Why You Shouldn’t Turn Comments Off

Why You Shouldn’t Turn Comments Off

By Kylie Stanley, PR Technician

Social media is a valuable source for brands to hear feedback from customers, listen to concerns and engage with their followers. As a brand you might feel that turning off comments can help to prevent negativity, keep the focus on your product, save money from having to monitor comments and feel exclusive. But turning comments off on social media or ads is a bad business practice that should be avoided. In this blog, we will break down why you should keep your comments on.

Opens Conversations

Social media is a great place to listen to your customers and have open conversations about your brand and/or products. It also allows customers to engage with other customers about the products. We’ve seen comments before where one negative comment leads to multiple positive comments from other customers touting them on why they love the products. Allowing these open conversations lets your customers engage with each other or provide product concerns that need to be addressed.

If a customer has a negative experience with your product or service, wouldn’t you want to know about it? Or if they have a question about how to use it, wouldn’t you want to help them? Turning off comments would only lead to upset customers and never provide insights into any problems within your business.

Creative Ideas

By having open conversations on social media, it can develop ideas that your business can implement. If you see negative comments about a specific product, you could write a blog or press release on the item to debunk these comments and spread awareness on the item. Additionally, social media comments could lead to creative ideas of what you could do at a tradeshow, whether it be fun booth ideas, giveaways or a trades influencer who wants to meet up and learn more about your brand.

How to Handle Negative Feedback

Now that we have discussed why keeping the comments on is beneficial for your brand, let’s discuss how to handle any negative comments you might receive.

Make sure to reply to their comments! Most times, negative comments are coming from a bad experience, so ask “can you please email or message us with more detailing regarding your issue.” This will show other customers that you’re being attentive and taking note of any problems customers might have. Also, remember everything on the internet is public for everyone, so not responding or leaving an aggressive comment towards your customer would reflect badly on the company.

Another alternative to turning off comments that you shouldn’t do is deleting or hiding comments.  Hiding comments can weaken the trust between you and your followers and make you appear to be hiding something. Social media is meant to be conversational, so you should show your customers that you are receptive to both positive and negative feedback and want to encourage discussion. Check out our full blog post on “best practices for handling negative comments” to learn more.

Before you turn your comments off on social media or ads, think about the feedback you could be missing. Be open to having conversations with customers to see how you can improve any concerns that may need to be addressed.

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Solar Eclipse Celebrations in Cleveland

Solar Eclipse Celebrations in Cleveland

Something big is coming to our city in Cleveland… It’s the solar eclipse!

On Monday, April 8, the Great American Eclipse will be taking place throughout the Midwest region of the USA. The path of totality lies within Cleveland which means we will receive nearly four-minutes of darkness in the middle of the afternoon! This event won’t happen in Cleveland again until 2444, so make sure you’re prepared for the event.

Throughout Northeast Ohio, events will be taking place in honor of the solar eclipse like:

A solar eclipse is a sight totally worth seeing. No matter where you are that afternoon, we hope you’ll find a great viewing spot for some fun in the sun. If you haven’t already, sign up to receive a pair of Sonnhalter branded solar eclipse glasses.

Enjoy the specs…and the eclipse!

https://www.sonnhalter.com/2024-solar-eclipse/

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Unleashing the Power of Diverse Minds

Unleashing the Power of Diverse Minds

Following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post. 

Innovation has always been an indispensable driver of progress, reshaping industries, and propelling businesses forward. But why do some organizations just do it better than others? Those organizations practice an important principle – they embrace diversity.

It’s often thought that innovation is the domain of a privileged few, characterized by ingenious thinkers, executives, creatives, or right-brainers, who single-handedly come up with brilliant ideas. However, the true essence of innovation is far more empowering and all-encompassing—it is a quality that resides within every individual, regardless of titles, roles, and backgrounds. A cornerstone of our ideation sessions has therefore always been including a wide variety of individuals to participate in the process of creating new ideas.

Diversity of thought

No one has a monopoly on creative thinking or the ability to see things from a different perspective. And yes, while certain individuals may innately be more creative thinkers, the potential for innovation is available to everyone. In the right conditions, anyone can be an idea machine.

Change things up

Encouraging individuals across all levels to share their unique insights and ideas creates a culture of problem-solving. During many typical brainstorming sessions, you will find similar people, going into a typical conference room, in front of a whiteboard, with the idea that in this sea of sameness, new ideas will be generated. That poor team is doomed from the start. It’s not so surprising then that the ideas are less innovative and more likely just incremental improvements.

Nurturing a culture of innovation

Organizations can enhance their innovation capabilities by:

1.    Embracing Inclusivity: At your next brainstorming session, stretch the boundaries of who you would normally include. Invite individuals from other departments, interns as well as executives, and even some from outside your organization.

2.    Changing the landscape: Please just have your brainstorming sessions anywhere but in the usual space. Go outside if you can, a different building, anything but the same room where you may have always held these types of sessions. There’s a reason why new thoughts blossom by simply taking a walk or an activity that breaks your normal routine.

3.    Following through: Don’t ask for ideas only to ignore them. It’s important to not only have a wide variety of people participate in the ideation process, but also to stay engaged with them through the entire life cycle. Not all ideas are good ideas, but all need to see how their collective ideas are implemented, transformed into something even greater, or possibly shelved as a future potential initiative. And most importantly, helping them understand why.

4.    Acknowledge and communicate: Recognizing and applauding innovative contributions—regardless of their scale—reinforces the principle that everyone plays a pivotal role in propelling innovation. Even if not everyone in the company can participate in some form of an innovation session, if you are encouraging their input and ideas, ensure it is being acknowledged..

5.    Fostering a creative environment: It can be difficult to just ask people to take the time and go be creative without providing them with the resources to do so. Your organization doesn’t have to go as far as Google’s famous 20% policy where they allow employees to spend at least 20% of their time on pet projects, but there needs to be some allocation for people to take on the added role of helping your organization come up with breakthrough ideas.

Creativity resides in the heart of every individual across your entire organization. It should not be an annual event or a special exercise, but a mindset embraced by the company, backed with up with processes and support. Even if innovation sessions are often led by marketing or your strategic planning group, it’s important to remember that they may lead the process, but all are involved. Your organization’s ability to harness the full breadth of everyone’s innate capability to tap into their creativity holds massive potential for innovative progress.

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Why You Should Use Sponsored Campaigns

Why You Should Use Sponsored Campaigns

By Kylie Stanley, PR Technician

It’s important to understand the competitive landscape that’s on social media and how every brand is competing against each other. This battle can make it difficult to reach your target audience and to drive sales or brand awareness from organic marketing. Currently online, 4.59 billion people use social media like Facebook and Instagram. So, what’s one way you can advertise to your audience? By using Meta advertising. In this blog, I will tell you more about Meta advertising and the benefits that it could provide to your company.

What is Meta Advertising?

Meta advertising is a form of advertising that uses Facebook and Instagram to create and target ads to specific audiences. Companies can create campaigns where they can select the type of ad to run, their audience and the budget they want to spend. Meta then will use Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms to deliver this ad to users who would be interested in it.

Measurement and Reporting

One benefit of sponsored campaigns is the ability to monitor your ads regularly. Meta’s measurement tools allow you to check stats like reach, landing page views, click-through rates and more! By using the measurement tools, it can give you insight into what’s working on your campaigns, what you should try differently and what your customers are interested in.

Cost

Although Meta advertising isn’t free, it is the second cheapest platform (Twitter) to advertise on. One of the benefits of it is being able to set how much you’re spending on a campaign or per day. But keep in mind that you want to spend an efficient amount of money to hit the “sweet spot” of advertising. If you spend too little or too much money, then your ad won’t perform well among your audience. This cost-effective advertising can generate traffic to your website and can be just as effective as banner ads.

Brand Awareness

Meta is perfect to build brand awareness while driving direct sales for your company. By increasing your visibility and exposure you are opening your business to potential customers and having users become more familiar with your brand.

Conclusion

In today’s digital environment, it’s important to reach your target audience, increase visibility and drive more traffic to your company’s website. Using Meta advertising can be a cost-effective way to advertise online, while providing measurable results and achieving your marketing goals.

Check out our other blog post on why content marketing may work better than traditional advertising.

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20+ Industrial Maintenance Training Resources

20+ Industrial Maintenance Training Resources

With the ongoing concern about our nation’s skills gap, the option for choosing an education to pursue a vocational career is certainly an attractive one. With plentiful skilled labor jobs to fill, trade jobs pay very well (sometimes better than four-year college degrees) and don’t saddle students with hefty student loans.

In an article from SJVC, a private career college, they discuss more than 20 resources for maintenance training. With a variety of resources, you can expand your knowledge about the industrial market and explore your career options.

General Resources and Publications

Sometimes the best place to learn more is by reading more about it. By reading publications that correspond with the industrial market, you can learn more about what’s happening in the industry and about tips and tricks.

Video Series

Watching videos is a great way to do online training and gives insights on the daily work a maintenance worker might be doing. You may also expand your knowledge by watching training videos that can allow you to get an overview of the job and the tools you would be using.

Podcasts

Podcasts offer crucial information from someone who works in the career firsthand. Putting on a podcast is a great way to hear day-in-the-life reporting and an easy way to listen to tips.

Social Media

Social media is a valuable place to get recommendations, learn industry news and see insight into the career you want to enter. Social media can also help you look at a specific company and show you what they do in a day.

Check out the article from SJVC to see further in depth about each of these training resources.

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