2008 September 16 | Alec Saunders

Beyond PR: Can social media actually impact the regular customer? Robyn Tippins talks about some recent customer service horror stories of her own, how her blog attracted executive attention and got results. One, Comcast, came via the Comcastcares twitter account. The other came from Capitol One patrolling mentions of their name. Both resulted in mostly positive results but took very different approaches in the way they contacted and later dealt with the situation.

Other callers on the line discussed similar customer service horror stories, and how social media helped them achieve results… or not!

On the Calliflower Conference Call today: Robyn Tippins, Sheryl Breuker, Dan Rockwell, Sergio Meinardi and Tom Orr.

Squawk Box September 16 - Beyond PR [ 19:54 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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During my time at Microsoft presentation scores were a kind of blood sport — a source of pride after a particularly good presentation, and one that conferred bragging rights. Presentations delivered at the Executive Briefing Center or other functions were graded on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best and then the grades were delivered in email. I can vividly remember Steve Linowes on the Windows 95 launch team crowing about his particularly good results after one presentation.

Asking audiences to grade presentations this way is good practice. It has only one outcome, which is better presentations.

Last week I gave a presentation at the OCRI Zone5ive event here in Ottawa on social media and its uses in marketing. The topic is so broad, of course, that there’s no way that anyone could hope to cover it all in one 40 minute session, so I drilled into the tools I use, why and how to use them yourself. My theme was pretty simple — social marketing has been around for a long time. There are simply newer and more efficient tools to do it with today. And as you know if you read this blog often, I’m pretty passionate about social marketing tools.

Zone5ive scores their presenters too. Out of 106 results… my score was an average 4.86 / 5.0. I thought it was a pretty good presentation. I just didn’t realize how good.

I was pleased, both by the results and the memories it brought back. Thanks Zone5 for the welcome, and the pat on the back. And if you’d like a copy of the presentation, here it is.

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