We've "scene" it all--The SceneExchange Blog

Targeting Your Customers Via Social Media

As a follow up to my post about "couch commerce", I promised a rundown about how to decide what social media is a good fit for your target customers. Here's my how-to.

Create a Human Story

First of all, remind yourself that today represents entirely new ways to cultivate customers. Using social media is one way to facilitate interactions between people online. They make it easier to listen to and respond to people directly.

How can you humanize your company's story? Go deep into your target demographics and discover the people--and what is important to them about you and your industry.

(And be sure not to push your messaging at them--you have to bring value to the conversation. Think of social media as one big holiday party--who are the people you enjoy talking with the most? The ones who listen and ask you great questions about yourself--not the people who just talk and talk to hear their own voices.)

Evaluate your customers' habits

Ask yourself the following:

• Do you know what your customers are doing?
• Do you know if they are active with social media? If so, how active?

People online contribute in a myriad of ways. Here are several categories they might fall into (credit for these goes to Josh Bernoff at the groundswell blog)

• Creators--Create and publish their own content (in blog, video, photo, etc. format)
• Critics--React to the content of others by posting, editing and commenting
• Collectors--Organize content by organizing or voting
• Joiners--People on social networks
• Spectators--Reads and consumes some level of social content

Next, it's time to survey your customers to gain an understanding of their habits. This will give you a starting point--a baseline understanding, if you will. It will let you watch how they engage and behave.

The next steps are up to you and your company. First you need to determine if you have the resources and gumption to open things up for two-way dialogue. At our company, our management team was split about starting with social media. There was a great deal of fear about "what if people say bad things about us?". Now we all understand that a "bad" comment can be a starting point for making something better--or explaining why we did what we did. The point is that social media gives us the opportunity to have a conversation we might not otherwise have had.

Are you truly ready for social media? It takes time and resources internally, but the rewards are worth the effort.

--Beth

Social Media and Beth Bailey in the news

Our own Beth Bailey has an article about Insurance Companies using Social Media to help with marketing in this month's copy of Best's Review. The article title is, "Join the Revolution."

If you have a subscription, you can login online to give it a read--otherwise, track down a copy from someone in your office.

Congratulations, Beth. We all know you feel very passionately about the topic.

--Jen

Shark jumping at one of my favorite blogs

One of the blogs I like to read when I'm cruising around the 'net is Karl on Cars, written by the Editor-in-Chief of Edmunds.com.  I especially like his posts about cars that have jumped the shark. 

What is shark jumping, you ask?  The term was originally coined to define when a television show did something inexorably stupid that started the show on its decline into kitschy irrelevancy.  The phrase, "jumping the shark," is a reference to Happy Days, and the episode when Fonzie, leather jacket and all, donned a pair of waterskis and jumped over a tank of sharks while on vacation in Hollywood. 

But, all kinds of things can "jump the shark" - musicians, politicians, video games, and, as Karl's blog points out, cars.  Karl defines a car jumping the shark as, "when a particular model topped out before beginning that inexorable slide into pathetic-ness."

The one pick I absolutely agree with is the Chevrolet Corvette.  The C1 'vette was sex on wheels.  Prince didn't call a racy woman a "Little Red Corvette" for nothing.  But the C3 'vette might as well have been piloted by Evel Knieval for all the shark jumping it did.  Did you see Boogie Nights?  Dirk Diggler was a high school drop-out desperate to belong.  Dirk defined cool as performing karate without any formal training, "imported Italian nylon" shirts and his late 1970's Corvette with "ten coats of competition orange, hand-rubbed lacquer."  All he was missing was a mullet.

Check out this amazing display of cheesy-ocity.  No, this is no joke.  This is an actual Corvette commercial from 1984. An exquisite display of shark jumping.

The Corvette has gone on to redeem itself in recent years, particluarly with the C6 convertible, and is now a viable option for the sportscar enthusiast.  But keep an eye on Karl's blog to weigh in on other models that may have jumped the shark.  It's fun reading for car buffs.

--Chrisa

Perception IS Reality

I ran across an article on eHow.com, on how to file a car accident claim.  eHow is a collective intelligence website, sort of like Wikipedia, where any registered member can add an article about how to do, well, just about anything.  This particular article, however, was authored by an eHow editor - a paid employee and "expert" in the subject of cars. 

eHow articles give steps on how to do something, and rate the difficulty of performing said task, as judged by the author.  This article has 4 steps, and is judged to be of moderate difficulty.  The steps include taking your own damage photos, calling your insurer from the scene, if possible, and waiting, no joke, "several weeks to several months" for a settlement check.  This is how an "expert" sees the claims process.  A moderately difficult, do-it-yourself, wait forever process.  That's the perception.  And, as any marketer will tell you, perception IS reality to the customer, no matter what the reality actually is.

So why is that the perception?  When, as I've mentioned before, the average person experiences an accident every 5-7 years, one mediocre experience creates a looooonng held opinion--and one shared with friends, family and neighbors--which helps shape their perception, and so on.  What makes the experience mediocre?  Lack of involvement?  Lack of understanding of the process?  Lack of communication?  All of the above?  Whatever it is, specifically, the experience for the insured is going to have to change for the perception to change. 

--Chrisa