Skills:

• Web content
• SEO

Skills:

• Web content
• SEO
• Web development
• Enewsletter management
• Social media

Skills:

• SEO
• Web analysis

Skills:

• SEO

Skills:

• SEO
• Web content
• Email newsletter management

Skills:

• Social media
• Social network development
• Blogging
• Web content
• SEO

You can find out more at Mom Blog SEO.

P.S. You can also make money promoting my book by joining the affiliate program.

I see some companies who standout. They not only respond when directly contacted (@ed on Twitter). They monitor Twitter for mentions of their company, and they respond anytime someone mentions them by name. Beyond all of that, and read this carefully because this is the crucial element, they make things happen and address or fix the issue quickly.

One example was @shoebuy. I had a gift certificate to Shoebuy.com and it was about a week before a conference when I remembered that. I went there to get some shoes, and I saw no option to get them overnighted. I tweeted about it and didn’t even realize they were on Twitter, so I didn’t say with their @ in the tweet. Within seconds, yes seconds, two different Shoebuy employees on Twitter responded that they could overnight certain brands. It wasn’t easy to determine which brands, so they sent me a link to a full list.

Within an hour, I had ordered my shoes and they arrived the next day. Without that Twitter intervention, I would have been annoyed with Shoebuy and I would not have placed the order at all. I also would have likely told people about this bad experience. Now I can rave about the company. (Like now.)

Many times, however, I see companies doing it wrong. This not only means the resources they are putting into Twitter are wasted, but they are probably causing more damage than good.

Here are what I will describe as the five bad customer service types.

The Retro Customer Service Tweeter

I sent @wachovia a DM this morning asking about an issue with my account. Their response was to call their 800 number. Ummm, why are you on Twitter exactly? I get there are privacy issues, but there are ways to share information via DM that would not be a problem.

If we wanted to endure an 800 number, wait on hold, argue and cajole to get a straight answer, get accidentally knocked off the line, call back and start over… well, we aren’t idiots. Anyone who is on Twitter is surely capable of looking up your toll-free number. We are contacting you on Twitter specifically because we want to avoid all of that. Phone customer service sucks 99.99999 percent of the time (yeah, that’s a real statistic). We despise it.

You can get a monkey to DM people 800 numbers, but I would prefer you hire a savvy human who can contact the right people and fix the issue.

The Multiple Personality Customer Service Tweeter

It is perfectly fine (in fact, wonderful) to have several people within the company and/or on behalf of the company on Twitter. In fact, as my example above shows with @shoebuy, it wasn’t even the official account that contacted me. What is not OK is not clearly specifying which Twitter account is the official one, or the one designated to handle customer service complaints.

We get that you can’t have one human monitoring your account 24/7. But there are ways to handle that. Say in your bio or your background who the various people are. If you want to be personal, have them sign their tweets with -firstname or -initials. But just look at @umatter2charter! This is one. hot. mess!

Twice, I have contacted Charter. Twice I’ve gone at least a day or two because I didn’t properly decipher which of their five (yes FIVE) Twitter customer service accounts was on at that moment. Kudos to them for responding when they get it or make sense of it. But having one account with multiple users would be so much clearer.

As it is now, this is reducing their effectiveness and confusing/irritating their customers on Twitter. It’s also clearly slowing their response time. Beyond that, this will be hard for them to reverse if customers are following or accustomed to tweeting one of the five accounts.

The Oblivious Customer Service Tweeter

First, let me say not being on Twitter is a major fail these days. A year ago, it was no big deal. Today, especially for a major corporation, it is glaring. But it’s possible to be on Twitter and be just as distant to the community as one who is missing. Where is Apple? Seriously. And @itunesmusic is the epitome of the blind Twitter account.

Here are some warning signs of an oblivious tweeter:

• They don’t follow anyone. (Here’s a hint: when you do that, no one can DM you. So they can only complain @ you publicly. You know, where everyone sees it. Mmm-hmmm.)
• They don’t reply to anyone.
• They do nothing but self-promote and sell.

The Two-Faced Customer Service Tweeter

Twice, I complained about AT&T on Twitter. OK, way more than twice, but they acknowledged it twice. They replied publicly and in DM. They asked for my email address, and said the matter would be addressed and someone would be in touch. Twice, I never heard a word.

Whether intentional or just a case of it falling through the cracks, this is shady. Publicly, it saves face. The company looks responsive. But believe me, I have since tweeted that this happened. And now I am blogging about it.

If you say you will help, do it. At least try. Believe me, we don’t forget.

The Good News Customer Service Tweeter

This is a variation of the Oblivious Tweeter above, but an equally annoying one. They are more than happy to chit chat, and to retweet when someone raves about their company. They think contests asking people to follow them to enter is engagement. They think churning out coupons is enough.

But if someone complains on Twitter, they disappear. Or DM and want it taken offline. If you are a company on Twitter, you have to take the good and the bad. You have to address the good and the bad. There are positives to even the most negative tweets. Twitter is a great big free focus group. You should listen. The feedback could be valuable.

Plus, back to @shoebuy, they quickly turned a negative into a positive. That is what people tend to remember. If you respond, that is.

What do you think? Do you have an experience with a company on Twitter that did it just right… or just wrong? I’d love to hear about it.

_{Customer service illustration based on photo © Ray Smithers.}

The book is in preorder status right now. The first 100 to preorder (you only pay when it’s released) get it at half price. A fourth of those half-price preorders went in one hour when I posted about it on Twitter!

You can find out more and reserve your own copy at Mom Blog SEO.

For 2010, I would like to see the hard work start to pay dividends. I would like to focus more on results. I want to see ventures that don’t just have a mission, but accomplish it. I would like to see 2010 be the year (for all of us) of harvesting the ripe results of our efforts.

My 3 Words: Queens, Focus, Freedom

December for me was a forced sabbatical. We traveled to Disney World at the beginning of the month, I was sick for three weeks, and then we lost power at home twice (once for three days, which forced us to travel on snow-covered roads to a hotel just to find heat for our family).

It became an involuntary vacation. It was impossible to be productive, and at best hard to get any work done. In the end, it was a gift. I got a chance, long needed, to step away from the work and reflect. To relax and prioritize. Life is a lot like a neo-impressionist Pointillist painting. If we stand too close, it is nothing but random dots. Step away, and the picture becomes vividly clear.

Queens

For my first word, I confess I am stealing (with slight modification) Chris Brogan’s word of Kings. His words about behaving like a king really connected for me. He described it as the ability “to maintain poise and balance and charm and demeanor when dealing with life’s unpleasant moments.” I think for women it is even more important to behave regally. The level and intensity of mom blogger dramas I witnessed in 2009 is just unacceptable. In 2010, I’d love to see all of us as women rise above.

If not all women (hey, there will always be the fools who perpetrate this low-life behavior), let’s set the bar and hope others follow. I also think it’s important to command respect. We are professionals. Let’s act like it. (And yes, that includes insisting on being paid for time, consulting, marketing and any other work.) Let this be the year that the mainstream media runs out of mom blogger scandals to cover. You can get mad at journalists for ignoring the inspirational stories about the mom blogosphere and focusing on the negative. But the fact of the matter is, they can’t write negative stories if they don’t exist. Don’t create them, and ignore those who do.

Focus

This has always been my challenge. As a journalist, I had a writing coach who suggested coming up with one word that summarizes each news story. It was tremendously helpful, and has stuck with me for years. In fact, I thought of that lesson when I saw Chris Brogan’s list. I am one who tends to think of ten things at once, and operates best with several balls juggling. That is great for productivity, but bad for focus. In 2010, I want to work hard to prioritize and to determine what is worth my time. I did some of this in 2009, leaving About.com after seven years and despite it being a nice stream of income. Sometimes, you have to walk away from things, even important things, to give you time to focus on what’s more important. If it were easy, you would have walked away ages ago.

I am planning to sell some of the social networks that I have fully developed and that have nice Google rankings (PageRank 4 for both), but I don’t have time to grow: Dadosphere (which would be a great buy right now, as I think dad bloggers will be the next in thing) and PictureMyCamera, a social blog/social network for photography enthusiasts). Contact me if you’re interested in buying one, or taking over management for a share of the revenue.

It also means that I will be focusing my services. One issue with being a jane of all trades is that it’s tempting to offer all services. I am going to revamp my hire me page to focus on the things I really enjoy, and which provide a better return on time investment. While I like my SEO Makeover, it is very time-consuming. For things like that, I am looking at developing eBooks or online courses instead. With so many pursuits, some simply need to require less hands-on time. I get a lot of joy from speaking, training and mentoring, so that will be my focus.

Freedom

There’s one thing I learned from my unexpected time off in December. It’s that I don’t want to be tethered to work and social media all hours. Going off the grid is good for us all. Part of the reason I want to focus is to create more time. I spent the last month doing many things just for fun. I rediscovered reading. I can’t tell you the last time I read a fiction book just for the pleasure of it, but in December I read every book by Karen Chance and the entire Twilight series. Yes, those are books with absolutely no purpose whatsoever except entertainment. It was wonderfully indulgent.

I want freedom on a few levels. I want to earn more for less effort to create financial and lifestyle freedom. When I decided to go from seasoned career woman to work-at-home mom, that was my vision. As anyone who works from home knows, it can be dangerous if you are a workaholic. You end up doing nothing but work. I will not spend 2010 with my fingers glued to a keyboard.

I’d love to hear what three words will be yours for 2010. Share in comments or, if you do a post, be sure to share the link in comments. And thanks to Chris Brogan for the inspiration.

_{Image of blogging queen, © Mike Licht of NotionsCapital.com.}