When Offline Service Undermines Your Online Brand

Hysteria, slackerism and other bad habits to watch out for

There are several online brands – including Amazon.com, Zappos and Dan’s Chocolates – from which I would buy practically anything. Their customer experiences are spectacular: efficient, empathetic, and enjoyable.

Office superstore Staples has long been on my list – until recently.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Staples.com’s ease of ordering, special deals, record-keeping, Rewards Program, and free shipping for orders over $50. The site is both wildly convenient and dependable, and it is always the first place I turn when I need supplies.

But lately, Staples’ offline service is undermining all the great work the company has done in building its brand online – at least in this customer’s mind.

I receive too-frequent calls asking me about how my Rewards Program is “working out for ya.” The caller reminds me that I should have received my latest Rewards check (yes, I know this and I always spend them). She is there to help me if I need anything (yes, I know this too). As a small-business owner (who, for better or worse, is the office manager as well as the president of the company), I am not usually thinking about office supplies first thing on Monday mornings. I said this the last time I picked up the phone. (In fact, I usually think about it on the weekends - and love the ability to place orders 24x7.) Worse, the transaction, on the Staples end, has an edge of hysteria, making me wonder about the stability of Staples’ business.

The personal touch is important, but not if it’s intrusive – and only if it delivers real value to me as a customer.

Instead, why not send me a personalized email every Monday morning, with the representative’s contact information? This would enable me to react and respond based on my needs. And spare me the poor diction of the caller. (In the past, Staples employed clear-speaking people who would field service calls – and even call me if my shipment was delayed. Those days appear to be gone.) I still skim all mail from Staples. The vendor would have found this out if it ever surveyed me.

It gets worse.

Last week, I received a call from the IT services group of Staples, Thrive Networks. The caller inquired if “you guys” had anyone taking care of our IT systems and asking if the caller’s company might help “you guys.” First, I am not a guy (obvious by my name and voice on the telephone). Second, I am a PROSPECT with MONEY to spend on office supplies and tech support – not your friend from the bar (otherwise why are you calling me?) This was the all-important first chance to make a good impression – and the caller failed. He also introduced more cognitive dissonance into my decade-long good feelings about the Staples.com brand.

The most troubling thing about these transactions was not the transactions themselves. It was the fact that they demonstrated a startling lack of empathy or understanding of the customer (a small business-owner who by definition is busy and one who is obviously a woman). I no longer feel that Staples knows me at all - even though the company has collected all that information about me. (Much of the information is in fact available to me in my online account).

One might argue that Staples was a bricks-and-mortar company first, and an online company second, making the comparison with Amazon, Zappos, et al., unfair. But other bricks-and-mortars do a great job of delivering a consistent brand experience across offline and online media. (I wrote about one recently, Hafner Vineyard, a small family-owned business.)

My advice to marketers: if you struggle with this problem, go back to the basics. Think about who you are selling to, what their problems are, and how you can best help the customer. That’s a good start.

PS: I am still a Staples customer, and fervently hope that it can fix these problems.

Is Marketing Gobbledygook Destroying Your Brand?

How Hafner Vineyard avoids the trap and builds a brand that pops.

I spend a lot of time in this blog talking about the use of Internet technologies to build brand image and sell products, particularly for smaller businesses. David Meerman Scott recently wrote a blog article about technology marketers’ use of stock photos of people – you know, those indistinguishable photos of too-beautiful-to-be-true people.

For me, the article raised an important question: is marketing gobbledygook destroying your brand?

Do you find yourself copying words, pictures and graphics that make you look and sound like your competitors? If so, it dilutes the distinctiveness of your brand. In today’s cut-and-paste society, technology makes it all too easy for marketers to fall into the marketing gobbledygook trap – and many do.

Not Hafner Vineyard.

Hafner Vineyard is a small, family-run vineyard in the Alexander Valley in Sonoma County. It makes wonderful Chardonnays and Cabernets. You can get their wines if you dine in dozens of restaurants in California, or by ordering it from the vineyard. That’s it.

I was introduced to Hafner a few years ago, when I received a direct-mail piece from the company. I am a wine-lover, so I assume that they bought my name from one of the many wine and travel publications that I subscribe to.

Regardless, the direct-mail piece was so beautifully designed, written and produced that it immediately drew me into the winery. It appealed to me as a wine-drinker who is always looking for new wines and wine-drinking experiences. I bought. And I bought. And I bought for clients at Christmas. The products are wonderful, and I have become a raving fan. As have my clients, who all asked: “where did you find this wine?” (It found me and made me love it, like all great marketing.)

Hafner recently published a new web site, and their brand just pops off the page. Like that first direct-mail piece, the web site makes me feel like I am at the winery. It brings me into how they make the wine, who makes the wine (no stock photos or self-consciously hip bios here), and how to buy the wine.

Hafner is notable because of how it uses technology. And sometimes less is more.

When I placed my first order, I received a personal confirmation phone call from the head of marketing, Scott Hafner. I always know when my standing order will arrive because I receive a postcard (how low-tech but reassuring – a person sent this!) When I placed my Christmas-gift order, I received a confirming call from one of Scott’s colleagues to review the information.

Shipments usually include a little gift – some hand-drawn postcards of the winery, or some permanent corks for resealing wine. When you buy something from Hafner, you can always speak with a person if you want. (And, when I posted a comment about Hafner wines on a New York Times article, Scott recognized my name and called me again.) I have an open invitation to visit, as I am reminded on occasional postcards. I am, for sure, not their biggest customer, but they always make me feel as if I were their most important customer.

Granted, some of these processes may not be scalable for a larger business. But it’s the thought that counts. Hafner’s marketing works because it is 100% empathetic: Scott and his family put themselves in the customer’s shoes, and use marketing – high-tech and low-tech – to create a 100% marketing experience. Larger businesses can achieve this by using technology creatively: just think about Zappos - another favorite of mine.

The trick is to let your brand values rule, not the technology or “popular” marketing practices.

Curing Blogorrhea and Other Mysterious Social-Media-Marketing Maladies

Just because you can say anything online, doesn’t mean you should

For me, one of the best things about social media is the ability to learn things from other people.

Because of people’s willingness to share expertise, I have learned a lot from professionals in my field and the industries I cover, as well as from talented amateurs. I hope I return the favor by writing this blog and participating thoughtfully in Twitter and Facebook.

I’ve also learned what NOT to do, by witnessing some mysterious behavior.

Perhaps emboldened by the bits and bandwidth to say as much as they want – and the relative anonymity – some people do say anything. And usually to the detriment of their personal brands and careers.

Here are four examples of mysterious social-marketing maladies, along with my prescriptions for them.

Blogorrhea: An irresistible urge to run off at the mouth on one’s blog without considering the big picture, context or long-term ramifications.

An example: A colleague and talented fellow consultant has a really interesting blog. Recently, she criticized – by name – a prominent public figure from her past, as well as a past employer. She also disclosed what seemed to me like confidential information about the employer. These comments were presented within the context of a thought leadership article that had some valid points. But if I put on my CEO hat, I would have to ask myself: “Would I hire this person as a consultant? What’s to prevent me and my company from ending up as a subject in a future blog post?”

I would also be hesitant to introduce her to any of my clients, for the same reason. Perhaps there was a strategy behind this article, but I remain mystified. I consider client and employer relationships lifelong relationships – even if they end badly. (The bad guys usually will get out-ed, by someone else.) I also take client NDAs very seriously. I don’t blog about the internals of clients’ businesses without their explicit permission.

My Rx: if you must write about clients and employers, anonym-ize what you say. Yes, this is probably not as tantalizing and self-aggrandizing, but it’s safer from a career perspective.

Projectile Preciosity: An assumption that everything about you is interesting to everyone equally.

An example: Babies think everything about them is interesting. Today, many adults apparently do too, and social media sites enable them to share this information ad infinitum. I am appalled by the number of mature professionals (not just college students) who are shooting themselves in the foot by posting inappropriate information on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Most recently, I was shocked to see a former colleague – a great technical marketing professional – use a picture of herself in a bathing suit on her LinkedIn profile. (And she was seeking employment in her field, not in lifeguarding, modeling or adventure travel.)

My Rx: If you are a job-seeking professional, decide on a personal brand strategy that provides the proper context for everything you do and say online. Then stick with it. (There are a lot of great resources about personal branding.) I actually advise a personal-brand strategy for everyone, even my retired mother: your social media footprint is searchable, permanent, and universally available (in spite of social-media sites' policies about privacy and data-sharing). No social media site is an island, and you are what you Tweet and who you Friend even if you protect your updates. (And, yes, my mother took my advice.)

Marketing Misanthropy: Using social media for negative or self-absorbed brand marketing.

An example: On my personal Twitter account, I recently posted a mini-review about a wine from New Zealand that I had tried and liked. Another winemaker (whom I follow) replied to me with a condescending comment about the wine. In about 120 characters, he (1) managed to insult me as a prospective customer (I buy a lot of wine, which should be evident from my Twitter account); and (2) missed an opportunity to introduce me to one of his wines. In fact, looking at his Twitter account, he hardly ever promotes his wines. Clever cool-guy points: 1, Marketing points: -10. Why is his brand on Twitter? If this is a personal Twitter account, why would he link it with his brand?

My Rx: If you are tweeting or blogging on behalf of a brand, remember that you are representing the brand – not yourself. Let your personality shine through, but in an unobtrusive way that strengthens not weakens the brand. Look for “teachable moments,” like the one above. That’s called marketing, and social media gives brands a unique opportunity to create personalized dialogs – with millions of teachable moments. You’re crazy if you don’t take advantage of this opportunity.

An update: the winemaker has since protected his Tweets. Probably a good idea: if you can't stand the heat, best to stay in the cave.

Terminal Coolness: Using social media for mindless, distracting and irrelevant self-promotion.

An example: Another colleague has a great blog about marketing writing. He has a regular, ardent follower who regularly replies and re-tweets him on Twitter. But the re-tweets generally consist of: “You, @XXXXX. That’s bad, man” and variations on this theme. The follower’s bio suggests that he is a professional, not a professional rapper or a rapper-wannabe. He doesn’t appear to be a spammer. Perhaps there is some scam here that it isn’t evident – and I am just not smart enough to figure it out. At the risk of sounding undemocratic, he’s a waste of bits.

My Rx: Get some therapy.

Most of the problems above could be solved with mega-doses of three virtual vitamins: Vitamin A (awareness), Vitamin C (context), and Vitamin E (empathy).

Do you know anyone with these maladies? What do you think?

How and Why I Tweet

A journey into the dark underbelly of Janice L. Brown’s Twitter life

In my last blog post, I wrote about how I created my own Twitterverse to meet my business and personal goals.

Here are some of the ways that I have created my own private Twitterverse, and what you can expect from me if you are part of it:

I tweet about topics of professional interest to me: technology, healthcare, marketing, advertising, journalism, corporate communications, writing, language, social media, social trends, my clients' businesses, and the downfall of the American empire (a.k.a., secular degradation.)

I don’t tweet about things outside these topics. Why? Because these topics define me and my personal brand. Tweeting about only these topics creates a critical mass of opinion that helps other people – the right people – discover me.

I have started another personal Twitter account to cater to my other interests: food, wine, travel, films, music, books and the evolution of popular culture.

I tweet whenever I do posts on my blogs.

If I have to think too much before tweeting on a particular topic, then I don’t do it. This means it’s outside my span. My “blink” is usually right. (Although politics ever tempts.).

I try to limit my tweets to a few per day. But if I don’t have something valuable to say, I won’t tweet – even if I miss a day.

I un-follow people who tweet too much. Ditto people who use so many clichés and mantras that my teeth hurt: they are typically lazy thinkers and conformists.

I try to SEO my tweets and my profiles so the right people will find and follow me. Sometimes I succeed.

I try to be provocative but always relevant (not sensationalist). I also try to be polite and constructive (that's just my personality).

I re-tweet items of interest from people I follow. I often find interesting new people to follow in what my followers tweet. So my personal Twitterverse grows organically.

I usually don’t follow people who don’t use their real names or who lack robust profiles, including ideally a real photo (clothed). I stopped watching cartoons as a kid. What are they hiding?

I don’t block anyone except people pitching sex (or criminals or apparently crazy people). I have nothing against selling or buying sex. I just think it’s incredibly rude to make me look at your naked picture (or worse) if I didn’t request to do so. Particularly before I have had my second cup of coffee. Blocking seems…un-Twitter-like.

I report spammers. You wrecked email; please don’t wreck Twitter.

I get ticked off if I follow a business thought leader and all he talks about is baseball or trips to the dentist. I often un-follow – it just takes too much work to find the nuggets. (A few personal moments are ok, but I save mine for Facebook.) I know that TMS (too much sharing) is part of the social media game, but I need to protect my time and my sanity.

And I get really ticked off if I follow an organization or business, and the resident Tweep starts tweeting about her boyfriend or going shoe-shopping. Brand, people, brand! (Un-follow.)

I don’t thank everyone who follows me, but I appreciate those who do (except spammers).

I don’t automatically follow people who follow me – even if they are my offline friends or colleagues. They have to post content I am interested in. Otherwise, I will catch up with them the next time I see them in person. Or on Facebook.

I take highly personal comments offline – to Direct Message – but I can’t do this if you don’t follow me back.

I use hash tags sparingly. Great for events and established groups, but otherwise overused in my opinion. Except for #spam.

I never tweet while drinking. (Sorry for those of you who like the entertainment value.)

I value my followers and those I follow, and try to protect the integrity of these groups as much as possible. My followers and those who follow me, in a sense, define me and my brand. I know that I don’t have total control, but that’s just part of the organic discovery process of social media.

How and why do you tweet? Please comment below.

My Own Private Twitterverse

As a marketer, what can I learn from my own behavior?

When I began my career in marketing and corporate communications many years ago, I created a regular morning ritual. I would get up very early, skim the major business daily newspapers, clip stories for my files, and forward select articles as a courtesy to my clients. To do my job correctly, I have always found it important to stay on top of trends and look for competitive or commentary opportunities for my clients.

Of course, my ritual has changed over the years, as technology has changed.

Today, I still get up early. But I go online to skim the major business dailies, to bookmark or share important stories, to add my comments to stories, and to read my Google alerts and RSS feeds. And I spend more time reading blogs than I do reading mainstream media sites.

The biggest change has happened in the last year. I now start my morning by checking my Twitter account first.

My personal Twitterverse – the few hundred people I follow – are a trusted group of colleagues and sources. These are chosen relationships, not forced ones (“must read The Boston Globe because I might miss something important”).

My Twitterverse can often point me to news and content – from mainstream-media sources and non-mainstream-media sources – that I care about faster and better than I can find it myself. On Twitter, I can essentially subscribe to opinions from bloggers, as well as headlines from mainstream publications. And I can share things that are important to me, with people who I care about or have come to value. Twitter has dramatically changed the process of discovery for me.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the value of Twitter. Critics point to the low signal-to-noise ratio, the increasing amount of spam, and the number of inactive accounts. But Twitter has become an important and valued part of my professional life. (It’s also become an increasingly valuable marketing tool for my clients, which you can read about elsewhere on this blog.)

Twitter works for me because I have made it my own private Twitterverse. In my case, I have carefully accumulated followers, and I think carefully about everyone I follow. I have gone for quality over quantity.

With millions of people participating in Twitter – many of them inactive or marginally active – it is increasingly important for marketers to be able to find and engage with the most active and thoughtful among us.

So, what engages me, as an active member of Twitter?

I like tweets that are:

Provocative – give me information and ideas that get me thinking

Relevant – appeal to my interests and use SEO so that my standing searches can find good tweets easily

Valuable – provide working links to valuable content or information that I can take action on easily (for example, an ebook I can download)

Obvious – favor descriptive language over cutesy but obscure language

Sharable – leave enough space so I can easily re-tweet (I suggest at least 20 characters)

Consistent – stick to an area of expertise and don’t go off on tangents

Respectful – don’t waste my time

Authentic – come from a real person or brand, with a real profile and a real photo or company logo

In my next blog post, I will provide some insight into how I created my own private Twitterverse: how I tweet.

(The picture above is me on the stage set of my first press conference, in the 80s. And yes, I am communicating with a colleague in Europe using a telephone - not a cell phone, SMS or Twitter.)

Why “Social” is the Most Important Part of Social Media Marketing

Why It's Vital to Put Your Best People Forward

I am getting a lot of calls from businesses today about social media marketing. The gist of these conversations is usually: “I need to get some of that social media.” And many of these conversations conclude with “But I don’t have the people to put into it.”

My advice: then you should forget it.

That may sound a bit unilateral, but for the most part it’s sound advice. Because the “social” part of “social media marketing” – people – is the most important part.

Ok, there are some exceptions. For example, we’ve seen Dell sell millions of dollars of its products over Twitter, by simply posting what’s on sale. Food trucks are boosting their sales by using Twitter to advertise their locations, and retailers are using Twitter to clear out excess inventory. Arguably, the amount of “sosh” (social interactions and content) that goes into these sales-oriented programs is minimal: the value to the customer lies in the price, the timeliness, and the location. (Although I would also argue that if companies are just pushing out products and not taking advantage of the ability to have a two-way conversation with the people they sell to, they are missing an important business opportunity.)

But for most programs the true value will be in the “sosh.” And “sosh” equals people. Their expertise and their knowledge. Their personalities. Their familiarity with your products and your customers’ problems, and their pride in helping solve those problems. Their enthusiasm and their ability to converse on behalf of the business.

These factors are what will make you a valuable resource to customers and prospects, and someone they want to do business with.

Some of the businesses who call me want to outsource their social media – in other words, check it off their marcom to-do lists.

But if this describes you, ask yourself: are you really ready to delegate your newfound, highly interactive and content-rich conversation with your customers to someone outside your company? As my colleague Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR says of “outsourcing” your social media strategy: “Do you want to create opinion leaders who aren’t internal subject matter experts? That's like shipping weapons to the Mujahideen. Yes, they may use them to fight the Russians now, but they can also use them to fight us later.”

If you’re really struggling with manpower, look for creative ways to staff your program. For example:

There may be people inside your product organization (beyond the official product managers) who are already blogging or engaging in social media. Can you draft and train them?

Could you create an employee blog, but empower your Corporate Communications team to review content from hundreds of employees before it is posted – as Southwest Airlines did successfully with Nuts About Southwest?

Could you empower current students to answer questions from prospective students like the Wharton School has done in the Student2Student forum on the MBA Admission Blog?

For some other examples of creative staffing of social media programs, see my previous posts: “Bringing Brand Image to Life through Social Media Marketing" and “Does Social Media Work for B2B Companies?”

Social media marketing can be an invaluable strategy for most businesses. But it requires a social commitment, and that means people. It requires time to create compelling content and create a living, three-dimensional brand. Taking a checklist approach to this challenge is a sure path to lackluster results or even failure.

Are You Guilty of Anti-Social Marketing?

How to avoid being an accidental blammer, drive-by shooter or hitchhiker.

Social media marketing is evolving pretty quickly, so many of us are learning as we go. Learning means trying new things, and testing limits.

Unfortunately, I am seeing some people really testing the limits of social media – to the point of being anti-social. I think a lot of this behavior may be inadvertent. But it goes against the spirit of social media marketing and it will hurt – not help – the craft of social media marketing in the long run.

Here are three common offenders* – and some advice on how to avoid becoming one.

The Blammer: The urban dictionary defines a blammer as “someone who spams blogs in order to obtain backlinks to their own site.” Here’s one example. A colleague of mine posted an extensive, well-written “10 tips” article on his blog. A woman posted a one-line comment that essentially said “hire me for this part of the problem,” with a link to her web site. The comment seemed too intelligent to be an automated spam, but the effect was the same: thoughtless, selfish and, well, anti-social. The sad thing: this woman is tops in her field, but I would never hire her on principle for fear that she’d act thoughtless and selfish with my clients.

My advice: Don’t be an accidental blammer. If you comment on someone’s blog, leave some value behind – not just a sales pitch. Spend five minutes making some substantive comments, adding some educational value and some context before you make your sales pitch. You might just spark a dialog that enhances your reputation and opens up even more business opportunity – even if you have no blog of your own.

The Drive-By Shooter: By my estimates, more than half of comments to blogs and other social media sites are off-topic, crazy or just plain mean: offhand comments lobbed just for the heck of it, and usually anonymously. So I was surprised when I received an offhand comment like that in the relatively intimate and accountable world of Facebook.

A friend of a friend made an offhand comment about something I had posted. While I was tempted to dismiss it for what it appeared to be, I didn’t. Reading between the lines, I saw that the commenter was making an interesting point. So, I responded in public: I thanked her for her comment and encouraged her to blog about it if she wasn’t already. She later sent me a personal message apologizing for the offhand remark, and thanking me for responding seriously and graciously. We are now Facebook friends. I have met someone new with professional interests and personal interests similar to mine – the value of social media.

My advice: Don’t join the mindless ranks of drive-by shooters, or lob-em-and-leave-em commenters. Do be thought-provoking and sensationalist, but also be thoughtful. Take advantage of the available real estate in comments sections: provide your thoughts, get a dialog going, spark a useful debate. Dialog and debate is incredibly powerful, and it advances not only your personal brand but also the cumulative value of social media.

And remember: a lot of what you say is searchable forever, so it contributes – positively or negatively – to your personal digital profile on the Web.

The Hitchhiker: Ok, this one really ticks me off. A Tweep Tweeted his own blog as if it were someone else’s: “wow, here’s a great blog! Tell everyone!!” He also tacked on the names of three other Tweeps – unrelated (as far as I can tell) to anything in the blog. And this wasn’t an isolated Tweet; it’s apparently his standard M.O.

This seems like a cheap way to amass followers. Ironically, the blog is actually pretty good. But I would never follow it on principle, because I now don’t trust the blogger. If he uses such transparent trickery to promote his blog, he’s completely untrustworthy in my opinion. I can’t trust his content.

My advice: Let your blog content stand on its own. Use your Tweets to get the right people to your blog. Be controversial, colorful and “out there.” SEO as you go. You may not build your followers as fast, but you will create a more valuable, committed audience – which ultimately has much more marketing value.

Social media marketers seem to be diverging into two camps: the Sluts and the Substance. The Sluts want to get business and followers without extending themselves. The Substance are people who understand that great, thoughtful content is more likely to attract the right followers – and that good business will follow and sustain itself.

Call me naïve, but I aspire to the Substance.

* I am not using real names here because lawyers have apparently identified social media as fertile ground for defamation lawsuits.