Kevin Smith: He's Mad As Hell. Image from ViewAskew.com

I’ve never been one to suggest that “the customer is always right.” Having worked as a cashier in my high school years (an experience I think every North American should have), I can tell you emphatically that the customer is indeed not always right. Sometimes the customer is just plain wrong. And mean. And even a complete idiot.

But just because bad customers exist does not mean a business can or should counter them with bad customer service. The danger in allowing any level of poor customer service to be dished out is that it’s too easy for employees and business owners to stay in that mode and become indignant to customers who may not fit the mold of your ideal client, but are, in fact, right about a situation and what they should expect from you.

Before, if you screwed over a customer, the most you could expect is that you lost their business. Perhaps they’d tell their friends. If they were REALLY angry, they’d write a letter to somebody. Not any more. With the gaining popularity of social media, word of mouth now has a microphone. Give someone crappy service, they’re going to get loud about it, and some people have pretty impressive microphones.

This weekend, writer / director Kevin Smith was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight on account of a “safety issue.” The safety issue? Someone at Southwest determined Smith was too large for just one seat and required two – but as a second seat was unavailable, they opted to eject him from the flight. They did this, despite the fact – according to Smith – that he fit into one seat and between the armrests – the apparent gauge of measurement Southwest uses to determine whether a “Customer of Size” requires more than one seat.

While still in the airport waiting for the next flight, Smith took to Twitter, where he has 1.6+ million followers (a good chunk more than Southwest’s Twitter feed has) and started describing his experience in the colorful language Smith is well-known for.

Hundreds of people started tweeting Smith with their own humiliating stories of Southwest’s treatment, with a fury not entirely unlike the “Mad as Hell!” scene from Network, which Smith was only too happy to retweet to his followers.  Southwest reacted with a blog post, one that many people, based on the comments, felt was inappropriate and lacking. While we’re the first to applaud content marketing and social media usage, the emphasis is on content. Smith provided his full side of the story, complete with a part about a fellow Southwest passenger who experienced the same treatment on Smith’s flight, in his latest podcast SModcast #106 (in case you weren’t sure, the language within it is NSFW, so plug those headphones in!).

An ineffective customer service issue has now become a giant PR crisis. Happy Monday, Southwest.

Smith is hardly the first to take to Twitter, Facebook, blogs or Podcasts to complain about sub-standard customer service. Heather Armstrong, a blogger behind the exceptionally popular site, Dooce, let Maytag have it when the company was less than responsive when her new washing machine broke in late August. And it’s not just “celebs” who are taking a stand when customer service has failed them. Yours truly received better service from Netfirms after snarking on Twitter about how lame my service experience had been. A friend of mine received local news coverage after complaining about a restaurant’s treatment of a customer via her blog and Twitter.

Want to avoid this? What should you do if you own a business?

1. Treat each customer as if they might have a million Twitter followers. They might. Or they might be friends with someone who does. Or the “pithy” 400 followers they do have might retweet to their followers and theirs and so on. After all, that’s how the Motrin scandal got started – by non-celeb social media users.
2. Review your policies. Take a look at your policies and see if there are any aspects of them that would give your customers a legitimate reason to be upset. If those policies can’t be changed, make sure they are communicated to customers and staff clearly and that you have a sensitive and consistent way of enforcing them.
3. Expect more from your staff. Train them well. Check up on their service. Give them incentives to treat customers well such as stock / ownership options or bonuses.
4. Don’t be afraid to apologize and admit where you went wrong.
5. Make sure you’re engaged in social media monitoring. To its credit, Southwest has been monitoring and involved in social media and this situation. Is it handling it right? You be the judge!
6. Take care of the customer in question first, and the public interest in the scandal second. According to Smith, the top customer service executives at Southwest had NOT contacted him despite the blog post suggesting they had. Certainly give your audience a heads-up in the medium they’re using (Twitter) that you’re aware and dealing, but make sure that first customer is prioritized.
7. Understand crisis communications in a web 2.0 world. Take a look at our tips for avoiding a social media faux pas and tips for reacting to a social media bomb, part 1 and part 2.

Memes are fun, but aim higher. Image from Askville.com

Those who work in a marketing agency or marketing department of a company have likely encountered a client, colleague or boss who was very excited about Internet trends. Some examples of these trends, called memes, include the whole keyboard cat series and women writing their bra colors in their Facebook statuses. While every meme is unique, they all managed to capture the attention of masses of people in a short period of time.

Because of the popularity of a meme, some companies and agencies strive to purposefully create one. While I understand the appeal, it’s important for any content marketer or social media manager to know the difference between a meme and a marketing campaign that goes viral.

Why? Well, take a look at this awesome video from the good people at Current’s SuperNews and see how many memes you remember enjoying at one time or another:

Now that the trip down “Memeory Lane”  is over (sorry, couldn’t resist the opportunity to pun), ask yourself:

• Do I know who created those memes?
• Did I buy anything as a result of those memes?
• Did a bunch of people copy those memes without referencing the person who started it all?

Your answers were “No”, “No” and “Yes”, right?

Instead of thinking about becoming a here-today-gone-tomorrow Internet craze, work toward a content marketing strategy that solidly connects people to your brand in an interesting way. With some creativity, even well-branded, product-heavy content marketing can go viral. Just ask the people at Blendtec about the success of their online “Will It Blend?” campaign. They:

• Made their product the star of their videos and used it in an interesting way
• Gathered feedback from the audience on what they’d like to see next
• Utilized smart SEO tools and keyword strategies to drive people to their videos and site
• Involved public relations to take their concept mainstream
• Appeared in the news and even did in-person demos on the Today Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
• Saw a major lift in sales. As early as 2007 (the same year the campaign launched), Blendtec’s revenues increased five times over.

The final word is this: Memes are for fun. Viral and content marketing are for businesses that are serious about making money.

Image from MichaelJournal.org

Think your organization is too conservative to get into blogging? Too bureaucratic to start content marketing efforts?

Regardless of your religious affiliation, it may be time to take a cue from the Pope. In acknowledgement of the power of the digital word, the Vatican recently released a statement calling on Catholic priests to get hip to social media.

A snippet of this call to action (via @mashable) says:

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich “menu of options” might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled. Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different “voices” provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

When an 83-year old leader of an organization that hasn’t exactly been known for change is all over content marketing, you know it’s not a passing fad. It begs the question: If your company still isn’t on board with social media, what exactly is it waiting for? Divine intervention?

If uncertainty and a lack of experience is stopping your company in its tracks, consider contacting a content marketing agency. We can perform miracles!

Dude, Dell's got a new revenue stream!

Cutsie blog post titles aside, we’re not suggesting that you copy another company’s every move – rather that you understand and learn from them. In this case, if there’s anyone in your company who is still bah humbug’ing social and content marketing via Twitter, you might want to direct their attention to Dell.

Why? Because Dell recently announced that they made a total of $6.5 million in revenue through their Twitter activity over the last three years. And what is the media buy to have a Twitter presence? $0. How you like them apples (err … Dells)?

Dell has been a leader in corporate Twitter activity, jumping in with both feet early and steadily. With several Twitter accounts associated with their brand (I stopped counting at 70), Dell has been able to engage directly with consumers on several different levels. The most popular Dell Twitter account, the @DellOutlet provides daily deals and customer service to its nearly 1.5 million followers. Other accounts include the faces behind the brand – like @Kara_atDELL (who handles small and medium business communications/ PR for Dell) and @ChrisBatDell (Dell’s Digital Life blogger) – various departments at Dell’s headquarters and a slew of campus and regional customer service reps.

So how has Dell been able to find success on this still emerging social networking site? We’ve been stalking them and have found the following to be true:

• Commitment. While not every account that bares the Dell name gets continually updated, the main accounts are quite active. There’re no toes in the water with Dell’s Twitter push – it gets full attention from the staff behind it.
• Responsiveness. When someone asks a question, Dell answers. The engagement on the @DellOutlet is particularly impressive. Not only does the customer receive a response, the demonstration of customer service is for all to see. If anything is going to give a consumer confidence in doing business with a company, it’s by seeing a business’s abilities and accountability in action.
• Specializations. If Dell just had one account, it probably couldn’t deliver the personal service it does now to so many different people. Instead, each account serves a special purpose and gets the job done well. This not only allows Dell to work more efficiently across Twitter, but different accounts appeal to different audiences (i.e.: people who are looking for deals vs. people who want to talk about tech upgrades), thus expanding Dell’s reach.
• Transparency. If someone on Twitter is employed by Dell, you know it. While other brands might be paying people to act like unbiased fans (boo!), Dell pays employees while growing good reviews and enthusiastic consumers organically and genuinely. There’s no confusion or dishonesty.
• Personality. Related to the above, we see who’s behind the account and behind the Dell logo on Twitter. While conversations are hardly jumping to hot-button topics like religion and politics, you’ll see some pretty informal and personality-infused chats about technology, the day-to-day and life in and out the Dell offices. Go figure, people like chatting with people.
• Tracking of ROI. How does Dell know Twitter is worthwhile? They monitor their activities, links to their sites and track how promotions spread across Twitter. At the end of the day, they can claim the $6.5 million in sales as a reason for their social media activity to continue.

Twitter is currently free for companies to use (there’s rumblings this won’t always be the case) – so isn’t it time for your company to take advantage of this content marketing tool, too? If you’re not sure how to get started or are looking for freelance writers, a content marketing company can help.

Google's Offerings Are Your Offerings

We’ve mentioned it a few times: the cornerstone of content marketing is bringing value to readers and potential clients. Writing insightful and entertaining blog posts or articles is an easy way to do this, as is creating a tip center filled with quick bursts of SEO-mindful information.

All fairly doable, right?

Then, every so often, we exclaim things like “Make an app!” or “Develop a widget!” and we can feel your enthusiasm grow cold and your “Yah, right” face showing up. While widgets and apps are not as complicated as you may think they are, if you don’t have someone in-house that has the developing chops, it means outsourcing – and that might be more than you’re willing to chew right now.

We want to assure you that even with “ordinary” skills and a limited budget, you can go beyond the written word in your content marketing offerings. Here’s an example:

I’m the editor and contributor for a site called Hitched.ca. Primarily, the site is a free forum (a message board) for Canadian women. The website grew to include a magazine portion – a series of articles that expand on the topics modern women gab about. The magazine has been useful in attracting in new members – which is important as Hitched’s revenue is from ad views and clicks. The website sees roughly 80,000 unique users, nearly four millions impressions a month and attracts national advertisers.

To add a little oomph to articles (both value-wise and SEO-wise), we occasionally provide some useful free tools – all of which were built freely and easily by people just like you (i.e.: not programmers):

• In the article discussing 2009 holiday TV specials (we all have to get our Claymation fix!), we developed a schedule with Google Calendar that displayed exactly what was on when. This schedule can be viewed or added to one’s own Google Calendar – easy, accessible, useful – and free!
• In an article discussing family household budgets, we created a simple budget sheet using Excel (this just as easily could have been built in or uploaded to Google Docs). Readers were able to download it, apply the advice in the article and use it.
• As article ideas develop, so do our ideas for tools: a template for an updated resume, a calendar for upcoming sales of an advertiser, or Excel-based calendars to chart ovulation for family planning – really, the options are endless.

In all these situations, readers are pointed back to the forums (Hitched’s greatest wealth and user retention tool) to continue to discuss the article and share tips with one another. With more articles and digital offerings we put out, the more people come (and stay) at Hitched – and these are numbers advertisers care about.

If you have a Google account and can use everyday programs like the Microsoft Office Suite or a scheduler, you have the ability to create content marketing offerings related to your industry easily and freely.

How simple is that?

Once the turkey and the pumpkin pie have been given a good home, attentions in the US tend to turn toward holiday shopping. Those Black Friday deals are likely calling your name.

If you run a business, it’s go-time – and you hopefully have been putting some effort into your online presence. Stats from eMarketer show that 17% of all consumers use social media in their shopping decisions. According to the same group, online holiday shopping has grown this year by 5.4%, impressive when you consider the economy has seen better days. That works out to an estimated $30 billion in online gift spending for November and December this year. Forget pumpkin – we want a piece of that pie!

We recently provided some links to tips for improving your e-store, and believe us, those are handy. But what about ways to harness content marketing and social media to drive promotions?

Here are some examples of what some notable brands are doing with Facebook Connect:

Walmart: The Christmas List Workshop
What aren’t they doing? Through their promotion, you get to “Christmas Yourself”, put together your list, get a sense of what these friends and family members want and then hunt down the deals at Walmart.

Walmart: The Christmas List Workshop on Facebook

Toys R’ Us: You Vote, You Save!
The name says it all. Give Toys R’ Us a little input on what offers you like the best, and you get a coupon to purchase gifts at a special low price. It blends what people like best: sharing their opinion and getting a deal.

Toys R' Us: You Vote, You Save on Facebook

Gap: Holiday Factory
Sort of like a personalized Mad Lib, this app grabs your profile details to create a holiday centered around you. You can then add this holiday to your events calendar, invite friends and presumably coo over Gap fashion. And of course, there are deals to be had on “your” day. You can take a look at my own Jensgiving, a holiday that involves one of my main hobbies:  Eating.  How true:

Celebrate Jensgiving with Gap's Holiday Factory on Facebook

Be sure to take a look at the list Mashable came out with of interesting Facebook promotions. Their list includes Intel, JC Penney, Sears, Best Buy and Macy’s. Some of what they found are beautifully simple – like Fan-Only promotional offers – and others are more involved like Fan Challenges – the more people who sign up as fans, the lower the price of a product drops. They’re all great examples of how Facebook and content marketing can be used to create engaging, sharable promotions to stand out from the competition.

You too can YouTube!

Content marketing isn’t simply about blathering your latest corporate news online. Good content marketing is  about what the audience is interested in and delivering that to them in digital ways that are relevant to your products and services. To boil things down to a very basic level, people are looking for:

1. Helpful information, tips and tools
2. Entertainment
3. Free stuff (via contests, samples, downloads and so on)

The genius of content marketing is that through it, potential clients also learn about you and gain confidence in working with you. By demonstrating your abilities, quality of product and even corporate culture (because customers like working with nice / funny / pleasant people – go figure!), you end up giving a soft sell on yourself. It’s win-win!

With the popularity of YouTube, videos are wonderful tools for content marketing. The trick, no matter what industry you’re in, is to focus on delivering one or more of the three things people are looking for (and not simply develop a commercial) and to ensure you’ve optimized your video so it’s as search-friendly as possible.

“But my business doesn’t seem video-worthy.”

If you think that, you might be suffering from am all-too common condition: a lack of imagination (in which case, a content marketing agency can definitely be of service). Any business can utilize YouTube to create interesting and worthwhile content. Don’t believe me? Here are three random videos we found on YouTube from businesses you might not expect to be involved in content marketing:

Company: Bensons For Beds,  a mattress and bed company
Feature: Employees become part of the world’s largest human-mattress domino
Content Marketing Category: Entertainment
Reach: In less than five months, the video has nearly 750,000 views:

Company: TiffanyD,  a makeup artist
Feature: Tiffany is announcing a contest, sponsored by a make-up brush company, that calls for her fans to create their own “Old Hollywood” make-up looks
Content Marketing Category: Free Stuff
Reach: The contest received 132,000 views and received 242 tagged video responses (which themselves received hundreds and even thousands of views):

Company: Performance Bicycle,  a bicycle and accessories shop
Feature: Performance Bicycle’s “Spin Doctor” delivers tips cyclists can use to ensure their road bike is fit for them properly
Content Marketing Category: Informational
Reach: Posted over a year ago, this video currently has 90,300 views

Brutal, eh?

Just one week later, Hyundai Canada posted this video on YouTube:

Admittedly, the video quality isn’t the greatest, but in this case, it was more important to be fast than polished. Hyundai did what all businesses that want to do well in content marketing should do:

1. Monitor: Stay on top of trends, especially if they’re even just remotely related to your industry.
2. React quickly: Our attentions are fleeting. If you want to connect to something trending on the Internet, you need to pull the trigger right away – otherwise you’re old news before you’re new news.
3. Use the medium: The bad parking job was a YouTube sensation – it only makes sense that Hyundai engages the same crowd using the same medium.
4. Promote: The team behind Hyundai’s video undoubtedly found out what media and top bloggers covered the original video and used social media-focused public relations tactics to promote Hyundai’s response. Through the PR lift from sites like The Globe and Mail and Mashable, the Hyundai response video now has well over 100,000 views is just four days.

They also did one more thing we hope companies aim for: Being the good guy.

Etsy's Has Content Marketing In The Bag: Image from Etsy Labs

It’s fine to talk about what you should be doing content marketing wise – but it’s even better to show you: Enter Etsy. Etsy is like eBay in that it’s a home for thousands of sellers to showcase and sell their wares. It is not like eBay in that the wares are generally hand-crafted or vintage finds. It’s also where all the cool kids are hanging out.

Etsy’s strength is the community it helped to establish and its acknowledgement of sellers small and large. Everyday there are new featured items and a new featured seller – all of which are promoted through Etsy’s Twitter account that has a million plus followers. But that’s just the basics.

Etsy also has a fantastic content section called The Storque that is updated daily by and for its “indiepreneurs.” The information presented largely helps Etsy’s sellers, but it also presents information buyers and the everyday public would find useful and entertaining. What can you find in this section? Some highlights are:

• The Seller Handbook: A collection of marketing tips and videos geared toward the Etsy shop-owner – but also handy for nearly anyone who has an online business
• The How-Tuesday: A collection of videos where various Etsy experts show people how to make their own Etsy-inspired crafts. They’ve recently been featuring Halloween-related ideas like costumes and spooky puppets – which falls right into the advice we recently gave readers about seasonal content marketing!
• Craftivism:  Stories about how the Etsy community makes a difference through volunteer projects, raising funds for charities or making the planet a little greener. This is a great case of “knowing thy audience”  in content marketing. The Etsy audience, by and large, is both community-driven and eco-invested (a large amount of reclaimed and recycled items are sold on Etsy), so this section is a perfect match for sellers and buyers alike.
• Etsy Events: Etsy pulls together both virtual events (online labs, webinars) and in-person activities (local meet-ups, fairs and more). The events create buzz outside Etsy’s usual sphere while bringing an already engaged community even tighter together.

Throughout The Storque, there are great pictures, videos, text and, of course, feedback. Because this section is largely member produced, the individuals featured do their own digital PR (tweet, sent e-mails, blog – all content marketing, really!) and drive more and more people to check out the content. And they’re clearly doing something right – in September alone, $16 million worth of goods were sold on Etsy. Brilliant!

Why Etsy gets bonus points: Like Snuggie, they’re not taking themselves too seriously. When Regretsy popped up, a site that mocks Etsy finds (as their slogan goes: “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet!”), Etsy’s spokesman, Adam Brown, told the Wall Street Journal, “… if it brings more traffic to the shop and helps make sales then all the better.” (That said Etsy did ask Regretsy to make some small visual changes and to add a disclaimer that the site was not related to Etsy in any way – but overall, a pretty good attitude to have!)

Etsy gets our A+ on content marketing! If you know of another super star of content marketing, give them props in our comment section – we could feature them next!

RIP Coke Blak

You may recall a recent post of ours that discussed the Motrin Moms fiasco where we demonstrated that a blunder in social media, while embarrassing, likely won’t affect your bottom line. I’m still standing by that – but with an amendment: Content marketing and social media screw-ups likely won’t hurt your finances, provided that your product is something people will / already like.

Content marketing and social media can do wonders to promote your services and products – but if your services and products aren’t so hot to begin with, you’re likely out of luck. Once word gets out that what you actually offer – that thing that people are supposed to pay for – is crap, social media (as used by others) can really haunt you.

How so? Let’s look at the now-extinct Coca-Cola BlāK (or, Coca-Cola Blech, to anyone who tried it). If you haven’t had the culinary pleasure of trying Coca-Cola BlāK, just imagine someone melting a tire, some candy corns and a plastic bag of discarded coffee grinds into a vat.  Carbonate and bottle the whole lot. Now imagine yourself in a fetal position and wishing for death. That, dear readers, is the Coca-Cola BlāK experience you missed out on.

As usual, Anderson Cooper relays the experience far better than I could. As much as I could swim in Anderson’s dreamy blue eyes all day, you may want to go straight to 1:30 of this video to see the most eloquent reaction to the product one could have:

As you can imagine, the clip got picked up, placed on YouTube and was played thousands of times. Furthermore, even the average jerk like me had the capacity to blog, YouTube or devote a site to the disturbing taste of this “beverage” that we all discovered independently.

Through social media and word of mouth (or word of mouse, if you will) people learned that Coca-Cola BlāK wasn’t worth shelling their dollars over to try – and the product was off the shelves a little over a year after it first appeared in the market. Social media has had the same effect elsewhere (like the movies Bruno and Jennifer’s Body flopping at the box office after early engagers  massively panned it online).

Moral of the story: Before you invest in content marketing (or any marketing, really), make sure your product is up to snuff. No amount of clever promotions or social media engagement can save it otherwise. Quality control testing should never be skipped.