People have been serving customers in “real time” ever since there have been customers. So this is not a new concept. In fact, we’re using technology to correct a problem that technology introduced–distance between company and customer.

If someone walks into your store with a problem, you fix it immediately. If a customer calls you on the phone, you talk to them (hopefully) immediately. But what if someone posts something negative about you on Twitter or to an Internet Forum? What then?

Real time search allows you to monitor those types of interactions, complaints, and complements. It’s still your responsibility to respond, but the time needed to find such messages has been greatly reduced.

The lines between marketing and customer service are blurring. Quickly responding to someone on their own turf in a respectful manner has potential not only to set them straight, but also increase the likelihood they will tell other people about your remarkable effort to make it right. And your public response will serve as a permanent record for anyone else who sees the comment.

Twitter is currently the primary source of real time content, but expect others to get on board quickly. Twitter’s success has driven the major search engines to add real time search features to their products. But Twitter still manages the majority of real time traffic, so you can use Twitter’s built-in search engine as a place to hear what people are saying about you. Otherwise, expect popular online listening tools to start accommodating real time search in the near future.

This certainly won’t pre-empt any traditional forms of customer service, but people are out there talking about you online one way or another. You’ll be better off if you’re aware of it, since it’s not just going to go away on it’s own. At the end of the day, you should view this as an opportunity to serve people better.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Corporate blogs benefit greatly from a collaborative effort to produce and maintain. While it’s easy for anyone to start a personal blog in seconds, a company blog takes considerably more thought and planning to execute.

We are fortunate to have talented and engaged clients and want to highlight a couple of our most successful blog launches for The Alter Group and Bliss PR, which each benefit from multiple contributors. These projects engaged talented designers and thought leaders outside Astek who were essential to the end results. Both blogs run on custom installations of WordPress.

Astek’s focus on helping our clients produce blogs over the past few years is especially rewarding since the client has so much influence over the life of the end product, which changes nearly daily.

Case Study #1
Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire blogs featuring podcasts
Business Focus: One of the nation’s preeminent corporate real estate development firms.
Blog Focus: Corporate Real Estate, Finance, Economy, Healthcare
Approx. Combined Monthly Visitors: 4,800+
Original launch: April 10, 2008
Redesign and ALTER+CARE Inspire launch: April 6, 2009
Featured in: Alltop.com

Astek worked closely with The Alter Group team over several months to hone the voice and focus of the blog, identify and train contributors on software, design the feature set needed, and deploy a flexible platform for growth. The initial budget was low to make sure appropriate resources could be committed consistently and to prove ROI before “going big.” Once the process and message proved stable, we engaged a designer to add the finishing touches that make the blog what it is today.

Dramatic color and imagery set Alter NOW apart from other blogs:

Consistent and careful use of relevant imagery in each article pulls the reader in:

The footer of each article features a ShareThis link for easy distribution across email and other web sites (important for viral growth to reach new readers), the author photo, name, relevant categories and tags, and a link to leave a comment, which invites readers to become part of the ongoing conversation blogs present. This article also features a link to the corresponding podcast on the subject.

The sidebar features easy subscription links, quick links to the podcasts, and prioritized standard blog features such as search and recent posts:

Both blogs are featured prominently on The Alter Group home page for easy access:

Case Study #2
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders blog
Business Focus: Business-to-business strategic media relations and marketing communications
Blog Focus: B2B marketing, public relations, professional services, financial services, and healthcare

Working with BlissPR to design and launch their blog was, well, blissful! They had been planning this launch for some time so the overall strategy and content development were in good shape. BlissPR primarily needed a partner to help with design, production, and blog deployment and integration strategy.

BlissPR wanted to integrate the new blog into their existing Web site, which presented a unique set of design opportunities and challenges. The new design features a prominent masthead for the blog with subscription links and a search box. Each article on the home page is clearly delineated with a green title bar, photo of the author, and crafted abstract leading to the full story. The “Share” link has plenty of room to breathe, highlighting the importance of this word of mouth feature.

The side bar focuses on the people behind the blog to provide context to visitors. A brief description of BlissPR is immediately followed by photos linking to bios of all the authors. This is a great way to add personality to your blog. The sidebar is followed by standard blog elements like tag cloud and recent posts.

We’re very proud of our clients’ ongoing success with these publications. Please check them out and remember to leave a comment!

Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders

Here’s a succinct list of five things you can do to improve your corporate blog. The three blogs featured above stand as testimony to these recommended tactics.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media, Web

I’m seeing more “free” offers come through friends feeds, such as on Twitter. I even participated in one, as an experiment. As always I encourage people to do whatever they want with Twitter, but we must consider the value of the collective attention spans we attract. The more people we reach see ads from you, the less they will value what you have to say. The number of ads you present is inversely proportional to the likelihood they will choose to continue hearing what you have to say.

We all now have the power to control what we hear and when we hear it, and that’s what’s new.

Now, the ads I’m seeing in particular on Twitter are for Macheist: I bought the @MacHeist 3 Bundle. 12 Top Mac apps worth $900+ for just $39 AND I just got Delicious Library 2 FREE! http://mhtweet.com/uQ1gyd

I happen to be someone who would be interested in this ad, as Macheist is a great program, but I’m torn. I know that many of the people who follow me wouldn’t be interested and would therefore just read it as a message I was passing on, however even less personal and constructive than a retweet. The social stream starts to feel more like a traditional ad campaign or SPAM in this context. Only now I have to weigh other factors such as personal trust. I know that the people I know will keep it to a minimum, and if they don’t, I (and others) will decide whether or not to keep listening.

In a world where the consumer gets to create and control his media, products and services must simply be good to survive. What’s interesting is that as more of my friends participate in promotions like the one above (three so far), the more compelled I feel to participate. This is for two reasons. One, I know that I won’t annoy them by sending it back, and in fact will reinforce their decisions to post. Two, some of this just boils down to basic peer pressure. If ten of my friends get something for free that I want, do I really want to be left out?

Having said that, I’m a huge believer in the power of word of mouth marketing, and this certainly falls into that category. It’s just a little more blatant than someone sharing that they enjoyed using a product. In this case, I’m not even sure my friends have used the product yet at all, which is why it feels less credible. I do appreciate the transparency of the message. It’s very clear where it came from, why it came to me, and what I could get out of it, which makes for a quicker assessment of value.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Technology

Do you have a few favorite websites that you find yourself returning to on a regular basis to check for new content, like news sites or a favorite blog or sites featuring local events?  Did you know you can set up a news/blog aggregator (commonly referred to as a “Feed Reader”) that will gather all new posts to your favorite sites in one spot for easy reading?  You could even receive notification by email when your favorite site has a new post.

For our “How To” this month, we are giving you step by step instructions for subscribing to RSS feeds using the feed readers at NewsGator.com.

NewsGator Desktop Feed Reader

(Other popular readers include:  Google Reader, Bloglines, NetVibes, My Yahoo! and many others.)

The thing we love about NewsGator is that they offer a series of free readers that you can view online, on your desktop, from Outlook, or on a mobile device.  All their products sync together seamlessly so if you read a blog post on your mobile device, the post will be marked as read on your desktop application and online as well.

Follow these easy instructions to set up your NewsGator Feed Reader(s)!

For an Online Feed Reader:

1. Go to www.newsgator.com/individuals
2. Scroll down and click “Try Now” under NewsGator Online
3. Click “Create free account!” and set up an account

To Add Feeds:

1. Copy the RSS link from the blog you want to follow.
   1. Right click on the Blog’s RSS button (should look like this: .
   2. hose “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location.”
2. On your Newsgator.com page click Add Feeds.
3. Paste the URL of the feed into the field.
4. Click “Add Feeds.”

For a Desktop Feed Reader That Syncs with Your NewsGator Online Account:

For PC’s

1. Go to www.newsgator.com/individuals
2. Click “Free Download” under FeedDemon for Windows
3. Follow Installation Wizard
4. When prompted for a username and password choose “Existing Account” and enter login information used for NewsGator.

For Mac’s

1. Go to www.newsgator.com/individuals
2. Click “Free Download” under NetNewsWire for Mac
3. Open the application
4. Under Preferences go to “Syncing”
5. Click “Create Account, or Login”
6. Click “Existing Account” and enter Username and Password used for NewsGator account.
7. Click “Continue”
8. Enter your email address and click “Finish”
9. Close Preferences
10. Click Refresh All and it should pull in any feeds on your NewsGator.com account.

iPhone and Mobile applications are also available at the same site: www.newsgator.com/individuals.

iPhone RSS Feed Reader

Get Email Alerts of Blog Activity
If you’re like me, you might like notification when new postings are up on your favorite blog.  Some blogs, like ours, allow you to sign up to receive email alerts through the Blog’s RSS options.  If you find a blog does not have this service but you’d like to set it up, there are several free services out there that will send you email, IM or mobile alerts either once a day or as activity occurs.

One service that offers a variety of alert options is Yahoo! Alerts.  To set up alerts using this system, you will need to sign into (or create) your Yahoo account, then:

1. Copy the RSS link from the blog you want to receive alerts about.
   1. Right click on RSS button.
   2. Chose “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location.”
2. Go to alerts.yahoo.com.
3. Click on “Feed / Blog.”
4. Paste the RSS feed link into the field under “A.”
5. Choose how often you want Alerts delivered:
   1. As they happen.
   2. Once a day, if there are changes.
   3. Choose how you want your Alerts delivered:
      • Email.
      • Yahoo! Messenger.
      • Mobile.

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Katie Hawkey Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, General, Podcast, Technology, Web

I saw a post from a friend recently that wondered aloud if any of his friends would “catch up” to him on FriendFeed, a service that collects all of your digital contributions to the Internet and allows you to republish them as feeds heading anywhere else. Maybe he was joking around, but I think we can’t look at the sheer volume of our contributions as the measuring stick for success. With 50,000 new blogs every day, there is more and more noise. I think it will level out over time. The people who have something valuable to stay will stick around. The others will get bored. But we’re not there yet and you’ll never be heard by putting others down, but rather lifting your own voice up.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Social Media, Web