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Too. Many. Channels.

  A little Friday fun. You’d think it would be easier to keep in touch with your contacts these days thanks to the many ways we have to communicate. Phone, email, texting , IM, Twitter @replies and DMs, Facebook messages – and let’s not forget about good old fashioned written notes.

But somehow, we’ve made it more complicated. Everyone has his or her own preference of how they’re predisposed to communicate and be contacted, and it’s a challenge, to say the least, to manage all of these channels and keep a mental Rolodex of preferences. Is there a solution? I don’t know. But Allen Mezquida shared his latest Smigly animation with me, and it captures it well.

Warning: there may be some offensive language in the video



Do you have a solution? Or do you just muddle along like Smigly above?

Scott Monty

From Community Management to Command Centers

In early 2007, Chris Heuer, Shel Israel, Deb Schultz, Giovanni Rodriguez, and I explored the evolution of social media within the enterprise at an intimate business event in Palo Alto. One of the more memorable discussions focused on the rise of an official role within business to listen to social discourse and channel inbound questions and comments as well as official responses. The question eventually arose, how do we classify this new role within the organization? The designation of “Community Manager” earned the greatest support that day, but it did so with a caveat, “communities, by organic design, could not be managed.”

Fast forward several years, the community manager has evolved into an industry standard position within the social media value chain; it is also the beneficiary of its own appreciation day.

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Will Canadian retailers survive?

“Motivated employees make a huge difference in service”  says David A. Aaker in his book, Strategic Market Management

Mind the gap

Like many busy moms, I willingly and sometimes, forcefully, take on everyone’s shopping in my family. This year, more than ever before, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the limits of customer service at retailers, more particularly, at Canadian retailers.

This has given me a pretty good insight in their practices and what the end user, the customer deals with. I will use this “experience” to bring you a series on Canadian retailers; the first topic is pretty general as it sets the tone and give you a fair idea of the landscape.

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You Are What You Tweet: Content & Company Define Us

As little as two or three years ago for most of us, we relied on information mainly from the mainstream media.  Today, the internet is content rich (and of course has been for longer than a few years) and with “everyday” folks like me joining Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc. the content available is incomprehensible.  I could go into all the stats available to support it, but since that’s not where I’m headed, I’ll skip that.  Where I am headed is this: you are defined, categorized, listed, judged and perceived by both the content you post AND the company you keep.

Yes, I said that and—although I don’t have the metrics to prove it—I can tell you from my own personal experience online that it’s very true.  I have tweeted “You are what you Tweet” and what I mean by that is this: If you want to be recognized for a certain type of skill, industry, vocation, cause, etc, tweet 80% of content about or relevant to that subject(s). A new 80-20 rule:  I tell clients to post 80% about business related content and 20% other stuff.  What’s other stuff? I say reserve it for this: fun with other Twitter friends, hobbies, and family—but not too much.  I think this is a good formula in general for keeping your “stream” valuable and credible, yet interesting while simultaneously demonstrating that you are indeed a real person with a sense of humor and knack for attracting like-Tweeters.  Ah-ha!

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Finding Inspiration to Write

Today I was part of a great Twitter chat #SOBcon. Lots of smart folks and a question came up that I found intriguing because of the dialogue it stirred in everyone.

“Where do you find your inspiration to blog or write”

The stir came when it was suggested that inspiration and having an editorial schedule could be polar opposites. Many agreed with this notion, some did not and sliced it down the middle.

The issue came down to this conundrum:

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Life is backstory

“That’s only the tip of the iceberg,” is what we say when we want our hearers to know the challenge, problem, or opportunity is deeper, more expansive, more significant than what we see. In human interaction, what we SEE—skin color, clothes, grooming, posture, and facial expression—are only the tip of the iceberg of who a person actually is.

Just like most of an iceberg is hidden, so a human being’s backstory is out-of-sight. If you wanted to see the rest of the iceberg, you’d have to do a deep dive underneath the water (which would be very cold, I presume). You’d have to do some research, get special gear, probably make more than one trip to berg, and in general, make a serious investment.

If you want to see a human’s backstory, you’ll have to make a serious investment, too. However, you can get started right away by making a determined choice to pause before you make those snap judgements about what you see in others. Instead, run what you think about what you see through the backstory filter by reminding yourself, “There’s more to this story.” Then, temper your words and actions with compassion.

For companies, it means valuing the backstory by making a commitment to listen, explore, and discover your customers’ backstories—asking where were they before the discovered you, understanding what fears, hopes, dreams, and goals are, discovering what fuels their imaginations and actions.

When you take the time to value another’s backstory, you gain insight into why people do what they do. You’ll be better prepared to actually help them do what they want to do.

What’s your customer’s backstory? What’s yours?

Trey Pennington

How Social Media is Changing Public Relations

In 2010, facing the biggest public relations crisis in recent history, oil company BP turned to the one medium that could instantly address public concern: social media. Nearly six months after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill occurred, BP has nearly 48,000 Facebook fans, over 19,000 Twitter followers and more than three million YouTube channel views.

Social media updates describe cleanup efforts, research projects targeting impacts of the oil spill and calls for volunteers.

While the success of BP’s social media efforts is debatable, few people can argue the need to monitor and address online comments and feedback. As BP has shown, the biggest change may be the new challenges in reputation management. With these challenges also come new opportunities – opportunities to mitigate bad press, connect with customers and reach potential influencers in the media.

New Threats, New Opportunities

Reputation management isn’t just necessary for big corporations. Small businesses also benefit from monitoring social media chatter, whether or not they have social media profiles. Simple searches on Facebook and Twitter reveal valuable information about customer satisfaction, competitor weaknesses and new market opportunities.

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One way to look at the internet, mobile, web and tablets

Nethierarchy

It might be about the size of the screen and whether or not you’re standing up.

Start at the bottom. For the first five years of the Internet, the most used function was email. Email remains a bedrock of every device and system that’s been built on top of the internet, though sometimes it looks like a text message or a mobile check in. This is the layer for asynchronous person to person connection, over time.

Moving from left to right, we see how the way we use the thing we call the internet has evolved over time. We also see how devices and technology and bandwidth have changed the uses of the net and, interestingly, how a growth in mass has led to a growth in self-motivated behavior.

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The Social Compass is the GPS for the Adaptive Business

Over the years, I’ve written extensively about the need to extend opportunities in social media beyond marketing and customer service to set the stage for the social business. I believe that the impact lies beyond the socialization of business; it introduces us to a genre of an adaptive business, an entity that can earn relevance now and over time by listening, engaging, and learning.

In October 2009, I worked with JESS3 to visualize corporate transparency and authenticity for the release of Engage.  In the process, I realized that those two words, transparent and authentic, didn’t carry tangible business value to leaders and decision makers.

Please, before you think about engaging in social media, I need you to do two things…be transparent and authentic in all you do.

Got it? Good.

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The Fallacy of Social Media Reciprocation

You are not entitled to attention.

You are not entitled to a follow-back on Twitter simply because you follow someone. You are not entitled to blog subscribers or comments simply because you publish stuff. You are not entitled to clicks to your junk or signups for your newsletter or any thing of the sort.

In fact, you are not entitled to anything.

The web is not a democracy, nor is this an egalitarian society. Giving of attention when it’s such a precious commodity is not something to be done in some empty gesture of validation, and as the attention giver, I and only I will decide how I’ll approach my connections online. My reasons aren’t yours, nor should they be. You don’t decide the value in paying attention to you, I do. This black-white, good-bad, hard-and-fast-rules of engagement stuff is ridiculous at best, and pathetic at worst.

If you honestly need someone to follow you or friend you on a social network to find self worth or acceptance, it’s really time to re-evaluate your priorities.

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