Adding to the pressure, Sony’s social media team had a relatively small budget for the project.

With a creative mix of social media and in-person events, Sony brought out thousands of people to locations to “Catch the Tablet” and tell their friends about it.

Most notably, the campaign created buzz that inspired 1,000 clicks from Facebook to the Tablet S pre-order page, making it the most successful social media effort yet for the company.

A Sony fan "catches" the company's new Tablet S.

How Do You Create a Viral Campaign?

At Sony Electronics, a team of seven is dedicated to supporting the company’s thousands of products with social media. Understandably, the team focuses on select high-profile products, and the Tablet S was one of the biggest yet.

The Sony Tablet S launched in mid-September.

“We wanted to increase awareness of our Tablet S, generate buzz in advance of the launch and drive in-store visits to Sony stores and dealer stores,” said Marcy Cohen, head of social media at Sony Electronics.

“It was an interesting challenge for us to generate awareness before product availability and the only way to do that is by letting people touch and play with it,” she added.

The goal: get as many people as possible to try the Tablet in person and encourage them to tell their social networks – in short, go viral.

Step 1: Get people to show up

Working with Atomic PR, Sony came up with the “Catch the Tablet” cross-country tour. Starting two weeks before the launch, fans could try the Tablet in one of 32 Sony stores or at specific locations in select cities nationwide: New York, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Fans would decide the sixth city on the tour by voting from among Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta and Boston.

With Facebook as the home base for the campaign, Buddy Media created a unique tab on the company’s fan page. There, fans could find clues about where Sony’s social media team would be in each city, vote on the sixth city and enter to win one of the many Tablets Sony was giving away during that two weeks.

On a campaign-specific tab on the Facebook fan page, fans learned where they could "Catch the Tablet" and voted on the sixth city.

On Facebook, people could also RSVP for events and find interactive maps to city locations.

Sony alerted fans of the team’s whereabouts with Facebook posts, keeping them relevant to fans in specific cities with geotargeting.

Spirited fans in San Francisco showed their support for the Tablet.

To control costs, the core social media team traveled to all locations on the city tour, rather than hiring street teams, giving the team firsthand interaction with fans and the Tablet.

“It was invaluable [taking my core team],” Cohen added. “I became a total expert on the Tablet. I would be able to answer any question anyone posted to me about the Tablet.”

The chance to try the Tablet S, and possibly win one, brought fans to Sony stores.

Step 2: Make it worth their time

Many of those who showed up at events or stores not only got a one-on-one experience with the Tablet but also took away free SWAG like t-shirts, buttons and cotton candy, and depending on the event, food and drinks. Though giveaways were small and inexpensive, Cohen says fans were excited to score free stuff and wear it.

But the real draw was the chance to win one of four Tablets being given away each day. Fans could enter to win two ways: by submitting their emails on the Facebook tab or by taking a photo of themselves “catching” the Tablet and then tweeting it with the hashtag #CatchTheTablet.

More than 600 people entered to win a Sony Tablet S by tweeting photos of the Tablet.

Step 3: Get them talking

By requesting a Twitter post to enter, Sony netted more than 1,700 tweets with the campaign hashtag, many of which included a photo. Out of 8,800 contest entries, 600 were from fans who “caught” the Tablet live.

The U.S. social media campaign generated global awareness of the Tablet.

Step 4: Partner with others

Sony stretched its budget and reach by partnering with other companies in tour cities, drawing up to 600 people at some events.

“If you partner with another company that either has their own social media following or has an event already going on, you get so much more bang for your buck,” Cohen said. “A lot of the logistics have already been worked out by the other company.”

Those partner events included a meetup at Adobe, an exclusive tour of Google’s headquarters for Sony fans and a visit to TechCrunch Disrupt, all in San Francisco. In New York, Sony joined forces with GetGlue, which was already hosting an event. In Miami, it was a breakfast meetup at BGT Partners, a web development company that works with Sony.

Sony fans toured Google's headquarters as part of a joint event.

1,000 Clicks to the Pre-Order Page

The city tour was just one piece of a major national campaign, which included TV and print ads and PR. But the viral impact of the pre-launch social media effort exceeded Sony’s expectations.

The company tracked 41,437 engagements on the CatchTheTablet Facebook tab, including poll votes, clicks, shares and image and video views. In the process, Sony’s Facebook fan base increased by 8% and its Twitter following by 4.5% just during the campaign.

Approximately 2,300 people weighed in on the tour’s sixth city location, with Seattle winning with 40% of the vote.

A Sony fan tries the Tablet in Seattle, which won a Catch the Tablet visit with 40% of the vote.

The 1,000 clicks from Facebook to the pre-order page were the best evidence that the team’s efforts drove real interest in buying the Tablet, giving Sony momentum as it headed into the actual launch.

“We were very pleased with pre-orders,” Cohen said.

The campaign’s success now has Sony teams around the world talking.

“It certainly generated a lot of recognition internally at Sony,” Cohen said. “Colleagues in other countries want to know what we did. Every time we’re meeting with a product group, they say, ‘We want a campaign like Catch the Tablet.’”

“We’re over the moon about it. It’s something we never engaged with before in terms of putting the whole team out on the street. We had limited budgets and big goals so we felt we needed to do something a little bit risky but within our budget.”

What do you think? How have you effectively used social media to drive people to in-person events? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

HootSuite just announced that they’ve passed their millionth user at the end of November, so it’s time to take a deep dive to see what HootSuite is doing and how it’s going to impact the social media space. Here’s a review of the latest and greatest with HootSuite’s new freemium service model.

Last fall, HootSuite announced that they were changing their business model to offer new “premium” services for business customers. All HootSuite users received a message asking them to choose a plan when they attempted to log in for the first time after the change.

Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, said, “We designed HootSuite to be a comprehensive dashboard for agencies, enterprises and consultants using social media to monitor brands, manage campaigns and analyze results. We’ve integrated with the leading social networks – including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – and now look forward to adding mash-ups through our API as well as adding more reports which business users seek.”

However, on the HootSuite blog, it clarified that the move wasn’t to cannibalize their customers by suddenly charging for services that used to be free: “We aim to continue providing free service to approximately 95% of our current users.” The big question is whether it’s worth it for business teams to pay for these expanded services. Well, here’s what has changed.

Social Profiles

The free version of HootSuite now allows management of up to five social networks, while the Pro and Enterprise versions offer unlimited networks.

RSS/Atom Feeds

This is the first time I’ve actually explored this option, but I realized how much time it could save me. It allows you to view RSS feeds right within HootSuite. I envision seeing a blog post, reading it and easily sharing the link on all of my networks.

Personally, I wish that it just allowed you to import your Google Reader Feed rather than individual RSS feeds but it’s a step in the right direction. I’ll probably only import a few of the most “important” feeds for now. If you’re on the free version, you get two feeds, and unlimited feeds are available for both the Pro and the Enterprise versions.

Team Members

This part got a little confusing for me when we upgraded our accounts. You get one free team member for the $5.99 per month charge. But if you have additional team members, they’re $15 each per month. I’ll comment on this a little bit later.

Social Insights

In the paid versions, HootSuite gives you a list of other social networks users participate in. I’m not 100% sure where these sites come from or how they’re gathered.

I took a look at Chris Brogan’s profile, as I figured he would have a robust set of sites and was surprised that it didn’t have his LinkedIn profile, his blog or his Delicious account. I’m not sure these are the networks that Chris would want to promote and I don’t see any way that I can control what shows up in my profile.

Influence Scores

This score tells you how much influence HootSuite thinks a user has. It’s a useful tool for trying to understand who your followers are and who you’re following, but is more of an indicator than a hardcore measurement that I would rely on. You can also use it to track your own profiles to show growth in your influence as your network grows.

Overall I think these features are useful for a business user but the only thing that’s worth paying for to me is the team members feature. And this was tough to swallow because our team was used to getting it for free and we can still have that feature for free if we migrate back to TweetDeck.

The one challenge that I had was that we have people in our organization who “monitor” accounts and those who “manage” accounts. It would be nice if there were a “read-only” option for multiple accounts at a lower price point. We had to go through and prioritize our users, which forced us to limit visibility to some individuals who really could benefit from having insight into the conversations. For now, we’re migrating those users back over to TweetDeck.

Analytics

The big thing I’m seeing promoted as the real value in upgrading your account is the analytics packages that are available. I used a fairly new Twitter account for the sake of this review.

I used this account because it’s new and doesn’t have a lot of traffic yet, so it allowed me to look at a limited amount of analytics to digest the feature fully without impacting my own measurement strategy, which does not use the ow.ly URL shortener.

Ow.ly Stat History: The free version will offer 30 days of URL history while the Pro and Enterprise versions offer unlimited history.

This is great for those who use the ow.ly shortener, but if you use another shortener as your favorite, you’ll not have any data available.

For us this is very limiting because we use a proprietary URL shortener for campaign tracking purposes. For the purpose of the test, we did use the ow.ly shortener to see the results.

The stats that are available are daily clicks on a nice chart broken down by clicks by region and clicks from top referrers. You also get a list of your most popular messages and tweets by influencer. And if you want to get really granular, you can get down to the stats by individual message. This really gives you some insight into the social graph of the account and what is and isn’t working. From a management perspective I really appreciate this level of insight at the click of a mouse.

Google Analytics: This could be one of the most powerful features of the HootSuite premium package, and if you ask me, is currently their primary differentiator in the market.

Within the dashboard you can now overlay items like the number of tweets sent over your website traffic to look for trends. Even more powerful, they’ve integrated Google Analytics campaign features so that you can tag a URL with a campaign and track results.

We built a proprietary shortener at my company because there were no tools to do this at the time, but now tweet-level lead generation tracking is available to anyone who has Google Analytics set up on their site.

This is a game-changer for tracking return on investment (ROI). It certainly has its limitations in that you must have some mechanism for conversion on your site that you can use to evaluate sales, whether it’s lead forms or actual online orders.

For service businesses, lead forms will likely be the only way you can measure sales interest using the campaign integration feature, but that’s far better than what we’ve had access to in the past.

Holmes mentioned that they’re working on integration with Omniture as well. This will open the doors for many mid- to large-sized businesses to use the tools, as Adobe-owned Omniture is one of the largest providers of integrated business analytics. Holmes didn’t give an indication of when the Omniture integration will be complete, but personally I’m anxiously waiting for that day because then I’ll be able to use HootSuite for end-to-end measurement. And having one end-to-end solution for management and measurement is huge.

From a cost standpoint, I think HootSuite Pro is reasonable with their $5.99 per month charge, and while I would prefer to have two levels of users to avoid the $15 per month per user charge for all of our users, with a corporate budget it isn’t unreasonable. This is certainly a nice entry point for businesses that are looking to have ROI-level measurement capability without dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars for costly systems integrations and custom development.

Enterprise Options

Behind the curtain, HootSuite has also introduced HootSuite Social 360, the Enterprise version. This is the big daddy and comes with everything including the kitchen sink. It gives you everything in the Pro package, includes 30 team members, a vanity ow.ly URL and 10 seats for their certification program.

They boast “enhanced” analytics, but because I only have access to the Pro version, I’m not sure what that means. At $1,499 per month it’s a hefty big brother to the Pro package, but I was surprised by the limited amount of information that was available. They offer a PDF with a few details and push you to schedule a demo. I suppose at that price point they want the ability to customize your experience and walk you through the system. I was hoping to find beautiful graphics of the expanded analytics that would make my mouth water!

Closing Thoughts

It will be interesting to see how HootSuite will start to impact users of other monitoring tools like Radian 6 and Meltwater Buzz. Monitoring tools have been held up as the Holy Grail for measuring brands since social media started to flood the market. They are very often confused with ROI measurement tools.

But their big weak spot has always been their inability to get to that level of measurement. Quite frankly, HootSuite allows you to do the monitoring and the measuring but there are tradeoffs. You won’t have easy metrics like share of voice across your industry and be able to compare yourself to your competitors with fancy graphs like you can in Radian 6.

But the question will become do you have the budget for both and how much value do mention metrics provide for your organization? With HootSuite boasting over a million members, it means based on their own math that of 5% of users who will be impacted by the changes, there are 50,000 users who are likely potential premium users.

Disclosure: HootSuite provided a 30-day free trial of their Pro model with multiple users so this review could be written. A free 30-day trial is available for all users.

Check these two great articles to learn about 8 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring and 8 Easy Twitter Monitoring Ideas.

What are your thoughts? Have you upgraded your HootSuite account? If so, tell us what you think of the premium features. Are they worth the money? Are you also using monitoring tools like Radian 6 or Attensity? If so, how are the changes impacting your usage of your other monitoring tools? Let’s talk about it! Leave a comment so we can start the discussion.

In this article, I’ll introduce you to social media guidelines for all your employees and your social media management team, and for crisis management and specific platforms. I’ll also take a look at important considerations for big and small businesses.

Advantages of Social Media Guidelines

Here are four major benefits:

• Provides a way to implement your social media strategy and improve your social media performance.
• Gives everyone the information they need to work well together.
• Makes it easier to build your social communities online.
• Makes it possible to respond to emergencies before they get out of hand.

With the right strategy, social media guidelines can have a direct impact on your success.

Models to Follow

Create the social media guidelines your business needs.

You can easily find examples of social media policies and guidelines used by big companies. Here are a few lists of social media policy resources:

• Dave Fleet has a list of 57 social media policy examples and many interesting articles on social media policies to read, as well as a free ebook to download.
• Chris Boudreaux has a database with 150 social media policies.
• Laurel Papworth lists 40 different social media staff guidelines.

As you look through these resources you’ll notice how companies have different approaches.

Here’s a look at the different types of social media guidelines:

Social Media Guidelines for Employees

Some companies feel the need to provide their employees with general guidelines on how to use social media for both their personal profiles as well as professional profiles.

These guidelines can simply be reminders of what’s considered confidential information or information that could have legal ramifications if shared on social networks in any format.

You can also read the discussion on Forrester’s decision to have their analysts blog on the company blog and not on personal blogs.

Guidelines for Your Social Media Team

The people interacting and engaging on social media can benefit greatly with guidelines adapted to your business needs.

On one hand, the people interacting on behalf of your company must:

• Be knowledgeable of various legal terms and what they mean in your business environment, such as defamation, endorsements, intellectual property, and any form of wrongful disclosure
• Be aware of global implications of your online communication
• Avoid inappropriate comments about competitors or others online

On the other hand, they must also:

• Remain positive
• Be helpful and add value
• Be transparent

And in addition to this, they are entrusted with cultivating relationships and building community on your social media profiles.

It’s not always easy to balance all of these criteria, especially for people new to social media. And this is where good guidelines can be critical.

If you need this type of social media guide, Todd Defren’s corporate social media policy template is a good place to start.

Guidelines for Crisis Management

You might want to monitor the negative comments about your business because a crisis can grow very fast. So you’ll want to know how to respond to any social media attacks and have your action guidelines ready to respond to a negative situation before it gets out of hand.

Prepare for any possible crisis you encounter on social media.

For example one of the first places to start is to be sure your team has both social media and business expertise. You’ll also need to delegate enough resources to maintain an on-going presence on your social media sites. This will help you to implement the steps you need in crisis management.

Once you understand how to use social media for crisis management, you’ll want to build your online presence and your:

• Social relationships in your business community
• Social media team
• Online monitoring

You’ll also want to establish clear guidelines to for a quick response. These usually include:

• Ultra-transparency
• Dialogue, as well as the right message
• A team able to provide a rapid response
• And knowing when to call in public relations professionals experienced in social media crisis management

Check out what Chris Kenton has to say on social media crisis management.

Editorial Guidelines for Specific Social Media Platforms

You can also create editorial guidelines on how to implement your social media strategy on specific platforms such as Facebook. These editorial guidelines can be very useful when you have several people contributing in one place.

Creating specific editorial guidelines can help you build stronger communities on each platform. For example, moderation might need to be handled differently. On your business blog you might opt for pre-moderation of all comments, but this is not something you’ll be able to do on all social media platforms, where you’ll have to adjust your guidelines.

An active Facebook page can have a lot of social interaction. And you may need to monitor your Facebook page more than on other social media platforms and need a small team to rotate at different times of the day. You’ll also want to incorporate more fun activities regularly on your Facebook page to encourage engagement.

Social Media Guidelines for Big Companies

While big companies almost always have existing communication policies and these guidelines also apply to social media communication, they also need to make sure they address the specific dos and don’ts.

Big companies might require both internal social media policies and external social media policies.

The question of managing social media celebrities may also be integrated into their social media guidelines.

Social Media Guidelines Adapted to Small Companies

Smaller companies may not need all of these social media policies and guidelines. For example, with fewer staff and less time available, smaller companies may decide it’s quicker to “block” people who leave inappropriate comments.

They might only need one well-crafted set of guidelines, some good judgment and an understanding of social media and their company’s online strategies.

And even if smaller companies think they don’t need social media guidelines like the bigger companies, they can benefit tremendously from one, because it will:

• Help them to stay focused on their social media strategy
• Allow them to benchmark their progress and better evaluate what to do next
• Allow them to manage the time they invest in social media better

Find the Right Social Media Guidelines for Your Business

Here are three things you can do to help you create social media guidelines for your business:

#1: Check out the social media policies and guidelines of companies similar to yours in the lists mentioned above.

#2: Listen to our expert interviews, in which many of these social media pros share the simple guidelines that work well for them.

#3: Read through the social media case studies here on Social Media Examiner to see how other companies use social media successfully.

You’ll learn more as you engage on social media and implement your first social media guidelines. So remember to seek feedback and be ready to tweak your guidelines from time to time to fit in with how your business communicates on your social networks. The social platforms change and people also change in how they communicate on them.

Want to learn about the editorial guidelines used on Social Media Examiner’s Facebook page, which helped to build a thriving community of over 15,000 fans in only a few short months?

Sign up for the Facebook Success Summit 2010 where Amy Porterfield and I share Social Media Examiner’s Editorial Guidelines for Facebook.

Now it’s your turn.

What social media policies or guidelines does your company have in place? How have they helped your business? Let us know your comments in the box below.

Photo credits : Moi Cody & Kriss Szkurlatowski

Although many marketers see the value and potential of social media marketing, most have yet to translate that into sales, found a new report by R2integrated.

According to the study, 65% of respondents said that their companies have not increased revenue or profited using social media. When asked about their biggest impediment, 36% of the respondents cited “not enough data or analytics to develop ROI” as their #1 challenge.

A few key finding determined what set the winners apart from the losers.

What Did Successful Businesses Do Differently?

R2integrated CEO Matt Goddard says, “The data we’ve compiled suggests that marketers clearly recognize the need for, and see the potential of, social media, but are still trying to develop models that increase real engagement which then leads to profitability—if that’s a goal for implementing a social strategy.

Despite the presence and popularity of social media, many companies remain relatively unfamiliar with its practices, pundits, and principles.”

This chart shows the overall breakout of the implementation challenges the respondents listed

The overall study took a close look at the differences between the marketers who had a solid social media strategy in place versus those without one.

One major finding was that those who responded that their company had profited or increased revenues using social media were almost twice as likely to have a formal social media strategy.

In addition, they were approximately twice as likely to have a dedicated headcount for managing social media.  The chart below shows how those with a strategy are equipped with a team to handle the campaigns.

These stats bring to mind the “chicken or the egg” question. It would be extremely beneficial to know if these organizations put together a strategy and then filled their team to support it or if they put together a team to create the strategy. This data would be very useful to those companies who are still debating how to tackle their social media needs.

This chart shows two groups--those with a social media those without a strategy and if they do or do not have a social media manager.

The data above would seem to be common sense—if you put together a plan and you strategically carry out that plan (educate yourself and do the hard work), you’re likely to see solid results. If this is obvious, however, then why aren’t more marketers creating social media strategies with managers accountable for seeing them through?

The good news is that we just might be seeing a shift. Even though 50% of marketers reported not having a social media strategy, 57% actually do have someone dedicated to managing their social media.  Therefore, we could very well start seeing more businesses outlining their campaigns and putting a strategy together for their social media endeavors.

Another interesting fact from the study was that the perception of social media differed depending on whether the marketer had a social media strategy in place.  Check out the chart below to see how the two different categories perceived social media overall.

This chart illustrates the perception of social media based on the two groups--those with a social media strategy and those without one.

Overall, 37% of respondents thought social media was “useful and helpful, but could live without it.”  A healthy chunk of marketers can live without social media? Who are these marketers? Is this the same bunch that thought the Internet in early to mid-1990s was just a fad?

When it comes to using social media, 53% of the respondents stated they were “still learning” or “behind the curve” compared to the 44% who stated they were “efficient” or “expert” in social media.

And that leads to the much-debated question, Is there such thing as a “social media expert”? Here’s the breakdown of responses:

• 40% of respondents said, “Yes, a couple.”
• 32% said, “Yes, there are lots.”
• 27% answered either “No, not really” or “Hard to tell.”

Now it’s your turn.  Do these stats surprise you at all?  Do you see parallels in your own social media experiences?  And as for the “social media expert” debate, where do you stand? Do they really exist this early in social media’s adoption? Tell us your thoughts below!

At a time when businesses are using social media to promote content and start discussions, Avaya has found that listening trumps talking.

“We’re listening to social media and responding,” said Paul Dunay, Avaya’s social media ringleader, who is global managing director of services and social media marketing.

“There is no Tweet that goes unturned. No forum post that goes unturned where our name is mentioned.”

What began as a way to engage and support customers has evolved beyond even Avaya’s expectations. And if Avaya ever doubted its investment in social media, those concerns are now put to rest.

A recent quarter-million–dollar sale, which began on Twitter, soundly answered that question.

Making the Case

Avaya started in 2000 as a spinoff of Lucent Technologies, but its legacy goes back more than a century to the original Bell system. From the earliest phone systems to advanced, unified communications, Avaya and its predecessors have been – and continue to be – at the forefront of the field.

It makes sense then that Avaya would be wherever people are communicating today. The company’s social media activity started informally and grew organically. First, it was mostly a matter of supporting – and keeping – existing customers, many of whom need replacements as old phone systems are retired.

At the time, Dunay followed Avaya mentions on Twitter, which were mostly questions that he forwarded to support reps.

“The old 1.0 way was a call center or inputting tickets on the web,” he said. “2.0 is we’ll try to reach out to Avaya support which is, by the way, me on Twitter.”

With the growth of social media, those mentions soon became too much for Dunay to simply watch on his own. He brought his case to Avaya’s CMO, and left with official backing to build a cross-functional, global, and virtual social media team.

“It was very easy for me to build my business case on retention of existing customers because it’s so expensive to get new ones,” he said

Customer Conversations ‘Everywhere’

Through word of mouth, Dunay found early social media adopters within Avaya’s 15,000 employees, starting with seven people across communications, marketing, support, legal and other business units. As the team began organizing Avaya’s social media strategy, they chose to focus on four main tools: Facebook, blogging, forums and Twitter.

From there, Avaya’s social media was “literally an explosion,” according to Dunay. That team of seven employees has now grown to 50 – all of whom volunteer to participate in social media on top of their regular jobs.

Today, the company has 42 Facebook groups, five Facebook fan pages, one external blog with 10 regular Avaya writers, 10 global Twitter accounts, and 12 LinkedIn groups. Internally, Avaya leverages social media just as much, with 14 internal blogs, 15 wikis, about 3,000 employees on Yammer and some on the recently launched Socialcast.

Facebook serves as the hub, with events, news, discussions and links to blog posts. The blogs discuss trends, innovations and cultural insights. Twitter allows them to post quick bits of information, respond to support requests, and monitor mentions of the brand and competition. Forums enable customers to get help from each other or from Avaya tech support.

With significant momentum, Dunay reported back to the CMO. “She asked, ‘Where are we talking to customers?’ I said, ‘Everywhere!’ She asked, ‘Where are we holding conversations with partners?’ I said, ‘Everywhere!’ We’re holding all the conversations in the same places with each one of those constituencies – and then some.”

Contests, videos and other resources engage Avaya’s Facebook fans.

The Eyes and Ears of Avaya

With active listening as the team’s main approach, members found they simply couldn’t be everywhere at all times – especially as mentions of the Avaya name grew to between 1,000 and 2,500 weekly. They turned to Radian6 technology to listen to and measure all social media mentions of not just the company’s name, but competitors’ names, product names, and types of conversations.

“We identified conversations we wanted to go deeply into,” Dunay said. “Wherever conversations about small business and communications happen, we need to be there.”

Avaya tracks a dashboard of mentions, and can choose to either ignore or respond to each. When one member “hears” something requiring further action, he or she posts it on an internal wiki and it’s assigned to someone on the relevant team to address it. That might be support, billing and finance, engineering, a partner, and so forth.

Dunay stresses that none of Avaya’s responses are automated. Who knows what a customer or prospect might say? If your response isn’t tailored to their comments, then you’ve missed the opportunity to connect on a personal level.

The 58-Character Sale

On average, Avaya interacts with a couple of dozen customers through social media on a weekly basis. By listening, the team also comes across sales opportunities. In June of this year, 58 characters of a simple Tweet started the relationship with a potential customer.

“shoretel or avaya? Time for a new phone system very soon,” the Tweet read.

“In less than maybe 15 minutes, we had seen it and figured out what the heck to say to this guy,” Dunay said. “I wrote back, ‘We have some highly trained techs who can help you understand your needs best and help you make an objective decision. Give me a call.’”

Dunay referred the gentleman to a business partner, and 13 days later, they closed a $250,000 sale. At the same time, the new customer’s follow-up Tweet went out: “…we have selected AVAYA as our new phone system. Excited by the technology and benefits…”

“We were there. We were listening. It pays to listen,” Dunay said. “I can’t say we hit 100% of the conversations where we’ve wanted to be, although it’s probably 60–70%. But on our brand name, it is 117%. We’re on every one of those.”

Avaya proactively identifies and responds to support issues using Twitter.

One Tweet Away

By proactively looking for mentions and conversations, Avaya sees issues before they even arise, before anyone contacts the company. A response to a social media mention truly makes an impression on customers, prospects and partners. “We are the early response center for things happening in the marketplace,” Dunay said. “They love knowing you’re one Tweet away.”

Avaya’s social media team grew quickly, but Dunay has an even bigger vision for social media.

“I don’t think it should be 50. I think it should be 15,000. Everyone should have a hand in it,” Dunay said. “We definitely want more people deeper and broader in the organization.”

“Our goals are to have deeper, more interesting and more pervasive conversations with as many people as we possibly can,” he added. “Why wouldn’t you take every opportunity for your brand to build better and deeper relations with every customer you can?”