Let's call him "ROI Guy"

“What’s the ROI of Social Media?”

That’s the question that gives me ulcers when asked it.

Easy now, old-school business folk, I don’t have a problem questioning the value or return of something that takes potentially both time and money from your business. Any smart business person would do that.

My problem is we hold social media to a higher level of judgement than most things in business.

So, at no charge, I will Skype into any of your companies and explain exactly the ROI of social media, if you first can tell me what the ROI is of the following common business practices:

1. Meetings. Especially meetings about how social media is a waste of time. Weekly meetings…. with 10 people at them.

2. CC’ing everybody on every email. I figure the time it takes to read every “official” corporate email, you could’ve built a Twitter empire, ruled Facebook and had time for some Angry Birds (on Google+)

3. Meetings.

4. 2,000 mugs with your logo. I know when I need a lawyer, I search my coffee mug shelf. I know, I know, you bought them in December so you could spend your budget so you’d get it again next year, but still.

5. Overpaid conference keynote speakers No, wait. Scratch that. Nothing to see here. Move along.

6. Meetings.

7. Making your employees commute. Your business is mostly done over the computer or on the phone. Why do they have to sit at a desk again? Face time FTW!

8. Leather boardroom blotters. Ask the admin assistant that is on year 5 of a wage freeze how impressed he/she is that you just spent $2000 on leather squares.

9. Meetings.

10 Your Yellow Pages Ad, Direct Mail pieces and Tradeshow Booth. If you know the exact ROI on these three, awesome. You’re ahead of the game. Most have no clue.

11. Fax machines and toner. Seriously. I had a vendor say I couldn’t email a scanned version of a contract to them, since they needed me to “fax the original”. You know the actual piece of paper doesn’t travel through the phone line right? Right??

And even the smarter ones in business know that to be successful, you have to:

- Answer questions about our product or service

- Educate consumers

- Offer post purchase follow up

- Market research

- Discuss industry best practices

Read those five things out to a social media naysayer and ask if they agree about them being smart for businesses. Because that’s a checklist for what social media is used for. Just sayin.

Combine these with banning employees from using social media at work because it “distracts workers” and you see why I’m losing my hair. (Social media didn’t create distracted workers, Minesweeper did).

What do you think? Anything to add that you see companies doing with no question, yet deny social media because of “ROI”? Leave it in the comments below!

(You KNOW this post has to be epic, I started it off with a Helen Keller quote. Shazam!)

Facebook. Half a billion people. One of the greatest things to come out of the Internet for many reasons, without it there would be so many social media consultants that would go hungry and have to go back to shilling “video email!” from 1998.

The biggest threat to Facebook and it’s success isn’t a change in format, structure or infrastructure. It’s user apathy. And more specifically when it comes to Facebook for business, event apathy.

Exhibit A

This event invite defines all that is wrong with them. I live 2,519 miles from the event location, I’m not single and frankly a “hands-on” singles night sounds like something we should all be doing in private. (You may think I’m picking on the event organizer here. Which I am. If you don’t want to appear in my blog, don’t invite me to events like this. Easy peasey)

Many people have said to me “It’s no big deal, just reply with no, and be done!”

I say “NO” to that. The onus to stop Facebook event spam should not be on the receiver. The logic is the same that email spammers use (if you don’t want it, just delete).

More importantly, if you look closely at that event again, this is the most glaring thing:

3 “Yes”, 19 “Maybe” and 4,552 AWAITING REPLY! This screen shot is just before the event takes place, and the invite had been out there for weeks, so it’s safe to say these people weren’t replying anytime soon.

Read those numbers again.

Notice it doesn’t show the number of people who said “No” which I assume is about 400, since they most likely used a script to auto invite 5,000 “friends” to the event.

Do the math.

It’s not even the 400+ people you’ve pissed off with your untargeted invite to get 3 “yes’s”, which you’ve actually achieved the impossible with: You’ve made direct mail and cold-calling success ratios look good. It’s the 4,552 who never even saw the invite that scares the jeebus out of me.

This isn’t a freak occurrence. Most people I’ve talked to have gotten so over whelmed with Facebook invites to events like these, they’ve either stopped noticing invites or turned of notifications all together (like I have). And that is horrible.

I threw a party at BlogWorld last year. Open bar, 100+ of my fave people, fancy pants velvet rope. 45 people on the invite list never even replied and didn’t know about the event because they stopped checking them long ago. They missed an event that was targeted (only people I knew/thought were going to BlogWorld were invited) and most would have come.

And we have done this. The most social, strongest community in the history of the world, and people have turned to apathy for events. This has to stop.

We must stop:

- Inviting people to a local event that aren’t

- Creating events that aren’t actual “events” but a way to email mass people at once, regardless of reply

- Constantly emailing people who haven’t replied yet with information about your event like the person is coming

- Publicly inviting people to a private topic event (weight loss, confidence, being single). I’ve been invited to 15 different weight loss events in the past 3 months. What are you trying to say?

What can we do to make it better? Invite people to events that are a geographic and demographic match. You know, like actual real marketers do? Stop blasting it to thousands to try and land a few. Every time you do that, a baby unicorn dies. A baby unicorn.

PS – Don’t get me started on the new “groups” feature that adds you without permission and emails you every wall post until you opt-out of each group individuality. That’s for another day and Helen Keller quote.

Do you pay attention to invites? Do you get redonkulous ones? Do tell in the comments below!

]]> http://www.unmarketing.com/2011/02/15/how-we-are-killing-facebook/feed/ 427 http://www.unmarketing.com/2011/01/11/the-awesomeness-of-being-a-2-0-author/ http://www.unmarketing.com/2011/01/11/the-awesomeness-of-being-a-2-0-author/#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:14:31 +0000 unmarketing http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/?p=722 I don’t know how authors did it years ago. You pour your heart and soul into a book, it hits the shelves and you hope people like it.

I’m such a spaz that I don’t think I could handle the lack of immediate validation and/or rejection.

I’ve been amazed since UnMarketing came out. The immediacy and coolness of tools has blown my mind. Waking up everyday and reading tweets in real time about people reading the book makes me smile. Every. Day. It’s the passive conversation our readers are having with each other that was untappable (my new word) previously.

Twitter mentions

And sadly most authors aren’t even listening to their readers:

And it’s not just on Twitter. Blog reviews, and other mentions can happen under our radar. Setting up a Google News Alert for your book title in quotes will keep you on top of most mentions online. I’m also tacking Trackur for a spin. I’ll update this post to let you know how it goes.

Kindle

I was initially a little miffed at the Kindle version of UnMarketing because they made all my saucy/sarcastic footnotes into endnotes, and people wouldn’t click on them, thinking they were real citations and other ridiculousness, but I now LOVE the Kindle version for many reasons:

1. Immediacy – I’ve had people buy the Kindle version during one of my talks as they’re in the audience. This blows my cranium. The drawback of being an author who speaks is when people leave the session, they rush off to the next one and forgot to purchase your awesome book. Or worse, there is no bookstore on site and if you think that they’ll rush to the bookstore when they get home, you’re sadly mistaken for the most part. The immediacy and ability for your audience to buy your book on their phone/laptop/reading device in real-time is epic. If you’re even a half-decent speaker, the highest moment of intent to purchase your book is during your talk. And people can buy it. Brilliant. (this isn’t unique to the Kindle, you can also grab them on the fly as iBook, Nook, Kobo, etc)

2. Digital loaning – I freaking love this about the Kindle. You can loan your copy (link explains it) to someone else for up to 14 days. All you need is their email address. You can only loan a book out once, and can’t read it while it’s out on loan. I believe it’s only available currently to USA based purchasers, I’m not sure why they hate Canada but nonetheless this is great for spreading your content, especially to those that can’t afford all the books they want to read. The author/publisher also  has to agree to it. I learned about it when I saw this tweet a few days ago:

I saw the tweet and retweeted it. I received a large amount of responses that people were impressed I would retweet that, since it doesn’t create sales. I say why wouldn’t I? I want people to consume the book. To love it. That’s our job as authors as far as I’m concerned. It’s not just to write it or talk about it or even sell it. It’s to get people to devour it. Jim wanted to read the content but didn’t have the means currently and I wanted him to read it. And now he is

Heck, if you’d like to get a loaned Kindle copy, leave a comment below or if you have the Kindle version and are willing to loan it to someone, leave a comment too. Then simply reply if you have or want it to the person. And Shazam! We have an UnLibrary!

3. Free R&D – This actually made me say out loud “WOW!” which was awkward since I was sitting by myself in a coffee shop, but I digress. Kindle lets you highlight parts of a book. That isn’t the cool part. Kindle also takes the data and tells you the most popular highlighted lines from your book. Check out the UnMarketing ones! This is R&D for an auther/publisher and tells you what is resonating with your readers. (I just said YA! out loud. I’m going to get thrown out of this place.) Another great thing to do is to take these and make them tweets. You already know it clicks with people. Bring on the retweets!

Here is a sample of mine:

That’s gold Jerry!! You don’t have to guess what’s working, it’s right there in front of you! You can go and check it out for any Kindle book, not just yours. Just click over here. And you can also see the top highlighted books. Just click on the book title and it will show you the highlights. Amazeballs!

4. Track Sales – Using Amazon Author Central you can login as an author and see sale info that used to only be available to your publisher. It allows you to track where it’s selling and in what medium.

Click to enlarge the chart

Digital books are gaining traction. Do not ignore them. It doesn’t matter if you like to read in that format or not.

And this is only a fraction of what is being done and accessible out there to authors and their fans. Did I mention I did an entire 30-city UnBookTour planned through Twitter without any cost to myself or my publisher? Ya, that too.

What have you seen out there when it comes to books that excites you when it comes to the 2.0 book world? Leave a comment below! Or let me know you want to loan/borrow the Kindle version of UnMarketing!

“Your comment is awaiting moderation”

“Your comment is awaiting approval”

“You need to register first”

Congratulations, you’ve just halted the conversation on your post.

For the most part, moderation is used to stop spam from appearing not necessarily to censor comments, but you’re hurting the voice of the very people that can be your biggest evangelists.

There are many issues with this:

1. When a commenter sees those five words and has to wait for approval, it will stop them from spreading the post until it has been approved
2. 99% of the time the commenter doesn’t get a notification that the comment has been approved, and so never spreads the original post at all.
3. The flow of comments is dictated by the blog owners ability to approve comments in a timely fashion.
4. As soon as a commenter sees that their original comment is awaiting moderation, they will hesitate to comment on anyone else’s comment in the thread.
5. The commenter doesn’t know if it’s awaiting approval for being a non-spam comment, or that the blog owner is only allowing positive comments.

If the spam issue is your main reason for moderating blog comments, there are a few quick fixes.

1. Install the Askimet plugin. This well-known, and free for personal use tool is amazing for filtering out spam comments. I average 100+ comments per post, and have only ever had to delete one spam comment that made it past Askimet’s filter.
2. Use a comment management system like Disqus. That’s the system I use here. It allows threaded comments, meaning I or others can reply in-line to a comment and it makes it linked as a conversation, including emailing the original commenter that someone has replied, so they can return and continue the engagement. It also emails me every time someone comments, and I can reply on my Blackberry in the email, and it will post it as a comment. Not to mention if a spam comment slips through (or a troll) I just reply to the email with “delete” and it’s gone instantly.

There are some valid reasons to moderate comments, such as very sensitive topic-based sites (especially religion, politics, parents against Justin Bieber) and also large corporate blogs that have certain topics that bring out the “special” folks of the world.

But for the most part I see moderation being done on the very blogs that need comments: the ones that don’t have many at all. Especially when you’re starting out, let the conversation flow. Create community and engagement. The comments on my posts are 10X better than my original post. Why would I want to stifle that?

And don’t even get me started on captcha’s……

Speaking of comments, add yours below (Wouldn’t it be awesome if I then pointed to my comment section that was moderated?)

What do you think? Does it turn you off when a blog moderates your comment? Have you had issues that have lead to moderating your blog?

Pubcon Keynote Panel

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
— Aristotle

I assume Aristotle was talking about a conference panel when he came up with this quote. That’s what a panel should be, the discussion/content that is created is better than if each person was speaking on their own. Unfortunately, most panels I’ve seen rarely meet, let alone exceed expectations. Here are my best tips for making them worthwhile for everyone:

1. Be an actual panel – 4 mini-presentations plus 2 minutes at the end for questions isn’t a panel, it’s four freaking presentations! 10 minutes for each person to “present” isn’t enough time to get into anything of substance anyways, but take those away and open the entire up for discussion, now we’re onto something! So many panels talk about audience interaction and discussion, and yet they leave the last 3 minutes into audience questions and many people leave feeling unfulfilled. On the other side, I also don’t think it should be left up to the audience entirely to ask the questions. The job of a great panel is to have great discussion which naturally stimulates thought and questions from the audience.

2. Have an actual moderator who moderates – People like to hear themselves talk, *cough* me *cough* but they take over the panel and a good moderator not only knows how to cut off a blabbering mouth, but also knows each persons strengths and can direct questions and rebuttals to the appropriate person. I sat on a panel next to a guy who said “in my book, I talk about” 7 times, and then at the end said “Well I guess I should mention my book” and held it up. I wanted to moderate him right in his nostril. The moderator should be on top of the self-promo, since that can kill a panel like nothing else.

3. Moderator intros each person – This is one of my personal peeves. Either each panelist is allowed to tell the room about themselves or the moderator reads out the pre-written bio. The issue is, given an open window, panelists can talk about themselves for 3-5 minutes each. Doesn’t seem like much, except with 4 panelists and a moderator that can last anywhere from 15-25 minutes! Most panels last for an hour. I’d prefer the moderator, who sometimes picks who goes on the panel, to introduce each person with the reason they picked the person, one minute each, tops. I realize a lot of people speak on panels to get exposure for their company, but the best way to do this is to get into the meat of the panel topic and share great info.

4. Stay on topic within reason – This is also an issue with solo talks, the content doesn’t match the description. It’s even harder with multiple people on a panel. The biggest problem with not being related to the description is people pick which concurrent session to go to based on that write up, which means they aren’t going to another. Especially for the huge events like BlogWorld, SXSWi, PubCon and Affiliate Summit, there are multiple tracks and topics. If you don’t deliver on your promise, not only is there a let down, but a missed opportunity to see another session that may have been more suitable.

5. No slides – I’m all in favor for banning them altogether, but especially for a panel. It’s a think-tank, and a place to create a dialog that happens nowhere else. A slide deck prevents this, especially if they’re the same ones the panelists use in their individual presentations. Even when I’m on a panel that requires slides/mini presentations, I’ll do something original for that panel, usually pulling up websites that have talking points for the panel topic (although this is dangerous, since it depends on usually unreliable conference wifi, but I’m a fan of living on the edge. Or something.)

6. Different opinions – A real let down for an audience is when each panelist says the same thing. This doesn’t mean there has to be violent arguments, but have different perspective on points at least. On a BlogWorld panel I was on, my favorite part was when myself and Shayne Tilley from Sitepoint had different opinions on pop-ups. I said they were evil, and he said they worked. The discussion showed two passionate opinions, and I respect him for having it. On the other hand, during a panel at Canada 3.0, I sat on a panel, and a policy writer from Google said “people like reading ads” and I lost my mind. Which was awesome. I don’t think I’ll be invited back. but I do love panels!! Seriously, ask me to be on yours at any of the main conferences, and I’d jump faster than a kangaroo on Red Bull that has to pee.

7. Moderator knows each panelist – This is one of the reasons why I don’t like it when conferences take it upon themselves to pair up moderators and panelists, but the onus is more so on the moderator doing his/her homework on the topic, participants and audience.I sat in the audience of a recent huge conference, and went to an author panel to support some friends who were on it. Not only did the moderator not know who was on the panel, she even screwed up the intro of half the panel, and didn’t direct any questions of substance to the right panelist. It made a potential great panel into a waste of time.

But don’t take my word for it, either leave a word or two of your own in the comment section below, or have a look at these highlighted tweets when I asked Twitter about what they did/didn’t like about a panel:

What are the best/worst examples of a panel you’ve seen? No need to mention the name of the event, just what went right/wrong.

"On my command, unleash Twitter"

One of the things I love about social media is people stand-up for each other. The art of “having your back” has returned. As very recent examples show:

1. The Cooks Source Revenge: Editor uses someone else’s recipe/article, writer takes exception, editor sends condescending reply, citing that all the internet tubes are “public domain” and she should charge her for using the article. UNLEASH THE GEEKALANCHE! If you Google “Cooks Source” you can see this turned into a worldwide story. Advertisers were bombarded with calls and emails to pull their support from the magazine.

2. Amazon Pedophile Guide: Somebody discovered Amazon was selling a guide to being a pedophile and thankfully the online world collectively lost their mind on them. Within 18 hours, the call to boycott Amazon was so strong, they pulled the title. Sadly, this also generated sales of the ebook before it was removed.

3. #IAmSparticus: Man gets to airport, is cheesed his flight isn’t going anywhere and tweets “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” And is promptly arrested. During his trial, a horde of online folks, mostly in the UK, tweet the exact thing and add “#IAmSparticus” to the end, in an act of awesomeness and solidarity.

Here’s what I love: everything is immediate and everybody is relevant. it no longer depends on press releases, contacts and a huge budget to get the world to take notice, it just has to be an awesome outrage. Us geeks have nothing better to do than to gang-up and stand-up for what’s right. We live rent-free in wicked basements and don’t have to do our own laundry (at least I wish this was still true for me).

Here’s where I take issue: We’ve lost the benefit of the doubt. I have no problem with the examples above but people now default to complaining on social media instead of going directly to the business first. I try to treat screw-ups as if they happened with my business, meaning I’d want to know to have a chance to make it right.

With my last post I could have simply tweeted that the food sucked, and walked away, but I never would have gotten it resolved and realized the chef cared about my experience.

I’ve seen people post on Facebook and Twitter about a terrible meal or a bad service experience but have never actually asked for it to be resolved, like the social media smurf unicorns would run off in the night and fix it all, due to brands fearing the social media geek-tsunami that was impending.

My mom brought UnJunior to get his haircut last week and wasn’t pleased with the attitude when she was refused service due to the time of day (20 minutes away from closing). She asked me if I could “Twitter” it. That’s when I started to sob gently. Social media should not be a megaphone of anger if we haven’t tried for a resolution. I’m guilty as the next person. So with this situation, I sent a DM to the hair place, and she explained what happened, overbooked, only stylist there had to leave to get her daughter at daycare before it closed. I could have jumped on Twitter and called them out with the old “DO YOU KNOW WHO I THINK I AM?? HAVE YOU SEEN MY KLOUT SCORE!!??”  Amazingly being human here worked and we talked about UnJunior coming in at another time.

It’s gotten so bad I’ve heard of people threatening places that if they don’t comp them rooms, meals or swag at events, they will tweet, post or give negative Yelp/TripAdvisor reviews. THESE are the people that need to be outed and have a social media beat down. THEY are the ones that make the social media sphere bad for the rest of us.

So next time you’re about to rage, make sure you give the business a chance to make it right first. If they fail to make it right, then on my command, unleash social media hell.

Have you had good/bad experience with this as a consumer or biz owner? I’d love to hear your comments below.

Not an actual image of the chef

Which leads me to today. I’m writing this from the Hilton Garden Inn, in Hartford South/Glastonberry. I’m on stop #8 of my 30 city UnBookTour to promote my new book, UnMarketing. It’s been going amazing, but that also means I live in airplanes and hotels.

This morning I rolled out of bed, and headed downstairs for breakfast around 9:45am (did I mention I’m not a morning person?) The lobby has a breakfast buffet, and I’m not talking about a “continental” breakfast that most hotels throw in as a bonus that contains a danish and something that resembles juice. This was a full spread of eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, cereal, bagels. You name it.

I usually miss breakfast, since sleep is something I really enjoy, especially after just crossing the continent, so I was impressed I was able to catch this feast.

I told the chef that I’d like eggs, bacon, sausage and hash browns (shut it foodies) and grabbed a juice and took a seat. As soon as I sat down, I noticed they turned off the lights around the buffet. Score! I just got there in time.

Apparently not.

I dug in to my food and it was bad. Cold. Old.

I forced down some bacon and after testing each of the other items, I couldn’t continue. The waitress walked over with my bill and placed it on the table, without saying a word. Now, most people would just allow this to happen and walk away but I called her over. If I owned a business like this, I’d want to know if something was up.

“Hi, the food was really bad. It was cold and old.”

She just looked at me, not knowing what to do.

“I’ll go get the manager”

And she walked away. I never asked for the manager, or to have the bill taken care of. The manager came over and was nice and offered for the chef to make an omlette or something special for me. I declined, letting him know I really wasn’t hungry anymore, told him I wasn’t looking for a freebie or anything but thought he needed to know. He picked up the bill and said they’d take care of it and apologized again.

And this is where the customer service “apology” usually ends for 99.9% of businesses in the hospitality business.

But not here. The Sous Chef came out, Forbes, and stopped me from walking out and he looked shaken. Not in a shaken way like he’d been chewed out by anyone, but a sincere look of being upset. He said “Sir, I’m terribly sorry about your food this morning. A few things, although not excuses, we didn’t know until we were cleaning up, but the water underneath the food trays that keep everything warm was gone, hence why it was cold. And I also should have never given you the food that was sitting out that long, I could have made you something fresh right there but I thought you looked like you were in a hurry. Regardless, I’m terribly sorry, this is not how we operate and we’d like another chance to make it up to you.”

Wow.

This guy gave a damn that a guest had a sub-par experience and he needed to make it right. We can’t stop screw-ups, only how we remedy them. And the solution usually isn’t hard. Most people who complain just want to feel validated, that someone has heard and understood them.

I didn’t threaten to “tweet about it” or use “Do you know who I think I am?”. I’m simply a person staying at the hotel. He could have simply talked about how much of a moron I was to his co-workers, or brushed it off by saying “you can’t please everyone.” He truly cared that they screwed up. He owned it. He changed my view of the Hilton Garden Inn and the Hilton overall. And he didn’t have to.

Every employee is your brand ambassador, your marketer and the face of your company. They make a difference. Forbes made a difference for a billion dollar hotel brand to me.

He said, as I was heading back to me room, “I’d like to make this right.”

And my reply was “You already did”

This get-together has been over 5 years in the making (we had never met in person), so Michael Port and I decided to film us chatting about one of our biggest online pet peeves: being asked to speak on telesummits. Have a look:

The moral of the story is: Get to know people before pretending you know them. Do you have any stories of being approached or trying to run a telesummit? Do you have rules on what ones you’d speak for? Let us know in the comments!

Michael has a new version of his famous Book Yourself Solid program coming out. See that link in the last sentence? It’s not even an affiliate one. I don’t make a cent off of you signing up and improving your business. Michael is the best there is and I’m happy to spread the word, proud to call him a friend and gitty I got to finally hang out with him.

Scott BC (before coffee)

I have a morning ritual that I know many of you share. Coffee around here is a bit like a religion. You choose your brand, you pick your favorite, and then you stick with it. In the Toronto area, Tim Horton’s is the church of coffee. It is a part of the culture up here, part of the vocabulary. When you say you’re going for coffee you go to ‘‘Tim’s’’ or you’re going to go to ‘‘Horton’s’’

I’m sure you have your own coffee chains in your area that have the same kind of following. They become a part of our routine. This has to be the ultimate goal for a business, whether it is service- or product-based. Work to become a part of somebody’s routine. If you can, it is worth an incredible amount of money. The lifetime value of each and every somebody who spends $2 a day with your company is incredible. Think about that for a second—$2 a day equals more than $700 a year. Over 10 years you’re looking at more than $7,000 in revenue from one person. Companies have a vested interest in making sure you become a ‘‘regular’’ and you should be working hard to make your customers lifelong clients. Unfortunately, just like many personal relationships, when you become used to one another you take each other for granted, and companies do this far too often with loyal customers.

Tim Horton’s had me. I was loyal as could be. But recently I have done something I never thought I would do. I changed brands. Being a loyal Tim Horton’s customer, almost every day I would go and get my coffee from them. I didn’t even think about it—that is just what I did. When any other coffee company came into the area, they were an afterthought. No way a new company was going to change my habit.

Slowly something happened. I started noticing cracks in the armor of my habit.

One misstep or one small issue will not lead to somebody changing a day-to-day habit. But when you begin to add up enough of those small things you open up the door to your competition. It is not usually extreme customer service issues that drive people away.

So here is the story of the small things that led me away from Tim Horton’s. First, the servers wouldn’t stir my coffee. The coffee was inconsistent, a small thing, but one that I know my fellow coffee drinkers out there will understand.

When you buy your coffee at the drive-through and start to drink it after you’ve pulled a mile or two away and find that it was not made or stirred properly, the experience is hurtful. For people like me who take three sugars in their coffee and order the same coffee every day, I really do notice the difference when it isn’t made properly. Similarly, when there are mistakes in the order, when I can taste cream instead of milk, when there is sweetener instead of sugar, your customer will notice. These are little things. Mistakes happen, of course, but when they start happening more and more your customer begins to wonder if this is how service will always be. Then the customer begins to doubt the quality of your service or product. This doubt creates a space where your customer is open to try something new.

Got gap?

Picture the image of a gap. It starts as a tiny crack. Your loyal customer has always been happy with your product or service and then slowly small doubts add up and cracks begin to form. Until one day, the experience gap grows just big enough for one of your competitors to get through. The experience gap is the space between the best experience your customer has had with you and the worst. Ideally this gap doesn’t exist or is as small as possible.

Businesses need to make buying their products easy. This was another issue with Tim Horton’s that led me away from being a loyal customer. The company does not accept debit card payments. So their customers cannot pay for their coffee and doughnuts with a bankcard. This is rare today. As a matter of fact, the only reason I would ever take money out of the bank was so I could buy coffee from Horton’s. (I think the only two businesses in the world that do not accept bank cards are Horton’s and drug dealers. Although I think some of our local drug dealers here will take checks.)

Now the extra inconvenience of taking out cash was okay when my coffee was perfect, but adding this to the frequency of mistakes in my order was getting to be too much. Add in some other things I put up with in the name of my favorite coffee, such as the cumbersome lid that was impossible to open while driving, and the long wait times, and I was really open to the competition. I had been a loyal customer for 20 years. I figured that over the past 20 years I have spent upward of $15,000 with the company. I was at that point where all of these small negative experiences had come together, the perfect storm point, and I was open to give something else a try. It takes a lot for somebody to change anything, let alone change a part of their daily routine. I didn’t really do it consciously, it just happened. All that it was going to take for another company to earn me as a new customer was quality that matched what I was used to and that gave me more convenience.

Enter in McDonald’s.

I was already a McDonald’s fan. The company didn’t have to begin at the start with me or get me to buy into its brand. But I didn’t buy coffee there. My first real job was working at McDonald’s when I was 15. As far as I could see back then, the only people who bought coffee at McDonald’s were senior citizens at six in the morning. But now McDonald’s was on a mission to prove that its coffee was worth buying on its own, a bold task considering the market already included heavy competition from Horton’s and Starbucks.

A few years ago I wouldn’t have even thought of trying the McDonald’s coffee let alone of switching over to it, but I had gotten to the breaking point as a customer. I was willing to at least try something different. Tim Horton’s was taking my business for granted, but McDonald’s was working for it.

McDonald’s had a promotion to launch its coffee and it was giving out free coffee to anybody during certain a certain time. So this was going to be the time I was going to try it. Unfortunately the lineup of people to try the coffee when they found out it was free could have rivaled lineups for rides at Disney World. So I decided to hold off on giving it a try. A few weeks later I finally went in and tried it.

Compared with Tim Horton’s, McDonald’s had the same, if not more, drive-through locations, just the kind of convenience a lazy man like myself was looking for.

At this point the quality was important—no matter how much convenience or customer service I got, at this point if the product wasn’t of the quality that I liked I wouldn’t switch to it. This is really important to note, quality is always important! No matter how much marketing or UnMarketing you do, it doesn’t make a difference if your product or service doesn’t stand up. So I order the coffee and go to pay for it and the server takes my bankcard! I am allowed to use my bankcard to pay for the coffee—McDonald’s earned one bonus point.

I get the coffee and I see that the coffee cup is double walled— meaning I don’t have to put a sleeve on it! I don’t have to ask for a second cup! McDonald’s execs have spent some time thinking about their products and their customers and thought, ‘‘Hey, coffee is hot, people don’t like to burn their hand’’ and come up with a solution—a double-walled cup. Genius.

I went to open it in my car and the lid was amazing. You can open it with one thumb and it pops and locks open—no mess, no burned fingers, and another bonus point. The ease and convenience of the cup itself really improved my experience.

The location near my home also has a secret weapon. His name is David. At the Iroqouis Shore Road location, in Oakville, Ontario, David is the guy you talk to in the morning in the drivethrough. He’s kind, considerate, happy but not the ‘‘in your face’’ that makes you hate him in the morning. Heck, he even makes the add-on suggestion of a muffin a pleasant occurrence. It’s gotten to the point that I will go out of my way in the morning to have David serve me. Great service and a great new product. I never would’ve even known if it hadn’t been for the ‘‘dropping of the ball’’ from the where place I was loyal.

This is exactly what your company does not want. You do not want your long-time loyal customer be dissatisfied too many times and now in the hands of the competition and very, very happy. I then tasted the coffee and it tasted great.

I get no reimbursement from McDonald’s to say that I am not their affiliate. In all honesty, the coffee tasted great, even better than what I was used to. That did it. And now I look for McDonald’s when I’m wanting a morning coffee or on the road. I may be just one customer but my lifetime value is $20,000 or $30,000. How many people will it take for Tim Horton’s to realize that understanding the needs and wants of the marketplace is a good thing to do all the time?

You need to know if your customers are happy, and if they aren’t you need to know why and how you can change it. You need to know where you stand in the eyes of your customers. Are they happy, are they ecstatic, or are they just there holding on until someone better comes along? You do not want your brand to be in that zone with current customers where the experience gap has left a space for the competition. You cannot be complacent or inattentive leaving your hard-earned market ripe for the picking.

Do you have any stories about switching as a customer because you felt taken for granted? Add it in the comments below!

And if you pre-order UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” now for 34-37% off you’ll also receive, at no extra charge, two hugs, 3 fist bumps and a high-five!

(Fellow Canadian/Horton’s folks can pre-order here )

Holy monkeynuts.

That’s roughly 5,000,000 characters of typing, assuming an average of 100 characters a tweet.

And it’s been worth every one of them.

So the question is why? I’ve practically written enough on Twitter for five books, am a member of the 50/50 club (50k tweets, 50k followers) (I totally just made up that club right now. You’re welcome. I’m like the Jose Canseco of Twitter when he joined the 40/40 club in baseball, except I doubt I’ll be making an appearance on celebrity boxing anytime soon)

It’s not the fact that I’ve spouted off on Twitter 50,000 times, it’s the content of those tweets. The majority of them have been conversations. If you take a look at my stats you can see that almost 75% of my tweets have been replies. Over 37,000 of my tweets have been points of conversation. That’s why Twitter works for some and not for others. Twitter is a conversation.

I know, I know “TWITTER HAS NO RULES” and flippity-flo, but the point is if you believe that business is built on relationships, you have to make building them your business.

Here is a visual representation of my most commonly used words for those 50,000 (using Wordle through TweetStats)

“Thanks” “awesome” “good” (ok, and “Vegas”. Did I mention I’m opening keynote for BlogWorld in Vegas in October? Just be there)

I joined Twitter to get to know other business owners. It wasn’t to directly create business revenue, but if you’re great at what you do and connect with other great people, business is bound to happen either through joint-ventures or direct sales. People ask me all the time “Ya, but is Twitter worth it for my business?” Do you think I’d hit keys over five million times if I thought it was a waste of time??? I’m not a lonely guy. I have friends. Twitter has just enhanced that even more to where the people I know now through Twitter has made my life and business better exponentially.

The point that’s missed is the time it takes. Have a look at this graph of my number of tweets per month and take a wild guess to when I started seeing great results through Twitter:

Social media doesn’t change the fact that relationships take time. You truly do get out of it what you put in. It’s tough at the start. You can see by the chart I was barely around at the beginning. You have to have faith in the conversation. it seems like no one is listening at first, but trust me, we all are.

And I’ve finally changed my opinion. I don’t think everyone should be on Twitter. It can’t be forced. I don’t want people who hate the idea of “talking about nothing” trying to make Twitter work for them. Get out of our Twitter pool, you’d probably just pee in it anyways then complain about the temperature.

To all those that do believe in talking with each other, I adore you. Thank-you for making my life, both business and personal better than I could have ever hoped for.

Here’s to the next 50,000. Oh, and here’s to Vegas too

(Note: to make your own Wordle visual graph of your tweets, you have to go to TweetStats and run your account analysis (it’s free) and then click on the tab at the top that says “Tweet Cloud” then near the bottom right choose “Don’t like the TweetCloud? Well then, go make a Wordle!” and choose “no @’s” so it removes people’s user names so you can see just the words you’ve used. Then come and let me know in the comments your most used words too.)