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Corporations are recognizing the power of social media and the lasting impressions it can create.  More than ever, brands that only before had a web site or a simple direct mobile campaign can now interact B2C with new prospects worldwide.  Some corporations have hit a roadblock on the pitfalls of engagement with these groups by social media and should read my recent blog post about defining a corporate social media policy. A social media policy is not a panacea to create a lasting word of mouth campaign.  However, once the right people are in place, social media can deliver immediate ROI and long term results.

Brands transitioning from a web site or simple direct mobile marketing campaign to include social media must be aware of several important factors.  Typically a brand web site is set up to gather information about their visitors to create a database of people that opt-in.  Once the person is in the database an email message such as a weekly, monthly or quarterly newsletter is sent via a push method to the potential customer.  In the age of social media, potential and current customers are using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and location-based services like FourSquare and Gowalla to pull information from brands on-demand.

The on-demand services by the above mentioned social media sites make it perfect for brands to engage current and soon-to-be customers worldwide.  If you are an international brand, have employees or an engagement agency handle questions, comments or immediate concerns 24 hours a day.  Possibly have your system set up where the agency is used on the opposite of what the brand can cover on its own.  This is important because someone in Germany could ask a question, but the brand has someone in Hawaii engaging.

Many corporations are looking to transition some of their own people to be in charge of the social aspect of the brand.  The people in transition or new hires should be evaluated for the ability to engage properly, listen to a customer, provide value in answers and create an open line of communications.  Evaluating a person in transition or a new hire for engagement should cover how they respond to both criticism and praise of the brand.  Train the employee to reward the customer who gives the brand praise, continual positive engagement via retweeting on Twitter, posting video reviews and blog posts or sharing the brand to their friends.  Train them to identify the brand’s social media influencers so that they feel special enough to continue to promote.  Third party promotion is a very strong influence on peers.  Listening to current customers who may have a problem is important in order to remedy quickly.  Have a policy addressing how to handle these criticisms so that the other people watching your sites will understand how customer service issues are resolved.  It’s very important that corporate level executives are aware how a crisis will be handled so they can incorporate this into their plan of action.  This can help your brand immediately and in the future.

Brands have an exciting opportunity to listen and engage customers from around the world in a positive medium.  Social media should be used to represent the brand and the immediate person behind the engagement. Customers want to know a real person is behind the brand.  Be real, honest and open towards others and they will in return.

Christopher Rauschnot is an accomplished social media and engagement consultant to corporations worldwide.  He has made a positive impact in the hospitality, travel, nightlife, entertainment and technology industries.  He has been directly involved with the creation of several corporate media policies and is a conference speaker.  Most recently, he spoke about brand engagement and at the Consumer Electronics Show 2010 – Social Media Jungle presented by Jeff Pulver. He is an active user of Twitter at (@24k and @24kMedia), and he has a 24k Media Facebook Page. He also blogs about technology at The Mac Wizard.  Christopher enjoys traveling to destinations while interacting with social media influencers in each city he visits – he’ll be a panelist at the “Twitter and the Entertainment Industry: How the Real Time Web is Changing Hollywood” on Tuesday, April 13th from 5-6pm in the Destination Broadband Theater.