Posts RSSAmazon fails at measuring perception on Twitter…at least so far
By Justin Goldsborough | April 13th, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…How fast does word of mouth travel? Well, just ask Amazon.com. During the last hour while I ran to the Sprint store and grabbed some lunch, more than 6,500 new tweets were posted on Twitter under the hashtag #amazonfail.
Why are people mad at Amazon? Well, according to “The Inquisitor” blog it’s because Amazon.com has been removing GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) book titles from their sales pages on the grounds that they are “adult content.” As you might imagine, this issue has many people up in arms, but what is worse is the speculation in the blogosphere that Amazon may have purposely done this as the result of a policy decision versus the removal being an actual computer programming glitch.
Did Amazon do this on purpose? Or here’s a better question…Does it matter? In today’s social media world the answer is a resounding no. Amazon removal of GLBT titles may have been the purest of accidents. But the company needs to measure to people’s perception, no matter how much it differs from reality.
As Jessica Gottlieb said in her blog on the subject — where she mentions btw that she talked to a source at Amazon she’s known for more then 20 years who said that it really was a content “flag that was too broadly applied by some poor dev guy by mistake” — “perception is everything.” All it takes is for one person to see a tweet or a blog and then start passing word on to their social networks. Heck, that’s what I’m doing right now. That’s how this story went from one blog over the weekend to the Wall Street Journal in under 60 hours. And remember this happened on the weekend. Probably would have gotten to the Journal faster during the week.
So what do you do if you’re Amazon? Well, there’s no fool proof plan. But here are some thoughts:
- Apologize, apologize, apologize. Even if the content wasn’t removed on purpose, it happened. Remember brands must measure to perception.
- Join the conversation where it’s happening, apologize again and tell your side of the story. Twitter is currently blowing up with conversation about this issue. And Amazon has a Twitter account. But have they addressed the issue there? Nope. In my mind, that’s the amazonfail.
- Tell the truth and be transparent. Do not put a PR spin on a story like this or you will get eaten alive by the people. If it was done purposefully, say that. A mistake, say that. And either way, say you’ve heard what people are saying (tweeting) and you’ll work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
- Learn from this. Develop a social media strategy. Actually, Amazon may have one already. But its Twitter strategy needs updating as the company account is set to behave purely as an RSS feed and doesn’t recommend how to get in touch with someone from Amazon. Remember Twitter is about conversation. If Amazon had already built a relationship with tweeps via its brand name account, an issue like this would have been easier to explain/handle. Instead, when people are rapid tweeting about Amazon and its most recent tweet is a daily book recommendation from 17 hours ago, that’s screams “we don’t get it.” Amazon.com also has no mention of the incident on its home page.
What are your thoughts? Surprised at how fast word of mouth can spread? How would you handle this issue?
Btw, here are some samples of the tweets being posted on the #amazonfail hashtag:
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”
Are technology and time teaming up against blogs?
By Justin Goldsborough | March 18th, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…I blog a lot less these days. When I first started blogging, I followed a strict schedule of at least one post a week and often more. I even established “blogging Mondays” for myself to make sure I took time each Monday to write a blog entry. Now I’m down to one or two blog posts a month and you wanna know why — reading and writing blogs takes too long.
Blogs are heralded as one of the founding tools in social media and a movement away from a “one-way, talking-at-you” mentality to a “two-way, talking with you” philosophy. But if you think about it in simpler terms — why complicate things — blogs were really one of the first steps in the evolution of online conversation. And as technology changes and evolves we have more of these conversations to follow and less time to follow them.
Maybe I’m just impatient. Or maybe I have ADD. But to me, reading a blog to get to the comments section where the actual conversation is taking place or writing a blog post instead of tweeting my thoughts and getting immediate feedback is starting to make less and less sense. It’s like when mom and dad made you eat your cooked carrots so you could have chocolate ice cream. You did it, but you do it begrudgingly.
Like those vegetables, I really do believe reading and writing blogs is good for me. The issue is time. Seems like each day I have less of it and more things I want to do, more conversations I want to have. Therefore, each day I become a bigger fan of just getting to the point. After all, IMO the biggest advantage of online conversations is perspective. Why wait the couple of hours it takes to write a post and the additional time it takes for you to read it. It’s not that I don’t value the opinions people share in their blog posts. In fact, those opinions — that perspective — is what I’m looking for. But I haven’t got all day…and neither do you.
Like I do anytime I have a hypothesis, I hit the tweets (not streets) to see what others thought and to check my own sanity. Here’s what I tweeted:
- Blogging less these days. Takes 2 long & feels a bit 1 way compared 2 tweets. Am I impatient? Crazy? Or r u tweeting more, blogging less?
And here’s what some of my Tweeps had to say:
- @tvsmike — A lot of people I’ve chatted with have said the same. It’s almost as if there are two types of SM personalities out there: Those who blog, and those who tweet and link to said blog. I tend to enjoy Twitter much more because I’m pretty sure I have ADD and I can’t focus long enough for a real solid blog post.
- @mvellandi — Indeed blogging is tougher work now. I’m doing more posts that link to and review news stories, using a bookmarklet.
- @robodaniel — Still prefer blogging. Takes longer & less conversant but seems more permanent. Tweets are fleeting like leaves in a river.
- @docsmooth — Blogging a bit less, but I think the content quality is up, since the small thoughts come out here. All i’m saying is I am not tweeting instructions to set up a secondary DNS server. someone else might figure out how.
- @movetrends — Agree and just read this post from @mcuban Where Does Tweet Time Come From? You may find interesting.
Conclusion? I think it depends on the type of person you are. Some people still like reading the newspaper. But a lot fewer people do it today than did even a year or two ago. Technology is funny like that — it has a weird way of infiltrating our lives and the majority usually rules adoption. I’m not saying blog posts are a dying medium like newspapers are today, but it wouldn’t totally surprise me if we saw that trend in the near future.
Blogs have been a great bridge from one-way to two-way communications, but near real-time conversations are the next step, a step many are already taking via Twitter, Facebook status conversations, LinkedIn questions, etc. What may actually keep blogs around for a long time is the value add that comes from the ideas shared in the comments section.
I still see value in blogs but I have to have the time to read them, like a relaxing Sunday afternoon, a lunch break or a long flight. Come to think of it, kind of sounds like the way I’ve heard some describe newspapers in recent years.
I’d love to continue this post, but I have some other work to get done. Plus, I’d rather end now so you can share your thoughts. After all, that’s the real value of the conversation — the two-way dialogue. Frankly, if I were reading this post and not writing it I’m not sure I would have gotten this far.
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”
Skittles site layout a sweet opportunity for IDing influencers
By Justin Goldsborough | March 2nd, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…I feel obligated to add to the Skittles buzz today — and I think that’s just fine with Skittles. If you haven’t been on Twitter today, or on the Internet for that matter, or just haven’t heard about the site redesign heard round the world, make sure to check it out: http://www.skittles.com/.
What you’ll see isn’t really a Web site at all, but more of a peak into the rainbow (sorry, couldn’t resist) of online conversations and communities focused around Skittles. The site url take you to a Twitter search of the term Skittles. The media tab takes you to Skittles YouTube or Flickr site. And the Friends tab takes you to…you guessed it…Skittles Facebook page.
So what’s the point of all this? Well, one is obviously to generate buzz. And since Skittles has been a trending topic all day on Twitter, and an office topic all day here at Sprint, I think Skittles can say without a doubt that it’s accomplished goal number one. But where does this candy-coated brand go from here? After the buzz dies down, what’s next? And will Skittles even leave its site in the current state?
I could talk about how I applaud the willingness to try, the demographic targeting (likely Gen Y), the transparency. Or I could scratch my head in words about the site toolbar (bulky and annoying), the fact that you have to enter your age before Skittles will take you to Twitter search, a public site, or the lack of a clear long-term vision (not that there isn’t one, just not sure of it). However, I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to highlight what I see as potentially the biggest advantage of this type of a site layout and then tell you I’m not sure how well it will work for a product like Skittles. So here we go.
If you manage a significant presence on any social network, you’re bound to run into a random act of kindness sooner or later; somebody you don’t know who goes out of there way to help you out. Social mediaites can’t help it. It’s in our genes to lend a hand, especially once we’ve formed a relationships with someone.
For instance, these types of interactions happen all the time on Twitter. And Skittles new site design, a.k.a. Twitter search of the brand name, surfaces these examples for all to see. If Sprint went the Skittles route, people would likely see some complaints about overage charges and phones that don’t work. But they’d also see people offering to help…and not just Sprint employees. Remember, customers don’t care who answers their brand questions or solves their issues just as long as someone does.
Companies that aren’t working to develop relationships with influencers like Nan Palmero or Barbara Nixon who help tell their brand story or solve customer problems need to take a closer look atthis strategy, especially if their success is as contingent on customer service as Sprint’s is. Nan is a BlackBerry guru who actually helps our customers when they ask questions about their BlackBerry devices on Twitter. He has also stood up for us in online conversations and told great stories about our brand and the customer service we provide in social networks. Oh yeah, one more thing…Nan doesn’t even work for Sprint. Neither does Barbara, a NASCAR fan and lontime Sprint customer who points out customer issues to Sprint reps on Twitter all the time and answers questions about Sprint when she can.
Now to why influencers might not mean that much to Skittles. The success of Skittles doesn’t really rely so much on customer service, does it? What’s really important is whether or not people like a chewy, fruity candy (I love Skittles btw, especially the red ones). Sure some brand fans could tell cool Skittles stories and point out the company’s work in the community. But in the end, you like the candy or you don’t.
So I’m not sure how big of an impact influencers may have on the Skittles brand. Only time will tell. But Skittles cannonball into the social media pool does make you think about how such a design might play out within your own company. It might be too much. The “anything goes” mentality toward comments might turn some people off. And I’m not advocating this far of an overhaul of our sprint.com design. But I can guarantee one thing…every customer who visited the site would find influencers like Nan and Barbara who could help answer their questions about Sprint, whether those influencers were employees or not. And that kind of “customers helping customers” outreach could help any brand reliant on a superior customer service reputation.
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”
Silos don’t make sense in a social media world
By Justin Goldsborough | February 18th, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…I’m getting really tired of answering the question: What department do you work in? Yet when I meet someone new inside or outside Sprint, that question undoubtedly comes up in the first two minutes of conversation without fail, often followed by the trading of business cards. Dissect any company and you’re going to find silos. We call them departments — corporate communications, marketing, customer service, product development, etc. Talk to the people in those silos and you’ll find more silos. We call them jobs or responsibilities – “I’m responsible for internal communications,” or “I manage customer account issues.” Silos breed ownership, which breeds control, which leads us down the road of labeling everything and everyone. John Smith isn’t John Smith anymore. He’s the direct mail rep for the southern region. And Sally Jones isn’t Sally Jones. She’s account number 58764.
Does your company have silos? Most do for organizational purposes or to set job expectations for employees. But in my opinion, silos offer more problems than solutions. The companies that win will lose the labels and set one expectation for their employees – engage with people and build relationships. That’s where social media comes in, because social media can be the silo killer if company leaders will let it.
Note: This post was written as a guest post for Rodney Rumord’s (@Rumford) and Beverly Macy’s (@beverlymacy) Gravity Summit (@gravitysummit) blog. Read the post in it’s entirety and make sure to check out what Gravity Summit is all about!
Just $10 can make a world of difference
By Justin Goldsborough | February 2nd, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…I had never done this before until a month or two ago. I saw a guy on Twitter, Dave Armano, post that he was trying to help Daniela and her family find an apartment. Daniela, a Romanian immigrant with “very little family support” had left her abusive husband and taken her three kids with her. The family was living with the Armano’s and Dave turned to his community of blog readers and Twitter followers on Jan. 7 to help raise $5,000 for the family by Feb. 5.
What happened next showed the power of online communities and literally made my jaw drop to the ground cartoon-style. $12,000 was contributed to Daniela’s cause in under 24 hours. That’s right, $12,000. Simply amazing! I don’t even know David Armano. Never met the guy. But I knew I wanted to be part of a life-changing experience like that.
Enter Danny Brown. Danny is another guy who owns his own PR agency and is trying to use his platform as a blogger and high-profile Twitter personality to make a difference. His cause is the 12 for 12k challenge. The basic idea is 12 charities (one for each month of the year) and 1,200 people donating $10 a month each month. In the end, the goal is $12,000 for 12 charities.
Just doing the math…1,200 is a lot of people. And not everyone may donate $10 each month. So when another Twitter friend, Rachel Kay, asked if Sprint could be a sponsor, I wanted to help. But I’m also very aware that times are tough and we just announced that we’ll lay off 8,000 people in the coming months and won’t have tuition reimbursement or 401k match for 2009. In this kind of an environment, asking for a sponsorship just didn’t seem right. But what about $10?
Obviously this is voluntary. And I understand that in times like these, $10 can be a meal for kids or a third of a tank of gas. So I’ll completely understand if it’s just not a feasible option for you at this time. Also, I’ll be adding this post to my external blog in hopes that folks who come across it will join the cause.
When times get tough for us they get even tougher for those who are really hurting. And being a part of this type of effort is one of the coolest results I’ve seen come out of social networks. So, if you want to participate, here’s how you can donate. It doesn’t have to be every month. Could be just one month if you want. Whenever. There are no strict rules when it comes to helping people out :).
The January charity was War Child. And February is focusing on Stop the Silence. Additional charities will be announced in the coming months and I will post them on this blog for those who wish to participate.
Thank you in advance to anyone who donates. And if you don’t feel you can at this time, that’s ok too. Just share the story of 12 for 12k with your friends and family.
Let’s see what a difference $10 can really make.
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”
Companies on Twitter need to hash out tagging strategy
By Justin Goldsborough | January 29th, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…There is nothing more frustrating than searching for an answer online and not being able to find it. When customers can’t find answers, companies lose money…and often customers. Not to mention the hit their brand reputation takes.
So along comes Twitter (or any other social network for that matter), and it’s like “Happy Birthday corporate America.” Here’s your chance to listen to your customers, engage with them and make it easier for them to find those answers. And corporate America is doing an admirable job. For example, customers complain about Comcast on Twitter, and @Comcastcares responds within minutes. Customers tweet about vacation plans and @SouthwestAir reminds them that they fly to L.A. The other day a customer posted about an error she was getting on her Instinct device, and we were able to find an answer on our product ambassadors internal blog that helped fix her phone.
These examples are steps in the right direction; great reactive responses. But IMO, we’re all missing one big opportunity to be proactive — tagging these answers so the next customer or employee with the same question doesn’t have to experience the same frustration. It’s the difference between helping a kid with his homework versus showing him how to do it himself.
Here’s what I mean. Search your brand name on Twitter and you’ll likely see a variety of questions. Once you spend the time to track down the answer — and I know it can take hours, days, even weeks — make it easy for others to find it on Twitter by adding a hashtag that will categorize your response.
At Sprint, we’ve experimented with the hashtag #sprintfaq. We haven’t used it long enough or consistently enough to see it pay off yet, but the idea is that Sprint customers on Twitter would have a database of answers to check out before they tweet our way.
Tagging is a key to organizing our online conversations. Hashtags work pretty well on Twitter except it’s been my experience that one out of every 25 posts or so won’t show up in Twitter search. Plus, I believe there’s a limitation on number of tweets shown and don’t tweets stop showing up in the search after a period of time? At least today anyway…I believe Twitter is working to eliminate these limitations.
Facebook needs conversation tagging in a bad way. If two of my friends are talking about car shopping and then three months later, I need to buy a car, I want access to that conversation. It’s the same thing with company FAQs, whether on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, wherever.
I was talking about this idea the other day with my buddy, who’s just started dipping his toe in the Facebook world. He brought up a great point: “Dude, I just want to be able to Google the answer to any Sprint question. That’s it.”
Well, Google does a pretty good job of searching Twitter so wouldn’t this tagging idea help there too? Maybe we need a #sprintfaq Twitter account. What are your thoughts? Will faq tags benefit users across channels? Will they work with the limitations of Twitter search?
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”
Twitter provides chance to influence your brand’s story
By Justin Goldsborough | January 20th, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…I had lunch the other day with a 20-year-old college student — let’s call him Adi because, well, that’s his name. It was supposed to be an informational interview for him, yet I think I may have gotten as much, if not more, out of it. We talked about a lot of different things, but it was what he said when we were talking about how word of mouth affects brand reputation that really made an impression on me.
“I don’t ever buy a product because of an ad,” he said. “The only reason I buy a product is because one of my friends or someone I know tells me about it and says it’s worth buying.”
Corporate America, are you listening? Hope so, because Adi and his friends are a part of the generation that’s going determine the majority of purchase decisions for the next 50 years or more. And those ads you’re spending millions on to run during “Must See TV” – they’re fast forwarding right through them. Those full-page newspaper ads you’re taking out in the newspaper – they’re throwing them in the recycle bin (yeah, they’re a very green group). That is, if you can even peel them away from the computer or their cell phones long enough to look at a newspaper.
Note: This post was written as a guest post for Laura Fitton’s (Pistachio) Touchbase blog. Read the post in it’s entirety and make sure to check out all the great points of view on Touchbase!
Technology, SM played big part in reaching King’s dream
By Justin Goldsborough | January 19th, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been one helluva blogger. He had passion, he was opinionated, but maybe most importantly…he was interested in connecting with people and having a conversation about the dream we all remember from his famous speech.
Imagine if MLK had a blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any type of Internet presence at his disposal. More people would have heard his point of view, his inspiration and it would have been so much easier for America to mobilize around his rallying cry. Just ask our next president, Barack Obama, who with his campaign team’s help, ran a clinic on how to share a message with the American people and mobilize a country around one ideal, in his case “Yes we can.”
Think back to how many times you heard or saw Obama deliver that line on TV, on YouTube, on a friend’s Facebook or MySpace page, on a Web site, on a blog site…you get the idea. Now imagine if MLK’s “I have a dream speech” had been shared the same way. I think it’s safe to say quite a few more people would have had their eyes opened enough to share that dream.
Technology, especially the explosion of social media, has changed the way we communicate and the way we see each other. It’s made us a more open society that seeks to learn from people from all walks of life. Discrimination was the norm for many in MLK’s day. Today only listening and adhering to one point of view is seen by most as being narrow minded.
Social networks like Facebook have changed the definition of a friend. That word used to only define someone we’ve known for a long time. Today it also defines someone we want to get to know. And that was one of the biggest obstacles history tells us MLK and his followers faced in fighting discrimination and racism — for the most part, white America didn’t want to get to know anyone unlike itself. That type of a philosophy is 180 degrees opposite of the sense of community generated in online social networks.
Think about how you interact on these types of sites. Or how you interact with people online in general. In most cases, there’s an inherent sense of respect that comes into play. We treat each other better and give each other the benefit of the doubt more in the online world. Somehow we remember our manners when interacting screen to screen.
At some point during the technological revolution we’ve experienced over the past couple of decades, our hunger for information started to outweigh our egos and elitism. People still care about status, but they’re also afraid of missing out on what they might learn from someone. Or better yet, as Obama’s campaign highlighted so well, what they might learn when working together.
Racism doesn’t make sense in today’s social media world. In fact 99 percent of communities won’t allow it. Try validating discrimination in a social network and you’ll be the one who ends up feeling ostracized. Inclusion is a standard of our online culture. You have to earn your way out of the community embrace, instead of having to earn your way into it.
Now I know the easy argument to make is that proponents of racism could have used social media as well to further their message and mobilize against those seeking change. But I don’t buy it. And here’s why. There’s something about putting your thoughts down online that’s different than thinking or saying them. Once you post something, it’s out there for the whole world to judge and most people have a “better double check that” reflex that kicks in. It’s part of what makes online interaction more civil.
Also, influencers play a huge role in what opinions the community adopts and spread WOM. And MLK was one helluva influencer. Which is why he would have been a great blogger. We all know Twitter tracks followers…well MLK had millions of them and he would have broken the cap on Twitter long before anyone else if tweeting was around in the 1950s and 1960s.
Tomorrow, the United States will inaugurate our first-ever African American president and a big part of MLK’s dream will become a reality. Obama has been called the “social media president,” so we can safely say that his ability to influence voters via the Internet played an integral role in his success and eventual election. In his time, MLK influenced a nation by giving a speech that was broadcast only on radio and TV. Imagine if his dream had been spread by people like you and me in our current online world.
We might have been saying “Yes we can” a lot sooner than we did.
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”
Product Ambassadors blog helps solve customer issue immediately
By Justin Goldsborough | January 7th, 2009
Justin case you were wondering…the next time someone ask you about the benefits of Sprint Space or how sharing information via a blog post can help our customers, do I have a story for you to tell.
About 30 minutes ago, I saw a customer post on Twitter that she was having a problem with her Instinct, so I reached out and asked for details. She told me she was getting an “Uncaught exception” error.
I told her I would ask our Product Ambassadors (PAs) on Sprint Space if they could help. But I didn’t have to ask because PA Russ Sullivan had already blogged about this issue on Monday. So I just copied his fix instructions and tweeted them to Rachel. Here’s how the convo went (NOTE: Read from bottom to top on next image because that’s how Twitter records conversations).
The only reason I was able to help at all was because of Russ’ post and the comments added to it by several employees and other PAs. And the end result…Only 18 minutes after I let Rachel know I’d ask our product ambassadors team for help, she responded with this tweet:
That’s the immediate type of solution sharing knowledge via social media can provide! Thank goodness we’ve got such a great group of product ambassadors telling the “Sprint story” about our devices and making it easy to help our customers.
Now, imagine how easy it would be for customers to get the latest product tips if that group was blogging externally on Buzz About Wireless or sprint.com. But that’s another post.
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”
“License to try” breeds creativity
By Justin Goldsborough | December 29th, 2008
Justin case you were wondering…I don’t believe that creativity is genetic, at least not completely. I’ve heard people say you’re either born with creativity or you’re not. In response, I call on my tried and true, journalism-school vocabulary and say — “Bull honkey.”
Creativity is something that can be learned just like long division and state capitals. And it can just as easily be squelched. The key is whether or not you have a “license to try” (yes, I got that phrase from my favorite “Corey’s” movie, License to Drive:)).
Most people learn by doing. But to learn this way, you have to be allowed to take chances. Find someone who calls themself creative and probe a bit further. I guarantee they’ve been given latitude to experiment. Creativity isn’t necessarily getting it right the first time.
On the same token, talk to people who say they aren’t creative at all. Do they really lack the potential to think up new ideas or have they been conditioned to do things one way? Worse yet, are they afraid to try an alternative route.
At Sprint, our No. 1 imperative is “Do it now.” In my opinion, that’s Dan Hesse telling us to be creative. Take chances. Make an impact. Take a shot. But you can’t do any of these things if your first thought is “What will my boss say?” or “What will my colleagues think?” And that doesn’t mean you’re not creative. It just means you’re hesitant to learn by doing because of how “doing it now” might be perceived.
So, I’d ask you to ask yourself: Do you have a “license to try?” More importantly, do you encourage your employees and colleagues to get behind the wheel?
“The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Sprint.”