When unicorns fight bears, we all win: Book(s) on Business of Awesome/Unawesome reviewed

Businesses and organizations have opportunities to be awesome and spread awesome in person and on the Internet every day. Businesses and organizations also have opportunities to be unawesome and spread unawesome in person and on the Internet every day. Fortunately, author/blogger/speaker Scott Stratten (aka Unmarketing) has these phenomena more than covered with his must-read two-headed book, The Business of Awesome/The Business of UnAwesome.

It’s two books in one, unflinchingly honest and unstoppably funny, but it makes one unifying point: How much you care about your customers says far more about your brand than anything else. We’ve all had good customer service and bad customer service, and these experiences linger with us long after we remember our purchase, our meal or our stay.

The Business of UnAwesome side chronicles the many awful things companies do in customer service, marketing and social media. The misguided case of the unfortunately named Boners BBQ, which assailed a customer via social media for her even-handed review (and incorrectly claimed she didn’t leave a tip). Using social media to blast information but never respond to questions. Unbelievably awful marketing gimmicks. Lavishing gifts on new customers while ignoring your loyal customers. Poor use of QR codes. So many truly terrible things somehow conveyed with great entertainment.

If that side says beware the trolls, the Business of Awesome side asks you to embrace the unicorns. Stratten repeats the beautiful story he told at #pseweb about how one man’s heartfelt apology saved his whole view of Hilton Hotels. Even awesome people and businesses make mistakes, but he shows how they make things right. Stratten lovingly details customer service that brings a smile instead of a frown, social brands that make loving them fun, small gestures that make huge impressions, companies that don’t take themselves too seriously but are very serious about pleasing their customers.

A unicorn boxing a bear, or why Chad Frierson from Austin’s Pizza is awesome.

He saves perhaps the greatest example for last: John, a customer who placed an online pizza order and added a small, silly request in the comment field, “Please draw a unicorn fighting a bear on the box.” Chad Frierson from Austin Pizza’s Call Center took the order and knew it wasn’t something the stores were equipped to do. So he drew a picture of a unicorn boxing a bear on a Post-It and sent along with a nice explanatory note ending with “I hope this suits your needs.”

“Needless to say this is the greatest thing of all time,” Stratten worte. “John uploaded the picture to display its awesomeness, which then went viral and was seen by millions of people. This story reigns supreme over all others, not just because it includes a unicorn, although that certainly helps. This was done by somebody in a frontline position with seemingly little autonomy, at no cost to the company, in an industry not known for being mind-blowing. It was done with immediacy and personality, without focus groups or a meeting beforehand. … He simply decided that unawesome is unacceptable, saw the window and acted on the awesome …”

If you’ve enjoyed perusing Stratten’s @unmarketing Twitter feed, checking out his blog or seeing him speak live, you’ll love this book. If you haven’t, yet you work in social media management and/or customer service, you really should catch up on his awesome work.

#pseweb11 review: the importance of being human.

It may sound strange, but my top takeaway from the 2011 Canadian Post-Secondary Web Conference, among all the talk of emerging technologies, involves the importance of being human.

This thread tied up neatly in the keynote by Scott Stratten, the engaging fellow behind @unmarketing, as he humorously yet passionately championed humanity, customer service and authenticity as a way we can better do our jobs in higher education. Tools are just channels, and social media does not automatically provide connections any more than a content management system magically generates content.

Scott doesn’t know the ROI of responding to a student who tweets their acceptance to your college, “and I don’t care,” he said. “Just do it!” As to how we let complicated policies and committees get in the way of good conversations, he recalled asking an educational leader (tongue in cheek, I assume): “What’s your social media policy about talking?” The response, an excellent one: “If someone asks me a question, I just answer.”

Both Scott and Penn State’s Robin Smail (@robin2go, in “You Can’t Stop the Signal, Mal … Authentic Social Media) brought up the now famous example of the Red Cross social media worker who mistweeted on the company account about “getting slizzerd.” And how the Red Cross quickly said “oops,” reassured people they were sober and engendered a lot of goodwill. We are a forgiving society full of humans who make mistakes. In social media, we are greater when we act as humans and connect as humans. Social media channels are merely opportunities to connect … it is our content, our humanity, that determines if they are effective.

Many other presentations in a conference addressing technology focused on the human touch. In “Herding Cats: Web Governance in Higher Education,” Mark Greenfield (@markgr) of the University at Buffalo said the keys to creating a great institutional web presence do not involve web tools … they involve the education and empowerment of everyone working on the web and the buy-in of top leadership. With “King Content: A Social Media Audit,” JP Rains (@jplaurentian) of Laurentian University gave a great study of effective content among several institutions, which all came back to knowing your audience and interacting with them. Ryan McNutt (@ryanmcnutt) of Delhousie University, presenting “Fire and Ice, Status Updates and Tweets: Emergency Communications in the Social Media Age,” likewise looked at how relationships with your campus and community are vital bits of crisis communication plans.

PSEWEB also saw an upsurge in presentations related to the mobile web — increasingly important as our users go increasingly mobile — and how to produce great video on a low or no budget. My presentation on geosocial media (viewable online) may still represent a novel subject, but the audience was wonderful. The conference once again had great variety in the presentations and the institutions represented, and I learned such a marvelous melange of lessons and met such a magnificent mix of people.

Moreover, if you follow the #pseweb hashtag, you’ll see this conference creates a community that interacts throughout the year. Much praise to the tireless Melissa Cheater (@mmbc) and everyone who came together for a first-rate post-secondary education gathering!