Make your customers laugh...

The old saying goes, “The customer is always right.” But is this always true in the current age of social media where many customer service interactions take place in a public forum? Smart brands are paying particular attention to the way they interact with customers because their responses are available for the entire world to see.

At the Social Media Week in Chicago, presenters in the “Confessions of a Community Manager” presentation brought up an interesting theory: The customer isn’t always right. They asserted that humor is sometimes useful to diffuse customer service complaints online. A number of famous examples show that humor tanks when it’s insensitive, but being funny is immensely successful when it’s tuned-in and well-timed.

When it’s good to be a wise guy

Recently, there have been many examples of companies trying to infuse humor and personality into their customer service interactions. One of my favorites was a battle between AT&T and T-Mobile over a customer. Twitter user Jay Rooney, a.k.a. @RamblingRooney, took to Twitter when he was considering whether he should switch mobile carriers, and his posts spurred a long series of clever banter between the two mobile providers.

The conversation caught other customers’ attention and created a larger discussion about which carrier was superior. In the end, it looked as though T-Mobile won with its willingness to engage.

Another example is Tesco Mobile’s brilliant response to a customer’s bizarre Facebook post complaining about poor service. The company’s reply inspired a whole chain of hilarious Tweets in which many other users and brands weighed in and demonstrated what can happen when companies pay attention to social conversations.

While these two cases show how brands with agile social responses can spark ongoing customer conversations, a separate instance proves that interactions don’t need to be long to be funny. AMC Theatres’ witty response to a Tweet from Oreo about sneaking cookies into theaters achieved over 1,800 Retweets!

The benefits of being funny in social marketing

So the question remains: What is the point of using humor to deal with customers on social media? And considering the potential backlash of getting humor wrong – is it worth it?

 I’d say yes. It is worth trying to work some fun into your customer interactions on social media. When done correctly, there are many benefits to being humorous online.

1. More personality

When you give your social media managers the freedom to be funny, you will give your business more personality. This works particularly well for brands in industries that aren’t ordinarily funny, like technology software. A sassy tweet (when appropriate) can help you stand out of the crowd.

2. Make jokes, save face

Humor can also be one of the most effective ways to diffuse awkward or problematic situations. It pays to lighten sticky situations because social media posts are public, and more often than not, seen by third-party social observers. As we saw in the Tesco Mobile example, the playful response to one user’s strange post caused other Twitter users to rally around the brand and created a fun chain of engagement.

3. Get a bigger audience

The final, and perhaps the biggest reason for brands to use humor on social media is the buzz. Funny social interactions are often covered on other sites, and thereby reach an even bigger audience. Additionally, comical interactions receive a lot of Likes, Comments and Retweets.

All told, brands stand to benefit greatly from using humor online. When done correctly, the benefits certainly outweigh the risks. It definitely takes guts to respond to a customer with a witty Tweet, but I think that it’s worth it. So tell me: What do you think? 

Crowdsourcing: A New Way to Look at Digital Marketing

Recently our group (for Digital Marketing) had this discussion on the state of marketing and crowd sourcing. We believe that most would agree that, not so long ago, marketing was a one-way conversation. Until the social media revolution changed everything, consumers were rarely asked to take an active role in their favorite brand's marketing. That's how it used to work.

Over the last few years, more and more companies are jumping on the crowd marketing bandwagon. For example:

• When Levi's wanted to find a new star for its 2012 marketing activities it ran a crowd sourcing campaign using Instagram.
• Expedia launched a new crowdsourced deals feature on its U.S. site in 2012 that automatically identifies the best deals found by other travelers for hotels rooms and flights.
• In April 2013, Nissan announced a new marketing campaign that uses its social channels to allow fans to help customize and name a one-off version of the Juke Nismo.

As a marketer you're likely to ask two obvious questions prior to testing out the crowd for your next campaign: 1) 'How do I use the crowd most effectively?' and 2) 'What exactly is the crowd?'

Crowd 101

For starters, even though you can crowd source things like funding for your next project via Kickstarter or analyze the genes involved in the production of antibodies and immune-system sentinels, marketers happen to be one of crowd's biggest users.

In a nutshell, the 'crowd' is any set of contractors (usually just individuals) who are looking to work on any project available to them for a set price. There are plenty of services like 99Designs, oDesk, CrowdFlower and others that are a clearinghouse for people looking for work. Savvy marketers using these services are saving a great deal of money, while getting quick, high quality results.

Small to medium sized businesses tend to take advantage of it because they lack in-houses resources. But as with the three examples we've given, many other large corporations are making use of paid crowd. For example General Electric and NY Post  are among those who use Outbrain and Google Ads to promote their messages. And AOL, Amazon, Microsoft and LinkedIn have all chosen to outsource via crowd for various initiatives.

However, crowd sourcing isn't only about solving problems in the fastest, cheapest way possible. Handled well, it's a tool to find effective solutions by taking a deep dive into the heart of what are often complex marketing issues.

There are many ways to effectively implement crowd sourcing.

Separating the Wheat from the Chafe
Separating the important information (wheat) from the filler (chaff) is essential. This is a phrase often used to indicate an ability to separate an more important/significant issue, problem, fact from other, insignificant information available. And there's a great deal of insignificant information about most things.

While crowd sourcing is undeniably incredibly powerful, it can be difficult to implement essentially in smaller organizations. It takes both time and money to do well and small businesses with few existing customers may struggle to get enough meaningful responses. So how does one go about it?

1. Talk to your existing customers first: No matter what your end goal is, you should start by talking to your existing customers. They've given you their hard earned money in the past so their voice should have a greater weight on any future decisions. You may be surprised how much they're willing to help if you just ask.
2. Use all existing communication channels: One error most people tend to do while implementing  a crowd sourcing strategy is that they only communicate it via one marketing/communication channel. For example, they'll post something on their Facebook page asking for feedback, but visit their website and there is no mention of it. Now in certain circumstances this may make sense, but more often than not businesses miss out on huge opportunities by not using all their marketing channels effectively. So make sure you use, PR, social media, website content, e-mail and even in-store mentions (if you're a retailer) together as part of a cohesive strategy.
3. Use dedicated crowd sourcing platforms: Finally, if you've talked to your existing customers via all the appropriate communication channels and you still can't find what you're looking for then and only then should you consider looking at dedicated platforms. The reason expert market doesn't do this right from the get go is because these platforms often have lower engagement levels. That said we do use a variety of third party platforms to accomplish certain tasks these include: Amazon mechanical turk to source small repetitive tasks, iStockphoto to source large number of images for obscure B2B products, UsabilityHub to test design and layouts among others.

Crowd Sourced Content Marketing

Original and compelling content is critical to your success as a marketer. Involving your customers in the process is a great way to create engagement, product improvement, product development and an interactive reputation as a brand. It can also add substantial value to your content.

Few things that companies can do is:

1. Invest in quality content 
This is of paramount importance. The web is inundated with spammy content from marketers looking for links, so it's critical that your content stand out from the rest. You'll want to commission original, long-form content complete with useful insights that only a subject matter expert would know. Then, include images and resource links to round it out.

2. Use a content creation platform 
You can use services like Scripted.com, Contently.com or eByline.com to begin sourcing high quality editorial for use in your campaigns. They all use their own crowd of talented writers to help brands produce engaging content.

3. Use content amplification tools 
Companies like Outbrain and Content Blvd help you to increase the visibility of your content. Most business blogs don't have a large audience, therefore it doesn't make sense to publish exclusively on their own blogs. These tools help to ensure that the content you're investing in gets seen by the target audience.

Crowd sourcing changes the game for web marketers, This is especially true with resource-intensive marketing tactics such as native advertising where brands need to produce a steady stream of original, high-quality content, and get that content published in front of the right audience.

Taking advantage of the crowd is a safe, efficient, cost effective solution to a number of different marketing strategies and problems. 

Beyoncé Goes Digital

Wikipedia defines digital marketing as marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones, cellphones, digital billboards, and game consoles to engage with consumers and other business partners. Making this definition simpler, we can say that digital marketing is a collective term which is used where marketing meets internet technology and other forms of new media.

One of the major components of digital marketing is social media marketing, which has got a boost due to countless networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. It allows for two-way communication between a company and consumer in a way that wasn't previously seen and it’s safe to say that it has changed business approach to marketing as now, the consumer holds the power.It’s also based on one of the most effective forms of advertising; word of mouth.

It’s also useful for making content 'go viral', something which can help to strengthen a brand very quickly. It’s brand personality that makes social work so well, as if this is done correctly, across the board, then it can boost engagement considerably.

One of the best examples of how social media has changed the way of traditional marketing has been illustrated by Beyoncé when she used Instagram and Twitter to update her fans about her new album release. On December 2013, she surprised her fans by posting a video featuring images of her and the cover of the album on Instagram, with the caption “Surprise!”. After her announcement on the social media site, the 14-song album appeared for sale on iTunes, as did 17 different videos from it. Within 12 hours, 1.2 million tweets were posted about “Beyoncé” and within the first 24 hours more than 430,000 albums had sold for $15.99 on iTunes.

This just goes to show how social media is changing how traditional business works ushering in a world of changes from the mundane.