Seth Godin is a constant source of inspiration. I know I'm not alone in thinking that. He has just written a new book called "Poke the Box" which doesn't surprise me because Seth writes a lot of books. But this one sounds interesting on many levels. He has decided to try to re-construct the publishing paradigm by doing it himself in conjunction with Amazon and by packaging the book in a way that encourages you to give a copy to others. It is always great to hear or watch Seth speak and I just watched a recent video interview with him that I highly recommend you check out. Yes you'll hear him talk about the book, but keep watching because he'll really make you think about your "job" and your place in the world. Check it out.
Every now and then I get asked about what to do if a brand's fans and customers get angry and start using Facebook to vent. Crisis management in social media takes some concentration. No, things don't just blow over. Nor should you necessarily want that to happen. You could lose a lot of customers very quickly. Today Social Media Examiner posted a really good and concise roadmap with how to deal with a Facebook crisis. I've reposted it here and definitely check them out if you haven't before; SME is one of the best resources for small, medium, and large businesses looking for social media marketing advice.
What do you do when you’ve just received a less-than-complimentary Facebook wall post from someone who likes your business (or used to, so it seems)?
The customer could have a simple complaint, or be so upset he’s gone on the offensive, making sure you and the rest of your community knows he’s angry.
Your next steps are key to retaining not only the business of the angry customer, but the business of other fans who like your page as well.
#1: Respond no matter what
It’s vitally important that the complaints and issues your fans pose on your wall are addressed. Inactivity on your part will appear as though you’re trying to ignore the issue and sweep it under the rug. Being unresponsive does nothing more than incite more anger and increase the chance the user will come back with even more angry wall posts.
Moreover, your community can see that angry post. If you don’t reply, it appears as though you are unconcerned with customer support, which can be detrimental to your reputation.
A response that illustrates respect and understanding for customers’ concerns will indicate your intention to rectify any problems. By addressing this upset fan, Newegg is demonstrating that they value their fans’ opinions—even the negative ones.
An upset fan who promises to shop Newegg less frequently still receives prompt, respectful customer service.
#2: Be patient and understanding
In dealing with upset fans, you must remember that you are closer to your industry, products and services than they are. What may seem like basic, common knowledge to you is often foreign to the end user.
Take a step back and put yourself in your customer’s shoes. This can go a long way in understanding why he or she is frustrated. It may not be your company’s fault that the customer is upset.
Whether or not the fault lies on your end, a simple apology will go a long way in keeping the customer’s business. Instead of trying to figure out where the blame lies, turn upset fans into loyal customers by making their experience better.
#3: Contact the Customer Privately
Sending a private message or email to the customer opens up more options for you to address his or her complaints. The goal here is to extend some sort of token letting the customer know you’re sorry he or she is dissatisfied with your company, and you’re willing to make it right. Whether that’s offering the number of the manager’s direct phone line or a discount off the next purchase, moving the conversation from public to private allows you to give the customer a personal touch that signals you care.
However, offering things like direct lines and special discounts publicly can lead to other people creating problems just to get that special treatment, so it’s best to keep these practices off the wall.
While Hayneedle’s customer shown below isn’t visibly upset about the damaged order, Hayneedle handles the situation perfectly, and contacts the customer privately to resolve the issue.
Hayneedle moves conversation with a customer from the Facebook wall to private messages to better help the customer.
#4: Consider asking the fan to remove the post
Say you’ve discussed the issue privately, any problems have been straightened out, and the faultfinder is, once again, your happy customer.
While your wall is an integral part of your web presence, the customer may be unaware of how important it really is to your reputation. If he or she is satisfied with the resolution you’ve reached and grateful for the time you’ve spent making things right, there’s nothing wrong with privately asking the person to remove the post. Most of the time, he or she will remove the angry wall post.
#5: Respond back to the original post
As a general rule, you, the Facebook page admin, should not remove negative posts. Not everyone is going to have a glowing review of your product or company. Social media users know this, and if they see nothing but positive comments, they’ll assume your company is deleting the bad comments.
If you don’t feel comfortable asking your customer to remove the post, you do have the option of publicly responding back to that post. Express happiness in the resolution you’ve reached and thankfulness for her business. Even a negative post can be a good thing, as long as the last comment is positive. Your reputation among your community will soar when they see how well you take care of your customers.
Zappos is shown below addressing a negative comment. The helpful attitude effectively nullifies any poor reflection on Zappos or their services.
Zappos responds quickly with understanding and a desire to create a better experience for their upset fan.
#6: Let your community respond
Letting your community respond for you is really the end result of all the earlier steps. It requires copious time, energy and patience with your fans, and a fantastic product. After you’ve engaged with your fans for a period of time by answering questions and offering support, you’ll notice that your fans will be more active on your page, even to the point of assisting each other.
What’s great about getting this community support is that there’s a genuine credibility when fans endorse your business for you. They become your eager virtual support agents, answering questions and solving problems before you have a chance to. But this is a level you can only achieve if you’ve nurtured and supported your community.
The Pampered Chef has built a fantastic online community of users who love the product so much, and who have been given such great support themselves, peers will answer each other’s questions before The Pampered Chef has to respond.
An outpouring of community support is the direct result of The Pampered Chef's top-notch customer service.
#7: The Last Resort
If the offended party is unreceptive to your customer service attempts, blatantly hostile and only active in your community to start arguments, banning the individual is a last-resort option. And anyone leveling expletives or racial slurs against your staff or fans should be banned. Your staff and your fans don’t deserve to be subjected to the abuse, and in the end, they will respect you more because you took the initiative.
I get asked all the time what is my favorite thing I've seen from a brand on Facebook. My answer is always, Intel's Museum of Me. The idea of taking the content on your profile and putting it into a creative display isn't new. But the manner with which this particular initiative was displayed is gorgeous.
So of course, we always want to know who is behind such a great execution. I was just pointed to this story which I'm sharing below which will explain, enlighten, and hopefully inspire.
The Making of Museum of Me
In the first week of June, a new Facebook application called Museum of Me captured the attention of more than 2.5 million people and surprised the people and the company that created it. And it all started with a simple sketch on a napkin.
During a time when celebrities and businesses around the world are clamoring to grab the attention of consumers through Facebook, the Museum of Me broke through the noise by taking what people care about dearly, and letting them create their own personalized story in a visual way.
The Museum of Me was created by an Intel marketing team in Hong Kong working with a boutique advertising agency in Japan, and it's reportedly become one of the top 12 most popular museums in the world judging by the numbers.
Stephanie Gan, an advertising and digital programs manager at Intel, said the experience became an overnight sensation that spread socially around the world as millions of people were curious enough to go off and create a personalized virtual museum of their life. It was supposed to launch officially on June 1 but the team did a test pilot on May 31. Within 5 minutes, there were 36 likes. Within 5 days, there were 1 million hits.
"We just had the Facebook 'Like' button on the site and it took off through the power of what people were experiencing," Gan said.
"It spread quickly through word of mouth via social networks, largely Facebook, but also Twitter and YouTube," she said. "The first thing we saw came from a person in Madrid, who tweeted about the video we posted to YouTube."
Next, people in Japan were tweeting the link to Museum of Me. Then New York, California and Brazil. Press and analysts covering social networking and computing trends weighed in, which contributed to the buzz.
Museum of Me pulls information from your Facebook page to create a virtual museum of your digital life. Photos, videos and friends are presented as pieces of art, displayed randomly as if in a museum or art gallery.
CNET called it a "really neat tool that does a fine job of collecting all the information from your Facebook page and doling it out in a fun exhibit." The Wall Street Journal's Tech Europe blog labeled it "a slick use of Facebook's social graph and for creating what will certainly be a viral product."
It struck an emotional chord with people, according to Jayant Murty, the director of Intel's brand strategy in Asia.
"Images trigger memories and those memories can be very, very personal," said Murty. "People go back to photo albums to reminisce on the past and tell stories about our past. These are things we do in our everyday lives. We just found a way to pull this together into an online experience."
"Ultimately, the Museum of Me taps into one's narcissism and private experiences in an intensely social and networked world," Murty said.
Like any new and successful idea, the concept for The Museum of Me sprang from humble beginnings. The idea began with rough sketches drawn on cocktail napkins.
"Earlier this year at our big International Sales and Marketing Conference, our team wanted to quickly share the concept and idea of the project with our corporate colleagues, since we had the chance to meet up with them," says Murty. "We didn't have any writing material on us at the time, so we grabbed napkins from the bar, crowded around tables and sketched our ideas out!"
Not everyone was convinced once it went live, and the initial flood of visitors strained the servers gathering data for all these personal museums through the cloud.
Mashable called the experience "a bit creepy … it seems a bit like you've passed on," and BetaBeat pointed out "that the very personal nature of this information makes the context in which it sits extremely important" in a post titled "Intel's Museum of Me Features Dead Friends and Ex-Lovers."
One person said "I don't want to end up on a wall" below an image that his "friend" shared on Facebook from the Museum of Me experience.
Murty said there is a level of privacy built into the experience and that one of the big "aha" moments for him was when his team figured out how they would approach the sharing aspect.
"We created the Museum of Me with the intention of it being a personal, private experience," said Murty. "Holding steadfast to the view that this is a private experience in a public environment was probably the best decision we made."
Creating the Exhibit
After whittling down their ideas into a concept, Murty and Gan knew they were on to something big, but nobody expected it to become so popular once it went live.
"We took the idea of Museum of Me and started to share it around inside Intel when it was still in very early sketches," said Murty. "It was really back-of-the-napkin stage, but even in that early phase virtually everyone said, 'Wow, that's interesting!' And that's not a response we encounter here all the time."
According to Gan, the aim was to make something thrilling and emotional then equate it the performance and visual experience of Intel's 2nd generation of Core processors. The company markets these with the tagline "Visually Smart" to highlight built-in graphics and media capabilities.
"We are not 'in your face' about Core i5 or Intel branding," she said. "First you have the experience and then at the end we flash the brand badge. This is a better way for us to create an emotional connection."
Projector Inc., the agency in Japan, suggested they create music that would play inside Museum of Me. So they worked with artist Takagi Masakatsu, a Japanese composer who solicited more than 400 different recorded voices from his Twitter followers. Those voices were woven into the Museum of Me's musical score.
When it was finished, it represented a compelling new way to share people's digital lives. Becky Brown, who heads up Intel's social media center of excellence, said it was evident pretty quickly that more capacity was needed as the word spread.
"This thing just took off," said Brown. "We were watching comments on our fan page, and some people were saying things were lagging, and that that's how we knew we needed to add more server capacity."
Rather than this being an entirely new idea however, Murty sees it as triangulating and processing a variety of insights.
"Very often great ideas are ones in which people draw on two or three parallel sources of inspiration," he said. "The fact is, the pieces of the puzzle were there. It is just that we assembled them with the help of the talented people."
Over the years I've written about how to get an edge when looking for a job. It's a subject of interest for me partially out of a life-long fear of not having a job and respect for those who go after careers that fill them with passion. I was lucky enough to know what I wanted to do when I was just a kid. I was driven to learn and ultimately build my own business. I also was very specific about what I wanted to do and mapped out a path to get there.
When I speak at universities, I always recommend that students do internships, connect with people in business, and when they interview to really go for it. I often say, odds are you are going to lose, so if you lose, lose big!
Today my friend Brad sent me a great article about Tristan Walker from Foursquare. I've met Tristan several times and he is infectious. When he speaks about Foursquare you really believe they are going to change the world. At the bottom of this post, I've dropped in a video of Tristan explaining new Foursquare innovations to me and Brad at this year's SXSW conference. But first I want to share with you this article. If you are wondering how people land those very desirable jobs at companies like Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or wherever you may want to work, take some notes on how Tristan did it.
Two years ago, a Stanford business school student named Tristan Walker sent Foursquare cofounders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai an email out of the blue, asking for a job.
Today, Tristan is Foursquare's director of business development. During his tenure, he's built partnerships between Foursquare and huge brands such as Bravo, MTV, CNN, New York Times, NBA and Starbucks.
Today marks two years since i sent my very first email to dennis and naveen (wow i was such a nerd! ha). naveen sent a reminder to team foursquare today and i thought i’d share it on my blog. Man, how times have changed:
Hey Dennis and Naveen
How’s it going? Hope all is well!
My name is Tristan Walker and Im a first year student (going into my second year) at Stanford Business School (originally from New York). Im a huge fan of what you both have built and excited about what you guys have planned for FourSquare. It is an awesome , awesome service.
I would love to chat with you guys at some point, if you’re available, about FourSquare. This year, I’m looking to help out and work extremely hard for a startup with guys I can learn a ton from. Dennis, with your experience at Google and the Dodgeball product, and Naveen, with your experience at Sun and engineering in general, I know I could learn a great deal from you both!
Before business school, I was an oil trader on Wall Street for about two years and hated it! Moved out to the Bay/Stanford to pursue my passion for entrepreneurship and the startup world. This past spring I had the opportunity to work for Twitter as an intern and learned a ton. Solidified my commitment to working at a startup that I’m passionate about, and FourSquare is one of those startups that I believe in.
I know you guys are probably getting inundated with internship-type requests, but thought it’d be worth a shot! I can assure you Im humble and Im hungry! Let me know if you’d be interested in chatting further. I definitely look forward to hearing from you.
Stay awesome!
Tristan
@tristanwalker
———————————————————————-
tristan j. walker | mba class of 2010
stanford graduate school of business
A few things to note here:
i spelled foursquare “FourSquare”…capital F and capital S….TWICE! (so taboo these days) ha. Talk about green…and who says “stay awesome!” (hilarity!)
i sent this email after really thinking hard about this post from Jenn Van Grove at Mashable (thx jenn!). After reading, i IMMEDIATELY started to think about the potential for merchants and brands to start interacting with customers in ways that have never been done before. I read that post in May of that year I believe and signed up that same day
After my using foursquare everyday for about two months I knew i had to work for the company. On July 16th i scoured the internets, found Dennis and Naveen’s emails (#crazytristan) and shot them an email right away. This was before they even had @foursquare.com email addresses (and well before our series A round).
This is the first of 8 emails i sent Dennis/Naveen. They both must have thought I was crazy. On the 8th email Dennis replied
“you know what, i just may take you up on some of this, are you ever in nyc?”
-dennis
You could tell he was a bit annoyed (sorry dennis! oh well…ha) I thought on it for a little bit, and replied back (something along the lines of…):
hey dennis, yeh I was planning on being in ny tomorrow [i was in LA at the time!…and no, i definitely had zero plans to be in NYC] how about we meet up live at your offices?
-tristan
then i booked my flight that night, flew out the following morning, hung out with him and naveen for a week and one month later I was full time at good ol foursquare
which brings me to the last point. a lot of folks ask me how Ive been able to secure some pretty cool spots at awesome companies and my answer is always the same. “be so enamored with the product that you would work for the company even if they didnt hire you….more importantly find where the needs are within the organization and be willing to do whatever it takes to help them fill the need (work for free even!)…and MOST importantly make sure that youre filling a need that the organization doesnt have the resources to fill on its own. If a company is not willing to let a hungry, passionate, smart, unpaid advocate of the product help the organization to fill that need (when it doesnt have the resources to do it itself) then you probably shouldnt be working at the company anyway. They’re just being arrogant”…Dennis and Naveen made pretty clear that their passion was with product (and theyre the best in the world at it). I knew i could help them (without much guidance and hand holding) to think through the business opportunities / potential for foursquare. And i did it for free (for 30 days at least :)). I gained their trust, which was most important.
The past two years for me have been nothing short of amazing. Dennis/Naveen didnt have to but they gave me a shot and really did change my life. I owe those guys a ton and im truly appreciative of it all. Now, back to work…. :)
Thank you to everyone who saw me speak today at the CEMA (Corporate Event Marketing Association) conference. I had a great time and as promised, here are the links to some of the things I referenced in my presentation along with the whole presentation which is embedded at the bottom of this post.
The presentation I gave is based on what I call "Social Media Now" where I share my philosophy on how to help you focus your social media efforts.
Okay, here is the Pecha Kucha (remember, it was broken into 3 parts: innovations, brands, and resources.
BRANDS
Pecha Kucha
INNOVATIONS
1. Location Based Social - Foursquare, Facebook "Places," Gowalla, Loopt, MyTown, etc. Yes it's all the rage. Just understand that this is the tip of the iceberg. Soon when you are walking by a store your phone will buzz and offer you a coupon if you come inside.
2. Social Commerce / Social Shopping - This is your Groupon, Yelp, Gilt Group, Living Social. Flash sales that entice you to try new retailers at a tremendous discount.
3. Social Gaming - Farmville, Mafia Wars - People love playing games. We're seeing extensions of this now with apps like SCVNGR that turn your shopping and traveling into a game. Again, people love games!
4. Mobile - We've been waiting for the mobile explosion for years. Thank Apple for tipping it over with the iPhone and now Google's Android software. Everything we do online is headed towards mobile.
5. QR Codes - These black and white (sometimes color) graphics are popping up all over the place. On posters, websites, magazine ads. You can view these through an app for your phone (just search "QR Code Readers" on your iPhone, Android phone, etc. and you'll find them for free). They lead you to websites, videos, deals, coupons, etc. You can change the information whenever you want it without changing the QR Code.
6. Video - Pay attention to video. You've got YouTube as the leader, but you have new extensions showing up such as UStream which is live video streaming. I recently watched Zappos do their company meeting live on Ustream.
7. Digital and Social Immersion - Merge radio frequency identification (RFID) with smartphones and social networking and you complete the loop of total immersion in connectedness. Example: EpicMix. See what they are doing at Vail ski resorts and you’ll get it. Your ski pass is embedded with a unique ID. It knows where you are, how many miles you’ve skied, it tells you where your friends are, and it provides a platform to add photos and video. You unlock badges that automatically update to your Facebook page. You don’t need to do anything. Imagine the extensions to shopping, dining, and travel.
8. Square - This device helps everyone become a vendor. It's a little device that hooks onto you iPhone and you can then swipe a credit card. It even enables your customer to sign your phone with their finger to get a proper signature and if requested, will send you your receipt by email.
1Brands
9. Delta - This is both an innovation in technology and an innovative brand. Commerce is coming to Facebook and we'll soon be able to buy things right on Facebook. No need to leave. Delta is one of the first companies to embrace this concept and enables you to purchase your flight right on Facebook.
10. Levis - Last year Facebook created OpenGraph which enabled website to embed Facebook right into their sites. Now you can experience Facebook when you are not on Facebook. A great example of this is on Levis.com. Go to the "Friends Store" and you can see what your friends think of those 501 skinny jeans.
11. Starbucks - One of the leading brands utilizing social media. They have done a number of things in social media, but my favorite was the creation of MyStarbucksIdea.com which is a website created to crowdsource new ideas from customers and employees. Over 100 ideas have come to life and tens of thousands of people have participated in creating and voting on ideas.
12. Also from Starbucks, they recently embraced the concept of Near Field Communication (NFC) which enables a person to pay for their coffee with their phone. No need to bring your wallet, just have the barista scan your Starbucks app.
13. Bose - Great example of customer service via Twitter
14. Mountain Dew - Marketing and Market Research, crowdsourced their new flavor from their community via Facebook, Twitter, video, and more.
15. Old Spice - Direct response via YouTube as a result of people Tweeting, blogging, and Talking on Facebook about the ad campaign. Sales reportedly increased 106% during the month of the campaign.
RESOURCES
16. Blogs and Newsletters that help me stay on top of innovations in social media, specifically geared towards the small and medium business include: Social Media Examiner, Media Bistro, iMedia Connection. Specifically I recommend Social Media Examiner, every day they publish articles specific to how you can use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. to help enhance your business.
17. Blogs and Newsletters that help me stay on top of new technologies, specifically new apps, new websites, and new social networks include: Tech Crunch, Mashable, and Read, Write, Web
18. Web tools to help you see what people are saying about you (we often call these "Reputation Management" tools) include: [Free] Search.Twitter.com (for Twitter search), Ice Rocket and Blog Pulse (to search blogs and message boards), and [Paid] Radian6 (for sentiment analysis too).
19. Facebook Management Platforms. There are many companies now that help you manage your Facebook pages, blogs, and Twitter. This can be especially helpful if you are a major brand and you need to manage hundreds of thousands of fans and you want to add new features on a regular basis without having to constantly pay to build new apps. These include: Buddy Media, Context Optional, Vitrue, Involver, and Hoot Suite (Hoot Suite is free where the others all cost several thousands of dollars - Hoot Suite is also not as advanced as the others and is more about managing conversations than adding new features and apps).
Breathe
20. Now relax - www.donothingfor2minutes.com - Believe it or not, there is a website where you can go and do nothing for 2 minutes. No seriously, you need to do nothing or you FAIL!
And below is my full presentation if you want to see that too.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and if you saw my presentation and have any comments, please feel free to leave them here or email me at LarryW@Fanscape.com.
I just wrote a quick thought down and gave it to The Marketing Arm agency's Share Blog. Check out their blog HERE and I've pasted it in below as well...
Me
Q: You blogged recently about the importance of answering the “Why do I care?” question when developing social media campaigns. What are some examples of brands doing a good job of providing their customers with something of value?
A: There is a mad rush right now to get more people to “Like” you on Facebook. Success is being measured as how many fans you have and not necessarily on how much those fans are actually engaging with your brand. There are plenty of ways to get people to “Like” you. You can give them free stuff like Starbucks did originally with their ice cream and like Einstein’s Bagels did with a morning bagel and cream cheese. You can use other platforms to drive “Likes” like Bing did by giving people Farmville cash when they “Liked” Microsoft’s Bing Facebook page. And then there are a host of underground spam merchants that will guarantee you “Likes” for pennies a piece. But getting fans is only part of the strategy, keeping them there is much more important. And challenging!
So what should you do? Simply put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. What would you want to see? What would make you come back again after you got your free stuff or were drawn there by a promotion or piece of exclusive content?
There is a lot of noise out there. The typical person only “Likes” a handful of brands. They have so much going on in their lives and they are engaging with their friends multiple times of day on Facebook, so if you are a brand, you really need to stand out. Some of the brands that are doing a great job with this:
Skittles – For Skittles, it’s all about weird content. Turns out there are about 18 Million who like to watch and interact with like-minded weirdos.
Starbucks – Yes, they are the leaders in social media, but why is that? Because they listen to their customers. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said that last year’s growth was largely due to the fact that they actually listened to their customers and that social media was a huge part of that.
GameStop – A year ago they didn’t have a Facebook page. Now they have 2.5 Million fans and one of the most active Facebook pages of any retailer. Why? Because they have video game fanatics running their social media properties. If you want to see game trailers first, reminisce about games of yore, or get to meet the people that make the biggest games, then you visit every day.
Mountain Dew – Dew drinkers love to live on the edge. They are young passionate action sports fans. Once a year Mountain Dew introduces a new flavor and when they do, they turn to their Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube fans to help them create every element from choosing the flavor to actually making the television commercials. There are few brands that give this kind of power to their fans.
Now step back. What are your favorite products? Why would you follow them on Facebook or Twitter? What could that bar of soap, that denim jean manufacturer, that potato chip maker do for you that would make you come back over and over?
In August, Fanscape will celebrate our thirteenth year in business. We started as a viral marketing company centered around helping musicians connect with their fans, and we've grown into a social media marketing agency focused on helping major brands connect with their customers.
There wasn't a MySpace or a Facebook back in the early days. Nor was their eCommerce or Email / CRM marketing. Most music artists just communicated with their fans from the stage and only a handful kept up fan clubs through traditional mail.
The idea we had at Fanscape was to take the mailing list sheets that artists often left at the merchandise counter and actually enter the information into a database (something that rarely happened). Our theory was that if we could keep track of the fans and actually communicate with them, you could tell them when the next album was coming out or when there would be another show in their town. All the research showed that the reason people didn't buy a new album or come to a show was because they didn't know about it. Our goal was to create a deeper bond between artists and their fans.
Here was another theory we had. What if you surprised fans with something no one else could get? Access! Our very first client was an extremely popular punk rock band from Seattle called, MxPx. Their fan base was rabid. When they toured, they would sell out every show. We helped build their database into the hundreds of thousands. We also created a paid subscription fan club where one of the special privileges was that as a member, you were always guaranteed to get a ticket to the show, even if it was sold out. About a year in, we had this idea; what if when you pick up your tickets, we surprised you with a backstage pass? We tried this in one city and you should have seen the fans faces when they picked up their tickets and realized they would actually get to meet the band. As you can imagine, the word spread and membership to the fan club doubled seemingly overnight.
We've tried to repeat this over the years and we still work it into many of the creative concepts for our brand marketing campaigns. Providing value to your customer is the key to great Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Always step back and put yourself into the shoes of the customer you are trying to reach and ask this question, "why would I care?" Why should they chose you over a competitor? Random acts of kindness go a long way in answering that question and creating a better bond between you and your customer.
Hi Everyone. This blog post is specifically geared towards the people who saw me speak today at the Rutgers Business School, 2011 Ethical Leadership Conference. I wanted to make sure that you could both view a copy of my presentation as well as get the links for everything I referenced. Thank you very much for listening to me speak and please don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions.
Larry Weintraub
LarryW@Fanscape.com
(323) 785-7750
The whole presentation is embedded at the bottom of this post. Here are the links to some of the things I referenced in my presentation along with some added information.
During the presentation I told you about a handful of resources or items to check out. Those include:
The Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) video that I showed. Here are the links to both the most recent one (the one I showed) and its predecessor:
Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) - http://bit.ly/eG0vGV
Social Media Revolution - http://bit.ly/eHOAoD
Twitter.com - I recommended that you sign up and "follow" 10 - 20 people. Just listen, don't feel a need to speak. I really just want you to see how news gets delivered to you in this medium. When you go to Twitter.com, they actually have a link called, "Who to Follow" that can help you locate people you may want to follow based on your interest. Definitely start there. Also, when you click on that link, there is a search bar and you can just pop in the names of people you might know of that are on Twitter.
MyStarbucksIdea.com - This is the site that Starbucks built to help source new ideas for free from their customers and their employees.
Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) - WOMMA.org - The organization that guides social media agencies and word-of-mouth-marketing agencies with ethics and policies. The direct link to the Code of Conduct is: http://womma.org/ethics/code/
Intel's Social Media Guidelines Policy - I recommended that you check this one policy out specifically because it's fairly short and covers a lot of the bases. - http://intel.ly/intelpolicy
Pecha Kucha
INNOVATIONS
1. Location Based Social - Foursquare, Facebook "Places," Gowalla, Loopt, MyTown, etc. Yes it's all the rage. Just understand that this is the tip of the iceberg. Soon when you are walking by a store your phone will buzz and offer you a coupon if you come inside.
2. Social Commerce / Social Shopping - This is your Groupon, Yelp, Gilt Group, Living Social. Flash sales that entice you to try new retailers at a tremendous discount.
3. Social Gaming - Farmville, Mafia Wars - People love playing games. We're seeing extensions of this now with apps like SCVNGR that turn your shopping and traveling into a game. Again, people love games!
4. Mobile - We've been waiting for the mobile explosion for years. Thank Apple for tipping it over with the iPhone and now Google's Android software. Everything we do online is headed towards mobile.
5. QR Codes - These black and white (sometimes color) graphics are popping up all over the place. On posters, websites, magazine ads. You can view these through an app for your phone (just search "QR Code Readers" on your iPhone, Android phone, etc. and you'll find them for free). They lead you to websites, videos, deals, coupons, etc. You can change the information whenever you want it without changing the QR Code.
6. Video - Pay attention to video. You've got YouTube as the leader, but you have new extensions showing up such as UStream which is live video streaming. I recently watched Zappos do their company meeting live on Ustream.
7. Digital and Social Immersion - Merge radio frequency identification (RFID) with smartphones and social networking and you complete the loop of total immersion in connectedness. Example: EpicMix. See what they are doing at Vail ski resorts and you’ll get it. Your ski pass is embedded with a unique ID. It knows where you are, how many miles you’ve skied, it tells you where your friends are, and it provides a platform to add photos and video. You unlock badges that automatically update to your Facebook page. You don’t need to do anything. Imagine the extensions to shopping, dining, and travel.
8. Square - This device helps everyone become a vendor. It's a little device that hooks onto you iPhone and you can then swipe a credit card. It even enables your customer to sign your phone with their finger to get a proper signature and if requested, will send you your receipt by email.
Brands
9. Delta - This is both an innovation in technology and an innovative brand. Commerce is coming to Facebook and we'll soon be able to buy things right on Facebook. No need to leave. Delta is one of the first companies to embrace this concept and enables you to purchase your flight right on Facebook.
10. Levis - Last year Facebook created OpenGraph which enabled website to embed Facebook right into their sites. Now you can experience Facebook when you are not on Facebook. A great example of this is on Levis.com. Go to the "Friends Store" and you can see what your friends think of those 501 skinny jeans.
11. Dr Scholl's for Her - Good example of social media best practices, ethics, and social policies in this Facebook page.
12. Starbucks - They lead in social media. They recently embraced the concept of Near Field Communication (NFC) which enables a person to pay for their coffee with their phone. Just have the barista scan your Starbucks app.
13. Bose - Great customer service via Twitter
14. Mountain Dew - Marketing and Market Research, crowdsourced their new flavor from their community via Facebook, Twitter, video, and more.
15. Old Spice - Direct response via YouTube as a result of people Tweeting, blogging, and Talking on Facebook about the ad campaign. Sales reportedly increased 106% during the month of the campaign.
RESOURCES
16. Blogs and Newsletters that help me stay on top of innovations in social media, specifically geared towards the small and medium business include: Social Media Examiner, Media Bistro, iMedia Connection. Specifically I recommend Social Media Examiner, every day they publish articles specific to how you can use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. to help enhance your business.
17. Blogs and Newsletters that help me stay on top of new technologies, specifically new apps, new websites, and new social networks include: Tech Crunch, Mashable, and Read, Write, Web
18. Web tools to help you see what people are saying about you (we often call these "Reputation Management" tools) include: [Free] Search.Twitter.com (for Twitter search), Ice Rocket and Blog Pulse (to search blogs and message boards), and [Paid] Radian6 (for sentiment analysis too).
19. Facebook Management Platforms. There are many companies now that help you manage your Facebook pages, blogs, and Twitter. This can be especially helpful if you are a major brand and you need to manage hundreds of thousands of fans and you want to add new features on a regular basis without having to constantly pay to build new apps. These include: Buddy Media, Context Optional, Vitrue, Involver, and Hoot Suite (Hoot Suite is free where the others all cost several thousands of dollars - Hoot Suite is also not as advanced as the others and is more about managing conversations than adding new features and apps).
Breathe
20. Now relax - www.donothingfor2minutes.com - Believe it or not, there is a website where you can go and do nothing for 2 minutes. No seriously, you need to do nothing or you FAIL!
And below is my full presentation if you want to see that too.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and if you saw my presentation and have any comments, please feel free to leave them here or email me at LarryW@Fanscape.com.
Today I had lunch with my father. During our meal he became the second person in one day to tell me that he worried that social networking might be making us less social as human beings. And tonight something happened. I looked at my Facebook page and counted nearly 200 people wishing me a Happy Birthday. Last year I wrote a blog post on the same day as today and expressed how happy I was to see nearly 100 birthday wishes. So in one year the number has doubled. And my Facebook friends have not grown that much percentage-wise because I've become far pickier about who I accept.
So there is a definite argument here against what my dad said today. Thanks to social media, specifically Facebook, I just had a lot of people, and yes, I do know most if not all of them, say hello and wish me a great day. The majority of which I haven't spoken to in years. I even struck up some great conversations and reminisced about fantastic events in my life. All of which wouldn't have happened without Facebook. I still would have gotten a dozen phone calls or so, but I have to admit, I feel really special today. A lot of people went out of their way to write me a note. And I loved writing them all back to thank them.
So no, social media doesn't make us less social, it makes us more social. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Thank you everyone for the wonderful birthday wishes. And for all of you who told me to have a great day, know that I did in fact have a great day!
I see much in life as a possible business. It is exciting, but also torturous. I just don’t have enough time. A new idea often sends me into hours of thought, research, and ultimately deviation from what I really need to do in a day. I believe that the Internet has made it easy for anyone to create a business. I believe that the Internet has made nearly everything in life easier. I believe that trying to impact the masses is a tough notion, but finding a group of people similar to you, is at your fingertips. I believe that music is free, and that is not a good thing. I believe that life is a collection of experiences and that every day I learn something new and forget something slightly new.
I have learned that the toughest part of running a business is inspiring your own employees. I have grown to understand that you have to show your family at least as much respect as your customers.
I went to college at the University of California, San Diego and majored in Economics and minored in Literature/Writing. I wish I had majored in Literature and only taken the one Economics class that taught me about Supply and Demand.
Larry Weintraub is the CEO at Digital Word of Mouth marketing agency Fanscape. All blogs posts are Larry’s personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of Fanscape clients.
I see much in life as a possible business. It is exciting, but also torturous. I just don’t have enough time. A new idea often sends me into hours of thought, research, and ultimately deviation from what I really need to do in a day. I believe that the Internet has made it easy for anyone to create a business. I believe that the Internet has made nearly everything in life easier. I believe that trying to impact the masses is a tough notion, but finding a group of people similar to you, is at your fingertips. I believe that music is free, and that is not a good thing. I believe that life is a collection of experiences and that every day I learn something new and forget something slightly new.
