Is Your Casino Likeable?
January 18th, 2012
Being human in a digital world is the first step on the road to likeability. This is one of the single-best pieces of advice Dave Kerpen offers in his book, Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and be Generally Amazing on Facebook. (and Other Social Networks)”
And just how does a brand become more likeable? To begin with, stop selling to your gaming audience and start serving them. Making this mental shift is difficult for a lot of marketers because we’ve been talking at our audiences for so long.
Social media has been a struggle for most because it belongs to consumers. Only until recently have we really understood how to connect with consumers in today’s world, and it requires us to think of our casino brand as being human.
By now, we all know that social media…
- Isn’t free.
- Won’t bring instant results (in some cases yes, but not in most cases when you are in the process of building a community).
- Absolutely can’t make up for bad experience or service! It can make it worse, so if you know you have problems, fix them before getting into the social space.
Likeable Social Media offers 12 ways in which you can be human, and likeable:
1. Listen. And don’t stop. Relationships should be 50% listening and 50% talking, but as marketers, we tend to forget this basic tenet. Make the mental leap from what you do to your audience to what you do with them.
2. Think like your audience. What is relevant to your gamers? Maintain this as a filter for all things social.
3. Ask those closest to you to be your friend. This is a no brainer. Leverage your strongest assets—your staff, player’s club members, vendors, etc.—by asking them to support you.
4. Always respond to a bad comment. When you don’t respond, it’s like hanging up the phone on someone. But in today’s environment, everyone sees that you’ve done it. Adopt a “Do Not Delete” rule (exceptions: obscenity, profanity) and privately fix it. There are two very important words a brand can use in social media and it’s “thank you.”
5. Respond to the good. Next to “I’m sorry,” “thank you” are the second two favorite words in social media. People who write good things about you need to be responded to just like those who complain.
6. Ask questions. Status updates that pose questions directly to fans engage them 2-6 times more than other updates. Remember, social is all about acquiring feedback. Double your engagement rate by turning statements into questions.
7. Give value, for free. Build loyalty and trust by providing value to your audience. This will help you build a “pull” strategy to counteract your “push.”
8. Be authentic. Period.
9. Share your stories. Until recently, we had to buy a 30-second commercial to tell our story. Today, there are multiple channels by which can do this—a tweet, a photostream, a timeline, or a video. Use these channels to share them with your gamers.
10. Make doing business with you easy. Even though we still have to achieve business results, we need to always be mindful of serving over selling. Sales will happen when you do the first part of it correctly.
11. Admit your mistakes. If you say you are sorry in a real, authentic way, you will be forgiven.
12. Consistently deliver surprise and delight. When done offline, okay. When done socially, it will spread.
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