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This just in—not every customer is going to love you. No matter how good your products and services are, you’re eventually going to have a customer that’s impossible to please. It’s just part of doing business. In the past, dissatisfied customers may tell a few friends, but now, they can hop online and put your brand on blast in front of the whole world using Facebook, Twitter, and a range of other social networking sites.

How should you respond when a customer complains about your company online?

• Address complaints quickly—The longer you drag your feet before responding, the more that anger is going to boil inside of your customer. You have to be proactive. Remember, other people are watching and waiting to see how you’re going to respond. If you don’t take care of problems in a timely manner, you could lose more customers.

• Don’t get defensive—In your eyes, your company is perfect. But the truth is that you probably do have some faults. If you immediately get overly defensive when a customer says something nasty about you online, you’re going to look bitter, unprofessional, and cocky. None of these are traits your customers will like.

• Don’t make excuses—Customers don’t want excuses. They want restitution. Don’t make excuses for your mistakes, and don’t point the finger at others. Own your company’s mistakes, fix the situation, and promise the customer to never make the same mistake again.

• Find out what you can do to make the customer happy—The good news is that most upset customers can still be won over. If you’ve made a mistake and are apologetic and eager to make things right, most customers will forgive you and give you another chance. Speak to the angry customer and ask them what exactly you can do to make the situation right. This puts the ball in their court, and it helps you find a solution for winning them back.

• Take the conversation private if necessary—If the issue isn’t something that can be solved easily, you may wish to take the conversation with the angry customer to a private place. Perhaps you can direct message them, email them, or give them a phone call. You don’t need to put the whole thing out in public for everyone to see.

• Consider asking the customer to remove the complaint once resolved—If you’re able to resolve the complaint, politely ask the customer if they would consider removing their negative post now that the issue is taken care of. In most cases, the now satisfied customer will happily oblige.

What’s your method of dealing with customer complaints online? Share your tips by leaving a comment below.

It’s never a good feeling when you lose followers on Twitter. Many companies measure their social media marketing success by how many followers and fans they have (this is a poor metric to use alone, but this post isn’t about that). Losing followers on your company’s Twitter page is often a sign that something is wrong, and you may need to adjust your approach.

Here are 7 common reasons companies lose followers.

1. It’s all about you—If every post is all about you and offers no value to your followers, people are going to leave you eventually. You need to give your followers content that is useful, interesting, entertaining, and helpful to them. Stop talking about yourself, and shift the conversation to things your customers care about.

2. You post a stream of advertisements—When people follow your company on Twitter, they likely expect to meet some promotional Tweets, but no one wants their feed to be clogged by nonstop advertisements. You need to mix things up. Don’t just post sales-y Tweets. Make sure you’re giving your followers useful content as well.

3. You binge Tweet—There’s nothing wrong with being a prolific Tweeter, but you do have to be respectful of your followers. If you go on a binge and drop 20 Tweets in 5 minutes, you’re going to annoy your followers because their whole feed will be filled just with your Tweets.

4. You disappear for long periods of time—When Twitter users start tidying up the list of people they’re following, guess who the first users are to get cut? It’s the ones who never Tweet anymore. If you let your account go dry for a while, people are going to assume your account is dead and they’ll stop following you.

5. You offend your followers—Sure, Twitter (and other social media outlets) gives you the opportunity to be a little more informal and say whatever you want, but you have to remember that you’re always representing your brand. You need to make sure you don’t ever cross the line and say something that will offend your followers and, even worse, cost you customers.

6. Your content is boring and repetitive—Have you ever tried to watch a rerun of a show you’ve already seen? Unless you just loved the show, you probably got bored pretty quickly the second or third time around you viewed it. The same concept applies to Tweeting. If you’re giving your followers the same old, predictable content over and over, they’ll get bored and stop following you.

7. Your content isn’t relevant to your followers’ interests—As a company on Twitter, it’s important to have a solid understanding of what type of content your followers are interested in. If you don’t know, ask them, and pay attention to the types of things they talk about and the kinds of content they share.

What are some of the reasons you stop following companies on Twitter? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

By now, you probably already know that social media affects SEO. The ultimate goal of the search engines is to provide users with results that are highly relevant to their interests. By incorporating social signals into their algorithms, the major search engines are now able to provide results that are more personalized to the individual searcher.
But what exactly are the social signals that are important for SEO? And what does all of this mean for you? Read on to find out, and share your own thoughts by leaving a comment at the end of this post.

Sharing and participation amongst friends
If you’re signed in on Google and perform a search, you’ll notice that many of the search results have annotations showing which of your friends shared this link on various social networks. In the eyes of Google (and other search engines), a search result has more relevance to you if one of your friends liked it than if no one you know has liked it.
Simply put, people trust their friends and other people in their social circles. Whenever you’re looking for a recommendation for a good restaurant, you’re more likely to go to the place one of your close friends recommends than the place some restaurant reviewer you’ve never heard of gave 5 stars.

Level of influence
Not all sharing is created equal. The whole premise of incorporating social signals into search is that a link that people share must be valuable, and if that link is shared by users with high influence, it must be even more valuable. In other words, a link that’s Tweeted by someone with 10,000 followers will be seen as more important than one shared by a guy with 5 followers.
Level of influence matters when it comes to social media and SEO. What does this mean for your SEO efforts? It means you need to strive to get your content shared by the influencers in your niche. That requires building relationships with them over time, so that they’ll begin to notice you, read your content, and share it with their followers.

Volume of shares
Finally, the total number of times a link has been shared across the various social media sites influences its ranking. It makes sense when you think about it. If one link was shared 500 times and another was only shared 2 times, it’s a strong indication that the first link has more importance and relevance than the other.
This means you really need to focus on making your content easy to share, interesting, unique, and relevant to the needs of your audience. And you have to put in the work to really promote it on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, ReddIt…you name it. The more your content gets shared, the better it will be for your SEO efforts.

How do you think social media affects SEO? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

While you might cringe any time you hear a cliché, the fact of the matter is we use clichés in our everyday lives because they make it easier for us to explain something. Clichés are pretty much understood by us all, and they can be used to explain just about anything—even social media marketing.

Here are 6 clichés that will help you become a better social media marketer.

Good things come to those who wait — We’ve all heard this one a million times. It’s about patience. Patience in social media marketing really is a virtue. Too many companies launch their Facebook and Twitter pages, expecting to see instant results. That’s rarely how it works. Social media marketing is about building meaningful relationships, and that takes a lot of time. So, good things really do come to those who wait.

Content is king — You know this cliché makes you want to drive your head through a wall every time you hear it, but you also know that it’s true. To be an effective social media marketer, you have to provide your audience with great content. You need to have a sharp understanding of what your audience is interested in, and you need to focus on building content around those interests. Great content spreads, gets you noticed, and starts conversations.

Take it one day at a time — Social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to put in the work every single day if you expect to see results. Each day will be full of new challenges, but if you take it one day at a time, you’ll start to gain momentum and build your brand.

Keep your nose to the grindstone — Social media marketing is hard work. Too many people take the “if you build it, they will come” approach to social media, and that just doesn’t work. You have to spend time each day creating content, interacting with your target audience, promoting your pages, etc. While doing all of this, you need to focus on the bigger picture and bigger goals, keeping your nose to the grindstone the whole time.

Think outside the box — There is no simple formula for social media marketing success. You’ve probably seen a few brands successfully pull of viral campaigns online, and you want to experience that success too. It requires creativity. You have to be unique. You have to stand out from the millions of other social media marketers who are vying for the attention of your customers.

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours — Social media marketing is all about the give and take. If you want others to RT your content, share your links, and help spread your message far and wide, you need to do the same for them. You can’t expect others to help you if you don’t return the favor.

What are some other clichés that describe social media marketing? Share your favorites by leaving a comment below.

If you’ve spent any time at all on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site, you’ve undoubtedly come across that guy. You know who I’m talking about. The nuisance. The tool. The d-bag. The guy who just doesn’t seem to get it. The guy who you still wonder why in the heck you’re following him.

Then again, maybe you don’t know who I’m talking about. Maybe you don’t know because you’re that guy (or girl). Not sure if you are? Here are a few characteristics of the Social Media Tool.

1. It’s all about you, you, you – Self-absorption is a classic characteristic of the Social Media Tool. Every new post is about them. It’s not about starting a conversation. It’s about promoting a sale, pushing some offer, patting themselves on the back…you get the idea. The truth is nobody really care about you all that much. Social networking is about conversations. And to have a meaningful conversation, you can’t just talk about yourself all the time.
2. You post at a rapid-fire pace – There’s nothing wrong with having an active social media presence. It can be a good thing. However, there’s a very thin line between being active and being an obnoxious tool. If you post dozens of times each hour, you’re overdoing it. You shouldn’t be clogging the feeds of your followers. They’ll quickly grow sick of you and eventually disconnect from you.
3. You post the same messages over and over again – Occasionally, it’s okay to repost your messages at different times of the day to make sure all of your followers have a chance to see it, but if you’re constantly reposting the same things over and over again, you’re a spammer. And spammers are tools.
4. You think you’re an internet A-lister – What’s up with these people who get a few followers and suddenly think they’re some sort of internet celebrity? Let me clue you in. You’re not a celebrity. Nobody really knows who you are nor do they care. You’re insignificant in the grand scheme of things #realitycheck. You refer to yourself as a ‘social media guru’—Ugh. Do I really even have to explain this one? “Social media guru” is code for “social media tool.” In fact, if you refer to yourself as any type of “guru”
5. You think number of followers is all that matters – The Social Media Tool is always bragging about how many followers he has on Twitter or Friends or Likes he has on Facebook. What he fails to understand is that those numbers don’t tell the full story. Who cares if you have 10,000 followers if they’re mostly low quality followers? Give me 100 people who are truly interested in what I have to say over 10,000 who couldn’t care less.

Do you know any social media tools? What are some other key characteristics I left off the list? Share them with us by leaving a comment.