But when a brand that usually does a stellar job online makes a mistake, should we not retain some perspective and cut them a little slack? (And let’s reserve the word ‘disaster’ for tsunamis and earthquakes, shall we?)

Much as they (and customers) would like to think they are, social media managers are usually not in complete control of their little online empires. Often, it’s when a social media strategy has been signed off and the channels are launched that the social media managers’ battles begin.

In the last year, the Mints have developed at least 15 social media and/or Facebook strategies for high profile brands. And sound as these strategies are, internal battles can prevent them from being implemented properly.

What they’re up against

Even the best social media managers are often at the mercy of brand / product / marketing / other senior managers and directors. People who have their own agendas and want their material featured regardless of the editorial calendar and social media guidelines. Who think they know better – but who are removed from their customers.

Just as frustrating are the people who promise to supply content or answers, but don’t. One of the most useful skills a social media manager can have is the ability to pull rabbits out of very empty hats.

To add to their joy, social media managers are often working their bits off trying to field abuse and compensate for ops, management and customer service shortcomings in other parts of the organisation. It’s a pretty thankless task. And unfortunately, those who do a good job simply find themselves overloaded with even more queries to resolve. Customers are quick to complain and will swarm to a channel that finally gets them results.

Cut them some slack

Woolworths’ customers hauled the brand over the coals on Facebook recently for using images of very, very thin models in a campaign. While some people were not satisfied with the company’s response, the brand did address customer concerns quickly, repeatedly and professionally:
 
Chances are that Woolies’ social media managers’ hands were tied over the ‘skinny models’ campaign. Knowing how customer complaints are usually handled on the Woolworths Facebook page, their response above is a little colder and more corporate than usual. I’d not be surprised if the social media managers were advising the product manager to pull the material immediately – but were meeting resistance. (This is all pure speculation – my company is in no way involved with Woolworths’ online marketing.)

We’ll likely never know what the situation was. But I’m pretty sure that the Woolworths social media team had a really bad week and were handling it as best they could. Some customers realised this:

So social media’s not all glamorous, then?

No, it’s not glamorous, and often it’s not much fun either. Social media managers spend a lot of time handling complaints and fielding abuse – often after hours (Facebook page moderation at 4.30pm on New Year’s Eve, anyone?). But this is part of the territory of putting your brand out there and it’s important for brands to know what they’re in for.

Unsurprisingly, clients need to be better educated about social media. Not just their social media teams, but everyone who will be contributing content, and those up the chain who make overriding decisions. Their agencies and consultants must make them aware  of the pros, cons, dangers and opportunities of being so in touch with their customers. Be clear on what resources are needed to do a proper job (budget, training and headcount). Communicate what could happen if the brand drops the ball and how important the brand’s ‘character’ is in bad times. Make sure there’s a solid content strategy and moderation policy in place – which includes crisis management.

Then, because managing a Facebook page or Twitter account well takes sensitivity and finesse, if your social media managers are doing a great job, give them more respect. They are the ones who are actively engaging with the audience on a daily basis – so listen to their advice. Trust their expertise.
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What are your thoughts? Should we adopt a zero tolerance approach for social media faux pas, regardless of a brand track record online? Or should we acknowledge that these things often get blown out of proportion? Do weight in with your feedback in the comments below.

A personal note from Mint #1, Jo Duxbury:

The really cool thing about seeing my business grow is that I can now afford to do some of the things that I couldn’t during the Early, Lean Years (make that Very, Very Lean Years). Like pay myself a salary. Or buy nice chairs for the office that don’t cause back pain. Or support organisations who are doing amazing community work. And earlier this morning I snapped up a Groupon voucher for pampering treatments for ME, for a bargain R330 – because I work hard and deserve it.

But did you know that for just R40 more I could feed a child for a YEAR?

I first heard about the Peninsula School Feeding Association was when I was at junior school here in Cape Town. While I always arrived at school with a tummy full of ProNutro and Bovril (ugh) toast, three out of four children in the Western Cape arrive at school hungry. That’s shocking. And as the PSFA says, ‘you can’t teach a hungry child’.

Through the PSFA you can can ‘adopt’ a child and feed them for a year. As my business grows, I’d like to start feeding entire classes, standards or maybe even schools (I have high hopes for Peppermint Source!). For now, we ‘adopt’ as many kids as we can each year, adding more when we have bumper months.

So this is a challenge to my fellow small business owners, as well as freelancers and consultants, and friends: If you can spare R370, click this link and sponsor at least one child’s lunches. Please do it! Thanks.

Note: Peppermint Source is in no way affiliated with the Peninsula School Feeding Association, nor do we do any work for them. We just really believe in what they are doing and think they deserve support.

1. For multi-agency pitches, when you meet the rest of the pitch team (at whatever stage), be genuinely nice and friendly – and be interested in every last one of them. You don’t know who you might be able to help out, and who might be able to support you.
2. Document everything. Make it clear what the pitch team is expecting from you, and what you’ll be delivering.
3. Pitches are incredibly time consuming. Even if you think you have a small role, it WILL mushroom. Make sure your other (paying client) work does not take a backseat – difficult to do when you’re under pitch pressure.
4. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. It’s important that the entire presentation team does this together, but it’s possibly even more important that you rehearse your own section a few times before the big day. Present it to your colleagues, your partner, or your pets. It will help you be prepared and solid in what you are saying. If you are confident with your material, you can pay attention to the pitch context and adapt it if necessary – rather than panicking.
5. For out of town pitches: Even if it is horrible at the time, taking the red eye flight and getting there with a few hours to space is MUCH better than arriving 30 minutes before the pitch. Build in contingency time.
6. If there is a big pitch team, decide beforehand how you will greet the clients, and do it consistently. For example, will you all stand up when they enter the room? Will you each shake hands with everyone? Or will one person do all the introductions? It’s a small thing, but can be soooo awkward if you don’t plan it.
7. Have a small presentation team. If there are more than you than there are people on the pitch panel, you have a problem.
8. Smiling lots of big, genuine smiles can go a long way. Many people find big pitches daunting and look pale faced and shaky as a result. Smile, be energetic and friendly – and you’ll look confident. Remember, people buy people.
9. Don’t present from behind a laptop. This forms a physical barrier between you and the client. And the client doesn’t know what you’re looking at – you might well be checking your Twitter stream while your colleagues are presenting.
10. Reading your part of the presentation entirely from your notes makes you look amateurish and unprepared. You’ll look much more confident if you can speak naturally, with only the occasional glance at your notes.
11. Print out your slides with their accompanying speaker notes, and have them in front of you. At the very least, they will be a security blanket; at worst you’ll refer to them often.
12. You must be timed! In your rehearsals, aim to end 5 min before your allocated time is up. We tend to say more in a pitch than when we are rehearsing… you know, you keep talking until someone on the panel shows acknowledgement. At the presentation, keep a watch (not a phone) on the table in front of you and break your presentation down into sections so you know where you should be time-wise.
13. Make sure you have something memorable to end on. Have a confident finish – make it high impact to retain mindshare. There’s nothing worse than a presentation that whimpers out. Make it a clear and defined finish (no ‘Oh, and also, we’d approach the…’ after you’ve said ‘Thank you – that’s it.’).

And lastly, read your audience. Emily was challenged to get the words ‘popcorn’ (easy) and ‘pterodactyl’ (difficult) into her presentation. She was up for it, until she saw how formal the panel were, and has parked the challenge until the next time…

Louis managed to make it look effortless, but it’s taken him a good few weeks and a lot of work behind the scenes. The swan reference in the headline? Calm on the surface, paddling like mad underneath!

We asked him what his main event management lessons were from this project:

1. When planning an event, don’t leave any stone unturned. Initially I got costs and information for absolutely everything that the venue offered so that I had a good idea of all their services. The client asked for a couple of changes at very short notice, and because I’d done a lot of initial research, I knew what was possible, and what I could trust the venue to sort out for me.
2. Always have a plan. In this instance, the client had not actually done a site visit but had seen lots of pictures of the venue. He’d just trusted us to make a call on it. We’d assigned a private area for the pre-talk reception but when our client arrived, he asked to change it to the public bar. Thirty minutes before the guests were due to arrive! The venue was fortunately very accommodating and it was no problem, but for next time, I will make sure the client visits the venue in advance, if it is a new one.
3. The venue staff can make or break it. The helpfulness and professionalism of the events/banqueting manager will be a big factor in which venues I’ll recommend to clients in future. Robyn and Philippa at the Pepper Club were fantastic. On the night, Philippa was always visible and very hands on during the event. While nothing was too much trouble, she wasn’t sycophantic – we really enjoyed her warmth and friendliess. So often upmarket venues suck up to you, look down on you, or are pretentious. Why?! I’d rather use venues where I leave feeling good!
4. Build a really good relationship with your venue contact from the start. Go and see them a few weeks before to establish a personal connection so that you’re not just a name or voice on phone and email. This helped a lot.
5. Some things can be left until the last minute. Venues usually ask for final numbers a few days before the event, for catering purposes. Six hours before our event we had another seven people say they wanted to come. Because this wasn’t a huge change, our venue was very accommodating (although it may have been a problem if the number was 50!). I think when the venue can see that you are doing your best to make sure everything is done to deadline, one small change will likely not be the end of the world.
6. As this was my first event, I was really stressed out! But I think it actually helped me to focus. It made me go over and over the list of things to do. So sometimes stress is good
7. For the first time, we used Eventbrite to send out the invitations and manage responses. I spent about two days studying the site and learning it backwards. This meant I was able to find answers to the clients’ questions and could give them the information they were asking for quickly and easily.
8. A small glitch with Eventbrite was that some of the invitations did not get through to people – probably blocked by their company servers. Phoning key invitees and checking whether they’d got it, and if not, forwarding it from a client email address helped. We’re going to investigate how to get round this for the next one.
9. We’re lucky that our client contacts are lovely, and we could work as a team with them on this project. Because we’ve had up to 50% no-shows at previous events, we had a meeting to plan how to increase the numbers. People ignore invitations, so we complemented our sending of email invitations with one of the clients doing telephone follow-ups. Of course, if you’re inviting thousands of people, that’s not going to be feasible, but for this scale it was, and was effective. We also sent out email and SMS reminders in the week leading up to the event. As a result, no-shows dropped to 15%.
10. Timing is everything. Another factor influencing the improved attendance figures was probably that we’d changed the event from a breakfast briefing to a just-after-work time slot. For a small event, a short, after-work do seems to work well. And while it shouldn’t be necessary, alcohol helps get the conversation going – people were much more relaxed than at previous events and weren’t stressed about traffic, or having to rush off to the office. They also didn’t have to take time off work and could still be home by 7.30pm.
11. Pick an out-of-the-ordinary venue. The Pepper Club has been getting a lot of publicity since its launch just over a year ago but I don’t think any of the people at the event had actually been to it before. Many were curious about checking it out – which may also have helped the number! Being an upmarket yet trendy space also, I think, reflected positively on our clients.

Louis, we think you might be the Mints’ official event manager now! Good job.

We asked him a few questions:

PS:  If you could work on any brand in the world, what would it be, and why?
LN:  I would have to say The Rolling Stones. They are arguably the most successful band of all time and have been able to build a very strong brand over more than 40 years. I love their product and the fact that their brand will probably outlive us all.

PS:  What brand has made you sit up and take notice recently?
LN:  I’m a sucker for adverts using clever, tongue-in-cheek humour and Nando’s has never let me down.

PS:  If you didn’t work at Peppermint Source, what would you be doing?
LN:  If my dreams were a reality, I’d be touring the world with a successful rock band, but if they weren’t, I’d probably be a professional cricketer.

PS:  What are you most looking forward to about working at Peppermint Source?
LN:  I’m extremely excited about working in a small and dynamic team. The opportunity to grow with the company will be very rewarding. I’m also really looking forward to just being one big sponge. I love gaining knowledge.

PS: Rebecca Black – Dire or the “next big thing”?
LN: Definitely the next big dire thing!

Welcome, Louis! Great to have you on board.

Our team is expanding and we are on the lookout for super people to join us at all levels. If you have experience relevant to what we do, are bright, sparky, have tons of ideas, think that excellent customer service is a non-negotiable and know your way around social media, we’d love to hear from you. You’ll get extra points for perfect grammar and spelling.

Here’s the kind of person we’re looking for:

1. Positive, dynamic and enthusiastic.
2. Proactive – take initiative, have lots of ideas and not afraid to vocalise them.
3. Intelligent and adaptable.
4. Practical and hands-on – keen to learn and explore.
5. Honest and reliable with an extremely strong customer service ethic.
6. Confident and assertive.
7. Willing to help out with other elements of the business if necessary no matter how mundane the task (someone has to do the filing…).
8. Able to work under pressure – get things done efficiently.
9. Interested in learning about marketing strategy and implementation – ambitious.
10. Hard-working and conscientious with unfailing professionalism.

If you are interested in becoming a Mint, please send the following to Emily:

• Your CV (two pages max please)
• Links to your social media presence (Twitter account, blog, etc.)
• Details of two recent contactable references
• A covering letter telling us:
  • What you have to offer and why we should meet with you.
  • What it is about Peppermint Source that appeals to you.
  • How you fit our profile above.
• Your salary expectations.

Jo’s talk entitled ‘Building content strategies for brands on Facebook’ was well-received and looked at what a content strategy is and why you need it. Her talk was summarised nicely by BizCommunity’s Issa Sikiti da Silva and their blogger Terry Levin – click their names to read their respective write-ups.

If you missed Facebook Connects, the good news is that Habari will be running them every quarter. Join Habari’s Facebook page to keep in the loop, or download the presentations from the February events here.

Just to explain Peppermint Source’s involvement with Habari: We have been working with Habari since October 2010 on Facebook content strategy, page management and copywriting projects for a number of high profile national brands. Habari have just launched a new social media division, Domino, who outsources the specialist field of content strategy to us here at Peppermint Source. (Note – there’s no ownership here – we simply have a MOU in place; we’re still independent!)

So if your agency would like to add content strategy to your service bundle too, give us a call. And if you are a brand or agency thinking about starting up, or refreshing your Facebook page, PLEASE do a proper content strategy exercise first! It will save you

She comes from an advertising background and has recently completed an Honours degree in Strategic Planning. (We admire anyone who manages to study while they’re working full time!) She’s interested in brand equity, contact management and design thinking and when she’s not working, you can find her running, cooking for and entertaining friends and family, or reading a good book in the sun.

We asked her a few questions:

PS: If you could work on ANY brand in the world, what would it be and why?

EV: Roxy. It’s a brand that I truly believe is built on all the ‘right’ principles. It’s a healthy brand in terms of its identity and infrastructure and has really wholesome equity. They do all the right things in the right way – through hard work and great quality. They’re a really ‘healthy’ brand without being pious or boring. Other brands should really hold them as a benchmark.

PS: What’s been the most interesting thing about your new job at Peppermint Source so far?

EV: Working outside of the city centre! No, probably that I’ve learnt more about online in the last three weeks than I have in the last three years. We’re working on some really amazing things like online content strategy, new web copy and web trends.

PS: What brand has made you sit up and take notice recently?

EV: I adore the packaging on the Benefit cosmetics range. It’s practically art. With branding like that, they don’t even need to advertise.

PS: If you didn’t work in marketing, what would you be doing?

EV: I’d probably be a marine biologist. I was pretty much brought up on the beach and am obsessed with all things oceanic!

Welcome, Emily! It’s great to have you on board.

Which version is your favourite? The cupcake and mojito tend to be the most popular!