Conversation Agent

Social Media as Modern Telephone, Frank Eliason, Comcast

[0:45 on investment in social media during hard-times, courtesy of Radian6]

He struck me as the real deal from the first time I contacted him via Twitter. In the last year plus, Frank Eliason has become the face and experience of Comcast for many of us. Rather than me talking about him I thought it a good idea to let him talk directly with you here. Our conversation:

Can you talk a little bit about your background? How you got to Comcast.

Frank: I have always been a simple Customer Service guy. My background prior to Comcast was Vanguard Investments, followed by Advanta Bank. While at Advanta I learned the power of the Customer story in implementing change.

I have found Customer Service operations are always centered on numbers, but change was rare. When you drilled into the numbers and use the Customer story, change happens fast. People, including the C-suite, are Customers too and they can easily relate to a bad experience.

While I was at Advanta we did a lot to improve the experience. One day I was putting together the annual report for Advanta, and it was to include Customer calls as the background. It was at that point I realized how far we moved the needle. That was around February, 2007. I decided at that time I would seek a company I can have a strong impact on the Customer experience. The only company I applied to was Comcast.

I joined Comcast as a Customer Service manager in September, 2007. On my 4th day we were asked to locate a blogger and reach out to them. Since that time, when we had time, we continued to do that. At the time we were only reaching out via phone.

In December, 2007 I was asked why we were not posting on the blogs. I did not realize that we were allowed to do that due to my background in financial services (that would not have been permitted in those worlds). So we started to post to blogs when we could not identify the Customer.

Bloggers loved it! They blog for a reason: to be heard. They loved that we were listening. In February, 2008 it became my role, and I was asked to hire a few people to help. Going back to what I learned at Advanta, I started to share the story via a daily newsletter. Today that goes to about 3000 people within all levels of management.

Believe it or not, prior to this role, I was not on Facebook, or Twitter. Besides a limited amount of activity on LinkedIn, my only experience in social media was a website I had for our daughter Gia when she was born premature. She spent the first 3 months in the NICU and we created the website to communicate with family.

We later used it to educate people about Cystic Fibrosis and to support fund raising efforts for charities close to our heart. At the age of 3, Gia was diagnosed with liver cancer, so again we turned to the website to keep people up to date and teach them about the form of cancer she had. She passed away in July, 2004. Later when her sisters were born, we created our family website. Today I also have a blog of my own.

Business Week called you "the most famous customer service manager in the US" in an article that detailed how you help customers on Twitter. I remember when I reached out to you on Twitter early on asking for an interview and your response was something like "I'm busy helping customers now".

There's been an evolution from stories of disbelief to the NYT and BW featuring your work in a positive light. What has changed inside Comcast through this transition in the media? Are you getting more support?

Frank: To us this is just another contact channel, just like email, phone or chat. This is just a preferred method of support for some Customers. When we set out our goals were simple: Listen to our Customers and help when we can. That is all we strive to do.

We were already in a transformation when we started this. Comcast has been working hard at improving the overall experience for our Customers. This was just a small part of that effort.

I have always had support from all levels of management regarding our efforts. They saw value in meeting Customers where they already are, and have provided us free reign to do just that, wherever we think is appropriate to achieve our goals. The support I received extended to if I would require additional staffing, I know they would continue to support me. I am so grateful for having a leadership team that is open to trying new things.

Even though you are known and your work is respected online, you're talking with one sliver of Comcast customer base. I imagine that NPS metrics are rolled up at C-level. Have you seen an influencing effect of the positive sentiment your work created and is creating online in other areas of consumer sentiment for Comcast?

Frank: It is hard to say, because we are doing so much to improve the Customer experience throughout the organization, that positive improvement truly highlights all of those efforts. I think the preferred measurement for the C-Suite has been how we have taken what we have learned from Customers and truly improved the experience for all Customers.

Unlike typical measurements of performance, my team is measured on effectiveness and improvements they make for our Customers. I teach them to be proactive and find solutions to problems they encounter. If something is broken for others they are encouraged to find solutions.

In an interview with Lee Odden at TopRank blog, you talked about the two criteria that you look at for getting involved in media at a tactical level: Searchability and Timeliness. You talked about Twitter and Google, but you have since expanded your toolkit.

How did you convince Comcast to make the investment? How do you structure your reports to senior management? This is something that would be helpful to your peers who are looking to ask their organizations to make the investment.

Frank: Ultimately we look for any space that is efficient in helping us meet our goals of listening and helping Customers. I think for us it was easy because Comcast already wanted to find ways to improve the experience. We also started gradually assisting Customers, and each time we did, Customer would let it be known how pleased they were to have the assistance.

We were also learning, and continue to learn every day. The main report we do to management is our daily rollup (also goes to anyone that requests it internally, no matter the level). We refer to it as the Comcast Online Pulse. The goal of the report is to provide an at a glance review of conversation about Comcast. It is our way of sharing the story, which as I learned at Advanta, is very powerful.

What is the best move you made on behalf of the business to date? Why?

Frank: Wow, this is a tough question for me. I have not believed anything I have done is that special. To me it is common sense to help Customers in need. I stepped away to think. I think the best move I have made was to really hire a great, passionate team that strives to create the right experience with every Customer they come in contact with.

They are a huge credit to the success we have had. They all were hired internally but each brings new experience and a unique background to our effort. They also love finding ways we can improve as the organization. I absolutely love every one of them (don’t tell them, I do not want it to go to their heads).

You and I talked about the fact that we both view social media involvement as a team activity with many players with complementary roles. Is Comcast learning more about social media as an organization? Do you share best practices and learning internally, beyond the communications group?

Frank: We are constantly learning in this space and we meet regularly to share what we learn. These discussions include PR, Customer Service, marketing and many other teams in the organization. We continue to learn in our help forums, external forums, Facebook, Twitter, external blogs, and even our corporate blog. These discussions help us understand what is working, and what is not. We encourage all areas to be involved in social media.

You recently came to the realization that, yeah, you actually do marketing when you're helping customers. What's in store for the future? What do you envision for the organization and where do you see your role evolving?

Frank: It is hard to predict where I see my role evolving. I love helping companies improve the service for their Customers. I love the social media space, but the Customer will always be the first love. But I do see a convergence of marketing, PR and service.

This space is not about ads; it’s about building relationships and having conversations with your Customer and prospective Customers. I think in the coming years you will see more companies encouraging their employees throughout the company to be a part of social media spaces.

I also think companies will see the benefits of crowd sourcing to learn more from the community. This already happens in places like forums, but think about how different products impact each other. Think about how your computer interacts with your router, modem, to the internet through your internet service provider, then to other server beyond your ISP’s network.

Those are a lot of parts working together, or in some cases, not. How does a Customer know where to begin? There is not an easy way for any of those companies involved in the products to answer every aspect to find a solution. But there are always people on the net that have had a similar experience. I think we will see evolutions that will make this all work to provide the best support to Customers.

_____

Thank you, Frank. I was really touched by Gia's story and what must have been such an emotional roller coaster for you and your family.

Today at Fast Company Expert blog we talk about how when it comes to customer service, action speaks louder than words. You'll see how this matters when it comes to using social media, especially as you start executing.

Will Google Wave Eliminate the Need for PR as Media Relations?

New media has already reminded up that PR stands for public relations and not just media relations. This is still something that many organizations are navigating at the moment. Now Google is giving us yet another Wave of innovation and showing us what is possible in the browser. It was developed by the team that gave us Google Maps. From the site:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Note that Wave is an open protocol that will allow third party developers to make their own Wave servers - just like they did with email. What seems nice about it is that it treats media as a process, where truth could emerge from many voices and forms. Is this going to spell the age of news in the cloud?

I was reading a post by Jeff Jarvis on the possibilities of Wave and news and noticing how resistant to proposed changes people are in the discussion that ensued in the comments. We don't have to like it, we can however admit that things are and have changed. As a reminder, I encourage critics to propose an alternative, to build it, to champion it. It's way too easy to just say "I don't like it," and "you suck".

Rather than resisting to the idea that this is happening, I'd like to think with you about the opportunities - and changes - that such a tool brings to the fore. When media becomes fluid this way, does the public relations profession need a digital tune up?

Where will the public relations professional and publicist fit in? Is it time for the transition to true communicator and conversation agents vs. merely passing along information, in some cases pushing it onto people who do not want your news?  Will press announcements be streamed real time through the wave? What will be the long term changes?

In a wave, your press release would have a long tail. Would PR be free? What are the things you should think about for your news?

• the content - what value components will allow your publics to derive self-worth and interest?
• the multimedia - this goes way beyond the social media release to access and potential community involvement
• the conversation - what's the story from the point of view of the community?
• the social aspect - this is where the information generates engagement

Would we use other software with the Wave? What kind of changes will this bring to the ability of small businesses to compete with larger ones? Will Google Wave eliminate the need for PR as media relations? How about listening tools? You should be thinking about the implications. Wherever there are changes, there is opportunity.

The future belongs to those who make it happen.

___________

Related posts:

Your New Media Equity
You're Writing for End Users, You Always Were
Do You Need Trade Media for a Product Launch?

Who cares about your news?

I mean who wants to hear from you? How is the information going to help them be smarter, do their job better, sell more? One of the most frequent pitches I get says something like "we thought your readers would enjoy to hear about 'x'".

Would they? How do you know? We had an interesting conversation in the comments at John Cass blog a couple of weeks ago when he posted about a pitch he received from Gary Vaynerchuk's publicist.

In the comments to that post, I wrote:

Neville and John, you now make me feel special as I received the very same email on June 5. I was going to write a post about the fact that media "celebrities" - and Gary qualifies as one - might really have a chance to change the game on this whole social media thing with execution.

Passion is high on my list, but I don't think that's why I got the email pitch. I do understand that scale gets challenging once you go beyond a certain threshold. [Sorry to miss you at Mediabistro Circus, Gary, I was speaking on the same day. Congratulations on your daughter.]

My other thought was that perhaps a few bloggers might enjoy spending time at Gary's site. Going back to what both John and Neville said in this thread, it's not be about generating traffic opportunities for a personal site... but it might be about making connections with a different community and Gary has a very loyal community.

Just brainstorming here. Because of my passion and involvement with Fast Company, I've met many authors over the years and helped those who wanted to connect with live events - we did two for Dan Pink, one with Ben McConnell, two with Bill Jensen, one with Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre... I could go on. Only on one occasion, the author, who will thus go unnamed, felt he wanted to get paid to come and promote his book. All of this is in my blog bio, within reach.

Reach means different things to different people and connection depends on the ability to find that out. Good discussion, thank you all

Gary's response was brief:

Thnx Val u hit the tone as those were many of the things I was hoping to do, in hind site I picked the wrong of communication, I should have made a video..and I will :)

Gary was being brief. But there is one indication of whether you care about someone or not - spelling their name right. For those reading (and pitching), I absolutely dislike any name shortening or mishandling, like using the Anglicized version. But that was not going to be my point.

You see that in my comment I make a couple of very specific suggestions to Gary. Do you think anyone followed up since June 15? Not a peep. When you're asking others to care about you, do you ever consider for a moment who cares about your news?

Stop trying to count number of impressions and start working on making an impression, being memorable. We discussed connections yesterday. What if I have only a few readers here, but a very large network off line? What if I speak to or know the one person who will sneeze your news to the whole world?

When you pitch someone, stay away from the obvious mass emailing - just because you can, it does not mean it will give you the best results. Also, fewer and more targeted sites or relationships may open you more doors. This may not be the case for Gary - who doesn't like Gary Vaynerchuk? It will be your case in similar circumstances.

When is it a good idea to include bloggers in your media outreach?

1. If you can pass the straight face test - this matters to their readers
2. You have an integrated approach - part of the story fits the new media landscape like a glove and you have something unique to offer for that one media property
3. Their traffic is your audience - chances are a blogger's traffic is much more targeted than a magazine's, but more fragmented
4. You intend to dedicate time and resources to being authentic - cutting-edge, leader, authority in whatever it is you do tend to sound fake to someone who writes for passion
5. You're open to a two-way dialogue and accept that ideas may come back to you as a result of the conversation - do you have a plan to follow up with that specific person?

How do you figure out who to pitch?

• Do your homework. Read their work - not just the first three words of the last post so you can tack them on the beginning of your email, please. We can read, too and if your email doesn't make sense you've lost your chance. I provided an example of a good pitch here.
• Get to know them, develop relationships. Aren't you in public relations? What happened to the "relations" part? Or do you think your job is just to send out lots of emails? What is better, several ignores and relegation to the spam folder, or a few quality (for the blogger) conversations?
  
• Make it easy for them. Whatever happened to the much hailed social media release? Why are PR agencies not using that? It works [hat tip Shel Holtz]

Also, if you spend time online, you will know the tone, and topics that resonate. People share a lot - on Twitter, FriendFeed, Delicious, etc. Maybe you feel this as you're reading - we've been over this before. Why beat a dead horse? Well, it's not old until it's done and today very few, not so many, ok maybe one and they're my cousin, do it.

How do you measure success?

Please don't tell me you count impressions or media by the number of readers I have. Don Bartholomew has it right, let's not get carried away by the numbers of followers or readers. Relevance is a very much fragmented concept in social media. Ask yourself: what numbers are real?

[image of yesterday news by Zarco Drincic]

How I do the Connecting Thing

Jay Baer let the cat out of the bag, so I might as well confess - I am a connector, and a life time one, too. Someone said on Twitter today that she wished people understood that the loudest ones are not necessarily those who are making stuff happen (I'm paraphrasing here). Many collect people, I learn about them - what they're looking for, what they're passionate about.

From strangers to friends on trains (part of being Italian and trains never arriving on time), to discovering amazing talent among people in a room crowded with voices intent on networking. I don't have a very sophisticated method, I'm afraid. No big spreadsheets or ultra-tech tools, although the human brain is probably the most sophisticated of all systems.

I just choose to observe, find out, and remember. Because I know a time will come when I'll be able to connect a dear friend with a resource, a business with a partner, an acquaintance with a job opportunity.

What do I get out of it? Why do we need to get something beyond the being helpful part out of it?

Connections is one of the topics here at Conversation Agent. I met Jason Falls when he noticed my first post on connection Katas. I still remember his comment about it.

Being that we're enamored with data, I can tell you that quantity and quality of connections both matter. There is a tipping point when you begin to know fairly well a good number of people and you can help exponentially.

I started making introductions to people early in life and my network has grown organically as a result - on two sides of the pond. Community can also form from the connections made between smaller networks.

During the years when I was facilitating online conversations at Fast Company and organizing live events - yes, 98 free live events, way too many to compete with anyone doing them today - content was the determining factor for inviting the right people to the conversation. Like any good Italian meal is an excuse to be social, right?

You want to have a mix of professionals in organizations, consultants, and service providers/agencies at events. And you don't want especially to be preaching to the choir. There needs to be a nice mix to make things interesting for everyone.

One of the weaknesses of professional associations is that often there are many more providers  than buyers at events, for example. Our community/network cut across professions, industries, and organization type. And it grew organically over time.

You can turn the dial with content and change results.

The other great thing is that because we had series of events, we had a great deal of diversity among attendees within the same community. We played with Legos, worked on the digital strategy for a museum and tested restaurant technology, we brainstormed with CEOs, and went shopping for the right internal communications strategies.

I summarized some of it here, the rest is what you learn with me in posts and through the connections we make now. It was never about me, it still isn't. It's about exchanging ideas and meeting people. In some cases, it's about giving the stage to anyone who decides they want to connect.

Give it time. It may not work today, but I will remember tomorrow, and the day after. I don't believe we lost the ability to pay attention to what's important - and you are important.To make the right connection, where the is a fit, takes time. But when you do, you fly, you're in "flow".

Yes, I do the welcome bit - an email on your first comment and whenever we have something to say to each other, email is the new offline. I do the the facilitation, answer questions - this post was the result of a question - the connecting - usually most of it behind the scenes - and thank often, in many languages. 

Finally, as I wrote to Jay the other day, I think it ironic that my posts show such a low comment count, because they are shared and discussed in many places - I wish TypePad had thought of innovating in the direction of aggregation vs. its own sign up system.

Steve Rubel says blogging may be dead - not by a long shot. It's "and/and", rarely, "either/or". I'm with the getting to know you movement, and for that you need to actually be impressionable and have enough content to invite discovery - in one place.

As for the impressions I make, I know it takes time to notice someone else. I'm in no hurry. I'm in it for the long haul.

What about you? How do you make real connections?

[image of world's tallest Lego Tower]

Producers, Meet Colleen Wainwright, the Communicatrix

In a recent post, she wrote about travel: "The destination may surprise you. It will probably surprise you. When you get to what it is you’ve been working toward—a primary relationship, a VP title, your own business, a gold statuette—it will not feel like or seem like or look like what you thought it might on the way there."

And I guarantee that it will indeed do just that. Working towards something is a lot more fun and challenging - some days in good ways, others in not so good ways - than being there. The growth is in the motion.

Have you ever watched a tree or a plant grow? You probably won't see it day to day when you want it to show, but you will see it in the end. The destination often is also an opportunity to look back and see how far you've come. Colleen writes at Communicatrix. This destination will surprise you, and so will the exposure to her ideas.

I'm one of those people who connect with stories, that's why I write so much about them. And her story is intriguing. Colleen's transparency is the kind Jim Collins talked about when he was on stage with Alan Webber at Fast Company Real Time in Phoenix talking about "the three circles". Finding that place of intersection - and interest - between passion, DNA, and economics. Straight from the About You page, here's a conversation with Colleen.

Why are you online?

Colleen: Aside from TMZ and all the awesome pr0n, for two main reasons:

First, it is the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to put the word out there. Growing up, I always wished I had my own publishing company; now I do. She shoots! She scores!

Second, as many of your wiser and more articulate subjects have already said, the Internet is a genius way of connecting with your right people. "Right" is going to vary from person to person, but for me, it's about finding people with whom I share Significant Areas of Overlap, and expanding my knowledge base from there.

For example, we may both be fascinated by marketing, but you come at it from the perspective of a multinational conversation-starting sharpshooter with experience in big-boy stuff like tech, whereas I'm a loopy clown who has happily frittered away her life writing jingles, playing dress-up and waxing rhapsodic about her intestines. Where in real life would we have met? Maybe SXSW, but even then, not without the Internet intervening.

What prompted to post in "About You" at Conversation Agent?

Colleen: Because it terrified me to do it. I think it's pretty important to do stuff that terrifies you on a regular basis.

Also, I see what you're doing as providing a bridge between people who might not otherwise meet, and whose connecting will certainly change them, and might change the world, for the better. That's something I want both to take advantage of and to support.

Also-also, because I knew if you decided to interview me, I'd get to see how you describe me. Since half the time I have no idea of how to describe myself, I shamelessly throw myself in the paths of those who can do it for me.

What are you working on that you feel will connect ideas and people?

Colleen: I wish I had some big, schmancy-cool, global foundation or think-tank or what-have-you to get people on board with, but really, it's just me, the entertainer, and my mission: to be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love. Not exactly Joan of Arc material, but hey, we all have our jobs.

Currently, mine translates to a lot of writing about my own processes—on my blog, in my newsletter about effective communicating, in a monthly column about marketing for actors. I'm halfway through a year-long project that's about "marketing out loud"—I'm externalizing the day-to-day work of marketing a small business via a separate blog and podcast. I speak as often as I can about non-hideous ways to put yourself out there on and off the Internet, and I've got a few other strange little creative projects cooking on the back burner.

I suppose you could say the main thing I'm constantly doing is working to make myself a better, more joyous conduit. Is that even a thing? I'm doing it, so I guess it is.

Who would you like to connect with?

Colleen: At a recent unconference I helped facilitate (an amazing experience I heartily recommend to anyone thinking about it), a friend of mine, Jason Womack, answered this question the best way I've ever heard: I don't know what I don't know.

I have a long wish list of people I know I'd like to meet because I think they're cool, but I'm equally interested in meeting the people I don't even know that I want to know. I'm pretty sure I'd like to meet someone who likes producing as much as I like creating; I'm much, much better at generating content than I am at putting it out there. And it would be amazing if they were fellow travelers who get that self-development doesn't have to be ponderous, dull or poorly written, and who want to put some good, juicy, fun stuff out there.

But really, I'm open to what I'm not so sure about, too. Serendipity rules!

______

A couple of immediate connections I would make for you come to mind:

• my friend CK, who I admire for keeping it real and managing to be kind, generous and graceful while kicking ass in the marketing department
• I know you would also enjoy meeting the talented Karen Hegman, a communicator passionate about narrative
• and my Australian friend Gavin Heaton, a servant to chaos and a master of story

I open the floor to the community for more suggestions and ideas on who you should meet, as well as of course, the connection they can make with you directly.

100 Thoughts on Marketing

Leo Babauta has written the perfect post for some of the thoughts I've been having about marketing, social media and the age of the customer. In it, he encourages us to be lusting for life, not stuff. I couldn't agree more. I find that the more I know myself, the more refined and specific grows my taste on wines, food and yes, stuff - like jewelry, clothing, cars, even vacations.

Plus, there's something else - I'm all bought out. In fact, it's been a couple of years that I started paring down what I own and being very deliberate about purchasing only when I need something and mostly to replace something else. Take my iron, I've had that for 15 years (wow, do they make things that last that long?).

It seems that the more time I spend creating and being creative - at work and with writing on the blog, etc. - the less I need to acquire things.

Part of the process and the joy is to get to know new people, to exchange ideas and make connections and the realization that you cannot touch someone without being touched in return. Which is a far better experience than the momentary gratification of a new thing. Ok, maybe technology warrants a separate post, I'm an aspiring geek and all that.

You probably find this, too - the less you buy, the less you want.

This is a big problem for marketers, isn't it? And for an economy that based its faith on consumers, which is probably why companies are ill organized to deal with customers anymore. Everything was optimized towards that sale of a certain kind of thing. That's probably why the amount of spam has never been greater.

The social part of digital experiences has unleashed or highlighted - along with awakening the creator in us - a desire to be that is far greater than that to have. Presence tools like twitpic and many more Twitter apps are very much in vogue. A while back we took the 100 thing challenge.

Stuff, especially marketing stuff, is due for a tune up. Let's take the meaning challenge for marketing. Here are 100 thoughts:

1. be short on pages for the Web site, long on user experiences
2. optimize the relationship, not the click throughs
3. let the user guide your next steps
4. provide experiences
5. use multimedia for learners and readers with different styles/preferences
6. use your content and smarts to elevate the other
7. be relevant
8. give trust and care
9. realize that the most important person on the phone is the customer
10. make the product rock
11. help the customer rock
12. ask questions and listen
13. get personal and stay personable
14. communicate often, simply, kindly
15. be engaged and participate
16. simplify
17. make it easy to deal with you by being where people are
18. learn, improve, innovate
19. liberate your inner fan often
20. transform your business processes
21. change your assumptions
22. think community vs. transactions
23. collaborate internally
24. create value
25. be passionate
26. be authentic
27. stay open to change
28. provide a platform for customers to find others with like interests
29. build interaction in your conversations
30. integrate, connect the dots, connect
31. breathe life into what you do
32. create magic
33. learn to speak your customer's language
34. test your ideas with the marketplace
35. play
36. use games to accelerate learning
37. allow your fans to brag about your products and services
38. let your employees be evangelists
39. observe more, judge less
40. watch the social triggers that make stuff happen
41. figure out where you can be more transparent
42. streamline your onboarding
43. make customers wish they never left by throwing them a party when parting ways
44. leave the door open
45. make realistic promises you can keep
46. go the extra mile
47. smile
48. be contagious
49. think long term, prepare to excel each moment
50. share
51. think relationships more than public
52. keep the fire in your belly burning
53. scrap most brochures, make eBooks - or your could go the other way and
54. use your brochures as souvenirs of beauty and style
55. make your marketing materials not just simpler, but fun, too
56. delight and surprise (in a good way)
57. give customers useful data about themselves
58. provide a better context around customer experience
59. communicate more
60. contribute to meaningful conversations
61. empower your experience designers
62. talk to the people who want to talk with you
63. learn to deal with the challenges those people face, when they face them
64. overdeliver
65. let special circumstances guide pricing
66. be hungry for improvement
67. discover the deep emotional associations with your brand
68. find out when to dial in intimacy and camaraderie
69. find your tribe and lead it
70. make your coupons collectibles
71. audition customers for private screenings/previews of your new product
72. help your customers do more with you and with less stuff
73. be agile
74. adapt
75. be portable - mobile is the next technology
76. be sincere
77. cultivate relationships and ideas
78. earn your media
79. break down your silos
80. help build networks of interest or communities of practice
81. connect networks with each other
82. invest in your customers
83. tell the customer story
84. know your story and values and live them
85. focus on the product and the experience first
86. remember that changing the world can also mean making someone's life easier
87. put people before procedures whenever you can
88. solve customer problems
89. learn about the ways people respond to your content online
90. find ways to match your content better with the people who want it (it may cost you more)
91. educate
92. entertain
93. be curious, interested and interesting
94. think about the many-to-many relationships in the marketplace
95. follow through
96. consider dimensional not just as a direct marketing tool
97. write great emails - packed with knowledge, easy to read and share
98. send emails only to those who sign up
99. encourage sharing by giving the example
100. mix it up - it's not all about you, make it about the industry, and the people

A penny for your thoughts?

[image courtesy of cobalt123]

Own Your Story Again

Customer service is the new marketing because it is grounded in competency, people, and contact - all things that can help you with innovation and relationships and that cannot easily be outsourced. They in turn create the experience your customers have that contributes to your story - that of your company and your brand.

I thought about how owning your story is the true business currency these days as I read the telling dialogue reported in Douglas Rushkoff's book Life, Inc. (you can find chapters at Boing Boing):

I’m regularly called in by companies looking to improve what they call their “stories” -- the way consumers and shareholders alike perceive them. But when I interrogate them about what their companies actually do, many are befuddled. One CEO called me from what he said was a major American television manufacturer. I happened to know at the time that there were no televisions manufactured in the United States. But I went along with the charade.

“So you make television sets?” I asked. “Where?”

“Well, we outsource the actual manufacturing to Korea.”

“Okay, then, you design the televisions?”

“Well, we outsource that to an industrial design firm in San Francisco.”

“So you market the televisions?”

“Yes,” he answered proudly. “Well,” he qualified, “we work with an agency in New York. But I am directly involved in the final decisions.”

Fulfillment and delivery were handled by a major shipping company, and accounting was done “out of house,” as well.

Just what story was I supposed to tell? The company no longer did anything at all, except serve as the placeholder on processes that happened in other places.

Branding, marketing, and public relations are not a substitute for maintaining a semblance of competence. These activities simply play back what the business is doing. The value needs to be baked into the business to show up in communications. And the business needs to interact with customers, employees and people in general to create its own story.

Businesses that do not seem to have a clear path to help employees participate in that very value they created are starting to show that discrepancy in the customer experience. Which in turn shows up as customer dissatisfaction or poor customer experience that ends up being a problem for sales. Customers have replaced consumers, even though we still behave as the latter in many ways.

Is the Internet the place where you can own your story again? After all, we know that value can be created from anywhere, where people can participate in the value they created, for example:

• Firefox by Mozilla - better and safer than Microsoft Internet Explorer (I would also add faster)
• Wikipedia by crowd sourcing - broader and more comprehensive and often more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica (I could add more interesting)
• YouTube by crowd sourcing - more diverse and filled with talent than what Hollywood proposes (often formulaic and playing just to the center of the bell curve)
• Itex by members - where B2B can barter services crating a cashless economy
• Support groups for people with rare diseases
• Open source projects
• ... and more

But wait, isn't the pipe that is keeping me connected something I rent from a corporation? Isn't the software I'm using to post something I pay for every year? Aren't all my clicks and online navigation being monitored and tracked by marketers that will push the appropriate content my way? Are we simply trading one form of controlled experience - that of television - with another - that of the technologies and tools we've become so accustomed to?

Reading Rushkoff is quite the sobering experience.

There is so much discussion about what to do and what not to do, about definitions, about real value online today. Let's think for a moment here - do we own our story when we worry about the number of friends or followers we have and judge others using this very metric? Do we add value when we measure what we can learn from a post based upon the number of comments it receives?

Are we outsourcing our own critical thinking to others? Do we pitch before engaging? Do we expect value without giving value ourselves? I'm a strong believer in the pursuit of knowledge at the service of human potential. If it's true that we're in the attention economy, our measure of success is the actual connection formed between people and between ideas and people.

Genuine conversation between people may be less easy to exploit, but it's a whole lot stickier than any Web property or shiny object of the day. The very essence of human potential is paid off in the concept of community, where service becomes the main currency. Service goes hand in hand with empathy and compassion.

As for the word customer, I leave you to some interesting etymology discoveries.

Today at Fast Company Expert blog we talk about how you can get the most out of customer service - and this is valid both for the company and the customer.

[six word story by zen]

Is Your Company Thinking that Social Media is a Job?

I'm asking because technically, it really isn't.

Let's take a step back and think about the strong word in the term social media. We've had all kind of media for ages - print, then the novelty of radio, then video that supposedly killed the radio stars (they also said that sound in movies would never take off, oh my), then the Web.

Well, there have been many technologies in between and now plenty in continuous development (and fashion), I'm just skipping through this.

The progression is easy to see even within each medium and format. I remember when television commercials had their own time slot, then they became more intertwined with the programming, to the point that now you Tivo them (imagine a language plastic enough to make verbs out of product names).

We're seeing the same devolution online where media companies sell more and more interrupting ads because ads online do not really deliver the same results as they did and still do in print - not even close. But you can measure your lack of results with ever increasing levels of precision.

That's why you integrate off line and online and advertising with many other tools in your marketing communications mix.

Why do we ignore the ads better online? It turns out that to be effective, online ads need to be by companies and products you want to notice in the first place. Amazing how everyone is noticing the online Apple ads at the New York Times talk to other ads now, for example. We ignore the others because when we're online, we're there to be social.

Sure, we're social animals offline, but online amplifies our behavior. We expect to talk back or even initiate a conversation. And in the case we are just sitting on the fence or observing, we want to find out what our friends or peers are saying about a product or service before we go to the company's Web site or we take action in any way.

Why do people go online in the first place? For many reasons - self-expression, loneliness, intellectual curiosity, networking and relationships, narcissism, entertainment, community, intellectual stimulation, peer pressure, collaboration, globalization, common interests, modern life demands, to feel human. I could go on. In social media people want to share. If you want an example of that, look at what happened after the death of Michael Jackson.

While people want to share, marketers want to sell.

Indulge me on a lateral example before we get to the crux of this post. Think about the other sexy and trendy topic - that of green and sustainability. Companies focus their attention on things - namely their products and buildings - rather than the effects that their policies have on people. Jeffrey Pfeffer (hat tip Mark Earls) writes:

[...] companies and their management practices also have profound effects on human beings and the social environment.  And the evidence suggests that, in many instances, these effects are even more pervasive and more harmful than the effects on the physical world. 

As a few examples, companies in the United States have cut health insurance to both their active employees and retirees, causing problems in accessing health care.  Many organizations have either curtailed completely or diminished their contributions to employees‟ retirement, and have thereby shifted the financial risks of having enough resources to retire to their workers. 

Such actions have increased financial stress.  And the waves of downsizing and economic insecurity created by wage givebacks and involuntary, part-time work have had profound affects on both psychological and physical well-being. 

Human nature doesn't change, but human behavior does.

This social media thing is not just about a series of tools that whomever you hire needs to be more or less proficient in using to help your business. There's an awesome discussion on job titles and skills led by Olivier Blanchard (read the comments).

If you did approach media as new channels, then to gain a presence there, you need a team. Let me say that again - this is not the job of one person. Even with a team, without the support - or alignment - of the whole business, you are like the company that slaps a coat of "green" paint and checks the box on sustainability. 

Because it is direct to customer and prospect, social media can help you in many areas:

• customer service - gathering information and recommendations in addition to real time support
• research and analysis - tracking new trends, gathering feedback
• marketing - bringing ideas back into the business and products to a market that wants them
• public relations - communicating efficiently with stakeholders
• product development - R&D, finding problems to solve
• innovation - collaboration, inspiration, influencing

But it won't do those things for you. Before you have a culture where sharing is not only possible, but encouraged, you need to a have qualified and experienced team of people leading the organization there. People who are able to analyze issues, problem solve, recommend, implement, learn, and give you the business results you seek along with the proof of return on your investment. Your returns will be proportional to your ability to align the organization behind this team.

Depending on the challenges your organization faces, you may look to hire marketers, communicators, customer service reps, and public relations professionals (exemplary list), who understand the dynamics of social media and have used those tools for business. There's a big difference between using these tools to just hang out and to generate conversions.

My colleagues responsible for SEO and SEM know and understand marketing, for example. It's important that you stay grounded in that because SEO is but one sliver on Web and online presence. You can be optimized all you want, if the content has no value and does not map to your buyer's needs, you get a lot of first dates and no game.

The true spirit and message of The Cluetrain Manifesto was not that companies would learn to market in new channels. If I cannot persuade you to read the book (it's free), Geoff Livingston will, so read his post. Geoff quotes Locke:

We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp, to even contemplate. And this longing is not mere wistful nostalgia, not just some unreconstructed adolescent dream. It is living evidence of heart, of what makes us most human. But companies don’t like us human. They leverage our longing for their own ends… Our role is to consume.

There is a lot more going on here than meets the eye. This is about people re-adjusting and rebalancing the very idea of business. Building a sustainable company should consider the human as well as the physical dimensions of company actions. Social media tools have brought this conversation to the fore. 

Best practices for utilizing the tools are being developed as we speak.

There are professionals out there who are broadening the scope of their business knowledge by researching, and observing, and doing. If we look at a group of prominent names in social networks at the moment we can see that these professionals are grounded in business skills.

Amber Naslund has experience in fund raising and brand building, Olivier Blanchard has built brands, CK is a marketer with more than ten years in solo business in NYC (if you can make it there...), Frank Eliason has deep experience setting up and managing customer service support, Chris Brogan has built his practice learning part time - an overnight success years in the making, Peter Kim joined the conversation from the research and analyst side after being in marketing. I could go on.

Your applicant should be excited about your business if they want a job in your company.

They should know marketing, understand communications, have worked in customer support, or have been in the trenches with public relations. Those are the foundational knowledge, experience, and skills that will guarantee your programs and dialogue with customers and prospects will make business sense.

Plus, these newly created positions that incorporate the digital space in social networks are the work of a team, not of a lone ranger. As I said in on Twitter just last week, depending on your product and service needs, you may need a content curator, a community facilitator and a team of experienced product development conversationalists. 

Just to take one of the points on Olivier's list:

Applicant actually knows how to use Twitter to help your company build brand equity online and offline without having to DM people for help.

You need to know not just how but what building brand equity means in the first place.

As for those companies looking to hire professionals who understand how to use these tools - you need to first figure out what your objectives are, then hire someone who has extensive experience solving problems in that area.

If you come across a really good candidate, he/she will be all over social media. She/he understands this is a game changing thing and has taken steps to learn, integrate, adapt, even coach the team, and get results already.

We will talk about how you get there in a subsequent post. Questions?

My Twitter 20 Interview on Conversation and Community

In case you missed it, I was a guest on Jay Baer's Twitter 20 interview on Twitter this week. Thank you for that, Jay. It was fun, especially since I had no idea what questions you were going to ask.

I met Jay at SxSWi when I had the opportunity to have face time with him and a group of smart professionals like Debbie Weil and John Havens of BlogTalk Radio.

We had a reunion recently at Marketing Profs B2B Forum in Boston. The Twitter appointment with 20 questions was a natural progression - although some call the medium a regression.

The ultimate presence tool, Twitter allows people to be "on air" without having to move away from the office and making a big production. Everyone can play and participate.

Some of the points that resonated - read: were retweeted - most with the audience from the dialogue were (emphasis mine):

• Companies should let go of assumptions when listening. There’s such a thing as thinking you’re too smart.

• Hire those who lean forward, who are curious and interested, who listen before they answer, who love learning.

• Brand is not the logo, it needs to permeate every aspect of business… and take into account the feedback it receives.

• Customer service is marketing. Your processes are marketing. So is your receptionist, your building, your people…

• How about a community facilitator, a content curator, and a team of conversationalists for product development/innovation?

• It’s a team effort to help the organization own its brand. Think about the words: organization, company->organism, together.

• conversation is the art of thinking together to find something new. It’s good to have new people/ideas in it + mix it up.

• Pick your tools based on your “flow” – where do you feel energy? What suits you? Leave room to explore new places every week.

• Explore, experiment, test, fail – within your abilities to stretch but not to the point of fatigue. Manage your attention.

• Good content writing has not changed – we’ve changed.

• I believe that it’s a team and not one person that defines a company and owns a brand, so here I’m part of a team.

During the interview I asked for feedback - how do you think blogging has changed? Is it now about lifestreams? Is it because there was no innovation in fragmentation that some are moving more towards aggregation and multichannel steaming of the same content? 

Steve Rubel says blogs are out of beta but bloggers should always be in beta. I agree with Louis Gray who responded to the post on FriendFeed that blogs still occupy an important role in the digital ecosystem - that of long form "how to" content and thought leadership.

What do you think? Are you finding it easier to tweet (now potentially trademarked - shall we have to resort to twit instead?) and comment on FriendFeed or Facebook? Or maybe just use a Posterous or a Tumblr account? Should we skip Web 2010 and move directly into Web 2012? What happened to Web 3.0? 

Enough to make your head spin, isn't it? What's your take on all of this? Too much?