No Textbook Required: Use Social Sites to Gain Social Media Skills


We’re halfway through 2011 and social media has not yet gone away. It’s thriving, evolving, and changing the way we interact. So if you’ve been putting off learning the new social media tools that will help you connect and engage with customers and clients (as well as potential customers, clients, and contacts) there’s still time to resolve to make 2011 the year you start leveraging its tremendous potential.
While nothing beats hiring an experienced social media practitioner to help you or your business identify goals, strategize, and implement, there are many free resources and tutorials available online to help you learn and familiarize yourself with both basic and advanced platforms, tools, and techniques you need to create or upgrade a social media presence.
Social media enthusiasts are, first and foremost, social, and most of the best practitioners enjoy sharing their knowledge online. There are great videos, great slideshows and great blogs you can access that provide you with an expert – and free – social media education.
Here are some social sites with great resources and tutorials:

Slideshare
Why you should go there: Slideshare.com, which describes itself as “a business media site for sharing presentations, documents and pdfs,” offers a wealth of easily searchable presentations as well as features such as “Top Presentations of the Day,” “Hot on Facebook” and “Hot on Twitter,” and “Spotlight.”
How you should use it: Use keyword searches for access to presentations, how-to slide shows, and cutting edge thinking by top practitioners. A search for “social media getting started,” for instance, turns up 1645 hits. Many speakers at social media conferences upload their presentations so search for conferences by name. And use the “people search” function to find content generously shared by experts such as Chris Heuer, Chris Brogan, David Armano, and Beth Kantor.

YouTube
Why you should go there: The second largest search engine in the world is full of great content, great talks, and great how-to videos. A search for “social media” produces 6,700 results.
How you should use it: Search for “how-to” videos, such as “How to Customize Your Facebook Page” (690 results,) video blogs by social media experts, and videos of speakers at conferences such as Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summits or Toby Daniels’ Social Media Week to hear talks about new trends.

Twitter
Why you should go there: If the web is Social Media U., Twitter is the course catalogue. Social media thought leaders, strategists and practitioners are constantly uploading links to great resources.
How you should use it: Identify a good Twitter List of smart social media thinkers, follow it, and click on the links they tweet. Or create your own list of resources. By following Tweeters like @Mashable, @SocialNetDaily, @SocialMediaComm, @SocialMedia411, @SocialMedia2Day, @SocialMediaWeek, and @TweetSmarter you are guaranteed a daily diet of links to great content, great how-to articles, and great blogs by top social media thinkers (you can find their content and others’ by following my Social Media News list: http://twitter.com/#!/CatherinVentura/social-media-news.)

Mashable
Why you should go there: Mashable.com which was founded in 2005 and now claims over 30 million monthly page views is one of the single best aggregators of news about social media and digital trends. Updated constantly, it is a one-stop (if a bit overwhelming) treasure trove of the state of the web now.
How you should use it: Take advantage of Mashable’s lists, how-to, and guidebook sections to find lists of social media resources and trends, guides that range from to How to Build Apps, How to Use Facebook Insights, to using Social Media to solve the Global Water Crisis, and e-guides to Twitter and Facebook.

Google
Why you should go there: A search for “Social Media Getting Started” yields 10,800,000 results.
How you should use it: Search for “How to,” “Tutorial,” or “Guide” and the specific topic you’re looking for (e.g. “Tutorial Add Twitter WordPress blog.”)

Not understanding how social media works is no longer an option. When you help yourself to the great resources on the social sites above, you’ll be “learning while doing” as you familiarize yourself with the exciting new ways businesses are connecting in 2011.



This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

AT&T Operators Should Answer More Social Media Calls

"Is anyone from AT&T on Twitter?" I tweeted several weeks ago, "I have a horror story."

The silence was deafening, despite the fact that there are at least six Twitter accounts that feature AT&T's blue-striped sphere as their avatar. Granted, with a foreboding Tweet like that, I might not have wanted to respond either, but I'm a customer, so AT&T should have been paying attention.

I have to admit I was perplexed that that the AT&T sphere is not participating more actively in the Twittersphere. They are active on Facebook, for instance, where they forged a strategic alliance with rapper Lil Wayne (who currently has 93,800 followers on one Twitter account).

So why the lack of response on arguably the fastest growing Social Media phenomenon (and real time search engine)? AT&T is a phone company, for heaven's sake, and should be listening when customers reach out, whether it's from an iPhone, Facebook, or two tomato cans and a very sensitive string!

And yet their Twitter line was buzzing and none of their accounts were answering.

My motives for reaching out to them on Twitter were simple: I am an active Twitter user and I saw that AT&T had Twitter accounts too. I didn't need more customer service, which is what often prompts tweeters reach out to @comcastcares, for instance, run by Comcast's engaging and effective Director of Digital Care, Frank Eliason, who handles questions ranging from outages, to hard rebooting, to missing closed captions. My specific problems, which included a startling policy, a mind-boggling procedure, and systemic errors, had already been solved.

I simply wanted to connect with AT&T on a corporate level to give them feedback about what they got right and what went appallingly wrong.

Here's what they did right: three remarkably dedicated phone reps -- all of whom I will call Wendy because one actually was named Wendy -- spent a combined total of six hours of company time, making sure I got exactly what I needed.

On Friday, Wendy #1 spent one hour porting my number from T-Mobile, creating a Family Plan, talking her supervisor into preserving my thousands of rollover minutes, and giving me a free refurbished Blackberry Bold. She was so delightful to work with, I let her talk me into a gel cover I didn't need. When none of the emails she had promised me with the contract and tracking numbers had arrived by Monday morning, however, I called back to discover AT&T had absolutely no record of my order. In spite of the reference number I had gotten from Wendy #1, the transaction had vanished into thin air.

Enter Wendy #2 who spent 3 hours trying to track my order down, actually calling me back with frequent updates. Finally, she discovered that my Harlem zip code had raised a red flag (I'm not kidding..,) because there are "fraud issues associated with it" and that my order had not even been entered into the system yet because AT&T (get ready...) had certain procedures they needed to follow first to verify my address.

I was stunned, not only because I had been "profiled," so to speak because I live in Harlem, but because of what it told me about AT&T's efficiency. AT&T was already my phone company: so if they don't know where I live, who does? And because I was already a customer, all they had to do was 1) call me back, 2) email me, or 3) look me up in the phone book to find out, but apparently AT&T has a "procedure" they have to follow to verify addresses that takes several days.

Wendy #2 truly cared, though, and worked hard to get me what I needed, which I appreciated. She facilitated a little magic and the phone arrived late Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately it arrived with the wrong number written on the Sim card. Not only did my phone company not know where I live, they didn't know my phone number either!

Enter Wendy #3, as gracious and dedicated as the others, and two hours later my phone was up and running with the correct number.

Dedicated customer service reps like the ones who helped me can do a lot to build brand loyalty, but only if the company they are representing cares enough to give excellent service as a company. And so, frustrated by how many hours of my (and their) life this had required, I reached out on Twitter, where I knew AT&T had several corporate accounts, to compliment their customer service reps while pointing out the places where their systems had broken down. But no one tweeted back.

Smart companies monitor the conversation. Craig Newmark, who astonishingly still does customer service for Craigslist, regularly uses Twitter Search to see what people are saying and to volunteer to help solve their problems. More and more government agencies are listening to and connecting with citizens through social media, like the HHS Center for New Media, whose excellent Andrew Wilson has been an important and reassuring source of information about the swine flu outbreak.

As Digital Marketer Matt Snodgrass said at a recent round table I attended: "Customer service is often facilitated with a simple 'I hear you' and that's where Twitter can shine."

But AT&T, whose employees had been such good listeners on the phone, either wasn't listening or wasn't responding on Twitter, so my attempt to give them feedback fell on deaf ears. Given that AT&T has already established a presence on Twitter, it makes a lot of sense to integrate it with other customer service functions; it makes sense to join the conversation and let customers know that the company itself is as caring as they ask their employees to be.

Come on, AT&T, it's time to reach out and touch someone again. And this time you need to do it online.