A guide to engaging in conversations about your brand. Jason Duty - Social Outreach Services at Dell, discusses best practices and tips for building, joining, and engaging in social communities for a brand.

1. Engaging in
Conversations
about Your Brand
Jason Duty
Dell Inc

2. It’s Not the Wild West; It’s the Blob
Learning Objectives for this session
• Getting Started
• Assessing Engagement Opportunities
• Best Practices
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3. Getting
Started
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4. First, Read the Thread: Understanding Context
and Rules of the Road
Image courtesy of elitistjerks.com
Tips & Best Practices for Getting Started
• “Listen” (read) & understand context and community including TOS/TOU
• Remember that real conversations are two-way (at a minimum)
• When building/joining communities, find the most valuable ones
• Think before you post, but always be yourself
• Remember: The internet never forgets
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5. Big Brother is Watching: Disclosure
• Transparency is important
• FCC requires disclosure
of an author’s affiliation
with a brand when
discussing the brand
• Include disclosure in your
Twitter profile.
• Disclose in each post for
other platforms
Image courtesy of michaellouiscalvillo.com
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6. Engaging
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7. Holy %$@#! Someone Just Mentioned Us
How to assess and evaluate engaging in a conversation
Misguide Unhappy
Positive Question Trolls
Agreeable, Poster seeks Rants, ridicule or d Negative
Factual errors in customer
truthful post additional info demands
the post experience
Reach Monitor Fix the Restore
Offer Avoid facts Call in your
out responding and customer
Engage w/ Answers look for
Respond with
factual support
positive posters comments resources
information
Response
Final Evaluation Consideration:
Base response on present -Influence
Responding info, site influence and -Timeliness
customer prominence -Transparency
-Tone
-Sourcing Media and Community
Social

8. They Don’t Hate You, They Just Need a Hug:
Capitalizing on Turn-around Opportunities
• When there’s been a mistake, problem, etc, surprise a
customer with something unexpectedly awesome
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9. Other Best
Practices
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10. It’s About the People
• Interact with customers in
existing discussions &
sometimes create your own
• When customers comment,
acknowledge them
• Reward an individual for
participation by publically
thanking them
• Resist the temptation to
flood your brand’s wall, feed,
etc. with transactional
messages
• Share posts/links you find
interesting
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11. The Robots Will Kill Us All
• If you haven’t been asked already, at
some point you will…
• “Is this a real person?”
• Tips to avoid
– Be personable
– Avoid using scripts / marketing language
– Mix biz and common interests posts
– Use multi-media
Image courtesy of theoldrobots.com
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12. Questions?
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