Croydon Dinner Club experiment

The result of typing "dip hand
experiment" into Google image search.

As some of you who follow my personal account on Twitter may know, I have recently decided to dip my hand and try out a little social experiment.

For the past few months I've been to a few social gatherings and networking organised through Twitter. The idea being that people of a similar interest meet other people of a similar interest over a breakfast, dinner, lunch, that sort of thing. The whole thing sounds frightfully "blind-date-ish" but actually it's pretty good!

We've reached a point in society which has been ever growing, where everyone is afraid of their neighbours, where the news has convinced us that everyone will eat our unborn children and/or put a bomb under our bed. Meeting people in a new environment with a very loose connection was surprisingly good!

Now, I've been to business networking events before and I'm very happy in them, coming away often with a buzz of "anything is possible!!" But when that safety net of "we are here for business" is taken away and it's just getting to meet people, that's where it gets interesting.

Inspired by the good work of Jonny Rose in his mission to make neighbouring Purley a more socially engaged town, I have taken part of the mantel up for Croydon by introducing the Croydon Dinner Club.

The idea of this and from what was done in Purley, is to get people engaged with social media and in Croydon to come out and meet others face to face over a plate of good food. With Croydon being all over the news recently, but still with seemingly large divides in many social areas, it seemed like this needed to happen.

So the first one is planned for the 27th March. If you're interested to see how this develops, you can check out the twitter feed for the event: @CroydonDC and follow how it progresses through that.

If you're thinking about setting up a dinner club in your town or City, feel free to get in contact - I will gladly help out!

Customer Experience: Connected

You know, the problem with not being a professional blogger is that, when business comes your way, you kind of follow it in a mesmerized, moth to a flame sort of way... except that usually you end up better than the moth in that analogy.

In my last post I briefly spoke about the outcome of a lucky tweet, or at least, what seemed to be a lucky tweet. In fact, it wasn't luck, it was an honest response to an interesting challenge. It was also a brilliantly informed move.

Peter Shankman is a very well known guy at the moment. Here's a short bio about him, taken from Business Insider:

Peter Shankman is the founder of HARO and is generally regarded as one of the top marketing consultants and speakers working today. His clients include Saudi Aramco, NASA, The U.S. Government, Haworth, Disney, Foley-Hoag LLP, American Express and countless others.

By responding to Mr Shankman's tweet in the way Morton's Steakhouse did, they gave great customer service to a well followed, high profile guy. Now, I'm not about giving celebrities or famous people extra stuff, but what is partly key to this is that he is high profile for the right reasons.

He's not high profile because he kicks a ball in a goal or can string some notes together. He's not famous because he owned some tech company in the 90's which went big. How he's earnt his "fame" (of course I'm using fame loosely here) is unimportant but what he is famous for is. What's he famous for? Marketing. Under marketing comes customer service. Shankman knows the value of marketing and knows the value of good customer service, so in repayment for the quality customer service he received he repaid them in value with a little blog post.

But, let's step back a bit further here. This isn't a post about Shankman, this is about remaining connected. Morton's Steakhouse exemplify this. Having an open channel for customers to connect to the business in a quick, almost throw away way is what has made the difference here. Without Twitter, this never would have happened - it was a total throw away comment. But also, without the business taking Twitter and engagement seriously, it may have never happened either.

What makes Twitter a beautiful resource for a business is the ease of connectivity. Whereas before you'd have to find the website of the business, locate the contact page, find an e-mail or a number, decide which is more appropriate, spend more time deciding what you're going to say... now a customer just has to take out their phone and, in what feels like a throw away few words, tweet the company. (Forgive me for saying this, but...) BAM, that company instantly has feedback from a customer. Honest, without much thought feedback. You're getting that customers thought then and there. Whether it's good or bad it's feedback, which is vitally important.

The happiest winking Twitter bird
I could find, especially for you, Reader

So, the customer loves it, but it requires a lot from the business. It requires you to be plugged in 24/7 to be able to respond to the requests, questions, feedback.

Social Media does not sleep. People are social all the time. If you're a 8.30-6 weekday business and suddenly an article appears about your business on a news website at the weekend and you're not online to capitalise from it, you've missed out. Likewise if a customer wants an answer to a question which is time dependent, you've also missed out. This is why many businesses outsource their Social Media, as it's cheaper than paying a member of staff around the clock, 7 days a week. Of course, having in-house Social Media Marketing is great, something outsourcing can't ever fully reach, but not all businesses are in that luxurious position.

Remaining connected to your clients through Social Media is so vital but is still so undervalued because people still just don't understand it. This is a smaller dot-com all over again. The businesses which have got a large and growing online following will certainly be doing far better than those who don't. Why? Because people care about that business with the quirky or informative twitter feed, who engages with them every now and then...

It's the equivalent of the local shop keeper who knows your name. Sure there may be shops closer, but because of that relationship you've built up, no matter how shallow, you'll go that little bit further. Twitter is doing exactly the same for businesses.

Stay connected.