Media140 Scotland

In case you missed it – you can watch the full live stream taken from last nights brilliant Media140 event in Scotland. Hosted by Mark Jennings – @markofrespect, MD of D8 Digital, with guests including Pat Kane, Steve Berry and the brilliant Trey Pennington. Oh, and an introduction that starts about 9 1/2 minutes in from Mark that made me blush furiously… Thank you!

You can help @BullyingUK

By Rich Baker

I’m breaking with tradition on this blog post, and am asking you to do the same. @BullyingUK is the twitter name of a charity that bears the same name.

Bullying UK has pioneered in their use of social media to

• raise awareness
• instigate giving
• promote their charity

John, their Founder and Chief Executive works with Liz and Stuart to support 500,000 people a year with no government funding. Amazingly, they do this on £50,000 a year. That means they are supporting thousands of people for only 10p each. That’s an efficient business model!

However, financially things aren’t great. The recession hit, and people struggled to find money to donate to charities. John and the team don’t have a big budget to advertise, or hire people to stand in shopping centres. They have to be as cost effective as possible to ensure as much of the money raised goes to supporting as many people as possible.

In John’s words;

We support 500,000 people a year and need only £50,000 a year to do it. We were founded 11 years ago as a 100% web powered charity where the aim was to help as many people as possible for the lowest cost we can.

I think we proved that a different form of charity one that dosent suck up millions of pounds to help only thousands of people can work. Sadly we have always struggled to bring in donations from the general public and the government refuse to fund any of our work because we have asked tough questions of their policies.

This year what with the financial crisis has really hammered what little money we had coming in, we only have one member of staff (ME) and i just think that given that how efficient we are and how little money we need to do it some people out their must be able to help.

Problem is one person can only knock on so many doors per day and chase down leads never know if it’s the right use of time.

Any donations no matter how small will really help and if theirs a business out their that wants to make a tax efficient donation that would be really good as well.

So, I’m asking you to do one – or preferably all of the following things;

1. Donate two quid a month here (what’s 2 quid – thats a coffee. Its not even a pint in a pub.)

2. Use the hastag #savebullyinguk on Twitter and promote and raise awareness. #likeminds, #media140, #140conf – wouldn’t it be cool if you could hijack your own hashtag to help this week?

3. Republish John’s words (use mine too if you like) on your blog. Copy and paste this article. It will take 5 minutes to do. You can use your influence to help thousands of people. Imagine if we could get 10,20 or even 50 blogs all with the same message. We could reach thousands.

That’s it. Do something now.

One last thing, if you have ever witnessed bullying, or indeed have been bullied yourself, think what a great source of support something like Bullying UK would have been and what a real tangible difference it could have made to your circumstances, and how you felt. Often, it’s the sense of isolation and helplessness that makes it worse. People, and kids, don’t need to feel like that.

Click here now. If you work in the media, get in touch with John @BullyingUK

Conversational UK Launch Giveaway

By Rich Baker

As a thank you to the people who registered their interest at my pre-launch site all email addresses have been entered into a draw to win £30 Amazon eVouchers.

Using a random number generator the chosen number in the chronological list was..

18

The 18th person to sign up was…

Andy Laird!

Congrats Andy – the voucher is winging its way over to you now! Now, if I can only remember what your twitter name is I can let you know!

A new competition next week!

Customer service, social media and marketing

I’ve been consolidating some thoughts on social media marketing and customer service. My brain is often ‘abuzz’ with ideas and thoughts and that’s why blogging is good for me – it forces me to clarify and shape my ideas into something I can then share with others. I recommend it if you don’t already.

My passion for customer service started young. In my late teens, I dropped out of university (I got my degree and moved on to a MBA later) and ended up ‘flipping burgers’ at McDonald’s. It wasn’t the first job like that I had done, but it was the first where I could see first hand the impact I could have on the bottom line by having conversations with customers that built relationships. I rose quickly through the ranks with that company, and learned to appreciate the business model that has made the company so successful. I then had ten years with a Virgin group company, where I worked at a senior level on engagement, customer service strategy and also pioneered Twitter in the industry.

What has changed about customer service?

Well, I think the basics haven’t changed. It’s still about the conversations we have. It’s where we have them that has changed. Time is our most precious commodity, and that in part is responsible for the rapid technological changes we have seen in the last ten years. So is globalization which has led to increased competition.

Competition has made differentiation vital. It’s important that you stand for something different. Why? Because your customers are less loyal to your brand than ever before. Consumers today are more savvy.

The growth in the use of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media has presented a huge challenge for companies. Suddenly all those conversations people had in private suddenly became public.

The World is now Online.

Marketeers were the first to notice the opportunities online for their brands. There have been some brilliant viral video social media marketing campaigns. Once of my all time favourites was created to encourage people in Sweden to buy a TV License. An amazingly engaging solution to a fairly mundane issue.

The thing is, the low barriers to entry in social media mean that anyone can potentially reach millions of consumers in a way that in the past only companies with big budgets could. The web has become a brilliant leveler. It has democratized self expression. I can upload a video right now to YouTube (or Vimeo etc) or set up a Facebook Group or use Twitter to highlight my personal experience with you or the company you work for.

Companies are no longer in control of their message. There has been a massive power shift back to the customer.

If you make a mistake using social media then it’s in public. Everyone sees it. Often, it is a small but ethically ‘grey’ decision that causes the biggest tidal wave of ‘social media mania’. Journalists use social media for stories and as a result your mistake can often end up in a broadsheet on breakfast tables the following morning.

This isn’t all bad though; whilst they won’t admit it, lots of account managers and marketing directors are quietly thanking their lucky stars that someone else made the mistake before they did. It’s a fairly new game and many are still learning the rules of engagement.

It’s also an opportunity to build a better strategy by engaging with the very people you have let down. Great Crisis PR in social media can often turn people onto your product better than being squeaky clean all the time can.

That’s why the whole marketing game is changing.

Convergence

Customer Service in social media IS Marketing. It’s also online/crisis Public Relations. It’s the most powerful form of marketing there is; Word Of Mouth. We capitalize and abbreviate it to WOM because we use the term so much!

Did you know that brand loyalty is lowest among Generation Y? So if your target market is anyone aged 16 – 31 to them you had better have something else up your sleeve. This Generation respond to the Truth.

By all means spend £x (insert your own figure here) on big flashy marketing campaigns if you want to but be warned that a big chunk of your target market won’t buy it (ask Pepsi). They definitely won’t buy it if your marketing doesn’t reflect the actual experience of using the product or service.

People, myself included, have often talked about brands ‘no longer in control of the message’ i.e. their brands are being commented on and talked about online all the time. Were we ever actually in control of the message? Maybe we could just influence it. Difference is, the conversation has moved online and so that’s where we must influence.

The Evolving Organisation

Customer Service (and internal communications) is something lots of people in the business are involved in. A single person is not in control of the output. If you are a service organisation (and I challenge you to show me a business that isn’t) chances are most of your £spend goes on payroll for your customer service people. Your people are hired to have conversations, build relationships and help the business remain resilient.

If it is done well, Customer Service is linked to SHRM. The people who are recruited are part of a wider strategy that should link the internal or employee brand with behaviour, training, development, performance management and remuneration. It’s all part of a complex system. Senior people in companies spend a great deal of their time making sure everything ‘fits’ together so their offering is consistent, measurable and contributes to increasing the value of their proposition.

The growth of social media means a massive opportunity to differentiate on a much more strategic level. This can be on a corporate level, business unit level or on an operational level.

As well as working with companies on their social media and online marketing strategies, I’m currently exploring how we can rewrite the business school models to reflect a more responsive, democratic and flatter business structure.

What ever social media people will be using in two years time, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz or something else, we can be sure that the world won’t go back to the way it was.

We are in the midst of a Service Revolution. It’s time to participate.

©Rich Baker 2010 All Rights Reserved.

This article first was first published by mycustomer.com – thanks to the team at Sift Media.