On my way to work on Friday, I noticed a large white sign at the side of the road. In big red letters it said, “Heavy traffic at RIM Park from March 30 to April 1. Expect delays.” The sign hadn’t been there the day before and I wondered what big event or circumstance was behind the heavy traffic.

Driving by RIM Park I looked over the parking lot and the outside of the sports complex to see what clues I might find in the mystery of the heavy traffic.
Aside from additional signs directing people where to park, it seemed like a day like any other. I was stumped. But still, I wanted to know - what was going on at RIM Park?

Chances are good that whatever was planned for RIM Park would be of little to no interest to me, but the desire to know had taken over!

I was reminded of a car dealership with which I used to do business. They were having a sale, but rather than advertise in the usual ways, they told no one and erected a giant fence around their property days before the sale was to begin. They hired a security company to have guards stand in front of the fence 24 hours a day to prevent people from trying to look through the fence. They were instructed to tell anyone who asked what was going on, “We’re not able to provide that information.”

People went crazy!

When we’re told we can’t know something, even when we have no idea what we’re missing, our curiosity takes over. Advertisers and marketers can create frenzies by teasing us and withholding information. Perhaps we’ll be more likely to want the product or service when it’s finally revealed.

On the other hand, when we have important information that we need to communicate to employees, customers, or the general public, we need to take a completely different approach. The sign needs to tell us exactly why we should expect higher than normal volumes of traffic. There can’t be any fences or people who stand guard, deliberately keeping us in the dark.

Of course only those organizations intent on sabotaging their image or reputation would ever do these things deliberately, but how often are those same circumstances created accidentally?

• Employees are told there’s a major restructuring planned, but they have to wait until next quarter to hear the details.
• Customers are told that pricing is going to change, but not when or by how much.
• The media reports a scandal, but the subject of the story says, “No comment at this time.”

Information may not always be available to be shared and perhaps the whole story isn’t yet known. But when partial communication is shared, deliberately or otherwise, curiosity will run wild.

Sometimes fences will be built when we don’t want them and there won’t be anything we can do about it. But just as often, our actions, or failure to take actions, build these fences when we can least afford to deal with the results – curiosity out of control, runaway stories.

Have you had similar experiences? I’d love to hear about them. And if anyone knows what was going on at RIM Park, can you let me know?

A week ago, Belvedere Vodka posted an ad on its Facebook and Twitter account that I assume was a horrible attempt at humour. It was horrible because it seems to be laughing at sexual assault and I’ll never understand how an ad like this was allowed to run.

There’s an excellent article in the Globe and Mail that covers the way the company has handled this mistake and how people are judging them for their handling of this issue. Worth reading if you’re interested in the story.

As I read the story, a few thoughts came to me:

1. Mistakes like this should never happen. The company must have an approval process that wasn’t followed.
2. Some things just aren’t funny. Ever.
3. When mistakes like this are made a company has to show the world how sorry it is without corporate speak or reservation.
4. Good PR can’t overcome horrible lapses in judgment.
5. What we do on social media lasts forever.

What other thoughts would you add to this list? Please leave me a comment or send me a message!

Yesterday, I attended an IABC webinar on employee engagement, led by Steve Crescenzo.

Steve shared with us his five keys to fostering an environment where employees feel engaged and provided tremendous examples of organizations that are doing the right things.

Steve’s top 5:

1. Bring employees inside the loop: tell them what drives the business and why and answer the question – why should they care? Then, tell them what you want them to do.
2. Show them what they do matters: feature the people closest to the work when telling the story
3. Help employees be ambassadors for the organization: when employees are asked, “What do you do for a living?” have we prepared them to tell a good story or hung them out to dry?
4. Let them talk to each other: organizations must trust their employees to act like adults
5. Show them their opinions matter: organizations should communicate the what and the why down, but allow for the how to come from the employees

Steve gave us an analogy to help us understand what true engagement looks and feels like. He asked us to think about a time we rented a car and whether anyone had taken it through a carwash or changed its oil. Of course the answer is no – because we don’t care that much about a rental car. Employees who aren’t engaged think about their companies like rental cars. They show up, do their work, get paid, and go home. When employees are truly engaged they feel like owners of the company and act accordingly.

As I sat through the webinar I made mental notes about the different organizations I’ve worked for and which ones did a good job of engaging their employees and which ones had a lot of work to do. I thought about the specific actions (or inaction) that made me feel engaged or made me see my company like I would a rental car.

I’m interested in hearing your stories – have you worked for an organization that made you feel truly engaged? What did they do? Have you worked for a company that had it all wrong? What did they do that made you feel this way?

Leave me a comment or send me a message!

Someone asked me the other day how I’ve managed to grow my Twitter account to more than 1,000 followers.

I’m well aware that 1,000 followers won’t land me in the Twitter hall of fame, but it was clearly enough to impress this person and quite honestly, I’m very happy that I’ve attracted this kind of a crowd. I very nearly shared the list of steps I’ve taken that have worked for me:

1. I have a professional picture and a brief bio
2. I post content I find online that I think will be helpful to others (always using shortened links)
3. I create my own original content through my blog which I share on Twitter
4. I thank people who mention or retweet me (I’m nothing if not polite) and respond to DMs that seem to come from real people who aren’t trying to sell me something
5. I follow a lot of people who work in my industry and others who seem to have similar interests, and many of these people follow me in return

There’s nothing wrong with the above list and if you’re struggling to add followers, I’d highly recommend each step. The problem with this list however and the reason I didn’t feel comfortable even pretending to be a social media expert is that I’m missing something.

And the something I’m missing is big - really big.

Social media is about engaging with other people to share ideas and find ways to help each other.

Engagement takes many forms on Twitter:

1. Having real conversations with people
2. Actively looking for opportunities to retweet and comment on other people’s posts
3. Helping people with no expectation of anything in return
4. Connecting your followers to each other when you think they would benefit
5. Acting as a mentor
6. Answering questions, offering advice, being helpful
7. Taking an interest in people for who they are, not their business or what they tweet

The sad fact is that I’ve done very little engaging and I’m not sure how helpful I’ve been to the 1,000 people who follow me. I’ve had brief spurts where I’ve attempted to start conversations with strangers and actively looked for opportunities to share and promote and interact with my followers, but I get discouraged easily when it seems the world hasn’t noticed. I get busy and forget that I need to put in a consistent effort to build relationships, to give more than I take.

The keys to success on Twitter (and any other social media platform) are to be yourself, be real, be helpful and be consistent - relationships will follow.

I’m really glad that I have 1,000 followers, but once I put in the effort to really engage people, I know my entire Twitter experience is going to change.

That one thing is going to make all the difference.

Everywhere I looked today, I saw the story of a guy who rode a small submarine to the deepest point of the sea, explored for two hours, then returned to the surface. It was the first manned expedition to this part of the sea since 1960.

While this is truly a remarkable journey, it’s not the sort of story that would normally catch my attention. But it did - and I’ll bet it caught yours too.

The reason of course is that the guy is film director James Cameron, who gave us two of the biggest films of all time – Titanic and Avatar. A story that would be newsworthy no matter who piloted the craft, now takes on a life of its own because of its celebrity star.

George Clooney’s recent arrest at a protest over the Sudan crisis became front page news not because we care so deeply about the issue, but because it’s George Clooney. If he had instead picketed a Baskin-Robbins location over the increase in the price of vanilla ice cream, there would have been media coverage. You would have heard about it.

Celebrities like Cameron and Clooney understand that they are constantly watched and use their celebrity to gain media coverage for issues that are important to them. As an aside, we need to be aware, as media consumers, that sometimes the issues of greatest “importance” (what is covered by the media) have been determined by entertainers and other famous people, but that’s another blog post.

How business leaders are different from celebrities

Business leaders are not celebrities and we don’t obsess over their every move. However, as employees, customers, partners, stakeholders or simply interested observers, we care very much what they have to say about the organizations that matter to us.

We want them to be vocal when there is change. We want them to tell us that things will be okay in times of crisis. We want them to tell us that we should be excited about the future of their organization, that what they’re doing still matters, to keep watching.

We don’t want to see pictures of you walking down the street with your children, but we expect regular communication from you. We expect greater interaction with you, more transparency and sharing than ever before. And we expect this not just from your organization, but specifically, from you.

We won’t ask you who you’re wearing, but we’ll notice when you don’t come to the party at all. We won’t chase you down the street to take your picture, but we’ll show up when you have something to say. We expect you to be the voice we hear when we turn in your direction. You might have to work harder than Justin Beiber or Angelina Jolie to get our attention, but we are watching and we notice when you’re silent.

And let’s not stop at business leaders. Community leaders, teachers, coaches, parents and many others have people counting on them to speak up and be heard. In so many ways, what you have to say is more important to us than anything we’ll ever hear from James Cameron or George Clooney.

Of course, leaders don’t live under the microscope of celebrity and the choice to say nothing is always there.

Just because you can though doesn’t mean you should.

Most people don’t like to complain, but as a recent experience has reminded me, any organization that hopes to keep its customers happy should make complaining easy.

Each week, for the past eight years I’ve filled my car up with gas at the Petro-Canada station in my neighbourhood. Their price is never the lowest, but the convenience of having only to make one left turn out of my driveway keeps me coming back.

And I quite enjoy the ability to use my debit and Petro-Points cards directly at the pump when I pay for my gas. In every way, Petro-Canada has been meeting my expectations. That is, until a couple of weeks ago when they made some changes to their pumps.

My Petro-Points card (despite the long crack through the middle) was accepted easily, but I received an “unable to read card” message when I tried my debit card – a card that gives me no problems anywhere else. Several attempts later, all with the same result, I cancelled my transaction and went inside to pay for my gas.

“There’s something wrong with your new pump and it wouldn’t read my debit card,” I told the woman inside.

“We’ve had a few customers tell us the same thing,” she politely told me, as she processed my debit card with no issue whatsoever.

Perhaps I was foolish to think that my feedback went any further than that counter, but I was disappointed this week to find that the pump was still unable to read my debit card. I paid inside and it bothered me that the same woman I had complained to the week before didn’t notice that I had tried unsuccessfully to pay outside. I didn’t want cigarettes, lottery tickets, newspapers or coffee – why would I come inside to pay?

I don’t blame her for the problem (surely she was neither the decision maker behind the new pumps nor the installer), but I do expect that she would offer to do something about it, especially when others had complained before me!

While I’m very interested in seeing that my debit card once again works at these pumps, the absence of an easy way to report my problem to someone who can fix it has me very frustrated. I could probably visit the Petro-Canada website and lodge a formal complaint and perhaps, someone there would respond to me, but is it reasonable to expect that I would put in this much effort? If ever I did, how would I feel about that? Wouldn’t it just be easier to take my business to the next closest gas provider?

The reality is that the easier you make it for your customers to complain, the more likely you are to hear where you need to improve and keep them as customers.

Here are my suggestions to make complaining easier:

1. Train your employees to ask, look for and resolve customer problems
2. Provide a phone number for complaints
3. Provide an email
4. Provide social media channels for customer feedback
5. Train your employees to ask, look for and resolve customer problems

What’s that? I have this point twice?

Good.

For several weeks my kids have been practicing songs that their school choirs are going to perform tonight at the spring concert. My daughter has given us partial concerts all over the house, but my son insists that we are to be surprised by his song and hasn’t allowed us to hear him, not even once.

Two days ago, he came home from school and told us that his music teacher said, “Tell your mothers that they should bring tissue to the concert, because when they hear your song they’re going to cry!” He could barely contain his excitement. It was priceless.

I thought about all the other things this teacher could have said:

“Your parents are really going to love your song.”
“Your parents will be really surprised when they hear you.”
“We’re ready to put on a great show.”
“Remember to be at the school 45 minutes before the show and wear a white shirt!” (Don’t teachers say this before every show?)

But instead of any of these, she said to bring tissues. She said your mothers are going to cry. Brilliant.

It’s a perfect message because it’s:

1. Specific
2. Memorable (even for six-year-olds)
3. Creates an image in your mind
4. Contains emotion

What’s more, it inspired the kids to give their best performance tonight – you know they want to see if they can make their mothers cry with their song – and as a parent, I can’t wait to hear a song that might make us do more than clap and cheer.

All of us deliver messages every day. Do you tell people they’re going to like the song or do you tell them to bring tissues?