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In The Box Podcast

Episode 3: Robots vs. Humans 2, Customer Service, Disruption And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we continued the conversation of robots versus humans, we chat about bad customer service, start a narrative around masculinity, explore the value (or lack of) of Instagram and play with disruption.

Episode 3: Robots vs Humans 2, Customer Service, Disruption

Instagram — What is the value of Instagram?

Robots over humans in service industry — Do you see robots or computer programming dumbing down the service experience of a business?

Bad customer service — Tell me about a bad customer service experience … what would you have done?

Alcohol in Madison — Best place to enjoy an adult beverage in Madison

Narrative around masculine strength — How courage is portrayed in relation to masculinity?

Disruption — Best time for it? worst time for it?

 

Stay Positive & Find A Way To Disrupt

Conference Value Origin

Conference Value Origin

Garth Beyer

Let’s be forward… often marketing conferences, PR summits, and social media workshops rarely talk about anything you don’t already know. They are more of a review. Are you answering the question of who your audience is? Are you using Instagram the right way? Are you measuring, measuring, measuring?

Check. Check. Check.

At a marketing summit this morning, seated near the back, I could see nearly everyone’s attention wavering. People were surfing the web, emailing or Pinning things instead of engaging with the speaker. The speaker was providing solid, factual, and feasibly insightful information, but none of it was new or risky.

After the session was over I asked a couple of others what they got from the session. They had to rack their brains. (One didn’t come up with anything, but she did note it was a nice review.) Then I was reminded…

We create the value we walk away with from a conference, summit or workshop.

After each session I talked with folk there and took ideas to the edge of reality with them. The people around me became the real thought leaders of the conference, taking marketing ideas to a new level. (All the while making the time and experience worth it for both of us!)

Give this a try next time you’re at a conference that you find yourself not learning anything new. Talk to those around you. They’re feeling the same way, and they’re ready to make the value they went there to receive.

All it takes is, “Do you mind if I interrupt? What do you think about Instagram?”

 

Stay Positive & As It Is With Life, You Get Out What You Put In

Expecting Conversation

Expecting Conversation

Garth Beyer

Instagram Photo

I see a lot of social media posts and talk to others who create online content wondering why they are not getting any engagement, why no one is commenting on their Instagram photo or replying to any Tweets. My reply is two-fold.

Lack Of Communication

Those who see the blog post, the Instagram photo, the podcast, don’t know what they are supposed to do next. Amateurs – and I don’t mean it as an insult – simply state what they want the viewer to do. Some write “leave a comment in the comments section below” at the end of their blogpost or ask “please share this video with your friends” at the end of their YouTube bit. It works!

The more experienced communicators can craft the message in a way that asks the viewer to participate, to communicate in some way without asking straightforward. The wording, the voice, the structure matters, but takes hours of practice to get right.

Writing into a void is easy, writing to interact without requesting the interaction is di-fi-cult.

Take care how you craft your next message, when you write your next blog post, when you post an Instagram photo description. Be sure an objective viewer will know what you want them to do.

Lack Of Emotion

Simply stating, a lot of created social media content is safe. It’s banal. It’s all numbered, bolded, bulleted and smells like a PowerPoint.

If you’re not getting interaction (when interaction is what you want) you’re lacking emotion in your content. The Instagram photo isn’t moving enough, the YouTube channel doesn’t make the viewer feel like anything has changed after watching, the blog post doesn’t make the reader giddy to start something new.

The question to ask before you start anything, before you tweet, before you share a photo on FB: how do you want viewers to feel?

Just as important, the question to ask before you finish anything, before you hit send, before you upload: will the viewers feel what you want them to feel?

 

Stay Positive & Voice Matters

Photo credit: me

Goosebump Advertising

Garth Beyer

Snapchat could be an advertisers solution to the fading mass email list.

It’s easy for someone to delete what they can recognize as spam.

And, in this new fast-paced-digital-age world, we don’t need to read a long advertisement or watch a 10-minute promotional video to know if we are in or not. Really, 10 seconds will do.

That’s where Snapchat (and I suppose, Instagram and Vine too) comes in. If I, or any marketer/advertiser/PRS wanted, we could find millions of usernames and send a 10 second promo video of us playing music, a website to visit, an experiment we’ve done and so on in order to convince a stranger to connect with us.

It’s an entirely new feature to being personal and having fun with advertising.

Gives me goosebumps.

 

Stay Positive & Make It Quick