Social Media & Customer Service Lessons from the Cable Giant

Prior to joining SEER, I spent almost six years working for Comcast. The instant anyone found that out, I would be bombarded with questions and (too often) complaints about the service they’d received previously. To this day, I still get calls from friends asking why their DVR no longer records their favorite program. People just want to know that someone’s listening.

When I read about a Comcast employee reaching out to fellow blogger Michael Arrington over the weekend, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. For anyone not familiar with the story, Michael had an outage and started posting about it on Twitter, just to rant about the problems he was dealing with. Imagine his surprise when Comcast actually called him twenty minutes later to help fix the problem he was having. It turns out a manager at Comcast, Frank Eliason aka @comcastcares, has taken to monitoring mentions of Comcast on Twitter and has slowly and quietly been responding to people for the past six months – a revolutionary idea and a brilliant way to actively connect with customers. This was picked up all over the blogosphere, and was even written about in one of my favorite sites - The Consumerist.

I spoke to Frank about the work he was doing and how he was changing the customer service industry. The most amazing thing for me to hear is that he’s manually tracking, reading, and responding to these Twitters on his own, as Comcast didn’t expect this service to become public knowledge for some time. Frank explained that “the challenge to the publicity is that we must be seen, when in the past we were a little more quiet reaching out when we could. We know we need to improve, and this is a small part of that effort.”

So what can you, as a company owner, learn from Comcast’s example?

• Create a Twitter account – Not only can you connect with people quickly, but you may have access to people in your industry that you never expected to get to communicate with.
• Set up Twitter tracking – This can be done in several ways. Through your Twitter account, you can set up tracking on IM or SMS with a simple “track @rachael823” command. You can also use sites like http://www.tweetscan.com to show you history of the term you’re searching for.
• Smart business owners would track their personal name, company name, domains, competitors’ names, and even top keywords for their industry to see who’s talking about anything related to them.
• Do this across all social media sites and blogs.
• Set up Google Alerts to notify you when any of these terms come up.
• If anyone is talking about you, positive or negative, it’s such an easy task to reach out to them, especially on Twitter. How long does it take you to type 140 characters? The effect that effort has on the recipient is well worth it.

Media Bullseye had a great question: Where is everyone else? Is anyone out there already taking action to monitor their reputation online through social media channels?

SEO is an industry with unethical, unscrupulous, shady folks at every turn, and I hate what many of those people do to our industry, so I figured I’d post the following list of how SEO companies lie and how to not fall for those lies. So here goes:
SEO Company lie #1 – Their Clients

STOP being lemmings!!! For you who select SEO companies to work with, please don’t fall for the client list! It matters less than you think! Putting a client on your client list doesn’t mean you did a real project for the company listed.

Being invited to speak at a company does NOT make them an SEO client, nor does doing a 5 hour engagement (in my opinion). If a company has impressive client roster, pick the references! Having worked for someone and having a GOOD relationship with them are two different things.

SEO Lie Repellant Tip - Choose your references

While any SEO company will have some references all ready for you, you should ask for at least a couple that YOU PICK from their client list.

The SEO company should say “NO PROBLEM” when it comes to connecting you to at least half of the client you requested, asking for more than 3 references is just weird though so don’t ask for the whole client roster to be a reference. Keep in mind some clients just aren’t into doing the reference thing sometimes and as a result SEO’s may not be able to easily get them, that is why I say half is a good figure to shoot for.

One thing to expect is that a lot of SEO companies don’t work direct with their clients, and often are private labeled, so they may not have direct connections with each client.

The agency that brought them in should easily be able to vouch for their work though. Some SEO companies private label, so you may see some big names that are brought to them by an agency, you should speak with the agency in these instances.

There will always be minor reasons why someone can’t connect you with every requested reference, the bigger issue is how they react to being asked this question. Their gut reaction should be like “no problem”, if they gut reaction is “why” or “ummm, well, err, my contact left there” or some other excuse, be wary and do deeper digging before selecting them.

Again people, stop falling for the client list and big client names, get the details.

Even SEER has to clean up our list a bit, as a smaller search company that knows we can compete with the big boys, we fell into the trap of listing our most recognizable brands only, that will change with our impending re-launch.

SEO Company lie #2 – Their Staff

If you feel more comfortable with a certain size SEO company, that’s fine. I am not here to change your mind, but to help you do a little due diligence and make sure they really have that many people. After seeing an SEO company totally rip off a prospect and just flat out lie about their staff of 25 people I was pissed and thought…

“how can I help people figure out how to catch these liars…I got one way…”

SEO Lie Repellant Tip - USE search engines!!

Of course there are always special relationships, virtual CFO / COO types work with multiple companies, billing people, exec assistants, etc. But when it comes to the core SEO/SEM team, you should be finding members of your SEO/SEM team on LinkedIn, Digg, Del.ico.us, Zoominfo, Sphinn, etc. Hint: search for the company name in addition to the individual’s name, also search for the persons name as one word too, see what I find when I search for dannysullivan vs. Danny Sullivan again, if someone uses their real name, run the search on that too.

Now of course many will have aliases (sugarrae, greywolf, oilman) so they won’t be easy to find, and to be honest you don’t really need to. I have another way if the search engines come up a bit lame.

Use Linkedin (most business people are here)
Here’s my quick check, a few of ANYONE’s search team should be on LinkedIn, if a company says they have a search team of 10 people it is not crazy to think that by typing in the name of the company in LinkedIn and see 4 or 5 of them, right?

Go search for the company name, what comes back?

I think small good companies have no problem saying, “We’re small, and we’re GOOD”. If what makes a company good is their size then they’ve got problems, and now you do too!

SEO Company lie #3 – I know (insert celebrity here) Matt Cutts, Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, Aaron Wall, Neil Patel, Todd Malicoat, Greywolf, etc… knowing them and THEM KNOWING YOU are TWO different things.

Accepting someone on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you are friends!

Sure this adds credibility, but come on people, when someone says they know someone, I would expect that to be a reciprocal relationship. These SEO celebrities probably get 1000+ cards a year from a ton of people and may even have e-mailed some, chatted a bit, but that doesn’t a relationship make.

SEO Lie Repellant Tip – This doesn’t matter!!

To be honest, knowing these guys shouldn’t really mean much for you as a purchaser of SEO services. Why would your SEO team need to know Matt Cutts? I’d like to think that Matt has heard of me or seen my SEO videos - A guy can dream right?

If for some reason who an SEO knows means something to your in your selection process, you are focusing on the wrong things!

LEE Odden did a great piece on the Fallacy of the SEO celebrity.

SEO Company lie #4 – We do social media

Because social media is hot right now, I think everyone says they do linkbaiting / social media, which is fine, we all gotta start somewhere. But here’s how you can decipher one from the next: (Tamar, thanks for the help on this one & please never go back to full time server admin work, LOL!)

Ask your social media strategist for their URLs on:

• Facebook
• Youtube
• Digg
• Del.ic.ous
• Stumbleupon
• LinkedIn
• Twitter (which I hate but recently fell victim to)

If they have accounts for most of these consider them a beginner that has at least done the basics (which is OK, this is a new area and you shouldn’t expect them to have 3-4 years experience in this area).

The question is do they actually have activity and friends and are adding to these profiles with plugins, groups, etc? You really have to be active on these communities to understand the nuances of how they work. Each one is slightly different.

Mid level social media folks should be very active on many of these above, not all but many. Additionally, some of these would be a waste for marketing, but at least a mid level person is involved enough in the community to stay on top of marketing opportunities if they exist.

The top folks at least know of these & what kind of content plays best on these:
• Sk-rt
• Hugg
• Mixx
• Reddit
• Yahoo Answers
• Ballhype

Be careful here, the key is ACTIVITY not just an account. If they were not active recently, maybe it is because they have not found a lot of value there, but at some point there should have been some serious activity.

And yes, the key is activity, but if you’d want to emphasize anything, don’t spread yourself too thin (by using all these services). Do a little and get good at one or two social media sites.

SEO Company lie #5 - We can guarantee XXXXX or we’ll get you XXXX links per month sales pitches

If the guarantee is for keywords, or #1 rankings, or page 1 rankings, NONE can be guaranteed! This is the easiest issue of the 5, but after having been asked in a room of hundreds of people about the effectiveness of a 20 THOUSAND keywords meta tag at a recent affiliate summit, I think basics are still important and worth discussing.

Ok, here’s a simple rule…if you got cold called, DO NOT work with that company. Sure some of you may have exceptions, but this is simple, no cold calls, no marketing e-mails!

No company can guarantee an actual ranking, or an actual number of terms on page one. If you do have a company that gives you a guarantee, ask them if you can select the terms that count, make sure all are two the word phrases and watch them squirm! The issue with guaranteeing page ones is that the SEO company is likely to include some softballs in there to make sure they hit their “guarantee”.

Any company that tells you how many links they expect to get you monthly is the wrong company to work with. Do you really care that they get you 3, 30, or 300 links per month? NO you shouldn’t, it should be about maximizing rankings to maximize leads / sales for keywords that are applicable to your business.

Links are a byproduct, not to mention, getting 3 good strong hard to get links could be worth 10x more than 30 or 300 in terms of how they help you rank.

Disclaimer:
We do have a guarantee though

It is simple. We feel that if by 6 months we don’t have a certain percentage of terms on the first 2 pages of Google / Yahoo / MSN and the client account is in good standing, then we pause payment until we do. We do this because we just don’t feel right taking people’s money if for some reason 6 months in we are not performing.

Don’t fall for other SEO Lies, if you have more please let me know, I plan on developing am ongoing checklist of things to look for when selecting an SEO firm and obviously I am missing a bunch!

Here at SEER, we are driven to help others (when we’re not conquering the SEO industry). Combining two things I love to do, I’ve outlined some simple and useful tactics any non-profit can use to boost online efforts.

- Have you created an online donation page?

Besides the firm dedication a non-profit needs to function, all non-profits know that funding keeps an organization thriving. Every non-profit should have an online donation page which is secure and easy to use. There are many creative avenues to request funding from your supporters. For example, an Online Volunteer for UNICEF can design a personal donation page with information about their chosen cause, set a fundraising goal and then invite everyone they know to visit their page and donate to UNICEF. Volunteers can also form teams and recruit others to help spread the word.

You don’t have to be an international and well established organization to do this. JustGiving.com is a site that allows charities to create donation pages for free (but charges a small transaction fee on donations). Another site, FirstGiving.com offers the same service but provides you with additional web tools such as a fundraising widget that you can include on social media sites.

Change.org is a free service that allows non-profits to add their group to general causes such as Ending Poverty or Universal Health Care. Visitors can then donate to your specific organization or donate evenly to all groups within one cause.

-Have you applied for a Google AdWords Grant?

Under the Google Grants Program, non-profits can receive up to $10,000 worth of clicks in the AdWords program. Any non-profit organization without political or religious affiliation and a 501(c)(3) status may apply. The application seems to be competitive based on the high number of applicants but having someone on your team with AdWords experience may better your chances of being approved. Also, seeking out a specialist in the PPC field to help manage the campaign is highly recommended. Ten grand a month can have a large impact if used strategically.

-Are you requesting links from supporters?

In SEO, we have this little thing called “link juice.” Actually, it’s a big thing! The number of sites that link to yours influences the site’s importance in the search engines. Requesting that visitors link to your site from their personal websites and blogs can increase your prominence in search results and drive traffic.

End Poverty International has partnered with several sponsors who have pledged to donate a certain amount for every person who links to Endpovertyinternational.org from their .edu page. I’ve never seen this done before and it doesn’t seem to be encouraging a lot of .edu links but I like the idea! The benefit is two fold—link juice and money!

-Are you socializing?

More likely than not, there are tons of people surfing the web who would love to support your cause. But if you don’t have at least an active MySpace or Facebook account, how will you find them? Using social media sites is an excellent way to stay communicated with your supporters and keeps them up-to-date on your organization’s news and events. It is much more interactive than a static website and people won’t have to remember to visit your site—they’ll just log into their MySpace or Facebook accounts. And best of all, it’s free!

For example, this is the official MySpace page for the Susan G. Koman Organization. Friends can read the stories of others as well as share their own personal stories. You can also create a MySpace group like this one which discusses homelessness and creates awareness. Even enhance your page with features such as a fundraising widget from ChipIn.

I’m amazed at the amount of resources out there for non-profits. I would love to hear from non-profits who have used SEO and SEM tactics that have been successful.

How a deal might be struck (continued from part one)
Assuming there is a certain level of trust between the buyer and seller, there are a few ways a deal can be made and a few questions to be addressed before the transfer is made. Will the buyer maintain the seller’s identity after purchase? To what extent is the buyer allowed to act as the seller when they acquire the account? Consider:

• Display name
• Personal pictures
• Existing blogs
• Existing comments
• A list of friends exempt of being solicited personally

An agreement between a buyer and seller can be structured in any way. The possibilities are really up to the parties’ imaginations. Here are some other facts and ideas to be kept in mind when arriving at an agreement.

1. Keeping a seller’s pictures up can help to ensure that friends don’t delete the account after the transfer. It is common behavior to aggregate existing friends and not pay much attention to minor profile changes when the potential “deleter” has a long friend list and only interacts with a few people with regularity. As a buyer, don’t raise any flags by putting up an unlikely photo or doing anything else that might be suspect behavior, like bulletin spam.

2. The seller can change their account email address. They’ll no longer be found if someone searches based on email. It may, however, take weeks for the email to be removed from the search results.

3. One can enable an away message thus disabling new incoming messages if desired.

4. One can require a last name to add you as a friend (which can be changed to something not obviously guessable) if the seller does not want new real life friends finding this profile and becoming a friend.

5. A buyer may want to require comment approval. If the account purchase is publicized, it should not be made known on your page. If people know that a profile is being used for marketing purposes they’re less likely to keep it as a friend.

Finally, I have listed some scenarios where a buyer and seller may have their biggest concerns.

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