It seems that, to keep rates looking low and win eyeballs on third party travel sites, hotels from Vegas to Disneyland are adding in mandatory fees presented on arrival which cover the obvious and not necessarily the used (I’ve seen them for gyms, pools, etc) with no choice but to agree.

Deception exists when perceptions are not set.

It’s bad enough when you have to pay for the obvious (how many people want WiFi versus in-room coffee) but when something is mandated upfront, it must be in the buy box, the sub-total — right in front of the customer. Sticking it in the fine print of a corporate is about as transparent as making it up at the time of check-in.

The implications to brand & the bottom line are no small addon.

Gaming the customer can return a short-term gain but we must consider the long-term result that follows our experience and the reputation it creases.
Price may lead the buying process but 5 full or empty stars sit right next to it and the impact shows. I don’t have hard numbers but inline comments from TripAdvisor, Yelp, Expedia, and even Hotel sites paint a clear picture of how, after a resort fee enters the equation, negatives go up, perception of value goes down. That game causes the equation to shift.

This is not just true of hotels either. Any time a customer is forced into something after the fact — whether its required component to an electronics device not put in the box, an unexpected servicing need, or whatever, it’s going to leave a bad taste to the customer and give them a reason to cry out to the world that is always listening.

As comments shift from accolades and experiences to tips and warnings, the very issue which the resort fees are mean to skirt (pricing perception) becomes the focus as people become that much more aware, and comparison focused as they fight to understand the true (all-in) value being offered.

Social must be a part of the entire corporate culture.

While social is often caught up in the Facebook/ Twitter/ Google+ channels, it is really the buzz word that sums up focusing on reputation both as the spread of knowledge and the reality of immediate experience.

By thinking “social” outside of marketing it it’s possible to see beyond a single channel… A resort fee augments revenue and tricks sales today, but businesses to not survive on today alone thus what happens to experience, reputation, social must be just as important to sales and ops as it is to a marketing team. Companies cannot survive working in isolation.

When people are surprised by a forced cost it trumps everything else… Even if the value remains great.

With social the approach to measuring has really crept into the same process. Sure we had – and still have – a lag in getting to the right data, the naysayers who argue that if you don’t measure ROI elsewhere, why measure it here, the people who say you can’t, or shouldn’t but all said the abundance of metrics in the space have made it too tempting for companies to peer beyond the social stats and into the business results.

But what I learned through all that media buying, all that “what’s a sale” ROI analysis is that the TV / Radio / Print people had one things right… as good as metrics are, they only tell you story of how to grow those metrics and that isn’t always a part of the greater tale of what’s making you succeed.

Social metrics only count what they can see and they can’t see much.

How many of your customers make a purchase, walk out of your store elated and immediately call a friend to advocate your brand to them? How many times will you be mentioned over beers during Sunday football? Or in the mall during a shopping trip? The answer is that you don’t really know… We get indicators through surveys, customer rep interactions, but we never profess to measure the absolute number let alone bottom results that a casual mention brings. Social is no different: we’re able to access a slice of the conversations but it’s only part of the pie – and a shrinking one at that.

Measuring Word of Mouth: No one includes a track code in their conversation

The most common Social ROI calculation comes by taking the number of people who click a link from a Tweet, Facebook posts, etc and within the same cookie-measured period convert to an action of some sort whether that’s a sign up, a lead, or a sale. This is simple, logical and traditional ROI methodology and yet fundamentally misses measuring how social actually works: person to person.

Just imagine if this scenario were applied offline…

Running off of the previous sample people are mentioning brand all over the place… in the mall, around a sports game but you’d even dream that they’d include a specific reference code along with their endorsement or that when the people they told it too walked into your business they would recite that code, or much of anything about the introduction, back to you. On the web it’s the same. People don’t share links that you pick. They take your story and write their own intro, they mention you once in a longer tweet, or as a offshoot in a blog post and the more embedded the mention is, the more relevant and authentic it becomes. An affiliate link from a friend is worry little; a raving review is worth everything.

Measuring Conversations: The door is closing on what’s being said

A recent CEA survey indicated that only 26% of people believe they’re sharing anything publicly on social networks. As the demand for privacy is grows, people are cutting off read access and locking down across many tools and that means less to see, less to read. But the desire for reporting doesn’t slow just because the data is limited; instead we turn to what remains open and use that. Twitter, parts of Google+ and the open posts on Facebook. On one hand all good barometers to gleam out individual remarks and action they remain fundamentally flawed by their population bias, by their sample size and thus as an overall read the fail provide anything comprehensive.

It’s like doing research on your nation-wide customer habits by only calling people who live in Texas.

Even if you’re more sophisticated, doing backend data matching with your follower list against customers, you’ll still be left making conclusions off a fraction. Think about it: the top brands have 5, maybe 10 million fans against 10 or 20 times that many customers….  People like a page on their terms and often long after getting a product, if ever. But does that mean social was missing from the equation?

Measuring the “other “benefits: Social is more than just sales, much more.

Just as important as how we measure is what we measure and the evidence is that it’s not all about the sales. Again this is natural — the flow of social is that people who have experienced, who have a problem, who really like what we do are the ones that connect, not just those on the fence. Thus the benefits come all over… cost savings in service… reputation improvement… a boost to retention… even product development insights.

But while sales are easy to break apart, the so called “soft benefits” are no. What’s lift of knowing to put more cheese on the next pizza? How about in answering the phones quicker? These are tough questions with no direct result and it often takes months or even years for a chance to fully impact the consideration and purchase processes. So we turn back to what can see and what we always use judge marketing because face it, we’re still calling social media, and that’s sales.

So while we may remark that there’s “other benefits because we can’t quantify them per interaction, per fan, per anything into a clean dollars and cents column, ROI becomes sales on investment, reduced calls on investment, coupons printed on investment and we quickly stop considering anything else.

But it’s not just what we measure: How we influence has changed.

The sales funnel is no linear. There’s no entry point, no requirement to visit a store, order a catalog or go to a website to start thinking about a brand or a purchase. Smartphones, tablets, kiosks, mall stores, retail, ecommerce… we’ve gone from one to two to over a half dozen purchasing channels.

And how we expect to behave is shifting as a result. When you can share anything and you know your network can access everything, what matters is your spin, your opinion why waste characters on a link everyone knows or can find. Amazon gives out a $5 or $10 offer and more tweets ask people if they used it or about it than end up linking to it. If you only tracked the clicks to conversions, you’d miss success.

By following what we can see, we’re abandoning the big picture.

The danger isn’t in measuring what we can see; it’s in assuming that what we measure is what’s happening. When we have data we logically want to follow what it says but in social the data is just an indicator of what’s risen to the top, what’s public, what’s got our magic link involved.

If we make that slice our focus where does it lead us? The logical jump on making more that we can track, more of the same, more of what we say is “working”. Abandon the casual mention, forget people telling a friend, the smartphone photo in the store, the self-made pin… those don’t associate with clicks, leads or sales. Instead bring out the funnel… the offer sign up form, the coupons, and the contest.

Those aren’t bad things on their own by any stretch but are they social? Do they have correlation to opening up to interact with our customer? To show our expertise? Build our sense of value? Reposition our brand in a market that expects transparency? Or even drives people to want to tell their friend so they can try it too? By focusing on what call ROI what we’re saying is focus on what can carry through to ROI and while that’s improving, it’s the story, it’s not what social really does, it’s not where success is.

… When I was a new direct response marketer I let myself believe that the influence my message had was captured by a funnel we created, we defined and we wanted to force. Social is the inverse of that reality and it’s our job as marketers to insure everyone understands the distinction between a useful datapoint and an all-encompassing report. If the conversation becomes “do ___, it’s giving us the most customers” we’re not doing it right.

Now let’s step back and look at the other side of the picture: Just about every major brand has caught on to the idea of “engagement”, everyone wants to “have a conversation”, to “be authentic” and “get connected”. But authenticity remains a tactic relegated to a channel; it’s still social media vs marketing vs retention vs business.

This company already had a dialogue with me on Facebook that was actually pretty useful — they responded quickly, other customers even chimed in some agreeing and some suggesting that I had the wrong expectation, awesome [note: social to CRM still = huge opportunity ]. But why would they then call me and read a script to try and jam an offer down my throat?

It’s not that we should abandon every sales technique to simple have a casual chat with people but rather that we have to really accept that we’re making this shift in social channels because people have changed. No one cares if their interaction is via a Facebook post, a tweet, a cashier at the retail store or the retention team, in every case the expectation for what we as marketers call transparency is the same. Good business is good business.

So when we talk about bring social to the entire organization it doesn’t just mean get everyone a Twitter account. It’s about looking at the transformation in consumer expectations that’s happening and addressing that across the entire company because it impacts the entire process.

Had this rep opened with the same intro but asked me why I left I probably would have told him. Had he been given flexibility by his supervisors and autonomy to decide how to respond to my answer – to see if I was right to upsell now or simply file a note for later instead of being tasked with trying to close everyone no matter what into a reactivation his brand could have built goodwill and been the subject of this post in an inverse context.

Reputation isn’t made on a social network; it’s built by the product, by the service, by the value of the entire chain. Improving perception, getting reviews, driving sharing and all those related benefits that so desperately want from social means taking a social approach far outside the marketing cubes… otherwise we just fall flat on our face: one channel on its own is not change.

Like fan counts, the contest, the charity donation for every follower, the freebie for a like, all were at one point novel ideas so when we first did them it wasn’t a bad idea, we weren’t trying to reach the world, we were trying to get people who had never “faned” a brand to do so, to get our existing base to recognize that we were on this new medium so we ignored their wants and expectations in order to just get in front. But now it’s the everyday: a SoCal billboard from a company I’ve never heard of promises $25 to an organization for my Facebook click. Their name isn’t Coke or McDonalds, is the entire world really appropriate to be targeting to become a fan?

It’s time for that to all stop. Not to stop running programs but to stop running them for the sake of picking up whomever we can. It doesn’t make any sense.

Whether the platform calls it a like, a follower, a connection, a circle member or whatever what we’re talking about is brand fans, people who we can hopefully connect with around what we sell, who may share a post, who want to comment back and give us an insight and that requires a mutual relationship – they have to be interested, we have to know why they are.

With a gimmick we know exactly why the person’s following but yet we pretend that’s not it. We pretend that everyone is ready to connect with our brand and just needed a push to make it happen. So we tell the tell the team we’ve added 200,000 people this quarter who want to engage with us and meanwhile our comments all start to read “first to post” or “give more stuff away”. They’re engaging all right, just not with what we offer.

Social as a tactic is young and there’s certainly going to me times where we decide to do something to get seen but we have to remember why we’re doing this – to connect, to be a part of the conversation, to get a chance to talk to our customer. So when we read that most brands can’t beat 1% engagement rates, can’t find the “ROI” [I’ll save that for another day] the first issue we should be thinking about is who we’re even bringing in to talk to that would make those numbers change.

 

“We can fix your reputation on search engines and put good reviews first”… If you’ve turned on the radio or network TV in the past year or two you’ve heard the companies claiming to fix brand reputation by reordering results and even creating content. The ethical ones draw a line at impacting existing reviews while the bottom of the barrel doesn’t just outright admits they’re making stuff up and either way the message is clear to consumers: the review system can be gamed.

Of course gaming is not only bad companies trying to pretend to be good; scan through enough reviews and you’ll find gems like this one: “I haven’t bought this but everything XYZ makes is overpriced so I give it a one star”. Whether its brands attacking each other, service providers raking in money with promises of hiding bad reviews or consumers gone rogue in a negative [or even positive way], there’s a growing credibility problem with reviews.

There’s no doubt that reviews are downright vital…. in fact Millennials place more trust in others than friends & family, and we’re only getting started. However as reviews grow in importance, the efficacy of the system is taking a serious hit – reviews will become less trusted and now is the time for companies to tackle the problem.

1. We need to validate reviews on our sites.

When Starwood announced their review program last year what stood out was their move to validate every comment. Knowing what’s on their site is real is a powerful move, and moves the ball to trusting that they don’t filter, not that the reviews were made up.

2. Reviews must be presented authentically.

When companies re-order their reviews or even worse, just list the top ones, the entire concept becomes useless. As research has shown, it’s not the 5-star rating people want to see… it’s the reality of the product, the fact that someone has an issue with it, even if the issue is a non issue. Being honest with how we show reviews gives people a reason to believe that what we’re showing is all inclusive.

3. We need to provide a method for others to validate off of.

Amazon is as much a research site as a purchase one – etailers and content sites are not just getting reviews from their own sales / bookings. They need a way to authenticate too and that means those of us making products or selling services have to move to being more open, to provide  a mechanism identify a real customer by anyone.

This is not an easy path. If you sell in store how do insure a product review is real? If you turn away someone because they don’t validate aren’t you just encouraging them go to a third party site and make even more noise? Validation is by no means a simple process but it’s the right step to move towards to make those reviews count and to root out the problems, whether they’re negatives or positives. In the end transparency wins out.

The chief issue with a like, a retweet, or any other broadcast that is asked of a user is the endorsement behind it. Just as social has a code of conduct for brands engaging with consumers, the same exists for consumers engaging with each other. Posting to the wall and using a strong statement, each “like” is a statement. And not only do you have to get past that hurtle, but under the current feed systems, each action disappears off in minutes to a sea of new updates, photos and other likes leaving little long term connection outside of a smart counter.

But with Facebook’s new timeline feature and the apps that plug into it, the sharing game is in for a massive change.

As Facebook demonstrated with their launch partners at the recent f8 developer conference, a timeline app is an aggregation of activities from a particular site or tool that are individually less visible but collectively add up to reflect a part of someone’s life in their profile — whether it’s sharing a live playlist with spotify, last nights’ movie with Netflix, the current craft project, or even an automated stream from a vacation, apps will allow for users to associate activities as a part of their self identification.

Less visible & less significant, the opportunity for exposure will increase

The challenges to liking that I mentioned previously poses a significant barrier on many levels — users are selective about how many companies they like in total, how frequently they will add something new and even how they interact with sub-level pages like a brand vs an individual item for fear of overdoing it or being spammed by brands. By lowering the priority of each post and enabling more reasonable actions (reading, watching, listening to, researching, etc) it’s logical that users will become more willing to share and even allow for automated posting for trusted and appropriate tools.

In traditional advertising we consider repeated exposure vital to building up awareness and consideration so while these changes reduce the impact of any individual share action that is moved over to a timeline app, repetition is a worthy tradeoff for building social credibility.

Social has gone far beyond speeding up support inquiries or driving discussion n product launches, brand building is now really more “brand attachment” or the connection a brand is able to make, keep and show within a customer’s life. Timeline draws this evolution out literally and even further drives home the significance of moving from a buyer-supplier relationship to a partnership of sorts.

Early adopters will benefit significantly from viral effects.

While f8 outlined a few possibilities, there’s really no consumer facing brand that can’t find a way to bring themselves into a timeline.

The opportunity for timeline apps to is significant across many b2c and even b2b channels going from the very straight forward and “obvious” activities like a streaming service post to far more complex sharing like an update after a QR code scan or the departure of a plane.

Pulling in my own real world example, we see timeline as a game changing way to launch and build activity bringing gift related actions out from our standalone web and mobile platform and into a user’s existing social base without having to force (or build) a full app connection. With a simple confirmation, the wishlist picks, reviews and discussions around products created on our site live in a central place right where our user is most — Facebook. This in turn drives up repeated impressions which not only gives us the chance at growing our users but it helps the user fulfill their goal of getting their wishlist shared, seen and that gift purchased – it’s an action that we both want.

From my seat as both managing a consumer service and bringing brand marketing programs out, timeline apps are one of those changes that we will look back on and say “wow, that changed things” but I am eager to know what you think — is your team mapping out ideas, knee deep in code or holding on the sidelines to see if things shake out first?

Are the social tools we are using the right tools for our businesses?

Let’s start with a couple examples…

It’s Sunday afternoon and a man walks into Robins Brothers, “the world’s largest engagement ring store”. After having a great experience with the clerk and making a selection, he’s prompted to share the store by a kiosk on the door. Elated about the experience he quickly “validates” the store by liking it through Facebook. Before he makes the 5 minute drive home his soon-to-be fiancé’s friends have all posted back congratulating the two on an engagement that hasn’t happened. Whoops.

Fast forward a few days… the same man heads out with his [now] fiancé to watch a movie at the local theatre. The film is considered a “chick flick” but he likes it. After the movie, fandango asks him to post a review through his choice of social sites… all of which use his real name. Concerned from his last incident that he’ll get caught by his buddies he says nothing. Opportunity lost.

The next day the woman’s wife who works for a large corporation that was presented in the movie in a less than great way gets a call from her bosses’ boss asking about a comment she made about the brand integration on her new Twitter account.  Realizing that what she had said was public, she turns off the feed from the site where she posted to Twitter.

None of these are far fetched, in fact, they’re all based on real stories that have happened and you can bet there are millions more out there. From a casual comment on a “like” of a particular brand to noting a review on a product a friend would not have expected you to buy, people are increasingly aware of the association between their lives and their postings.

While there’s inherent benefits in forcing real identity around social content like accessing someone’s friend network, or even seeming necessity, like detailed commentary, that’s a pro we’ve created without necessarily considering the impact of the con.

Thus it comes down to a decision: more content or better validation.

Luckily most brands don’t have to pick one or the other. With a host of tools it’s possible to allow both sides and with tweaking, even seemingly open tools can be made rather private. For example, Facebook’s basic like button posts right to the wall while the much richer UI share widget allows the user to select to exclude or include friends. Simple messaging to explain this may encourage a user afraid of exposure to hit share.

Give people enough choice to decide what and how while matching their own need for privacy, all while encouraging them to influence others – which accomplish your goal of creating visibility and buzz, even if it’s not quite in the way you wanted.

This is an all too common tactical error that, as we become more connected, is having a greater bottom line impact.

1. Customers don’t operate on your 9-5: It’s a big world and people are not all located in your corporate time zone, that already sets the stage to be “unavailable” at times when you’re expected.

2. “After hours” can be the most important contact time. No one wants to work Friday afternoon but if you run a weekend focused business, that’s many people are most likely to reach out.

3. People “get stuff” on days off. Weekend birthday parties, christmas morning… these are often the biggest days for engagement as people, especially kids, students & young adults [who are of course extremely active online] are often gifted products. Gifts don’t tend to arrive Tuesday between 10 and 2.

4. A quick, off hours response says a lot about your brand and whether it’s a “congratulations” on the gift, a “we can help you with that tomorrow” or a “here’s some quick info”, it’s a major win at building loyalty and reducing flare ups.

It’s ok, heck it’s proper to have reasonable “offline” times. But as consumers take more control, their expectations have shifted and you stand to miss out by sticking to the hours that are easiest for you.

Instead, why not give your teams a little flexibility: leave early for that afternoon yoga class, take a morning hiking trip, but when you’re resting up this weekend, pop back on to Tweet deck and see what’s happening. It doesn’t take an entire split strategy shift to be active & catch the low hanging opportunity; it just takes thinking on a different term.

And as for that Hawaii boat operator, we went with another vendor, one who was around not in real time, but that weekend. That’s all it took.

Expertise in what the brand really stands for: employees know best

While corporate builds the brand strategy and sets a marketing tone, the truth is that all the store visits and surveys in the world don’t put us in the driver seat with the customer. Retail associates, shipping teams, customer support are already the face of your brand to your customers and the true experts on the pulse of the business. From a practical, when it comes to reaching people in a meaningful way, perspective your employees are your best assets as they live and breathe the true brand every day.

Expertise in how to use social: It’s a usage curve, not a training one.

One can say that only so-called experts should be putting messages out the public but let’s face it, social is new… evolving every day and is used by just about everyone so the learning curve to participating on a useful level is unlike any tactic before. Sure you have to figure out CoTweet, Buddy Media or a similar tool, learn the goals of a social campaign and the reason for authenticity but really it comes down to thinking like a customer, being willing to look at the brand from a new vantage point and not just as a marketer: then you can make an impact.

Guidance required: Setting the right tone

This does not mean giving free reign, doing that invites arguing, insider information, and a host of other problems but with logical guidance, rather than walls, programs like Twelpforce from BestBuy have shown, leveraging the mass employee base scales far better than any corporate managed program can.

Not just employees who contribute officially: Involvement is every mention

But of course not every employee is going to be out there advocating the brand on social channels in an attempt to become the next social media manager. Even then, there are three reasons why you should continue to let everyone log on, access farmville and tweet about their weekend plans.

First you have the opportunity of each person’s network — networking in the 21st century is as much about Facebook posts and +1s as it is sales events or conferences and every employee comes to you with a unique group to influence on many levels.  You see this when employees, far outside of marketing, talk about their great corporate culture, the latest products or even defend their brand. Within their influence circle, each employee becomes the voice of their brand. Take away access and you silence their ability, and desire to support.

Second you have information. Whether it’s an earthquake or a business trend, social is the fastest tool out there. It’s why we can stun our executive teams with the speed in which we discover relevant case studies or consumer insights and the same is true across the organization. With training rather than filtering, employees can tap in to this to understand what the brand is doing, their contacts at agencies, partner providers, even local competitors.

And there’s a danger to limits: Your own social backlash

Then there’s practical side. Block Facebook and Twitter online and people will turn to their phones. Block their phones and they miss out on what’s happening in their personal life. That breeds resentment which at best hurts your retention time (hi HR) and at worst leads to a lot of bad commentary on glass door and all over the social we as people get home and log back on. People are social beings so just as you don’t stop employees from a quick chat at the water cooler or a smoking break, you shouldn’t be slapping their hands to keep them off of social.

Open up and educate to benefit.

Whether it’s leveraging motivated employees to provide a face to the brand, influencing friend circles or simply giving employees enough respect to check in now and then, there’s great opportunity in opening up social to your entire organization and focusing on educating and training rather than limiting and penalizing.

If productivity stinks, Facebook is merely today’s outlet for free time, and a ban will not fix the problem anymore than removing the free water cooler.

You can’t claim engagement if you’re buying it

Whether it’s a flier in a newspaper with a Facebook coupon, a tv spot with a Twitter url for a contest or an outright offer to buy fandom with a deep discount (see “Did This National Restaurant Chain Put Too Much Love Into the Like?” by Jay Baer) the result a purchase of a like rather than a connection with a customer. As this sort of buying becomes more common place, it’s not surprising that even as brands talk about wonderful ideas like engaging and building community, research from the Get Satisfaction blog shows that 43.5% of consumers are following brands for offers — and why not, that’s what they’re being told they’ll get.

Already missing the mark on relevancy, social sites penalize poor relevancy

With hundreds of connections per user noise has become so high that systems like Facebook’s EdgeRank now exist to tune down what a user, their friends, and even the overall “like” audience see from a brand page. Even on systems like Twitter that don’t have scoring of responses, the mere amount of information makes the less than relevant disappear into the bottom of a long stream. Thus the more a brand buys it’s following, the less each follower sees, or cares to pay attention to the brand. This becomes a cold reality when you discover that some brands are suppressed to over 80% of their audience.

This doesn’t mean abandoning growth goals, but rather settingt expectations about what they lead too

A brand that decides “I’m going to go out and advertise my page to build up” is wrong to use the word engage to refer to that program. Conversation is gone and while the activity is on a social channel, it is as much broadcast marketing as an email list or a weekly mailer… Even worse with virtually no segmentation offered by social networks, the existing loyal fan base is lumped in with the prospecting effort. Everyone becomes one jumbled mess.

On the other hand, a brand that says let’s insert a flier with orders to share a comment, or posts a sign inside our stores with a mention that you’ll find expert product insights, company updates and occasional offers on their social pages is building the expectation of dialogue and is attracting loyalty and certainly customers. A discount may be associated but the qualification is that you want to be an insider, a participant first, and get a little something in return for it in access and savings.

Bigger counts do not actually mean bigger reach or results

It’s a critical realization and once you step down the paid like road it’s very difficult to get back up the relevancy ladder.