Does Your Facebook Page Shout Contempt for Your Customers and Their Communication Preferences?

Jan. 4, 2011 - PRLog -- If you have fatally underestimated the time, skill and energy required to engage your customers effectively in social media, you probably have an inactive and unresponsive social media presence. Why let the damage to your brand continue?

Bill James, CEO of We Engage LLC ( http://www.facebook.com/weengage ), is urging business owners to rebalance their marketing budgets and avoid joining the dearth of small business social media accounts that are embarrassingly under manned and under engaged.

"There are millions of small to medium business owners who have entered Facebook only to establish a business page and then basically let it fester through lack of activity to become a negative statement about the brand and its owners," said Mr. James. He compared it to listing a business telephone number and then never answering the call.
California based We Engage LLC ( http://www.weengage.com ) offers full management services for social media accounts from as little as $99 per calendar month and has clients across North America. Business owners can relax knowing their accounts are publishing regular and focused content and responding to all customer approaches quickly. Plans are customized to reflect activity levels and can include multiple applications in social media. They include publishing content at a specified frequency, as well as monitoring in real time and providing effective response to all customer questions and comments within specified timeframes. Specialists liaise with business owners and directors to agree on strategy, tactics, content, focus and activity schedules. Contracts run for 3 months initially and then month to month. This means there is no long term commitment to the service.

"We Engage LLC has removed any excuse or justification for remaining under engaged in social media in 2011. Cost, commitment and reliability are simply not an issue," said Mr. James.

Marketing Budgets need to be rebalanced for 2011.

"Savvy business owners (B2B and B2C) are transferring realistic chunks of their marketing budget to social media channels from traditional media, like print and mail. Many small to medium sized businesses continue to miss new sales from social media marketing because they remain under invested in their customers' communication preferences. Competitively, it's a question of who will wake up first," said Mr. James.

Many owners have not fundamentally reviewed the balance of their marketing spend for years. They are stuck spending up big on advertising and promotion in shrinking communication channels (print advertising, indirect mail marketing, email and direct telephone marketing) while customers are moving in droves to a new and growing social media. They just haven't recognized the shift by users from traditional to social media communication channels," said Mr. James. According to James, owners need to do the math on where consumers are finding or being referred to product and service.  Increasingly, it's social media.

"Facebook has nearly one quarter of all online display advertisements in the US...and online advertising has grown 22% between 2009 and 2010. "Online advertising is growing like crazy," according to Mr. James. There is no ' if ' in the equation," he said.
He explained that, paradoxically, many business owners that have severely undermanaged accounts in various applications have then concluded that social media has nothing to offer or has failed as a marketing channel. "It's a self fulfilling prophecy...the investment must come first," he said.

"'Engagement' requires effective participation in the communication channels preferred by your customers. 'Participation' is both generating meaningful content and responding effectively to the approaches of your customers within an acceptable timeframe.”
The shift to social media and mobile communications is a generational shift to the use of new communication channels. New technology has changed the relative utility of various means of communication over time. Communication preferences are habits which are formed early in life.  They are also skills which need to be acquired through education. This explains why use of older communication channels persists over time and why users currently immersed in the education system are the most avid users of new communication channels.

Many owners of small to medium enterprises have not understood that consumers in younger generations (generations X, Y and Z) are using applications like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr in the same way as Baby Boomers chose to use radio, telephony and email in preference to the telegraph, newsprint and standard mail.  In turn, there was a time when the telegraph and newsprint and 'modern' mail services were new technologies preferred by the generation we now refer to as the 'Traditional' generation. Successive generations of business owners have had to adjust marketing budgets to account for these changes in communication preferences. “It's simply time to do so again,” said Mr James.

Mobile telephony platforms and social media applications are now the preferred communication channels for many younger consumers. Many generation Y and Z consumers will never actively use email, almost never read newspapers or magazines, rarely check the mailbox, trip to web-sites infrequently and will never own a telephone with a cord attached.

Mr James asked “Where does that leave the existing marketing strategy and budget for many small businesses? In need of a rebalance?”.

Additionally, there is a gradual transition underway as Baby Boomers (the fastest growing users of social media) and even members of the Traditional generation begin to also access social media and an increasing use of the mobile telephony platform. Having said that, there will always be a legacy following for older channels.

Mr James advises the following, “Adapt or die. Your competitors certainly will. Rebalance your marketing budget and ask yourself who your customers are and which are their preferred communication channels".

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'We Engage' is an outsourced provider of community management services in social media. We assist our clients to sustain a culture of trust and brand advocacy by engaging subject to agreed protocol, brand strategy and tactics.