7 Tips to Higher Level Customer Satisfaction

Achieving high customer satisfaction is crucial for business enterprises to achieve their repeat purchase and increase customer retention. While there are no rigid rules or strategies to keep customers satisfied, following certain best practices definitely help to achieve higher customer satisfaction in any kind of industry. Few of such tips can be discussed as follows.

Well trained customer service staff

Customer facing staff such as the front line customer service representatives must be effectively trained in soft skills, customer handling skills, including strong product/process knowledge to serve the visiting customers, either in case of online or offline business. Frontline staff forms the first impression on the customers and their behavior plays a dominant role in maintaining a high-level customer satisfaction.

Collect timely feedback and act upon it

Collecting feedback from the customers after a sale by making a courtesy call will make the customers feel valued. Seeking their feedback over telephone verbally or electronically through emails or live chat will help to understand their grievances and areas of dissatisfaction. Such areas can be acted upon and strategies must be formulated to provide permanent solutions to such customer problems.

Communicate clearly and listen actively

Customer queries, issues and complaints must be actively listened to and response must be given promptly. It is a poor practice to ask customers to repeat their concern again and again. This may irritate the customer and lead to customer dissatisfaction. Understanding their problems the very first time and giving them proper resolution through clear and open communication keeps customers satisfied. It is also essential to communicate the product & service offerings clearly to the customers before they make a purchase. This will help to avoid setting up wrong customer expectations and control customer dissatisfaction afterwards.

Maintain an effective CRM

In the current cut-throat competitive business environment, it is essential to maintain an effective customer relationship management system with well-trained staff personnel. The CRM team will be able to maintain an extensive customer database including their names, addresses, contact numbers, frequency of store visits, and nature of products purchased and/or services availed. This data will help in creating customer profiles and tailor the services according to their needs & expectations.

This will also help to identify the loyal customers making repeat visits to the store, either online or offline and create loyalty schemes to make them happy. Contemporary customers expect the company to remember them and reward them for offering their long-term loyalty. Hence, CRM will help to offer the customers with rewards, loyalty points, discounts etc and provide them a higher level of satisfied. The CRM team must also conduct customer satisfaction surveys to understand their queries, needs & expectations.

Adopt state of the art technology

Delivering excellent customer support helps to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction. In the technology-driven global business environment it is necessary to deliver customer services through state of the art/ most updated technology such as social media, mobile apps etc. Integrating customer relationship management system with social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, will help to interact with the customers, exchange feedback, share ideas and involve customers in business activities such as contests.

Nowadays, the use of smartphones has changed the shape of marketing and building customer networks. Remaining connected with the customers through mobile applications will help them to conduct transactions with the company at the comfort of their home and as per their convenience. This will provide customers with convenience of shopping, making payments, tracking merchandise, return merchandise, availing discounts, gaining loyalty points etc at their finger points. This will it will be easier to achieve high level of customer satisfaction.

Provide excellent after sale services

It is advisable to deliver excellent after sale services once the sales transaction is over. Making regular follow ups on customer complaints, product replacements, servicing on defective products, return merchandising etc are few examples where customers would expect efficiency, honesty and transparency. Although, after sale services do not fetch money but it is considerably important to keep customers satisfied and achieve their long term custom.

Aim to achieve customer delight

Instead of striving to achieve high customer satisfaction, a company must set goals to achieve customer delight by going an extra mile. Treating the customers as the most important stakeholders, offering customer-centric solution, delivering value through an appropriate combination of a marketing mix (fair combination of product, price, place, promotions) combined with excellent after sale services is essential to keep the customers delighted.

Conclusion

Satisfied customers not only provide their lifelong loyalty but also recommend others to choose the company. This helps in retaining existing customers along with acquiring new customers leading to increase in sales and profitability. Hence, it is of utmost importance for companies to implement effective strategies to keep customers satisfied and increase their business reputation.

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Young Social Innovators Announce New Partnership with Ulster Bank

New partnership

Young Social Innovators and Ulster Bank have announced a new partnership at an event in Dublin. Over 150 people gathered to hear from speakers including An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD who spoke about the important role that social innovation has to play in developing an economically stronger I. The event was emceed by Diana Bunici, TV presenter and author.

Support

Through the new relationship, Ulster Bank will provide financial support to YSI and its participants, ensuring that social innovation in Ireland continues to be fostered from a young age. A record breaking 444 innovation projects have been entered into this year’s Young Social Innovators of the Year Awards by over 6,500 students nationwide, an increase of 8% from 2015. Across its programmes, YSI is currently accessed by approximately one in ten students throughout Ireland whilst it works to grow its interest and activities in Northern Ireland, Canada and Zambia.

An example of social entrepreneur

Ulster Bank is also committed to providing participants with access to support for their projects, many of which have the potential to be developed into a social enterprise and sustainable business. One such example, Greener Globe, was conceived by a team of students from Tullamore College in Co. Offaly including Jack Dooley who was speaking at today’s event. They patented their energy free Aquacica showerhead which uses a traffic light system to encourage users to reduce the length of time they spend in the shower, from an average of eleven minutes to seven minutes, therefore leading to reductions in water use and energy costs.

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How to Create an Acquisition Strategy as a Small Business

Many start up companies hope to eventually get acquired but don’t have a clear acquisition strategy or plan on how to get there. In order to create an effective acquisition strategy as a small business, there are several aspect of their business that must be carefully planned out. While transparency is important, the particulars concerning the companies finance and legal aspects play a vital role in the success of the acquisition. In addition, there are organizational concerns, communication tasks and stakeholder assessments required. Let’s take a look at developing a good acquisition strategy…

1. Be Clear With Yourself On Goals And Motivations Before Developing a Acquisition Strategy

The first things you want to consider when positioning your company for an acquisition is your reasoning for selling your business and how you want that goal to be executed. Ensure that you understand the impact of the acquisition, and prepare the company for a smooth transition into that direction. Any company looking to acquire your start-up is going to be interested in understanding the vision you have and the potential you see in your respective industry..

If your vision is not visible to others, chances are you will have a difficult time attracting a complimentary investor or buyer. On the other hand, a clear vision could make the difference between thousands and millions of dollars. Elastica’s recent acquisition by Blue Coat is a perfect example of this.

2. Get Your Business Affairs In Order

The complex and lengthy process of the acquisition will require a full and thorough transparency of the inner workings of your business. Financial statements and other discovery documents will be vital as you make appeals to potential buyers and establish your company’s’ value. Do your due diligence by organizing all pertinent documents, ensure all taxes and licenses are current, and satisfy any outstanding issues that may be viewed as an encumbrance or threat to your company.

3. Get The Experts Involved

As an entrepreneur, your expertise is in providing your service or selling your product. Just like you seek the best personal doctor or the best hairstylist, establish a team of the best investment bankers, tax attorneys and advisers who are experts in their fields. An acquiring company will be impressed by the quality of reports that will be delivered, especially since it will be prepared by an outside expert, as it gives authority to the testaments given.

A business that is being micro-managed and macro-managed by the same person does not give the impression of a serious, established and profitable business worthy of being purchased, but rather more of an entrepreneurial endeavor that needs additional time to flourish before it is sustainable. Besides, if you allow the experts to handle those crucial tasks, that leaves more time for you to confidently focus on the other aspects of the acquisition.

4. Open The Lines Of Communication With Your Management Team

Create an open environment where your talented employees remain involved and informed. Prepare the team for the transition and encourage them to take a personal stake in the transition. By remaining cultivated with the best and brightest on your team, you ensure that you will retain their loyalty and dedication, which make the strength of the business as a unit more appealing.

5. Make Sure Your Key Stakeholders Are Aligned To Avoid Last Minute Crises

Make sure every member of the board and all key stakeholders are on board for the sale. Try to predict any conflicts that might arise at the least opportune time. Large corporations are easily scared away from strife within a company that visibly poses a threat to the companies’ potential success. They’ve seen businesses like Hewlett-Packard lose millions as a result of bad acquisitions, so naturally corporations want to proceed with caution. Any last minute disagreements can stall the acquisition, or even permanently dismantle the agreement all together.

6. Re-Establish Significant Partnerships and Clients

One of the most important reassurances that you can offer is that the current customer base is established, strong and loyal. Part of the process of nurturing that loyalty is to customers them selectively informed. You want to avoid scaring them off towards your competition after the acquisition. Your investors also may want to engage with the customer base to evaluate their level of support and loyalty. This critical assessment serves as a vital reference for investors and buyers when predicting future growth potential of a business in the aftermath of the acquisition.

7. Understand Your Company Narrative

When conveying your journey and passion to a buyer, your narrative will be more effective with it is compelling and credible. Every aspect of your company will be in the spotlight, and it is important that your narrative is inspiring, confident and convincing. The interested parties are not the only ones who need to feel your passion. The stake holders, board member, employees and customers all alike must be in sync based on your conveyance, Without that harmony, you will find it difficult to convince them to sign on the bottom line.

Once you have all of your business affairs in order for your business acquisition will become probable, but almost certain. You will attract the right type of company who will be able to envision your dream and implement strategies that will elevate the value and positioning of your business.

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CoderDojo Community Platform Hackathon

The CoderDojo Foundation recently relaunched Zen as a new open source community platform! With the awesome support of Code For Ireland, Dogpatch Labs and Ulster Bank we are hosting a 2 day Hackathon at Dogpatch Labs to show you how to contribute to this opensource community platform!

About Zen

This new system allows CoderDojo community members (Mentors and Champions) to fully manage their Dojo activities like issuing tickets to individual Dojo events, posting in forums, editing and setting up profiles etc. The system is completely open source.

Below are some of the really cool community features:

– A forum for community members
– A forum especially for youths over 13 years of age
– An improved Dojo listing where you can book tickets to a Dojo event
– Profiles for individual community members where you can showcase your skills and the Dojo you belong to

We’re using some cutting edge open source technology for the system:

– NodeJS
– AngularJS
– PostGreSQL
– Mozilla Open Badges
– Jenkins

About the hackathon

If you’re interested in developing for this open source project please come along to our Hackathon in Dogpatch Labs, the top tech start up hub in dublin! On the day there will be 2 streams, a coding stream and a translation stream.

Coding Stream

We will cover how to get set up for development and open your first pull request! Don’t worry about having / not having lots of experience, we will have experienced developers present to help you, and we have a list of issues that are “suitable for beginners”!

This is an ideal opportunity to:

– Showcase your development skills on an open source repository. Employers love to see open source activity on Github so it is an easy way to prove your skills.

– Learn from experienced developers in the tech industry. The system was developed by a leading NodeJS development house, NearForm

– Learn how the peer coding reviews and deployment processes work in a real world scenario.

Translating Stream

We are also looking for people to help us translate the community platform. If you are fluent in any forgien language we would love your help on the day. We are using Crowd In to translate the community platform. More details about helping translate on the day can be found here.

This is an ideal opportunity to:

– Showcase your language skills

– Contribute to a open source community project that impacts youth all around the world!

What you will need:

Your Own Laptop and charger

You don’t need to be an expert but you will need to be very familiar with javascript.

Resources

View repository here https://github.com/CoderDojo/community-platform where you can see issues and the Readme if you’d like to get started pre-workshop.

Where can I contact the organiser with any questions?

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us directly via: info@coderdojo.com

If you are interested in contributing to the platform outside this event, we are always looking for developers to help out, get in touch via the mailing address above.

A special thank you to the event sponsors Dogpatch Labs for providing the amazing venue for this event and to Ulster bank for providing the food.

Hope to see you there!

WHEN: Wednesday, 6 January 2016 from 18:00 to 21:00 (GMT) – Add to Calendar
WHERE: Dogpatch Labs – Unit 1 CHQ Building. North Wall Quay. Dublin, Dublin D1 IE – View Map

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Climate Launchpad launched

Climate Launchpad, which is part of Climate-KIC Europe’s largest clean/sustech accelerator, is launching again.

Climate Launchpad

Sustainable Nation is running Climate Launchpad, the ideas competition of Climate-KIC again this year. Last year one of the finalists Orbas (internet of food, http://www.orbasconsulting.com/) got to the last 20 out of 80 finalist and 700 submissions. Not bad, but we like to win this year.

Tallinn, Estionia

Same set up this year, 3 finalist from Ireland will compete with finalist of 28 counties. The finals are in Tallinn, Estonia in October. Anyone with an idea in the climate/green/clean is welcome. The size of the problem/opportunity is 37 trillion.

Programme

The programme will consist of a number of orientation/preparation sessions across Ireland, between February and April followed by a two day workshop with an international trainer from Climate Launchpad in May.

The 2 day workshop delivers a new, very sharp methodology to get to a realistic proposition and a pitch (it bleeds). It is loosely based on “Disciplined Entrepreneurship, 24 steps to successful startup” by Bill Aulet. Happy to share the methodology with anyone interested.

Mentoring

The workshop is followed by 6 mentoring and coaching workshops and a pitching final. The 3 winner get to pitch at the international final in October in Tallinn.

Help

If you could spread the word, or make any introductions, I would be much obliged. More details you can find here http://sustainablenation.ie/.

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Climate Launchpad launched

Climate Launchpad, which is part of Climate-KIC Europe’s largest clean/sustech accelerator, is launching again.

Climate Launchpad

Tallinn, Estionia

Programme

Mentoring

The workshop is followed by 6 mentoring and coaching workshops and a pitching final. The 3 winner get to pitch at the international final in October in Tallinn.

Help

If you could spread the word, or make any introductions, I would be much obliged. More details you can find here http://sustainablenation.ie/.

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10 Green Business Ideas for Eco-Minded Entrepreneurs

Are you considering to start your own business but are concerned about the impact it will have on the environment? Green businesses are ecofriendly, and they go beyond the regulations to show their commitment to sustainable development. You do not need any particularly brilliant new idea. What is more, most of the green businesses are alternatives of the standard businesses, but with a nature-conscious management and production processes. Check out the following green business ideas.

1. Green Business Ideas – Organic farming

While businesses are going green, so are their customers. Everyone nowadays is switching to healthier lifestyle choices, and this particularly concerns the food they consume. The effect of this is that organically grown vegetables and fruits are highly sought, and this trend is sure to continue in the future. The market for these products is very developed, so you will have no trouble finding buyers. What do you need to start this business? A piece of land and love for outdoor work.

2. Organic menu restaurant

If you do not want your hands to get dirty, but still wish to take your piece of the pie in the ongoing healthy-eating trend, why not be on the other side of the transaction? Open a restaurant that would serve only organic meals, made from organic ingredients that you would be buying from organic farmers.

3. Green construction

Become a green contractor. Green construction simply means construction with eco-friendly materials and incorporation of energy saving systems, such as solar heating.

4. Recycling pickup

Recycling is also very popular these days. But no matter how determined people are to recycle, there is always the problem of what to do with bulk trash, like computers and house appliances, once you no longer need them. If you want to start a recycling pickup service, take a page out of the book of Sydney’s rubbish removal services, for e-waste. It is a very lucrative business, yet in deficit.

5. Green developer

Develop applications that will help people help the earth. These can be simple guides to local green stores, or complex energy consumption calculators.

6. Green consulting

If you are familiar with green technologies and standards, you can easily become a consultant to other businesses on ecological issues. Help other people start a green business, or turn their current business into a more environmentally friendly one. This consulting can involve anything from efficient energy consumption to sustainable production. Get certified to gain more credibility among customers.

7. Upcycle

Furniture upcycling has quite a hipster vibe. Take any piece of old, unused furniture and repurpose it in an unusual and preferably unexpected way. All you need is some tools and a few original ideas. Once you clear your attic and basement of all the unused furniture, you will find that flea markets are a great place to find new ‘raw materials’.

8. Green blogs

If you like writing, and like to work from home, start a blog. But not just any kind of blog. Start a green blog that will promote green activities.

9. Bicycle business

Bicycles are the most eco-friendly means of transport there is. They emit no gas into the atmosphere and so do not pollute the air. Buying and reselling bicycles has become a huge part of the green revolution. Consider participating in it. You can also open a small local bicycle café where you will sell drinks, while you are repairing your customers’ bicycles. Take tourists to bicycle sightseeing tours of your town, or your neighbourhood.

10. Eco-cleaning

Start a cleaning services company which will use your own natural house cleaning products. Make more money by selling these products to households and other cleaning service companies.

What green business do you see yourself managing?

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How To Retain Customers Using Real-Time Adaptive Marketing

Imagine for a moment what it would be like if your favorite brand (e.g. a clothing company, a local restaurant, an e-commerce store) started treating you like royalty:

they remember your name, your preferences, and
send you personalized offers and recommendations based on your previous purchases, visits to their store/site, surveys and feedback

Too good to be true? Not anymore, thanks to real-time adaptive marketing technology that brings a whole new level of personalization to the game of business.

The Roots Of Personalization through Adaptive Marketing

Personalization is not new, it’s been used by local shops, restaurants, tailors and barbers for decades. In the old days, business owners knew each and every one of their customers personally. This degree of intimacy allowed businesses to understand the real needs and wants of their customers and provide deeper levels of attention and, as a result, retain those customers for life.

It’s through this type of commitment to their customers that local restaurants, tailors and even bookstores would always have stock of their customers’ favorite merchandise and keep them coming back again and again.

Mass-consumption, however, turned customers into anonymous Excel figures and the old-school customer care was gone. What seemed like the lost art of salesmanship is now making its way back into the digital market under a different hat: personalization.

Imagine your favorite e-commerce store displaying a popup message the next time you land on their site:

“Hey, welcome back! You were looking at these sneakers last night. Why not buy them right now?”

Hey Jeff, your X-Men t-shirt is still waiting for you in the shopping cart! Complete the order today and get a 20% off.”

“Hey Lynda! Your gym membership will expire in 5 days. Check-in on Foursquare and get 20% off next month’s bill.”

Or, what about letting your favorite restaurant know you’ll be arriving in 30 minutes and by the time you get there the head waiter has already prepared a nice table for you? All of this being done using a simple app that syncs your intention to buy a service with the in-house logistics.

Wouldn’t it be great if brands started implementing this level or customization in their communications and bring the targeting to this amount of granulation? Wouldn’t you be impressed by such a service? Of course you would!

And the future is here. In the SF movie “Minority Report” there’s a scene where Tom Cruise walks into a shopping center and immediately after his retina scan, the billboards start to talk directly to him: “Hey, John Anderton! You could sure use a Guinness right about now.”

Anticipating customer intent and interacting with customers with super targeted ads has already been implemented by giants like Amazon who believes they can anticipate what you’re going to purchase and will ship items to a regional distribution center before you even placed the order.

Personalization… Today

Here is a typical example of personalized user experience: you browse through the newest items added on your favorite home décor e-store and suddenly the store displays a personalized message for you saying “Welcome back! Buy this lamp in the next 10 minutes and you get 10% off.” The coupon code would fit perfectly into the context and has great chances of conversion.

How would you feel? I know I know I’d be excited that my favorite store acknowledged my presence on their site and enticed me to buy using some sort of urgency trigger. That would be a really intense shopping experience.

Another example is Flipboard, an app that allows people to customize the way they discover and consume content. Amazon displays “similar” products to people, based on their purchase or browsing history and even on the items listed in their “Wishlist”.

The beauty of personalization is that it gives people the chance to create their own experiences and choose the type and format of the content they want to consume. No more cookie-cutter template emails and ad copy. Just imagine what personalization could do for your own business, knowing that every piece of content fits perfectly on your prospect, just like a custom-tailored suit can.

Interconnectedness In The Digital World

Today, 80% of internet users own a smartphone, which means they are almost always connected and are interacting with their favorite brands via multiple channels. These users have become no only tech savvy, but they also demand more attention, they expect to be acknowledged and treated well.

Why? Because they know they have options and that your competition is eagerly waiting to get their money. These always-connected users are even willing to share a lot of information if that’s what it takes to receive personalized offers and services.

An Infosys study of 5,000 consumers worldwide (including 1,000 in the UK) revealed that 78% of British respondents would buy from brands that made them more targeted, relevant offers.

This is where adaptive marketing and personalization help you align your marketing with real-time events (e.g. #CecilTheLion). Adopting real-time marketing techniques can help you take the pulse of what’s going on in the world and leverage big social movements by putting your own spin on the situation.

How To Create Your Omni-Channel Infrastructure

Consumers are coming back and forth among multiple devices, from smartphones to desktops and from laptops to tablets to TVs. They can interact with a business in a physical store, on a website or mobile app, through a catalog, or through social media.

Here are the 3 core steps to create an omni-channel user experience:

1) Have a seamless and consistent messaging across your print, digital, social and mobile marketing channels.

A print ad might supply a QR code to drive viewers to your website or Facebook page. Or, an e-commerce retailer should strive to preserve items in a cart across devices – if you add an item to your mobile shopping cart, it should still be in your shopping cart when you log in on your desktop computer.

A great example of a brand that has created an effective, seamless physical and digital user experience is Victoria’s Secret. Victoria’s Secret Angel Card program allows members to share & earn points by shopping in-store and online. Cardholders receive personalized e-mails with special offers and promotions, free gifts and birthday presents and access to exclusive shopping events. Members also receive extra rewards for syncing their social profiles and sharing the company’s news, effectively unifying omni-channel experiences.

2) Understand your audience’s path to engagement or purchase.

The ability to track your customers as they flow and make purchases through all the channels and capture all this data from online and offline sources allows you to find various touch points (physical store, desktop site, email list, social media, TV, mobile site, mobile app, catalog, customer service representative, etc.) on your customers’ journey. Tying multiple channels together helps you to understand which data points are most useful to you and segment your audience / budget accordingly.

Today’s marketing automation systems all have omni-channel marketing automation. Platforms like HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, Act-on, or Silverpop help you manage your data, automate your marketing strategy and keep track of your data across multiple channels.

3) Capture attention once you’ve reached your audience.

That’s where relevance comes into play. Create customized content to intensify the power of your messaging on every channel. For example, you can send recommendations for complimentary products (a shirt to a pair of jeans).

Adding social features like sharing, ratings and reviews, and comments to your website allows customers to easily interact with your brand and seamlessly share their actions and opinions with their peers. Generating an actively engaged user community and nurturing user-generated content boosts SEO and increases referral traffic, time spent on site, and, ultimately, lifetime customer value.

Here is how Macy’s uses the omni-channel marketing system.

Shifting From Acquisition To Engagement

Check out this innovative ad campaign from a Swiss advertising agency. This is a really cool example of what’s possible with the new adaptive marketing techniques. The ad promotes a remote ski resort in the Alps and it was displayed in live video format in Zürich’s main railway station.

This way, urban commuters could connect in real time with the person making the invitation and receive a free train ticket (printed on the spot) if they decided to hop on the train that would leave in 15 minutes. Great urgency factor! The man from the ad even agrees to talk to people’s bosses to get them a free day to go on the trip.

The Swiss ad is just a glimpse of what marketing of the future looks like, in both creative angle and technology. This will definitely stir some waves among creatives and make ads more fun, spontaneous and minimize friction.

The key benefit of real-time marketing is that brands can use content marketing to create stories and experiences around products or services – pretty much like what museum have always been doing. Create installations where each piece of art would take the viewer to the next one and guiding them on a path of discovery.

This approach to marketing will mark the shift from the information age to the conceptual, experience age, where ads will become integrated experiences that build upon previous user interactions with the brand and get them involved into meaningful conversations and transactions.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, personalization comes with huge benefits for both customers and brands. This is the beginning of more targeted ad campaigns, improved customer service, more sales and higher rates of retention.

Customers are already starting to look for the royal treatment and are very diligent with their money. The better you can acknowledge your customers, show them appreciation, nurturing and letting them know that their voice is important to you, the easier it will be to stand apart from your competition.

Brands that will build omnichannel experiences for their users and optimize customer interactions across all devices will rise to the top. Adapting to change is the key factor for staying in business and this time change means creating unique customer experiences and personalized journeys throughout the entire sales funnel.

What are your thoughts on the future of real-time adaptive marketing? How do you see your business adopting it? What kind of content works best for moving your customers down the sales funnel?

We’d love to hear from you and see how you’re adapting to real-time personalization to enhance your customers’ experiences.

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Worst Social Media Mistakes

With the world we live in today becoming so reliant on online outlets, businesses need to make the most of their presence on social media. However, always remember to be careful not to misrepresent your image while using those social platforms. Read on for some tips to avoid making the worst social media mistakes.

Many social media pages are built to engage with people and build a decent depiction of your company, product or name. While many have wildly successful media operations set up, others have failed for various reasons.

We’ve seen it time and time again.

Avoid that misconception by reading just how a blunder can influence your media pages, and the most common mistakes that you can avoid.

Top Social Media Mistakes you Shouldn’t Make

Too many words. Stick to your point. Followers aren’t reading your feed to spend five minutes scrolling down a post with too many commas.

Using words you don’t understand. DiGiorno’s mistakenly used a trending hashtag to their marketing advantage on Twitter in 2014 to promote their pizza. #WhyIStayed was trending in opposition to domestic violence, and DiGiorno’s got quite the reprimand from its misuse.

Not keeping a focus. Just as your word count should be limited, be sure to keep the concentration on your topic.

Over-posting. Once you find your rhythm of posting, stick to it, if it is working well with your audience. Over-doing the frequency of updates could negatively impact your strategy.

Being a ‘Debby Downer’. Positivity spread from your social media manager is essential to the continued support of your company, and just good customer service.

A shortage of media. Balance the ratio between images, video content and plain text. You need to keep people engaged while reading your feed, but not overwhelmed with too much text.

Bringing in politics. If it doesn’t support the nature of your company, or bring guaranteed positive responses from your followers, then it isn’t worth the risk.

Not engaging in conversations. You’re on social media for a purpose. How can that purpose be achieved without maximizing opportunities to use your expertise? Communicate with the people in your network.

Pay attention to the responses from the users you are trying to engage with and use them to restructure your strategy, if needed. They will be your best source in the changing market.

Deleting comments that are inconvenient. If the comments are inappropriate or hinder your strategy or image as a company, by all means you withhold the right to remove them.

If the comments are not rightfully lewd, and the operator of the media page just doesn’t want to deal with the ‘hassle’ of handling the situation, then you have a problem.

Your presence on social media is contingent on responses you give to your followers, or any commentor. Don’t let an honest answer hurt your name; let your honesty speak for your reliability and morality.

Posting controversial topics. Why bother? Everyone is a heckler on social media. It’s unavoidable, but it is somewhat controllable.

Any hot topic is likely to get publicity over media, but if it is irrelevant to your intention and purpose of being on social media then avoid it. We all know what happened with Adam Goodes; why contribute where it may not be needed?

Lack of context. It doesn’t matter what you say if the context of what you’re saying isn’t connected in an appropriate way. Context is key. Isn’t it?

Lack of content. Amnesty International Australia used Tinder to launch a campaign to raise awareness for women in forced marriages. As a sensitive topic, presenting their ideas without an effective strategy in place would be useless.

In the case of Amnesty International, thousands of people clicked the link provided; their mission was successful due to the compelling content successfully integrated in their advertisement.

Not staying informed. With technology changing just as fast as world events happening, this is essential to executing a successful social media strategy.

Just as Nike had to revoke a t-shirt design after its significance shifted. The t-shirt started as a competitive baseball rivalry between New York and Boston, and quickly changed to an image that misrepresented the horrific scene in Boston in April 2013.

Nike had to react quickly. Once the directive dialogue over social media began, they immediately removed all t-shirts from their shelves.

No filters. We’re not talking about Instagram filters here but with regard to a chain of command.

Bloomingdale’s recent ad sparked major controversy and is now being referred to as a “date rape ad”.

How could such an inappropriate ad, which completely misconveys an acceptable public opinion on rape culture, pass through several stages of approval?

Dozens of people had to have seen this advertisement before it was released; Bloomingdale’s is no small business. Once it was published, the backlash began.

You can avoid this by refining your editing process: checks and balances.

Generating automated responses. This can backfire, and backfire quickly. In addition to installing checkpoints for potential media content, ensure that if you are using an automated response system always be aware of what is posted.

Forgetting to filter the extra noise. Stick to your strategy and your purpose of using social media services and get rid of the distractions. This will help with your time management in addition to increasing efficiency.

Rid your news feed and/or Twitter feed of pointless conversations. Fill those spaces with constructive outlets that will be beneficial to you, and will make your sites easier to manage.

Final Thoughts

Some mistakes are excusable, while others take a lot of time and money to fix. Take caution in what you post and remember to use the resources easily available to you. Including getting a second opinion on content, and making sure you stay caught up with current events.

Overall, social media services should hold the capability of making you more successful if used properly. Take advantage of the opportunities it provides and don’t waste time making mindless errors that are avoidable.

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Madness at the Ulster Bank #hackmakethebank hackathon

Was just part of a meeting preparing for the upcoming Ulster Bank hackathon in the Dogpatchlab in CHQ on 29-31 January.

On the programme, apart from hacking is Techball, lessons in Irish dancing, food, drink and massages.

For good measure, participants can win Spheros. Yep, the robot that is the basis of BB-8 in Star Wars

I am concerned! If you want to be part of this madness, you need to be fast, tickets are quickly running out. Book your place here

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Category Archives: Start Ups