If a customer or potential client talks about you on Facebook, can you avoid losing a sale?

No, not unless the customer is a part of your own conversation.

But if someone is talking smack about your brand or company of Twitter, you have that chance to join the conversation and steer the conversation in a more positive direction.

Here’s my quick, unintentional case study.

My wife and I went car-shopping on Saturday. We were interested in a Hyundai, but wanted to look at similar models at a Kia dealership down the street. I’m not familiar with the Kia, other than a few past rentals – and I can’t even remember if they were Kias.

But I figured my Facebook friends may know a thing or two about the Kia. I was hoping maybe some of those friends were checking out Facebook over a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning.

So before we left for the dealer, I posted a simple question as my status update:

Tim is going out car shopping. Anyone here ever have a Kia? I think I had one as a rental once.

And the comments? The included horror stories of a friend of a friend’s older Kia being held together by duct tape and zip ties. Another friend talked about her co-worker’s 10-year-old van needing work.

But the most intriguing from the word-of-mouth standpoint were the comments that told me to buy a Hyundai. I think three or four people spread their affinity for the other Korean automaker. And there were also shout-outs for Toyota and Mazda, as well as one to buy American.

Since I’m not Facebook friends with Kia, or any Kia representatives, Kia did not have a say in the conversation.

But if I had sent the update to my Twitter followers instead of my Facebook friends, Kia could have had a chance to win me over.

Why? There’s two big reasons:

• Twitter is searchable: Want to find out who is talking about you or your brand on Twitter? Use Twitter’s search function and Tweets about whatever you want to find will show up most recent first. In the Kia case, someone in marketing could have followed me and let me know about dealer incentives, or quelled any of the anecdotes about its older models.


• Facebook can be private: Even of you as a marketer were going to search “Kia” on Facebook, you’re going to come up with people who have the letters “kia” in their name first, and then groups for fans of the automaker. Even if you find out who owns or is a fan of Kia that way, that person’s Facebook profile may not be public. The marketer would have to become that person’s friend to find out if he or she is using status updates to spread good or bad news.

So as a merchant, what do you do? You have to monitor Twitter just as you would the blogosphere. If you have an employee keeping an eye out on what people are saying in cyberspace, make sure Twitter is a part of that activity.

If a customer or potential client talks about you on Facebook, can you avoid losing a sale?

No, not unless the customer is a part of your own conversation.

But if someone is talking smack about your brand or company of Twitter, you have that chance to join the conversation and steer the conversation in a more positive direction.

Here’s my quick, unintentional case study.

My wife and I went car-shopping on Saturday. We were interested in a Hyundai, but wanted to look at similar models at a Kia dealership down the street. I’m not familiar with the Kia, other than a few past rentals – and I can’t even remember if they were Kias.

But I figured my Facebook friends may know a thing or two about the Kia. I was hoping maybe some of those friends were checking out Facebook over a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning.

So before we left for the dealer, I posted a simple question as my status update:

Tim is going out car shopping. Anyone here ever have a Kia? I think I had one as a rental once.

And the comments? The included horror stories of a friend of a friend’s older Kia being held together by duct tape and zip ties. Another friend talked about her co-worker’s 10-year-old van needing work.

But the most intriguing from the word-of-mouth standpoint were the comments that told me to buy a Hyundai. I think three or four people spread their affinity for the other Korean automaker. And there were also shout-outs for Toyota and Mazda, as well as one to buy American.

Since I’m not Facebook friends with Kia, or any Kia representatives, Kia did not have a say in the conversation.

But if I had sent the update to my Twitter followers instead of my Facebook friends, Kia could have had a chance to win me over.

Why? There’s two big reasons:

• Twitter is searchable: Want to find out who is talking about you or your brand on Twitter? Use Twitter’s search function and Tweets about whatever you want to find will show up most recent first. In the Kia case, someone in marketing could have followed me and let me know about dealer incentives, or quelled any of the anecdotes about its older models.


• Facebook can be private: Even of you as a marketer were going to search “Kia” on Facebook, you’re going to come up with people who have the letters “kia” in their name first, and then groups for fans of the automaker. Even if you find out who owns or is a fan of Kia that way, that person’s Facebook profile may not be public. The marketer would have to become that person’s friend to find out if he or she is using status updates to spread good or bad news.

So as a merchant, what do you do? You have to monitor Twitter just as you would the blogosphere. If you have an employee keeping an eye out on what people are saying in cyberspace, make sure Twitter is a part of that activity.