but today’s an exception… just remember to give stuff back afterwards! officially that just means that you’re borrowing it… well in my books anyway I’ll stop digging myself a hole now…

all items are being held hostage, to be returned upon realisation that they’re actually missing in the first place… after all the bow and arrow must be essential daily items right?

happy happy thursday lovely people, hope that you’re having a great week.

m x

the one and only vero pepperrell kindly pointed me to an interview that the guys from freshbooks did with me at fowa miami earlier this year. i’m actually speaking in this video and it might give you an indicator as to why my weekly videos are done in mute!

oh you should probably know before you watch that i’m incredibly drunk, although you probably would have sussed that for yourself.

now yes, i can hear your chuckling. i know i was terribly drunk. i know that i could hardly stand and yes, yes, i know that texas is not north america… it was humour in my drunken state.

i hope that it made you chuckle, even if it was at my expense… taxi!

it’s a super happy thursday…. let’s blame it on the sunshine and not the moonlight or the boogie…. okay it’s a bit of a random one.

thanks for taking a couple of minutes out of your day to share in my randomness with me. happy thursday.

m x

community bricks

i’m currently working on the social strategy for a really fun project. it’s challenging and rewarding. it’s what i enjoy and it’s something that i’ve spent a lot of time developing. as such, i’ve gone through what i consider to be the basic steps of building a successful community:-

1. establishing who the community is that you serve
2. deciding what problem it is that you’re solving and how you plan to solve it
3. working out where your community are having their conversations and how they want to be communicated with
4. finding out what it is that interests the members of the communities, what it is that bonds them, what tools they use etc.
5. what it is about your service/product that is actually going to distinguish you and make them give a damn

the company thang

having done that and established the networks i believed our users have adopted, i created corporate accounts on a number of sites that people who were interesting in what we were doing could connect with us on. for me, the benefit to this was that they’d easily be able to identify the tone and character of the brand and creates something for the company that anyone can use, rather than just myself. that makes sense right?

well why is it then that i still find myself updating content on my own networks as well as the branded networks? you’re guaranteed if i post a link on twitter i’ll get more than ten times the response as if i were to post it on the corporate twitter account. fact.

reputation

the change in our culture of late has meant that people zone out when they’re being marketed to – they rarely listen to ads, hate sales people (especially those of the stripy suit variety) and can see through thinly veiled social media attempts from the old boys trying to be cool.

someone that i barely know can recommend something on twitter or save a link on magnolia and i’m way more likely to check it out than a company persuading me to do so.

do your job

Brian Oberkirch recently wrote a really interesting piece about consumers not wanting to be talked to all of the time and i couldn’t agree more. for me, the perfect combination is having a company that let’s me have a nose (without that annoying person on your back asking if they can help until you have enough and leave) but is still on hand if you get lost and need a little point in the right direction.

the perfect company is one that uses their products and services as much as you, knows it inside out and is part of the conversation because they truly have something interesting to contribute, not because they feel they need to be seen to still be in the loop.

the insider

if the truth be known i think that people want to know who’s behind the scenes, they want to interact with someone that they know or have heard of, they want to know you’ve got flaws as well as sheen (why do you think so many mags sell when there’s pics of celebrities with blemishes – people don’t like perfection).

i realise for corporations that brings with it issues. you can’t rely on your marketing coming from a few individuals, after all what happens when those people leave? i’ve thought about this issue long and hard and i’m still not sure that i know the answer to be honest. it is a risk, but it’s a risk that you need to take, at the beginning anyway. surely it’s better you have people doing a bloody good job and getting your product or service out there into the domain and cross the other bridges when you come to them – after all, the hope would be that the brand would be well recognised by the time that happened?

the solution that i’ve settled for is to use both personal and professional. i converse with community members using the corporate name, encouraging people to recognise that there’s a human voice behind it. however, those same community members are also more than welcome to talk to me using my personal accounts. on twitter for example, my followers know if they follow me, they’ll hear about good days, bad days and the days where my heel snapped on the way to work. if they follow the work twitter account, they’ll hear about website developments, legal issues and exciting launches.

it becomes a different issue again when you throw seeding companies into the mix… but i won’t even get into that here. maybe i’m a small town girl with small town ideas but i’m going to stick with my beliefs. my beliefs that if you’re genuine, you care and you want to make a difference, your community will build. have nothing to hide, don’t be afraid to wear your heart on your sleeve and willing to share (collaboration is much more fulfilling than the feeling of hiding your ideas to keep that competitive advantage!).

onwards and upwards

it’s really not an easy situation to tackle and i think you need to remain open and flexible with your approach. be okay with the fact that you’re learning and developing – you’re on a journey and given time, your community members will be coming along for the ride too. i’d be really interested to hear how others approach this issue…

i asked. you answered. here are your favorite blogs with the things that make them rock for you…

www.zeldman.com – timely, relevant, funny and insightful @mozster

www.blackcountrygrammar.co.uk – because it’s mine @jonthebeef (you cheat!)

www.cafehayek.typepad.com – russ roberts realistic take on economics @jimdittmer

www.dvorak.org/blog/ - because i’m an old crank @jimdittmer

www.jdapdx.com/users/jim/blog/ - it gives a chance to explore and comment on the constant media spin that swirls around us – @jimdittmer

www.randommel.com – the thursday vids keep me going @gold123finger & @kallardnyc

www.notcot.org – all of the world’s coolest stuff dumped in one handy place @LucPestille

www.seomoz.org – the content, the staff and the community @ciaranj

so there we have it – a bunch of tech blog and economic readers (who’d have thought it given that i did the shout out on twitter? haha). oh and a couple of brown nosers thrown in to the mix too, but hey you made me smile

probably the dullest video that you’ve ever seen in your life, but it was funnier than the original – i guess that says it all! lol

happy thursday xxx

… being a company that genuinely cares will!

i went to dinner the other night and received some really bad customer service (infact i’m sure she secretly spat in my dinner, but that’s a whole other story!). anyway, as i left the restaurant i mentioned it to the manager and he casually apologised but somehow it wasn’t enough. i knew that i wouldn’t be going back there again and it got me to thinking…. i am the first to admit, that this is probably a bit of a tangent, but nonetheless!

smiles

gone are the days where a smiley face at the customer service desk or at the end of a phone are sufficient. customer expectations are higher than ever and rightly so, with ever growing competition in the marketplace. nowadays, your whole company has to be genuinely smiley, from inside out.

whilst this can be scary for many companies to accept, you have to open up, to be receptive to criticism, pro-active with improvements and not afraid to admit you might have some flaws – people will love you more for it.

cool kid culture

so many companies love the idea of “social media”, they want to be seen as one of the “cool kids” leading the way. however (and this is a big however!), unless the culture of your company is adapted to embrace such a change, you may as well be banging your head against a brick wall.

if you’re going to embrace new technologies and communication tools, you’re going to also need to embrace the way that you use them (and… wait for it… even change your processes!! yuck i hate the word ‘process’). for example, if a blog post has to be passed through ten levels of sign-off, it’s no longer genuine and loses it’s meaning. i know how scary that can be for many companies, but it’s true.

wanting to build a community around your product or service is great, but as soon as you’re doing it purely to monetise, all of your hard work is undone and you’re back on that scrap heap again – those good old internets folks will sniff it out a mile off.

trust your team

be okay with the fact that you’ll have to empower your team to become brand ambassadors. no, they probably won’t be a part of the team forever, but that’s life, it happens. one thing that IS guaranteed, is that they’ll be a hundred times more committed and dedicated to helping you succeed whilst they’re there. if you worry the whole time that you don’t want to give them too much power, you’ll end up having someone for a few years giving maybe 80% – unleash their full potential.

open the floor

it’s natural to want to maintain control, no one doubts that. however, by realising the huge opportunity presented to you by opening up the floor to your users/consumers you’ll be putting yourself way ahead of your competitors. the honest feedback that you’ll receive will give you the information you need to adapt your offering to precisely match the demand of the market. this is raw data that companies with a more traditional approach would pay a fortune for. take advantage of that.

the tools are there for you, use them!

the first thing that i would recommend for any company is to set up an account with get satisfaction. i personally believe that this is the future of customer service. tons of companies are now using this service to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. the thing that i love about get satisfaction is that anyone with an opinion or some information to give can contribute to the conversation, plus it’s free!

monitor feedback using tools like summize, tweetscan or google alerts. this allows you to respond immediately to someone who wasn’t 100% satisfied rather than waiting to be contacted by someone who was really displeased. without a shadow of a doubt, they’ll tell your friends about you and what better advocate than your users?

i recently had some difficulties whilst using campaign monitor. i made a flippant comment on twitter to say that i was struggling and before you know it, there’s a response for me asking if i need help. it’s that kind of service that makes me choose them above other email clients and that’s the kind of care and attention that i want from all companies that i interact with.

rambling

i know that you’ll probably think that a lot of what i’ve rambled on about above only applies to web companies, after all, it’s mainly tech-savvy people that use sites like twitter etc. i’d agree with you, this isn’t mainstream practice for companies at the moment. but that in itself is a huge opportunity – it’s a chance to put yourself ahead of the rest and be really good at customer service when mass adoption does take place rather than playing catch-up.

don’t settle for being okay, go be damn fabulous and people will thank you for it.

a while ago, i did a video about what was on my desk. it was random, as you’d expect from me, but it went down a storm. now that i’m at aardman, i thought it would be good to do it again – it’s very different! hope that you enjoy!

happy thursday peeps xxx

next week i’ll try and make it cooler i promise! sorry it’s late x

i’ll start by grovelling – you see there is no random video this thursday! i’ve been geeking it up at the carsonified offices for their launch of matt before going to bathcamp and well to be frank, i’ve got a super special video for you tomorrow.

so to keep you going, here’s a video that was captured of our super casual fridays last week… i think i need to move about the office some more! enjoy

A day in the life of Aardman Online office from benje on Vimeo.