Author Archive
Posted January 10th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Mack over at the Viral Garden had a post yesterday that gave a great tip for using Google to monitor your brand in the blogosphere. He also underlined the importance of corporations leveraging the free market research available through blogs. However, I disagreed with the underlying message of his post, which implied that corporations don’t monitor the blogs and should always respond to blog posts about them.
Good marketers know when no response is the best course of action. Here are some examples:
- A truthful, transparent response will incite more negative posts.
- Responding may expose the company to legal action or increased regulatory oversight.
- Entering the conversation opens a floodgate that requires continued involvement beyond the resources of the company.
Still don’t believe me? Then you probably also think the customer is ALWAYS right. Now I do believe that you should do everything within your power to make a customer happy, but there are some customers whose happiness would drive you out of business. When those customers blog, no response is the best route.
Do you have other scenarios when a corporation shouldn’t respond? I’d love to hear them. Also feel free to comment about your vehement opposition to the content of my post. Just be aware that I may not respond.
@Jennifer Laycock Please don’t misconstrue my post in any way. I loved your post and subsequent comments. In your specific case, Panera’s best response may be to allow each franchise location to determine the log in time interval, in which case you could get the local manager to give you unlimited access.
Posted September 20th, 2007 by Char Lyn
I just read a great article in a paper I’ve never read before thanks to the Freakonomics blog. It was an inspirational story about a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has pancreatic cancer and is unlikely to live more than a year. In the article, he quoted something the assistant football coach told him in high school when the head coach kept yelling at him for his mistakes:
“When you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”
While the article touched me, that one quote stuck. I started to think about the work we do at DIG and the number of companies afraid to engage with their customers through social media. Businesses are so often afraid of their customers “yelling at them,” but they forget that people only yell because they are engaged—they haven’t given up hope that the company will give them what they want. If they want something within your power to give, then you can gain loyal followers by giving it to them. If customers want something they aren’t getting from you, their lack of yelling means they are getting it somewhere else.
Freakonomics’ recent move to the New York Times blog is a perfect example of this idea. When they moved to the NYT, they lost the full-post RSS feed. The readers, 90% of whom were reading through RSS readers, revolted in the comments of every post for at least the first week. The authors were open in their communications about the reduced feed through three posts on the topic here, here, and here. They were not able to make everyone happy and lost some readers (customers), but the NYT readership should compensate for the loss.
So, where is your company at? Are you on the field getting yelled at, and getting the cheers when you make the touchdown? Or are you still sitting on the sidelines of the real game and only playing in the safety of the friendly flag football game at the company outing?
Posted September 12th, 2007 by Char Lyn
The NY Times Bits blog outing of John Ordover’s Marry Our Daughter prank site made me recall the hour I spent at work horrifically fascinated by the male pregnancy site. In both cases I was relieved when they were confirmed hoaxes. From a social media perspective, sites like these are the accidents on the side of the road during rush hour traffic. One can’t help but slow down to gawk, then talk about what was seen around the water cooler. Unfortunately the Britney debacle wasn’t a hoax, but it received the same type of viral reaction.
As a group here at DIG brainstormed campaign ideas for a current client after having seen the Marry Our Daughter site, I was once again reminded of what makes media viral. Like the virulent germs they are named after, explosive campaigns need a little bit of shock to create a pandemic. The shock can take many forms: disbelief that requires verification from all your friends (Marry Our Daughter), unexpected craziness (Carlsberg beer and Will It Blend?), remarkable/silly but useless talent (Stride gum), and yes, sexy still sells (do you really need links to prove that?).
Fortunately, campaigns don’t have to be virulent to work, and going viral doesn’t guarantee revenue. There are many campaigns which promote steady growth over time without shocking or offending potential customers such as the Coke Zero campaign, Cisco’s Human Network and Visa’s Fan with a Plan. They provide reliable information to quality customers and still provide entertainment.
What people often forget is that the product or service being sold must have customer value. If the product doesn’t live up to the value proposition, the most viral campaign in the world can’t guarantee product success.
Posted August 24th, 2007 by Char Lyn
Have you noticed the new features on YouTube? I love the new beta page—it’s cleaner and just feels better in my browser. Today I noticed that they’ve also added forward and back navigation buttons to the recommended videos at the end of each clip. The forward button also has a timer feature that lets you know when the presented clips will change. I’m thrilled about these nav buttons since I can never mange to click on an interesting video before it is replaced by a new one. They’ve also added thumbs up/down buttons to the comments to help filter out the drivel, which I greatly appreciate.
Successful Web services like YouTube have learned that they have to continuously improve in order to stay relevant. But, they also have to earn revenue. In addition to other improvements this week, YouTube has rolled out a new advertising format that overlays the videos like a news ticker at the bottom of the video. Its use is very limited right now, and I had to watch a number of videos before I found one with the new ads. The blogosphere is voicing its opinions about these ads in posts like these on Profy, CyberNet News, and Jaffe Juice.
According to Mashable, Google is making the ads optional for the content owners. If these ads survive the current maelstrom of mostly negative reaction, Google could potentially use the format to make revenue from the extremely popular embed feature, which currently allows people to put ad-free clips directly on their blogs and Web pages.
Corporate America has capitalized on the platform by sponsoring vloggers, posting their commercials, and buying banner ads. The new ad format may increase commercial use of YouTube and water-down the user generated content, but as the largest video community on the Web, it will continue to get the eyeballs marketers covet.
Next Posts
Previous Posts