Social Media video

How to Connect Social Media to Your Business with Dave Evans (5:52) Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Mar 16, 2010

In this video interview, social media marketing specialist Dave Evans explains how businesses can use social media to listen to the voice of the customer and respond by improving their products and services.

Evans begins by explaining the feedback cycle that exists between the experience a business creates and the conversations that result from it on the social web.

He likens the feedback cycle to the purchase funnel concept: awareness > consideration > purchase. In offline marketing, word of mouth often leads to a purchase. And once a person makes a purchace he, too, is part of that feedback cycle. With the social web, however, we have a much more direct channel, such as the review mechanism, where purchasers can seek feedback about a product or service. The cycle here consists of purchasers' comments and shopers' queries.

We used to use focus groups to listen to potential customer likes and dislikes. But focus groups are influenced by previous motivations to be a panel member as well as selection bias. In contrast, purchasers' comments on the web are much purer.

Having understood the feedback cycle on the social web, businesses need to understand what that feedback means in terms of their products or services. They listen to understand what is the issue -- either positive or negative. The social web can sometimes tell us what not to "fix," things that customers really like.

Evans cites Fred Reichheld in The Ultimate Question (Harvard Business Press, 2006). The whole point is to generate favorable recommendations, then use those to drive your long-term business. Favorable recommendations give your business a huge competitive advantage. Without them, you're continually spending money yourself to create awareness.

Dave Evans is a ClickZ columnist on social media, author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day (Sybex, 2008), and Consulting Director for 2020 Social. This interview was taped at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conference in San Jose, California, August 2009.