I have had it with Vodafone, we spent our holiday dealing with an Indian call centre and threatening bills in the thousands for data charges we had no visibility over, no control over and we had really tried to avoid this by buying two data bundles at the huge cost of $400. Insane and now a TIO case. The TIO stated in their 2011 report

“There has also been an alarming increase in the number of consumers with high debts because they could not monitor their usage adequately, the majority using mobile phones,” Mr Cohen said. Of the 10,469 issues reported to the TIO about inadequate spend controls, 7,844 were exclusively about mobile services – an increase of 119 per cent compared to the previous year.

“It is in everyone’s interest to make sure there are effective and easy-to-use monitoring tools available to consumers to track their own usage. Service providers should also monitor customers’ usage and notify them if they are accruing unexpectedly high bills to avoid people not being able to pay their bills and facing credit and debt collection problems as a result,” Mr Cohen said.

Could we resolve this issue easily – NO. The customer service we received was so bad, so time consuming and so dreadful. When we looked to another supplier,  our friends and colleagues tell us on Facebook every mobile provider is rubbish (albeit Vodafone is cited as the worse of the worse, here in Australia AND in the UK).

I read an article by Michael Winner, while in the UK, whiling my time away with Vodafone Australia’s indian call centre…Michael said “Who says we get happier with age, I am getting more grumpy” As a restaurant critic he says one his favourite remarks to a waiter is “Could you send a search party to the kitchen to find my main course”…The waiter goes away saying “Grumpy old sod” and of course he is quite right. Why shouldn’t Winner be grumpy when left sitting waiting endlessly for a meal. One of his better examples, that I can completely understand is restaurant receptionists, “Do you have a reservation in a surly contemptuous voice as if you are a non-person if you don’t!”

Why shouldn’t we complain if the meal we get served is awful?

Why shouldn’t we complain if Vodafone try to rip us off on data charges that are daylight robbery?

Why shouldn’t we complain when we can’t get a shop assistant to help us in David Jones?

Why shouldn’t we complain when we have to deal with robots on customer service lines?

Why shouldn’t we complain when you deposit a lot of money in your savings account, which states “here to make the most of your money easily” and they can’t answer their “Always Open” telephone line? ….just listen to music and listen while we tell you in an automated patronising voice how to make a desposit ….(Yes UBank its you)

Why shouldn’t we complain when our major telco can’t get one bill correct in any one month over a 12 month period.

Yet when we dare to complain our complaints are met by an aghast sigh and/or an attitude of “here we go a difficult customer”and/or a foreign call centre that hasn’t a clue.

Seriously that is why half these companies and brands are frightened of Twitter, Facebook and social networks. People like me are getting grumpier and grumpier and they are telling everyone what the real promise is behind the brand BS.The real promise is really really bad customer service and it is getting worse across the board.

No pics no flowers no hearts – here is what you need to tick off if you want success because often the ideas that win are never grand

1. Make it simple

2. Solve a problem ….your audience, maybe they are time poor – save them time, maybe they are just wanting to find that thing – give it them without the bullshit marketing, etc – give them what they want

For me as a small business owner – I DONT want ebooks or information, I don’t have time – I want leads, I want to promote myself – create that for me – I will be with you

See what I mean

3. Don’t believe more numbers = more business

Less is more these days – deep connects, better more meaningful relationships and a form of reality will help you win

Big or small business – there is one rule to follow KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID – KISS

Here is the good – top virals of 2011 from Ad Age here

The bad from eConsultancy here

And to end the year with more research that shows our dearly beloved Marketers don’t get social media (or maybe don’t get their audience) all here

I am sure there will be more lists to come.

Truth is

1. Clever creative works whatever the channel – The Good

2. The bad – don’t patronise the audience or try to lie

3. Marketers  - well 2012 maybe your worse yet. Clients are waking up to the public and starting to realise maybe marketing has to change, just like the rest of many industries.

Just think about it, you wouldn’t be planning to open up a shop selling cameras next year would you? Maybe you shouldn’t be trying to set a marketing campaign using the usual next year either

Have a great Christmas and here is to some refreshing new thinking for 2012

Oh lord – they pay me money….. I pay my mortgage.

But when they don’t listen to you, for what they pay you for, what do you do.

I always said what I do is like an endurance test. A constant education of what I know intuitively & thorough 24 years of experience starting in consumer electronics in Europe – helping companies to embrace digital and a new digital economy. It’s changed everything.

But sometimes I want to give up, because often, I get big nods and often big cheque’s, then no one acts properly on the advice I give them…groan! They make it so hard and throw up their own brick walls.

This blog post, is not directed for one company, or for me, it’s for many me’s and lot’s of  companies facing the digital native and the digital economy.

What do you do then?

How hard is it for you? Supplier (giver) Client (receiver) ?

Then today we have the shocking story by Philip Sherwell that Facebook refuses to shut rape page run by schoolboy

Extract:

With nearly 210,000 people indicating that they “like” it, and many million of monthly visitors, the “alleyway” page is the most popular. Others include “Abducting, raping and violently murdering your friend as a joke”, “Pinning your mate down while someone HIV positive rapes him for a laugh”, “Police call it a restraining order, we call it playing hard to get” and “Turning into a chain smoking sexual predator when you drink”. Many of the regular users who “post” on the pages are young Australians and Britons- many still at school, judging from information on their own Facebook profile pages. The website allows any child aged 13 or older to open an account.

Rape is never justified

One of the big issues that faced the affiliate marketing industry way back through the late 1990’s and 2000’s was controlled placement on ads to ensure brand ads did not appear on porn sites. It seems Facebook hasn’t countered that its own ad policy may need some work on it.

Extract:

Major companies that advertise on Facebook were furious to discover that their advertisements were appearing on the “rape page” and demanded they be removed. They included Barclays, 02, John Lewis, Sony, BlackBerry, American Express, Groupon, Heinz, National Lottery, the White Company and PepsiCo. After complaints from several businesses to Facebook, the “alleyway” page was “whitelisted” last week, meaning that no adverts could be rotated on it. But advertisements continue to appear on other pages where the content was just as offensive.

The reality of these scenarios is that as Facebook has been a mass Internet eco-system in its own right, it is hosting the R rated material based on its own view of governance and ethics, not necessarily of its members, its advertisers and certainly not of government.

Second life went into a hole of despair of drugs, prostitution and murder in some cases being played out in the virtual world.

Now if that’s your thing, it’s up to you to look and engage with that stuff in accordance with the law of the land. But I also think if Facebook’s entry age is 13, and it chooses to host such pages as the Rape page quoted above, then it must put in checks in terms of age (& qualifying age online if extremely hard – save for cross matched mobile records and credit card records for proof of age, which is still not in anyway 100%) and it must put in checks to notify users of the type of content on the page.

I think the Facebook story has a long way to play out, but it may yet, get out played by a dark world of virtual nastiness that turns away its revenue (its advertisers) and its users.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-refuses-to-shut-rape-page-run-by-schoolboy-20111017-1lsde.html#ixzz1b0KqpsEq

Image courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/RapeIsNeverJustified

The first task was to use every support link and form known to Twitter to raise a response. As the days ticked by I felt I was really stuffed. It was an odd feeling to see my routine disrupted. I am used to having Tweetdeck running in the background monitoring all sorts of topics and conversations. I am used first thing and last thing daily posting my interesting article links and suddenly it was no more.

I am starting to use Google Plus a lot more. It reminds of Twitter in the early days in terms of getting access to smart people and their thinking. It is less crowded and far easier to filter and manage contacts than Twitter. So I started to consider maybe abandoning Twitter completely and becoming a Google Plus chick exclusively, but still I had this nagging want to get back on to my Twitter community.

I actually set up a new account to cover myself, while I thought of a new strategy for Twitter, @fiibendall. As soon as I had, in seconds Twitter reinstated my account. The two actions were not related, just an ironic coincident. I immediately set about revoking all access to third party accounts, as my lovely @twitter support chap had told me this was the issue which led to my account being suspended, a third party application accessing my account. I changed my password.

After getting over the feeling of being violated! I THEN, spent all day receiving spam tweet followers and realised I had an autofollow to these people on my account. I spent most of yesterday Unfollowing people, I am sorry by the way, if I unfollowed more worthy people, than the spam & porn guys.

All in all it was exhausting and upsetting. I had no idea how being suspended would make me feel so awful emotionally, from feeling I had done wrong, to “what people would think” to relief, then feeling like I had been violated to exhausted trying to get to an equal status quo, that my account is resembling today.

The conclusion is that Twitter is far more part of my life, more akin to Facebook than I realised. Both are different channels for different use and people, but very much part of my life. And social networking is as much a part of my life as going to the supermarket, having coffee with colleagues or dining out with friends.

I don’t think thats because I am sad, I think it is a behaviour evolution – do you?

It’s a bit unusual for us to make something like this free. It’s an experiment in ‘content marketing’ – a hot topic in digital marketing and something we examine in the briefing itself.

Of course we’re interested to see how many visits and downloads we get, the tweets and social mentions, but we’re most interested in getting links to this page (ideally with the link anchor text Internet Marketing Strategy) to see how this impacts our natural search rankings for the phrase ‘internet marketing strategy’.

Currently we’re nowhere near the first page of Google, or other search engines, for this competitive search phrase. But could we be with a bit of ‘content marketing’? And what value might that drive to us?

We plan to publish a mini case study with the results of this experiment which hopefully you’ll find interesting and which might help put more concrete value to the effectiveness (or otherwise) of ‘content marketing’.

You can help with our experiment…

Of course we encourage you to download and read the briefing itself (we think it’s very good) but, ideally, you would send a link to this page (not the file itself – little SEO value there…) to relevant contacts or, even better, you’d link to the page from your blog, via social media etc.

In an ideal world you’d even use the anchor text Internet Marketing Strategy to the link to the page.

I’m sending this email to around 30,000 of Econsultancy’s members globally so, if you do your collective bit, then we should stand a good chance of building some great, and relevant, links…?

Will we shoot up the rankings as a result? Or get punished for the suspiciously quick build-up of links with the same anchor text? Who knows… watch this space.

Obviously we’re not incentivising you to do this in any way because that would be “paid links”.

All the best and thanks for any help.

Ashley

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
Econsultancy

Emily Zwolinski

through Facebook. I’ll call myself a social media rookie. Twitter was reserved only for famous people, or those who like to overtly vocalise their opinions, and LinkedIn was a completely foreign concept.

This has all changed. I now have both a Twitter and a LinkedIn account; I’ve discovered Twitter is a great way to connect with thought leaders and their opinions, and I see LinkedIn as an essential self-branding tool for anyone wishing to get their name out there. Although I am still ‘learning the ropes’ on how these sites work, and have set myself up as an observer not participator, I’ve taken the first and most important step in developing my own personal brand. My Twitter account is @ezwol, currently I have protected my profile, until I feel ready to turn it on and understand the content and conversations i can best contribute to. But I have learnt that this is just fine. I have started the journey in my personal branding.

It is not only essential for businesses these days to have and maintain a social media presence in the corporate world, but I’ve discovered that the power behind creating an individual personal brand through these platforms is enormous. The instant exposure you gain to large networks of people, and in turn the influential connections you can form is literally priceless.

Anyone can go and make a LinkedIn account, but the true significance lies in their ability to effectively brand themselves to the world, and maintain this brand over time. So it isn’t a question of how many social media sites you can join or how many followers you have on Twitter, but rather the quality of your personal brand and how you choose to use this exposure to your advantage.

However, it doesn’t mean jump in where angels fear to tread! I am taking this slowly and watching these sites I have signed up, as opposed to pushing myself out there. Where I do jump in, I want to make sure I am contextually relevant to the audience. Consequently I am set up, but siring Linked In, before I post my full profile and perhaps even use multi-media to present myself to the world! Watch this space!

Which brings me on the next point, you may be wondering when the ideal time is to start fostering your personal brand. The answer: there isn’t one. Some believe that it is more useful to start once you’ve worked for a few years. You’ll have a great deal more experience in the industry, and sure you might ‘understand’ yourself better, but why not start young? Although I am still studying, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is essential for people to start building their personal brands as early as possible, especially in this increasingly competitive media environment. If you already have a positive social media presence, employers will be far more likely to take interest in you than those who have no presence at all. The only caution is to ensure you know exactly what you are making public, and the consequences of this. You don’t want something negative to hurt your personal brand further along in your career.

Having a personal brand isn’t a one step process – it requires a strong commitment over time. But, the benefits you will reap can be endless – being vocal about your great skills and abilities isn’t always tacky. You may not think you have the tools to create your brand, but you know yourself better than anyone else and social media is now easier to use than ever before – go for it! Even if it is a watch and learn approach like me, before long, you will see me out there. This blog contribution is another start.

Herding Bubbles- Up Hills is a Thankless Task – as the British Judiciary Find Out

I used this phase “herding bubbles up a hill is like trying to control social media” oh about 2 years ago to explain why I thought a Social Media Club wouldn’t work on www.marketingmag.com.au.

Since we have local relationship GPY&R relationship questioned http://www.news.com.au/national/defence-review-teams-sex-controversy/story-e6frfkvr-122606 0003731 as to social media – the truth is that all parties, agency and / or government department, have been exposed for being an ace of un-fairness, but their biggest bum  is their total ignorance of getting the basic  implications of a digital society whatsoever. GPY&R & The Defence Force look like they are pretty crap at the most basics of basics of getting this digital media medium.

This is not a simple case of total unprofessionalism, this is a big question-mark over  tax payers money and a dumb response to “those that get it”. The dark side of social media that  is proved again and again. When you think social media is advertising. It isn’t …..OK!

If GPY&R think they can get away with not taking into account their staffs personal and professional activities, they look bigger dicks than they did in the first place.

I actually really respect Hamish McLennan, knowing him personally, he not only interviewed me personally as a contractor before the take over, we had a mutual understanding of where digital was heading. He should beat the guys at GPY&R arses badly, his and Sorrell’s vision was not what you delivered –you guys actually have / had an opportunity & loads of money, you blew it and keep blowing it. You have more support than anyone to get this right. You just get it wrong through ignorance and arrogance. “You’re FIRED” would be appropriate right now and maybe a re-think like David Cameron was saying. Maybe this just isn’t an ad agencies, nor lawyers thing – it isn’t actually.

Enter Mr.Ryan Giggs ……a fresh blow of more stinky air of social media …”the biggest civil revolt in our times” (oh come now, Ol’Blighty  you give the guy too much credit!)

I must disclose a personal situation! Well I don’t have to, but I will for fun – Ha!

Me & Mr.Giggs have met a while ago when I was firmer than these days! . I used to live in Knutsford, I was socializing with the Man Utd team and Mr. Liam Gallagher at a well known haunt in Alderley Edge. That is the Cheshire hang out for all these northern footie heros! Mr. Gallagher I think must of slipped – but there was a hell of a do that suddenly happened and Mr.Giggs ran in and rescued me – lifting me out of harms way, holding me close, and planting a big lovely smacker on my lips! It didn’t go much further his funny eyes put me off, but it was kinda cool in a re-telling it at a “dinner party sort of way” and he was lovely to be honest as a knight saving me from the mêlée of a Gallagher!

So I have been fan of his and was much upset to find out what an idiot he was being with this super injunction. He is a brand. Not like Beckham, but he has the most amazing advisors – you’d think one would tell him – explain the real essence of social media. It is text book these days. But these expensive advisors don’t employ peeps that get digital communications??? Come ON??? What a rip off!

I understand the law is not getting”it” – social  media. I understand so many people are catching up. I make my living educating corporate Australia and brands to know and realize DIGITAL channels and employees, and consumers demand to be treated differently. Live up to expectations or don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Live up to your expectations. That applies whether it is to Mr. Giggs  and his wedding vows  or Julia Gillard’s promise on Carbon or to brand promises.

The legal industry & government, not just in the UK but in every territory in the world needs to understand things have changed. Power has shifted from government and institution to people, stop hanging on.

Learn – the people will decide. Best get with the people, instead of being a stick in the mud (applies to brand or ad agency or wealthy people or government) you all think you know you everything with your focus groups. Get to know the real people by listening to the Internet.

HERDING BUBBLES UP A HILL IS LIKE TRYING TO CONTROL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS PEOPLE

IT JUST DOESN’T WORK

HOW MANY MORE TIMES DO I NEED TO SAY IT?