Companies That Don't Embrace Social Media Might Be…

Drowning because they don’t have any real content or they are not engaging on social platforms. Does your client want to connect with you on LinkedIn? Probably not. 

That’s why you have Facebook and Twitter to engage and communicate with your clients get a better understanding of their needs and what products they are interested in. 

Trust ME!,  the water's fine in the social media pool, but many companies are still afraid to allow workers to dive in. Experts say employers should take the social media plunge to buoy their brand and improve productivity.A few of years ago, General Electric Co. wasn't satisfied with how it was bringing good ideas to life internally.

Like most global organizations, GE struggled to create connections and share corporate information among its 300,000 employees.

In just the past decade, social media has surged from a college student pastime to a full-fledged corporate phenomenon. Facebook was founded in 2004, but by December 2012, it had an average of 618 million daily active users. Similarly, LinkedIn and Twitter also have experienced skyrocketing growth.

On the other hand, companies should not adopt a complete hands-off approach, experts say. Improved productivity will only come when employees understand the right and wrong way to use social media on the job, and managers provide guidance on what's expected, Yates says. "Most people will respond appropriately if you communicate that social media at work is OK as long as it's used to get your job done and doesn't compromise your performance or that of others," she says.

Companies increasingly are getting that message. They are welcoming social media and weaving into the way they do work other companies waste their time with senseless reports that they try to measure with. When they take forever to upload content and when they do they still screw up and pass it along instead of taking responsibility for their own self absorbance or positon in the company.

In my personal experience loan companies haven’t decided whose responsibility it is to respond.
Is it marketing’s responsibility or perhaps the PR team’s job to reply? In other words your own boss may have no clue how to engage or turn on the social media button. If you have customers that are waiting for a response but these teams may be working hard to respond, but doesn’t know how to answer sales, support or service questions. If they see something that requires a response from another department, they may forward it on a “catch as catch can” basis, but have no automated way to identify and route things to the right person. And even if the post finds its way to the right department, which individual is responsible for replying? Fifty-three percent of respondents to the ICMI survey said that routing posts to the right person was a major challenge.

The best users and companies like Cyberhooked understand that social media is a conversation, not a monologue. More effective companies use social media to interact with customers by creating online customer groups and monitoring trends. They were twice as likely to use social media to research new products. And they met their customers where they already were, using four or more social media channels – including multi-media sharing, review sites, discussion forums, and blogs. How do you use social media to listen to – and engage with – your customers?