Company Blogs Provide Added Way to Reach Out
Yesterday’s article on the earthquake prompted Allison Herdic of Chartwell Inc. in Atlanta to email me about a blog post she had written back in May after the awful tornados in the South. “If social media had been on the scene a couple of decades ago, Waldo and Carmen Sandiego may not have been so difficult to find after all,” her post began. “As with many of your customers, they probably would have been tweeting or updating their Facebook status, revealing their whereabouts and latest adventures.”
She chronicled some of the hardships and then wrote how Chartwell can help. “As noted in Chartwell’s recently released report, “Using Social Media for Effective Customer Communications,” utilities largely began using social media for outage communications purposes, such as detailing restoration efforts and providing timely updates.” Now those utilities are posting energy-related tips, correcting misinformation or just connecting with customers that prefer social media.
It was a very good post and it’s a good blog that Chartwell uses to reach out to their audience every week. Allison’s last post was headlined, “From face-time to mobile billing and payment options, meeting customers’ needs is the ultimate goal” and talked about creating apps for bill payment and other customer-care functions. “Whether the method of billing is traditional or the payment type progressive, utilities are ultimately faced with the imperative of increasing satisfaction. After all, if a customer prefers strawberry, vanilla just won’t do.”
In London, Melcrum also does a good job on their blog, with various people writing—three in the last month, in fact. Roz Topolski wrote last week about employee trust in management, citing a statistic “from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research, [that] even a 10% increase in employee trust in management has the same effect on general levels of satisfaction as a 36% increase in monetary reward.”
She emphasizes the importance of trust in building today’s successful businesses, and how effective internal communication—Melcrum’s chief topic—“is the highway to a high-trust workplace. Communicators can equip leaders and managers with the essential tools they need to strengthen the relationship-focused elements of their business and drive their organization towards financial recovery.”
Topolski goes on to promote Melcrum’s summit in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4-6, focusing on Roger D’Aprix, author of “The Credible Company: Communicating with a Skeptical Workforce.” Prior to that post, Tanya Batra wrote about their results from a poll on companies’ priorities over the next three years—engaging stuff. (Speaking of which, her post before that centered on employee engagement.)
And finally, the following comes from Matt Bailey’s SiteLogic website. Bailey, a frequent speaker at SIPA events, is the author of “Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day.” He leads such a busy schedule that he doesn’t get to blog much. When he does, it’s good:
“One of the most important tools available in analytics is segmentation. The old interface in Google Analytics suffered from major User Interface problems, as the primary tools were simply not seen by the users. I was constantly amazed in my seminars as most attendees simply had no idea how to access the segmentation features available in Google Analytics. The primary reason no one knew about it? The combination of color, contrast and text size resulted in a critical tool that was difficult to find and use…
“The new Google Analytics interface now focuses users on a clear path to creating segments. The link for creating advanced segments uses clearer colors, higher contrast and a larger text size. In addition, the primary link to creating new segments is now located on the left side of the page. The old location was on the right side of the page, where eyes rarely drift, especially where there are no contrasting elements to draw the users’ eyes. By moving over to the left side of the page and presenting it in larger text and contrast, users will now be able to see this function as part of the interface, and not an afterthought.”
Blog on.
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