ImpactWatch Blog

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream has announced that they will be transitioning from email marketing to contacting customers almost exclusively via social media outlets. It’s an interesting decision in that major companies usually have the resources to hit consumers from all angles…so they do. I’m sure that sending updates via Facebook is cheaper than maintaining a multi-million contact email list, but I also wonder how many people will be lost in the transition.

B&J’s has 1.3 million Facebook fans. That’s a lot but likely still smaller than the email list that I’m sure has been a cultivated over a decade. And while it’s true that you can always delete a marketing email without reading it, it’s also very easy to miss FB and twitter updates if you keep your habit even remotely under control.

Apparently, customers indicated that they weren’t fans of the monthly email newsletter and preferred to be contacted via social media. I first wonder how they came to this conclusion. Were these spontaneous complaints? Did they do a poll on Facebook? Is this a case of the vocal minority on SM changing the rules for all? I hope the decision wasn’t that simple. I know my 17-year old cousin voted that she would rather be contacted via social media, but she’s not reading your updates, guys – she’s too busy texting.

This still begs the question of why the company didn’t make efforts to improve the newsletter, decrease its frequency or simply shift focus to SM if they felt customer contact was more successful through that channel. They would reach email-only customers while strengthening relationships with those who are active on SM. The real intrigue is why they didn’t take these intermediate steps and transition from the listserv gradually (or never).

So, I don’t know if hordes of people were unsubscribing from the listserv or what, but it will be interesting to see if other companies follow suit…and how this affects Free Cone Day.

Photo: Technicolor76

A few goodies for the week:

• Social Media Monitoring Tools – How to Pick The Right One – Convince & Convert

• Social Media Monitoring software is a commodity – CustomerThink

• 12 Critical Keywords Every Company Should Monitor in Social Media – Trackur

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SEE LAST WEEK’S TOP POSTS

Going back to the eavesdropping vs customer service argument from a few weeks ago, eMarketer has released some very interesting new stats on how consumers in a variety of countries actually feel about social media monitoring and outreach.

So while not all consumers are convinced that companies intend to fix their issues, a minority are actually concerned about the underlying issue of being monitored and contacted through social media. As I’ve mentioned previously, I think this is in large part a public education issue. Consumers need to better understand the levels of privacy provided by each social media outlet so they properly control the information they release in that format.

I don’t mean to let companies off the hook. There are many that are more focused on shotgun marketing than the customer service opportunity this provides. I believe this is also an educational issue and that companies will quickly learn with experience what type of customer contact is appropriate.

For now, public opinion is on our side.

• Top Five Social Media Marketing Mistakes – BusinessWeek

• How to Audit Your Social Media Efforts: 20+ Questions to Ask Yourself – Sociatic

• Social Media Monitoring Tools Exposed – The Viral Muse

• If you only do one thing in Social Media, it ought to be SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING. – PR Squared

• Matrix: Brand Monitoring, Social Analytics, Social Insights – Jeremiah Owyang

• Manage Your Online Reputation—Before Someone Else Does - Wall Street Journal

• My Feelings About Sentiment Analysis – Intelligent Enterprise

• European PR measurement summit – really? – Liberate Media

• Measuring Social Media’s Impact on the Bottom Line – Winning Business

• Crack isn’t just a waste of time. It’s bad for you too – BrandNet  I thought this headline was funny and went to check it out. Turns out it was actually relevant.

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SEE LAST WEEK’S TOP POSTS OF THE WEEK

Yesterday, I woke up to discover an emergency situation. Yes, it’s true that we had a 6.2 earthquake here in Mexico, but I slept through that. Unlike my emergency, the earthquake caused no damage in Mexico City.

I woke up to find that I had no internet. No internet!

After recovering from the initial shock, I quickly contacted tech support (my husband) to assess the situation. With a home network that consists of 2 routers, a TimeCapsule, a NAS and 4 computers, there is pretty much always something wonky going on here but it doesn’t usually affect my ability to shop online. If you think I’m overreacting, consider that Finland has declared broadband a human right.

In all seriousness, I work from a home office that is 2,000 miles from ImpactWatch’s main office in Washington, DC. I can’t just pop over to use the wireless. So after hours of playing doctor with our boxes and cables, husband gave up and went into his own office. I headed over to Starbucks.

When I returned in the afternoon, we were still offline. The longer I was without internet, the more I figured there was something amiss with a router or some component in the house. In the two years I’ve lived in Mexico, I haven’t lost internet for more than a pair of hours.

Then I had an idea. If the ISP was to blame, surely others were having the same problem. I turned to Twitter to see if anyone else in Mexico City was having issues with Cablevision, our ISP.

For those of you who don’t speak Spanish, these people (and hundreds more on Twitter) are not happy. Many have been without service for more than 2 days. Seeing these complaints was actually a relief for me because I knew that my house wasn’t the problem. I could have saved hours of fiddling around if I had gone to Twitter first for troubleshooting.

The response from Cablevision has been disappointing. They disabled their single support phone line from the beginning and make no mention of the issue on their website. Living in Mexico, I know first-hand that companies get away with a lot here – the complaint-resolution process is slow and ineffective. With social media and smartphones becoming more widespread every day, I don’t think they will get away with it much longer.

Bien hecho, Cablevision. Well done.

The Second European Summit on Measurement finishes up today with one of its major goals accomplished. The Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles has been voted on and passed by 200 delegates and the leaders of five major international PR measurement and evaluation organizations  (The Global Alliance, IPR Measurement Commission, AMEC, PRSA and ICCO).

The principles of the declaration are:

1. Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programmes.
2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality – cuttings in themselves are not enough.
3. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity.
4. Social media can and should be measured.
5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.
6. Business results can and should be measured where possible.
7. Transparency and Replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

This is an international agreement to raise standards and to continue working towards reliable, valid and objective measurement of communications programs. Good stuff!

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Slow week, but I’m working on the Top Posts of the Year from the past 52 Top Posts of the Week lists. Please add a comment with anything that I missed. Also, Dear Mark Evans, please stop cranking out amazing blog posts every day. It is making the rest of us look bad :)

• How Much Does Social Media Cost? – Sysomos

• The Barcelona Prinicples of Measurement – Katie Paine

• First global standard of proving value of PR created at European Summit on Measurement – PR Week

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SEE LAST WEEK’S TOP POSTS

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• Three ways to act on your social media monitoring – Social Media Today

• 52 Questions To Ask When Hiring A Social Media Company – Outspoken Media

• Six real ways to measure social media – Meme Burn

• How ‘BT Sarah’ spies on your Facebook account – Daily Mail. [The Daily Mail is often silly-bazilly but this is clearly meant to alarm readers who are less web-savvy. I propose higher webucation.]

• Revolutionizing Corporate Communication: 6 Tips for Integrating Social Media – Huffington Post

• What if Social Media Isn’t Working? Then What? – Sysomos

• 5 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself When Creating a Social Media Report Template – Lauren Fernandez

• PR measurement was never meant to be an exclusive club – Rebecca Denison

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SEE LAST WEEK’S TOP POSTS

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Photo: Bluedharma

The Daily Mail has stirred the pot again by suggesting that companies are spying on customers who post negative comments on social media sites.

I work for a media monitoring company and I have for a really, really long time. So it makes sense that I would be in favor of…well…monitoring media. But I think in this situation, most customers understand and even appreciate what companies are trying to do by engaging them through social media. The real problem seems to be the subset of customers who are misinformed about the nature of social media.

The thing about posting information publicly is that the information is then PUBLIC. That means anyone can read it. If you sign up for an interactive forum, like Twitter, that means that you are making yourself available to be contacted by the very public that is reading your publicly available posts.

So I think the issue here is one of education. People need to know what they are agreeing to when they use social media sites and what their options are for limiting contact with the public. For instance, they could set their Facebook profiles to block everyone but friends. This way they are not posting publicly nor inviting contact from the public. If it’s one way communication they are looking for, blogs can be set-up to disallow commenting. Or if they really want to vent privately to friends, email works well.

There are a lot of different broadcasting and interaction options available online and I think the internet needs to do a better job of educating users on what those are. Maybe a mandatory mini-tutorial when you sign up for Facebook or a new blog account. Maybe Twitter can change the “What’s Happening?” box to the “What’s Happening That You Want the Whole Freaking World to Know About?” box. Subtle AND effective.

And to companies – for goodness sake, don’t abuse the privilege. You are so lucky to have this opportunity to see into the hearts and minds of your customers. By all means, ask if you can help. Offer a coupon or discount when someone compliments your product. Do not contact customers who do not mention your company by name or ask specifically for the service you provide. “I like jellybeans” does not mean “please contact me jellybean-makers.” You will ruin it for everyone, I promise.

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Photo: Samuel Mann