“Folks on social media want to talk to customer service and product experts not Marketers.”

Blanket statements like this drive me absolutely nutso.  The fact is, promotion finds it’s way into almost every facet of our lives, it goes where we are.  There’s no denying it, there’s no controlling it.  The best you can do is accept it and try to make it into something that people might be interested in.

To say that people participating in social networks don’t want to be promoted to may be true, but that’s like saying marketers shouldn’t be on TV because people only watch TV for information and entertainment.  What is TV like without promotion?  Look at CSPAN – have you ever watched CSPAN?!?!?  I would use public television as an example, but even public television has elements of promotion.

I think everything has to be balanced, the company I work for does a very good job of balancing promotion with entertainment, expertise and customer service.  I think a lot of companies struggle to find that balance.

The best advice I can give: keep it personal and transparent.

Over the course of the contest, I received more than 400 unique page views, I was retweeted more than 15 times, including by some contest specific accounts, the post was shared on Facebook a couple of times, it was even written about on other popular blogs.

I received 7 qualifying entries.

7 people took the time to sit down and write a quick letter about why they thought they deserved a more than $350 laptop.  I guess the reason I was so surprised by this response was because of the prize.  I’m not talking about a $50 gift card or something like that, we’re talking about a computer.

I’ve decided to forgo the voting process and just pick a winner myself.  I’m going to re-read all of the letters this week and select a winner no later than March 6th. The winner will be posted here – the only catch – I expect the winner to take a picture with their shiny new netbook when it arrives and email it to me.

Now that you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, it’s not what you would think of as a traditional Twitter contest.  I don’t care if you follow me, you don’t have to re-tweet something (although I’d appreciate it if you would, I’d love a lot of entries), all I want you to do is write me a letter and send it to me in the mail.

Here’s the contest:

1. Write me a letter explaining why you should win the prize (listed below)
2. The letter has to be hand written or typed on a typewriter
3. You have to include a return address (this is where I will ship the prize)
4. You also have to include your Twitter ID so I can congratulate you on Twitter for being the winner
5. The contest will begin today and all letters must be postmarked no later than February 4th

The prize is:
Asus 10.1 ATOM N270/250G HDD/1GB Win 7 Netbook

You can view the exact specs here.

My address is:
Scott F. Murphy
434 W Diversey Pkwy., APT 2B
Chicago, IL 60614

Once I’ve received all of the entries, I will judge them and post the top 5 letters.  Then I will post a Twitter based poll where you can select the letter that you think is best.  That person will be the winner.  Once the winner is selected, I will ship the Netbook directly to them.

Legal jargon:

• Void where prohibited
• Must be of legal age in your state to enter the contest
• I am not liable for anything bad that happens to you because you win this Twitter contest
• The prize is subject to change based on availability, but will be the same specifications or better than those listed here
• The prize must be shipped to an address with in the United States
• You must have a Twitter ID to enter – i.e. you must be a Twitter user, you don’t have to be active, you just have to have an account
• By entering, you agree to these rules and agree that you are eligible to enter

This contest is in no way associated with my employer Sears Holdings – it is completely my contest and no endorsement is implied or should be assumed.

1. Be Personal

I read an article recently about the best brands on Twitter, the quote that stood out most for me was:

“Be a person first, and a company second.”

Think of your Facebook page as a way for you to communicate conversationally with your customers.  While it can be a valuable tool for getting the message out about deals and discounts, it can also be an exciting and interactive way for you to get to know more about your customers – or at least the ones who are fans of your brand (and important thing to keep in mind).  Being personal means associating the brand page with the person who maintains it.  I do this by “signing” all of my comments.  This lets people know that there is a real person on the other end of this thing, who is actually listening to what they’re saying.  It helps to develop a personal connection with your customers.  Developing that personal connection helps to foster that “long term value” customer everyone is seeking.  Don’t make Facebook transactional — make it personal.

2. Know Your Audience

Facebook has a number of valuable analytics tools; the one I find to most useful to me when working with my “internal customers” (people within my organization who would like their message on Facebook) is the information about demographics.  I can see exactly who my audience is and tailor my message to them.  Specifically, for example, if my Facebook fan base is made up primarily of women ages 25-45, I’m probably not going to sell them a gaming system directly, but I might remind them that someone in their family might want one as a gift.  I’m thinking of them as the purchase decision makers, not the influencers.  If I’m talking to men ages 18-25, I might point out the great deals on gaming systems and provide them with a way to share those deals with the person who they think will be making the purchase.  It’s essentially the same message “buy a gaming system”, but I’m tailoring the message to my audience.  Overall, its valuable to address your message to the people you know are listening.

3. Respond and React

People are going to come to Facebook to comment about your brand, some of these comments will be positive; many of them will be negative.  Facebook gives your customers a voice that they haven’t had since the days of the family owned store, where if you had an issue, you could just go to the store owner.  Now, they can come to a public forum and voice both their positive comments and their complaints.  It’s important that you address both.  If someone compliments your brand, make sure you respond so that they know you’re listening and you heard their comments and appreciate them.  This will encourage other people with nice things to ay about you to post them as well; again, this is another way to create a personal relationship with your customers.  If someone comes to your brand with a complaint, don’t just respond: react.  I comment on every negative post,  and if I can, I also reach out to the customer directly and try to address their concerns.  I have created a special profile that is tied to my corporate email address and has limited personal information.  I use this profile to directly reach out to customers with issues and try to help resolve them.  The number one thing I hear from customers I help is “I’m just glad there’s someone listening who cares.”  If I can’t respond to a customer directly (due to privacy settings), I direct them to a special customer service email address that they can reach out to for help.  Being direct goes a long way to continuing to develop that customer relationship.

4. Have Fun

Not everything I do on the fan page I maintain is all business.  During the holidays specifically I asked a lot of easy to answer fun questions that resulted in a lot of customer engagement.  One example was:

“Parents, where do you hide your kids Christmas gifts?”

That post along received about 500 comments.  It was a simple question, easy to answer and a fun conversation between the brand and the customer.  The most popular question I asked during the holidays was both fun and beneficial to the brand.  I asked:

“What is your favorite Christmas movie?”

The far and away winner was “A Christmas Story” — the question received over 700 responses.  The next day, I worked with our Online Business Unit to discount the DVD to $10 and was able to post the discounted product to Facebook be 4pm the next day.  This kind of fun question turned into an opportunity to give our customers a product they wanted at a discounted price.

5. Try New Things

Because Facebook is such a new platform (in the grand scheme of marketing channels), it affords you an opportunity to try new things with your customers that you normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to because of cost or lack of support from the enterprise.  An example of this for us was a photo album of some of our most popular Jewelry products.  We showcased 18 of our most popular products with direct links to their pages on our ecommerce platform.  This allowed our customer to “shop” directly from Facebook and it foster conversations about our Jewelry line.  IT also allowed us to feature some “rich” content in the form of photos.  This is just one of the many ways we have experimented with Facebook.  Not all of your ideas are going to be well received; some won’t get any reaction at all.  Keep in mind anytime you’re trying something new, does it help you build better customer relationships?

These are just some of the best practices I use to keep the content on the Facebook pages I maintain, fresh and interesting for the audience.  Do you have any best practices you’d like to share?

Normally, I would say, pick a subject and stick to it so as not to alienate your audience.  In this case, it’s really more of an addition than a change – I want to write about the things I’m passionate about.  When I redesigned this blog, I decided those things were the Air Force, Technology and Volunteer Management.  At that time in my life, I was immersed in all of those things.  Now, I’ve started a new job and I’m spending less time thinking about Technology and way more time thinking about the much blogged about topic of Social Media.

That’s right, I’m going to start adding my ideas about SOCMED to the already mountainous pile of crap content that already exists on the subject.

To be clear:

I am not an expert – not even close.

I think I have some insights into the space purely from the perspective that I work for a company that has embraced this platform as a way to reconnect with it’s diverse and large customer base.  Are my ideas gospel?  Hell no.  They’re just that, my ideas.  Some of them are working for us, and some of them aren’t.  Sometimes I’m just full of shit.

So, here we go, take it for what it’s worth.