Online PR Podcast

OPRP Episode 009 – 07.17.09

This is the ninth episode of the Online PR Podcast with Mark Polson of Code Greene and Pete Codella of Codella Marketing.

In this podcast Codella and Greene discuss:

How to best respond to criticism of company mistakes
The importance of customer satisfaction surveys and what you should do with the feedback
Measuring return on investment for social media engagement

Case Study in Criticism

Mark shares an experience his company has had this week with a page not found error on one of their clients Web sites. He and Pete discuss an appropriate response given the circumstances and Pete outlines three recommendations for responding when bad things happen:

Accept responsibility (if it’s yours to accept)
Apologize, and be genuine about it
Outline steps you’re going to take, and a time line, to make it right

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Mark relates an experience he had attending a Utah Technology Council meeting where the CEO of Mindshare discussed his experience and observations from his work in real-time customer experience monitoring. He shared that he can almost forecast a company’s stock price, or real value, based on how it responds to negative customer feedback.

Pete pointed out that collecting the feedback is important, but equally important is having a plan in place for responding to praise and criticism. Additionally, if you’re going to communicate with customers, you’ve got to have their contact information, whether that takes the form of a mailing address, e-mail address and/or mobile phone number.

ROI of Social Media

Much has been written and said now that social media is the soup du jour about proving utilization and engagement through social media tools is valuable to companies and brands.

Pete provides his point of view that engaging through social media is just like having an insurance policy for your business. Just as you wouldn’t neglect protecting your physical assets, you shouldn’t neglect participating in the online discussion of your brand, products or services.

For companies that wait until a crisis to get involved in social media, it’s too late.

Participating in social media from the get-go allows an organization to communicate from a position of strength and respond quickly to negative or inaccurate comments. And it goes without saying that such an organization is not only participating, but also monitoring and regularly reporting on what’s being said in the space.

Pete and Mark briefly discuss The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report. Pete highly recommends reading and discussing the report. It makes the case for living in a world where brands can’t only push messages but also need to participate, engage and do. The report also points out that the lines between online and offline are blurring and will continue to do so as brands become more engaged.

One of the important questions for marketers becomes this: you not only have to reach your target customer, but you also need to communicate with their social influencers. This means identifying them and creating ways by which to influence them in a positive way toward your brand.