Archive for 2009

• Social Media Customer Service

• Thursday, December 17th, 2009

• A recent experience with my bank had me thinking again about the use of social media in customer service.

  The large number of high profile social media customer service disasters experienced by companies such as United, Comcast and HP make it plain that any company whose consumer products could conceivably require customer service issues must have a process in place to identify and address customer service issues in social media.

  While previously a dissatisfied customer might tell ten friends about his experience, a dissatisfied customer using social media can tell thousands. Even worse, the online record of the complaint stays on the Internet eternally for all to see.

  The basic strategy of a social media customer service program should be to: (more…)

• Posted in Reputation/Brand Mgmt, Social Media | Comments Off

• Social Media Aren’t Changing How We Think about Litigation, But They Should

• Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

• The past year has brought an avalanche of stories about the impact social media has had on litigation.

  One Florida lawyer was reprimanded by a state bar association for making statements critical of a judge on his blog.  The phrase “Evil, Unfair Witch” apparently left the judge unamused.

  Another attorney was held in contempt after asking a judge to delay a trial so he could attend an out-of-town funeral.  The judge visited the lawyer’s Facebook page and discovered he was in town and not at a funeral.  This must have made for a very bad day at the office.

  (more…)

• Tags: Facebook, litigation, Social Media, Twitter
  Posted in Reputation/Brand Mgmt, Risk/Litigation, Social Media | Comments Off

• Yet Another Reason Why Google Rocks My World

• Thursday, November 19th, 2009

• Clearly, Google’s invention machine has been running on full-throttle recently (but, really, was it ever not?), as evidenced by the recent releases of game-changing applications in progress like Wave and Sidewiki. Today marks yet another milestone for the digital darling: A developer preview of Google Chrome OS, Google’s very own operating system that follows in the design footsteps of its Chrome Web browser (released late last year).

  Today’s big news isn’t the OS itself—that announcement came back in July—but rather the release of the OS’ source code, which is Linux-based. Plus, the developer preview, taking place at the Googleplex in Mountainview, California, is much anticipated by techies, all of whom are clamoring for more insights into the operation system’s potential power. Among the details leaked so far (courtesy of Robert Scoble):

  (more…)

• Tags: Asymmetric Communications, Chrome, google, Social Media
  Posted in Asymmetric Communications, Social Media | Comments Off

• Twitter on the Move

• Saturday, November 7th, 2009

• In another example of how social media is enveloping the “web 1.0” internet, this week Twitter enhanced their new “Twitter Lists” feature with a new widget that allows you to embed any twitter list elsewhere on the web, where the widget will update in real-time as new tweets come in.

  (more…)

• Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

• Businesses Participate More in Social Media, but Measurement Still Lags

• Thursday, November 5th, 2009

• 

  A brand new research report from Business.com sheds some light on the question of how big a role social media plays as a business resource. Many findings underscored what we already knew—companies and executives are using social media—but some stats offer added dimensions to the hows and whys of this online activity.

  But first, an overview: Nearly 65% of the 2,948 respondents reported using social media as part of their normal work routines. As for the most popular social media resources for business information: (more…)

• Tags: Measurement, metrics, research, Social Media
  Posted in Measurement, Social Media | Comments Off

• Real-Time Search To Redefine Optimization, Data Mining

• Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

• Following up on Dan Bingham’s last blog post, the socialization of search continues with the news that Yahoo is getting in the game, partnering with Web search start-up OneRiot to begin testing a real-time search feature. This announcement comes in the wake of deals inked between Twitter and both Google and Microsoft to bring in features from the microblog that will enable the search engines to pull in social media content alongside regular search results.

  For communications professionals, the crux of this search evolution is two-fold: It stands to reshuffle the deck for traditional search engine optimization strategies, and to offer real-time data whose breadth and depth has yet to be seen. So, like most social media-driven evolutions, this one is a double-edged sword bearing positive and negative consequences: (more…)

• Tags: Asymmetric Communications, google, real-time search, SEO, social search, Twitter, Yahoo
  Posted in Asymmetric Communications, Social Media | 1 Comment »

• Asymmetric Search Results

• Monday, November 2nd, 2009

• Recently, with little fanfare, Google announced a beta version of what is likely to be the next big thing in search. Called Google Social Search, the technology finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. These friends and contacts are pulled from the social networks you participate in, based on the sites you enter into the recently launched Google Profile product. Here’s a quick demo from Google.

  (more…)

• Tags: Asymmetric Communications, google, social search
  Posted in Asymmetric Communications, Social Media | Comments Off

• Tough Times for Traditional Media

• Friday, October 30th, 2009

• It has been a brutal two weeks for the media industry, even by the standards of what has been a horrific year for the industry. To review, just in the past two weeks:

  • The Wall Street Journal announced that it will shutter its Boston bureau

  • Forbes closed its LA and London bureaus with a rumored 50 or so editorial staff let go

  • The New York Times announced plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs — about 8 percent of the total — by year’s end

  • Time Inc. is expected to announce next week that it will cut $100 million in costs and make significant layoffs

  • Sam Zell, former owner of the Chicago Tribune, went on Bloomberg Television to say of the newspaper industry “nobody can survive.”

  • New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. compares print media to the Titanic

  (more…)

• Posted in Media Relations | Comments Off

• Who Will Defend the Financial Services Industry?

• Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

• The past two years have not been strong ones for the financial services industry’s popularity. Between the fallout from the economic collapse last Fall, the government bailouts, and now public backlash against reports of record profits and bonuses to industry executives, it is hard to pinpoint a time when public opinion on the industry was lower. Just this week, we saw an organized march on Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo in Chicago, while CNN is running an ongoing series called “Nickel & Dimed”, a scathing review of the increased fees the financial services industry is charging consumers. (more…)

• Posted in IR/Financial Communications, Reputation/Brand Mgmt | Comments Off

• In the Reinvention Economy, the 5 Stages of Grief Apply to Senior Execs & Social Media

• Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

• In the Kubler-Ross model, the five stages of grief are outlined as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. In the context of corporate leaders and social media, these five stages of grief still apply, perhaps more directly than one would think. For instance:

  • Denial: “Social media is a fleeting trend” or “Social media doesn’t apply to my business.”
  • Anger: “These crazy bloggers are trashing my brand—MAKE THEM GO AWAY!”
  • Bargaining: “Maybe if I start talking to these online people we could work something out” or “We can start engaging, but only if we disable comments on our corporate blog.”
  • Depression: “Why me? Why now?”
  • Acceptance: “Clearly social media is here to stay, so I guess our business needs to get onboard.”

  (more…)

• Tags: GM, Social Media
  Posted in C-Suite Communications, Reputation/Brand Mgmt, Social Media | Comments Off