The 5 Most Common Types of Social Media Buzz

Buzz is buzz, right?  When it comes to getting people to talk about your company or products online, as long as they are talking, should you be content?

Smart marketers not only listen carefully to what customers are saying online, but they also learn to use social media buzz to strengthen their brand and enhance customer satisfaction.  Recently, I came across an article dissecting social media buzz.  Here’s a breakdown of the five most common types:

1. Compliments

The good news is that loyal customers love to talk about their favorite brands.  If you’re doing a great job, your customers are likely to share their experiences online, and the results can be stellar: online compliments have the power of becoming viral through “likes” and re-tweets, and personal recommendations can introduce your company to many new customers.

2. Complaints

The bad news is that people are quick to complain when you’ve failed to meet their expectations.  It’s so much easier to tweet about poor customer service than to go directly to the company to complain.  The thought of customers sharing stories of product defects or shoddy service might be scary, but this type of buzz creates opportunities as well.  By responding to problems online, you get the chance to win back the complaining customer, and hopefully, to give them a more positive story to share online!

3. Suggestions

Think of the social media universe as one big focus group you can drop in on at any time.  When social media buzz takes the form of suggestions for product or service improvements, marketers win big.  If you’ve released a new product or upgrade, find out what customers love or hate about it, as well as what features they’d like to see in upcoming products.

4. Recommendations and Comparisons

Shopping is often a social endeavor, as consumers talk about which products they would suggest to friends, or why they prefer one brand over another.  While they’re getting information from each other, marketers can gather information from these conversations.  Recommendations can offer data on how customers are using your products, or why they are not.  Also, you can get a frank assessment of how your brand stacks up to the competition.

5. Purchase Behavior

This type of buzz gives marketers a window into customers’ buying processes.  Forum sites can reveal which brands or products customers are comparing, which distribution channels are being shopped, and why one brand is chosen over another.  These insights can show marketers who their biggest competition is, provide ideas for future marketing campaigns, and help them to tweak pieces of the marketing mix to promote sales.

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Even though listening to the din of social media buzz can be disorienting, with so many voices across so many platforms, organizing the types of content related to your brand can help you make sense of the noise.  What other types of buzz do you find useful in evaluating your products and services?

Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 at 9:00 am and is filed under Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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