Mouse is mightier than Sword!! Engage your customers through Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Several years before, management guru CK Prahlad wrote a definitive article on Co-opting Customer Competence, in which he had outlined how you can coproduce with your customer, and use his competence to sharpen your competitive advantage. One of the main tools of coproduction is not just listening to your customer, but engaging and actively using his inputs in your design and delivery of your products and services. A few years before, a website was a mere shouting tool - communication was often one way, with website providing information to the reader/user/customer. But today, online platforms are powerful interactive tool that allows you to engage your customers, not just communicate with them. Your customers are constantly communicating with their networks about everything including the products and services they use. They blog, tweet, share and buzz, and it is important to optimize your business and your online presence for social media in order to effectively engage and co-opt your customer in your success.


Why should you engage your customers? Why bother what they write about you in their social networks?


(a) Customers trust user generated content, reviews, and recommendations much more than they trust any of your traditional marketing tools including advertisements. Media advertisements are good to generate the first interest. But  beyond that, your previous customers evangelizing your product will get you much more sales and new customers. The Razorfish consumer experience report for 2008 reports that 61% of people rely on user reviews to buy products. According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the study's respondents.


(b) Consumers give you valuable inputs and real time feedback. The mouse is mightier than the sword. Internet users increasingly tweet, share, blog, and buzz about everything they do, feel, and think. Google has started crawling social media sites including facebook, twitter and its own buzz in order to give real time information of the latest information in its search results. You can listen in to what your customers and users are saying in real time. 


(c) The word of mouse.  In other words, do you have the latest tools to instantly share your information? Can your readers share the news about your latest product launch to their network using twitter, digg, or FB Share? The word of mouse is viral, and powerful. If only you can provide the right tools, every reader can become your brand marketer, every customer can become your ambassador.


How can you optimize your business for social media?


1. Have a blog page. Blog is a powerful tool to engage and educate your customers and visitors. Blog gives an opportunity for the visitor to learn more about your product/service, and understand why your product/service is better. You can blog about all the latest research and market trends that gives more information about your hypothesis to the users. You can test your new product ideas, and capture the user inputs early on. You can get more information on advantages of having a company blog here.


2. Have social media sharing tools to share instantly information from your site to other media sites like FB, Twitter, Digg, and the like. This is very vital for viral word of mouse marketing.


3. Have a FB Fan Page, and integrate FB Connect. Most of your customers and prospective customers are likely to be in Facebook or Myspace. Their positive (and negative) comments about your products and services will be instantly available to their networks and your networks. Unlike myspace, FB has a vast majority of real users with real friends. Comments from real people are more likely to be trusted and hence you must encourage.


4. Tweet and Follow. Encourage your customers and users to follow you. And you follow them. It is a great way to reach your customers and your follower's followers.


5. Influence the influencer. New concepts of social media influence are emerging, and tools such as Klout, and Mylikes are able to measure the influence of any user in the twitter and social networks. Social media gives quanitifiable and analyzable metrics to orchestrate influencer marketing strategies. But before that, you need to be present in the social media.


What has been listed above are some of the important channels. There are many more channels including youtube, bookmarking sites, and the like. This diagram gives the complete universe of social media. (image courtesy: www.theconversionprism.com, by Brian Solis)

But the most important thing is to listen to your customers and users feedback and inputs. Listen to what they are saying about the products and services they use. Capture the trend. Decipher their wish list. Discover their desired outcomes. There is a wonderful article written by Anthony W Ulwick on Turning your customer input to innovation. A good product manager will know what and how much to listen from his customers. As more and more users generate contents, and more and more users consume user generated contents, harnessing the power of the social media will become mandatory to maintain your competitive advantage. It certainly appears that mouse is mightier than sword.

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