While in the car the other day, I was listening to a morning drive radio program and I was struck by how many people were calling the station to relay relatively embarrassing stories.  As I thought more about it, I realized how good radio programs are at starting conversations.  Something with which many companies and brands struggle.

Photo via santibon on Flickr

For those radio programs that rely on listener interaction, stimulating conversation is a necessary part of their program.  To be successful, they have to motivate listeners to call in to recount stories which will not only interest other listeners but further stoke the discussion.

Picking up a phone and dialing a radio station isn’t a herculean effort, but relatively speaking, especially in this time-taxed age, it does require some effort (it’s more of a time commitment than clicking on a button to re-tweet or forward an email).

So, what can we learn from radio?  It seems that there are four key takeaways relating to successfully starting a conversation that we can apply to social marketing:

• Subject Matter.  Yes, this is an obvious one, but more companies than you think just appear to ‘phone it in’ (love the  puns).  There is a lot of competition for people’s attention so you have to select subjects that your audience is going to be interested in – not ones that only serve your company/brand.  It takes work.  It takes time.  This usually means thinking beyond your product or service and really focusing on the customer.
• Need to Ask.  Don’t forget to actually ask your audience to participate in the conversation.  This is equivalent of the radio station announcing their phone number and asking people what they think.  You’d be surprised how many more contribute to the discussion when you explicitly ask (we’ve tested this).
• How to Ask.  The way you phrase the question can have a significant impact on the response.  Sometimes you want to ask a very open-ended question and sometimes you will want it to be very specific.  It really depends on the subject.  Over time, you will learn the best approach for the type of question and your audience.
• Listen and Learn.  In most situations, radios programs are just asking the questions for the entertainment value.  But as marketers, we can learn extremely valuable information regarding the motivations, interests, frustrations, etc. of our target audiences from those conversations.

So turn on the radio and let the old dogs teach us social marketers a new thing or two about social marketing.

Today’s To Do List:

1. Design landing pages for email campaign
2. Implement paid search ads
3. Deploy transactional emails
4. Publish blog posts
5. Start drip campaigns
6. Optimize key pages
7. Plan sales promotions
8. Develop creative for display advertising
9. Post on Facebook fan page
10. Design merchandise up-sells

The to-do list of what you need to do to manage your online presence is virtually never-ending. You have so many tools in your toolbox, and you never feel like you have the adequate time and resources to be doing everything you really want to do. It is so easy to get buried in the day-to-day activities of managing your Internet operations.

However, as important as those tactics are to your success, you can’t forget to dedicate time to step back and take a 30,000 foot view of your business and consider your opportunities.

Real game changing ideas come by thinking big. That type of thinking can’t be crammed in between analyzing your conversion funnel and adding new products to your online store. You need to find the time to really allow your mind to clear itself of the day-to-day minutia so that you can think strategically.

This is not the once-a-year strategic planning that other groups in your organization may be able to do. Given the rapid pace of innovation in our space, you need to be doing this much more frequently – for example, monthly. You need to get out of your office, turn off your phone, leave your laptop in your bag and let your mind explore the possibilities.

What implications do Foursquare, Quora, QR codes, NFC, a double-dip recession, tablets, electronic wallets, cloud computing, smarthphones, federal spending cuts, Groupon, unrest in the Middle East, etc. have on your business? What’s the next big thing? What are your competitors doing? Where is the venture capital money going? What are the real visionaries talking about? Is there innovation in seemingly unrelated industries that you may be able to leverage? What do your customers really need, and is there a way to provide them with a better experience? What assumptions are you making that you need to challenge? What does all of this mean in terms of risks and opportunities?

Are you ready for your trip to 30,000 feet? Are you ready to see the forest through the trees?

‘Sorry’.  It’s such a simple word, but it can have such a tremendous  impact.  It can diffuse even the most tense of situations.  It can be a game changer.

By telling a customer that you are sorry when she has a negative experience with your product or service, you are showing her that you care, you sympathize with their situation, you aren’t blaming her, and you are willing to take responsibility.  Maybe most importantly, you can significantly change the tone of the conversation so that you can have a meaningful discussion in trying to find a resolution to her problem.  

However, ‘sorry’ is more than a word – it’s an attitude.  It’s a mindset.  It’s introspective.  It’s thinking first about what your company could have done to prevent the problem or what it can do now to resolve issue.

Elton John sang, ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word.’ Is that the situation for your organization?

Consumers love discounts.  Who can blame them?  Who doesn’t want to pay less for something?  For marketers, they are very enticing.  They can boost sales, break-through the clutter, and stimulate trial from new customers.  Used correctly, they are a valuable tool for a marketer.

However, if used indiscriminately, consumers become dependent on them, expect them, and won’t shop from your store without them.  That’ll force you to either provide a steady stream of discounts that you’ll probably never be able to stop or risk the wrath of your consumers.

Much like a carpenter, you aren’t going to be successful relying on a single tool (heck – you can only do so much with a hammer). Discounts can provide wonderful results for companies, but make sure that you don’t forget other useful tools in your marketing tool box.

I recently saw The Social Network, a movie about the founding of Facebook, and there is a line that has really resonated. Toward the end of a meeting between Sean Parker, Napster co-founder, and Mark Zuckerberg, Parker says something to the effect of:

You know what’s cooler than a million dollars? A billion dollars.

His point was to think big.  Redefine what success is.

Photo By Suzan Marie

That’s one of the common traits of successful entrepreneurs – they think big. They think in terms of ‘game-changers’, revolutionary ideas. They think outside of the box.

Not everyone can come-up with the next idea for Facebook, YouTube, or iPhone or how to send a human into outer space (and get him back), but we all can force ourselves to take a step back and think about how we can innovate in our jobs. Challenge ourselves to look at our opportunities and challenges in new ways. Question assumptions. Ensure that we aren’t just doing something because that is the way it has always been done. Learn from industries and businesses that don’t seem to have a direct relationship to ours. Always strive to improve.

Very few are going to have the success of a Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, or even Henry Ford, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from those types of successes to help us generate evolutionary, if not revolutionary, ideas.

Recently, Google introduced its Priority Inbox for its Gmail web-based email service in which Google attempts to divine the relevance of an email message based on a variety of factors such as keywords and past interaction with other email messages.  Microsoft and Yahoo have announced similar initiatives.

Image: Google

These changes are the next stage in the evolution of ISP’s, web-email providers and other email related companies helping users manage their inbox. Even though each may take a different approach, all solutions strive to identify the relevant emails and block or de-prioritize the irrelevant.

I don’t see this a ‘game-changer’ for email marketers. If you provide engaging, useful content, you should be in good shape – just like 3 months, 6 months ago, etc. If you think email is just a cheap marketing channel where your ‘blasts’ are more of an afterthought than a well-planned, integral part of your program, you are still going to fail.

The following are a few recommendations as to how you can position yourself well in the era of the evolving inbox:

1. Focus on your Subscriber – Ensure that you are putting yourself in the shoes of your customer and thinking about what content she really wants to receive.
2. Use Segmentation – Improve your relevance by using all possible data to segment your list.  Use those segments in varying the frequency of emails, content delivered, etc.
3. Start the Relationship on the Right Foot – Set expectations with your sign-up form and Welcome email about the type of content and frequency of emails.  Provide something of value in your welcome email so that your subscribers are likely to engage with that first email.
4. Practice Good List Hygiene – Most subscribers who don’t want your email anymore aren’t going to click the ‘unsubscribe’ button.  They are just as likely to click on ‘Spam’ or do nothing.  Those that are emotionally unsubscribed can damage your relevancy score just like those who reported your emails as spam.   After attempting to re-engage a subscriber don’t be afraid to throw in the towel and remove that subscriber from your regular list.
5. Grow Your List the Right Way – Stay away from promotions or activities that incent people uninterested in your brand to sign-up for your newsletter. Launching a contest that awards a car to a new subscriber would definitely grow your list but after the contest ends, you are going to be left with a lot of people who aren’t going to be into your email.
6. Make Unsubscribing Easy – Don’t hide your unsubscribe link.  If someone really does want to leave your list, you would rather have her unsubscribe than mark your email as spam.
7. Don’t Take Your Subscriber For Granted – Approach your marketing program with the mindset that you have to re-earn permission with every email you send.
8. Be Data Driven – Ensure you have analytics in place that allow you to understand what works and what doesn’t. Obviously focus on what drives engagement with your emails but don’t lose track of the fact that you ultimately need conversions.
9. Test, Test, Test – Test everything you can: subject lines, personalization, images used in design, integrating video, etc.
10. Be Adventurous – Try new things – don’t get stuck in a rut.  Get inspiration from what others are doing, even those who aren’t competitors.

We tend to love the status quo. The status quo can be as comforting and reassuring as a child’s blanket or favorite stuffed animal. Alternatively, change can be intimidating, nerve-racking, and uncertain. The danger, however, is that love for the status quo can lull us into a false sense of security and blind us to both risks and opportunities.

The pace of technology, business, and even life means that everything is changing at a more rapid pace. Entire business segments are both created and made obsolete more quickly than any other time in history. Competitors come from seemingly nowhere and opportunities can be taken advantage of in a way not experienced before.

Image: Tambako the Jaguar

As such, we can’t be hypnotized by the status quo. It’s so easy to continue to do the same thing and too often organizations create or permit cultures where people become more concerned with protecting their turf than growing the business.

You don’t have to look any farther than Blockbuster to find a company where the status quo was doing quite well but they neglected to recognize the winds of change. As a result (and the excellent execution of Netflix), the company is in serious trouble.

The best way to avoid the danger of the status quo is to create a culture were the norms are challenged, creative thinking is encouraged and risks and opportunities are continually being evaluated. Departments needs to coordinate and collaborate, and leaders need to be required to look not just at what’s right in front of them but also what could be coming further down the road.

You can’t be certain what change is coming, but you can be assured that some type of change will arrive.

How would you respond if you called a company’s customer service department and the agent told you to send an email to another customer service group and someone should be able to help you out?  Pretty frustrated, right?  Well, you see that type of response frequently by companies on their social networking sites.

It happens because sites like Facebook and Twitter are often under the domain of an organization’s marketing or public relations department and there isn’t sufficient coordination with the customer support group.  The problem is that your customers have and will increasingly turn to websites like Twitter or Facebook to air grievances and seek resolution.

Your customers don’t care which department is responsible for “social media oversight” or your organizational structure.  When they tweet you or post a comment on your Facebook page, they expect the same type of results (if not better and faster) as if they picked-up the phone and dialed your phone center (or emailed or contacted you via online chat).

Given the public nature of social websites, prompt and effective customer service on Facebook, Twitter and the like is extremely important.  Not only should you want to take care of your customer, but because your response is seen by prospects, other customers, vendors, and partners, it also impacts your brand.

Here are a few tips to help provide excellent customer support on social websites like Twitter and Facebook:

1. Understand that even if you don’t have a Twitter profile or Facebook fan page for your company, your customers will still voice complaints about your organization on those sites and you need to be prepared to react.
2. Develop a process to handle customer service issues that are communicated via sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Include all relevant groups within your organization and make sure that you treat the posted complaint like an email, phone call, or chat – in others words, be proactive in contacting the person who originated the issue and be ready to help them.
3. Have social monitoring in place so that you can respond quickly to issues.  If you are still developing your process, you can use social monitoring to get a sense of how many issues you might encounter on a daily or weekly basis.
4. Don’t forget that social media time (especially Twitter time) elapses at a much quicker pace.  Just like 1 human year equals 7 dog years, 1 real world hour equals something more like 7 twitter hours.  Responding in 48 hours isn’t seen as being prompt in the social media realm.
5. Be strategic about when you communicate publicly and privately.  Not all communication with the customer needs to happen via public comments.  The initial contact should be public so that others are seeing you are being responsive but often the follow-up (getting specifics, etc.) is better done via email, phone calls, or direct messaging.
6. Even though we live in a digital world, sometimes the best way to diffuse a situation is by talking the disgruntled customer over the phone.  The extra effort can go a long way and is usually appreciated by the customer.
7. Make sure there is some process to provide a summary report of complaints and issues back through the organization. The best way to handle customer problems is to prevent them in the first place and complaints and reported issues should be valuable feedback to sales, marketing, engineering, research and development and product development.
8. Be transparent!  Don’t, and I mean never, try to diffuse a situation or defend your company through a response where you pretend or give the allusion that you are just another customer or unbiased community member.
9. Don’t think that only ‘big’ companies need to worry about customer support on the social media sites.  People use the web do research on all types of companies (big and small, national and local).
10. Obviously, don’t forget that anything you post publicly can be viewed by everyone.  Think about how your response will be perceived by others – don’t be dismissive or defensive.

Is there anything that I missed?  What suggestions do you have for companies to be successful in addressing customer service issues via websites Twitter and Facebook?

You’ll hear companies tout the number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers or email subscribers they have, but those numbers don’t mean much.  Sure, everything else being equal, you would rather have more fans than fewer.  What is really important, however, is how engaged those fans, followers, and subscribers are.

My wife has an address book that she has kept for as long as I can remember.  She has hundreds of names, but many of the people listed are ones whom we have lost touch with.  We don’t know what is going on in their lives and we wouldn’t be invited to a birthday party, wedding, or graduation party they hosted.  In fact, a large percentage of addresses and phone numbers probably aren’t valid anymore.  We certainly can’t count everyone listed in that book as a friend, even if their information is still current.

The same holds true with your online marketing lists.  People may have signed-up because of a contest, by mistake, or were once interested in your product.  The reality is a significant portion of many companies’ customer lists are disengaged.  It happens – people lose interest, move on.

So instead of focusing on how big your list is, focus on how many people you can really get engaged with your company, brand, service, or product.  That is the number that really matters.

Image: Danilo Rizzuti

Math was one of my favorite subjects in school and my undergraduate degree was in Finance with a minor in Accounting, so needless to say, I like numbers and data. That is one of the reasons why I enjoy immersing myself in tools like Omniture SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics, which are great at capturing the ‘what’ – what happened on your website, what content was clicked-on in your email campaign, etc. As a marketer, however, the ‘why’ interests me a whole lot more than the ‘what’.

Most web analytics, email, search and social marketing reporting tools provide vast amounts of data, but those applications are really more of a means to an end. Knowing that my traffic increased, my email click-thru rate improved, or a Facebook fan page generated significant engagement is useful, but what is immensely more valuable to me is understanding why those things happened. Obviously, if you know the cause of your success, you are much more likely to be able to repeat it. The better you can understand your target audience, the better you can market to them.

Most reporting tools can’t tell you the ‘why’. Humans are still best at that task – turning lots of data into meaningful and actionable insights. The problem is that many companies either don’t have staff with the right type of experience to do it or the staff doesn’t have enough time.  Often, organizations don’t know the right questions to ask.  As a result, decisions aren’t fully informed and opportunity is lost.

If you haven’t yet, make 2010 the year that you dedicate the necessary resources to being able to answer the ‘why’.