Humanizing Brands and Building Loyalty on Twitter with Shel Israel

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Of all my guests, I’m particularly excited about this one, who last appeared on this podcast in a joint interview with Robert Scoble.

One of the best books I read in 2009 was Twitterville by Shel Israel.

I found it so riveting and packed with helpful information that I simply couldn’t read it without a highlighter.

If you like this podcast, you’ll love this book.  

For a preview, listen to this in-depth, one-on-one discussion with Shel Israel about how organizations can use social media to sustain customer loyalty when things go wrong, human interaction as a replacement for the false image branding often conveys and the future prospects of Twitter as a company and a service.

SHOW NOTES

01:30 — Shel Israel agrees to let Eric Schwartzman publish his “Twitterville” book notes, the author’s feelings about the book and whether the title sells it short.

04:45 — Employees are often encouraged to stay in their lane at big organizations. From an operational standpoint, how does someone like Frank Eliason of @ComcastCares get the cable repair truck to show up on time, or get modifications made to someone’s cable bill?  Achieving buy in for social media customer service programs enterprise-wide.

09:37 — A discussion of the Motrin Moms backlash on Twitter prompted by Jessica Gottlieb in response to a commercial she found to be insensitive and whether or not organizations are sometimes too quick to capitulate and rollover in response to customer protests, regardless of whether or not they believe the protests are reasonable.  

13:06 — The herd or pack mentality often pervasive when and where people congregate online, how it relates to individual and organizational behavior and what Motrin’s real failure was in how they dealt with the #motrinmoms incident.

14:47 — Frank Rose’s article in Wired Magazine titled “Commercial Break” about the consumer-generated advertising campaign for Chevy Tahoe, which is often hailed among social media pundits as a case study for what not to do, but which resulted in increased sales, market share, and shorter sales cycles.  

19:17 — Why and how the way organizations like @WholeFoods and @Starbucks approach to Twitter is more in line with the Land of Oz than with reinforcing and underscoring a commitment to transparency and authenticity.  

21:17 — Reconciling Julian Smith and Chris Brogan’s claim in their book Trust Agents that organizations should “never leave an empty, unused account anywhere because it’s as much an indicator of neglect as a dirty desk” against the belief that logo Twitter accounts are, generally speaking, not as effective as individual accounts because who wants to talk to a Coke can?

22:31 — Branding is a creative, false image that companies manufacture to try to convince you that their products, brands, and services are something they’re not. Twitter presents organizations with an opportunity to replace that model with a more authentic, legitimate experience based on human interaction.

25:08 — Identifying the friction between subjective and objective Tweets and whether or not some sort of distinction between the two could suggest a practical, reasonable governance policy for organizations that are on the fence about whether to Tweet under branded or individual accounts.

27:45 — If organizations embrace a Twitter strategy that encourages employees to use their individual accounts, how can those organizations preserve the relationships employees establish on their behalf after they exit the company?

29:07 —  Shel Israel’s experience working with MCI, which at the time was engaged in an aggressive telemarketing campaign, to explain why the effectiveness of organizational communications cannot be measured by raw data alone and the notion that social media may, for the first time, present organizations with a more fiscally-responsible channel for expanding market share.

32:18 — Customer service as the new PR and solving problems via social media in full view of everyone.

33:00 —  A discussion of how automaker Toyota has set up and organized their Twitter presence under a branded logo account @Toyota, but with the employees tweeting on the companies listed in the sidebar are custom background JPEG.

34:29 — Using Andrew Sinkov, who tweets @evernote and Apple Computer as a backdrop, a discussion about the importance of good conversation versus product performance.

35:31 — While superior product performance and qualified employees may render social media less important, sustaining customer loyalty when things break will be much more difficult for opaque, secretive organizations with no goodwill in the online community.

38:08 —  The prospects for Twitter as a company, micro-blogging as a communications channel and concerns about Twitter as a single point of failure.

42:45 — Shel Israel’s new book about the software company SAP, which he is co-writing with Mark Yoltan, SVP of the SAP community network.  

45:56 — End