Listen To Your Customers
Posted by Jim | July 31, 2009 | Comments Off
One of the most exciting aspects to me of social media is how businesses can use them to connect directly to their customer base. I recently posted a video of small business owners discussing how they use twitter for this very purpose. Traditional means of advertising have always been very one-directional: companies sent out the messages they thought customers wanted to hear. In fact, countless hours and millions of dollars have been spent on research and focus groups to try to discover just what it is that customers want.
Today, businesses can use social media to ask customers what they want.
Social media allow for much more effective two-directional communication between business and customer. Neil over at Quick Sprout recently touched on this when he wrote about using twitter to create interesting conversations with followers and to share knowledge. From a business perspective, companies can use social media to listen to their customers and then begin the process of interacting with, and engaging, them.
A great example of this is Starbucks‘ recent introduction of the Mini Starbucks Card, a version of the popular gift card small enough to fit on your key chain. Starbucks has said that the idea of the mini card was one of many inspired by its My Starbucks Idea site, where customers are invited to share and discuss suggestions. Starbucks is also great at using twitter to reach out to its customers: earlier today it offered $25 mini card reloads to the first five of its over-250,000 followers to post pictures of their mini cards to @starbucks with the hashtag #MiniStarbucksCard. A rather inexpensive way to create instant buzz.
What other companies “get” social media?
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