Long gone are the days when you could deal with letters, emails and phone call messages when the time was right for you. Now you have to respond instantly to market changes, developments, complaints and cries for help…

You would respond at a time to suit you, once you had researched the problem and perhaps found the solution. Now with instant messaging systems that are public – like Twitter, you have no choice, complaints can be made and charges levied and the longer you are seen to reply the more you are seen to be in the wrong.

You have an opportunity now to say something like @complainent, got your point, thanks for letting us know we will try and resolve this for you. Call 0800 614421 for immediate help.

You might just get a response @complainent thanks for your help, I called and all is resolved, thanks: @company

That would demonstrate your brand values immediately and in the minute. It would also gain you more followers and more followers is what you should want if you know what is good for you. To ignore these opportunities is to deny yourself, in all my years in Internet Marketing, we have seen this time and time again. That is the only cost this time, time itself – someone needs to focus on this stuff – but luckily you can buy time – so no real problem?

Now Twitter needs no more than 140 characters, so that cannot be that much time. A response on you fan page can take minutes too. This has been made even faster now that FaceBook has made sweeping design and functionality changes.

This positively affects brands that want to connect to their customers. Under normal circumstances, I tend to say that the same business principles apply. But, in this case: most brands need to change! In the time that they do not change, they leave the door open to the more flexible, nimble, perhaps smaller business owners who can be more responsive – start monitoring your competitors – it can be interesting – you might be the first to know of issues and know even before them! Indeed you could even fix the problem before them and gain a new customer in the process…

Customers demand that you support them, they expect it and in return give you business, so we should view Social Media as the sales funnel. The days of completely self service websites are not over, but the days of customer support are returning – and those that recognize this are rewarded – big time. As a brand owner – all you have to do is listen – as a competitor all you need to do is listen – wherever you are whatever you do you can gain a lot from just listening and responding to these open channels.

A word of warning about listening and responding: strangely, in the UK at least, although I am not lawyer, you cannot hire an agency to represent you unless you tell your customer that is what you are doing – and that is probably ok. It seems to me that this smacks of being less than genuine with the big brother connotations.
In any case, customers nowadays want to hear from no one less than the CEO. As all others it seems cannot be trusted, as it is illegal for someone to be hired to represent the CEO – unless you tell them that you are the Spokesman for the CEO – which is not ideal…

However, this should not be a problem, the CEO should be the ultimate spokesman of the company, as distinct from a publicity seeker, the CEO should have a need to speak to clients, to staff, to make sure that the vision is being carried out and being understood, providing a path of least resistance and feedback – just the things required in effective Social Media campaigns…

This is the opportunity, this is where we are, it is more about being human and starting the dialogue. The Internet is increasing becoming more human, it already has several billion neurons, it is able to communicate good and bad and it really talks to people – it is where the people are. You will know it is too late if you need to communicate a message urgently and you haven’t established the appropriate channels.

Without followers, fans, subscribers, or people consuming your feeds — what you do have is a mailing list, perhaps a list of telephone numbers and less still, an email list. It is likely that none of these will be comprehensive.

Technology is empowering it offers humour and intelligence. It is possible to tune it into a highly effective resource of influence. You can make software widgets – tools that work with FaceBook or Twitter that can bring more orders into your business – even if you are just selling pizzas.

The winner is the one who is more accessible. Accessibility is even enshrined in law! You need to get creative and remove the barriers.

You can get involved today, all you need to do to start is open accounts at the various websites like twitter.com, or facebook.com. It is quite easy to do, but you need to be the one doing it for most dramatic effect in the bottom line of your business. Failure to get involved leaves the door open for your competitors to take your clients – without any friction!