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Social media listening
From left: Tristan Bishop, Ron Vinson, Arra Yerganian & Charlie Treadwell (photo credit: Ed Uyeshima)

At the unveiling of the social media command center at Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco on 5/30, four brands spoke passionately in a panel about social media listening and how it has changed the nature of their business.

Here are the key social media insights from Symantec, Cisco, University of Phoenix, and the City and County of San Francisco. Use these takeaways to engage more powerfully with your customer base, and change the nature of the conversation.

1. Organize your social media mentions

Tristan Bishop, Director of Digital Strategy at Symantec utilized social media mentions of their brand  by organizing each one in a logical place. Tristan divided the data into six buckets to travel to six different departments: requests for tech support; sales leads, public relations issues, compliments for product marketing, suggestions to product development, and fraud and piracy issues for the legal team.

Engaging in social media requires organization. “It’s like pulling diamonds out of a big pile of dirt,” Tristan says, “But once you find a logical home for every piece of information, you can start to turn chatter into actionable items.”

2. Empower your brand ambassadors

Arra Yerganian, Chief Marketing Officer at University of Phoenix, turned his company’s massive presence on social media ­-- including 1.3 million fans on Facebook -- into a community engaged in sharing the University of Phoenix brand. By beginning to listen and respond to the concerns and comments from both alumni and current students online, Yerganian soon saw the power of utilizing alumni in the role of brand ambassadors to bring the message of higher education to a broader audience.

After a recent ad campaign that featured a Phoenix alum wearing lucky red socks, there was a huge outpouring on social media from current and former students asking for a pair. Yerganian shares, “We realized how important social was for us. As an online academic institution, without a conventional football team, or a company store that sells swag, we needed this galvanizing tool for our community. Our alumni recognized that this could be their outlet to share and explain their success and it’s helped us magnify our message in a unique way.”

After listening to the chatter, it became clear to Yerganian that the best way to share the University’s message of education was by engaging those that already love the place. They found ways to empower these ambassadors to express their views to their networks.

3. Turn negative brand mentions into positive ones

Charlie Treadwell, Social and Digital Marketing Manager for Cisco Systems, thinks of social listening as “the bumper lanes in a bowling alley.” By listening to what’s being said about your company, you can bring back customers who have had a frustrating experience.

Charlie shared a story of a customer who couldn’t get his product questions answered by the presales employee in a chatroom. “The guy left the chat room frustrated, and like so many people do, he went on Twitter and said, ‘Hey @ciscosystems, I was trying to get my question answered, but your guy couldn’t help me,” says Charlie. Because of the listening system that Cisco has in place, that Tweet was tagged as a customer needing urgent assistant, and was rerouted back to customer service.

“The customer got a Tweet back the very next day with a link,” explains Charlie, and after clicking on the link, he was greeted by someone who already knew his name and was familiar with his case.

“Not only did that customer purchase a product, but he left the experience giving the experience five stars out of five,” says Charlie. By listening with Radian6, Cisco has been able to change the normal routine when something goes wrong, to turn it into something positive.

4. Listen for feedback

As Director of Media in the Department of Technology for the City and County of San Francisco, Ron Vinson knows how to tune in to the collective interests of the citizens to help administrate the city more effectively. Recently the city was considering raising rates on parking meters in several sections of town, but when word got out, there were a proliferation of negative Tweets and online comments, so Vinson advised the city to scrap the rate adjustment altogether.

You don’t have to be a public city official to take advantage of public dissent. Any company in the midst of introducing a product line or considering a new venture, can put their information out on social media and take the temperature of its customers. Then they can decide to make an adjustment based on crowd sentiment.

 

While some of these brands already have social media command centers in place and others have yet to launch one, all of them are actively listening to their communities, working to solve problems, creating new opportunities and making a difference. To learn more about social media command centers, check out the free ebook below.

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