Margie Clayman

This great contribution is by my friend Raul Colon. Raúl J. Colón is Principal of CIMA IT Solutions Corp. , an IT Consulting & Social Marketing Firm, which helps small-to-medium sized organizations in implementing adequate business processes to meet their IT and Social Marketing business goals. I sometimes also call him Kitchen Table Talks “pet” 🙂 Follow him on Twitter @rj_c!

I have been using foursquare for a good amount of time. Foursquare offers badges for different levels of customers which initially got me interested in playing along (How can Geo-Location Services Help Your Business?. Although the past few months I have been working more from home, while I am traveling I am consistently checking-in on foursquare at most locations.

I have seen how people have caught up with using foursquare but it surprises me that more venues have not moved as quickly in creating an experience via foursquare.

Not as many businesses sign up for an offer on foursquare but the few that do sometimes don’t create the experience their customers who are foursquare users are looking for. I remember reading @chrisbrogan’s “GO MAP YOURSELF” and understanding the difference in feeling like the real mayor of the venue or just being the foursquare virtual mayor.

Why offer your customers a foursquare experience?

Foursquare offers major visibility because every check in automatically reaches the network of the person that checked in. You might be able to put your Business name in front of hundreds or thousands with very little effort.

It offers various and flexible ways of promoting your services, products, and mainly your locations. You can create virtual loyalty cards, give a bonus or upgrade on an item, boost traffic on slow days, create an incentive for 1^st time visitors, create an incentive for repeat visitors, give out something unique, or even motivate people to bring their friends along.

How to enhance or create the experience

Educating your staff about the offers is a great start. I have had various experiences in which I have checked in for a foursquare offer at a few restaurants and I get a confused look from the waitress not understanding they have a foursquare offer. Educating your staff about offers is the most important part of the experience.

Greet those who checked in on your location and thank them for checking in. For example if you are in the restaurant industry have your hostess or manager verify who has checked in and take a look at their avatars or pictures have them greet them.

Remind them and apply the offer before they ask. This will create a completely different experience from having to tell the waitress or haggle with the manager to get was offered. If you are not able to identify the person via their avatar go ahead and send them a tweet thanking them for there visit and reminding them about the offer.

Know your foursquare mayor. ;[I have been the mayor of many venues in which I have not been recognized being a repeat customer and holding the title of Mayor on Foursquare.] Adding the foursquare part meant I was promoting their business to my community and networks on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  Once you have done your research, make sure you give him some extra perks and teach your staff to recognize whom that person is. For those customers who don’t use foursquare, make sure you also show gratitude with offers for supporting and promoting your business.

No matter what tools you use online or offline. If your business is actively promoting foursquare make sure they are really making your foursquare mayor feel like he is royalty. Creating a unique experience for those that support your business should be in every business plan.

Any other suggestions on creating or enhancing your customer’s experience using Foursquare?

I saw a post over the weekend that really had me thinking I was living in a Monty Python film. Here’s the jist of what it was about.

Someone made a tweet.

Another person saw the tweet and called the first person out because they felt something was wrong with the tweet.

So then, according to this post, a third person called out the second person, saying they really shouldn’t have called out the first person.

The post itself was kind of calling out all 3 people.

Really? Are we all on a playground and really interested in pushing, shoving, and then telling on each other? Um, like, totally yuck.

So, that’s it. I’m calling you out.

Why “calling out” is detrimental

Apart from the fact that I generally hate the phrase “calling out” (I don’t know why, this hatred is irrational), there are some really good reasons not to engage in this “calling out” behavior online. Here are just a few.

• If you “call out” people a lot, your profile is going to look like just a bunch of snipey, snarky comments. Now, if you’re going for that, I don’t want to stand in your way. But first impressions and all that…

• If you keep calling out the same person, people are going to assume that you are feeling a little green. Not nauseous (although maybe), but envious. Even if you have the greatest points in the world, if you keep picking at the same person in a public venue, you will start looking pouty to other people.

• People will start becoming afraid of talking to you because they don’t want to say something that will cause you to call them out. People are unaware of your call-out boundaries, you see.

And now, ways to discuss rather than call out

This is not meant to be a muzzle. I’m not placing a mask over your face reminiscent of Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. I don’t even have such a mask, if you want the truth. I fully believe that most things can be debated. Is the sky blue? Eh, I don’t know. I see it as aqua. See? But there are ways to debate in a civil fashion and then there is the kind of icky, immature, slightly irritating “calling out” methodology.

So, how can you debate a point with someone so that other people can learn what you are trying to teach without you throwing pie in someone’s face? Well, here are some ideas.

• “I just saw your tweet and am wondering why you approached it that way. Care to share? You can DM me if you want.”

• “I had heard that tweeting the way you just did is not considered a best practice. What is your objective in tweeting that way?”

• “Hey, I just noticed your tweet and I think you may have forgotten to….”

See? Isn’t that just as good as listening to a CD of the ocean or practicing some Yoga and meditation? The calmness of it all just will wash over your Twitter stream, and everyone will not only lower their respective blood pressures but they will also learn (or ask you to expand upon) your point.

What a great deal!

And that’s not all

You may think I’m offering you quite a deal here. A calm Twitter stream, helping your followers learn things, and looking all grown up all in one fell swoop? What could possibly be added to this great deal?

Well, if you approach someone you disagree with from a standpoint of wanting to learn and teach, you might actually end up developing a relationship of respect or even (wait for it) appreciation. That’s right, building a conversation and then a continuing interaction around an initial disagreement can actually be the foundation for an extremely strong friendship.

Holy cow. What a deal!

The downside

I understand that calling out has a lot of perks. To be completely transparent, here are some downsides of refraining from the “call-out” methodology.

• You may not get to present yourself as the top authority on everything ever

• Your traffic may not spike as much as it does when you call someone out

• You don’t get to take your angst out on a person who lives in your computer -a punching bag may be in your future.

• You may not get as much attention in general if you refrain from “calling out” people who have big Social Media followings. A puppy may be in your future.

And there are probably other downsides that I’m just not thinking of. You’ll have to weigh the pros and cons, I guess, and decide in which direction you wish to travel.

So what do you think?

Can we maybe move away from the “I’m calling you out” end of the spectrum and maybe move a bit more towards grown-up conversation? I’m not asking you to use phrases like “My respected colleague” on Twitter. I mean, I’m not that much of an idealist. But maybe kind of inching towards that way, it could be nice, right? Maybe?

Weigh in on this issue, woncha please? I promise, I won’t call you out.

There are a lot of mistakes companies or individuals can make. Most of them are forgivable. Take the Social Media blunder that the American Red Cross had to deal with this month – not a very pleasant situation, but you still know that the Red Cross is a strong organization.

There are some things, though, that a company just can’t seem to overcome, or if they do, it takes a REALLY long time. There are two mistakes in particular that spell absolute doom for a company or brand’s reputation.

1. Make a promise and then break it

Trust is a sort of mushy word, so marketers and Social Media folk stay away from it a lot of the time. However, if you think about it, trust is one of the keys that influence us in terms of who we buy from, who we work with, and who we listen to. All you have to do to see proof of how much damage this mistake can cause is to look at Toyota. Toyota made a business out of promising that they were the safest, most reliable car on the roads. The only thing that was as important was the Toyota customer. The rash of horrible accidents that occurred because of the brake pad malfunction broke promise number one. Finding out that Toyota kind of knew about that and didn’t say anything broke promise number two.

Will Toyota ever be able to gain that trust back? They’re working hard at it, but certainly for the families and friends affected by those accidents, it will take many years and a whole lot of effort to win back that relationship.

Not all broken promises result in death and injury, thank goodness, but they can leave an awfully bitter taste in peoples’ mouths. Whether you promise a product by a certain time or whether you promise to do something for someone in the online world, a broken word is comparable to a broken back for your company or brand.

2. Set expectations and don’t deliver

Setting expectations is a bit different from making promises, although in the end it could be a matter of semantics. When you make a promise, you literally say, “I promise that this is so.” or “I promise I will do this.” Setting expectations can be a bit more convoluted. You can drop a lot of hints, for example. You can have verbal conversations that don’t get taken down into the written word. A lot of expectations are set based on how people understand their relationship with you. If they trust you (there’s that word again) they are likely to think that the expectation you are setting is as good as a promise.

If you do not deliver on your expectations, the feeling you create in your customer or even your friend can be equivalent to the feeling a broken promise creates. People do not like to feel like they have been jerked around. People do not like to feel stupid. If your actions create those sentiments in people, your company or brand will suffer for it, and it again will take a long time and a lot of effort to claw back up that hill.

Mistake Prevention

There are two sad things about these two deadly mistakes. The first is that they are grossly common. The second is that they are so easily preventable. It would have been easy for Toyota to say, as soon as they identified the brake pad problem, that something was going on that needed to be fixed. It would have been easy for BP to be more forthcoming about information regarding the Gulf oil spill, right?

In the online world, these mistakes are especially easy to fall into. You’re not shaking hands with people. You’re not looking people in the eye, and it’s really, really easy to type things without thinking about what they really mean. For example, if you type that you are going to review someone’s blog and then you never do, that might not even appear as a blip on your radar. For the person you told, however, that could be a point against you. If you make a bigger promise or set a bigger expectation and don’t follow through, the ramifications can get exponentially more serious.

To prevent these scenarios, try to do the following:

1. Think before you type. How is the other person likely to view this promise or set expectation?

2. Ask yourself if you can actually deliver on what you are promising. You are far better off to say, “Gosh, I just can’t give that the time it deserves.”

3. Pull the band-aid off quickly, but with care. If you promise something and then realize you can’t do it, tell the person right away. “I know I promised to do xyz, but something came up and I’m just swamped. I’m really sorry about that.”

Three easy steps that can save you, your brand, your customers, and your community a lot of heart ache.

What do you think?

Are there mistakes that are more deadly than these? How can those mistakes be prevented? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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There is a wonderful, wonderful candy store near where I live. They are really famous for two goodies – chocolate covered oreos and chocolate covered strawberries, but everything they make is to die for.

I go into this store maybe 3 times a year (if I went more, I’d be exploding from too much weight). I always lust after the boxes – especially the boxes of their chocolate covered, nutty, marshmallowy loaves. It’s gluttonous and the boxes are kind of expensive, so usually – usually – I end up settling for these little sample-sizes they have. Two pieces per package, or maybe a bag of mini-oreos. But once, I went in and decided that I was really going to treat myself. I passed right by the usual sample varieties and got myself a box.

This story does not have a happy ending, though. When I got home, I saw that when they said “loaf,” they meant loaf. It was a 12″ long, 4 inch wide candy bar, essentially. And after picking off a piece or two, I realized it was way too much. I didn’t want it. I had been much happier with the variety that the smaller bite-sized chunks had given me.

I worry that you might be headed that way with your plans for the online world.

What is the giant candy loaf of Social Media?

In the world of social media, it seems like a lot of people are aiming to be the next big thing. It seems very achievable because as we’ve talked about before, on the surface, being a Social Media wunderkind seems kind of easy. You just tweet a lot and blog consistently, right? And what do you get? Tons of followers. Tons of fans. Tons of blog comments. Tons of connections. It seems like a world of sweetness and wonder only matched by a giant chocolate nutty marshmallowy loaf.

But there’s a catch. Being the next big thing means doing a lot more than what meets the eye. It’s hard to take little bite-sized chunks out of something that big. You can’t make as many deep connections, maybe, or maybe your handful of emails that you could respond to right away have multiplied into an army of emails that are driving you nuts and making you feel bad.

Pretty quickly, your great big dream can turn into something that is just making you feel kind of sick. You can get burnt out. You can get tired of the whole darned thing. And then what?

Make sure you can live with what you’re dreaming of

One thing you can say about something like a mini-oreo or a single piece of candy – you can eat it. You know you can. In fact, you can even luxuriate in the experience. You want to make it last. And yet, when you’re done, you feel content. You’re satisfied. You’re not really needing 75 more pieces of the same thing.

In the world of Social Media, there are things you can do that are just like that. You can build your community carefully and luxuriate in the experience of getting to know lots and lots of special people. You can refine your writing so that you are creating blog posts you’re really proud of. You can work on answering questions in LinkedIn so that you can really make an impact there. Each of these things can be really rewarding. They can also keep you plenty busy.

Do you really need to be the next big thing?

What do you think?

Image by Zsuzsanna Kilian. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/nkzs