<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Matthew Latkiewicz works at Zendesk.com, customer support software.  He writes for and edits Zengage, Zendesk\u2019s blog about customer engagement.\nWhat\u2019s your customer engagement style?  It\u2019s a question reminiscent of those light-hearted quizzes that proliferate magazines: Are you strong or sassy? Independent or group-focused? When someone @-replies you on Twitter, do you respond immediately or wait a couple days?\nThese questions are actually important to consider. Why? Because customer engagement encompasses your company\u2019s customer service, support, and marketing. It also deals with your company's forums, Twitter accounts, blogs and meetups. How various companies use Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and its ilk, goes a long way to define the long-term relationship consumers have with that brand. \nThere are some amazing success stories. Old Spice, using both Twitter and YouTube, recently ran a customer engagement masterclass that created a much-needed mania around the brand. Yet, for every success story, there are plenty of flops. When a Domino\u2019s Pizza employee uploaded a disastrous video about the company\u2019s hygiene standards to YouTube, a widespread negative viral campaign ensued. \nThe lesson: Ensure that your engagement style matches your company\u2019s brand, goals, and general attitude. We took a look at the top five engagement styles that currently dominate the social web. Which are you?\n\r\n1. The Game Show Host\r\n\n\n\n\n\nYour message: Winning is sometimes the only thing. We\u2019ve all seen things like this before: \u201CRT - FREE STUFF OVER HERE LINK #welovefreestuff.\u201D This social media personality knows that contests and special offers generate a lot of activity and set up a very clear (if slightly old-fashioned) relationship with the consumer. The consumer follows whatever steps you\u2019ve laid out: Retweeting something, sending in a picture of yourself with company swag, or signing up for a newsletter. Then they are rewarded for taking these steps. Dialogue or community isn\u2019t as important as having consumers hanging around hoping they\u2019ll win something or get a special deal.\nHow you say it: Giving stuff away or offering deals works well only if you\u2019ve got some trust built up. There are a lot of scams out there and acting like a wacko Twitter user doesn\u2019t instill much confidence that this offer is trustworthy and/or legit.\nWho\u2019s it good for? Big companies with big pockets wanting to speak from the perspective of the corporation. \nExample: Virgin America. Nearly all of Virgin\u2019s Twitter stream is devoted to special deals and contests.\nThe bottom line: They keep the voice friendly and light, but also faceless. The brand itself is speaking here.\n\r\n2. Your Friendly Neighborhood Service Rep\r\n\n\n\n\n\nYour message: Like a good neighbor, you listen to your customers and engage them on an individual level, mostly to solve customer support issues or to capitalize on sales opportunities. You monitor social network channels because \u201Cthat\u2019s where the customers are,\u201D and if conversations are happening about your brand, you want to be there to participate.\nIn this engagement style, Twitter is an extension of your customer service reps (albeit in a limited, loose way). Businesses following this style don\u2019t so much start the conversation as they react to the ones that have already started - whether that\u2019s a customer complaining about your brand or a consumer asking a question that your business is well-equipped to answer. You live by co-tweet, the @-reply and direct message.\nHow you say it: With one friendly \u201Cindividual\u201D voice. This engagement style calls for a business to officially anoint someone or selected people from within the company to be the official Tweet-voice. Their personality is allowed to come through on some level within company boundaries. Customers need to feel as if they are being handled by an actual human being who is personable, but not too edgy.\nWho\u2019s it good for? Larger, consumer-centric businesses, especially service and retail outlets, that have the resources to monitor multiple channels of customer feedback.\nExample: Staples. Staples\u2019 Twitter stream is full of @-replies asking for DMs. And they even use little illustrations of the actual people who are sending out those tweets as the background of their Twitter page.\nThe bottom line: Staples chooses to engage customers on a somewhat personal level; each tweet is \u201Csigned\u201D by the person who tweeted.\n\r\n3.The Beehive\r\n\n\n\n\n\nThe message: We\u2019re all in this together people. Everyone who works for you can be your social network identity. Instead of having an official company account, you encourage all employees to participate in social media networks. Work identities collapse into personal social identities.\nIn this engagement style, the focus is not so much the direct relationship between consumer and business. Instead, it\u2019s a distributed relationship whereby the business benefits by all the small relationships between its employees and the wider world. This is a radical way of thinking about customer engagement because it\u2019s about cultivating a culture of engagement throughout your entire company.\nHow you say it: In a wacky, edgy, at times out-of-control voice. Often a company in this style will have a social media policy setting some ground rules and expectations; but the real thing holding this strategy together is a philosophy of engagement.\nWho\u2019s it good for? Idea-based companies, large or small. If your business is based on innovation, networking and generating buzz, this is the style for you.\nExample: Any number of small software companies, but IBM is one of the most interesting examples of this style. They have an extensive and thoughtful approach to social networking (and computing). They encourage each of their employees to identify themselves on social networks as IBMers.\n\r\n4. The Community Builder\r\n\n\n\n\n\nYour message: Always an acquaintance but never a friend. You think of your customers as like-minded folks, and so you build spaces on the social web for them to hang out and share in their like-mindedness. You use Twitter to share non-business related links and quotes that you think your customers will like, but you also keep a slight distance from them in an attempt to let them drive the conversation. You probably use the word \u2018movement\u2019 in your Twitter bio.\nOftentimes, a business who follows this style will integrate their Twitter use within other social technologies - blogs (but for strictly non-business news), forums, and even entire websites devoted to the things your community cares about.\nThe community builder\u2019s goal is to create conversation around things the company cares about and then link that conversation to the brand.\nHow you say it: With a balanced combination of passion and detachment. You want to encourage your customers to join your movement but you don\u2019t want to either dominate the conversation or make the whole thing feel like it was cooked up by your marketing department. You are going for what people actually care about and so a little humility \u2014 making the brand ride shotgun or even in the back \u2014 works best.\nWho\u2019s it Good For? Businesses whose products and services already target a community with a definable set of values. If your customers and you would have a lot to talk about at a dinner party, this is a good bet for you.\nExample: Timberland. They run a community effort called Earthkeepers, a set of initiatives (including social media) devoted to environmental action. As described on its site:\n\"When you\u2019re an Earthkeeper, you\u2019re part of a community of like-minded people from all over the world intent on doing the little things and doing bigger things, like replanting eroded areas and retrofitting their engines to run on bio fuel. Earthkeepers learn from and support one another through original and inspiring ideas of making the world a more sustainable and livable place. And the more of us there are, the better.\"\nNote that while the Timberland logo is on the top of the page, it\u2019s not mentioned here. In their tweets they take a more anonymous tone and almost always include a link to something the community might care about (often linking back to the Earthkeeper blog).\n\r\n5. The Friend\r\n\n\n\n\n\nYour message: Every customer interaction is like one amazing high-five. You are the business owner who knows all your customers by name and hangs out with them on the weekends. Your business Twitter account is way more important to you than your personal account (in fact you may not even have a separate personal account - it\u2019s all the same to you). \nBusinesses in this style will share relevant info like menu updates, new products and event information but will also mix in personal thoughts, jokes and pictures of themselves at work. They tweet about things that have nothing to do with the business per se. These businesses want to their relationship with their customer base to be fluid and up-to-date.\nHow you say it: Just as you would say something to a pal.  Pretty much anything goes, though the more personal the voice the better. Because your engagement with your customer is based on the friendliness of the relationship, the more natural and true to the voice of the person communicating, the better.\nWho\u2019s it good For? Smaller, local businesses. This is best when your social media presence mostly extends your face-to-face relationship.\nExample: Choose any local restaurant and look at their Twitter account. There are a lot of food carts here in San Francisco like The Creme Brulee Cart which use Twitter to update their customer base as to where they\u2019ll be that day, but you\u2019ll also see messages to customers, friends, and other business owners. \nThe bottom line: They engage with their customers as friends.\n\r\nWhat\u2019s Your Style?\r\n\nIt is important that you think through how you want to engage your customers on Twitter and elsewhere on the social web. It\u2019s important to stay true to your brand but also to make clear the ways in which your customer engagement style furthers the type of relationship you want with your customers and potential customers.\n More Business Resources From Mashable:\n- Cubicle Spy: At Work with David Berkowitz of 360i [PICS]- How Online Retailers Can Leverage Facebook\u2019s Open Graph- How Small Businesses Will Use Social Media In The Future- 11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates- 6 Online Tools for Expanding Your Video Strategy\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, AndyL"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/08/11/customer-engagement-style/>