When an irate traveler tweeted about how he had arrived late to The Four Seasons in Palo Alto and been “bumped” to an inferior room, the hotel saw it immediately and responded, promising to make it up to him. Turns out, the customer spends about 60 nights a year in Palo Alto for work, and promised in his next tweet to spend many of those nights at The Four Seasons.

The brand has had several similar stories posted online by delighted customers, and they are exactly the kind of successes that justify the investment in social media for customer service (which, in turn, drives sales).

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If you’re buying a car, do you check Facebook? Or do you read up on Kelley Blue Book values and scour the company website for every spec, from horsepower to miles per gallon? What about music — do you check Top 40 radio charts or scope out what your Facebook friends are actually listening to on Spotify?

Social media has infiltrated the purchasing funnel, helping consumers make informed decisions, from what to have for lunch to where to go on vacation. Depending on the decision, sometimes you turn to your social graph, and sometimes you turn to Google. So, as a brand marketer, you want to know what online channels you should be targeting in order to reach the perfect audience for your product.

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Social media: it’s not just for kids.

In fact, social media as a whole is dominated almost entirely by people old enough to have kids – the average user of a social network is 37 years old. Millennials – people born between 1978 and 1994 (current ages 16-32) – were the first generation to be “raised” on the internet, and represent a significant portion of all online users.

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