Savvy site owners are getting pretty keen on getting those nifty Twitter and Facebook buttons onto their home pages these days! Thing is of course, having them and using them, properly, can often be two different things! A Tweet today is not a sale tomorrow! Especially, if as recent findings show, you're one of the overwhelming majority of web businesses who neither bother to follow back or reply to comments.
So what's the point of going social with your online marketing if you're not actually engaging with those who were interested enough in your tweet, Facebook update, blog or video to take time out to retweet or leave a comment? According to a recent survey of UK online retailers, very little, as the findings show only around a quarter are bothering to respond on Twitter, even less on Facebook and none at all on YouTube or a site blog!
While it's certainly encouraging news to see eCommerce and other sector organisations now growing ever keen to embrace social media networking as they see it rapidly changing the way consumers search and interact across the internet, unfortunately, too many studies are still finding a lack of real understanding or even fear by some business owners to actually use the tools properly!
Once again, the problems of finding valuable time, the cost effective channelling of inhouse resources away from urgent, daily business or having realistic budget expenditure for outsourced web marketing to take care of the entire process, are ever real obstacles.
Thing is, it has to be done! As Google, Bing and Yahoo go increasingly social in their battle with Facebook to retain their search market share, and algorithms are primed to index social relevance and popularity, brand identity is as much dependent on if and how you engage with your niche audiences. Answering questions and solving problems are critical customer service indicators and so is the time it takes to make that reply!
Despite the buildup of Twitter followers in many cases, too many companies either fail to engage beyond the 'one way' tweet or a tiny few reply over an hour later! Although, this still compares favourably with email marketing followups, which can take up to a day or more!
Understanding what is expected from experienced Twitter or Facebook users, whether in response to positive or negative comments, is crucial to fostering perception of the right kind of social presence rather than be suspected of the 'sameold, sameold' attitude, which, simplistically, tries to use the channels for oneway, push marketing. It's also the reason why, once again, a negligible 10 - 20 per cent of companies will bother to give any form of reply to adverse or even affirmative comments
It simply isn't going to wash with today's socially-literate users. The case for properly operating a daily company blog is even more crucial. While it is estimated that around a half of today's websites possess some form of blog function with varying degrees of quality content, response to comments or questions to posts tend to be non-existent, which could be seen as a clear indication that the brand or organisation have no real intention of becoming truly social.