Marketing Roadmaps

Archives for 2009

Women are more than mommies: More Women

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crossposted to Snapshot Chronicles

I’m sure it will be a surprise to the mainstream media, but women are more than mommies.

Many women aren’t mommies at all, for a variety of reasons that are their business, not ours. Those of us that are parents don’t define ourselves solely by that role, even if we write a mom blog. And definitely when we do not write a blog about our parenting experiences.  When our blogs are about other things important to us — our jobs, our hobbies, our causes, our politics, our opinions, our rants and our raves.

Our lives. Ourselves.

We find our identity beyond our motherhood. It may encompass it, but women are not simply wombs who walk.

But in the minds of the media  and many marketers, women bloggers are mom bloggers. The consumer products companies reach out to moms. The media companies create opportunities for moms. Moms moms moms.

It’s a perennial frustration for women’s blogging community BlogHer, which works overtime to focus attention on the full spectrum of women’s blogging, but regularly sees the media hone in on the one segment. Mom.

Some — myself included — see this repeated reduction of women to our reproductive status as a form of sexism. Moms are about kids. Men are about the world. Moms aren’t serious.

It’s part of a cultural mentality in which a company can argue that lactation is not a condition of pregnancy, and dismiss an employee for taking unauthorized breaks to pump while allowing smoke and pee breaks. Isotoner/Totes, if you are wondering. That Danielle has a nice summary with links to other posts.

Bullshit.

But, you know, we are more than our reproductive organs. Media, marketers should pay attention. We’ve got disposable income. Even if we are moms, we do not spend every cent on floor wax, juice boxes and school supplies. If we aren’t supporting the Disney and LEGO franchises, we’ve got even more money to spend on stuff.

So, why aren’t companies reaching out to us in greater numbers? Why isn’t the media telling the stories about women entrepreneurs, women bloggers, women philanthropists? Grandmas and grad students. Women doing all sorts of things to make a difference in the world beyond just the genetic material we created or might create.

It’s been a refrain for years at the BlogHer conference. This year, the indomitable Grace Davis decided to do something about it. Something to call attention to More Women (than just moms.)

She’s created an online community called More Women.

Why is this important?

If you are a woman blogger, with or without offspring, check it out. We need to make our voices heard as women, not just as mothers.

If you are a marketer, pay attention. We will be heard, and you might want to be among the first to catch our ear.

Laugh if you will. I know the song is a bit hokey and outdated. But for many of us in Generation Jones, it was large part of our development as women and feminists. More than 30 years later,  I  Am Woman still says we won’t give up.

I am woman, hear me roar. In numbers too big to ignore…

Part-time telesales/telemarketing rep opportunity (Nashua, NH)

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My client GuideMark is looking for a part-time telemarketing/telesales rep.

Inside Sales/Telemarketing
Part-time, Contractor

Approximately 20 hours per week, preferably at the GuideMark offices in Nashua, NH,  however there is flexibility for some of the hours to be done from home.

Tele-rep will be:

  • making calls to fill seminar/webinar seats from both house and purchased lists;
  • qualifying suspects & prospects to set appointments for in-person sales calls for outside rep
  • prospecting from purchased lists.

Job requirements:

  • Two-five years inside sales or telemarketing experience, preferably with B2B technology products.
  • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
  • Familiarity with common office software (Word, Excel, Outlook) required. Past experience with CRM preferred.

Interested? Email your resume to gmehr@guidemark.com

Attention: Social Media Innovators

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Did your company, organization or agency execute an interesting and successful social media project last year?

The Society for New Communications Research would love to hear about it, and invites you to submit your project for consideration in its Annual Awards. The deadline is September 7, 2009. More information at sncr.org.

Why should you enter? Of course, there’s the recognition for your project and your team, and who doesn’t like a little recognition for their achievements?

Just as important, though, is what your peers can learn from your best-in-class work. SNCR highlights the winners at the awards ceremony, in association publications and on the program at the annual conference, New Comm Forum.

Don’t miss this opportunity to contribute your work to our collective body of knowledge.

What #maytag & @dooce says about customer service in America… and it’s NOT good

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Earlier this week, a customer service nightmare erupted for Maytag when popular blogger Heather Armstrong, “dooce,” tweeted her frustration with the company’s service, or lack thereof,  to her one million plus Twitter followers.

The incident raised more than a few issues, from whether celebrities have a greater responsibility for restraint in their use of social broadcasting tools like Twitter, to just what IS wrong with customer service in this country. We’ll take each of these in turn, but before you read my analysis, if you aren’t familiar with the tale, read these posts:

The Celebrity Effect

It’s a well-known fact. Celebrities get better customer service than the rest of us. If Caroline Kennedy, Oprah or Madonna called Maytag customer service, they probably would have had a better outcome than Heather Armstrong, even if the telerep were in Bangalore not Brooklyn. There’s real-world celebrity, and there’s web celebrity, and the reality is very few web celebrities cross that chasm.The digerati know who we, and they are, but the public at large, no.

As a result, corporate policies and processes are still trying to catch up with the effect of the web, and the social broadcasting tools at our disposal. They don’t have a good answer for Heather Armstrong or Dave Carroll (United Hates Guitars) because they don’t understand how online influence works.

Here’s the scary reality: a little influence and a good story is enough. Sure, Heather Armstrong’s one-million followers made it happen faster but even someone with far fewer followers can precipitate a customer service nightmare.

Yet, most customer service organizations are still operating under a policy that doesn’t understand the impact of social networks. I completely understand not wanting to respond to “blogger blackmail” but increasingly by the time there is more proof, it’s the VP of Customer Service and the CMO dealing with the problem, not the line.

Social networks give us all far more influence than we had before. Our words are amplified.

Responsibility and influence

Does that mean we have to exercise greater care with our online influence? I think yes. While I understand the frustration that leads to TWEETS IN ALL CAPS, Twitter is like the game of Telephone. Unlike a blog post, in which we can explain, a tweet starts with only 140 characters, and as it is retweeted, original meaning can be lost. Even if we link a post, the original link can be lost.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to tweet about customer service frustrations. We are. It does mean we have to weigh our influence before we speak, and do our best to tell the story, not just vent. Whether we have a one million Twitter followers or merely a few thousand.

We also need to collectively guard against the mob mentality. Sure, we can sympathize with a fellow blogger, but the Twitter pile-on can be a bit excessive.

Think. Before you tweet. Before you retweet. Before you respond.

The fundamental customer service problem

At the end of the day, no one should be so frustrated with customer service that they feel they need to tell 100 or 1 million of their (closest) Twitter friends. Yet it happens everyday. If it did not, @dooce’s fans would not have been so ready to jump on the maytag-hating bandwagon. It isn’t just that they love her, and she had a problem. They can identify. They’ve had a customer service nightmare too.

We know from research conducted by the Society for New Communications Research  that people are increasingly willing to share their customer service experiences online. We also make purchase decisions based on the experiences of others.

That, combined with anecdotal evidence like the #maytag twitterstorm, would indicate that it is well past time for companies to develop a better response to online criticism than “sorry” and throwing tons of resources at high profile problems.

Even better, why not anticipate, and avoid, potential problems. You know, with better customer service.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Social media karma

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It’s time to make a few deposits in the social media karma bank.

The past few weeks, I have been consumed with Blog with Integrity, my book proposal and getting ready for my vacation to Africa next month. In the process, a number of interesting projects and initiatives from my marketing, PR and social media friends have piled up in my “must blog about that” pile.

Former Bostonian Aaron Strout was kind enough to ask me to be a guest on his podcast, along with Brian Morrissey of AdWeek and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, to talk about Facebook Connect. Take a listen. Enteprise web and community managers, you should definitely check out Aaron’s company Powered. They are doing some neat things with enterprise level communities and Facebook Connect.

In my role as an SNCR Fellow, I was privileged to conduct a social media workshop for Goodwill Industries International at their summer national learning conference in Grand Rapids Michigan. The students were great, and really invested in figuring out how to make social media work for their communities. I was already impressed with what the Goodwills were doing with social media, and am looking forward to even greater things in the future.

If you have old clothes and other goods, please consider making the effort to donate them to Goodwill. Your donation doesn’t just fund charitable programs, it funds programs devoted to putting people to work. In these economic times, that literally doubles your money.

My SNCR colleagues Don Bulmer of SAP and Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks are conducting a research study called  The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks. They are interested in the the use of social networks as a tool in the enterprise and part of the decision making process. Please check out the website for more information and if you fit the profile, please consider taking the survey.

Janey Bishoff and the team at Bishoff Communications are helping Boston ad exec Jeff Freedman’s non-profit Small Army for  a Cause raise funds for cancer research in memory of Jeff’s late partner Mike Connell. They are holding a fundraising event on September 17th called Be Bold Be Bald!

Participants will wear bald caps on the 17th to raise funds and awareness of a major challenge faced by cancer patients, losing their hair. More information at beboldbebald.org

Chris Brogan’s book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, co-authored with Julien Smith, went on sale at Amazon today to a very positive reception. Congratulations Chris! I promise to read it when things slow down.

Finally the SXSW Panel Picker went live today. Once I sort out all the various panels from friends and colleagues, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’m cross-eyed trying to figure it all out from the tweets. If enough panels from people I know make the cut, I might even make the effort to go this year.