The book takes an approach that is very similar to his first book (Likeable Social Media) in that it uses a compilation of personal stories and real examples, rather than research, to convey his points. Likeable Business is a very straightforward and light read, just like the first book was.

There are 11 principles that the author believes makes business leaders more likeable and makes their organization better and more customer-centric. In this review, selected principles are covered in more detail than others while a brief summary will be shown for the remaining ones. Grab your copy if you are interested in reading in detail all the principles, along with great, insightful stories, and personal experiences about each.

Listening

The author talks about Netflix and how listening helped the company regain its customers. In the summer of 2011, Netflix began a price hike for all their services and that they would split their business into a DVD rentals (through a new site called Qwikster) and a separate streaming service business.  Customers were extremely unsatisfied and expressed their thoughts on Facebook and Twitter. Shortly after, Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings stated on a short blog: ‘It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password…In other words, no Qwister. While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.’ His decision to listen to his customers helped Netflix reduce the risk of losing more customers. After losing 800,000 customers after the original announcement, Netflix gained a net 610,000 customers in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Storytelling

Do your customers know the story of how you began? The author tells the story of a 19-year-old college kid named Brian Scudamore and coming up with the idea for what was then called ‘Rubbish Boys’ a customer-based junk removal service that traveled around Vancouver removing unwanted items from people’s homes. In 1999 the company changed names to 1800-GOT-JUNK? Within 5 years what had started as a $700 investment turned into a booming business with locations in most major metropolises across North America.

Brian uses storytelling as a tool to promote teamwork and grow his business because ‘When people understand who you are and where you come from, they’re more likely to rally around your cause’

Authenticity

Great leaders are who they say they are. Vulnerability and humility are hallmarks of the authentic leader and create a positive attractive energy.

Transparency

Openness and honesty lead to happier staff and customers – and a happier you. Take the curtains down between you and the customer because when you lie, you lose. Take for example the case of the BP oil spill where internally, BP said the spill could reach 100,000 barrels per day but when it handed the documents to Congress, the company claimed that the number was 5,000 barrels a day. As a result of the deceit, BP lost over $25 billion in market value due to falling stock.

Team Playing

No matter how small your organization, you interact with others every day. Letting other shine encourages innovative ideas.

Responsiveness

Today’s leaders are responsive to their customers, staff, investors and prospects. Responding shows you care.

Adaptability

Leaders must be flexible in managing changing opportunities. Humility and willingness to adapt mark a great leader.

Passion

Those who love what they do don’t have to work a day in their lives. Passion is contagious. It will affect your bottom line.

Surprise and Delight

Most people like surprise. This section explores many ways to surprise without spending extra money.

Simplicity

The world is more complex than ever before and yet what customers often respond to best is simplicity – in design, form and function. We humans all crave for simplicity. A likeable leader or business must be focused and deliver simplicity.

Gratefulness

An interesting concept, the ROI of gratitude is discussed in this section. The author tells the story of Charles Best, the founder and CEO of Donors Choose, an online nonprofit organization that makes it easy for donors to give classrooms in need. Charles conducted an experiment to demonstrate the ROI (return on investment) of gratitude. The experiment consisted of hand-writing thank you notes to about half of their recent first-time donors. The results were positive and they showed direct correlation between the act of being thanked and the likelihood of giving again. In fact, those who were personally thanked were 38 percent more likely to give another donation, proving an actual ROI on gratitude.

The Last Word

This book is great for those interested in reading about success and failure stories revolving around running businesses, from small to large. Some may even find it inspiring since there is a significant focus on entrepreneurs who have been widely successful by either practicing all or some of the principles discussed in this book.

Surprisingly, Rio Hotel didn’t tweet ‘Come on over, we have no line’; instead, they tweeted: ‘Sorry about the bad experience, Dave. Hope the rest of your stay in Vegas goes well’. And indeed, Rio Hotel was the hotel he stayed at the next time he went to Las Vegas. Essentially, Rio Hotel earned a $600 sale from one tweet. The introduction finishes off with 3 things that social media can and can’t do for you: 1. It cannot make up for a bad product or organization; 2. It won’t lead your company to overnight sales success; and 3. It is not free as it is generally regarded—it takes a great amount of time and effort.

The book then continues with 18 chapters, a conclusion and an appendix. Each one of the chapters describes a different strategy that will help you ‘utilize social media to become more transparent, responsive, engaging, and profitable’.

A quick glance at selected chapters

Chapter 1 – Listen first and never stop listening. IBM’s Listening for Leads social media campaign where people called ‘seekers’ listen and look at conversations from users of social media sites helped uncover millions of dollars worth of sales leads.

Chapter 3 – Think and act like your customer. How many of you listen to and enjoy radio commercials? Think about what you feel when you receive or experience some of these advertising and marketing tools: direct mail, flyers handed to you on the street, emails in your inbox from marketing lists you don’t remember signing up for or telemarketing. Do not interrupt your consumer; put yourself in the consumer’s receiving end. Be likeable, not disruptive.

Chapter 6 – Respond quickly to all the bad comments. DND or do-not-delete rule refers to the rule that unless a comment is obscene, profane, bigoted, or contains someone’s personal and private information, never delete it from a social network. Companies that delete negative comments about their brands through social networks will disappoint the affected users, who will react by giving negative word-of-mouth to their friends about your brand. Due to the nature of social networks, this can have a devastating impact on your brand’s reputation, especially if the affected customer is a celebrity or a high-profile individual. To put it in perspective, Facebook users have 130 friends on average. One status update with a negative comment about a company will be seen by some of those 130 friends–if not all. But each one of those friends will also has on average another 130 friends. Think about the impact. Now imagine if it is a high profile individual with a few thousand friends.

Chapter 8 – Be authentic. Develop an authentic voice by showing humanity in your interactions with your customers, instead of sounding scripted. Models, processes and scripts will not help you connect with your consumer. Demonstrate a personality and truly seek to understand your customer. Chapter 18 – Don’t sell! Just make it easy and compelling for customers to buy. If you engage your prospects online, have a great product or service targeted toward the right people, and make it painless and compelling to buy whatever you’re offering, then you don’t really have to do any selling at all. The sales will come.

Also interesting

Throughout the book, the author talks about some Facebook features, in particular their ad platform. He emphasizes its power, reach and simplicity in targeting very specific audiences. That is, companies or brands looking to advertise on Facebook can target their ads to very specific people who have certain interests, job titles, relationship statuses, age ranges/demographics and even lets you target friends and connections of your current fans.

The book’s appendix is A refresher guide to social networks that matter most. It goes through the different uses of social networks. It focuses on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, foursquare, YouTube and their main features and what it can do to help build your brand.

What’s likeable about ‘likeable social media’ by Dave Kerpen?

‘likeable social media’ is a light yet great and interesting read for those interested in marketing, social media and how to best use them to attract customers and make them genuinely love your company and brand.

There is at least one example (generally more) to illustrate each one of the 18 strategies discussed in the book. The examples come from either personal experience from the author, experience through the author’s customers and their social media campaigns and from other high profile social media initiatives by other companies and brands. The examples sometimes include Facebook screenshots of particular comments or responses made on companies’ fan pages that were either good or bad, successful or failures, depending on the topic explained and it clearly illustrates the idea the chapter is trying to get across.

I believe that the tips or strategies written in this book not only apply to marketing and businesses or brands, but also to personal life. If you are looking not only to be a likeable brand and to boost your company’s image or brand through social media, but also for a self-help book on how to be a generally ‘likeable’ individual, I recommend this book. This is a good read for anyone involved in marketing, social media campaigns and public relations–although each of us is, in some way our own marketer, social media manager and PR spokesperson.