THE SITUATION You’ve found a complaint on Twitter (short-form platform), and you’ve determined the individual is fairly influential, has followers and reach, and interacts a lot with people. So you have a high-priority situation, worth addressing. TECHNIQUES USED ■ Identify Yourself (Humanize the Interaction) (1) ■ Apologize…
You can’t respond to complaints unless you know they exist. In addition, if your goal is to gather business intelligence about your customers’ wants and needs, you need to know where they are and what they say. To identify people you might want to contact, you need to scan, search,…
It used to be that most customer contacts were made in person, on the phone, or by letter. Then e-mail became more popular and available. More recently, additional “channels” have been added to the mix, including social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, company blogs, websites, and even YouTube…
If you are active on social media, you may receive more comments, complaints or compliments than you can reasonably handle. It’s likely you’ll find it difficult to respond to every person who mentions your company name or brand in a negative way. For this reason, you need to triage…
The Internet, and social media have made a lot more things possible for small businesses, and that’s a good thing. However, making EFFECTIVE use of either of these requires that you learn things about how to optimize your time. Poor use can damage your brand….
If you own a small business website (and you should), you should also learn a little about SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO), which is the practice of writing content, and structuring your website (or blog) so it’s more likely to show up in SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS…
Today, customers have way more choices at hand, whether in terms of technology, restaurant items and other food services, or automobiles. With that huge explosion of choice comes the challenge of making informed decisions, and customers usually lack the information needed to make purchases that…
I am fascinated by business; by the people that run them, by the customers that use their services and buy their products, and by the staff that apply their time. Fascinated by the capture of value, be it from suppliers, staff or customers, and by…
Whether you run a small business blog or website, or use social media as a means of communicating with prospective and current customers, there’s one essential principle you should keep in mind. On the surface, it’s a simple idea, but beneath the idea is the…
Q: Robert, you’ve just semi-retired after twenty five years running Bacal & Associates as a solo business. Was there ever a point where you wanted to grow your business into something a lot bigger, with employees, and the trappings? Robert: Well, yes and no. Unlike…
Recent Comments