Daily Archives: 27/11/2010

Spending December Learning the Guitar in Berlin

Last March, I spent 8-weeks learning German at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin. This December, I will be spending as much time as my guitar teacher and German best friend Frank Merfort has to sell me learning completely beginners guitar. Though I will not start on an electric guitar, choosing to learn on a 6-string acoustic guitar, which I guess is standard fare (though probably not on this one):

273255 Spending December Learning the Guitar in Berlin

At the end of the day, though, I have always wanted to learn to play the iconic Fender Stratocaster, so while doing the hard work and earning the hard fingers and the thick callouses is what I will be doing in Berlin — the very basics — I ultimately want to learn the electric guitar. And there’s hope, too, because it looks like I will never need to carry around an amp with me. As long as I have my Apple iPad, I can always rock out on AmpliTube for iPad. Here’s my dream Strat in Abraham Harrison orange:

Fender Custom Shop 62 Stratocaster Relic Capri Orange R52579 1 Spending December Learning the Guitar in Berlin

5 More Essential Tips for Online Social Media Brand Engagement

This morning I wrote 10 Essential Tips for Social Media Brand Engagement but realized over the course of the day that I need to be even more explicit when it comes to helping you all engage most effectively with the denizens of the Internet, be it on blogs, social networks, message boards and forums, via email, email lists, or groups. Here are another five, all dealing with follow-through, accountability, follow-up, attentiveness, under-promising, and over-delivering (via Marketing Conversation):

Do what you say you’re going to do: I keep on telling people that social media marketing and digital PR is equal parts logistics, organization, and hospitality. Everyone focuses on the charm part of the relationship but a man is judged on keeping his word. Keep your word.
Over-communicate online to let your customer know what’s going on: the first thing a visitor should hear, almost immediately, is “@chrisabraham Hi, I just saw this. Let me see what I can do. I’ll get back to you in a few with more information.” Then, “@chrisabraham I just spoke to my manager and he’s getting approval for the refund. I will be back to you soon.” If you don’t over-communicate, visitors may feel dismissed
Private messages and DMs are only for private information, bring the conversation back into the spotlight: don’t just impress your single guest with your mad skills and your ability to solve problems and deliver results. Once you get the account info, name, address, and phone, bring it back into the light and solve the problem
Only mention solutions that you are empowered and authorized to offer: even if you unintentionally lead a visitor on with promises of a full refund or over-nighting a replacement, if you are not authorized to solve a problem, don’t even mention it until you get an express OK from whomever is authorized to make the decision — just keep the customer in the loop every step of the way (see #2)
After all the charming, responding, communicating, and authorizing, you are not off the hook until you provide a solution: always beware to offer the solution that your visitor or customer wants rather than the solution you want to give because someone who’s mad just gets madder if they don’t get satisfaction. Be willing to give ’til it hurts

OK, that’s it for now. For your convenience, I will include the original 10 Essential Tips for Social Media Brand Engagement below:

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10 Essential Tips for Social Media Brand Engagement

Here are the top ten things we at Abraham Harrison remember every day as we engage online and deal with global bloggers, tweeters, and Facebookers in the thousands over many clients in half-a-dozen languages. They’re social media engagement tips we have sorted out together as a team, added to things I have learned online since 1983:

Don’t play favorites in social media: everyone germane to your brand now has a platform and a voice online. The “A-list” is just one constituency, and not always the most influential. The “B-to-Z List” is enormous, active, and very influential to their audiences; treat them with full respect
People are busy online so respect their time and respond to their requests immediately: respond to anyone who engages within the hour, no matter who they are, if possible. If they’re being neutral or positive, it shows respect; if they’re hostile or contentious, an immediate response can prevent a war and win them over
Do not pour all of your resources into top influencers: find a way to engage through the long-tail
Remember that you’re always in public when you’re online: not only your tweets and blog posts are public; whenever you email someone or connect with them via DM or via private message, it just takes a simple copy-and-paste for any and all of your correspondence to go public online. (always assume everything you do might very well end up on the front page of the New York Times)
Always be responsive, timely, generous, and friendly: always engage horns with hugs. Irony and snark does not work. If you are every accused of anything untoward, accept, apologize, and move back to solving the issue
Keep as much of the conversation online and in public as possible: while you may be tempted to bring the conversation offline, keep all of it online until the point you need to exchange personal data and account numbers
The primary value of online customer support is being publicly generous and responsive: don’t just pop in and pull everyone who engages with you onto the phone, into email, or over to a private direct message but take the opportunity to spend as much time as you can having a public, open, friendly, and helpful conversational back and forth.
Engage online and in the public eye for for as long as you can: great advice from Zappos’ Thomas Knoll: why rush the open ticket to closed? Why not spend the time to actually build rapport? This isn’t a call center proper. Why not keep folks chatting back and forth for as long as they’re interested?
Never turf any question or query: never drop someone a link when you can write/talk them through it and please, never, ever, tell them to look it up on Google or send them to an FAQ. Each question is an opportunity to engage and teach (and also be seen engaging and teaching)
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”: this is a quote from the philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 AD) that we at Abraham Harrison live by. When folks online snap, are mean, short or even angry, we know it is never really at us. Everyone’s busy and has a first life and we just wander into somebody else’s messes. Our only job is to be as helpful, responsive, nice, generous, patient, and friendly as humanly possible

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10 Essential Rules for Engaging Customers via Social Media

Don’t play favorites in social media: everyone germane to your brand now has a platform and a voice online. The “A-list” is just one constituency, and not always the most influential. The “B-to-Z List” is enormous, active, and very influential to their audiences; treat them with full respect
People are busy online so respect their time and respond to their requests immediately: respond to anyone who engages within the hour, no matter who they are, if possible. If they’re being neutral or positive, it shows respect; if they’re hostile or contentious, an immediate response can prevent a war and win them over
Do not pour all of your resources into top influencers: find a way to engage through the long-tail
Remember that you’re always in public when you’re online: not only your tweets and blog posts are public; whenever you email someone or connect with them via DM or via private message, it just takes a simple copy-and-paste for any and all of your correspondence to go public online. (always assume everything you do might very well end up on the front page of the New York Times)
Always be responsive, timely, generous, and friendly: always engage horns with hugs. Irony and snark does not work. If you are every accused of anything untoward, accept, apologize, and move back to solving the issue
Keep as much of the conversation online and in public as possible: while you may be tempted to bring the conversation offline, keep all of it online until the point you need to exchange personal data and account numbers
The primary value of online customer support is being publicly generous and responsive: don’t just pop in and pull everyone who engages with you onto the phone, into email, or over to a private direct message but take the opportunity to spend as much time as you can having a public, open, friendly, and helpful conversational back and forth.
Engage online and in the public eye for for as long as you can: great advice from Zappos’ Thomas Knoll: why rush the open ticket to closed? Why not spend the time to actually build rapport? This isn’t a call center proper. Why not keep folks chatting back and forth for as long as they’re interested?
Never turf any question or query: never drop someone a link when you can write/talk them through it and please, never, ever, tell them to look it up on Google or send them to an FAQ. Each question is an opportunity to engage and teach (and also be seen engaging and teaching)
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”: this is a quote from the philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 AD) that we at Abraham Harrison live by. When folks online snap, are mean, short or even angry, we know it is never really at us. Everyone’s busy and has a first life and we just wander into somebody else’s messes. Our only job is to be as helpful, responsive, nice, generous, patient, and friendly as humanly possible

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Make Your Customers Fall in Love with You

iStock 000008126002XSmall Make Your Customers Fall in Love with You In doing business, and in marketing you should build a beautiful relationship with your customers as you would want to build a wonderful one with a partner in life. There are a lot of factors to consider when trying to be committed to your consumers. According to “3 Tips to Help Customers Fall in Love With You” by Paul Williams :

Be patient. You can’t rush or force yourself on your customer.

Be understanding. Make sure you understand their needs, what she is looking for. Then meet those needs … Better yet—exceed them!

Be accepting. If you’re getting the signal that she’s not interested, accept it, and move on.

These are the tips he gave to ensure a long lasting relationship with your customers.

“You cannot please anybody”, so it’s true that you can’t really possibly make your customers fall in love with you, but these are some guidelines so that they wouldn’t hate you. Just be true to your product and to the customer, because there is loyalty and trust are the most important thing than making them love you.

The Future of Marketing Virtual Conference

FutureMarketing The Future of Marketing Virtual Conference I am honored, grateful and humbled to be in-line with all of these notables both in this post by Kimberly Reyes (@CommDuCoeur), The Future of Marketing Virtual Conference on the From Bogotá with Love blog as well as to have been included in the actual virtual conference called The Future of Marketing:

“Reaching out to bloggers is easier than you think: care about the conversation, rather than who they are.” – Chris Abraham, President/COO, Abraham & Harrison

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