Social media is an incredible marketing opportunity for companies which want to reach customers in an unusual way. However, social media has the ability to empower consumers a lot; giving them a chance to be part of a virtual community. This can obviously turn out to be a double-edged sword for companies that will receive either nice praises or bad criticisms. The questions then are how to build a strong and loyal community for your consumers? How to deal with negative feedbacks? How to create a real relationship through the use of social media?
According to Wikipedia, online communities can be explained by the Reciprocation Theory. This “infers that a successful online community must provide its users with benefits that compensate for the costs of time, effort and materials members provide. People often join these communities expecting a sort of reward, whether it is physical or psychological.” Therefore, a company should understand this mechanism if it wants to build a strong online community. Thierry Mugler, a French fragrance company, understood it very well by creating the Womanity blog. By giving the opportunity for thousands of women to express themselves, Thierry Mugler wanted to understand more specifically how women’s’ trends evolved and how he could define the concept of “womanity”. Therefore, he created a strong community around his brand. In exchange, active women bloggers receive free samples and products. In addition, this blog allows him to better understand women’s needs in terms of fragrance and beauty. He succeeded in gathering women not only around a brand, but he also made this brand the symbol of women’s strength and power. Wearing a Thierry Mugler fragrance therefore means being self-confident and modern. In a different way, computer companies such as Apple or Dell have strong active communities of users. These users answer the technical questions of other consumers who have difficulties. They feel as a part of a big community and receive psychological gratification in return. We call the active members of such strong communities “brand advocates”. They are really helpful in dealing with issues and defending the brand when a company has some negative feedbacks. For example, Newell Rubbermaid, had some issues with the safety of certain strollers and received some bad press. However, they had so many brand advocates to defend the brand that they recovered much better than expected. As Mr.Blackshaw (vice president of Digital Strategic Services at Nielsen) said during an interview, “That’s why the really big idea in social media is this notion of next-generation customer relationship management. How do we take our loyal consumers and turn them into something even more valuable?”.
The opinion of online communities can turn out to be very valuable, for example in the creation of a new product: as shown is this graph, many companies generate new ideas for new products thanks to crowd-sourcing. An online relationship with a brand and its consumers must be reciprocal in nature: the concept of co-creation is relevant when firms adopt an “outside-in approach, by listening to and observing customers. Then companies are in a position to discover ways to create mutual value.”
As online communities and online users have a lot of power and easily write negative comments about a firm, it is extremely important to know how to deal with negative feedback from consumers. Either it can ruin the reputation of a firm or increase the power of the brand.
Social media are tricky in the sense that they have no closing hours. A good strategy is then being sure that you do your best concerning your ability to answer all the questions/comments on every platform of social media, 24/7. One should always stay vigilant about social media feedbacks from consumers as it can lead really fast to a disaster if not dealt quickly. Ms. Swedowski stated during an interview that in general, a company should directly answers the negative comments a firm receives, especially when they are “posted directly on the Facebook fan page or directed at their Twitter account”. However, it happens that some companies can receive a lot of feedback from consumers at the same time, negative or positive; the only thing to do is therefore prioritize. The famous Molson case study provides an example of negative consumer’s feedback after the creation of this Facebook promotion: Molson launched a Facebook contest among university students. They could post pictures of them in “full party mode”. It turned out that this contest was encouraging alcohol drinking among young people. Molson received a lot of criticisms and had to apologize and end this contest so that people stop ruining the firm’s reputation. By doing so, Molson showed its ability doing mistakes but correcting them and that is the beginning of a trustful relationship.
Are there magical recipes to avoid negative feedback on social media? Certainly not, however a study shows that when companies provide all the necessary tools for evaluation and feedback, it will more likely receive positive feedback. The explanation from Mr. Blackshaw is this one: “historically, companies have made it really difficult for consumers to provide feedback; hence, the only thing that really pushes through is the negative. As the barriers to entry decrease, as expression devices proliferate, such as mobile phones that enable friction-free tweets, for example, our natural inclination to give someone a high-five or a compliment.” Implementing a natural and honest dialogue with your online consumers is certainly the best way for preventing surprising negative feedbacks.
Finally, negative feedbacks can even lead to enhanced experiences with consumers. The more important thing is to turn every bad comment into a positive thing: show the firm has room for growth, that it can improve on itself and that the consumers’ feedback really matters for it. “On Twelpforce they know that the pain point is the opportunity to solve, delight and exceed expectations. If you carefully analyze their TV commercials, you’ll notice that the whole dramatic effect premise behind the copy starts with the pain point. So someone gets up there and says, “Gosh, I couldn’t find the product” or “I’m confused.” Then the Twelpforce answers the issue.” As Mr Blackshaw says.
Article and interview readen:
http://totalaccess.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008511&dsNav=Ntk:basic|Brands+and+Consumers+Create+Value+Together|1|,Rpp:50,Ro:2
http://totalaccess.emarketer.com/Interview.aspx?R=6000382&dsNav=Ntk:basic|Dealing+Effectively+with+Customer+Feedback+via+Social+Media|1|,Rpp:50,Ro:-1
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