The Ups and Downs

The twists and turns of independent consulting right now are dramatic and severe. One day we are absolutely essential and urgent RFP’s flow in. The next we are as unnecessary as can be. The hot and cold nature of clients can throw even the most stable consultant into a tizzy. I’ve had clients pepper me with questions until both they and I are blue in the face. And then come back for another round. I’ve had potential clients ask me for proposals only to tell me my services won’t be necessary and sitting back and watching them institute every single one of my ideas.

As more and more companies get familiar with social media and convince themselves they need to engage, the temperature and intensity of client interactions and pitches is heightening. And so much as independent strategists like myself desire this, there are some pitfalls to watch out for.

Most of all is the tendency to react to quickly to client overtures. Personally, I get way too excited by consults that go well. I even get excited by meetings that don’t go so well. This a form of arrogance that needs to be tempered. Because people on the bleeding edge of social media interaction, those that are well-informed of trends and developments in the social space, who know how to use the tools, who have programs worked out ahead of time for their clients, believe themselves to be more than necessary. And you know what, in a way we are. But just because we feel this way, doesn’t meant the rest of the world does, especially those that we are pitching.

Yes its true that many managers and those holding the purse strings are taking social media much more seriously than they were even a few short months ago. I spent most of the fall explaining to potential clients why they need to engage with social media. I no longer need to do that. Great! But with this added businesses comes another level of scrutiny that social media marketers need to adjust to. We are often faced with people who only have a tentative grasp of the issues and the tendency is for people to act like they know more then they do. It then requires time for us to parse through exactly what we are dealing with.

The Twists and Turns

The twists and turns that social media marketing can take are varied. I’ve had consultancies start with a specific set of goals in mind only to find two weeks in I am knee deep in issues that were never on the table. Often this is because clients don’t have the necessary infrastructure to carry out our pre-approved goals. This is one of the most fraught situations to face because everything gets pushed back, and then the client, often looking for reasons to believe you aren’t worth the trouble, time or money, can point to lack of progress. It’s not fair, but life never is! And we are the ones who have to shoulder the burden, because after all, we work for the client. It’s their dime.

The rapid nature of social media marketing, and the entire world online forces strategists to constantly be on their toes. Not only do we need to effectively service our current clients, we have to perform due diligence on future projects, pitch new clients. On top of all that we have to remain completely up to date with developments in the social space.

What new apps or applications or social networks are launching?

How will these effect my current or future clients? What about client’s that have already been serviced? Do we have to go back to those clients and ensure that they are up to date with these new developments.

For instance, right now I am watching the controversy over Facebook, which I wrote about yesterday, and how it may effect marketing on social networks. At the exact moment that many of the businesses I know are getting ready to finally engage Facebook in a serious way, it may be that Facebook is on its way out. Yes that is exactly how serious this controversy is. Facebook may be on its way out. And right now businesses are out there making plans to dominate what could very well be a defunct or at the least a highly compromised service.

In short, social media is a roller coaster ride of emotions and actions. The best we can hope for is to hold on tight, trust in the integrity of the system we have in place, and even try to have a little fun! Throw your hands up in the air! I know that after a tough couple of weeks here I am pledged to try , sit back, trust in the integrity of the system I have built over the past 9 months, and simply enjoy the ride.

Image Courtesy of flatluigi on Flickr

Kerfuffle is the only way to describe the latest controversy over Facebook and its new stance towards its user’s privacy. The truth is that Facebook can’t believe in privacy anymore because if it does, it doesn’t have much of a future. The future of Facebook (and of every other social network) lies in its ability to monetize its user base. The best way to monetize your user base is to collect and organize that highly detailed and targeted information and sell it to marketers. Or package it in a way that marketers can deploy it using the internet’s ingrained and sophisticated form of advertising.

From today’s Financial Times:

Facebook is thus important not only to investors but to everyone interested in the future of the internet, which is practically all of us. If it decides, in Google’s phrase for deceiving or messing around with its customers, to “be evil” then millions feel the effects.

Unfortunately, Mark Zuckerberg, the 25-year-old who founded Facebook as a private social network for Harvard students, has recently been displaying a disregard bordering on disdain for Facebook users’ right to maintain control over personal information.

This is the dilemma facing social networks. If they go too far with their user’s data, then they run the risk of losing the trust of those user’s (perhaps the most important equity there is in the 21st century). But if they don’t go far enough, then they aren’t of much value in the long run.

I think what we are missing in all of this is that our definition of Privacy is shifting. Not for everyone, in fact, some are calling for stricter standards and default settings. I have to say that these people have a point, even though I fundamentally disagree with it. The truth is that the goal posts have shifted. Privacy is certainly not what it was a generation ago. The problem our culture seems to have is even recognizing that the shift is going on, and then overreacting when it hits us in the face. Here is the dirty truth about privacy: most people don’t care.

Mr Zuckerberg was at least speaking plainly, unlike last December, when he wrote in an open letter that “our work to improve privacy continues today”. He failed to mention that, eight days later, it would turn six aspects of each user profile, including gender, location and the friends list, into “publicly available information”.

If Facebook users were allowed a free choice, they might well tick the box to accept anyway. His vision of the “open graph”, in which Facebook’s users engage more with websites they visit and applications they use because the services are tailored to them, has allure.

Facebook’s Social Graph API

I spent the better part of last week going over the extensive documentation for Facebook’s new social graph API. Discovering just how OPEN the default settings were was pretty shocking. It allows a website to access not only a person’s name but their email, address, birthday as well as their entire list of friends. That’s pretty dramatic. If only I were a savvy sick manipulating marketer I could have a field day with all that data.

And here I am looking at this radical approach to openness and privacy and realizing that we’ve now reached the crossroads between marketing and privacy. Marketers have spent the better part of a century trying to get the very same data that networks like Facebook and Foursquare now have on us. Who we are, who are friends are, what we like, what we consume, where we are, where we spend our money and how we do so?

I mean this is the holy grail of marketing segmentation. And yet, I couldn’t help but be turned off by the thought of that data being used for the wrong purposes. And yet knowing what I know about human nature I know that is exactly what will happen. I think people are in for a surprise in the coming months. They will soon be targeted with advertisements in ways that are so personal and so relevant that it is going to be severely off-putting.

But I think what bothers me most is our society’s total inability to actually have the conversation that we need to have about privacy. Let’s just talk about it: let us talk about what should and should not be off-limits. From my perspective, I actually have no problem with my privacy settings being wide open. That is because I am analyzing how I am marketed so that I can turn it around and help my clients think strategically about how to do it better. Or differently.

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Image Source: alancleaver_2000 on Flickr

I’ve just come back from a client consultation. Great brand, growing business, terrific press relations. Just one problem: the community they represent mistrusts them. Viscerally so. Is it because they are simply the biggest player in this field? Is it because they are perceived as too “markety?” Or due to the fact that they’ve made mistakes in the past and operate in a world where the margin for error is slim?

It doesn’t matter! The fact is they have a problem and they know it.

We talked about how social media can begin to alleviate this problem. I told them to forget their critics for right now (I used slightly more flowery language to get my point across) and to go direct to the community. Social media allows a brand to do this. This firm has a great service, is staffed by wonderful people, has an honest mission and at the end of the day does good things.

So instead of trying to change the minds of their critics, I advised them to go around them. Don’t disrespect the criticism, don’t pretend its not there. Acknowledge it, and deal with it publicly. Open up the conversation. Start telling the story of the brand directly to your customers and clients. Use the openness and targeting inherent in social tools like Twitter and Facebook to bypass the critics. Let the people decide. They are the only ones that matter and if you provide great service and great content, then eventually your customers and future customers will share that. They’ll talk about it. They’ll become your own little brand ambassadors.

The critics don’t stand a chance. They’ll eventually have to confront the fact that there is a groundswell of support and that if they continue to carp from the sidelines, it will look like they are out of touch. In point of fact, they will be out of touch.

Social media might be the best tool that businesses have to manage a crisis, whether its a product recall, a bad review, or even just the critique of a few influential community members. It is such a perfect tool because you it allows you, when properly wielded, the ability to do two things:

1. Go directly to your customers (current and potential) with your business and brand and let them be the decision makers. This bypasses the critical voices, neutralizing them and giving the brand time to rebuild and reinvigorate.

2. Brings the criticism into the forefront. If a social media strategy is one properly, it means the brand is finally willing to say we are unafraid of our criticism. Because it WILL show up. For every positive blog post, or tweet, for every testimonial video posted on YouTube, there will be a reaction. But as long as the brand or business is conducting its marketing in the open, for all to see, in an authentic and earnestly engaged way, the critics don’t stand a chance. Social media marketing allows for this. It allows for brands to confront their critics out in the open, instead of in the hushed tones and whisperings that so much of community.

Every crisis is an opportunity. Social media brings this aphorism to a truly spectacular level.

Flickr image courtesy of Daquella manera

How much is too much? How much social media interaction and engagement is worth it? Does social media even work?

These are the questions that the majority of business owners I speak to are asking themselves. I won’t even mention the few people I talk to who aren’t convinced that social media is the future of their marketing efforts. It still happens.

But I think I am turning into a social media critic. Yeah. I am a social media critic.

We really need critics right now. I can tell you from the front lines of social media marketing, we are not as smart as we think we are. And business owners aren’t as stupid as we make them out to be. Simply put, social media, as it stand now, is not for everyone.

The cost in both technology investments, branding, training and, most importantly, time are too high for many businesses.

The Technology Requirements of Social Media

For businesses unaccustomed to social media and its inner workings, even the most basic assumptions social media marketers make can be an enormous leap. Some businesses don’t have WiFi set up, which means they may be tethered to desktop computers. And those computers may not even be able to handle applications like Tweetdeck, YouTube, Facebook and other tools.

The last thing a social media marketer wants to find out when starting a new consulting gig is that they’ll have to wait to get new computers bought, or WiFi installed, or a laptop replaced. You just lost two weeks. Talented marketers will adapt to this by either talking about technology during their pitches and initial conversations, or being able to train people and provide overviews of social media while the technology is being upgraded.

The Branding Requirements of Social Media

I like starting blogs. Inbound marketing is a powerful tool for businesses to being their social media interactions with. Because my business primarily deals with businesses involved in the hospitality sector, I consider their content to be top-notch. What is their content? Their food! Their wine! Their daily specials. Most of all the people, the chefs, the sommeliers, the owners, the managers.

But good blogs and websites cost money. I really don’t believe in using poorly designed blogs or off-the-shelf products for websites. I think the great content that clients will be illustrating need fantastic, unique design in order for it to make even a minor impact. Launch a crappy blog and I actually think you might be doing your business harm. Influencers online can tell the difference, and although they may not be your target audience, they are the ones you want to enfranchise to share and promote your content (and therefore your business) when they do find out about it. Your customers are following them.

So websites, blogs, Twitter account, Facebook fan pages: these all cost money to do properly. And those costs can range from $500 for a decent blog into the man thousands for a blog, new website and other customized sites.

Social Media Training

Catching businesses up on the daily ebb and flow of social media is one that social media marketers really need to excel at. But it also requires time to bring someone from newbie status to experienced networker. Bringing up Tweetdeck or Tweetie or Seesmic for a client for the first time scares the crap out of them. All those columns! Where is Twitter? What is this? It’s moving too fast!

It usually takes me between 3-5 hours to properly train someone in the functionality and capabilities in a Twitter client. And that is not counting the month or more it takes to monitor their tweeting to ensure they are tweeting properly: shortening their links, retweeting enough stories, or sharing appropriate content. Are they following people back? Are they creating or maintaining lists as any good business should?

All told social media training takes a couple of months until a client approaches that sweet spot when they not only feel comfortable but are enjoying themselves and serving the needs of their business.

Even Now Social Media is Not For Every Business

It’s true. Sorry. I have to retract things I have said in the past. Simply put, the costs and time involved in social media are still too high, and the return is just not provable yet. I know it is coming. Eventually we won’t even use the words social media. It will just be embedded in our daily lives and interactions. The technologies and philosophies will just be part of our operations.

But for now, social media takes a heavy toll on a businesses operations, and for some small businesses, where few people where many hats, asking them to don one more may not be worth it.

Image Source: Peter Kaminski on Flickr

What happens when a client doesn’t listen?

This is a potential powder keg of a situation actually because it is often the first step in the wrong direction for a successful business partnership.

Now this is not to say that clients should just blindly follow their consulants wishes. That would be disastrous. Most of the time the client knows more than their consultants about their own business. There are exceptions, for instance when a consultant previously worked in the given industry and has more experience and a track record of success.

But most of the time clients know the ins and outs of their business with a depth that an outside consultant, no matter how savvy, cannot match. That client may frequently disagree or flat out overrule a consultants particular strategy. As they should. And if all goes well then there is nothing to worry about. Client is happy and the consultant still has a job. Obviously if this situation repeats enough times said consultant is going to be out of a job.

But what happens when the client is wrong and they still won’t listen. What happens when they can’t or won’t enunciate their goals beforehand and they won’t examine their metrics after the fact. Most importantly, what if they aren’t listening to the consultant on matters which that consultant can speak specifically to?

Consultants are paid to perform specific tasks. But there is also an implication that a consultant will provide objective opinion regarding their clients strategy as well as aligning their clients success with their own.

I do well. Client does well. We all prosper and maintain a long healthy relationship.

Perfect!

Except we don’t live in that perfect world and a client unwilling to listen to their consultants advice often asks that consultant to blindly follow them. I wonder if it is an ownership issue? “Even though you’ve disagreed with us on this, this is the decision we’ve decided upon and we want you to support it.”

But here is the question: What is the right play for the consultant? Do they, in an about face, blindly support their client’s wishes. Or do they disengage? Is that even possible?

What do you do when clients won’t listen and then expect you to go along? 20th century thinking says, fall in line, support the team, do what’s right. But is that really what we want people doing? Subsuming their own values to myopia?

Were you great at sex the first time you tried it? Was your first tweet as bad as your first blowjob? Was your first Facebook ad campaign as difficult to achieve as your first orgasm? Did you rock the socks off your, ahem, customer first time in the drivers seat?

The answer to the above questions is most likely: HELL NO!

Social Media is like sex and because you can never have enough sex or social media it is helpful for us to make this rather spicy analogy. It provides a way to talk about social media that anyone can appreciate, especially in light of recent data that suggests that social media is now more popular than porn, when it comes to web activity.

What are some of the reasons we fail at sex, and social media?

Inadequate Strategy

No matter how much porn we watched as kids, and boy did we watch a lot!, the reality is that sex is such a jarring experience, built up in our imaginations as teenagers and young adults, that when it actually happens it is often a blur. What did just happen? The reality never matches the fantasy.

Social media engagement is so similar. Especially for brands or businesses that are just jumping in now, having heard so much about, having read about it, feared it, experienced the mystique of it. And now they are diving in, and it’s all a blur. There is so much stimulation to take in! Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, You Tube, geo-location, mobile software, iPhone apps, streaming, lifecasting, online advertising, SEO, Video. How are we supposed to master all this?

Is it any different than sex? Think of all the moves and positions a virgin is thinking and worrying about. Missionary, doggy-style, oral sex, the Flying Dutchman? The Swedish Helicopter? It takes years to build up the mastery to be able to have sex leaning against a wall. Can you really expect that your first month using Twitter will be any different?

You aren’t supposed to! Anyone who thinks right off the bat that they are going to be a champ in bed or a social media trendsetter in their industry is still looking at things from a 20th Century point of view.

Social media, like sex, is all about feel. It takes time to understand the landscape of our lovers and it takes time to learn the landscape of social media. We need to understand when to push and pull, what to tweak, what to nibble on, what NOT to nibble on; when to sink right in and when to hold off.

So don’t expect to come up with a grand fool-proof strategy on your first attempt. Expect to make mistakes; expect to be an amateur for awhile. Listen and learn, converse, talk about it with your customers. What do they want from you? What do they need? What don’t they want?

A great strategy for any business exists out there, but don’t expect to find it at first.

Lack of Consistency

Anybody can have an off night, right?  It happens. The problem is that if it happens too often we run the risk of damaging our reputation and in the case of social media, our brand. Social media strategies, just like sex, require consistency if our aim is to please.

When you have followers captivated by the content of your blog, a lack of consistency can seriously burn you as a source of information. Disappointment is the worse thing we can do to either a lover or a Facebook Fan.

So I guess the question would be: How do we avoid the lack of consistency?

This is the fun part: Practice Practice Practice. Practice takes time but it also makes perfect. We must take the time to execute the strategy and constantly address the feedback we get from our customers. It’s the equivalent of the infamous phrase, “Was it good for you?”

With time and practice comes consistency and the rewarding certainty that everybody is having a good time.

Inexperience

Social Media Marketing is more art than science, though the science part is rapidly catching up. Each business needs to discover which tools and platforms are most relevant to their needs. Randomly trying those tactics that have worked for others ends in a futile enterprise and with this frustration comes the “I will never do it again” attitude.

So if you are inexperienced in the art of making love or the art of social media marketing strategy execution, the last thing you want to do is stop trying.

Inexperience always comes attached to the inevitable question: Can’t I just do this on my own? The answer of course is: Yes!

But remember that as a temporary amateur you might need a little bit more guidance, a little bit more advice and there is no shame in addressing this early in the process and asking for help from people with more experience.

The grand thing is that your audience–more so than many lovers–can be very forgiving. With the right guidance and the right team behind your brand you can attempt social media engagement again and realize that no matter what mistakes you have made in the past due to inexperience there is always a new strategy to explore.

Finally, you should never forget that this environment is like a living organism, it is always changing and morphing and transforming itself into new and better things. The world of social media can always give you a second chance if you are open minded enough to try again.

I promise that the more you do it, the better you will become.

Zachary Adam Cohen couldn’t help but co-author this post.

I just came back from my local wine store, 9th Avenue Vintner. Great place, friendly people, lots of tastings and a fantastic newsletter. They had a tasting this evening with a gentlemen from a winery up near the Finger Lakes. We got to talking and I asked him what kind of social presence his winery had.

Sheesh. It was like I just pissed on his leg. The guy immediately got cold and distanced, his eyes glazed over a bit and he told me in no uncertain terms that he didn’t see how “that kind of thing” worked at all with his family winery.

Now, I was actually hurt by this. I was hurt that the guy actually seemed to find my question offensive, sure. But I was more hurt by the fact that as much as I live in a social world, there is still a huge segment of the population, and in particular, small business owners, who simply haven’t had the time to begin engaging.

Is It Too Late To Catch Up On Social Media?

Seth Godin asked this question the other day on his blog.

What if your organization or your client has done nothing?

What if they’ve just watched the last fourteen years go by? No real website, no social media, no permission assets. What if now they’re ready and they ask your advice? And, by the way, they have no real cash to spend…

Seth has a helpful list of suggestions to get people caught up, my favorites of which are these:

Have the president post her (real) email address in every invoice and other communication the company sends out, asking people to write to her with comments or questions.

Don’t have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.

Start a book group for your top executives and every person who answers the phone, designs a product or interacts with customers. Read a great online media book a week and discuss. It’ll take you about a year to catch up.

Hit his blog for the rest of the list.

Personally, I don’t think its ever too late to catch up on social media. But that ignorance that I encountered, that is what has to change. Because what that small winemaker was telling me was not that social media had no application for his business. What he was telling me was he simply didn’t know where to start, was frustrated by this fact, and had unfortunately decided, rather conveniently, that social media wasn’t for him.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. And he knew it.

Image Source: US Army on Flickr

The Agony and Pain of Restaurant Websites

Smooth Jazz? Flash? Impossible Navigation? Incredibly Long Loading Times?

The current state of restaurant websites is pathetic. Haven’t we had enough of this? Why do restaurants think they can get away with putting up a brochure of their offerings and expect their customers will respond by flocking to their establishment? In a city like New York, with thousands of dining options, it is simply not enough to broadcast your service to a sophisticated public. Even in smaller cities and towns with far fewer options, restaurants are failing miserably to adapt to the realities of how consumers spend their money today.

Let’s Take a Look at Why

The 20th Century is why! All one had to do was broadcast, hire some P.R. people, get the word out and hoped and prayed that the customers started flocking.

Not anymore folks! American’s get a bad rap for being lazy, apathetic gluttons who watch too much TV and lack any real culture. Silly I say! Social Media is changing that perception right quick! And more importantly, it’s changing the truth about Americans.

American consumers are quickly becoming a discerning sophisticated consumer. Part of this is due to the recession. We are all going through a phase of re-prioritizing just what it is we REALLY want to spend our money on. And what we want to spend our money on is places, products and people we believe in, that we feel connected to, that we feel we have a stake in.

Social Media makes this all possible. We can now communicate directly with the brands and businesses that get, or could potentially get, our spending money. And it’s all public. No more ruses, no more telephone hangups, no more poor customer service. Why not? Cause when you piss off a customer these days, they can get you back. They can Twitter it, they can post a youtube video, they can blog about it.

What Do Restaurants Need To Excel in Social Media?

First thing’s first, you need a blog. There are so many stories to tell. Who are they? WHY are they? What motivates the chef, the servers? Give me a narrative damnit. I want your food but I also want your story. Restaurants are one of the few remaining places that we go to truly disconnect. To be with our loved ones, our friends, our family. We get to connect in real life after SO much connecting online.

But I want to do so in a place that has captured me with their story. And you can’t do that without a blog. Start one, make the time to learn the basics and start sharing. You will quickly find a lot of people willing to share your story. You’ll find your natural constituency. Are you a Nouvelle Mexican spot in Boerum Hill? Well, talk Mexican food. Share stories about authentic Mexican ingredients. For the Chef: Write a post about any stage work you did in Mexico or Spain or wherever! Who trained you? What did you learn?

Where does your food come from? Talk about your vendors, the farms and middlemen that get the product you serve? Talk about the menu, how was it created? What inspired this dish or that? Give us some context. You don’t have to give away every little secret. We still like to be surprised. But give us something!

Oh, and can we please get your social media links? Every website in the world has their social media links proudly displayed on their website. And you don’t? I know 14 year old Indonesian scam artists who have better designed websites than you do. Oh and btw: you got ripped off royally on your site.

And tell us who is doing the twittering? Is it a host? What’s her name? The Chef? The PR Firm? Let’s get some transparency people

How Can You Use a Blog To Entice Customers?

As I am known to do, I asked Twitter AKA The Hive Mind about this today. One user, a new friend name John True suggested letting blog readers know about special “off the menu” items. This is a fantastic idea. Every so often the restaurant could end a blog post with an “Easter Egg.” Basically, they could leave a clue telling readers (or twitter followers) about something special going on. This a great way to make your readers feel their are privy to something special. And it’s another creative way to convert readers to customers.

What about letting blog readers, or Facebook Fans, or Twitter followers get first dibs on any special events?

And what about video? And Pictures?

Start a YouTube channel, get a Flip HD camera and start interviewing regular customers. Is someone coming by once a week? Get him or her on tape to tell us why? What draws that customer back? Maybe we’ll feel the same way. Are testimonials so hard to produce? Stop relying on a big media dinosaur to come to your rescue. Yes, The New York Times is still important, and hopefully always will be, but for the most part, the impact of professional critics is nominal. If 20 food bloggers love you, and 5 critics don’t, guess who wins? It ain’t the critics. No one trusts them anyway.

Photo by A National Acrobat

A Dirty Word

Customer + Service used to be dirty words didn’t they? The term conjures up long lines, impolite service, outsourced call centers. Anything but actually being served.

I wonder if that isn’t all changing because of social media. Now that customer service is public, can brands and businesses really afford to fall flat on customer service? Can they afford to fail when everyone, potentially, is watching?

Of course not.

For many years, we got the customer service we deserved. It started in the 90′s as corporations and businesses realized that their customer service just wasn’t that important. After all, as companies got larger and larger, it didn’t make economic sense to devote resources to customer service. The number of people who had problems with products or services was low enough that the bean counters’ arguments against improving customer service won the day. What happened when we received poor customer service? We kicked ourselves for wasting the time and money, got a little more disheartened by the experience, but basically we kept mum. More importantly, customers had no way  to express or publicize their dissatisfaction.

Well, now we do. We have that platform. Platforms really. We have social media, where we can broadcast our experiences as warning signs to others. We have the voice now.

Of course that comes with added responsibilities, but isn’t it time we had some of those anyway? These responsibilities include not complaining about every little thing, not griping about every minor infraction. And one has to be credible. If all you do is criticize, no one is going to listen. You have to praise as well. I go out looking for companies and brands to praise so that when I feel the need to criticize, I have a credibility base.

Cinchcast Gets It Right

How about an example of really great customer service? I’ve been toying around with Cinchcast, a new iphone app and social streaming application that allows one to record and stream audio recordings, straight from my iPhone, to Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc..I really like the idea of being able to capture short blog posts in audio format and immediately publish them. I find myself putting down more thoughts instead of the occasionally unenviable task of sitting down to a proper blog post.

What I have found is that my Cinchcast recordings are aiding my thinking, by allowing me to flush out ideas as they pop into to the old knowledge engine. By having a forum to get those ideas out quickly and painlessly, I can create more room for larger ideas to marinate and become fully formed. It’s how my process works and I am really excited to be using Cinch. If my recent past is any experience, my use of Cinch is going to mature quickly.

But Cinch was having problems, serious problems with authenticating my logins. The app allows you to login with your Twitter or Facebook credentials, or register with cinch. But the authorization process was buggy. I would frequently be unable to login with either twitter or facebook or both. I had cinches saved under different accounts and my accounts weren’t integrated.

So I sent a quick email to their feedback department just before I went to sleep. And I woke up to find a wonderful email in my inbox:

Hi Zachary,

Thanks for your support of Cinch. You’ll be happy to know that we have changes in QA that will address all of these concerns. There is a bug in the IPhone app with twitter logins that we are testing a hot fix for now. We will be releasing not only the ability to get embed code for a single cinch but also a multiplayer shortly. I combined the accounts for you.  You can login with either fb or twitter to the same account.

Boom! Done! Problem fixed and I’ve now been informed of where Cinch stands on other issues. How easy was that? And beyond just getting an answer and having my issues dealt with in a timely, responsive and polite manner, I woke up feeling motivated to write about the experience. This blog is new, so the traffic is still small. But I have a fairly large megaphone on Twitter and Facebook and now I’m going to send out this post to those streams.

A customer service success turns into something bigger than just that one experience. This is why customer service stands to encounter a massive evolution for the better. We are all about to be much better served.

The Crowd is Watching

I wrote a post yesterday about how brands are damaging themselves by deploying social media without taking the time to understand even the very basics of this new media environment and its philosophies.

In particular, I took issue with the common practice of brands  jumping on the bandwagon of social media, and then letting their accounts be static, that is, using it to broadcast PR messages, or worse, letting their accounts sit idle. How many restaurants, for instance, signed up for Twitter or Facebook pages recently, sent out a few tweets, and then ignored it for months?

Wanna know what that tells me? It tells me you were chasing a fad. It tells me you thought using social media was going to be easy. It tells me, most of all, that you weren’t being original. You merely heard about Twitter and Facebook and social networking, and jumped in. Boo!

A Brand Misses An Opportunity

Two nights ago, I had some great news and decided to celebrate by dining at Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern, a relatively new restaurant from one of NYC’s most gifted restauranteurs. Dinner was fantastic. My friend and I split the infamous Black Label burger, the Roast Chicken, a beet salad, pommes Anna and glazed carrots. We drank bourbon and vodka.

The Burger is the best in NYC and without getting into the debate about how expensive or elitist it is, or the fact that Shake Shack is simply a different kind of burger without the ambitions of the Black Label burger, I’ll simply say it is the “Burger to Beat” in NYC.

But this story isn’t about the burger or the dinner. This is about the cheese course. Fantastic cheeses. But it was late into the meal, and I already told you about the bourbon and the vodka.

I tweeted at the company who made and sourced the cheese. I saw they were pretty active in my stream and figured, oh, great, I am going to get a quick answer.

Nada, Nothing, Niente!

Ok, figured they were busy, and that I would get a reply later.

Nothing. Hours turned to days. And this is why it matters?

If I had gotten a quick answer I would have loudly proclaimed the quick reaction time. I would have saluted the company for their engagement and for making life easier. I may even have written a blog post on the occurrence. The fact that I didn’t get any answer turned a great opportunity into a liability. And I am not the only person watching. That’s the whole point. There is a crowd of watchers out there, the peanut gallery is alive and well. They see my tweet, maybe they become curious about the cheese that I am taking the trouble to search for. But if I don’t get an answer, they don’t get an answer. How many people might have considered buying that cheese next time they shopped had they seen an answer stream across? Would the name have stuck in their head?

Lessons Learned?

If you are going to be using social media, you’ve got to really be present. Answer your tweets, respond to blog comments, keep your Facebook page updated and in synch with the rest of your activities. The crowd is watching. It’s not about individual users. I am a nobody, a nothing. I am not an expert and I am not a guru. But taken in total, the crowd can make a difference. The crowd can drive sales. Keep them happy and your brand will benefit.

Now is that really so hard?