Social media is the hot new way to market and promote your business, but make no mistake—it’s not just a fad. If you haven’t gotten on board with Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and other platforms for social customer relationship management, take a look at these success stories.
Blendtec is a small blender company with a pretty small marketing and advertising budget. Yet one thing Blendtec did have was an innovative idea that stemmed from a simple question: Will it blend? They made a series of videos in which the company’s founder, Tom Dickson, takes various consumer items—an iPhone, a Rubik’s Cube, marbles and a disposable lighter, among other things—and feeds them into the company’s Total Blender. The videos went viral on the video-sharing site YouTube, resulting in an explosion of sales within the company’s retail division. In face, they’ve seen a 700 percent increase in sales—with an initial investment of just $50. That’s some serious ROI, my friends.
Baby products manufacturer Graco, on the other hand, used the photo-sharing site Flickr, as well as a blog, to improve their sales by creating an online community of parents and babies. They encouraged their customers to submit via Flickr pictures of their babies, with a Graco product, they purchased. Showing real people using a product isn’t a new approach, but doing so online is an innovative way to get the message out. Graco even sponsored local events, then posted those pictures to the Flickr account as well, further positioning itself as a company that values family, parenthood and community.
Comcast found a different approach. Taking into consideration how social networking has revolutionized the American lifestyle, they created @comcastcares, a Twitter account which caters to the needs of their clients and offers instant responses to any concerns they may have. Frank Eliason is the man behind the tweets, and he may well be the most famous customer service rep in the world. He responds directly to consumers who express dissatisfaction with Comcast on Twitter, and actively tries to resolve issues, whether they are related to customer service, billing or technical issues. Says Eliason, who uses his own picture as an avatar to give his tweets a personal touch, “Now when [people] think Comcast, they think Frank.”
Accounting and tax software company Intuit takes the power of social media in yet another direction. They have an online community, where anyone can ask questions and get answers from real people, as well as a tax wiki called TaxAlmanac. A wiki is an online, interactive encyclopedia or knowledge base that anyone can edit. Its content is offered for free use on websites or in business documents, as long as proper credit is given, and it’s valuable as a resource where anyone can learn about tax issues or law, accounting, small business financial topics, and current judicial events.
There are hundreds of other businesses—ranging from freelance writers who work out of their basement, to multinational giants such as Coke and McDonalds—that have learned how to use social networking to grow their profits and improve customer relationships. While traditional businesses may tread water temporarily, pretty soon they’re going to have to learn how to swim in the water of social media. If they don’t, they might just sink.
