A few weeks back, this direct mail piece came addressed to me from Dish Network. It features a picture of an olive-skinned and black haired beauty on the front and handsome dark haired, stubble-bearded man on the back. Beyond that, I cannot tell you what it says because it’s written in Arabic. My husband and I first had a little chuckle about it, but the longer this piece sat on my desk, the more it bothered me. It appears that it was sent to me because of the ethnicity of my last name, however I have a distinctly Armenian name, not Arabic. Although Armenia is in the general area of many Arabic speaking nations, Armenians actually do not speak Arabic as their native language; they speak Armenian. Different culture, different language and different alphabet altogether.

I found out that Dish Network is on Twitter, so I quickly tweeted them asking to be connected to someone in their marketing department to discuss an issue. I swiftly got a tweet back saying that I should DM them with the specific issue so that they can be sure to “connect me with the right person.” As succinctly as possible in 140 characters, I stated that I was offended by being ethnically targeted with a direct mail piece and wanted to discuss it with someone. Silence. A day passed and I sent them another DM, asking to please be connected to someone who could discuss this with me. Silence. I went to their web site, found a customer service email address and sent a message explaining the situation in detail, why it bothered me, and again asked to be connected to someone who could address this with me. Silence.

So here’s what’s so wrong with this entire scenario from a marketing, customer service and social media perspective:

1. If a company is going to send out a direct mail piece, then they better be darn sure they know who they are targeting.

2. Making an ill-informed assumption that someone with a name from a certain ethnic group speaks a certain language is wrong for several reasons. In my case:
- Armenians aren’t native Arabic speakers. Some Armenian may speak Arabic, but that’s not typical. Clumping everyone with heritage from that region of the world into a general category of Middle Eastern and making assumptions based on that, negates the richness of Armenian culture and the myriad of other cultures that grew from that region.
- I am a 2nd generation Armenian-American. Not only do I not speak or read Arabic, but I do not even speak Armenian (except for a few words like girl, yogurt, dog and how are you) and can’t read it at all. I happen to speak and read English as my native language.
- For all the Dish Network marketers know, I may not even be Armenian. I could be from any ethnic group, and simply married to someone with an Armenian name.
- Even if my heritage were from an Arabic speaking culture, why would it be assumed that I speak and read Arabic?

3. If a company has a presence in social media, then they are essentially inviting people to contact them with comments, suggestions or problems. If a consumer does contact them via social media with a problem, then they are obliged to answer. What’s the point of being there if they don’t? To just have the appearance of being accessible?

4. If a company tells someone that they will connect them with the “right” person, then should connect them with the right person, not just ignore them.

5. If a company has a contact email on their website and someone takes the time to contact them, explain a problem, and ask for assistance, then they should respond to them, not just ignore them.

Yes, I admit, this post is a bit of a rant, but I am angry that I have been targeted and profiled in this way. I am angry that I tried to contact Dish Network to discuss this and was even invited to do so. But instead of offering me some kind of response, they chose to ignore me instead.
Moral of the story:
1. Direct mail campaigns based on ethnic or racial profiling are probably not a good idea.
2. If a consumer has a problem or complaint, then it’s probably a good idea for the company to respond (in English).

You all know the scene: Dorothy and her three friends return to Oz with the broom in hand after a harrowing near-death experience dealing with the witch and all those flying monkeys, only to have Toto pull back the curtain and expose the wizard as the charlatan that he truly was. In our world filled with online gurus of all types and sizes popping up on Twitter, LinkedIn and the Internet in general, it’s important for businesses to know how to smell the difference between the real deal and a faker. With the ease of self-promotion that comes with using the Internet also comes the ease for anyone to claim guru status in order to try to win business.

Here are a few red flags and tips on how to be sure that you are working with someone who knows what they are doing:

Using the word “guru” to describe oneself
In its original form, guru was not a self-proclaimed title. It was something bestowed upon a religious leader who was thought to have power, knowledge and insight into God to guide followers from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge. I don’t think they were talking about Twitter followers. If anyone describes themselves as a guru in their bio, I suggest running the other way.

Is the walk the same as the talk?
I came across a blog the other day that is a great illustration of this point. Calling this site a blog really was a bit of a stretch because there were only a few entries over the course of several months and they all were brief announcements promoting speaking engagements this person had lined up to impart his wisdom on how to build business through the use of blogging and social networking. The only problem was that right next to the post was that little blue box announcing that he had 4 feed subscribers and a little blue bird announcing that he had 58 followers on Twitter. None of his posts had comments or Re-Tweets. Looking at his Twitter feed, all his Tweets were link backs to his “posts” on his blog promoting his speaking engagements. Now would you trust that this guy holds any wisdom regarding how to build business through social media? Don’t think too long on that one.

That’s what Google is for….
It may sound obvious, but Google search the person’s name or business and take a look at the results. Hop on LinkedIn and take a look at the profile. See what the person’s credentials are or what he or she has done in the past. You can tell a lot about a person with a couple of clicks.

The proof is in the pudding
On the Internet people can claim to be a writers, designers, social media specialists, web designers, or business advisors. Heck, some people even claim to be 16-year-old girls but turn out to be 50-year-old men. It’s up to you to know for sure with whom you are dealing. Ask to see a portfolio of work or references from previous clients. If the only thing a supposed marketing guru has ever marketed is the marketing of his or her own marketing guru-ness, then beware. You be the judge.

You get what you pay for
To a certain degree, this statement is absolutely true. It’s not necessarily true that the more expensive someone is, the better, but I can guarantee you that anyone who is willing to write some copy for you for $20, design a logo for you on spec, or suggest a tag line for your business for free on LinkedIn is not going to be providing you with great results. Pay fast food salary (or no salary at all) and you’re guaranteed to get work at the caliber of a squished hamburger and floppy fries or less. Do a little research to find out what the going rate is for high quality work and negotiate from there.

Size doesn’t always matter
With crafty methods of getting more followers on Twitter, don’t always think that the more followers someone has guarantees a higher level of expertise. I actually get the opposite feeling sometimes when someone has an exorbitant number of followers…it makes me think SPAM. Remember, Charles Manson had a lot of followers too.

Money, that’s what I want
Another red flag is the use and overuse of the dollar sign and images of piles of money on someone’s Twitter background, blog or website. If money is the primary concern of the message, then losing yours should be your primary concern.

Finding great talented people to accomplish what you need help with is actually pretty simple. When you are looking to hire someone to work on a project for you, use common sense. Do your homework, understand the going rate and maybe most importantly, trust your instincts.

What to tweet or what not to tweet, the rules of behavior and usage for Twitter abound on the internet. Most humans desire some rules to live by, whether it’s through religion, government, family, workplace, or self imposed ethics, most people get a certain level of comfort from knowing the parameters within which they should or are expected to operate. The problem with trying to apply rules to Twitter use is that everyone is inventing their own rules as they go to suit their own needs. Like it or not, Twitter is like the old wild west and like those days, it is a bit of a free-for-all.

I started writing this post to express my opinion about such things as ghost tweeting, sponsored tweets and spammers. Then I thought about it a bit more and realized that I’d just be contributing to the already incredibly long list of posts about Twitter do’s and don’ts (this one I thought was particularly amusing). There are a myriad of ways to use or not use Twitter and a matching number of viewpoints about which is “right” and which is “wrong.”

There are people who use Twitter to write books one tweet at a time, people who use it to link to naked pictures of themselves, people who use it for customer service, for marketing, for shameless self promotion, for entertainment, enlightenment or inspiration, for posting affiliate links in the hope of making some cash, for posting random thoughts, or for posing as someone else. Whatever the use, whatever the motivation, no matter how many people scream “that’s wrong,” the same number will scream “says who?” When there are no rules, people will make them up as they go or some will not operate under any rules at all. So one of my resolutions for the new year is to try to stop being so irritated by those that are not using Twitter to my liking. I will simply do what they did in the wild west and in a blink of an eye I’ll take my gun out of its holster, aim, and fire directly at the block button.

Image courtesy of www.PDImages.com

Brand building and the return on the investment it takes to build a brand are, to a great degree, difficult things to measure. They can be a bit elusive and hard to define. The measurement involves participation in and understanding of a process that takes place over time, utilizing and considering numerous variables and methods to create a sense of familiarity, awareness and trust in a product or brand name. *Note the phrase “over time.”

There are some seemingly lucky dogs that hit on an overnight success, but those instances are rare, and most often only have the appearance of overnight success. The behind the scenes relentless messaging, marketing, PR, promotion and brand building work that takes place is usually not visible to the naked eye. And it really shouldn’t be.

Patience is key here. Focusing too heavily on tangible and quick ROI, dollar for dollar is futile. Investing in a promotional campaign that sends traffic to your site, starts people talking on the internet and elsewhere about your brand, increasing your Google ranking, getting your brand more attention from other media and other venues, though it may not seem like a strong dollar for dollar return, one has to consider what awareness is worth. When does the dollar return come from a promotional investment? Maybe not for months or even longer. What will greater brand awareness lead to? Customer trust and loyalty, new business, and more sales, but it most likely will not be right away. To expect to pay a dollar for promotional work and the next day get two dollars back is unrealistic, but that oftentimes is the expectation when a client asks about ROI.

Data is useful, no doubt about that, but data can be deceiving. If a promotional campaign does not immediately and directly produce sales, but does drive traffic and produce positive awareness, is that considered to be a poor return on investment? I would argue that ROI doesn’t necessarily have to translate directly to dollars out vs. dollars back in. The return may not come in ways that can easily be counted. The return can come in ways that are impossible to measure. It can come from a positive consumer feeling about and recognition of a brand, trust in a product, understanding of and connection to what the brand stands for and what a company is all about. All of that has to come before many consumers will be willing to spend one penny to buy. How do you measure and value the various elements of ROI?

Mommy, There’s A Caterpillar In My Pickle Jar!

When I was a kid, I can recall one day finding a pickled caterpillar floating in the brine in a jar of pickles from which I was eating. The little creature was about the same size as the gherkins in the jar and it had been pickled to that same unnatural yellowish green hue. After I finished screaming out of disgust from the realization that I almost ate the thing, my mother quickly typed (yes, on a typewriter) a carefully crafted letter of complaint to the company. She put the letter in an envelope and sent it off in the mail along with the jar containing the caterpillar. A few weeks later, my mother received a lovely letter of apology along with a slew of coupons for free pickles and other products from this company. She felt acknowledged and satisfied with the response and that was that. It was a matter between my mother and the pickle company.

Today, if that same scenario popped up, a modern mother might run right over to her laptop and tweet about the disgusting experience to her 3,000 followers on Twitter and maybe blog about it with a close up picture of the pickled caterpillar and a YouTube video of the thing floating around in the brine. Maybe some of her followers and readers would re-tweet or re-blog about the experience and before you know it, that one tiny caterpillar in the pickle jar could cause quite a big PR and QC problem for the pickle manufacturer.

Consumer Responsibility

As consumers, we need to know that what we say in our online communities can be very powerful, both in a positive way and a negative way. I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that what we say online is there forever. Once done, in most instances, it’s pretty hard to retract. Consumers now have ethical responsibilities that were never on the table before the onset of the Internet, and were previously reserved just for businesses. Consumers now have unprecedented power to make or break a brand.

Corporate Responsibility

As businesses, we have the responsibility to make sure our practices are above board and our products and services are the best they can be. People are watching and listening, and if our products are not what we say they are or as they should be, then everyone will know about it within a few instants. If we are entrusting our products to the power of social media, then we must be willing to take what comes and deal with it, good or bad. Businesses can no longer keep problems quiet, most often they have to deal with them out in the open forum of social media.

The Changing Landscape Of Business

Social media has changed a lot of things. It has changed the way we communicate. It has changed the speed at which we can disseminate, find and devour information. It has also drastically changed the way we do business from researching, selling, and promoting, to communicating with our customers and colleagues and monitoring the marketplace and our own businesses. Social media has thrust a new age of power, responsibility and accountability onto businesses, consumers and anyone with an Internet connection. No longer can businesses hide behind carefully crafted copy and corporate speak when one customer could potentially create a brand’s name as a trending topic on Twitter for good, bad or evil. We all have an awesome responsibility here to be fair, honest, responsive to both consumers and businesses. Suddenly we are all swimming in the same pool, and we all have to take that responsibility seriously.

I remember a Halloween party that I went to back in college. Great party, lots of friends, incredible costumes. Then the door opened and someone in a full body gorilla suit walked in. He/she did not speak, only made grunty gorilla noises. No one knew who it was, and the gorilla refused to reveal his/her identity. At first it was funny, but then we all started looking around the room to see which of our friends was missing from the group to try to ID this gorilla, but everyone was accounted for. It left everyone with a creepy uneasy feeling. Who was this person and why wouldn’t they reveal themselves? Was it a serial killer, a thief, a rapist, a crazed psycho? What did this person have to hide? It spooked everyone so much that we collectively threw the gorilla out of the party.

That story came to mind because I’ve been noticing that there are a lot of businesses hiding behind their own corporate gorilla suits on Twitter. Twitter, as most of us know, is a great place to connect with people, get the latest hot topics and find out what’s going on before it even happens. Those in business know or should know that Twitter offers up an amazing opportunity to connect with consumers directly, serving as a pipeline back and forth and building a community around a brand. One thing though that many businesses with a Twitter presence don’t realize is that it’s important to let people know who is behind the corporate tweets.

One of my pet peeves is when a company has a Twitter page and all that is there is the company name and logo, but no humans in sight. The tweets are coming from someone, but for some reason the company feels that it’s best that the person remain anonymous and just tweet as THE COMPANY. Bad move, in my opinion. It comes off as impersonal, and suggests that there is something hiding behind the mask of the brand name, like there’s some mysterious reason why they should be afraid to come out from behind the shadow of the giant logo and reveal themselves.

I always think in social media that if community and relationships are going to be built, then you need to show your face, if not literally, at least figuratively. People don’t want to connect to a company, they want to connect to a real person at the company who has some level of power to listen to what they say and to take action or at least interact. There’s an accountability issue that starts to rear its head. If someone from the company takes ownership of the Twitter interactions, then they might be put on the spot at some point and have to face what consumers have to say. It’s a lot easier to be anonymous than to show your face. I like to know who I’m talking to.

Another thing that a lot of companies don’t seem to get about Twitter is that no one wants to only read tweets or look at links to the company’s website or pictures of their products. Sure promote yourself now and then, but Twitter isn’t primarily an advertising venue, it’s a social media venue. Have a conversation. Interact. Promote here and there, but get to know your consumers. Give them a reason to follow you besides listening to you tweet on and on about your brand name and how great your products or services are. Let them know who you are and that actual humans who are not afraid to show their human faces are on Twitter ready and waiting to connect, listen and chat, and if need be, face the music if something negative comes up. If you are wearing a corporate gorilla suit, it’s time to take it off and show us who you really are.

Image courtesy of www.gorillasuits.com

There are a lot of people talking online these days about the importance of injecting personal information into your blog. Although I completely agree that you have to show who you are as a person to your readership in order make a connection and create loyal readers, I think the level of personal exposure completely depends on the type of blog you have and where you draw your line personally.

If it’s a business related blog and it’s connected to a business of providing professional services or products, then I think there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Your business blog should offer your personality through occasional anecdotes and snippets of personal experiences as they are relevant to your viewpoint. On the other hand, if it’s a blog about a personal journey as a parent, cancer survivor, traveler or any other “journal” type blog, then revealing more intimate information would be appropriate and relevant.

In both cases it’s important to establish boundaries that are right for you. It’s also important to remember that anyone with a computer has the potential to read what you write, which on one level is an exciting thought and on another is kind of a creepy thought. I think some people tend to reveal a bit too much information, almost forgetting that, although they may have a core group of readers that may “know” them, they are also revealing themselves to the entire blogosphere, including the good, the bad, and the creepy. We all know this to be true, but sometimes tend to forget while we are interacting with our circle of blogging friends. You wouldn’t hang your underwear out to dry on the sidewalk in front of your house or set up a speaker system so everyone in the neighborhood can hear the personal discussions you have inside your own home. The same should be true of your blog.

On the other side, a blog is not a white paper. Factual information is a good thing on a business related blog, but the person behind the blog needs to be revealed at least to some extent. Readers want to know that there is a real person behind a words, not just a machine or committee producing a factual, well researched report or crafted corporate speak. I think it’s important to know the difference between walking the line and crossing the line and being able find that magic spot that works for you.

On this blog, I do reveal things about my life to my readers, but only when it’s relevant to what I am writing about. I think most of my regular readers know about my right brain tendencies and my creative entrepreneurial approach to looking at things. They know that I am married to a designer and know we have an 11-year-old son. They know that I go to the flea market on Sundays looking for cool old stuff. They know that I used to watch the Jetsons when I was a kid and that I’m a huge fan of Dr. Seuss. But more importantly, I think they get to know me through my perspective on the various topics I write about. Your personal qualities should show through when you write, even some of your more imperfect human ones. Being a human is a good thing.

I took part in an online group discussion yesterday on LinkedIn that started from a business owner posing the question:

“Can anyone suggest the best areas to spend marketing budgets in difficult times such as these?”

The floodgates immediately opened, and asking that question resulted in quick machine gun responses from numerous marketing types all mapping out in a few sentences how this man should spend his marketing budget. The funny thing about the responses is that with the exception of mine and about five other people, they all had two things in common:

My solution is your solution

The first thing was, not surprisingly, they all said the best use of this man’s marketing budget was to use their services, which included: SEO, taking clients out to fancy restaurants for lunch for some one on one, writing a white paper, reading someone else’s white paper, adding a blog to his site, engaging in social media marketing, purchasing lists of sales leads, producing videos of customer testimonials, and on and on.

Who are you and what do you want?

The second thing that they had in common was that none of these people offering up their services to this man had anywhere near enough information to even begin to guess what would work for this company. There was no indication of what kind of business he had, who his customers were, what his budget was, or what his marketing goals were. In other words, there was no information to build a marketing PLAN.

All of the suggestions that people made to this man could potentially be valid and useful, but how could anyone possibly know that they had THE solution for him? Without more information it really was an impossible question that could not and should not have been answered in that forum. This man believed that he could pose the question and get a marketing plan for himself for free, but all he got instead was a bunch of sales pitches from people playing out their own marketing strategy of pitching their services in LinkedIn discussion groups.

Get to know yourself

Businesses need to do some of their own homework first before they can reach out and expect to get a valid marketing strategy in place. Seeking assistance with marketing is absolutely a fine thing to do, but first you have to know at least the basics of who you are, what you are trying to achieve, who your customers are and what your budget is. Then, go to a creative marketing strategist that can build a working marketing plan with you to reach your goals. In business (and in life for that matter) the answers are usually not that easy to attain.

There are two camps that seem to be fighting each other these days. One is the old school camp of marketing and promotion and one is the new school. Paper and phones vs. digital and blogs. The conflict comes from the pure traditionalists that are closed to and a little fearful of the new and the cutting edge youngsters hooked up to their laptops and other devises who haven’t been around long enough to have ever seen the effectiveness of the old.

A friend of mine, who runs a pretty successful product design consultancy, is purely old school. I’d link to her site here, but she doesn’t have one. She isn’t on LinkedIn, has no idea what Twitter or Facebook is, only uses email to send files, yet she is a sought after designer. She uses pencil and paper and a telephone to do business. How does she get clients? The old fashioned way. By sending a beautifully designed direct mail piece and following up with a phone call. Remember mail, with stamps and envelopes? It works for her and she has no shortage of clients.

There are those that would be screaming that, in order to be competitive, you have got to get out there in the social media world. You have to have a blog, you have to be on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, comment on other blogs, rub elbows with the who’s who in the digital world. In a lot of cases this is absolutely true. I’ve said that myself, but I’m seeing a trend of everyone telling everyone else how to run their businesses, old and new alike.

My argument in support of old is that there is so much information and non-stop talk going on out there in the digital world that people find themselves yelling or talking more and more thinking that will get more attention. It starts to get so noisy out there that it’s really hard to stand out as an individual. Because of this, the old school approach starts to seem new again. Getting a beautiful or interesting promotional piece in the mail is a special thing again, and ironically is something that can have the power to make a business stand out from the crowd of the electronic images and messages that bombarded us on a daily basis. It’s like hanging onto that halter top for so long, that it came back in style, and actually looks pretty good with those new pants.

My argument for new school is that it is so quick and so vast, that it opens up a whole new opportunity for people to access your business and for your business to access people. It’s engaging, dynamic, and if used creatively, has the potential to grow your business beyond your wildest dreams. I just think there needs to be a balance. Every business, every person has their own philosophy and methods of reaching their market. Assumptions can’t be made that old is dead and new is it (or vice versa). I’ve been around long enough to have witnessed the success from using both methods. I was college educated during old school times and self educated on the job during new school times. It’s not an either/or scenario. I think both schools still have some learning to do.

I think one of the spookiest things some companies could imagine knocking on their door this Halloween is a social media specialist: Standing there at a company’s door, laptop in hand, surrounded by an army of Twitter followers and blog subscribers with their goody bags open,  asking for engagement, community, transparency and humanness. The company thinks: Trick or Treat? This image is more frightening to some companies than a vampire lunging in for a bite. There are many companies that want to be involved with social media, or think they should be involved, but at the same time they are deathly afraid of it.

I was contacted the other day by a children’s product company interested in engaging my services to “legitimately” (their quotes) populate their company’s website with positive reviews and photos of people using their products by tapping into my network of bloggers, providing them with free products and asking them to post accolades.  Apparently the company feels they don’t have enough reviews for their products on their site and many of them that have been posted legitimately (no quotes) have turned out to be negative because of ongoing QC problems that the company has been having. Her response was that “there are always QC problems in manufacturing, that’s just how it is.” She also wanted me to screen the product reviews before they were posted and intervene if anything negative arose. I explained the new FTC regulations  and that I thought this method of “legitimate” population might be considered questionable without a disclosure. I also offered other methods that could authentically populate their site’s reviews, but the conversation ended and I haven’t heard from them since.

I think in this case, there were missed opportunities. Instead of trying to drown out the bad reviews with manufactured good reviews, they could have embraced them, thanking the consumer for pointing out a problem and actually addressing the problem in a public way with a vow to fix it at the source and follow up with proof that it was fixed, instead of saying, well everyone has QC problems, that’s just how it is. That’s not how you engage your consumers. I know nothing is perfect in business, but when you put product out there to consumers, especially if you are inviting them to respond publicly on your company site, then you better make darn sure the product is as good as it can be, and if it isn’t and your consumers care enough to let you know, then you should respond with thankfulness, action and implementation to make sure it never happens again. To try to drown out negative comments with crafted positives just defeats the whole purpose of engaging people. It’s like inviting consumers to offer their opinions, and when they open their mouths occasionally saying something you don’t like, you cover your ears and say: “I’m not listening, LA, LA, LA.” This is what is meant by companies being human. To acknowledge mistakes or problems, apologize, promise to fix them and then actually fix them is the kind of thing that will gain a company respect in the marketplace with their consumers.

The thing about social media is that it can’t be completely controlled the way that advertising can. That is a very spooky thing for many companies.  There is some control, like determining the right person to manage your social media strategy and what to put out there to the public, but as far as trying to control what the public will perceive and say and do and manipulating things to look legitimate when really they aren’t, that is not what social media is all about.  That’s what advertising is about.

Here lies the problem for a lot of companies.  They know all this social media stuff is important, but don’t fully understand how to use it or why and how it’s different from advertising. They try hard to turn social media into just another controlled venue for advertising, and in my opinion, that is simply a waste.  Use your advertising for the crafted, controlled message, and use your social media for really listening to and engaging with real people.  If you are not ready for what may happen when you let go and start talking publicly with your customers, then maybe stay out of it for a while until you feel confident that what your company offers will be well received, or until known problems are fixed, or until you can respond to negative feedback with positive action. It can also be started in small ways. Start with a blog, talk about new products coming up or things in the industry. You don’t have to do a full-blown blitz to be involved in social media.  Start where you are comfortable, but understand that there is a certain amount of letting go of fear that needs to happen.

So if a social media specialist comes knocking at your door this Halloween, don’t be afraid, just drop a little humanness in his or her goody bag.