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The Top 12 Sites in the Marketing with Social Media Course

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speaking-workshops Below is a list of the top 12 sites by unique visitors, visits and page views (they are different) upon completion of the Marketing with Social Media MBA course taught by Bill Belew (that’s me writing about myself in the 3rd person).

The course focused on content/inbound/social media marketing and was taught at the graduate level in an accredited university in Silicon Valley. Here are the details:

  • The students had different blogging rhythms – 1-3 times daily and wrote various lengths of posts – 200+ to 600+ words.
  • All actively created internal and external links and fished, legitimately, for back links.
  • The students guest posted twice each week at BillBelew.com and at a classmate’s site of their choice.
  • The students also wrote evergreen/anchor/pillar posts weekly.
  • Finally, some students actively worked their social networks if they had a presence.

For good or bad, take a look at the top 12 sites. I encourage you to let the students know what you think of their ongoing product.

Visits Uniques Page Views
Soccer Roundup 1,764 1,260 4,732
UI Design 1,134 437 3,053
Arts and Crafts* 2,789 2,393 14,691
Saumya’s Kitchen 1,887 1,163 4,329
Techno Evolution Leads Revolution 1,594 1,308 3,083
Rph at Work 1,542 1,081 5,722
Info-Nepal 1,901 1,422 4,984
Migrated Mouse 1,455 1,147 2,477
Colors n Spirits 3,076 2,115 20,907
Social Media Buff 2,453 1,726 4,855
Jinie’s Kitchen 5,332 3,419 14,284
World of Dance 2,047 1,843 3,413
 *the first month of data is missing
Course aggregate 43,599 28,376 122,680

Out of the 60 active students that finished the course, these top 12 (20%) students received:

66.5% of unique visits

61.9% of visitors

70.5% of page views. 

Where is Pareto when you need him? Indeed, 20% of the class clearly did generate the majority of the output.

Some of the questions I have at this point which I will address in future posts …

1. Does blogging pace make a difference? Multiple times/day of short posts vs one ‘meatier’ post daily? How about a combination to this approach?

2. Could the students generate organic traffic without relying on keyword research?

3. Does content have to be grammar perfect? For many of my students, English is their second and even 3rd or 4th language!

4. What about cheating and duplicate content? Does it work? Some of my students went that route and in a future post I will tell you how that worked, or didn’t work for them.

5. What is an average bounce rate? Time on site? Page view to unique visit ratio?

6. Do my instructions work in other languages? 2 of my students wrote in Chinese and one in Japanese.

7. What was the hardest part for these newbie bloggers?

8. How did they keep themselves motivated or not?

And and and …

9. What questions would you like to ask? What answers might I be able to dig out for you from this experiment?

I have a ton of data that I will share here in the coming months and at my home site – BillBelew.com and at NMX 2014. Will you be there? I will.

BTW, how’s your blog working for you?

5 Beginner Steps to Creating a Blog that You Can Monetize

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Last week, I wrote Follow 50+ MBA-level Case Studies in Content and Inbound Marketing about a 48-hour class that is happening at a university in Silicon Valley.

In the first week, my students wrote a combined 750-ish posts of varying length and purpose – daily posts, guest posts, link bait posts. At Top 10 Content Marketing Sites in the Social Media MBA course I listed up the best performers. You’re welcome to take a look to see just how many unique visitors, total visitors and page views that much effort can produce in sites that are starting from zero.

In this post I want to articulate the 5 first steps my students and I had to take BEFORE they could think about making money with content marketing and the challenges I faced to get them there and how I, ahem, overcame those challenges just to get the students online and writing.

Step One: Get a Domain Name and Hosting

More than 2 weeks out my trusty TA (teacher’s assistant) and I started sending emails to the whole class via the school’s learning management system. No response. What do you do when you can’t get a response and the only way to contact the students is email? You spam them until they figure out they had better do something.

About half of the 60+ students showed up with a domain name and hosting.

Another one fourth showed up thinking, “What’s the difference between having a domain and hosting? Aren’t they the same?

And still others said, “You emailed us? When? You want us to do what?”

There was no easy answer. My trusty assistant, Kevin, came to class and they drove him ragged getting everyone a domain and hosting. It wasn’t pretty. But over the course of the first 2 days and 16 hours of in-class time and a ton of emails, we got everyone in the class online with a domain, hosting and WordPress installed.

If any reader here has a better solution to this problem…by all means let me know.

Step Two: Get the Right Plugins and Set Up the Back End

With a group of students who don’t even know what WordPress is, much less a plugin, there was no easy answer to this either. Throwing something up on the giant screen and having everyone follow along just wouldn’t work. Besides I had to spend a LOT of time on Steps 3-5 and couldn’t afford the time.

I nearly killed my local and overseas staff. They were spending about 1-2 hours per site setting the permalink structure I like, getting the right plugins in place – SEO, sitemap, etc. Creating webmaster accounts for each and installing Google Analytics so we can track the results. 60+ websites at various stages of coming online x 2 hours each = a LOT of time.

Again, I knew of no simple way to do this other than throw food under the door to keep my staff happy, or at least well fed, while they brought all the sites to an equal footing. Suggestions?

Step Three: Decide What to Write About

Unlike the first two steps,  at this point I finally had everyone on the same page, in the same room, doing the same thing. I could get all 60+ students to look up and follow along.

I had all students create a tagline. My specific instructions were for them to tell me what they were going to write about in 10 words (not a magic number, but definitely less than 12) or less what they planned to write about. They were NOT to use adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions or articles. They were to come up with 3 different iterations and show them to five other classmates for feedback and pick the best one. Focus for a site from the get go is critical

Other instructions:

  • Write about something you are interested in
  • Write about something you can create an interest in
  • Write about something you have a lot to say about.

In my world, if a blogger doesn’t have a 1,000 things to say about their topic they will have a hard time making money with their site.

Step Four: Use SEO to Ensure Posts are Found

What is SEO anyway? Search Engine Optimization. But what is that?

I define Search Engine Optimization as content that appeals to real people (first) and to search engines (second). But it must appeal to both.

If a blogger only considers readers they might get read but only by the people the blogger tells to go their directly. They will not be found as well by search engines. If the blogger considers only the search engines they are likely to come up with stuff that is just unreadable. There is an ideal balance for the content. Ideal balance = optimization.

I have learned that there are some 220+ parameters that can go into an ideal post/page. I have also learned that pages can be overly optimized. But what I find of particular value is that I have also learned that there are about 20 ‘things’ you can do to a blog post that will get you 90-95% of the results you want. I will write about them in a future post.

If you can’t wait, you can buy the book – Marketing with Social Media. It’s the text book, first draft, that I wrote for this course.

Step Five: – Make a Plan and Work the Plan

For every hour of classroom work, I can require 2 hours of work outside of the class.  I am requiring my students to write 600-750 words DAILY. How hard can that be? They are permitted to adapt to their own style.

Some like to write multiple short posts.

Some like to write one long post each day.

Some like to do a combination.

It doesn’t matter to me.

Additionally, the students are required to guest post weekly at my home site about their progress (you can read their posts at Bill Belew Guest Writer AND guest post at one classmate’s web site that is relevant. Lots of link love happening that will only get better and of more value as the sites mature = get more content. Lastly, they are required to write one relatively higher quality post – link bait style.

Ongoing:

All 5 of these steps were done in the first 2 days of class, each a full 9-hour day, counting lunch. The students are off and writing at this point. Some get it, some don’t. Every educator knows that just because you tell somebody something, it doesn’t mean they learned it.

In the meantime, in about 10 weeks, this class will wrap up with some 15-20,000 posts being written over a large variety of niches and at various paces and different lengths and with different intensity and interlinking. How cool is that?

What do you think I can learn from this?
What would you like to learn?

What you can do:

Step 1 – Subscribe to the Bill Belew.com/blog to get more immediate updates from me at my home site. You will also be able to read the inbound and content marketing student experiences first hand

Step 2 -Subscribe to this NMX blog to get updates when they come out here.

Thanks for reading.

What Businesses NEED to Learn from Romney’s Project ORCA

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Project ORCA was supposed to be the saving grace for the Republican presidential campaign. In a race that came down to the wire in many states, this new way of organizing Romney’s league of enthusiastic volunteers to monitor voting across the country could have been responsible for swinging the votes his way. Obviously, that did not happen, and in a post entitled “The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA” one would-be volunteer, John Ekdahl, outlined exactly  how this project failed. Another disgruntled would-be volunteer shared similar experiences with Brietbart News here.

Now that how has been answered, the remaining question is why. And, importantly, what can we learn from this mess?

Simplicity, Defined

Project ORCA was designed to be extremely simple. Using smartphones, volunteers were supposed to be able to easily report who had voted and who had yet to show up at the polls. That way, registered Republicans could be contacted and encouraged to come out to vote.

While the system was fairly uncomplicated for volunteers, the introduction to it was not clear. This is where Project ORCA fell short, and this is where many businesses fall short as well. Simplicity marries design and implementation. One without the other, and you risk failure.

With Project ORCA, volunteers’ questions were not adequately answered during conference calls. They didn’t receive their packets until the night before, and the term “app” confused people (Project ORCA used a mobile website, not an app available on the Android/iPhone store, but they called it a “mobile web app”). Volunteers were not instructed properly about the information they needed to take to their polling location, so many were turned away. Questions to the help line went unanswered.

When you introduce a new technology to your customers, is the implementation as simple as the design? Is your audience prepared for the changes? Are you ready to provide customer support? Have you taken the process out of the users’ hands as much as possible?

Timing is Everything

More important that simplicity perhaps, is timing. The Republican party waited until the last minute to implement this new system, causing mass chaos on election day. Ekdahl reports attempting to reach out for help so he could still fulfill his promise as a volunteer, but it seems as though the system was overwhelmed with people having problems, so he never received a response. Undoubtedly, many others found themselves in a similar situation.

Despite conference calls about Project ORCA in the weeks leading up to election day, too much was left to the last minute, with no real Plan B in place if problems ensued. The timing was just wrong. Had the kinks been worked out in October or better yet, even earlier, through beta testing and mock election day run-throughs, this initiative might have instead been a success. It may have even changed the course of the election.

I’m sure the Republican party did some testing before the big day. I’m not suggesting they just threw this together and crossed their fingers that it would work. But they didn’t also allow their volunteers to be part of the testing. If you’re introducing a new technology to your audience, whether it’s a brand new ecommerce site, a new interface for a digital product, or something else entirely (like a new way of counting votes at polling locations), you have to give people a chance to test out the system before they need to use it.

Half-Truths and Problems Ahead

What I find most troubling about the reports I’ve been reading from Project ORCA volunteers is that they all seem to have been reassured that problems were localized. Even before election day, it sounds like frankenspeak talons were tightly grasping this entire project. Writes Ekdahl,

“From the very start there were warning signs. After signing up, you were invited to take part in nightly conference calls. The calls were more of the slick marketing speech type than helpful training sessions. There was a lot of “rah-rahs” and lofty talk about how this would change the ballgame.”

Never underestimate your audience like this. People don’t want to hear half-truths and false flattery. They want answers to their questions and help with their problems. Nothing will sink a business faster than their customer base feeling like they’re being fed lies.

No matter where your political loyalties lie, I think we can all agree that Republicans have some rough roads ahead. It’s arguable whether the success of Project ORCA could have changed the tide, but it’s inarguable that it’s failure is making many uneasy about party management. This is perhaps the most important lesson businesses need to learn from the Republican party and the downfall of Project ORCA: the seas won’t always be smooth sailing, but when problems arise, how you manage your audience, especially through online channels, will set the course for the future.

Where is your business headed?

Image credit: Gage Skidmore

How Home Depot Became a Pinterest Powerhouse [Case Study]

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One might not at first think that power tools and lumber have a place on the Internet’s current social media darling, Pinterest, but this visual platform is being dominated by none other than Home Depot. Currently, Home Depot has over 12,000 profile followers on Pinterest, and their individual boards all have over 8,500 followers. If Pinterest’s high revenue-per-click rates and the assertion that Pinterest users are heavily motivated to buy are to be believed, Home Depot has build quite the lucrative following on this social networking – and it’s a following that is growing daily.

Understanding What Users Want

While DIY home renovators might go to Home Depot for pipes and wood, the company understands that this kind of item isn’t likely to resonate with Pinterest users.  Based on their Q2 2012 reports, about 2% of their total sales come from their online channels, which doesn’t sound like much until you remember that total sales for the company were $20.57 billion that quarter. People aren’t likely to buy certain items online because they want to see them in person, but Home Depot sells lots of items that people are willing to purchase sight unseen, and these are the items the company highlights on Pinterest.

For example, here’s an item Home Depot pinned on its Outdoor Living board:

Pinterest users are a lot more likely to buy this item online than to purchase potting soil or plants online, despite these being popular outdoor items at physical Home Depot stores.

Home Depot also understands that people are looking for different things at different times of the year. For example, during the fall, the boards at the top of the Home Depot profile include Tailgating Ideas & DIY Football Party Ideas and Halloween Crafts & Ideas.

The company also has boards for other holidays and seasons, like Valentine’s Day Inspiration and Summer Celebrations, but these are found closer to the bottom of the Home Depot profile. These can easily be moved to a more highlight position when the time is right.

Give and Take

The best take-away from Home Depot’s Pinterest activities is perhaps the way this company combines promotion of their own products with promotion of other items. Like with all social networks, when you use the platform as a broadcasting tool alone, users typically don’t respond well. To have a more complete Pinterest presence, you need to not only promote what you’re selling, but also promote other cool and interesting products and projects you find.

A good example is the Home Depot Wreaths for Any Occasion board, which features some Home Depot products like an ornament wreath and bat wreath alongside wreath products and projects from others sites, like The Charm of Home, Make and Takes, and Once Wed.

Home Depot has Character

What I personally like most about Home Depot’s Pinterest presence is the personality. Home Depot could take the path many brands take on social media by being extremely “corporate,” but instead, the company’s pins have a little flavor. The descriptions make it sound like a real person, not a stuffy corporation, is behind each pin.

In the above pin on the company’s DIY Wedding Inspiration & Gift Ideas board, for example, you can see Home Depot asking “How cool would it be to have a wedding cermony [sic] inside of a greenhouse?” and several people answered. This type of engagement with a brand is worth more than passive repins, especially for a product not originally from the Home Depot site.

Where Home Depot Could Improve

Although Home Depot does Pinterest better than most brands, I still see room for improvement. Here are a few ways Home Depot could have an even strong Pinterest presence:

  • More Boards: Currently, Home Depot only has 32 boards, which means there’s a lot of room for improvement. With a topic like home improvement, there’s no limit to the individual boards that could be created.
  • More Interaction with Followers: Home Depot’s conversational style with pin descriptions is just a start. The company could take things a step farther and interact with their followers through comments.
  • Following More People: Home Depot currently only followers about 280 people, which is a very small percentage compared to followers. By following more boards relating to home improvement, the company would have more ideas to repin.

It will be interesting to watch how Home Depot continues to grow on Pinterest, as well as see other brands follow suit and start to build a presence on Pinterest.

How One Small Gelato Company is Rocking Social Media [Case Study]

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I first learned about Talenti Gelato a few years ago from a blogger friend who just happened to mention it on her blog. At this point, a few grocery stores were carrying three or four flavors, and when I noticed it at my local Giant, I decided to try a pint.

I became an instant fan, so I decided to follow the company on Twitter and Facebook. Their social media presence has made me even more of a fan of their product, and it’s a staple in my shopping cart, despite the fact that it’s more expensive that most other frozen treats.

Let’s take a look at how Talenti is absolutely rocking social media, and their efforts are resulting in more sales for their company.

Social Media Monitoring

I don’t know what system Talenti is using to monitor their social media efforts, but they rock at it. They aren’t just replying to messages they receive directly (a must for any company). They’re also going above and beyond and seeking out people who are talking about them, even if they are linking to the Talenti Facebook page or @ replying to them on Twitter. Check out this screenshot I recently took of their Twitter account:

Not only are most of their messages @ replies and RTs instead of just broadcasts, but they’re talking to everyone and anyone mentioning their brand. To test my theory, I randomly tweeted about Talenti Gelato without using their hashtag or @ replying to them directly. Within a few hours, they had retweeted my message:

As a fan, it makes me feel special that the company noticed me. Most companies don’t.

A Video Presence

I don’t know why more companies aren’t using video to talk about their products. This is the video Talenti is featuring on their homepage:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/vqYdhTZycd4[/youtube]

Now, I’m not knocking the amount of time that certainly went into this video, but it’s nothing amazingly special that other companies couldn’t do as well. Having your founder get on camera for a quick video like this makes me feel much more connected to the company.

They didn’t stop there, though. If you visit the video page on Talenti’s site, you’ll find lots of other videos that highlight specific products, and on their YouTube channel, they’ve even started to post videos about what to do with old Talenti containers, which definitely fits into their eco-friendly company image.

My favorite video of theirs has to be this creative promo where people use Talenti containers to make music. It’s like a real commercial you would see on TV – but on YouTube!

Fun Interaction with Fans (but always with a goal in mind)

Talenti isn’t some stuffy, stuck-up company, despite selling an artisanal food product. They’re fun and they talk to fans like people, which helps to break down that divide between business and consumer. After all, we’re all more likely to buy from people we think of as friends. Here’s a great examples of one of their Facebook status updates:

More importantly than just pointing out their fun communication style, however, is recognizing that Talenti has a goal with their messages. They rarely go off on tangents or talk about topics unrelated to their product. You do want people to feel connected to the culture of your company, but you should also have a goal behind your communications. Talenti definitely does, even if fans may not be conscious of that push to buy more gelato.

EdgeRank Domination

On Facebook, EdgeRank is king, and Talenti is killing it. Their posts are all about interaction to help get readers as involved as possible. For example:

Check out not only the number of people who commented with captions, but also the huge number of likes and shares they got, simply because the image they used was irresistible. Talenti uses images pretty often, actually, which is important for EdgeRank. They also ask questions, run contests, remind users to hit the like button, and more.

Without interaction from readers, it doesn’t matter what you say or how often you update Facebook; no one will see it. EdgeRank is important, and if your company isn’t writing status updates with it in mind, it’s hard to be successful on Facebook.

All About the Product

What Talenti does best, in my opinion, is produce a quality product. If you go to their Facebook page or search for reviews of their product on blogs and other social media sites, it’s hard to find bad comments. People (myself included) just love what they do.

Your social media efforts are only as good as whatever you’re selling. So before you throw money into your online effects or devote any time to social media, fine-tune the product or service you’re offering. That way, your time online won’t be wasted replying to complaints and dealing with bad press.

Want to learn how to use social media better for your business? Join us at BusinessNext Social in Las Vegas this January – it’s going to be an amazing conference!

Top New Media Case Studies of 2011

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I’m a sucker for a good case study. I think the best way to learn how social media is working is to take a look at some real-life examples. You can’t always replicate success or avoid failure by copying what another company or person has done, but it can help you revamp your own strategy.

As part of the 12 New Media Days of Christmas, I’m supposed give you four awesome case studies from 2011 that I think are worth checking out. Problem is, I can’t pick just four!

So today, I’ve compiled a list of fifteen fantastic new media case studies of 2011, put together by talented bloggers from around the world. Whether you’re a business owner or a blogger, these are some great examples of companies doing things right – and wrong – along with analysis of they hardest question to answer in new media: why.

If these case studies just aren’t enough for you, check out link #15: 50 Social Media Case Studies Worth Bookmarking from Simply Zesty!

These aren’t, of course, the only great new media case studies out there. Share your favorites (or ones you’ve posted on your own blog in 2011) by leaving a comment below.

This post is part of the 12 New Media Days of Christmas! You can see other posts in the series here:

12 Bloggers Monetizing
11 Emailers List Building
10 Google+ Users a-Sharing
9 Vloggers Recording
8 Links a-Baiting
7 Community Managers a-Managing
6 Publishers a-Publishing
5 Traffic Tips
4 New Media Case Studies (this post)
3 Must-Read New Media Interviews
2 Top New Media News Stories of 2011
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Canned Responses: A New Media Case Study for Brands

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I’ve heard it said that no response is the worst response a business can have when it comes to brand negativity. I’m not 100% sure that’s true. It depends on your industry of course, but personally, I’m finding it more and more offensive to read a canned response. Certainly, you want to let people know that you’re listening, but if your responses are plastic, you might be better off not responding at all.

To illustrate what I mean, I’d like to present a bit of a case study based on some experiences I’ve been having lately. Right now, I’m actively apartment hunting, moving from my rural area of Pennsylvania to the Washington, D.C. metro, and since it’s a four-hour drive, I’ve been doing a lot of online browsing. That way, when I’m in town, I have a much shorter list of places to see in person.

As you may know, if you’ve ever apartment hunted, when it comes to managed complexes or towers, the pictures aren’t always a good indication of what you’ll get in real life. In fact, many places have a few “show” units set up permanently with higher-quality appliances, flooring, etc. than is found in the rest of their units. They use these show units for photographs on their websites and to show prospective renters on their tours. So, to get a clearer picture, I’ve also been perusing review websites, such as ApartmentRatings.com, where people who have actually lived in these complexes can rate their experiences and write reviews. Of course, you have to take what you see with a grain of salt since 1) people who have had an extremely negative experience are always more vocal and 2) nothing stops apartment complexes from going online and posting fake reviews to boost their scores. Those are issues to talk about another day, however.

The fact of the matter is that most of the bad reviews go unanswered. There’s space on ApartmentRatings.com to leave a response, but I’d guess that over 90% either have no response or responses from other tenants asking questions or saying, “Me too!” It’s uncommon for a property manager to respond.

I haven’t found myself getting mad at this. My gut reaction isn’t, “Wow. Not only did this tenant have a major problem, but they don’t care at all! What a horrible place this must be.”

No, my reactive is to shrug and assume that they have no idea what is being said about them…or at most, they see the poor reviews but don’t have staff members dedicated to responding. If there’s no response, I don’t really find it offensive.

But I’ve been seeing a lot of canned responses – responses that are clearly copied and pasted and are unhelpful at best. The management is acknowledging the problem, but they are making matters worse.

To illustrated, this is one of the responses I saw. It was posted to a 1/5 star rating entitled “We still call it Amityville” that talked about a mix-up with the move-in date, unresponsive maintenance staff, and other problems. Here’s a screenshot of the ensuing conversation (if you can call it that):

In my browsing, I saw that same response, word for word, on a number of other posts. “Anonymous” is absolutely right – no response would have been better. This kind of canned response actually offends me as someone looking at potential apartments. I can just imagine how offended it would be to the actual review writer.

First of all, the name is clinically corporate. No one is talking to you – the response comes from “CommunityManagementTeam.” Not “Jane, Community Manager” or “Joe, Customer Relations” or anything like that. A nameless, faceless corporation. Not exactly the kind of image any property management company should want.

Second, the review starts off in a very “me, me, me” type of way. Of course your company doesn’t want bad reviews. This isn’t about you. If you get a bad review, the very first thing you should say is “I’m sorry.” End of story. Even if the customer is wrong, they still had a negative experience, and you should feel sorry in the role your company played in that.

Third, let’s talk about the actual “apology.” Word for word, they say: “We’re sorry you feel that your experience was less than satisfactory.” Not, “We’re sorry you have a less than satisfactory experience.” No, this company has the balls to say, “We’re sorry you feel the way you do” as though the customer is wrong. It’s like if you call someone a mean name and then your apology is, “I’m sorry your feelings were hurt” – i.e., you aren’t sorry for saying it, you’re sorry that the person is so sensitive or found out you said it. This property management company shouldn’t feel sorry that the tenant is upset about these problems. They should be sorry that the problems happened at all.

Lastly, they closed the response with a generic phone number and email. The contact information is nice, but dealing with a corporate office isn’t going to help this tenant because he/she specifically said in her review that there were communication problems with the staff again and again. You can bet your last dollar that if the tenant actually contacted the company using that information, he/she wouldn’t have reached anyone who knew anything about this review or her experiences.

Overall, what I read from this response is, “We see your complaints and we don’t care enough to give you an actual response. We’re just trying to make it look like we care.” And the writer called them out on it…to no response. It’s been several weeks, and the property management company hasn’t come back to say, “You know what? You’re right. Sorry for the form response, let me help you.” They’ve gone silent, and that’s a problem.

The point I’d like to make here is that the notion that no response is the worst response isn’t always true if you’re dealing with brand negativity in a new media setting. If you honestly don’t have the manpower to truly manage your social media presence, it’s better not to have one at all, in my opinion. I would rather assume that your company isn’t there than read a quickly copied and pasted form letter that makes matters worse.

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