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Create your brand story: Newport Interactive Marketers

Jamie Palmer, senior practitioner at University Business Consultants, taught Newport Interactive Marketers how to create an effective and personal brand story for online and offline platforms.

“78% of people are visual … if you can build a story, people will remember you.” – Jamie Palmer

What’s your brand story?  Are you telling it so listeners will engage?

Create your brand story

Return on investment
  • Build trust + engagement  = ROI
  • Once you’ve built trust and engagement, you can sell (softly)

Pillars of storytelling

  • Build structure and reframe your stories based on how the other person responds
  • Keep it simple: Have a specific theme, use strong words, be positive and/or funny
  • Be sneaky: Tell stories that show your expertise without overtly saying it
  • Use chunking techniques: Keep any stories less than 3 minutes, 2 would be ideal
  • Can only have 1-3 characters in your story: Don’t lose your point in character development

Create a metaphor, paint a picture that illustrates your offerings

    • What does the product do?
    • How would I describe the product?
    • How does the brand make me look and feel?
  • Utilize strategic intent

Tips

  • Have meaningful conversations
  • Bring in a third party to help tell your story instead of always talking about you
  • Make real-life connections like Newport Interactive Marketers

Twitter tips

  • Sometimes you tweet just to help SEO
  • Be careful what/when you tweet
  • Twitter counter measures counts up/down
Remember: Wherever you go, you are marketing your own brand and creating your own story.  Take Jamie’s strategies to create a story that uses the pillars of storytelling and paints a compelling picture to connect with your audience.

Check out University Business Consultant’s Connected movie trailer

Thank you @seangw, @carloverkat, @KevinTVine, @chrissheehy, @RIBloodCenter, @SidewalkBrand for adding your insights via Twitter to this #NIM event.

Social media and customer service with Newport Interactive Marketers

Combine your customer service and your social media efforts

Opinions?  Everyone’s got one.
Social media? 75% of U.S. population uses it.

Combine the two, and you have the perfect platform for people to speak out, to be heard, and to be responded to.  It’s a smart business move to combine your customer service and your social media efforts for best results in both crucial areas.

Chuck Dennis, Vice President and Senior Consultant for Knowledgence Associates and customer service guru, taught Newport Interactive Marketers how to successfully combine social media and customer service as a business strategy.

What did NIM members learn at the last meetup of the summer?

Use social media for customer service. Why?

  • TRUTH: The lines between PR, marketing, and customer service are so blurred, there’s no separating them.
  • Enhancing your relationship with customers is the key to successful growth!
  • Social media users need customer media reps to interact, and not spew out marketing.
  • Customer service today is about being PROactive and Reactive, not just reactive.

Tips for intertwining social media and customer service

  • Unhappy customer? Stop talking. LISTEN. Apologize for inconvenience. Tell them what you’ll do. Do it.  Ask if satisfied.  Give bonus.
  • People don’t care about excuses, but they love an apology (if warranted) just don’t keep ’em hangin.
  • ALWAYS respond to customer service issues as soon as possible.
  • Very unattractive and a bad idea to bicker with companies and people on social media.
  • Provide forums/communities where businesses encourage discussions, questions, and comments, but do not dominate the conversation.

Transparency

  • The big difference of social media is that it is transparent; its on a global stage.
  • Let the public SEE how well you take care of your customers. People are watching, will appreciate the care you show customers.
  • No logo’d hats or pens to fix a customer service issue. Come through with solutions instead.

Stay on top of customer service

  • Look for your name coming up online.
  • Use Google Alerts
  • Use social media monitoring tools such as Hootsuite or Radian6

Social media and customer service in action

Chuck Dennis’ final tips of the night

  • Great service rules still reign
  • Take advantage of current events for cool customer service offers.
    • Example: Drink called Earthquake!

Thanks for the tweets @NEMultimedia @kelly_ahern @PRnick , @buona_vita, @seangw, @roncorr

What are your favorite customer service via social media examples?