I was sent a link to a Michael Bublé video the other day. I’m not a big fan of his singing – though I readily admit he has a great voice and it makes for decent background music. What I saw surprised the heck out of me and made me rethink my impression of him. It also made me think a lot about what I and others in marketing are trying to teach brands about listening. We focus a lot on the how and even the when, but we often miss out the why. We assume that brands want to listen, or the brands assume that they have to listen because bad things are being said.  Take a moment to watch the video and then I’ll share what Michael Bublé reminded me about listening.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cw1uLVSl1Y

The first thing that struck me was the fact that Michael Bublé stopped the show to listen to this mother heckling him from the audience. He could easily have had her removed by security. In terms of brands that would equate to ignoring the unhappy customer who tweets about you – the way 70% of brands currently do – see this post from Jay Baer on that topic.

Instead he chose to stop the show (business as normal) and sit down and listen to what this mother and fan was trying to say. He points out that he is a singer, he turns up and thousands of people pay to listen to him (reminding the customer of what business he is actually in) but he allows her to continue with the story.

The mother pleads to have her son be allowed to sing on stage with Michael Bublé (change the way you do things to help me, the customer). Having heard her story, he decides to allow it (trying a new approach with customers). His expectations are no doubt fairly low, after all, all mothers think their sons are wonderful (brands don’t expect customers to bring much value to the discussion). What he gets is a huge surprise, one that evokes the “Holy Shitballs Mom” response (Why didn’t we listen to our customers before?).

At the end of the video Michael Bublé states in a half joking way that he has four years before the young man he just brought on stage will kill his career by winning a TV Show (if brands don’t continue to change based on customer feedback they will become irrelevant).

The point is that listening without knowing why is pointless. You can have all the tools you like at your disposal, have in place all the processes but if you aren’t prepared for the surprise that customers will bring to your brand then perhaps you would be better off not listening at all.

What “Holy Shitballs” moments have you seen with brands?

Companies that refer to themselves as Global do so to illustrate their ability to operate around the world and of course to give the impression of size, reliability and capability. However, I am constantly surprised at the number of companies that refer to themselves in that way but really mean they have operations in other countries. Operations that have no integration, no common systems and no ability to work together, so much for Global.

Global Companies: A Tale of Two Countries

I recently wanted to fulfill a wish from one of my daughters for her birthday. She had found a necklace sold by Tiffany & Co. It was her 21st birthday and given that the necklace was very reasonably priced I wanted to get it for her. I live in the US, she lives in the UK. Usually this is not a problem. I either have whoever I am ordering from ship direct or I go to their UK website and order from there. I do this all the time with Amazon and it works without fail.

However the Tiffany US website, having led me through their checkout process, doesn’t allow for international shipping addresses. Ok no problem I’ll use the Tiffany UK website, I go through the same checkout process only to find that their payment screen doesn’t allow International billing addresses. Undaunted by this I phone the Tiffany helpline, where a very helpful support person informs me that they are familiar with this issue, that they are working on a solution and that they are sorry to have caused a problem. She then tells me the solution is to phone the nearest store to where my daughter lives in the UK and have them ship it. She even provides me with the telephone number – great service.

I phone the UK store, explain what I am trying to do only to be told that they can’t take international payments, her advice was to go to my local Tiffany store buy the item there and ship it myself!

Tiffany fails on being a Global company in my book – they definitely need to be able to transact across borders.

Global Companies: A Further Tale of Two Countries

So I bought the necklace at my local store and then headed to Fedex, because after all they are an global shipping company. I filled out the requisite paperwork and then discovered that the Fedex could not find the city that the package was going to. In fact the assistant in the store referred to the destination as “some small country”!

Fedex failed because their people are trained to believe what the system tells them and not use their initiative. In the end I took my package to the Post Office, who within minutes had it addressed, labelled and on its way to the UK – also for a lot less than Fedex would have charged me.

Global Means Integration

So the lesson here is, if you are going to refer to your organization as Global or anything else for that matter make sure you can actually deliver on those claims. If you are going to be a global company then you need a lot more than a store in another country.

What are your experiences with global businesses?

Image used under CC license from Gerry Balding

How do others see you is a question that I was asked yesterday. It really made me think, I know how I want others to see me, but do I really know how they actually see me. No of course the “me” I’m talking about is the brand me not the person me. That can be a hard line to distinguish when you are talking about a person that has also worked to create a brand around themselves. Easier when you are talking about a company or an organizational brand.

How Do Others See You – What Image Are You Portraying?

Knowing how others, whether those “others” are customers, clients, readers etc see you can be a great aid in closing gaps in your brand image. During the conversation that sparked this post I discovered that the person I was talking with saw my brand in a very different way than I see it. This was actually a very positive thing for me, as they saw me much further developed than I saw myself. Nonetheless having that conversation made me realize that so often we plough ahead with our own perception and forget to actually check-in with the constituents that really matter – our audience.

I intend to check in with my audience on at least an annual basis and find out how they perceive my brand. What qualities do they associate with it, what attributes come to mind when they think of the name and also what do they not think of when they think of my brand.

How Do Others See You – How To Ask

How do you find out how others see  you? Especially in perhaps a more structured way than just a casual conversation. Big brands can afford to have market research conducted to obtain this type of feedback. How does a smaller organization or even a solo entrepreneur get the same feedback?

This is where relationships come in. Building a network of customers, clients and trusted voices that you can reach out to for answers to these questions is the easiest way to get that feedback. Of course it takes time and if you haven’t already started then you have a long path ahead of you. But building it has so much value that it simply can’t be expressed in revenue terms. Customers and clients have so much more to offer your business than just money. They have the perspective that, as business owners, brand managers and marketers we so often lack.

So as my group of readers – how do you see my brand? What attributes do you associate with it?

How will you ask your audience how they see you?

Image used under CC license by Tambako

There are approximately six weeks until the New Year, I find that this is a good point in the year to spend some time focusing on strengths and decide what next year is going to look like. What are you going to do differently next year? Defining next year is not just about writing a wish list of things you hope will happen. Nor is it just a matter of creating a plan that you can execute. An element of reflection is a strong component of moving forward.

Focusing on Strengths – Gaining Perspective

In determining what I want next year to look like I spent sometime reflecting on the past year – what did I change, what worked, what didn’t, what did I not try? These seem perfectly good points to reflect on, but I also spent some time taking an honest inventory of my strengths and of course in doing so, highlighted my weaknesses. Focusing on strengths gave me a sense of what I enjoy most about the work I do and how I might spend more time doing those things and, being honest, increase the amount of income those activities generate.

There are things I should be better at but am not. Some of those things will remain no matter what I decide to make 2012 look like, they are core activities necessary for any business. There are however things that are not only not core activities they are neither strengths nor things I enjoy – so why am I still doing them? In part I would imagine because I wanted to ensure that I at least tried them – which is a good reason to do something but not a good enough reason to sustain an activity.

Focusing on Strengths

Auditing yourself and your year is an interesting experience. A lot can change in a year – for example today is the one year anniversary of my move to Dallas from Austin – that was a significant change, and one I wouldn’t have predicted at the beginning of 2010. In performing the audit on my own activities I highlighted three areas that I feel have both become strengths and are things from which I derive great enjoyment:

• Speaking
• Writing
• Creating

I have spoken in public for many many years and to be honest, as anyone who really knows me well will tell you, I am happy in front of an audience of a couple of hundred than I am sitting at a table with a couple of people. This past year has given me the opportunity to travel extensively speaking in various settings and to a wide range of audiences – all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed. The fact that this is also becoming an increasingly significant contributor to my income is a distinct bonus.

Writing is something of a passion and a torture for me, as I know it is for a lot of writers. I never really imagined I would be able to earn a living writing, but surprising things happen. Not only did I manage to get a book written and published but I’m currently working on a second book for publication and a third for digital distribution, along with contributing as an author to various other outlets. It really does give me a lot of pleasure to write and so why would I not include that in my activities.

Creating is a vague term at best. For me it can best be described as working with ideas. Some people would call it Strategy, some people Ideation, some day dreaming. Of all the elements that I perform for companies, the big picture thinking, the wild ideas, the “what if” scenarios are what I enjoy most, so that definitely stays.

Focusing on Strengths – losing the weaknesses

In deciding to build a year based on what I feel are my strengths it also implies that I am not going to focus on the weaknesses. That is mostly true, I am acknowledging them and where possibly cutting them out of the processes and activities that I engage in. By focusing on strengths I am hoping that I build a stronger year in 2012, it’s a gamble because, while I might see something as a strength that might not be a shared view and perhaps some of those activities that I consider weaknesses just might have made a difference if they were included in the mix.

What are you focusing on for 2012?

Over the past week a study in how to lose the respect of your advocate base has slowly revealed itself in the form of a design competition being run by Moleskine, the notebook company. In the world of the Social Consumer in which we now all operate, advocates are far more powerful than Influencers. Influencers, are for the most part, incentivized to talk about a brand, product or service. Advocates on the other hand are so loyal to the brand, product or service that they will happily promote it for no reward other than seeing the success of their beloved brand.

Moleskine: Not Asking The Right Questions

What happened in this particular case? Moleskine decided to follow other brands and to hold a “social competition”. They partnered with DesignBoom who have held these competitions for other brands in the past. DesignBoom has worked with car brands like Infinity, Renault and electronics brands like Fujitsu among others. So Moleskine obviously felt that they were in good hands having DesignBloom run a design based competition for a logo for their blog.

The biggest difference between Moleskine and the other brands that DesignBloom has worked with is the competition entrants. For Renault or Infinity the designs were not being submitted by drivers, they were being submitted by designers, which is also true for Moleskine and that is the issue. The intended competition entrants for the Moleskine competition are designers, which makes them Moleskines customers, potential customers and advocates. The question Moleskine forgot to ask is what do our customers do with our product? You would think they would know as the site for which they were seeking a new logo is a place for users of their products to showcase their work. Moleskine’s product is central to their customers business, it is an essential tool that helps their customers generate revenue.

Moleskine: Asking For Free

The competition has caused an uproar in the design community because it is seen as an on-spec submission request – a request in fact for up to 3500 designers to submit their work for review and for one of them to be chosen as “the winner”. Many freelancers, when they are first starting out have to do work on-spec to capture their first client. However, those are usually small clients and are used to add to a growing portfolio. That a company the size of Moleskine would expect designers to submit work for free in the hopes of “winning” the competition is a remarkable misunderstanding of who their customers are.

All of this might have been rescued were it not for the response to the criticism that Moleskine made on their Facebook page:

As far as the Moleskinerie logo contest is concerned, we would like to clarify that since the nature of Moleskinerie has always been participative, made up of passionate contributions and voluntary submissions, we decided to let the community participate again in creating the new logo of the blog.

We decided to collaborate with Designboom to do so, a leading online design magazine, which is well aware of how to run a contest of this kind.
If you had spent some time on the “Competitions” area of Designboom website, you certainly have seen that other Brands are running and previously decided to run similar contests, with the same regulation of our with great participation as well as amazing results.

That said, being a contest, there’s a final price for the winner, but all the submissions are free, as well you are free not to taking part to it.

The tone, the arrogant and dismissive manner in which the criticism is addressed only added fuel to the fire. Designers, agencies and others are all leaving comments on the page stating that they will no longer be purchasing Moleskine products for their business – all of these comments are going unanswered.

Moleskine: Learn the Lesson

From the sidelines it is hard to see how Moleskine can recover from this particular PR nightmare. Their current tactic seems to be hide their head in the sand and hope it goes away. Asking their community to submit “free” work – which as any freelancer will tell you is the bane of their existence is such a monumental faux pas that it has revealed more about how little the company understands what happens to their product when it leaves them than I am sure they intended.

When you sell a business product it is incredibly important to understand how that product adds value to the end users business. Whether its a notebook or a computer, a piece of software or a vehicle. Knowing what your customer does with your product and how that action impacts their revenue gives you a much better insight into your customers needs and the ability to meet those needs.

Could Moleskine have achieved the same level of engagement without enraging their customer base? Yes, undoubtedly, most importantly they should have recognized the needs of their customers and folded those into the outreach that they were considering.

What advice would you give to Moleskine?

Thanks to anyone who has decided, and will decide to take part to it.

There are only a few weeks left in 2011 the year that Social Media was supposed to become “normal” and yet as a recent report by Booz & Company/Buddy Media shows the majority of companies are fixated on Twitter and Facebook. That really isn’t that surprising, especially when the C-Suite are so familiar with status updates that they believe that is all there is to Social Media.

What They See vs What They Want

This graphic describes the problem nicely. Executives and others looking to Social Media only see the tip of the iceberg. They see status updates, but what they really want lies much much deeper. Beyond the Social Marketing layer and into the depths where Digital Marketing lies. The problem is that they can’t see the whole iceberg, only the tip. So when they start to talk about Social Media they think they understand what they mean but in reality are often convinced that the tip is all that is needed.

More than one captain has been caught out by not understanding the size of the iceberg he is encountering. As the Booz & Co/BuddyMedia report shows, 79% of respondents are pulling resources from Digital Marketing to pay for Social Media initiatives. This is a worrying trend. It is a strong indicator of the lack of understanding about where Social Marketing fits in the overall toolbox. The danger is that by visualizing Social Marketing as little more than another channel through which to push messages (96% of respondents see Social Marketing as an advertising and promotions channel) organizational leaders are going to run their Social ship aground.

Scratching The Surface

If, as some posit, Social Media/Marketing were the normal way we conduct business would we really still be reading reports like this? In all honesty most companies are still barely scratching the surface and most are still not even managing to do that. Some of the problem can be attributed to the perspective we have on the world as digital marketers – we love Social and Digital, so we believe everyone does and that most are using it. The truth is most are not. We are also guilty of perpetuating the myths that surround Social – it’s cheap/free, it’s easy, users are just waiting for brands to talk to them.

Will things change in 2012? There is one metric in the report that indicates perhaps things might change – 57% of respondents are planning on hiring headcount to manage Social Media within their organization. Hopefully having individuals or even a few of them in an organization that actually understand Social Marketing is more than just status updates will lead to an overall better understanding within organizations as a whole. I’m hopeful this will lead to change, but I’m also realistic that change, especially at the organizational level is hard and slow.

2012 – The Year of Social?

So will next year be the year Social becomes normal? As much as I want to say yes, I have to say no. I think we are at least 5 years away from seeing the term fall by the wayside in the same way as we rarely see the phrase e-commerce used these days. In the interim we should continue to point out that iceberg in the path of so many organizations who think they are navigating the waters of Social so well with their status updates while missing point.

What do you think, will the lack of vision sink Social in 2012?

Over the past five years or so I’ve seen lots of discussion about where Social Media should sit in an organization. Some will say it has to be in the Marketing department, others insist that it is a PR activity. What everyone agrees on is that the  Advertising department shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the Social Media toolbox.

Social Media Storytelling

Social Media is all about storytelling, or so the “guru’s” will tell you. That’s when they aren’t telling you that it’s all about relationships. Ok so I am supposed to tell stories to people so they will “like” me as a brand and that will create a relationship? Actually that is a pretty fair description of the way social media should work. It can’t be about a relationship without there first being something to attract attention. Back in the day, as people are want to say around here (Texas), we used to practice a principle called AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. That has, for some people, fallen out of favor, but I have no idea why. It works, and it works at all levels of human interaction – which is afterall what Social Media is supposed to be about.

Think of dating. If you aren’t aware of someone, then how will you take an interest in them? If you have no interest in them you are unlikely to find yourself desiring them, and if you have no desire you are unlikely to take any action – well any positive action. This holds true for every scenario that you can imagine for human interaction. Whether it is between two humans or a human and a brand. So first we need to create awareness and interest. Storytelling is definitely a great way to do that. Let’s look at some examples:

Social Media Storytelling – Old Fashioned Advertising

Storytelling is being trotted out as the “key” to Social Media as though it were something new and wonderful, recently discovered by the social media “guru’s”. It isn’t. Watch the video below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVGmdwHTP1I

That ad is from 1970 – the jingle went on to be covered by The Carpenters and became a hit on both the US and UK music charts (that’s what they call viral these days). Notice that the name of the brand doesn’t appear until the end. The focus is the young couple and their story. This is story telling, but it is also advertising. In 1970 the nearest thing to a mobile computing device was a pocket calculator which would have cost you approx $1800 in today’s money. Social Media meant talking about last night’s TV and yet here we were creating stories to bring a brand closer to its customers.

Take a look at this next video – it is fictional of course, but it mimics the thinking of the late 1960′s and the revolution that was advertising in the age of David Ogilvy. In Mad Men, the character of Don Draper isn’t a Social Media guru – he is an ad man and he tells stories (and yes there is an ad before the clip).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY

Social Media Storytelling – Advertising 2.0

So many of today’s Social Media “specialists” have no grounding in marketing, PR or advertising. They have reinvented themselves a hundred times and this is just their latest persona. 3 years ago they were SEO experts, before that they were Website experts, who knows what they were before that. Don’t get me wrong, I too have reinvented myself a hundred times (a long story for another time), but when you reinvent yourself it is incumbent upon you to know the history of the field that you are entering.

Social Media Storytelling isn’t a new thing, it’s just new to those who are new to the business of convincing people to buy things. Storytelling has always been the best way to sell things – to build an emotional attachment to a product, to set it apart from other products or services in the mind of the consumer. So when you are deciding how to shape your next Social Media campaign, take some time to talk to the advertising department. Ask them how they would tell your story, what emotional attachment they might bring to the fore and start from there.

How do you tell stories to customers?

image – simon salt ©2011 All Rights Reserved

Over the past week we saw a social campaign creative team have their baby called ugly. As creatives we know that from time to time this is going to happen. What seems like a great idea to us, something that carries the message in a way that is engaging etc turns out not to resonate with everyone. Not only doesn’t it resonate it actually annoys people to the point where they point out how ugly our baby is to all and sundry.

That’s An Ugly Baby!

For those of you who are parents (or dirty dancing fans) you will immediately know what this feels like. Whether it has happened to you or not, the thought of someone calling your new born child ugly is unspeakable. The bile rises, anger ensues, rationale goes out of the window. It is hard to hear that someone is critical of your baby. The reaction is no less when the “baby” in question is the product of a team of creatives who have brainstormed, included, rejected, thrown around countless ideas before finally crafting the finished product.

When criticism is given it is hard to receive when you have poured hours of labor into producing the piece that is being criticized. The usual reaction, an understandable one is to become defensive. We want to defend and justify our creative decisions, we seek to try and  explain our creative process to the people criticizing us. We want them to understand our thoughts and our process so that they will stop their criticism. Unfortunately we can’t do that, not really. Instead our defensiveness makes us unable to hear what is really being said.

Defending The Ugly Baby

At first we might reject the criticism, then we become really defensive and start to attack back. We want to find fault with the other person, to point out their shortcomings. Accuse them of being incapable of creativity or making anything worthwhile. Of course all this does is reduce our argument and its effectiveness. Onlookers see only someone who is avoiding addressing the issue and has now resorted to personal attacks. Of course our justification for this is that the other person was personal in the first place by calling our baby ugly. But as creatives we have to have thicker skins than that. Comments, observations, even direct criticisms of our work are not personal attacks, though they feel like it.

Responding as though these attacks are personal only aggravates the situation. Often making it much worse than it was originally. The more defensive we become the less we listen to what is being said. The less we listen the more likely we are to find ourselves in a place where the argument reaches a point of no return. An impasse where neither side can see a way forward so both become entrenched in their position. This is a situation that can arise in any relationship but it is particularly visible when the two parties concerned are high profile professional communicators.

What To Do With The Ugly Baby

As professional creatives and communicators we have to find ways of both making critical observations and receiving criticism in ways that doesn’t lead to that impasse. When the talking stops and the arguing starts the discussion is over. Regardless of intent, criticism can be helpful, even if it wasn’t intended to be. However being open to listening to it, weeding out the useless and retaining the lesson contained inside it can be an exercise is patience and discipline that escapes even the best of us.

In the internet age where critics are given their own name – “Trolls” and over sensitive creatives run screaming to their fan base for help fighting the trolls we are at risk of losing sight of the benefit that critics can bring. They can make us revisit our assumptions, push ourselves to try harder in our attempts, even to rethink and create something even better.

So how do you give criticism? How do you receive criticism?

Does pressure help you or hurt you? Like a lot of people I’ve been spending time on Google plus over the past week and a half and yesterday Chris Bailey shared the Nike commercial featuring the US Women’s soccer team. The video is below. The video made me think about pressure that we impose on ourselves to try and make ourselves better.

Pressure as a motivation

As a writer, blogger and speaker in the marketing world I have a lot of peers, and like most people I measure myself against them. Some I feel are in a different league to me all together, with others I feel I am further advanced than they are.

When the people I respect and admire like Chris Brogan, Jay Baer, Brian Solis, David Armano produce great content I feel the pressure mounting. Not because I want to be better than they are, but because they are elevating the game, raising the bar for audience expectations. If you have ever seen any of these guys speak you will know what I mean. They can command a room because they know their subject extremely well, they relax and become friends with the audience.

In that way pressure becomes a motivator. I recognize that the audiences I will speak in front of, the audiences that will read my posts want more and so I impose pressure on myself based on what I have seen others deliver.

No Pressure – No Achievement

But, what if, like the video asks, there was no pressure? Would you still succeed? Would you still give it your all? I know, speaking for myself that I doubt I would. Without others raising the bar, I wouldn’t elevate my own standards. Not because I’m lazy, but simply because maintaining the status quo is what we are good at. Of course I’m not talking about the type of stressed out, boss screaming at you, not enough money in the bank, kids home from school type of pressure – that is a whole other thing.

This pressure is the type that comes from within, the pressure you put on yourself to get better at what you do and to continue developing yourself as a professional. I am constantly surprised by the complacency I encounter, especially in the corporate world where I speak to marketers who haven’t picked up a new business book since they graduated ten years ago but consider themselves to be professional.

Pressure As A Negative Influence

Of course pressure can be a negative influence, you can end up convincing yourself that you will never raise your game to the level of others. That other people have some kind of “secret sauce” that they are using that makes them better at what you do than you are. In reality that isn’t true, the truth is that those other people are also measuring themselves against a benchmark individual or group of individuals and applying that same pressure to their game, to drive themselves to achieve more.

So does pressure help you work?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E851cINimc0

image used under CC by gfoots

Social Media Monitoring is a waste of time and money. There the cat is out of the bag. All those amazing tools that exist like Radian6, Visible Technologies, Lithium, ViralHeat, Social Mention and hundreds of others are a complete waste of your time and money. Let me explain why.

Social Media Monitoring Is Pointless

Full disclosure, my company offers Social Media Monitoring services – this is not a pitch. Here is why social media monitoring is pointless – because just seeing what social consumers are saying about you is meaningless unless there is an action plan that leads to follow up. Unfortunately most companies fail to realize that social media monitoring, whether done in house or by a third party doesn’t mean that the workload is reduced by the use of a tool.

There needs to be a strategy behind the results. That strategy has to be effective and include a plan for both good and bad mentions. I’ve seen quite a few examples in the past week of companies that are either not bothering to monitor their social media accounts as closely as they should or are only looking for amplification of their message. Therein lies one of the problems, just because your organization decides to use social media as a marketing tool, doesn’t mean that your consumers will see it as a marketing channel. If they find that you have a Twitter account for example, they are going to use that as a point of entry to your customer service process whether you created it for that purpose or not.

Social Media Monitoring – Good, Bad & Mediocre

I recently stayed at the Hotel Max in Seattle. I had a very good experience with them and decided to write a Yelp review of them. Within a day I had received a response from the team there thanking me for my review. I then noticed that they had in fact responded to every review – good and bad and where the reviewer had a less than optimum experience they had apologized and asked how they could fix the problem. The hotel has received 214 reviews – every one of them has received a response from the team at the hotel. That is good Social Media Monitoring.

On Twitter this weekend I saw a rather ironic event. Frank Eliason, who can quite possibly be credited with being the forefather of great customer service via social media during his time at ComCast, reached out to Audi to say that he wasn’t happy with the Audi roadside assistance, he was waiting for a service vehicle to come and get him. I noticed this and followed up with Frank to see if Audi ever contacted him as I couldn’t find a response on their stream. Audi didn’t. In fact they were completely silent that day, the following day their stream consists of chatting with “Fans”. This was definitely a failure to monitor and act accordingly.

Delta Airlines were equally silent when a video of American troops returning home from duty in Afghanistan hit the social media world. The troops had been charged after a confusion over extra baggage. The video – posted to YouTube and then reposted to Facebook and Twitter created a small storm among social media users. Delta responded on their Facebook wall and eventually on Twitter. I think they did somethings right and some things wrong. Firstly what they got wrong – silence. This is basic customer service – allowing customers to create the story and having no response is not the way to handle things. Respond immediately, even if your response is only – “We hear you and we are going to look into this”. What Delta did right was to fix the issue, they actually rewrote their policy based on this incident, which is great customer service, but they could have silenced their critics faster had they told people they were working on a solution.

Social Media Monitoring – Don’t Waste Your Time

The point of all this is, if you aren’t prepared to act, then don’t stroke your ego’s by simply monitoring to see how many “fans” you have out there. Sure it’s nice to know that people think highly of your brand and to be able to pull quotes from social media sources to include in your client/C-suite presentations, but those are meaningless if you are going to let the real opportunities slip pass.

Social Media Monitoring gives an organization the opportunity to not only respond but actually change the way they do business and make them more competitive. What are you using Social Media Monitoring for?

Image used under CC license – anderscismo