In which I learn people will absolutely complain about everything...

 http://www.dailytech.com/Facebook+Twitter+Fans+Say+No+to+Gaps+New+Logo+/article19876.htm

The above link is an interesting article, again on the sort of negative groundswell that can arise from social media and the pressure put on companies to respond when consumers say they don't like what you are doing.  Gap developed a new company logo and decided to roll out the new graphic last week (which is odd because a lot of companies focus on a gradual transition of logos so as not the confuse the public, preferring instead to alter it over time so that no one perceives a huge difference). However, Gap decided to unveil their new logo on their website in bold style, moving away from the logo Gap fans had come to identify and apparently, love with all their hearts.





The new logo design, pictured bottom right in the image above, was met with outright mutiny in social media. Facebook and Twitter fans revolted, stopping just short of carrying guns and pitchforks to the Gap headquarters, and the new logo became the center of quite a bit of mockery. The most glaring mockery:  probably a feature on site called Crap Logo Yourself allows you to make your own version of the hated logo using whatever word you'd like. So I wasted some time and did that for our course title...(See below). Go ahead and waste some time making your own...you know you're going to.

Gap decided shortly to remove the new logo (probably developed by a branding company for no small fee) and revert to their old, apparently stellar logo. My question is what do you think? Was this a publicity stunt to get Gap some attention and to have people profess their loyalty to the Gap they know and love or was it truly a marketing goof-up?

In which I learn social media can be used for everything...

http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2010/09/23/gop-widens-social-media-lead-during-summer-2010-study-finds.aspx

Source of Graph: OhMyGov!

So apparently, in addition to all the wonderful things social media can do for us in terms of procrastination, business, keeping in touch, and just generally saving us from boredom, add a new one to the list. Political Polling. We all heard about how President Obama was the first Presidential candidate to use social media, which gave him an advantage in younger markets in terms of connections, but now apparently all candidates and politicians are onboard with social media. In fact, Republicans who tend to sckew slightly older, and who may not have used social media as much in the past, have apparently been gaining and then passing the popularity of democratic candidates on the social web this summer, as indicated by the article above. What might be interesting to see is how predictive Facebook activity levels are of actual voting behavior come November...All reports seem to indicate a pretty big shift in Congress, and potentially the Senate as well...so I wonder are political scientists now using Facebook data as much as marketers are using Facebook data?

In which I learn the immediacy of Social Media

Well, my parents are both in Hawaii and I'm not, which makes me a) sad I'm not 14 and taken along on their vacations any more and b) bitter...just because.

However, they were almost not in Hawaii, and I've since learned a lesson on the power of social media that I understood on some level in theory but actually saw in practice on Saturday.

8:00 a.m. Saturday: A panicked call from my mother, in the Atlanta airport. They are traveling on a Delta buddy pass for the first time to Hawaii, a place my father (and anyone else in their right mind) has always wanted to go. The problem? The original date for their trip was pushed back, and the date reconfirmed and booked. The buddy passes to Hawaii came with additional costs adding up to $500. The trip was confirmed on Friday by a Delta agent. Suddenly, Saturday morning, when checking in hours before their flight, the news delivered by an uninterested gate agent: the buddy passes have expired. So imagine suddently, after you've looked forward to this for months, made all the preparations, paid for the hotel, and been really excited about your vacation, you're not going to Hawaii at all. And "speaking to someone higher up won't do any good," as told to them by one stellar example of customer service. As to the fact that Delta allowed the trip to be booked, the $1,000 deposit for the hotel room already paid, complete indifference.

With visions of my father having a stroke or heart attack in the Atlanta airport, or being arrested and shown on the news for shutting the airport down on September 11th (of all days to plan a flight), dancing in my head, I started frantically googling Delta customer service numbers...and calling them. After one phone call ended in a message that "the customer service office is closed" (I mean, after all, people only fly Monday through Friday 10-4)...and then winding my way through a 20 minute automated service message where I just kept saying "Operator...Operator....OPERATOR....OPERATOR NOW!!!), I think my blood pressure was nearing dangerous levels.

Then a thought occurred to me...I mean, I've sort of been harping about social media and customer service...why not actually use it? So I turned to my Old Faithful Facebook first, leaving a message of desperation on Delta's Wall (although to leave a message I actually had to "Like" Delta, which I was doing anything but at the moment). And so I waited for something to happen for a bit and then considered Twitter. I tweeted a message: @Delta: Delta is denying parents flight booked and confirmed yesterday Atl_Hawaii after taking their $500 fee...Father is near stroke. HELP! 

So, it might not have been the most eloquent plea, but in my defense I was a little shrill by this time as the time for the flight was approaching rapidly. 

I tweeted Delta at 8:41. At 8:45 (FOUR MINUTES LATER), this response: 
DeltaAssist

 

@joannapmelancon I’m sorry to hear this. Pls follow and DM me @ DeltaAssist with your details. ^JH 8:45 AM Sep 11th via CoTweet in reply to joannapmelancon 

So I did message, ^JH, and he did respond to a series of DMs and attempt to work on the problem with me, while my parents were also working through things at the airport. The tone of the DMs was a little annoyed at times, as it is not Delta policy to apparently use Twitter for "non-revenue" flying (I pointed out that as the pass had cost my parents $500 it was not non-revenue for Delta, particuarly if they chose not to honor the pass), but there was service available to me and quickly, espeically as I explained the issue was not one of policy but of employee indifference and rudeness. Eventually, the problem was solved by refunding my parents for the origial buddy pass and letting them buy another one. 

This is the moral of my story though: That putting something out publically does seem to elicit a response and some actual help which is completely new in my customer service experience with airlines (and most other people's experience...for example, United Breaks Guitars). Delta did eventually make things right, which at the end of the day, restores my affinity for Delta.

Oh, and as of 12:30 on Monday afternoon--still no response to Facebook posting, if that gives you any indication of where companies are watching out for customer complaints.

I wouldn't encourage anyone to complain for no reason, but if you've run into a customer service issue and immediate employees are not responsive to your needs, I might suggest thinking of social media outlets for help in the future.  

Oh, and my parents are in Hawaii looking at Diamond Head and the Pacific as I type this...which brings me back to the beginning of the post and my bitterness that I'm not.  

In which I discover I have completely lost my mind...again.

There are many times in my life where I've had the distinct feeling of biting off more than I can chew. Entering a doctoral program in my 20s. Buying a 40 year-old house that was covered in the ugliest wallpaper I'd ever seen, learning to canoe when I was 4 months pregnant, you get the idea. The most recent occurrence of this feeling in my life happened as I was sitting in my office this summer and preparing the new course I'd volunteered to teach. Social Media Marketing. It's all the rage after all, and we have requests from companies, weekly and sometimes daily for interns or new positions for students who can develop a social media presence for these employers.

So, what's the first thing you do when you start preparing a new course? Why, pick a textbook for guidance, of course. The textbook will give you an idea of the really important concepts to focus on, as well as the proper and logical order in which to cover the topics at hand. Not to mention that textbook will come with lovely canned PowerPoint slides that I can adapt to my own needs and style and a test bank to make test writing easy (for me, not the students of course, let's not be ridiculous). All of this, and give the students a nice bit of information about the subject bound neatly between two covers. 

Well, in this instance, for this subject, which is brand spanking new, there doesn't happen to be a text book. Not one. No where. Well, then, the answer is simple enough. Write a text book. This is it, my ticket to fame, glory, and millions in royalties from all the poor students who will have to pay to buy my textbook at outrageously un-worth it prices...but wait. It occurs to me, daily, as I read and assimilate information about social media, that by the time I cover this material in one, two, or three months time, it will stand a grand chance of being outdated, not to mention how outdated any textbook would be the second it rolls off the printer. So that's the real reason there aren't any textbooks available. And thus, I begin to understand just how challenging this field is at the moment, as well as how much opportunity exists for students who can learn how to learn about social media. So what it boils down to, is that this course is, and must be, quite simply different from any course I've ever taught. What has to happen is that the basics need covering/teaching and the content must be actively sought and created as we go. Students will need to help find the newest content. And I think this will be the case for many years to come as marketers and business people struggle to truly understand and harness the power of the social web.

Unlike some people, and here it is in print to be held against me forever if I'm wrong, I really don't think Social Media is a fad. I think that the nature and way companies use it will change slightly to drastically in months/years to come, but that we are right this moment actively developing strategies and theories that will really change how marketing is done. I think social media is here to stay. And I'm not just considering projections of the popularity of social media, but rather, looking rather personally at my own sordid relationship with social media--particularly social networking sites.

My husband is fairly convinced I need a 12-step for Facebook addiction and I'm inclined to agree. I love social media. I can waste more time on Facebook than anyone I know. Being a natural procrastinator, I believe it is the world's best tool for avoiding unpleasant tasks that you'd rather not address at the moment. It's so innocent, that little tab at the bottom of my computer screen and it takes seconds to click on it and see if anyone in my little universe of most of the people I've ever met in my life has said something interesting. Most of the time, someone has. At least something more interesting than what I'm doing (i.e. grading, research, syllabus-writing, you get the picture).  I was late to the social media bandwagon (in all things, I am NOT an early adopter). I couldn't understand why I would want to broadcast my every move or thought throughout the day to a community of people who could care less. However, I find myself back in touch with people that I knew 15 years ago and haven't seen or heard from since. I find myself in touch with people I didn't even particularly like in middle or high school...and I find myself sharing with them the biggest events of my life. "Getting Married Today," "Brian and I are expecting a baby in January," etc as well as the more mundane, "Brian talked me into going canoing and we almost died," or "I don't understand why people leave their houses at all in the summer." And I'm a trespasser in their lives and moments too, the good and the bad, the big and the small...and I am so interested by it all, as an individual.

As a marketer--I'm enthralled.The possibility of social networking is endless. It is exciting. It comes at a time where nothing that used to work is working anymore. I truly think that those that learn about it now, on the cutting edge, will be at an advantage as they enter the job market in  years to come. And that's why, even though I think I've lost my freaking mind in volunteering to teach this course, I couldn't be more excited to be doing it.