Dan Soschin

Recap 1: DC Social Media Week – Analytics Presentation

I just got back from spending an afternoon in Georgetown presenting “Get Smart! Make Better Social Media Decisions through Analytics” to a group of about 250 social media enthusiasts at the PowerHouse. Everyone was great and I really enjoyed the presentation experience. It helps to have a great, captive audience and a good venue. I hope everyone found the information that I presented useful.

Over the next two days I will post a sample case study, the slide deck and the video of the presentation. I’ll also tweet out links.

I will also work to reply to everyone’s LinkedIn messages and Tweets as soon as I can.

Thanks again for making the presentation great!
My take: Applebee’s service exacerbated by social media missteps

By now you may have already read about an incident over a tipping disagreement at Applebee’s. If not, you can read the article here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/applebees-waitress-fired-god-tip-receipt_n_2591794.html

Crap like this happens all the time for three major reasons:

1. Most businesses have crappy employees who care more about themselves than those they are being PAID to serve

2. Most customers care more about themselves than supporting businesses with loyalty

3. Cheap restaurants get caught in the cross hairs of people who shouldn’t be eating out because they are two cheap, and employees who don’t give a rat’s ass about said customers

And incidents happen like this all the time. I’m not going to take sides here, okay, I am. The customer was wrong, and the employee was too. The only potential winner would have been Applebee’s had they not exacerbated the issue by getting so defensive and argumentative on Twitter and Facebook. Read how their social media team’s responses snowballed worse and worse: http://rlstollar.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/applebees-overnight-social-media-meltdown-a-photo-essay/.

This shows you how engaging with people in this manner – specifically defensive, can be counterproductive. It would have been tough for Applebee’s to survive this anyway, but social media speaking, it went worse than it could have. I think most people have very short memories and the bottom line is that most people will be back at Applebees and most of the complainers probably don’t eat their anyway.

LESSONS:

1. You need to have a crises plan in place ahead of a crisis.

2. You need to think out a strategy and platform for addressing social during a crisis

3. Be careful defending ground. If you are “right”, your customers (loyal ones) will defend you.
Just watched the new Mercedes Super Bowl ad and it’s not good

Keeping with a recent trend, more and more Super Bowl advertisers are leaking their commercials ahead of the big game in order to create some buzz running up to the ad’s prime time debut. This strategy gets people (like me) talking about the ad and more importantly, the product, well ahead of time, earning extra value for the advertiser. This extra buzz is for better or worse, and in the case of Mercedes-Benz, a car I am overly passionate about, it might be for worse. The new ad with Kate Upton and some high school boys washing the new CLA model, is just not a great commercial. It’s not super sexy even though Kate’s featured in it and it hardly shows the car’s best features (it’s styling and affordability). The cinematography and production aren’t anything special either. It’s hardly a commercial I’d equate with the big bucks of Super Bowl advertising. Of course, even this article criticizing the ad is generating some (you’re probably the only one reading this who’s not related to me) press… and you know what they say, “there’s no such thing as bad press”. While I disagree with that statement (and so would Lance Armstrong), here we are, talking about another ad.

A better CLA ad with Willem Dafoe:

See for yourself in this article by Yahoo’s Shine site which similarly pans the ad:

http://shine.yahoo.com/work-money/kate-uptons-mercedes-ad-too-tacky-sexy-194300914.html
Get Smart! Make Better Social Media Decisions through Analytics
Have you heard of Social Media Week? If not, check it out here: http://socialmediaweek.org/

This February, Social Media Week will take place in 10 cities:
1. Copenhagen
2. Hamburg
3. Lagos
4. Miami
5. Milan
6. New York
7. Paris
8. Singapore
9. Washington DC
10. Tokyo (TBD)
How does it work? It’s a collection of events sponsored by a wide variety of companies and organizations throughout each city, bound by the common theme of social media.

Last year I spoke on the ROI of social media to a standing-room-only crowd in Manassas, VA. This year, I will be presenting the following session:

Get Smart! Make Better Social Media Decisions through Analytics
Leveraging Facebook EdgeRank and Google Analytics to Drive a Return on Business Objectives

So you’re adding social media to your game plan for your organization, moving it from an afterthought to front-and-center. You’ve even got a staff member ready to roll up their sleeves and manage your social media strategy for the organization (and that person might be you!) But now what? How do you decide which campaigns are working and which ones are not? In this session, attendees will learn how to leverage Facebook Insights, Facebook EdgeRank and Google Analytics (all free tools) to measure campaign ROI (return on investment) and ROO (return on objectives).

While I’m still working on the details of the venue, I do know it will be somewhere in the DC metro area. I hope to have a venue locked down by 1/21/13. So check back to the event page early next week for more details.
Art of the thank you note: simple and timely

If you are like most folks in today’s fast-paced companies, you barely have time to take a lunch break, so you’re probably also ignoring another vitally important part of your work day – the thank you note. For the past several years I have been writing short, simple thank you notes when I interact with a member outside my team and they assisted me to my expectations – even if they were “merely doing their job”. For example, last week, our crackerjack help desk, located in another state, set me up to beta test an HTC Windows Phone. I was nervous. First, I wasn’t too sure about the new “Windows Tiles” interface, but I was more worried about my upgrade from the BlackBerry and whether or not I’d be offline or lose data. One of our agents at the help desk got me set up and transferred to the new phone with ease. I was so delighted that she was able to assist both efficiently and effortlessly, that I was compelled to say thank you – even though it was just part of her job. I opened my middle draw and pulled out a thank you card – nothing fancy, just an inconspicuously designed 4 x 6 inch card that says “thank you” on one side and blank in the middle. I wrote a three sentence note:

Dear (so and so) –

Thanks so much for getting me set up on my new
Windows phone so quickly. I sincerely appreciate your
assistance on this project. Here’s to a great 2013!

Sincerely,

Dan

It wasn’t exactly my best Ernest Hemmingway, but that’s not the point. The point is that the next day after receiving the phone, I stopped for five minutes, and wrote a personalized note of thanks. Notes like these can go a long way with building relationships with other people and their teams. These little things are remembered the next time you need a hand and they pay dividends. But most importantly, it really helps set the workplace mood in a positive manner – spreading thanks to everyone that’s makes our organization run.

So next time someone helps you out, take five minutes and say thanks by sending a prompt, simple note. If you need some cards, go to Target or any stationary store – they are not expensive and will more then pay for themselves in the return value you generate.

Here’s another great article about thank you notes, especially when it comes to interviewing: http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/11/21/how-saying-thanks-can-help-your-career
2012’s Brand Fails brought to you by AdWeek

Here’s a nice round up of “what were you thinking?” moments brought to by the good people at AdWeek.com:

http://www.adweek.com/news-gallery/advertising-branding/20-biggest-brand-fails-2012-146137
YouTube Features Marketers will Appreciate – New and Improved Annotations

YouTube is rolling out new features for their partners enabling them to use a new form of annotations. Previously, I felt that the annotations feature was a bit limited. It was designed to keep viewers on YouTube.com by only allowing video owners to link to other YouTube videos and no external sites. With this enhanced annotations feature, you can now link to sites outside of YouTube.com. This is great for promoting products or content. This joins other features for partners such as enhanced page layouts, custom thumbnails, unlimited length videos and more. Google is really starting to roll out some great features for YouTube which has really lacked the bells and whistles of many other platforms. These features are being rolled out in typically Google fashion, so partners will need to be patient.

Here’s a great article on ClickZ.com about the new features.
Social Media & Value

I spend a lot of time working with departments at the University to help them attain value from social media; and I spend a lot of time traveling around the country to share best practices for measuring and reporting on social media. I throw around a lot of terms like “ROI” and “ROO” and “EdgeRank”. But, what it all comes down to is understanding first what your objective is, and then how to apply social media to attain the objective. Sounds easy right? Well, for a little Monday night humor from our friends at TheOnion.com, here’s why social media can get a bad rap:
The DC Government & Social Media

The Wall Street Journal reports that, “The local government in the nation’s capital is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to a startup to gather comments on Twitter, Facebook and other online message boards as well as the government’s own website. The data help form a letter grade for the bureaucracies that handle drivers licenses, building permits and the like.”

I’m not too surprised about this, and find that its a bit sooner than I would have thought. The idea of using social media to listen to your customers and then improve your products and services is not a new concept. It’s certainly our flagship missing at American Public University System – where we use social media to make sure our student experience is exceptional. But we’re known for being a social media savvy organization.

So it’s surprising to hear that traditionally conservative and innovation-lacking government agencies would have social media on their radar. But as we have seen in the last 24 months, public safety organizations have turned to social media to distribute important news alerts, and non-profits rely on it to engage with their constituencies. So, it only makes sense that folks who have been leveraging social media have migrated to some of these agencies; or through professional networks the agencies have realized social media can be a great tool for customer service.

The article goes on to discuss how the agencies have reacted to complaints – moving customer service staff who don’t deliver positive customer experiences to other positions where they don’t have to interact with the public. While humorous, this will go a long way to holding employees at government agencies more accountable for their actions; and perhaps will motivate under-performing individuals to step up their game and help redefine agencies like the DMV.

Read the full article here (subscription to the WSJ may be required):

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324712504578133530033916570-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwODEyNDgyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email
Posting on Facebook as a Business – You Need to Read This!

I’ve been traveling around the country a bit lately talking a lot about Facebook’s edgerank algorithm. I won’t explain edgerank here, but I will say it is what Facebook uses to determine which updates will show up in your news feed. Yes, not all of them show up. Most don’t.

If you’re a brand, you maybe in trouble here. The only way out is to start paying Facebook. That’s right – pay to play!

To learn more about this, here’s a great article to get started:

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2221131/facebook-stole-your-fans-and-wants-a-ransom-to-get-them-back