Mashable has offered up a long list of social media and tech events to attend in 2010.
Reading the list of social media marketing conferences, including the express and implied promises of benefits – and threats to corporate existence (Engage or Die!) if your company doesn’t attend – I’m left once again to wonder: “How, ever, did a company extend its brand and engage its customers without the aid of the social media marketing crowd?”
Instead of agonizing over which events to attend and which to miss, or busting the budget by attending half of them, can’t we craft the Social Media and Customer Engagement Short Course? Say something akin to the courses once offered by SNL’s Father Guido Sarducci? (My favorite was his short course that offered to teach your child everything he or she would likely remember after 4 years of college.)
Here’s my first attempt at the “Social Media Expedited Learning Short Course“:
Lesson 1: The best social media strategy is to deliver on the express and implied promise of customer experience that your company’s marketing department and advertisements has attempted to associate with “your brand”.
O.K. Lesson over. Now, to review.
Isn’t the best “social strategy” to be honest and open about the delivery of that experience, as in “if you get it wrong admit it and fix it”? Don’t lie about it. Don’t cover it up. Don’t play games.
The social media word du jour for this is transparency. In other words, when the world knows about your dirty laundry then playing pretend just makes your company look bad or worse.
Effective social media strategy? How about just doing the right thing or make what was done wrong right – by some reasonable means or method?
How many more seminars and speeches by experts will it take before the self-evident becomes obvious? Deliver on the express or implied promise of your brand. If your employees or agents gets it wrong then promptly and fairly investigate any issues and fix what was mishandled.
If the “unhappy customer” had made a public spectacle of the bad experience then visit the places where he/she has “gone public” and explain what you have done to address the issue or otherwise publish a fair and factual response to the allegations. The con men, complainers, fraudsters, bullies and all their ilk are equally subject to the effects of social media – such as exposing your maligners for who or what they really are.
If you really want to invest your time and money in a course that will have a positive impact on social media difference then you should stay whereever you are and focus on ALL your employees and agents delivering on delivering to the customer the experience known as your company’s brand.
You do that – you deliver on the promise – and this thing called social media will do the rest.
Promise.
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