Dan Soschin

Legacy customer service challenges can impact success of a social media strategy

Erik Sass at MediaPost.com reported today that Wells Fargo is launching a social media command center and this got me thinking about big business, social media and customer service. Is it possible for a big business to do social media “well”? The key to this is to understand how businesses perform in the area of customer service, since I believe social media and customer service go hand-in-hand for businesses.

If you invest time and money into a social media strategy you may be effective in managing your reputation in the online space; or at a minimum simply understanding what people are saying about you and identifying areas that need improvement. But if you are an organization like Wells with tens of thousands of employees – many on the front line, you have a different challenge. Essentially your front line staff can do more damage to your business than you think. By giving bad customer service, they may be counteracting anything positive you are doing online. Furthermore, you may be frustrating your customers and employees if your social team is faster at acknowledging, triaging and escalating customer service issues. If you do a good job in the social space, more customers will go there to get help – potentially creating more negative sentiment online, and overtaxing your social team. If you send those customers back to the support team, they may not receive the same response times they are used to when going through social.

This is a difficult challenge to overcome, and really hits at the root of customer service – training front line staff so that they are not liabilities to your brand, but rather, they enhance your brand’s equity at every interaction. And good customer service as a tenant of good business has always been prudent.

To conquer this challenge takes time, coordination and a bit of patience. Start by reaching out to your counterparts in various departments to educate them about social media, your mission, and social’s ability to positively impact the business (and improve their lives). You’ll need to do a lot of selling and a lot of training. But a collaborative approach whereby you involve department staff in the social process is an approach that is both effective and well-received at organizations I’ve helped tackle the service challenge. You’ll find champions in each department who will lead the effort with you – and it’s a joint effort. I recommend starting with one or two departments, perhaps with folks that are already doing some social or demonstrate social wherewithal. Then incrementally add on more departments and communicate through regular conference calls and presentations to discuss case studies (successes AND failures) so that you can improve upon your efforts over time.

And, none of this is possible without a really good social strategy and policy – two things you must have in place before looking to conquer the world of social media customer service.
Mark Twain on “brevity” and why your marketing copy probably stinks

Earlier this year I wrote a piece on office productivity, “My 5 tips for success in the office” for OnlineLearningTips.com. The cornerstone to the article was my admiration of Mark Twain’s take on getting the hard stuff done.

This week I want to share another one of Twain’s quotes that I admire greatly:

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

How on point is this quote when applied to today’s agile marketing organizations?

How many times have we ended up creating long winded marketing pieces or blog posts because we’ve struggled to truly and eloquently communicate our points? So we babble on and on with the hope that eventually we’ll get to where we need to go, or we’ll include enough buzz words to cover every possible angle?

Being long winded is a bad habit. Don’t confused that with being chatty or an extrovert though. Being long winded is a result of being unable to effectively communicate in a succinct manner. In other words, marketers often have a hard time of getting to the damn point.

Hopefully you understand my point by now. BREVITY!

The more eloquently and succinctly you can convey your marketing message, the more likely your audience will engage with you and understand your message. But striking the balance between being too succinct and too long is a challenge most marketers have yet to master.

The same goes for presentations, emails and conference calls. Be brief instead of long-winded. It’s more difficult to communicate in this manner and takes a great deal of focus. The end result is that you will come across as more eloquent.

In Ocean’s Eleven (one of my favorite movies), Russ (played by Brad Pitt) is prepping Linus (Matt Damon) for a con. Rus says, “Don’t use seven words when four will do.” in explaining to Linus that he needs to be brief.

I use this modern adaptation of Twain’s quote regularly when working with my marketing group to eloquently communicate how important it is to be brief.

So, next time you find yourself writing marketing copy, a presentation or even conducting a meeting. Think of Mark Twain and focus on delivering your message succinctly. Your audience will thank you.
Think twice before sending that email

I just read a fantastic article by Anna Papadopoulos that should serve as a good checklist for determining when it’s appropriate to send an email. I always caution employees to be careful about email and to never put anything in an email that they wouldn’t want their boss/mother/CEO/etc. to read. Things get forwarded, printed out, shared, etc. You just never know where your email will end up once you click send.

Here’s Anna’s article which sums it up well:

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2291155/dont-let-an-email-ruin-your-career-or-weekend

Here are some more of my thoughts on email etiquette.
Anonymous comments and trolls… the end is near!

I was absolutely delighted when a colleague of mine, Todd Miller, forwarded me this headline:

“Huffington Post to ban anonymous comments“

Reported by CNN’s Elizabeth Landers based upon a keynote Ariana Huffington delivered at HubSpot’s annual Inbound Marketing Conference in Boston, MA.

Said Huffington, “Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for wha

t they’re saying and who are not hiding behind anonymity.”

I’ve long opined that anonymous comments were the bane of the internet, a spawn of pure evil, and provided no value whatsoever to the internet. In fact, anonymous comments create liability and harm the public.
What is authentic design?

My esteemed colleague, George Fox, recently shared a fantastic article with me on this very topic. Essentially, what authentic design boils down to is creating interfaces where design isn’t forced, but rather a product of function and natural utility (of what ever it is you are creating). The post discusses various periods of history drawing comparisons to architecture and materials engineering.

Hands down, it’s one of the best articles on designing for the web I have come across.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/07/16/authentic-design/
Why your business ruined webinars for everyone

How many invitations to a webinar do you receive on a daily basis? I probably receive about 10 via the various newsletters and marketing emails I receive each day. And I’ll admit that marketers have done an excellent job at getting me to read the messages, with catchy subjects and interesting event titles.

And how many have you attended in the past year?

Of those, they were all terrible, right?

It’s because companies and marketers don’t know how (or perhaps they forgot) to create great webinars. The formula is frighteningly simple too.

Webinars suck, and it’s your company’s fault. But that’s okay, you can change this with a few steps I’m about to outline below. Take note, because I can’t possibly stand sitting through another one of these crappy events or have my staff waste their time falling asleep while they could be generating ROI for my business.

Here are the two “do nots”. I’m starting with these, because you’re doing them now and you have stop as soon as possible.

1. Don’t ever talk about yourself or your company for more than 20 seconds.

It’s okay to say, “My name is Dan and I’m the CEO of XYZ company and I have a background in civil war dentistry”. You need to establish credibility. But do so in less than 20 seconds or else it becomes vain and you’ll lose your audience right out of the gate. And better yet, have someone else introduce you and keep it to 20 seconds. And don’t say crap like, “I built a XYZ company 10 years ago and sold it to Microsoft”. That just tells us you probably got lucky with your timing, now you have a wheel barrow of money, and you should probably be retired. The fact you sold a company and are rich doesn’t give you credibility within a specific industry or regarding a specific problem we’re facing.

2. Don’t ever talk about your product.

Unless your webcast is entitled, “A 30 minute demo of my product, XYZ”, then don’t ever talk about your product for more than 10 seconds. People don’t want your product, so get over it. They want to know how to solve a problem. So help them. If your product helps solve a problem, then talk about how the problem got solved and pepper in the fact that the customer used your product to solve that problem. But that’s it. No features, no pricing, no benefits, nothing. Stop being salesy. If you think the audience wants to learn about your product, you are completely wrong. The audience has a problem, and you solved it, and that’s what they want to hear about.

Okay, so now you know what not to do. Here are five things you can do that will help you attract more people to your events, increase your credibility, and most importantly, convert more attendees to customers.

1. Keep it short.

There’s no reason a webcast has to be 60 minutes. Keep it short. Some of the most powerful presentations are short because companies have found a concise and eloquent method for demonstrating the fact that they solved a problem. And if you cannot do the same, then you’re not communicating it well. A short presentation will not infer the problem is simple or easy to solve. It will merely demonstrate you have a 100% firm grasp on what the audience wants and how you can help. A 30 minute presentation is probably sufficient.

If you want to allow for Q&A, that’s okay, but I suggest NOT doing this. I know what your thinking… “This guy is crazy, you always have to allow for Q&A!” Well, do you know what happens if you allow for Q&A at the end of your event? Attendees start to leave slowly and the audience attention dwindles. So the last impression you are making is to leave people annoyed that they have to listen to another customer with a completely different business ask a question that you don’t care about. What a waste of time. And you’re ending on a fizzle not a sizzle. Don’t do Q&A. The customers with the real questions, they’ll still have them tomorrow. So make it clear at the end of the event that if someone has a question, here’s where to send it… In other words, give folks a very easy method for getting their questions answered offline. And that’s a great lead development strategy as well. Reel ’em in.

2. Tell a story

For the love all things good and decent, don’t read your slides. Keep bullets to 3-4 word phrases and only 3-4 per slide. Tell a story that starts with a problem and ends with a recognizable, repeatable, tangible solution. Humans, since the dawn of time, have been story tellers. Create a clear story board that the audience can identify with and guide them through your case study. It flows better and the audience will stay engaged. Polls are an okay method for engaging your audience, but that’s scripted and can disrupt your flow. Just ask questions and let the audience use their imagination. Isn’t their imagination stronger than poll results?

3. Provide a takeaway

The audience is attending because they need help or inspiration with solving a problem. Leave them with something they can download other than your slide deck. Maybe this is a one pager of best practices, a list of additional resources, a video, an infographic, you get the idea.

4. Provide a clear call to action (CTA)

At the end of your webinar, you should have a clear CTA. And even better if it’s a homework assignment tied to your takeaway (#3). For example, maybe you have a checklist that helps people do an assessment of their problem. Give them the checklist… or give them direction on what the next steps are towards getting started solving their challenge.

5. Provide an offer (optional, but recommended)

You are probably doing a webinar to generate interest and leads for your business, products or service. So provide some sort of offer. Don’t make it too salesy like “if you sign up today, you get half off”. Business people don’t like to be pressured or rushed. But you can still make it time sensitive. “Sign up by the end of the month and we’ll provide 20 additional hours of support”. Or, “sign up for a product demo this week and you’ll receive a 20% credit, an iPad or a date with my cousin, Becky”. An offer is a great way to continue the conversation without being too salesy and to provide some additional value for the folks who attended.

Okay, so hopefully this is all pretty straightforward. Most of us have all these ingredients, we just need to reassemble them into a better package. If you do, you’ll be well on your way to a better webinar experience. And I and my staff, on behalf of all your future webinar attendees, thank you!
Social media for combating crime

As the Edward Snowdon NSA leak story continues to unfold, another conversion, equally as important is surfacing – who should be allowed to monitor conversations and when? And even more important, what defines something as a private conversation versus public? Certainly we would all agree that if you post a website with information about a crime, that information is publicly available. But what if that information is within a private social network requiring authentication and moderation to join the group? These types of questions are all coming into play as the Snowdon story continues to develop. But they aren’t new questions. We’ve been talking about them for years. Just what can get a person in trouble on the web or within social media?

At the University, we teach what I refer to as the “grandma test”. Simply put, if what you do, say or share on social media is okay to share with your grandmother, than it’s probably okay to share with the world. Of course our training is more extensive then this, but that’s a good reference point.

The NYPD has been quite resourceful lately, using social media to track down, identify and incarcerate gang members who where bragging and discussing their escapades online.

Does it make sense to go one step further? What if the networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, allow (through some sort of partnership), law enforcement to have more administrative or back door access to these sites so they can monitor groups that are moderated or private without those groups knowing? There’s nothing in the terms and conditions of these sites that prevent this; nor anything to protect you. Most users operate under a false sense of security. So again, my suggestion is to not do, say or share anything on social media (even if you think it is private and secure) that you wouldn’t want the world to know.

If law enforcement then mines that data, looking at groups purported for criminal behavior, are they doing the public justice or encroaching on personal freedom? Can they prevent certain types of crimes from happening altogether or at the very least stop future crimes from occurring? Probably. But how much personal freedom are you willing to give up? I’ve never really assumed I had any personal freedom for anything I’ve posted or stored online, so for me personally, I don’t feel that I’m giving up much freedom. However, I do have personal conversations over email, and that goes through servers owned by Verizon, Yahoo and Google, to name just a few. And I wouldn’t want my email records to be made public (but even if they were, it wouldn’t be a big deal, because I again, I don’t say much of anything over email that if made public would be embarrassing).

So think about it – your phone calls, text messages, emails, social posts, and so on… all of these things could be mined for insight. If you are paying for the services (such as your phone), does that entitle you to more privacy?

These are some interesting times. What do you think? How much is too far when it comes to mining this information?
My 5 tips for success in the office

There are many things that enable my success in the office. It’s not just technology, time management, or working with bright people. And it’s not all about keeping an upbeat attitude, healthy lifestyle, or positive relationship with coworkers. These are all HUGELY important. But, for the sake of this article today, I’m going to focus on five things that I try to do each day to ensure I have success in the office. Take each one on its own and you’re doing well, but master all five and you’re headed for success.

1. Eat the frog

Mark Twain said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

– See more at: http://onlinecareertips.com/2013/06/my-5-tips-for-success-in-the-office
When to sunset your blog

As a frequent speaker on social media, marketing and blogging (and a blogger myself), one question I come across on a recurring basis is when someone should “give up” their blog and just be done with it. You’ve probably come across a blog like this, if not your own, in the past several months. Basically, the way it works is that a blogger starts out with grandiose ideas of writing daily about this-and-that, tweeting out their posts, sharing content on LinkedIn, and creating lively discussions that lead to dozens of comments and follow up posts… In reality, what really happens is you write a few posts for the first month or two, maybe add in a couple shares, that dwindles to a post a month, and then after a year blogging it seems like just another item on your ever-growing to-do list that is put off indefinitely. Months go by and the best you can wrangle up is a retweet of an interesting news story you saw on Yahoo.com.

So what do you do? And, how do you know when it’s time to throw in the towel versus “keep on trucking”?

[Keep on reading at www.OnlineLearningTips.com for the remainder of my article.]
Social Digital San Diego – Recap
We had a blast, fellow roosters, cats and dogs! Thanks for making my trip out to the amazing Gas Lamp district in San Diego for the Social Digital 2013 summit. I had a great time presenting, “Are you winning the race? Strategies for measuring success each step of the way on your social media journey.”

Many of you have tweeted me asking for the case study template and the dashboard template. Have no fear, the links (along with my slide deck) are below.

Just a reminder, the data in the presentation screenshots is not real, but the concepts are! Take your organizational reporting on social media ROI from good to better to best… and dip your big toe into attribution too!
Thanks again for all your great feedback on the presentation.

“Huffington Post to ban anonymous comments“

1. Eat the frog