Practical Conversations

Communicating your organization’s message, whether that message pertains to a sales, marketing or support function should always take your audiences needs into consideration. The problem tends to be that professionals write professionally. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a place for technical jargon, buzzwords and catch phrases – but unless your message is specific to a technical or niche market, your audience may be more inclined to walk away and choose other options. This has the potential to damage your brand image and bottom line.

Clearly defining your goals and understanding that your audience’s goals and your organization’s goals need to be in tune with one another is very important, yet the needs of your audience are more than just ‘widget A’ or ‘concept B’, they are driven by issues of belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization.

Creating a sense of belonging makes your audience feel valued.

Enabling deeper and more personal relationships with your audience has the potential to make them active participants in the defining and creative processes of products, services and solutions. Setting clear standards for your ‘Brand Personality’ and simple directions for your employees and co-workers, if done with your audience’s perspective in mind, allows your organization to develop brand trust and customers to develop brand affinity.

When your audience is looking for assistance with finding a solution or resolving an issue, the last thing that they need is someone communicating in language that is technical or using language that implies a lack of knowledge or experience. Though this tends to go both ways, using language your customers don’t understand may turn them off to your brand, but simplifying the language too much may wind up insulting them. Conversational language beats jargon any day!

Creating avenues for your audience to respond and communicate in a perceived real-time way develops a sense of ownership and true brand trust. This empowers your audience to:

• understand and embrace the realities of your products, services and brand
• spontaneously contribute to conversations with the organization and other potential audience members
• proactively find answers to problems and openly share their stories and experiences about your brand

In the end, your audience is depending on you. They are looking to you for solutions, support and recognition – yet they are also looking to find a home for their personal fulfillment, even if only on a professional level.

When I was studying interpersonal communication at Ithaca College in the early 90s, one of the concepts we looked at was whether your environment encouraged or discouraged communication.  The terms I learned were: sociopetal (environment encourages communication) and sociofugal (environment discourages communication.)

Sociofugal Environment

Sociopedal Environment

Determining if a physical environment encourages or discourages communication is a pretty straightforward process.  You may look at how the chairs are arranged in a room or where the food stations are placed at a party.  Evaluating how we’re encouraging/discouraging communication online can be more challenging.  It’s obvious that a blog post with comments closed discourages communication.  But what if your goal is for blog commenters to interact with each other?  Does it make more sense to have threaded comments so it’s clear which comment someone is replying to?

When designing your blog/community/site/app, you need to know your goals to determine if you’re getting what you need.  Are you looking to encourage discussion among your customers?  To encourage conversation directly with you?

A form to rate content and submit comments that doesn’t show previous ratings or comments like in Microsoft support articles (at bottom of article) will encourage communication with you directly, but not among customers.  While an approach like Amazon customer reviews, encourages some interaction among customers.

It’s worth stepping back (or getting someone with fresh eyes) to look at how you’ve designed your blog/community/site/app.  Are you encouraging or discouraging communication?

Last Wednesday, just before Thanksgiving, I took the time to give thanks to my Dimdim customers (Dimdim web conferencing, giving thanks to you.)  I left the office later in the day to enjoy the long weekend.

Everything was good and relaxing until Friday, early afternoon, when I got a call from the office.  I had just bundled up and was getting my dog ready to go for a walk around our block (about 4 miles.)  While in the process of setting up a new workflow to help test our outgoing emails, the wrong list of people was selected.  Luckily the team caught the problem and turned off the new workflow, but not until after 1,000+ people had been emailed (some receiving up to 25 emails in under 10 minutes.)  There were a few customers on Twitter expressing concern and a few emails received, but that was about it.  Once we had identified what went wrong, I put in a request for help in getting the full list of people and went back to my weekend. (which was otherwise good, by the way.)

Monday morning I had my list of affected customers.  Deciding what to do wasn’t difficult, it was clearly our mistake.  If I had suddenly received anywhere from 1 to 25 email messages in under 10 minutes, most unrelated to the product/trial I was in, I’d expect an apology.  So this is what I sent to all these customers:

Subject: Conflicting Dimdim messages are not our way of thanking you

Early in the day Friday (Nov 27), we were excited to be working on some improvements to our process, but unforunately we accidentally added you to a new program that wasn’t ready yet. I’m very sorry for the extra emails – it’s definitely not a good way for us to say thank you.

As soon as we realized what was happening, we stopped the new workflow so you should not be receiving any more incorrect emails. We’re changing how we manage workflow updates to make sure this never happens again.

Thank you!

-k
Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager
Dimdim Web Conferencing
e: kevin@dimdim.com
twitter: @dimdim

I know sometimes it’s hard to swallow our pride, but the fact of the matter is that we’re human and mistakes happen.  When I scheduled the email to go out I started worrying a little about what type of response I’d get.  I’m still surprised at the responses I’ve received.

• 3 people asked me to never email them again
• 13 people sent me thank you messages

The thank you notes were such a wonderful reminder of how much people value an honest direct approach.  Here are some of the responses:

“How refreshing!  Admitting, apologizing and fixing an error. I appreciate this very much.” [Email]

“I was wondering about the massive number of emails. Thanks for the clarity.” [Email]

“Thanks for the clarification, I assumed I requested the wrong information.  I realized it did not affect my account and I simply deleted the duplicate messages – no worries at all.  These things happen and we move on.  Hope your Thanksgiving Holiday was enjoyable!” [Email]

“‘No worries man!  I love your site and I’ll provide any feedback or help you out in any way. ” [Email]

“Kevin – Thanks for your email.  I was thinking it was unusual to receive so many emails in such a short space of time.” [Email]

“Thank you so much for your message.  As a matter of fact, at first I was surprised by the messages, but it was pretty obvious there was a glitch somewhere.  It speaks very highly of the organization when you take the time to explain to the users what happened; it is not as common as it should be.  I just started testing DimDim, and if this is the support I can expect in the future, I’m sure I’ll be a very happy customer.  Thank you again and a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you.” [Email]

“Bravo ! Je viens de recevoir un courriel de DimDim qui s’excuse pour les nombreux courriels envoyés la semaine dernière. C’était une erreur” (Via Google Translate: “Bravo! I just received an email DimDim who apologizes for the many emails sent last week. It was a mistake”) [Twitter]

Next time you encounter a problem where an apology is needed, remember it’s not about you.  It’s about the customers who deserve your apology.

Thanks!

-k

For the September, 2009 Social Media Breakfast NH (#smbnh) at the Manchester, NH Public Library I gave this talk about my rules for community.  I call it ‘Kev’s Rules for Community’.

I try to live these rules every day--whether I’m engaging online via twitter, blogs, or any other tools.  The rules are simple:

1. Be Real (don’t be a bot)
2. Address the Need (not just the explicit ones)
3. Be the Gatekeeper (never be the roadblock)

These rules are part of a project I’m working on to get the Dimdim support team on Twitter, directly engaging with customers.  My goal was to go beyond just teaching the tools.  Anyone can create a Twitter account and jump into the conversation.  I wanted to make sure we are consistent in our approach.

I personally have a hard time following rules if there are too many to remember.  What are your rules?  Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter (@kevinmic)

-k

[Special thanks to Matt Turner (@onmatt, www.onmatt.com) for helping to pull all the examples together for this talk, and Leslie Poston (@geechee_girl, www.uptownuncorked.com) for the opportunity to speak.  I do so love to talk.]

A friend of mine will be attending her first social media event this Friday.  She’s joining us at the Social Media Breakfast NH BBQ.

I’ve been thinking about the best advice I can give her — she told me that she’s shy at this type of event.  Having attended a number of events, I recommend:

Look around the room for the people who look like they want to be engaged, but are hanging back.  Chances are they are more shy than you and just waiting for someone to break the silence.

I’ve used this approach many times and found almost everyone I approached seemed relieved when I introduced myself.  I typically ask people what they do, then go from there.  I try to keep my mouth shut (which as an extrovert, is sometimes a challenge) and focus on listening to what they have to say.

Some people will answer quickly, then drop back into silence. That’s ok.  They’ll need to move at their own pace.  Follow-up questions you might want to ask are:

• is this your first _________ (insert event name)? — which can open the door to talking about how other events went, what they got out of them.  Could also be a good way to help you judge whether the mix of topics and people is the right kind of event for you to attend in the future.
• what brought you to  ________ (insert event name)? — a good way to get an understanding of what they need/are looking for.  It might be something you could help them with, or at least you might know someone they should talk to.
• I’m still new to __________ (pick your latest social media site/service/craze).  Do you use it?  What do you use it for? How have you been doing it? — this could give you good tips/pointers for your own use.

Talking about the weather is a typical fallback for many people.  Try to stick to questions that help your get to know the person better.

Remember, if it comes down to it and it’s too hard to draw them into the conversation, you can always politely say “I’m trying to meet as many people as possible today.  It was great to meet you.”  Pause for a moment, then look around the room.  There’s always someone out there hoping someone else will break that awkward moment and start a conversation.

-k

As someone reviewing resumes for a Social Media & Web Marketing Specialist position, I’d like to share some tips.  In the first 48 hours I had about 100 people email me.  I’m guessing other employers are having similar experiences.  Some of these tips really aren’t social media specific, but take my advice:

Everyone wants to stand out, but if you create more work for the person reviewing resumes, chances are you won’t be considered.

I’m doing my best to review every applicant who has contacted me, but if it takes me more than a few minutes to get an impression, I’ll admit you go on the “no thank you” pile.

Tip 1: Resumes are still used

It’s great you have a LinkedIn profile or that you keep information about yourself on your web site.  If 99% of other candidates are still sending a resume, having to go find information about you creates more work. Not good.  It may be a personal preference, but I try to stay organized and my inbox expands by several hundred a day, for me it’s easier if you send your resume as an attachment.  No need to attach your cover letter, your email can say the same thing.

Tip 2: If your resume doesn’t include links to you & your work, you aren’t presenting yourself as a social media pro

I hate to be harsh about this one, but if I’m looking to hire someone it’s because I need help.  (Meaning I’m already overloaded.)  If I have to lookup your information to know you have a professional online presence, you haven’t made it easy for me.  I’m not saying you should provide a laundry list of all your sites, just the ones you feel are key.  You want the links to point to you and your work.  It’s your portfolio, not the kitchen sink, just include the best.

Tip 3: Be easy to find

It should be a given, but just in case you’re new to this, if you make it past an initial review of applicants, expect the next step will be that someone Googles you.  Are the links that come up ones you would want a prospective employer to see?  Do you come up in the results at all?

When I get so many files, I typically save them all off into a folder.  Naming your resume ‘resume2.doc’ makes it that much harder for me to find you again later.  At a minimum, make sure your name is in the file name.

I’m sure there are many things I’m not thinking of, but I have to get back to finding the right person for this role.  Any other suggestions?  Leave a comment.

-k

Last Thursday ended up being a very interesting afternoon.  During lunch I went out to run some errands.  At one point (while waiting at a red light) I checked Twitter to see the following:

I’m grateful that @AppraiserJenn took the time to let me know.  A few hours before I had tweeted a link to a blog post by Rachel Happe (@rhappe) on the Community Maturity Model using the bit.ly link shortening service.  I’ve had great luck with the bit.ly service so I doubted the problem happened with them, but since I was on the road and couldn’t look into it — I was concerned.  At another stop light I tweeted apologies, then rushed back to work to see how bad the damage was.  

Back at work I finally saw the mystery tweet, which was supposedly sent “from web”.  Problem is, it was sent while I was driving.  And I didn’t send it.

That was enough to convince me somehow my account had been hacked.  I immediately logged in to change my Twitter password (took 5 tries because Twitter was again “over capacity”).  I also went into my profile to see what applications/services I had authorized (under Settings/Connections).  Changing my password was probably enough, but I was feeling a bit violated.

I’m a pretty trusting person and love trying out new services, so I’ve very freely been entering my Twitter username and password many places.  Why copy and paste when I can just click “tweet this”?  Until I forget about this eventful Thursday (which I’m sure I will), I’m only using my desktop Twitter client, BlackBerry client, and TwitterFeed.  

What can you do to prevent this from happening?

1. Pick a real password!  Easy to remember, hard to guess (which mine was)
2. Be careful who you give your username and password to (which I wasn’t)
3. Change your password periodically (I’m very bad about this)
4. Don’t use the same password for everything (now working on changing them all)

Twitter is also trying to help us by creating OAuth, so we won’t have to give out our passwords to use 3rd party sites/services.  When you want the 3rd party application to have access to your Twitter account, that app calls Twitter and Twitter manages the login process.  Twitter remembers what applications you’ve authorized (TwitterFeed uses this service), so you can go into your Twitter settings and revoke access at any time.  No password was given to the 3rd party site.

-k

(for those wondering, my curiosity got the best of me late in the day and I clicked the link.  Let’s just say it’s about “male enhancement”. Definitely not safe for work!)

When I switched to Mac, I had to give up my habit of using Outlook for managing my task list (Entourage doesn’t sync Tasks to the server and I typically have 100+ items on my lists).  After some research, I went with Remember The Milk and signed up for a 1-year account (in January 2009) so I could use their MilkSync for BlackBerry.  

Near the end of April I started encountering an error with MilkSync.  The issue was acknowledged on April 25th by email.  Two days later I was asked to provide my logs (and they sent easy to follow instructions on how to get the logs they needed.)   April 28th, I received an email saying:

“I’ve been advised by the team that this issue should be fixed. Please let me know if you have any further issues.”

I thought, great!  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.  On May 2nd I replied to the email again to let the support rep know the issue still hadn’t been resolved.  I even sent a photo of the error.  No response.  May 28th I sent this message:

“I’m writing to express how extremely disappointed I am that as a customer who purchased I received no further response on this issue (from May 2nd.)  At thetime Krissy emailed me the issue was not fixed.  The errors stopped within a week of sending that email, but I ended up having to reset my sync for the product to work correctly again (it was reporting that sync successfully ran, but was not updating data.)  I’m not sure about you, but I’m VERY hesitant to give any product that touches my contact list another try if I lose important data.  

I’m in the process of looking for something to replace RTM with my BlackBerry now.”

It’s been almost a month since my last email to them and still haven’t received any acknowledgement.  I’m pretty patient, but that is unacceptable.  When I found the MilkSync app was showing my tasks had successfully synchronized, but they hadn’t. In the end I lost some of my task list data.  That was when I cancelled my 1-year non-refundable account, only 5 months into what I had paid for.

I think what I had the most trouble with is that the only means of contact was email, which obviously failed.  The support issue received a tracking number that was in the subject of all communications, so I’m assuming there is a tracking system behind it.  Even if the support rep had taken a sabbatical or left the company, there needs to be a process in place to ensure customer issues don’t fall through the cracks.  

-k

 I’ve been using Evernote for years now.  When I switched to Mac a few months ago I noticed a problem with the Evernote client for Mac.  When I would select a category for my note, it would jump to a seemingly random category regardless of what I selected.  I could work around this by going back into the note and moving it to the right place, but when you’re clipping things for reference later the last thing you want to be doing is spending extra time on it.  

I submitted the issue to Evernote on March 22nd and received an automated response.  As a “premium member” I should get a response within 1 day.  The next day I received my response with a follow-up question from a support rep.  We went back and forth a few times.  The support rep was unable to reproduce the issue, so I created a Jing video to show how easy it was for me to recreate.  Two days after submitting, the issue was given over to QA to be reproduced.  They had acknowledge my issue and were taking a look at it.  

Where I get  excited is less than 2 weeks after reporting my annoying but not show-stopping issue, I received an email saying:

Hi Kevin,

this bug is fixed. New Mac version with bug fix will be released next week.

Thanks,

Evernote Support

True to form, in a week the new release fixed the issue.  

Way to go Evernote.  The entire process was handled via email, but at no point did I feel like I was forgotten or ignored.  The added touch of confirming it will be in the release made me feel that I had someone looking out for me.

I’ve been extremely behind on my blog reading and started to catch up tonight.  One post that caught my attention was from Sean Bohan, My 11 Twitter Guidelines.  There’s plenty of Twitter advice out there, but few who boil it down to the essentials like Sean did.  All 11 recommendations are good, but two really stand out for me:

• Be human
• Make your tweets inherently “retweetable”. 

It’s important to be human (or “real”), but worth noting that doesn’t mean the world needs to know you’re going out for brunch.  That’s why I keep my @kevinmic and @dimdim lives separate.  I assume people following @dimdim are there because they are interested in web conferencing, webinars, elearning, etc.  People following @kevinmic are subject to my scattered interests.

After reading Sean’s post, I realized I’ve started to look at my tweets from the perspective of “is this retweetable?”  But, I was only taking that approach with the tweets I wanted retweeted.  A few hours before reading these tips, I had someone prove the point — they retweeted a tweet I thought no one would want to tweet.

Thanks to Sean for this great advice!

-k