I recently bought a RØDE VideoMic Pro. This is a way-cool micro-phone created specifically for improving the sound in videos. It has a camera shoe connection, so it can sit on top of a camcorder or a DSLR camera, and it provides great sound.
While researching this microphone, I visited RØDE’s website and discovered that the company is doing a lot with social media. RØDE has both Twitter and Facebook accounts, so I followed and friended the company. Soon after, someone from RØDE direct messaged me in Twitter, saying: “Hey thanks for following! Please fire any questions, suggestions, praise, &/or abuse you have at us, we would love to hear from you!” [Author’s Note: All quotes from social media included in this book are shown as is, complete with misspellings.]
That’s just the beginning of how RØDE seems to work hard at interacting with its customers. For example, the company recently asked its Twitter followers this question: “We’re going to rock this weekend!! tell us who/what/where/when/how you’re going to rock with RØDE Microphones!! #rockwithrode.”1
The people at RØDE also answer questions and give advice via Twitter. One Twitter follower, @RichardHall93, tweeted: “Good wedding today. Gutted that @rodemics VideoMic Pro’s quality is so poor. Broken on it’s 2nd outing. http://t.co/0NPOvra”2
RØDE read Richard’s comment and responded with some great customer support: “Hi Richard, all our mics are covered by a 10 Year Warranty—pls email worldsupport@rodemic.com, they can send you a new part.”3
RØDE staff keep track of questions their customers ask and sometimes follow up via Twitter. Here’s one example of a typical follow-up response: “@legitimatelouis We sent you a tweet a few days ago http://bit.ly/eaqUpx—does that answer your question or do you need more info?”4
Remove the “social media hipness” of Twitter for a second, and what is RØDE doing? Providing great customer service. Conversations between customers and a company are taking place, and these sound very much like what you might overhear at a local mom-and-pop photography store. Real people working at RØDE are following up with their customers to make sure those customers are happy with RØDE products and that they have the answers they need.
RØDE provides a great example of customer service and support via Twitter—one that more organizations would do well to emulate. What’s the problem? Some organizations simply don’t know where to start.
That’s why I wrote this book.
Many people already understand how to personally connect with friends and family using 21st-century tools like Facebook or Twitter. Facebook lets me easily stay in touch with my nephew, who lives six states away, and I can even connect with interesting “people I once knew”—like all the people I went to high school with who recently friended me because our 25th high school reunion was coming up.
This part’s easy—you click Like and move on, right? Simple stuff.
When we try to take those same social media tools and use them to connect our organizations to our customers, though, it becomes much more difficult. Many organizations have struggled to understand how to interact with customers online. Because these organizations don’t understand how online connections work, they have had to “learn under fire”—some even by making their first leap into social media via an apology video on YouTube, like JetBlue’s CEO did a couple of years ago (www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r_PI7EAUw).
Today, the average business or organization has yet to embrace emerging social tools and many haven’t even started. Yes, they do have websites, but the content is mostly about the organization itself—there are no face2face connections taking place between customers and the organization. Do they use social tools like Facebook or Twitter? Rarely. If they are using these tools, they are using them primarily as a one-way broadcast medium, not as a way to connect with customers and deepen customer relationships.
These organizations are still planning for traditional business-as-usual physical interactions and relying on traditional tools like press releases, advertisements, and marketing write-ups. Their customers, however, are using social media tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube to talk about those companies, their products, and their services. They want face2face interactions online, just like they want them when visiting an organization’s physical space.
What are these organizations missing? They are missing a face2face presence on their websites. They are missing conversations and community. These organizations need to start holding conversations—in Twitter’s 140 characters or less—and follow up by responding to mentions and “retweets.” The conversation needs to continue in blog posts, status updates, and comment boxes. These conversations can be made visual with the use of multimedia—by using pictures of products on Flickr or a video on YouTube.
My goal in this book is to help organizations learn how face2face works in an organizational setting. To meet that goal, we will explore how organizations can connect with people in a variety of online settings. Readers will find plenty of examples of what’s currently working and what’s not.
Here’s what you’ll find in this book.
Chapter 1 contains an explanation in general terms of what it means to be “human” on the web—how communication, listening, and sharing in online communities can make an organization seem “human.”
Chapter 2 discusses how the web is changing the way we communicate and explains how to use social media tools to communicate in a more natural, inviting way.
Chapter 3 explores how you can use images and videos as visual tools to connect with your customers. You will also find tips about how to most effectively use pictures and videos organizationally.
Grassroots online communities can form around products, services, organizations, and ideas. In Chapter 4, I’ll explain how these types of communities form, share some handy tools that can be used to help support these online communities, and in the process, provide some ways your organization can have a human touch while interacting with customers in these community-driven spaces.
In Chapter 5, we’ll look at what online listening entails; describe some ways for organizations to listen to conversations online, like what to listen for and how and when to respond; and finally, we’ll look at some online listening tools.
Being formal is the fastest way to kill the personal touch in corporate communications to customers. Your customers want you to be human. Chapter 6 explains how to let your organization’s “personality” hang out a bit to help your customers feel comfortable connecting with you.
Friendly, open design can be inviting and can help customers feel welcome in a physical space. This principle also holds true online. Chapter 7 explores how a well-designed digital experience can help your organization provide that face2face human touch for customers.
Chapter 8 focuses on tools like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. We will discuss what you can do with each tool to connect your organization to your customers and how to make human connections while using each service.
Your organization will have critics. Chapter 9 explains how to handle criticism online.
Want to know where to start? Chapter 10 gives you some starting tips and focuses on creating strategy and goals.
In Chapter 11, I focus on measurement and analytics tools, and answer some questions, including: Why measure? What can be measured? How can you measure?
And finally, Chapter 12 is the “application” chapter. We are going to take some of what we learned throughout the book and apply it to a business setting to see how making face2face connections works in the real world.
1. Rodemics, Twitter post, accessed January 16, 2012, www.twitter.com/#!/rodemics/status/64077629443158016.
2. RichardHall93, Twitter post, accessed January 16, 2012, www.twitter.com/#!/RichardHall93/status/61565597162553344.
3. Rodemics, Twitter post, accessed January 16, 2012, www.twitter.com/#!/rodemics/status/63733103646085120.
4. Rodemics, Twitter post, accessed January 16, 2012, www.twitter.com/#!/rodemics/status/60120777948803072.