Monitoring Your Social Media Environments

I chose to do an analysis of Telus, using the tracking tools Monitter and Hootsuite to research tweets about Telus’ Customer Service. I was impressed with how quickly and easily the relevant search results appeared. As Telus is a sizeable company, I recorded ten tweets, in succession, posted between Nov 17 and 18.

1.                  I can't deal with @telus anymore .. by far the worst customer service ever. .step up your game. .#telus

2.                  Really not impressed with @TELUS customer service today.

3.                  It's rare that you hear someone happy with their cell phone service so I will come out and say it; I love the customer service at @telus!

4.                  @stickinrink37 @TELUS Just today? I can't think of a day that I have been impressed with their customer service.

5.                  @TELUS does it again...consistently happy with their customer service!

6.                  Dear @RogersHelps @TELUS @Bell_Mobility I'm sick of @WINDmobile horrendous service & apathetic customer care who wants my multiple accounts?

7.                  @KeiraAnne It's not that shaw offers a inferior product, it's their lack of customer service telus even has @TELUSSUPPORT...it's awesome

8.                  My dad really likes making conversation with telemarketers and telus customer service..

9.                  @telus All carriers have sinned and fallen short of the glory of HONEST, STRAIGHTFORWARD customer service!#givemestrength

10.              There are not words for the abysmal customer service I have been receiving from Telus. Well, maybe I can think of a few...      

Using these tools, it is possible to draw conclusions on the sentiment of the messages in regards to company popularity. You could use them to monitor campaigns, and also to compare your company reputation within the overall industry.

There was a lot of activity on the topic of customer service, resulting in many daily tweets, basically resulting in 50/50 performance. According to sentiment of the tweets, lack of support seems to be experienced equally among the main communication providers, so the problem appears to be industry-wide. In rating each tweet from 1 to 5 (one being very dissatisfied, and 5 being very satisfied and 3 being neutral) these tweets would indicate Telus' customer satisfaction rates approximately 26/50.

Telus’ own Twitter account stats are 1750 tweets, 11,719 following and 14,199 followers, 585 listed. During the same time period, Telus’ Twitter account listed 21 tweets on Nov 18 (only 3 of those belonged to customers, the rest were company tweets) and 13 on Nov 17, all were company tweets. With very little customer involvement appearing on their Twitter account, the company is either restricting which posts to include, or would need to monitor using similar tools, to see what’s being tweeted about them elsewhere. Without doing this, they may not have a true impression of their customer relations.

The Power of Words

I would like to comment this week on a YouTube video by Purplefeather Online Content Specialists that was presented to our Public Relations class called the Power of Words,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Hzgzim5m7oU#t=7s

    

In under two minutes, this exceptional video demonstrates the effectiveness of writing to your target audience. In Social Media alone, we are being inundated every day with hundreds of choices of competing messages. A Google search for “the power of words”, for instance, yields 362 million results.

If we are to stand out and get noticed, our message must relate to our target audience. The more important our messages are, the more important it is to define that relationship.  Define what our message means to them, not us; especially messages that require a call to action. Defining the reader helps us define the most powerful words.

One of the vital lessons I learned about Social Media was put most poetically in 1839 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the pen is mightier than the sword.  

Technology Transforming Communications

We didn’t always have internet access, just like we didn’t always have single page printers. Over the past 25 to 30 years, technology has revolutionized corporate industry, but probably the Marketing field more so than any other. Technology has been transforming tools of the trade in Journalism, Media and Public Relations almost every 2 or 3 years.

I have included a list of ten of my personal favorites. 

                         10.      Desktop Publishing

         9.        Cell Phone Miniaturization

8.      Laser Printing

             7.        FTP Capability

6.     Color Printing      

         5.     Digital Media (vs Analog)

                                        

4.   Laptops above 40 Gb

3.    Facebook

                                 2.      YouTube

                                                                             

                                          1.     Internet capable phones

If anyone has any additional items they would like to add, feel free… 

Steve Jobs - Marketing Visionary

The article that Rohit Bhargava wrote about Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, I found both thought provoking and inspiring. In the article, Rohit mentions that he is inspired by “actions” not “people”.  Then, the article goes on to explain how Jobs had the ability to attract “an army of smart people and help them create something real… products that affected how we experience the world.”  You can find my Digg at http://digg.com/news/business/influential_marketing_blog_what_steve_jobs_really_gave_us

Myself, I find vision inspiring. I find taking your concept of new technology and creating a computer operating system that radically differs from the current form, visionary.  Founding a company of three employees, to compete with a company partnered with IBM, and establish a lion’s share of the market within five years, I find visionary. Identifying a revolutionary animation technology, Pixar, purchasing it, and partnering it with the most prestigious, world-wide distributor of animated films, Walt Disney Company, is visionary.

Rohit states that Jobs was passionate.  I suggest that it was his vision that drove the passion and desire.  He had the ability to communicate that vision so that others understood it as clearly as he did. They could perceive why he was involved in the day to day work, how he had the ability to tweak the products in minute ways to make them better. And they shared that vision through the confidence that Jobs had when he introduced those products to the world.

I think the simplicity mentioned in the article can be explained by his vision as well. If you can already see the outcome, it makes the path getting there seem clear, simplified. It explains his ability to strip away everything that is not important, and focus on those things that support your vision. So this brings me to the final point - purpose.  

It was how Rohit describes Steve Jobs' purpose that inspired me most. It defines, with utmost clarity, the vision that Jobs had for Apple as their CEO. He defines the vision, the purpose and the mission statement of the company, exemplified in one person, in a way that I had never taken the time to reflect on. And as so often with commemorations, “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

Designing a Social Media Test

In our Social Media assignment this week, we are supposed to design a test that examines a particular component of a company’s social media campaign. For the purpose of this exercise I have chosen to design a test for Kumon Canada’s website. I would want to test particularly if it is necessary to share to 10 different sites listed on their share file. The purpose for testing is to see if the time and energy spent to monitor all these sites is actually resulting in a better understanding of how potential customers will interact with our site. There is likely a strategic reason why these sites were added originally, but to maintain monitoring for extended periods of time would involve costs that eventually require statistics to validate their necessity.

At the moment, this feature is offered only on the home page of the site. My assumption is that they hope to engage first-time visitors, or customers who return to the site for updates and enjoy the interaction. In targeting returning customers, the best way to elicit some action, say to get a “like” on Face book, is to offer something for free, say a set of books, tapes or DVDs, worth up to $40 retail.  By posting this promotion for one week on our Face book page, and following the likes and comments on the admin network, we would have proof and a count of interaction through that media.

The next week, we change the items being offered, and run the same promotion through the MySpace page, keeping track of the results again on the admin network. Week three, we would tweet from the admin account and record traffic driven to the MySpace page offer, recording any changes. The following week, in targeting the first-time visitors, a different offering but run the promo on the homepage near the share links, for people who post it on their Reddit account, Delicious account, Google Buzz, Stumbleupon, or Digg. Customers will submit their entry ballot by email with a link to the post they made.

Tracking the results each week would define which social media account is the most effective. This should also give accurate stats as to which share sites are most popular with Kumon visitors and clients. Decisions can then be made with these stats as to which media requires the most monitoring.

My Social Media Personality

I chose to write this blog as someone used to being analytical, investigative and conceptual, someone still searching to see the BIG picture. In business I am a natural-born communicator, an organizer, project-oriented, a problem-solver with a fair amount of insight who loves to rely on, and create, systems. I am drawn to challenges and like to develop models, explore ideas and satisfy the need to be innovative. But I would much rather accomplish these things at the back of the room, and let someone else bask in the limelight.  For me, the discovery and sharing of new ideas, or a project launched from paper to completion, is its own reward.   

My friends would describe me as reliable, cooperative, honest, optimistic, and an independent thinker. Aside from writing under a pen name, all content I include in my blog is original thoughts, and comes from the heart. I am not as physically active as I have been in younger years, and I can say with all honesty that recreational activity comes now with heavy stress on the “recreational.” My marriage relationship is strong and my three children are a blessing. I agree to accept responsibility easily, but I can also delegate when needed. I would like to think of myself as genuine. Genuine and dependable.  Like the Maytag repairman of late 20^th century. See http://www.characterweb.com/maytag.html .     

Communications - Same Job, Different World

I find it amazing how returning to school at 50 changes your perspectives. I feel like Marty in Back to the Future, where the names are the same, but the course content is vastly different. The purpose of this blog will be to journalize these perspectives in my journey to aspire to the present day expectations of my profession.

When I began my Marketing Management certificate program in 1980 at BCIT, the course selection was confined to Advertising, Business Writing, Salesmanship, Marketing, Management in Industry, Retailing and Public Speaking.  These courses were compiled by polling industry's needs and at the time seemed very appropriate. My 5 year career goal was to work myself up from customer service into outside sales, and eventually to sales management. A simple plan for simpler times. In the early 1980's when computer screens were monochrome, and DOS was king, lecture rooms where not digitized but used film projectors or overhead slides, the term "marketing" was very regional and involved a lot of energy and creativity to expand a company's brand or sphere of influence.

Today that same certificate program allows so many career options and boundless opportunities; Professional Real Estate Marketing, Marketing Communications, Professional Sales & Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Tourism Management to name a few. Each option path is drastically different and relies on entirely different abilities and skill sets. My impression is that the rapid evolution of communication is the major contributing factor.  Today we scan and text documents where 30 years ago it was type and fax. Instead of researching a company in Dunn and Bradstreet, a trade magazine, newspaper article or collecting literature at a trade show, we can view its annual report on its own webpage, collecting valuable and relevant information in less than 5 minutes. The old reliance on media to get the message out to the masses is now supplanted with technology that can target specific audiences. And gone are the days of constructing campaigns to create national brand exposure. The internet has leveled the playing field of all businesses so they are globally exposed and accessible.  Indeed, it is the job of the Marketing specialists now to protect a company's brand and sphere of influence. Where a large company, such as BC Tel (now Telus) in the '80's would have a marketing department with one or two specialists, that same company today requires a department of many marketing specialists. Its not that surprising.  After all, who would have been more affected by and understand the importance of the technological change in communications, and its marketing, than Telus. As Doc said in Back to the Future Part 2, "Its a new world out there, Marty."