She wrote a blog post about her experience at the grand opening and also included in that post a little sadness. During our trip to Wegmans (the grand opening was also attended by 24,994 other rabid fans), she forgot to purchase plastic wrap and paper towels.

Well, Wegmans is on the social media ball. They tweeted at us all day, followed and retweeted our photos of the grand opening. Engaged with us about our experiences. And when they saw that Gretchen forgot her paper towels and plastic wrap, they called her.

Actually, Kevin Russell, store manager at the new Wegmans called her. He left a message saying that he felt sorry that our Wegmans experience was incomplete and was sending a delivery to our house in Hingham. Seriously. TO OUR HOUSE, 47 miles away. Here’s the video of what we found on the porch when we got home today…

So, if you run a company that might be having some trouble understanding the right and wrong ways to engage using social media, I urge you to take a lesson from the Wegmans team. They spend time paying attention to what people are sharing about them on the Web (active listening), and they actually think about what matters to people – being heard and being valued.

If you don’t think this type of activity pays off, ask yourself if your business could benefit from 25,000 people coming to your next grand opening.

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: customers, engagement, groceries, northborough, paper towels, shopping, twitter, wegmans, youtube

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Is that really the way businesses should be trying to get customers and subsequently be trying to leverage those first customers to get more customers? Maybe that’s how it works. Think about your affinity for brands. Think about how you are emotionally or logically tied to products. Then think what your price would be to share your love of a brand with your friends.

Finally, if a brand found your price and met it, would you put your voice/face/reputation out there for a brand? Which companies would never get your support? Which ones would you support – or do you support already – for little or no compensation?

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gravity summit, gravsum, greg shove, halogen media, klout, twitter

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But what you might not have known is that my car already gets 33MPG and I seriously considered a Smart car a while back to even improve on that.

So, when I saw (and actually drove) the Nissan Leaf in Las Vegas in January I had a feeling it might be my next car. Trouble is, after pinging them on Twitter and getting them to agree to call me to set up the purchase of a car here in Boston, all communication stopped.

I don’t know about you, but if you were buying a TV and asked for salespeople to give you a call, you’d be pretty irked if they didn’t. For something larger – that requires a bit more of an investment in time and energy (ironically) – you’d think the company would be more receptive.

Especially as our society has become one where communication can be done anywhere and with any device. In fact, today I’ve written 11 blog posts – half of which were done on my iPhone using a BlueTooth keyboard. So if you can’t reach me with the technology that’s around today, there’s probably another reason I haven’t heard from you. What about it Nissan?

Nothing about Nissan and nothing against the car. I just wonder if the reason they haven’t contacted me is because the car isn’t ready to survive a winter in the Boston area. I’ll wait and see what happens.

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Boston, communication, customer service, nissan, scooter, twitter

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That brings me to three points…

1 – What makes me qualified to rant about poor grammar when I clearly messed up the title of this post?

2 – Does it really matter how you come across in loose conversation if your professional missive are clean, clear and correct?

3 – If you don’t care how you’re representing yourself or your brand on Twitter, should you care if you get ridiculed publicly for errors you make in this space?

Answers…

1 – If you missed the sarcasm of the title, you should add that failing to your inability to spell or construct a sentence. My qualifications include experience, training and a love of the English language. *I am in no way qualified to comment on the grammar or spelling of tweets in languages I don’t speak fluently.

2 – Depends on what you’re doing? If you can ensure that your professional contacts remain wowed by your style and don’t actually care about substance, then have at it. But, in an age where people are getting fired for errant tweets and denied jobs because they have errors on their LinkedIn page, it pays to focus on being accurate and correct.

3 – This is a toughie. If you’re putting your errors out there for everyone to see, you should be able to take the heat if you get called on them. I prefer to keep discussions offline instead of ridiculing people in public – especially if I know the person I’m dealing with sees all jokes as a sign of disrespect and doesn’t understand sarcasm.

What’s your take?

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Boston, grammar, Jeff Cutler, reputation, twitter

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Thanks go out to Patrick O’Malley who provided the intro to Fox and Ted Daniel.

Here’s the piece…

Tweetup to Meet Your Twitter Friends: MyFoxBOSTON.com

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Boston, fox 25, friends, gretchen, news, social media, trish, TV, twitter

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