Author Archives: Todd Shamberg
Move over Foursquare, Facebook Places is making a move. Socialized mobile has made SM headlines for months now and is here to stay. A couple of weeks ago, Facebook announced they are launching a new application called “Deals,” a functionality that allows the user to find deals at nearby businesses. Essentially, this gives local businesses the opportunity to offer you a deal when you check in to their location.
These deals will fall in to four categories: Individual Deals offers discounts, free stuff and other rewards; Friend Deals allows you and a friend to claim something together; Loyalty Deals target regular customers and Charity Deals gives you the chance to donate to a charity.
Here are some examples of what brands are doing now.
Individual Deals: Gap gave away a pair of jeans to the first 10,000 people to check in to one of their locations.
Friend Deals: Starbucks has a custom application tab that allows you to share a “red cup” with a friend. It’s a little misleading in that you think you are sending a free drink to a friend, but really your friend still needs to check in to a Starbucks in order to receive the free offer. Either way, you still get a deal.
“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.” – Sam Walton
We live in a world where we have access to just about anything and everything with a click, or two, of a button. There was a time when you would hear people talk about customer service and you would assume they were sharing a positive experience. Now when you hear customer service, you think of your worst story ever.
One of the keys to a successful business is how much emphasis you place on CRM. Henry Ford once said, “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” Whether you order a steak in a restaurant or purchase an iPad online, now more than ever consumers expect to be “taken care of.” Fulfilling the feeling like you’re being “taken care of” can come in many different forms but the one true key is simple… just LISTEN!
Almost any business can get a customer to try their product or service once. In order to have the consumer return, companies need to pay special attention to providing a positive experience from awareness to purchase and far beyond. Organizations retain customers online and offline simply by listening. People want to be heard. They will share their experiences and opinions if you ask (even when you don’t ask) in the hopes you will improve their experience. Listening to your audience shows that you care about them individually and can even make them feel like they are a part of your brand, which builds advocacy. If your customer–and specifically, your customer who belongs to a branded social community–thinks their opinion matters and they feel like they have influence on how you operate your business, the sky is really the limit.
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Todd Shamberg | Critical Mass Chicago
“People laugh at things that are true and we all remember something that was really funny.” -Tom Yorton
It can be challenging to use humor when speaking to a community in the digital space, but it is essential to find ways to “humanize” our voice. One of my jobs is to keep people coming back to my client’s social channels to learn, be entertained and more importantly, just be a part of something. A few great ways to keep the community growing is by posting links to various news articles, posting interesting and relevant videos and developing a rapport with the individuals. In order to use humor in social media, you need to first know exactly who it is you’re talking to, according to Yorton. “You have to know your audience, and you must know what’s true for them – what’s unique for them in that category,” he said. Yorton also talked about how knowing your audience allows you to build that rapport and when using humor in marketing, 
it is crucial to keep it short and sweet. Communities are usually formed in the social space because there is a common interest among members. Using that commonality and producing a little humor will keep people interested in the product or service and entertained by the content. Community members in the automotive world might be brought together by a passion for speed and horsepower. People in the acting world might have a common interest in Steve Martin (he DOES have a FB page).
For those of you that are curious to see how incorporating humor to tell a brand story can be done well, just take a look at the new Orbit “The Prom Date.”
Finding the common interest among community members is the easy part. Finding a way to incorporate humor in a way that’s relevant to the brand is the difficult part. I think one great way to effectively integrate humor in social media from the community side is creating a recurring content feature or theme. An idea I’ve personally been considering is something like Storytelling Fridays where every Friday the members of an auto community share stories about the first car they owned. Most likely you will see some humor come out through these stories and it also gets the community involved on a personal level, which is the surest way to to keep them invested.
I challenge you to use a little humor in your next encounter with an online community. Or have you already? Feel free to share here, we’d love to hear your great ideas.
Todd is a Community Moderator for Infiniti Global, working in our Chicago office.
