Pro Blog Service

You are here: Home / Archives for All Posts / Communication

Communication

By

PR & Marketing Agencies, Know Your Stuff Before You Offer Social Media

I’m both heartened and worried by the number of PR and marketing agencies that are offering social media.

I’m heartened, because it means the business world is that much closer to accepting social media as a real form of communication. It means they know it’s going to be around for the long haul.

I’m worried, because a lot of these agencies don’t even understand it They just threw their new junior account exec at it because she has a Facebook page and they think that means she knows enough to run a large-scale campaign for them.

A lot of social media professionals just come off as snake oil salesmen, like this guy.
Make sure you know your stuff, AND that it works.

Social media is not an entry-level position, people. It’s not something you turn over to the brand new employee who has never even run a traditional campaign. And it’s definitely not something an agency should try to learn on a client’s dime.

NOTE: This is not to say that entry-level people shouldn’t do social or that PR or marketing agencies shouldn’t get into it at all They absolutely should. But, your experience needs to be more than resuscitating the nearly-dead Twitter account you started six months ago with the “Still trying to figure this twitter thing out. Does this make me a twit?” tweet.

I’ve seen a number of agencies now that are starting to offer social media as part of their service offerings, but I think they’re out of their element, and are only going to screw it up.. For one thing, their Twitter accounts are less than six months old. The agency accounts have fewer than 500 followers, and the employee accounts are all hovering around 100, and are filled with retweets from the agency account.

That is not social media experience. Not enough to start providing services for clients.

Strong social media experience means running campaigns where you can measure the ROI and show how much money you made. Strong social media experience means having more than 2,000 followers, because you know the ethical way to break past Twitter’s 2,000 following cap. Strong social media experience means you have a blog that’s more than a year old, and it’s filled with new social media knowledge and opinions, because you publish 2 – 5 times per week, not per quarter.

Look, I know how to write a press release, and I know how to pick up the phone and individually pitch journalists and bloggers. (Jason Falls would say that puts me ahead of the game for knowing that.) I even know how to do good TV and radio interviews. But that doesn’t make me a PR expert.

If I wanted to open a PR agency, I could probably do a passable job. I could fool a couple of small clients, and learn on their dime. But I wouldn’t be giving them the best I could be (or, if I was, the best I could be wouldn’t be good enough).

If you’re in PR or marketing, and you want to offer social media to your clients, you need to do a few things before you ever you’re ready to start:

  1. Put together a team of people who are responsible for social media, not just one person. You at least need someone who can write and someone who knows how to read analytics and research. You also need one person who will be responsible for it all. This is not a time for committees and democracy. You need a social media account executive to take charge.
  2. Understand that social media is as much about sales and customer service as it is about marketing and PR. If you’re going to manage social media for a client, you need someone who can sell and deal with problems.
  3. You need to invest heavily in the ongoing education of your social media team. Require them to read industry blogs, read or listen to social media books, attend social media networking meetings, and pay for any learning they can get their hands on. I met an advertising agency that pays its staff to read books and give book reports to the rest of the agency at a monthly meeting. They pay $25 per book read (they even have a copy of Branding Yourself (affiliate link) in their library).
  4. Send your social media team to at least one conference a year, if not two or three. Better yet, have them learn enough so they can present at those conferences. The great thing about being a presenter is you have to know more than your audience, which means they have to stay on the cutting edge.

If you’re going to do social media, do it right. You can’t sign up for a new Facebook account and pronounce yourself a social media consultant any more than you can record a video on your mobile phone and call yourself a video production house. Take the time to learn as much as you can before you offer it. Don’t feel like you have to rush. There are plenty of clients available, and they’ll still be there in a year or two when today’s agencies are being fired by their clients for bad social media execution.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: Inky (Flickr)

By

It’s Still Corporate Blogging, Not the Social Web

Debbie Weil doesn’t like the term “blog” anymore. She wants to do away with it.

I was listening to Debbie on Doug Karr’s Blog Talk Radio from the end of February, and she said she doesn’t like the term “blog” anymore. Rather, she wants to call it the “social web,” since blogging has grown beyond a string of chronologically arranged thoughts by writers who wanted to journal publicly (I’m paraphrasing).

I couldn’t disagree more.

While blogging may be old hat to people like Debbie, Doug, and me, it’s still new to a lot of businesspeople, who are only just now hearing about it. They’re only just now hearing about social media. They have just recently quit calling it “Facespace,” and realize there might be something to allowing their employees to contribute to their website.

Some of these guys even have a website. (No, not the horse.)

Keep in mind, the business community still hasn’t embraced the Internet as a whole. According to Formstack, only 45% of businesses in the US have a website.

That’s a friggin’ website! That’s not even a blog.

I built my first website in 1994. On Adobe PageMill. It was horrible. But we were one of the first businesses in our industry to have one, and I’ve been online ever since.

It’s 17 years later, and more than half of the businesses in this country still don’t have a website. They’re certainly not thinking about a blog. Maybe they’ve heard of it, maybe they know someone who’s got one. But they’re not seeing the need to have one.

And if that’s the case, they’re certainly not ready to embrace the social-ness of their website, and stop referring to it as a blog, since they don’t even have one.

Cast of Decoder Ring Theatre, an audio theatre company in Toronto. They're airing 6 of my radio scripts this summer on their podcast.

I’ve seen this “we’ve got to stop calling it by the old name because it’s not accurate anymore” phenomenon so many times before in so many different industries. Radio theatre is no longer called “radio theatre” anymore, it’s called “audio theatre.” Why? Because you don’t listen to these plays on the radio anymore, you listen to them via streaming audio, podcasts, mobile phones, CDs, and even tapes. Who the hell uses radio?

The audio theatre groups I’ve been a part of have been arguing about this for the last 10 years. (In fact, if I want to rile them up, I’ll bring it up again, like shaking a jar of angry bees just as they’re starting to calm down.) But the only people who care about the distinction are the practitioners themselves. Most of the non-audio theatre public still calls it “radio theatre,” because that’s the name they know. That’s how they refer to it when they talk about what they, their parents, or their grandparents listened to.

When I ask them about “audio theatre,” they stare at me blankly, until I say “that’s the new word for radio theatre.” Then they get it. Audio theatre’s biggest marketing blunder was when they stopped calling the art form what the typical listener was calling it, and I think it played a role in the diminished acceptance of the art form, even as audiobooks and other forms of audio entertainment and education have taken off.

If we want corporate blogging to continue to grow, we need to keep calling it a “blog” for as long as the business community has not fully embraced the Internet as a whole. Once everyone has a website and a blog, then I’ll call it a “social web.” Until then, I’m going to stick with the term the rest of the business community is already using. The social media pros can call it whatever they like.

Photo credit: pullarf (Flickr)

By

5 Key Steps for Good Customer Service in B2B Social Media

A couple weeks ago, while we were on our way to Chicago, Erik wrote about how people — customers — can get good customer service by participating in B2B and B2C social media. He talked about how customers can get a company’s attention, why they shouldn’t whine, and how to make sure they’re taken seriously when they have a real complaint.

But companies also need to follow some customer service “best practices” in the social media realm, if they want to see what the customers are talking about, and to avoid a serious customer service meltdown. We manage a lot of customer service social media for our clients, and have been able to solve a lot of problems on their behalf. Here are five steps we follow in providing good customer service in B2B social media.

1. Find your Customer Playgrounds

Facebook is not the only game in town to manage b2c social media for a company. More often than not, you’ll find your customers participating on sites that are specific to your industry. Social media and business can be found on Twitter, Blogs, Forums and other Social Networks.

For example, in the travel industry, whether it’s an airline, hotel or car rental company, they can keep an eye on their customers by hanging out on Flyertalk, where everyone is talking about everything from airline miles, aircraft and the luggage they use. By focusing on specific discussions, they can keep abreast of what their customers are concerned about and pleased with.

Most industries have their playground where people are congregating and talking about what you are or are not doing right. Find yours and participate.

2. Create a Team.

You need a team to monitor your brand online. Your best bet is to create a tiger team of different people from different departments, rather than assigning one department like marketing or customer service to it. However, you need to appoint ONE person to be in charge of it. Don’t make it a committee, because nothing will get done. Customer service definitely needs a seat at the table. Also, create a plan to quickly address a bad Twitter post or Facebook post. This is where customer service needs to be at the forefront.

3. Monitor the Networks.

It’s not just enough to have a Twitter account that you check for mention of your name (although you need to do that too). You need to monitor a lot of the different networks and forums. There are several tools to help, including Lithium (formerly ScoutLabs), uberVu, Radian6, Vocus, and of course, Google Alerts.

There are more entering the social media monitoring market everyday, so the list is fluid. Find one that does what you need and stick with it. But be prepared to change, since the quality of the lists will often change.

4. Have a Plan to Respond.

Make sure you you always address the issue and deal with the customer. Don’t engage in an argument with them. Whether you think you’re wrong or they’re right, don’t engage in a public debate. If the customer is just dead wrong, address the issue privately, but solve their problems publicly. Let everyone see you’re taking care of your customers; this will help potential customers feel more at ease. But if you get into an argument with a customer publicly, you’re going to lose when everyone else sees you as a bully.

 

Step 1: Research the person who posted their comment.

    • Do they have Klout?
    • Have they identified themselves?
    • How much influence do they have?
    • Are they a troll? (There are individuals that go around and say bad things and try to extort you to remove the comment.  And, they may not even be a customer or have purchased your product).

Step 2: If they are legitimate, address their issue.

See how easy that is?

5. Communicate the effort, so you are demonstrating action is being taken.

Demonstrate that you are conversing with your customers and answering the questions. The passive aggressive behavior of online behavior quickly turns into appreciation, if the customer feels heard. Someone may complain “Smitty’s restaurant ruined my day. Put Swiss, not American, cheese on my cheeseburger. #FAIL,” but will backtrack and soften their complaint if you follow up with “I’m sorry for the error. We’ll buy your lunch the next time you’re in.”

Remember, social media is about having conversations with your customers online. Monitoring what people are saying allows you to get important feedback you would not otherwise get. Feedback is good, embrace it.

By

Three Secrets to Make Your Video Go Viral – A Warning to Corporations

I’ve been digging into a lot of social media case studies lately, especially those that involve a little guy going up against a large corporation and winning the battle of public sentiment. A lot of these studies involve videos, and I think I’ve figured out the secrets to why they’re going viral, and why large companies need to watch out for these situations.

One of the most memorable videos is Dave Carroll’s “United Breaks Guitars,” which he released after United Airlines mishandled his $3,000 Taylor guitar. Carroll released a song and video about his efforts in filing a claim against United and all the hoops he jumped through for a year before anyone would even listen to him.

Ten million views and three videos later, Dave not only got his satisfaction from United, but Taylor guitars gave him two new guitars. His efforts also netted enough negative press against United to give an entire PR department heart failure.

Other videos have had similar success getting the attention of the corporate giants, and getting them to take notice and fix their problem. The same is true with blogs, tweets, and other times people have gotten punked by . And I’ve identified a few things they have in common.

    • Viral videos are not straightforward rants. There needs to be an unusual hook, or something that makes it different/better than someone staring at the camera and talking about their complaint or issue. That’s why videos that involve music or acting gain a lot more traction than that talking head video you wanted to do.
    • Viral videos include something humorous. Dave Carroll’s video was musical and funny. Other complaint videos are also funny, or have a humorous element to them. People love to be entertained, and anything that’s humorous will gain more attention than something that’s serious. (Of course, this doesn’t work about serious issues — just ask Groupon — so choose your humor carefully. And if you have to resort to humor that is guaranteed to offend part of your audience, don’t use it. You don’t want your audience hating you.)
    • Viral complaint videos are always about David going up against Goliath. This is the big secret. I have yet to see a viral complaint video about two Davids fighting it out, or two Goliaths duking it out. It’s always the little guy going up against the big guy. Whether it’s Dave Carroll (a real David) fighting against the uncaring, careless United Airlines, or Dooce complaining about her Maytag (not a video, but a great example of the little guy fighting the big guy), people always cheer for the little guy. If there’s any indication that the big guy is screwing someone, we’ll watch the video, read the blog post, and retweet the tweet in order to help get the word out about the “epic struggle.”

This last point is what corporations need to beware of. All it takes is one irate customer with some creativity and a Flip camera to make your PR people sweat blood trying to overcome the tens of thousands of views of that video and subsequent complaints, plus any negative press that came about from their video. Dave Carroll’s epic struggle was picked up by the global press, making sure the United name got plenty of mentions in the press.

Even for companies who don’t want to be on social media, they need to at least have a presence so they can monitor customer complaints. They shouldn’t be caught off guard by videos, because they’re already behind the 8-ball when it comes to social media. The little guy is ready to complain about the big guy, and everyone else is ready to support them and carry their torch for them.

By

Five Rules to Getting Good Customer Service on Social Media

Social media has made customer service more important and easier since the advent of the 800 number.

We tell people, and our companies, what makes us happy and what makes us upset. We tell others they need to support or avoid companies that have pleased or displeased us. And if we’re lucky, the companies will pay attention to us, and solve our problems for us.

But depending on what you complain about and how you do it, you may have better success with some techniques than others. Here are five rules for getting good customer service on social media.

1. Don’t Be Passive-Aggressive

Social media has made it possible for the passive-aggressive among us to air our grievances to all of our friends without actually confronting any issues. You see them on Facebook, Twitter, and other anywhere else we can share our innermost thoughts and accomplishments with our friends:

Claire: I wish some people would quit leaving the toilet seat up.
David: Jeez, I said I was sorry.
Gayle likes this.
Gayle: Good for you, Claire. Make whoever it is PAY!”
David: You know, I can see you both across the table.

Customers who complain about a company need to be specific, factual, and shouldn’t play the hapless victim seeking sympathy. If you don’t like something, say so outright. Also, sticking the #fail hashtag on a complaint tweet just makes you look like a petty drama queen.

Wish someone at @burgerking hadn’t only put one piece of cheese on my Double Whopper. Learn to count. #fail #MyDayIsRuined

2. Don’t Be a Jackass

The funniest thing I heard Scott Stratten say at his Social Media Club Chicago talk was, “I’m not the jackass whisperer. I don’t have time to deal with jackasses.” If you’re a jackass to the company you’re dissatisfied with, don’t be surprised if they don’t help you. Calling someone names or insulting them because you’re not happy will only make them mad, and wreck what might have been a valid complaint. If they do help, it’s because they’re committed to customer service, not because your jackassery is actually effective.

3. Don’t Say Anything You’re Not Willing to Say to Someone’s Face

If you’re a jackass online, how willing are you to be a jackass to someone’s face, especially when they’re not the person who aggrieved you? And if you’re the passive-aggressive type, are you willing to make a cutting comment at the same time you make eye contact with someone?

What makes me laugh is to see is when someone complains about a company on Twitter, and the company responds, the person quickly backtracks and tries to soften what they previously said. It’s an understandable vent. They’re upset, they’re frustrated, and so they reached for their mobile phone, and told the world why, but didn’t realize the company was paying attention to them. When the company responds, they backpedal on their complaint, embarrassed at their outburst, and more than a little humbled. And yes, I’ve done this. It’s embarrassing.

Many years ago, when I was in grad school, I was on the receiving end of this. I had stepped onto an elevator and hit the button for my floor. The doors closed just as a woman ran up. I couldn’t hit the Open Door button in time to keep them from closing all the way.

“A-hole!” she shouted as the doors shut in her face. (She didn’t actually say “a-hole,” she said the whole word.)

However, it turns out I did hit the button in time so the elevator didn’t leave. The doors slid open again, bringing her face to face with the guy she had just called a name.

“Oh jeez, I’m so sorry,” she stammered. “I was just annoyed about the doors.”

“Don’t worry about it. I won’t make you ride with an a-hole,” I said, and hit the Close Door button.

Here’s the rule. Don’t shout something on Twitter or Facebook that you have to stammer an apology for when you meet that person.

4. Send Out Thank You Messages After Your Complaint Is Resolved

After you’ve been helped, write a blog post, or post a video or some photos about you being happy with your new or replacement item. Turn the company’s effort into a win for them. Give them something to be happy about. Customer service people spend 8 hours a day being our whipping posts, so show them — as publicly as possible — that you’re thankful.

There’s an old management adage that says “reprimand in private, praise in public.” That works here too. If you have a customer service gripe, it’s nice to keep it private. Just between you and the company. But definitely make your praises public. Let everyone know why you’re pleased.

If you do launch a complaint in public, it is absolutely not right to only thank them with a personal email. You made sure everyone knows about the company’s failure, so you need to make sure everyone knows about their success too.

5. Praise a Company Before You Have a Need to Complain

There are some companies that just rock your world. You love their products, you “like” their Facebook page, and you tell all your friends about them. Become a super fan and praise them on your blog, Twitter, and Facebook. Become their evangelist before you ever lodge your first complaint.

If they’re on social media, connect with them there too. Become someone who will help them out when they need it. Then, when you have a complaint, not only do you have one or two people you can complain to directly, they’ll take you seriously, because they know how much you already love them.

As clichéd as it is, the old saying, “you catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar” applies here. If you’re unhappy with a company, by all means, complain. It’s your right as a customer. But if you do it the right way, you’re more likely to get what you want than if you whine and gripe about their incompetence and #failures.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: kandyjaxx

By

A Social Media Strategy for Non-Marquee Sports & Athletes

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dan Clarke (@speedydanclarke), an Indy Lights racer from England who lives in Indianapolis, and learning about his struggles this off-season. He’s looking for corporate sponsors so he can race in the upcoming season.

Dan Clarke at Carb Day 2010

If you don’t know what Indy Lights racing is, then you’re starting to see Dan’s problem. Indy Lights is the developmental racing league for IndyCar — Indianapolis 500 — racing. In a sport with fewer US fans than the NHL, he’s in the minor leagues.

Think of your favorite baseball team. Can you name its AAA minor league affiliate? Can you name their players? Do you know who their best hitter was last year, or their best pitcher?

Now you understand Dan’s problem. He’s looking for sponsors for a sport outside the big three — NFL, NBA, MLB — trying to convince them that the developmental league is a great place for them to be seen.

This is where social media can help. A personal branding campaign, even for athletes, can help build their brand, find new fans, and hopefully, bring in the big sponsors. It doesn’t matter if you’re an IndyLights driver, a minor league baseball player, or even the veteran right guard for the New Orleans Saints. If people don’t know who you are, they’re not going to care, and you’re going to have a tough time getting them to notice you. But by doing some basic personal branding, you can use that network to bring in new opportunities that contribute to your total success.

Start with Twitter

Twitter is one of the easiest places to start. This is where you can immediately see your fan base (# of followers), interact with them, and even measure the impact you’re having. Turn followers into fans, turn fans into evangelists. And as more people follow you, demonstrate to potential sponsors that you carry a lot of weight with your network.

Most athletes ignore their fan base on Twitter, choosing instead to communicate with each other publicly about private issues. For example, most IndyCar drivers have only a few thousand followers and only follow a few dozen people. Helio Castroneves, one of the most famous drivers in the world today, only has 31,000 followers, Ryan Briscoe has 8,600+, and Penske Racing (“one of the most successful teams in sports history with 330 race wins”) has 9,900 followers. To put that in perspective, I have 7,200 followers, I write blogs for a living, and the last thing I won was “Best Comedy Script” in a theater script competition in 2005.

If you don’t follow people, they won’t follow you. When you’re in a small-market sport, you can’t afford to be picky about who you follow. If you’re worried about privacy, don’t tweet your personal life. If you’re worried about managing a large Twitter network, get TweetDeck and use Twitter lists. But don’t make yourself seem unapproachable. Twitter is the one place you can interact with fans and still keep them at arm’s length.

Tip: Use Klout or Twitalyzer to measure the influence you have. Show sponsors that a positive word from you can influence buying behavior among your fans.

Create a blog

The blog is really the hub of your personal branding campaign. The point of being on those networks is to drive traffic to your blog; the point of your blog is to get people to join you on the other networks.

Your personal branding campaign is a wheel, with the blog at the center.

A blog is a place where you can share a behind-the-scenes look at what you’re doing. Share your exploits on and off the field/court/track, post photos, post videos, and tell stories. Fans love feeling like they’re connecting with their favorite athlete and learning stuff the casual observer or fair-weather fan doesn’t know. This is why celebrity news is so popular. People get to learn something about their favorite stars. But since small-market athletes don’t get the rave coverage that the Peyton Mannings and LeBron James of the world, you have to make your own news.

Blogs are becoming more important and popular among the PR crowd, especially crisis communicators, because they avoid the whole filter of mainstream media. For athletes, this avoids the filter of the sports media, which only gives a scant amount of attention to your sport anyway, and even then, only to the victories of the marquee stars and screwups of everyone else.

Tip: Use Google Analytics or Yahoo Analytics to measure web traffic. Demonstrate to sponsors that you 1) can get traffic to your blog, and 2) can send that traffic to sponsors’ websites.

Social Media PR

Adopt a strategy of sharing with other bloggers in your sport. Even though I’m not a big open wheel racing blogger (I’ll get to blog from the media center of the Indy 500 for the 3rd year running, but won’t be going to any other races), I can name at least five other race bloggers who all have a decent readership. And they’ll gladly share some digital ink with anyone from the sport who will talk to them.

So, talk to them. Tell them stories, give them exclusive news, and grant interviews. In short, treat them like real journalists, and they’ll pay you back with space, exposure, and kindness. Let a few bloggers break the news about your new team, your plans for the year, or even your struggles. They’ll become your fans, and tell their fans all about you, which will make them your fans too.

I’ve been listening to Wall Street Journal sports writer Stefan Fatsis‘ book, A Few Seconds of Panic (affiliate link), about his weeks spent in training camp with the Denver Broncos as a kicker. While I have never been a Denver Bronco’s fan, Fatsis’ look at the danger and drudgery of training camp and football has me looking at the Broncos in a whole new way, and I may have to cheer for them a few times this year (something I would never have done until this week). Can you find bloggers to do that for you? What about bloggers outside the sport? When less than 1% of the country knows who you are or what you do, non-industry bloggers are a rich, untapped vein. (Just don’t blanket every blogger out there. You’ll be labeled a PR spammer.)

Tip: Let other bloggers tell your story. If they make it compelling enough, they’ll win your fans for you. If you connect solidly with 10 bloggers and they each have 1,000 readers, you’ll reach 10,000 people. Now, compare that to the effort you would need to put out to reach 10,000 people yourself.

Build a Facebook Brand Page

You may already have a Facebook page, but that should be kept private. Try not to connect with your fans on your personal Facebook profile, since that’s where you’re also connecting with family and friends. Instead, create a Brand Page, and connect with people there.

However, it’s crucial that you actually use this page regularly; don’t ignore it. Promote your blog posts there. Post status updates when you publish your tweets (but don’t feed your Twitter stream into Facebook; it’s annoying. Just rewrite them to be more Facebook friendly.)

Tip: Republish your videos and photos to your Facebook page too. Ask your fans to share them with your friends. It’s a well-known adage in social media circles that we consumers trust recommendations by our friends. Let your fans evangelize to their friends about you.

There are a whole lot of other strategies I could recommend — posting videos to YouTube and photos to Picasa/Flickr — but that’s for another post. Use these strategies as a place to start and start building your personal branding campaign as a way to get sponsors, build name recognition among fans, and add new fans.

Do you have any strategy suggestions? Anything you’ve done as an athlete, or anything you wish an athlete would do? Share your wisdom in the comments section and let’s learn from each other.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: Just_Bryan (Flickr)