Zane Safrit

Reading the Declaration of Independence

My BlogTalk Radio show today was devoted to reading the Declaration of Independence in honor of the upcoming Independence Day, July 4th, celebration this weekend. I wanted to share it today, instead of Friday July 4th, to remind us all why we celebrate this day...before we start celebrating it.

That document, written 336 years ago, serves as one of the pillars of our country's freedoms; freedoms articulated in the eventual Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.

That's why it makes sense to celebrate the Declaration of Independence on the same day I reserve to discuss word-of-mouth, social media, customer evangelism, employee evangelism. It's the desire for the freedom to generate word-of-mouth, to talk about what we want, when we want, with whom we want, in the manner we want...or not, to disagree, to seek something different, something better, to want to be wowed as customers, to want to wow our customers, to be able to choose our place of employment...that spurred the writing of the Declaration of Independence and set in motion the events that led to the Constitution that articulated our freedoms. And it's those freedoms that created our country, our economy, our lifestyles...our marketing.

Reading the Declaration of Indepence aloud, start to finish, was a great experience. Inspiring, chilling...it left me wondering about a lot of current events. It takes about 14-15 minutes to read aloud. I encourage you to take the time to do it.

Happy 4th!

Notes from Interview with Andy Brudtkuhl

Here's some notes from Andy Brudtkuhl's conversation with me this morning on BlogTalk Radio. You can listen to our conversation at www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. 

Andy created IowaFlood.com to share with the masses the stories with the still ongoing Iowa floods.

Twitter. Twitter was the most important social media technology for Andy’s platform, IowaFlood.com.

Twitter was the meeting place for members in the Des Moines Iowa area to share their stories on the Iowa floods. It was these conversations that drove Andy to create IowaFlood.com.

His first goal was to centralize the coverage by all the traditional, mainstream media. And then share it with his community members on Twitter.

Then he saw a broader, more personal, real-time coverage with his members on Twitter and their use of Flickr and YouTube and blog posts.

He expanded his vision to instead share THEIR stories with the masses, along with the coverage from traditional, mainstream media.

2 hours. That’s how much time he needed to launch the site from idea inception to buying domains to going live.

Kudos to Andy for not waiting for perfection instead choosing to get something up that worked and be open to ideas and suggestions for the site from the community members.

Resource Used:

Domain names: GoDaddy.com

Blogging Platform: WordPress.

Hosting: Mosso.com ( Shouts to them for their proactive customer service call to help optimize his site.)

Social Media Firehose: Yahoo Pipes. This pulls in to one feed the  content from various feeds with various social media resources based on key words. (Upper right corner on his site. Embed code is there to share the feed on your blog or website.)

Photo-sharing. Flickr. It’s easy to find photos about the floods in Iowa with keyword tags.

Content-sharing: wufoo.com. It’s a template you can add to your site to allow users to submit content directly to you. (Right, Andy?)

Video-sharing: YouTube. (duh)

Site Power: Community Members. Andy says: They power the site.

3 Indispensable Resources:

* Twitter

* WordPress

* Community Members.

Shouts:  Des Moines Register for their help with content and feeds.  We both agreed it’s nice to see them embrace the social media community and resources. Their Twitter Id is: dmregister.

Template for future events.  Andy’s created a template for future platforms devoted to events: conventions, concerts, art fairs, emergencies, disasters.

Andy’s Contact:

* Business: 48 Web Consulting
* Blog: Get a New Browser

Prediction: Michigan football roars bak in 2009 with some Florida-like speed and creativity.  Looking forward to it.

Andy’s Takeaway: Get on Twitter and Embrace Your Community.

Shouts to Andy: Without getting all sappy, a lot of shouts go to Andy, and his community, for building the site. It shows a lot of technical savvy. And it shows a lot of heart for his community. Kudos, Andy.

Today's Interview with Andy Brudtkuhl

Andy Brudtkuhl is talking with me this morning on my weekly BlogTalk Radio show.

Andy's put together a community page, Iowa Floods, that's become a central resource for all the news and updates on the recent floods in Iowa. He's posted links at the top to agencies offering assistance as well as their phone numbers. And there's news updates from many resources, some traditional media and some from citizens' media.

This site alone would be reason to interview Andy. It's inspiring, clearly a labor of love for his community to invest the time and resources to build a site with resources for the members to address this community-wide disaster.

But what's amazing to me is how Andy's pulled in a variety of social media resources including Twitter and FriendFeed, rss feeds and tags, updates from citizen media including blog posts and photos and youtubes, to create in real-time a community portal for this major event.

I may be getting hyperbolic here but it's a model that could be used in other similar situations. And in one sense, I hope it turns into a valuable business for Andy. On the other hand, I hope the catayulst for that isn't an ongoing series of disasters.

The show starts at 9:30 AM Central. The URL to listen is http://www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. And if you can't join us live, you can always listen later in streaming mode at the same URL.

Notes from Conversation with Jackie Huba

Here's some notes from my BlogTalk Radio show with Jackie Huba from The Swom and Church of the Customer.

• Word-of-mouth vs word-of-mouth marketing.  Word-of-mouth is a strategy; word-of-mouth marketing is a tactic. The first is a mission; the 2nd is an after-thought.

• DNA. Word of mouth is generated from the DNA of a company, when they give a reason or inspire their customers to talk about them, to volunteer to be their loyal sales force.

• Kudos to the person asking it. That's what Jackie answered when I asked her what’s so important about the Net Promoter Score from the Ultimate Question Survey. Ok, now what. You've found out the customer will/won't recommend you. Now what?

Exactly. Kudos to the person daring to ask a customer their opinion. Neither one of us are being facetious. Jackie pointed out so  many companies are scared to even talk to their customers, so let’s give kudos to the person asking it. That’s such a huge step. And once taken, you can’t really go back to ignoring the customer.

• Badge of Courage. Employees at Enterprise Rental wear their Net Promoter Score as a badge at company events. That shows how important it is. It’s measured and celebrated and heroes are made from that score. Heroes and careers.

• Customer Service is pro-active now. Using examples from Salesforce.com and their use of Yahoo Pipes (link and link) and  comcastcares at Twitter and Dell’s Ideastorm and blog response team, she points out that companies (the smart ones) are pro-actively seeking customer experience opportunities by engaging the customers where the customers live on social media.

• 4400 Tweets. Frank Aliason at Comcast began using Twitter (comcastcares ) to reach out to their customers. In less than 3 months he’s posted about 4400 tweets to Comcast customers in response to their needs for service.  That’s roughly over 1500 per month direct responses. Happy customers tend to tell 3-5 people about their experience. Now, multiply that message spread rate by the power of Twitter. And multiply it again by proactively reaching out to solve their issues before they become a dell hell-like firestorm.

• We are not an airline with great customer service. We are a great customer service organization that happens to be in the airline businessWe’re a customer service organization who just happens to fly airlines. - Colleen Barrett, CEO of Southwest Airlines. Church of the Customer Link

• Social networks’ growth comes from niche-markets, niche or specialized communities. Ning has over 250,000 communities. The most popular are very niche-oriented: firefighters, Lisa Nova (youtube), alumna, scrapbook makers.

• Employee Engagement Comes First. Dell built an EmployeeStorm internal community site to enlist their employees in creating solutions and understanding the need to reach out to their customers with the Ideastorm site. Very smart. See 2nd point about corporate DNA and its role in creating word-of-mouth.

• TheSWOM. Their current project. 835 members, great conversations from the members, great solutions for generating word-of-mouth from the members. And these solutions are happening nearly every day. And it's free. And it's helpful. Get over there. Become a member.

Thanks, Jackie.

Today's BlogTalk Radio Guest: Jackie Huba

Jackie Huba, co-founder of The Swom (The Society for Word of Mouth) and Church of the Customer blog,  joins me this morning at 9:30 AM Central at my BlogTalk Radio show.

Jackie will talk about some current Trends in Word-of-Mouth, including different ways to measure  your customers' word-of-mouth and its impact on your business, and in particular Fred Reichheld's Net Promoter Score methodology. And we'll also talk about the use of social media for customer service, in particular Dell and Comcast and their use of Twitter to connect with their customers. And lastly, we'll talk about the growth of niche-oriented social networks.

Jackie and her colleague Ben McConnell have been out in front proselytizing this message for 5-6-7 years. A few of their accomplishments:

Together they wrote Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force. And that's how I first met them back...back...in late 2002.

Their 2nd book was Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message.

They blog regularly and outstandingly about wom and customer evangelism at Church of the Customer. With 184K readers according to their feedburner graphic you know they've got something smart to say.

And now their newest adventure is The Swom, The Society of Word of Mouth. It's a niche-oriented social network built using Ning. It's growing fast with a nice balance between agencies that provide word-of-mouth expertise and clients/companies whose products inspire that in their customers.

I'm psyched. Come join us at 9:30 AM Central. You can listen live in streaming mode at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. And if you're reading this post at a later date, you can listen to the recording at the same link.

Links:

1) Measuring word-of-mouth, customer loyalty using Net Promoter Score. Fortune Small Business

2) Dell's Hearing Test. Adweek.

Today's BlogTalk Radio Interview with Angela Maiers

UPDATE: Angela's not able to do the show. She's on the way to the hospital. Not life-threatening, but it needs her attention. We'll reschedule. You can leave your get well wishes here or on her blog at Angela Maiers.

My weekly BlogTalk Radio  show has a special guest this morning:   Angela Maiers

Angela has a passion for creating engaged teachers and creating an engaged learning environment. And THAT's the foundation for our future: engaged teachers creating engaged students.

And not just for our school years, but for life. Her vision is we create a habit, a lifestyle for learning. And more than vision, she has skills and programs that will bring her mission to life for many.

And, she's grown her business solely through Word-of-mouth.

I'm looking forward to our talk, this morning.

Our conversation is live at 9:30 AM, Central time, here in the US. You can listen streaming at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit.

And you can call in and ask questions at:

US:          646-915-9212      
Code: 19978#.

And a link will be up later so you can listen at another time in streaming mode.

BlogTalk Radio

I raved about BlogTalk Radio and their features and ease of use, this morning during my 2nd show. Ever since then, BlogTalk Radio's site has been...quirky. By quirky I mean, it makes IE freeze or consumes nearly 100% of computer's resources for a ...long...time....And the 2nd show hasn't been posted yet.

Maybe I hexed the site, for me, at least.

And I also raved about my the influentials in WOM, word-of-mouth, and customer evangelism for me. They are:

Ben and Jackie at Church of the Customer and now with Society for Word-of-Mouth (one word: join.)

Seth Godin

John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing

Andy Sernovitz

Fred Reichheld with Net Promoter Score and The Ultimate Question Survey.

Etal: Jake McKee, John Moore/Brand Autopsy, Paul Chaney, Becky McCray at SmallBizSurvival, Anita Campbell at SmallBizTrends.

Join me every Wednesday at 9:30 AM Central. My channel is www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. And you can join the call 646-915-9212. Your guest code is 19978#.

No. I don't know what I'm talking about next week. But it's Wednesdays and that's my day for WOM, word-of-mouth, customer evangelism, and related issues. Maybe we'll have some guests, too.