For those of us in the UK who may not have realised the furore surrounding the removal from the shelves of a specific Johnson & Johnson product in Canada and the USA, now thanks to our friends on Facebook we can now share the beautifully crafted apology, created by Toronto agency Lowe Roche.
The video is accessible online at OBTampons.ca/apology, where visitors type their name into a blank field to activate and can then hear an apology in the form of a power ballad sung by a male singer. The snazzy part of all this is the customisation of lyrics and certain visual cues to include the name the visitor has entered.
At the end of the video to seal their apology Johnson & Johnson have a 2$ voucher to apply to the purchase of OB Tampons, valid until December 20th.
The apology and coupon have been offered after J & J discontinued the Ultra brand of their products.The product was discontinued last year and customers voiced their displeasure with phone calls to customer services and online petitions. Shelley Kohut director of communications and public relation at J & J Canada said “When (O.B. Ultra) wasn’t available, they certainly did let us know that that was something they were counting on and needed from us,” and “Given the nature of the product and the high degree of loyalty to the product, we really wanted to take the opportunity to let our consumers know that we truly are sorry that we put them through that frustration.” J&J is at present working on a time-line for restarting production and distribution of the Ultra brand.

Now, it’s all a beautiful use of social media and while not everyone appears to have accepted the apology in the same way, (and why would they?) I think it’s entertaining but then I’m not personally affected by the brand disappearing off the shelves.

The video has worked and more than that people who don’t need to see the apology have viewed the apology. Downside of this, the video wasn’t made to be viewed on mobile devices, so a lot of niggles from people who were sent the link but couldn’t then view it. Mobile audiences are growing so don’t restrict your audience by forgetting them. Think mobile.

Social media, customer services, online petitions raised the voice level of the customers. The voucher offer, initially only available to its Canadian customers, J&J have now realised the errors of their ways and made it available to the US. Slight problem here is Canada get an easy to print coupon and the US have to download Coupon Printer and then print it out.

The coupon is dated for use by Dec 20th 2011 and for any product, as they are still working on the time-line for production of the much loved Ultra brand. So a bit tight with the expiry date of the voucher. Considering how viral the video has become, use the momentum and don’t lose everyone on December 20th 2011?

Is there any way we can help with your social media? Email us, or telephone 0203 468 8594 and speak to Tamara.

This week I found one of the benefits of using Twitter as a customer. I had recently decided to move my phone number to GiffGaff as it seemed like it would work better for me. For the last few years I have paid for two phones on T-Mobile on their 30 day rolling tariff. Initially it has worked very well. At the beginning of the year my old phone decided to be more trouble than it was worth and my OH bought me another phone, a very nice LG and bought it from T-Mobile. Now I suppose I should have realised that any phone bought from T-Mobile will be locked to the network, but silly me, I thought that as I had bought it off contract that wouldn’t be the case.

Anyway, thinking that GiffGaff’s offers will work better for us, I decided to finish the rolling contracts, keep the numbers and move to GiffGaff. The winner for them has to be that calls between GiffGaffers are free, together with the ‘no contract’, ‘change your mind each month if you want to’ deal.

Now I find myself in a complete tizz, my number has been ported out to my GiffGaff number and when the new Sim is put in the phone we have USIM locked. So backwards and forwards between various numbers, GiffGaffers being very helpful, T-Mobile saying £15 please and 28 days to release the phone. Arrrghh!!!

And so to Twitter, after getting the usual email automated responses from T-Mobile, saying we may take 7 days to answer your query, just shout ‘help’ on Twitter and we are off. It remains to be seen whether anything gets sorted but at least T-Mobile responded within minutes and not days.

You feel that someone is listening and not just fobbing you off, but that may come later. Wish me luck!

So what does that tell you about Social Media? That if it is going to work for your business, it’s good to talk and listen to your customers. Twitter is quick at getting results, no business wants it to be broadcast across the internet that people are unhappy with their service. Handled correctly, social media, can nip things in the bud and customers know they have your attention because you have answered them with something other than an automated response.

It would be nice if things didn’t always happen this way, but with plethora of technology, folk can’t be expected to understand how it all works and companies must handle that knowledge with care, likewise their customers.

For help with anything techy email us, twitter @tamarabaranova, or just plain pick up the phone and talk to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Are you admin for pages on Facebook? Facebook are advising you to back up your old page insights in preparation for them being phased out from December 15th.

From then the social network will no longer collect data from the old page insights and insights as we know it, will disappear completely on February 15th 2012.

On the old page insights they advise you to back up your information as this will be deleted on February 15th but your data from December 15th will be collected in the new improved insights.

Have you also noticed…. on your personal Facebook page how you can fine tune what you see or what people see of you? If you are tired of seeing what everyone is listening to and reading, change the settings. You now have multiple choices for handling this overload of information in your news feed, by hide,delete,unsubscribe,unfriend, report or block options. The button to the right of a post drops down to give you all these options and a much calmer way to handle the regular (far to regular) postings of some. You can then still decide to visit their feed when you choose rather than your page be overloaded.

You can click to view all updates, or most or only important ones too, so again you can refine individually, what you see according to how much you want to see of friends. Further changes can be made on a friends’ profile where the subscribe button allows you to customise even more precisely. Options are here too, to add friends to particular lists; Places of work,schools,residences and family relationships.

How to hide yourself away…on chat. The follow on from all this privacy and hiding of other people’s posts, leads me to this option. On the chat screen there is a small settings button which gives you the option of, to chat or not to chat, primarily you can see who’s on line and they can see you are available to chat. If you want to refine this, limited availability can be optimised and you can restrict who can communicate with you at any point in time, alternating between your various lists.

Do you need any help with all the things that Facebook keep changing? Email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594 to find out how to optimise your pages

Facebook have introduced more refinements so that you can decide just how tight you want your privacy settings.
Facebook made several significant changes to its privacy settings through the new inline buttons. The obvious changes, inline tag review and sharing buttons, affect much of the information you are likely to share on Facebook. Before the introduction anyone who could see content could actually comment and tag but now all tags can be approved. The new ‘view profile’ button lets you see how your profile appears to others.
The new settings for the sharing button mean you can share with everyone, friends,networks,friends of friends or customise to a select few. You can also choose to hide it from people too.

Tagging You can now tag by location and when tagging people who are not actual Facebook friends you can choose whether the tag shows in your profile or on your wall. Removing a tag has also become clearer with a choice of options, and an ability to remove and then block the tag creator.

Privacy settings
Within the home drop down button settings can be adjusted for how you interact with people. Privacy can be restricted so that only friends can see your posts and you can control your default privacy setting to public friends or custom.
Via the inline audience selector privacy can be controlled for status updates, photos and information, with the ability to use these as you share, or afterwards. It’s worth remembering that people you share information with can then share it with others.

The options are broken down into the following areas:

How you connect – who can -
look up your profile by name or contact info?
send friends requests?
send you Facebook messages?
post on your wall?
see wall posts by others on your profile?

How tags work
Profile review of posts friends tag you in before the appear in your profile. (Be aware they can still show up elsewhere on Facebook.)
Tag review for those that friends want to add to your profile.
Maximum profile visibility of tagged posts once they are on your profile.
Tag suggestions when friends upload look-a-like photos of you.
Friends can check you into Places app.

Apps and websites
Lists all the apps,games and websites you use and then allows you to individually edit all the settings. This allows you the opportunity to do some spring cleaning and clear out those that you no longer use.
Within this space you can edit settings that control how your info is brought by others to the apps they use. Use it to control the categories of the information.

Instant personalisation which allows you to see relevant information about your friend when you visit partner websites.

Public Search which controls whether a preview of your Facebook profile is visible when people search for you using a search engine.

Limit the audience for past posts although you can change this setting it means that any posts you have shared with everyone will be restricted to just friends. Maybe a more selective method is to choose the audience for your individual posts instead.

Blocked People and Apps

Don’t forget that you can run your account within a secure setting by going to account settings, security and enable secure browsing. Keeping your information safe while browsing on Facebook.

Too much information! Have a look around the settings and it’s not so daunting, but if you would like some help email us here, or speak with Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Facebook is a great tool for marketing products and reaching out to new
markets.

It may be a very good tool but it still needs help to market your pages and spread the word, don’t just expect the folk to come flocking to your pages.

Plan and build your marketing strategy so that you don’t waste your energy supplying all the trimmings only to discover that you have no fans.

If you have a blog, network them so that when they are published, it shows up on your Facebook page.
Cross promote across your various social media networks to grow your fan base.
Increase conversations with your fans, capture the interest of people who want to spend money on your products or services.

If the people behind the branding are passionate and committed to making customers happy you can bring this excitement to your brand. It’s down to you to spread the word and enthuse your fans who will then pass the message on and attract new followers. Don’t waste time on those that are not interested, be sure you know your market, making it possible to target them and fine tune your Facebook ads for your audience.

Branding your Facebook page, so that it resembles your website or blog, lets your followers know that they are dealing with the same company. It’s possible to now do as much on your Facebook page as you can on your website. You can let people know of any events you are hosting or special offers you have.

Engage with your followers by keeping your pages up to date with interesting snippits for your audience to read. Use video and photos to entertain and educate your fans about your products.

Next week, getting started and some useful tools for using Facebook. Need any help or advice, email us, or speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.