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?

4 Level Headed Strategies for Responding to Negative Comments Online

www.Cyberhooked,com
By Robert Vaughan

Small-business owners spend good money on advertising, media relations and other promotional materials to increase brand awareness and control the conversation surrounding the business. Although these tactics can be effective, one of the biggest factors that sway consumers’ opinions is feedback from others.

Years ago, word of mouth was a very literal expression that meant one person shared their experience with their friends and colleagues and then those people shared with their network and so forth. These days, when a customer is upset with their experience, the first thing they do is announce their opinion on social media and web forums.

Related: Got a Bad Yelp Review? Here's How to Defend Your Business Online. (Cyberhooked)

So what do you do when you get a scathing Yelp! review about the terrible service and cold soup at your family restaurant or a horrible post on Ripoff Report about your gym’s cancellation policy? The tips below will help answer these questions and outline some of the best practices for handling bad reviews.

1. Know that time is of the essence.

To gain back trust after a scathing review, make sure you say something as soon as possible. A quick response shows that the business has nothing to hide. It’s important to note, however, that the messaging needs to be thoughtful and accurate, since the audience may already be aggressive and you don’t want to fuel an already existing fire.

Sometimes, the best response is something simple, such as “We are very sorry for the inconvenience and frustration that you've been experiencing. Please contact me directly and we’ll get this figured out.”

2. Admit wrong doing and just apologize.

If the complaint is legitimate and truthful, it’s important to step up and take the blame. People often respond negatively online to businesses that are trying to evade the blame or pass it off on someone else. Conversely, customers are more likely to forgive and forget if the owner apologizes sincerely and then tries to make amends.

Related: Don't Make These Customer Review Monitoring Mistakes

If the angry customer who received poor service and cold soup wrote on the local restaurant’s Facebook page, then the restaurant could respond back by saying that they truly apologize for the negative service, and would like to make it up to them by offering a meal for them on the house. A business owner should then go to their employees and pinpoint the problem, so the issue does not continue.

3. Don’t feel obligated to respond to everyone.

Often times, online comments can be crude or vulgar because people are more courageous when hiding behind a computer screen. If the comment is a personal attack or vague, don’t engage. Only respond to specific complaints about your service or the customer’s experience. Acting defensively or engaging in the foul play can make you and your business look petty and childish.

4. Ask yourself, do you want to be right or rich?

Even some of the most famous authors receive bad reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. It comes with the territory. And if you can’t bear the thought of someone criticizing you, justly or unjustly, then don’t publish.

Worrying about less-than-favorable reviews wastes energy that can be better spent writing another book or doing something fun.

Wait a day or two and see how you feel. If you’re still upset,resist the urge to keep going back to the bad review and reading it again, hunting for any inaccurate morsel.

Don’t send emails to your friends, relatives and fans telling them what happened and asking them to write good reviews to “push down” the bad one. Most of them probably won’t even know you got less than five stars.

Your objective is to have a successful business. Don’t sabotage yourself by turning current and prospective customers off with an emotional or defensive response to an online comment. Keep the big picture in mind and ask yourself if your response is going to help or hurt your business. Never respond out of emotion or argue over details, and always keep in mind that the best way to go about responding to negativity is to take the conversation offline.

4 Level Headed Strategies for Responding to Negative Comments Online.

Cyberhooked is a huge fan of American Horror Story

FX today ordered a 13-episode, fifth installment of executive producer Ryan Murphy's anthology miniseries, just days after the premiere of American Horror Story: Freak Show became the most-watched broadcast in the cable network's two-decade history. The next season will begin in October 2015. Freak Show's Wednesday opener attracted 10 million viewers, based on live-plus-three-day time-shifted viewing. It tops the previous FX champ, the September final-season premiere of Sons of Anarchy (9.3 million). Freak Show (Wednesday, 10 p.m. ET/PT), which is set at a 1952 Florida carnival freak show, also set a young-adult ratings record for FX. "The American Horror Story anthology has had the highest growth trajectory of any show in FX history, not to mention an unprecedented track record of success in awards recognition," FX CEO John Landgraf said in a statement accompanying the announcement. "With Ryan Murphy and his partners, Brad Falchuk, Dante Di Loreto and Tim Minear at the helm, the show's success is not surprising. AHS continues to deliver amazing stories, a brilliant troupe of actors led by Jessica Lange, and a visual style unlike any other on TV."

American Horror Story Freak Show used the second half of the Edward Mordrake two parter to show the origins and tears of Twisty the clown. When the legendary carny myth showed up at the freak show’s Jupiter, Florida campground, drawn by Elsa’s rehearsal on Halloween, it seemed the the purveyor of the attraction would be the victim required by the “boogeyman” of the circus world. Instead, the “two-faced” ghost, or demon, learned of several freaks’ deepest secrets, sins and hopelessness. A penalty that all had to pay after Mordrake visited them.

Each of the show’s members that Edward questioned, in order to ascertain whom he would take with him, told touching and disturbing stories about their journeys to Elsa Mars and her Freak Show. Ms. Mars with her past in the German sex trade, which she tells Mordrake about, starting in Berlin 1932 and how it was all sexual chaos; animals, amputees, hunchbacks…Elsa reveals that even in that “dark trade” she was a star. According to her, she was special, right up until she was the unwilling participant in a snuff film where she should have died, only to survive because one of her clients saved her.

 As Mordrake starts to take Elsa and make her a permanent member of his dead freak troupe, he hears the music from Twisty the Clown’s toy piano. Even though the demon on the back of his head has said that Mars is the one, Edward hesitates and goes to Twisty, inadvertently saving Jimmy Darling’s life in the process. While the murderous clown’s victims escape, much to Dandy Mott’s major annoyance as killer clown in training, Mordrake listens to the badly deformed children’s entertainer as he tells of his beginnings. In American Horror Story Freak Show Twisty was a “special” clown a festive clown, whose mother dropped him on his head when he was small, “it was an accident, too many cocktails,” went tearfully on the run to Jupiter, Florida after the dwarves in the carny accused him of doing bad things to the children.

Upon his return, Twisty is accused once again of doing “twisted” things to kids, by the toy store owner in the small town, the same man who becomes a victim later on. When Edward Mordrake asks him about the children, the clown explains that he took them from the freaks, killing their parents and how he got the kid’s a baby sitter. He clearly does not understand the depths of his evil acts and his “innocence” causes the demon on the back of Mordrake’s head to weep. The second face tells Twisty in American Horror Story that he is the one they want and the clown is then stabbed to death. Jimmy witnesses the death and the resurrection of Twisty. When Dandy Mott returns, after losing the escaping victims, he finds his “mentor’ dead and picks up the scary teeth that the clown wore and puts the mask on his own face. Later the all American rich-kid murderer “in training” kills the housekeeper while wearing the teeth. He has finally graduated from small animals to people. In

American Horror Story Freak Show, Twisty the clown will shed no more tears and kill no one else. He has joined Mordrake’s doomed troupe of freaks and Dandy is now the new Twisty, sans the deformity of his shotgun blasted mouth. By the end of the show, the only tears left to be shed are those of the audience who will be moved by the residents of Jupiter coming out to thank the freaks for saving the town from Twisty.

American Horror Story has gone viral with its massive audience. Its the topic/buzz of every water cooler and social media platform. More info on viral marketing Viral marketing can be as powerful as the buzz suggests, but the relationship between effort and reward is not always proportional.

Marketing is an industry with an inexhaustible appetite for buzzwords so a buzzword or brand about marketing that involves another buzzword – social media – is bound to get a lot of attention.

Viral marketing is undoubtedly powerful, but it poses challenges for business advertisers in that it's difficult to predict when efforts at going viral will being successful. Here, we take a look at viral marketing, how it works Using POP's RAPID Process, we provide website, consulting, design and development services to clients in a broad range of industries. We provide these services for the creation of websites, web-applications and mobile applications. For more info visit www.Cyberhooked.com and discover your hook