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Persuasive Picks for the week of 04/12/10

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lifestream-icons Social Media Marketing Overload? Some Tips for Startups
This post by Audrey Watters in ReadWriteWeb’s “ReadWriteStart Channel” provides 4 solid tips to help businesses avoid being overwhelmed when first engaging in social media.

4 Reasons Why PR Agencies Are Taking Over Social Media
Jason Keath provides great food for thought in this post that provides four concrete reasons why PR will eventually rule the social media space for big brands and of course, we have to agree!

How web analytics can help you avoid a PR disaster
Eran Savir, co-founder and VP business development at Kampyle, explains the importance of pursuing and maintaining a high level of customer service and interaction in the online space.

The Engaged User: Bridging Your Web Site And Social Networks
JanRain CEO, Brian Kissel expands on the importance of ensuring there’s a strong bridge between your online social presence and your corporate website that can enable users to become strong proponents of your products, services and content.

Hubspot’s Foursquare Cops
Hubspot’s new video spoof of the TV show “Cops” made its debut this week and is definitely worth a watch.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 01/25/10

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foursquare_logo_girl6 marketing opportunities on Foursquare
Many are predicting that 2010 will be the year of mobile marketing. If thats the case, then iPhone and Blackberry app Foursquare is on its way to being a leading platform in that space. Tony Felice from iMediaConnection shares 6 ways marketers can take advantage of this increasingly popular mobile app.

Facebook Marketing Tips: Make the Most of Your Fan Page
Online Marketing Blog Copywriter, Michelle Bowles shares a few great tips on making the most of your Facebook Fan Page and provides examples of real pages that are inline with her advice.

Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl Ad Plans Include Social Media
Stuart Elliot from the WSJ’s Media Decoder blog provides a run-down of Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl campaign that includes a combination of traditional tv ads and online focused social media efforts

50% of Marketers Shifting Funds From Traditional to Online; Social “Top Priority”
Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal shares the results from a recent report from the Society of Digital Agencies that indicates marketers are continuing to put more time and effort in the online social space.

Social Media As Customer Service
Lauren Fischer from SimplyZesty explores the trend of businesses adding social media platforms to their customer service workflows. A link to a Forrester presentation is also provided.

 

Persuasive Picks for the week of 09/07/09

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techcrunch_punked.jpgYeah OK, So Facebook Punk’d Us
Facebook’s PR team gets some fun revenge on TechCrunch by pulling a fast one on Arrington & Company by subtly revealing a new “feature.”

Gaffe by Tweet: Top 10 Social-Media Slip-Ups Musicians, movie stars, professional athletes and now, even politicians are flocking to Twitter. Some use it well. Some don’t. Newsweek shares 10 slip-ups from the political camp.

Social Media for B2B
Socialnomics author, Erik Qualman gives some insight and advice to B2B companies looking to wrangle their social media strategies… by reviewing the way B2C’s have been doing it.

The new PR: Nimble Twitter responses make grass roots easy (or hard)
Sarah Gilbert shares a few stories showing the importance of listening, responding and acting quickly to customer comments on social media channels.

How Customer Support Organizations Must Evolve
Along the same lines of the previous pick, Jeremiah Owyang expands on how customer service organizations must evolve and adapt to survive the rapid changes in customer communication. Slides from Jeremiah’s recent presentation on the topic are included in the post.

No “I” in TEAM – why we’re all now in sales, PR and customer service

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There’s an age-old argument that has traditionally taken place among the walls of corporate America regarding the relationship between marketing, PR, sales and customer service: who is responsible for (and receives credit for) leads? What is the process for turning leads into customers and who “closes”? Once that happens, who is responsible for keeping customers happy and informed? The traditional answers might look something like this:

a) PR – awareness that supports sales’ efforts; sales – responsible for actual leads

b) Sales

c) Customer service

Truth be told, now more than ever, each of these constituents must work together – in essence, sharing all of these responsibilities – to ensure a wholly positive prospect or customer experience. With the rise of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook for direct engagement and interaction, the lines are a bit more blurred – we are all selling or promoting to prospects and caring for our customers.

Take, for example, two recent examples from my own life:

1) I recently had to have GE come out to fix my refrigerator (again…but that’s a different blog post). The repairman came, said he fixed the part, took his check and went along his merry way. The next morning, I woke up to a freezer that still wasn’t fixed and a refrigerator that was 60 degrees! Now I had two problems instead of one and I was not happy. I called customer service. The woman on the other end knew I was upset. She said the repair (read: sales) schedule couldn’t fit me in for another week. I didn’t take kindly to that answer and as such, she quickly found an opening for me on the next day. This woman recognized a customer service issue that could have turned into both a negative sales experience (if I had patience and a lot of ice, I could have called an independent repair shop) and negative buzz (PR). She salvaged a customer and a negative Tweet or two… Now, I expect the repairman to come back and treat me as nicely as she did – and to apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll let you know how that goes. But if he doesn’t, which experience will I remember the most?

2) I went to St. Louis last week and Tweeted that I was searching for a good hotel. A PR rep from the Hyatt Regency St. Louis contacted me on Twitter and presented a really great offer. Although I received other recommendations from my online communities, I was impressed with the effort that this woman put into treating me as a customer who mattered. As a PR rep, she could have very easily just answered my question with “Try the Hyatt” and a link – but instead she took on the role of sales, securing a discount code and taking the time to interact back and forth with me to “close the deal.” She not only promoted her company and made a sale, but she set the precedent for my expectations around their customer service. I am happy to say that the remainder of the experience upheld the standards of expectations that she set in her interactions with me. As a result, I Tweeted about my gratitude and here I am writing a blog post recommending that you try the Hyatt if you ever visit St. Louis.

The definitive lines of responsibility are, of course, still important as business executives specialize in one area or another – sales, customer service, product development, PR, etc. However, at the pace of business today – and the public engagement that customers now expect – those lines need to be a bit more flexible within organizations. Different departments need to support each other more than ever – and communicate better than ever.

Be sure that you prepare your company with consistent and persistent messaging, clear guidelines for communication and definitive processes for working across departments. Lead with the attitude that every employee has the same goal – to make your company great and your customers happy – and be sure to rethink policies that might otherwise detract from that initiative.

As transparency continues to be expected and business is conducted in a more public forum than ever before, every employee is essentially selling, promoting and representing their respective companies in every move they make. Be sure you prepare your staff to represent your brand in the right light.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 07/19/09

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Twitter 101Twitter Launches “Twitter 101″- Step One Of The Business Plan
Still looking for self-help in understanding what Twitter is and how to use it? Now you can get that information straight from the source with Twitter’s new online guide for business.

Nine Marketing Tips from a Six-Year Old’s Lemonade Stand
Jim Lodico guest posts on WebDesignerDepot.com with this great set of marketing tips inspired by his daughter’s lemonade stand.

Why Customer Service Should Be in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Tamar Weinberg shares this great post that reminds us how important customer service can be when engaging in social marketing strategies.

Deep social media engagement pays dividends
Sally Falkow provides an overview (with links to the source) on the eConsultancy.com blog of a recent ENGAGEMENTdb study thats shows how companies with the deepest and widest social media efforts gained revenue over the last 12 months.

Amazon Buys Zappos, Gives Press the Boot
Amazon and Zappos show that sometimes you can deliver the news on your own terms without the help of the media. It was certainly an interesting move considering the size of the news – and it has been yielding opinions on both sides of the fence. Here’s the video that Jeff Bezos released on YouTube:

In a Web 2.0 World, Customer Service Still Matters

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With all the do-it-yourself technologies prevalent in today’s Web 2.0 environment, customer service is very often stripped down to an IM chat or email. Often it’s impossible to get a human on the phone when you most need it, and when you do happen to “catch” a customer service representative, cultural barriers, sour attitudes and long processes tend to prevail. Now, more than ever, customer service matters.

One of our clients, Constant Contact, has always recognized this – their entire culture is built around taking care of the customer. Personally, we’ve experienced some great customer service this month from other vendors – and as a small business, it’s great to be treated with the care, respect and importance that is often only reserved for large customers.

Two examples:

Promopeddler

We had to order a rather large supply of light up glasses for the TechCrunch Boston MeetUp. We called a vendor we had used before and when we were negotiating some timing/pricing issues, the approach was a threatening “we may be more expensive, but you’ll regret it if you don’t use us” attitude. That doesn’t play well with us, so we tried a new vendor, Promopeddler. Promopeddler won our business due to their sales rep, Laurie. Laurie’s approach was not only that she was grateful for our business but she went above and beyond with her customer service. She was truly the reason they won our business.

Laurie was proactive, persistent and consistent – all the way past the point of the glasses being delivered. She provided extensive contact information, contacted us daily to let us know the status of the rushed order, called us when she thought a color aspect could be better – and provided a recommendation – and even followed up to ask us how our event was and if the glasses worked out. Our customer experience was so outstanding due to this woman that as long as she’s there, we’ll be a customer. We noticed they made the Inc. 500 “because we give personal service with every order.” Yes – they really do.

Verizon Wireless

We had a unique situation to solve with some BlackBerry purchase from Verizon. It required getting on the phone with some customer service representatives, which is not always a very positive experience. However, one customer service representative, Anthony in New York, made all the difference today. He was very clear every step of the way through the process and he was so personable we ended up chatting about baseball and football – and even though he was a dreaded Yankees fan and we are diehard Red Sox fans (most of us, anyway), we felt like a customer that mattered. Anthony made a time consuming process not only bearable but even entertaining – and experiences like that stick with your customers, so they stick with you.

The point here is that yes, the Internet provides a mostly do-it-yourself marketplace and opportunities to communicate without ever saying a word. But positive, helpful and verbal human connections are still important ways to make your brand memorable – and your customers loyal.