Page 249 - Social Media Marketing

Twitter—maybe we should pay attention to that.” This is a really insightful first step. 227
It was not a corporate strategy to do something about the firm’s image problem on
Twitter, but rather a decision to go out (so to speak) and engage customers where they ■ ╇ R eview and H ands - O n
are, a point stressed by Jeff Jarvis in his work relating to creating a social business.
Based on what they found, and what the firm’s internal customer advocates did next,
the result was profound: In the words of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, “It has changed
the culture of our company.”

In addition to looking at social technology as a marketing application, and
beyond the actually engagement points—support forums, communities, ratings plat-
forms, and similar—that help shape a social business, look to your own purposeful
and decided participation as a way to build a force of advocates. Combined with a
decent business model, an orientation that positions your firm as the advocate for your
customer is a smart play.

Review and Hands-On

Chapter 8, the first of the “social business building blocks” chapters, covered engage-
ment in detail. Importantly, this chapter viewed engagement from the customer’s per-
spective rather than a marketing or business perspective. This distinction is more than
semantic: Analogous to catching more fish by learning to think like one, getting it right
in social business means engaging your customers from their point of view. In short, it
means becoming their advocate, so that they might become yours.

Review of the Main Points

The key points covered in this chapter are summarized in the following list. Review
these and develop your own practical definition for engagement in the context of a
social business.

• Engagement is a customer-centric activity.
• Move beyond ratings and reviews—useful as always, no doubt—and get into

support services, ideation, and discussions.
• Implement a strategic approach to social business that specifies a plan to create

advocates and then measure your performance.
• Connect customers to employees using collaborative applications.
• Finally, it’s still your business. Placing customers at the center of what you do

doesn’t mean handing them the wheel.

Chapter 8 sets up the primary activity that differentiates a social business from
all others, engagement, and a collaborative approach to working with your customers
that builds your advocates. A business that steadily builds its own base of advocates is
a business that steadily and surely wins over the long term.