Posts tagged trish blogs

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!

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

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?

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