Social Media Strategy Archives - Page 7 of 16

Bloggers Unite to Slap Susan G. Komen

02/03/2012 By Jayme Soulati

Like Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks, I wasn’t going to address the Susan G. Komen national public relations debacle in an election year with Planned Parenthood. After reading her post and the oodles of smart comments from her community, I still wasn’t.

Then, I read Shonali Burke’s extremely amazingly thoughtful and balanced post with more than oodles of examples of trust gone awry and communications strategy, or lack thereof, gone to hell in a hand basket. (I just read in her comments it took her 4 hours to craft that post; when you read it, you’ll understand that she actually gifted us with a case study.)

One of the comments at Gini’s house gave me pause and it goes something to the effect of “isn’t this issue a way for bloggers to build links and get traction from others outside their communities by jumping on the bandwagon?” Gini provided a very smart reply and you can find it yourself when you review the 100+ comments as of this morning.

I’m trying to be sensitive to this comment from someone who doesn’t know that we who write about communications, PR and social marketing MUST cover these topics. That said, and very top of mind for me, what this issue boils squarely down to are three things:

Women’s health
Election-year politics
Poor public relations and social marketing strategy

Each of you reading and following has an opinion that puts us on opposing sides of the aisle. When you read everyone else’s blogs about the serious debacle unfolding (there’s so much more with Bank of America and Penn State, etc.), you can’t help but get beyond pro-life or pro-choice issues with this.

If you’re NOT in communications, I implore you to look at this from business and communications strategy angles. Again, I point you to the blogs mentioned here; these bloggers have done a spectacular job (better than I ever could) of presenting all the facts with balanced judgment to boot. I’m proud of them. Thank you for what you do, Shonali, Gini, John, and the rest of the gang. #ThatIsAll.

The Tip of the Iceberg Only

>>Nancy Schwartz Getting Attention blog via @Shonali

>>Joe Waters Blog via @Shonali

>>Planned Parenthood causes/giving via @Shonali and Beth Kanter and there’s a Pinterest board on this, too!

>>John Haydon who writes and works with non-profits

Should Health Of Blog Community Align To ROI?

01/11/2012 By Jayme Soulati

I had a post all ready for today, and then @TheJackB spat all over my blog in comments. I could not let that slide, so this post is a compilation of his musings and mine. (You get co-authorship, TheJack, but just not in the byline…heh.)

The Sales Lion wrote a post yesterday about why community is not Holy Grail of blogging that I’m sure is creating a slew of comments, not the most of which is Gini Dietrich (although I’ve not been over to comment myself). Marcus said something to the effect that “Gini shocked the blogosphere admitting her business almost went bankrupt in 2011 in spite of her healthy blog, Spin Sucks, and its huge community with lengthier commentary.” (paraphrase)

IMHO (In my humble opinion), Arment Dietrich is a service firm; it delivers professional services and seeks clients to pay it to stay viable. Gini is the point person, face, poster child, CEO, founder, biz dev artist for her firm, and, oh, yeah, she’s chief cook and bottle writer for her highly popularly ranked and accoladed blog, Spin Sucks. Her new product, Spin Sucks Pro, for which peeps will subscribe to content and teachings via webinars and writings from around the ‘sphere, launches soon (after a one-year delay during which she had to fire a tech team and start from scratch). (Never write sentences like these two.)

When you’re running a successful digital marketing/PR shop with staff and expensive headquarters near the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, and you’re launching a brand new online moneymaker that fails and requires an immediate new investment in tech dollars and clients refuse to pay you for six months and the economy sucks (like Spin), then what’s so surprising about a firm nearly going belly up (in spite of a successful blog and community)?

This dilemma is one many successful entrepreneurs face — how to clone oneself. We are the brand and brain power clients wants, hire and require. Using Gini Dietrich was a poor example to showcase that a profitable business has nothing to do with a healthy blogging community, and here’s why:

The target audience for Spin Sucks Pro are PR, marketing, social media peeps; a healthy community of such is required to ensure that Gini’s new $ venture succeeds. Can you imagine if she had attempted to launch Spin Sucks Pro without putting all the sweat and tears into building a healthy and growing community at its precursor? Right.

Here’s what THEJACKB had to say in comments here yesterday:

Yep, I commented on Marcus’s post. I was half awake at the time and uninterested in picking that post apart but I am not convinced that there is a relationship between Gini’s biz and comments.

Fact is that if you can demonstrate to brands that your blog reaches the eyeballs that they want to get in front of then you can make money blogging. It happens, and any one of us has the opportunity to make it happen. It might not make sense for some of us to pursue that path but the opportunity is there.

Let’s circle back to comments and community. You and I (Jack and Jayme) have talked about this, and I’ll repeat that I don’t see comments as being currency. They aren’t always useful social proof for whether a blog is popular, influential etc.

But that doesn’t apply across the board. Fact is that many of the people that speak at blog conferences get their positions as faculty because of their community and the comments. It is not impossible to get a gig without, but it is much easier when you have it.

Data mining is useful for bloggers. When you start to break down who your readers are you can learn all sorts of interesting things. During the past four days more than 4k uniques took a moment to read my post.

Two PR agencies and several brands were camped out on that post for extended periods of time. I don’t believe that they hung out there solely because they loved the writing. There is something more going on. My job is to figure out why. Maybe it is because they are looking for a writer or maybe it set off a keyword alert, but I’ll put money down that there is a money making opportunity tied into it.

Let’s circle back to the question of can you make money and approach it in a more direct manner. Let’s pretend that blogger XYZ has a product/service that they sell and that there is a valid value proposition tied into it.

Blogger XYZ needs to learn how to close. Ask for the order. Stop pussy footing around with “you might be interested or want” and ask for the sale. Remember Alec Baldwin in Glen Garry Glen Ross- “Always Be Closing.” (Excuse me while I reconnect the IV, the coffee drip just ran out.) (Indeed, Friend, you exhausted yourself with that spittle.)

What say you? (This is edited; thank you, Marcus.) Are business success and community related? Need you have a thriving blog community to also have a thriving business?

New Trend: Get Off The Grid

11/07/2011 By Jayme Soulati

I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing more and more peeps getting off the grid for a week’s respite and even longer. There’s a general malaise, at least in my community, about the time we’re spending to remain connected across channels while coming up with something fresh and exciting to say (that’s not an echo).

>>When my friend Queen D (that’s @3HatsComm to y’all) decided to pull way back, it seemed like she disappeared for good. Upon a query, she insists she’s lurking and around, just not as front and center as she used to be. I have to say, I miss that comment energy. She left an indelible impression; more than she knows. (But, she’s not gone…just more quiet!)

>>Kaarina Dillabough, my north of the border pal, announced she was going dormant (that’s dormant, not Dorman) for a week and then announced upon her return she escaped on a 33^rd anniversary with hubby to the Caribbean. (I missed her in my stream; but she was not gone…just taking family time.)

>>My dear friend Erica Allison still has her “summer off” post on her sidebar on the blog (one of the highest PostRank scores she’s tallied) which said she would be encumbered with mommy duties while running her business in summer months. These weeks, her booming business has her focused on areas like billable work and not her blog…she laments this turn of events but also recognizes the need to earn money. (She isn’t gone, just not as accessible to her community.)

>>And, the most ~~famous~~ infamous of all, NittyGriddy, went MIA for more than two months! Gasp! And, to inform her community she’s baaack, she hit up the Gin Blossom to announce her comeback on @SpinSucks.

>>When Danny Brown (along with a team of writers) launched his Punk ~~Rock~~ Views on Social Media blog about the new tonality in social media, he added to my thoughts about what is going on here?

Look around your community. Per chance you’re amplifying messages within your own peer group; I’ve heard many a friend mention this more than once (me included). I’m hastening a guess that most of us launched our blogs with every good intention of attracting new business from small-to-medium enterprises and laughing all the way to the bank.

Alas, our blogs (at least the bloggers with whom I’ve spoken) agree we’re writing and messaging in an obvious comfort zone – right amongst our own peer group and network of service-oriented professionals (likely playing in the social media, marketing and public relations space).

Does this resonate with you? If it does, here’s what I want to say:

>>We are social media leaders following other social media rock stars just ahead of us pioneering and testing the next new app, tool, channel, platform, connector, game, and more. It’s so easy to become jaded and tired in this leadership position, but guess what?

WE CAN’T!

We have to keep the energy and vibe and positive spirit high…WHY? Because our clients, customers, peer bloggers, entry-level professionals, and others in our communities expect us to be that way – helpful, teaching, positive, thoughtful, inspiring.

>>You bet it’s challenging at the top. We’ve put bloggers on pedestals for years; wanna bet they’re tired too leading the pack as they do? Sometimes they show it; other times they don’t.

>>The point here is this…when you’re tired from being smack in a leadership role in social media and your messaging begins to show those rough edges (because your community recognizes that), then do get off the grid. Take a breather already; no one will fault you for a little R&R because when you return you’ll be back like a spring breeze to tell us all about it.

Customer Service, Auto Collision Repair and Social Media

10/06/2011 By Jayme Soulati

When there was hail damage to my beloved orange Mini Cooper convertible, I was devastated, yet counted our lucky stars kidlet and I survived driving in the tornado. The experience following to get my vehicle repaired was eye-opening and resulted in my blog post and Facebook posting on the “offender’s” fan page.

This is a piece about vehicle collision repair shops or auto body shops or whatever you’d like to call them. The teams in these businesses, often mom-and-pop establishments or franchises or dealerships, have to work daily with customers who have angst, stress, injury, insurance issues, and are expecting to spend dollars to repair their vehicles.

I’ve spoken with many experts of late about the situation that exists in body shops — they are behind the times in how they service customers, how they engage with customers, and how they perfect their own customer service to ensure a new customer returns for future work.

Here’s what I recommend right now for any body shop, collision repair facility, or dealership:

>> Bring in a public relations/marketing practitioner with expertise in social media to meet with your team, observe and analyze how services are rendered.

>> Allow that expert (Hi?!) to conduct a social media analysis to determine your collision repair facility’s brand and influence on social channels. That includes Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Foursquare/Gowalla, daily deals/Groupon, and others.

>> Select one point of contact from the customer service team in the body shop to get trained in social media. That person can work with the public relations practitioner to learn why social media is critical, how to listen to customers, how to document what they say and follow-up, how to ask for a review on Yelp, and how to keep them coming back for more services (beyond auto body repair).

>> The contact internally becomes basically tied at the hip with the public relations consultant so that content can be delivered across channels within the regional boundaries of that business.

Social Media Campaign

The social media campaign could look like this:

>> Analyze the website and freshen it to be customer centric; write for the customer to entice and convince them that your brand, reputation and service are solid.

>> Establish a Facebook fan page and add the buttons to your facility’s website.

>> Launch a profile on Yelp and ask for reviews from customers you know had a good experience. Put up a coupon on Yelp good for an oil change and tire rotation.

>> Explore a daily deal with the area newspaper or buy a Groupon campaign to bring in new prospects. When they come in for the first time for services other than auto body repair, take them on a tour of your facility and show them the capability you have for detailing and collision repair. (The most fascinating thing about collision repair services or a personal injury law firm, for example, is that you don’t know where your next customer is coming from until there is an accident.)

>>Record the name and email of the prospect in a database you launch and add this to Constant Contact. You’ll launch a newsletter perhaps four to five times annually about collision repair, auto health checklist, and more.

>>On the business website (which should be updated), add a form that says “Register for our Newsletter here.” When you capture names, they get added to the database and they get the email newsletter.

Conclusions

The point I’m making is this:

Customer service begins on the frontlines, but it doesn’t end there.

>>Customer service begins prior to that person ever entering your business.

>>Customer service has to happen during the entire face-to-face experience.

>>Customer service requires “the ask” to invite a post-visit review (either a Yelp rating, or Facebook posting, or register for our newsletter).

>>Customer service is a follow-up phone call or survey to ensure satisfaction, and it is also a real and genuine person concerned that a customer had a good experience while in a place of business.

For years, we’ve all said, “customer service is dead.” Isn’t it high time those charged with customer service in small businesses get a little more creative to earn and keep a customer?

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