BUZZZ

Rachel (into intercom): Who is it?

UPS Michael: It’s UPS with a package delivery.

Rachel: Should I come down or are you coming up? (I ask HOPING he’ll say he’s coming up.  And, guess what? He ALWAYS does!)

Michael: No, I’ll bring it up! (with enthusiasm)

BUZZZ (as I buzz him in)

But this doesn’t happen with every delivery I receive from UPS or any other company.  Sometimes, they wait down there for me to come all the way downstairs to sign for the package.  But, every time, Michael says he’ll come up, and does it with enthusiasm, like he loves his job and loves bringing packages door-to-door to customers.

Once I was walking around my neighborhood with a friend, and I saw Michael.  I told her, “That’s my UPS guy.”  She asked, “You KNOW your UPS guy?”  She’s right, most people don’t know their UPS guys.  They’re as non-descript as the brown uniforms they wear.  But, Michael I remember and recognize when I see him.  Last week, he delivered a package to me.  Same story.  And, when he came to the door, he said, “I’m the nice one.”  I laughed, and confirmed that he is “the nice one”, and how much I appreciate that he brings the packages up to the door.

So, kudos to Michael!  But, why is it such an anomaly that someone would need to be “the nice one.” Have we come to expect “not-nice” for service these days?  How difficult is it to take that extra step (or three flights) to make a customer happy?  I would argue, not very difficult.  The better service that sticks in people’s heads, is usually worth the effort of a smile, extra time or expense of giving them a nice experience. And, an experience that they may share with their friends. Or come back for more often. Or purchase more.

*When I say “UPS guy”, please assume I’m also including women.

(Photo credit: Package delivery)

What do you think?  Have we come to accept “not-nice” as the norm? How important do you think it is for companies to take that extra step for service?

• General overview
• Getting Started
• How to use Twitter
• Twitter lingo and do’s/dont’s
• What are the benefits of using Twitter
• A few companion applications

Twitter is about connecting to people with similar interests, and can be used for business or personal reasons, including networking, learning information, getting business, finding a job, etc.

If you have never been on Twitter or have not spent much time on Twitter, this webinar is for you!

(after purchase you will be automatically redirected to the video recording)

Less than 10 minutes later, I got this back from the Boloco Twitter account:

Wow, amazing (by the way, John Pepper is the owner of the entire Boloco chain)! Not only that, but the manager at the Boloco I was at, came over to me personally to ask if the music level was OK now.  I was really amazed.  What an example of great customer service!  I spoke, and Boloco responded quickly, in a friendly manner, and certainly made me a happy customer (even though I can’t eat burritos at the moment… BOO!).  John Pepper really GETS customer service and how important social media is to business. (side bar… he attended the #BurritUP event I went to a couple of months ago, and he continued with us as we went on to his competitors’ stores to eat and discuss burritos.  Not a lot of business owners would have done that).

So, why is this important?  Customers in this day and age have many forums to discuss their opinions, many of which are quite public.  Companies can easily make a customer very happy by responding to their concerns.  Now, “responding” doesn’t necessarily mean doing what customers want all the time.  If Boloco knew that the volume they had the music was ideal for the majority of their customers, and had responded to me with “Sorry the music is too loud for you.  We are always striving to achieve the perfect balance and sometimes we struggle to get it right” that would have been OK with me.  They heard me, and responded. That’s the most important thing.

But wait, there’s more…

…the story doesn’t end there.  Check out this stream of tweets about Boloco after I tweeted what happened.  For example, “Think that they just won over a customer”, “Wow -  that’s service” and “That’s pretty awesome. Great stuff from @boloco.” Praise, praise, praise.  Even some discussion about a new Boloco product.  So, now Boloco has taken making one happy customer to a whole group of people discussing this, and getting a more positive image of Boloco the more it happens. That’s the REAL power of social media.  Viral.  Spread your message.  Listen and respond quickly to your customers.

So, I ask you, is listening to your customers important?  YES.  Why?  To make a happy customer (and make them feel heard).  And, happy customers tell their friends.

What do you think?  Does this show the importance of Social Media?

Anyway, the conference was even more incredible than it was last year, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes/learnings. (Not necessarily quoted word for word; and if you know who said some of the unknown quotes or if I made any errors, please let me know!)

Day 1

• How do you engage customers without pissing them off? Just need to listen. And then figure out WHEN in the conversation it’s right to jump in. ~Citrix (name?)
• SM needs to get out of the corporate communications group. It should be spread throughout the company ~Innovative marketing panel
• In terms if marketing, it’s not about the thickness if your wallet, it’s about the thickness of your mind. It’s a great time to be a poor marketer. ~Justin Rasmussen, Coffee House Ideas
• Who will own social media in the future? PR agencies, interactive agencies or ad agencies? Answer: The companies. ~Brian Halligan, Hubspot

• PR is dead. ~Brian Halligan, Hubspot (I couldn’t disagree more.  I do believe PR is changing, but it will never be dead.  The big difference I see is that rather than companies finding press, the press will be finding them.)

• People turn to social media traditionally to solve 3 problems: 1) sales 2) get the word out , 3) need to make a relationship better or change it.” ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners
• You need to look at your “share of suckiness” vs. your competitors. “We suck less” ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners (it’s important to look at what your detractors are saying, but also keep in mind industry norms for sentiment.)
• PR = helps groups communicate with one another and facilitate discussions. What is PR2.0? A new approach to PR (PR isn’t just media relations) — it’s about building long term relationships, and now we can do it directlly with the customer. ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners
• What is a social media press release? Integrating keywords, SEO, interactive content, links to SM sites, enabled for social media. ~”Getting the Word Out” panel
  
• Measure engagement (not impressions), which will then lead to sales. ~”Getting the Word Out” panel
• Marketing = getting people to know, like and trust you. ~Rich Ullman, Ripple6
• What do you say to the people that say they don’t have time to create good content? Tough! ~Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent
• If you’re doing SM, and not email, you’re insane. It has a $44 ROI per dollar spent, on an email campaign. ~Email panel
• Using purchased email lists is just spamming. The people didn’t sign up for the email. ~Email panel
• “Rented list” – means using another list to communicate your message (i.e Daily Candy). ~Email panel
• 20% of tweets mention brands (source http://bit.ly/MVSlV). Twitter users are twice as much likely to engage with brands than on other platforms. ~Jesse Engle, CoTweet
• For a company with multiple tweeters, it’s best to have logo as avatar, twitter background with faces/names of tweeters, and use cotags. ~Jesse Engle, CoTweet
• Kodak’s blog is not about the actual product, it’s about HOW we use our products. ~Jennifer Cisney, Kodak
• Cool free listening tool www.socialmention.com ~unknown
• How to get your video to go viral? Story, spectacle, emotion, conflict, questions. ~Tim Street, APE Digital

Day 2

• Listening helps you find ppl who are passionate about what you do, out on the web. That’s how you build a comunity centric way to market. ~Listening and monitoring panel
• Email’s role in the marketing mix is more important than ever. Email is a main DRIVER of social web activity. ~Greg Cangialosi, Blue Sky Factory
• The blog is the ANCHOR of our social media efforts. ~Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines
• Where else can you get immediate and passionate feedback from your customers other than in social media. ~Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines
• Social Media optimization created the findability of social objects – keywords, titles, descriptions, tags, syndication. ~Christopher Carfi, Cerado
• If there are a bunch of kids in a playground, and there are no toys there, they’re going to leave. (referring to making your Facebook and website interactive). ~CC Chapman, Campfire
• Everyone needs a CMS (even if it’s just Wordpress), in order to update site,keywords, tags, etc. ~CMS panel
• Whereever you are finding the most uncomfortable information about you, look there 10 times harder! ~Tim Walker, Hoover’s
  
• What are Social Media Influencers (SIM)? Harnessing social media and social influencers to achieve a goal. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Market to the community not just the individual. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Social engagement results in purchases 24 days later on average. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Focus not just on the platforms, but on the relationsips… focus on WHO is influencing your customer. Research influencers. ~Ken Chow, R2 Integrated
• Great Marketing = Convince people to SELL. ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Google’s ranking algorithm = context (does it match what they’re looking for?) + authority (how much does Google trust you?). ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Titles are the most important piece of information you’re giving to Google about what the page is about.The MOST important is the one on your home page. Earlier words send a stronger message to Google. So, your title keywords need to be ordered appropriately. Don’t make your Home page titled HOME (even if you sell homes!. ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Don’t buy ads on Facebook. Use it to look at the demographic info to find who meets your target profile (brilliant!). (I don’t agree about not buying ads, but the target demos are great!). ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot

If you want to see even more highlights from me or others during the Inbound Marketing Summit, check the #IMS09 hashtag on Twitter Search.

Overall, an incredible conference!! A few suggestions for IMS next year. Include people’s Twitter names in the program, on their nametags,  and on the screen while their speaking. Improve the wireless.  Add a case study component… so many great minds together in one room!  We can break into a group of 10 and all work on a different case to put together a social media and marketing strategy and tactics.  Do short presentations so we can all learn from eachother.

(Photo credits: Group, Chris Brogan, iPhone, CC Chapman)

Anything important I missed?  Feel free to add or comment on the above!

Last weekend, I decided to conduct an similar experiment of my own. Except that it really wasn’t planned. It just happened by mistake. I put my iPhone through the washing machine. Yes, rinse cycle and all. So, what happened to it? Well, by the keen knowledge of my friend Claudio, my phone was saved, and seems to be in 100% working order. Here’s what Claudio did to save the day:

• He said, no matter what, don’t turn on the phone until we fully dried out the insides.  So, despite my impatience to just turn it on and see if it was working, we kept it turned off
• Then, Claudio instructed me to suck all the water out of every single hole in the iphone.  It tasted like Tide.  (maybe that was just his way of getting me to wash my mouth out with soap!).  Anyway, I literally sucked as hard as I could out of both microphone holes, the volume buttons, the headset hole, the on/off buttons, the charger hole, and the SIM card hole.
• Then, he pointed a hairdryer at the charger hole and blew medium heat air into the iPhone for probably an hour and a half.  Every few minutes, he rotated the iPhone around so the hair dryer blew into different holes.
• Then, we charged the phone.  We’re not sure if my phone had run out of battery before the washing machine incident or if it disengaged the battery during the incident, but it did need to be charged.

So, that’s it!  At first, the sound on my ringers and music was off, but over the next few days, it came back to normal.  There was also some fogginess on the screen, but that went away the same day.  Now, it’s good as new.  Thanks Claudio!

Anyone else have any tips for saving an iPhone from a washing machine, being run over by a car, or being dropped?

I can’t continue to write for the Wall Street Journal “Laid Off and Looking” blog anymore, because I have a new job! I will be the Director of Marketing and Social Media at Second Time Around, a consignment clothing retailer with 19 stores in 8 eastern states (MA, NH, RI, ME, CT, VT, DC, NY). Second Time Around’s owner, Jeff Casler, recently got venture capital funding from Generation Equity Investors, so is slated for more growth in the coming years.

I got this new position through a combination of Twitter, an online job website, and good old fashioned networking. Back when I first lost my job a year ago, I posted my resume on a site called Jewish Jobs. Lisa Colton, the founder of Darim Online, was looking for someone with my background for some consulting work and found me on the website. She also recognized my name because she had been following me on Twitter for a couple of months and liked the things I had to say. So over the next few months, we kept in touch and talked about how we could work together. Then on June 17th, I got an email from Brian Colton (Lisa’s brother-in-law), a partner at Generation Equity, saying they were looking to fill a marketing position at their latest venture, and Lisa had given him my name. One month later, on July 16th, STA offered me the job!

A year ago, I don’t think I would have gotten this job. I wasn’t well versed in social media, but I have been focusing on that for the year I have been out of work. Social media is such an important part of marketing these days, and I was behind the eight ball before this year. I also think that being involved in social media has put me “out there” so much more, that potential employers like Lisa or Jeff could see what I’ve been up to much more easily. One look at my Twitter account, my website, or the posts I’ve been doing for this blog, bring instant credibility to me. You can see the way I write, the way I think and where my interests lie. I know this had an impact on me getting the job I did, and think it’s vital to a successful job search, even for people not interested in marketing.

I was delayed in writing this post for the WSJ blog, because I was hoping to be able to write about a job offer I was expecting to have. It didn’t come. It still may, so I haven’t lost all hope, but it sounds like the company may be unsure whether or not to hire for the position. Sound familiar? I have been hearing this more and more lately with the poor economy. Either the company advertises for a job, and then decides they aren’t hiring any more, or they restructure the job in the middle of hiring because they are trying to accomplish more with less, or they just decide to put the position on hold.
So not only do we (laid off folks) have to deal with the stress of being out of work, and an unknown financial future, we are also impacted by the uncertainty that companies are feeling themselves. This makes it tough, and honestly a bit emotionally trying at times.
The way I have combated this is to try to not get too excited about a job until it becomes a reality. I talk about potential jobs with my friends and family, but try to not go into too much detail. The more we talk, the more excited I get, and the more they ask questions. “Did you get the job?” “When will you hear back?” “Did you hear from them yet?” “What are the next steps?” “Did you follow up with them lately?” It’s supportive, but for me, more and more talk brings more and more excitement, and consequently more and more disappointment when it doesn’t work out. So, no more detailed discussions for me!
The other way I have combated this becoming too emotionally trying is to continue plugging away, even though I have a good feeling a potential job will work out. Don’t stop. You need to keep going until you accept the job, or even the day you start your job. In this economy, anything can happen, and stopping not only wastes time if it doesn’t work out, but emotionally it makes you more invested in the opportunity you are waiting on. Keep many balls in the air, and don’t be “monogamous” until you get the offer, because you know the company certainly is not.

Readers, how do you prevent yourselves from getting too emotionally invested in a potential job opportunity?

Obviously, being out of work was stressful.  It was stressful financially — how was I making ends meet?  How long was my unemployment going to last? Would I get the client I was trying to get?  It was also just a constant stress of feeling like I needed to do something to move my search or consulting work forward all the time.  Even at night, if I wasn’t out socializing or at a networking event, I was very rarely just relaxing in front of the TV or reading.  For most of the year, I didn’t really take a break.  So, in that way, work seems relaxing!  It’s not such a weight hanging over my head, like I felt all year. I do think I’m going to be working at night a bit, having some work travel, or weekend trips (I was in Chicago this week and am going to CT tomorrow), but for some reason, I’m better able to shut my mind off and relax.  I can come home at night if I don’t have plans, and take Stella for a leisurely walk, get dinner, and watch TV. Love it!

On the other hand, my schedule couldn’t be more different now than it was for the past year.  I got accustomed to having the schedule I wanted.  I went to bed no earlier than 2am on most nights, and woke up by 9am at the earliest.  If I was tired, I took a nap.  I took Stella for a walk in the middle of the day if I wanted.  Now, not only do I need to get up at a normal hour for work, I have started working with a personal trainer and am in physical therapy (for my knee), so get up almost every day by 6 or 6:30am.  Going to bed at 2am no longer works.  Napping in the middle of the day is not recommend, at least if I plan on keeping my job!  So, from this perspective I find it more stressful.

But, so far, I seem to be managing OK, and am getting used to going to bed early again.  I am LOVING the job. Everyone is incredilby nice, welcoming, and very dedicated to growing this company.  There is so much opportunity for marketing and social media, I can’t wait to get some of my ideas moving!

How have you coped with a change in lifestyle like this?  Any ideas to help me or others?

(Photo credit: Money Tree, Clock)

I was actually confused as to if this was a non-profit or not, and sure enough, his website had already answered that question: “No we are a not.  We are a for profit business and where the charity component comes in is that we like to donate some of our time, resources and profits to charities during a campaign or after a campaign.”

I had a blast on my ride!  It was very low to the ground, had an amazing pickup (although I think we scared the Brookline locals a bit!), and had smooth leather seats. Ray told me the car would sell for $250,000, a number I can’t EVER imagine spending on a car, no matter how rich I get (thinking positive thoughts).  A surprise to me — not to car aficionados, I’m sure — was that the engine was in the back of the car, and we could see it while sitting in the car.  Very cool!

So, what do I think of this idea?  I think it’s very innovative, and for sure gets people to look.  I wish I had taken photos of a few people with their jaws hanging open, and heads turned.  But, are they looking at the car, the ads or the people?  I tend to think they’re first looking at the car, and then wondering who is driving such a nice car, and then finally look at the ads.  As with many things marketing related, measuring ROI is tough.  Estimating eyeballs on the car is probably an easy task, but measuring if they see the ad is another thing, not to mention if they actually take it in, or are just taking in the car.  Then there are all the side benefits… people writing posts like this, people posting photos that show the advertisers in them, the viral effect of social media, etc.

In my current job, I don’t think I could justify the spend.  But, if I were working back at Jim Beam or Kraft again, spending $6,000 on something that would get me a lot of talk value, on a budget of $10-25MM, I would definitely consider it.

What do you think of the idea?  Would you spend that kind of money for 100 miles?