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The ROI of social media is survival

March 14, 2012 — 5 Comments

If you’re a huge brand, there are tools out there to help you measure the ROI of your social media efforts.  For smaller businesses, though, it can be much more difficult.  Perhaps it’s worth $700 per tweet, but it’s rarely that consistent. :)

More and more, the ROI of social media is simply that your business will continue to exist.  For example, if I asked you for the ROI on your business phone, your response would likely be “Who knows, but we obviously need to have a phone!”.  And you’re right!  The same goes for social tools; customers fully expect you to have a presence on social networks to help them find answers to their questions and hopefully to encourage them to come in for a visit.

Below are three example of businesses near me that have closed in the past year, and I feel that a lack of social media presence contributed to the demise of each of them.  A bad business will go under no matter how well they tweet, so perhaps these companies were doomed anyhow.  However, I think a bit of effort in the social world would have helped all three tremendously.

Bellacino’s

I loved Bellacino’s.  They featured “grinders” and pizza, and it was quite tasty.  They’d put coupons in some of those coupon packs that you get in the mail, but that was about as far as they went.  Their lack of social media simply meant that they were rarely in the front of our mind.  I had no real desire to “connect” with them necessarily, but if their coupons had been on Facebook I would have gladly hooked up with them on there.  If I had done so, perhaps they would have appeared in my feed from time and time and we probably would have gone in more often.

They went out of business around a year ago.

Stadium Bar & Grill

Stadium was simply made for social media, and they simply ignored it.  The restaurant did all kinds of fun activities, like trivia night and local music, but did a pitiful job of presenting it online.  For about 18 months their Facebook page had a total of one update that said something like “check back often for special events and coupons!”.  Great idea, but no execution.  They eventually started updating more often, but hadn’t built up a fan base of any kind and didn’t have enough time to build a presence.

I emailed a few of the owners to offer to help them out (for free, even), and never got a response.  They went out of business last month.

Rita’s Italian Ice

Rita’s was a place that served frozen ice, kind of like slushies.  It was really good!  Every day they’d have a different selection of flavors, which meant it was a perfect opportunity for social media.  Before I’d run out there to get treats for the family, my girls would always ask what flavors they had today.  Because of their lack of Facebook and Twitter updates, I’d have to call.  It was painful.  The poor girl answering the phone was typically trying to help a customer in the store at the time, while she’d be reading me a list of flavors that I’d be frantically writing down.  It was stupid.

With them, not only did I offer to help but I even took the time to set up a Twitter account for them, brand it, and show them how to use it.  Rather than updating daily with the flavors, they’d update it maybe once a month.  Useless.  I got tired of calling, so the only time we’d go is if the whole family was out together so that everyone could pick their own flavor.

They went out of business six months ago.

How do you do it right?

Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt

It’s not all bad news, though.  We have a local frozen yogurt shop called Menchie’s that is simply amazing on Facebook.  They’re just a little store in a strip mall and they have over 1200 fans on Facebook!  If you look at their page you’ll see why — tons of updates, coupons, interaction with every user, and just a great job of connecting with their customers.

It’s not rocket science; in fact, it’s quite simple.  The issue is that it takes time to do it right, and you need to commit to it.  I have no idea who runs the Menchie’s page (the owner, perhaps?), but they put the time into it to do it right.  As a result, they’re getting more customers through the door.

It’s no guarantee

I’m certainly not saying that this is a guarantee that your business will flourish.  Those other three stores still might have gone out of business, and Menchie’s might be gone in a year.  Ultimately, you still need to provide a great product at a great price and treat people right when they come in the door.

I can promise this, though: in all four cases above, social media was a distinct factor for bringing people into the business (or failing to), which is huge.

You’ll notice that all four examples are food related, and that was intentional — social media was seemingly made for restaurants, so if you’re still wondering if “that Twitter thing might catch on”, you need to get in gear now!  If you need help getting started, just get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to help.

In Companies, Facebook, Social Media , , , , ,
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Working toward A Brighter Web

January 24, 2012 — 3 Comments

A Brighter WebOver the years I’ve posted quite a few video tutorials on here and on other sites.  The problem is that they were scattered all over — many on here, quite a few on Google Earth Blog, various ones on my Google+ account, etc.  Recently I set out to get all of those organized, and the result seems to be pretty good.

With the help of Ali Green, we’ve put together a new site called A Brighter Web.  On the site we have over 60 video tutorials on topics such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and WordPress.  We’re adding a few new videos every day, and we’ll be expanding our range of topics over time.

With that in mind, what would you like to see on a site like that?  More social platforms, like FourSquare and LinkedIn?  Or perhaps software tutorials, like Photoshop?  Leave a comment and let us know what you’d like to see, and we’ll certainly take your ideas into consideration moving foward.

Thanks!

In Facebook, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Videos, WordPress , , , , , ,
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It’s time to stop dabbling with social media

January 12, 2012 — 3 Comments

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a few groups of United Methodist Church leaders near Washington, DC to discuss how the church can best use their websites and social media tools to reach people more effectively.

My social media presentation was largely focused on the fact that Twitter and Facebook are no longer tools for churches to be “playing with”; they’ve become legitimate communication tools.  While most churches are doing fairly well with Facebook, Twitter remains a problem.  I’m hoping the tools I shared with them will help get things rolling.

Google+

Even though the sessions were only a week ago, my thoughts on Google+ have changed.  At the time, I said something like “You need to focus hard on Facebook and Twitter, and start playing with Google+ because you’ll need to be active there later this year“.  As it turns out, “later this year” is now.  The reason for the sudden shift is Google’s release of “Search, plus Your World”, which adds heavy Google+ integration into the search results.  Here’s a quick video showing how that works:

That alone should be enough to encourage you to get your organization on Google+.  But it goes further.  Try searching for “music” or “cars” and you’ll get a result similar to the shot below.  Notice the area that I outlined in red.

Notice that the red box is for Google+ profiles only; no Twitter or Facebook found there.  That is seen by some as anti-competitive, and perhaps it is, but that’s simply how it works right now.  Britney Spears trails a variety of artists on Twitter (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, etc), but none of them are on Google+ yet.  As a result, she’s suddenly getting a lot more free promotion when someone performs a search.

For now, that area doesn’t matter much for your business, but it will soon.  For local searches, Google will almost certainly start showing businesses in your area instead of just generic industry-related results.  If you wait until that happens before you join Google+, you’ll be way behind.  Suppose Katy Perry sees those results and joins Google+ to get back in the game.  While she may catch up to Spears eventually, she’s already behind by 1.3 million followers.  How far ahead do you want your competition to get before you join the game?

Faces in the main results

Not only is that side bar relevant, but the main search results (in both personal and non-personal mode) are already full of results from Google+.  In many cases, those results show the face of the author of the post even if the post was made on their own blog.  For example, the below search for “google earth imagery january” shows my face next to the second result, because it knows that I wrote that article and it connects to my Google+ profile; and this is the non-personal results!

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket

As much as I love Google+, I’m certainly not advising you to bail on Facebook or Twitter.  As I said at the beginning, those are legit communications platforms and your organization needs to be active on both of them.  For now, at least, all three are very important to your organization.

If you want to dabble in social media, there are places to do that.  Play with Pinterest (connect with me), play with Path, or play with any of the other new services popping up.  Pinterest may become more serious this year, but for now you can just poke the tires a bit.

I don’t have time

I hear it a lot — “not another service to keep up with!”, but it’s all about your mind set.  Instead of worrying about how you’ll have time for three separate services, just look at it from the positive side.  Now you have another way to connect with your customers, and this one will help you show up more frequently in the search results too.  It’s a win-win!

Once you get things set up, simply take 10-15 minutes/day to post your latest thoughts and respond to people that are talking to you.  It doesn’t have to be a huge deal.  If it takes longer than that to respond to everything coming your way, then your business is likely doing well and you can afford to spend more time working with those people (or hire someone to help you out).

Do you think any other services are worthy of the full attention of your business right now?  I can see LinkedIn being one for a few organizations, but that’s about it.  Agree?

In Facebook, Google+, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Twitter , , , , , , ,
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Your business isn’t perfect, but that’s ok

December 12, 2011 — 2 Comments

A few days ago, I shared the story of a recent visit to Marlow’s Tavern.  In that post, I referenced a post from Scott Stratten where a simple apology from a hotel made a big difference in how he felt about things.  It reminded me of a recent stay I had in a hotel, and how a simple blame shift made the hotel look really bad.

On the way to Michigan for my grandmother’s funeral, we stopped at a Country Inn & Suites, where we’ve had enjoyable visits in the past. It was really just a minor issue at the hotel, too; the tub was full of water when we arrived, and apparently had been for days, because the shower floor was really slick when you stood up in it. We didn’t complain or anything, but I mentioned it in the email survey they sent a few days later.

Their response?

Wow!  It wasn’t a big issue before, but now they made me feel pretty stupid.  Did I imagine the problem?  I replied back that I was pleased to have received a response at all, but to belittle my issue was a pretty insensitive move.  If they had simply apologized for the issue I would have been good with it, but their questioning whether or not it was even a problem was pretty weak.

Applebee’s

It reminds me of a visit my wife and I made to Applebee’s years ago when we lived in Dothan, AL.  We tried to go there one night for dinner, but the place was full of smoke.  It was awful.  We emailed them to let them know about it.  A few days later, a manager called.  Which of the following did he say?

A – Sorry about that, one of our waitresses just had a baby and we all lit up cigars to celebrate.
B – Sorry about that, our ventilation system was having issues and the air in the smoking section wasn’t getting refreshed properly.
C – No it wasn’t.

It wasn’t a long phone call, but he insisted repeatedly that it wasn’t smoky in there.  Period.  Very odd.  Had he apologized and explained the situation, perhaps we would have tried going there again in the future.  With his actual response, we never went in the doors again.

You’re a human, and that’s ok

Your business is run by humans.  We know that.  When mistakes occur, which will certainly happen, how will you respond?  Will you respond like Chrylser did when a bad Tweet went out, and fire everyone in sight?  Or respond like the Red Cross did when a similar bad tweet went out, by apologizing and turning it into a win-win for everyone?

MythBusters

Another good example of a solid apology is with the MythBusters cannonball incident.  If you haven’t seen it yet, the MythBusters had a cannonball go way off course, through a neighborhood, through a house (!), across a six-lane road, and then end up inside of a minivan.  It was very fortunate that no one was hurt.

How did they respond to it?  The hosts of the show, Jamie and Adam, went to the neighborhood and held a brief press conference.  No lawyers making sure they said the “right thing”, just them giving a sincere statement.  Then they met the homeowners to see the damage, and will be paying to repair all of the damage (include hotel stays, if necessary).  In addition, they’ve vowed to investigate to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.  It’s exactly how they should handle it, but so many companies don’t.

When you’ve witnessed a company making a mistake, how did they handle it for you?

In Companies, Twitter , , ,
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Marlow’s Tavern, meet Gary Vaynerchuk

December 10, 2011 — 4 Comments

Last week, I saw a speech that Gary Vaynerchuk gave to a bunch of RE/MAX realtors on the topic of social media engagement and it was quite awesome.  Here’s the video if you care to watch it:

Watching it inspired me to pick up Gary’s latest book, “The Thank You Economy“.  Awesome book, highly recommended. The folks at Marlow’s Tavern really need to read it.

As a general rule, we enjoy Marlow’s.  They have a few locations near us, good food, and solid service.  Tonight we took our babysitter out there for her birthday, but the evening had a few minor issues, and I think they could really benefit from having more of a “Thank You” approach to business.

No birthday desserts

We made sure to mention that today was our babysitter’s birthday, because we knew that Marlow’s did the little free cupcake dessert like most restaurants.  Nope, not anymore.  ”Some people lie about it being their birthday, so we can’t do that anymore.”  Uh-oh.  Really?  Did that surprise them?  Of course some people will lie about it — that’s why you give them a cheap cupcake and not a free steak. We had three adults and two kids, with a total bill of $78, and they’re concerned that they might give away a $3 dessert that isn’t legit?

While you certainly need to watch out for people taking advantage of you, this just seemed really shallow.  Companies that do customer service the right away (like Zappos) just focus on treating their customers like rock stars, and don’t worry so much about potentially giving up $3 every now and then.

My food was SLOW

It was remarkable.  The other four people in our party got their food fairly quickly, but I didn’t.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We’re guessing it was 10-12 minutes before my food arrived, which is crazy for a place like that, but things happen.  However, I still don’t know what happened.  I got a quick “sorry ’bout that” when they brought it, and that was it.  It was clear they didn’t care about the issue a single bit. A much better approach would have been like what Scott Stratten had happen at a hotel a few years ago; he had a very bad breakfast, but they apologized and explained the problem and he was much happier as a result.  Here’s his full write-up of that experience.

I decided not to press the the issue with them, just to see how they’d handle it.  Simply put, they didn’t.  No apology from anyone, no deduction on our bill.

(Speaking of the bill – $2.50 each for kid’s drinks?  Wow!)

Twitter

With those in mind, I did a little digging when I got home.  They’re pretty solid on Twitter (@MarlowsTavern), so I poked around for a while.  The content they push out is solid, but their conversation skills are weak.  They reply to some comments, but it appears to be at random.  Just in the past week:

  • Jennifer asked whether a dish at Marlow’s was gluten free.  A few days later, she got a reply from them — yes!  Excellent.  So she replied back asking if they had a gluten free menu, or how they should request gluten free products.  Crickets…
  • Robbie tweeted that he was taking his wife to Marlow’s for her birthday.  A quick “congrats” would have been nice, but they simply let it go without comment…
  • Another user tweeted to rave about their Sunday buffet.  Again, no reply.

Seriously, businesses need to build true fans to be successful and here are people actively telling their world about your restaurant — and you ignore them?

Google Place Pages

How about their Google Place pages?  They have a handful of locations, so I just checked out a few of them.  I found these two gems rather quickly:

The response from Marlow’s, as expected, was silence.

Google+

Needless to say, they’re not on Google+ yet.  Not that I can really fault them for that (it’s new, smaller than Facebook/Twitter, etc), but people are already talking about them on there…

Website

Since they’ll probably be reading this, I’ll toss in a few suggested website tweaks as a bonus.  Their website is really pretty solid (many restaurants have dreadfully awful sites), but it could use some adjustments:

  • On your front page, you have a link to your “to-go” menu.  Seems like people might often be in the car when they call for that.  And the menu is a PDF?
  • In the footer, “copyright 2007″.
  • Also in the footer is the “designed by” garbage.  Don’t leave that on there.
  • Your canonicalization is a bit messed up.
  • “Follow us on Facebook”.  Don’t you “follow” people on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  People get confused enough, so don’t switch them up for no good reason.  I’ve never liked the words “follow us” anyhow, because it implies that “you should follow us and we’ll send you a bunch of crap”.  I’m glad the Twitter widget (which you have on your site) says “Join the conversation” instead, as that sounds much better.
  • Your Entertainment page encourages people to visit you on MySpace, which you haven’t updated in about two years.  Can’t blame you for the lack of updates, but you should probably remove that link.

It just takes time

Social media can be difficult for some businesses.  If you sell toilet plungers, it’ll take some work to come up with a creative campaign.  For restaurants, though, it’s dead simple.  Just put in the effort, connect with your patrons, and prove that you really care about them.  I should also mention that their Facebook pages (like this one) seem to be managed quite well, so they’re not totally ignoring everyone.

At the end of the day, these weren’t killer problems for Marlow’s.  We certainly think less of them, no doubt, but we’ll be back eventually — they’ll just be a little bit lower on the list.

In Companies, Facebook, Google+, Marketing, Mobile, SEO, Social Media, Twitter, Videos , , , , , , ,
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A week of Google+

July 11, 2011 — 5 Comments

It’s been a little over a week since I joined Google+, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about it.

Addictive – for now

Thus far, I’ve found it quite addictive.  The fact that 90% of the people I follow on Twitter are already over there means that my Twitter usage has dropped quite a lot.  However, only about 15% of my Facebook friends are on it, so it’s got some work to do in that regard.

That being said, I won’t be giving up Facebook or Twitter anytime soon…

Privacy is top notch

Google has had issues with privacy in the past, but they’ve certainly learned from their mistakes. The privacy settings in Google+ are easy to use, quite powerful, and default to “don’t share much”.  Kind of the opposite of Facebook.

“Hangouts” are amazing

Hangouts are the group video chat feature, for up to 10 people at once.  They work amazingly well, and I’ve met some really cool people through them.  In the future, I think they will be a great venue for business meetings, Bible studies, small groups, book clubs, etc.  Really, anything that typically has 5-10 people meeting in person could be done quite well via a Hangout.

“Circles” are simple, but potentially confusing

The idea of putting your friends into Circles is quite simple, and works very well.  Drag Steve in “friends”, drag Heather into “family”, etc.  The problem is that the content from circles come from people, not topics.  For example, I might add 20 Google Earth geeks to a “Google Earth” circle, but then I’ll see virtually all of their posts; relatively few of which are likely to be about Google Earth.

“Sparks” are weak

The idea behind Sparks is pretty cool — a quick way to follow a topic you love and share relevant news with your friends.  However, the items shown are kind of random and can be somewhat dated and spammy.  I expect to see some good updates from Google in here soon.

Google Chrome Plugins

If you use Google Chrome as your browser, there are a lot of great plug-ins to help make Google+ even better.  Here is a full list of them, but two of my favorites are:

  • Replies and more: lots of great tweaks, including a quick “reply” button while you’re in comments.
  • Comment Toggle: Hides all comments in the stream, but you can toggle them open/closed with one click.

Businesses

Right now, there is very little business use for it.  As a freelancer I can make some use of it, but no “non-human entities” are allowed on there yet.  No websites, no car dealers, nothing.  It’s kind of nice, but it’ll be changing soon.  Google has promised some great stuff when those features finally come out, so I hope they’re right.

It’ll be hard to avoid

Google has said that many of the Google+ features (Circles, etc) will be making their way into virtually every Google product.  This will make use of those sites more enjoyable for g+ users (quickly share a YouTube video to a specific circle), and it’ll make it harder to avoid the service for everyone else.

Plus, that silly notification icon already has me jumping to click it every time it lights up, and it’s on the top of almost every Google product.  I feel like Dug from “Up” every time it I see a number in that red box.

I hope for some customization to that in the near future (I don’t need a notification for every “+1″ on a post of mine), but it’s still quite handy.  Better yet, it creates a drop-down menu from wherever you are, so you can deal with it right there (answer the comment, etc) without ever having to visit the Google+ site.  That’s gold.

So…how’s it gonna do?

This is the big question, and I really don’t know.  I love it so far, but it’s early.  I think it’ll be a player in the social game, but it won’t be replacing Twitter or Facebook for at least a few years.  Given Google’s huge audience, vast integration with other Google products, and their willingness to spend money to make it right, Google+ isn’t going anywhere.

If you own a business, or otherwise need social media to help succeed, dive in now.  At some point, you’ll likely want to get your business involved with Google+, so get started today and start learning the ropes. Contact me if you need an invite, then connect with me on g+.

If you’re a social media butterfly, but have no real need for it, give it a shot.  It’s likely to keep growing, so now’s a good time to jump in, start making connections, organize your Circles, etc.

If you’re just a casual social media user, it’s up to you.  If you already use Google products like Gmail and Android, you’ll be amazed at how well it blends into your lifestyle.  If not, then just keep enjoying life on Facebook and keep your ears out for more on Google+.

What do you think?

Have you tried Google+ yet?  Think it has a chance to succeed?

In Google+, Social Media, Technology , ,
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Don’t run your fan club like Tim McGraw

June 13, 2011 — 10 Comments

My wife and I are fans of Tim McGraw; we’ve seen him in concert a few times, and we’ll likely see him again in the future.  However, his “fan club” is such a disaster that I had to share this here.

We joined his fan club earlier this year because we knew he was coming to Atlanta and we know that fan clubs get early access to tickets.  I kept an eye on my inbox, and got all kinds of stuff from them — “tickets now available in Nashville!”, and Seattle, and Miami, etc.  I thought it was silly that they were sending me that junk, since they know where I live, but it’s not a big deal.

Later, my wife happened to hear on the radio that the station was having a pre-sale starting the next day.  What about the fan club presale?  Yeah, it started a few days prior.  Of all of the emails I got, that wasn’t one of them…

Waste of Time

So the fan club was a waste of time.  Perhaps the email got lost, marked as spam, etc, but I still wanted to leave the club.  No need for it anymore.  This proved to be interesting.

Contact form?

First I tried their contact form.  You can fill it out, but it doesn’t actually submit properly.  It just takes you to a blank page.

Twitter?

The link on their home page to their Twitter account doesn’t work.  Fortunately, their MySpace account is still humming along…

E-mail?

I tried replying to one of their newsletters, but I never heard back.

Unsubscribe

Ok, since I obviously can’t contact, I figured I’d just use the unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of the email.  Ok.  Click the link, enter my email address in the box, get an “unsubscribe verification” in my email.  I clicked the link in there to verify my unsubscription and got a 404 error.  Wow!

This isn’t new

All of this happened back in early March — more than three months ago — and it’s all still broken.  The contact form is still broken, Twitter link is still broken and I just tried to unsubscribe again and got the same issue.

Tim is a great performer, but his fan club is such a huge mess.

Pay Attention

Always remember to pay close attention to your site.  None of these issues were intentional (except for failing to respond to my email), and they simply became issues over time.  Since the management of the site isn’t likely to be using the contact form or trying to unsubscribe from the emails, they don’t know the problems exist.

I’ve been guilty of this in the past as well; a feature on a site of mine will go down, and I’ll be unaware of it for a  few days until a member lets me know about it.  Now I try to spend more time going through things and making sure everything is running smoothly.

Have you ever been “trapped” by a site like this, with no good way to contact them or unsubscribe?

In Companies, Marketing, Twitter , , , ,
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My favorite WordPress plug-ins

May 1, 2011 — 4 Comments

Three years ago I wrote up a list of my favorite plug-ins, and decided that it was well past time to give the list a fresh look.  While many of them have stayed the same, I’ve got a few additions and a few deletions.

The ones that stayed the same

These plug-ins have certainly been updated in the past few years, but remain part of every blog I manage:

Akismet – Amazingly awesome spam fighting plugin.

FeedBurner Feedsmith – I still run all of my blog RSS feeds through FeedBurner, and this is a great plug-in to quietly redirect visitors over there.

Google XML Sitemaps – A simple way to generate an XML sitemap and automatically notify search engines of your new posts.

Highlight Author Comments – Make your replies stand out when you reply to comments on a post of yours.

Subscribe to Comments – Allow users to get email notifications of new posts after they leave one.  I love when blogs have this, so I can be notified if someone replies to my comment and then we can continue the conversation.

The ones that I’ve moved away from

Here are the plug-ins that I no longer use regularly, for one reason or another:

All in One SEO Pack -Most of the themes that I use (typically from StudioPress) have great SEO baked right in and this is less important.

Enhanced WP Contact Form – I’ve switched to Wufoo for virtually all of my forms.

Fancy Zoom – I still use it from time to time, but most themes have better image management.

Top Commentators – This isn’t really a bad plug-in, I simply don’t use it any more.

Sociable – I’ve removed this in favor of Twitter and Facebook-specific plug-ins, shown below.

Twitter Tools – I now use dlvr.it to handle this instead, but I use it rather sparingly; be fresh on Twitter, not automated!

WordPress.com Stats – Still a great plugin, and I use it on a few blogs, but I primarily rely on Google Analytics.

The new additions!

I’ve dropped some plug-ins, but also added some new ones over the past few years such as:

Canonical URL’s – A very simple plug-in to add the canonical tag to your pages.  Not overly helpful in many cases, but can be excellent for your SEO sometimes.  (What is the canonical tag?)

PuSHPress – This enabled PuSubHubbub support for your blog. In short, it makes sure that RSS readers and others will get your posts instantly, rather than the next time they check in a few hours.  (more about the PuSHPress plugin)

RSS Footer – This adds a line of text (with a few links) the bottom of each post in your RSS feed.  The basic idea is that if someone is scraping your site and posting it as their own, you’ll at least still get some free links back to your site!

Twitter Button for WordPress – A simple way to add a “tweet” button to your posts.

WP FB Like Button – A simple way to add a Facebook “like” button to your posts.

WPtouch – A great plug-in that creates a mobile version of your site and automatically serves it to mobile phones when they connect.

You?

What about you?  Any other killer plugins that I’m missing from the list?

In Analytics, Facebook, Mobile, SEO, Technology, Twitter, WordPress , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Your customer service starts with the person that answers the phone

April 29, 2011 — Leave a comment

While I’m certainly not a big fan of the phone, I still use it quite often.  As you’ve probably noticed, while businesses love their fancy programs and mission statements, their front line workers define who they are.  Here’s two quick examples:

The unhelpful church

A few months back, Ali and I were giving a social media presentation to a group of local businesses.  There was a mix-up about who was bringing the projector, and it looked for a little while that it might be a big problem.  We knew there was a church right next door, and most churches have projectors around.  Being mid-day on Tuesday, it seemed likely to be available.

I know some people that attend there, but had never had any interaction with the church before.  I knew it’d be interesting to see what happened when we called.

We were hoping for the best, but felt it would be understandable if they had said “no”.  We would have been willing to put up collateral, but it’s still a tricky thing to loan out valuable equipment to a stranger.  But we didn’t get a “no” — we basically got a “we don’t care”.  The precise response was something like “no one is here to take care of that now, we can’t call them, they might show up later or they might not.   Good-bye”.  Blech.  Fortunately, we were able to get a projector in time, and I’ve since purchased my own to avoid that kind of problem in the future.

I now have one experience with that church, and it isn’t great.

The awesome dentist

A few weeks back, I had to have my wisdom teeth pulled.  My dentist doesn’t do that kind of work, so he gave me four local oral surgeons to call.  I called them all.

The winner, quiet easily, was East Cobb Oral Surgery.  The other three places sounded very annoyed that I called.  Not downright rude, but you could tell they didn’t want to be on the phone.

When I called ECOS, the woman was very friendly, very polite and very patient.  The call only lasted about 45 seconds, but she was MINE for those 45 seconds.  It made all the difference in the world.  One receptionist spent 45 seconds being helpful, and the company earned $1300.  Not a bad return on the time she invested with me.

ROI?

People often want to know the ROI of being on Twitter or Facebook, and it’s quite difficult to measure.  It’s similar to the ROI of answering the phone, since it’s all about connecting with people.  That receptionist earned ECOS $1300 in 45 seconds, which is on pace for nearly $100,000/hour.  Is that her value?  Obviously not.

For another example, I mentioned a few years ago how a single tweet earned an HVAC company $700.  Is their Twitter account worth $700/tweet? Not so much.

When it comes to social media, don’t worry too much about trying to calculate ROI.  Build relationships and the return will come.

Thanks?

One weird thing, though.  After the surgery, which went very well, I emailed my primary dentist and ECOS to express my thanks for their quality work.  Neither ever replied.  Not a big deal, but kinda weak.

Have you ever had a similar experience, where a single interaction (phone, Twitter, etc) created/lost a lot of income for a business?

In Companies, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter , , , , , ,
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Great stats on Social Media usage by the Real Estate industry

April 6, 2011 — 1 Comment

I’m down in Fort Morgan, AL this week for a little vacation with the family, and I’m shocked at how lazy the realtors are around here.  Like most beachfront communities, most of the homes are either for sale or rent, yet many of the sale/rent signs are broken, every “take info” box is empty, and I’ve only seen one house that has a unique URL on it.  90% have no web link, and the rest simply link back to the main site for that company.  QR codes aren’t even being considered.  If you’re a hard worker and want to live at the beach, move down here — you’d be a hero!

For a wider look at the Real Estate industry, check out the infographic below, created by Mashable. It illustrates some very interesting numbers regarding how the Real Estate industry is using social media.

A few things that jumped out at me:

  • 84% of real estate professionals are now using social media.  That’s it? I would have expected that number to be in the mid-90′s.  Granted, many aren’t using it effectively, but that 84% includes those people.  16% apparently aren’t doing anything with social media yet.
  • 73% of homeowners are more likely to list with a realtor that is willing to do video, but only 12% of the real estate industry current has a YouTube account.
  • The real estate industry uses Facebook more than other small businesses, but they’re way behind in Twitter usage.

Anyhow, check out the infographic below.  Anything else jump out at you?

In Companies, Facebook, Real Estate, Social Media, Technology, Twitter , , , , ,
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