I’ve been fortunate enough to meet Saul Colt at several conferences over the last year and on Twitter. He’s always outgoing and eager to chat, he’s also a fellow Canuck. Saul is the Head of Magic (really) at Freshbooks, an online invoicing company which “pushes the envelope”.

Freshbooks has garnered plenty of notice by influential blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable. Their community outreach through social media is impressive.

The following is an interview with Saul as part of my Communication 2.0 series of interviews with companies who are using social media the right way.

D. Who are you and what do you do?

S. My name is Saul Colt and I am the Head of Magic at FreshBooks.com.  My role here is to make online invoicing and time tracking sexy and I do this by combining social media, word of mouth marketing and just good old fashioned customer love and mutual admiration.

D. What social media (ie. blogging, podcasting, micro-blogging, social bookmarking, etc.) are you using to engage your clients and promote FreshBooks?  Of these online marketing tools, which do you find most effective?

S. We literally do just about everything except podcasting but we are considering throwing our hat into that ring soon. For us the most valuable tool has been Twitter. It allows us to keep us with what is going on with our customers and listen to their comments and suggestions…also it has been amazing for us to handle support questions, announce new releases and even gather up a slew of folks for a customer dinner!

D. How are you measuring your success from new media marketing?

S. We measure our success buy following unsolicited blog posts, twitter posts, hits to our web site and of course sales and conversions.

D. Are you cautious about allowing your customers to post about your company? How do you handle criticism online?

S. FreshBooks users are the greatest, most passionate people in the world and we never worry about how they will represent the company. We genuinely love our customers and I think that shows in how our customers evangelize for us. That being said we do have the very rare negative comment and we never shy away from those. We respond to (or try to ) every comment, good or bad and in a thoughtful manner try to correct the situation. It is never worth getting into an argument so you just have to be respectful and treat someone the same way you would if you were both in the same room.

D. What is one piece of advice for a traditional marketing company trying to embrace Web 2.0?

S. People are talking about you on places like twitter so you really should get in there and correct any incorrect statements and make some friends at the same time!

D. Thanks Saul.

I am very happy to announce that Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos agreed to an interview with me. Zappos is known as the best online shoe store in the business, but they are now offering much more.

A quick blog search will tell you how happy Zappos’ customers and staff are. They are truly a perfect example of a retail company that is using Social Media the right way.

Some innovative things the company does include:

• offering new recruits a quitting bonus of $1,000. The idea here of course is that if you aren’t serious about the job, then you’ll take the money and run. The cost of training new staff far exceeds $1,000, so it’s a win win.
• publish a “culture guide” book. The book looks similar to a school year book, filled with photos from company events, conferences and the daily grind. It features a couple of paragraphs from every staff member with their idea of what the Zappos culture is. It’s a brilliant idea for new staff members.
• at South By SouthWest, I snapped the photo above of the free Zappos branded water ponchos. Talk about a brilliant way to promote your company. Anyone waiting in line to get into a local restauraunt during lunch will certainly remember wearing one – I do!

D: Who are you and what do you do?

T: My name is Tony Hsieh and I am the CEO of Zappos.

D: What social media (ie. blogging, podcasting, micro-blogging, social bookmarking, etc.) are you using to engage your clients and promote Zappos? Of these online marketing tools, which do you find most effective?

T: Our blogs are at: http://blogs.zappos.com. We are also very active on twitter: http://twitter.zappos.com. We also have a presence on myspace and facebook, but aren’t as active on those. The primary purpose of the blogs and twitter is so that outsiders can get a glimpse into our company culture. We don’t really think of them as marketing channels so much as ways to develop a more personal connection with people, whether they are other employees or our customers.

D: How are you measuring your success from social media?

T: Since we’re not looking at them as marketing channels, we aren’t measuring marketing ROI.

D: Are you cautious about allowing your customers to post about your company? How do you handle criticism online?

T: One of our core values is to be open and honest, so we encourage all customer feedback as long as it’s honest and constructive. There is always room for improvement, so whatever feedback we can get is great!

Our core values are here:  http://www.zappos.com/core-values.zhtml

D: Although Zappos is an online company, what is one piece of advice for a *traditional* marketing company trying to embrace Web 2.0?

T: Make sure that whatever you do, you do it in an authentic way and you are truly passionate about it. For example, if you’re not passionate about Twitter for Twitter’s sake, then you’re probably not going to be very successful at using Twitter.

We aren’t forcing all of our employees to use Twitter, but we do offer classes for those that are interested in learning how to use it.  We now have over 400 employees using Twitter:
http://twitter.zappos.com/employees

D: Thanks for taking the time Tony. Best of luck with Zappos.

This will be the third and final installment of my Communication 2.0 series (for now). If you are with a company, can recommend a company, or simply want to speak with me, please shoot me an email at davemadethat AT gmail.com. Thanks.

I recommend you check out their blog, Nuts About Southwest. The blog traffic has increased by 30,000 visitors since this time last year, not too shabby. You can also follow Southwest on Twitter.

D: Who are you and what do you do?

S: My name is Shannon Ferguson, and I’m an Advertising Specialist at Southwest Airlines, and part of the Social Media Team

D: What social media (ie. blogging, podcasting, micro-blogging, social bookmarking, etc.) are you using to engage your clients and promote Southwest?  Of these online marketing tools, which do you find most effective?

S: We engage in a variety of social media at Southwest.  Perhaps our most well-known is our award-winning corporate blog, Nuts about Southwest.  We recently launched our blog 2.0, which allows us to further integrate social media–like with our new podcast, video blog and flickr tools — and allows site visitors to easily access other sites where we have an online presence.  You’ve probably noticed that on our blog we have various RSS feed subscription points, image & video galleries, and links to YouTube, flickr, facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter.  It’s hard to say which is the most effective because they’re so integrated.  At the risk of sounding overly diplomatic, though, they each have their own value and audience, and they’re incredibly useful in both disseminating our messages and connecting with our Customers.

D: How are you measuring your success from new media marketing?

S: We have a variety of tools and platforms we use.  We have the ability to measure tone and reach of specific blogs and social networks.  We compare this with the tone and messages with our traditional media relations, and report all to senior Leadership.

D: Are you cautious about allowing your customers to post about your company? How do you handle criticism online?

S: We think it’s important that these social media forums are a place for Customers to voice their opinions about our Company.  People need a channel to vent, and that’s often less than flattering to our Company.  I hope that what we portray to our Customers and blog readers, though, is that we really care about each person’s experience with Southwest.  With that being said, we welcome opposing viewpoints but we do not view social media as the correct place to respond to individual Customer Service issues.  We have an entire department dedicated to Customer Relations, who have much more authority and information than those of us on the Social Media Team.

D: What is one piece of advice for a traditional marketing company trying to embrace Web 2.0?

S: There are so many different ways to reach out to your Customers online, but you need to find which one is best for your Company and what you want to accomplish.  Whatever you do, make sure your efforts are sincere and believable.   Also, don’t be scared to try new things – explore and educate your leaders on possibilities in the Social Media realm.

I hope this provides you with a little bit of insight.  Thank you so much for your interest, Dave.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me for any additional clarification.

D: Thanks very much Shannon.

-

I’ll have my next Communication 2.0 interview next Wednesday with Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos. Subscribe for free to my blog by clicking this link and you’ll be alerted instantly when that interview has been posted to my blog. Thanks.

If you know a company who are using Twitter and other social networking services effectively please let me know. If you’re with a company who is doing this I’d love to speak with you for a future interview for my Communication 2.0 series, email me: davemadethat @ gmail.com.

The following is an interview I conducted with Frank Eliason, Customer Service Manager for Comcast at their Corporate Headquarters. A few months ago Frank created an account on Twitter called @comcastcares. Over a short amount of time he has become a popular destination to have problems solved and questions about Comcast answered quickly. This is a true success story of how companies can embrace social media and micro-blogging to interact with their customers.

There have been several success stories from Frank’s Twitter usage like:

• Bryan Pearson had a late payment billing issue resolved.
• Scott Stead had a neighborhood outage repaired.
• Joel Houssman got a call from Comcast headquarters to be sure his cable problems were fixed.

D: Who are you and what do you do?

F: I am a Customer Service Manager for Comcast at our Corporate Headquarters.

D: How did @comcastcares come about?

F: Back in September we started reaching out on some blogs and forums.  It was minor, and really in our spare time.  As we were doing this, we started to see positive feedback.  This caused us to do it more.  Now we have a 8 people helping.  As this outreach began to get noticed, @ComcastScott encouraged us to check out Twitter.  That was in February.   We watched for a while, usually reaching out to some people via phone.  In early April we reached out to Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.  Afterwards, he posted a blog about how Comcast was monitoring Twitter.  What was interesting is in the comments some people stated that we only reached out because he was Michael Arrington.  Well then many others started commenting back that we reached out to them too.  The cat was now out of the bag, so we decided to engage on Twitter.  We started posting the very next day using the ID we signed up for in February.

D: What social media (ie. blogging, podcasting, micro-blogging, social bookmarking, etc.) are you using to engage your clients and promote Comcast?

F: We reach out in blogs, micro blogs, forums and other sites we find through various search techniques.  We really are not trying to promote Comcast.  I am a Customer Service person, and my goal is to help, nothing more.  I am not a PR person or marketer.  It sometimes comes across that way, because we are creating a positive image.

D: Which social media do you find to be most effective?

F: Twitter has been amazing because of the ability to build friendships.  These new friends then begin to help spread the word through blogs or responding to others that comment about Comcast.

D: How are you measuring your success from new media marketing?

F: We are not measuring success, we are gathering feedback and helping Customers.  We do track some of the people we help, as well as most of the topics we see to help improve the Customer experience at Comcast.

D: Are you cautious about allowing your customers to post about your company? How do you handle criticism online?

F: People are going to post good, bad and ugly about any Company.  The difference is we are there to help if they need assistance.  Sometimes we may provide more information so they can better understand.

D: What is one piece of advice for a traditional marketing company trying to embrace Web 2.0?

F: Comments on the web are not going to go away, in fact they are they permanently there (search cache or on the server).  Instead of ignoring it is best to get involved.  I would also recommend that it is important to understand the language and culture.  For example on Twitter, just marketing or selling does not earn respect.  Get involved and be personal.

D: Thanks Frank.

—

I’ll have my next Communication 2.0 interview next Wednesday with Shannon Ferguson, an Advertising Specialist and Social Media Team member for Southwest Airlines. Subscribe for free to my blog by clicking this link and you’ll be alerted instantly when that interview has been posted to my blog. Thanks.

I’m a long time Twitter fan as you probably know. In the next day I will likely surpass 8,000 tweets (or posts on Twitter).

While I was preparing for my presentation I had the idea to reach out to a few companies who are using Twitter effectively. I realize many of you probably have touchy feelings about Comcast. Personally, I would just like them to change the darn On Demand music.

Tomorrow I will be posting an interview I did with Frank Eliason, otherwise known as @comcastcares, the Comcast Customer Outreach person who has become a popular destination on Twitter for solving your Comcast woes.

[tags]Communication 2.0, interview, Comcast, On Demand, Frank Eliason, PodCamp Nashville, PodCamp Toronto, Dave Delaney, dave made that, Promoting Your Brand  on Twitter, @davedelaney, @comcastcares[/tags]