I kick butt on a First Beer

A long time ago I wrote a blog called "Bad Buzz ... Yeah I remember my first beer".  This blog was part of a series talking about how to respond to social media that goes bad. 

What I get a kick out of is that that page is my most popular blog page BY FAR. 

I suspect that people are finding my marketing-focused blog based on searching for information about really having their first beer.  It does make you see the potential for stuffing a page with top hot words to build traffic to your page. 

How do you find hot words?  Have a look at the Google Hot Trends in the left column of this blog and similar stats like Trending Now on Yahoo.ca, or Trending Topics on Twitter.  But stuffing a page with hot words is something Google really frowns on.  So I won't and you shouldn't either. 

Focus on relevant and interesting content, and your audience will follow.  At least, that's the theory I'm working on.

Responding to Social Media Buzz - Step #5 ==> Craft meaningful responses

What is a meaningful response? A meaningful response:

• Lets the person know they’ve been heard
• Let’s the person know who you are and that you represent the company
• Thanks the person for their feedback
• May ask for additional information (perhaps in a phone call)
• May attempt to offer an explanation and an apology

(The rest of this section refers to “blogs”, but that applies equally to vlogs, tweets, reviews, and so on. Whatever the Social Media is, you should respond to the Social Media using that Social Media. If the original contributor creates a video about you, then you should respond with a video.)

Here’s how you do it:

1. REALLY read the blog … Seek first to understand what is being written about you.
2. Keep your emotions out of your response ... Count to 10. Personal criticism – or in this case, criticism of the business you are standing in front of - is too easy to take to heart, and difficult to really listen to and understand. Put down your shields and defenses. Stay objective. Focus on the content, and get prepared to listen and enter into a productive conversation.
3. Seek first to really understand ... Perhaps your first response should include a variety of non-confrontational questions like: "Can you give me more details …”. Additionally, it should make use of appropriate Active Listening techniques such as restating key points, and asking permission to resolve the situation. Through asking and listening you should attain concrete and constructive details.
4. Accept the criticism ... No matter what, the criticism is somone's feelings - right or wrong - of your company’s performance. No matter whether you agree or disagree with the criticism, it is time to accept it, and get ready to respond. By letting go of your own resistance and resentment and becoming at ease with criticism and disapproval it is easier to learn lessons and comfortably assert your own perceptions.
5. Thank the person for the feedback ... This has a triple impact with your critic: (1) the critic hears that you heard them, (2) the critic's perspective of you is raised, and (3) it gives you an opportunity to "count to 10" again, and set up your questions.
6. Have a discussion about the issues ... Check your "Lecturer" hat at the door, and engage your critic in a conversation. Ask, listen, chat, discuss, with a focus on open-ended questions. Listen carefully to see if you can understand the problem, and then seek a solution together.

Responding to Social Media Buzz - Step #4 ==> Determine if you should engage

Image by fredcavazza via Flickr

You’re out there watching for Social Media Buzz about your company now, and you start to find content. Now it’s time to determine if you should engage with Twits, Bloggers, Vloggers, and so forth.

On average, each blog post is looked at something like 25 times. Now, that makes for a pretty big cross-section as most blogs are looked at once or twice (and one of those may be the person who wrote it), and some are looked at hundreds of thousands or even millions of times.

One of your first questions might be, “Is this guy important?” There are few ways to really determine if any one Social Media activist is important in the overall scheme of things. One proxy to determine if a person’s blog is important is Technorati.com’s “Authority” ranking. Technorati calculates authority by looking at all links from unique blogs from the past 6 months. That means a blog’s rank will change daily based upon the blog's activity from 180 days ago up to today. As older links fall off the count and new links are added, the blog’s link count may increase, decrease, or stay the same.

Perhaps a good rule-of-thumb is to not spend your time trying to determine a given post’s or poster’s importance, but simply to spend your time engaging with them.

What about Social Media that is filled with profanity or cursing? When customers are unhappy they may tend to write with words that would make your mother blush. The challenge is to figure out if it is worth paying attention to this type of feedback. One way to do this is to take some time to engrain yourself in the other content from the contributor. Do the words that were used spill from bad habit (and consequently reduce the credibility of the contributor), or do they come from the passion or pain of the experience with your company? In the latter case, you really should respond. However, you need to tread cautiously.

Another good rule-of-thumb when experiencing Social Media is to pretend you’re experiencing a customer walking up to you and complaining about their experience with your company. If the person is using the F-bomb as an adjective, adverb, and a figure of speech, then you probably don’t want to engage with that person. On the other hand, if they are using it out of frustration, then you may quickly recognize the need to grit your teeth and engage in the conversation with them.

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• How To Successfully Track Your Way To Blog Success (beatschindler.com)
• Technorati on the Authority Changes (blogherald.com)

Responding to Social Media Buzz - Step #3 ==> Build out your Tactics

Now’s the time to get into the nitty-gritty of how you’re going to respond to Social Media Buzz. There are several points to consider.

• Brand your blog responses ... Your blog responses must reflect your brand, and must be from your brand. You must never masquerade as a third-party trying to shout the praises of your company. You must always be up front about who you are, and that you represent your company. But, you may not be the person who is actually responding to the Social Media. So, before you even write your first Social Media post, write up a description of the "persona" - the person and his or her personality and "voice" - that you want to respond to Social Media. For instance, if you are responding for a stodgy old bank, then your perona should use a greeting like "Good Afternoon", and always use full and proper grammar. On the other hand, if you are a mountain bike company, your persona should use all the right slang: "Hey dude", "shred", and so on. Everyone that is going to respond to Social Media Buzz must present this branded persona.
• Set a standard and branded greeting ... like “Hi There – It’s from ”. In addition, you might hyperlink your company’s website into the name each time.
• Define the name of your responder ... You have a choice to make here: for the sake of consistency, you may want to use the same "virtual responder" so that all of your responses have the same pen-name on them. The advantage of this is twofold – first off it is easy to search for and find your Social Media responses. Secondly, if over the years you end up with 3-4 people responding to Social Media, they can all respond under the persona's name like "Thanks, Ivy". On the other hand, you may want to use the names of the actual responder. The upside of this is that it is more personal.
• Find the Social Media Buzz … Blogs, Vlogs, comments, reviews, and so on - using Technorati, Google Blog Search, IceRocket, and other suitable searches and feeds. Set yourself up searches and RSS feeds so that it is easy to find Social Media Buzz in the future.
  
• Set up accounts … Each social media service typically has a defined account. By using an account, rather than an anonymous response you build a history on each social media service and also build credibility with people who follow Social Media.
• Staff and train your team … Assuming you get a team. Otherwise, perhaps you are training yourself.
• Join the conversation … Now you’re ready to get involved with social media. Search out good and bad feedback about your company, and get ready to interact with it.

Responding to Social Media Buzz - Step #2 ==> Set out your Strategy

Setting your strategy is an iterative process, which goes something like this:

• Listen to the conversation ... Before you jump in with both feet, find and read Social Media about your company and get an understanding of what those conversations are all about. Determine what the buzz is, and how much you need to be involved with it.
• Set some goals ... This is a tough thing to do, given that the metrics on Social Media are few and far between and it is even harder to see an immediate positive benefit to any responses. This is also the time and place to start doing one of the toughest things … drafting your business case. Take a look at the benefits and consider how you’re going to make or save money by responding to Social Media Buzz. Be cognizant that benefits will not magically happen overnight. They will take time to be realized, and consequently you should stage your benefit calculations over several months or years. Also, be careful not to overstate the potential benefits and costs savings. If you state that you will be able to cut your advertising budget by 50% as a result of improved Social Media Buzz, then your CFO will come calling in short order. In reality your benefits have to outweigh your costs only by a reasonable amount. Potential benefits might include:
• increasing positive buzz about your company (thereby driving up the value of your brand, allowing you to reduce advertising costs, and at the same time driving sales up),
• reducing negative buzz about your company (reducing the amount of time you need to spend defending yourself in the media, and the amount of cash you have to spend on PR),
• increasing your Organic Search Ranking by propagating relevant links to your own website (and thereby both driving more traffic to your site (hopefully leading to more sales), and saving advertising dollars), and
• operational improvements driven by keeping your ear to the ground (improving the engagement and brand loyalty of your customers, reducing advertising costs, and improving the utility of your product or service (which likely has a self-fulfilling effect of bringing more customers to your door)).
• Plan for success ... You will need to give Social Media care and feeding - Social Media isn't something you should step into once and back away from. You have to get into and stay in it. That means that once you determine how you will respond to good and bad social media and you will need to set aside time on a regular basis to participate in Social Media. You may even need to have staff in place to keep up with it. Even more, you may need to involve professionals to help you engage in social media. This is the time to draft up the second part of your business case. Now you will start to develop an eye for how much meeting your goals will cost. How many people will need to be involved in listening and responding to buzz? How often will you do it? How often will you need third parties? Be careful not to dig too far into too many details at this point. Focus on the “why” and not the “how”. You probably want to keep your plan to a few PowerPoint slides featuring big concepts, a couple of examples, and your high-level business case. Also, you might want a short-term and a long-term plan. Your short-term plan will look at the immediate future of Responding to Social Media Buzz. This may be a 6-month plan to staff up a team, create a library of responses, and so on. The outcome will be that you are in the game of Social Media. The longer-term plans may include how you may become involved in other types of social media, in creating your own company blog, or in creating your own customer forum. Put your short-term plan on the table. Keep your long-term plan in your back pocket.

Now for the final - and perhaps most complicated step, because it forms your "make or break moment" ...

• Sell the idea ... responding to Social Media as a representative of your company and brand can test your company's culture and its leadership. Before you do the “big sell”, you will need work the slow and soft sell to a variety of individual executives and your peers to ensure that you understand and are cautious of their concerns, and that they understand what you are setting out to do. To do this well means that you must not be married to your plan. You need to listen to the executives and adjust your goals and plan accordingly.

The Definitive Guide to Responding to Buzz in Social Media - #1 Commit Yourself

I've taken a few weeks away from blogging, but now I'm back into it and ready to write "The Definitive Guide to Responding to Buzz in Social Media". This guide comes from several pieces of research that I was doing back in the summer which looked at the best ways to respond to criticism in other fields. Taking that, and some of my own experience in responding to social media, I will be posting an 11-part guide which will give you the tools you need to respond to both good and bad buzz in social media. Join me now as we begin the journey...

#1 == Commit Yourself
As a BIG first step you must commit to responding to social media. To do that is a process in and of itself. But, first off you have to really decide that responding to social media is an important thing to do. You need to believe it deep down in your gut, and you need to be able to make others believe it as well.

To commit yourself means that you have to plan and execute actions that are really the next 10 steps in the responding process, which are ...

• #2 ==> Set out your Strategy
• #3 ==> Build out your Tactics
• #4 ==> Determine if you should engage
• #5 ==> Craft meaningful responses
• #6 ==> Reply based on the context
• #7 ==> Follow some basic etiquette
• #8 ==> Enlist your critic's help
• #9 ==> Create a response template library
• #10 ==> Bring in a professional when you need it
• #11 ==> Get metrics

Join me on the journey to Social Media Response happiness over the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to it.

Finding Buzz about you on the web

You've decided that you want to track and respond to social media - blogs and reviews - and you're getting things lined up to make that happen. Excellent.

Now, how do you find it?

There are (at least) four places you can go to start your search.

• Technorati
• Google Blog Search
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics' BlogPulse
• IceRocket

With each of these tools you can set up your search with your company's name (or even your competitor's name ... but I don't generally recommend responding to posts about them). Then you can set up an RSS feed so that you can easily watch for updates out there in the blogosphere.

Also - while the tools are always being updated, they may not do a very good job (if at all) of hitting social networks like MySpace or FaceBook. So you may need to search those separately. On top of that you may want to look for other feeds that are industry specific. For instance, if you are in the travel or tourism industry, you likely want to do a search of TripAdvisor.com.

Interestingly, each of these tools may bring you different results. So, you may want to start by using them all and then pare back to the few that seem to work best for you.

Finally - you may wonder if a given blog is worth responding to. One way to know is to look at the "authority" of the blogger. To determine this, head over to Technorati. They calculate authority by looking at all links from unique blogs from the past 6 months. That means your rank will change daily based upon your blog's activity for a rolling 180 days. The higher the authority, the more people probably look at the blog, and the more likely that the blog is worth responding to. However, just because a blog doesn't have high authority doesn't mean you should ignore it. It can always become the mouse that roared.

Bad Buzz - Handling personal criticism in an evaluation

In the search for "How to respond to bad social media buzz", I've touched on comparisons to Responding to a bad report card, and Handling a heckler. Today I'll look at another touchy point that has some similarities - Handling personal criticism in an evaluation.

My sources today included:

• EzineArticles.com, Five Steps For Handling Personal Criticism by Olimpio Zapanta,
• FashionSenseClub, Personal Image Services, Responding to Personal Criticism, and
• LifeHack.org, Handling Criticism: 6 Options to Get Through It by Thursday Bram.

Handling Personal Criticism in an Evaluation
One of the most stressful moments in anyone's life is the dreaded Annual Evaluation. We're all familiar with this drama where your boss & critic spends a half-hour filling out a report about you and then invites you into a private meeting where they terrorize you with their impression of your performance. Okay - so hopefully it isn't actually that way, but it would be hard to deny that it always feels like it is going to be that way.

No matter what, there will likely be some criticism of you in that Annual Evaluation. Criticism can either be helpful and constructive feedback which will lead to a performance improvement or help you climb to the next level, or it can be mean-spirited and destructive which will lead to a reduction in your motivation and performance.

Whether you think you deserve the criticism or not, here's how to deal with it:

1. Keep your emotions out of it ... Count to 10. Personal criticism is too easy to take to heart, and difficult to get into your head. When you are criticized, it is much easier to get defensive than to stay objective. But, getting emotional or defensive when hearing criticism tends to draw things out, give power to the critic, and eliminate your opportunity to improve and grow. So, when your boss criticizes you, "count to 10", focus on the content, and get prepared to listen and enter into a productive conversation.
2. Thank the person for the feedback. This has a triple impact with your boss: (1) the critic hears that you heard them, (2) the critic's perspective of you is raised, and (3) it gives you an opportunity to "count to 10" again, and set up your questions.
3. Seek first to understand. That's one of the Steven Covey "habits". Quite simply it means that you need to ask questions, and get your boss & critic talking - regardless of any feelings you may have that the criticism is inaccurate or unfair. Questions like: "Can you give me an example of ...?" or "What makes my work unsatisfactory?" are good starters. When your critic is answering, be sure you engage with your critic through Active Listening techniques such as good eye contact, an engaged posture, allowing the critic time and space to talk, restating key points, and non-confrontational questions. Through asking and listening you should attain concrete and constructive details. If you haven't already got it, you may even want to ask for the criticism in writing, or for your official evaluation to be amended. You might even write the criticism down yourself, and ask your boss to confirm it. One clear advantage of this is that it gives you a written and mutually agreeable foundation from which to begin improvement.
4. Accept the criticism. No matter what, the criticism is somone's feelings - right or wrong - of you and your performance. No matter whether you agree or disagree with the criticism, it is time to accept it, and get ready to respond. By letting go of your own resistance and resentment and becoming at ease with criticism and disapproval it is easier to learn lessons and comfortably assert your own perceptions.
5. Deal with it. After counting to 10, listening, and accepting, it is time to deal with the criticism from your boss. You have several choices to be made:
• If you have made a mistake, admit it, apologize and move on. Among other things this lets your critic know you've heard them, and avoids a fight about the problem.
• Give your side. Ask your critic if he or she is willing to hear your side of the situation, and if they are, say, "I see it differently" or "I remember it differently." Then tell your critic what you remember and how you feel. But, remember, don't become confrontational.
• Reject. Some bosses spend their days dreaming up ways to criticize you. We're all programmed to do it. Think about the volume of block-buster and mean-spirited reality TV that's on-air, and you'll know what I mean. Consequently some criticism is unfounded, unacceptable and filled with negative energy. In this instance, your choice might be to reject the criticism. Speak up for yourself-- you'll feel better. Of course you might also find yourself out looking for a new job ...
• Ignore or Divert. These are the good cousins to "Reject", and you may not find yourself looking for a new job right away. Simply ignore the criticism. Perhaps pretend you didn't hear it. Or, start with the topic they were beating you with, and then take the conversation to a new place. Either way, launch a new conversation where you're in control, not your boss. Of course, that behavior simply shows that you aren't really listening to your critic, and it may just show up on your next evaluation. The long-term impact is that you might find yourself looking for a new job ...
• Resolve valid criticism. Take steps to improve by setting a plan with the critic. This gives you an opportunity to ask for help through their support, extra training, other assignments, and so on.
6. Enlist your critic's help to monitor your progress. You need to actively change your behavior, and also to monitor your own progress as you work to act on criticism and improve. However, it is also important to ask your critic (boss) to give you ongoing feedback (and to seek it out if they don't). Be sure to let your critic know that you want to change and improve, but that you nee their help and feedback to help you do it.

So, for fun and improvement, here's a comparison to my guidelines for responding to bad social media buzz:

• Be careful - Absolutely. "Count to 10". Focus on the content, and get prepared to listen and enter into a productive conversation.
  
• Contest fraudulent / wrong comments - This is a choice you can make during the conversation, and only after you have asked questions and understood what the criticixm is. At that point you can choose to tell your own side of the story.
  
• Write a response - During a performance evaluation, you are typically engaged in a conversation. If you get into writing a response you've ratcheted things up a notch, and you should probably have a look at Monster or Workopolis while you're at it. However, the conversation of an evaluation should give you lots of time to ask questions and learn more about your opportunities to improve.
  
• Fix the problem & upload a proof (like a picture) to prove the fix - This step is highly parallel to responding to bad social media buzz. In a job evaluation you should set a plan to fix the problem with your boss and ask your boss to provide you ongoing feedback about your progress.
  
• Report findings back into the company - By involving your boss in your performance improvements your boss should be able to participate in and enjoy your success with you. Consequently your next evaluation should be half-written by the the time you get to it (and it should all be good).
  
• Participation becomes content - As in the last point, when your boss participates in the improvements, it is a no-brainer that your performance appraisal will reflect the improvements.
• Bring in a professional - This is aligned with ratcheting things up a notch and going to your HR department for help (if you can't get your boss to help you improve, and / or if the criticism is completely unfair. Alternatively, it may be aligned with getting additional training by taking a course.
  

To sum up, the model for dealing with personal criticism in an evaluation is very similar to the model for dealing with bad social media buzz.

Now that I've gone through all of this research over the last few days, I think that next week I'll update my guidelines and process for responding to bad social media buzz. Stay tuned ...

Bad Buzz - Yeah, I remember my first beer ...

In the search for "How to respond to bad social media buzz", I found a number of comparisons to responding to other social circumstances. Yesterday I blogged about the comparison of Responding to a bad report card vs. Responding to bad social media buzz. Today I'm blogging about a similar comparison of Handling a hecker vs. Responding to bad social media buzz.

Today's title reflects a famous retort by Comedian Steve Martin who in response to a heckler threw back "Yeah, I remember my first beer."

Handling a Heckler
Today my sources are:

• eHow.com by Blake Guthrie,
• Toast Masters by Mary Ward Menke, and
• Wikipedia, by a cast of thousands.

Hecklers heckle for a couple of reasons:

• Some people may just want to participate with the performer, or
• Some people want to to give them something to bounce off of and add humor to the show.
• Of course, the third reason is that they just may be so dumb and drunk that they don't know what they are doing :^)

You have to be very careful about how you respond to a Heckler. Generally, there are three ways you can respond to a Heckler:

• Ignore the interruption and continue,
• Use humor, such as good-natured joking, typically to land a well-placed insult that embarasses them into being quiet, or
  
• Ask them to behave or get out.
  

If you can't control the Heckler through these methods the Heckler can take control of your show, and ruin you!

If you choose to go the route of using humor, then it is critical that you:

• Study some of the greats ... Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman, Jerry Seinfeld, Rodney Dangerfield, and so on. Watch for their responses, and timing.
  
• Be aware of your timing. You can't be too slow, you can't be too fast. You have to allow an appropriate pause. You can't let it sit too long. Your response has to make it apparent that you have a sharp wit, and that the Heckler shouldn't re-arm and take a second shot at you. Your response should also not take over your show or presentation. It must be controlled. It must not be obsessive, but it should be really fun and also make other people think twice about heckling you.
• Have a stash of great comebacks and know how to improvise on them to fit the situation so it seems like you just made it up. Don't copy the comedic greats. Perhaps borrow from them, but don't copy. Also, practice your delivery. But ensure you keep yourself crisp. Every comeback line must seem fresh and spontaneous

The final approach is to simply call the person out, tell them they are rude, and ask them to stop or leave the show. If they won't do either, call on a bouncer to bounce the Heckler the heck out of there.

In comparison to the guidelines for responding to bad social media buzz:

• Be careful - Absolutely. Being careful is key, otherwise the Heckler will own you and your show. Same deal with social media. One badly placed response to a blogger, and you will live with your brand will be flogged on the web in perpetuity.
  
• Contest fraudulent / wrong comments - This is clearly different. In responding to a Heckler you want a one-way conversation. On the web with Social Media, you are trying to engage in a conversation.
  
• Write a response - While with the response to a Heckler you are trying to be inflammatory and make them stop talking, with the response to a Blogger you either want to engage them in a conversation or choose to ignore them. When you engage them your goal is probably to let them know you hear their problem and find a resolution that leaves them singing your praises. On the other hand, when I choose to ignore a Blogger it is typically because their blog is full of profanity or generally their credibility seems really low (that's a judgment call you have to make some times).
  
• Fix the problem & upload a proof (like a picture) to prove the fix - Well - it is kind of the same. When you are responding to a Heckler you fix the problem by making them put a cork in it. Okay, really, the two approaches are not the same. When you fix the problem in a response to bad social media buzz, you need to actually solve the problem and provide proof in a Blog response that the problem is fixed. You may even fix it so well that you blog about the problem and the fix on your own corporate site!
  
• Report findings back into the company - If you fix a Heckler, then the Heckler shuts up or leaves. When that happens it is important to make a mental note of how you did it. What you said, what your timing was, and what the audience's reaction was. Then repeat that in the future! Same sort of deal for responding to bad social media buzz. You should create a stock library of conversational responses that you can use to start your response to blogs. You will probably find a lot of similar social media buzz, and consequently you can customize and re-use responses that have already proved effective.
• Participation becomes content - Ever so true! You only have to think about Steve Martin's "I remember when I had my first beer," Rodney Dangerfield's "Hey buddy you oughta save your breath. You'll need it later to blow up your inflatable date, no offense, " or Jerry Seinfeld actually visiting a Heckler at work.
  
• Bring in a professional - This is parallel to joining Toastmasters or going to a stand-up comedian course to help you learn how to respond.
  

So, there we go, the model for dealing with a Heckler is somewhat similar to the model for dealing with bad social media buzz.

By the way, the Wikipedia entry is great because it lists 30 or more famous heckling responses - including the Steve Martin quote.

Bad Buzz - Aye carumba ... my kid's report card was awful!

In the search for "How to respond to bad social media buzz", I found a number of comparisons to responding to other social circumstances. If you consider a "social circumstance" an open conversation between people, and if it involves bad buzz then the circumstances are "just right".

Similar bad social media buzz situations may include:

• Responding to a bad report card,
• Handling a heckler, and
• Handling personal criticism in an evaluation.

Today I'll start with the "bad report card" scenario, and compare that back to the guidelines for how to respond to bad social media buzz. Over the next couple of days I'll also look at the heckler and the evaluation.

Responding to a bad report card
I'm a happy guy ... I haven't had this situation with my kids yet. Looking around on Google I found three good sites right away:

• Families.com, Nicki Bradley,
• SelfGrowth.com, Connie Hammer, and
• TheCuteKid.com, by Teresa.

To paraphrase the three articles, here's what they say to do when you do run into the bad report card:

1. Keep your response in check. Your first reactions to the report card - whether good or bad will have a major impact. If you see a bad grade(s), take time to respond. "Count to 10", even up to a full 24 hours! Think about your goal and your child's needs and feelings.
   
2. Reevaluate your expectations. Maybe your child is actually fulfilling his potential with the grade he got. Maybe you know that there are reasons that your child got that grade (e.g. maybe you aren't helping him wiht his homework). Consider your child's natural strengths and weaknesses and not just your desired strengths and weaknesses before forming expectations.
   
3. Think about the things that matter most to you and your child. Likely that is learning and progress, and not the ugly grade on the paper. Concentrate on the learning process and ask questions, like "What did you learn (in science, math, art. etc.) this term? What did you enjoy? What was the easiest thing? What was the hardest thing? Why do you think you got this grade? What do you think you could have changed or done differently? What do you want to work on next time?"
4. Have a discussion about the issues. Check your "Lecturer" hat at the door, and engage your child in a conversation. Ask, listen, chat, discuss. Again - more open-ended questions like: "Are you having problems with the subject matter? How do you get along with your teacher? How do you get along with your classmates? What are your tests like? How do you think you could do better at them?" Listen carefully to see if you can understand the problem, and then seek a solution together.
5. Meet with the teacher - ideally in person, and ideally with your child along for the conversation. Stay objective in this conversation, and keep your emotions in check. Discuss what the teacher views as the problem and compare this with what your child views as the problem. Ensure you have a meeting of the minds on the reasons for the bad grades. You might even ask the teacher to provide you with updates on how your child is doing in order to help everyone evaluate progress and avoid future surprises.
6. Solve the problem. Set a plan, based on your child's input, his teacher's input, and your input. Ensure your child is doing the work and homework he is supposed to do (and help him schedule & do it), adjust your expectations, hire a tutor or get extra help from the teacher. Also, get feedback regularly from your child and from his teacher.
   
7. Discuss and consider natural or logical consequences. The natural consequence of not having good grades is ... bad grades. While a parent may be tempted to remove important things from a child's life - such as activities, toys, and so forth in order to "punish" the child, or "encourage him" to work harder, these consequences are not directly tied to bad grades. The best natural consequence is likely to set aside time each day where your child site down and do & review their homework each night. Sometimes this may mean cutting back on activities and play time.
   
8. "Start Anew". Wipe the slate clean, with your new expectations and goals - and more importantly your child's goals. Focus on your child's positive personality traits that you know will carry them well into the future. Boost your child's confidence by telling them that they can do it and then help them achieve it.
   

In comparison to the guidelines for responding to bad social media buzz:

• Be careful - That's the "Count to 10" step.
  
• Contest fraudulent / wrong comments - That's part of the "Have a conversation" step. You may need to ask some questions in order to contest an inaccurate comment.
  
• Write a response - Again, part of the conversation. Ask for more details if you need them, and even ask that the blogger contact your customer service department directly (you probably don't want to have a heated conversation in the open public domain of the internet, and you probably also don't want to give out your own contact information).
  
• Fix the problem & upload a proof (like a picture) to prove the fix - That's the step related to "Solve the Problem".
  
• Report findings back into the company - These are the "natural consequences". When you report back into the company, people get to hear real-life stories about your customer's experiences, and the fix that makes everyone happier. This will reinforce the fix
• Participation becomes content - This correlates with your first reaction to the report card. Becoming a tempest in a teapot will only sour your child's image of you. Writing a bad blog response will sour your brand.
  
• Bring in a professional - This is parallel to hiring a tutor to help you.

So, there we go, the model for dealing with a bad report card is similar to the model for dealing with bad social media buzz.

Responding to Buzz

(I unintentionally took a week off. But, now I'm back.)

I didn't know I was doing it, but some time ago I did an experiment in responding to buzz (both good and bad) in social media - including blogs and reviews. At the time, I drew up a list of guidelines to use when responding. The experience was fun, and the results were very positive.

As part of my "series" on responding to buzz, I did some poking around to update my list of guidelines. My research took me through a wide variety of business sites, consultants, educational, and miscellaneous sites.

To summarize my findings ... Responding to social media buzz requires an honest, polite, actionable and timely approach.

In general ... you must:

• Sell the idea ... Company culture will be tested - Determining that you are going to start responding to social media may test the culture of your company. Are the executives willing to let you respond to social media? Ensure you understand what you are setting out to do, and find a great way to sell that it needs to be done.
  
• Join the conversation - Get involved with social media. Search out good and back feedback about your company.
  
• Be responsive - Respond. Participate. Do something.
  
• Be honest - Make sure you tell the truth in your responses. If you say you are going to do something to research and follow-up on the post ... DO IT.
  
• Be timely - Find and respond to blogs and reviews quickly.
  
• Be human - Don't respond with legalese, process documents, and gobbledygook. Respond as if you are part of a conversation.
  
• Acknowledge Consumer’s experience - If the consumer says something happened. Believe it. Good, bad, or otherwise. Let the consumer know you believe it.
  
• Do not offer a bribe (e.g. a gift certificate for their post) - Keep things open and honest. You must not "pay" for a post either in advance or afterwards, regardless of it being good, bad, or otherwise.
  
• Give Social Media care and feeding - Social Media isn't something you should step into once and back away from. You have to get into and stay in it. That means that once you determine how you will respond to good and bad social media, you will need to set aside time on a regular basis to participate in Social Media. You may even need to have staff in place to keep up with it.
  

When dealing with positive feedback, the additional guidelines are pretty short and sweet ...

• Thank the blogger for the positive feedback - Say thanks. Keep it short. Reference your website with an actual link, and ideally deep-link to a page on your site that is relevant to the blogger's post.
  
• Remember that the blog or review belongs to the blogger - The blog isn't yours. Don't resort to using it as your advertising forum. Say thanks, reference your site, and get off the blog.
  

Now, for the tough stuff. Dealing with bad reviews in social media provides you with a make or break opportunity to build many new brand champions, or create many instant enemies. Good luck to you. Here's a short list of guidelines.

• Be careful - Be really careful about what you are wading into when you start firing responses out onto the internet. Escalation and communication expands rapidly online. Especially when your response ends up making you look stupid.
  
• Contest fraudulent / wrong comments ... If you have proof of inaccuracy - I heard of a hotel chain who had their pool lambasted on TripAdivsor.com, with a picture of a hotel pool full of slime. This was a surprise for the hotel chain, since they didn't have a hotel pool at that destination. So they were able to easily contest the review, and TripAdvisor removed it.
  
• Write a response - Let the blogger know that they've been heard. Acknowledge their feelings. Let the blogger know what action you are going to take (and really take it).
  
• Fix the problem & upload a proof (like a picture) to prove the fix - Imagine that it was really your hotel whose pool caused a wave for a customer. Your response should be to explain the problem, explain what the fix is, and describe that it's all better now (e.g. Our most humble apology ... Our pool filter was broken ... We fixed it as soon as we got the new part ... It looks great now and the water is crystal clear.)
  
• Report findings back into the company - Don't stop at your discussion with the blogger. Ensure you have the ear of your company through a well-placed executive who can help to take action in order to eliminate problems in the future.
• Participation becomes content - Remember, that whatever you write becomes part of the fabric of the web. It will start to show up in searches all over the place. You want to be sure that your content reflects your brand for the long-term.
  
• Bring in a professional - If responding makes you uncomfortable, or if the bad review is a really hot topic, then you should bring in someone who can handle it for you. Google it, and you can find lots of people who can help like Hill & Knowlton.
  

Finally, one thing you can be sure of is that someone on your Executive will demand metrics. Social Media Metrics are very hard to produce. Even if you can find some that satisfy a VP or an EVP at a point in time, that snapshot will likely not demonstrate full benefits of Social Media. On top of that, at the point where you manage to alleviate negative buzz with great, honest, polite, actionable and timely responses, the metrics won't ever reflect this.

Go and be social!

By the way, in the next few days I'll give you some hints on how to find social media buzz. Check back often ;^)

Responding to Bad Buzz

Following along on my train of thought about "Buzz", and considering the United Airlines fiasco that Sons of Maxwell have unleashed, today I want to start thinking about what to do when you find you are facing "bad buzz". That is to say, if your product or service breaks, you don't recover well, and a customer discovers that your story isn't true ... then they tell the world about it through a blog, YouTube, or any of the other plethora of internet based tools at their beck and call ... WHAT SHOULD YOU DO???

Over the next several days I'm going to bring together posts from diverse subjects about "responding" - from things like responding to your child's bad report card, to responding to a bad review of your writing. Along side those, I'll bring in blogs from Seth Godin and others. By the end, I hope to be able to publish a good set of guidelines about "How to respond to bad buzz online"

Trends for 2009: #13. Online Interactive Marketing will grow

Okay - I know this may seem somewhat repetitive, given some of my other Trend titles included:

• Integrated Interactive Campaigns
• Paid Search Advertising
• Online commerce will continue to grow
• Online advertising will continue to grow

But, there is a subtle difference here that is important. So, on we go ...

Online Interactive Marketing will continue to grow ... but ... most Marketers will continue to be more familiar with traditional media than the boundless opportunities provided to them by the online world. Even as marketing budgets are slashed and traditional media crater in their reach and effectiveness, many Marketers will not take advantage of the new opportunities that are available cheaply, easily, efficiently, and effectively online.

Some things for Marketers to focus on in 2009:

• Determine and Pursue your Social Media strategy: First off you have to recognize the value in engaging significantly and frequently with your prospects and customers, and then look at the opportunities you have to "monetize" your involvement. You need to develop a long-term social media strategy, plan, and related tactics. You also need to invest in getting good people and training them to do the job right. Tactics you may employ include:
  
  • Publish your own blog - content you might publish includes your Executives views on your culture, your ad campaigns, your product, your people, stories from your customers, and your company's history.
  • Participate in other blogs and reviews - use Techorati, Google, IceRocket, and others to track blogs and reviews where your company's name shows up, or where topics that are important to you show up. Create a "company blog spokespersa" (which could actually be several people, so long as they stick to the persona). Participate in blogs. For instance, if someone gives your product a good review then thank them for that. If someone gives your product a bad review then see what you can do to resolve the problem.
  • Add Reviews to your Site - There are two companies out there who can help you get product reviews up on your site fast. They are Buzzillions and BazaarVoice. Either of these two companies can get you up and running fast.
    

• Produce some Online video: Video continues to grow in importance on the web. A good analogy is that Video is to Text on the web as TV is to the Newspaper in traditional media (i.e. Video rules in terms lasting impressions). Reasonable quality video cameras are selling for about $100 (albeit it makes sense to invest in higher quality for commercial purposes). Publishing video couldn't be easier with the likes of YouTube and similar hosting sites available for FREE. The message ... produce some video.
• Produce TV-like commercials specifically for the web: In the "old days" you might have produced a TV commercial and then posted it to the web. That won't do any longer. Now it is important to shoot TV commercials specifically for the web. How are they different? First off they are typically lower video quality. They also might be shorter. In TV-land, the viewer must sit in front of your ad for 30 seconds. On the web, they will leave you more quickly. On the other hand ... your ad may be several minutes long. On the web you can produce an "advertising epic" - so long as it is truly captivating. People will gladly watch your entertainment, and maybe even forward it off to friends, and you won't have to shell out for a bunch of TV air time. A big way to make your online ads different is to allow a viewer to interact with the commercial. Perhaps the viewer should be able to select characters in the ad, then choose various changes to your plot line.
• Create Software as an Advertising Media: Build out Google Gadgets, desktop applications, or other similar software that will help your customers connect with you. There has to be real value in the software. But, if you build it, they will come. Plus, they will buy from you!
• Build your Opt-in Email List: Email marketing is likely the cheapest and most effective way to reach out to people who have already volunteered to be your customer. If you don't have an inhouse opt-in email list, start one. If you do have it, make sure that your emails are personalized and effective.
  

Will I be right? The year will tell!

• Follow this blog and watch for the next marketing trends I'm forecasting for 2009.
• Feel free to contact Market GoGo to discuss this further.