Keep Me Connected Jewelry

Is Facebook really important? Is it worth it to be there if someone could potentially write something negative about us? Do people really base their purchases on social media?

These are some questions that I get when talking to prospective customers and even sometimes friends asking about what I do.

And my answers to these questions: YES! YES! and YES!

I’m going to take a little time today addressing some of these questions.

I’ll start off by saying when I want to know about how a company actually is, I often hop on Facebook and give them a look. I look at what they have posted, but when I’m evaluating them, I’m looking more at what fans have said on their page. Did they sing their praises? Did they air their grievances? If it’s negative, how did the company respond?

I take all of this information to help me form my opinion and decide whether or not I want to use their services or buy their product. Facebook is such a fluid platform, changing daily. It takes a lot less work to write a comment or review on Facebook than to go to Yelp or something similar, and it gives me insight into their customer service before ever going there.

Facebook is important for your businesses for a wide array of reasons, but I’ll touch on just a few here.

•  Through Facebook, we get to connect with your customers almost daily!
• We can easily informing them about events and show them new product!
• Your customers have a platform to sing your praise!
• New customers or friends of customers can get to read the great things said about you!
• We can have fun with your customers and keep them thinking about you!

I’ve been reading a book called Engagement Marketing written by the CEO of Constant Contact, Gail Goodman. I think she has a great perspective about what it means to be successful in social media. You don’t need 10,000 fans or 100 comments. Facebook has been called a game changer in marketing by a lot of people.

“What’s the real marketing game changer? Age-old word-of-mouth marketing strategies made publicly visible by social media sites.” (Engagement Marketing, 2012)

This is so important because like I said it gives your customers the opportunity to influence potential customers without necessarily knowing them personally. And if they do, even more so.

According to Wildfire, a major social media campaign company shared some numbers from recent studies of social media users:

• 78% are directly influenced by branded posts when making purchases
• 74% use social media to encourage friends to try new products
• 80% try new things based on friends’ suggestions via social media

And Constant Contact shared this finding in a June 7th webinar:

• 36% of people trust advertisers while 81% trust recommendations or online opinions

That gives social media some huge influencing power. And of all the social media sites–Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, FourSquare, Google+, etc. Facebook is the still by far the largest platform. Additionally Facebook users are typically more active, meaning they spend more time on Facebook than other uses spend on the other social media sites.

As far as worrying about if anyone says anything negative about you, simply put, don’t worry. Worst case scenario, if someone writes a negative comment on your page, you can delete it.

Addressing whatever the issue though is, in my opinion, the best thing you can do. And it can actually make people think even more highly of you. I’ll give you a prime example. Here in Seattle we had a big snowstorm/ice storm this past winter. It really messed up the flights going in and out of Seatac for about 5 days. Alaska Airlines took a lot of flack from people online at first because they had to cancel quite a few flights. And we all know how grumpy people can be when it comes to traveling.

People took to Facebook to ask questions, complain, or praise the company. And I’ll tell you what, even though I wasn’t flying anywhere until a couple of weeks later, I was checking their page just out of curiosity to see all the commotion. They had two people assigned to the page–David and Elliot. They manned all the responses. There wasn’t a single complaint that they didn’t try to address. Whether the issue was their fault or not, they were making people feel heard.

By the end of it, there was a whole host of comments and posts thanking them for their help. For me personally, their positive response to the negative comments (whether or not they could actually fix the situation) made a lasting impression. That attitude is consistent with my experiences with them and so I am very faithful customer to this airline.

So, here I am 7 months later, using social media to praise this company. And so I guess I’m proving my own point. Their Facebook activity cemented my feelings about the company. I’ve told this story many times now. I’m out there influencing the people I know–all because of their Facebook page.

Give people the platform to talk about how awesome your company is and have fun with them and you can a have a lot of success with social media.

 

 

 

 

We do business with people we like. We choose our friends and people we want to surround ourselves with by how much we like them. Never underestimate the power of an act of kindness….directed at someone you know or someone completely random.

I am a big fan of random acts of kindness. You never know what effect you will have, but you can be pretty sure it at least puts a smile on somebody’s face. On our way to the summer show in Nashville, we had a layover in the Denver airport. My mom and I decided to grab bite to eat in a restaurant in the airport.

The place was busy, but not crazy. We sat for ten minutes though and still hadn’t seen our server. I was starting to get a little grumpy, since I’d been up since 3:30 and at this point, I think it was 9:30 and I hadn’t eaten anything. While we were waiting though I heard this guy in his early twenties asking the bartender if he could call his girlfriend, get her credit card number and run his tab that way. He had somehow lost his wallet or debit card and had no money. The bartender told him they didn’t normally do that but that he would go back to manager to check.

I relayed the story to my mom, who was a little further away from the story unfolding and had been on the phone. She said, as I knew she would, that we should pick up his tab. So when the bartender came back, still not sure if he could accommodate the young man’s request, my mom told him we would pay for it. The boy was shocked, the bartender looked pleasantly surprised. As if after seeing people coming and going without connection to other day in and day out left him hoping to see people taking care of each other.

The young man graciously accepted the help and my mom handed a $20 bill and told him to take it in case he needed something along the way. At first he refused, but my mom insisted and told him to pay it forward.

He said he loved that movie! (The one with Helen Hunt and Kevin Spacey). Very sad movie, but very good and a touching concept. You should watch it if you haven’t already seen it. He promised he would and reiterated that he only felt comfortable taking the money because of that.

I look at it this way, if I was in that predicament, I would hope that a stranger would reach out to me and help me. And if he didn’t need the $20 at all, maybe the reason my mom was supposed to give it to him wasn’t for him but for the person who really needed it that he would pass it on to.

In random opportunities we have a chance to turn someone’s day around, perhaps even change their outlook. If we apply that mentality to people that we have relationships with or our acquaintances with, we can really make some awesome things happen! We can love on the people we interact with daily with little things like buying someone’s coffee or complimenting someone on their outfit. The ways to go about it are endless, but the idea is this: love people through little acts of kindness.

Big gestures can be important and make huge impacts, but the opportunity for those is less frequent. Today and every day, you can show people they are important and appreciated.

And on that note, I really appreciate anyone who is reading this (and who has read this whole thing to make it to the end of it!). I feel very blessed to work with such an amazing people and to be able to live out my passions—writing and interacting with people. Thank you. You make my day.

This blog is going to be a place for me to talk to you about what is going on Facebook. A newsletter for my customers, if you will. I will give you updates of ideas that seem to be working great and thoughts on where we will be going.

Additionally, through this site, you will find a link to PayPal, which is where you can make your monthly payments. Just click on the PayPal tab. There is a drop down menu that allows you to select whichever program option you are signed up for. If at any time you wish to unsubscribe to this program, please email or call me and I will take care of that for you too.

Thanks for your time and for your business!

Have a beautiful day!