If you're still doubting the use of or need for Twitter, this is the post for you. I'm constantly amazed at what a powerful personal and professional network it is for me. When it's working (which has been sporadic of late), it can transform the way you think about relationships.
Let me give you a real-life example.
Earlier this week, I headed down to New York to see a client. I usually do day trips on the Acela, but this time, I had an evening commitment and I needed to be in Washington, DC the following day. So the day before, I went online to find a hotel room in the city - which is usually not a problem, especially with the last-minute travel sites.
Only this time, it was different. No rooms in the city were to be had for under $800. I could stay at a hotel near the airport, but my commitments required me to be other places in the city, so it would be a logistical nightmare (and expensive) to stay near the airport. What to do? I turned to Twitter, of course.
Many people in my network were willing to help - I received replies directly on Twitter and private direct messages. Suggestions ranged from specific hotels they knew to areas of the city to consider, all the way to someone who pulled up a specific price quote on a room for me. The problem was, all of these places were sold out.
As I was waiting, I tweeted:
Well, I learned never to underestimate the power of the crowd. Tim Peter (@tcpeter) came forward to say:
Turns out he is working with a group that does luxury reservations and this was their impetus to start a Twitter account (@luxres). I received a tweet from them asking how they could help, and within the next 15 minutes, they got me a reservation at the Mansfield, a boutique hotel in midtown Manhattan. Perfect! While the price was a little more than I wanted to spend, it was nowhere near the gouging for some of the rooms I had seen.
Thanks to a well-connected and attentive community, I was able to keep myself off of a Central Park bench for the night. It just goes to show, that if you take them time to invest in relationships and being a valued member of a community, it can work in your favor when you need it.
Special thanks to (a bunch of people you should be following on Twitter): @tcpeter, @luxres, @chelpixie, @SavvyAuntie, @DonnaPapacosta, @Spangles, @joec0914, @adamcohen, @stevemann, and @ParentopiaDevra.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Twitter Does It Again
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Using New Media to Respond to Customer Feedback
Here's a video that captures the essence of why companies should be thinking about social media with regard to customer issues. And it's from no less an old media bastion than the Wall Street Journal.
Interestingly, they advocate for blogging to come from all levels of the organization, citing the oft-quoted fact that people like to hear "from people like them." So, it's not just for the CEO to blog anymore. And it doesn't just end with customer relations, it's also can help with employee relations.
For the full scoop, click on the video:
Via Shel Holtz.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Corporate Blogging - How the Pros Do It
Has this ever happened to you? When you're at a conference that offers many tracks, all of the really interesting sessions are at the same time. It happened a number of times to me during SXSW. Only I typically missed all of them, due to making personal connections and discussing topics of mutual interest with colleagues in the hallway.
The good news is that on my final day, I didn't have to make that decision. The first session of the morning was one that I was really looking forward to. Called "The Future of Corporate Blogging," it was a panel discussion between Lionel Menchaca, Mario Sundar and Kami Huyse, moderated by Mack Collier.
There's no question that this was a worthwhile session - with two living case studies of corporate blogs that really work, rich examples of how to do things well, and some of the very individuals who made it happen. Add in a consultant's view of measurement and tools, and an insightful moderator who operates in this field, and you've got a great mix. So, on with the summary!
An introduction from the experts
Lionel is the Chief Blogger at Dell's blog Direct2Dell and Mario is the Community Evangelist at LinkedIn - and these are two great examples of corporate blogs. Both were founded in response to a particular problem that needed to be solved; the prevailing thinking was not "we need a blog." Note that. The blogs were part of an overall communications strategy; blogging itself is not a strategy.
Kami is the principal at My PR Pro and is widely respected in the field of communications measurement. She rightly observed that if you want to figure out where to connect with your customers, you need to know something about them: namely how they communicate. How and where are they most likely engage with you? Do they use Facebook? Are they on Twitter? Do they read blogs? You should also find out what they need. When you meet needs in the place they're most likely to be, you'll find a wealth of engagement. Then you can decide what to measure.
A quick word about measurement
It seems like the holy grail of social media marketing is around measurement & metrics. I think it keeps coming up because there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Invariably, at the beginning of every campaign or project, you should be asking yourself "What would we consider a success?"
The panelists offered the following suggestions as a rough set of guidelines of measuring your blog or establishing a set of social media metrics for your efforts:
Kami actually put together a number of links on her del.icio.us page for reference:
http://del.icio.us/kamichat/sxsw2008
You've got a blog. So what?
Mack raised an excellent point: customers probably don't care that you have a blog. How do you make it relevant?
Dell makes it relevant by adhering to a social media framework:
Listening, analyzing, taking action. The first thing Dell realized is that there were lots of conversations going on about Dell on the Web. In fact, when the corporate blog started, about 50% of the comments that came in were negative. But, thanks to their openness and action, now 80% of the comments are positive.
Lionel noted that taking action is the most important step, and Dell has addressed this in a couple of ways. First, they've empowered every employee to apologize. Think about it. A huge corporate behemoth has stepped away from its usual scripted customer "service" language and allowed the company to become human for it a bit. That's a huge step right there.
Next, Dell established a way for customers to share product development ideas through IdeaStorm. A core team looks at new ideas that come in, assesses them, and then figures out a way to incorporate those into the business. Dell has received about 9,000 ideas from the community, with over 600,000 comments. An example of one idea is getting Dell to integrate Linux. To show you how effective it was, Dell put out a survey and in 8.5 days received 100,000 responses from customers. Now customers are aware that they can influence product development at Dell and it's resulted in the development of a community of loyalists.
LinkedIn wanted to help users better understand the site and the technology.
Mario noted that the company's vision was to establish conversations - a "playground of ideas" - on the site. The best way to teach customers how to use the site was to show them how to use the site, through demos. The next best way is to provide them with excellent customer support.
Overall, the panelists agreed that relevance lies in how easy you make it for your customers to interact with you. A surefire way is to create multiple touchpoints that meet the goal of reducing the amount of time between the identification of a problem and a solution. Sometimes you can find answers in unexpected areas. Despite our focus on the new shiny "2.0" things, forums are still a great place to mine for information, feedback and problems.
And in order for social media strategies to take root, the panelists noted, a company's culture needs to change. It's a step-wise process that can take years with layers of tools, technologies, and management that get more complex the longer you're in the game.
But not all is lost, even if you're in the most change-resistant environment. You don't need a fully-formed answer before you respond to concerns you identify by listening. Just be human and reach out - think of it as a conversation, where you add incremental value along the way and learn more about the person, the problem and the processes along the way.
And if there are any doubtful managers or executives in your company, sometimes seeing these conversations helps to dispel the myths/fears around negative comments. It's essential to demonstrate this on an ongoing basis, especially in a large organization, in order to show how direct communication with customers really matters.
New tools
Each of the panelists was asked about which new tools they'd recommend trying out.
Mario recommended trying Twitter as a customer service tool, for monitoring and response. He also had this cool idea: try setting up a livestream (video) as a response to users. He suggested that you use whatever tools you can find that allow you to answer problems or questions in the shortest amount of time.
Kami observed that blogs can be a platform for all of these tools. In some ways, she said that a blog could almost become a home page for the customer, where they're offered a more rich experience. The only caution she noted was that we should be aware that expectations are changing: as you give more, customers will expect more.
And Lionel reminded us that internal collaboration should not be ignored in this process. Piecing all of these activities together within the enterprise is essential, in order to capture all of the value. The best advice for this was "Get it off of email." If you establish a wiki, you'll be able to share more information with everyone within the organization.
Questions
The panel had time for a few questions from the audience.
1. How do you keep your personal brand separate from your corporate brand?
Mario referenced Hugh McLeod's post about the porous membrane - step out of the way and let users speak directly with product development, to keep each separate. That way, you can maintain your own brand and let the people at your company do what they do best.
2. How do you help employees understand the value of & support a corporate blog?
Dell established an internal blog (behind a firewall) at the same time they established Direct2Dell, with the same structure & setup, in order to capture value internally. LinkedIn encourages employees to read and contribute to the corporate blog.
3. What's behind the fear of blogging in the corporate world?
On the surface, there's the fear of getting flamed by negative comments and not knowing what to do. But you know what? It's happening anyway. It's better to capture these conversations and show how you can interact with your customers.
An example is when Dell launched its blog on July 5, 2006. About a week later, Lionel wrote a post about the now famous flaming laptop. He said that within minutes, got calls and visits to his cubicle with questions like, "What the hell are you doing?" He rightly observed that people were talking about it and it was all over the Internet already; he was acknowledging it and joining the conversation. It led to 1.3 million battery recalls, but more importantly, it also led to a documented process for interacting with customers.
As I noted at the beginning of the post, this was a great session and I'm really glad I had a chance to attend. If the conference organizers recorded it, I'll be sure to share that here.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Social Media for B2B Marketing: Don't Monkey Around
As a former classical studies major, I’m fascinated with etymology, the study of linguistics. The word that is the focus of so many marketing books – conversation – has its origins in the Latin word conversari, which means "to dwell, to keep company with." And this is entirely appropriate in the name of social media marketing, since having conversations requires spending time with people – namely, customers.
Too often in B2B marketing, we see the definition of the more personal "customer" devolve into the distant and cold "decision maker." Decision makers are relegated to the sales cycle, engaged in research and in need of information and education. The prevalent attitude seems to be that marketers develop the message and decide which information to share with decision makers. This is command and control, with unidirectional messaging at its core.
Is it any wonder then why B2B companies are slow to adopt social media as a marketing channel?
It's not that B2B customers are steering clear of social media. On the contrary, they use blogs, message boards, podcasts and online communities in their research for business solutions as well as in their personal lives. But B2B marketers don’t seem to be aware of – or worse – care about conversations that are taking place within the social media space about their brands.
Brands are being discussed, both positively and negatively; now marketers can follow the conversations and join in. Ignoring it won’t make the problem dissipate; indeed, businesses that continue to put off the decision to join the conversations will find themselves at a disadvantage.
But – to return to our etymology lesson – marketers need to spend time with their prospects and begin to embrace bidirectional conversation. A simple way to start is to listen. Keep listening. And listen some more. Take the time to explore the sites. Look around. Follow the conversations with RSS feeds.
Above all, resist the temptation to jump in until you understand the context. Businesses that attempt to harness the power of social networks or new media sites without realizing the generally accepted etiquette will find themselves unwelcome. It is only by listening and learning that B2B marketers will be able to start talking with their customers.
Note: this post originally appeared as a chapter in The Age of Conversation.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Social Media Takeaways #3
This is a busy week - coming off of the great Boston Web Community dinner, courtesy of EMC, where I got to see some of my favorite new media folks (Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, John Wall, Sarah Wurrey, Steve Garfield, Dan Schawbel, Peter Kim, Yianni Garcia, Julia Roy) and meet new ones (Jeff Glasson, Christine Perkett, Amanda Gravel). In addition, I'm gearing up for PodCamp Boston 2, where I'll be speaking.
But that doesn't mean there wasn't still a bit of time for a few Social Media Takeaways:
My Apple Is a Lemon
No, this isn't David Armano's way of trying to score some free bling for his blog (like some other people we know). It turns out this is David's 2nd Macbook Pro that's given him inexplicable trouble, so he decided to write about it.
- SMT: Uh-oh. Apple should be concerned. First they fired 800 employees for taking a $100 voucher on their free iPhones, now they've got a prominent blogger who's pissed off. I hope they're listening. But I like what Matt Dickman had to say on twitter: @Armano: I bet Dell responds before Apple does ;-)
It's not a good week to be a customer. Seth Godin and the Ad-Vocate both opine that the customer is not always right and call for certain customers to be fired. I like Seth's rejoinder to the phrase "the customer's always right": when they're wrong, they're not your customer any more.
- SMT: Listen up. Get to know your customers well, through whatever space they inhabit. Find out what they're saying about you and join the conversation if you can. But realize when you'll never convert them and know when to let go.
Fa¢ebook
At this point, Facebook is steering clear of Google and instead opting for the cold hard cash from our friends at Micro$oft - a cool $278 million, to be exact. This amount, a 1.6% stake in Facebook, entitles the software behemoth to be the exclusive U.S. and international advertiser with the social network through 2011.
- SMT: A $15 billion valuation for Facebook? What-ever. If the ad revenue can continue to stream in - and with Facebook's ability to target different demographics, it's an attractive site for advertisers - then perhaps it's not totaly off-base. But with today's fickle youth, I wonder if Facebook isn't going to be old school before 2008 is out. The only hope is continuing to get the more mature generations involved. And I wouldn't rule out additional funding for Facebook from other sources...
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
O Tempora, O Mores
I'm still trying to rub the cobwebs out of my labor-intensive Labor Day weekend, so in the hopes that you're more alert than I am today let me try a little riddle on you.
What's one thing that is ubiquitous, we all have in equal amounts every day - from the tiniest baby to the oldest person, from the dirt poor to the filthy rich - yet we never seem to have enough of it? And pondering the mystery of what it really is St. Augustine said of it: "If no one asks me, I know; but if any person should require me to tell him, I cannot."
Time.
We all have time. Oh you've heard the idioms: time's a-wasting, time is on your side, time's up, time out, time being, take your time, killing time. I could go on, but this isn't Grammar Girl. If you'd like the full list, check this out.
And we've all heard someone (most likely our mothers) say "So-and-so had the same hours in a day that you have" when trying to cajole us into being more productive. While it's easy to dismiss such "motherisms," I think that particular phrase gives us a lot to think about.
At the end of the day (24 hours, to be exact), we all had the same amount of time to create or do or think and change the world just a little bit more. We all had the opportunity to improve the experience of a customer, make someone feel special, measure and report something to a client, or encourage those around us.
Time may be the great equalizer, but it's our persistence, work ethic and imagination that set us apart from each other. It's how we utilize our time that makes all the difference in the world. Time spent with family, at work, solving problems, helping others and generally making the world a better place than we found - whatever we deem worthy and important in our lives - is what makes us productive.
How do you spend your day? Do you impart a unique value or imprint on every interaction you have? In short, do you use your time wisely?
If not, there's always time to improve.
And yes, this entry was a thinly-veiled mea culpa for not writing anything over the past week. Thanks for humoring me.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Take a Deep Breath
I've got to hand it to the folks over at Skype. Just when I thought they were digging their own grave by being slow to respond to a crisis, they managed to do the right thing.
If you aren't familiar with Skype, it's VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol), or simply phone service via the computer. Skype is one of the leaders in the field, typically serving about 8 million customers at a time. They were acquired by eBay in late 2005 for $2.6 billion, which raised quite a few eyebrows at the time.
Last week, Skype experienced a catastrophic and near-complete outage from August 16 to August 18. Many people (myself included) who rely on Skype for a main phone line were stranded, podcasters who were planning on using Skype to record a phone interview were out of luck. And worst of all, it was a good 12 hours or so before Skype communicated anything about the outage to its customers and the public. Let's just say there was some hyperventilating going on.
How did they redeem themselves?
Well, once Skype got the hang of giving updates on the Heartbeat Blog, they did it fairly regularly and were quite forthcoming with details. Every two hours or so, they'd fill us in on the process and answer questions. Let's call it regular breathing.
But people still wanted to know what cause the problem. Finally, on August 20, Skype gave some context around What Happened on August 16. Evidently, there was a significant Windows update on Thursday that caused many Skype users to reboot and login to Skype simultaneously, and it was a drain on the servers.
And then, on August 21, Skype was quick to note that they weren't blaming Microsoft: they explicitly stated "We don’t blame anyone but ourselves." Whew! The lawyers must be breathing a sigh of relief. Then they outline what they learned from the incident and that it will not likely happen again. It's good to know they're now trained in CPR.
Finally, "The people at Skype" sent an email (yes, that's exactly how it was signed) stating their abject apologies for the outage and acknowledging (or groveling?) that they are nothing without their customers. But more than simply trying to flatter their customers, Skype made sure they'd be willing to come back:When the unexpected happens, it's important to remember the people who stuck behind us and whose loyalty humbled us. I want to thank everyone for their support, patience and being part of the Skype community. And for those of you who missed out on using Skype last week - I want to especially thank you as well.
Not bad, not bad at all. It's heartening to see that they did the right thing. It's just too bad it took them so long to get their act together. I'd expect a little more out of an eBay company, wouldn't you?
As a goodwill gesture to all you faithful Skype Pro, Skype Unlimited, SkypeIn or Skype Voicemail customers, we're adding an additional seven days to your current subscription, free of charge. And even if you didn't miss out on using Skype last week - you can still have a week free on Skype, on the house!
Friday, August 17, 2007
iBox
Wow. Talk about high-level customer service. Justine Ezarik, aka iJustine from Tasty Blog Snack, got herself a little surprise when her first iPhone bill arrived earlier this week.
In a box.
Not satisfied with giving you the slowest mobile network out there, evidently the "new" at&t decided that they need to kill a few forests while they're at it. Justine's bill was some 300 pages long, because at&t gives you a detailed transaction of every text message you send.
Here's the rather well-done video spoof of the iPhone commercial.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Want a Free Marketing Secret? Listen Up!
One of the key tenets behind my contribution to the Age of Conversation book is that in order to make a start in social media, marketers must first start by listening. Like so much of marketing, it's not rocket science, it's common sense.
Everyone probably has an older relative who at one time told them something like: "You were born with one mouth and two ears; use them in that proportion." Well, the same applies to marketing. Just think about how you can create brand loyalists by listening to your customers - and demonstrating to them that you heard what they had to say.
When I began reading my co-authors' contributions I began to see the word "listen" crop up a number of times. Since this is the more passive portion of conversing, I wasn't expecting much. Out of sheer curiosity, I took my e-book version (you can buy it as an e-book, paperback or hardcover) and did a quick search for the number of times "listen" was used.
Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found that this book about conversation by 103 authors contains 90 instances of the word.
But really, I shouldn't be surprised. These are 102 other people who get it. Now let's see if we can get the rest of the world to listen in with us.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Second Generation iPhone Is Here
While the iPhone has been hyped by the digerati and blogosphere, recently the actual sales numbers didn't quite live up to expectations. Only 146,000 phones were activated on June 29 & 30.
Of course, this may have had more to do with crappy customer service from AT&T - excuse me, at&t - but it reflects on Apple's poor choice of carrier. But the bottom line is, fewer phones were online than expected.
Why? I think it may have something to do with the tech-savvy folks who are waiting for the second generation of iPhones. They're waiting to see if there are any bugs to be worked out, if Apple adds Flash support, a speedier network, a better battery, etc. Can't say that I blame them. I know a former member of the executive team at Apple and he said the same thing. It's helpful having an inside line on goings-on at Apple.
So, you might be wondering just what the 2nd generation iPhone will be like? I have the answer below...
Friday, June 22, 2007
Help! I'm Being Held Hostage by Marketing
I've made something of a tradition out of my Friday posts on this blog - my Friday Fun Video series. Long weeks, hard work and frayed nerves by the end of the week usually give rise to a little pawky humor that lends itself to Friday posts. But seeing as I've kept you awash in video posts this past week, I'm going to keep away from it today.
But I can promise you that I've got a real winner of a video to share with you next week.
For this week, I'll give you a thought about push marketing as inspired by the famous National Lampoon cover from January 1973 (full disclosure: I used to work just down the street from the Harvard Lampoon. The twisted humor probably rubbed off on me). How often have you felt like you've been held hostage by advertising or marketing?
More recently, this concept was illustrated by a Dilbert strip. Too many marketers, when they've exhausted the traditional lead generation, direct mail and sales-intensive efforts, seem to espouse this mentality:
And I've seen it happen with marketers who, after they've exhausted their lead generation, direct mail and trade show efforts (and budgets!), want to start a social media campaign in order to pick up the slack. Common phrases include:
- "Which social networks should I join / which blogs should I comment on to help sell more product?"
- "I'm going to measure ROI on my [blog/podcast/other social media effort] by measuring sales."
With a social media strategy, your goal should be to become part of the conversation, to allow a community to form as a result of the conversation and the tools that you make available. If you really want to become indispensable in your customers' eyes, you need to understand them, you need to listen to them, you need to let them tell you what they need.
Maybe they'll tell you that you'll have to reconfigure your packaging or develop an improvement to your product or face a major overhaul of your website. Is this a pain? Sure. Is it expensive? Sometimes, but not necessarily, and let me tell you why.
The money you spend on these short term fixes, on listening - yes, actually listening to your customers - and taking action will be one of the smartest investments you could ever make. Think I'm overstating it? If your customers perceive your product to be inferior or the information on your website too confusing, they'll leave you for a competitor who can give them a better product and a more enjoyable Web experience.
The money you spend on making improvements - the very improvements that your customers ask for - will be goodwill that you can't buy any other way. They'll know that their opinion mattered and that a company actually listened to them, rather than forcing them to buy more crap. With a conversation that you've fostered or a community that you've nurtured, you'll have a committed and long-term focus group that will be able to tell you what you need to know.
Now, that's not to say that you should take every last recommendation or spend a huge budget on changes. But you should be open to hearing about your customers' points of view. After all, they're the ones that have to live with your products.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
So You Say You Know Your Audience
When you work on a project or in an industry for a protracted period of time, you find yourself getting comfortable. While there's nothing wrong with comfort - and its related cousin confidence - it's easy to get complacent and to make certain assumptions.
The classic lesson about assumptions - Felix Unger's remonstration "When you assume, you make an ASS of U and ME" - is universally true. But how often do we take it to heart about our audience?
For example, I would make certain assumptions about the demographic of the Internet audience for broadcast media viewers. Namely, I would think they'd be on the younger side - say, in the 24-35 range mostly. I was pleasantly surprised then, to read a recent Research Brief from the Center for Media Research that told a much different story.
Notably, if you add up the figures of those 45 years of age or older, it makes up 73.58% of the audience. That's right - nearly three-fourths of those who consume network offerings online are over the age of 45.
Was it surprising to you? I didn't see it coming.
