GerardMcLean.com

Chris Brogan coined the phrase “grow bigger ears” and for the past two years or so, as brands got comfortable with social media, it was more important for them to listen more than it was to jump out and converse with us. For those brands that got social media early on, they are already listening in more places and with larger ears than their customers are probably comfortable with. For brands that are just starting out on the social media path, start running; you’re already behind.

But it might be time to stop growing bigger ears and start growing bigger hands. It might be time for brands to start integrating social media within their operations and not just their marketing or customer experience departments. We don’t really want brands to “converse” with us; just do for us.

What do I mean by this? A couple of examples.

CPG Brands at Retail
Many brands pay merchandising service organizations to go into retailers and perform audits, new product cut-in, restocking, point-of-purchase placement, etc. What if one of the point of purchase placards just had a @twitter address and said something like: “Tweet you are here, take a picture of the 8oz bottles of BrandX and get a coupon for a buy one/get one free.” How many time-stamped, geo-tagged photos and fan tweets do you think that CPG brand would get? Would this create more demand for at retail service due to an increased turn on the product? Maybe, but until someone tries it, we’ll never know.

Pizza
On Tuesday afternoon, about 4:00pm, Papa Johns sent out a tweet something like “Hungry? Order a Papa John’s pizza.” Oh, man was I ever. It was a long day and I did not have time to eat. So, I clicked on the link. Bang, right to the front page. So, from there, I had to log in.. can’t remember my password… looked it up.. got to the order page, had to decide… oh, y’know what, I’m just not that hungry.

What Papa John’s could be doing is give me the option to save a Twitter preference. Next time they send me a tweet, all I have to do is reply to it and my preferred pizza has been ordered, paid for with my save credit card, in the oven and on it’s way to my front door; all just by replying to the tweet. (I know, there are some issues with privacy/security and such, but maybe they could send me a DM or an email confirming I did indeed reply to and order a pizza.)

What’s missing in social media right now is that last ten yards of connection to the customer. Sure the smart brands are listening with big ears but until they start growing bigger hands and integrate social media into their operations, social media will be the stuff of late night jokes and CNN scare stories instead of Harvard Business School case studies.

I’ve never had a formal mentor arrangement with anyone. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but perhaps I’ve always associated with folks who weren’t closers. And when feeling closed upon by my “mentors,” I backed away. Perhaps that is the way these things are supposed to work; a support system of bumper rails without risk of co-dependency.

Looking back, when asked to be someone’s mentor, my first question was always, “What do you want?” It was almost always met with indecision. “I just want some help. My career seems to be stalled, I’m feeling frustrated and taken for granted. I want to be more like you” was a common reply. Little did any of these poor, hapless, rudderless folks know that I was just as lost. I guess I just hid it better.

But without a direction, without knowing what they wanted, I could not help. But I tried anyway, helping perhaps to define the direction, the needs and wants and winding the charge own the path. But because the direction did not come from the fire in the gut, it usually burned quickly, smoldered and finally died. Most drifted off, afraid somehow to tell me they no longer wanted to be mentored.

For myself, I’ve always wanted a mentor and have attracted a few. But what started out as a mentor relationship slowly evolved into someone older guiding me into a career they wished they had, not what I wanted. We usually parted without a goodbye.

And now blogging has replaced the need to mentor for me. If any of my ramblings are helpful in any way, take them, use them and make them your own. But don’t ask me for more than I am willing to give here; both of us will be disappointed and part strangers.

This mentor round-table challenge was thrown out by Holly Hoffman of WorkLoveLife.com

I was researching on some history and came across an article that I had written for a paper version of NARMS Today back in 2005. I thought I would share. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed re-visiting it.

The week before the NARMS 2005 Conference, I visited my son at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I am a bit of a newspaper buff, so I grabbed a copy of the Oxford Times at the local gas station and stuffed it in my briefcase, intending to read it on the plane ride to Tucson.

On the plane ride home, after several days of intense NARMSing, I remembered my copy of the Times and pulled it out to read. It was a typical neighborhood newspaper, full of local stories on garage sales, lost cats, high school sports and blurry photos contributed by local residents. It was printed with heavy black ink that smeared on my palms and probably eventually made its way to parts of my face.

But I didn’t care. I immersed myself in the banal stories and took in the heavy smell of ink and paper.
Something about holding a newspaper connects the reader with the stories and photos on a personal level. Then it occurred to me that NARMS.com is a lot like a local newspaper.

Both – local newspapers and NARMS.com – thrive because they are organic and specific. The web site is successful because it is organic. The parts of the website that are most useful are those that connect people to people. NARMS developed it because of core needs of those who were involved in the retail service industry.

NARMS did not set out to create a new product or service but simply to fulfill an existing need in a more efficient way. Many of you remember the dot-com frenzy of nearly a decade ago. Not many of those websites are in business because they sought to create a need instead of filling one that already existed.

NARMS.com is also successful because it is specific. The JobBank and the Recruiter, for example, don’t aspire to be the most searched or hold the greatest number of jobs andprofiles. It is there for one reason — to match retail service reps with retail services companies who need them. Like a local newspaper, NARMS.com has a specific focus and delivers only the tools and information that are most critical for its audience.

To some, it must feel strange for an article about technology to be looking back at what has been called a dead and dying industry; newspapers. But technology does not exist in a vacuum. It exits to serve human beings with organic and specific needs. Absorbing and applying lessons taught by feeling, watching and experiencing an industry that thrives in spite of the onslaught and seduction of “new media” and 24 hour news, helps provide a clear vision for our web-based services to the NARMS membership.

Gerard McLean, President, Rivershark, Inc.

I ran out of coffee filters the other day. Not a big deal, I’ll just hike to Kroger and get some more. When I got there, I saw the empty peghook that once held my filters. Moreover, there was a red tag on the hook informing me that this product would be discontinued.

Here’s why this is a big deal. A few years ago, the 53rd automatic drip coffee maker I have ever purchased in my life, died. Just quit. Arrgghh, there has to be a better way. And there was. Melitta makes this carafe and cone set that only requires hot water and gravity to make coffee. The only wrinkle is that it also requires a size 6 cone filter. But, since Kroger carried it, not a big deal. I adopted my new system. And it was great because it was so simple. It only really required gravity to work. And gravity was free.

Then someone at Kroger decided they were not selling enough #6 filters. And, without asking me, they just quit carrying them.

Amazon.com still sells the #6 and I just bought approximately 2.6 years worth of filters. Until my filters arrive, I am using paper towels to line the cone. In the event Melitta decides to quit selling the #6 cone filter altogether, I know I have 2.6 years to come up with an alternate solution to a perfectly good system. But, what I foolishly adopted outside of the normal 10-cup basket filter automatic drip coffee maker is now showing signs of that death-march to obsolescence. An inferior technology persists because it is ubiquitous.

We get change and new stuff. Really, we do. It excites us. It gets us out of bed every day. But we also have a library of 8mm reels our childhood is on that we can’t watch, a library of 8 track and cassettes our music is on that we can’t hear, a library of VHS tapes our children’s lives are on that we can’t relive and a mountain of Zip Drive cartridges our careers are on that we can’t share or pass on. We’ve seen the result of a system being brought to its knees when a tiny bit of the supply chain becomes obsolete right after we dedicate a large chunk of our lives to it.

We grew up in large families (which is why there are so many of us now clogging the ladder rungs to the top) where everything from dinner to clothes to mom’s attention was a competition with the people you lived with. Most of our families had one car and one income and choices were made based on the supply of resources. We got jobs that promised us work, retirement accounts and free benefits that seemed too good to be true. We took them and squirreled them away, believing that one day they would be gone (turns out we were right.) We’ve lived through and survived at least three recessions and a very large oil embargo. We’ve seen an explosive increase in the divorce rate. In short, we’ve been conditioned to know that free is never unlimited free. Free will run out. Free has a catch. The good times do not last. Commitments are broken every day without apology, remorse or obligation.

And now Twitter and Foursquare want to be the operations in our supply chains, somewhere between service delivery and invoicing. I can see the possibilities for several industries we do work for and it is very, very exciting. But Twitter is free, it has really no reason to be there tomorrow, no obligations, no contract with me.

As I reach for the coffee filters that are no longer there, between boiling the water and lining the cone with carefully folded paper towels, I pause and think, “What if Evan Williams decided to just quit doing Twitter?”

Talk is one thing. Money is quite another.

A couple years ago, this thing called Twitter popped up on the landscape. Sure, it was a lot of fun and pretty much a waste of time. The kids in the company took to it right away and started following each other, tapping out little notes on what they were doing at the time. And they had their Facebook, blogs, Flickr accounts and all sorts of other social media venues they were wasting their time with.

“Let them play,” was the mostly unofficial, official stance many companies took. “At least it keeps them happy and out of my hair.” And every now and again, the bosses would throw these kids a bone, allowing them to speak at a conference or work on a project that involved some social media listening dashboard and other harmless, tech stuff that would amount to nothing. And it would shut the kids up for a while so the bosses could get some real work done.

But then the bosses started noticing that lots of people were on Twitter and Facebook. Lots of folks were interacting with the kids at the keyboards and the kids were becoming the voices of their brands. And the game began changing from one of cheap talk to revenue opportunities being let out the door.

Now there is money to be made collecting, packaging and selling information. Suddenly, social media was no longer a toy. And the walls started to go up around the kids who were the face and voice of the brands. Average Joe could no longer interact with the familiar, casual voice on the other end of a twitter stream. Contracts needed to be signed, releases vetted, HR needed to authorize who could and could not speak at a particular venue.

“The voice of our brand must be aligned with the organization.” “Materials must be pre-approved to ensure no company secrets are revealed during your presentation.” “Legal must approve your tweets to ensure there is not implied contract being made.” And it goes on.

And suddenly — without much fanfare save the deafening sound of large walls falling into place — social media is now a business. And make no mistake about it, a damn serious one. Because social media is no longer just marketing, engagement or customer experience; it is operations. And operations people are deadly, stealthy serious players.

After thinking a bit about what sort of New Year’s Resolutions I needed to make a few days ago, I decided that I would put a list of five things together that I will NOT do for 2010.

Here goes, in reverse order of importance (IMHO):

5. I will not use free software or services
I have come to the conclusion that there are two things true about “free” software/services. 1) Business that uses them only have the advantage until they break, cease operations or go off-line unexpectedly and 2) “Experts” who advocate that you use them are only trying to force you into reason #1 to keep themselves at a competitive advantage.

4. I will not create any more Google Alerts
Google Alerts used to be useful, but now I get so many of them so fast and so many of them lead to a false positive that they are just clogging up the inbox, wasting my time reading them and causing undue anxiety.

3. I will not sign up to receive any more newsletters
Eventually, the really cool stuff that I needed to know that you were publishing turns into a spam email every day/week/month and a really lame Holiday greeting card at the end of the year. If I need to know something, I’ll Google it. If you are doing your job well, I will find you there.

2. I will not create any more user accounts
If you require that I create an account to read your stuff, use your “free” online tool or order from your online store, I’m just going to shrug and move on. I already have accounts with the major online retailers like Amazon, B&N and MacZone. The chances that I won’t be able to find what I need from them is not very high, even if the price is a little bit more.

1. I will not read any more blog posts about using Social Media.
Everything that needs to be said about social media has already been said. I already know how to use Twitter and how not to use Twitter.

That’s my list and I’m sticking to it. What about you?

My BFF Rupert Murdoch* has been taking some hits lately about him wanting to block Google from indexing his sites and putting up pay walls. I understand his reasoning and don’t think he is too far off the mark. In order to explain my thinking, I have an analogy.

Say you own a small grocery store. It is in an urban setting and there are lots of other stores in the neighborhood that is similar to yours. You seek more foot traffic because some fancy college grad with a marketing degree convinces you that the more traffic you can pump through your stores, the more likely these people will stop and buy some impulse item you strategically place near the exit.

In order to produce more traffic, you encourage people to stop by and use the restroom. (the other guys down the street make you buy something first!) As word gets around, the locals and tourists stop into your store and use your restroom, flush the toilet, wipe their hands and stop and buy something cause they kinda feel guilty using your restroom for free. You’re not making enough in additional sales to cover the cost of the water bill, the additional cleaning staff, the paper towel, the soap and various other things that go with making a restroom public. In addition, the city health department caught on that you were making your restroom available to the public and cited you for not being handicap accessible. You pay the fine and some contractors to put up grab rails, new toilets and a ramp. But, the marketing dude you hired kept swearing that with patience and persistence, the free restroom policy will pay off.

“Give it time. That is investment. It’s all about giving back,” he says.

As time wears on, more people are using your restrooms because they heard from a friend who heard from another who tweeted that your restroom was free. And, these folks didn’t even bother to buy anything anymore. They just wanted to use the restroom. Moreover, lots of them stopped by the magazine rack and leafed through the latest issues without buying, especially on rainy days. If you didn’t want them in your store, why did you let them use the restroom? Meanwhile, the cost of water, soap and cleaning kept going up.

Then a recession hit and you had to fire some people, including the smart marketing degree guy who seemed to want to text and tweet more than he wanted to stock shelves and help paying customers. You took down your “Restroom open to the public” sign and immediately, the freeloaders started blogging and tweeting that you do not understand customer service in the Internet age. Your customers who came in and bought something could still use the restroom and they started to remark that is was much cleaner than it had been when the public at large was there. In fact, the experience for paying customers became so nice, they didn’t even notice you raised your prices $.10 here and $.20 there.

And your bottom line got better, even when your foot traffic dropped significantly. Your water, cleaning and supplies bills went way down. Almost none of the folks who used your restrooms for free ever came around anymore and when they did, it was to insult you and your stupid, miserly ways.

That is what I think Rupert was going for. Maybe.

Feel free to snark on twitter. Opinions are free, but if you would like to buy something on the way out, you are welcome to.

*I don’t really know Rupert Murdoch and we’re not really BFF. He’s probably a pretty dangerous person with his nutty politics and such. But, he is not stupid and he really does understand people. He understands they fear more than they think and worry and dream more than they act. Video here. Gawker.com didn’t want me embedding the video for free. Ironic.

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world.

John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it). His store is here on the Internet.

For comparison, Gary is at http://www.winelibrary.tv. John is older and has a calmer presentation style, but his passion erupts as he speaks. He is what Gary will be with age.

I received a call from someone who pulled my phone number from the Whois record of a client. He was having trouble signing up for some services on a Web page because he didn’t know where to go next. In his mind, the page simply ended without any direction.

When I went to the page in question, it was clear in my mind that the “Complete your profile now” was an obvious link and that he should click it to go to the profile page. But he didn’t see it. I wonder how many others didn’t see it and didn’t bother calling me.

So, I added “Click here to complete your profile now.” Yes, I know that is so Web 2000, but I don’t care. Users expect to see “Click here” as a call to action and regardless of how dorky it looks to Web designers, we’re going to use it. A lot.

Click here is alive and well. And works.

The Center for Media Research sent out their email Research Brief today about how small business are not into social networks for leads. As a small businessman myself, I agree with them. Kinda. I can’t recall the last lead I got twittering out my latest status or a coupon deal or where I am going to be at a certain time if anyone wants to chat, etc.

But then I got to thinking about how all the ways I use social media networks and how we employ them for a lot of our clients and kinda changed my mind. The problem is not the social media networks not being effective, but the MARKETING of the social media networks not being effective.

For example, one particular client uses Twitter to send out job posts, facilitate responses back to the post which enables qualified applicants to reply very quickly and the listing client to fill the job quickly. This in turn enables them to schedule in-store work faster and drive their completion rates higher with their clients. Yet, if you asked the primary client if social media networks are helpful in generating any leads, they would say, “Not at all.” Mostly because the process is automated and invisible, but also because it is not marketed heavily. They know traffic is up dramatically and that jobs are being filled exponentially faster, but because they don’t have a direct hand in the process, it is taken for granted.

Moreover, since the client is also on a WordPress framework, their bi-weekly articles are now more “Google/Yahoo!/Bing-friendly,” which enables potential customers to find them more readily as SEO/SEM is easier to implement. Since all of this is invisible, again, their answer would be, “Not at all.”

Tools like RSS, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN are being used effectively by small business even if they are used invisibly. Just because the CEO doesn’t tweet doesn’t mean they are not using social media. Dig a little and you’ll find many probably are. They just don’t know it.

For small business, it is all about the return today for effort I put in yesterday. Market social media without the “engagement” and “conversation” hype and stick to the operational parts and only then will we see a rise in the “Very helpful” 3%.