Quora: distraction or deliverance?

Contributed by Samantha McGarry

As a communicator, Quora pushes all my buttons -- in a good way. But folks, let’s get serious. Let’s get over ourselves. Let’s stop trying to be cool and popular, let’s put on our business heads and focus on value and effort. Amid all this Quora buzz (and there have been several interesting articles written in recent days,) the following questions leap out at me. I don’t have the answers; I’m not sure anyone does yet. But it behooves us to think about this stuff before we jump on the bandwagon.

• How do I manage another social site? I could spend hours on Quora but, seriously, I have a long, long to-do list to get to.
• How do I best use it to complement what I’m already doing for clients on Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare, …etc.?
• Show me the APIs! If Quora is going to stick around, I’m going to need it to talk to my social media monitoring and measurement systems.
• Other than we cool PR/social media/ IT peeps, who else is using Quora? Aren’t we just all talking to ourselves right now? Or is there a serious B2B or B2C audience?
• Should I be recommending that clients participate to share content and build thought leadership?
• Is it a viable lead gen or referring traffic source for inbound marketing?
• Is it influencing attitudes and buying decisions?

Ultimately, Quora feels like another interesting model for finding and sharing information and answers, engaging with quality people, and for distributing and linking to valuable content. But I also think we need to slow down and assess its viability – or we’ll be spending all our time in Quora-land and not enough time focusing on what really matters as PR professionals: delivering value and results.

Feeling the Twitter Love

OK, I admit it. I don’t tweet as much as I probably should. Don’t get me wrong, I am an avid Twitter user – following people and organizations I think are interesting, important or just fun. But actually tweeting what I am doing personally – well, sometimes I find myself at a loss. I love Twitter – getting breaking news fast, hearing people’s reactions quickly, and obviously I use it for my clients a lot -- just not for personal tweeting (at least not frequently).

But this week I did tweet a couple of gripes I had. One was with Comcast (I mean, who doesn’t have a gripe with Comcast?). I moved into my house a year ago and after completely flubbing the installation of my phone/Internet/cable for over a month, they still cannot get my call waiting working (yes, seriously). I have spent more than 8 hours on the phone with them on this issue and still nothing. The other day I missed an important call because of this issue so I tweeted it. Within minutes @comcastcares reached out to ask what they can do. Fingers crossed – maybe it will actually work!

Then earlier this week I went to order some framed artwork for Christmas from Gallery Direct. It said at the top of the site that all prints were 50% off; but between the time I ordered and the time I went to checkout (within the same session) the sale ended and my entire order was marked full priced. Was this fair? Honestly I don’t know for sure. It didn't seem like it to me. It annoyed me so I called their customer service (something I almost never do). The woman was insistent about it being appropriate and was actually rather rude. So I tweeted my gripe. Last night I received an incredibly gracious email from the manager – making me an even better offer than what I had initially and apologizing for my bad experience. I was totally impressed by this response and have suddenly transformed into a Gallery Direct (@gallerydirect) fan.

Would I have gotten these responses without Twitter? I don’t think so. In the case of Comcast, I think they are wisely using Twitter to help curtail a fairly horrid reputation for customer service. In the case of Gallery Direct, I now genuinely feel that the relatively small company cares about its customers and customer service. But if it had not been for Twitter, that manager may have never known about my bad customer experience.

So here’s to the power of Twitter! Now I am going to go tweet something positive about these companies. (That’s only fair, right?)

Are you all aboard on the Twitter train?

At first social media sites like Facebook and Twitter were dominated by individuals just looking to share some photos or thoughts with other individuals. In the past few years there has been a heavy stream of businesses jumping aboard the social media bandwagon. There are still a lot of skeptics out there that don’t think having Twitter handle or Facebook page is going to make much of a difference to their company, or it’s not right for their type of company -- and I couldn’t disagree more.

Social media is here to stay. It might be constantly changing, but this way of engaging with people from all walks of life, from all over the world, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Twitter recently reported that they had 125 million registered users. Imagine if you could tap into just a tiny percentage of those users? You really can if you go about it the right way!

You should definitely use the social media outlets to tell your customers about exciting company news, new products and any promotions you are running. But the key to a successful social media presence it to get down to a personal level with the customers or potential customers you engage with on these sites.

At InkHouse we have clients who do an outstanding job of this. They take the time to answer every question tweeted their way, thank those who gave their product or company praise, and do their best to make sure problems and concerns are addressed. It’s almost like another customer service channel at times, and customers are constantly turning to tweeting to a company rather than calling some robotic 800 number that usually ends up in punching the # sign over and over until your finger is numb.

These satisfied customers you just engaged with online often then take to their Twitter handles or Facebook walls and tell hundreds and even thousands of their followers how wonderful of a company yours was and that they made them feel like they mattered as a customer. Then those followers retweet it to their followers or share it with their Facebook friends, and over and over it gets retweeted and shared. Before you know it, those simple acts of customer engagements have made positive impressions on a countless number of people. Word of mouth has a whole different effect in the social media world.

Don’t even think for a second that your company’s line of business wouldn’t benefit from having a social media presence or isn’t the type of company to be tweeting. There is such a broad spectrum of companies using social media it would surprise you. I recently read an article about the growing number of plumbers using social media. They’ve been using Twitter to get advice from other plumbers, share knowledge and look for parts, as well as engage with their customers.

Still aren’t convinced you need social media? Don’t forget, consumers aren’t the only ones using Facebook and Twitter. There are countless decision makers who have a presence on social media sites. Having tools like Twitter and Facebook in your toolbox gives your company another way to start a conversation with these decision makers that some of your competitors may not have tried yet.