Social Media Marketing

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c h a p t e r

1 :

SOCIAL M

EDIA AND C

USTOMER E

NGAGEMENT

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Operations Marketing

Customers

Social Business

Figure 1.3 The Marketing-Operations Connection

The connection between the disciplines of marketing and operations and social

media—and in particular the conversations, ratings, photos, and more that circulate

on the Social Web—is this: The majority of conversations that involve a brand, prod-

uct, or service are those that arise out of a difference between what was expected and

what was delivered or experienced. After all, we tend to talk more about what was

not expected than what was expected. In this simple relationship between expectation

and actual experience, the folly of trying to control conversations on the Social Web

becomes clear: Conversations on the Social Web are the artifacts of the work product

of someone else—a blogger, a customer, a voter, etc.—who typically doesn’t report to

the organization desiring to gain control! You can’t control something that isn’t yours

to control.

Instead, it is by changing the product design, the service policy or similar in

order to align the experience with the expectation or to ensure the replicable delivery of

“delight,” for example, as Zappos does when it upgrades shipping to “Next Day” for

no other reason than to delightfully surprise a customer. At Zappos, it’s not just a story

of an occasional surprise upgrade that got blown out of proportion in the blogosphere.

When bloggers—and customers—rave about Zappos, it’s for good reason: Zappos cre-

ates sufficient moments of delight that many people have experienced them and gone

on to create and share content about them It’s expensive—and Zappos isn’t always the

lowest cost shoe retailer. But in the end, delight wins. Zappos set out to build a billion-

dollar business in 10 years. As a team, they did it in eight. Ultimately, it is the subse-

quent customer experiences—built or reshaped with direct customer input—which will

drive future conversations and set your business or organization on the path to success.

Connect Your Team

Social media marketing is in many ways a precursor to social business. Social media

marketing is most effective when the entire business is responsible for the experiences