Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 47

Social Media Tip: Know What Business You Are In

Do you know what business you are really in? If you don't, it may be difficult to have an effective social media outreach strategy.

As I asked as an example in my post "What Is Strategic Marketing and How Is It Connected to Social Media?": Are you in the box manufacturing business or the business of supplying containers for different customers' needs?

Why is this distinction so important for effective social media outreach?

I gave a 10-minute presentation to my Beverly Hills Leads Club chapter based on the concepts in the above blog post. Afterwards I got an email from another member questioning whether his company's ideal customer was searching the web for the company's services.

The more I thought about what this person's company can do for businesses, the more I realized that he probably doesn't understand what business he is really in. In fact, if he realized what business he is really in, he would probably understand how to connect with potential ideal customers on the web.

And part of that connection would entail teaching potential ideal customers what his company can do for their businesses.

Basically it comes down to:

• First, understanding what benefits you offer your potential ideal customers.

• Second, figuring out how to educate via social media those ideal customers about how you can help them achieve their goals.

While this sounds simple, it isn't.

But once you commit to developing this marketing foundation, you will be on the path to using strategic social media outreach to get in front of and make connections with your ideal potential customers.

Warning: If your social media outreach efforts bring your potential ideal customers back to an old-fashioned website that is un-social media friendly, you need to eliminate this disconnect immediately before investing large amounts of time and effort in social media strategies.

If you need a website that is social media and search engine friendly, see our Miller Mosaic call-to-action website package now.



© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC.

How to Add a Google Plus Profile Headline

Google+ profiles offer the opportunity to have a strategic headline similar to the headline you can have on your LinkedIn profile.

The headline in Google+ is NOT the same as the "Introduction" in your profile.

In Google+ after you click on the profile icon at the top of the screen that takes you to your profile, you automatically see "Edit Profile" to the right on the same line as your name.

When you click on this, you aren't yet in editing mode for your profile. You have to hover over a specific area of the profile and then click on that area to get the editing mode for just that area.

But nowhere in that screen could I find the ability to add a headline, as I had seen on other people's profiles.

Refusing to give up, I clicked on various things until I found the answer. And now I'll share this with you:

Under your profile name is a line that says "A brief description of you" — that's where you click to add a headline — and a little box opens.

When you're done typing in the box, or when you've exceeded the unknown number of characters, you click on save. Voila! You now have a headline that can be revised by the same method (clicking on the headline to open the little box).

And I've been revising my headline. As Google+ is connected to Google's search engine algorithms, I've been considering what keywords do I want in my Google+ headline.

Now on LinkedIn it is against the terms of service to put a URL in your headline (even though it won't be a hot link). But I'm emulating social media guru Chris Brogan on Google+ as at this time he does put his site URL in his headline. For now I'm trying my company's URL in my headline and hoping it isn't a violation of Google+ terms of service.

Oh, yes, Google+ is yet another brave new social media world, albeit one with great opportunities. The sooner you jump into the water, the sooner you'll learn to navigate in Google+.

See my Google+ "work-in-progress" profile at http://gplus.to/PhyllisZimblerMiller

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC, which offers "done for you" and "do it yourself" social media services at www.millermosaicllc.com/services/

Information about Phyllis' fiction books and ebooks is available on her Amazon author page at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazon

What Is Strategic Marketing and How Is It Connected to Social Media?

If marketing and promotion are the actions your company takes to let people know what products and/or services you offer, strategic marketing is directing those actions to the people most likely to buy your products or services.

While this may seem logical, in practice this is often not done.



Think of traditional television advertising:

Even if people actually watch the commercials during a TV show, how many of the commercials shown are actually pertinent to the lives of the TV show viewers?

Even shows whose demographics are presumed to be known cannot show only ads that interest the show's viewers. After all, the same consumers are not necessarily interested in buying diapers as well as cholesterol medicine as well as any number of disparate products or services.

Now let's look at strategic marketing for an imaginary company selling college dorm room products:



Instead of spending gobs of money on TV advertising with the hope that some of your target market will see your commercial (and then later act on the commercial's information), you can engage in targeted social media campaigns that directly target your audience.

Plus social media campaigns (on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) can enable your target audience to take action immediately to download a free coupon or sign up for discounts or even, believe it or not, BUY your products online and have these delivered to the college dorm.

Of course, even with using social media, not all social media sites are right for reaching your target audiences:

First, you need to clearly define what business you are in. For example, are you in the box manufacturing business or the business of supplying containers for different customers' needs?

Second, you need to clearly define who your target audience is. Business to business or business to consumer is only the top level question of this defining process.

Third, you need to clearly understand how social media works. Just because social media sites are easy to join does NOT mean that effective social media actions are intuitive.

Fourth, you need to figure out which social media sites are best for creating online conversations with your target markets.

Fifth, you need to implement social media activities on those strategically defined social media sites in order to connect with your target markets.

While this does require more effort than simply paying huge gobs of money for your advertising agency to create and place, for example, TV commercials, your return on investment for attracting your target audiences – and getting these people to buy your products and/or services – can be much higher.



If your company needs help with any of these steps in strategic marketing and social media, email me at pzmiller@millermosaicllc.com

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC.

How Our AT&T U-Verse Problem Was Solved

If you followed my blog post and updates for "I Have Lost a Day of Work Because of AT&T's Mistake (and Inability to Fix It)" you'll know the details of our Internet access problem.

There's a surprise twist.

First, Twitter to the rescue:



I learned later that @ATTJason is a manager who scans social media sites and blogs for people whose AT&T problems haven't been solved or who have been mistreated.

This explains why he contacted me through Twitter although I had already unsuccessfully tried getting help from @ATTcustomercare. (FYI: @ATTcustomercare does NOT care.)

After several tweets and DMs to exchange info, @ATTJason called in Robert Glover, who is part of a very specialized team (think Special Ops).

In the meantime, I got another call from the Philippines, and Glenn said that he read in my record that the problem had been solved. Not true. And Glenn asked if I had canceled the service. Again not true.

Also, the U-verse installer, Ravi M., left after two-and-a-half hours of not getting authorization to install the U-verse service because of what turned out to be a truly messed-up account.



Here's the twist that Robert Glover discovered:

There's a cable box for our area two blocks east of us. And on the street one block over is someone who had U-verse service and canceled it. But AT&T insisted we already had the service (and turned off our DSL) because this person's service had actually not been disconnected and that person's record was messed up with ours. (Everything is done by phone numbers so I still don't understand how this happened.)

Once Robert figured this out and created a new account for us, he worked with our installer, who came back even though it was after hours. Ravi went to the box, straightened things out, and installed the U-verse, which worked for a few minutes.

Then Ravi went off to check the box once more and the Internet access stopped.

Now even later in the evening, Ravi came back and checked numerous things until he got the service to stay on.

Yes, @ATTJason, Robert and Ravi saved the day – and it was a 12-hour day from beginning to end.

But no one from U-verse marketing or advertising (the ones spending all the money on advertising) contacted me, apologized, and offered me financial compensation (perhaps six months or a year free service) for the loss of an entire day of work for both Yael and me.

PLUS … I said to Robert:

What if I hadn't known how to use social media to repeatedly ask for help and @ATTJason hadn't found me and called in Special Ops?



Robert told me about the site www.dslreports.com, and he said that, had I known about this site, I could have found the email for the Special Ops unit – uversecare@att.com (there's no phone number for this unit).

But I later went on that site and looked all over for that email but couldn't find it.

I highly advise you that, if you have U-verse service or plan to get it, you keep this email for your own use.

And while I again thank Twitter and @ATTJason for coming to the rescue, I am still left wondering about a telecom company where so many customer service employees in the U.S. and the Philippines kept saying for hours: "We can't help you. It's someone else's department."

Note to the FCC: Regarding AT&T's merger with T-Mobile, you might want to investigate this pervasive AT&T customer service problem. AT&T definitely needs a company-wide reorganization if the company ever wants to provide good customer service.

I Have Lost a Day of Work Because of AT&T's Mistake (and the Inability to Fix It)

Note: I am writing this post because, even if this problem eventually gets solved, I want to help prevent this problem for other people. AT&T desperately needs to overhaul its systems integration and customer service options in order to actually provide good customer service.

I started writing this post when my Internet business partner Yael and I had already lost two hours of being on hold to try to get our Internet service restored after AT&T mistakenly turned it off.

Here are the basic facts of this debacle:

Yael and I needed a faster Internet connection than the DSL we had.

On July 15 we decided to upgrade our Internet service to AT&T's U-verse service. The earliest available installation date was June 20.

But late on July 18 our Internet access went off.

The morning of July 19 Yael and I spent hours being transferred all around the globe (literally). Apparently one AT&T record mistakenly said that we had been upgraded to U-verse on July 15 while another record said we were awaiting the service upgrade on July 20.

AT&T TURNED OFF OUR DSL ACCESS BECAUSE WE SUPPOSEDLY NOW HAD U-VERSE.

You would think it would be simple to have the DSL access turned back on until the U-verse installation. If you thought so, you would be mistaken.

Back and forth between customer service, U-verse and sales. And then stuck in the black hole of different people in the Philippines reading from a script and repeatedly say "I am sorry."

Eventually my insistence on talking to someone who could do something about this black hole got me transferred to a tech support supervisor in the Philippines named Glen.

He got me into yet another queue because "we are only tech support and can't deal with your problem."

Now Glen stayed on the line waiting in the queue for the order department in the U.S., which was "experiencing heavy phone volume" so no idea how long this wait would be.

And throughout these hours I was asked the same questions over and over again, including whether a U-verse technician had installed the U-verse service. NO, NO, NO, NO!

After an additional 30 minutes on hold, I was connected to Cindy in Reno, Nevada, who informed me that once the DSL was shut off (BY MISTAKE BY AT&T) the service would take 4-5 days to be turned back on.

Let's think about this. In a world where the Internet takes us around the world in seconds, AT&T can't turn back on my DSL that AT&T turned off by mistake in less than 4-5 days!

This is absolutely incredible – and totally unacceptable.

(AT&T: Please stop spending all your money on advertisements for your service and instead spend some money on actually having systems in place that provide good service.)

Then Cindy in Reno told me everyone was in a meeting. I told her to "Get someone out of a meeting."

Supposedly a manager would be pulled out of a meeting.

After another long period on hold (coming up on almost three hours in total with different people around the globe), manager Natalie told me that I was in the wrong department and she couldn't help me.

Apparently you are always in the wrong department with AT&T and no one can help you.

I had to get out of this black hole of endless transfers and endless periods on hold only to be told that particular person and that particular department couldn't help.

I told Glen I was leaving for a location to publish the post that I had been writing while all this was going on … and on … and on.

Glen asked me to not yet publish the post until he called me back.

Okay, he called back about 30 minutes later and said a U-verse technician would be out within a four-hour period this afternoon.

BUT that still might not get my Internet access fixed because, once the equipment was installed, it could take a certain period of time (of unknown length) before the access was actually granted.

Question 1: Will the tech show up?

Question 2: Will I get my Internet access back today for my INTERNET BUSINESS?

Except for Glen, not one person of all the people Yael and I talked to (she tried calling various other AT&T customer support numbers while I was on hold in the Philippines) cared at all. Not one person said, "I will get the person high enough up in the organization to take care of this right now."

Question 3: Why does AT&T pretend that it cares? The Twitter username @ATTcustomercare also did NOT help. Really, AT&T cares? I think not.

In the struggle of three hours, only one person seemed genuinely interested in trying to help me. But if that person can't do anything, what good is his sincere interest?

In conclusion, in order to help other people not have to experience this problem and lose a day of work, AT&T must immediately integrate it services and provide true customer support. (How about for starters a high-level ombudsman with the power to immediately get things done?)

Or perhaps the appropriate U.S. government regulatory commission should look into AT&T's services and customer response mechanisms. Maybe it takes this kind of power to get AT&T's attention.

UPDATE: Tech installer has arrived with INCORRECT INFORMATION! Now let's see what happens.

ONE HOUR LATER: The tech installer hasn't started installing U-verse yet because he has been on the phone with AT&T all this time. Why? Because our AT&T records continue to be so messed up that he can't install the U-verse service.

Business integration anyone?

30 MINUTES LATER: Glen from the Philippines called to ask how things are going. I tell him that 90 minutes into U-verse installer's visit nothing is happening because our account is still messed up. Apparently the person who took the sales order for the upgrade really messed things up. BUT WHY CAN'T SOMEONE ELSE FIX THIS MESS-UP?

And I've been polite up until now and sent @ATTcustomercare private messages (DMs). But now the gloves are coming off — I've sent a public tweet asking why someone can't help.

ANOTHER 30 MINUTES: @ATTJason saw my public tweet and is trying to help. But so far only DMs back and forth — no action.

UNBELIEVABLE: Installer's two hours (of having done nothing) are up so he plans to leave!



Leave your comments about your experiences with AT&T for Internet access or with other Internet access providers below.

Speaking of eBooks, Book Marketing and the South China Sea

In the last few days I've had several guest posts go live, and I have listed the topics and links here in case any of these posts appeal to your interests:

How Self-Publishing at Age 60 Led to a Career (in Social Media)

And for the same site The New Opportunities in eBook Platforms

eBooks: The New Frontier of Book Marketing on the Web

Are You Taking Advantage of Social Media to Promote Your Business?

And two new posts on the home page of the website for the eBook-only novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS – www.MollieSanders.com – which deal with the increased tension in the South China Sea between China, other Asian nations, and the U.S. Navy.

I hope there's at least one post that appeals to you.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC, which offers "done for you" and "do it yourself" social media services at www.millermosaicllc.com/services/

Information about Phyllis' fiction books and ebooks is available on her Amazon author page at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazon

We Changed Our Thinking on Website Design

Until now Yael and I would say emphatically that contact information should be on the right-hand sidebar of a website. In fact, we often did not recommend putting contact information on the ABOUT page.

But the widespread use of smartphones has dramatically changed the website design landscape.

Why?

Because that right-hand sidebar most likely does not show automatically when people look at a website from their mobile phone. Only the main area content shows.

Now we believe that the right-hand sidebar should only be used for duplicate information – information that appears elsewhere on the site – or information that is not high priority.

Because of this, Yael has been revising our site www.MollieSanders.com for the eBook publication this week of the novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS. She has made layout changes in connection with our new layout design thinking.

The right-hand side of the site now contains duplicate info about buying the book because this info is now on the main content area of pages. And the contact info is on the AUTHORS page.

This is why we love WordPress websites so much. As things change on the Internet, we can easily revise our websites to reflect these changes.

And no matter what new online tools have become available, websites have to be periodically checked to make sure all the information is current.

Have you checked your own website recently to see if it is effective for the increasing use of smarthphone Internet access as well as ensuring all your information is current? If not, now is a good time to do so.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC, which offers "done for you" and "do it yourself" social media services at www.millermosaicllc.com/services/

Information about Phyllis' fiction books and ebooks is available on her Amazon author page at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazon

Three Faces of Personal Profiles: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

In replying to a comment on my "Book Marketing" LinkedIn group, I wanted to use the person's name to clarify to which comment I was responding.

Only there was no person's name. Yet again someone had missed the point of LinkedIn profiles, which are listed under PEOPLE.

A LinkedIn profile should be a person's name and personal professional information. Then a person can create a COMPANY profile for his/her company. And these are listed under COMPANIES in LinkedIn.

In a private message I sent this explanation to the particular company and added that the same is true of Facebook. When people join Facebook they must first create a personal profile in their own name. Then they can create a Facebook Page for their company, their book, their brand, their cause, etc.

Now we come to Twitter. Twitter works the opposite. You can choose any Twitter username you want (that is available). It can reflect almost anything – your company, your book, etc. – although it should NOT be the name of a famous person or famous brand if you aren't that famous person or famous brand.

But when it comes to the NAME field of the Twitter profile info, if you are an individual or an individual representing your company, it is more "social" to put your own name rather than the name of your company or repeat the Twitter username.

I DMed this additional info to the person from my "Book Marketing" group. I got back a DM that several people tweeted on the company account so that no one person's name could be put in the NAME field.

I responded in a DM by sending the link to the Twitter account of the Staples team. This is an excellent example of how to make a company's Twitter account "personal" even if several people are tweeting on the same account.

Check out this example now at http://twitter.com/#!/staplestweets and note how the different people use their initials after their tweets so that it is clear who is tweeting what.

Hats off to @staplestweets – I wish more companies having multiple people using an account would follow this "social" example.

P.S. If you're interesting in book marketing, visit my open "Book Marketing" LinkedIn group.



© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC, which offers "done for you" and "do it yourself" social media services at www.millermosaicllc.com/services/

Information about Phyllis' fiction books and ebooks is available on her Amazon author page at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazon

If You Sell Products or Services You Are in Business

If you are a comedian looking for paying gigs or a dog groomer looking for dogs to groom, you are in business.

Why am I stating what may be obvious?

Because of an email response I got in which the person said something was too "business" and the person was in "entertainment."

Let me state this as clearly as I can:

"Business" is NOT a dirty word. In fact, it is what fuels the U.S. economy — the more business the healthier the economy.

And while we are on the subject, "selling" is also NOT a dirty word. We do need to sell our products and services in order to have an ongoing business.

But if the sales part of your business makes you uncomfortable, you should be embracing social media wholeheartedly.

Why? Because social media is about sharing information related to your products or services rather than pushing out sales messages. And this sharing of information helps create relationships between you and your target audiences that can lead to the purchase of your products or services.

Instead of assuming that what worked in the past still works today, it's important to have an open mind to learning about the new opportunities that online marketing presents to your business.

And the first place to make sure that you are presenting your business effectively in today's Facebook era is your website. Read my blog post "The Importance of Effective Websites" about how you are presenting your business online.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC, which offers "done for you" and "do it yourself" social media services at www.millermosaicllc.com/services/

Information about Phyllis' fiction books and ebooks is available on her Amazon author page at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazon

The Importance of Effective Websites

I met with Buzz Park of True Presence and we discussed how so many people are wedded to websites that hurt rather than help their businesses.

The problem is that most business owners have not studied what makes an effective marketing-focused website.



When you don't know what make a website user friendly, social media friendly and search engine friendly, you can easily be mistaken about your own site. You may mistakenly be guided, for example, on what you personally think "looks good."

Now this wouldn't be such a problem except that ineffective websites can impact on your business success. If your website isn't easily found through search engines or if your website loads so slowly because, perhaps, you have a Flash home page, you've unintentionally shot yourself in the foot.

Of course, most business owners are very busy running their own businesses. It's not feasible for them to carve out time to learn what constitutes an effective business website. But, as the saying goes, it's what you don't know you don't know that can hurt you.

I encourage everyone to devote a few minutes each week to reading one or two blog posts about the elements of an effective business-focused website. As I wrote in my blog post " Google Plus Could Help Businesses Find Content to Share on Other Social Media Sites," we may all soon be able to take advantage of Google+ to find this type of content and deliver it to us.

And as a shoutout to how social media can help businesses, Linda Rose Levine of Rose in Bloom told our West LA chapter of Our Common Thread how she had gotten clients through social media. "Social media really works," she said.

If you haven't yet started to take advantage of the power of social media to get in front of your business' target audiences, I encourage you to add this to your "must do" list for successful businesses in 2011 and beyond.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC. The company works with clients to clarify their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and then use that USP for creating relationships on social media sites.

Miller Mosaic has a set of three how-to social media videos – Twitter, Facebook Page and LinkedIn – to help businesses and other professional service providers effectively set up their accounts on these sites.