Capulet Communications

Having a social media presence is mostly about building relationships, not unlike conventional marketing. But in social media, communication works both ways and in real time.

If a hard copy journal gives your product a bad review, the copy disappears from the shelves in a month or two and you can move on. Not so with a bad online review. Google’s cache system and internet archives ensure bad reviews stay online forever.

So, what can you do about it?

Domino’s Pizza was getting a lot of negative attention about the quality of its pizza on Twitter and in focus groups. Rather than ignoring the feedback, they took the opportunity to make a better product and responded to criticism on social media channels. They even went so far as to change their pizza recipe. They tell the story with a video called Pizza Turnaround and the Twitter hashtag #newpizza. When they were criticized for initially censoring negative comments on their own website, they decided to post them along with an explanation of what they were doing to make customers happier.

Domino’s turned a negative situation into an opportunity for engagement. Not only did they respond to the problem, they showed the world what they were going to do about it.

If your customers or critics are on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, you should be too. Not responding to online criticism makes it look as though you are not a part of the internet community and that you are not monitoring the web closely enough. Even worse, it looks as though you don't care what customers and critics are saying. Though a negative review may last indefinitely on the web, so will your response and evidence of dialogue with your community.

As Jane Goodall discovered, the best way to learn about a species is to live among them. The social web can be a bit like the “wild west” of online communication. But there are some key communication protocols to be aware of before striking up conversations with the locals.

If you understand the social web’s code, you’ve got a better chance of breaking into the inner circle and getting mentioned or reviewed by online influencers. They can send thousands of visitors your way. Remember the golden rule of the social web is this: Listen First.

By emulating the behavior of influencers and learning their dialect, you can become more confident when approaching them. Begin by finding blogs and online communities that focus on your product, organization, or industry.

You can start by doing a search for blog and you’ll probably find references to your company. Poke around any associated blogs to find more references. Then, start reading them regularly.

If you can’t find blogs dedicated to your company, try searching for blog. Start reading these corporate blogs and the third party blogs that cover your competition.

You can certainly find blogs dedicated to your industry. Don’t believe us? Try searching “funeral blog” and you’ll find dozens. Now try searching for blog. If your industry has newsletters, conferences, and magazines, it has bloggers. Find a few and start reading them today.

With just a few clicks, you’ve got a virtual stack of reading material that will help you get to know the new influencers in your industry. Find out what they are talking about, and which companies they’re watching. Perhaps most importantly, find out what they’re not talking about. You don't want to pitch bloggers irrelevant stories because that wastes both your time and theirs.

If you do your homework and read the right blogs weekly, you lay the groundwork for future, positive interaction with these influencers.

We're pleased to introduce Shoshana Berman to Capulet's blog readers. She is a writer who is working with us on some projects and is writing blog posts about social media, using our book "Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook" as inspiration.

Shoshana has a varied background in both science and drama. Writing for Capulet is low key compared to past jobs, including doing reptile education shows for children. She's also a classically trained chef. When she isn’t reading, cooking or eating, Shoshana is mildly obsessed with following online news. Having watched the internet progress from a science experiment at universities in the 1980s to surreptitiously “talking to people in Russia” to become the ubiquitous communication tool it is today, she is fascinated by Web 2.0 and its potential to connect like-minded people around the globe.    

For a tech marketer, like me, Computerworld is the big time. Getting ink in the publication is on all of our clients' wish lists and goes a long way to validate a product. Which is why I'm so delighted that Todd R. Weiss included Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook in his article, "Social media marketing: 5 must-read books".

The "essential" books on Weiss' list provide a starting point for businesses that are new to social media marketing and are looking for some help planning their strategies and getting social media programs up and running.

We're in good company with Joel Postman's SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate; David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly; Maria Azua's The Social Factor: Innovate, Ignite and Win Through Mass Collaboration and Social Networking; and Tamar Weinberg's The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web.

If implementing a social media marketing strategy is on your list for 2010, these resources will put you in good stead. Happy reading!

After months of writing, rewriting, editing and then editing again, our book, "Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook" is finally hitting bookstores this month!

We've been delighted and, frankly, relieved to see good reviews coming in early. Here's a roundup of some of them:

“If you’re ready to get off the sidelines and get serious about social media marketing, you must read this book first. Friends With Benefits is tactical, practical, and above all, useful.”
- Lee LeFever, Common Craft

“Friends With Benefits is a must-read for social media marketers and those new to the field.”
- Monique Trottier, So Misguided

“This book is invaluable and there’s nothing like it out there in terms of a realistic portrayal of what works and what doesn’t.”
- Chris Abraham, Marketing Conversation

This month, our book is featured in BoxCar Marketing's Underwire newsletter. Not sure if you're spamming your customers and potential customers? Check out the section of our book BoxCar excerpted on that topic.

We'll be sharing more tips from the book with you on this blog and at the book's website, www.friendswithbenefitsbook.com.