Big Convenience (and a Little Jar of Curry)

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Gradon

Last night, we had a rare occurrence: Meg forgot we were out of an ingredient critical to our planned dinner: Thai curry paste. But no worries… we live a short walk from a small neighborhood grocery store. I walked down and scanned the international foods aisle, but couldn’t find the paste. We were out of luck, and would have to order out — a $40 mistake, perhaps.

Or were we out of luck?

The commuter rail station, between the grocery store and our house, is home to five Zipcars. And in my pocket was an iPhone. As I walked out of the grocery store, I opened the Zipcar app and saw that a Honda Insight hybrid was available right that minute. I finished the reservation process — a couple taps on the screen, really — as I arrived at the car.

I spent $7.75 to reserve the car for an hour, but could have spent half that if I was willing to wait another 12 minutes (I wasn’t.) For less than 1/4 the cost of take out, I rented a car, drove to another grocery store, and bought the missing curry paste. AND some other stuff we remembered we needed on the way.

Zipcar’s incredible growth over the last few years is based on a pretty basic formula: They have reasonably nice cars (the Insight is just about the worst car I’ve ever driven, but that’s Honda’s fault, not Zipcar’s), they’re affordable, and they make the entire process easy.

Whatever industry you’re in, think about your typical customer experience. Do you offer a good product? Is it priced right? Do you make it easy — pull-out-a-phone-and-make-a-few-taps-easy — to buy? If you can’t say yes to all three of these, the Zipcars of your industry are going to happily, easily steal away your customers.

Any other examples of companies providing similar services with similar ease? What other companies could be rock stars if they just made it more simple to buy?

#10x10X10: The Radian(t) Lauren Vargas

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Gradon

Back in February, I started a series of conversations with people who participate in the operation of social media programs for a variety of different brands. Today, I’ll continue with thoughts from the spectacular Lauren Vargas.

Lauren Vargas, Director of Community at Radian6, is a Boston-based communications professional with a decade of experience in community relations, internal and external corporate communications, and government affairs. At Radian6, she assists organizations with building sound objectives and strategies for listening and measurement, and helps them engage with the communities they serve by fostering authentic relationships built on trust through conversations and participatory media.

1. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is _______.
Take the 30 second commute to my office, grabbing a Coca Cola on the way! Oh, did you mean my job? To get my cylinders fired up, I begin my day with a couple rounds of Set or Bejewled and then read the posts in my Must Reads file in Google Reader. I dedicate only 30 minutes to skimming my Inbox for any urgent issues, or risk being swallowed alive by email for the remainder of the morning. I make a fresh to-do list and start diving into projects. There is no typical day in the life of a community manager, but I build routine into my morning to help me start the day on the right foot.

2. Define “brand” in 140 characters.
A brand is the soul of a business, service or product; the intersection of thoughts, feelings, and experiences linked to said business.

3. What’s the best tool in your social media arsenal?
The best tool in my arsenal will adapt with me through any job and any communications channel. It is integrity.

4. Why is it important to have a real live human behind your social media efforts?
People talk about “humanizing” the organization like it’s some sort of collective thing. Instead, we should be highlighting the individuals that power our businesses. People want to talk to other people, not a faceless avatar.

5. How much of your content is pre-planned vs. real-time responses?
Responses are not pre-planned, but our community team does have a playbook to guide our responses or actions. We encourage our community managers to have personality in their responses, and express individuality. This attitude fosters deeper conversations. Real-time conversation deserves real-time response.

6. We all know social media isn’t a part time job. Realistically, what kind of hours do you put in and what are some typical tasks in a normal work week?
As a community manager, to some degree, you are always “on” if you are participating online. Our community team puts in the hours we need to, to serve our community. We work with other departments (support and our account managers) to scale our response. The planning and creation of content is a task that takes up a significant amount of our time, but it fuels the conversations within the community.

7. What do you do to get away from the “always-on” experience?
It is tough, but sometimes, I just have to go off the grid. If I find myself in front of my computer, I find myself online. So I snuggle up with my Nook or Discover magazine and let my mind get lost in the pages of a science fiction novel, or get inspired by an article about the socialization of plants.

8. If you had to choose between delivering your message and caring for your community (but only choosing one), which would it be?
Caring for my community, because ultimately that IS delivering my message as a community manager.

9. What’s the wackiest/most eccentric community you’ve ever been a member of?
Oh goodness, I am fairly conservative with the communities I join online, but perhaps if I could find a Threadless support group, that would be the most eccentric.

10. The last thing I do before bed is _____. (PG rated!)
I always end the evening by reading fiction. A business or non-fiction book fires up my brain, so I prefer to get lost in words about a parallel universe. This type of reading helps me wind down, and helps me stop agonizing about my never-ending to-do list.

When she’s not managing communities (including her wee kids at home), you can find Lauren at The Root Report, Radian6′s Social Strategy blogs, and @vargasl on Twitter.

#10x10x10: Ten Brands, Ten People, Ten Questions

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Gradon

There are countless social media professionals out there.

Freelance social media consultants. Agency social media strategists. PR-two-dot-something-or-others. And they’re all great, and do great work (hopefully!) for brands of all shapes and sizes.

But what about the people inside the brands? The people that know what makes the brand tick… and more importantly, what makes the customers come visit, click, and even sometimes buy?

I wanted to hear from the folks on the front lines, so I reached out to ten of my favorite social media brand professionals with the same ten questions. I’ll feature one of them every week for the next ten weeks.

Ten brands. Ten people. Ten questions.

I’m excited to start off this new series with none other than my friend, Zena Weist, the Director of Social Media for H&R Block. Zena leads an award winning social media team that has received national acclaim for integrated online marketing communication programs, and the H&R Block online community. This includes the National Social Advertising, Media and Marketing (SAMMY) Award for Best Social CRM from digiDaily, and the National PRNews Platinum for Social Media Award.

Zena is a digital practitioner and social media strategist with over 15 years of online marketing experience, including executive leadership in digital start-ups, account management with interactive agencies, and client-side roles with Hallmark, Sprint and Embarq. Her specialties include online brand engagement, integrated marketing communications, and project management. Zena lives with her family in Kansas City, Missouri.

1. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is _______.
Hit snooze

2. Define “brand” in 140 characters.
Customer expectation

3. What’s the best tool in your social media arsenal?
Our people… their passion to help our clients inspires me. (And I’m not just saying that — I really mean it.)

4. Why is it important to have a real live human behind your social media efforts?
Not just human, but a person vested in your brand. I think it’s important to have associates (not agency folks) as brand advocates. They naturally speak with your brand’s voice, care deeply about getting clients’ needs met, and enjoy representing your brand in public.

We partner with our amazing eCare crew, and several hundred of our very best tax professionals. What we’ve ultimately found most effective in our social media efforts is finding people who understand the difference between being a brand advocate, and being a company spokesperson. Two different roles… both very important.

5. How much of your content is pre-planned vs. real-time responses?
We have a very aggressive content strategy, and we are in a heavily regulated industry — so there’s a lot of pre-planned content. That said, every day we are constantly creating real-time content called conversation .

6. We all know social media isn’t a part time job. Realistically, what kind of hours do you put in and what are some typical tasks in a normal work-week?
Our team is constantly on. Thank goodness we have a team! We take on-call shifts. My typical work-week is around 50 hours — in tax season it’s easily 65. When there’s an issue we are working it can be up to 70-75.

7. What do you do to get away from the “always-on” experience?
Due to burn-out, I made a conscious decision to give up a lot of “personal” social media activities. I jumped head-first heavy into social media in 2007, working during the day, and exploring at night. This summer, I hit maximum overload. My “always-on” mentality was hurting my personal life. I made a commitment to myself to shift my priorities.

I don’t blog, check-in, or comment as much. I’ve filtered a lot of “nice to have social media stuff” out. I definitely don’t stay up with all the industry commentary like I used to, and I’ve given up trying to keep up with the latest and greatest “shiny objects”. I’m very rarely “on” unless it’s necessary for my job. My “free-time” choice is offline. I will admit that sometimes I lapse, and my “free-time” does get consumed with private community chatter, some Q&A forum debate, or DMs. I’m working on it, though.

8. If you had to choose between delivering your message and caring for your community (but only choosing one), which would it be?
Easy! Caring for our customers where they are (be it our community or a public forum). You have to respond to needs before you can deliver messaging.

9. What’s the wackiest/most eccentric community you’ve ever been a member of?
The Kansas City Ugly Christmas Sweater Party community is the wackiest I’ve got going for me. Crazy social media funsters working their booties off for a great cause!

10. The last thing I do before bed is _____. (PG rated!)
Count my blessings.

When she’s not working (which, as you can see, is rare), you can find Zena blogging at Nothin’ but SocNET, and tweeting as, surprisingly, @zenaweist (with a name like that, why choose anything different?)

Runkeeper fans came running: how one brand got a boost from an enthusiastic community

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Gradon

I’ve always been a runner. In high school, I found (somewhat ironically) that track was the only sport I could take part in that wouldn’t trigger asthma attacks. I ran the 400m dash outdoors, and the 600m indoors, and would regularly run 5+ miles during my practice runs.

Of course, after I got out of school and got into the “real world”, the frequency of my runs waned… as did the miles I could cover.

But over the last several months, I’ve become more serious about recommitting to running. I’m now setting goals for regular runs, and planning for gradual mileage increases as my overall fitness levels scale upwards.

I was using a variety of Android apps on my HTC MyTouch to begin tracking my progress, until I recently got my first iPhone. It’s a 16gb 3GS — a hand-me-down from Meg, who got a hand-me-down from a friend who upgraded to an iPhone 4. With this new possession, I gained access to a flood of run-tracking options.

Two that I’m (somewhat) familiar with are Nike+ and RunKeeper. I’ve heard good things about each, but wanted to hear from other runners what their preferences are. So I asked Twitter (of course.)

The response I got was overwhelming.

Over 30 people replied — many of whom don’t follow me — and the majority of them recommended RunKeeper. I was curious as to why, and after a bit of investigating, found I was retweeted by RunKeeper’s Twitter account. Clearly, RunKeeper’s doing something smart.

First, RunKeeper makes a great product. There’s no way they’d get that kind of response if it was anything less than fantastic.

Second, they’re using social media perfectly. Whether through Twitter or Facebook, RunKeeper manages their community beautifully: answering questions, accepting suggestions for improvement, and — most importantly — getting people excited about using RunKeeper on their next run/walk/bike ride/etc.

It was RunKeeper’s community that won me over. With such a dedicated online following, how could I not give them a shot?

So here’s my question for you: does your brand have a following like this? If someone asked about your product or service, would a small army of supporters come out of the woodwork to promote you?

And if not, how can you better use social media tools to interact with your customers?

10 Social Media Women That Deserve a Vanity Fair Article

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Gradon

Earlier this week, Vanity Fair put out an article featuring 6 women they deemed “America’s Tweethearts”. Each of these women has garnered a significant audience through Twitter and other social media tools… but the main point the article seemed to stress was that these women were physically attractive (in addition to painting them as more than a little “cheerleaderesque.”)

The thing is, I don’t follow any of them on Twitter, and have actually only heard of a few of them. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m not as up on the social media game as I should be. More likely, it’s that their content isn’t what I’m looking for, personally — not because it’s not good, but because it doesn’t fit my interests and needs.

(That said, I saw a video of one of these “Tweethearts” interviewing an executive from an auto company this week that was simply awkward — perhaps “pretty reporter” syndrome has followed women into New Media, too?)

It wasn’t long after checking out the article that I began making a mental list of women — women that I have interacted with through social media, and many in person, too — that understand the unique attributes of social media, and how to use these tools to help businesses and non-profits, and further their own careers.

(They might well own trenchcoats and high heels, too… but how good they look in them doesn’t have much to do with their other skills.)

And so, I present my list of 10 Social Media Women That Deserve a Vanity Fair Article:

Alicia Staley (@stales) is a three-time cancer survivor using Twitter to build her charitable enterprise, The Staley Foundation. She is also a social media activist at WEGO Health, and many other places across the web where people are having important conversations about health care.

Amber Naslund (@ambercadabera) is a smart, crazily organized “social media and marketing crackerjack” who concentrates on effective community management with Radian6. Amber leads by example, and is one of the most thoughtful bloggers in the social media space.

Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter) is a high-level thinker (with a strong dose of practicality and down-to-earth perspective) and blogger at ZDNet, an online security pro, and co-host of the quick n dirty podcast. When Jennifer weighs in on a topic, people take note.

Meg Fowler (@megfowler), through her eponymous personal blog and a Twitter stream that, like her, is rarely “on topic” — though when she is “on”, she displays an amazing grasp of marketing and branding strategy — has built a career as a freelance writer from the ground up. (Oh, and she has fantastic taste in men, too.

Rachel Happe (@rhappe) is a connector of ideas and people, and speaks from a place of both vision and practicality. Her extensive enterprise business experience gives her an action-oriented view on community, which she is putting to work with her (and partner Jim Storer’s) Community Roundtable. If you mix Chris Brogan-eque perspective with her metrics-minded advice, you get a powerful 1-2 punch.

Rebecca Corliss (@repcor) has used her passionate love of music and social media to create innovative marketing campaigns for Hubspot. A PR pro by training, she shines in helping teach small businesses use inbound marketing, as displayed in her work spearheading Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University.

Stefania Butler (@citymama) came to prominence as one of the original parentbloggers at her CityMama site (note: I didn’t say mommyblogger!) and continues to provide wise, sensitive community leadership across that space. You can find her working as a communications pro with her own Clever Girls Collective enterprise.

Tamsen McMahon (@tamadear) is an “intellectual magpie, finding what shines in branding, arts, higher education, and life.” (That’s an awesome Twitter bio! Who could say it better?) She worked for many years helping social organizations build brands, and now she’s helping brands become more social with Sametz Blackstone Associates.

Whitney Hess (@whitneyhess) is an independent UX designer, writer and consultant. She is sought after by a wide range of clients for her expertise in, amongst other areas, integrating social functionality into corporate web design. And if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, she is also a much in-demand speaker in her field.

Zena Weist (@zenaweist) is a blogger, and digital and media pro with experience providing executive leadership in digital start-ups, account management with interactive agencies, and client-side roles in online brand engagement, project management, social media initiatives and web implementation. In other words, she walks the walk, and Zena is also an autism awareness advocate (how’s that for alliteration?)
UPDATE: Great timing, and proof of her business prowess, Zena has just accepted the position of Director of Social and Interactive Media for H&R Block. Congratulations, Zena!

Gradon Tripp

Life. Marketing. Social Media. And Combining All Three.

Category Archives: Brands

Big Convenience (and a Little Jar of Curry)