Archive for category: Step Up Your Social

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Don’t Let Bureaucrats Write Your Most Important Emails

So many brands works so hard on their social media posts and newsletters, but overlook crucial comms opportunities by outsourcing important messaging to bureaucrats.
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When someone places an order with you, or donates to your organization, or even just signs up for your newsletter, are they welcomed into the family and made to feel as special as they are? Or simply sent a brief “thanks”?Too many brands overlook such key moments in their audience journey. In today’s episode of Step Up Your Social, we’ll look at one massive failure, and a whole bunch of successes.
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Hopefully this episode will inspire you to revisit your own customer or donor journey and edit accordingly!​Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream podcasts. And scroll down for a full episode transcript.

Full Episode Transcript

A friend of mine recently had his outstanding student loans forgiven as part of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives all outstanding student loans for people who have spent 10 years working in public service.

He knew he was getting close, but the program is complicated and he didn’t know exactly when he would cross the ten-year threshold.

Then one morning, the email arrived.

The subject line read “You’re amazing” and when he opened it, it screamed “Congratulations” in 36 point font next to a picture of fireworks.

“Our country couldn’t work without you and the work you do” it continued.

There was a GIF of Jim and Pam from The Office giving each other an air high five.

The email went on: “The United States government thanks you for your dedication to our civil society and we are excited to inform you that all of your remaining student loans have officially been forgiven.”

Then there was a picture of President Joe Biden eating an ice cream cone and a note that read “whether you like ice cream, travel, or just an extra hour in bed, we hope you find a way to celebrate this tremendous achievement. Congratulations. And thank you for your service.”

Of course that is not at all how the email read.

Rather the email’s subject line informed him: “Action Required: View the message in your Paperless Inbox and take action.”

The email itself was a templated form with a green button inviting him to “go to paperless inbox.”

Once there, he found a PDF formatted to look like a letter informing him that his loans had been forgiven.

It did use the word “congratulations,” but everything that followed would have looked more in place from his accountant at tax time than the federal government informing him that his life just got a whole lot better.

Now granted — this is an official correspondence from the US Government.

But here’s the thing — the US government is a brand, just like any other. And, as is all too obvious for anyone who follows even the slightest bit of news, it’s got a massive branding problem.

What an amazing opportunity the government has to recognize the once in a lifetime gravity of this message and take advantage of it to buy itself some massive — and much earned — good will.

The federal government is rewarding people for their hard work and consistent payments with a massive gift. Rather than letting an amazing copywriter draft this life-changing note, they let a loan servicing company do it, where it was promptly outsourced to a bureaucrat.

What a missed opportunity.

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So you, the listener, are most certainly not responsible for drafting comms for the federal government. So why are we talking about this on an episode of Step Up Your Social?

Simple. So many brands make the same mistake (if on a much smaller scale).

They worry so much about every tweet and Facebook post and newsletter, but then let bureaucrats write emails that matter so much.

Here’s a test for you — pause this episode and go subscribe to your own newsletter with a new email address. What happens when you do?

Do you knock your own socks off with your welcome, or do you get a simple “thank you for subscribing” and then get added into the standard queue waiting to hear from your brand again… eventually?! There’s probably a decent shot you didn’t even get a confirmation at all, right?

The Hustle is a phenomenal daily email that shares business and technology news right to your inbox.

Their content is amazing and they work hard ensuring their readers enjoy every issue. They definitely understand that a welcome email is a huge part of setting expectations and welcoming users into their community.

Years ago they went viral, not for their reporting or their formatting, but for their confirmation welcome email.

The welcome email informed them that the moment they subscribed, a buzzer went off in their office and now everyone was celebrating with hand shakes, hugs and even shots of tequila.

Silly? Yes. Memorable? Hell yes!

You can find the full email here.

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And it’s not just welcome emails that get overlooked.

I’m a paying Canva user. I pay annually.

The typical company would send a note letting me know that my credit card was about to get billed. But Canva is no typical company.

Rather than informing me I owed them money, they wished me a happy anniversary and congratulated me on another great year using their amazing product.

My wife and I have two little kids. We recently bought them each a pair of Keen sandals. A few weeks after buying them, we got an email from Keen asking if “those shoes dirty yet?” chock-full of helpful cleaning tips to keep our kids shoes looking clean and ready to go.

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I’ll close this episode with one more example. When CD Baby first launched in the late ’90s, they were shipping physical CDs to people. Weird, I know.

Every order resulted in an automated email, which simply read “Your order has shipped today. Please let us know if it doesn’t arrive. Thank you for your business.”

But one day, Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby, realized that he could do better. So he replaced that bureaucratic drivel with the following:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD an d polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!

Quite a re-write!

Sivers claims that simple email created “thousands of new customers.”
And I believe him! I know I for sure would be way likelier to tell my friends about it, then a note simply informing me that my CD has shipped.

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So here’s your assignment: go through your own customer or donor journey and ask yourself – do your most important communications sound like they were written by a bureaucrat or by someone who actually loves your brand as much as you do.
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Edit accordingly!

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Likes On Social Media Are Free

This is a short episode, adapted from an article I wrote 5 years, about the importance of engaging with positive comments on social media. It’s as true today as it was the day I wrote it. So I wanted to share it with you, my podcast listeners.

​If someone goes out of their way to say something nice about you on social, and you can’t be bothered to smash that like button, you should re-evaluate why you are on social in the first place!

Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream podcasts. And scroll down for a full episode transcript.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I wrote a version of this post 5 years ago. It’s just as true today as it was then . So I wanted to share it with you, my podcast listeners.

On Friday night — five years ago — I went to see a Grammy winning bluegrass legend wow his crowd with songs spanning his 40+ year career.

Because I’m both a bluegrass nerd and a social media nerd, I streamed one of his songs via Facebook Live.

It was late on a weekend night and it didn’t get a lot of views in real time. But over the next 36 hours or so, it was watched a few dozen times. (And now I can go back and rewatch the band anytime I want on my personal Facebook page!) But truth be told, by Sunday night, I wasn’t thinking about the video anymore than I was about the drive to and from the show.

But then Monday morning, something interesting happened — my video was “liked” by the bluegrass legend it featured.

Now let’s be clear: I don’t think that this artist liked the post himself (although he might have). More likely it was a member of his marketing or management team.

But the notification that he had liked my video popped up, and I have to be honest — I got excited. Like, more excited than I probably should have.

I work in social media for a living. I know how this works. I know he probably has some marketing agency liking positive mentions of him online. But you know what: it still got its intended effect out of me!

Having him like my video felt like getting a high five or a quick hello from a bluegrass legend.

Does that digital high five mean that we are suddenly best friends? Of course not.
Does it mean I can suddenly shred  on the mandolin like he can? I wish!

Am I still excited enough that it happened that I immediately wanted to tell all my friends about it? Yup.

Liking that post cost him and his team literally nothing. Yet it added to my excitement about the show and about the artist overall.

Social media serves many roles, not least of which is customer service and community relations.

Think about yourself as a movie star. When you walk down the street, people are going to recognize you. You can’t stop and have lunch with every fan. You can’t even stop and take a picture with them all or you’d never get anywhere. But you can nod and smile to everyone who waves at you.

That’s what a “like” is on social media — it’s a head nod from a celebrity. It doesn’t suddenly make you best friends or ensure that they will buy your product/go see your next movie/buy your upcoming album. But it shows the fans that you are real, and that you respect them as people, not just as consumers. And it only takes as much time to create that connection as you need to give a single click of your mouse or tap on your phone.

If someone posts about you or your business online, respond. Or at the very least, smash that like button.

If they write you a review, thank them (or address any concerns as needed). But at the very least, like their post and let them know you see them and you appreciate them.

If you see a celebrity on the street, and you wave at them, you are going to tell your friends one of two stories:

“Oh my goodness, I just say this famous person on State Street. It was so cool!”

*** OR ***

“I just saw this famous person on State Street. He was kind of a jerk.”

​You’re the celebrity. Which would you prefer?

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What Are Vanity URLs and Why Should You Be Using Them?

A vanity url is a memorable url that will redirect to the page where you actually want to send people.

They are easy (and inexpensive) to set-up, and can help your user easily find your brand’s important content and sub-campaigns.

In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we delve into what they are, how to set them up, when you should use them and more.

We also cover Bit.ly links and talk about when those can and should be used in lieu of vanity urls.

If you aren’t using both of these tools in your digital toolkit, you’re making things harder than they need to be for your audience.

Tune in today and learn more.

Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream podcasts. And scroll down for a full episode transcript.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

The other day I was watching Hulu and I saw an ad pushing treatment for men suffering from a quote Bent Carrot.

If that sounds a bit phallic… well, yeah, that’s the idea.

I tend to tune out most — if not all — medical ads, but this one got my attention. I mean, they took a sensitive issue and made it, if not funny, at least memorable.

But what really got my attention was their url: bent carrot dot com.

I mean, that is just an epic url for a company in the business of mending, ummm, bent carrots.

Here’s the thing though – there’s no website at that link. Bent carrot dot com is not a website – it’s a vanity url.

What’s a vanity url? Think vanity license plates, but for landing pages.

It’s a memorable url that will redirect to the page where you actually want to send people. It can serve a similar purpose as a QR code, but with one memorable exception from this past Super Bowl, most people aren’t gonna capture a QR code from a commercial. Just like having a great 1-800 number used to be the industry standard for anyone who wanted you to remember their phone number, vanity urls are a great way to help ensure people remember your website.

If you go to bent carrot dot com, it simply redirects you to peyronies dash disease dot xiaflex dot com slash patient. Think anyone’s gonna remember that url? Of course not. But bent carrot dot com – yeah that one will stick with you.

Even though you probably wish it wouldn’t.

I was once working with a client on her digital program. Throughout the course of the engagement, it came out that she had a second website. There are certainly times where that can make sense. But I asked a few questions and I got a bit queasy on her behalf. This client had paid for an entire website, developed copy, worked up graphics… all the work that went into a website — when all she really wanted was a landing page for a vanity url she had bought.

She wasn’t a musician – but to keep it simple let’s pretend she was. She already had her band’s website. She had a new album out and she — smartly! — bought the url matching her album’s name. But to use it, she thought she needed to build a whole new website.

Why is this bad? For so many reasons! The first is that she invested a ton of time and money into a new site. But she also made her users’ journey more complicated. If I like a band, I want all info about the band, INCLUDING THEIR ALBUMS, on a single site. Not spread out over a bunch of sites. AND by doing what she did, she actually hurt her SEO (or search engine optimization). Because her two websites are now competing with each other on Google for the same keywords.

What should she have done instead? She should have simply built a landing page on her primary site and redirected her vanity url to it.

Want an example of that? Head to stepupyoursocial.com. I mention that url in every episode of this podcast. But here’s the thing – that website doesn’t actually exist! It’s just a landing page on my primary website.

It was easy to build (well, easier), it helps with my SEO, instead of hurting it, and it keeps my users’ journey clean and simple. After all,  you can easily jump from my podcast page right to my blog. Or to my services or about page. You can learn all about who I am and what I do without ever leaving my site.

So was this hard to do? Was it expensive? Good news: it doesn’t cost anything (beyond the cost of the url) and it takes about 60 seconds to set up.

Go to wherever you buy your urls – I personally use NameCheap. But there are loads of alternatives, including Google Domains, domain.com, buydomains.com, GoDaddy. Lots of options. Once you own the url, simply go into the backend and redirect it to wherever you want it to go. I can’t give you step by step instructions because every platform is going to be a little bit different. But Google “redirect url [insert name of where you bought your domain]” and you’ll find step by step instructions just waiting for you. Follow those instructions and you should have this done in less time that it took watch that hilarious TikTok video you were just checking out.

The hosting companies say it can take up to 30 minutes or so to take effect. I find it typically works within minutes. But just wanted to flag it might not work immediately.

So that’s what vanity urls are. When should you use them? Anytime you want to have a memorable url for a sub-component of your brand that’s easy to remember.

That might be bent carrot dot com. Or stepupyoursocial.com. Or the name of your band’s album. Or a program or campaign your organization is running. Or a video series you have created. Anything you want to be abl e to easily send people to without all those slashes and dashes after your primary url.

The cost of a non-premium url is going to be about $10 a year give or take. (A premium url – like social media master dot com for example – could run tens of thousands of dollars.)

While I’m personally partial to vanity urls, I also want to share a totally free workaround for you.

Bitly.

Bitly is a free link shortening tool.

You can take any url and drop it into bitly and it will give you a short url that will redirect to your landing page of choice. This could be a page on your site. Or an article you think is important. Or a YouTube video you love.

I use a bunch of vanity urls for my brand. But I also regularly use bitly links.

Want my free Facebook live checklist? Head to bit.ly/facebooklivechecklist and download it today. Want to find a blog post I wrote, rounding up stock photo sites that focus on diversity? Head to bit.ly/diverse-photos

And I’m not the only one.

Want to watch Madonna’s Frozen Remix video on YouTube? Head to bit.ly/frozenremixvideo.

Want to do a paid internship, spending your time diving off the West coast of Vancouver Island? Head to bit.ly/DiveIntern.

I think you get the idea.

Not every product needs a vanity url. For everything else, bitly links can be great substitutes.

But big important caveat: don’t just create a bitly link. Customize it. Meaning switch it from the random letters and numbers they’ll assign you with something easy to remember, like FacebookLiveChecklist or FrozenRemixVideo.

Doing so is free, quick and easy. If you’re not customizing your bitly links, you might as well be sending them to peyronies dash disease dot xiaflex dot com slash patient.

And no one wants that.

So get out there and set up your redirects.

And if this episode was helpful to you, do me a favor and send a few folks to stepupyoursocial.com. They’ll be redirected to a landing page on my site – it’ll be exactly what they were looking for!

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What Your Brand Can Learn From WORDLE

If you use the internet, you’ve likely heard of WORDLE.
According to Buzzfeed, there have been nearly 2 million tweets mentioning “WORDLE” since November of 2021.
But here’s the thing: this game, that so many people play and talk about, had only 90 users in November. Not 90 thousand… 90.
How did this viral phenomenon happen and what can we as digital marketers learn from it? A lot!Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream podcasts. And scroll down for a full episode transcript.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

If you use the internet, you’ve likely heard of WORDLE.

If not, here’s a quick primer: It’s a VERY simple word game where you have to figure out the five-letter word of the day. You start with no information. When you guess a word, each letter will turn one of 3 colors. Grey means that letters NOT in the word. Yellow(ish) means that letter is in the word, but not in the right place. Green means the letter is in the word and in the right place. You get 6 tries. That’s it. That’s what all the hubbub is about.

I personally LOVE word games. I feel like WORDLE was made for me. But it was not – literally hundreds of thousands of people play WORDLE every single day.

According to Buzzfeed, there have been nearly 2 million tweets mentioning “WORDLE” since November of 2021.

But here’s the thing: this game, that so many people play and talk about, had only 90 users in November. Not 90 thousand… 90.

The game was created by Josh Wardle (really). He’s a software engineer in Brooklyn and he created it for his partner. But it was too good not to share, so it made its way around the family. On Nov 1, it was played by 90 people. But those 90 people loved it. Enough to become ambassadors for the game. So they told their friends who told their friends and here we are.

No one is getting paid to promote WORDLE (the creator has opted to not even monetize the game for himself!). People just love it so much they want to spread the word.

So why are we talking about a viral word game on a podcast about social media and digital marketing? Because there is A LOT we can learn from this simple word game.

So let’s dig in.

First of all – it’s simple. Like silly simple. I explained how to play in about 20 seconds above. The game’s instructions are only 82 words long. If you can spell (in English), you can play WORDLE.

Mr. Wardle could have based the game around 7 letter words. Even 6 letters words would have probably made some linguists feel very good about themselves (or bad I suppose). But by keeping it simple, he ensured that anyone can play, regardless of how much time they’ve spent reading the dictionary.

Along with being simple, the game is also extremely limited. Had he wanted to monetize, the creator would have let you play as many words a day as you wanted… in exchange for either money or at the least watching ads.

Instead, there’s one word a day. Play it… or don’t.

But if you don’t, you can’t go back. Whether he meant to or not, the creator developed a game with FOMO baked right in. If you miss today’s WORDLE, you miss today’s WORDLE. You can’t get to it tomorrow.

Now as a brand looking to make money, you might roll your eyes and say “great that he can afford to create free content, but I need to get paid.” Fair enough. But here’s the thing – great content creates trust. And loyalty. There’s literally a name for creating great content as a way to reach your customers. It’s called Content Marketing. And you know what – content marketing is amazing. I built my business on it. As have so many others.

And should Mr. Wardle decide to sell official WORDLE merch, or launch a new game, or maybe start a newsletter about internet virality, he’s developed a massive community of people who will trust that his future content is going to be amazing. Will they all kick in or subscribe – of course not! But he’s filled his funnel immensely with people who love his content. If even 1% of daily players supported his next endeavor, we’ll let’s just say he could probably quit his day job if he wanted to.

Imagine if he’d gone the other way – shoving as many ads as he could onto the page, and making you sit through an annoying popup video just to get to the game? Would folks still play? For some – yes (it really is a great game). But he’d probably lose a ton of daily average users. And you better believe folks are going to be less likely to serve as ambassadors for the game – why should someone go out of their way to tell their friends to play a game that looks spammy and is rife with ads. Maybe they’d tell their nerdiest friends. But virality isn’t about one person telling another person. It’s about one person telling lots of people. Exponentially. WORDLE is fun, but also clean and easy. Onboarding is seamless – why not help spread the word?!

Now if Mr. Wardle had asked me for advice when getting started, I would have recommend giving people the option of creating an account. This would have given you the ability to back and forth between desktop and mobile while keeping your stats in order. And he could have even reminded you to come back if you had missed a few days.

But here’s the thing – people don’t need a reminder to do something that they love. Which should serve as a huge lesson for your digital program. Telling people you’re doing a thing is fine. Having them waiting anxiously for you to do your thing – we’ll, let’s just say that’s way better!

What kind of content could you create that your audience would be waiting around to access. I don’t know what the answer is to that question – but figure it out and this is going to be a great year for you and your brand!

Now I mentioned we don’t need regular reminders to do the WORDLE because we just want to do it. BUT it’s hard to log on to any social media channel these days and not be almost inundated with reminders to play.

And that’s because the creator did something truly brilliant: he made sharing your score literally as easy as possible.

Like Spotify Wrapped before him, he didn’t embed a “tweet now” button on the game that brings up a complicated pop-up with awful formatting. Rather, after completing a round, you see the following: your personal statistics, a countdown clock to the next WORDLE and a big green button that simply says “Share.” When you click it, it doesn’t open anything you have to edit and deal with. It simple copies your results to your clipboard. You can now paste them anywhere you want (Twitter of course, or Facebook, but also a private text message or an ongoing email chain with old friends). They’re your results to share how you see fit. While I haven’t run focus groups, I can all but guarantee that this ease of use is a huge component of why people are constantly talking about this game online.

One thing worth noting: when you share your results, Mr. Wardle was smart enough to not show the actual words you used, simply the colored boxes you got and how many chances it took you to solve today’s WORDLE. Anything more would have killed the game in its tracks early on. Because everyone hates a spoiler, but people love to show off their results. His solution was brilliant in its simplicity.

So what are you doing to make your audience’s relationship with you easy to share. Do you have a hashtag on your packaging materials with a call-to-action to tag you on social? Do you have fun things up in your physical space that visitors are going to want to take pictures of and share on social? Do you provide regular content on your social channels, website, newsletter or elsewhere that doesn’t try to sell your product, but simply adds values to the lives of your intended audience?

Add value – often and for free. And people will be excited to tell their friends about you.

If you haven’t yet tried the WORDLE, head to powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle (you can find the link in this episode’s show notes at stepupyoursocial.com). Be sure to tag Reverbal Communications when sharing your results. We’d love to see them!

And when you’re done mastering today’s WORDLE, think about what you and your brand can give to the world that will get millions of people talking about you on social media.

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Step Up your social ep. 18 — Write Your Blog Post For Google. Or Facebook. Or Both. And Other Tips For Blogging.

 In Episode 13 of #StepUpYourSocial, we discussed why you should be blogging.
Today let’s talk about how you should approach writing content for your blog.
In this episode, we cover a lot of best practices for blogging in 10 minutes or less including:

  • The Goldilocks approach to finding good topic areas
  • How to make your content easy to skim
  • How to write for your audience, even if you’re not a great writer
  • The ideal length of a blog post (hint: it’s exactly how long it needs to be and not one word longer!)
  • And the importance of writing for Google. Or Facebook. Or both.

Tune in today and then get ready to step up your blogging!
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​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.​

Full episode transcript

If you aren’t already blogging… you should be.

We did a deep dive into why in Episode 13. But the short version:

  • It provides you content you can use to drive traffic to your website.
  • It’s great for your SEO – Search Engine Optimization
  • And it clarifies you as an expert in your field.


For more on all three of these reasons, head back to episode 13 and dig in.
So that’s why you should be blogging.

Today let’s talk about how you should approach writing   content for your blog.

First things first: a blog post should answer a question. It doesn’t literally have to be titled with a question, though that doesn’t hurt.

The question should be specific enough that people are looking for the answer, and broad enough that you can turn it into a full-length blog post.

A while back, I did a blog post on the Evolution of Instagram. That topic is potentially HUGE – but I was answering a specific question: How has Instagram changed over the years.

-What was the score of last night’s game? A bit too specific.
-Let’s do a full annotated history of our local sports team, along with in-depth explorations of every players’ personal journey to get there, the story of the team mascot and a recap of every game they’ve played since 1945. A bit too broad.
-What can we learn about our favorite team based on their playing last night? Sweet spot!

You can write pages on that topic, without ever losing the thread of why you are writing the post – or more importantly – why someone might want to read it.

So answer a question. Specifically.

Next up: make your post easy to skim.

No matter how captivating your writing, some people are not going to be interested in pouring through every word.

User headers. And subheaders. And sub-subheaders.

Use bullet points and lists. Please LOVE lists.

Keep your sentences short.

Keep your paragraphs short.

Use formatting – like bold, italics and underline – to make it easier for your reader to know what’s the most important content in the page.

If you can, use images and graphics to help make your content flow.

The word I like to use when it comes to content written for the internet: digestable. How easily can someone digest what you are trying to impart. If it’s not easily digestable – they will just move on.

You don’t have to be a great writer to be a great blogger. You just have to break things down in a way that your audience can follow.

So answer a question and keep your content easily digestable.

If you want to connect with a wide audience, don’t assume they know… well anything!

The goal of writing for an audience is not to make yourself sound smart. It’s to make them feel smart.

Picture a real person in your head when you write (or at least when you edit) your content. You are an expert in your field (if you weren’t, you couldn’t be blogging on it!). Unless you only want to talk to other experts, don’t assume they know the lingo. Spell out acronyms for them, explain why something that seems obvious to you should matter to them. Write for them as if they don’t know what you are talking about. Because frankly, if they knew what you were talking about – they probably wouldn’t be reading your blog post!

So answer a question with easily digestible content in a way that makes your audience feel smarter.

Next up: write your blog post for Google. Or Facebook. Or Both.

What does this mean? If you want a post to do well on Google — meaning you want people to find it when they do a search on the topic — know your keywords before you start. What’s a keyword (bearing in mind a keyword can be a phrase as well)? It’s the thing someone is going to put into Google that will hopefully help them find your post!

Before I wrote my blog post on the Evolution of Instagram, I did research into which keywords people were actually searching for on the topic. Were they looking for a history of Instagram? A breakdown of how Instagram has changed? Something else altogether? They were looking for an Evolution of Instagram. So I wrote my blog post accordingly. And my blog post is now on the first page of Google when someone searches for that keyword.

How did I get it on the first page of Google? I used Evolution of Instagram as my url slug (the part after the .com in my website). I used it in my title. I worked it into my copy as often as I could without sounding redundant (if your copy sounds like it’s been “stuffed” with keywords you will be penalized by Google, not to mention by your annoyed readers!).

How did I know that this was a keyword worth optimizing for? I did research. There are loads of free and paid tools out there you can use. I like one called Ubersuggest. You can also just use Google directly – run a few searches and see what comes up. Did one query give you 20 hits and another 200,000? Well that’s good to know, isn’t it!

Not every blog post needs to be written for Google.

But if it’s not written for Google, make sure you’re writing it for Facebook!

If you don’t have to worry about people searching for your content – because it’s something timely, interesting to you and your audience but not necessarily to the world, or for any other reason, then be sure the title helps it pop.

Let’s say you’re writing a post about the ways that your industry has changed, and what it means for consumers. And, just so we can get specific, let’s say your industry is artisanal sourdough bread .

If you’re writing for Google, you might go with: How Sourdough Baking Has Changed Over The Years, or What Do I Need To Make Sourdough?

If you’re writing for Facebook, you might go with something more like: Finding the Sweet Within Your Sourdough! Or 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Sourdough… But Should!

No one is going to search for those latter titles – but they are fun and have the potential to do great on Facebook!

In this day and age, if your content isn’t written for Google OR Facebook, it’s written for no one. So pick one – or find a way to tailor it to both – and get to writing.

To recap:

  • Know the question you are trying to answer BEFORE you start writing.
  • Make your content easily digestible.
  • Write to make your audience feel smarter.
  • Optimize your post for Google. Or Facebook. Or both.


One last thing: folks always want to know how long their posts should be. Google likes long form content, so if you’re writing for Google, keep that in mind. That said, I prefer the following: your content should be exactly how long it needs to be and not one word longer.

You’re not doing yourself any favors adding fluff to a post. Google will see through it. So will your readers. Tell them what they need to know and let them get on with their day.

Happy blogging y’all!

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Step Up your social ep. 17 — How Chewy Uses Their Customers’ Darkest Moments To Build Unyielding Brand Loyalty

What do you do at the end of your customer lifecycle? Do you go above and beyond to ensure that the customer who is moving on never forgets just how much they love you?
Chewy is a pet supply company. They know their customers will have to cancel their auto-renewal products… eventually ? ? ?
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But Chewy doesn’t just offer canceling clients full refunds. They take their “marketing generosity” to the next level.They don’t just want to get out of the way. They want to be a part of the family.In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we take a look at how Chewy creates unyielding brand loyalty from their customers, even as those customers are canceling their orders.

We then give some thought to how *you* can keep your client lifecycle going, even as it seems like it might be wrapping up for the foreseeable future.

Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

If you’re a pet person, you know how much joy your little furry (or scaly or feathery) friend can bring into your life.

Sure there are chores associated with having a pet: They have to be cleaned, walked, taken to the vet… did I mention the endless cleaning?! But through it all, our days are just better with a pet at our side.

Unfortunately, most pets have shorter life cycles than us pet owners.

You might enjoy your fish for a few months, your bird for years, or your dog or cat for decades. But eventually, that hard day will arrive when you have to say goodbye to them… for good.

So now grab a tissue, wipe your eyes and take off your pet owner hat and replace it with your digital marketer hat.

If you’re in the business of selling products to pet owners, this cycle can create a real challenge for you. When someone loses a pet, your customer cycle for them ends. At least for the time being.

There aren’t TOO many industries where customer service reps have to field questions from the grieving as a regular part of their job.

Selling pet products is DEFINITELY one of them.

So you know that awful day is coming for every one of your customers. What do you do?
If you’re Chewy, you use that awful day to builder deeper and more meaningful relationships with your customers.

Head to Twitter and search @chewy and the word died and you will find countless stories all getting at the same thing – my pet died. I had regular packages getting delivered from Chewy. I called to cancel and not only did they refund my money, they told me to keep the food and donate it to some other pet owner who needed it.

AND NOT ONLY THAT! Loads of people shared stories that they got flowers in the mail from Chewy expressing their condolences. I even saw people posting about Chewy sending them oil paintings of their passed pups!

To quote just one of the many tweets you’ll find when you search: “That’s all class.”
Here’s the thing – you can find these posts all over Twitter. But I first learned about this tactic from a random post in a Facebook Group.

And I can pretty well guarantee you that anytime a first-time pet-owning friend asks someone on the receiving end of Chewy’s — let’s call it “marketing generosity” — where they should buy their pet supplies, they aren’t just going to recommend Chewy — they are going to do so empathically, as if it’s a family company.

Could Chewy simply offer full refunds and call it a day?

Sure.

You might even see tweets letting you know that Chewy customer service makes it easy to cancel orders when your pet departs.

But by going from easy to compassionate, Chewy takes their relationships with their customers to another level.

They don’t just want to get out of the way. They want to be a part of the family.

On a P&L, this might seem bad for business. You are building deep bonds with someone who no longer needs your services.

But pet owners are pet owners through and through. It might be weeks or months before they get back on the horse (or kitty or puppy or chameleon). It might even be years. But they will almost certainly get another pet!

And even if they don’t, they will have friends and family members who do.

Chewy sees these regular order cancellations not as an end of their relationships, but as the start of a whole new one, one deeper and with more intimacy between them and their customer.

And it pays off for them big time – don’t believe me? Just head to Twitter or Google or reddit or Facebook and poke around! The stories are endless.

The takeaway here: wow your customers, even if they’re no longer your customers. Host free classes teaching people how to be better at something related to whatever you sell. If you ship products, make the packaging so fun people can’t help but post a picture of it on Instagram. If you’re a nonprofit and someone sends you a gift, do you send a thank you that let’s them know you appreciate them… or do you send them a letter that knocks their socks off?

The person who bought your product or donated money might never do so again. So what?! They are the people most likely to spread the word about how great you are to their networks.

Make it easy for them to do so and more importantly , give them a reason to want to!
At the end of the day, remember that you can’t just sell pet stuff. You have to be a pet person! I hope you have the same passion for whatever you are selling or advocating for online, as your typical pet owner has for their furry, four-legged friend!

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 16 — Reply All Just (Accidentally) Reminded Us About The Power of Facebook Search

One of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, just did a whole episode trying to track down something that wasn’t showing up on Google. If they had remembered that Facebook, while first and foremost is a social media channel, is also a search engine, they could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and energy.

The Facebook search bar is more powerful than you probably realize. In this episode of Step Up Your Social we’ll walk through some of the power lurking right at your fingertips.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
​
Drop us a line or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

Want to listen to the recreated version of the song? Or the original one? You can hear both in Reply All episode #158 The Case of the Missing Hit.

Or scroll down and listen to them both below.
​

​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Full Episode Transcript

Do you listen to Reply All? It’s an awesome podcast about living in the age of the internet. Or something like that. If you don’t listen already, you should. It’s one of my favorites for sure.

Last week, they dropped an episode called “The Case Of The Missing Hit.” In it, PJ, one of their two hosts, goes on a truly epic search — and I mean epic in its literal meaning — to find a song that was big enough to be played on the radio internationally in the 90s, but somehow had [virtually] no presence on Google.

The story starts simply enough: A man named Tyler reached out to PJ for help. He could hear this song in his head, but he   couldn’t find it on Google, even though he remembered many of the lyrics. It’s a weird concept in today’s age, where we can find virtually anything online. And yet the song was nowhere to be found… with one weird exception. Years ago, a guy who lives in Trinidad and Tobago had asked about it in an online message board, referencing several of the same lyrics that Tyler remembered. But of course, he too, was trying to track down the song.

This proved that Tyler hadn’t made it up, but it also didn’t help PJ solve the case of the missing hit.

To solve the case, PJ did what any normal person with a budget and an obsession does: he helped Tyler recreate the song in its entirety from memory. Tyler took a song he hadn’t heard in more than 20 years and he coaxed it out of a group of session musicians. PJ then took that recording and talked to… well everyone!

He spoke with numerous music critics from Rolling Stone, producers, radio show hosts from the era, even the lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies, as the song in question had a very BNL type feel too it.

Google failed them, so PJ took his query to the world. And in the end, all this time, energy and effort amounted to… nothing. Everyone he spoke with had a great idea about how to try to solve the problem. Every great idea took PJ down another rabbit hole. And every rabbit hole ended as unceremoniously as it had started with, “sorry, I just don’t know.”

Then something the Trinidad and Tobago guy had said in his original post sparked something in PJ and he plugged a few lines of the song into Facebook’s search bar. Immediately, not only did he find the song… he found the songwriter who had written it in the first place.

So much time and energy and effort could have been avoided if PJ (or Tyler for that matter) had remembered that while Facebook is first and foremost a social media platform, like virtually every other social media platform you know and love, it’s also part-search engine.

So let’s talk about a few other things the Facebook search bar — that simple little bar right at the top of your account — can do, that you might not have realized:

First things first, type something — anything — into the bar on desktop, and you’ll be brought to a search page. From there, you have a slew of filtering options both on the top of the screen and on the lefthand side.

On the top of the screen, you can choose to only see posts, people, photos, videos, market place, pages, groups, apps, events and links. So the next time you’re trying to find a Facebook Page and you can’t quite remember what it’s called, instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, try filtering instead.

On the lefthand side of the screen, you have a whole other bunch of options. You can opt to see posts from anyone, or only yourself, your friends, your groups or pages, or only content shared publicly. You can even choose a source, to see if a friend, group or page has talked about an issue you care about.

Want to see all posts? Of course you can do that. But you can also limit your search to only posts you’ve already seen. Which could come in super handy if you’re looking for something you saw, but can’t remember where.

You can limit your search to only show content tagged in certain locations or posted in a certain year — or even in a certain month of a certain year!

So yeah, right off the bat, you can see that while Facebook might not be Google, there’s more to its search then simply keywords and scrolling.

Now let’s get into some of the less obvious things you can do with Facebook search:

Once upon a time there was an easy way to see which of your friends lived in which city. Then Facebook got rid of that helpful  feature. But good news, they replaced it (they just forgot to tell anyone). Looking for friends in a particular city or state? Just type in “my friends in [wherever]” and Facebook will show you a list.

Looking for a bar, a pizza place, or a spot to get your oil changed? Type in “pizza places near me” and Facebook will show you a list, with a map. Just like Yelp, but without ever leaving Facebook.

Want to know if your friends liked the pizza place you are considering? On the top menu bar, head over to places. On the lefthand side, select “visited by friends.” You can also filter by “open now” and  price!

Want to know which events your friends are going to (or should we say so-called friends, since they’re apparently going out without you!)? Type in a keyword. On the top menu, go to events. On the lefthand side menu, go to “popular with friends.” You can also search for events based on location and date, to find things to do today, tomorrow, this week, this weekend or next week.

While their Boolean search isn’t as powerful as Google, you can employ it to some degree. If you don’t know Boolean by name you might know it in practice. Boolean search is a method of search that lets you filter or exclude terms by using all caps AND, NOT and ORs. So type   “social media” AND “Madison, WI” into Facebook (or Google) and you’ll only get content back that mentions both. Switch AND with OR and you’ll find content mentioning either. Go with NOT and you’ll find content mentioning the first term but not the second one. This can be pretty helpful when trying to narrow your search.

Now it is worth mentioning that while Facebook search is powerful, it’s far less powerful than it used to be. Google “Facebook search bar tricks” and you’ll find tons of articles telling you about a bunch of features you can use. But alas, Facebook killed a lot of them off when they did away with their Graph Search. This feature let you see which of your friends liked which pages, and which posts had been liked by a specific person. Guess it was all just a bit too invasive for a company so worried about your privacy. #LOL

But there’s still plenty you can do with the Facebook search bar.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!

Drop us a line at stepupyoursocial.com or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

In the meantime, don’t get stuck like Tyler and PJ. Start appreciating the power of Facebook search today!

PS: want to hear the song PJ and Tyler recreated, as well as the original? I’ll have links to them both at stepupyoursocial.com.
​

 So Much Better by Evan olson (Original Version)

​Better Than (Reply All Version)

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 15 — Free Digital Tools You Should BE Using But Probably Aren’t

THE EPISODE:

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT, ALONG WITH LINKS TO ALL MENTIONED FREE DIGITAL TOOLS:

Facebook loves video and really wants you to share videos to the platform. When you do so, they reward you with views. But here’s a scary statistic: around 85% of Facebook video is watched… without sound. So what are you to do? Hone in on your acting skills? Stockpile posters and write out the accompanying text? I won’t tell you NOT to do either of those. But there’s a far simpler option available to you built right into Facebook.

Once you’ve added your video to Facebook, but before you’ve posted it, you’ll see a menu on the right side of your post. (This only works on your computer, not on mobile.) You’ll see an option to replace your thumbnail. You can either select another moment from the video or upload something you created. In other word, good news: you’ll never again have to start off you video with an awkward open-mouth shot. Then below that, you’ll have the option to add subtitles and captions. Select that, pick your language, and Facebook will auto-create subtitles for your video. Assuming your video isn’t too long, it should only take a few moments for them to do so. Once they’ve been created, you can go through and edit them to make sure they are perfect. Then you can add them to your video and voila, instead of speaking to the 15% of your audience who DO listen with the sound on, now you can now speak to all 100% of them.

It’s worth mentioning this also works with live videos. But only after the fact. Once your video has been posted to your page, click the top right icon to edit it and you’ll get the same option to customize your thumbnail and to create subtitles.

So that’s one free digital tool you should DEFINITELY be using, but probably aren’t.

In this episode, I’m going to run through a bunch more. Let’s dig in.

Let me clarify that, per the title of the episode, every tool I am mentioning today is free. But it’s worth noting that many of them have premium versions you can pay for. But not one of these awesome digital tools requires a credit card to start using.

So let’s get into some more free tools you should be using.

In previous episodes of Step Up Your Social, we’ve covered Google Alerts, Facebook Pages to Watch (both in episode 10) and Twitter lists (in episode 2). Those are three killer, free listening tools. Let’s add one more to the list.

Feedly. Feedly is an RSS tool. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.) Instead of having to jump all over the internet, looking at countless news sources and blogs, you can create a free Feedly account and then subscribe to as many publications as you want. You can bundle your publishers by category and then, whenever you are looking to catch up with the news — or importantly, wherever you know you need to share something on social but are not sure what — you can head to Feedly and see all the content that every publication or blog you follow has posted. You can even break down content by category, so you can just see what’s going on in the world of Facebook, or email marketing, or minor league baseball or whatever. Instead of searching the internet for relevant news, use Feedly to create a pipeline to bring all that relevant news directly to you.

Next up, let’s look at two powerful apps owned by Instagram.

There are no shortage of free photo and video apps or tools in the app store. But these two are owned by Instagram, so you know they must be good.

The first is called Layout, and it lets you take multiple pictures and lay them out as you want. You can easily drag and drop to switch pics or to change the size of one image or another. It’s very easy to use.

The second is called Hyperlapse. I really love this one. It’s just a simple camera app, but it lets you create videos that can be sped up as desired. You have to take the video in the app for it to work, but once you’re done filming, you can speed up the video from 2x up to 12x speed. So let’s say you stick your phone in a tripod and film you and your team setting up for an event. You can take that footage, speed it up by a factor of 12 and suddenly your 15 minute set-up can be viewed in under a minute. Very powerful storytelling tool for the right situation! Quick caveat: for obvious reasons, it will record video without sound. If you want, you can add sound in after the fact. But the app will not capture any audio accompanying your video.

I don’t refer to many digital tools as magic, but this next one really kinda is. It’s called Remove.bg (as in remove background). And that’s exactly what it does. Caveat: it only works for people, not things.

You can use this tool on your computer or phone by visiting Remove.bg. Upload a photo and then tell it to remove background. It will take about 4 seconds and then, just like that, you’ll have the person (or people) in your photo captured against a transparent background. In my experience, they aren’t 100% accurate. They’re only about… 97% or so. Not bad for a free tool and four seconds! You can then erase anything they missed or add back anything you want to keep.

Then you can export that file and upload it somewhere else to edit it, or just add a background to it right through their site. You can upload your own background files, or select from their photo library.

Anyone with any Photoshop experience can do this same thing. But not as quickly as remove.bg. And probably not for free!

Speaking of graphic design, there are a million free tools out there that will help you design better graphics, add logos to your pictures and do plenty of other basic graphic design work without having to invest years into learning Photoshop. But Canva was the originator of the field and they are still the go to for all my “graphic designs for dummies” needs.

They’re free to use, but they do offer a premium version that adds perks like letting you store your brand’s colors and create more advanced file storage systems. You should also know that despite having an endless amount of pictures, icons and pre-made templates to pull from, a bunch are free but many are not. So be aware that you aren’t building something you love using a paid pic or icon, unless you are prepared to pull out your credit card. That said, most assets can be bought for just $1, so you don’t have to worry about breaking your budget.

Another great thing about Canva is that it’s all web based. So you can login on your computer, start a design. Then head to your Canva app and keep working on the go.

It’s also worth noting that Canva.org offers free premium options for nonprofits.

And since we’re talking about stock photos, my go to stock photo source these days is Unsplash. You can search the site by keyword, find beautiful, high quality photos that you can then use for free. They request, but don’t require, giving credit to the photographer.

I will add that I’m not a lawyer and there are some fine print things that might affect you and your brand. If you have a lawyer, ask them to vet the language per your needs. If you don’t, head to Google and get lots of different takes on what you can and what you can’t do with “free” stock images.

I’m going to close my list with two quick writing assistance tools. The first is Grammarly, a free extension you can add to your browser (and your phone as well, though I’ve stuck with just using it on my computer). It’s essentially spellcheck for everything you do online. It won’t make you a better writer per se, but it will help ensure you don’t embarrass yourself with typos, missing commas or by using the wrong your.

The second one is called Hemingway App. This one may actually make you a better writer.

Copy and paste your text into Hemingway App and it will flag sentences that are hard to read, words that you can simplify, overuse of the passive voice and anything else keeping you from writing more like Ernest Hemingway.

So that’s my list. I’d love to hear any tools that you use that I didn’t include. Share them in the comments, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn at Reverbal Communications or tweet at me using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.

As always, if this was helpful to you, I’d really appreciate a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and will go a long way towards helping us reach a larger audience.

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 14 — 7 Times The Airlines Blew It On Social Media (And What We Can Learn From Their Mistakes)

THE EPISODE:

THE TRANSCRIPT, ALONG WITH LINKS AND SCREENSHOTS:

Last week, a “YouTube Star” named Drew Gooden tweeted “Excuse me @Delta but this is outrageous. I just got sucked through the toilet hole in one of your aircrafts and am now hurtling through the sky, can I get my money back? This never happens on Southwest.”

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Obviously this is a ridiculous tweet, intended for comedic purposes. But the person handling customer service for Delta that day, who was clearly in dire need of a few pots of coffee, apparently didn’t read beyond the first line before responding “Hello Drew, I am sorry to learn of this, can you provide more detail to what occurred. HBB.” ​

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Drew promptly responded “got sucked through toilet hole.”

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​Let’s take a step back and think about how this happened.

Now what the airlines lack in legroom, they more than make up for in social media budgets. Who amongst hasn’t used social media to reach out to an airline to complain about something, only to be met with a pseudo-personalized response — replete with an employee’s first name or initials — only to be informed they can’t actually help us with our problem but that they hope we have a nice flight (even though we’re writing to ask why our flight has been delayed 18 hours, with no end in sight!).

But still, they are paying people to monitor their channels, and provide quick responses to any and every query sent their way, including paying HBB to respond to Drew when he complains about being sucked out of one of their toilet holes.

What’s the lesson from this ridiculous exchange: social listening is good. But only, if you are actually hearing what your audience is saying.

Now this podcast exists to share quick, actionable tips to help you step up your social. In this episode, we’re going to look at 6 more times the airlines blew it on social media, and talk about what we can learn from their collective mistakes. Let’s let their fails become our best practices.

So without further ado:

Social Fail Number 2: The lesson here is the same as in the previous example, but it’s too good not to also share.

When American Airlines merged with US Airways, they created the world’s largest airline. Twitter user Mark Murphy tweeted his congrats. And this new mega-airline was quick to reply, thanking him for his support.

The problem: Mark’s congratulatory tweet actually read: “Congrats to @americanair and @usairways on creating the largest, shittiest airline in the world.”

So yeah, the airline was listening, but they weren’t actually hearing.

Social Fail Number 3: During the 2014 World Cup, the US was playing Ghana. When the US men’s team scored their second (game-winning) goal, Delta was excited to share the news with its fans. Smart. Delta serves an international audience of people who like to travel. Why wouldn’t they want to show their audience that they are in on the fun?

To represent the US, they used an image of the Statue of Liberty. To represent Ghana, they used an image of a giraffe. The problem? There are no giraffes in Ghana.

What can we learn from this mistake? Don’t make assumptions. Five minutes on Wikipedia could have prevented years of embarrassment for a brand that was trying to show they were with it, and instead showed how little they understood the world they were trying to connect.​

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Social Fail Number 4: This one isn’t actually from an airline. It’s from an airport. But it still made our list.
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In 2013, Luton Airport in London posted a photo of a recent incident from Chicago in which a plane had skidded of a runway, promising that “Because we are such a super airport… this is what we prevent you from when it snows… Weeeee :)”

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Let’s start with the fact that this is just bad writing. But convulsion aside, the real problem with this post is that they were using a plane crash as a punchline, despite the fact that a six year old boy had died in the incident.

Even if your brand’s voice is bold and irreverent, know when it’s appropriate to make jokes about incidents involving dead kids? Umm, let’s go with never. Sound good?

For Social Fail Number 5: let’s start with the lesson and then move backwards. Contests and hashtags can be great ways to drum up User Generated Content and to encourage your audience to sing your praises to their communities. But they aren’t magic, and if you are struggling with a PR crisis, they can often create more harm than good.

This is a lesson that Qantas Airways learned the hard way.

Qantas wanted to drum up some online excitement for their brand, so they decided to give away a first class gift package by having people tell them about their “dream luxury inflight experience” using the hashtag #QantasLuxury.
The responses came streaming in. But they weren’t what Qantas had in mind.

Here are just a few examples:

  • Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire
  •  #QantasLuxury is a massive executive bonus while your workers starve and your former customers choke
  • Flights that leave on schedule because Management doesn’t arbitrarily shut down the airline #QantasLuxury
  • #qantasluxury having a skybed so “superior in its class” you have to be under 5 foot to be able to use it with your legs straight.
  • #qantasluxury – is not being told you can apply for refund online & finding out they only refund via a phone # that no one answers for 4hrs

So yeah, you get the idea.

This is not the story that Qantas wanted their audience to share with their networks. But even an intern should have foreseen that you can’t use a hashtag to solve a PR problem. A hashtag is offering the floor to your community. And if you think their stories MIGHT be more problematic than positive, maybe find another outreach approach.

Social Fail Number 6 was a famous one — United Airlines overbooked a flight and instead of raising the incentives until someone volunteered to leave the plane, they opted instead to violently drag a man — a doctor in fact — off of their plane. Someone shot a video of the brutal altercation and of course it went viral.
So I guess the lesson here is don’t be a jerk to your customers. But actually, I’m including this one on the list for a different reason.

As bad as the video was — and it was BAD — their real social media fail came from their response.

Bad things happen. An overzealous security guard or a stressed out flight attendant made a mistake and let their emotions get the better of them. Give it time and enough volume, it’s going to happen.

But when you inevitably make your apology, you better make it good. Needless to say, United blew that as well, or this issue wouldn’t have made today’s list.

A United exec put out a statement that essentially blamed the passenger, even though it was United who oversold the flight in the first place.

Additional apologies followed but it’s safe to say that this issue will stick with their brand for some time to come.

The lesson: if you are going to issue an apology, make it right the first time!

Which brings us to Social Fail Number 7, the final mistake on our list. This one is a doozy, and it’s — to put it mildly — NSFW (Not Suitable For Work).

In April, 2014, a Twitter user, Elle, tweeted her frustration with US Airways regarding an issue with her flight.

Five hours later, US Airways responded to let her know they were sorry.
Elle didn’t accept their apology. “Yeah, you seem so very sorry. So sorry, in fact, that you couldn’t be bothered to address my other tweets.”

US Airways responded with the following: “We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and follow-up.”

Accompanying this tweet was almost definitely the most explicit, shocking and inappropriate image every tweeted out by a Fortune 500 company, if not by any company ever!

It’s so NSFW I won’t even describe it here, other than to say it involved a toy airplane.

The tweet was deleted within an hour, but it is still very much lives on via screenshots all over the internet (even though I kinda wish it didn’t).

So here’s the lesson: don’t put anything on the internet, whether in a DM, a secret Facebook group or certainly not in response to a customer, if you aren’t prepared to see it quoted or screenshot across the internet.

Also, trust the people you have helping you manage your social accounts. Like, really.

Special thanks to Tre Temperilli for providing research assistance for this episode.

If you are enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving it a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and can go a long way towards helping grow our audience.
​
Thank you and be smart out there.

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Step Up Your Social Ep. 13 — 3 Reasons You Should Be Blogging

There are three primary reasons you should be blogging to grow your brand:
1) It’s great for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
2) It positions you as an expert in your field
3) It creates endless bridges between your social media and your websiteIn this episode of #StepUpYourSocial, we dig into all three of these reasons, as well as how to approach creating content, the difference between timely and evergreen content… and a whole lot more!Tune in today right here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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