Five Things You Need to Know About Social Listening

Social listening is the activity you're engaging in when you pay attention to what consumers are saying about your company at any given time, and even what's being said about your competitors, or your industry in general.

Listening is a relationship function, and social listening for a business isn't terribly different from listening to your spouse or significant other. There are behaviors that will make you more successful, and some that will continuously throw roadblocks in your way and frustrate you.

1. Be open to whatever is being said, however critical. If someone is raising a concern with you, don't dismiss it, even if it seems petty or unreasonable.

2. Learn to look at the situation from the customer's perspective. Remember that they're probably not aware of most of the solutions available to them, even if those solutions are on your web site. The customer doesn't work for your company, and there are some things it's not reasonable to expect your average customer to know.

3. They didn't tell you they have a problem because they had some free time, so make sure you reassure them that their concerns are valid, even if the solution is simple.

4. Take a minute to research the customer's issue before you respond, so you can provide the most educated response to their specific circumstances. If their comment was angry or upset, take care that you don't respond to emotion with emotion. That's like using a match to respond to a gas leak.

5. Don't set up unrealistic expectations. Telling the customer what they want to hear will, only very rarely, resolve the issue, especially if you can't provide that level of service consistently in the future for that customer.

How to Do #FollowFriday and Be a Real Twitter Influencer

Click here for my #FollowFriday list.

This post is about not doing #FF the same as everyone else. It's about singling out the individuals whose tweets you seek out. It's about finding new ways to bring value to the people you follow. You can call it paying it forward, or whatever you want -- but it's really about authentic engagement with your social media audience.

If you're on twitter, it's likely that you see #FF or #followfriday lists pop up as the weekend gets closer. Most likely they'll look like this:

RandomUser #FF @myfriend @thisguyIknow @workplacebuddy @storeIlike @websiteIvisitedonce @dudewhoRTedMe Love your tweets!

Which is nice. I mean, it gets a little exposure for the people you mention, and that's great. But let me ask you this question. When you see #FF lists in your stream, how many of the names in the list do you click on?

Yeah, I thought so, me too.

Have a Goal - Help a Brother (or Sister) Out
What's your #FollowFriday goal? Is it to let your followers know who you know? Is it self-serving name-dropping (which never works, by the way)? Or is it to create new followers for the people you follow?

To persuade your followers to follow someone you are following, they need more than just a name and your tweet.

Most people are using Twitter as a social exposure tool. Most people also tend to follow users they'll read, enjoy, and retweet -- that kind of twitterati is much more appealing than someone who only consumes. Twitter is a conversation, and you have to let the other participants know that you value their input. So recommend people who will add value to your followers, either by retweeting or by posting retweetable messages. If they'll add value, your followers will follow them.

Doing #FollowFriday the right way takes a little time. But taking the time shows your followers that you think these users are worth the effort -- that they'll add value to the tweet streams of anyone who follows them. These tips will show you how to use #FF to show that real value to the people you follow.

1. Start #FF by telling Twitter "I will follow every user mentioned in any #FF list I'm in." Being mentioned in a #FF list should be an honor, and the people mentioned with you are people whose posts you'll probably enjoy. Do it, and watch how many #FF lists you get included in. Then follow them. All of them.
   
2. Send an @mention to let the user who sent out the #FF list know that you followed all their recommendations and you're looking forward to great tweets and great future #FF lists. They'll thank you for it. And retweet the original list with a "Thanks for including me!" message.
   
3. Get creative with how you make your #FF lists. Do them with a city theme, or maybe only people with blogs you read, or perhaps companies you do business, or people who inspire you, or experts in a particular field...it's practically endless. If you do a themed list, hashtag it with the theme when you post it.
   
4. Most people using Twitter are using it to get eyes on their blog or company Web site. Your #FF recommendations every week are great word of mouth. On top of that, SEO for sites is improved by the number of inbound links there are on external sites. Sure, it's not a lot of SEO juice, but it's some. Everyone appreciates link-backs from other sites, and sometimes you'll get a link back to your site as a thank you. Creating a page on your blog that includes all these links can be a great way to add a little SEO value to the sites of the people you follow.

Why I Do It My Way
If you've clicked any of the links in #3, you've seen how I do my #FF -- I create a page that I can post as a Twitter update and @mention the people on my list. This has the benefit for me that I'm getting clicks on my site as my #FF people check out what link they've been associated with, but also they re-tweet my link to their followers, and mostly they click around some of my other posts, which increases the possibility that they'll tweet one of my posts.

There's a traffic advantage to me for doing it this way, for sure, but there's also the benefit to all the people in my #FF list - past and present. They get many more visitors looking at their Twitter bio, and a recent tweet to put them in context, in a way that might make visitors interested to follow them on Twitter.

Valuable reciprocity is the name of the game for #FF, so what are you really doing for the people on your #FF list?

Using Twitter Lists to Get Traffic for Your Web Site

If you're hoping to monetize your blog, and nobody knows you're posting great content there, you may as well not bother writing at all.

I don't say that to be mean, but it is important to understand that, as the saying goes, a leader with no followers is just a guy out for a walk.

So you need followers. If you've read my pieces about Twitter, you might have the impression that I think that getting followers is somehow dirty. It's not, and I apologize if I made you think that. You need eyes on your work to get anyone to tweet about it or give you a Facebook "Like." So how do you get the most eyes pointed your way?

What I will discourage up-front, and consistently, is using a piece of software to automate your following and engagement behavior. But with that said, here's a simple five step process to increasing your followers...legitimately.


Let's assume you have at least *some* followers, or that you're following some thought leaders in your industry.

1. Find an active Twitterati. Make it someone whose tweets you look forward to reading.
   Chances are, they're listed by a bunch of people who also look forward to this person's tweets. People like you, in fact.
   
2. Pick a list,and when it comes up, click the "Following" tab. It should have the number of people who are being followed in this list.
   
3. Now you just have to look down the profiles and add the people who you find interesting. Yes, it takes time, but you're adding people who you're probably going to enjoy reading and engaging with.
   
4. Engage with the people you added. Give them some @mentions and retweet the great things they say. While they may have been unknown to you five minutes ago, you do have things in common with them, and you have a bunch of reasons to engage with them. Remember to tweet out original thoughts, and occasional links to your blog, but mostly you should engage with your new friends.
   
5. Repeat. Some of these folks are going to autofollow you. Don't worry about why they follow you, only why you're following them. Others won't follow you at all. Don't worry about that, either -- they're going to appear in your Tweetstream and give you a ton of stuff to talk about and engage with them. If you're genuine and engaging, they'll eventually follow you.

See, it's not difficult. If you follow a couple of big lists in a day, chances are you'll see your followers sky-rocket. And when that happens, you'll see more people @mentioning you, and retweeting your links and comments.

In time they'll begin coming to your blog and tweeting links directly from your social sharing buttons.

Remember -- this is different from using a follow-bot. You're deliberately choosing each person you follow, based on mutual friends, and shared subject-matter interest.

And now you want to follow me, because you never know when I'm going to post something useful.

How to Grow Your Followers in Twitter

1. Don't follow everyone. It's okay if the number of people you're following is LOWER than the number of tweets you've put out. While there are no hard and fast rules about how many people you follow, you probably don't want to follow more than about twice as many people as are following you. When you find Twitter users whose updates you really enjoy, mention them in your #FollowFriday lists. Remember, real people provide interesting opinion and perspective. Follow-bots provide followers who have no opinion or perspective, and nothing you can retweet.

2. Spread your tweets out through the day. If you have regular marketing messages, use something like Hootsuite to schedule them. Sending all your tweets in a five minute spell just gets you lost in the tweet streams of your followers. Or worse, your followers think you're spamming them. That's okay for marketing messages, but you need to remember that Twitter is a community, and it's imperative that you actually interact in a person-to-person way, too. Auto-tweeting doesn't include you in the conversation, or build relationships. And if you don't do those things, you're not going to get the best out of your Twitter experience.

3. Hashtag EVERY message. Using hashtags will get your tweets out in front of more than just your followers, and will generate more followers if your content is compelling. If you tweet good quality content out about a specific subject, and you do it with consistency and regularity, you'll fast become an expert around that subject's hashtag. And experts find themselves getting retweeted often.

4.  Don't follow users who don't tweet regularly. Don't follow people who only tweet self-serving marketing. The well-known rule of thumb is that for every self-serving tweet you put out, you should be putting out four informative tweets. Start by following a couple of magazines in your sector, and a couple of well known or interesting users. To begin with, only follow users who participate and who tweet regularly. Avoid users who have very few tweets, or are following a disproportionately high number of users compared to how many followers they have. If you follow Guy Kawasaki don't expect that he'll tweet your content. He won't (most likely.) Follow interesting people, retweet them. Thank them if/when they retweet your stuff.

5.  Retweet. This gets you on the rader of users you follow. Eventually, if you're putting out original tweets, and not just retweeting the thoughts of other users, they're likely to follow your tweets and retweet them. Making sure specific users get to see your tweets by giving them an @mention is a good way to let them know you exist. Just make sure what you're giving them is something that they might be interested in, and not just spam.

6.  Link shorteners. There are dozens of them. Use one. Your 140 characters are precious, don't waste them. Link shorteners also make it easy to track your clicks. For most of them, paste the link into the address bar and add + to the end to get click statistics. For example, http://goo.gl/xJRNL is the link, http://goo.gl/xJRNL+ is the statistics for the link. Really, it couldn't be easier.

7. Get listed in the right lists. It's just as important as getting specific followers. Use hashtags to become an expert in a subject -- users following that hashtag will add you to their list of experts, and are more likely to retweet and share your updates. There really isn't an easy way to get listed, other than by posting links to great content and being retweeted. It's about reputation.
FollowFriday is a great way to share the handles of users whose input you've found really valuable. Create a list for people you include in your own #FF lists, and you'll find yourself growing your list of followers in the best way possible: with people who contribute to the thousands of conversations going on in Twitter at any given moment.

8. Analytics. Know which of your tweets get the most clicks. See what content resonates with your followers. There are tools that claim to measure influence, like klout.com, EmpireAvenue, and PeerIndex. They're free, and provide metrics about how your network is interacting with you and the world, and vice versa. My favorite tool for tracking my Twitter, though, is TwitterCounter, which gives charts for followers, how many people you follow, and how many tweets you've posted.

9. It's okay to grow slowly. Don't stress out about getting hundreds or thousands of followers immediately. Certainly don't follow hundreds of people right away. Remember that it's an information exchange community -- if you're consuming more than you're putting in, you'll find it hard to get followers.

10. Know what to tweet. In a sample of 10 tweets, you probably want a breakdown that looks something like:
1 x Public reply @usertweet
2 x Marketing tweets
3 x Retweets
4 x Original thoughts/links to interesting content

And really, that's about all you need to know about Twitter to get started using it effectively. I know, it's a lot to take in, but if you don't have your expectations set too high you'll find that it's a useful tool for getting traffic to your site.

The Customer From Hell
I'm a hard-sell when it comes to customer service. I have pretty low expectations, and it bothers me when they're not met. So let me get those expectations out in the open so you can see that I'm not a crazy-man.

The short list is:

1. Work with me, and dont make excuses.
2. If your company's screw-up or mistake affects me adversely, you're going to have to own up to it and compensate me for my trouble.
3. Follow up, and fix problems, not symptoms.

The longer list is in the form of an advisory:

• "No" should not be in your vocabulary. If you tell me it can't be done, I'll tell you that if you escalate it high enough, there's someone who can make it happen now and you should be prepared to escalate to that level if you need to. 
• Customer service is for the 0.0001 percent of customers who experience problems.
• That 0.0001 percent of customers will tell 100 percent of their friends.
• Customer service is what you do when things go wrong. It is not covered by your procedures or call center scripts. 
• They're your processes and procedures, make them work or break them.
• If it's your core business activity, be competent. If something goes wrong, own up to it, and fix it.
• If you make a mistake and it affects me, you need to compensate me. 
• If you need to compensate me, it needs to be overwhelming.
• There is no such thing as a private customer service conversation. Companies record them for quality control, I post them on my blog and live-tweet them.
• I can out-wait you on the phone. If you can't fix my problem I'm not getting off the line. At some point the call-monitor is going to let a supervisor know you've been on a call for way too long. And then I'll speak to them.
• Your Director of Customer Service is on your Web site's About Us page. I'm pretty sure I can figure out his email address and let him know, by name, which of his customer service people are naughty, and which are nice.

Okay, maybe I am a crazy man.

I recently had this experience with GoDaddy (which I'm going to talk about at length), who clearly did not know that I have these guidelines which I, perhaps irrationally, expect them to operate under. GoDaddy also announced today that they've been sold for $2.25 billion. I hope that some investment in their customer service staffing is on the agenda, because they need to improve it. Urgently, and significantly. Just read on if you don't believe me.

The Problem


Tuesday. 2:50pm
I decide I'm moving my blog to WordPress. So I set up the WordPress account and then go to GoDaddy to set up hosting.
All I need to do is:

1. Set up a new hosting account.
2. Remove thatduncan.com from my current hosting account, set a new domain name as the primary domain for the current hosting account.
3. Add thatduncan.com as the primary domain name on the WordPress hosting account.

Easy, right?

For the rest of Tuesday I'm stuck at step 2, which shows as "Pending" on my account, but the process could take as long as 24 hours, according to the pop-up message when I switched the domain name on the hosting account. So I'm not too concerned.

Wednesday 3:54pm
Twenty-five hours have passed and I still can't use my preferred domain name on my WordPress hosting account. Which means I can't upload the WordPress software to my domain, which means I can't get into working with it.

So I call. I'm not going to use any names here, but I'm told that there was a problem, and that the event is going to be replayed, and while it could take as many as 72 hours, these things are usually done inside 24 hours. Great, another day wasted, but at least I know when I'll be up and running, right?

Phone time: 10:01 - Total Phone Time: 10:01

Thursday 9:22am
I get this email from GoDaddy:
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. The issue with changing the domain name on your hosting account has been addressed and is resolved. The primary domain name on your hosting account has been updated and you are now able to access without issue. If you continue to experience delivery or access problems after today please let us know. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.

Please contact us if you have any further issues.

So if the problem has been "addressed and is resolved" you'd think I should be able to use thatduncan.com on my WordPress hosting, because it's no longer associated with the other hosting account, right?

Nope.

So I make the call, and I'm told that the event failed again, and that it will be replayed, but it would be another day before the change would show on my account.

I ask why, if the event had failed, did I receive an email saying it was "addressed and resolved?" That was an error. Really? You think I can't deduce that, GoDaddy? I know it's an error, but what it tells me is that someone opened a ticket, someone closed a ticket, someone didn't check if the ticket had actually been resolved. Incompetence or laziness is my guess.

Phone Time: 36:50 - Total Phone Time: 46:51

Friday 10:55am
Another 24 hours has passed and I'm still stuck at pending. The first person I talk to tries to explain what happened and why they need to replay the even and why that will take another 24 hours.

It bothers me that I had to raise my voice and tell him to stop talking. It bothers me that he was more interested in explaining what went wrong (though not how or why) and telling me that there's nothing that can be done other than replaying the event. "It's so rare that this happens" he assures me. Well, it's happened to me three days in a row, so it doesn't feel particularly rare to me.

My feeling is that if it's failed three times in a row, maybe someone needs to start the event, make sure it succeeds, and keep trying until it works. I'm informed, in a tone that's more than a little annoyed, that the process doesn't work that way.

I ask to speak to someone who can make sure that it doesn't fail this time. I'm informed there isn't anyone. I am pretty sure that's a lie. I ask to speak to a supervisor, and I'm told that "you can speak to a supervisor, but they do the exact same things, and they'll tell you exactly what I just did." Which begs the question: what do GoDaddy supervisors get paid for if they don't have any additional authority? It took several minutes and several requests to get a supervisor. That's just bad customer service. In the end the impatient techie says he'll put me onto a supervisor "who won't be able to help me any more than he already has."

But he was wrong.

The supervisor agreed that the process failing was unusual, but that he would talk to the admins and have them replay the event, he'd call me back as soon as he had an answer.

Phone Time: 38:00 - Total Phone Time: 84:51

Friday 12:14pm
The supervisor talked to the admins and came back with their answer: they'll replay the event at 2:48pm, and that would fix it. 2:48pm Pacific, so 5:48pm Eastern. In about 6 hours. But that was the best he could do.

Phone Time: 7:06 - Total Phone Time: 91:57

And that's when I started tweeting.

How to Make Frenemies and Influence Customer Service Outcomes

 

So the issue was fixed faster when I started tweeting. And while I'm happy that GoDaddy have someone monitoring this stuff, I shouldn't have to start attacking their brand in order to get adequate customer service. It should be a reasonably simple process to empower front-line reps to fix problems. Using social media to protect your brand rather than engage and deliver great service isn't going to work long-term. Engagement needs to happen on the phone and on the Web site, not just in social space. Customers will see that the interest here isn't in improving customer experience, it's in managing complaints and getting the squeaky wheel to shut up before it does more damage.

Valuing Your Customer, the GoDaddy Way (ie. Not much.)

For the record, it's July 4th, and I'm still waiting for a response from GoDaddy that makes me feel like they really value me as a customer. $5 makes me feel like they don't value me at all. Hopefully by sharing this post on Twitter and letting them know just how badly I feel they screwed up, how unengaged they were, how it took an hour-and-a-half on the phone to get almost nowhere, and how I haven't felt, at any stage, like GoDaddy care about whether I am a customer of theirs or someone else's, I can influence them to reconsider their valuation of future business I might transact with them. Or not.
What I do know is that GoDaddy were engaged on Twitter until they said "here's $5" and they haven't responded to me for three days. That's not what being an engaged social space company is about. It's not about paying me off, it's about making me feel valued.

Feel free to message me or comment to let me know that my demands are both extreme and irrational. What do you think GoDaddy do to make this experience right? Would you be angry with this service, or do you think that it's acceptable?

Let me know...

The Unwelcome Guest

All marketing is bullshit. Know why? It's all done to get you to buy something, and the moment that the purchase/sale transaction appears on the agenda, every piece of communication is aimed at making you feel inadequate or afraid, in order to persuade you to make a purchase that's going to make it all better. Or so the marketing tells you.

Marketers make up words to sell their stuff, or give new meanings to existing words. The problem is...there are already perfectly good words that more accurately describe whatever it is the marketer is redefining (badly).

What's In a Name?
"I can help the next guest in line," shouted the bored-looking part-time student staffing the register.

I looked around, and realized that her proclamation had been aimed at getting my attention. But...guest?

At what point did I become a guest in this store? I don't remember checking in, though I really did want to check out. Nobody had taken my bags, I hadn't been told to enjoy my stay when I arrived. Nobody was asking if I needed to order a cab, and my car had not been valet parked when I arrived. And, most annoyingly, there was no minibar.

I might be a curmudgeon about this, but calling shoppers "guests" is total and utter bullshit. It doesn't make me feel more welcomed, and it doesn't make me feel better taken care of. It's fancy frosting on a cake whose ingredients are not known by the eater.

What or Who Are Guests?
The problem I have with calling paying customers "guests" is, I think, that's it's dishonest. Hotels have guests. People come, and they stay. Overnight. Restaurants (excluding fast food eateries) have guests. People come, and have care taken that their personal dining needs are met.

Neither Webster's, nor the OED define "guest" as a consumer of goods in a store.

In the stores that use this misnomer, sales assistants don't take a special degree of care to make certain that the shopper...sorry, guest...has a great experience. There is no personal touch. Most barely communicate above a grunt. If hotels and restaurants attempted to engage their guests with the same level of apathy as the assistants in these stores, they'd be the easiest places to get a reservation.

In your store I am a customer. I am there to procure something. I am there to engage in a transaction where I give you money and I get a product, and in order to give you that money I have to stand in line.

What's The Difference Between A Restaurant and a Store
In a hotel I can check out from the TV in my room. In a restaurant the bill is brought to my table. You see, those are payment solutions that are created for the convenience of the guest. If I have to stand in a line that has a light-up number at the front of it I am not a guest, I'm a customer. And no matter how many times you call me a guest I'm never ever going to have that warm and fuzzy towards your store that I have when I think of some of the great hotels I've stayed in, or some of the amazing restaurants I've dined at.

So How Can a Business Engage and Be Genuine?
Call me a customer. Call me a consumer. Actually, don't. Train your staff to make eye contact with me, smile, and politely say "Hey, I can help you now. Thanks for waiting. My name is ______, are you enjoying your day?" And then really engage. The benefit to you? You don't need to pay a marketing idiot to reassign meanings of words, and I'm more likely -- much more likely -- to come back to your store.