Social Media

A friend phoned me today on her ride home from work, buzzing with frustration. She sometimes struggles with the operational and people-management aspects of her job. Anything nibbling around the edges of conflict or fierce conversation makes her palms sweat. It seems the IT techno-scanners in my friend’s office discovered one employee sent 348 instant messages one day last week. Someone (or maybe the sniffing software itself?) determined 348 IM’s equaled an investment of about 5 hours, 50 minutes...

Back in the old days when "integrated marketing" execution was decidedly weighted with more print, outdoor, TV, and direct than web portals or online advertisements, the full service agency I worked for had its own information group bundled under the IT department. It was the mid-90's, and we still had budgets for employee training, annual raises, and early-out Fridays. The information group consisted of two staff librarians and one support person. In retrospect, their roles may have seen a little...

In life and business, there are some measuring sticks that matter. Are you giving love and praise unconditionally? Are you generously sharing the bounty of your talents so that others might learn and grow? Are you holding fast to the promises your brand makes to its customers? Are you committed to doing more, even when no one is looking, even when no one specifically asked? Such things will be the measurement of our lives. They'll determine the course of our businesses. As Danny Brown...

Take a look at your marketing project list. It may be a traditional lined legal pad you carry around in a folio or color-coded Post-It notes surrounding your monitor like a dressed-up peacock. It makes little difference how you keep your list, because I bet we're all the same in how we tackle the things on them. We start with the easy stuff. And it will be our undoing.Whether you start each work week with a carefully plotted, organized list broken into "important" and "necessary" subsections...

Channel management (of the communication variety, not the sales/transaction sort) is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses. As consumers adopt new tools (and as tools mature and become more advanced), their expectations of brands grow. We want our MTV, and we want it via RSS, SMS, QR code, through Twitter, and, well, you get the picture. What needs to happen is a crossing of communication streams (a la Ghostbusters) to produce a more powerful solution, one that informs customer service...

Brand bibles, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides can provide general outlines of Do's and Don'ts, policies and common steps to issue resolution. As helpful as these resources may be to a social media specialist (or customer service rep), they can't replace personal experience and direct exposure to an assigned product or service.  A more dimensional and holistic training approach is critical to help front line staff make smart, informed, and controlled choices. Several high-profile brands gained...

Becoming a social business isn't as easy as adopting a few tools and making a few status updates.  Designing an innovative company around disruptive technology means more than taking a shallow swipe at establishing a service line and chalkboarding a "sometime, down the road" SaaS. Work the room Last week I attended a networking event coordinated by the Technology Association of Iowa.  Dubbed Pitch and Grow and well attended by University of Iowa types, the event centered around entreprenurship...

Listen up.   Grab your AmEx and head on over to Amazon.  You’re about to buy a book. That is, unless you win a free book (and I have one to offer some lucky duck). But you’ll probably want multiple copies, so you still need that shiny green card. Share the knowledge wealth. Once you dive into Jay and Amber’s book, you’ll be flooded with warmth.  The clouds will part, and someone, somewhere will sing.  You may even be bathed in golden light if you’re sitting near a south-facing...

Customer satisfaction is a crucial element to building enduring customer relationships.  A brand image may be a composite of many things, but satisfaction is the glue that binds them all together. Over on the Social Media Explorer blog I recently wrote about the role of social media in achieving customer satisfaction.  Part technical tool review, part examination of socially-enabled communications, the post took a look at Groubal ( the "complaint as a petition" platform) but begged a deeper...

Recently Tamsen McMahon published a really great infographic on the Sametz Blackstone blog.  It's a decision tree that maps out paths for determining whether a tweet might get re-tweeted.  The graphic includes subjective filters ("Is it interesting?") and practical factors ("Am I busy?") to consider for those trying to spread the word about something on Twitter. We might add other subjective filters like "Will this be a 'me-too' RT?"  Sometimes you can really like something for its own merit...