MackCollier.com

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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.

BTW if you enjoyed this post and want to have new posts delivered straight to your inbox every day, please subscribe via Feedburner by clicking here.

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Which sites are good to promote your blog besides Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn?

I just asked this question during #Blogchat, here are some of the responses I got:

Which sites are you using to promote your blog posts and how?  Share with us in the comments, please 😉

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EConsultancy Blogs about @KennethCole hijacking hashtag, then promotes it

I noticed this earlier.  If you’ve been on Twitter within the last 24 hours, you have probably seen the backlash over @KennethCole’s insensitive tweet about Egypt.  KC has since deleted the tweet and apologized, so the backlash has died down considerably.

Econsultancy, like many social media sites and bloggers, also wrote  a post on the episode.  But what’s interesting to me is that EConsultancy is now promoting their post and have purchased the #KennethCole hashtag to promote their post, as you can see above.  The same hashtag that people are using to voice their displeasure over KC’s tweet from yesterday.  What that means is if you are following the #KennethCole hashtag on a client like TweetDeck, or if you search for it via Twitter Search, the promoted tweet from Econsultancy will always stay at the top of the results.

So it seems that Econsultancy is doing the exact same thing that KC did, they are attempting to leverage a hashtag for their own personal gain.

My question to you is, do you think Econsultancy is wrong to do this, or brilliant?

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Kenneth Cole’s Twitter blunder shows why participation matters

In case this tweet from @KennethCole is later deleted, I took the above screenshot.  This is the next tweet the account made.

That next tweet missed two key words: We apologize.

Look, I am not going to completely throw KC under the bus here.  We are constantly telling companies to ‘be human’ with social media.  It could be argued that whatever person behind KC’s account was trying to do that, and just made an extremely bad choice in what they tweeted.

But there’s a key lesson here for all companies: You don’t attempt to leverage an online conversation you aren’t participating in.  Especially not one that so many people have such a deep and emotional investment in and when people are dying.   The backlash has already started, just follow the #KennethCole hashtag.

And now we have a fake KennethColePR account created that’s making them look even worse.

This should be a huge warning for companies everywhere: Just because many social media tools are ‘free’ to use doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in learning how to use them properly.

UPDATE: Look at the 1st page of Google search results for “Kenneth Cole”.  It’s dominated by news items about this tweet and actual tweets from customers slamming the company for being so insensitive.  The majority of the content on the 1st page is negative, and it’s all been created within the past 6 hours.

SECOND UPDATE: @KennethCole has now deleted the tweet in the screenshot, and has apologized via Facebook.

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Interested in finding Social Media ROI? Get better metrics.

The above is from slide 20 of the Altimeter Group’s deck on Social Business Forecast 2011.  The previous slide said that the top thing that corporate social media strategists are focused on in 2011 is creating ROI measurements.

In order to do that, you need to be measuring the right metrics.  Look at the above slide and note that the most popular metrics that corp social media strategists are tracking are ones associated with engagement.  Now if your goal for using social media is to build engagement, then that’s fine.  But if your goal is to generate sales, then measuring your number of Twitter followers is a terribly weak metric to measure.

If you want to improve your ability to measure the value of your social media efforts then start measuring metrics associated with the action you want people to take.

For example, if you want to use your blog as a tool to generate sales, then you need to focus on metrics that are tied to product sales, or interest.  Such as, signups for a product demo, number of times you are contacted for more information about a product, downloads of brochures etc associated with the product, referrals from the blog to a specific product page.  Or….actual sales generated on the blog.

All of those metrics are tied to the action you want the user to take, buying a product.  They all indicate someone that is interested in the product and that indicates a potential customer.

On the flipside, if you are using your blog to generate sales, why measure traffic?  Traffic is almost meaningless, you need to measure what people do AFTER they arrive on your blog.

Here’s some examples of picking better metrics:

Notice as you go down that list of metrics, you are getting closer to your actual goal of generating sales.  That’s what you need to be striving to do.  A lot of the chatter we’ve heard over the past couple of years is about the inability to accurately measure the ROI of social media.  A good deal of that isn’t due to deficiencies in the tools, but rather in the measurement process.

Put your metrics on trial, and make sure that you are measuring what you should be.

BTW need help designing a better measurement program for your social media efforts?  Check out my social media training options.

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3 Reasons Why Social Media Training is Critical for Companies in 2011

The above is a graph from EMarketer listing the top areas that corporate social media strategists will be investing in 2011.  Note that the most important investment area for these strategists, behind only measuring SM ROI, was internal education and training.  I think there are 3 reasons why social media training is so critical for companies, especially larger ones, in 2011.

1 – Social media for companies has evolved, teams are now in place.  Larger companies are no longer experimenting with social media, they’ve now committed and staffs have been hired.  It’s very important for companies to invest in training these teams and not only that, but that they get the same training.  And that open interaction and collaboration is facilitated.  In many cases, the people that spearheaded a company’s social media efforts a couple of years ago, are now training all areas of the company on using these same tools.

2 – Social media training is cost-efficient.  I’ve seen this far too often over the past 2-3 years. A company sends an employee to a social media conference, then that person takes copious notes all day in every session, then goes back to her office and tries to explain to her team what she learned.  So the end result is the company paid $1,500-$2,000 to send one person to a conference, and all they get is a notepad full of hastily scribbled notes that no one can really explain.

This is exactly why last year I shifted the focus of my consulting to providing on-site social media training for companies.  I realized that for about the same amount that a company could send an employee or 2 to a social media conference, I could give them on-site social media training for an entire day, to their entire team.  This is a huge cost-savings to the company, and helps the entire team be more efficient in its social media efforts, meaning the investment in social media training easily pays for itself several times over.  Please check out my Social Media Training and Workshops page to see exactly how this service works.

3 – Social media training helps get everyone on the same page.  Instead of having ‘the blogging guy’ and ‘the Facebook gal’, your entire team can be up to speed on how your company is using these tools, and more importantly, what you are trying to accomplish.  That means that the efforts of the individuals will be more effective, and as a result, the output of the entire team will increase dramatically.

So if your company now has an organized social media team, there’s three reasons why I think it’s critical for you to invest in social media training in 2011.  If your company has started a social media training program, either internally, or by bringing in external consultants or agencies, how has that worked for you?

And if your company would like to hire me to either provide on-site social media training to your team, and/or to help your company organize an internal social media training program for your employees, please email me.

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You don’t inspire change by telling someone they are wrong

One of the things that has always bothered me about how we (consultants and agencies that sell social media marketing services) talk to companies about social media is that the conversation almost always starts with telling the company what they are doing wrong.

They aren’t being ‘human’ enough.  They are being too self-promotional.  They don’t ‘get’ social media and they don’t do a good job of connecting with their customers.  The message we seem to be sending companies is ‘We aren’t going to get anywhere until YOU fall on the sword and admit that your approach to social media is dead wrong.  Then and only then, can you learn how to do it the RIGHT way.’

Yes that’s being a bit overdramatic, but I think we need to consider how our message is resonating with the companies we are trying to reach.  If you take a CEO that’s already highly skeptical of the value of social media, then tell him that everything he thinks he knows about social media marketing is dead wrong, then it’s not too hard to imagine them shutting down and not listening to what you have to say.

People don’t like hearing that they are wrong, and they don’t like being talked down to.  We as consultants need to remember this and respect the skill it takes to build a business and remember that social media is just one tool in a toolbox, and not the Holy Grail.

It’s not always about the message you are sending but the way you deliver that message.  It helps to remember the other person’s point of view and business reality.

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Use Google Reader’s Shared Items for post ideas

Veteran blog readers have probably already discovered that Google Reader is a great way to keep up with the blogs you are subscribed to.  But one of the features I get a ton of value from is the Shared Items from my friends.  Think of it this way: Everyone else is subscribed to dozens of blogs and as they are going through their feeds, they are picking out the most interesting and valuable posts, and sharing them with their followers.  Which means I am exposed to a lot of great blogs and sites that I might otherwise never find.

And of course, this gives me a great idea for post ideas, because in viewing my friend’s shared items, I can see which topics and ideas are important to them.  Which gives me an idea of what I should be writing about.

And here’s another great tip: You can set up Google Reader to let you send interesting posts you find in Google Reader (Either your subscribed feeds or Shared Items from friends) directly to Facebook and Twitter.

First, click on Settings in the top right corner of the screen, then Reader Settings.

Next, click on Send To, the last option on the right.  You’ll be given a list of several services that you can send your posts to, including Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Friendfeed, etc.  Click the services you want to share posts with, and that’s it!

Then when you see a post in Google Reader that you want to share, click the Send To option, and a small dropdown menu will let you click the service you want to send the post to!

So if you are using Google Reader, check out the Shared Items section, it’s a great source of inspiration and a wonderful way to discover interesting new sites and blogs!

BTW, if you want to see all the posts and articles I have shared in Google Reader (over 300), then click my Google Profile.