While there could have been many reasons for the CEO to remove this event at the very last minute, this is simply a move which is too drastic to make especially when people are able to air their thoughts and reasonings on the social media which are many times more valid than the CEO’s reasons.

What’s done is already done.  But it’s the aftermath of handling the social media that matters today.

So far as I can see, they have been trying to do some cleaning up of the “mess” by finishing the unfinished work, doing some FAQs for the public, CEO giving some explanation, keeping the comments as intact as possible while removing vulgarities, CEO posting on the wall to apologise and taking full responsibilities, and lastly to focus on business continuity with the rest of the wall posts.

It is a very difficult task to handle the huge amount of negative comments which keep flowing in.  Not to ignore any of them and continue to allow the social media users to vent their anger, it is a wise choice to make as it requires a lot of thoughts and a plan to clean up the mess.  The idea is not to agitate anybody.  No amount of words can ever be sufficient to have a good reason to convince anyone why they are withdrawing an activity which costs the company a million dollar of expenses and refunding around 1000 tickets.  Seriously speaking from both the business point of view, and from the public of this highly-anticipated event.

I think they have done everything that they need in this social media crisis.  Only time can heal the rest now.

When a company is still small, they can still say “Welcome Charles.  Do you still want to have your favorite drink for your meal?”  When they grew big, they forgot their customers’ name.  But they will only greet and ask about their favorite drink when the customer flashes their VIP card and they checked in their database of their customers’ favorite drink.

Today, it is virtually impossible for a company’s staff to remember so many customers and treat them as though they are their friends.  They have to use some sort of automation in order to be “personal” and “friendly” to their customers.

And to manage customer relationships, the companies are treating the customers like a number game in sales and customer service.  The meaning of number game is that if they failed to close a deal or to satisfy a customer’s need, they will just move on and look for new customers.  This is all taught by the top salespeople as their focus is on money and not on the customers’ needs.  And it seems to work very well for them, but it doesn’t work well for the customer service when they have to handle the complaints and misrepresentations by the salespeople.

This is where social media comes in handy.  Because of its common platform being used, people are talking freely to everybody about you and your company.  If you have treated any particular customer badly, don’t be surprised that the other customers know about it as well.  In fact, right from the start where you work on social media, you should already be expecting complaints and you should even plead your customers to complain so that you can focus on improving and becoming a better company to serve them!

This should be the way that the companies should be expecting when they are using social media.  Hence, the rest are all about content scheduling and marketing exciting campaigns…

Today, 80/20 rule no longer applies when everybody has the same ability to tell the world how the companies have treated badly with 80% of their customers. Instead, we must continue to build our customer base and all of them well.  As you build up your own Facebook Page, you are opening up a can of worms to the 80% of your customers who will be ready to complain publicly to the rest of your 20% customers.  Customers will start to complain as much as they want, and your role is to continue to cater to their needs.

I am foreseeing that more and more people will be employed in the social media positions to cater to the customer needs whether they are good or problematic customers.  And if you continue to serve 100% of your customers well, it will continue to grow tremendously as many of them will reciprocate by being your evangelists to introduce your business to their friends and relatives online.

What do you think about 80/20 rule here?  Does it still apply to the sales and marketing today?  Do leave your comments here to let me know.

Yesterday, our salespeople had trained us to be aware of their sales tactics.  We have been learning and keeping track of the latest sales tactics so as to “protect” ourselves from being “conned” by the salespeople.  They have tried many ways… From cold calling, to cold knocking, to distributing brochures, to giving free gifts in the street.   Everything that they do, there is a price tag to it.  Then, they suddenly learn that customers love free stuff.  They started shouting “FREE GIFTS here, you want?” in the street, which attracted a lot of people out there and eventually the salespeople are taking advantage of the air time to sell their products while the potential customers are listening.

Today, we have a very attractive market called the “social media” where many people have been thinking of ways and means to decipher the code to make their million dollars.  This market is very special because it is first build with relationship in mind.  I must thank Mark Zuckerberg for creating Facebook because I have managed to re-connect with many of my old friends today.  Facebook has become a place for everybody to invest time in return of reviving friendships.  All of us have been really packed with our family, usual friends, career and our hobbies.  We don’t have that luxury of time to re-connect with many of our older friends at all.  It is such a waste that a friendship is gone just because we don’t have time to spend with them.  And now, Facebook has bridged that gap so that we can keep one another in touch with simple messaging, status updates, comments and even Facebook games.  And with such a place for relationship building, many of us are starting to rely on news and articles shared by our circle of friends because we trust them.  Many of us are starting to drift away from searching for news, which explains why Google is also getting their business into social media too.

We don’t trust salespeople easily today.  We have been bombarded with annoying calls, sms and emails.  Some even bombard us through social media when we see a whole list of real estate sales/rental and many other types of products/services from salespeople who either pretend to befriend us, or are our real friends even whom we tend to unfriend them.  Companies are setting up Facebook pages to bombard us as well.  Why are they here for?  Social media is supposed to be a place for us to catch up with our friends.

If you get what I mean, I am trying to say that companies must put their products and services aside if they want to involve in social media.  Build a relationship with your fans by giving them as much things as they want from you… If the fans are interested in buying your product, they eventually will buy.  Don’t worry about it.

One of the things you can do is to give free gifts away for free…. No strings attached!  Don’t be stingy and give only corporate gifts… Give something really good!  Treat your fans as though they are your friends!  Eventually, they will spread for you if they feel like it… And they will just want to do as much things for you just as you have done for them.  We are all human beings here… Naturally, we want to reciprocate… But don’t expect your fans to reciprocate though… I know it is very hard to explain ROI here… But it should actually improve the social media sentiments about your company.  And this is very important because people only listen to their friends for advice….

I started writing a weekly update to my colleagues about the social media trends.  It has actually built an extremely powerful internal communication.  I didn’t notice it myself till I stop for a while to read up some of the social media books out there.  A lot of seminars that I have attended out there are not as good as the books that I have selected (based on the best sellers list).  The books have really geared me up to the next level which I am going to prepare myself with my team.

I have also started writing to external parties on a weekly basis.  It is establishing myself for something bigger than I have thought.  I started to see how I can help more and more people out there with the kind of experience and knowledge that I have learnt.  And I am going to put them into good use and seek out to the corporates who need my help so that they can build better social media marketing strategies.

The world is changing for sure.  It is definitely for the better.  There will be higher qualities of products that we can expect… There will be transparency of things that we can expect… There will be more things to do… And this is really something that I am passionate about!

What is your role in your company?  Do you see yourself having a greater role since the social media evolution?  Do leave a comment and let us know.

Since the birth of social media when Mark Zuckerberg says that the age of privacy is over, a lot of people’s lives have been affected tremndously.  From the time when they are looking for jobs and their employers found their clubbing photos on Facebook, to the time when they hope that they will not be adding their bosses on Facebook because they think this is a very personal thing for their regular ramblings to stay sane.  Or even in a very awkward position when you are thinking whether you should delete your ex-girlfriends from your profile or not even though you are still friends.

Even when Google+ has come to the rescue of the new way of setting up social media where privacy is in the magic of the Google circles, there is still an association of you and your brand that you are working with on the social media.  Even if you don’t put it right there, your friends will become your advocators to tell people about who you really are.  You will be found out sooner or later even though you might have hidden all your posts on the social media.

On the other hand, the employees working for a brand can actually embrace social media and let everybody know that they are working for this brand.  It gives a sense of personality because they are getting to know the employees and may even become friends.  All these little bits and bites are actually helping to build brand because everybody knows that they are still human beings at the end of the day.  There might have some sort of association of their behaviors to the brand, but again time will tell as everybody are still human beings at the end of the day.

Stop being a brand.  Be human.

The Internet waits for no one.  You either tell us right now, or you can tell us later.  If we happen to be around at the time when you tell us, we will know.  Or else, we will just miss it totally even though we are trying not to.

As a social media marketeer, you have to schedule your articles in such a way that it is shown when we are online.  On the other hand, you have to be mindful of the time-sensitive articles that you are going to schedule. Hence, it is better not to plan too far ahead.  Instead, take good note of the bookmarks that have great contents.  And also to write them on real time.

Oh by the way, grammar mistakes are allowed here since real time is more prioritized.

There are many signs telling you whether you should start social media or not.
1. Your stakeholders are not ready to support you physically. Mental support doesn’t count.

2. Many companies are built with the mindset of initiating marketing efforts, but none are ready to maintain forever.

3. If IT security is your biggest concern, please don’t start social media because there will be a security breech but it all depends on the measures that your IT security manager takes.

On the other hand, there are many signs telling you that you have no choice but to start social media.
1. Your consumers are shocked to hear that you are not participating in social media when your company’s industry is absolutely relevant.

2. Your top management is setting social media direction for the company, but is also very strict on its human resource addition. Who is going to maintain?

3. Your competitors are gaining exposures on the social media, giving you peer pressures. What is your next move?

Whatever that you do on social media, you are doing marketing.  People will start to recognise your efforts as a person in the company.  And not as a faceless company.  People will recognise you for your mistakes as a human being, not as a perfect brand out there.

Welcome to the social media.  If you are really in the marketing department and yet you refuse to let known of your social media, you probably need to learn from someone in other department who communicates openly in the social media and may actually know some of the journalists indirectly out there…

I start to think what is the purpose of the people attending the seminar.  I noticed some are taking photos of the powerpoint slides as the presenters were presenting.  I noticed some are doing their own things while “listening” to the presenters speaking.  I also noticed people leaving the seminar to see other parts of The Internet Show.

Next, I listened attentively to the contents of the presentation.  It gives me an idea of how the presenter is actually thinking in his or her real world.  These are the words that I hear… “You must do this in order to get it work.”  ”You must wear different masks when talking to different people.”  ”Social media is like dating.”  All these things bring my thoughts to another realm… I think they are not really teaching people about social media… They are teaching people how to be street smart!  In anyway, social media is still about dealing with human beings… except that they are all in words instead of meeting face-to-face.

Then, I start to question about my purpose of attending.. It seems like I am there to see if there is anything else that I don’t know of.  But again, this has brushes me off because all of us have different philosophies of working in social media.  I don’t agree with some of the things that they have presented, but I still think that they are successful in terms of being able to speak up there where people are so “attentive” somehow.

My opinion is that social media is just like driving a car (quoted from a good friend of mine).  Everybody can tell you how enjoyable it can be when you drive around.  But when it comes to actual driving, it feels so different altogether.  You have to practice driving as much as you can in order to be better!  There is really no point to keep taking notes and end up nowhere at the end because those notes are not the key to success as there are many ways to skin a cat.