ComMetrics weekly review: Customer relationship management

Social media monitoring DOs and DON’Ts: social media marketing, social media metrics, social media monitoring tools, benchmark test, Twitter monitoring, luxury branding and other happenings we came across while surfing the internet, blogging and posting on Facebook, Identi.ca, Google Buzz, or Twitter.

Last Wednesday I posted

Is social media un-social? 6 keys to success

which focused on implementing the right procedures for customers to get in touch with a company, and for that company to respond swiftly and justly.

Then I got a lovely email in my inbox offering another report from Brian Solis. Based on my experience of trying to get this report, I thought I would focus a bit more on customer relationship management, as well as quality, and social media mavens.

Below, I share my experience and give a short assessment of the report.

Wednesday

So what happened? The email I got from the Social Media Marketing group on LinkedIn mentioned something along the lines of

1. “The State of Social Media Around the World 2010″
Here is a great view of social media around the globe. If you were to look at Social Media in the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr.

As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas. As Social Media is truly global and relationships are truly without borders, it’s incredibly important to understand the social behavior associated with each platform that hosts conversations relevant to your projects regardless of their geographic location.

The above sounds really enticing, especially the sentence about, “it’s incredibly important to understand the social behavior associated with each platform…”

Who would not want to know the answers to this important issue? So I went ahead and ordered the report.

.

After I clicked on the “Request Now” button, I ended up on Brian Solis’ website. It took me a while to figure out that the paper was being downloaded simultaneously as I was being redirected to his personal blog.

Incidentally, the email I got for the download link also provided an email address for any questions I might have, which I promptly made use of. I got another email that referred me to the FAQ page which certainly answered my query… and if I still needed help, I would find another email address at the bottom of the FAQs.

Finally, I sent an email asking for some advice because I had the feeling some of the hyperlinks were not working for me. I got a new copy, which I tried on various computers for several hours. None of the hyperlinks worked.

What happened? To make a long story short, the final response was something like this:

——–
From:
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 8:58 AM
To: Jennifer Allgrove
Subject: Re: Cannot get report

Dear Ms Jennifer
Thank you for the quick response, much appreciated.

There seem to be hyperlinks in the report but they fail to work….. in
my Adobe Reader…. Was this an error?

Respectfully
Urs
——–
Subject: RE: Cannot get report
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:14:33 -0700
From: Jennifer Allgrove
To:

Hello,
I am not sure why they are not working. It may be due to an older
version of Adobe. You will need to check with your system administrator.

Sincerely,
Jennifer
TradePub Customer Service
—–Original Message—–

A side note: It would be unfortunate if the report had no hyperlinks, because some backup material would have helped. It’s almost worse if the URLs fail to work…

Friday – the report

What about the report? Well I looked at it and it provides some data, but has no reference list indicating where I could look at the primary data on which the author’s inferences and conclusions are based.

The report provides information about various countries and users’ activities based on 30,000 interviews worldwide and we are given a synopsis of the data. I was looking for answers regarding such questions as:

– Why is the most often-cited activity on social networks or communities uploading pictures and sharing images?
– If users in the US upload pictures more often than those in Brazil, what does this mean for my business?

Unfortunately, I could not find an answer. I would love to hear from anybody who has information about research addressing these issues.

By the way, this report is being distributed worldwide, but the hyperlinks apparently do not work in Adobe 6 or 7. In fact, they even failed to work for us using Adobe Reader 9. Did someone maybe make a mistake?

Bottom line
When push comes to shove, few might notice the problems I had with the hyperlinks because this is Web 2.0, where many of us are too busy networking to do quality control first. Hence, we tweet a link or endorse material before we take the time and trouble to read it from beginning to end.

The report is interesting, since it puts together data from various countries, but the why and what it means for us are not addressed. You can read it yourself here.

Have an opinion on this? Are you satisfied with the quality you get when social media mavens push another report and call it research? Please share in the comments; I love to hear what works for you!

Article source: ComMetrics weekly review: Customer relationship management

Please watch this short video, explaining these issues in more depth, including showing you data from Brian Solis’ report and asking questions that require answers before we can make sense of these data.

Tagged as: marketing buzz, micro-blogging, quality versus quantity, social media marketing, social media monitoring