When Consumers Revolt Against Traditional Marketing, What Should You Do?
When little-known, first-term Illinois senator Barack Obama faced Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign, he knew he couldn’t compete with her financially. He couldn’t afford telemarketing and direct mail campaigns or TV and radio advertising.
So instead of playing by the old rules, he made new rules. He started blogging and he created profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
He also hired the co-founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes, to be his Internet strategist. And he won the Democratic presidential nomination even though he spent a lot less money than his opponent.
At the time of the election, Obama had five million fans on Facebook—over four million more than Clinton. On MySpace, the numbers were approximately 800,000 and 200,000, respectively. On Twitter, he had over 100,000 followers and his opponent had about 5,000.
And he did all of that by following the principles of inbound marketing. 
Why Social Media is Inseparable From Customer Service
In this video I interview Frank Eliason regarding the connection between customer service and social media. Frank is now Senior Vice President of Social Media at Citigroup and is also known for his previous role at Comcast.
Frank is a pioneer in using social media for customer service and in this video he talks about what has changed over the last few years. He also shares tips for companies to improve customer support.
You’ll find more takeaways below. Be sure to leave your comments after you watch the video.
10 Cures for Your Social Media Pains
For marketers, social media is becoming increasingly complicated. The number of channels continues to grow and the pressure to show how all this effort will impact the bottom line only grows stronger.
The pains of managing social media are obvious – now let’s look at 10 different cures to make those pains disappear.
#1: I can’t keep track of what’s going on!
Between answering questions on LinkedIn Answers and updating your Ning profile, you missed the fact that one of your customers just wrote a scathing comment on your Facebook page.
Are You Unknowingly Bribing Your Social Media Fans?
Could “ethical” bribery be setting your business up for failure?
If your company’s social media interactions revolve around advance announcements of sales, special offers and insider-only promo codes – to the point where receiving these things is the primary motivation for your fans and followers – then you’re essentially bribing customers to stay.
In this case, social media merely provides a pleasant, whitewashed cover for the bribery.
Thus, the very activities you’re hoping will improve your relationship with customers might well be actually hurting your reputation with them, making those customers less likely to pay your full price without balking.
This article will reveal four ways to build customer loyalty without bribery.
4 Steps to Driving Faster Sales With Social Media Content
One of the key benefits of social media (that’s rarely discussed) is its ability to resolve doubt and confusion among fence-sitters.
Yes, your prospective customers are likely confused and possibly uncertain.
During my 15 years of website strategy and usability work (before I went all “social media” on you), I tried very hard to live by the two-click rule—answering the most common questions customers have about your business on your site within two clicks.
