Attention: This message is under control!

With social media becoming the major player in promotions for businesses, they must learn to adapt to the change in the way their message is broadcast to the public.

Picture the game of broken telephone, where a person whispers a sentence to the person next to them who then passes it on until it has gone around the circle. I’ve never heard the sentence come back the way it started.

This is the effect that social media is having on advertising messages. Companies who haven’t adapted continue to try to push their messages, but what they’re saying and what consumers are hearing is completely different. Did you know that only 14% of consumers trust the messages in advertising? My guess that this number drops lower on most ads though.

With social media, no matter what you do, people have a place to talk about your business. It’s crucial to be involved in these discussions in order to respond to criticism by learning from the complaints and making up for what has cause problems to your consumer. But it’s not just about the bad stuff, keep following those that are saying positive things about your business or product. These people are promoters, they’re on your team. Over 70% of consumers trust what they’re peers recommend and again im sure this number is higher when it comes from friends and family.

I’ll give one great example in the hotel industry. Trip Advisor is a site that i use amongst many other users to rate and read reviews about hotels that i’m consdering for my holidays. Although, they offer the ability for the hotel staff to respond to reviews, it’s rare that i see a hotel that answers. By answer, i mean not posting the same pre-written response to every comment, i mean truly responding personally to as many reviews as possible. The hotels that i see responding are aknowledging the good comments and apologizing and making up for the bad.

This shows consumers that you care and helps your message under control. “We’d like to thank you for making us aware of the need to update the decor in our hotel. Thanks to your recommendation, we have put together a team of designers to address the subject right away. In gratitude, i’d like to invite you to see the modifications for yourself as soon as theyre  done and will offer you a free night stay.”

Although you can’t always offer a free product, just acknoledging their concern will often solve the problem and will give you insights into how you can improve your business. Relating back to a previous post of mine, you always want to find out where you can improve your business.

What are you doing online to keep up with what others are saying about your business?