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How Dell is using Social Media to connect with its brand evangelists and detractors

All week we have been talking about the value of brand evangelists and why companies should be connecting with them.  Today I wanted to look at a company that’s connecting with not only its evangelists, but some of its detractors as well.

Recently, Dell held a CAP Days event in Germany.  CAP stands for Customer Advisory Panel, and it is an event where Dell meets with some of its customers that have had both good and bad things to say about the company.  This is the 3rd CAP Days event that Dell has held.  I am partial to this event since I helped Dell facilitate the first one last Summer in Austin, but I also think it’s an amazing case of how social media can help businesses connect with brand evangelists.

I talked to Richard Binhammer a few days ago, and he said that the participants for all the CAP Days events (there have been 3 so far in the US, China and Germany, with plans to expand to other locations) were identified via the social media and online monitoring that Dell is already doing.  A good example of social media making existing business processes more efficient.

But back to the most recent CAP Days event that was held in Germany.  Dell met with 10 customers that all had feedback for Dell, both good and bad.  What I found fascinating was that Dell was extremely open with what it learned about connecting with its customers at this event.  Here are the takeaways from the company’s point of view, and when you read these, keep in mind that this was published on Dell’s Direct2Dell blog:

  1. Our customers seem to have lost the emotional connection to Dell. They no longer understand the benefit of our direct relationships with our customers.
  2. We have reliable products and good support (if they pick the right support option!), but our advertising is misguided and an annoyance to some of our customers.
  3. Listening can be incredibly powerful. It’s unusual that a company the size of Dell listens to customers in such an open forum. Customers had never experienced such open dialogue with a global company.
  4. Customers do care about Dell, and they are spending their own time helping other customers and defending Dell online.
  5. We must deliver a better customer experience. There are millions of customers out there who will be loyal to Dell and buy more if we up our game and deliver the best Customer Experience!

As I was reading this, it seemed as if this was being written as an internal reminder and lesson for Dell’s employees, as much as anything.  But note the bolded areas (which I added).  How often do you see a big brand talking this openly and honestly about themselves?  Not very.

And let’s remember that Dell has this honest feedback available to them because they sought it from their customers.  They monitored the online conversation around their brand, identified key participants, and met with them directly to learn from them how they can improve their business and customer service processes.  Now they are taking that feedback and not only improving existing business and customer service efforts, but the CAP Days program itself is becoming a more efficient way to connect with customers.

And it is becoming a way to convert detractors into evangelists.  Think about yesterday’s post and how we talked about the ways that companies can create brand evangelists.  We talked about how companies should monitor online conversations, how they should respond to customers and talk to them on their level, and how companies should understand who their companies are.  All of these are present in the CAP Days program.

When I was involved in the first CAP Days event last Summer, I was talking to one of Dell’s customers that had some issues and problems with Dell’s products and services.  I listened to him tell me about his problems, but then he added ‘Mack I want to see Dell succeed’.  And then he told me how being involved in that event had opened his eyes to the fact that even though Dell was making mistakes, that it showed that they were committed to finding those mistakes, and correcting them.  He had arrived at the event skeptical of Dell’s commitment to improvement, but left feeling much better about being a Dell customer.

In closing, I want to restate the supreme importance of monitoring online brand mentions for all companies.  Especially higher companies like Dell.  While I am thrilled with the progress Dell is making, I also see that it’s putting their competitors at a self-imposed disadvantage.  Dell is taking the scary step of connecting directly with its online customers, and they are reaping the rewards of their bravery.

Here’s some very basic (baby) steps that your company can take to better connect with your online customers:

1 – Start monitoring online mentions of your company, brand, competitors, and industry.  If you’re a larger brand that has hundreds if not thousands of new mentions daily, you should probably invest in a monitoring platform to help get deeper insights from the data.  Or if you’re a small business, you can probably get by with Google Alerts or a free option.  Here’s a post I wrote on how to set up Google Alerts in 5 mins.

BTW a big reason why I think it’s important for your company to monitor online mentions is to get a better understand of WHO your online customers are and WHAT they are saying.  I still think many companies live with a largely unfounded fear that bloggers are people that are going out of their way to slam their company.  This is almost always incorrect, and companies can see this by monitoring and uncovering exactly what customers are saying about them online.

2 – Start reaching out directly to customers that mention you, especially bloggers.  If you see a blogger that’s covering you, offer to connect them with someone at your company that can give them better information.  For example, Richard mentioned CAP Days in Germany to me, I told him I would like to do a post on it (this one), and he had Carly Tatum (who helped facilitate CAP Days Germany) to give me more information on it.

Your company should be doing the same thing, you should be reaching out to bloggers and other online customers that are talking about your brand, and interact with them.  This will help ensure that these customers get accurate information about your company, and if you handle the exchange correctly, it will encourage more coverage from bloggers.

3 – Act on feedback you get from online customers, and let them know you are doing this.  If a customer raises a valid point or complaint online, help them, but then you can use that exchange to let other customers know that you want their feedback as well.  By listening to customers and acting on their feedback, you are ensuring that you will get more (and better) feedback, but also, you will improve customer satisfaction.  Customers want to be respected and heard by the brands they buy from.  They appreciate the ones that show a willingness to do this.

So those are some ideas on how you can better listen to your customers’ online conversations, and act on them.  Oh and if you are curious, here is a short video (in German) that Dell created to document their CAP Days event in Germany.  It will give you an idea of how the event was structured.

What are your thoughts on how Dell is using CAP Days to directly connect with its evangelists, as well as detractors? Is this something that other big brands should be doing? What could be improved about the process?

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5 ways to create evangelists for your brand

In yesterday’s post, we made the business case for why connecting with your existing brand evangelists is better than trying to reach influencers.  Now I’m sure some of you were reading that post and thinking that your company doesn’t have a lot of brand evangelists, especially not online.  If this is the case, can you create brand evangelists?

I think you can, and here’s 5 tips for doing just that:

1 – Start internally by exciting your employees.  This will foreshadow a bit what’s to come with engaging externally with customers.  But so much of the affinity that people have for brands, comes from the people that represent that brand, especially in a retail setting.  How much of the devotion that Starbucks evangelists have for the brand is tied to the friendly service they get from baristas?  I recently read a blogger (wish I could remember who) that joked that when they were feeling down, they liked to call Zappos support cause they always made them feel better.

So it stands to reason, if your employees aren’t excited about your brand, your customers won’t be either.  One way to excite your employees is to listen to them, and to empower them to share their ideas and voice internally.  A perfect example of this is Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, which is basically an internal socnet for Best Buy’s employees.  It’s a central place where the employees can come together, collaborate, share ideas, and see those ideas acted upon by management.  As co-founder Gary Koelling points out in my interview with him, this works because many of BBY’s employees are in their 20s, and fluent in using social media and expressing themselves via these tools.  So Best Buy, perhaps somewhat by sheer luck, has found a way to create a wonderful tool to let employees express themselves, and help each other.

2 – Understand who your customers are, and what draws them to your brand.  You likely have already done some research into who your customers are, and why they buy from you.  Are you tracking them online?  Do you know what they are saying about your brand?  It’s important to understand the good as well as the bad.

One of the quickest ways to create an evangelist for your brand is to quickly resolve a problem that a customer has.  And the wonderful thing about social media is that it has not only given customers all these sites and tools to express themselves, but companies have access to the same sites and tools.  If a customer vents online about a brand, the brand then has the opportunity to interact with that customer, and change their opinion of the brand.  And this often happens, companies such as Dell have seen firsthand that interacting with online customers and solving their problems, improves online perception.

3 – Interact with your customers on their level and in their voice.   As mentioned above, one of the attributes that many customers value in a brand is its voice.  We don’t want a stale and corporate voice, we want one that we can more easily relate to.  This is where the ‘be human’ advice comes from.  If a company is talking in a voice that’s consistent with the customer’s own, then the customer is more likely to listen.

This is where interaction is crucial.  The more engagement and interaction the brand has with its customers, the better both groups can understand the other.  And this engagement can be something as simple as interacting with customers on their blogs or Twitter pages.  But this engagement helps put both parties on the same level, which increases understanding, which increases trust, which increases the chance that a customer will become an evangelist for that brand.

4 – Monitor what customers are saying online, and respond. If you aren’t already, you should get a monitoring system in place to track what customers are saying about your brand, as well as where they are saying it, what they are talking about, etc.  This will give you great insights into how your customers are thinking.

But also, as you engage with your customers, that will encourage them to interact with you more.  Which gives you more feedback, and more chances to interact with customers, and improve their perception of your brand.  And give your customers multiple channels to leave you feedback.  It’s great to encourage blog comments, but give them your phone number, give them an email address.  By giving your customers multiple ways to talk to you, you are communicating to them that you DO want to talk to them.  That tells them that you actually value their opinion and feedback.  Which definitely helps improve the customer’s perception of your brand.

5 – Embrace and empower your existing evangelists to market for you.  The idea here is to make it easier for your biggest fans to do what they are already doing, singing your praises.  If you have customers that are singing your praises, then you need to give them a microphone, right?

And let’s be honest, who will be a better salesperson for the average brand; that brand, or an extremely satisfied customer of that brand?  We tend to trust fellow customers more than brands.  This goes back to the idea of speaking to customers in a voice they recognize.  We can relate to fellow customers more than we can relate to most brands.  Because customers speak in a human voice that we can relate to, where most brands speak in a salesy and promotional voice.

So those are some tips for how your brand can connect with your customers and create more evangelists for your brand.  To extend on this theme, tomorrow we’ll look at how one of the biggest brands in the world is going directly to its customers and evangelists to get the good, bad, and ugly from them.  And if I’ve sold you on the power of engaging and empowering your brand evangelists, please email me as I’d love to talk to you about how we can launch an evangelist engagement program for your brand.

Pic via Flickr user LoudTiger

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5 Reasons why Evangelists are better than Influencers

As you might have guessed by the volume of coverage it’s getting here, I am thrilled that the ‘online influencer’ debate is heating up.  Why?  Because it gives me plenty of chances to tell smart companies like yours why it makes far more business sense to empower and embrace your existing evangelists.

If smartly done, targeting influencers has real business value.  But it’s more for creating short-term buzz rather than sustainable growth.  And even IF you do target influencers, it should often be done in conjunction with connecting with your company’s evangelists.

Here’s 5 reasons why I think it’s better to target evangelists rather than influencers:

1 – Evangelists don’t have to be paid, just acknowledged. You don’t have to pay customer evangelists to promote you, they are already doing that.  And they aren’t doing it FOR the money, they are doing it because they love your company and believe in your products.  So you reward them by acknowledging them.  By pointing out who they are, and thanking them.  All that does is validate their love in you, and it motivates them to promote you to even more people.

2 – Evangelists have a vested interest in promoting you to their networks. With influencers, you are trying to give them something, usually cash or a gift, in an effort to convince them to promote you to the network that they have influence over.  But evangelists are already interested in promoting you to their networks.  Think about it, when we have a product that we love, that we buy consistently, we tell others about that product, right?  If you love your Honda, guess what happens when someone tells you they are in the market for a new car?  You tell them how much you love your Honda.

I love this quote from Bill Samuels, CEO of Maker’s Mark on the philosophy behind his company starting a brand ambassador program (emphasis addded): “We enjoy talking to our customers one-to-one. It really is in our nature. We never worry about the fact that this is inefficient because we are only talking to 50 or 60 or a thousand or ten thousand instead of a million. Which you do when you try to slap everybody on the ass with an advertising message. Because we know that our next customers are going to come from their efforts, not from our efforts.”

3 – Evangelists can help you reach your target market. In their groundbreaking business book Creating Customer Evangelists, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba had a wonderful quote that illustrates why evangelists are your best salesforce.  They said “They know your target audience better than you because they are the target audience!”  How efficient would it be to have a direct and uncluttered line to the exact customers you are trying to reach?  That’s access that your evangelists have, and you have access to your evangelists.  All you need to do is make the connection and reap the rewards.

4 – Evangelists will tell you what you are screwing up, then they will help you fix it. One of the big fears that companies have about social media is that they fear hearing criticism from customers.  But evangelists are a different breed of customer.  Whereas other customers might blog that ‘You suck!’, an evangelist will say ‘I think Company X got it wrong here.  Here’s what they should have done.’  Evangelists may criticize, but they also offer solutions, and will help you IMPLEMENT their suggestions.

For example, my friend Melody is a HUGE Starbucks fan.  And she has one of the more popular Starbucks blogs on the planet, devoted to the company she loves.  Notice in this post, she reviews a new Starbucks drink, and explains that she’s not sure if ‘it will work’, then explains WHY she thinks this way.  She gives Starbucks actionable feedback because she cares about the brand.

But notice something else: That post has *72* comments!  Melody isn’t just blogging about her love of Starbucks, she has created a place where other Starbucks evangelists can gather and discuss the brand they love!  Passion attracts passion, and it’s on display in the comments section of every post Melody writes.  How valuable is the feedback that Melody and her readers leave via comments?

5 – Evangelists want to see you succeed. This might be the biggest misunderstanding that companies have toward evangelists.  These people really do love your company, and they want to see it be as successful as possible.  Why would you not do everything possible to embrace and empower these special customers?

To perfectly illustrate this point, I wanted to return to an example that Ben and Jackie shared in Creating Customer Evangelists.  As you might recall after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the airlines industry was devastated, as were all the airlines.  In October, SouthWest Airlines received a letter from one of its customers, Ann McGee-Cooper.  In that letter, McGee-Cooper told SouthWest that “We are encouraging our clients to fly Southwest Airlines.  We are buying more stock…and we stand ready to do anything else to help.  Count on our continuing support.”

And McGee-Cooper included something with that love letter to Southwest: A check for $500. With the check came an explanation that McGee-Cooper understood that at that time, Southwest needed the money “more than I do”.

How amazing is that?  This one example perfectly illustrates why evangelists are far more valuable to your company than influencers.  And a perfect love story since this is Valentine’s Day 😉

So there’s 5 reasons why I think evangelists are better than influencers.  If you would like to hire me to help your company use social media to connect with your online evangelists, click here to get more information, or email me so we can discuss your needs.

Wait…is your company looking for ways to create evangelists for your brand?  Check back here tomorrow and we’ll show you how!

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Vote on the #Blogchat topic for 2-13

Hey guys, I wanted to crowdsource tonite’s #Blogchat topic, so thanks to @GLHancock, @KensiaCoffman, @HeidiCohen, @SweetSoaps, @GenoChurch.  Please vote on your favorite topic and the winner will be announced at 7pm tonite:

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Want to increase your Klout score and be more influential? Be careful not to do this…

My friend Trey Pennington just wrote a post on how to increase your Klout score.  It’s a great and timely post, as many people are now wondering how to do the same thing.  Trey had four tips for increasing your Klout score, but this is the point I wanted to focus on:

Stay away from people who aren’t important. Be careful about who you follow on Twitter. People with low Klout scores and people who are inactive on Twitter can bring you down. Remember the old adage about associations. Klout knows the score of all of your followers. You’re ranked by the company you keep. If you’ll keep company mainly with important people, you can increase your Klout score.

I will play devil’s advocate to this point.  When I first started blogging, I had zero visibility in this space, and couldn’t buy the attention of the ‘influencers’.  But I had a nice little network of friends that, while they were unknown, helped me by promoting my blog to their small networks.  They read and commented on my posts, and I did the same thing on their posts.

Over time, their networks grew a bit, and mine did as well.  A few of these friends began to get a bit of notice, maybe even some of you have heard of them, people like Ann Handley, David Armano, and Beth Harte.My point is, if I had let who I interacted with be dictated by their level of visibility, I would have missed out on connecting with a TON of people that while they were ‘unknowns’ at the time, are now the ‘rockstars’ in this space.

This leads to one of the true secrets of connecting with influencers: Connect with them BEFORE they are influential.  The first time I read Beth’s The Harte of Marketing blog, my thought was ‘She’s a better blogger than I am!’  So I immediately started telling everyone to check out her blog, because she was amazing.  Beth was grateful that I was promoting her to my network, and my network was grateful because I had introduced them to a brilliant marketer.  My thought was that eventually, Beth was going to be one of the thought leaders in this space, so why not accelerate that process?

The idea is, don’t connect with people based on their visibility, connect with people based on their smarts.  If someone is smart, the visibility and influence will come, why not get there early and lead the parade?

BTW in keeping with this theme, here’s a few smart bloggers I read that you might not know about yet.  All are brilliant, so go ahead and connect with them now, before the room gets too crowded:

Margie Clayman: Love Margie’s no-nonsense thoughts on social media.  Her writing and approach really reminds me of Shannon Paul’s blog.

David Griner: Great advice on how businesses can use social media, David is especially knowledgeable when it comes to business applications of Facebook.  And a helluva nice guy, to boot.

Debra Ellis: Debra comes from a bit different background as many bloggers in this space, as Debra is a direct marketing expert.  But she’s a wonderful networker on Twitter, and has a knack for finding the wonderful content and sharing it with others.  In addition to the great content she creates on her blog.

So that’s my best advice on becoming influential: Surround yourself with people smarter than you are, and connect your network with those people when you find them.  You’ll be smarter as a result, and your network will be grateful to you for introducing them to these smart people.

In that spirit, if you’ve ‘discovered’ a blogger that’s flying under the radar, please tell us about them in the comments.

UPDATE: Trey clarifies in the comments that his post was satirical and that he didn’t mean it to be taken literally.  Sorry Trey, didn’t mean to misrepresent what you said!  Please read the comments for Trey’s take on the issue.

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How Lady Gaga can use Social Media on The Monster Ball tour

I started to write this post based on how music artists in general can use Social Media on their tours, but since Lady Gaga is about to start a new leg of her Monster Ball tour in 8 days, I’ll use her as my example.

Gaga already has a couple of social media tricks up her sleeve for the Monster Ball tour.  First, she’ll be partnering with Virgin Mobile to help VM get 1,000,000 Likes on Facebook by year’s end.  VM will have 10 official ‘tour bloggers’ for Gaga, but I’m not sure how that ties into helping VM get a million Likes by year’s end.  Apparently, the idea is to get a million of Gaga’s fans to like VM.

Another deal she recently struck is with SkyGrid.  This one sounds more interesting, as SkyGrid would allow Gaga (and other artists) to pull user-generated content from social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and collect it all on one page.  If this could be done at the individual show level, it could really work to drive interest in the tour.

But in thinking about this, I have a few more ideas that Gaga could implement to use social media to better connect with her fans.

Gaga’s Monster Ball tour starts next Saturday in Atlantic City, and will end in early May.  The idea is simple for her Social Media strategy:  Give her fans the tools to re-create the magic and excitement of a Lady Gaga concert.

First, it starts before the concert begins, with this message to the audience:

1 – Each city is given a different hashtag, so that way Gaga can track fan engagement on Twitter in each city.  And the distinctive hashtag makes fans more likely to use it.  Tweets from each city can be streamed to Gaga’s website.  Gaga can also read a couple of the tweets during the concert, which will of course spike activity.

2 – Encourage fans to blog their review of the concert.  Gaga will pick her favorite reviews and notify the winners by commenting on the blog.  The winners will also receive a signed copy of her new CD, Born This Way.  Winners will be the ones that have the most comprehensive reviews, and make the best use of creating content via multiple forms, such as video, pictures, etc.

3 – Create a special page to collect all the fan-created content from each concert.  It sounds like Gaga’s recent deal with SkyGrid will make this possible.  If the functionality allows, concert-goers should be made aware of the page before the concert, that way they can create content in hopes of seeing it appear on the page.

4 – Select a few audience members at each show to video the show.  Follow the Beastie Boys model, give 50 attendees a Flip camera, and tell them to shoot footage of the concert.  They can shoot whatever they like, each other, Gaga, whatever.  When the concert is over, they return the Flip to Gaga, and get a signed and inscribed copy of her new CD, Born This Way.  Gaga can then take the videos and put some on her site, some on her YouTube channel, and also use all the footage collected from each show to make her concert DVD for the tour.

So those are some ideas I had for how Gaga can leverage social media during The Monster Ball tour.  What else could she be doing?  There’s a ton of possibilities involving FourSquare or GoWalla, maybe involving ticket giveaways.  What do you think?

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What I learned from going on a 3-week blogging bender

On Jan. 18th, I made a commitment to start posting every day here.  No set schedule in mind, I just wanted to start posting every day, and to track what changed here.  I had a few set things in mind that I wanted to track, but I also wanted to see what would happen/change as a result of switching my posting schedule from 1-2 posts a week, to 6 or 7.  Here’s what I learned about blogging from posting 22 out of the last 23 days:

1 – Momentum is everything.  I keep an eye on my traffic every day, I know in general how my traffic will ebb and flow throughout the day.  Prior to Jan. 18th, my traffic would normally dip to only 2-3 visitors an hour from 2am-5am, then inch up, and be up to around 15-20 visitors an hour by 7am or so.  By 8am on most days, the traffic here would be around 60 visitors for the day.

This morning, there were 158 visitors for the day here by 8am(it’s 11 am now and traffic is at 428 for the day).  And for the past couple of weeks, there has been around 100 visitors for the day by 8am.  My ramping up my posting schedule has meant that more content is being shared, and as a result, my visibility has increased.  I assumed this would happen, but it’s still cool to see the numbers in action.

2 – Visibility for individual posts fell, visibility for the entire blog rose.  This is a ‘duh’ lesson, but one that’s important to consider.  Before Jan. 18th, every post I left here would have 3-5 days as the ‘top’ post and more chances to be viewed.  After the 18th, some posts only had a few hours as the top post before being replaced.

The 10 posts published here prior to Jan. 18th averaged 104 ReTweets each.  For the posts since Jan. 18th, they have averaged 53 RTs, almost half as many.  But traffic has continued to rise, as you can see here:

So RTs are down, traffic is at record levels.  Now this has me wondering, what would traffic here look like in another month if I can keep this volume of posting up?

3 – It’s imperative that you try to ‘break stuff’ on your blog if you want to be a better blogger.  With EVERY post here, I had an experiment in mind.  I was changing something to see what effect it would have on something else.  I learned a TON, some of what I learned I am sharing with you here, and some of it I’m keeping to myself 😉  You should do the same thing.

Kathy Sierra once said that the people that are the experts are the ones that always assume that there’s a ‘better way’ to do whatever it is they are good at.  They are always looking for improvement and ways to become better.  If you want to be a real social media or blogging expert, you need to do the same thing.  Constantly break stuff and see what happens.

4 – Blogging every day was EASIER than blogging once a week.  This one totally blindsided me.  My biggest fear in starting the experiment of posting every day was that I would have to ‘mail in’ a few posts to keep the streak going.  I definitely did not want to do that, but I was committed to this experiment to see what I would learn (see previous point about the importance of breaking stuff).

What I learned was that there were a lot of blogging opportunities that I was leaving on the table.  A perfect example of this is this post I wrote on using Tweetdeck to track who is favoriting your tweets.  I was having a Twitter conversation with @be3d one night, and I favorited one of his tweets, and he mentioned that he knew I had done it.  I asked him how, and he explained how he was using TweetDeck to track it.  That was a great tip, so I decided to turn it into a blog post!  All I had to do was take a screenshot, and just recall the above conversation.  But I realized that I am constantly learning tips and tricks on using social media tools like that, why not share them?

5 – You don’t know what you don’t know.  I made a lot of experiments and changed a lot of things here over the past 3 weeks.  Often, I wanted to change something because I knew it would have an affect on something else, and I wanted to measure that impact.  But sometimes, changing one thing would alter something else, when I had no idea the two things were connected.

So while it’s great to listen to and get advice from the so-called blogging expert, you still need to go out and make your own rules.  Figure out what works perfectly for YOU, and you do that by experimenting.  So go break some stuff 😉

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Groupon’s non-apology and the art of handling negative comments

The above is one of three Super Bowl ads that couponing site Groupon ran during Sunday’s game.  The tone of all three ads has sparked a ton of outrage among viewers, as you might have guessed.  So much so that Groupon CEO Andrew Mason had to address the controversy on Groupon’s blog.  And that’s where I want to focus my attention.

First, here are some quotes from Mason’s post:

When we think about commercials that offend us, we think of those that glorify antisocial behavior – like the scores of Super Bowl ads that are built around the crass objectification of women. Unlike those ads, no one walks away from our commercials taking the causes we highlighted less seriously. Not a single person watched our ad and concluded that it’s cool to kill whales. In fact – and this is part of the reason we ran them – they have the opposite effect.

And no, this post doesn’t include the two magic words: “We’re sorry.”  Now, I can somewhat give Groupon a pass on not apologizing, cause I am certain that they really don’t think they did anything wrong.  But if you aren’t going to apologize for offending people, you also should be smart enough to not belittle WHY people are offended.  Mason’s post and its tone screams ‘Look guys get over yourselves, it was a flippin’ joke!  Get a sense of humor!’

And the readers caught that.  The post so far has over 170 comments.  And a big chunk of those comments aren’t so much about the ads themselves, but about Mason’s tone in that blog post.  This reminds me of a brilliant point that someone (I believe it was Ari Herzog) once made here in the comments:

How you handle the first conversation, leads to the second one.

This is exactly what Mason and Groupon are dealing with right now.  By being mildly condescending in his post, Mason didn’t improve the situation, he made it worse.  He gave people that were already upset, more of a justification for their feelings.  Gini caught the same thing I did, his tone talked down to Groupon’s customers, instead of being humble and apologetic.

And then my friend Amy made another interesting point to me: Notice that there are over 170 comments on that post, and NONE of them are from Andrew or anyone from Groupon.  To me, this reinforces the ‘If you don’t GET the ads, then it’s not worth discussing with you’ tone of the post.  And note also in the comments that Groupon is getting a LOT of support.  Many commenters are saying they liked the ads, and even adding how the commenters that are complaining are overreacting.  But Groupon isn’t engaging them either.

Which leads to another salient point: Every online conversation has three sides: My side, your side, and the side of everyone else that’s watching us.  For many people, that blog post will be their 1st exposure to the company Groupon.  Apparently, Groupon has a history of ‘cheeky’ ads, according to some of the commenters.  I have no idea, all I know now is that they write poorly-crafted blog posts in response to online controversy involving their brand.  It’s not so much about who is right and who is wrong, it’s how you HANDLE that criticism, and what the perception is from everyone that’s watching.  Case in point, I didn’t comment on that blog post, I decided to write my own post, here.

Here’s some advice for companies like Groupon that find themselves facing backlash from customers online:

1 – Respond quickly, and in a human voice.  Speaking in the same voice as your customers does WONDERS for helping them connect with you, and understand your point of view.

2 – Acknowledge the issues that have people upset, and if you are at fault then say ‘I’m sorry’.  And for the love of Pete, do NOT trivialize the reasons why your customers are upset.  Even if you think it’s completely ridiculous (and it very well could be), you have to understand that your customers do NOT think it’s ridiculous, and they are seriously upset.  Understand why they are upset, and empathize  with their feelings, even if you don’t agree.

3 – Be polite and respectful in handling the criticism.  This applies to a blog post you might write, or how you address existing comments.  Want to see an online bruhaha turn into a DefCon5 nightmare in 2.3 seconds?  Call the asshat that’s torching you in the comments what he is.  When people are angry and upset, they sometimes lash out.  And if YOU respond in kind, that’s just going to draw fire.  Instead, be polite, actually LISTEN to what the customers are saying, and address WHAT they are saying moreso than the WAY they are saying it.

4 – Respond to comments.  This is the step that Andrew missed.  Address the complaints head on.  Actually listen to the points being raised, and let everyone know that you invite further responses from them.  In fact, give them additional ways to get in touch with you and give you more feedback.

When customers see that you are listening and making a real effort to hear them and act on their feedback, that will go a long way toward converting an angry customer into an evangelist.  My guess is if Andrew had been responding to comments from the get-go and using the advice above, not only would there be far fewer comments on that post, the vast majority of them would be positive by now.  The people that were angry would feel that their POV was heard and acknowledged, while the fans of Groupon will have felt validated, and would be rushing to Groupon’s defense even moreso than they currently are.

If you read the post from Andrew, what did think of his tone and what he said?

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Measuring online influence and the elephant in the room

Klout is super hot right now among social media talking heads because it’s attempting to assign a number to measure online influence.  We in the social media fishbowl love numbers, because they tell us who is ‘winning’.

But I think there’s a huge potential issue facing Klout and any of the likely competitors that will soon be popping up that will also want to measure online influence.  That issue is, what happens when people start trying to game the system?  When people begin to understand how to influence their influencer score, then the score won’t be measuring influence, it will be measuring our abilities to game the system.

Any decent attempt at measuring online influence has to evaluate existing behavior, not influence future behavior.

For example, do you remember the backlash that Fast Company received over it’s Influencer Project?  Instead of telling us who the real influencers were, FC build a system where the influencers would reveal themselves by whoever did the best job of leveraging their online networks and convincing them to push them to the top.  IOW, the project rewarded the people that did the best job of spamming their own networks.  It didn’t measure existing behavior, it influenced future behavior.

This is one of the potential problems I see for services that attempt to measure online influence, especially if they have a scoring model like Klout does.  Joe did a great job of explaining how Klout works in the last post, but in theory, people with higher Klout scores will likely be more coveted by partner companies.  So if you knew how to use Twitter in a certain way to raise your Klout score up to 80, would you do it?  Before you say ‘no’, what if the difference between having a Klout score of 70 and 80 was getting a Sony PSP, versus getting to drive a new Camaro for 6 months?

These are real issues that Klout and any of its competitors will have to address.  And for the record, I do see potential for services like Klout, if companies are smart enough to leverage the information they provide.  As I said in the previous post, I think it starts with targeting evangelists for your products, moreso than influencers.

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What every company needs to understand about influencers and reaching them

Last week I received a package from Klout and TBS.  It was a Sony PSP 3000 loaded with a 1-min clip promoting TBS’ show Are We There Yet?

First, it should be noted that I am not a fan of this show, in fact I’ve never seen it.  The only reason why I can think that I might have been targeted for this promotion was that I sometimes tweet about TV shows (Mostly BURN NOTICE!).

Second, this was part of the Klout Perks program, where Klout apparently works with certain companies to offer certain products/services to people that are deemed to be influencers.  I got this offer right after my Klout score hit 70, so I assume that’s the activation point for the Perks program.

In 2011, many companies are now looking for a way to connect with online influencers.  If you are wanting to reach influencers, here’s some points to keep in mind:

1 – Target people that already have an interest in promoting you.  Too many programs attempt to give an influencer a product hoping that will convince them to promote the company/product to their networks.  It’s far better to connect with an evangelist for your company/product.  This is someone that is likely already promoting you/your product to their networks.

But perhaps the bigger point is, an evangelist is passionate about you.  You can’t buy my passion for a show I have never seen by giving me a $150 toy.

2 – Giving someone access to something they want often works as well or better than giving them products.  In this case, the approach of giving me a 1-min clip of a show on a PSP really doesn’t make me any more likely to blog about how amazing the show is.  But since I cover how companies can and are using social media effectively, that would be a great way to reach me.  What TBS could have done is reach out to me and see if I wanted an exclusive interview with the company’s CMO about how they are using Klout.  Or maybe when I am in Austin next month for SXSW, offer to take me out to dinner and tell me what your company is doing in the social media space.  THAT is access that has value for me.

3 – People that are influencers (especially online) often become influential by creating value for others.  Klout sending me a PSP isn’t going to convince me to blog about Are We There Yet because doing so won’t create value for my network.  If you want to gain access to the network that I am influential over, then you first need to give ME an incentive to connect you with them.  That incentive is value.  If you can give me a way to create value for my network, then you’ll win my attention.  This goes back to the previous point about giving me access to how TBS is using social media, vs a toy.  Because if you give me that access, then I can create content that will have value for my network.

4 – Target influential evangelists.  Let’s again look at what TBS did: They sent me a PSP with a 1-min clip about a show that I have never seen, and never tweeted about.  I’ve already said that access would have worked better in this case.  Such as TBS giving me access to how they are using social media to connect with viewers online.

But notice I mentioned that while I never tweet about Are We There Yet, I do frequently tweet about the USA Networks show Burn Notice.  So what if USA contacted me and offered me access to their Social Media Director to tell me exactly how Burn Notice is leveraging social media to connect with viewers?

THAT would be the best of both worlds.  USA would be targeting an influencer correctly, but also an influencer that is a huge FAN of Burn Notice.  It wouldn’t be a question of if I would promote Burn Notice and how they are using social media to my network, but how soon and how often 😉  Again, target people that are already passionate about you and your product.

Here’s how I think TBS could have improved this effort:

1 – Give influencers real exposure to the show.  As I said, I have never seen Are We There Yet?  The promotion should have included a couple of episodes so I could actually watch it and decide if I liked the show.  A few ‘behind the scenes’ clips would have been nice as well.

2 – Give influencers customized content.  What TBS could have easily have done was have one of the stars of the show, or Ice Cube, create a ‘customized’ greeting.  A very short video, about 10 seconds in length, where the star says ‘Hey Mack, thanks for participating in the TBS/Klout Are We There Yet? Promotion.  We wanted to show you what we are up to so check out the clips and media we’ve included, and thanks for watching!’  And of course, the name of each influencer could be changed, so all of the ‘customized’ clips could have been recorded in an hour, tops.  That would have definitely prompted me and anyone else that got the video to want to include it in a blog post.

3 – Give influencers a Social Media Pack.  Include a ton of high-resolution pics and videos with instructions for how they can be embedded/shared on my blog and with my networks.  Again, if you are wanting to target influencers so they will promote your show to their networks, make the content creation process as seamless as possible for me.

4 – Focus on more than just Klout score.  I’m not certain how I was chosen for this promotion, but it seems that my Klout score hitting 70 was the activation point.  For example, I would have also looked at how often influencers are tweeting about TBS/Are We There Yet?, and what the sentiment of those tweets are.

Then TBS could have decided: Is it better to target someone that has a Klout score of 70 that never tweets about our show, or someone with a Klout score of 45, that tweets about Are We There Yet? every week while the show is on?

Those are my suggestions, what am I missing?  How can we build a better way for companies to connect with influencers?

Disclaimer: Klout sent me the PSP3000, along with TBS.  Here’s the details, Klout didn’t pay me for this post, and my receiving the product wasn’t dependent on my posting about it or receiving it.

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