MattHaupt

Brand loyalty is the “holy grail” to many companies. What is better than a consumer who likes your product and your service enough to be a repeat buyer, over and over again? And isn’t that really one of the goals of your business’ advertising? To keep your consumers loyal to you?

Each day companies pour more and more money into keeping their customers as happy as possible. Making sure they do not slip up, even slightly, in the process.

But, are those customers who jumped ship so quickly, after a “mistake”, really brand loyal? A recent study suggests not.

New York University psychologists Heather Barry and Tom Tyler (you can read about their study here at We’re Only Human, a blog by Wray Herbert) performed a study with college students and their loyalty to their school based on policies they read that were both fair and unfair to students.

The study concludes that even though the students may have disagreed with the school’s policies, they were still loyal to the school overall, and were even more likely to be cooperative and helpful.

What does this say for your customers? Well, the ones that are truly “brand loyal” will not jump ship as quickly as you may think. Not only will they not jump ship, they will try to communicate to you on why they are upset, and may give you some answers on how you can help fix this consumer-company relationship.

What does this mean for your business? Social Media is more important than ever. (Well really any way that consumers can communicate is more important than ever). Consumers may not give you a call or email you on why they think your company is causing problems, but they might just blog about it. There may be a few tweets. They may even join a group about you on Facebook.

The point is, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. What you should be afraid of, once you make a mistake (which you will, trust me), is not attempting to listen to what your customers think about your mistake.

The Brand Loyalists love who you are and what you do. And when times turn sour they will be one of the groups of people giving you advice on how to improve. Listen to them.

Sometimes I go days without talking to someone (in person) about the cool things that are happening in the social media and digital space.

My roommate, Cameron, is probably one of the main people I talk to about technology in general, but he is also the one that makes fun of my Twitter obsession.

For example an email this morning:

It never gets old sending this crap to you.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8089508.stm

Or last week:

Subject line: “I F****** hate Twitter”

http://gawker.com/5274705/jogger-hits-tree-while-tweeting-hurtles-toward-global-infamy

Ah well, some people just have personal issues with awesome things like Twitter. (Even though he HAS a Twitter account)

Back to my point though. The reason I bring this up, is that today, during my Public Relations Strategy class, I had the privilege of hearing two individuals speak about social media and it’s practical uses.

John Hill was the first speaker. Hill is the Director of Alumni Career Service for the MSU Alumni Association. He spoke mostly on the wonderful professional networking site that is LinkedIn.

What I thought was great about his presentation was the fact that he not only showed what you could do on the site, but also how we (as PR and Marketing professionals) can use LinkedIn to connect with other businesses. I feel like a lot of presentations miss out on that connection.

From searching specifically for individuals in certain industries, at a specific company, and who has a specific title, to being involved in multiple groups.

He also talked about the “Questions and Answers” section (my new favorite spot on LinkedIn) and how you can answer questions and become an industry expert in a certain field. This could possibly lead to people contacting you directly for help. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The second speaker was Julielyn Gibbons the President (and I believe founder) of i3Strategies, a social media and internet strategy company in East Lansing.

Julielyn showed the class the wonderful “Social Networking in Plain English” and “Twitter in Plain English” videos. (Check them out if you haven’t seen them already). She went through some great stats on who is on sites like Twitter and Facebook, and mentioned how the sites’ users are beginning to skew older.

She also mentioned her personal uses of Facebook, which included documenting a vacation she had planned with pictures and notes.

The best thing about these two individuals was their excitement for the industry in general. You could see it in the way they spoke and in the way they explained the networks they talked about.

It was exciting, and their passion was contagious.

We need more people like John and Julielyn talking to companies and organizations about social media and its uses. They have a lot to share, not because they have been in the space forever, but because they have the passion and drive to take advantage of this growing and ever-changing space.

Photo by carrotcreative on Flickr

I am definitely an introvert.

You know how I know I am? Because I re-wrote this blog entry probably 15 different times because it just didn’t seem “right”.  You might think that is being a perfectionist, I think that is just because I never truly put my thoughts together before I started typing away.

But you know what? That’s okay, because in the online world, you get to think about what you want to say before you say (type) it.

It is funny how our online and offline personalities seem to match a lot more than some people say. I know there is this whole tendency to think that just because you have more conversations online than in real life, that you become more extroverted, but if you take a closer look that isn’t always the case.

Yesterday I asked my sister, who just received her masters degree and is going to be one hell of a academic counselor someday, how she compared her online personality to her offline, and if she sees her introversion in both. I remembered her saying that she didn’t comment too much on blogs, she just liked to read them, and I thought that might be due to her being introverted.  She answered me, even past her bedtime (she has 3 young ones, so she really needs the shut eye)…

“…when I stopped and thought about it, I realized that my lack of participation is still a bit due to my introvertism, just not quite in the way that you thought. See, one of the things that seems to be typical of introverts on the internet … is that they love the internet because it allows them the time to stop and think things through — to process their own thoughts before being forced to comment. I read somewhere that introverts tend to think, then write, then think some more, then re-write….even doing this for simple things like emails and blog comments! I definitely think this is true for me. Whereas an extroverted person might be comfortable whipping up a random blog comment or email in seconds and sending it into cyberspace without a second thought.”

After reading her email, it all started making a lot more sense to me. (Thanks Sis!)

The online world isn’t making people more extroverted. It is just a place that is a little more tailored to the way introverts behave!

Think about it.

You receive a tweet from a friend on Twitter asking you more of a in-depth question. You know you know the answer, but you need some time to think about it, form the right words, and then you can send something back to them. You think about it for a few minutes (maybe hours if you really want to make sure you are saying the right thing) and then you send it away.

And what does your friend think? Well, they definitely are not feeling awkward that you are not answering right away. I mean you could be busy doing something else that is more important at the moment. All they know is that you did end up sending something to them.

In the real world, that might not work out so great. Say you are at a party and somebody asks you an in-depth question. Are you allowed to say ”Excuse me, let me go think about this for a second and then I’ll come back to you with my answer”.

I mean you could, but you might get a lot of weird looks.

And you can definitely pick the introverts out in a crowded room, but what about online? The line between extroverts and introverts begins to get a little fuzzy. All human beings want interaction at some point. Extroverts are energized by a lot of interaction, and introverts can get drained. So is an introvert with thousands of followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook an oxymoron? I don’t think so…

Introverts just have the opportunity to gain friendships and connections in a way that fits their personality. And what is great about social media is that just because introverts can think about what they want to say to others doesn’t mean extroverts need to. They can type away their thoughts quickly and send to whoever is willing to listen. Social media works with everyone!

“But aren’t introverts less open about their feelings?”

Actually introversion has nothing to do with openness. I’m an introvert and I wear my heart on my sleeve half the time. It’s just, if I want to tell you how I feel, I have to think about how I feel first.

If you want to learn a little more on the true definition of introversion and extraversion according to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, check out their website.

Photo by Ruth L on Flickr

It is interesting how marketers are trying to get into the Social Media game. We have all seem some really bad campaigns come through Facebook and MySpace, with some ”good” campaigns being few and far in between.

Via Twitter last night I came across something very interesting regarding a social media marketing attempt on Facebook gone terribly wrong.

All of this information you can find on SquaredPeg.com written by Brad J. Ward. Make sure if you have any questions or comments to contact him. Apparently you’ll see this story in the popular news media sometime next week.

Basically what was uncovered was that a company named College Prowler started creating or obtaining admin rights to groups on Facebook that were for incoming freshman to colleges across the country. From my understanding, most of these groups seemed to be “official” groups for incoming freshman, however were created by a person not affiliate with the school and not a incoming freshman.

The company has, since this amazing discovery, left these groups (read the company’s comment here).

Now, I am for interesting ways to gain exposure of your company and product through the use of Social Networking sites such as Facebook; don’t get me wrong. But this company broke one of the cardinal rules when it comes to social marketing: transparency.

Even if these individuals were not trying to pose like incoming freshman or an affiliate of a university, by not disclosing who they were from the beginning they have undermined the social media platform and the individuals who participate in that platform.

I know everyone keeps saying the same thing, but apparently it’s not clear. If you are a company looking to reach people using social media, you need to be honest from the start on who you are and you have to provide something of value that people KNOWINGLY seek out for themselves. You can’t use any form of trickery…or it will result in something similar to this.

I applaud Brad and the other 15(ish) people who helped him look through Facebook to find these “fraud” groups.

This is what I love about social media…if there is something fishy going on, the group members will find out (usually pretty quickly) and will spread the news about any and all forms of dishonesty from a company.

I know that College Prowler is now in the process of leaving these groups they have created, however, I hope they keep these groups around and hand them over to the proper university affiliate, so these incoming students can still have a place to legitimately talke to other students going to their school.

What do you think? Is this as big of a deal as I think it is, or is this the only way to reach people through social media?