A brief detour from social media strategies for a moment…. I wanted to update you on something I’ve launched (well, re-launched, really) that I’m pretty excited about.

Back in 2006, I had one of the most popular podcasts on the Internet — the How To Do Stuff podcast. I always tried to make it a quirky, entertaining, and informative how-to series on all sorts of random things. Things you wouldn’t hear or read about on any of the many how-to sites out there.

The podcast came to an abrupt halt in September 2006 when I became ill. Well, I figured, now is the time to re-start it! And so HowToDoStuffPodcast.com is back up and running! New episodes will come every few days. So far, here’s what’s on the site:

• How to Wax Your Ass (by far, the most popular episode)
• How to Train Your Voice
• How to Hammer a Nail Properly
• How to Do a Sit-Up Properly
• How to Draw the Perfect Relaxing Bath
• How to Make Great Beer at Home
• How to Tip a Doorman
• How to Plant a Tree

I hope you’ll visit, listen to a few, and share the word about it. If you have a Twitter account, you can use something like this:

Tod Maffin’s quirky, entertaining, informative podcast is back! http://HowToDoStuffPodcast.com

If you’d like to receive an email each time a new episode/post is published, you can sign up here.

I presented my “What It Is: Awesomizing Your Podcast Using Secrets From Radio” workshop this past weekend at Northern Voice, Vancouver’s annual blogging conference. (I’ll be presenting it again on June 20th at Podcasters Across Borders in Ottawa.)

The basics of the presentation focused on what “it” was — you know, that little something, that thing on the end of your tongue, that makes you know if you like a radio piece or personality or if you don’t. We all know if a host has It, but I tried to outline exactly what It was so one could duplicate it. Here is how I defined It:

• It is intimate. You are speaking directly into someone’s ears — even more so when they’re using earbuds… you can whisper to them. Radio listening is almost always done today by one person at a time; families don’t gather around the radio any more. And yet so many podcast hosts talk as if they’re speaking to a room — they use a hyped voice, or they call their audience “everyone.” Remember, you are only speaking to one person. There may be thousands of these one-person audiences, but aim to speak to just one.
• It breathes. One big mistake that many beginning podcasters, radio reporters, or audio editors make is they edit out the um’s and ah’s, and the long reflective breaths that sometimes inteview guests make. Unless they are completely distracting, you should aim to leave breath in. Breath is emotional punctuation. It gives richness to the words being spoken. One long, thoughtful breath taken before answering a tough question can say so much more than just the answer.
• It seeks the Universal Truth. The great radio shows, like This American Life, are always seeking a Universal Truth in their stories. It’s not enough to report the flow of what happened — try to find out why it happened and what your characters learned from it. In short, great stories give us pause for reflection. Great storytellers draw out those moments of reflection and give us the space to reflect.
• It takes time. It’s said that the best portrait photographers throw away the first few rolls of film they’ve shot with the subject. Why? Because in those first minutes, the subject isn’t as relaxed or comfortable with the photographer, so they appear stiff and uneasy. The documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is famous for interviewing people for hours at length, even if he’s only going to use a short clip, because he knows the longer one stays with a person, the more comfortable they’ll feel, the more they’ll tell you, and so on.
• It is everywhere. Always take your digital recorder with you, because amazing audio will happen when you least expect it. Even if you’ve got a podcast coming up but no ideas on what to talk about, just look around, take in your surroundings, examine the patterns you do each day. Content is everywhere if you know how to find it.
• It does not abuse music. Great music under a podcast should sound like the scoring of a film — like harmony to the melody of the words. Avoid recognizable songs because your listeners’ mind will be transported from your narrative directly into whatever memories those lyrics evoke. Avoid songs with words that “comment on” what you just said — for instance, don’t play “Life Is a Highway” just because you finished talking about hitchhiking. It’s predictable and a cliché.
• It is phony. Realize that the best storytelling employs a lot of tools to make the  a podcast or radio story really come alive. It’s okay to add a pause where an interview guest thinks. It’s okay to “act” while reading a script — in fact, it’s very much your job to make that script come alive.

Rob Cottingham, who pens the hilarious Noise to Signal cartoon, was in the audience of my session and did up this great cartoon summary of my points:

You can watch this video if you like. It’s only about a minute long.

Sometimes I really don’t understand airp0rt security. I’ve been having boarding passes sent to my iPhone for a few months now and generally love it. I tend to lose anything in my pockets.

It struck me recently, that the screen you show to the security people when getting your carry-0n bags screened is pretty easily faked. You just need any barcode and you can type in the info you need below it. This would be about a 30-second job in Photoshop.

Save it to your cellphone and bingo — you’re into the “security” area.

Why would this work? Because the person checking boarding passes to get you to the x-ray lineup doesn’t actually scan anything. They just eyeball it — they’re looking to make sure you’re flying on that date, and they wave you in.

Of course, once you’re about to b0ard, they scan it and will figure out pretty quick that you’re using a fake screen.

But that could still get someone dangerous into what’s supposed to be a very secure area.

Is this something that hasn’t crossed their minds?

A funny thing happened on my way to my email account this afternoon. I got this email from Facebook:

Thank you for your Facebook Ads payment. The details of the charge are below. Please note that, due to processing delays by some credit card companies, this charge may not show up on your statement for a few days.

Transaction Details:
Payment: $51,313 CLP
Date(s) of advertising services provided: December 23, 2009 at 12:00am to Today at 12:00am (Pacific Time)

WTF? I owe $51,313 to Facebook for running two relatively small ads for three weeks?!

I currently have two ads running on Facebook. They look like this (and yes, please feel free to click them; thank you!)

Together, they generate a fair number of impressions but relatively few clicks. Certainly not $51,313′s worth!

And then I remember that Facebook is frequently confused when it comes to its advertising.

Turns out, Facebook was billing me in Chilean Pesos. I really owe a little more than $100.

So as to not stop my heart again, I try to change the currency to my own. Guess what? Facebook has a way of screwing that up too:

Nice.

Some months ago, I logged in to my Facebook profile to throw a few targeted ads up. I’d done Facebook advertising before and found it to be moderately successful — enough that I aimed to do a campaign every couple of months.

Imagine my surprise when I logged in one morning to find this:

For some unknown and clearly arbitrary reason, the gods at Facebook banned my account for running “abusive” ads. The essence of the message above is: “You tried to post an abusive ad. We’ve banned you. There’s nothing you can do about it. Now go away.”

This is bizarre to me. The only campaigns I’ve run are simple and certainly not abusive. Naturally, the Advertising Guidelines they’ve posted don’t help an iota. Under Facebook’s rules, one can’t post an ad that contain “political agendas,” that “advocates against any organization,” or is “grammatically [in]correct and [doesn't] contain proper sentence structure.”

Good thing the web as a whole doesn’t have that last condition.

The ad I ran that appeared to trigger this ban was this:

I’ve read Facebook’s guidelines several times. The only thing I can think of that bugged Facebook was the use of the CBC logo. However, considering CBC has officially endorsed my unofficial CBC fan page as its own, it’s rather a moot point. Or perhaps it’s because I didn’t put a period after “corp” — even though most Canadians know the CBC’s nickname: “The Mother Corp.” But I can’t believe this ad is “abusive,” as Facebook claims.

More Arbitrary Facebook Ad Guidelines

Among the offenses that will get you banned permanently from placing ads on Facebook are:

• Using a ‘&’ instead of the word ‘and’
• Ending a sentence with an ellipse (‘…’)
• Running an ad promoting a political point of view

The Solution

Facebook should take a lesson from Google, which at least tells you why your ad wasn’t approved and gives you an opportunity to fix it. If Facebook were to just email and say “You should use a ‘.’ after ‘corp’,” I’d be happy to fix it. I get my ads run; Facebook gets money. Problem solved.

Instead, people create a second profile with a fake name and run ads under that name instead, pointing to the same destination page as the original banned ad. In fact, considering these banning decisions are made by actual human beings, there’s a good chance that one could post the exact same ad under a different name and have it sail right through the approval process. One person’s “abusive” is another person’s “mild irritant.” We’ve already seen this in the approval process of Apple’s App Store.

Unfortunately for Facebook, I’ve given up trying to get this ban reversed. Instead, I’ve put that money into Google ads and other online promotional means.

Just back from some engagements last week and thought I’d pass this funny little tale along.

I’ve got a few A/V requirements when I present, notably that I like my notebook right at the lectern with me, and that I like the podium (stage/riser) to be free of anything else like chairs, tables, and so on. I tend to move around a lot when I speak, so this helps make sure I don’t faceplant (which, amazingly, hasn’t yet happened in 13 years of professional speaking).

Fast forward to the evening before my presentation. I’m at the event’s reception, meeting the delegates and sponsors, and up walks my client. We introduce each other, go over a couple of last-minute details, and then she leans in and asks, very politely: “Um, so we were able to get you a clear podium, but I wasn’t sure why you needed one?”

I told her that I move around a lot and would just prefer that there’s enough room up there for me to wander. She gets this blank look on her face, then one of those “Oh-my-god-I-completely-misunderstood” looks on her faces.

Turns out, she thought a “podium” was something you stand behind (actually, that’s called a lectern), not something you stand on.

And this was the result.

I sometimes wish customer support staff should simply not be able to use canned response templates. More times than not, I find support people don’t read your email at all — instead they seem to glance at it, find a few keywords, and match it to a canned response they have. Prepared.

Here’s today’s exchange with NetNation/Hostway, the provider I used in the past (and still, sadly, retain some domain names with).

Enjoy this nonsensical response.

Their original email — 2:24 a.m.
The service(s) listed below are about to expire and require your immediate attention. You must renew or your service(s) will be deactivated upon expiration. Your service(s) and possibly your business will be interrupted. Domain: thirdtuesdayvancouver.com.

My response — 11:19 a.m.
I would like to renew this, but when I go to account manager (following your link) it doesn’t show me that domain. Help! I do not want this domain deleted.

Their “response” — 11:48 a.m.
We received a request that you no longer wanted this domain, so it was closed, and autorenew was removed. If this is no longer the case, please provide us with the last 4 characters of your account manager password, and we will re-open it, to enable renewal of the domain.

Do you have any experiences like this that turned frustratingly comical?

I make a lot of phone calls in the day. Note that I didn’t say I talked to a lot of people. Rather, and probably like you, I spend my day listening to a lot of corporate “please hold” messages. It’s gotten to the point that I can pretty much guess at exactly what they’re going to say before they plop me into the queue.

And I realized today that pretty much everything they say on those messages is a lie. Case in point:

“We are experiencing a higher-than-average call volume.“

Bullshit. I’m looking at you, Shaw Cable. You’ve had that on your “please hold” message since 1821. It’s not that you’re suddenly experiencing more calls, it’s that you’ve chosen to not add more staff. I mean, did suddenly — just before I called on Tuesday at 11:20 a.m. — hundreds of people flood your call centre to order the iPhoto slide show channel?¹ Give me a break.

Some companies even have the audacity to take this one level further with “Because of overwhelming demand for our product, we’re experiencing…” Really Rogers Cellular? You’re doing that well? Because your financial statements are reporting the opposite — that, in fact, your bottom-line income² for 2008 actually dropped as compared to the previous year. Yeah. Overwhelming demand.

“Our menu options have changed.“

No. They haven’t. Companies use this line because they want to rope people into listening to their whole spiel first — which often includes product ads.³ Menu options don’t change often. Even if they do, do you really have to leave that on your message for the next five years?

“So that we can route this call to the right agent, please choose from one of the following options.“

This is one of the oldest tricks in the books. It’s called the “Operator 123″ trick in marketing circles. You know those ads that say to call their number and ask to speak to operator 123? Here’s the secret: there is no operator 123. That was ad number #123 you just responded to and by asking for a specific operator, you’ve helped them track which ad you responded to.⁴

That’s basically what’s happening with many of these corporate “please hold” messages. You’re going to talk to the same operator no matter what button you push. What you’ve done instead is logged a little reference in some tracking database what product you own or what your complaint is. And then, you simply get pawned off on whichever agent comes up next.

“Your call is important to us.”

Oops, excuse me — I throw up in my mouth a little. The paradox here is that the companies who dole out this rote, weak statement are the ones who seem to care the least about their customers — at least judging from their customer service. I mean, how do they know my next call is going to be important to them? Maybe I’ll just yodel for the first 30 seconds. That’s not going to be so important…

“Please choose from one of the following options.”

This would be great, if the options they’re offering have anything to do with why I was calling. Today, my financial institution called me seven times in the space of an hour. I was on an important call at the time and let it go to voicemail. Since there were so many calls in the space of such a short time, I wondered if there was something wrong. So I called their number.

Now remember, I am calling to ask why they called and if it were important. Which option would you pick?

1. Check your balance, pay a bill, transfer funds, or change your personal access code
2. Branch information or for our phone directory
3. Loans, mortgages, or lines of credit
4. Information on our new tax-free savings account or other investments and rates
5. Visa questions including lost and stolen cards
6. Personal or business banking needs

I guessed 6, only because it was the most generic. Of course, it was at the end.

Which of course, brought me to the most frequent lie of them all:

“To make sure you get excellent customer service, this call may be recorded.”

Um, what?! I’m going to get better service because a hard disk somewhere is recording our conversation? Get real. I have no doubt that if the call goes weird, you might be able to use it to train future reps on what to do, but the fact that you’re recording our chat won’t help me get anything. Here’s the real reason they record the call: Legal reasons. Organizations these days want a record of everything. Especially government and public sector organizations. It also helps them prove to you they were right and you are wrong, should it come to a dispute. But really, aren’t they always?

There are fewer and fewer companies which offer something as simple as this:

You’ve reached the customer support line of ABC Widgets. Please hold for an operator.

Would it be that hard?

Luckily, the Internet has a solution for everything, and some sites offer a tip sheet on which buttons to press to get through to a human being faster. For instance, when you call Tivo, just say “Live Agent” at the recording and it’ll blast you through. Not so easy at Dell Support where the secret code is⁵ 1, 7266966, 1, 4, 4.

1. This is actually a real channel — called The Frame — that Shaw sells. Go watch channel 165 on Shaw digital cable and see for yourself.
2. which Rogers calls “comprehensive income”
3. Call the Apple Store in Vancouver and the first thing you’ll get is a message proclaiming proudly “The iPhone 3GS is here!” Then, when you actually get to speak to a human you discover that no, the iPhone 3GS is not here. Hasn’t been for weeks. And they have no idea when they’re coming in.
4. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing; it’s pretty clever marketing, actually.
5. I’m not making this up

This is actually on a car rental company’s contract. “Peace of mind” is the name of its insurance plan.