Reputation Management
t2 Releases Communications Toolkit for Healthcare Providers for Covid-19 and Beyond
t2 Launches New Healthcare Communications Toolkit
t2Marketing International (www.t2marketinginternational.com) has developed a free communications toolkit for healthcare providers designed to respond to communications challenges during the current healthcare crisis, and serve as a foundation for more effective, streamlined communications moving forward.
For many healthcare providers, particularly long-term care facilities, digital communication has not been considered a priority. Current circumstances, however, have put a spotlight on communication weaknesses, which have created a crisis within a crisis. Many of these facilities are missing the most fundamental of communications touchpoints, and families have been struggling to get even the most basic updates on the condition of their loved ones.
Many large healthcare institutions that have robust communications departments have faced challenges as well. In some cases, marketing personnel have been furloughed, laid off, or re-assigned, with communications tasks re-allocated to people with little or no experience in best practices. The results, in some instances, have been disastrous.
This eBook was created from years of experience working with hospitals, long term care facilities, healthcare organizations, and associations, many of whom have found managing communications overwhelming at this time. It provides a step-by-step guide for structuring, implementing, and troubleshooting key communications initiatives and programs to better serve their communities during this crisis and beyond.
To download our new eBook, you can visit this page.
Op-Ed: You’re Only as Good as Your Worst Interaction
Managing your reputation on social media is an integral part of any comprehensive social business strategy.
If you are not paying attention to the perception of your brand by audiences, then you are forgetting about one of the most important features that makes a social business successful. The management of your reputation on social media is a living organism, and you need to pay it regular attention.
One of the realities of doing business is that the larger we grow, the more likely we are to encounter that individual that doesn’t like our product, our service, or simply has a bad experience. And what happens then? Well, a recent study by ZenDesk shows that 95% of customers who have a bad experience tell someone about it, compared to 87% who shared a good experience. Maybe we just like to tell others about our suffering, but the fact remains that you can be sure that a customer who has a poor experience with your company is going to go out there and tell the world. And it is now much easier than ever before.
And so we come to the title of this article: your brand is only as good as your worst public interaction. What did an angry customer have to say about your brand? How did you handle it? Your reputation on social media – on every platform from Facebook to Yelp! – is going to be affected in a much greater way by how you handle your unhappy customers than how you handle the satisfied ones.
The Intelligent Traveler
Put yourself in the customers’ shoes. Let’s say you are planning a trip and you are considering staying at one of two hotels. Assume the prices and amenities are all the same. Well, if you are like 65% of online travellers, then seeing a management’s response to comments on a social channel like TripAdvisor would sway you to book with the responding hotel. (Google, January, 2013)
People like the idea of accountability, and when you avoid dealing with issues head on, you are hurting your reputation on social media. Owning up to your brand’s mistakes, and showing people that you are taking strides to both remedy situations as they arise and prevent them from ever occurring again goes a very long way.
Nobody Cares What You Did Right
When you are buying a product on eBay, and you see that a seller has a rating of 99% from 100 buyers, are you going to care about the 99 people that said, “Great job! Fast delivery! Recommend seller!”? Or would you be more concerned with finding that one comment that reads, “Item was not as described. Seller did not respond to questions. Would not recommend.”? Probably the second one.
You can do something right a thousand times, but that one time that things go wrong, people will remember it. It is here that you need to shine. It is easy to handle happy customers. How you handle unhappy customers on public forums is what is going to influence future buyers.
The Ostrich Never Dealt with Social Media
Burying your head in the sand while people speak out against your service or brand might have worked back in the days of phone and mail. But now, when people can reach out to networks of thousands, you had better be ready to respond. Clearly, ostriches never had to deal with issues on social media.
Have a plan in place for every plausible scenario. You need to know the Dos and Do Nots for handling crises and unhappy customers before you have to deal with crises and unhappy customers. The last thing you want to do is learn from your mistakes when your mistakes have already resulted in consumers making up their minds. Read up and do the research on the mistakes of others and devise strategies for managing your reputation on social media from these.
It might not be an ideal situation, but the fact is that your brand is only as good as it’s worst interaction on social media. This is where people are going to do their research; consumers trust each other, not your brand. But you can change that by properly managing your brand’s reputation on social media!
Find out more about becoming a social business and managing your reputation on social media here.
Do you research products and services on social channels before making a decision? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
3 Departments to Involve in Your Social Business
Has your social business involved every department it can?
We all know that the marketing department is going to be among the first to adopt new media when it comes to social business, but what other departments can contribute to it? These three departments are generally forgotten when it comes to social business, and it is easy to understand why: a lot of people don’t know how they can be social!
Customer Service
Now, this is a little paradoxical. Yes, your customer service department is inherently a ‘social’ department per se. After all, it spends the day dealing with people. But when becoming a social business, your customer service department is going to become much more public then ever before. And that’s a good thing.
Social Care – or, customer service on social channels – is increasing in popularity and becoming a favorite among consumers. When evolving into a social business, you are certainly going to want to get your customer service team on the front lines. Just be sure you have a strategy in place for every possible scenario! Now, with social in the mix, your customer service team is a pseudo PR department. They are a direct reflection of how your company treats clients, so make sure they are doing it right.
Tech/Support
Has there ever been a department more suited for conversing on the web? Your tech and support teams need to be able to show that they can help with anything at any time. They are like an extension of your customer service team. In fact, they are your customer service team.
Think about it. When you call a customer service line, they are generally going to connect you with the department most able to assist you with your problem. By making these departments as easily accessible as your customer service team, you can help cut out the middle man and save time on all fronts. Let people deal with matters in the most efficient way possible, and your business will be functioning at optimal capacity.
Sales
If your sales team is not already on social, get them on there! You never know where you might find a new client, but you can rest assured that wherever you might find that client, there is a pretty good chance you will find them on social channels, too.
Your sales team should be listening to the conversation around your industry and involving themselves in the conversation when and where it is appropriate. Take a look at this blog post about cell phone carriers to see some great examples of Dos and Don’ts when it comes to social selling.
What other departments do you think would benefit from a presence on social media when you become a social business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
4 Social Media Quotes and Responses to Them
Below are some popular social media quotes and my reactions and responses to them.
Like any popular social phenomenon, social media has spawned a number of great minds to share their words of wisdom with tweet-appropriate brevity. Below are four social media quotes from industry leaders and observers and my reactions, interpretations or responses to them.
“Social media has infected the world with a sickening virus called vanity.” -Kellie Elmore
Yes – it’s true that social has further engrossed the ego of the already self-absorbed Generation Y (among others). But I can’t agree with the fact that vanity is a product of social media.
Vanity has long been in existence. Consider The Portrait of Dorian Gray when considering vanity. Surely, Oscar Wilde was not all that active on Twitter. What social media has done, however, is provided the world with a self-publishing tool. The results are often going to be self-absorption. But is that always such a terrible thing?
People can now showcase talents, reach broad audiences and education is a tweet away. Social media has also shrunk the business world so significantly, that the largest brands in the world can now devote seemingly undivided attention to customers in need.
“Distracted from distraction by distraction.” -T.S. Eliot
Fine, so T.S. Eliot wasn’t talking about StumbleUpon when he wrote this. But can you think of a more fitting reference?
As noted above, the world is a much smaller place thanks in large part to the advent of social media. That does not mean, however, that there is any less activity taking place within it. Take a minute to research an article online, and you find yourself having devoted three hours to becoming the world’s leading expert on sounds foxes make.
Though we can easily waste days sifting through the endless sea of content shared to social channels, I like to think of it as the world’s most comprehensive library. Every article, page, blog or video offers something we have not seen before. (Or, in some cases, something we have seen many, many times before and just need to see again.)
“You are what you share.” -Charles Leadbeater
Few things are truer than this when it comes to social media. A perfect example of this ringing true is the polarity the world witnessed as a result of Facebook status updates reflecting political preferences during the last American election.
Reputation management, Social Care and content strategies are all infinitely more important than ever before when it comes to social media. One misstep could land you in water hot enough to burn away all the hard work you have put into building your brand. Companies and individuals need to remember that they are participating in conversations on a megaphone, and everyone can hear them.
“Create more value than you capture.” -Tim O’Reilly
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
What are some of your favorite quotes when it comes to social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
3 Fatal Social Media Engagement Mistakes
Social media engagement is at the heart of any good program, but a few seemingly harmless mistakes can mean severe repercussions.
Are you taking advantage of the huge benefits that accompany social media engagement? It is supremely important that you are. After all, engaging with your social audience is the key to any good campaign. People are reaching out to you, and want to hear back. But be careful, there are a few mistakes that brands make when it comes to social media engagement, and they could be very costly.
Below are three mistakes that are easy to make but very costly to your brand.
Watch Your Grammar!
If you’ve ever watched your Twitter feed populate, or read through SMS threads among friends, you might come to the conclusion that good spelling and proper grammar are dead. Far from it.
A recent study by Disruptive Communications found that – get ready – 42.5% of customers felt that poor spelling and grammar on social media would damage their perception of a brand. This issue was, quite surprisingly, the most damaging to a brand’s image, with content being all about sales coming in second with only 24.9% of consumers finding it the most damaging to a brand’s image.
Grammar and spelling are still very important, particularly when you are trying to portray a professional image and convince potential customers to choose your brand when conducting business. Pay attention to those commas, and make sure you have the appropriate spelling of there/they’re/their, because your audience certainly is.
Sometimes You Have to Let It Go
Arguing is never fun. Arguing on social media is never smart. So why would you do something that is sure to be a no-fun-no-smarts activity?
It is more likely than not that at some point there will be a past, present or future customer that takes issue with your brand on social media. What is the best course of action? Well, whatever you choose to do, don’t blow it up – that’s very bad for business.
You would be better off acknowledging a complaint and rectifying an issue – even if you feel as though you are in the right – than getting into a public argument with a customer. Imagine how that would be perceived by other customers. Would you do business with a company that appears to have a ‘customer is always wrong’ mentality? Probably not.
Address issues in a professional manner and cater to your clients’ needs. Taking the conversation offline might be the best move in cases like these. But, while you might love your brand, don’t shoot yourself in the foot by berating the people that make it possible for your brand to exist.
Respect Your Social Activity and Audience
Sure, social media is a little more lax and informal than conventional marketing or communications channels. The idea of incorporating social into your business is to create a personality for your brand with which users can engage. But it is important to remember that while social media may seem a little less formal, it is still a serious part of your business, and should be treated as such.
You might create your social channels and hit the ground running. But a lot of brands tend to neglect their social networks after a while, and that means neglecting customers. People are talking to you on social media and leaving them without a response, feeling alone and unimportant can be harmful to your brand’s image online.
Treat your social customers like you would any other – they are really no different.
Keep these three mistakes in mind and you will find success on social media much easier to achieve.
What other social media engagement mistakes can you think of? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Equity: Crisis Management on Social Media
Crisis management on social media can help prevent devastating consequences to your brand.
Not everyone engages in crisis management on social media. Many brands choose to remain silent until an event has passed, and prefer to deal with it in a more conventional manner (e.g. press conferences).
While it may be a little nerve-racking to deal with a crisis in media as public, active and real-time as social networks, it can be a very valuable feature that should not be ignored.
Get a Handle on the Situation
The ability to monitor conversations on social media about your brand means that when a crisis does break, you will be able to know about it at the same time as everyone else. After all, social media is one of the first avenues people are using to spread the word nowadays.
Waiting until after the issue has evolved beyond your control can be far more detrimental than engaging at the outset of a crisis. Thus, you have a much better chance of quelling issues by taking control of it with an active, live audience.
Show People You Care
It might be for legal or PR reasons that you are not engaging with an angered audience on social media. But whatever it is, your brand stands to sustain far more damage when it does not engage.
People tend to think that when they are ignored by a brand on social media – particularly when they are speaking specifically to that brand’s social personality – it is because that brand does not care about the small, singular customer. That is not only an insult to the customer, but a bad representation of your brand to the customer base as a whole.
It is important to plan for crises on social media in order to know how to engage your audience when one does come up. (No brand is immune to these sorts of issues!) In this way, if a crisis should arise, you can have a legal department-approved approach to handling the issues.
This will show your audience that you care and will go a long way with them.
Social Equity of Crisis Management on Social Media
So where is there value added to your business? The Social Equity derived is both in the form of long-term value to your company and in terms of what your brand stands to lose without such a plan.
In the long run, your brand will have a carefully laid out strategy that can be applied to prevent issues from shooting beyond your control. With regards to what stands to be lost without such a strategy, think of crises you have witnessed in the past where brands did nothing to engage their audience.
In a recent case study about Nutella, we pointed out that the backlash which resulted from doing nothing to handle a crisis that broke out on social media meant some significant repercussions for the brand. Don’t let the same thing happen to you.
What other incidents can you think of where crisis management on social media has helped (or could have helped) a brand? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
5 Great Social Media Monitoring Tools
Social media monitoring is important to managing your brand’s presence and reputation online.
Social media monitoring can be a powerful activity in your arsenal when it comes to reputation and brand management online. Being able to join in the conversation as it is taking place is invaluable, particularly when you can join in with conversation about not only your brand, but your competitors and your industry as well.
However, simply scouring the net for mentions of your brand and keywords is going to take quite a bit longer than you might have time for. Therefore, identifying high-quality social media monitoring tools is important to a successful listening strategy.
Of course, there are tools like Radian6 and Sysomos that can be cost-prohibitive, but the five social media monitoring tools below are inexpensive, efficient and will do a great job assisting you with your monitoring activities.
Yext
Yext is among the best tools for merchants, particularly local sellers.
There are not too many social media monitoring tools that allow users to listen in on conversation taking place on review sites and see how their brand is being perceived on both a local and global level. The ability to amalgamate all of your reviews, ratings and user comments is both time-saving and a fantastic advantage.
Reputation.com
Reputation management on social media is of ever-growing importance. Considering the trust people have in recommendations they read online, preventing any damage to your reputation is virtually invaluable.
Reputation.com is designed to help you manage your brand’s reputation across a number of channels on the web. One of the best features of this tool is the ability to find out what is being said and how your brand is being perceived on a local level.
Brandwatch
With a built-in spam filter, Brandwatch is among the more user-friendly social media monitoring tools around.
Users can put together a set of keywords, start a search on relevant networks, and the tool will automatically filter out results that are less than ideal so that you receive nothing more than the best, most relevant results for your searches.
Tweetbeep
Tweetbeep monitors the Twittersphere to pick up on conversations that are relevant to you and your brand.
This free tool allows users to insert keywords related to their brands, competitors and their industry and receive notifications when conversations using those keywords start up on Twitter. This is great when you need to focus on other priorities and only need to be alerted when a conversation is happening.
Put simply, “Tweetbeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter.”
BrandsEye
There are dozens of reports that can be generated using BrandsEye, including whether or not a marketing campaign was effective and where conversations are coming from most.
The reporting capabilities with BrandsEye are the real gem with this tool. Some great data can be gathered and analyzed to optimize future social media and online marketing campaigns for your brand.
Incorporating one or more of these tools will certainly boost the effectiveness and value of your social media monitoring activities. Try them out and tell us what you think of them in the comments below or on Twitter!
