Category / Social Media

by adam

Some Lessons Learned

I am not a blogger, but I have a blog.  It’s the same way I would say I am not a golfer, but I like to play golf, especially with good company in nice weather.  About 6 months ago, I started this blog as a “parking lot” and an outlet to capture thoughts about many topics.  […]

Wonder I am not a blogger, but I have a blog.  It’s the same way I would say I am not a golfer, but I like to play golf, especially with good company in nice weather.  About 6 months ago, I started this blog as a “parking lot” and an outlet to capture thoughts about many topics.  The topics are work related in nature, but I’m not looking to hawk wares from my company here.  I am learning a lot about conversation, engaging folks (or at least trying to), and what drives many of the social media blogging evangelists out there.  Frankly, it’s been a lot of fun.  I’ve decided to take a step back and look at what are some of the key things I’ve learned.  I know there are many, many better sources for blogging tips and advice, and to some of those authors what I have captured here could label yours truly as “Master of the Obvious.”  At any rate, anyone who jumps into social media has a learning path – I’m sharing some of mine, and would love to hear yours too.


1) Build It (Properly) and They Will Come


Search Engine Optimization is arguably more art than science.  Through looking at referrals to my blog in analytics, it’s easy to see Google searches are the number one search-related source of traffic.  What I did not imagine or anticipate is the types of search terms that got people to my content.  For example, “Working at Brulant” as search terms has brought a number of folks here.  This is a personal blog, although I do discuss my work on occasion.  Of course I immediately notified our recruiting operations and we are polishing up a more formal blog strategy.  In the meantime, two very interesting personal blogs have popped up from our recruiting folks at Talent Acquisition: What Would Darwin Say?  and the art and science of recruiting.  Hopefully the firm will see ROI from this but that is not my specific intent.  Either way, it’s cool to see how folks have found their way here.


2) I Like to Write


I was a political science major at UVM, and after a senior seminar on American Foreign Policy and a minor in American Literature I thought I’d never want to write again – too many late nights staring at my Mac Classic.  This blog has helped me to start building my writing skills again, and it’s fun to find a topic I’m enthusiastic about to let the writing fly loosely.  Of course, that leads to…


3) There Are Not Enough Hours In the Day


I like to write, but it’s far from ever being my day job.  There are statements of work, conference calls, strategy meetings, proposals, and seemingly endless other activities that consume my time.  I’m working on building social media skills internally in our organization, but most of that is on my own time.  Not to mention when I am home in the evenings I’ve got a very fun family to spend time with. (I have yet to hone my skills on the Wii, to the tune of my 7 year old beating me handily in MLB Baseball.  I would never have stood for that in the day, but I digress.)  This blog, not to mention other social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and others, could easily consume more time.  I need to manage all of the above with a balance, and this blog gets a post a week on average – less than the recommended twice a week to maintain loyal “readership” by many sources.


4) Good Content is Rewarded


Good content is essential to a blog.  I know not every post I author is a good one, but when one comes along, it gets noticed and rewarded with traffic, recognition, and comments.  You don’t need to ‘link bait’ to get people to that stuff, it just gets out there – a friend from Twitter posted a link of one of my posts on Mixx.com; Another made it onto Digg; The folks at Alltop were kind enough to list my blog there; Other better known bloggers have linked to specific posts or added this blog to their respective blogrolls; Offline, friends, family and colleagues have shared with me positive feedback.  I love hearing from former and current clients who noticed this site.  The whole thing has remained a fun cycle to watch and participate in, and I am inspired to try to “do good work” with my posts here.  A good analogy would be to the children’s book, Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel in which a steam shovel and its trusty operator work a little faster and a little better with each additional person watching them work. 


There are many who have given me pointers (knowingly or otherwise) so far, and I thank all of them for their insight, tips, comments and suggestions.  I could highlight many folks or websites here that have good tips, but I’m just going to say a collective “thank you” to the folks who are passionate about this medium.  This has been a positive learning experience all around and I plan to continue it at a minimum just for that benefit.  What are some of the best lessons learned you have found from blogging or other social media tools?  If you haven’t started to yet, what is holding you back?  By the way, what led you to this post?


Photo credit: Austin Kleon via Flickr.

by adam

Gary Vaynerchuk Brings More Than Wine to Boston

Last week I had the sincere pleasure of attending a great social media event in Boston, a live taping of Wine Library TV.  Gary Vaynerchuk is not only perhaps the most passionate wine enthusiast out there, he’s hilarious and has a personality fit for a burgeoning online TV show.  His book tour (for Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 […]

Last week I had the sincere pleasure of attending a great social media event in Boston, a live taping of Wine Library TV.  Gary Vaynerchuk is not only perhaps the most passionate wine enthusiast out there, he’s hilarious and has a personality fit for a burgeoning online TV show.  His book tour (for Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World) brought him to Boston, where after filming the show he conducted a live Q&A.  His show and website encompass everything about community, and Gary himself mentioned he spends 18 hours a day working with his community.  (He’s actively responding to folks on Twitter and popping up on many blog posts from the event, among other things).  Bottom line: he has an uncanny knack to bring people together.  I met too many people to mention who I had previously only known on Twitter or through the Social Media Breakfast series in Boston (I’m still searching for a one-word term to describe that).


Gary’s site leverages everything Web 2.0 has to offer and is clear proof that good content is best served online, where a community can gobble it up.  Thanks Gary, for sharing your experiences with the Boston social media crew, and thanks to Dmitri Gunn and the PerkettPR team for organizing.  Thanks also to the many sponsors (Barnes & Noble – Boston University, Mzinga, Matchmine, Pour Favor, Select Wine Imports, and Beautiful Things by Charise) for running a great night. 


Even if you’ve never had wine before I’d recommend watching this and signing up to see future episodes.




by adam

Study: Only 30% of Top Retailers on Facebook

Opportunity Brulant, my employer, recently completed a study of 100 of the top online retailers to see which ones have a “fan page,” a feature that Facebook launched in November 2007.  Only 30% of the retailers surveyed had a page out there.  Yep, only 30%, despite lots of hype about the platform.  That’s it?  I believe retailers are missing out.  According to the study, some of the leading brands currently leveraging fan pages on Facebook include Bath & Body Works, Linens-N-Things and Victoria’s Secret. Among those that do not have a fan page presence are Bed Bath & Beyond, Circuit City, and J. Crew. 

Let’s take a step back for a minute.  I have been using Facebook for several months.  Like many, I went through the Facebook cycle of addiction:

  1. Shock (from my younger-recent-college-grad-cousins finding me online),
  2. Elation (reconnecting with summer camp, high school and college friends),
  3. Saturation (deluge of work and professional colleagues’ connection requests) and
  4. Annoyance (no, I don’t want to be “bitten,” “poked,” or compared to a celebrity, but thanks for asking repeatedly).

During this time I have learned much about viral marketing, useful and useless applications, and even met with a Facebook rep to learn about the advertising platform (see Top 10 Things You May Not Know About Facebook…For Marketers).  Facebook is a marketer’s dream – the platform has an average of 200 data points on each user.  As more compelling applications are developed, and Facebook explores new ways to achieve better usability, the potential for “stickiness” is improving.  People are spending more time on Facebook (despite recent declines in unique user growth), the company is expanding it’s presence globally, and users have more and more platforms to express what they like and dislike.  Online retailers should be looking at this as unchartered opportunity.  So why are so many retailers holding out? 

A ‘fan page’ is a free profile that a company can set up and maintain, allowing users to declare they like a brand.  If consumers like a brand, they can “fan” the page.  If they don’t like the brand, they simply ignore the page.  Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester wrote a thoughful post about “fansumers” explaining the implications to Facebook, in November 2007.  The Facebook Page is a surefire way to connect with passionate fans of a brand.  There is no requirement to buy advertising on Facebook (although once a company has a page it’s easy to do).  The “Facebook Pages Insider’s Guide,” available to anyone who sets up a fan page, describes the opportunity:

Facebook Pages give business the opportunity to build a consumer base, sell products, run  promotions, schedule appointments or reservations, share information, and interact with customers…Pages enable customers to interact, learn, purchase, and spread the word about your business to their friends. [emphasis added]

Retailers that are not at least considering whether their customers are on Facebook are missing out on an opportunity.  With little to no investment, minimal PR risk, and big upside potential, a page can be set up and become a natural extension of their online presence.  There is no need to “push” your page – if a company already has a loyal consumer base the word of mouth proposition will be a good start.  With some experimentation and a willingness to interact with “fans” retailers can improve their customer engagement, build brand awareness and take advantage of word of mouth marketing.  What is holding these companies back?

Please reach out to me, on Facebook if you like, if you would be interested in a copy of the survey or would like to talk more about Facebook Pages.

UPDATE: Day after this was posted, TechCrunch published metrics on Facebook overtaking MySpace as the #1 social network.  Opportunity knocks…

 

Photo credit:  Iain Alexander via Flickr

by adam

Using Friendfeed, Caught in a Social Media Turbine

I decided to check out Friendfeed, perhaps because of some of the outages of Twitter recently but also because I'm not an early adopter – but I'd like to be one day.  I think.  In a few short minutes I was caught in a vicious cycle, and it's probably because I'm not leveraging some of […]

I decided to check out Friendfeed, perhaps because of some of the outages of Twitter recently but also because I'm not an early adopter – but I'd like to be one day.  I think.  In a few short minutes I was caught in a vicious cycle, and it's probably because I'm not leveraging some of these tools properly.

Either way, here is what happened the last time I logged into FriendFeed, which is best read as if you are the guy from the MicroMachines commercials of the 1980s:

– In Friendfeed, I spot a Twitter post from a friend with a link to a cool blog post
– Read blog post, bookmark on del.icio.us
– Spot same blog post on Google reader 
– Share it on Facebook
– Facebook feeds automatically to my Plaxo account
– Get comment from Plaxo feed on how cool that post is
– I read comment in Gmail
– I respond in Twitter about cool blog post comment and go back to Friendfeed
– In Friendfeed, I spot a an annoucement about Friendfeed mobile
– I try Friendfeed mobile and send a txt message to my Facebook status, which updates in Twitter and posts on Friendfeed and syncs to Plaxo which sends me a notification email that my Friend's Tweetfeed shared a link on Googletwit… suddenly I'm in one of those awful AT&T commercials and I find myself in Googleplaxifacetwhirlfeediliciouseesmic.

Now I think I will go check that in as my location on Brightkite.

by adam

A Different Use for LinkedIn: Alumni Relations

About a year and a half ago, I left Accenture to join Brulant.  It was a big career change as I had been with Accenture (previously Andersen Consulting) since graduating college.  The opportunity to work at Brulant opened many new doors, but I also have deep respect and admiration for the people I had an […]

Linkedinalumni

About a year and a half ago, I left Accenture to join Brulant.  It was a big career change as I had been with Accenture (previously Andersen Consulting) since graduating college.  The opportunity to work at Brulant opened many new doors, but I also have deep respect and admiration for the people I had an opportunity to work with at Accenture.

Yesterday I received an invite through LinkedIn, as a reminder to reconnect to their alumni network site and “check in.”  I’m used to the connection requests and “Can you recommend someone who…” requests, but this one was different.  It was a unique landing page within LinkedIn that was a simple redirect to register for the alumni network.  The page includes a drawing for an iPod Touch and some flash content of stories from other alums. Only after learning what is Linkedin automated messaging did I understand the whole layout of the page and why it was so.

In addition to employee engagement, Accenture is leveraging a great tool like LinkedIn for alumni engagement.  Knowing how many folks are using LinkedIn (including recent data on a 361% year over year increase), and the high probability that those folks who left Accenture have a profile, this is a smart, simple and innovative way to reconnect with alumni.  Nice work. 

Does your company have a relations program with your alumni, and is it a good one?

by adam

Alltop: Aggregation That’s Easy on the Eyes

I saw a post from Facebook friend David Hinson recently that suggested to get your blog listed at Alltop, all you need to do is send an email to Guy Kawasaki, the well known enterpreneur and venture capitalist in silicon valley.  Sure, it's that simple.  And I have an offshore account in Kuala Lumpur where I will wire […]

Alltop I saw a post from Facebook friend David Hinson recently that suggested to get your blog listed at Alltop, all you need to do is send an email to Guy Kawasaki, the well known enterpreneur and venture capitalist in silicon valley.  Sure, it's that simple.  And I have an offshore account in Kuala Lumpur where I will wire you $500K if you just send me your checking account routing number and your social security number.

Blogging for me is a hobby, a way to force me to think about the world outside of day to day challenges in consulting.  I know I don't write as often as I should.  I've had this blog up and running for a few months now, I'm enjoying writing, but I can't truly say I'm a blogger.  So when I got a response from Guy merely 5 minutes after a late night email, saying, "We'll add you to socialmedia.alltop.com.  Your stuff is good," I consider that a significant boost of confidence to continue writing and seeing where this leads.

Alltop is a content aggregator site that Guy created more or less on a whim, seeing the success in driving traffic to some of his other sites from other aggregators like popurls.com.  Alltop has many categories and doesn't have an 'algorithm' – there is a staff manually reviewing content and placing it on each page to give it a human element of what they recommend.  (My suggestion would be to add a Digg like feature to perhaps build up credibility in some of the content, but what do I know).  You can read more about Alltop here.  With a "persuasive email" you too can be included in their directory, in exchange for adding banners like this:Alltop, confirmation that I kick ass 
or the one I included on the right.

Thanks again Guy, for:
a) being responsive,
b) including me (it will definitely give me incentive to continue writing and focusing on providing the best content that I can), and
c) creating a cool new way to get at information rather than trying to follow blogrolls, del.icio.us links and other informal ways of finding good blogs and news sources to read.

Have you checked out Alltop yet?  Here's a screenshot of this blog post from http://socialmedia.alltop.com:

Myblogonalltop

by adam

When Customer Service Is Not Just a Clever Name

Custsvc_3Lately there have been a lot of stories about customer service and customer relations foul-ups.  A couple of notable blog posts recently are Seth Godin’s frustrations parking his Prius and one regarding jetBlue, including engaging the former jetBlue CEO in the blog comments.  I’m guessing that everyone has had those moments – my dad likes to call his persona for taking on a customer service mishap “The Director of Retribution.” (He’s become the subject matter expert on writing letters directly to the CEO of companies and getting a response).

I also spotted Chris Brogan’s brief post on sincerely thanking Contintenal Airlines, and I thought I’d also take a minute to jot down three positive customer service stories that happened to me recently.

  • I also had a great experience with Continental Airlines.  Orlando airport shuttles were a pleasant surprise, too. Two days before a recent flight from Boston to Cleveland, I received a call from customer service mentioning the flight was oversold.  The rep asked me if it was OK to move me from my upgraded-due-to-status first class seat to an exit row seat in coach in exchange for 2 free one-way upgrade coupons and a $300 credit for future travel.  This is a 90 minute flight which I take often – getting bumped up to first class is cool but frankly a perk.  The fact that they called with an offer already in hand was both surprising and refreshing.
  • I am addicted to my Blackberry.  I should probably seek counseling, but I digress.  Last week, the earpiece speaker (not the speakerphone) suddenly stopped working.  I went to an AT&T Wireless store prepared for the worst, having to buy a new one, since I didn’t have replacement insurance.  At the store, the sales rep was extremely helpful.  He looked up my account and saw that my 1 year warranty had expired 2 weeks ago.  He called their customer service line directly in the store, and after a few minutes they had agreed to replace my phone and consider it still under the warranty.  Rather than wait for a replacement in the mail, I went to a service center down the street.  When I walked in and gave them my name, they took my phone and 10 minutes later handed me a new one with all my data replicated.  It was a seemless transaction and I was able to head out the next day on a business trip without an issue.  Nice job, AT&T.
  • I picked up bagels Sunday morning at Cafe Fresh bagels around the corner from home.  The owner always greets customers with a smile and recognized me from a visit about a month earlier with my sons.  I ordered a dozen, he threw in 3 extra bagels “for the kids.”  It wasn’t neccessary – he’s running the only local bagel shop around.  Going that little extra distance made me feel good about coming back next week.

There are good stories out there too, and while blogs and other social media tools can be used to influence or call out customer service mishaps, they can be used to reinforce the good stories too. Do you have experience in contact center solutions? Odds are, if you have lots of experience, you have a good customer service story to share! Just don’t forget to visit the Salesforce website if you are planning of optimizing your customer service.

Photo credit: RW Photobug via Flickr