COMMENTS
Hi
Interesting post. Do you have any recommendations for HOW to do the above? For instance, if you are a small business and want to add in reviews, are there free/ low cost ways to do this?
@Claire
Great question. Different software options exist. It depends on the technical details of your site as to which one would work the best.
For example this is a popular product review software add on: http://www.review-script.com
If you are a service-based business, a solution could be as simple as using a blog page as your service page and letting people comment on their experience working with you.
Hope this helps!
As much as I love all your points I cant see lots of companies doing #2. They all seem to be scared of bad press and not willing to deal with it, they would rather ignore it and hope they don't come across it or that it does not get big enough that they would have to deal with it.
Awesome post, I loved the part about reviewing products. My company is an advertising agency and I consider us pretty active on most social networks. I think the big challenge for us is that we are providing services more than actual products. I have thought about having a commenting section where some of our work is posted. What do you think? You gave me a lot of interesting ideas thanks Kipp
Great thoughts, Kipp. Another thing to consider is making it easier for customers, partners and prospects to talk to each other. Sometimes people would rather talk to an actual user of the product/service instead of a company employee and this can help them ultimately decide to buy.
We're pretty close to launching a new site for eWayDirect that includes a lot of community elements. Should be fun!
I thought this post gave very insightful ideas on how companies, especially companies who are just beginning to tap into social media, can use various functions on their website to make customers feel more “heard” in the decisions of the business.
I think that Amazon does a great job allowing customers to write product reviews which would one: give a company an idea if something is wrong with the product, and two: sell others on the product.
Encouraging commenting is also a great idea, because consumers may have a hit new product idea that people in the company have yet to think of.
All of these functions are ways to allow customers to feel more involved in the business that they chose to invest their money in to. It makes them feel accounted for and special, which means that they will most likely return with more business and encourage others to do the same.
Nice research, it is very helpful.
I can't believe Facebook connect wasn't mentioned. It's probably one of the easiest way to tap into a social network.
@Adam
Great point about Facebook Connect. I was saving that for a different post. Glad you mentioned it for this one though!
@Kipp
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so brash, and you are probably right, Facebook Connect is a topic in itself.
Thanks for great posts.
Good Post, but i think that is important to keep in mind the necessity of engage all or include whole organization into this perspective. I´m watching too many companies trying to do social networking without the commitment of their employes and worse, without the trust of the directors. It´s very important understand that social networking is not about a person (hero) working for the company, it´s about a team working around a philosophy to do their work, a way to share, live, work. it´s a conviction and if you don´t have this kind of values in a good percentage of their people, it will be very dificult to achieve the outcomes.
I´m very happy working like inbound marketing consultant but the first obstacle to defeat it´s the incredibleness. When you gain trust and commitment, at least for a little team, go ahead and put in practice all this thoughts.
@Nicolas - You are right, having support from an entire organization is critical aspects of maximizing the impact of these ideas.
Good article. I recently made the commitment to use social networking to generate inbound marketing leads. I am trying to get my employer to see the value in this form of marketing.
Interesting and valuable information in this post. We are certainly going to use some of those tips for our own company's website. Encouraging others to post a comment and get involved has made a significant impact in website traffic. Thanks for the great post!
When we provided a way for feedback, we instead got a lot of people using it for spam back linking to their site. Do you have any suggestions.
@Susan: Spam is a problem with any type of forum or commenting system on the web. Depending on what software you are using, it is likely that you can license spam filter software such as akismet.com to help reduce spam, but regardless you will still have to delete some manual. You can also add a Captcha which can cut out a lot of spam as well.
FYI: AP Stylebook Finally Changes “Web site” to “website” http://mashable.com/2010/04/16/ap-stylebook-website/
Very important way of the future when it comes to sites. I believe we will be implementing most of these social web properties to our new site. #2 is probably the biggest deal for any company. However, it could be turned into a positive. ?
Very interesting post and very useful too. I personally think that #2 and #3 are extremely helpful(and probably the best ways) if you want your corporate website to become more social.
Keep up the good work! Regards,
Cristina
Great advice here. I'd add that it's important to maximize the impact of the content you've created across your various social networks by incorporating it into your website with one of the many tools available. We built the TurnSocial toolbar because we saw businesses who not only wanted to incorporate Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr into their website, but also thought it was beneficial to display location information specific to their store, such as their Yelp reviews or customers' Foursquare check-ins, amongst other things. We've been considering adding similar functionality to a lot of what has been mentioned above, and it's great to hear readers' thoughts on the topic. Thanks for the great post!