TweetDuring our church’s recent 4th of July picnic, I had an opportunity to talk social media marketing with someone who has a different objective than most of us. Rich is not a business person, though he does work in business. Right now he’s just “passing through” while he and his wife work towards their goal of moving to Papua New Guinea to work with the Wycliffe Bible Translators organization to  support the efforts of linguists there to translate the Bible into languages which do not have printed Bibles.

Rich is active on Facebook and is just starting to get into Twitter. He asked me how he should use those tools along with his blogs to communicate not only with those who have pledged their support to his effort, but to reach out to others who might be interested in helping with their cause.

During our talk we discussed how he might use Facebook and Twitter to help promote his blog, which is where he talks about his cause. We also went over not doing the “hard sell”‘ to people because it turns them off. At one point, I mentioned he might want to read the post I wrote about Rob Snell’s Keynote at Pubcon this past March which I titled “Be That Expert.” I told him about how Rob and Steve Snell increased sales from their web site because they showed Steve to be an expert in his field of work and this credibility helped their marketing efforts.

I wonder, though, if that point was lost on Rich because I feel I may not have explained it very well at the time. After all, as an aspiring missionary to a land not his own, he’s not looking to sell anything or make lots of money. Or is he?

Think about it: Rich is trying to raise money to support him and his family in a foreign land for at least a year. He knows roughly how much he needs and is working towards banking that amount of money. In order to do this, he is working a full time job and he’s “selling” his idea to others in the hope they will contribute money to help him reach his goal. Is that really so different from the person running a company trying to sell enough banana guacamole to support him and his family as well as the employees who help him in his efforts and their families? While Rich’s motivations are slightly different, the goal is basically the same.

Nonprofits and charities have a different set of rules to follow. I’m not just referring to governmental regulation. In the case of nonprofits, they are selling a service which the people doing the actual paying will not benefit directly or tangibly from (except for, perhaps, a tax deduction). In Rich’s case, here’s what he’s doing:

• Selling A Product – Rich is selling Bibles, though he’s not selling them to the people who will actually receive them. Also, these Bibles do not yet exist because they need to be translated into a language which, at this point, may not even have a working alphabet. Lots of background work needs to happen before any actual printing is done.
• Adding Value – Rich is looking to add value to someone’s life. In this case, he’s not adding value to the paying customers. He’s attempting to convince others that paying for someone else to get the value is important.

So, what does this have to do with hunting dogs and equipment?
Good question.  At the end of the post I linked to above, I listed three tips Rob gave during his talk which can help someone develop a strategic social media plan. I pointed out that these tips don’t just apply to ecommerce web sites, and in this case they apply to Rich and others like him, too:

1. That you are an expert in what you do.
   • Rich needs to show himself an expert on Papua New Guinea, her people, culture and issues.
   • He also needs to demonstrate the expertise he has which will be put into use while he’s over there. People may be more likely to help someone who’s a skilled pilot (as Rich is) rather than someone who’s just going over there to wash dishes.
   • In his blog posts he needs to communicate the passion he and his wife have which prompted them to uproot themselves and their four children to go to a land half-way around the world. Passion sells – whether it’s banana guacamole or ideals.
   • He needs to communicate in a tangible ways how the people of that land will benefit from him going over there to do the work Wycliffe has for him.
   • It might not be a bad idea to offer up a list of things they need in order to be successful. Not only does Rich need to be skilled in the actual work part of being there, he and his wife also need to be skilled in how to take care of their kids’ needs, too. What will life be like there? Showing the challenges facing them will certainly add to their story.
2. That you have a product (or your product) is what your customers need. - Again, in this case the product or service is not something the person helping foot the bill will ever see. Rich needs to convince them that the value added to the lives of the people over there is worth supporting his efforts.
3. That they should (please) buy from you. - By showing he knows what he’s are doing and that  he has a positive contribution to make to the effort, Rich can make the case that supporting him is worth the time and money of those inclined to contribute to his cause.

You can learn more about Rich, his family and their efforts on their blog Reid All About It.

How about you? Have you worked with nonprofits? Do you have some ideas, tips or thoughts to share? Please feel free to drop them in the comments.

TweetYesterday evening Jen and I headed down to Dave & Buster’s in Austin for the Austin Internet Marketing Meetup featuring Brett Tabke of Webmaster World and PubCon. Brett spoke for about an hour around social media SEO and protecting your web efforts from rogue SEO tactics.

It’s All About Location
Brett made a prediction that Foursquare is getting ready to tip into something big. The reason for this is the folks at Foursquare have managed to figure out how to match location (of potential customers) and advertisers. I’ve seen a lot of debate over recent weeks about Foursquare and other location-based services (LBS) (notably in Aaron Strout’s blog with this post entitled “Are FourSquare and Gowalla Just Shiny Objects?” I think there is a lot of potential for LBS and Foursquare in particular, especially for businesses in location clusters. If someone were to mash up an LBS with a rating site (like SocialSmack, for instance) I think it would skyrocket because it would be immensely useful.

(Update: Just after I finished this post I saw this tweet from Brett reiterating his prediction from past night.)

Social Versus Paid Advertising
Brett also talked about how they stopped paying for advertising to promote PubCon and switched to what he calls “All Twitter, All the Time.” In 2008 PubCon was faced with a lot of uncertainty with the economy going south. People were not going to conferences and it was looking bad for them. They reached out to some influential bloggers and started a social media campaign which was highly successful. In the end, the show was well-attended with an increase year over year – in a down year with lots of bad economic stuff going on. Not only did PubCon benefit, but the hotels who worked with the conference noted the positive value of social as the attendees tweeted and blogged about their good experiences. All in all, this is a great case study for the power of social – if it’s done right.

Black Hat Strategies
Brett also talked about some Black Hat SEO stuff. This was not presented in the usual way, which is: these are tricks you can use to game the system but don’t get caught or Google will ban your site. This talk was in the context of how to protect yourself if a competitor or someone with an ax to grind uses these tactics against you or tries to make it look like you’re using “black hat” techniques, in an attempt to ruin your reputation. This was quite an interesting addition to some of the reputation management stuff I’ve been reading, such as Andy Beal’s Radically Transparent.

Plugs
Disclaimer: I am an affiliate for PubCon. If you click on the banner ad to the left after my eloquent argument convinces you to attend PubCon I will get a cut of the sale. If you think this a conflict of interest, feel free to click on the link in the first paragraph and browse to the signup page.

Brett gave us just a small sample of what his PubCon conference offers for those who attend. To be sure, other conferences are good and offer lots of good information, but there’s something about PubCon I really enjoy. It seems to me a bit more laid back and informal compared to other conferences I’ve attended. The price is great, too. If you sign up before the end of August the cost is less than $1000. If you go, pay attention and learn some stuff you can go back to you job or business and make up more than that cost rather quickly. The next PubCon is in Vegas in November, then there will be one in a yet undisclosed “Tropical” location in in the Winter and then one in Texas in March.

Galaga!
One of my favorite games as a teenager was Galaga. Dave & Buster’s in Austin has an old Galaga machine. I’m not as skilled as I once was in my nimbled-fingered youth, but I do OK. It was a lot of fun to relive my miscreant days. Well, I wasn’t that much of a miscreant, but I did have long hair and liked to hang out at the arcade.

TweetLead Like Ike – Ten Business Strategies From the CEO of D-Day tells the story of Operation Overlord from the time General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed leader of the effort to wrest control of Europe from Nazi domination, with the story carrying through to Ike’s eventual stint as 34th President of the United States. Author Geoff Loftus takes us on an historical journey through one of the most daunting military undertakings ever attempted to illustrate lessons which can be used in business today.

Loftus breaks the lessons into these ten key areas:

1. Determine Your Mission
2. Plan for Success
3. Stay Focused
4. Prioritize
5. Plan to Implement
6. Communicate
7. Motivate Your People
8. Manage Your People
9. Avoid Project Creep
10. Be Honest

To be sure, Ike did not always succeed at these ten things, but he did succeed where it counted and it brought great credit to him and the members of the Allied military forces. And, while success can teach lessons, failures can as well. Loftus points out where Eisenhower learned from his misques and became a better leader because of them – a lesson we can all benefit from.

While the focus is on Eisenhower’s efforts to lead the Allies during the latter part of World War II, Loftus further illuminates these ten points using events from businesses and business leaders past and present, from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs and from Enron to Time-Warner. It’s an interesting mixture of stories which helps put things into perspective.

As a history buff, I enjoyed the takeaways on how Ike handled things. The invasion of France on D-Day and the eventual campaign to defeat the Nazis was a huge task with only total victory being an acceptable end. The logistics alone bring to mind the worst headaches any business person could imagine. Combine this with having to manage a staff consisting of very strong and powerful personalities (such as Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and General George S. Patton being the two most colorful) and you can see where Ike had to be a tremendous leader in order to manage the operation.

I recommend this book to anyone aspiring to leadership, whether in business or otherwise. If you are a history buff, I doubly recommend it. I learned a great deal of background information about D-Day which I found quite interesting.

Lead Like Ike by Geoff Loftus (Amazon affiliate link)

Disclaimer: I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze book review Blogger program. Although Thomas Nelson Publishing provided the book at no cost to me, this review is my honest opinion of the work.

TweetHere are a couple more examples from my Bad Customer Service files. Please read and learn from their mistakes …

The Disconnected Call Center
Two years ago I needed to make some emergency repairs to my car. This was before I started on Dave Ramsey’s “Baby Steps” so I hadn’t yet gotten smart enough to have an emergency fund in place to take care of such things. I took out a loan from my 401(k) account to cover the cost.

Now that I’m a little smarter financially, I decided to pay off that loan early so the money will be in the fund (hopefully) earning more than the 5% interest I pay myself on the borrowed money. I called the group who manages the funds, got the payoff amount and made arrangements to pay off the balance.  I went to my bank and got a cashier’s check and sent it off.

Uh-Oh
Two days later I was balancing my checking account and noted that the bank teller had transposed two numbers on the cashier’s check. The check was off by a little over $40. I could have gotten mad at the teller, but I realized I should have checked the amount of the check before I sent it.

The next day, I called the 401(k) people again to explain my problem. The lady I spoke with was very nice and assured me my mistake would be no problem. She told me to send in another check for the rest of the balance of the loan and all would be well. Based on that advice I went to my bank, got another cashier’s check and mailed it off (double-checking the amount, of course). That was that, or so I thought.

The following week I received back the first check I sent. A form letter was attached with a check in the box next to the entry “Check was not made out in the exact amount of loan balance.” Needless to say, I was a little upset. Why didn’t the nice lady I spoke with during my second call mention this to me. Two days later, I received the second check I sent.

This is another example of customer service failing either because they are told to say whatever it takes to make the customer get off the phone or they don’t know what’s really going on. Either way this is wrong. If your organization runs this way, stop it! Your customers deserve better than this.

The Mismanaged Web Form
Yesterday, I was looking into purchasing a service. I went to the web site of the company I thought would be able to assist me best. I checked out the site and didn’t find information for exactly what I wanted, so I filled out the contact form. I asked my question in the comments and specifically checked “Email Me” and did not check the “Telephone Me” box.

“Ring, telephone, ring! Telephone, ring!”
Yes, you guessed it – someone called. Within fifteen minutes of submitting that form I got a phone call from a sales person. After talking about the service I wanted (yes, they had something which would be exactly what I wanted) I asked the person, “On the message you received from my form submission, do you get the information about how I wished to be contacted?” “Yes, it says here you wanted to be contact by email.” “Then, why did you call me?” “That’s policy. We always call to make sure we answer the customer’s questions thoroughly.”

I went on to explain to the very nice lady that I wasn’t mad at her, but it seemed rather a waste to ask a customer how they prefer to be contacted and not contact them that way. If it’s policy to always call, why appear to give someone the option to be contacted by email? I suggested she refer that policy to her management to either change the form or follow the customers’ requests. I wasn’t ugly with her – after all she wasn’t really at fault.

Telephone, ring! Telephone Ring! Telephone Ring!
The story didn’t end there, though. About ten minutes after I hung up with the first lady, someone from the local office of this company called.  She asked me the same questions and and gave me the same information as the first lady. Curious, I asked: “On the message you received from my form submission, did you get the information about how I wished to be contacted?” “No,” she replied, “We don’t get that information.”

The lesson here is: If you give customers an option about how they want to be contacted, and they give you a preference – give them what they ask for. If you’re going to call anyway, don’t ask for a preference.

How about you? Do you have any suggestions to help resolve these two customer service problems? Please feel free to add them in the comments.

PS: If you by chance get the song reference I make in some of the titles, I’d love to hear from you. Drop a note in the comments or use the contact us form (link at the top of the page).

Top Photo:  photo credit: Bob B. Brown

Bottom Photo:  photo credit: cdsessums

TweetLast week I was called upon by Megan Fleetwood, a reporter with KWTX in Waco, to offer up some comments about social media security and safety. In this case it was specifically regarding the safety of kids on social sites.

Unfortunately, the story is no longer available on their web site. I’m looking for another source.

Background
This particular piece revolved around a school bus driver who thought a dog belonging to one of the students on his route had been found by one of his neighbors. The neighbor was about to take the dog to the animal shelter. Concerned for the pet’s safety, he contacted the 13-year-old female student via a Facebook message asking if the dog in question was hers. Apparently, when she didn’t respond, went to her house and knocked on the door.

The concern here is (as spoken in the story): “When is it appropriate for an adult to contact a child on the internet?” I’m sure opinions vary. In this case, the school district leadership is convinced the driver’s intentions were honorable. Still, the incident did raise a bit of concern for school district – and it should.

Kids are on social media. It’s part of their culture and embedded into their lives in a way even the most social media-savvy adults I know don’t fully comprehend. Because it’s such a part of how they interact with others, it’s essential we teach them about online safety when they are young much like my parents taught me not to talk to strangers or look both ways before crossing the street.

School Is Teaching Kids
Apparently, the school district spent some time during the course of the last year teaching kids about online safety. That is excellent. Although I believe parents should be ultimately responsible for monitoring their kids’ online activities, it is an excellent idea for schools to help by offering some instruction. This may offer the chance for the kids themselves to look out for each other and help each other succeed in keeping not only their personal information, but their persons safe.

Social Media Policies for Employers
From what I gather of the superintendent’s comments, the school district does not have a social media policy for its employees. I firmly believe all organizations should have a social media policy, and this goes double for schools. I don’t think social media policies for school need to be draconian to the degree that social media contact between school personnel and students are cut off totally. There are some excellent and legitimate uses for social media contact, especially between students and teachers. However, there should be some guidelines to help prevent a situation like the one in this story; to help keep “honest people honest.”

Social media can be a great tool to help schools communicate. For example, I have a friend whose highschoolers are involved in Theatre Arts. The teachers have a Twitter account which they use to let parents know what’s going on when students are on field trips and traveling to competitions. Certainly a Facebook fan page for a teacher’s class would be of great help with communication of lessons and such between the teacher and students and parents. I know many teachers who use email lists for this type of communication – perhaps it would be more efficient to post message to social media sites.

Some Points to Ponder
During the interview I did with Megan we discussed a number of points about how to help kids make good decisions when it comes to their social media activities. Here are a few:

• It is mainly the responsibility of parents to teach their kids how to be safe online. Some parents are overwhelmed by this because they don’t understand social. If this is the case with you, concentrate on the basics like, “Don’t talk to Strangers,” “Treat others as you want to be treated,” “Don’t spread gossip.” Teach them not to share their personal information such as address, phone number, pictures, etc. with those not personally known to them.
• Foster a relationship with your kids that encourages them to let you know when something untoward happens. Often times communication between parents and kids is the best tool to keep them safe. Of course, when they become teens and think they know everything this gets tougher, so you have to start early.
• Anyone can figure out how to send a message to anyone else. That’s how spam works. Getting emails from strangers is nothing new. Teach your kids to ignore and delete messages from people they don’t know.
• It’s not a bad idea to put the family computer in the living room with the T.V. and other entertainment items. This way, you parents can keep an eye on what the kids are doing online.
• Check your kids’ social media accounts from time to time. Not only should you check the security/privacy settings on their accounts, you should check to see who they are interacting with and how they interact. Cyberbullying and such can be cut off if parents are involved in monitoring their kids’ online activities. You kids may complain about you “invading their privacy” but in the end they will appreciate that you care.
• If you are technically savvy enough, you can install various filters and limit your kids’ time online. This way you can help prevent them from Facebook-ing or MySpace-ing at all hours of the night.
• Kids need to understand that online is pretty much “forever.” Once something is posted and indexed by search engines it’s nearly impossible to get rid of and it can pop back up during searches for who knows how long. Younger kids talking smack and older kids posting pictures of themselves acting the fool at parties may be all fun now, but they can come back to haunt them later. Though this point probably applies more to older kids and young adults who may be soon entering the workforce, it’s important that kids learn early on about the basics of online reputation management.

Please check out the tips I gave in my last TV interview in my article “Social Media Safety & Security.”

How about you? What tips do you have regarding keeping kids safe online? Please feel free to share them in the comments.