Tag Archives: social media
Social Media is Easy*
*But that doesn’t mean that you know how to do it. It doesn’t mean that just because the barriers of entry are so low in social media that you know what you’re doing.
What Happens When the Mega Personal Brand Leaves the Company?
This past week something occurred that seems to have slipped by people rather quietly. Frank Eliason is leaving or has left Comcast. For those of you that have been dialed into social media for awhile, this is significant for a number of reasons and you’ll know why.
The biggest reason is that we, the social media community lose our poster child/case study of how one person with one tool/platform can transform how a company operates in the social media spectrum of customer service. Can some of you even count the number of times you might have used ComcastCares as one of your social media “examples” 2 years ago.
If you don’t know who @Comcastcares is or was, it was merely one of the first large companies/individuals to take Twitter and use it as a direct bridge or line of communication into Comcast customer service for real time/any time help of customer service issues.
When social media case studies were few and far between, Frank’s work at Comcast was our shining example of Twitter and customer service. We name dropped Comcast along with Zappos and Starbucks and Jetblue. So much so that Frank’s personal brand grew, and grew and grew. Not because he was promoting himself, merely this was just the effect of his social media success. @Comcastcares was as much Frank as it was Comcast. They were synonymous with each other-interchangeable if you will.
Which lead to an interesting conundrum as well as the second reason why Frank’s leaving is significant. It’s something in which a lot of us in the social media community had often talked about, tweeted about, written about and speculated about, and that’s this:
What happens when the personal brand behind a company becomes larger than the company because of social media? What does the company do? One of the other questions we threw around early and often as well was, What if that personal brand leaves the company, what happens then?
Well guess what? It’s finally happened. Frank, little did you know but you may be creating another case study for all of us. Good luck, and thanks for setting the table, taking chances, and leading the way for a lot of companies and people that will have no idea that you might be reason they are using Twitter for customer service. 🙂
Should Your Social Networks Mingle?
A lot of the apps and web services that come across the desk lately have to do with consolidation and aggregation. In fact, back in April there was a pretty good post in Social Media Today on 7 social media aggregation tools that you should use that caught my eye. I went through the list and I was familiar with 4 of them. But there’s a larger point I want to make here.
Actually 2 points.
Point #1. I’m going to use Yoono as my first example. Yoono connects you to your social networks and messengers. It unifies your status updates into a single stream of information and lets you update your status across all your social networks at once. Social media sites that are currently supported include, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Flickr. Messenger services are available through Google Talk, AIM, Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.
But what if each network has specific audiences? i.e. Facebook is family and friends. Twitter is your peer network. Linkedin is a business networking network and Live Messenger is say for your customers or something like that. My networks are somewhat broken out like that. I don’t want them to overlap. I don’t want my Facebook friends to receive my Twitter updates. I don’t want to pollute, so to speak, my otherwise “clean” Linkedin network with my Twitter updates. Occasionally I add the #li hashtag to a tweet, but otherwise I keep them separate.
You might be asking why I keep them autonomous but my simplest of reasons is that my networks are not all “business” related and conversely not all are intimate and or personal. Consider it strategic but it works for me. Different networks, different messages.
Point #2. There’s an assumption that we need consolidation and aggregation. I would say yes and no. I definitely think that having universal logins is heading in the right direction but there is one issue that I have with that. Profiles matter but they almost have to be a bit different for each network. People sometimes need to push out a different yet more effective profile per each network. Linkedin vs. Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Myspace. Different niches, different networks, different profiles.
Consolidation yes aggregation maybe.
More and more we are becoming members of more networks. That won’t be changing. I’m not sure there is an answer for posting updates that populate across all networks in which your networks understand the meaning. I may be looking at this too hard from a business standpoint and that’s OK. But the bigger picture is that consolidating our social networking effort is what we all want because we’re all hell bent on laziness or efficiency-take your pick. It’s just that aggregating or mingling them with any type of contextual adaptive effectiveness might be trickier.
The top 10 social sites, links and posts you might have missed this week!
I haven’t done one of these posts in awhile but let’s get right to it.
1. Paul Chaney shot this out today; Deliver your content to the social web with dlvr.it
2. I loved this post 7 reasons social media agencies are like advertising agencies; 8 reasons they’re not by Rob Petersen
3. If you’ve been living in a digital cave then chances are you’ve been missing an amazing social media marketing awareness campaign being done by Old Spice this week.
4. Watch this interview with Charlene Li and Clay Shirky with Andrew Keen on connectivity. Fantastic insight.
5. As video looms larger and larger, you need to understand the proper mechanics of optimizing your video content for SEO.
6. Read this interesting piece on how social media marketers rig the social media machine.
7. Instant messaging anywhere with Beejive
8. You need a QR code.
9. IM, Email and social networks in one easy to use app! It’s Digsby.
10. Check out MediaFunnel. Coordinate and manage your social media presence.
* From Tom Martin we have TweetyMail which seems really really cool!
5 Blogs I Like to Read
I struggle to write good content. I’m sure if you write a blog you probably have the same problem as well at certain times. I want to write stuff that you would want to read, but it’s tough. It starts with a compelling title and then goes from there. I used to be able to write every day but that was when the social media space, which I wrote about heavily back in the day, was not as crowded and everything was new and shiny and so experimental.
I probably don’t blog as much because I also see a lot of the same content regurgitated as well. But that’s OK, because what’s old to me might be new to others.
I still think there’s a lot to learn in the space though-It’s just that I’m not sure if I can provide that information for you when there are so many really smart people writing different, fresh, wonderful content. There are lots of new perspectives and fresh ideas-just maybe not from me. With that being said, here are five blogs I read that you might not that still maintain some amount of contiguous freshness to them. I read a lot more than just these 5-but this is as good a start as any.
Being Peter Kim I know, most of you probably know who Peter is, but he’s not a me-me person and pulls no punches with his writing style-It might be why I like his blog and it might be why you will too.
I am a big believer in the intersection of search and social and you should be as well. I also pay a lot of attention to the e-commerce space. One site that I like because of the depth of each post as it pertains to the above mentioned topics, is Get Elastic
Tamar Weinberg is smart, she just doesn’t go around telling people that she is. I like the variety of what she writes about, I like the fact that she covers the digital space completely and I like her writing style.
I generally don’t have oodles of time to read long drawn out blog posts. Do you? I do like and want digital, relevant, consistent content in snackable bits though. You’ll like Viralblog
Want someone who gives it to you straight? I always do. Not only is there something about what Amber Naslund writes that has always grabs me but she actually is one of the few that really really gets what social is…
What I look for in a good blog nowadays may fly in the face of conventional wisdom but I look for personality in the writing and not necessarily in the title-but the title is what grabs the eyeballs. What we really should be looking for though is compelling content, variety and personality. I hope this helps make that process a little easier for you.
If You Could Use Only One Social Media Solution, Which Would It Be?
Given that most of us claim to be too busy to do anything anymore-and it is somewhat true. Traipsing in and bellowing to anyone who will listen, that the tranformative nature of social media will change the way you do business for the better, is a lofty claim.
Let’s do a hypothetical. What if you could only use one “social solution”? Which would you use? and why would you use it? Let’s say you’re a consultant, which social media solution would you suggest and why? Which one is going to have the largest impact on your company? On your business? For your client? What if you’re boss said, “Pick one”, and given that that’s a minor miracle he said that-which will give you the firm footing to do more later on down the line? The most impact? Results?
This is kind of important for a number of reasons-not the least of being that some solutions are just not a good fit for some types of organizations. The reasons could be limited resources, limited time, money or whatever-but you just don’t go and jam a generic social solution into every company just because they want one. You’re going to set yourself up to fail if you do that.
Just because a company can set up a Facebook fan page for example- does that mean that it will give them the biggest bang for their efforts? Maybe, maybe not. What is going to give them the biggest return, the biggest impact? You can only choose one.
Let’s short list 11 high level social media solutions and tools right now.
- YouTube
- A Ning Like community or Forum solution
- A Blog
- Social Bookmarking
- Flickr
- Podcasting
- Wiki
- Social Monitoring
Each of the above have specific bells and whistles that allow you to do certain things. Remind me again, what’s the goal of social media? To have conversations? To sell stuff? To grow the business? To enrich Customer service? HR? Competitive intelligence? PR? Collaboration? Which one could do all of those? I got a better idea. Maybe you should just concentrate on one specific social “thing” that will make your organization better?
Ahhhh haaaaa… That’s it! Which one can do one thing that can make your organization better at what they do? You don’t need to try or “do” every social media solution to be successful. Just one-Doing one thing really, really well, will work.
What’s the ROI of your phone?
I had to embed this. Partly because I didn’t feel like writing today but also because this is just a really good thought provoking video.
An Open Letter to a New Social Media Consultant
Below is an email response I gave to someone I did not know who is determined to reinvent themselves and reposition their very talented skills in the social media arena.
Dear _____, you’re right, most companies don’t understand what it takes to be engaging, and most don’t have the right staff deployed, and some are not sufficiently funded to create engaging content-but they’re getting better.
And it is a never ending battle to get all the right departments involved and on the same page to really interact with people in a total 360 degree process.
Yes, you’re right, I am an evangelist trying to change this situation, but I am nowhere close though to being an expert, no one is; But I do try to come up with social media based creative, promotional/engagement ideas that are tailored to the client which work to begin the transition into social media- that’s a big part of what I do. I love it. Soup to nuts if you will, from strategy to implementation and all points in between. But I would say 50% of the battle is education on the front end, with a concerted effort on the back end to get them comfortable enough internally to be social externally without me, in the long run.
The great thing about social is that we can suggest specific ways that they can use social media to amplify what they are doing, that might be of interest to people who are not brand enthusiasts- and we can tailor platforms and tools to meet the needs of staff and customers. But in the end- what really determines success is not what I preach and instruct them to do-it’s a concerted effort to “do” it on their own. They need to own social. Not me. I already own what I do, because I have a belief in it’s transformative capabilities. Passion? you bet.
As I have said in the past. “I can teach you how to use social tools and social platforms, but I can’t teach you how to be social. That’s not my job.
I applaud you for reaching out to me because it sounds like you may be starting to drink the Koolaid- but it is a process in which a lot of people try to hopscotch the conversation and go right for the sale. Don’t do that. Be real. Be transparent. Be authentic.
But before you can start selling yourself as a social media consultant. You have to use the tools yourself, utilize the platforms and take some companies from point “A” and back again. Fail some. win some. and try some different things.
It sounds and looks like you have the background-but now you have to apply that to the new media world.
The easiest way to start, would be to grasp something like Tumblr.com and or Posterous or even WP, and start to share your thoughts, ideas, wisdom and experience with others. Join a community like you did with SM2day, comment on blogs and start to build up some new media credibility.
The good news about social media is that it is ever evolving and the diverse backgrounds of some really successful people who are doing some great things for companies of all shapes and sizes is expanding daily, so there is plenty of room for you on this train. Just don’t give up easily. It takes time.
Look forward to talking with you when you come to Naples
Marc
The customer experience slips through the cracks for Regal Entertainment Group
Yet another cautionary tale.
Crisis management, contingency planning, reputation management, leadership, why are these so hard? why are they so hard to grasp, to fathom and to implement? Maybe there is a perception that because they don’t figure into the day to day operations of organizations large and small that they’re not that important. Or are they?
It’s funny though, just when they’re needed most, you can’t find them; and it’s right then that everyone seems to ask-“What do you mean we don’t have policies, plans and procedures in place for “…
We talk all the time about the need to have social media crisis management tools, procedures and policies in place for good reason. Why? They work. They help. The mine field is littered with companies that have not done a good job in this area. The most recent is obviously BP Oil.
Why are crisis management policies and plans needed? Because customers, consumers are empowered now. When customers and people are upset and have been wronged, they can take to social networks and the power of viral socialness and vent and complain and create momentum to make a difference and affect change.
Companies need to be prepared for this-even if it never happens. Because you never know when things will fail and when someone might complain. You never know when groups, large groups, will take to social networks, large social networks and complain about your company. Why wait?
It’s why you monitor. It’s why you listen. It’s why you have these policies/plans in place.
Here’s a mini situation. Two days ago another opportunity to get it right fell by the wayside. This one though isn’t neccessarily social media related, yet the difference now is whereas before there might not have been a way or platform to complain there now is. So it does have social media undertones.
I decided to take my son to see Toy Story 3. There was a huge storm sitting on top of Naples, Florida, so a movie seemed like a great idea. The Regal Entertainment Group operates the largest and most geographically diverse theatre circuit in the United States, consisting of 6,745 screens in 546 theatres in 38 states. So they are a large outfit.
Yet it would appear that they have no customer service contingency plan in place for when their systems “go down” to complete transactions. Their contingency if you will, is to take cash, which systemically eliminates the huge section of their customers that came armed with a debit or credit card only
So here’s how it went down.
3 windows all open and yet all were saying they could take cash only because their systems were down. Wait, no this one says it can… We went from one window to the next to the next. And yet one window was able to take debit or credit cards? Wouldn’t all windows be on the same system? The information seemed to be inconsistent. No messaging to let people know of the current situation. No one out front, no signage, no manager, nothing.
We were able to get in, but I was already thinking about the disconnect in “managing” a customer service situation that seemed to be getting uglier by the minute.
Next up, popcorn and snacks. My assumption? I used the debit card out front, so the system must be back up and on line. Long line later, I order, present my card and am told that the system is down and they can only take cash. Are you serious? I tell them I just used it out front. They say they are told that the system is down. I tell them to try it. They say, like robots, that they are only to take cash. You mean you’re told only to take cash? Yes. You can’t even try and swipe the card? No. I just waited in line for 15 minutes. Sorry.
I look behind me and the line is swelling. I look to my left and it’s like this exact conversation is happening across the board. Where’s the manager, where’s the signage, where’s the “make it right act”? Rainchecks? free popcorn? Something?
I resolve to blog about it because I don’t have time to talk to the manager who I do spot trying to handle several large groups of irate people. I wonder what would have happened if I had tweeted about it? What would have happened if they had been proactive? I probably would have blogged about that as well.
But now a not so favorable customer experience will now end up online thanks to the intersection of search and social media…Oh well.
Direct Marketing Observations 