Today I read an article entitled, "Are You Listening to--or Shouting at--Your Customers Online? " and it was actually really funny. It was funny because it was true, there are thousands of examples of companies constantly using all caps when promoting things on social media sites. What really got me was they brought up the dearly departed Billy Mays. They explained that people listened to Billy not because he was yelling at them, but because they actually liked him. People don't like YOU yelling at THEM, so for the better of your business, you should turn the caps lock off. The article gave examples of what not to do, like this for Twitter:
"ONE DAY SALE! BUY! NOW!" or "WOW, MY COMPANY SOLD ____ IN ONE MINUTE!"
Once the article was done describing the things that shouldn't be done, they informed the reader of what they could do. They explained that there are four ways to talk to your online customers rather than yell at them, and I found them to be right. If there is a customer service rep ready and available to comment on questions and concerns 24/7 people will probably come back more often.
A personal example would be that I follow Clarisonic on Facebook and on their fan page someone comments on every single post made by a fan. Everything from just saying "thanks!" or answering questions or concerns. It is actually pretty impressive because I don't think most people expect that from a company. It wouldn't be hard for me to believe that people would assume that a company's fan page was stagnant and no one every checked it... That's what I would think. I think that that is really good PR because Clarisonic is staying in touch with their audience by updating them on new products and sales but in a great "one on one" way.
We haven't really discussed this topic in any of my classes that I've taken thus far, but since I am constantly shopping online and view a lot of company pages, I can say that I do get really turned off when there are "shouting messages" constantly being displayed. Thanks for writing this article to help companies tone down their loud messages to us unsuspecting customers.
