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Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

Explanation Overkill

Friday, August 12, 2011 —

When crossing the street in West Allis the other day, I noticed this sign:

Who would have thought that crossing the street was so complicated? My kids understood the basics of walk/don’t walk before they started kindergarten, and they never would have been able to read this sign back then.

Sometimes, the same thing happens with marketing, especially when you are trying to market a service. You can’t show anyone what you are selling, so you explain, and explain, and explain… Recently, I met with someone who called it “feature puking.” It may be a little gross, but it is a good analogy.

So what’s the lesson? Figure out what matters to your audience. Tell them that, and then STOP. Too much information can actually make decisions more difficult. (Even if you are just deciding whether or not to cross the street.)

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

Tags: Communication, marketing, milwaukee

Hello, Time Warner Business Class. Is anyone there?

Friday, July 15, 2011 —

We recently moved our offices at Clear Verve to a wonderful new space that gives us plenty of room to work and grow. Almost everything about the move went really well. Our movers (Two Men and a Truck) were fantastic. Our IT company (TBG Networks) was incredibly helpful and amazing. Time Warner Business Class, on the other hand, was not.

We’ve been in our office for two weeks now and finally got a properly working phone system just a few days ago. First, the system was ordered incorrectly. The sales guy ordered an extra phone line and asked for the system to be configured the wrong way. The installer caught that mistake and fixed it (or so I thought). The following workday, as I attempted to configure our voice mail, I discovered that the system still couldn’t work the way I wanted it to. Two phone calls to tech support and two phone calls to the sales guy later, was told by someone else that he had ordered a completely incorrect configuration and features I didn’t even need. And, it would take Time Warner three to five days to fix it. In the interim, we had to set up a single voice mail box for the entire company and just live with it.

At the same time, I was also attempting to get information from Time Warner on how to get our emails working. My requests only seemed to confuse my sales guy, who had no idea what information I needed to make my email work. He did however, know how to say, “I haven’t been trained on that,” and, “Here’s the number for tech support.” It didn’t take me too long to figure out that this guy hadn’t really been trained on ANYTHING and had no idea what he’d sold me.

Two days later, as I prepared to leave for vacation, I sent the sales guy an email telling him I’d be out of town and that he should work with Susan when the new configuration was complete. To my surprise, I received an autoreply from him telling me he had left for vacation the day before and wouldn’t be back for a week. In frustration, I called Time Warner’s corporate office, explained my situation, and asked for his boss’ phone number and name. I then called that guy and left a message. He didn’t call me back. For some odd reason, I was not surprised. (Can you hear the sarcasm?)

While I was gone, Time Warner reconfigured our system. However, they neglected to inform us about it. The only way we discovered this was when clients started desperately emailing us telling us they couldn’t leave us voice mails. Susan called tech support, and once again managed to get us a single voice mail box. Meanwhile, we lost a prospective project because someone couldn’t get a hold of us.

When I returned, I attempted to set up our voice mails. However, we had never been sent instructions on how to do this, so I had to (once again) call tech support. During my third call, I discovered that the rollover feature on our phone lines was not working. Luckily, I had finally found someone at Time Warner who cared, and he stuck with the problem until he figured out how to solve it. At that point, he also discovered that I STILL had one more phone line than I needed and gave me different number to call to have it removed.

So, what about my sales guy, who was so helpful when he sold me the system? I haven’t heard from him in two weeks. I’ve called his boss four times so far, and he hasn’t bothered to call me back either. Today, I’ll be asking for the next guy up on the food chain when I call Time Warner. I wonder how far I will have to go up the totem pole before someone actually cares.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

Tags: bad customer service, Communication, customer experience, Time Warner Business Class

I don’t have time to blog!

Friday, June 17, 2011 —

This is a very busy week at Clear Verve. In the last two weeks, we landed three new clients, and just this week picked up projects from some former clients. While we are most certainly GRATEFUL for the additional work and glad to see our former clients call us when they have needs, we have a lot to do. On top of the increased workload, Susan is on vacation, and we are moving the office to a larger location at the end of next week. I’ve been working at home nearly every night just to keep up. In fact, I’m typing this as I sit in the bleachers during my kids’ swim lessons so I can get it done.

So, why am I taking the time to write this blog? There are a couple reasons. First, blogging is good for our company. Continually adding to our website via our blog is good for SEO and helps keep our Linkedin profiles and our Facebook page up to date. Also, we think it’s important to practice what we preach. Because we focus on working with professional service providers and not for profits, we are always talking to our clients about content marketing and sharing their knowledge. We tell them that blogs, newsletters, and social media are ideal ways to help them showcase their expertise and their personalities. We bug them (in a friendly way of course) to provide us with information we can use to generate content for them or to generate the content themselves. So if we expect them to do it, we should also be doing it. Otherwise, we’d be like the shoemaker’s kid with no shoes.

I hope that when your business gets busy, you can also remember to take time – even if it’s just a few minutes each day – to do something that helps your business grow. Small actions over time add up to great things. Don’t wait – the time to grow your business is NOW.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

Tags: Blog, branding, Clear Verve, Communication, Facebook, marketing, persistence in business, Social Media

Most Liked Pages on Facebook

Thursday, May 19, 2011 —

The 25 most liked pages on Facebook surprised me when I stumbled upon it. While I currently lead a semi-active Facebook life, I joined back in the “olden days” where there was no news feed and you typed information in the About Me section with total freedom. (Did I also mention you had to walk uphill both ways before logging into Facebook?)

I was surprised when I looked at the longer Top Pages leaderboard list and saw mostly celebrities and music stars. A few other notable details:

Texax Hold’em Poker eclipses everything else by more than two million likes. It’s both an online and real-life game so it would potentially have more “likes” than running or swimming because you can use Facebook to BOTH play the game and connect with others.
Facebook is number two on the list. Isn’t being on Facebook enough to show that you like the company?
The only movie (series) in the top 40 is Toy Story.
The only food in the top 40 is Oreo. My guess is they must have done some kind of promotion to get this high because it doesn’t look like they do too many deals from their wall. But I could be wrong.

Two companies that I thought would be on the list were Coca-Cola and Starbucks. These two still make sense to me because they do a pretty good job keeping up with technology, social media and interacting with customers.

The only one I like in the top 25 is Disney, and I like them because they post random screenshots with quotes. I’m not in anyway obsessed with Disney movies, but it’s fun to have something different amongst friend updates and nonprofit organization updates (which make up most of what I see in my news feed).

Which of the top 25 do you “Like” and why? Or why not?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. She recently received her Communication MA from Marquette University. Follow Erica on Twitter: @erica_g.

Tags: Communication, Facebook, marketing, Social Media

When Weaknesses Become a Strength

Thursday, May 12, 2011 —

Last week, after being tasked with creating a survey on SurveyMonkey, I discovered the company had rebranded since the last time I visited the site (which I admit, was probably about two years ago). It looked so much more professional! This discovery led me to an online search to find out what others thought about the new look and the reasons for the change. It was harder to find than I thought, but my search led me to find this Pixelonomics post, highlighting 30 logo redesigns of 2010.

And my eyes smiled.

It makes me ridiculously happy to look at before and after shots, and to learn more about why organizations make certain changes to logos, colors, shapes and font types.

One website that kept me inspired daily before I got bogged down with grad school was Brand New. Its purpose is to keep tabs on brand identity work and provide opinions on it, focusing mostly on identity design. It’s still around two years later (whew!) and back to being a definite part of my morning routine.

We all have weaknesses (well I like to think so): ice cream, old movies, jewelry, video games, coffee shops, etc. But when they positively impact your professional track, does it actually become a strength? What weaknesses do you have that inspire you in your professional life?

Tags: branding, logos, marketing, nonprofit

Keeping up with the times

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 —

The other day I was working on a document and trying to save something when this box popped up:

Did you catch the word floppy? Because I laughed so hard when I saw this that I didn’t even care that Word lost data.

But it also got me thinking. Looking like you are up-to-date with technology and marketing trends means you need to have all the little things covered. I tend to think that Microsoft is keeping up with what they need to in order to stay competitive. So it was surprising to me that “floppy” was left in the mix, although I have to confess that this box did appear from 2003 Microsoft Word and not the most recent edition.

I only laughed at this blooper because, in my experience, Microsoft has been trustworthy and the mention of floppy did not seem to impact anything I was working on. There was at no point when the only option was to insert a floppy. So Microsoft will survive. But what if this was a detail that was overlooked by a company that had changed all its branding and missed a word on an important part of communication? Or if it was a company that switched to Twitter for most customer service continues to direct customers to an email that somebody doesn’t check often?

I hope this post serves as a friendly reminder to stay on top of communications and to remember the details!

Tags: branding, Communication, marketing, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media

Official Researcher for a Day

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 —

A few weeks ago I shared a research paper that I wrote in grad school with two classmates about creating communities on Facebook. We wrote it almost two years ago, but since the timeline to get accepted into a conference is quite long, we just presented our paper at the Central States Communication Association (CSCA) Midwest Convention a week and a half ago. I thought I’d briefly share my conference-presenting experience!

Not one of the three of us has any desire to include the title of “researcher” in our future but we decided that getting accepted and presenting at a conference would be our last grad school benefit/hurrah of sorts. We went into it with an open mind, excited to present to other researchers outside of a classroom setting.

The week of our panel presentation, we met and ended up with more questions than answers. How much time would we have? Would there be a podium? A microphone? Would there be 20 people or 100 in attendance? Did people want to find holes in our research or would they be mostly supportive? At least the one thing we did know was our material, which we were grateful for. And that there would be three other presentations during our time slot.

Our presentation went pretty well, although we stumbled over one or two points that had become rusty over the past year. It was great to share with others at a communications conference where people actively research a variety of communication subjects. After all four presentations in our time slot, a respondent assigned to our session stood up to talk about how all of the topics were the same and then spent a few minutes on each paper in front of everyone.

The respondent seemed very impressed by ours and it was great to get that response from somebody who didn’t need to give us an official grade! Apparently the theory we chose was unique to communications but worked very well and our ideas could really be used in a variety of circumstances. Success!

It was really valuable and satisfying to see a research paper from infancy (about our shared interest in social media and nonprofits) to being acknowledged in the research world. While it would be amazing to have a published paper, the three of us are completely content and proud to have presented at a conference.

Have you experienced something similar? Was it everything you thought it would be and more?

Tags: Clear Verve, Communication, Facebook, marketing, research

What’s in that envelope?

Friday, April 1, 2011 —

About a week ago, I received a letter from a local nonprofit (who shall remain nameless). It was a charity I was familiar with, so I opened the envelope. Here’s what I saw:

Can you see what the problem is here? How about if I tell you that this mailing was supposed to be encouraging me to “save the date” for an upcoming event. Unfortunately, that’s not the first thing I read. The first thing I saw was that a corporate table costs $800.

My point is not to bash this wonderful charity. They do amazing work. It’s to illustrate the importance of providing good direction to volunteers (or staff people). Make sure they think about what you are trying to communicate when they are working. This mailing contained three pieces of paper. The one they wanted me to read first (to build up my desire to fork over $800 for a corporate table) was sandwiched between the table solicitation and a survey.

When you are marketing your business or charity, details matter. Remember, people judge things they don’t understand based upon the things they do understand.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

Tags: Communication, content marketing, customer experience, Direct mail, marketing, nonprofit

Know Your Audience (Especially if You Accuse Them of Having Rosacea)

Thursday, March 24, 2011 —

I was recently mall-walking with a friend when we were approached by someone working at one of the center kiosks. Normally we would have walked right by, but we were just there to walk and he was offering us hand lotion. Hard to turn down, right?

After a successful hand scrub, hand lotion, and single fingernail shine, he looked at my face and asked, “So, what do you do for the Rosacea on your face?” It was blunt. It was a question. It was supposed to be engaging. But I was taken aback.

“Ummm I don’t have Rosacea.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, your face is red. That’s Rosacea.”

Um, this is winter in Wisconsin. It was cold. The wind was blowing quite briskly. I hadn’t worn a jacket while walking from the car to the mall. I also hadn’t put foundation on that morning. So, yeah my face was reddish. But do you really need to point that out? We stopped to try your HAND products. Don’t point out things that you think need to be improved on the rest of me. And, in my opinion, he should have worked his way there differently if I DID have Rosacea. If he had asked questions like, “oh, do you do anything to calm the redness in your face?” I may have been more interested in what he was trying to sell me.

Would this back and forth have insulted you? I mean, I was (albeit amusedly) insulted enough to ignore everything he said after that point. As soon as he jumped from our hands to my face without us broaching the topic, I was done and tuned out while he went over pricing for all the products we tried, some of which were actually pretty awesome.

My friend, while being just as taken aback as I was, thought his ploy might work on some women. She said that a lot of women purchase a product after being insulted to a point of realizing they need to improve something about themselves in order to look better.

But if you are selling to people who are not like that, you can’t backtrack after an insult.

With all that being said, please take the time to know your audience. And if you are in a place where you are trying to sell a product face to red-face, please use care in how you ask questions that will eventually lead to a comment about your product.

Think I’m wrong? (Not about knowing your audience, that’s a given.) If you think an insult works, I’d love to hear about it. Or if you have your own story about a time when you were insulted enough to be turned off of a product, please share that also!

Tags: Communication, customer experience, marketing, Target Audience

Creating Communities on Facebook

Friday, March 4, 2011 —

The idea started as a graduate school project for a qualitative research class at Marquette University. My group mates and I discovered a shared interest in social media, nonprofits, and, well, not research. We turned all that into a research project that we all actually enjoyed, and that we can now share with others!

We decided to use each of our undergrad schools (Marquette University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin – Madison) to study communication within Facebook fan pages. I’ll skip some of the in-between stuff. We did some research with a theory and it was awesome- all of our findings are backed by facts we can point to. Research can be COOL! But that’s not the point of this.

The featured character of each school is the voice of the university (which we called “The Narrator”). In addition to The Narrator each school has a small cast of supporting characters that fall into two main categories: the silent supporters (who voluntarily liked their school’s fan page) and the active cheerleaders (fans who clicked like and commented on the school’s fan page posts in addition to liking the page).

Now, how can this help you? We identified several strategies that can be used to maximize the effectiveness of current or potential Facebook pages:

Facebook fan page administrators should post regularly to the page, more than once per week. Regular posts not only offer more opportunities to deliver key messages to the fan page, they also keep fans of the group engaged! And this makes fans more likely to make checking the page part of their daily routine.
Post about topics that involve people, places, or events closely associated with your school/business/nonprofit.
Use phrases that resonate with your audience. In our study we observed that phrases such as Go Marquette, Ski-U-Mah, and On Wisconsin, rallied fans of each group. Such expressions help to define a group as a community and illustrate the bond members of the community share.
Pose questions to fans of the group, building opportunities for fans to be active members. When a question is posed and fans are encouraged to voice their thoughts and opinions, they may feel more essential to and active in the group dynamic.

Do these strategies correlate with what you do? Have you discovered any strategies on your own? We’d love to know! And if you’re interested in more about our research or have questions, let me know!

Tags: Communication, community, Facebook, marketing, Social Media

Promise Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

Explanation Overkill

Hello, Time Warner Business Class. Is anyone there?

When Weaknesses Become a Strength

Official Researcher for a Day

What’s in that envelope?

Know Your Audience (Especially if You Accuse Them of Having Rosacea)

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