Tag Archives: social media

Social starts at the ground level: Changing how we approach “experience”

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This week while at a big box retailer I overhear a store manager telling her assistant manager to “not call backup unless it was absolutely overwhelmed and necessary”, talk about a way to approach customer experience. For the manager this is the everyday challenge: use as few people as possible to cover a myriad of activities all while the lights are on and customers are walking in. At the same time hundreds of miles away at corporate, that same retailer has a growing team dedicated to bringing the brand’s positive value to light through social channels – two track that simply don’t line up.

The approach, and the comment aren’t unique this one retailer or retail at all but rather it’s just one example of the growing gap that exists between how companies operate at the point of interaction and the growing focus on customer experience in corporate.

As this discussion was taking place I could see the lines growing… and yet employees were visibly scampering around to other parts of the store, backrooms, and out the frontdoor for their current task. Some consumers waited and filed the experience away into their own head while others likely chatted about the long waits to whoever they were with on the spot or when they got home and then of course there are the few people who pulled out their smartphone and shared it with the world right then and there. But no matter how they acted, no matter what the, tickets / cashier or any other store KPI may have been, the perception of the store was impacted.

Just about every company has or is in the process of creating a team tasked with building reputation and yet these teams are often kept away from the process where impressions are actually made, left trying to leverage the good outcomes and mitigate the bad ones. For stores, call centers, even web teams, the focus is often on the same metrics they’ve known for years: items per basket, cashier efficiency, upsell dollars – drive the bottom line. It’s not the two sides are at odds with each other, it’s simply how they look at the world – social attacks experience to drive results while stores look at results to determine what to do in experience.

When the idea of social business first started to catch, we could only see as far as our team – how do we in corporate marketing get more people talking, how do we drive more reviews – agencies did this, brands did this, I did this, well did this – it was, at the time, the right way to go. But now we know better, we know that while we may say “social”, we don’t mean what happens at Facebook or Twitter, we mean what happens at the store, with the returns call center, during the tradeshow that creates the experience which will make it to Facebook.

So when we talk about bringing “social” to the entire company it doesn’t just [just] mean get everyone on Twitter to respond to questions, it’s about changing the culture, the metrics, the very way we do business. We have to think about what’s going to make our reputation against what we want out of our business – is our price point low enough to really be able to get away with long lines? Is our service really what we think it is?

Social should start in corporate, it should be managed by a team, defined and run as a part of everyday operations but that’s not where it ends.

Customers form their opinions at every interaction point and the impact of each positive or negative is huge – even if it’s never put out with a public comment that the corporate team can see. This requires a complete shift; we can’t assign reputation to a small team and leave those on the floor who actually make it ignorant of the realities of the market. To improve reviews, shares, likes – social, we have to improve the experience first.

Your employees are your brand, so why are you blocking them from social media sites?

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As social has grown become the top activity online, it’s not surprising that employers have started banning the use of sites by retail, support and genera employees. And that’s mistake.

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.

Social Media ROI does not end at new sales… Measuring the big picture

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If we’re starting a brand new company and tomorrow you kicked off a TV campaign promoting the business you’d expect some immediate sales to walk in the door, you’d expect to hear about the efforts, but chances are you’d be downright surprised if you broke even on new sales. After decades and decades of advertising we’ve come to accept the value of building brand perception to grow business over the long haul. So why is it that so many companies’ measure social media only by the short term sales bump?

Just because you have data doesn’t mean you know the full story

Since the banner first hit the web marketers have been stuck in the same paradigm – the data is there so measure it. And why not, with data coming in seconds rather than days or even weeks, the temptation to assume it’s all right there is great. Yet we’ve started to learn that people are using multiple ads, are narrowing in with many searches over time and conversions are taking longer and longer as the web becomes a corner stone of shopping. Single metrics are dangerous.

The opportunity cost of using social media only to acquire

Instead digital marketing, and even more so social media, must be looked at as holistic program that is as much a necessity as creating brand awareness and consideration is.

Some 70% of Americans say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before making a purchase, according to an October 2008 survey by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates

One could look at driving user reviews as an acquisition effort. There’s an audience to target, an expense to drive, host and promote reviews and a lift associated with a product that has them over one that does not. But it’s deeper than that.

When the majority of your customers are seeking reviews it’s not just about what you can increment, it’s about what you stand to lose. If you opted not to push for reviews because you couldn’t justify the cost on new sales, you risk all sales, not just new ones as people turn to other sites or product lines that offer the support they’ve come to expect. That’s not captured in lift metrics.

There are no longer channels, even tactics outside of marketing, must complement to earn a sale

Your investments into all forms of media drive people back to you or your partner’s digital properties for research.  Just like with reviews, if someone who uses Twitter sends a message for pre-sales questions and gets nothing… not a customer support message, not a suggestion of a peer to peer area, just silence. That speaks volumes about what your brand will be like after they buy.

This extends to all channels… after being intrigued by a radio spot and going a company’s website a user who discovers a blog about the culture and expertise becomes a great choice, even a premium value, while the other company that just promotes their tradeshow booth feels empty, or “salesy”. Customers don’t care which channel gets attribution for the sale, they simply look for validation – a good buy or a bad one.

Let’s not forget the brand awareness opportunity either

This isn’t just about tactics that support a product purchase on the front end either. Just like TV is run on a negative upfront ROI basis to produce over the long haul, a social campaign can have the same value.

750 million people on Facebook outrank major sports events, dramas or reality tv, and they’re around just about every day. So if a customer goes knocking on your Facebook page and it isn’t there, or isn’t doing a good job of holding their attention when they “fan” up, that’s a wasted opportunity. But with social this isn’t just prospective awareness, this is true engagement opportunity where a good program can have that person showing affinity and even spreading it. How does that factor in to upfront sales?

Measure but measure the right picture

By no means do I advocate stopping or backing off on measuring your campaigns but instead it’s about making sure you understand their full impact and measure that. The problem with data is that we tend to focus on what we have easily available, and that’s new customers who come in directly or old ones who stay attached… but engagement, validation, cross-channel sales, and many of the other components of social are not easily studied and thus they are skipped and that not only short changes your programs but opens the door to cutting something that’s far more important than you may realize.

It’s not all about social media: Advertising: the forgotten, but necessary, campaign partner.

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With the buzz out there, it’s easy to see why brand owners, marketers and of course the hotly contested social media experts, are extremely amped up about social, social, social but just because social is right in front of us doesn’t make it the only game in town. In fact, if you take a social only approach chances are you’re handicapping your campaign from the start.

Social media, while powerful, authentic and important only works if people see what you’re doing and that’s where advertising comes in as a symbiotic partner

The problem we see today is that people expect everything to just go viral. We’ve all be asked [told?] to make a viral video; to make a product get “out there” with sharing alone. The reality is that very few products even have a chance to “go viral”. For every blendtec or old spice is a thousand more brands with a good product that simply isn’t what people want to share around the web. That’s why on any given day the top 50 YouTube videos include one product related videos. Yup, one.

Advertising is the dependable version of viral

Instead of asking “how do I make this ‘go viral’”, which is something you can’t control or guarantee, you need to ask yourself: “how do I take something that is credible, authentic and trustworthy and make it get exposed”. This is why advertising becomes remains so important in an era of social media – advertising is your guaranteed source of visibility that insures success whether or not a viral pickup takes place.

Social Media changes how you advertise

Google AdWords, Targeted Banners, Lead Generation Campaigns, Facebook Ads. Advertising has been used to sell your brand’s value under your voice, with your credibility attached. Social integrates into this chain to make your ads authentic and stand out [at least until everyone gets on board].

Rather than saying “50% off on the Amazing Widget” say “50% off on the 5-star rated Widget” with quotes from reviews visible around the ad unit. Rather than a stock photo of actors enjoying their new RV pull in a video from your Facebook campaign of a real family talking about their experience with a link to read more stories. Bring the same transparency you have on your reviews, Facebook page, user community and other social features right out and into your advertising – the more real time and authentic, the better.

Product packaging is another great place to bring social to life and get in front of the customer. Think about two boxes with nearly the same product, one has a summary rating, an expert rating and a QR / RFID / short url link to read more reviews while the other doesn’t even have a mobile friendly site. Even at a higher price the brand willing to put it all out there is worth a closer look. Mobile has become far too prevalent to think you can hide or out impulse research, so instead beat the customer too it.

Don’t assume that simply because you have UGC on your website or social channels people are going to find it. You need to tell them it’s there.

5 Ways to Use Social Media to Get More ROI from Tradeshows

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From mega tradeshows CES, IFA, E3, Comic Con to niche & industry shows DEMA, IRCE, NAMM, and many more that I’ve since thrown away the badge from, I’ve made it to a lot of tradeshows in the past few years and every show I tell myself I’m going to create a killer post about the great uses of social media I see yet after every show I walk away empty handed.

Most campaigns start – and stop at a QR code linking back to a contest, let’s face it, is no more social than a lead gen form. But with a campaign that goes the distance to bring people in and aggregate content out, social media offers the opportunity to not just sell more, but give your tradeshow a whole new type of ROI by creating buzz that lives long after the booth comes down.

Bring customer reviews to speak for you

It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with a consumer comparing a couple show specials or a buyer for a major retailer who wants to be sure your product is going to sell through; people want to know they’re making the right choice offline as much as online. So at the risk of stating the oblivious: if people who buy turn to reviews, your booth should have them!

There’s many ways to do this from running reviews on monitored throughout the booth to putting the star ratings and the last 10 comments on the back of a PIL to summary cards in front of the product. Or, if you’re really innovative consider feeding them in via your vendor’s API to keep content super fresh. Regardless of the display medium the same rule applies as with reviews on your site: transparency rules. If it’s 100% positive, 4 word excerpts you’ve done nothing [except get people to use their smartphones to see the real story].

Get reviews out of the people you meet

Hundreds, thousands even tens of thousands of people will walk through your booth and, depending on your product; many will either try it or already be customers who own it. So why would your interaction stop at a demo or conversation?

Instead take some of those new tablets IT bought, remove angry birds [just during the day] and load up a mobile app to let people write their comments as demo users. Sure they’ve only used the product for a short time but you can turn that into a positive either badging your existing user review system [i.e. “Tried at E3”] or by making a “as said at ____” part of your site. The idea isn’t the depth; it’s the broadness and unbiased reality of having 500 or 5,000 comments show up in 3 days.

Use check-in tools & Twitter to create a reason to return [and talk]

You want buzz, you want traffic, and your sales team wants excitement to make your show come alive, after all, excitement breeds more excitement [and we all know the “stand outside your booth and look in” trick]. So what’s it going to be – another year of the business card into a fishbowl?

The goal here is simple: Give people a reason to stop on by daily, if only for a brief moment. It’s a chance for the team to sell, for tips #1, #2 and #3 to take effect and lure a deeper interaction and to get exposure outside the show.  So  pick your favorite, or the most show appropriate, check-in tool, Twitter or any other instant update service [or several] to turn that fishbowl into something digital.

Court influencers & general posters: get talked about

Sure tradeshows are about selling but that includes selling your brand. From bloggers to press to enthusiasts, the influencers and voices of the web are walking shows and it’s time marketing took a seat at the booth next to the sales team to greet them. The press event is not the end of the world’s involvement in your event.

These days much of the media coverage of tradeshows come in the form of blog posts, photo albums and video interviews so not only is it important to build a roster of these names for the long haul but it’s essential to insuring you get your time in the spotlight with someone   who is qualified, and willing to speak. Personally I prefer to use product / development team members on camera but that’s for another post.

Of course in addition to on-site coverage, this is also a great opportunity to side-step the extremely impersonal and sales like pitch process, get someone’s hands on your product and get them into your review program to take a deeper look. Nothing sells a product like the product its self.

Share the show with your follower: be the expert

For every attendee that can come to the show you’re at, many more of your fans and target audience won’t make it. Even those who do attend are pulled in a dozen directions at once… where to go, what to do… Either way people want to know what’s new, what’s exciting, what’s the story?!

This seems like the easiest item to check off, most say they do it, but there’s doing it and doing it right.

Consider a daily video interview to get a few customers’ reactions on your product. Try visiting your partner or complementary booths & events to talk about what’s happening with them as well. Bring in the well known events, show stunts and broaden up. You’re supposed to be expert in the category and that means you should have something to say about what’s going on all over, not just in your own 30×30 space.

And one last thing, time matters. Press, your competition, general attendees: they’re all talking in real time so if you’re not updating at least daily, you’re missing the point. If marketing is the most tired group at the booth call each morning that’s the tell you’re creating something people might actually share.

Got a tip or example of great social / engagement campaigns being run at tradeshows? Share it in the comments.

Solid execution: Delta gets smacked by soldier’s viral video, responds & changes policy in hours

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So it’s only been a few hours since my post on Delta Airlines snafu with a group of soldier’s over baggage fees which turned into a viral / pr crises in just a few hours. Not only is the issue all over Twitter, Facebook and news sites but the video from the soldier’s has passed 200,000 views at last count.

So while my first post was really about empowering your ground-level employees to avoid bad customer experiences, whether they go viral or not, Delta has turned this into a great example of how you should handle social incidents.

While nothing can erase the negative impact this will leave, Delta’s social [and business] teams have been on their toes and acting quick to avoid making this into a “United Airlines Breaks Guitar” hit. Sure the PR will continue against them, more articles will come, it won’t be good but for an organization of this site and legacy, they’re playing their cards well. Let’s take a look…

  1. Yesterday a video was posted about an issue costing 38 soldiers $2800 in fees. As quick as the video became shared, Delta was in the mix with a response from “Rachel” apologizing & reaffirming the policy just before midnight EST.
  2. This morning Delta wakes up to see it’s full-blown-viral with major social network and media coverage creating over 200,000 YouTube views.
  3. By 1pm EST Rachel has an updated post with an updated policy: 4 checked bags for military traveling in economy on orders. The post reaffirms Delta’s involvement & programs for the military. And Rachel also threw in a personal statement as an Army wife and 12 year employee of Delta.

It’s been less than 24 hours and Delta has out two blog posts, has changed a world-wide policy and has allowed a personal message to float into the middle of it.

Like I said, this won’t end the problem and frankly, adjusting one policy does not fix the underlying issue where the system often prevents employee from making the “right” decision but Delta has taken a strong step to mitigating the issue and, more importantly, having a voice in the spread of it every step of the way.

By moving quickly blogs, tweets, mainstream media are all adjusting their story to mention Delta’s response and changes while the story is hot. As hard as it is, this is critical and very well executed by Delta… The longer you wait, the colder the issue and the less your response is seen so, from a social crises management perspective, kudos to their social team for being on top of the video, their business for being flexible enough to run and make a decision when one needed to be made — even if it’s just one gesture it’s a big one at the right time.

For more thoughts on crises communication management in a social world, check out my previous post about the Urban Outfitters social media incident.

Urban Outfitters vs Social Media: A post about crises communication as if it was a crises.

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Right now it’s around 2:30pm pacific time and about 45 minutes ago I caught wind of an escalating crises the apparel brand Urban Outfitters is now facing. Updated comments now appear at the end of the post.

The background

As I understand it, 5 hours ago a tweet & blog post was made by independent artist / designer  / seller @amberkarnes stating that Urban Outfitters had stolen the style of several of her designed pieces. Amber’s network is just over 1,200 followers at this point and was presumably less when things started but that’s all it took to kick off enough fire that has gotten NY Mag, AllTop and enough other blogs and users talking that Urban Outfitters is now on the twitter trends list across the US — and not in a good way.

Urban Outfitters seems to have caught wind of this quickly, they maintain a fairly active social account so monitoring was probably not an issue, and their first reply went out about 2 hours after the incident flared up. Since then they’ve made other, unrelated tweets but have been dark on the issue while at the same time it’s growing. It’s crises communication time.

As interesting as it is, I’m going to put this incident aside and talk broader: How do you address a social “crises”

Given the real time nature of this story, I thought I’d take a similar approach to talking about crises management by putting myself under the same gun a company is under when facing an issue like this. Like I said in the opening, I caught wind of this post less than 45 minutes ago, and in crises mode that’s about how long it will take you to get the facts, make the right calls and startdown the management path if you’ve planned in advance, so I’m holding to the same standard.

1. It starts with awareness

If you’re lucky it’s not a monitoring tool or software that catches the issue but rather a great social manager who’s on the clock, logged in and sees something before it becomes a trend — that’s catching it early. Unfortunately issues don’t limit themselves to office hours and those monitoring tools as well as just having a well empowered and socially connected call center and employee base are critical to jumping on top of things. More of my “alerts” have been random twitter checks or a call from a colleague than anything else. When that phone rings you have to answer it.

2. Hopefully you’ve planned for a firedrill. I of course did not plan to firedrill a blog post about firedrilling.

This all works much better if you have a system in place that’s agreed on about who owns the issue, how they’re measured, escalated and handled. No template does it all but it’s about having the process to figure out the right plan rather than the plan to figure out the process. If you don’t have one handy, build it today – then come back next week for my post on tips about that.

3. Next you have to gather facts at lightning speed.

How big the issue? Where did it start? Why did it happen? How is it growing? Who has the authority to make a change? Should you make a change? What’s the blog buzz? How many tweets again? Did hit our Facebook page? Are we sure it’s a real issue?

There are a lot of questions and you won’t answer them all in 15 minutes, that’s not the goal. This is triage and your job is to figure out enough about the nature of the issue, the validity [real problem versus really big misunderstanding], the size and the spread so you can prioritize it according to an existing crises management plan. Know what’s important on the size, the scope and the impact to the company. That’s what’s needed to move along.

4. It’s judgment call time – prioritize the issue, ring the bell

Hopefully this is well documented in your crises communication plans but if not, you need to figure out how big of an issue this is and how that requires involving, alerting or getting input from.

Issues that trend on Twitter are by default going to be a full scale riot since you can about guarantee major PR coverage that week but from there it gets murky. Look at those facts on size, scope and validity – the more true an issue, the faster it’s growing, the worse the impact potential is. That said, something that’s big but misinformed can be very serious but also really benefits from having your ducks in a row as a strong with the support of your advocates will hit it hard. Most issues are more in the middle so it’s looking at the growth, where the conversation is coming from [widespread versus one site, known detractors versus every day users, new issue versus repeating].

5. Gather the right team and decide on the response strategy

From this point it’s very easy to slow down. Marketing l knows about the issue, has an idea for a response but others aren’t so sure, they want to see where it goes, or if it’s really a “big deal” [after all "it’s just on Twitter!"]. This is the most dangerous part of the process where you have to drive hard – no matter what the decision the goal is to reach it and quickly. You can move later, turn but whatever you do will be seen by the world so be ready to stand behind it… and the longer you wait the more you put yourself in a box… took too long to respond, didn’t admit a problem, admitted to something than recanted.

Now that’s not to say responding outright is always the right call. Sometimes an issue isn’t growing, sometimes it’s a flare up of an old problem by detractors that replying too will just flame, sometimes it’s something your advocates have already done a better job on than you could. Deciding to respond is a big step but in this world of open communication, it’s increasingly becoming the only. People want to know that you take an issue seriously and what you’re doing on it.

6. Writing your reply

This part is tricky. You need to be fast, get another group sign off but really think through the issue too. Are you ready to make a statement? If not, it’s only been an hour, you can state who is on it, what you’re working on, it’s ok. The decision to reply is a decision to either correct an inaccuracy, start a dialogue or to show you’re on top of figuring things out. Any of them are ok. And before you hit the post button, grab someone uninvolved to take a look — a last sanity check so fast doesn’t turn into poorly executed.

7. Make sure the response is unified.

It’s easy to jump in to a Twitter/ Facebook / blog strategy and totally forget about the rest of the world. If the issue is big enough to get to step 5 it’s big enough that you’ll get calls, people walking into stores, talking to their friend who works for you, etc.

Determine the spread and scope and issue the right response. Never stop conversation – that looks like you’re covering up, instead explain the issue, your response too it and why it’s important that your support / employee team speaks too it. Allow enough wiggle room that answers are real but be sure you’re not leaving your phone or store reps out to dry when they get a call they know nothing about.

8. Monitor. Follow up. Monitor. Follow up. Monitor. Follow up

On the business end: Whether you respond or not if the issue is big it should become your focus, your hour, your day. This morning Urban Outfitters ay have replied to a small string of tweets, now it’s a trending topic – that’s night and day difference [not saying it’s the case, just an example]. Bringing your whole social team plus representatives from all impacted areas either into a room or an email string and issue updates based on the severity from every half hour to every few hours. These should continue until the issue is gone decreasing as it fades away.

On the user end: If you replied, which is likely, you need to keep that dialogue going. The more your company is willing to open up, explain and respond, the more you can take back the issue even if you are in the wrong. Companies who made the call to keep talking through site shut downs, lawsuits, broken products get people to let them [the company] drive the understanding of the issue. People retweet, share, even defend when a company is explaining while not providing information is an invitation for just about anyone to become the voice of reason, no matter how unreasonable.

9.  You have the ball. Hold on to it.

I can recall an issue where I was boarding a plane several years ago and walked off – that raised a lot of eyebrows but it was the right call to make and it got people at a very senior level to pay attention too. I made the call because I had the ball. It was mine to run with and flying, even for 90 minutes, was just going to get in the way. Of course I’ve also gotten on the plane too [yup, more than one issue in an airport] — sometimes the right response isn’t to respond yet and sometimes you need to insure the process works without you since you won’t always be there for things to go wrong.

So there you have it, 45 minutes from issue to pushing back a few things, to posting. Not the best post, not the most comprehensive but that’s how it works… you pick up what you can see, you decide on the course, get a quick consensus and move. Next week I’ll post up some template examples of crises communication strategies to show how I approach them – but that’s not something one does during the issue, that comes after it.

If you’re looking for more on how Urban Outfitters handles this, while it’s already being judged, the next few days will be extremely telling with many great articles certain to cover the details. I may post on it myself but suggest you head to Twitter for a lot of commentary and insight – marketers and consumers alike.

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Update 5/26/2011 @ 10pm (pst):

It’s been around 13 hours since this issue broke on Twitter and while Urban Outfitters has still only issued one tweet on the topic, they’ve pulled the products in question off their site. IMO this poses two problems: First silence is a killer for an issue of this size. No matter how much is being done on the backend if it’s not seen up front the fuel keeps burning and in this case that’s tweets, facebook shares and blog posts by the second and to a target demographic that lives and buys by what’s trending. Second the decision to pull the products; while this may very well be the right call, the silence around it makes it deadly — acting without explaining is interrupted as being wrong and unable to explain why.

Having been in the shoes of their marketing team before I know how painful the process can be and being second guessed only makes it worse. Still, if there’s one upside to events like this it is the chance to learn whether you’re in the company or on the sidelines. Hopefully the decision to get more visible is made soon to give their brand’s response a chance to be seen but either way when the dust settles it’s time to evaluate what went wrong not just with the issue but with handling it. For those watching the story unfold, the question you should be asking is are you ready if the logo was changed to yours right now?

Update 5/31/2011

It took a few days but Urban Outfitters did issue a response on this late last week. Interestingly, despite the products coming down, they took an offensive, counter stance [just the article title is powerful: Urban Outfitters Responds to False Allegations by Necklace Designer]. This is the hard road but it’s often the right one — just because something comes out against you doesn’t mean it was so. However time remains a critical factor and by the time their comments made it online, visibility around the issue had decreased significantly meaning that many who read about the issue won’t see their comments.

Become a fan is not a call to action. Create better social following campaigns.

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So much emphasis is being placed on driving Facebook “likes”, Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers these days that we seem to be forgetting the user in the drive to grow, grow, grow. In the earl[ier] days of social networking it was fairly novel just to have a brand page that you promoted, regularly posted too, and *gasp* replied on. Now that’s the norm. That and a lot more. So standing out requires doing more than raising your hand and saying “I’m here”.

People may love your product but is that enough to get you selected as the brand they follow if you don't tell them why?

Step back and think about it… the call to action “become a fan” has got to be one of the most loaded statements in the history of marketing.

- A lifetime of purchases and evangelizing, was I not a fan before I joined your Facebook page?

- Is my “like” that strong of an endorsement that it makes me a fan versus just a follower?

- What is a fan? What’s so special about being one?

We can do better.

Exclusives, Useful Updates, Coupons, and even Just Brand Affinity can all be reasons to join up. But we have to spell them out so people know what they're getting.

Joining your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or other channels may joining something on a “social” site but it’s still a conversion action just like any other to the user. They’re a person, you’re a business. Thankfully, all that time we spend in building content strategies, making the right branded applications and offering a strong combination of “value” from discounts to inside looks to contests is all the ammo to sell joining up. It just needs to be sold.

So let’s stop telling people just to “fan” or “follow” or “like” us and tell them the full message.

  1. What is it you want them to do exactly?
  2. What does they get for doing this? What’s in it for them?
  3. What does becoming a fan really mean? What do you expect out of a fan? What can they do?

Without a defined offering for why someone should join it’s hard to know their value as a business either. How are you measuring likes versus loyalty in Facebook if the only goal is one action?

Thankfully the YouTube community has held onto some sense here and I’ve found a great video explaining how you get followers by PhilipDeFranco, a top followed channel. Not surprisingly, aside from a few gimmick ideas it all comes back down to having a clear offering that lets you stand out. Surprised?

Later this week I’ll be posting up a few examples of campaigns that successful brands are using to drive social interaction but if you have your own story, leave a comment.