Social:IRL with Peter Shankman

I had an opportunity to attend another awesome Social:IRL event yesterday. This one was on social media in customer service - Peter Shankman had some great advice and interesting case studies.

It all boiled down to one main premise: social media is not about "cool," it's about revenue.


Here are a few things he talked about:

Social media allows us to generate content quicker, faster and better. But because we focus on "quicker and faster" so much, many times we forget about "better." But your audience doesn't need crappy content; there's no point in social media if you are not reaching your audience.

Your job is to create engaging content. Then people will come to you. Don't send an email just to sell something, think about your audience - what would they want to read?

Be transparent. Information wants to be free. Honesty will kill the majority of issues before they become big problems. Use social media to get in front of a problem and shut it down before it gets out of control. Admit it, apologize, get over it. Make friends with people who hate you.

Be relevant to your audience. Even when your audience is very fragmented, you can stay relevant to them. How? Ask them what they want! Engage with your customers.

Today, the average attention span is 140 characters, or roughly 2.6 seconds.

You only have that much time to get your message across. Learn to write well, bad writing will destroy your company.

Be the top of mind for your customers. Your job is not to talk about how awesome you are. It is about empowering your customers to talk about how awesome you are.

Social media is all about 2-way communication. You can't be afraid of what people will say about you. If your customer service is good, there will be nothing to be afraid of.

And my favorite quote of the day: Social media allows us to take care of people better. So true.