Think Twitter Isn’t Worth Monitoring?

Peter Shankman, a well-known social media speaker, NASA enthusiast and carnivore, was recently traveling home from a business trip from Tampa when he sent out a tweet that showed customer service at its finest.

Simply put:

After his flight landed on time (a rarity which anyone who has flown in or out of EWR would know):

First, WOW, @Mortens now delivers and takes orders off Twitter!! Just kidding, but what this does show, is that they are paying attention. Whether they know Mr. Shankman is a frequent dinner or that they monitor Twitter and wanted to pull one of the best customer service stunts in the history of social media (so far). Maybe they got lucky and picked the right person who has over 100,000 followers and is a media mogul. For whatever the reason, the company showed how all companies should be utilizing social media and not too bad of a publicity stunt!

No matter your business size, what are you doing to improve your customer service to make them go and tell their friends? With Google Panda updates social is playing a bigger role in how your customers can find you. There is no budget constraint, no specific entry point, just jump in and LISTEN to your customers!

Even Worse News for Google +1

Originally my weekly commentary was going to be on an article that I found on Mashable about how Klout now has a +K button. Similar to Facebook’s Like or to a lesser extent Google’s +1 the +K is going to be given to users who have influenced a reader on a particular topic. Peter Shankman brought this up in his speech during the SFIMA conference a few weeks ago which you can read about here.

When I was looking at the article though, I noticed how many Facebook Likes there was compared to Google +1’s. It’s almost a 500 to 1 difference. This reminded me of an interview that Google ex-CEO Eric Schmidt conducted at the recent D9: All Things Digital conference where he largely admitted he missed the boat on Facebook and Social Media.

How does the 800 Pound Googlerilla (credit: Jay Berkowitz for coming up with the term) think about having now having another 800 pound gorilla (Facebook) in the room? They typically don’t like to be 2nd in anything but as far as overtaking Facebook goes I think that ship has already sailed.

SFIMA Keynote Speech by Peter Shankman

I was at the SFIMA.com conference yesterday who had Peter Shankman as the keynote speaker. Here were some of the key points of his speech:

Be transparent
Peter told the story of an idea he came up with regarding creating a list of PR professionals. He was constantly receiving queries for comments on articles as an "expert", but some of the answers to questions or comments journalists were seeking didn't match up with his skillset. He created a list that he could then send these queries out to other "experts" like himself who could then speak with the journalist so they could make their deadline. The mailing list built up to a nice size when he was contacted by an apparel company who was interested in sending an advertisement to the list. He wrote an email to the list talking about the products with a tracking code + url pointing to the advertiser. The return was 17% when the apparel company was used to normally receiving less than a 1% conversion rate. When they asked him what he did differently, all he said was he just wrote honestly about it and people on his mailing list trust his opinion so they purchased.

Privacy settings cannot be protected by stupid
If you don't want your information to fall into the wrong hands online, then don't put it online. A story he told was that he asked an audience member what kind of personal details she posted online and she replied "All of it but I only have it online for my friends". He then asked her friend if they were connected on Facebook, to which he said "yes". He gave him $100 and logged in with his ID and went directly to her Wall and saw all her info. In summary, don't post information online that you don't want everyone to know about.

Relevance - Find out how audience prefers to have their media delivered
He used an example of a non profit Animal Rescue group that was sending out coffee table books to anyone who made a donation. When he made his donation he called up the Rescue group and asked them about it. They told him their average donator tended to be older and didn't use the Internet. Well after getting added to the Advisory Board he conducted a survey and found out 2 things, 1) The average age of a donator was between 10 and 15 years younger than what they had thought and 2) they preferred to get their information online. He was able to save the Rescue group, $500,000 in the first year on postage and production costs while increasing their donations 30%.

Revenue. Always work on or create projects that will make money.
The days of the Pets.com sock puppet which went through $300 million in venture capital with very little revenue are over.

Attention Spans are very short.
The average amount of a person's attention span was 2.4 or about 142 characters. Normally you would think this was a Tweet but it's actually the length of a text message. As fast as cell phone growth is exploding, the text message is exploding along with it. Good writing is clarity and brevity and clarity and brevity is marketing.

Top of mind will win.
The big differentiator amongst all of the brands out there competing for your attention is customer service. For example, Delta had to make an emergency landing in South Carolina on a flight to NY and everything at the airport was closed while the pilots had vanished. He started tweeting to @Delta telling them they were stranded and then they needed help. Guess who responded to him? Southwest Airlines who told him if he could get them to an airport 30 miles north they would fly him to NY. Another time he was landing in Europe and was dead tires. He tweeted to his hotel that he wanted some coffee. When he checked into his room he had a knock on the door and it was room service with his coffee. These types of experiences are the reason why he stays exclusive to these brands.

What is your "KLOUT" score?
Influence is always important and just moving online. People with Klout Scores about particular subjects will have more influence in a decision making process.