INTERACTIVE SESSION : SOCIAL COMMERCE CREATES NEW CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

Assess the people, organization and technology issues for using social media to engage with customers.

To most people, social media are ways to keep in touch with friends and to let them know what they are doing. For companies of all shapes and sizes, however, social media like Facebook and Twitter have become powerful tools for engaging customer. Location based-businesses like gourmet food trucks can tweet their location to loyal followers and fans. Appointment-based businesses can easily tweet or post cancellations and unexpected openings. Larger companies run sweepstakes and promotions. And companies of all sizes have an opportunity to shape the perception of their brands and to solidify relationships with their customers. Peoples or employee use social media for either internally and externally.

Organizations use social media to engage customer and other stakeholders to help shapes the conversation around their product, service and brand. Besides that, Aim for single-contact resolution it means try to respond and fix the customer’s issues through social media, rather than moving it to a phone or email conversation. This provides a better customer experience overall in the communication format that customer prefers. If the issue can’t be resolved in 140 characters, direct message them details for contacting your company by email or phone.

Last but not least, be proactive when there are company-wide issues is means If websites go down or there are product recalls, reach out to your community with status updates before the complaints come rolling in. Let followers know what the problem is and that you’re actively trying to fix it. Lastly, create a social media policy for your company to Designates official spokespersons within your company who respond to comments and questions. Train these spokespersons in appropriate web etiquette, response times, and procedures.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for advertising, branch building, market research and customer service?

The advantages of using social media for advertising is can control is in your hands with self-service ads. Self-service ads are not like online displays ads. Instead, they consist of an image, brief copy, a headline and a link. Other than that using social media we can target audience for advertising. Besides that, they can set a budget that works. Set a daily budget that that are comfortable with and remember that can adjust budget at any time. In branch building, it uses social media conversation themselves as the product or service. The site allows groups divided in categories like customer, experts and communities give feedback to larger brands. Social media can help to grow business in many ways, using social media for market research is to collect data to determine awareness, data analysis to size up the competitors and customer sentiment. By using social media can benchmark campaigns and strategies to gain powerful insights into a competitor strategies, strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Social media monitoring gives real-time access to opinions, data that dates back and analysis of conversation.

The disadvantages of using social media for advertising it is a negative feedback. While it's beneficial for businesses to get feedback from their customers, social media makes the feedback public. If a customer has a bad experience with your brand, he may be compelled to share the experience on your social network profile. As a business owner, you have to be prepared to handle negative feedback immediately, before it ruins your brand's reputation. One of the unique weaknesses of social media research is the lack of individualized demographic and geographic data. This means we must find new and different ways to learn about the unique characteristics of people talking about brands. Inferred demographics and qualitative psychographics are just some of the solutions. The lack of demographics also means that we must find new ways of sampling and weighting our results, such as using website sources, to ensure that results are properly generalized to external populations.

Should all companies use Facebook and Twitter for customer service? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms?

Facebook and Twitter has become a very popular forum for customers to express themselves.  As a result, you’re given an opportunity to help customers solve their problems in real-time, before they go elsewhere looking for help. Companies use Facebook and Twitter as a customer service platform is new. But since then, many of the world’s top brands have started to adopt the practice. As more consumers turn to social media to get help, it’s important that businesses open the lines of communication. Depending on the volume, it could be worth creating a separate support handle, although it’s not necessary. Social media is changing customer service, and will continue to do so. Make sure that your company is ready to adapt. This is why any business like big or small should consider advertising on Facebook and Twitter. It is a great opportunity for a company to make online sales, get a following around the brand, create a platform where customer can discuss the product and, when done successfully, let people spread the word about your qualities. A large part of companies potential customers are there. Therefore, my opinion, all companies should have a Facebook and Twitter page where they can interact with their customers. No other advertising channel, at least where you can communicate, can compete with those numbers.   

Facebook is synonymous with social media–and given its sheer size, it certainly has clout. But again, it’s important to remember your business goal here. Its sweet spot is consumer-facing small businesses that are interested in building a community of customers that are loyal to the business and want to share their experiences with friends and family. Facebook provides a great forum to keep customers informed, and make them part of the conversation surrounding business decisions: a new menu item, discounts, new product to sell, etc.–and can also boost loyalty. In this way, Twitter can be a good choice for you as well. But the use of Twitter should not be limited to just listening; it also provides an incredible platform to create a dialogue with customers and prospective customers. For example, if your business is having a sale, you could tweet out links to coupons, enticing both new and existing customers.