Category

Communications

Nov 27
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How Movie Theaters Can Use Social Media Better

By Communications, Crisis Communications

I’m one of many people in my community beyond thrilled to have a brand-new theater. After years of needing an updated movie house, we finally have a 14 screen megaplex with an Imax theater. The theater had a bit of a rough start during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with unexpected, and unexplained fire alarms forcing the facility to evacuate multiple times. On site, the staff handed out passes to those ejected from their movies, but some patrons were still grumbling and others did not receive compensation for their ruined experiences at all. And what do dissatisfied customers do? Well, they go to Facebook, of course!

 

It’s interesting to me that the Regal Stonefield Stadium 14 & Imax has set up a Facebook page and earned more than 700 fans, and yet has done nothing on it’s page to respond to customer comments or complaints. If you go to the Facebook page you can see that there is not one comment or question to which the theater has responded.  (The URL is https://www.facebook.com/pages/Regal-Stonefield-Stadium-14-IMAX/352615974822625?fref=ts —  note that they haven’t even grabbed the custom URL to properly name the page)

 

Regal may think they’re the only game in town so they don’t need to treat their customers or fans well, or be responsive in social media. That’s too bad, because even though ticket sales are pretty good, they can still decline if customer service is truly awful. You can have a good theater, but a bad reputation may keep movie goers at home, or in the next town over for their big screen experiences.

I encourage the theater to make sure they’re paying attention to the page and to provide customers with the information they seek. If there’s a problem, such as the fire alarm issue, the fastest way to inform patrons of what’s happening and how they plan to handle it is to post those answers online, and since Stonefield already has a publishing presence on Facebook, there’s no better place to keep customers informed.

Nov 16
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How Social Media Has Actually Made Marketing Easier, Not Harder

By Communications, Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Social Media

There are a LOT of articles and blog posts out there warning the business world that social marketing is the One True Way. CMOs that are not using Big Data acquired through myriad, massively integrated social platforms might be out of a job soon. Social has replaced advertising. Etc. Etc. Etc. It can be very intimidating if you’re used to marketing your products in more traditional ways. The ROI of a social program can be hard to calculate. There are many companies making a nice living just trying to help marketers compute it!

But I’d like to argue that the era of social marketing has actually made your job easier.

Social tools add complexity, it’s true. They can fragment the marketing budgets and team. Hooking all these social listening and sharing platforms up so you can make sense of your customers’ online habits and predilections can add a lot of work, both in the short and long term.

But the transparency of messaging that social marketing requires actually takes a lot off the table. Since spin and backpedaling are really not effective anymore, it’s actually easier to decide what to do. The kind of content you create, the strategy you develop, and the systems you use to communicate can all be much simpler because they are designed to do one thing–explain what you’re going to do and how. You’re not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince someone to buy something of questionable value anymore. Their peers are going to provide the validating information about you and your offering that they need, not you.

It all comes down to doing what you promise and then enabling the satisfied to amplify their satisfaction via social channels. No more lying, covering, shaping, hiding, reacting. All you have to do is explain, clarify, and deliver.

Isn’t that why you’re in business to begin with?

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Nov 15
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Five Ways to Use Social Media to Attract Talent, Boost Recruiting

By Communications, Social Media

This week our president said that our priority needs to be on jobs and growth. Our local economy seems to be on board with that, as this week’s Hiring and Social Media workshop had a great turnout. I partnered with my colleague Mickey Kampsen of Management Recruiters International of Charlottesville to offer an educational session for people in charge of hiring and recruiting for their companies. The representatives that participated were from very large international companies down to small shops; all with many of the same challenges and needs.

Mickey’s expertise is on the recruiting and HR side of business, while Jaggers Communications offers expertise in social media. Our firm HAS been engaged to recruit community managers and social media/marketing associates and team members, so we have gained first-hand experience in the recruiting field, as well.

In the workshop, we shared five ways anyone in a hiring position can use the tools of social media to attract better talent and boost recruiting efforts:

  1. Use monitoring tools such as Topsy to watch competitors or other companies you admire, to see new jobs posted and their techniques for attracting talent.
  2. Use monitoring tools that search the social web to qualify a candidate and see if they’re behaving themselves professionally on social networks.
  3. Use the LinkedIn company page to full advantage, and further your reach into internal referral sources by growing your network and encouraging colleagues to improve their profiles.
  4. Blog — even in regulated industries you can blog to share your corporate culture, the stories of the  people who represent your team, and a sense of what it’s like to work within your company.
  5. Consider (especially if your company is large) establishing a Facebook page just for the hiring division of your company. Marriott takes this approach with success,  as does Unilever and Boeing — all great examples of how this can be done successfully.

We’re excited to see this much interest in jobs and growth on a local level and look forward to assisting companies with the next stage of sharing their stories through the growth cycle.

Nov 08
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Customer Service is What It All Comes Down to

By Communications

As digital marketers, we all have a lot invested in technological solutions. They might be content development tools, monitoring software, CRM, SEO optimizers, analytics, social media platforms, blogging tools–you name it. We spend a LOT of time and money perfecting and talking about them. An entire industry has sprung up teaching people how to “transform their business” using these tools. OK, maybe. But have we forgotten what it’s all for??

In the end, we want happy customers. The more, the better. The happier the better. Right?

So today’s story is about a local Charlottesville business, Blue Ridge Cyclery. They have been in business just under two years and are very much the new kid on the block in terms of bike shops. But in that short time, they have systematically unraveled the competitive advantage of every other shop in the area. They have landed all the best bike manufacturers. They have the busiest service department. They have become the source for the best rides. They have a great racing team. They have the nicest inventory. They have a great location. They are ubiquitous at all the cycling events locally. In short, they have won.

How have they done this so quickly? It’s simple–amazing customer service.

They take on problems other shops find too trivial or difficult. They deal with nasty warranty work. They provide an upbeat, can-do energy when you arrive. They do what they say they will do, often faster and for less than anywhere else. They are problem solvers, solutions providers, and enthusiasm generators. The result? Total loyalty, even if you feel guilty leaving your old shop. In short, they are the things you have to be FIRST if you want your marketing initiatives to work. They embody the promises we often make online to our customers, the ones we often fall way short in delivering. They don’t fall short often, and if they do, they make good.

So take a lesson, business people. Be what your customers hope (but often don’t believe) you’ll be. Deliver on your promises. Over-deliver, in fact. Exceed expectations. And be real! All the tools in the world won’t change the basic, simple fact that enchanting your customers in real life is job one.

 

Nov 07
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The Joys of Being the PR Firm Around the Corner

By Communications, Public Relations

I worked in St. Louis, Missouri for years.  17 in all, in fact. Five of those I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia. And while I loved that job, the firm I worked for, my colleagues, my clients and the work itself, traveling (and all its inevitable hassles) back and forth and not having the ability to “walk the halls” of my clients’ offices frequently wore me out. While I’m clearly a big believer in staying connected to others through social networks, I deeply value the ability to show up, to be present and to be eyeball to eyeball with people who are important to me.

At the end of 2010, after that last lonely hotel room, that last airline delay, that final unexpected layover, I quit the job in St. Louis and at the beginning of 2011 I opened my own shop in Charlottesville. I haven’t looked back since.

One of the truly great joys of working here is the ability to be present, live and in person, with our clients. A common day might include running into clients on the downtown mall, or really anywhere around town. Or learning the Gangnam Style dance from a client prospect at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Our proximity to those we serve allows us to dash, sometimes literally around the corner, to a client’s office. A client had a crisis recently and my colleague Rusty and I were able to pick up sandwiches for a working lunch and land at their office to work through the crisis management within the hour.

I’m not saying it isn’t perfectly possible to work at a distance, and we’re happy to do that, but there’s great gratification at being able to connect with those right here in our community.