There is nothing more emotional than your phone. It serves as your lifeline to the world.
For many of us a seriously bad day is one that involves a phone malfunction–one that jeopardizes our precious lifeline.
Incurring trouble with a mobile phone easily turns any delightful day to disaster.
I’ve personally had phone malfunctions including sending my phone for a swim in a cup of pumpkin coffee, leaving it at the gym after a spotify listening session, and dropping it about one million times. That lifeline has taken a beating. When the little earthquakes happen– my preferred customer service channel is twitter. For early adopters of technology it’s much easier to tweet or FB customer service than it is to get on the phone or go into a retail store.
Two years ago I worked with Verizon Wireless to help the customer strategy team deliver premium service to all of its social customers.
Verizon Wireless has consistently received J.D. Power & Associates recognition as top quality for overall customer care. They also have a large and loyal social following on Facebook–where you can reach customer service reps–in addition to their twitter support handle @VZWSupport.
Recently the Verizon Wireless team decided to create a short video about their social customer service team and I was asked to appear in the video.
A TV crew came to my apartment with a small truck of equipment. It was a lot of fun. Here’s the video below:
A photo from the day the film crew came to my house.
Today I spoke at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. This event is essentially paradise for foodies. The exhibit hall has thousands of gourmet finds from all over the world. If you have a gourmet specialty foods product, this is where people come to show it off. I saw a tweet flying around from Thomas Keller yesterday! The #WFFS13 is THE place to be.
When I started my own consulting practice, one of my first clients was a local Bay Area favorite Sukhis. Since then I worked with some other food and retail brands, and found a group I really love working with–foodies!
Today I gave the following presentation on Brand Storytelling and Social Media. I hope you like it! I have included some photos as well.
Kamaria Muir and I built the successful online magazine and social networking site Customer Management IQ together back in New York City. Kamaria will be joining Artemis this month. Now in addition to influncer engagement, public relations and social strategy we offer paid search, SEO, web development services and brand planning.
It’s my pleasure and honor to tell you about Kamaria Muir who resides in New York. Kamaria is an expert in Digital Marketing. She has strong experience in search engine optimization, pay per click advertising web design, brand planning and marketing campaign development. Over the past decade she has worked with world- class brands including Virgin Entertainment Group, Cheil Communications and Macmillan Publishers. She’s managed successful SEO campaigns across multiple websites for the International Productivity and Quality Center (IQPC) as well as PPC campaigns across Google, Bing, Facebook and LinkedIn for various clients including Urban Financial Group. She is a strong digital project manager – having implemented full scale website development initiatives at Macmillan publishers and strategic brand planning for Love Rocks NY and Blanket Anchor. She is both Google Adwords and Microsoft Ad Center Certified and has a Masters Degree in Strategic Communications from Columbia University.
Interested in learning more? Contact me at Blake @ Artemis Strategies.com.
Yesterday I saw Twitter co-founder Biz Stone speak at PRSA.
When we got into the media briefing room Biz immediately seemed like he wanted to leave. He said the minute he walked in the door his wife was going to berate him for being late and hand him a screaming ten month old. You got the feeling he cared a lot more about his own family life than he did being at a PR media briefing. I respected him for that. I also respected him for the world that he showed us yesterday–from being a college dropout obsessed with the democratization of information to creating a technology that would change the course of history.
Biz Stone answering questions, being down to earth.
He said two things that resonated with me on a personal level:
1. Opportunity can be manufactured and you manufacture this for yourself.
2. To succeed spectacularly you must be willing to fail spectacularly.
For me that means you’re willing to walk away completely empty handed from whatever you’re doing. And he reminded us that to do that–you need to care about what you’re doing on an emotional level.
Biz gave metrics that he felt companies should measure themselves by. One of them was joy. Can you imagine a company that looks at joy as an indicator of success?
I believe joy is directly related to self esteem. I believe self esteem is related to contribution. I also believe companies can build the self esteem of its employees by recognizing employees and giving them opportunities to challenge themselves and contribute. Today most companies don’t do this. Research shows a happy, proud employee will contribute much more than an employee that feels like a number.
Self esteem is something I write about a lot. I also built a “movement” around helping to build the self esteem of women with Project Enough.
Biz Stone’s talk about a service oriented approach to business reminded me of my own journey. I’d like to think that sharing personal stories about my own challenges with anxiety, depression, body image and self esteem help other women who are going through something similar.
My storytelling is my giving back. Most people would rather die than write about being humiliated as I did last week on the website Eat the Damn Cake. I get joy out of putting all my experiences and thoughts on my writing table and putting the pieces back together, but I also want to help other girls and women–to let them know they’re not alone–to provide them tools and resources and knowledge.
The talk made me think about Project Enough and why I keep coming back to it. I feel that this was a “movement” that started with a shift within me. I didn’t know if this was the right thing to do or not–and realized quickly this project was in no way about making money. This is a project to spread awareness and most of all joy–> to women, who suffer with body shame and low self esteem. And yes I just used the word “suffer,” because you do.
Biz said there was compound interest in altruism and I believe he’s right because when one person comes back to me and says thank you for writing that (or saying that), I can relate and I’m going through X, I feel that emotional compound interest. I also hope that other people experience that as well.
The other night I watched a touching “60 Minutes” special about Steve Jobs.
During the special there was a segment on how autistic children benefit from the ipad. Many of the children at the care center, who for years couldn’t speak, could finally communicate using the ipad. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a teacher, parent or therapist who–after years of struggle–could see their child actually express themselves?
According to the segment, autistic children love the ipad because they like the touchscreen, and the feeling of control they have using the ipad touchscreen. There are a ton of new great apps for autistic children on the ipad–and they are changing what is possible for people who have autism (and their families/loved ones). I was very touched by this video “Autistic and Passionate About Pavaratti.”
**
Thoughts on Control
Autistic children like the ipad because of the feeling of control they have using the touchscreen. When you hear the word “control” discussed today in a business context, it’s generally about social media, and how organizations feel they are losing control because of social media.
Where as before control was simple, today it is not. We like to feel we have full control, but in reality, we have little control. We go to great lengths to display “control.”
But the truth is life is always moving, shifting and while we might appear to have control for a little while, we only have control over some things–for a period of time. There always comes a time where we have to let go.
New technologies are changing the face of communication faster than we can blink. On the other end of that the attitude toward “work,” and its nature, has not changed.
What are your thoughts on “control” and the changing nature of “work”?
Social media is changing the way we do business. And with new features on Facebook and the somewhat social Google +, even the algorithms of our social networks and our streams are being re-organized
While in our personal lives we’ve completely mastered social, as one in six minutes online is generally spent on a social network (comScore), it hasn’t quite hit the office.
We spend countless hours crafting product reviews on Yelp. We recommend businesses we love. We answer the questions of people we’ve never met on Quora. We overshare on Facebook. We laugh at dancing chiuauas on YouTube. We speak in a truncated vowel-less language on twitter.
So why don’t we tell our bosses that he/she needs to clue in to the broader changes happen in technology today? Because, well who wants to be the party pooper? But who wants to take the risk of losing favor with the boss by telling them the way we’re working isn’t working.
It is said that 40% of the Fortune 500 will not be here in ten years.
Technology has become so widespread and affordable, that the problem lies not with our inability to purchase the technology, it’s the inability to move a big company. When you’re that big, you can’t be that Nimble, or at least that’s what the statistics about social media are telling us.
What is incredible is the advantage small businesses have in the age of social media.
Almost one-half of small businesses have successfully connected with new customers through social networks. A stark contrast, in big companies only 28 percent are leveraging social to talk to customers (Regus Survey “Social Success?”).
Smaller companies have the ability for agility. They can move faster. They don’t have to wait for legal and compliance to approve tweets. They engage with customers across social networks, and easily create compelling content curated for their audience.
Small businesses don’t have to bother with legacy cultures or streamlining communications. They get that customer service is PR and PR is customer service, and social is a very easy way to do both.
She can literally say anything. She never seems to offend anyone–unless you love Sarah Palin.
Tina Fey is a writer, director, actress and author and she just published Bossypants, a somewhat factual auto-biography. It’s incredibly funny, engaging, smart and refreshing. Here is a blurb about being “the boss” from the book.
I’ve learned a lot over the past ten years about what it means to be the boss of people. In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. In other cases, to get the best work out of people you maybe have to pretend you are not their boss and let them treat someone else like the boss, and then that person whispers to you behind a fake wall and you tell them what to tell the first person.
Contrary to what I believed as a little girl, being the boss almost never involves marching around waving your arms, and chanting, “I am the boss! I am the boss!”
What happens in the social digital world is magnified and forever burned into history.
If you are a brand, and your company sees customer management as a cost center (an ugly step child to be left in the basement), we see you.
If you are a brand, and you don’t care about your employees, we see you.
If you are a brand that cuts corners to make short term profits, we see you too.
If your CEO doesn’t care about engaging with his/her community, we see that three.
Here are 8 things brands can learn from Tina Fey when they set out on their social marketing journey.
1. Just own it. Don’t try to hide the obvious. If something bad happened to your brand, call it out. If you have food on your face, laugh at yourself. It feels better, and it feels better for us as well. Having humility and addressing vulnerability [even in a joking matter] neutralizes the energy in any room [chat room as well].
2. Listen, really listen. When you think of Liz Lemon [Tina Fey's character] you don’t think of that girl (or guy) in the room who seems completely unable to listen. Today’s best “PR” campaigns include more listening and less talking. Don’t be like Jenna Maroney [Jane Krakowski]. A hilarious and integral part of “30 Rock,” she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, and you don’t want her representing your brand to the world.
Scene from episode where Jenna dates a Jenn Impersonator.
3. Engage. If someone were to say something to you in “real life,” and you were to not respond, that would generally be considered rude. So don’t do it online. Remember it’s really the same bag. While you get the feeling Liz Lemon on “30 Rock” somehow thinks her team is completely useless, she’s a fairly polite person. She does the best she can to manage the nonsensical behavior from her team. Even Jack Donaghy [Alec Baldwin]–Liz Lemon’s crazy boss.
4. If you have to think twice, don’t post it. Liz Lemon is a wordsmith, a comic and a bit of an eccentric artist. But she works for GE (and Kabletown) so she has to censor her words. If you wouldn’t tell your prospects, your customers, your employees, your resellers, your partners, your…mom, don’t post it. If you have to think twice, don’t do it. Self-censorship is powerful.
5. It’s not cool to be self-promotional. If you are cool, we will notice. It’s important to put your stuff out there for people to find, but if you keep re-tweeting only your own stuff….you start to look desperate. Liz Lemon is very subtle. She’s well-researched, she’s relevant, she’s even oddly beautiful in her own unassuming way. The quiet nerd is way hotter than the self-promotional actress (think Jenna Maroney). Let your fans rave about you. And work hard to give them something to rave about.
6. Wear a bra [kidding]. Don’t hand over your community management to the intern [watch video and it will make sense] who does not know your products, services and processes. If you hire an intern to do it–one that has not cut their teeth somewhere else–will likely make mistakes with your brand. We all were there once–and hopefully we had a great coach who told us to shape up or get out. In any event, if you hand off your messaging strategy and governance to an intern, or someone who does not take care with your campaign, I can guarantee you will not be satisfied with the results.
7. Put a face to your brand. Today people are tired of dealing with logos and personality-less and inhuman companies. I don’t have to remind you it’s all about being human. It’s all about being “global and local.” Don’t smack a big logo onto your twitter alias. Put a nice face there, someone who can say “hello,” “how,” “help” and “thank you.”
8. Scripts don’t work. Neither do rigid rules. In this blog post I even broke my own rules. See rule number 6 [bra] and then remember rule number 4 [censorship]. You need to provide structure, but just like with anything this journey will not always fit into the pristine box you want it to. You need to lose a little control. You will sleep better at night knowing you trained and empowered your people to make good decisions when you are not around. Relax, you will make mistakes. And you will be very grateful for them.
Last week I saw quite a few tweets flying around that I found unsettling. They were in response to Malcolm Gladwell’s comments on the Egypt Protest in his article in The New Yorker “Does Egypt Need Twitter?”
For example here is a tweet I saw from marketing blogger @JeffJarvis: .
And this is my response.
Social media is an important new channel, but people have been staging coups for centuries.
The medium has changed, but the message has not. Let’s not forget the important issue here–the actual people and social turmoil. That’s the story.
Not the importance of social media. And let’s not beat up journalists who are not afraid to bring us back down to earth. We are very disconnected from the reality of a situation on the ground like what’s happening in Egypt, so it’s easy to get lost in the headlines. The story is the poverty rate in Egypt is 40%. That’s really high. And I feel compassion for these people.
But I am saying the media focuses on the headlines that
will draw audiences, and pay advertisers. Let’s not believe everything that we read without being critical thinkers…
including headlines about Twitter and Facebook.
It’s going to be a sweet day. Reason? Exciting news–I was featured in my first White Paper on B2B Blogging in 2011.
The paper was put together by Tom Pick and Tony Karrer, PhD of The B2B Marketing Zone and Social Media Informer. According to Tom and Tony, “The paper explores how 2011 is shaping up to be a pivotal year in the world of B2B blogging.”
We were asked the following questions:
What do you see as key trends in B2B Blogging for 2011?
If you’ve not started a blog yet, is 2011 the year to do so? Why or why not?
Will anything be different in 2011 in marketing your business blog?
What new challenges might exist in 2011 around B2B blogging?
See Page 34 for my thoughts on these B2B Marketing Questions.I would love your commentary or feedback.
B2B-Blogging-Trends-in-2011(4)
