What’s a Twitter? Using Social Media Effectively in Telecom and Colocation
It wasn’t too long ago that social media was considered the medium of choice for high school kids or tech-crazy geeks with WAY too much time on their hands.
Welcome to 2009. Social media not only has real-world value within business-to-business enterprises but also it has emerged as a practical marketing strategy and tool for your telecom company.
Your company can use social media tools to bridge the gap between the sales and marketing departments. Oftentimes, your sales team will have a better pulse reading on the actual end-users or customers’ feedback yet the marketing team is tasked with developing strategies to engage these segments. This disconnect can make it very difficult for marketing to provide sales with the messaging and tools they need to be successful in the field.
Social media tools provide a practical answer to this challenge by soliciting feedback and suggestions from its customers via blogs, tweets or updates through Facebook or LinkedIn. Marketing now has commentary from its client base and can make more educated and informed decisions about the direction of new initiatives.
Another way social media can benefit you is by providing a real-time, two way conversation channel for technical issues, outages, billing problems and more. If there is a scheduled upgrade that will interrupt service, an update on your company’s social media sites will help reach clients who missed more mainstream notifications (voice mail, email, etc). Or, if there is a technical issue that causes a brief outage, an alert to this downtime can be posted on social outlets plus updated frequently so customers are informed 24×7.
Social media accounts can also be used to monitor customer service issues. Social media and brand monitoring tools (both free and paid) provide excellent real-time updates about what is being said about your company online. Once an upset customer has been contacted, the conversation can be taken offline to ensure it is resolved satisfactorily. As witnessed by both Comcast and Verizon, it is better to listen and respond to “the ugly” rather than ignore any customer ill will or negative sentiment.
A really exciting way for you to harness the power of social media is to use it to educate and engage your channel partners. With the ever-evolving technologies in the telecom space, keeping your network current and armed with the latest materials is a challenge. You can use blog postings to educate your channel on the latest trends or products your company is promoting. Sites such as Twitter and Facebook also promote group communications and events with the ability to easily take conversations to a one-to-one level.
Finally, whether your goal is reaching end-users, agents or partners, social media provides you with a way to communicate honestly about your company’s ideas, successes and (on occasion) shortcomings. Your customers will appreciate the level of intimacy in your communications which helps to build trust and loyalty and your partners will feel more connected than ever.