In summary, I had to deal with a delayed plane, a sick passenger, a well deserved and expensive  shower, new clothes and a long delay at the airport, a lost bag for 7 days, a damaged suitcase and missing items from the bag and COUNTLESS hours emailing, talking to and collecting paperwork for Lufthansa.

Today I received a check from them for $1,732. This is the maximum amount they will issue for a lost bag. (Policy)

All and all, I’m OK with this. It certainly didn’t make up for the lost hours dealing with the company. It can’t make up for the inconvenience, the hassle, my niece’s disappointment when her new iPod was missing, etc.  At least, I feel like I have been somewhat compensated for the expenses.

Ultimately the question is – Did Lufthansa keep me as a customer?

Most likely they did. At the bottom of the pyramid.

During the entire process, I was contacted only once on this blog from someone in their “social media” department.

The worst part about Lufthansa as I discovered is that you cannot contact their customer department by phone. Only by email and by fax.  I suppose you can visit them personally in their office on the East Coast. It felt too much to me like they didn’t want to deal with customers.

Again, did they keep me as a customer? Probably so. Can they work on improving their customer service? Absolutely. Can they start to move people up the pyramid?Definitely so. It would have taken them very little to move me up. Maybe next time.

This concludes my Lufthansa story. Now, I’m ready for new travel adventures with happier experiences and better airline service.  Oh, and anyone from the customer service department of Lufthansa reading this blog, I can consult you on how to improve your customer service. Call me for a free conversation.

A year ago I embarked on a new journey with Out&About Marketing. The results have been very,very positive. I accomplished many of the goals I set for myself and learned a few lessons along the way. Overall, I have no regrets and I’m proud of the accomplishments.

Thank you to all of my clients who keep me on my toes, open my horizons and challenge me to learn more. You are all the best!

Thank you to all of my readers who visit my website, read and comment on my blog. Let’s keep the conversation going.

I learned so much throughout the year thanks to all of you – my clients, my readers, my social and real life friends and the hundreds of new friends I met online.  It’s been an absolutely incredible and motivating journey. Here are 10 lessons on starting a business, marketing for small businesses and social media marketing a year later:

1. The busier you are, the more you learn how to prioritize and optimize. I learned how to filter and aggregate content and how to go from spending hours online to only a few minutes a day. Social media can be a huge time investment. Learn how to manage your time and balance your day. And the most important skill of all is to learn to balance work with life. I have to say I managed to stay sane and have sufficient time to play and enjoy my life outside of ” computer time”.

2. Learn to elliminate 80% of the time you spent on unnecessary and non-important tasks and concentrate your effort on 20% of the things that are truly important for your business and for your life. It’s hard some days but you can do it. Limit your time to what’s truly important and get rid of everything else.

3. Social networking is great and really works when done correctly. One of my biggest appeal to social networking is the opportunity to make friends in real life. It’s rewarding to know you met someone on Twitter first and eventually you got to shake their hand in person. Introduce people to each other. Never forget that the Internet just opens the door for real relationships and true networking.

4. Never stop learning. Pick a tool each month and learn it. Maybe it’s WordPress, FourSquare, Evernote, Dropbox or Groupon. Whatever it’s the latest and greatest tool, invest time in learning it and seeing how it applies to your digital life or business. Don’t jump at all tools at once.

5. Every 6 months revisit your business plan/social media/marketing strategy and adjust as necessary. It’s one thing to have a plan. It’s different to actually follow it, measure your goals and adjust your strategy. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. Learn from it and keep moving. Don’t waste too much time on worrying about being perfect. No one is.

6. Celebrate. Small things matter. Set monthly and weekly goals that you can measure and when you achieve them, congratulate yourself. Set the bar higher for the following month.

7. Create a compelling story. People don’t care about your product. They will identify with a good story and if they believe it they will consider purchasing your product. Don’t just sell them your stuff. Provide interesting and engaging content. Ask yourself not what you are going to gain from social networks but rather what are you going to contribute. What’s your story? How do you fit it?

8. Find your niche. Find your niche and your voice. What are you knowledgeable about and have an expert opinion on? What do you know that people want to know? What can you be the “google” of? Without a very targeted niche approach your marketing will get lost. Start small and think big.

9. Before jumping in social media – educate yourself. Read blogs, learn new tools, develop a strategy and adapt it. After a few months revisit your measurements and adjust as necessary. Start small and grow your efforts as you become more proficient with each network. Social networking works. Period. But don’t expect to see overnight success in terms of sales. Be patient. You didn’t wake up one day to a full house of kids. Or maybe you did. Most likely you went through the dating stage, the wedding, and eventually the kids. It’s the same with social networking.

10. What are you passionate about? Do you have passion for what you do? Can you carry your passion online in your blog, tweets, Facebook updates? They say Content is King. If you don’t have passion, content will be a chore. If you have passion, get yourself a Flip camera, start a blog and start producing quality content. You will start building an audience. Just remember #8. Find your niche.

What would you like to get from Out&About Marketing? How are you using the site? What advice do you have for the blog and for me? What is your biggest marketing and social media challenge?

Thank you for your feedback and for your time. Now I’m going to celebrate being one year old!!!

Let’s examine 3 potential scenarios. What would you do if you were the person in charge.

1.  You are the General Manager of a luxury destination resort. The entire area just experienced a big flood. Your CMO is reporting the conversation online and your brand is being mentioned in a negative way as a result of the experience. What do you do?

2.  You are the Marketing Director for a ski resort somewhere in the US. One day, you have a big fire at the resort and you have to evacuate people from a lift and everyone from the resort. The conversation online starts while people are still on the chair lift waiting to be evacuated. You have 3 staff members who are familiar with your social media strategy. You have put an emergency communication plan in place prior to the season start. What are the critical steps in your plan and what are you going to do next?

3.   You work for an event company and have a major event planned in a medium size city. It’s taking you over a year to put it all together. You have worked hard on getting sponsorships, signing athletes, working with the community, advertising the event. Your client (the city) is paying you for the organization and the logistics. You expect to have at least 10,000 participants. The day before the event, you get a call from your portable toilet vendor saying he’s not going to be able to deliver the units on time.  What do you do?

A few articles to help you along the way:

Crisis Planning by Jeremiah Owyang

http://www.conversationagent.com/2010/06/crisis-communications-in-social-media-are-you-ready.html?cid=6a00d8341c03bb53ef0133f18d058d970b

Please, add your comment below and join us online for a live discussion on Twitter under the hashtag of #mrktchat on July 8th, 2pm PST where we are going to replay these scenarios and provide guidelines for a social media crisis plan.

First, the plane was delayed from Philadelphia to Frankfurt.

Second, a passanger threw up on my in the plane. The most disgusting experience in my life.

Of course, I missed my connection flight to Sofia and had to sit in line for over 2 hours to rebook. With the vomit all over me. Horrible experience.

The next plane to Bulgaria wasn’t until 9 hours later. I managed to find a shower for $8 at the airport. Washed my clothes and walked around in wet clothes until I found a store to buy some new ones. That meant going through multiple check points and passport checks.

Finally, with new clothes (another expense of about $150) and 9 hours at Frankfurt airport (another expensive stay) I got to Sofia to find out that my bag didn’t make it. Now, 30 hours later, Lufthansa still can’t find my bag. It’s not available in the system. What kind of a shitty system is that?Where is my bag? Still in Philadelphia, in Frankfurt or somewhere else in the world????

I have contacted Lufthansa in the US and in Bulgaria. They can’t seem to help me. Their online form doesn’t work. What is one supposed to do? I need my bag. I need a refund on all purchases I have made for this trip so far.

I’m taking my complaint to the social media world and I will not stop until I have a resolution. All of you Lufthansa people if you are listening on the web here’s a shitty customer experience that will damage your brand. Jump on on it. FAST!

1. Photo: Upload a professional looking personal photo. I know this is a no brainer but I still see some people with no avatar on their profile. I wouldn’t want to connect with faceless person, would you?
2. Profile: Fill out your profile completely. Try to avoid copying and pasting from your resume. If you want to show up on search engines, make sure to use keywords that describe what you do and what you want to appear for on Google. List all companies you have worked for and all schools you have attended. You will grow your network faster if you do. Search Engine Optimization works on LinkedIn if you fill our your profile with selected keywords.
3. Grow your Network. This one is the most important step. After your profile is complete, start growing your network. Connect with all contacts that you would like to from your existing contact list in Outlook or wherever you are keeping your contacts. Keep in mind that LinkedIn can act up sometimes during the upload. I hope they fix that issue soon. As you meet more people, check to see if they are on LinkedIn or periodically upload your contacts and see who you are missing. Networks take time to grow so be patient but at the end it’s worth it. It’s all about who you know, right? Just make sure you are connecting to people you actually know and want to be connected with.
4. Groups: A great way to meet more people from your industry is to join groups on LinkedIn. There are thousands of groups in each industry. Find some that look interesting and ask to join. I have never been denied participation in any group, but I’ve mainly joined marketing and internet groups, which fits my profile. Be careful with how many groups you join as you may get bombarded with emails if you opt-in for the daily digest. You can choose weekly or turn off all emails. Groups are great way to meet more people, keep an eye on trends, post articles you’ve written, ask questions and respond to questions that you have expertise in. Please, make sure you provide some value to the group.
5. Keep your status update fresh. If you are on Twitter, you can update your status from there. I use HootSuite to update all of my social networks.
6. Recommendations: Recommend some people you have worked with and ask for some recommendations from people who know you well. Please, make sure you don’t always have the same recommendations written for you as the recommendations you have received. It looks way too cheesy.
7. Applications:  LinkedIn comes with some great third party applications that will help keep your network informed about your interests and activities and keep your profile fresh. For example, I use their SlideShare application to display my PowerPoint presentations that I have made available online, WordPress plug in to show my latest blog posts, Reading List on Amazon to display what I’m reading and my recommendations of that book, TripIt to show my trips to my network and see who’s close to me if I want to connect in person while on the trip.

What’s the value of LinkedIn? Personally, I have found it to be a great network to stay in touch with people I have worked with in the past and present who I may not necessary want to friend on Facebook. It keeps contacts up to date and it’s a valuable tool for putting people in touch with each other and letting your network know your latest activities. I have found people I need from my network.  I have received recommendations on potential vendors and stayed in touch with people. The latest LinkedIn development is that now you can subscribe to company’s updates, making following a company look a lot more like your experience on Facebook.

LinkedIn is useful only if you use it right. What experience have you had with LinkedIn?  Are you still using an old style paper resume or have you completely moved to using LinkedIn for it? Any other tips you’d like to add? What mistakes to avoid? See this post from Neal Schaffer. And finally, let me know if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn.

1.Be very selective with your social media activities. Be mindful of how much time you spend on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, Foursquare and your favorite networks. I try to check in daily but limit my time to less than an hour.

2. When working on a project, stay focused on it until you finish it. Avoid multi-tasking. You will simply get distracted and your original project won’t get finished.

3. Be selective as to what emails you read. The web presents an ocean of information and it’s so easy to spend an entire day reading the latest news. Set up a few RSS feeds to your Google reader and check them once or twice a week. Forget the rest. Unsubscribe from all emails that are not valuable to you. You only have 24 hours in a day.

4. Use technology to your advantage. The tools exist to help you manage your time wisely. Learn how to use it and leverage it to your benefit.

5. Pay attention to what’s important not what’s urgent. You can spend an entire day putting out fires and in the meantime, your important project is still sitting there, staring at you and stressing you out.

I’m keeping this post short since if you are like me you  probably have many other blog posts to read and emails to check.

I’m declaring myself free from ADD. From now on, I’ll spend my time wisely. You can too. The choice is yours.

Your turn. Do you find wasting your time browsing through hundreds of emails and RSS feeds? What do you do to manage your time wisely? Any good tips?

Photo Credit: Flickr.com by PatrickSmithPhotography

I recently returned from a short trip to San Francisco and I’d like to recommend a few places to stay and eat while in the city that you won’t be disappointed with.

1. The best place to stay in San Francisco is the Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf. You can see all of their reviews on TripAdvisor which confirm my recommendation for a top place to stay in the city. The location is excellent for both leisure and business. It’s close for a nice long walk by the water to the Ferry Building Marketplace, a fabulous place to explore Northern California local produce, breads, meats, seafood, oils, wines or grab a cup of nice coffee or taste some fresh oysters. Along the way, you will pass a few excellent options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Hyatt is also super close to a couple of cable car turns around and you can enjoy a beautiful sightseeing tour of the city. We enjoyed being able to walk just about anywhere in the city right from the hotel. It’s within a short walking distance from Ghirardelli Square, the Wharf, Pier 39,  North Beach, the Coit Tower, China Town and even Union Square. In addition to the excellent location, I love the modern and clean rooms and most of all the super comfortable bed. The staff is helpful and friendly and the stay is by all means very enjoyable. I haven’t found a better place in the city regardless of your trip purpose – it’s great for short or long visits to San Francisco or business trips.  The Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf wins my award for customer service – everyone I have met in their hotel understands what it means to provide superb customer service. With rooms rates starting at $149, this hotel is a definite winner if you are looking for a place to stay in San Francisco.

2. Nombe Restaurant – This restaurant came as a recommendation by a friend. We looked at each other in the taxi with questions in our eyes as we were approaching the location – in a most unassuming part of  San Francisco in the Mission District. From the outside, the place looked empty although we were told a reservation is necessary to get it. Once inside, the place opened up to a nice atmosphere, busy tables and a great dinner. They serve a big selection of sakes and a very interesting menu of tapas. By all means, get the chicken wings with honey and serrano chili sauce. They have some interesting dishes as well starting with different sashimi plates and ending with pork belly (done two different ways) and chicken gizzards and hearts. Reasonably priced, it all depends how much sake you drink. The staff is friendly. This restaurant just made the Top 100 restaurants in San Francisco. Check out their Yelp reviews.

3. Kokkari restaurant is by far the best Greek restaurant I have visited in the US. Again, via a recommendation from a friend we went there once and we’ll continue to return. The staff is super nice and on top of it, the food is superb, the atmosphere is great.  They have an extensive wine selection from the New World and from the Old World and scrumptious tapas and dinners. By all means, try their lamb – you can pick from lamb rib lets to shank, lamb organs and other delicious cuts. I would also recommend their whole fish and the grilled octupus. The Greek salad, fava beans and zucchinis are delicious too. I would love to return there with a large group of friends and take over their private room. Kokkari makes the perfect location for a special occasion or casual drink and some tapas at the bar. Check out their Yelp reviews and enjoy it. Make sure to make a reservation ahead of time.

Your turn. What places in San Francisco do you enjoy and recommend? Let me know what you think of these places if you visit them.

An agency can help guide you in the process and bring you up to speed on the technology. Yet, every organization needs to make a commitment to their social media presence. Unless you create your relationships, craft your relevant message and respond timely to critical questions online, people are not going to trust you. I wrote a post on the Sm@rt blog about relevance of message and the value of relationships. You can check it out the Sm@rt social media for business website. An agency can help you establish your plan, explain the tools and how to use them, set up your platform correctly and guide you through the process. An agency cannot and should not act on your behalf as the voice of your company. You will lose the trust of your customers very fast. Today, trust between customers and your brand is worth more than gold.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink it. Dedicate the resources and commit to spending the time online in-house. Otherwise, you won’t have a dialogue with your customers but a monologue, you won’t have a social media presence but a marketing campaign.  The choice is yours.

I’m sure there are great agencies out there right now crafting super creative, viral and trustworthy campaigns. I think that’s great. But you also need to dedicate the time to build real relationships, talk to your customers and respond to their inquires. Let’s stop talking campaigns and start talking relationships. It’s the future of real honest marketing.

Your turn? Have you seen a well executed social media strategy by an agency? Which one?

1. I enjoyed David LaPlante’s presentation.His passion for technology, social sharing, video, content and skiing is addictive and make a big impact on everyone who’s ever seen him speak. On the forefront of technology, geek by heart and skier for life, David talked about the past, present and future of technology. A lot of change is coming to us and it’s happening fast. Stay with the trends or be left out in the cold when it comes to how you do business online.
2. Jim Scripps gave a great overview of blogging – what it is, how to do it and best practices. It’s quick to set it up and businesses can use to engage online, deal with a PR crisis, help improve their search engine rankings, provide timely updates, use it as a hub for all of their social media efforts and engagement with bloggers.
3. Michael Kelly from ClickMail Marketing gave an extensive overview on how to best utilize email marketing for organizations with a ton of statistics and best practices. Knowing that the average value of an email address is $120 puts a different light to the email database list of any size.
4. Jake Fields, from Treeline Interactive spoke passionately about mobile marketing: iPhone apps, mobile advertising, text messages and various applications. Mobile holds a lot of opportunities for the future. As companies enter this new field with many unknowns it’s good to partner with someone that understands it and does it on a daily basis. Treeline Interactive seem to be completely at ease when it comes to speaking mobile advertising.
5. Finally, here’s the presentation I gave on Facebook and Twitter for business. Someone asked about social media ROI. Here’s a good video touching on the ROI question.

Look around your business for signs that may be sending the wrong message to your customers. They may be making perfect sense to you (are they really?) but you are turning away your customers by sending the wrong message out. Way too many businesses nowadays fall into the trap of announcing to to the world all of their rules, policies and regulations. If you have to have a sign, make sure you are informing your customers about something of importance to them and certainly not trying to tell them how unfriendly your place is or how many policies you have in place. Seriously, if I want to pay with $100 bill, be happy about it and use the opportunity to upsell me on something I didn’t expect I need.

A quick research revealed, Keva Juice’s website has not social networks available on it and a quick search on Facebook revealed 2 business fan pages with the official one being fanned by 1,839 people. It’s interesting to note that the “official” Keva Juice Facebook page is only geared towards 13 New Mexico locations. Now, I’m really confused as to what Keva Juice is really trying to accomplish with their brand. For comparison purposes, their main competitor, Jamba Juice has 375,887 fans. It’s possible they don’t have silly signs in their stores too. I know where I’m going next when I crave a smoothie. Your turn. Do you see signs (written or not) that leave you wondering if you are really welcomed at a particular business?