Donnahill's List: socialmedia_amazon

• On Amazon's main Twitter page, the first thing one may notice is that Amazon calls it an official "Twitter Feed." Unfortunate as this terminology may be, it is indeed, a feed: The posts are broadcast-driven, self-promotional messages. Amazon does not respond to replies or appeals for assistance. Retweets and @responses of any kind are sparse, limited to positive mentions only, and mostly exchanged with "celebrity" entities (authors, actors, musicians, etc.). Furthermore, the only accounts Amazon follows are other Amazon accounts and a few (obvious or not) employees. In short, there's little relationship, and virtually no consumer dialog or customer service.

   

  The same holds true for 14 other Amazon Twitter accounts, like Amazon Videos, Amazon Games, Amazon Deals, although each account follows different types of people (e.g., Amazon's Music Account follows a few musicians, and AmazonVideo follows directors, entertainment venues, and industry pundits). Most Amazon accounts display a pattern of a very skewed ratio of those it follows and those who follow it, and a tweet history that reflects a lack of both interest and activity in responding to @ inquiries and messages.

   

  The only exception seems to be the Amazon Wish List Twitter account, which seems to have a heart with regard to answering people's questions about Amazon's browser-based shopping extension. This account has even referred people to 800# customer support for service-related inquiries. While a hopeful sign, unfortunately the bulk of the activity here is to drive use of the shopping extension to promote and drive sales. This is the path of least resistance in social media: meeting nominal and noncontroversial "points of need"—rather than providing critical customer service and support. (Points of need, as defined for this article, are individual mentions, comments, or messages that express the need for a brand's attention, consideration, action, or response.)

• Conducting a search for Amazon on Facebook reveals a very large list of Amazon-related pages, groups, and personas. Amazon's official Fan Pages are not listed as official... so it can be hard to distinguish them from a ton of bogus Amazon pages that also use the Amazon logo and have hundreds or thousands of fans, none of which could possibly fit in the screen capture shown here. (Over the period of one week, reviews were conducted of verifiable Facebook Pages, including Amazon's main account, Amazon Kindle, Amazon MP3, Amazon Affiliate. (Reviews of posts on Fan Pages were conducted before and after Pedo-Gate, on Nov. 9, Nov. 10, Nov. 11, Nov. 16, and Nov. 17.)

   

  The primary Amazon Fan Page has just over 240,000 fans. The default view for the Wall shows only Amazon.com posts. Amazon status updates usually garner at least 30 comments, reaching to the potential for hundreds of comments per post. Responses to comments were noted only as an extremely rare occurrence, and only on one Fan Page. Just prior to the scandal, at least 10 unanswered customer service issues were noted during a cursory review of comments posted on Amazon's main fan page. Such issues became more noticeable with the default setting for the main wall set to display wall posts from Amazon + Others. During the scandal, wall posts and comments skewed heavily negative and were often profane. More recently, wall posts and comments seem to be skewing more positive. However, crisis aside, we found consistent placement of unanswered point-of-need mentions during the review period. In addition, we found a significant amount of spam posted on the pages. On the Amazon Associates Fan Page, the proliferation of spam was very high.

• Applying Some Basic, Common Sense

   

  Essentially, it seems well established that Amazon doesn't use social media to handle, forward, respond to, or manage customer-service issues. In fact, Amazon's position on its use of Twitter, specifically, is that Amazon is looking into ways to use Twitter more effectively in the future. In the meantime, the company underscored that social channels are not recognized venues for customer service or support, and people must call or email to obtain help.

   

  When one considers the sheer scope and volume of these point-of-need mentions, and the cost and complexities of integrating this additional "load" from foreign platforms (not Amazon Web Services based response), it's easy to understand, at least in part, where Amazon is coming from.

   

  At the same time, there's an amount of common sense that is missing in Amazon's approach. If Amazon does indeed have a "no service" policy in social media outlets—Why not place disclaimers or directives within these destinations to explain this position? Why not offer direction, and point people to channels for service and satisfaction? Instead, Amazon leaves people hanging.

• he Cost of Being Anti-Social

   

  Without question, Amazon has chosen to view social tools as broadcast mediums. Despite an impossible-to-ignore proliferation of celebratory, highly positive mentions on the social grid, Amazon's anti-social use of social media is working to perpetuate negative exposure and breed distrust and even public contempt. It is also resulting in the proliferation of hundreds, if not thousands, of unanswered daily point-of-need mentions.

   

  A one-time agile company, Amazon has failed to strategically use social channels; that failure encourages the perpetuation of a lethargic, sales-driven corporate culture that fails to...

   
   
  • Listen
   
  • Apply critical thinking
   
  • Empower staff to respond
   
  • Acknowledge and correct mistakes
   
  • Salvage at-risk relationships
   
  • Embrace the value of people

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• Amazon
    An online retail giant, Amazon has social media down to a science. The company not only maintains a staggering 14 Facebook Pages (each constantly updated with new deals and interesting information), it also has 12 US-based Twitter handles and actually integrates social media into Amazon.com. Without leaving the Amazon website, you can link your Facebook account to your Amazon account, then view any friends’ wish lists, see who has an upcoming birthday and actually purchase and send things to friends. To top all of this off, Amazon just sold over 1.3 million vouchers for 50% off a $20 Amazon gift card via Living Social (an online social-coupon company). That is social media integration to the max! Chances are, however, that you’re not a competitor of Amazon…so what can you learn from their social media prowess?
• Amazon is known as the place to find a great deal. Their social media accounts reflect that, constantly announcing sales that will save customers serious cash. You can do the same thing for your customers. What are you known for? Don’t be afraid to remind people about it! Remind fans what they love about your business, without boasting. Amazon doesn’t say “we’re the best place to find a deal”…they put their money where their mouth is and they just give you the great deals! You can do the same thing with your business.

• Amazon also connects with customers and allows them to connect with each other via social media. People love that they can see what their friends want for a holiday, simply by logging into a single account. While you may not be able to go that far, you CAN encourage customers to connect on your pages. Start conversations about a new item, make each page visitor or new follower feel like they’re part of a group who benefits from paying attention to your company. A little positive attention goes a long way.

   

  Retailers can take many lessons from these social media-savvy companies and stores, but one stands out above all others: connect with your customers! Stay tuned in the coming weeks – I’ll be posting again about several other businesses who have used social media to drive sales. And please, let us know if you have thoughts or questions in the comments below!

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• Amazon Patents Social Networking System, Winks at Facebook
• The United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Amazon a patent for a “Social Networking System.” Amazingly enough, the description of the patent sounds, well, pretty much like any social network we’ve seen over the years, including Facebook.

• For Amazon, knowing which of their customers know each other would be an extremely powerful marketing tool and Facebook’s global user base of 500 million means the  could scale very quickly. This Facebook Platform page update suggests the service is entirely opt-in, using Facebook Connect, and would no doubt be subject to Facebook users’ privacy settings. For added peace of mind, TechCrunch reports that Amazon will not reveal your account or purchase history or contact any of your Facebook friends.

   

  The deal with Amazon follows Facebook’s announcement that it would allow publishers to contact users who ‘like’ a particular story – another development with significant implications for marketers.
• A Facebook spokeswoman said this was not a “deal” between the two companies but simply Amazon choosing to implement Facebook Connect on its site.

• Google is constantly changing its algorithms to try to provide users with the stories they want to read. It recently added a +1 button to connect users to stories their friends have enjoyed, but now it's broadening its scope. According to Nieman Journalism Lab, the search giant has also added connections to social media for its Google News that allow it to pick up on the most popular stories on the sites.
• Exactly how Google uses social media for its algorithms is something of a mystery. Whenever employees are interviewed, they always stop just short of releasing information on what Mike Cassidy, Google's product management director of search, has called the "special sauce." 
• The most obvious integration of social media is the section entitled "Most Shared."  Stories are broken up by the most popular in the last 24 hours, the last week, and the last month. The algorithm uses multiple social media sites to aggregate this material.
• Although spokesperson for Google News, Jeannie Hornung, wasn't forthcoming which specific social media sites are involved in the algorithm, even she couldn't deny Twitter's significance. When users click on a story on the front page, it links them to a story-specific page with a side bar full of tweets that contain similar keywords. "It's using the same technology that real-time search uses," she said. The tweets aren't a raw feed, but are rather based on relevance and authority.
• "The Tweets section appears when there's a high level of activity on Twitter focused on that story and those tweets add diversity to the full coverage page. For example, we demote tweets that are on a broad topic not necessarily tied to the specific news story, that simply restate a headline and/or that link to a story already included on the full coverage page."

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