I’m Joining Intel

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Blake Landau

Those of you who know me from Customer Management IQ or from my writing and speaking know I’m very passionate about social customer support. Over the last three years at my consulting company Artemis I’ve worked with companies such as Verizon Wireless, Newmark Knight Frank Retail and more. I have continued to learn with like-minded individuals serving on board of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP). I really love this industry and the people in it. That being said, I’m excited to announce the next chapter of my career. I’m joining Intel as the Digital Support Social Media Program Manager.

Why Intel?

Just to tell you a little about Intel, the vision of the company is to create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth. Most of you know Intel as a producer of semiconductor chips–you might not know they also have a variety of other products.

Not only does Intel have a stellar mission, the company has a proven track record of innovation and commitment to its customers. Intel even with 100,000 employees has a forward thinking talent management policy. Intel has a wfw (work from wherever) policy–something very important to me. In addition to this modern approach to work they encourage employees to build their own career paths. During my interview process all of the Intel employees I interviewed with had experience in a variety of departments. Some had MBAs sponsored by Intel, and one was about to embark on their second sabbatical. A sabbatical was something I thought was only offered to tenured university professors–I was wrong!

Intel places #15 on the Great Place to Work Institute list and has been recognized by many other important lists such as “Working Mother Magazine.”

The company is positioned to become even more successful considering this year’s world smart device market comprises 918 million phones and 191 million tablets in addition to 134 million desktop and 187 million laptop computers, based on IDC estimates. They’ve made recent efforts to move even more into the mobile market. I’m looking forward to contributing to this success by working on the social customer experience of Intel’s community.

What Will I Be Doing?

In my new role as Intel Support’s Social Media Program Manager I will focus on developing and executing short and long-range social media strategies–collaborating with Intel’s internal and external partners to make that happen. I’m looking forward to creating and driving a strategy to provide world class customer support via social media channels for both B2B and B2C audiences.

Additionally I will be doing the following:

Leading and driving collaboration with Intel’s marketing, IT and customer experience groups to define strategies
Acting as a “change” agent to define and develop new business processes and capabilities
Defining roles & responsibilities and oversight of 3rd party resources to implement the Digital Support social media strategy for today and beyond
Managing operational activities while strengthening customer loyalty and much more!

As I close the chapter of my consulting company Artemis I’m looking forward to this next chapter at Intel. I want to thank all of you who are important to me and have supported me through this journey.

Being Strong For Other Women

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Blake Landau

Do you know that other women are watching you all the time? Whether you realize it or not you are setting an example for people you didn’t even realize were your Facebook friends.

Are you setting an example of body shame for other women or are you engaging in a radical act of activism through self-love and respect?

I believe if we want things to get better for women we need to change the national dialogue. I also believe it has to start with the local dialogue. For example, are you someone who wants to build women up? If you are I would encourage you to think twice before you make self-deprecating comments on your social media sites about your body. Would you want your daughter or the younger version of yourself to say hurtful things about herself? If you want to help change the national dialogue for women, it starts with you. Diets, model and celebrity-dom are not helping women feel confident in themselves. Social media has given a voice to women everywhere. Let’s use this tool to make major change happen in the hearts and minds of women everywhere.

We’re all tired of living up to completely unrealistic standards of how we’re supposed to look. Together we can truly make change happen.

Many of us don’t realize the impact we have on those around us. Sometimes the best form of activism is living well. By respecting yourself, no matter if you fit into Vogue’s definition of what you should look like or not, you are committing an act of defiance.

By loving yourself–despite the media’s constant flood of messaging that you shouldn’t–you are participating in an act of defiance on behalf of all women everywhere.

When I see women who claim to be moving women’s rights forward calling themselves fat on Facebook I feel sad. By participating in the “not enough” tsunami hitting women everywhere you’re hurting women you “unofficially mentor” without realizing it.

We’ve all got to love ourselves and be strong. We’ve got to ignore the messages that tell us we are only worthy if we are thin and beautiful by Hollywood’s standards. We’ve got to do it for ourselves, but we’ve really got to do it for all the other women. Because they’re watching you. They’re watching us.

So the next time you look in the mirror and you want to call yourself fat please understand there is a girl in the reflection looking back at you. How do you want her to feel?

If you are one of the many women I know sitting at her cubicle now wanting to be inspired, please watch these Makers videos. You will not be sorry!

Your Computer Is Not Your Friend

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Blake Landau

There was a time when I forgot how important friends were. There was almost zero people in a twenty mile radius I could call if things were difficult.

I forgot that spending time on social media is not “social” time.

I literally didn’t have good girlfriends–and it was negatively affecting my life.

Community is not just something you build so you have users for your website. It’s something you REALLY need in your life. I’m pleased to say I’ve been on a bit of a friendship “binge” lately–getting so much joy out of hanging with the girls. Even if you’re in a great relationship, there is no replacement for girlfriends. Not having them has left a gaping hole in my life–don’t make the same mistake that I did. Friendships take some effort–you need to invest your time and energy–but if you aren’t thriving in the friendship portion of your life you are really missing out. Life is dreary without friends!

Friends do the following for you:

Laugh with you about the ridic stuff that women have to go through.
Complain about the lack of a female James Bonds.
Stop you from hitting refresh on your email.
Allow you to complain about your man while understanding you love your man.
Don’t try to fix the stuff you complain about, but just listen.
Asks you “what’s on your mind” without having it permanently etched in a data base somewhere to sell to Facebook marketers.
Shares honest stories about what’s happening in their lives (much better than the plethora of Facebook yacht or weight loss photos on Facebook).

Ask yourself if you have people in your life who you don’t talk business with. If you look around and you’re hanging out with people just because it will help your career-you are living a life out of balance. Take a serious look in the mirror about your life. Social media does not make people happy. Go out there and make some real friends. I did it and I feel so much better. I feel human again.

Verizon Wireless Does Social Customer Care With Style

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Blake Landau

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.

Brand Storytelling and Social Media at #WFFS13

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Blake Landau

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.

Artemis Is Growing

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Blake Landau

I am very pleased to announce that Artemis is growing and offering a full suite of marketing services. We are a now a bi-coastal marketing services firm with key areas of specialization.

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.

Control, Autism and Pavarotti

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Blake Landau

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”?

Small Is The New Black

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Blake Landau

Ok you’ve heard it before.

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.

image source

But while we are personally enjoying the benefits of the digital community, our employers have yet to dip their toe.

The stats don’t lie. While we are sharing personally, professionally the landscape isn’t so bright. 41% of companies report they don’t have anyone managing social media.

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.

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