5 Lessons from Reese’s Christmas Tree

Jenna WinslowToday I have a guest post from Jenna Winslow.

Jenna Winslow is a recent graduate from the University of Southern Indiana with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing.  Jenna interned at Signarama Evansville during her senior year and is currently the Digital Marketing Intern at Ten Adams Marketing.

5 Lessons from Reese’s Christmas Tree

Social media is not only a fun place to interact with friends, family, and businesses; but is also quickly becoming one of the leading marketing platforms. Social media offers the ability to reach consumers and to connect with them unlike ever before.  And in our rapidly evolving technological world, social media can either make or break a company.

Unhappy customers often go straight to social media to complain about a product or recent negative experience with a company.  And if they are able to express their rage in less than 140 characters, they typically tag the company’s social media account directly in the post.  All eyes then turn to see how, or if, the company responds.

There have been various cringe-worthy social media fails over the years: companies responding inappropriately to complaints – or just flat out ignoring them.  There are plenty of lessons that can be learned from these mistakes; however, just as many, if not more lessons, can be learned from social media wins – when a company nails their response to public customer complaints, settling the issue.

Reese’s had a social media win of their own after releasing their annual Reese’s Christmas Tree last November.  Social media savvy customers headed to Twitter to express their thoughts regarding Reese’s Christmas Trees – or more like the lack of resemblance to a tree.

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Despite being put in a difficult situation for the entire world of social media to see, Reese’s was not fazed by the complaints and used them as an opportunity.  Their response is what I would call the biggest social media win of 2015.

Reese’s created a Twitter campaign exclusively focused on the ugly, misshapen trees, making it official with the hashtag #AllTreesAreBeautiful.

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Reese’s did not simply apologize to their customers, although they did apologize. Reese’s took their response one step further by admitting the Christmas Trees are not perfect, and fully embracing that fact.  “It’s not what it looks like, it’s what it tastes like.”

Here are 5 lessons we can take away from Reese’s Christmas Tree win:

  1. Your customers are on social media, and you should be, too; build connections and reach customers you otherwise may not have been able to.
  2. Monitor what people are saying; turn complaints or bad reviews into an opportunity to gain feedback and learn from your customers.
  3. Never ignore a complaint on social media; not only does this reflect poorly on you, it could also be a missed opportunity.
  4. Engage with your customers on social media; whether a comment or post is about a great experience or a complaint, it requires a prompt response.
  5. Use social media to improve customer service; this can be as simple as responding to a complaint, and shows customers you value them.

Connecting with customers is easy thanks to social media, creating the opportunity to provide exceptional customer service.  Your next response to customer feedback on social media doesn’t have to become an entire Twitter campaign – but it could!

How Do You Treat Your Champions?

What is a Brand Champion?Cheer

Brand Champions are some of the most valuable assets a business can have. You know the people that love love love you, tell all their friends and family, maybe they write a blog post, tweet, or share photos of your brand or product on social channels.

And that – that is HUGE. A digital Brand Champion who is willing to stand on the digital rooftops and share about you are is more influential than all your paid advertising.  See, as consumers, when we are look at new things to buy, we trust the recommendations of our friends more than the paid advertising spots.

Do you even know who your Brand Champions are?

If you haven’t already, look at who is opening, sharing, and forwarding your email newsletters. Keep a list. Look at who is tweeting, @mentioning you, and sharing your posts. Keep a list. Look at who is sending you referrals on a regular basis. Keep a list.

How do you treat them?

Do you say thank you? Do you retweet, repost, or @mention them on occasion? Do you offer them specials or VIP access to things? Maybe send them some swag? You should. They are fan-freaking-tastic. The influence they have on your potential new customers is priceless.

Want more Brand Champions?

See above. The point is, if you cultivate relationships with the people that are your biggest brand advocates, they will keep doing it. Passion is contagious. Ever notice on Facebook the one thing that 16 people shared? One person was passionate about something enough to share it. That passion compelled another person, and so on and so forth. So, in the big picture of things, if you cultivate the relationship of a few Brand Champions, you can exponentially increase your reach to many.

What went wrong?

If you’re thinking – “People used to love my company. What went wrong?” I ask you,  how did you treat your Brand Champions?  What did you do when your biggest brand advocate had an issue or a problem? Did you go out of your way to make it right? Or, are your britches so big that you said – “Eh, so what? It’s one account, one sale. So what if you go to my competitor?”

I had this happen to me twice in one day! Two separate companies (that don’t pay me or give me anything, yet I regularly give them digital love) both said “Nope that’s the rule, I won’t budge.” I was shocked.
Here’s the thing – if a client is willing to give you a chance to make it right, take it. Most will just leave. If you do make it right, the love they have for you will increase. If you don’t work with them to make them happy, you’re not losing a just a customer. You’ve lost a Champion. Think about that. If they go to a competitor and your competitor is good to them, your competitor didn’t just get a new customer. They probably got your Champion to root for them now.

H Schultz quote

Businesses: Overcome Your Personality Disorder

Guest Post today by Jeremy Secrest

“Wah, wah, wah.” – all the grownups in the Charlie Brown shows.

Is that what your potential customers are hearing when you talk? Are they not connecting with your message?

Maybe your personality (or lack of one) is getting in the way.

Personality can seem like a fluffy term for business. It can come across like a trust fall or some of the more odd team-building exercises.

Yet, your customer has a personality.

And so do you.

 

Your customer is a person. And so are you.

And unless you’re selling to robots, people connect with people.

People who need people.

 

People have personalities.

 

Discovering and defining your brand’s personality is key to understanding how to best connect with your customer.

Not in a smarmy, leisure suit kind of way.

In a people kind of way.

The way you communicate through your emails, sales messages, advertising and social media needs to match who you are. It needs to resonate.

Just like a bookish introvert looks awkward trying to be the life of the party (so I’ve heard), you’ll look awkward if your messaging doesn’t fit who you are. Or sounds like a robot.

You’re not talking with robots.

You’re talking with people who have a desire that you’re working to help them achieve.

To connect with them, the way you communicate needs to be really clear. Which helps them understand how you can help them find what they’re looking for.

Personality helps clarify your message and connect the dots to connecting with your customers.BrandTellShare_Square

How do you discover your brand’s personality?

Check out #brandtellshare, a workshop on messaging, media and marketing April 12 with Dana Nelson, Damon Hancock, and Erin Bemis at Fat Head Media. One day. $99. Learn more and register at brandtellshare.com

Not ready for that, but still want to learn more? Get a free branding starter guide at mybrandstory.co.

Jeremy Secrest is Director of Marketing & Development at the Evansville Christian Life Center and founder of Mybrandstory.co.

#SocialSuccess What is Facebook Live?

Today on 44 News This Morning I talk with Melissa Schroeder about the new Facebook Live feature (for iphone users only at this time.)

Social Success on 44News This Morning@DanaMNelson stopped by to explain Facebook Live on this week’s edition of #SocialSuccess.

Posted by 44News This Morning on Friday, February 5, 2016

What made this more fun? My intern from the University of Southern Indiana, Jenna was broadcasting / recording the whole interview on Facebook Live. Watch it here:

We are live at 44News This Morning talking about the new Facebook live video feature

Posted by Dana Nelson on Thursday, February 4, 2016

 

#SocialSuccess – Facebook Video Upload vs YouTube

Today on 44 News This Morning I talk with Melissa Schroeder about which is better: Posting a link to YouTube

or

Uploading your video Directly to Facebook.

Watch to find out how to get the maximum impact from your videos!

Facebook Video Posting – 44News This MorningSocial Success: Talking about the value of posting videos directly to Facebook for maximum impact on 44News This Morning.

Thanks to @DanaMNelson and St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center: Evansville, IN.

Posted by 44News This Morning on Thursday, January 28, 2016

Facebook’s New “Pick Friends” Feature

Have you seen Facebook’s new “Pick Friends” feature? Facebook is messing with the algorithms again and rolling out a number of new features that will help them better understand what you want in your newsfeed. One of these changes is simple; you should see a box like the one below pop-up in your news feed. Simply pick your top 30 people, and Facebook will make sure next time you look at Facebook, the first posts you see are anything posted by one of those 30 people.

Pick Friends

It appears to be different than the “get notifications” feature, which is still active. So, if you’re stalking someone and get notifications for every post, no need to add them to the top of the feed. (Or if you were using the notifications feature to make sure you saw most of your boss’s or best friend’s posts, you can turn off notifications and add them to your ‘prioritize who you see first’ list.  This will save you some notification headaches.

If you don’t see this in your timeline, or you want to change your top 30 people, simply go to the top right of your Facebook page in the blue bar, and click the lock icon with the 3 bars – this will give you a drop down menu. Choose the “News Feed Preferences” item and you’ll see the pop-up below. Click to select or unselect people or pages.

Untitled image (1)FB menu w arrow

Let the Journey Begin

I got a text on Wednesday morning offering me a ticket to the WIllow Creek Global Leadership Summit. (I love this conference. I just failed to get my early bird ticket and to ask off work. I really didn’t think it was in the cards for me to go.)PhotoGrid_1438959979580

“SURE!!” I replied.  “What do I need to do to “earn it??”

“Just post on your social platforms your experiences.”

“Sold!”

(DUH. I would do that even without asking!) I thought.

 

So I went out on a limb, asked my boss Casey Valiant at Signarama if I can ditch two important events and basically take two days off.

He didn’t even hesitate. “Sounds good,” he said. Part of me thinks he might be doing the happy dance for two days of quiet, but I really know that he cares. They all do – the Valiants are just those kind of people. They care about our personal growth as much as our professional growth.

The first thing I took note of was the companies who bought tickets and paid to send their leaders to a 2 day Christian-influenced conference.  Companies like Springleaf and FC Tucker, who sent over 20 people each. Others like Berry Plastics, Bethel Manor, Bob’s Gym, The Dream Center, Flanders Electric, GAF Roofing, Heritage Petroleum, Jacobsville Join-In, Old National Bank, Victoria National, and Walther’s Golf n Fun all sent leaders to this event.

The second was people like Sally and Dan who took vacation time to make sure that they could be here.

I had PAGES of notes and tweeted EVERYTHING.  Had to earn my ticket right? If you want my notes, go back and look at my twitter feed for those two days. If you want condensed notes, check out Trey McClain’s blog. He is the pastor of One Life West and my ticket sponsor.

During the last session.  Craig Groeschel, of LifeChurch.tv, killed it. He gave an example of how and why as your organization grows, your mindset has to change. He then offered 5 areas for us to improve.

1) Build your confidence.

2) Expand your connections.

3) Improve your competence.

4) Strengthen your character.

5) Increase your commitment.

He was very clear, we could only expand one area. Not 3, not 4 – ONE. He asked us to write all 5 down and be thinking on which one we would choose. He then went on to explain each.

As I listened, I thought “These are all really good. It’s hard to choose. Let me see. I think I am a good networker and have some strong connections. That’s my tag line after all. “Making connections to build community.” I can knock that one off the list.” I then listened to all the others as he explained.

 

Now came the time of truth. What to pick? As he called them off, we were supposed to stand. As he called off # 2 “Expand your connections,” I jumped up out of my seat like a kindergartner who had the answers. Wait What? That was at the bottom of the list?? Well, OK.

Expand your connections, it is.  So to make it stick, I tweeted:

I choose to expand my Connection. @craiggroeschel @lifechurchtv #GLS15 @onelifewest @treymcclain @DaleBeaver #HoldMeAccountable please

As soon as it was over, I rushed over to Trey. I thanked him for his part in what felt like something BIG brewing. I saw people waiting to talk to him, so I asked him to pray for me and moved back to start packing up. That’s when I realized Dan Sully was waiting to talk to me, not Trey.

He came up and pointed out a young gentleman, and told me we needed to meet. I then asked him if he had seen my last tweet.

“No, was it about international issues?” By then, the young man had made his way over and told me that it was nice to meet me. Dan had told him about me, and felt we had to meet. I shared with him what I just experienced. I told him that it’s not often you can be so sure that God wants you to meet someone.

“It’s VERY nice to meet you.” We continued our conversation as I packed up to leave.

Later that afternoon, I called Dale Beaver, my pastor, at Christian Fellowship Church.  I shard the story and asked for prayer.

As I was on the phone with him, I remembered the first time he really counseled and prayed with me about my business.  It was on a Monday. He preached on the Sunday before. (He wasn’t Senior Pastor at the time, so he didn’t preach every Sunday.) I still have his sermon notes.

“God made you to walk among those you love

and those you don’t yet know.”

Words he spoke in February of 2010 have been playing on endless loop like a bad 80’s song you can’t get out of your head.

I don’t have a clue where this mission/quest/challenge to expand my connections is going to take me. I don’t know how this story ends. But let the journey begin as I publicly commit to connect to more people on a deeper level, and open my heart to possibilities.

 

Tired of Getting Facebook Game Request Notifications?

As requested, by more than one person, today I will help you fix another annoying Facebook notification.   Your Friend has invited you to play <Insert annoying game you have no time for>

The Problem?

Annoying notifications about games and farms and crazy stuff you have no time for, and quite frankly you wonder what your friends are doing playing those games anyway.

So let’s fix it.

When you get one of the notifications like this one:   Simply hover over the notification and two things will appear on the far right side, A small circle and a small gray x. The circle is labeled, that is to say that when you hover over it, a small black box appears and says ” Read.” Note, that if you have previously read it, the circle is not filled in and is labeled “Unread.” The X is labeled “Turn off.” Click that X.   You will now be prompted with a question to make sure you really want to stop getting game notifications.   Click “Turn off.”   You now get a small print message that has two more  options.  “You will not get notifications from <Insert annoying game you have no time for> Undo  Report r spam”    That’s it. Done. Now you do have to do this for each game. Be patient. Do this every time you get a game notification and before you know it, you won’t have any game requests! #WritingFor30 What else frustrates you? I have to write on something every day for the next 30 days. I might as well answer some questions.  Follow along with the other #WritingFor30 bloggers with that hashtag.