Sprint is my current mobile carrier in Santa Barbara California. For much of my area their coverage is pretty decent. In my enclave, the coverage is awful. The neighborhood I live is in an established one, about a mile from the ocean and the tourist areas, city college, and downtown. With the greater-Santa Barbara population somewhere in the range of 200,000 people, I should have adequate coverage. I don’t.

About six weeks ago I started working more out of my home office. Because my wife and I’s mobile phones are the only household phones, it meant more conference calls, more phone meetings with my boss in New York and with my partner in crime, Christopher, in Grover Beach. Suffice to say, the service is awful. Calls are dropped. Some never ring through to my phone. Others are unintelligible because of the “Luke, you know I’m your father” Darth Vadar voice.

So, I called Sprint. Oh wait, the service is so bad that the call kept dropping. Wait, maybe if I hold onto a sheet of tinfoil in my backyard with my right arm raised at 45 degrees above my head I can get a signal…nope. Ok, I’ll email them. I get the automated “Thank you for contacting Sprint Online. Customer E-Care has received your email and will respond to your request within 24 hours.” Ok, fair enough. I wait two days and never receive a response. I write again and get the same automated response. 25 hours later I get an email asking me when this problem started, was it just on my phone, and was it just at my home or everywhere? I responded to the questions and waited another 22 hours for a response. This time “Harold” called me. He asked me the same questions the previous person had asked me in email and said he would have to consult their technical team and call me back in 15 minutes. I waited for his call and after two hours received a voicemail stating that he couldn’t get through to me (no signal) and that I should call their 800 number for support. Again, because I can’t make a decent call from my house, I email again explaining the problem. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. This goes on and on for 10 days and 15 emails.

I finally reached my breaking point and asked to be let out of my contract. I have a year and half left on a service plan that I can’t use 99% of the time. They have conveniently ignored that request and have continued to promise me tech support and resolution of my issue within 24 hours.

We all have horror stories with companies we deal with everyday. So why do I bring this one up? I think Sprint is missing a customer relations opportunity and one for positive branding. Here’s what I think Sprint has done badly in this situation:

1. They impose a deadline on themselves of getting back to you within 24 hours. In the flurry of emails that have been sent, they’ve only honored that timeframe twice. The rest of the time I had to send follow-up emails asking when I could expect to receive support. Don’t set an arbitrary goal that you can’t reach. It makes your service look bad and it gives customers a false sense of hope.

2. After a customer has exchanged 15 emails with you, offer a direct line to a supervisor instead of the general service pool. I’ve already spent 3 or 4 hours of my time answering questions. Don’t make me waste another hour sitting on hold. This is especially true in my case where I may have to drive to a park or somewhere that I can find a signal to make the call. Respect your customers’ time.

3. Assign a service rep to a complaint and let them own it. If that’s not possible, at least keep better records of the interaction thus far. Every time I emailed I was assigned a new case number and a new rep that asked me the same questions. This meant I had to respond to them and then wait 24 hours (or more) for someone to get back to me. We’re now 11 days into this mess and I’m not a single step closer than I was after the first email.

4. When a customer is in limbo for a long period of time with unusable service, offer them a refund or significant credit. When I asked for something like that I was given 40 bonus minutes. Seriously? I pay for 2000 minutes a month, unlimited data, text messaging, and my service is dead in the water and you offer me 40 bonus minutes? I was beyond insulted.

5. No carrier wants to let customers out of a contract, but if you can’t resolve a customer’s service issues, let them out of their contract. I realize in the fine print they have every legal right to make you pay a termination fee, but that’s not ethical (especially since I paid nearly full retail price for my phone, not the subsidized promo rate). Plus, there are really only four major carriers in the U.S. With number portability there is a good chance that you may see this customer sign up with you in the future. Don’t make a bad situation worse by holding them hostage and insuring that they’ll never do business with you again.

How will this all turn out? I have no idea. I do know that the economy is in a downturn and businesses are hurting everywhere. You need every advantage you can get to position your brand in the best possible light. Handling a situation so poorly so that it ends up on a blog is certainly not helping Sprint in the eyes of potential consumers.

In the end, I believe that if companies just did the right thing and acted in good faith, the rest would probably take care of itself. Sprint, do the right thing.

At MediaTrust I am the “social media guy.” There are still factions of my company that don’t get what it is I do exactly. Social media is not an exact science and trying to explain it to someone that doesn’t understand services like Facebook or Twitter is going to have a hard time wrapping their mind around the value of things like podcasts and blogs. This applies to pretty much every company doing business today. For the past few years, I have been banging the drum on the importance of having a corporate blog strategy to everyone I meet. Yesterday Idris Mootee wrote a post that pretty much EXACTLY sums up what I have been trying to impress on people. He lists four key points that are key to your success:

1. You need credibility

2. You need to have a distinct perspective

3. Timeliness of relevant content

4. Balancing the corporate legal and strategic risks of posting vs. not posting

Check out his blog for more detail on each, but these are the bullet points. A successful blog has to have genuine intent. It has to be real, and it has to offer something other than the “me too” bandwagon-jumping I see too many companies fall prey to.

One final nugget of information I’d offer is don’t expect to make money off your corporate blog directly. I know, your business has enough cost centers, it doesn’t need another one, right? Wrong! If you follow the tips above and you put real effort forth, the amount of positive traction you will gain for your brand will be well worth it. Customers want to feel a connection to the companies they do business with. Offering a genuine perspective and a mechanism for your customers to provide feedback will be worth it’s weight in gold.

I reference Robert Scoble a lot on this blog. After all, he is a pioneer in this space and if you want to know which way the wind is blowing in social media, you BETTER know what he’s up to. That being said, I’ve been following his new gig over at Fast Company pretty closely. Obviously Fast Company is a well-respected brand in traditional business circles, but their foray into social media is fairly new. Bringing Scoble into the mix was a move that has been watched by a lot of people.

Scoble produces several shows for them. The one I’m focusing on for the purpose of this article is Workfast TV with his co-host Shel Israel. The premise of the show is a familiar format - Robert and Shel start off with some back and forth banter about what they did this past week, then they introduce their guest and proceed to have a discussion for the next 30 minutes or so.

It’s a trainwreck. First off, the vibe of the show is totally off. You have Scoble as the only one dressed in a suit and tie, while the rest are dressed more casually. Additionally his laptop is covered in tech stickers which totally negates any business look he’s trying to create. Second, the banter between Israel and Scoble is painfully hard to watch. Instead of being friends, you’d swear they met 5 minutes before the show. Attempts at jokes fall flat and are awkwardly laughed off. As a viewer it is uncomfortable to watch. Finally, the format is flawed. They sit around a table with the guest. While they’re bantering back and forth, the guest is sitting there uncomfortably wondering what to do with themselves. By the time they start referring to the guest in the third person, you start to cringe.

On a positive note, the production values are top-notch.

Ok, I know this was a very long-winded way to get to my point, but it was necessary for context. I posted a condensed and gentler version of the above critique in the comments of Workfast TV a couple of days ago. Guess what? The comment was deleted. Then, I started to see the bulk of the other users in the thread complaining that their comments had been deleted for being critical. Fast Company then chimed in… (Wait, I see they have now deleted their initial comments defending the deletion of user comments). So not only are they deleting unfavorable comments from users, they have seen fit to pull their initial defense of doing so. Wow.

That last piece just really cements my argument. Fast Company doesn’t get what social media is about. They thought that hiring Scoble would bring them instant audience and credibility - and it did. But now that is eroding quickly. After all, one of Scoble’s key mantras is that companies should be engaged with their consumers on the web. Fast Company has essentially thrown that way of thinking out the window.

I realize that Scoble and Israel have little or no say in Fast Company’s practices. I also understand that business is business, and they have to put food on the table. However, how do you build your career as a transparent blogger, then sit back and watch your personal brand be tarnished by a company using tactics that are the antithesis of your view of social media ? I reached out to Scoble on Twitter and Israel on his blog, and as of this posting there was no response from either of them. Are their hands tied? Does their silence mean they condone it?

I applaud companies for taking the leap and putting some money into the social web. The benefits can be tremendous for your traffic and your brand. But, you have to be willing to have a genuine conversation. You can’t put out a show about how companies are effectively using the web 2.0 world to their benefit, then turn around and censor unflattering feedback. Now, before Fast Company removed their corporate comment yesterday, they stated that they only removed negative attacks and said they were open to critiques of the show. That’s complete BS because my comment was deleted and it was a genuine piece of constructive feedback. Where is the two-way dialog in that example? Amazingly, Fast Company is actually going to be worse off in the web 2.0 space than they were before they started their social media initiatives. Instead of this being a brand-building effort, it’s now turning into brand repair.

What should you take away from Fast Company’s mistake?

1. Don’t jump into emerging media unless you really want to engage your customers in an open dialog.

2. Welcome and encourage genuine feedback in your forums and blogs. Don’t delete something because it doesn’t fit with your tightly-controlled marketing message.

3. Listen to feedback. Most of it is genuine, and although it may be painful to read, you may be able to learn from it and make something in your organization better.

4. Reward feedback, whether it’s negative or positive, by engaging participators with a response.

Scoble and Israel know these things. I bet they tell this stuff to companies everyday when they interview them. So is it not bizarre that they would work for a company that so clearly seems to hold an opposing view?

Like many people, I’ve become frustrated with Twitter’s downtime. The fact that “Fail Whale” has become part of the social media vernacular is proof-positive and certainly not the type of brand awareness that Twitter wants. Despite it’s unreliability, Twitter has become part of our daily life. What else is there?

You can’t swing a dead cat in the blogosphere these days without hitting a post touting the benefits of Friendfeed. Scoble’s been using it for months. Now Calacanis is pushing it almost as much as Mahalo. I decided to see what the fuss was about.

First, the interface is much cleaner than Twitter. The more people you follow on Twitter, the harder it becomes to actually make sense of the information coming through. The noise to signal ratio goes way up. Unless you use a service like Summize, you easily miss content aimed at you. Friendfeed has threaded conversations. The ability to reply and comment in an orderly, easy-to-read way is huge.

Next, the process of following people on Twitter is tedious and time-consuming. Friendfeed integrates with your facebook account so the people you are friends with on facebook automatically become part of your Friendfeed network. Friendfeed also integrates your blog, YouTube, SumbleUpon, and yes, even your Twitter account.

The final feather in Friendfeed’s cap is it’s reliability. By many estimates they have half the users and traffic that Twitter has, and so far, haven’t had any of the scalability problems that have plagued Twitter since their inception. I’m not an IT guy and have no idea what it takes to keep a site like Twitter stable. BUT, I do know that they are sitting on a goldmine. The only thing killing them is their crappy infrastructure. Why on earth wouldn’t you make this your top priority and hire the right tech team to fix this issue once and for all? I know these things don’t happen overnight, but in 3 or 4 months it’s only gotten worse, not better. What’s the deal?

I haven’t quite rang the death knell for Twitter yet. They were the pioneer in the micro-blogging movement and they have a great brand. That will keep their head above water for a short time, but if they don’t resolve their tech issues soon Friendfeed is going to continue to poach their user base. Then, it will be too late and whale will have permanently failed.

Robert Scoble is talking about how YouTube is going long-form and why it will be more profitable for them and more attractive to advertisers. His argument is that if someone is willing to sit through a 30-minute video online, then they are more engaged and will more likely be customers for advertisers:

Someone who’ll watch a 30-minute video is HIGHLY ENGAGED. They are far more likely to become a customer than someone who just watches a two-minute entertaining video.

Here’s why: long videos are a filter. Only the most passionate and most interested people online will watch such a video. Those who aren’t interested wouldn’t even consider watching a long video.

It’s a nice theory, but I don’t buy it. First, I believe that a large chunk of people that consume online video do so at work. That environment allows you to watch a 2-5 minute video and then get back to what you are doing. It also allows for more interruptions, while still being able to finish the video. How many times are you going to tolerate being interrupted at work by co-workers, phone calls, or email before you throw in the towel on a 30-minute video?

People just don’t watch long-form video on their computer. My own video work has fallen victim to this as well. I’ve done many videos that were 15 minutes long and after watching them with colleagues or with an objective eye, it was clear that people get antsy after 7 or 8 minutes. It made me cut deeper during the editing process and really get to the meat of the content. My productions are better for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it is impossible for a long-form video to find an audience online. After all, Scoble does just fine with viewership of his pieces - although it doesn’t hurt to have his brand name and the weight of Fast Company behind him. Additionally, sites like Hulu that archive complete TV shows and movies will find an audience because they are serving up content that already has a traditional media audience of millions. It’s hard enough for unknown prosumer / UGC / pro content to find an audience with short, well-paced pieces. I believe that becomes an even bigger challenge when the content starts getting into the 30-minute range.

The other side effect I see of YouTube allowing video longer than 10 minutes is increased piracy. They can barely police their network efficiently now with a 10-minute limit. This opens up their network to people adding complete TV shows or movies. That means their copyright department is going to be working lots of overtime.

Advertisers want engagement. We know that. To me, that is better measured by how many people comment on a video or link to it, rather than making the assumption that committing to watching a longer video makes them a better potential customer.

This week we did something different, and somewhat indulgent - we turned spotlight on ourselves and shared the how’s and why’s that go into creating the Relevantly Speaking podcast. How was it conceived? What type of equipment do we we use to shoot the segments? What is the distribution philosophy? What are we working on next?

Christopher and I talked about all of that during a sunny afternoon in my backyard in Santa Barbara. If you’re really paying attention, you can catch a glimpse of my dog, Mia, hanging around the “set.” You may also hear lawnmowers, birds, and other sounds of the day. We felt these added to the unique flavor of the behind the scenes chat.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on how you produce your podcast, we’d love to have you join the conversation in the comments section.

Check out Relevantly Speaking in Hi-Definition Video

Today, our pay for performance division, Advaliant, jumps into the arena of social networking. This move is long overdue, but we wanted to make sure we did our homework and positioned ourself in a way that made sense to our affiliates and our advertisers.

Our rollout centers around the idea of micro-blogging; short updates about new offers, news in the affiliate marketing space, and our perspective on the state of the industry. In addition to our presence on larger platforms like Twitter, MySpace, and facebook, we’ll also be participating in communities like Hi5, Bebo, Tumblr, Plurk, Xanga, Mashable, and Pownce. We believe that Advaliant’s journey into social media is more comprehensive than any other pay for performance network’s is to date.

Over the next few months you’ll see lots of great content coming from the Advaliant camp. In addition to our social networking activities across the web, we’ll also be doing some great stuff on our internal web properties including affiliate marketing podcast episodes (see our recent interview with David Taber) and the launch of the Advaliant blog.

We have some of the top minds in the pay for performance space working at Advaliant. Over the next few months I think you’ll come to see that in a big way. The first person I’d like to introduce you to is Larry Markovitz who works in Business Development. He’ll be the voice of Advaliant through our micro-blogging activities and will help steer you towards interesting content in our space. We know you’ll get to appreciate his intelligence, charm, passion, and wit - just like we have here at MediaTrust. If you’d like to start by following him at Twitter, you can do so HERE.

This is the second part of our conversation with David Taber. In this segment David talks about how affiliate networks can make themselves more attractive to advertisers and what you should look for when researching a network to do business with.

Check out Relevantly Speaking in Hi-Definition Video

We talk a lot on Relevantly Speaking about how companies are using social media in nearly every form. For the purposes of this post, let’s talk about video content. Let’s say we’ve convinced you to give it a try and you’re ready to start a video series for your company. You have a camera and you’ve shot some footage, but how do you add polish to the finished product? One tool that we use here at MediaTrust is a company called iStockphoto. They have thousands of high-quality images and HD videos that you can purchase and use in your productions. Businesses are using them in their presentations, bands are using them to make low-budget videos, and filmmakers are using them to supplement the footage they can’t get on their own.

For this episode we pull out some footage from the vault. This was shot in March when Christopher and I were covering SXSW. I think you’ll find it helpful.

Not a day goes by that I don’t have a conversation with someone about how using Twitter can help their business. Inevitably, the question I always get asked is “how do we make money using things like Twitter or social media as a whole?” I then sigh, take a deep breath, and recite the same speech I’ve given a thousand times before:

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT ABOUT SALES OR DIRECT REVENUE, IT IS ABOUT DRIVING TRAFFIC AND BUILDING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR BRAND!

Comcast has lit up the interwebs lately because of their use of Twitter. I used to be a Comcast customer and getting support from them was near impossible. I have to be honest, I was totally shocked when I heard of their foray into the Twittersphere. I started doing some research and was amazed at the level of personal attention I saw them giving to their customers - in a very public way.

Why is Comcast doing this? My guess is that someone high enough in that organization finally realized the impact that word-of-mouth has on your bottom line. Do a search for “Comcast customer service” and 8 of the 10 first-page entries are all negative postings. There’s even a YouTube video of a Comcast tech sleeping on a customer’s couch (ouch!).

How does this make Comcast money? Well, go back to my all-caps-bolded-sentence above - it doesn’t. In fact, it is costing them a bit to implement this effort. What it is doing in spades is putting their customer service in a favorable light for the first time. People are Twittering their frustrations with the cable company and someone is actually saying “I hear your frustrations and I want to help!” The icing on the cake is that it is being done in public view and people are taking notice. When I Google “Comcast Social Media,” I find a ton of articles talking about how Comcast is embracing change and trying to cut through the clutter of corporate bureaucracy. Clearly their strategy is paying off.