I’d be thrilled to see your comments/suggestions for my new book: Social Media Changes Everything (for Business). Read on and reply…

Chapter 1: Word of Mouth Gets a Megaphone

Recently, a friend of mine who runs a public relations firm in Chicago scheduled a last minute meeting in Denver. Her assistant called Avis, her preferred car rental company, only to learn that they were out of cars at the Denver airport location. Because Gini was a loyal Avis customer of 15 years, her assistant asked whether Avis could arrange to have a car delivered from one of their other locations.

The customer service representative replied curtly “Tell your boss to take a cab.”

As a regular social media user, Gini shared the surprising exchange with her six thousand plus Twitter followers using not more than 140 characters; not exactly great PR for Avis.

Here’s the fun part and a wake up call for businesses everywhere. Hertz was monitoring Twitter for comments about their competitors. Within two minutes of Gini’s complaint, Hertz “tweeted” her about availability of Hertz cars at Denver International Airport AND offered her a 20% discount.

Even five years ago, who would have believed that technology would be created that would allow a company to learn about customer service problems, their own or their competitors’, in real time as they happen.

Gini took them up on the offer and is now a loyal Hertz customer.

Welcome to the social internet – Web 2.0 — the world of Facebook… Twitter…Blogger… GetSatisfaction… TalkShoe… YouTube… MySpace… Ning… WordPress… and hundreds of other social media and social networking applications.

Together, social media and social networking (which I’ll shorthand as “social media”) are transforming the world in more dramatic ways than most businesses and organizations appreciate. The social web is changing the way people interact as dramatically as did the telephone roughly 125 years ago. It is altering customers’, suppliers’, partners’, and employees’ expectations about participating in formerly inaccessible corporate, non-profit, and even government processes.

Social media is changing everything.

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To learn more about Dave Nelsen and Dialog Group’s consulting services, visit www.get121.biz

I’d be thrilled to see your comments/suggestions for my new book: Social Media Changes Everything (for Business). Read on and reply…

Preface

From 2005 to 2009, I founded and built TalkShoe, a social media pioneer, to over 1 million monthly listeners using a variety of social media and social networking tools.

Facebook did not work well for us in part because TalkShoe, as the name implies, is about talking. It turns out that when people organize around a friend (or person) they have little else in common and therefore little interest in talking as a group.

However, when people organize around a topic such as a sports team, a hobby, etc., then they are often interested in talking together. As such, our efforts with Ning (one million topic-based social networks) yielded a much higher return.

We used our own live podcasting service to interact with our most important customers on a bi-weekly basis. This became the foundation our for product planning. Imagine how valuable it is to have your best customers suggest new features, guide your priority calls, tell you where the competition is beating your pants off.

We started Twittering in 2006 shortly after the service was launched, using it primarily for customer interaction / support. This was invaluable, especially when we had website problems and couldn’t use that medium to keep our customers posted. Users began to proactively alert us to issues via Twitter.

We also adopted Get Satisfaction for our customer support. This was a game-changer. Our community began to support itself. Our inquires dropped by 90% and customer satisfaction increased; how can you not love that?

And not to forget blogging. It’s a good starting place for any business.

This book is based on my experiences as a CEO using social media and social networking for improved return on investment. It is designed to help businesses, non-profits, and government organizations enhance the conversations with their most important internal and external customers. It contains hard-won knowledge about the do’s and don’ts in this space.

Be confident that if you start small and invest consistently, you’ll design better products and services, improve your marketing, increase your sales, and realize greater customer loyalty; in short, improve the competitiveness and the profitability of your business or organization.

As you read this book, you may proceed linearly from beginning to end. Or if you’re dying to know what a tweet is (for example), feel free to jump straight to the chapter on Twitter. The book may be even more valuable read in the order that is of most interest to you.

Let’s jump in!

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To learn more about Dave Nelsen and Dialog Group’s consulting services, visit www.get121.biz