Via Twitter and the blogosphere, you can learn a lot about your company and its products or services. In addition to being an author/speaker, I'm also an internet strategy consultant. Currently, I'm building a social media listening solution for a major financial services brand. They want to tune into the conversation about their company and either gain insight from it or engage with detractors and fans.
Currently, you can search blogs, web sites, wikis and Twitter. Facebook is not yet searchable as status updates are protected from non-friends. On Twitter, there is also a protected view feature, but only a few percent of all Tweeps turn it on. Many search tools are still in their infancy, and the depth of data is quite shallow -- for now. Even with these limitations, my client will likely gain an intelligence advantage by setting up a listening station. You can do this too. The trick is to identify your objectives, the tools that will make it easy and the process for utilizing your new found insights.
The first thing I did for my client was to conduct a sweep of web/blogs/Twitter to find out what's been said. This was time intensive, but helped me understand the positive and negative sentiment language -- giving me a set of keywords to add to the brand for future searches or notification tools. Icerocket provides a simple solution (Big Buzz) that allows you to search web + blogs + Twitter at the same time for a single word or phrase. It's manual, as you likely want to track multiple phrases, but it covers most everything that's indexed on the web.
In the beginning, I used Tweetgrid to create a dashboard view of up to nine searches. These included: "Company Name" Sucks, "Company Name" Upset, "Product Name" review, etc. The nice thing about Twitgrid is that it hits the same database that Twitter Search uses, but allows you to create a Tinyurl of your dashboard view. This is great because you can share this with others. Example: My Name/Product
One drawback to Tweetgrid and Twitter Search is that they only provide results from the last ten days or so. This means that if you use these tools, you need to check them every few days and archive the results. One solution for this is Tweetscan, which goes back over a year! If you are starting your listening project from scratch, start with a thorough Tweetscan to get current. If you want to follow historical tweets by a specific twerp (or his/her/its followers), check out Searchtastic.
Once the initial sweep is done, it gets easier to maintain over time. I researched different listening tools for companies, and the range of services was mild (free without much functionality) to wild ($10,000 a month with a lot of hand holding). In the end, I went with ScoutLabs (see screen shot of dashboard view above). This is an excellent service that can identify discussions, which ones need to be attended to and the competitive buzz. At only $249 a month for up to 24 concurrent searches, it is a steal for even a small business.
Each company has a different tolerance for detractors. Some companies only care about detractors (people upset with the company or its products) if they have a big bullhorn (followers, readers, etc.) My client, however, has a much lower bar and wants to engage with them right away and "let them be heard" ala Covey's 8th Habit. Many of the Yelp or Amazon reviews are not addressable as there is no way for the company to contact the detractor to work it out. With blogs, it's easy to contact the owner. In that case, I set up a Google email alert for a set of keywords and phrases that indicate an upset customer.
For Twitter, it's a little trickier. First, your company needs to setup a Twitter account (Company Name Listens is a good one). Then, publicly reply to the detractor, showing empathy and inviting them to contact you (when you post your email say it is tim at tim sanders dot com to avoid spam spiders). Next, follow the detractor, which will get you followed back at least sixty percent of the time. Once the detractor follows you back, you can message them with an offer to talk. If you want to follow all Twerps, included prospects, you can use Twollo to auto follow people based on keywords that might indicate they are a purchase intender. As a speaker, I auto follow "looking for" "keynote speaker" and it draws meeting planners into my web. In any event, it is easier than ever to engage with detractors, or if you prefer, your fans.
Along the way, as you tune to the conversations on the web, you'll also get great product or service feedback too. In the case of my client, we also discovered some rouge recruiters offering the sun and moon to prospective employees, which was a violation of hiring policy.
Are you listening to the conversation? Have you Yelped your service to see what people think? Have you used Twitter search beyond the mentions of your @? The best listeners in business usually have the happiest clients and the most progressive brands.
During the Labor Day weekend, I went home for my 30th high school reunion.
I'm from Clovis New Mexico, just west of the mid-Texas border. In 1979, I was the class president and captain of the debate team. It had been a long journey from the 8th grade, when I was the new kid at Yucca and didn't know if I'd ever fit in. It was the year of the Wildcat (our mascot) with state championships in football, basketball and marching band. Clovis pride was strong, and gave many of us the confidence to go out into the world and compete. Others that remained, fed local pride and applied their talents to cultivate a richer Clovis.
I'm so glad that I went home this year for the reunion, and I'm especially glad at what the trip did for my perspective. By going home, I was able to reconnect with my context -- the surrounding environment of aesthetics, influences and cultural flavors that come from growing up in a rural southwestern town. I've lived in big cities (Dallas and LA) for most of the last thirty odd years, so it's pretty easy to lose touch with my home town.
On Friday night, the class of 1979 met at the high school for a tailgate party and football game. We were playing one of the Albuquerque teams, which was always a tough win. We congregated in a set of bleachers set up for us behind the south goal. People reconnected, recollected and reveled in what we had shared together back in the late 70's. Once we all got over our haven't-seen-you-in-decades jitters, we got along like it was still back in the day. I thank Facebook for greasing the wheels as over half of the attendees were on Facebook or heard about it through Facebook.
On Saturday afternoon, there was a tour of Clovis for the out-of-towners. Jacqueline and I joined the tour at the Buddy Holly (Norman and Vi Petty) museum by city hall. I had a chance to have some one on one time with one of my high school BFFs, my debate partner David Begin. He and I won the state championship in 1979, and likely think of it as a crowning competitive achievement in our lives.
On Saturday night, there was a dinner and a dance. A few weeks prior to the reunion, one of the organizers asked me to speak after dinner. I put a great deal of thought into my short talk, and I was truly nervous prior to the talk. I focused my remarks on how much Clovis influenced our values and personalities. Even if you aren't from Clovis, there's a message in this talk for you: Don't forget where you come from. Draw upon your pride like a reservoir. Teach your kids how to possess local pride. That's what I got out of the trip: Pride works, so feed it.
I recorded this on my handy-dandy Zoom D4. I hope you take a few minutes to listen to it.
Yesterday, I was the keynote speaker at the Los Angeles Business Journal's annual CEO Forum. The theme for the year was "The Recovery Is On!" In preparing my talk, I conducted some pretty deep historical research into previous recessions, and what real opportunities emerged from the carnage.
I found study after study that suggested that the companies that pull out of the cut-and-save mentalities early will likely grow the fastest during the ensuing recovery. Companies that wait the longest to resume value engine investments suffer the steepest market share losses over time.
A 2003 Accenture study of the 1990-1991 recession identified what the winners got right and the losers got wrong. It's a great piece of research because this recession had a real estate and credit freeze component, making it an apples-to-apples comparison to today. The study concluded that the winners invested in their value-creation engine even during the recession -- mostly towards the middle or early ending. The winners benchmarked their competitors' investment patterns here too, so they could pounce on value-investment gaps that show up as poor services and inferior products.
Remember when Apple released the iPod? 2001, in the middle of the crash.
If you have a business where marketing is strategic (it's your core competency), proactive aggressive marketing during the recession will make or break you over the coming years. You can buy ads or get marketing services at a deep discount. Your competitors have pulled back their ads, so your bargain-priced ads stand out and get results. It's like corporate hold-'em.
A great piece in the New Yorker (Hanging Tough) tells the Great Depression story of Kellogg (aggressive) vs Post (timid, wait-and-see). During the 30's Kellogg grew both profits and market share and by the time the recovery was common knowledge, Kellogg owned the market. Hmmm, feels like Google vs Yahoo in the early 2000's, but I digress.
NOTE: If marketing isn't your value creation engine, one study review suggests that you shouldn't be proactive in this area as you are likely wasting your time/money.
If customer service or product quality is your value creation engine, you need to keep up your investments in talent retention and information technology for CRM. A July 2009 study by Deloitte suggests that "once the recovery begins to take hold, business executives and talent leaders can expect a resume tsunami as voluntary turnover rises with leaders and workers with critical skills seeking new opportunities." In other words, treat your people GREAT today or you'll bleed when the economy gets better. You never want a soaring economy to be your worst enemy.
In my talk, I pointed out that the secret to being the Phoenix is business confidence. Not at a macro-economic level (like the stock market), but at a leadership level. We must create cultures that have some risk tolerance, some generosity and some boldness. My notes from the talk are here.
Here's some bullet point takeaways:
1. Support the recovery through generosity. Give your employees some time off, non-financial perks or recognition. Pay your vendors/suppliers full price and refer them new business. Join non-profits in helping your struggling communities. These action not only position you as being "a good company" in a world of sinners, they will push your culture towards thinking recovery.
2. Feed your mind good stuff (see previous post).
3. Change the conversation from lack to abundance. Lead with the encouraging news and approach business problems as a solution provider and not a victim.
I read an article a few years ago about a new work related illness -- Black Berry Thumb.
I could see this one coming. There are millions of people that are as obsessive compulsive as church rats when it comes to their emails. Six or seven years ago before mobile email, you hit the F5 (function 5) button fifty times a day to check your email.
And for what? People that carry Crackberry's around and use them to immediately answer all comers write the worst replies, often cryptic and full of spelling and punctuation errors. And according to this article, they end up with an injury to boot. Don't get me wrong, you need to know when an important message is out there (on email, voice mail, etc.). I'm not saying to be out of touch. What you need to do is find balance and write mobile email communications as a last resort.
You should only repsond to emails that need an immediate answer when you are in transit. The way I do this is simple; I treat my Crack Berry as read only. If I see an email that needs my immeidate attention, I call that person on my cell. First of all, it is way quicker, especially if the answer needs to have some sophistication (they all do). In rare occassions (maybe 10% of the time), I can email back a word like "approved". But most of the time I read and respond by phone.
Try this approach out next week and give your thumbs (and other people brains) a rest. PS-- You should also respond to emails with a phone call when someone is upset (poor service, misundertanding, etc.). It will surprise them that 30 seconds after they hit the send button you called them to deal with it. It will also help you communicate your intentions via your audible tone of voice. What ever you do, don't live like a rat in a cage on an endless thread
Visit EmailAtoZ for more advice on mastering email/life balance.
A few weeks ago, I needed to send out a press release announcing the relaunch of Saving The World At Work. After searching around, I found eReleases, a press release distribution company. The website offered a nice comparison to the competition (like Business Wire) and the price was very competitive.
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