Tag Archives: brands

Staying on Brand in Community Management

I came across an interesting style of Community Management the other day. One of the things we’re adamant with our clients is keeping on brand and style with the way they want to be perceived through social networks.

Image

Forgive me if I’m sticking my nose into whichever agency runs Aston Martin’s online activity but I’m not so sure the client would want to be perceived using “winks” and exclamation marks.

  • Winks because, why would a brand ever need to wink at a client? Especially a brand that distinguishes a superior-quality and an elegance above most other Automotive brands
  • Exclamation marks, because it seems to be 1000 miles away from the Aston Martin tone they project in other marketing activities

Lionel Martin may just be rolling in his grave somewhere. Of course I could be wrong, their “Rules of Engagement” (that’s what we give to the client to let them know how we’re going to conduct their brand on Social) might include “Make sure we’re seen as jovial and really keen on Twitter” however even for my most light hearted and fun clients we’d still never “wink” at someone on Twitter.

Tagged , , , , , ,

When Communities turn against you

Sigh. I’ve had one of those weeks where several of my communities seem to have all turned volatile. No matter how much cool free stuff you give them as thanks for being there or awesome apps you’ve spent more than enough time on for the community, they seem completely ungrateful and just want to complain.

Sometimes I do wonder if Social Media will eventually lead to a turn on all marketing and brands. It’s becoming harder to market and think of clever creative ideas to satisfy what seems to be the general population of humanity (well the ones that are accustomed to complaining and buying online).

It’s totally fine to complain online using social networks, but do consumers realise that even if you do that, you’ll still be handed back to the same customer services you could have called an hour earlier whilst waiting for a reply on social media? (Granted we aim to get back to customers A LOT quicker than an hour) but some brands don’t have dedicated monitoring so it could be up to 48 hours on weekends sometimes. (I’m discarding companies like phone brands who have dedicated customer service teams because they get 876876324 tweets a day telling them they’re crap)

So you see, complaining on social media isn’t always the best way to do things. Especially if the brand your currently slating is only trying to help you and do their best to reward the community it does have. So if you’re a consumer, consider the brand maybe, just for a second or two and before you tell them you hate the amazing prize they’re giving away to the community for free, think of why they’re doing it in the first place – because they care about you.

My best advice is to keep that misanthrope tucked away inside you and smile like a good customer services agent would.

Tagged , , , , ,
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.