SocialSev

As a relative newcomer to social media, sometimes I think my inexperience works to my advantage. I don’t carry with me the baggage of traditional strategies that don’t translate well to emerging technologies. One of the things that stands out like a sore thumb to me is the tendency of organizations to continue to approach social media with the same ideology that they applied to traditional marketing campaigns.

In the “good old days,” if you could afford to reach millions of viewers with a 30 second spot on network television, you’d done your job. Hire yourself a creative marketing firm to squeeze the maximum amount of “I’ve gotta have that” into half a minute and Bob’s your uncle. Big companies with a substantial advertising budget had a sizable advantage over the little guy. That same logic applied to print and radio campaigns. The rich kept getting richer. But the game changed when social media gained acceptance as a viable marketing tool.

The race is not given to the swift, nor to the strong, but unto him that is able to endure unto the end.

Sorry to get all biblical on you, but that quote says it all. Rounding up a few million potential customers and screaming your message at them is not enough anymore. In fact, it might not even be necessary at all. But when it is, it also needs to be augmented by a strong sense of community. Take Ford, for example. I don’t think that there will ever come a day that we stop seeing Ford commercials and print ads. But they were forward-thinking enough to entrust their social media presence to someone like Scott Monty.

If you took a quick look at Scott’s blog, you wouldn’t even know that he worked for Ford unless you read his bio. Scott’s voice meshes well with the tone of a much larger, active community. He’s part of a conversation. He doesn’t attempt to lead that conversation, nor does he speak to his Twitter followers like a customer service agent for big corporate America. Scott just… fits in.

Scott Monty’s job is more than just schmoozing with Ford owners on social networking sites. But his Twitter usage is the best and most obvious example of what Ford is doing right. By way of comparison, Chrysler doesn’t seem to get it at all. Let’s start by comparing the two companies’ Twitter profiles:

What stands out like a sore thumb here? No, I’m not referring to the number of followers each company has. I’m referring to the disparity between the number of followers Chrysler has and the number that they follow. The difference in Ford’s case could easily be attributed to obvious spammers. But Chrysler is just phoning it in. How can you expect consumers to embrace your presence in social media if you don’t even care enough to embrace them?

One of the benefits of having a presence on Twitter is immediate access to customer feedback. But it’s not all sunshine and giggles. At times, community members are going to utilize the most readily-available outlet at their disposal to complain about their experiences. That brings us to another fundamental difference in the practices of these two companies. Below is a tweet from a dissatisfied Chrysler customer just looking for someone to talk to about his experience.

Ahh! A wonderful opportunity. This is Chrysler’s chance to step up to the plate, show some empathy for the customer, and turn their bad experience into a good one, right? So how did they respond?

And where does that link take you? The Chrysler Group’s contact page. Thanks, Chrysler. If @mcgoverntheory didn’t know how to use Google, you just saved him a heap of time! But seriously, they let a wonderful opportunity slip away from them. If the gentleman was belligerent or spewing profanities, I could see where they would want to move the conversation off of the public timeline. But he wasn’t. He was just reaching out for someone to listen to his complaints. This was an underhanded pitch, a perfect chance to show the Twitter community that they care enough to address the issue head-on. But they didn’t.

Let’s look at a similar situation for Ford. In this instance, the gentleman’s tone was a little bit more harsh. He’s clearly agitated and he wants answers. According to Kelley Blue Book, the base model of the vehicle in question retails for $48,175.

Under the Chrysler model, this gentleman should just be directed to customer service, right? They clearly already have the guy’s money. So how does Scott Monty (as indicated by the ^SM in the tweet) respond?

He takes ownership of the problem. He doesn’t push the gentleman off on someone else. Scott offers to look into the problem for @GamingBids. He even makes reference to the fact that he’s already responded to the complaint on Facebook. Here’s that exchange:

The gentleman has already exhausted all of the resources that he can find. He’s been stuck in a loop between Ford Customer Service and the dealers. It’s the same loop that poor Mr. McGovern is about to start with Chrysler. The difference is that Scott Monty is trying to break that loop. Ed Garsten and Mike Ellis either have an unhealthy amount of faith in Chrysler Customer Service or they just don’t want to deal with the problem.

This brings us back to the scripture quoted above. In all fairness, it’s not a legitimate quote from the Bible. It’s a combination of the completely unrelated Ecclesiastes 9:11 and Mark 13:13. But we social media types love mashups, don’t we? Anyhow, in the example above, Chrysler clearly view themselves as the “swift” and “strong.” Their social media strategy screams, “We’re big corporate America. If we make a Twitter page and speak, people will listen. We’re the marketing department, not customer service.” Back-to-back-to-back tweets about how much J.D. Power and Associates love them this year only contribute to their “Yay me!” image. Their blog is even more of the same.

Conversely, Ford seems to understand that building a community and gaining that community’s trust takes time. They’re willing to “endure until the end.” Initiatives like the Fiesta Movement and Warriors in Pink build on a strong sense of “belonging” to something bigger than a car company’s mailing list. Scott Monty and his team take an active interest in their customer’s lives, not their wallets. And it starts with sincerity.