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Kim Townend

Social Media Consultant & Digital Strategist

The Blog

What to do when a client won’t pay an overdue invoice!

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Late last year, I was approached by a local business, recently opened in the area, to help them build their social presence and hopefully their customer base.

I was really keen to get involved as I feel it’s important to support the area I live in, and it’s always great to see new ventures opening up near to me.

Long story short, I met with them and outlined a plan I also agreed to both their payment terms and a reduced rate (which were different than my own, but I was trying to be supportive of their endeavour in any way that I could.)  

I began work for them by creating a strategy, agreeing a direction and ways of working and right from the get-go they weren’t delivering on what we’d agreed. (Not giving me the content promised/rescheduling meetings at the last minute) but I just put this down to the upcoming holidays/general client inefficiency.

A couple of weeks before Christmas (I’d been working for them for the better part of a month now) I invoiced for the first half of the agreed amount. They had asked me to do this in our initial meeting – this was on their timescale. Invoice terms had been set at 7 days.

7 days came and went, and I was assured that the payment would be made soon. I didn’t worry too much about this as it was the holidays, I was just mildly annoyed until the client stopped responding to my emails or texts.

In early January I eventually got the details of their financial controller who emailed me back a few days later saying that unfortunately he didn’t have a payment date as of yet. No explanation as to why or when he might. Literally a one-liner.

This was what really annoyed me as it showed such a massive lack of respect. I continued to chase for payment, but to no avail.

In frustration (and not naming any names) I tweeted about overdue invoices, and a company called Safe Collections responded to me.

Now, I’ve never used a debt collection service because I haven’t had to. I’ve had overdue invoices before, sure, but they’ve always kept me posted as to what was going on and when I could expect payment.

I was at the end of my tether with this client so I contacted Safe Collections and they were super helpful right from the start. They take on the job of dealing with the client for you (very persistently) until they settle the account.  I just had to give them the client details and fwd them any relevant correspondence about payment.

It took the guys at Safe Collections just over 3 weeks to get my invoice paid, they updated me at every step and just took the hassle out of dealing with my worst ever client. It was worth every single penny of the teeny amount they charged for their services.

No-one asked me to write this post, but I thought it might be helpful for other freelancers/ small business owners to know that there are people who can help resolve situations like this.

I find it irksome that given the way that business works, if you complain publicly about not being paid or treated very well, it’s you who is seen as unprofessional, while the client continues as usual and you’re put in a situation that makes you feel (somewhat) helpless.

If you’re ever unlucky enough to experience this, just be aware there are things you can do while still retaining your professional integrity.

So, we’ve all finally agreed that Facebook is primarily a paid channel, what next?

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Some called it at the beginning of the year, and with each new announcement from Facebook in 2014 it became more and more apparent that the days of free product advertising were done.

OH NO!

What are we going to do?

I think that we’re missing the point a little bit here. The thing is, social media was never supposed to be about traditional marketing. Remember when it was just starting and it seemed infinite with possible uses? Guess what? It still is.

There are 2 things that I want to remind everyone of before we all start freaking out about the end of social;

1. Facebook is not the be all and end all of social media.

It’s no secret that I’ve never been a massive fan of Facebook, the audiences I have managed on there have always felt like just that, rather than communities. There are other platforms, many more appropriate to the people that you’re trying to reach. Facebook is full of horrible, badly made content right now and something needs to be done to address that. Remember forums and using Twitter like a human being? There are loads of other places you can be to engage with people who like what you’re doing.

2. Social Media was never supposed to be about just marketing anyway. Content is supposed to be interesting to the people who are seeing it. There’s only so many “competitions” and artfully placed photos of your product that people can see and still find entertaining. What’s really happening here is that brands who haven’t really thought about what their social strategy is besides ‘um, reach?’ are in trouble.

As I’ve said before, social isn’t just for marketing, and your 2015 strategy should reflect that, or you’re going to be spending an awful lot of money on showing product pictures to people who aren’t very interested.

Social customer service is still woefully bad in most cases, and yet this is what changes brand opinion the most. This blog post posits that good social customer service allows you to be active in the social space.

Given all of this, you would imagine customer service would be at the centre of most social strategies. But it’s still not. If you want to win at social in 2015 I’d advise getting your product people, your marketing people and your customer service people in the same room and building a strategy out from there.

Good social customer service alongside finding a compelling way to talk about your brand will always be a good foundation.

This wasn’t supposed to be a rant, more a call to arms to remember why we got into this business in the first place.

I’m looking at this as a way to be more creative and hopefully use 2015 to do some of my best work yet.

Social Media isn’t just for marketing

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In my line of work I’m often called upon to write social media strategy for brands and that’s good, I like helping people figure out how to build communities based around their offerings. Oftentimes it’s the marketing department that contact me. Again, as is to be expected as social media was primarily touted as a marketing channel. But here’s the thing.

It’s not.

I mean, it is, in that it’s great for marketing. BUT social media is also excellent for customer services, for product feedback, for sales leads and a myriad of other things.

A few years back, before social came of age, there was a big question about who “owned” social – the marketing dept or the PR folks.

I think it’s time for us to revisit this question, but instead of asking who ‘owns’ social, come up with a cohesive way of all departments working together to get the most out of social, and to ensure they’re providing a worthwhile service to their users/community/customers.

According to SproutSocial, 5 out of 6 messages to brands go unanswered. Now I can understand that not all of these questions are answerable customer enquiries, my time managing @GOVUK taught me that, but I’m reasonably sure more than 1 out of 6 is a question that can be answered.

Not dealing with your customer’s enquiries is hugely detrimental to your online presence, it doesn’t matter how good your marketing strategy is if the basics aren’t being taken care of.

So before you talk to an agency or a freelancer about helping you out with social, talk to the rest of your departments and get them involved. It’ll make them feel involved, it’ll make your job easier, and it certainly makes your customers happier.

This isn’t a new idea, but I thought it was worth repeating.