Okay, folks, it’s time to interject a little honesty into the social media dialogue.
Despite grand platitudes of how Twitter is ’shepherding a new era of corporate transparency and a spirit of engaging with customers,’ the fact remains that even the best corporate examples of such engagement on Twitter remain trivial at best.
Just because a company launches a Twitter page and assigns a marketing intern to tweet replies back to anyone who tweets them does not mean they have engaged in any kind of conversation or dialogue. They most certainly haven’t changed any paradigms, shifted any culture, or launched any new eras.
An @Reply Is Not a Conversation
Social media “evangelists” frequently fall into the mistake of trumping up this kind of direct contact as more than it is.
A conversation is not an answered question nor a thrown kudos. An example:
This friendly response to someone’s tweet is, to be sure, a nice little gesture on Rescuetime’s part. But it’s just that. A nice gesture. Good customer service. Put down that pipe, Shaggy; it’s too early to spark that bad-boy.
Tod Maffin and Malcom Gladwell have been selected as the two keynote speakers at the upcoming F5 Expo in Vancouver. Hear Tod’s story of how he went from being an always-on multi-millionaire dotcom executive to crashing into depression and addiction. A story of hope and recovery, with a lesson to everyone in the tech industry; Tod will outline his five key tools to surviving in the techno-busy lifestyle.
Here’s how a local TV station covered my half-day workshop, Leading the Facebook Generation, in Medicine Hat last week.
What the Meeting Planner Said
“This event more than doubled any other event we have ever had so we were very pleased. The feedback from the evaluations provided was very positive… Everyone enjoyed Tod’s sense of humor and the way he gave the presentation. On a more personal level I enjoyed working with Tod thoroughly from the beginning with calls and emails as I was getting prepared for the event and when I met him. Tod was very accommodating and helpful. I have organized events for many years and I can honestly say that Tod has been one of the most accommodating and friendliest speakers I have ever had the pleasure to deal with.” – Vickie Keeley, Medicine Hat HR Association
What The Audience Said
“I just wanted to let you know that I was at the Leading the Facebook Generation seminar [in Medicine Hat], and being 22, I thought you were hilarious and pretty much right on the money. I look forward to seeing another seminar should you ever come back to town!” – Julia Jordan, Medicine Hat AB
“I really enjoyed the presentation. It was one of the best presentations I have ever been to, the information was great and you have an amazing ability in keeping the audiences attention. I have already taken a lot of what you said in your presentation and used it in my day to day communication with the older generations in my life. You are awesome. Thanks for making the stop in small town Medicine Hat!!!!” – Lacey Amen, Medicine Hat AB
I don’t know why, but I’ve never liked picking up my voicemails. My entire communications system revolves around my email, so I’ve never understood why voicemails don’t show up in my email box.
A number of providers can do this for you — it’s likely that your phone company offers this kind of service, where people leave a voicemail and the audio is emailed to you.
I use a great service called PhoneTag that goes one stage beyond that — it actually transcribes the message for you. You forward any calls you miss from your office or cell phone to the special number PhoneTag gives you. To the caller, it sounds like any normal voicemail, complete with your voice prompting callers to leave a message. When they do so, a human being somewhere transcribes their message and that text is sent, along with an MP3 of the actual voicemail, to your regular email box.
Google Voice and others offer something similar, but their systems rely on a computer program to try to decrypt what someone is saying. As such, it doesn’t know when a comma or period goes, can’t figure out when someone is spelling out a name, and so on. The people at PhoneTag are usually very good at trying to accurately transcribe the message. They’ll even put [?] after guesses if it’s not clear. If you’d like someone else to take a whack at transcribing the voicemail, just hit Reply and Send.
I’ve found voicemails come to me transcribed less than five minutes after they were left. I never, ever actually “dial in” to pick up my messages.
The other advantage to this is that because it arrives in your email box, you can store the message and audio forever. Search your email for someone’s name and you’ll get their emails and voicemails sent to you. It will even put their actual name in the From line of the email if you upload your address book to the system.
PhoneTag comes with unlimited voicemail box storage, you can still dial-in and pick up messages if you like, and 24/7 customer support. You can pay in any of three ways:
$0.35 per message
$9.95 per month for up to 40 messages a month ($0.25 for each message over 40)
$29.95 for unlimited messages
Whether you are in a meeting, showing off a home with a client, or on the golf course, you can instantly see who called, what they said, and you won’t have to listen to all of your messages to find out about an important missed call. I often hit Forward and reply via email to the person who left the voicemail. They’re often pretty amused to see their words in text form.
Tod Maffin and Malcom Gladwell have been selected as the two keynote speakers at the upcoming F5 Expo in Vancouver. Hear Tod's story of how he went from being an always-on multi-millionaire dotcom executive to crashing into depression and addiction. A story of hope and recovery, with a lesson to everyone in business, Tod will outline his five key tools to surviving in the techno-busy lifestyle.
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“I just wanted to let you know that I was at the Leading the Facebook Generation seminar [in Medicine Hat], and being 22, I thought you were hilarious and pretty much right on the money. I look forward to seeing another seminar should you ever come back to town!”
“I really enjoyed the presentation. It was one of the best presentations I have ever been to, the information was great and you have an amazing ability in keeping the audiences attention. I have already taken a lot of what you said in your presentation and used it in my day to day communication with the older generations in my life. You are awesome. Thanks for making the stop in small town Medicine Hat!!!!”
