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(Almost) Everything You Need to Know About Twitter Chats

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:34:00 -0400

by Trish Fontanilla, VP of Community & Customer Experience at Vsnap

Last week I had the pleasure of being a guest on #MediaChat, a Twitter chat that takes place every Thursday at 10PM EST. Featured guests talk about social and online media, new apps, and anything else media related. The chat itself is hosted by Aaron Kilby from Artisan Colour. As I was promoting our Twitter chat, I realized that a lot of folks within our community had never participated in one before. So here are my thoughts on the what, why, and how.

What’s a Twitter Chat

If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed that some people add a pound sign / number sign (#) with a word (for example #chocolate) in their tweets. That’s called a hashtag. There are people that tweet out silly hashtags or use a hashtag for an event/conference, but others gather around a hashtag each week to discuss a certain topic aka a Twitter chat. To participate, all you have to do is add the hashtag to your tweet during the chat’s specified time. The moderator will start off and ask a question and add Q1 to their tweet. Aaron’s first question in #MediaChat looked like this:

When you’re answering, you just add A1 (or whatever number question they’re on) to your tweet. My answer to his question looked like this:

I was the guest in the Twitter chat, so I was the main person answering and people just commented, but in more open chats you’ll see a lot of people answering the moderator’s question and including A1 (or whatever number question they answer) in their tweet.

Why Participate

For me, Twitter chats are all about community. It’s been an incredible way to learn from my peers from all over the world, in many different industries about best practices and new tools. These chats can also be a great way to show your expertise within your industry’s community. I have gotten some great leads too, although, pretty please - do not use these chats to go all out to sell your product. But best of all, at least for me, I’ve made some amazing friends. My last few trips to NYC have been surrounded by food and drinks (even karaoke) with community managers I’ve met through Twitter chats.

Twitter Chats I Love

I’m actively involved in #cmgrchat (#cmgr is the abbreviation for community manager) on Wednesdays at 2PM EST (on hiatus for June 2013). The audience is primarily community managers and community enthusiasts. I also really like #custserv on Tuesdays at 9PM EST, which talks about customer service issues at companies both large and small.

There are a few chats that I keep tabs of, but don’t always participate in like #CXO on Mondays 12PM EST, which is a discussion on customer experience optimization for professionals and enthusiasts. There’s also #smallbizchat on Wednesdays at 8PM EST that’s focused on early stage entrepreneurs who have small biz questions and #B2Bchat on Thursdays at 8PM which is geared towards B2B marketers.

Here’s a more comprehensive list of Twitter chats out there: Twitter Chat Schedule. That list has about 700 chats you can participate in, so searching by a keyword or even tweeting out to your followers to see what chats they’re involved with might be a good place to start if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

How to Become a Guest

This is probably a classic Vsnap answer, but the last 2 Twitter chats that featured us, #MobileChat (Wednesdays 9PM EST) and #MediaChat, were the result of me vsnapping the hosts via Twitter. Besides getting noticed by being active in Twitter chats and in social media, I do think that you can pitch the hosts on a topic that would be beneficial to the community that it serves. Twitter chats are not out and out sales pitches, but it’s a great way for you to show how well you know the space. I will say that being a guest can be really fun, but I also like the more open style chats as well. There’s less pressure to answer every question and you end up having longer conversations with people.

If you’re looking for a Twitter chat example, there’s a Storify of #MediaChat from last week below. The Hashtracking report from the chat says there were 147 contributors, that produced 1,334 tweets, that reached 1.49 million people. Pretty amazing, right?

So, jump in, try it out (here is a short post on SocialTimes about etiquette during a Twitter chat if you’re wondering), and connect with your community. Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for other Twitter chats by tweeting us at @Vsnap or commenting below.

Why Salesforce Paid a Premium for ExactTarget

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:30:00 -0400

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

Salesforce.com acquired ExactTarget for $2.5B last week. On Wall Street, the prevailing opinion is that the 53% mark-up is too expensive. But there is a factor in that price that I haven’t seen anyone comment on. It’s that ExactTarget is really more than an email marketing platform.

Yes, ExactTarget provides email marketing capability. But they also have had a strategic focus on enabling more personal, one-to-one interactions as a critical complement to their broader marketing tools. And they’ve been preparing to introduce an app ecosystem called Hub Exchange, allowing third-party developers to bring a greater variety of capabilities to their product. That move gives a sense of how they’re different than a straight email marketing platform.

I see this as critical to the deal price. Because the ExactTarget acquisition will give Salesforce users much more than just another way to broadcast message-in-templates out to big lists.

Look, the complexity of today’s business/customer interactions is precisely why we need CRM. And Salesforce wants to extend its ability to help businesses further into the increasingly fine-grained phases of their customer funnels.

You need more than marketing capability to do that.

In fact, calling last week’s deal the acquisition of an email marketing tool really masks the fact that the world’s most forward-thinking CRM company is making a very deliberate effort to give businesses more relationship-focused tools.

I think they’re brilliant to do this. Because the businesses that use Salesforce know they must be ready to engage today’s ultra-empowered customers in more personal, less automated ways. Which means that Salesforce has to give them the tools that make that easy to do.

It’s the way the business world is moving.

Premium Account Details

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:31:00 -0400

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

A few months ago we told you that we would be turning on a set of premium features. We’re now just about ready to make that shift. In fact it will happen on July 10^th.

Why are we introducing Vsnap Premium?

Because businesses using Vsnap have asked us for capabilities that our free product didn’t have. And because we need to ensure that we’re strong as a company, so that we can continue to invest in and improve our product for you and the other businesses that want to use our platform to make their customers feel appreciated.

What features are being introduced?

Organization Accounts

This may be the most important feature. Up until now, all Vsnap accounts have been silos. That means that you could have a hundred people in your company on Vsnap, but each of you is an independent account. Vsnap Premium introduces organization accounts, allowing you to have shared data, shared billing, and administrative privileges and oversight.

Activity Reports

Premium accounts will have an easy data dashboard, which is something that managers and executives told us they needed. We’re giving you a balcony view on your team’s Vsnap activity and success rates. You’ll also be able to drill down to see a snapshot of each individual team member’s usage, and to manage the status of any video message that one of your team member’s records. This is about giving you the right understanding to support your team as they adopt this new, high-impact behavior of vsnapping customers.

Customizable Branding

Premium accounts will have three tools to customize the way that your vsnaps are presented to the people you want to reach. Let’s take these in order of the recipient experience:

“Send As” Customization

Premium accounts will have access to a new, enterprise-ready way to configure the “From” address on email notifications you or your team members send. This means that the person you’re reaching will get an email notification from your company email. E.g., username@companyxyz.com. The email notifications for free account holders will come from share@vsnap.com.

Note: We’ve offered an SMTP version of this feature previously, and we extended it to free accounts on a trial basis. But we’re disabling that because we don’t feel it’s strong enough in terms of security.

Email Body Customization

Premium accounts will be able to create a standard email notification format for all of their account members. You can put your logo into the email notification and choose how you want the text to read. This is a first step toward making the email notification something you feel very confident about. In other words, we expect to add additional degrees of customization for email notifications going forward, so we welcome your feedback on how you want that to work!

Logos

As of July 10th, Premium account holders will be able to display a logo on their vsnaps and in their email notifications. This feature will no longer be available for Free account holders.

12-Month Hosting

As of July 10th, we will begin hosting vsnaps for 12 months from the date of creation. This hosting period will go into effect for both free and Premium account holders. (We had thought we needed to limit free account holders’ hosting to 90 days, but we figured out how to keep your vsnaps free for a full year, whether you’re a Premium subscriber or not.)

What will Premium Accounts cost?

In the first phase there will be two tiers of Premium accounts:

SOLO BUSINESS

This gives you all of the benefits listed above, except for the Organization Accounts. This is an account for a freelancer or a consultant who’s working alone and needs some business features but doesn’t need the shared data etc. The cost here is $3/month for unlimited usage (based on annual subscription).

BUSINESS PLUS

This account is designed for groups of three or more users, and it provides all of the benefits listed above. The cost here is $15/user/month (based on annual subscription) for unlimited usage.

Any special deals for early adopters?

Absolutely! From now through the end of July, groups of three or more users can get a Business Plus annual subscription that breaks down to $10/user/month. Furthermore, any additional account members you add during the year will come on at that same special rate.

I’m not planning to upgrade. What will change for me?

Well you can still record and share as many vsnaps as you like, and you can still turn to us for great support if you have a question or hit a snag in using the product. As of July 10th, you won’t be able to have your logo on the player anymore. And if you’re one of the folks that enabled our SMTP feature, that will also be disabled. Finally, as with our Premium accounts, your vsnaps will now be hosted for 12 months. That means they can be viewed for a full year.

One more thing – you’ll also see a download button on the view page for vsnaps you create.

If you have any other questions about premium or setting up an account, you can send me an email or comment below.

How to Make the Most Effective Vsnaps

Tue, 28 May 2013 14:13:36 -0400

by Trish Fontanilla, VP of Community & Customer Experience

We’ve blogged about engaging people via Vsnap and what you should say in your vsnaps, but we haven’t pulled together a comprehensive post on what a vsnap should look like. I usually say it all comes down to great lighting and a personal message that makes someone feel valued. But here are some details that really up the effectiveness of a vsnap.

The Video

Make sure you vsnap in a place with good lighting. Being able to see your face is one of the things that really sets video apart from email. Click here for a trick Dave uses when he’s using the mobile apps.
Be aware of what’s in the background. You don’t need to manicure the background. In fact, a little activity is good - it helps the message feel more authentic. But don’t let what’s happening behind you distract people from what you’re saying to them. Also you want to make sure you aren’t showing signage or anything that’s off-brand for you.
Don’t feel like you have to take up the full 60 seconds. I always say if someone has to re-watch your vsnap in order to get the gist of it, then it should probably be an email.
Don’t forget to smile! And smile through the first couple seconds. Not only does it start the video off on a warm note, we grab the thumbnail in the first few seconds.

The Title and Description

Currently the title of our vsnap is the only customizable part of the email, so make it count. Be as specific as possible by including the person’s name and why you’re vsnapping them. For more on that you can check out this post: coming up with a vsnap title.
The description box is there to clarify the attachment or leave a quick note. Don’t feel the need to use it to reiterate what you’ve said in your vsnap.

The Attachments

If you are attaching something to the vsnap, make sure to title it appropriately. Something like, “2013 Customer Engagement Study”, is better than “Whitepaper23875638”, and it will make people feel better about clicking download.

The Email Signature

If you record a signature vsnap, the thumbnail of that video will go into all your vsnap notifications. How do you create a signature vsnap? 1) Record a vsnap as your normally would. 2) Send it to yourself. 3) Click on the vsnap in your feed. 4) On the view page, scroll down to the share icons and to the left you should see a button that says signature. Click on that, and now that vsnap is your signature vsnap.

The sign off in your email notifications will now look like the picture below. Full name, then thumbnail of your signature vsnap:

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions you’re always free to let us know via email, Twitter, or the comments below.

Happy vsnapping!

How To Solve Audio Issues on Macs

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:26:31 -0400

Hi Vsnappers!

Some people have been having audio issues when recording vsnaps on their Macs. The symptom is typically that there are bits of audio that drop out when you play back a vsnap you’ve just recorded. Usually this is an easy-to-fix problems in one of three areas: Operating System Volume, Recorder Volume, or Chrome/Flash Problem. Our advice is try these fixes in the following order:

1. RAISE THE OPERATING SYSTEM VOLUME

Macs default to a lower operating system (OS) volume than PCs. Usually that’s about 50%. We’ve found that if you change this to about 75%, you should be fine. Here’s how to do that.

Click on the gear icon in your dock (bottom or side of your screen depending on how you set it).

This will bring you to a window that looks like the one below. Click on Sound.

On the sound page, take the following steps.

First make sure that the microphone you want to use is selected. For most people it’ll say - Name: Internal microphone / Type: Built-In.

Then make sure your input volume is up and test it out. You should see the input level go up as you speak.

2. RAISE THE RECORDER VOLUME

On the record page (https://www.vsnap.com/vsnapMake/record when you’re logged in), perform the following steps.

First, make sure that the microphone you’re using is the one that’s selected at the top of the record screen. Most people use the Macbook’s microphone, so the option should be set to “Built-in Input”.

IMPORTANT: If you can’t see the the microphone selection, you may need to zoom out your browser. Hold down the command button (next to the spacebar) and 0 (zero) at the same time to reset the zoom.

Now make sure that the volume, in the bottom right corner of the recorder, is up. You may need to test this out once or twice because if the volume is too high, depending on your voice, the audio gets crackly.

Personally, I like to use my headphone mic instead of my computer mic since I’ve had hardware issues in the past (Tip #3 in this post: http://bit.ly/4k5tips).

3. RESOLVE A POSSIBLE CHROME / FLASH PROBLEM

If you’re using Chrome & can hear the audio in your vsnap but it’s garbled or out of sync, it’s probably an issue with Chrome’s version of Flash competing with your computer’s version of Flash. Click here to view a walkthrough of how to fix this.

If you have any other questions or feedback, feel free to email me directly (trish@vsnap.com) with your operating system, browser version, and version of Flash (check here if you don’t know). If you’re unsure of your recording environment, you can also go to our Help Center homepage: https://www.vsnap.com/about/help. We’ll detect your environment for you, just copy and paste the information under “Still having issues?”.

Happy vsnapping!

Trish Fontanilla, VP of Community & Customer Experience at Vsnap

Announcing HealthSnap: Bringing Video Messaging to Healthcare

Wed, 15 May 2013 01:07:00 -0400

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

Here at Vsnap, we have an amazing new partner – and we’re very excited about it! We’ve reached an agreement with Dr. Johnny Walker (www.healthfounders.com), a Dublin-based interventional radiologist and healthcare entrepreneur, whereby Dr. Walker will use a version of Vsnap’s code base to launch a new, independent company to pursue cutting-edge uses of video messaging in engaging and empowering patients.

The new company, called HealthSnap, will be headquartered in Ireland.

Here’s what Dr. Walker has to say about this:

“Vsnap has made video messaging simple, accessible and measurable. Now HealthSnap will customize a version of this powerful tool to help healthcare providers bring more human warmth and empathy into their patient interactions as a complement to the face-to-face consultation. This is important because we all know that better engagement drives better care and better, safer outcomes.”

Dr. Ronan Kavanagh, a prominent Irish rheumatologist and leading voice on the intersection of medicine and social media, affirmed Dr. Walker’s perspective. “I’m very excited about what HealthSnap will be doing,” Dr. Kavanagh said. “This kind of tool gives us the ability to humanise our interactions with patients, and that matters greatly to engagement levels and outcomes.”

For Dr. Walker, this will not be the first time he has broken new ground in patient care. In 1995, Dr. Walker launched a fully digital, personalized, mobile ultrasound scan service to small aboriginal communities in Western Australia literally out of the back of a truck. That effort grew into the highly disruptive and successful international teleradiology enterprise Global Diagnostics Ltd (www.globaldiagnostics.co.uk), a company that Dr. Walker exited last year. What does the HealthSnap agreement mean for Vsnap and the people using our application?

First, it won’t affect businesspeople using Vsnap at all. HealthSnap will be a separate company with a separate product, separate development team, etc. The Vsnap product will continue to have a laser focus on meeting the needs and requirements of folks in Sales, Support, Account Management and Employee Engagement.

Second, since this partnership represents a new royalty-based revenue stream for Vsnap, it means we’re going to have more resources to invest in our product. We are committed to making Vsnap an essential resource for customer-centric companies in today’s multi-media, multi-device business environment.

Third, HealthSnap’s investment represents an important validation. It’s an example of the fact that, as the number of personal video screens skyrockets worldwide, more industries are exploring new ways to use video to solve persistent problems well beyond the Marketing department.

We are thrilled to have found such a passionate, mission-driven partner in Dr. Walker, and we look forward to working with him and his team as they move forward. For more information, you can reach out to myself, Dr. Walker or Jim Joyce, Vsnap’s Dublin-based Co-Founder and CEO of Point of Care, a clinical healthcare company.

Dr. Walker: @jwglobal7 or johnny@healthfounders.com

Dave McLaughlin: @davemacboston or dave@vsnap.com

Jim Joyce: @jimbojoyce or jim@pointofcare.ie

Note: for press and bloggers working on deadlines in European time zones, Dr. Walker and Jim Joyce are both based in Dublin. For American journalists working on deadline, Dave McLaughlin is based in Boston.

Award-Winning Patient Support Pilot Powered by Vsnap

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:53:12 -0400

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

The Biomnis Healthcare Innovation Awards, held every year in Dublin, Ireland, recognize and celebrate initiatives that find a fresh way to attack persistent problems across several categories. This year, a small Irish company called Point of Care, was recognized with an award in the Patient Support category for its use of Vsnap to more effectively engage and help their patients.

Full disclosure: Point of Care CEO was my partner in founding Vsnap, and he is a shareholder in our company.

In the pilot program that the award celebrated, Point of Care nurses vsnapped patients either before or after clinical visits. The team wanted to create personal connections with patients, with the goals of encouraging patient questions and diminishing the anxiety that many people feel when it’s time for a vaccination or other medical procedure.

Basically, Point of Care believes that improving engagement will improve patient compliance and patient outcomes. And Vsnap is a way for them to improve engagement.

I want to congratulate the Point of Care team for thinking outside the box in terms of how they help their customers – people like you and I who are receiving important medical attention.

Their initiative is ongoing, so the company was not able to share final data with me. But we see more and more companies in a range of industries adopting this common sense belief – that sending simple, warm, one-to-one video messages makes your customer feel valued, and that how your customer feels has a direct bearing on what that customer does.

Across industries, we consistently see three benefits: people you vsnap take action more than folks you engage via email; they tell their friends more; and they stay loyal longer.

We are excited about the possible applications for using Vsnap or other feeling-focused video tools to engage patients in ways that are warmer and more human. At this point, our technology is not actually HIPAA compliant, but we’ll have more news on this coming soon.

3 Things Non-Technical Business Leaders Need To Do Now

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:24:00 -0400

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

Vsnap’s customer base includes many business leaders who do not come from an engineering background, but who are eager to unleash the power of technology to help them grow. This post is intended as a resource for those folks, who often struggle to effectively scope technical tasks and engage engineers.

Myself, I was an English major in college. Most of my career was spent in creative/business roles, not in engineering. I believe I draw great advantages from my prior experiences, but that doesn’t mean I can be complacent regarding my capabilities as a technical leader. In fact, I believe that improving my capability as a technical leader is the most critical action I can take to accelerate Vsnap’s growth.

The first reason that being conversant in technical language, framework concepts and best practices in process is so critical is because it impacts your confidence in setting direction and in how you guide your development team. This is about you being able to dive into the details and ask the right questions – and doing that with conviction. Leaders need conviction, and you can’t let a lack of knowledge undermine that.

Model a Culture of Learning

The world is changing pretty darn fast. We better be building learning cultures in our companies, or we’re destined to be left in the dust. Well there’s no better way to create that culture than having the company leaders model it. Be the Chief Learner in your company. Make the necessary investment to understand the language of technology. That sends a clear signal top to bottom that this is a place where learning is valued, where curiosity is supported, and where questions are welcomed.

Oh and by the way, if you don’t do this then you’ll send an equally clear signal, just a different one.

Practice Process

Get away from the idea that from time-to-time you will make a foray into the world of technology. That’s the wrong mental model. Whether you grow avocados or write APIs, your company exists in a constant context of technology. So it’s time to start thinking about each technology-related task that you take on as an opportunity to establish a replicable process. So, for instance, when you go looking for an email marketing tool, codify a little process for doing this. This will give you better results, and it will make it easier to take on the next technology task, because your process can be re-used and refined. Think of this as building little pieces of infrastructure for your business.

As a simple example, Nelly Yusupova, who runs the TechSpeak for Entrepreneurs bootcamp, offers this simple process for selecting SaaS vendors.

Make a list of all the features you need.
Assign a number to each one reflecting how important it is. (Maybe “low cost” is a 10 for essential and “customizable templates” is a 6, or a nice-to-have).
Look at at least three vendors and assign a number to how well each of them meets the features you need.
Compare the vendor ratings at a feature level in order to see who really satisfies your most essential needs. If there’s a tie, then you can make the decision based on your nice-to-haves.

Take Time for Your Tech Plan

This stuff is complex and fast-moving, so make sure you write down what decisions you’ve made and why. Make sure you keep an accessible document with this information. Remember, it’s never a good practice to have all of your key information in only one person’s hands.

I’ve made it my mission to be a great technology leader. For me, that mission is informed by my experience as a filmmaker and in business. But that’s not enough. It also means understanding the language and the framework concepts. I’m using that understanding to enhance my ability to brainstorm solutions to customer problems, and to better support our developers.

I believe I owe that to them. In fact, I believe I owe that to everybody in or around Vsnap – our team, our investors, our customers. And myself.

I totally recommend TechSpeak as an amazing resource (and fyi I do not benefit in any way from that recommendation) – and I’d like to hear what resources other people suggest. I hope you’ll add your thoughts in the comments.

Vsnap Introduces ‘Organization Accounts’ for Businesses

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:58:44 -0400

By Dave McLaughlin, Co-Founder & CEO of Vsnap

This morning we released v 1.4.0, which introduces the ability to bring individual Vsnap user accounts into a common corporate or organizational account. Up until now, each individual Vsnap account has been its own silo.

Today’s release represents a key step toward providing shared billing and premium features, such as greater customization of branding and richer reporting on user activity and recipient behavior. Thanks to all of you who helped us understand your companies’ needs here!

How This Works

In the near future this will be self-serve, but for now companies that want the benefits of an organization account can just email Trish Fontanilla or me. You let us know who on your team you want to serve as the Admin Member, and we’ll give that person the ability to invite individual user accounts into your team’s Organization.

Once you do this, your Admin Member will notice the following specific features:

Organization Data Dashboard

The Admin Member now sees a simple snapshot of aggregate Vsnap activity from all members of the organization. This includes total vsnaps recorded, view rate, type of share, and an overview of recipient feeling indicators (Helpful, Thoughtful, Amazing).

Administrative Oversight

The designated Admin Member now has access to all vsnaps created by individual Organization members and has the power to delete vsnaps from any member. This provides an important safeguard for the Organization.

Organization Ownership

If you are an individual Vsnapper and you accept an invitation to have your account become part of an Organization, then the vsnaps you create from this point forward will belong to the Organization. This means that individual members cannot delete any vsnaps they record once they become part of an Organization.

A few more things worth noting…

This Will Become a Paid Feature

The ability to link accounts in an Organization is intended to be a paid feature. We are absolutely going to continue to offer a killer free account, but it will be for individuals and not for organizations. Having said that, we’re happy to let you use it for free for the next month or so while we complete some other important premium features for businesses.

Discount Pricing this Month

If you’d like to take advantage of special pre-launch pricing, let me know or sign up for our premium mailing list to be updated. This month we’re offering 40% off pricing on annual subscriptions for early Organization subscribers. This will give the upcoming premium features to all members of your Organization, and it will allow us to “turn on” new features for your whole team as soon as those features become available.

Mobile vsnaps

Although these Organization features are currently visible only in Vsnap’s web interface, they do affect vsnaps created on the mobile apps. For example, a vsnap created on the mobile app of an Organization Member now can be deleted by the Admin Member and not by the individual who created it.

Nothing Changes for Non-Organization Accounts

If you have a free individual Vsnap account and don’t create or become part of an Organization, then nothing will change for you. You will still have free use of business features for the time-being, like the logo feature and the SMTP feature. And you’ll still own your own vsnaps.

Video Improvements

Actually there is one change that affects everybody – we improved how we handle the video file to ensure that your vsnaps play perfectly behind enterprise firewalls. This is good news for anyone using our application inside a large corporation, or to engage clients at large corporations. We’re now seeing a perfect performance on playing vsnaps in those environments.

That’s it for now. There will be much more in the coming weeks for the companies that are using Vsnap to make customers feel appreciated. Stay tuned!

4 Tips on How to Celebrate Customers' Birthdays

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:47:00 -0400

by Trish Fontanilla, VP of Community & Customer Experience at Vsnap

For the past 4 years, I’ve gone to Myers+Chang on my birthday. Usually they send over a dessert and the chef/managers (who I love) come over and wish me well, but this year they really wowed me. When I got to the restaurant, they surprised me with a menu (pictured above) that said “Happy birthday Trish! We love you!”. And at the end of the meal, they sent over their 6 desserts with candles in them. While I’ve got a crazy sweet tooth and appreciated that, the personalized menu was what blew me away. I talk about M+C on Twitter, but I posted the above picture everywhere - Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare.

So what are the customer love takeaways from this experience?

1) Don’t know their birthday? Figure it out! M+C doesn’t have a database with their customers’ birthdays, so how did they know it was mine? I was broadcasting that information with my reservation and tweeted about my excitement during the week. It’s all about using what your customers give you and actually taking time to listen. At Vsnap, we don’t collect that information at the moment, so what I do is casually bring it up in conversation, especially with people that interact with us a lot. I also do a simple Twitter search during the week, type in “birthday” (and variations, bday, b-day, etc), then click “People I know” to see if anyone’s talking about their birthday.

2) Get creative! Almost every restaurant you go to on your birthday will give you a free appetizer or dessert. It’s pretty easy for them to do on the spot without thinking much of it. What M+C did took some planning but probably wasn’t an earth shattering expense for me as a loyal customer. Are you doing something kinda vanilla like sending automated greetings? That’s fine, but maybe have people within the company do a quick followup (handwritten / email) to make sure that customer feels special. Birthday = worst day to feel like you’re being spammed. I’m sure you know what I do: I generally send a vsnap singing the Beatles’ Happy Birthday song. Sometimes there are drums, egg shakers, finger puppets, and tambourines too. (If you don’t believe me, send me an email and let me know when your birthday is: trish@vsnap.com)

3) Make it something they can share. The free desserts were great because, well one they were free. But two, it wasn’t just a piece of pie for me, I could share all the desserts with my group of 6. So what if you’re not in a position to send over some cale? Give your customers a discount code (or equivalent) that’s good for their friends, family and colleagues to use. And if you’re worried about the usage getting out of control, limit it to 5. Most of us like to celebrate birthdays with other people, help us do that! (This also ups the potential word of mouth.)

4) Make it easy. There was obviously no redemption issue around this piece of customer love, but I did want to bring it up. As I clicked through my birthday emails this past year, it was asterisk city. Good only on Thursday - Sundays. At participating restaurants only. With the purchase of 2 four - course meals. During a full moon when Jupiter aligns with Mars. Okay, that last one isn’t true, but the rest are. Remember, it’s all about making your customer feel valued, and a 10% off coupon with a ton of restrictions doesn’t do that.

Celebrating important moments, like birthdays, are incredible ways to build relationships with your customers. What do you do for your customers and clients on their birthdays? Or what have some of your favorite brands and companies done for you?

Acts of Meaning

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:43:00 -0400

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder of Vsnap

As the leader of a company that calls Boston home, I have felt a desire to comment on what has happened in our city over the last few days. But I wanted to take a few days to think about all of this. I wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t just add noise. I hope that others who are struggling with what to feel and what to do will find these thoughts helpful.

First, on behalf of the Vsnap team, we were very moved by the concern for us and for our city from members of our community far and wide. Thank you for checking on us, and for expressing your support. Our team is safe, as are our loved ones. Many of us go to the Marathon every year, and a number of friends and family members were indeed near the bomb blasts. But thankfully all are okay.

We are heartened to know that you share our sadness. Since Monday I’ve felt as though somebody is standing on my chest. The deaths and the injuries are so tragic. The apparent implications are so grim. The act itself, so senseless.

So what to make of it all? And what should we do, those of us who, like me, feel eager to help but are unsure of how.

I’ve been thinking about that all week, and I keep coming back to this simple idea:

The right response to a senseless act is an act of meaning.

I feel like we saw the truth of this statement over and over this week, starting in the moments after Monday’s explosions. People rushed in to remove the wounded. They opened their apartments for the stranded. They offered warm clothes and food for the exhausted.

Those are acts of meaning. They were the right responses to an act of senselessness.

For those of us who are not sure how to help going forward, I want to suggest that we can apply the same idea in our lives. In the business community, we all have a role to play in strengthening our city and our country, from the smallest startups to the most powerful institutions. We are creating jobs, nurturing the skills of our team members and pioneering products that help people. I believe that these can be acts of meaning.

I am a lifelong Bostonian, and it’s my experience that this small city with its narrow roads and narrower sidewalks has a way of pushing people together. I know that there is warmth in that, and that there is also friction. For me, that combination of camaraderie and confrontation is what home feels like. Here we hold one another to the common belief that who we are as individuals is defined by what we do – especially in the face of adversity. We do this, I think, because we believe in each other, and because we know that our futures are entwined.

The world saw that this week: the great heart of Bostonians on display. I think this is what people mean by this new phrase “Boston Strong”.

Like everyone else, I am grateful to all those who helped. We are all in their debt. And I commit my company to live these same simple beliefs. That we will act with a sense of meaning and responsibility, and that what we do is who we are. And in this humble way, we will help to make our city and our country stronger and better. And we will honor the victims of this tragedy and express our common cause with the heroes whose simple acts of meaning have reclaimed the Boston Marathon as the world’s greatest celebration of the human spirit.

Introducing Vsnap’s New VP of Community & Customer Experience

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:31:22 -0400

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder of Vsnap

I am very pleased to share with the Vsnap community that Trish Fontanilla is stepping into a new role as Vice President of Community & Customer Experience.

I can practically hear the cheers already!

As Vsnap’s first ever Vice President, Trish now has an expanded level of input and authority in every single customer-facing activity at our company, from customer engagement and support to product development and strategy. Creating this new role is a recognition of Trish’s incredible work and her great contributions to Vsnap’s success so far, and it is also an expression of the company’s commitment to keeping the customer at the center of everything we do, especially as we prepare to introduce premium features and paid accounts a little later this quarter. Because, whether you know it or not, Trish is first and foremost a fierce advocate for you.

I hired Trish as our Community Manager in the summer of 2011 when Jim Joyce and I founded the company. She is an incredible force for good. She lives the five simple beliefs that Vsnap is built on, and she personifies the character and commitment that defines our whole team, and indeed our whole community. Internally, Trish keeps us all honest. She is like true north when it comes to making sure that every decision is contemplated and debated with the average Vsnapper in mind. Externally, she is a powerful champion of the Vsnap vision for how businesses can bring warmth to the web.

The fact that we created a Community Manager role before we even had a product should tell you something about the value we place on understanding our users’ needs, capturing your feedback, and supporting your success as you experiment with vsnapping. I hope you will welcome the fact that we are doubling down on all of that.

Because Vsnap is about you. Our mission is simply to meet your need for an easy tool that you can use to make your customers feel special. Feel valued.

We are fortunate to have Trish on our team, and so is everybody who uses Vsnap. In that spirit, I want to give you a little nudge to vsnap her today and give her a pat on the back. You can do that via Twitter to @Vsnap or @Trishofthetrade. Or, if your message feels a little more private, you can reach her at trish@vsnap.com. Thanks!

http://www.vsnap.com

(Picture originally from http://www.the-red-kitchen.com)

Has True Enterprise Social Media Engagement Entered the Early Majority?

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:46:00 -0400

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

Rod Favaron says it’s happening.

Trish Fontanilla and I spent a couple of hours on Thursday at VCJ Venture Alpha East, a conference targeted toward limited partners in VC funds. (Thanks, MassChallenge, for the free pass!) One of the sessions featured Alastair Goldfisher, Editor-in-Chief of the Venture Capital Journal, chatting with Favaron, who is the CEO of Austin-based Spredfast, a social media management software tool. With him was Adam Marcus, of OpenView Venture Partners, one of Spredfast’s investors.

So what is it that Favaron says is happening?

He says that large companies, like Spredfast clients AT&T, Whole Foods Market and T. Rowe Price, are shifting their use of social media tools. Whereas they were touting their Facebook Likes and authorizing two or three people to tweet, now they are enabling true engagement enterprise-wide, on a daily, ongoing basis. To use Favaron’s metaphor, they are shifting from thinking of social as a more powerful billboard to understanding it as a more powerful phone system.

“How many phones do you have in your company?” Favaron asks.

Now you might say this trend has been in process for a while and what’s your point, Dave?

My point is that I don’t have a good balcony view of how authentic this shift is at the large enterprise level. So when I see that Spredfast quadrupled its revenues and doubled its headcount in 2012, I take note. And when I see that they raised $18MM in February of this year to go meet this social media management need of the Fortune 1000, I take note. (source)

And I guess it has me wondering if we’re now moving from the Early Adopters to the Early Majority in terms of how corporations use social to really engage in the context of what Forrester calls The Age of the Customer, rather than as just another toolbox to tell the world what they do.

The Early Majority, as Geoffrey Moore readers know, is comprised of people who are pragmatists, not risk-takers. When the pragmatists get on board, that’s a transition worth noting. Because the vast majority of companies in the world are run by pragmatist decision-makers.

At Vsnap, we obviously believe in establishing Engagement as an equal to Marketing, and in pursuing tactics that are personal alongside those that are broadcast. Just look at our Twitter feed for examples. So for us, Spredfast’s success is exciting, since it looks like an affirmation of a tipping point in the adherence to this worldview that is the foundation for our product.

I love to share this succinct quote, from Fred Reichheld, creator of the Net Promoter Score in his book The Ultimate Question 2.0:

“Business leaders must find ways to enable frontline teams to delight customers.”

Enable enterprise-wide engagement on a daily basis via social. Get to work figuring out the policies and protocols of putting all that into action. And then find ways to act on the mountains of information you gather that make your customers feel special, as Om Malik says in this awesome post.

What do people think – is this really happening at the large company level? Has all of this now moved into the Early Majority? What data do you have to affirm or challenge that?

(picture originally from spikelab.org)

Engaging New Signups with Video Messages

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:20:00 -0400

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

We pay close attention to who signs up for a free Vsnap account. Not just the numbers but actually who you are. Especially if you sign up with a business email address, in which case we take a minute to look up your business.

Then we send an individual vsnap to each of those business users. That usually happens within a day of you signing up, but sometimes it can be a couple of days. Usually I’m the one who sends that, and usually I attach something that I think the recipient will find helpful – a short case study or a link to a relevant blog post.

I say usually because this isn’t a form behavior. It’s a real person engaging a real person in a way that is specific to the two real people involved.

I can almost hear all the marketing automation people shuddering. But I want to encourage you to keep an open mind. Our view is that the email that plugs your user’s name into the salutation is a perfectly fine thing to do at the top of your funnel. But at some point you’ll need to do more than that to move the people who really matter to you. You’ll need to introduce some personal layer and some emotional aspect into your customer conversations. And that’s where these individual video messages come into play.

We use the tool this way because I want vsnappers to know that there are people behind the product, and that we’re here to help. Actually, I want you to feel that. That’s the difference between, on one hand, using an email to say “Hi Bob, there are people behind the product and we’re here to help” and, on the other hand, delivering the same statement in a warm little video message. With the video message, you feel it.

I just looked at the engagement outcomes for the month of March on those vsnaps to business users. About 40% of recipients watched the video message. 55% of those people then also looked at the attachment we put with it. And 28% of them sent a feeling indicator response, explicitly letting us know they found our vsnap either helpful, thoughtful or amazing.

When we introduce our premium features, which we’re working on right now, I expect we will see a that a high percentage of premium account holders are the same people who viewed one of these individual messages when they signed up for a free account.

But even before that point, we get so many benefits from the time that we put into doing this. Obviously it’s an expression of customer love, which creates a little emotional connection with the people using our product. We believe that is the most important ingredient of growth that is both fast and durable.

Also, this practice creates daily discussions within our company that are about specific users. In other words, the idea of putting the customer at the center of everything is not an abstract concept for us. It’s as real as the person I’m about to vsnap.

Sending these individual vsnaps allows us to put our beliefs and values into action, so that people know they’re not just bullet points on a page somewhere.

And it elicits fast feedback, which is to a startup what a good breakfast is to a twelve year-old.

But one of the best benefits of sending these vsnaps myself is that then I’m the one who receives the responses. Here’s a quote from one response I got last week:

Hi Dave. That was one of the most professional things I have ever seen. Well done. I have already shown your ‘snap (I don’t know if that is the proper terminology, but it sounds catchy to me) to one of my co-workers and he was impressed, too. Thank you for the inspiration to higher levels of customer service. I will definitely be using your product.

By the way, four more people from his company signed up for Vsnap accounts the next day.

So what do you think? Have you received one of these vsnaps from us? How did it feel?

http://www.vsnap.com

In Case You Missed It: March Recap

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:05:00 -0400

by Trish Fontanilla, Community Manager at Vsnap

(Our own March Madness… pictured above is the Vsnap team playing PerkStreet at Raise the Rim, a charity basketball tournament benefitting TUGG)

Hey vsnappers!

Hope you all had an amazing month. I know some of you out there may have missed some of our blog posts (did you know you can sign up to receive emails when our blog is updated?) or perhaps you’re new here, so here’s what we were talking about in March:

At the beginning of the month I wrote about my trip to Social Media Week NYC and four themes from my visit
Dave gave you a taste of what’s to come with our premium feature sets for business vsnappers (sign up here to be notified when premium launches and for special discounts)
We shared our practice of vsnapping people that follow us on Twitter (and our pretty amazing rate of engagement)
Then there was Dave’s post encouraging people to apply to MassChallenge. One of my favorites for his use of “bellyachin” and reference to Bill Withers (deadline is Wednesday, April 3rd by the way, and we’ve got a couple more discount codes)
And last but not least, all of the videos are now up from the Customer Love Summit! You can view the blog posts for individual speakers by clicking here or watch the whole summit by heading to our Vimeo channel.

And if you have any questions, want to talk about pie, or suggest an April blog post, tweet us at @Vsnap or send me me an email/vsnap here.

Here’s to an incredible April!

http://www.vsnap.com

Quit Bellyachin', Apply to MassChallenge

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:12:57 -0400

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

It’s deadline time for MassChallenge (Wednesday, April 3rd). If you’re thinking about whether or not to apply, I want to suggest that you should stop making excuses and just do it. If you don’t, then you don’t have the sense to run a company.

I know I know. Don’t sugarcoat it, Dave. Tell us how you really feel.

I guess there are legitimate reasons for not applying. But I can’t really think of any. I just don’t see any downside to being part of a killer community of like-minded people struggling with the same challenges, all with ocean views and a chance at large chunks of non-dilutive capital.

But let me get more specific. Just off the top of my head, here are 3 benefits that we have gotten by being part of MassChallenge. There are more, but this is just a little list to help you stop whimpering and start filling out that application.

1) Friendships

I don’t see how you couldn’t make friendships here. You’re all working so hard, which merits mutual respect. You help each other when you can, which engenders gratitude. You achieve amazing things, which inspires admiration. You share your struggles, which seeds trust. Starting a company and chasing a ginormous vision can be very, very lonely. We all need friends whose understanding can help us persevere. (Cue the music, Bill Withers…)

2) Mutual Introductions

I can think of at least ten times where other funded founders have made email introductions to connect me with their investors, or I’ve done the same for them. We also share contacts that might be customers, partners, employees, you name it. Look, the access point to pretty much every ingredient of success is a person. If you’re going to win with your company, you need to tick a lot of people boxes. The best way to do that is to build a high-quality network. The best way to do that? Join a high-quality community like MassChallenge and figure out how you can help the other people in that community. For the most part, they’ll do the same.

3) A Place to Grow

That sounds like the name of a pre-school: A Place To Grow. MassChallenge is kinda like pre-school (but with pretty good wifi and a lot of donated beer). You can even write on the walls (thanks, IdeaPaint!). Startups need nurturing. We need a certain amount of structure. We need to be challenged and guided. We need to hear stories. We are toddlers. MassChallenge understands this about us.

But you’re also not a toddler. So stop making excuses and fill out your application.

Remember you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.

Oh, and if you’re too broke, we respect that. (Actually everybody in the startup community respects it.) We have a couple of discount codes to share. All you have to do is send a vsnap to us on Twitter (@Vsnap) telling us why you need to be in MassChallenge. Which is to say, tell us how you’re going to change the world.

You can do this!

Don’t be a talker. Be a doer. There are too many talkers in this world. Not enough doers. Be a doer. Apply to MassChallenge.

[Video] Packaging Power: Lessons on How To Redefine The Purchase Experience to Suit the Customer

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:31:00 -0400

by Trish Fontanilla, Community Manager at Vsnap

“Bow & Drape is love”. According to CEO and founder Aubrie Pagano, that’s one of her company’s core values. So it was rather fitting that she present at the Customer Love Summit on how Bow & Drape, which makes custom dresses and separates, is exceeding expectations and bringing that love to their customers. Aubrie has some great insights on how web companies can brand experiences when their customers aren’t stepping into a physical space. And I’m so glad she was able to share her thoughts at the conference.

Check out the video below to see her presentation. You can find Aubrie on Twitter at @AubriePagano.

Watch the 2013 Customer Love Summit - Packaging Power video with Aubrie Pagano on Vsnap’s on Vimeo channel. To watch all the videos from the summit, click here.

Thanks again to Pat Leonard and The Pulse Network for filming the Customer Love Summit.

Did you miss our last post/video from the Customer Love Summit? Check out Tamsen Webster’s presentation Maximizing Influencer Outreach.

So Just How Engaging is Vsnap via Twitter?

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:48:41 -0400

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

People who know our Community Manager, Trish Fontanilla, were not surprised when she was recognized in this uberVU post as one of Boston’s most admired community managers. She’s amazing.

One of the many awesome things Trish does is that she sends a vsnap to each person who follows us on Twitter. (To see examples, just take a peek at our @Vsnap Twitter feed.)

Receiving a vsnap from Trish makes you feel that you matter to us. You feel valued. But don’t take my word for it. Test me. Go follow us on Twitter and see how you feel when you receive that vsnap. I guess that reading this post you’ll have lost the element of surprise. But still, I assert that you can’t help but feel that we are paying attention to you in a way that most web businesses do not.

And if you don’t feel that way, you can always unfollow us.

The other day, we were talking about all this activity we have with our community via our Twitter feed, and we got talking about the actual impact and how we measure that. So I asked Trish to go back to the last 100 vsnaps she sent via Twitter and just count up the number of people who responded in some way.

In other words, never mind whether people consumed your message. How many of them actually engaged with you as a result?

Now I just want to say, this was more a matter of curiosity than an actual need to justify the time spent on making sure that members of our community know we care about them. Because with this video messaging practice that she has pioneered, Trish is modeling the essential beliefs that drive us as a company. And, she effectively provides every person she vsnaps with a high-quality demo of how to use our product.

And part of what’s so interesting is that those people aren’t just passive observers of a demo. As recipients, they’re actually part of it. They experience that awesome little feeling-connection that a vsnap creates – that bit of warmth that is typically missing in interactions with web businesses. They feel it. And that’s what our business is all about. Giving other companies the ability to create that feeling.

Because, we believe, that feeling of human connection is what web businesses lack, and what they need. And – more importantly – what their customers need.

So what is the engagement level when you vsnap people via Twitter? Just how engaging is this tool?

The answer: out of 100 people, 55 people responded in some way – and every single one of those responses was positive in nature.

In fact 11 people responded in multiple ways (e.g. a Favorite and a tweet back).

My first reaction is that I was pretty floored by this. I had been so focused on the other benefits of Trish’s behavior that I’d never really considered what the return engagement numbers would look like. I guess I thought it might be 25% or something like that.

But more than half? That’s a pretty rich result.

Then again, I’m not really surprised. I see it as more evidence of what I already believe – that the personal layer matters enormously in business and that web businesses desperately need easy tools to create that connection and to make customers feel special.

But never mind what I think. What do you think? Have you received a video message? Does this post reflect how you felt?

Why We Love Vine (And Other Video Tools) (blog.vsnap.com)
Vsnap Examples: Event Followups with Wayfair and EverTrue (blog.vsnap.com)

[Video] Maximizing Influencer Outreach, a Case Study with Tamsen Webster

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:43:40 -0400

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

In another great talk from the first ever Customer Love Summit, Tamsen Webster (@tamadear on Twitter) of Allen & Gerritsen takes the complicated topic of Social Influence and breaks it down to help you understand the components as a step toward putting these concepts to work in your business.

I love this video — it’s got the killer combination of magic markers, a flip chart and a super smart clear-thinker. And for anyone who’s not totally sure about Social Influence, here’s a quote from the video to get you started on the road to understanding…

“We want to take the love we have for our customers, and the love they give back to us, and put it in a place where other people can see it – as a method of getting more people to see it and become part of that ever-increasing funnel of customers that we love. That is the whole point of what is called Social Influence.”

Watch the 2013 Customer Love Summit - Maximizing Influencer Outreach, a Case Study with Tamsen Webster on Vsnap’s on Vimeo channel

Thanks again to Pat Leonard and The Pulse Network for filming the Customer Love Summit and to Butch Stearns for introducing Tamsen. More videos to come!

Did you miss our last post/video from the Customer Love Summit? Check out Joe Gagnon’s presentation What I Found During a 300 Mile Bike Tour.

[Video] What I Found During a 300 Mile Bike Tour (Joe Gagnon Presentation)

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:24:00 -0400

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

If you don’t hear customer stories about your company told to you by another human being in real time, and if you don’t go out and actually experience that interaction, it’s easy to lose track.

That’s what Joseph Gagnon believes. He is the President of online education leader Penn Foster, and he lives his beliefs. So he rode his bike for 3 days and 300 miles, from Scranton to Brooklyn, to meet the people his company serves. Hearing their stories was his motivation. And hearing their stories was the reward – the invaluable reward – for this great effort.

Check out the video below to see his presentation from the Customer Love Summit. You can find him on Twitter at @PennFosterPres.

Watch the 2013 Customer Love Summit - What I found During a 300 Mile Bike Tour with Joe Gagnon on Vsnap’s on Vimeo channel

Thanks again to Pat Leonard and The Pulse Network for filming the Customer Love Summit. More videos to come!

Did you miss our last post/video from the Customer Love Summit? Check out John Kelly’s presentation on How To Align Around the Customer: From Board Structures to User Groups here.