Complaining and unhappy customers from our perspective our gifts for you and your business. They allow you to look closely as those aspects of your business or brand that have come into question, review how you are managing your customer service responses, allow you to engage with your customers one on one and build a relationship and make the great things you currently do better! Ironically  feedback and criticism promotes fear for many businesses – especially in today’s world of social media- where word of mouth spreads like a wild virus, yet what they forget is that by hiding or not responding this unhappiness spreads anyway. Why not take the initiative to face that unhappy person or group and use the good will and caring you demonstrate – as another way to promote the many great reasons – why they should continue to do business with you and SHARE their good relationship and experiences with others. Now that sounds like good publicity…taking lemons and making some delicious lemonade!

On Mashable.com I came across an article that speaks directly about this very issue today. Susan Payton posted an article that provides some good examples, expanding upon my thoughts in this post – to leverage that unhappy or unsatisfied customer – not only to help solve their discontent, but to take advantage of the ways you can learn more about how to make your business better and promote the way you face head on – the negative things you do or have done.

The outcome is that your customers win and at the same time so does your business and your brand. You learn about the way you can make your business better and in turn can promote the great way you engage with your customers. Think Zappos – they focused on customer service and it became their best skill because they realized when they began it was something they lacked. We always promote the positive things – but isn’t it a positive thing to know – that if I have a problem with your products or business you will be there immediately – to make sure that it gets fixed immediately?

How are you embracing complaining customers in your business? We would love to hear how you have managed some of your customer service challenges.

Best Nicole

Companies love positive feedback. They share it on Twitter (), post it on their website and use it as marketing fodder. But what about when feedback is, well, less than pleasant? What can you do with a handful (or more) of irate customers? Do you ignore them? Bury them out back? Not in today’s social atmosphere.

Rather than try to sweep these unhappy customers under the rug, look at them as a challenge and an opportunity to improve your brand and leverage them for some publicity.

Why You Want Angry Customers

There are several ways to connect with unhappy customers in a meaningful way:

• Hold a panel or forum in person; give them a tour of your facility and hold a venting session
• Work virtually; host an online panel to get feedback from them
• Work one-on-one to understand their concerns and address them individually

In-Person Events

Dell recently held its first Customer Advisory Panel event at their headquarters in Round Rock, TX. They invited two groups of 15 bloggers and social media gurus. One group was full of people who had negative experiences with the company and who were vocal about their displeasure. The second group was made up of people that Dell considered brand evangelists; people who loved Dell and told others.

The attendees started the morning with their gripes; customer service issues came up again and again. The heads of customer service and marketing were present and actively engaged. As they listened, they took notes, then asked questions and they promised they would make changes.

That type of customer empowerment is important. Now, whether they’ll go through with the promised changes is another story, but it was clear that Dell understood it was time to start paying attention to the public’s perception of its brand, and make some changes to keep their customers.

Nestlé is another company that has been successful at holding an event to let people engage with its brand directly. After a resurgence in interest in the Nestle Boycott a few years ago, Nestlé decided to invite a group of bloggers to what it called its “Happy, Healthy Gathering” in 2009. Mommy bloggers, who’d been tweeting up a storm about the company’s stance on breastfeeding in third world countries, were invited to tour the facilities and give their input on the company.

Whether the event truly changed perceptions remains to be seen, but it did a great deal to show that Nestlé was putting in the effort to reach its audience.

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers invited to participate Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel.

Virtual Panels

Virtual panels are decidedly less effective than in-person ones. But they can be good replacements for focus groups. Pssst is General Mills’ online testing ground for new products. The company sends participants coupons and free products to try, and in return they are asked to fill out surveys. The program is so successful that bloggers who write about saving money are gladly turning others onto joining Pssst.

Similarly, the Starbucks Passion Panel was designed to get customer feedback — for better or worse. The community of Starbucks drinkers gives their input via surveys and forums.

Passion Panel member Jennifer Boyd said, “Being on the Passion Panel means that I have access to direct input and discussion with other members. It enables me to give my opinion on Starbucks’ current and future products through surveys. The panel is a great way to engage with their loyal customers and solidifies a relationship with a consumer to a brand.”

Wal-Mart’s Elevenmoms platform is another example of how a mix of online community, shopper experience and in-person visits can work together to help the company gather new insights. John Andrews, former Senior Manager of Emerging Media for Wal-Mart and founder of the Elevenmoms, said the community succeeded in getting Wal-Mart’s attention in a few areas where it was lacking.

When the iPhone was launched in Wal-Mart stores, the Elevenmoms were invited to go through the purchase process. Some had no problems, but others did. It took one blogger two hours to buy a phone. Each blogger published her experience, and Wal-Mart took the feedback to its operations staff, who took notes and improved the purchase process.

“The Elevenmoms used direct social media interaction to improve the shopping process,” said Andrews.

Other feedback caused Wal-Mart to reconsider its layaway strategy. Having canceled the layaway plan due to costs, Wal-Mart got some flack from the Elevenmoms, who felt it made it easier to make big purchases. As a result, Wal-Mart developed its Site to Store platform, which provided the benefit of layaway online, so that local stores didn’t incur extra costs.

Disclosure: John Andrews now works with Collective Bias, a company with which I have collaborated on projects.

One-on-One

Solving a customer’s problems and changing their perception individually is the least cost-effective method, but a little work goes a long way. And it starts with customer service personnel being properly trained to solve problems, and not to simply stick to “the script” at all costs. Look at Zappos or Disney for great examples of how service reps are empowered to solve problems.

Disney empowers each of its “cast members” (staff) to solve a guest’s problem. From the street sweeper to the reservation specialist, everyone has the ability to turn a negative situation into a good one. That might mean replacing a fallen ice cream cone, upgrading a guest’s hotel room, or simply answering politely the most commonly asked question on Disney property: what time is the three o’clock parade?

Disney is so good at customer service, they’ve opened the Disney Institute, a customer service training program helps other corporations use the same techniques that has made Disney such a success.

Likewise, Zappos is also famous for its customer service tactics. The reps don’t use scripts, and seem to genuinely care about solving problems. Many customers are pleasantly surprised when their shipping gets upgraded and they get their shoes even faster – at no additional charge.

By providing instant happiness to the customer, these brands can prevent a lot of the bad karma that comes down the road when an unhappy customer becomes an enraged customer who tells everyone he knows about how bad the company is (no one wants their own version of DellHell).

Conclusion

On Mashable.com there is a wonderful article written by Maria Ogneva that focuses on your business – building relationships to help solve problems for your customers. Understanding what products you have – that will solve those customer problems today, tomorrow and next year. It goes back to a want need and a benefit. When we can fulfill those 3 human touch points – you begin to find that your brand not only becomes just a product – but rather integrated into ones day to day life.

What we loved about this particular article is that it focuses on the various business departments that make up a company, marketing, sales, customer service traditional advertising and product design. Outlining what their role is in relation to social media and how each can better serve the customer using social media tools.

Quoted from the article I think the author Maria Ogneva says it best “our brand is no longer what you say it is, but rather what the patchwork of customer and employee voices says it is. That being said, you still have a tremendous opportunity to help steer these conversations and educate the public in a conversational, open and honest manner so they feel well equipped to talk about your brand when they choose to do so.”

How are the various departments in your business serving your customers using social media?

Best Nicole

When it comes to social media for business, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. But to ensure results, you must align it with your overall business objectives and avoid falling for “shiny new objects” simply because they are trendy or hyped.

For example, a new business or “first mover” may want to focus on establishing thought leadership, while a more mature business should aim for customer support. In all cases, creating a product that actually solves problems for customers, present and future, should be every business’s top priority — and you should be using social media to help you figure out what that product is.

Below, we’ll take a closer look at how each department can blend traditional and social media to drive business goals and collaborate on a seamless customer experience.

Marketing Touchpoints

Remember that your business needs to have as many touchpoints with your customers as possible, of which social media is just one:

• A clear website that establishes value and helps customers weave your brand into their own story.
• Thought leadership and content creation, in the form of blogging, guest-blogging, webinars, whitepapers, e-books, presentations, and videos help educate the market. Use social media to help create and share content, as well as create discussions around this content.
• Relationships and outreach: As a result of your social media listening, discovery and engagement, you will undoubtedly form relationships with other thought leaders with whom you can collaborate on content, form guest-blogging relationships, create podcasts, etc. I have started many of my professional relationships on Twitter, which have later led to in-person meetings, client relationships, co-creating content, consulting engagements, jobs, etc.
• Events, online as well as offline, are also great awareness vehicles and can take the form of attending and speaking at conferences, sponsorships, and producing your own. Social media can and should be used to drive awareness, collect content input from the public, and provide ways for people in your network to meet in person. Take the time to produce content around the event. Interview people you respect and with whom you have built online and offline relationships, and share that content via social media.
• Then of course, there is social media itself, which is a must for any brand building effort. Your social media strategy should include actively monitoring Twitter (), Facebook (), blogs, discussion forums and other outpost communities, with the purpose of learning, engaging and forming relationships.
• Third-party support, in the form of partners, resellers, and blogger outreach, is also tremendously important. Forming and nurturing these relationships is crucial to your success as a brand, and can have a multiplicative effect on your social media and offline buzz.

Sales

You should also be using social media listening techniques to gather intelligence around your customers and prospects’ businesses to help drive better and richer conversations. Listen for purchase intent and identify clues about when people may be looking for your product.

Customer Service

This streamlines the customer experience. Imagine when a customer tweets an airline that she needs help; if the airline can tie her social data to its internal information associated with the reservation, it can help her that much better. Additionally, anyone in the company can help this customer, because there is a unified customer record available to all relevant parties inside the company.

The Intersection of Traditional and Social Media

Ask yourself the following questions:

• How will you receive traditional and social media requests for help? Perform a social media audit to understand where your customers are talking about products like yours, and set up a monitoring system attuned to those platforms.
• How will you triage your social media messages?
• How will you route and escalate your social media messages?
• How is that different (or not) from how you treat traditional e-mail and phone support?
• How much automation do you want?
• Do you use a hub-and-spoke system? If so, who is the hub — your social media manager or community manager?
• Are you giving Twitter responsibilities to existing phone and e-mail support reps, or are you hiring specific Twitter response teams? (This will largely depend on the volume of mentions you have and the size of your business.)
• How do they work with the rest of the customer service organization?

You also need to track workflow statistics on messages — social as well as traditional — and relate them to your success metrics. You need to have a unified reporting dashboard that integrates statistics for both kinds of support.

Product Intelligence and Design

• There’s a lot of information out there, and you can easily figure out what people are saying in aggregate by using the right monitoring and analysis platform. Because there is so much social data, you need smart text analytics to help you make sense of it all. When collecting customer intelligence, you should be blending traditional market research (surveys, focus groups, secondary research) with this type of social media research.
• On a more intimate level, you need to invite your customers behind the scenes and give them a stake in the future of the product. If your customers help you create the product, you can possibly reduce customer support queries and complaints in the future. One easy way that you can implement this today is by adding an idea generation and feedback community like UserVoice to your site.

The key is to establish a flow for easy and consistent information dissemination. Again, if you put your community manager at the helm, she can act as the liaison between the product team and the community providing ideas. Make strong multi-directional communication (between the community manager, product team, and the customer) a key priority.

It got me thinking – as my response was immediately that social media is not akin to one product or style of business, but rather the idea of finding ways to communicate and engage your target market by connecting with them, them connecting with you and of course with each other – as members of a community who all have the same interests and goals. I think that this all relates back to understanding a target markets social computing behavior. This behavior is not referenced by a product or a brand – but rather by the way they choose to communicate, share and access information. It is your job to understand what it is that you want from this engagement as a business and then understand who it is that you want to engage – learn how they will best want to engage with you and then proceed with that strategy in a way that will involve them in a mutually beneficial relationship of sharing.

One of the great things I learned about the many years in the fashion business was – that understanding that consumer behavior can be vital and varied for different target markets. Their response to your designs, colors, fabrics and price points can be directly pointed to how well you listened to what it is that they wanted, needed and liked. That strategic planning and understanding of your target customer was part of the strategic DNA of each season’s line planning – long before social media or computers (when I first began (lol))! When you got it right – they kept coming back and the re-orders were unstoppable and when you didn’t listen – the repeated reductions of your product still didn’t move off the floor.

While thinking about this topic of pigeon holing the product – instead of understanding that social media is about networking, community, engagement, sharing and extending your reach – to a vast network or as Seth Godin, coined “a tribe of people” who all have shared goals and interests – has more to do with the format that you choose to engage – then what the product may be. I found an article from last year at Mashable.com written by Samir Balwani that features 10 of the smartest brands leveraging social media. Blendtec, Burger King, Starbucks, Sun Micro Systems, IBM, Zappos, Comcast, Ford, Graco and Dell – all using different tools to target very different customers with very different products and services.

As Samir says in his summation “Lesson: Social media isn’t all about ROI, but it is possible. Creating cross-platform strategies can lead to the most success, especially when your demographic is already Internet and technologically savvy.”

Best Nicole

As we battle a global recession, corporations are looking for new ways to sell their products and engage their consumers. Many have turned to the Internet, with Social Media in particular, to market their goods. Let’s take a look at 10 companies that have done a phenomenal job of taking advantage of social media platforms.

1. Blendtec Blends it on YouTube

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Blendtec leveraged YouTube’s subscriber base and tried something fun and original. The campaign was a success and continues to entertain and sell.

Lesson: Social media marketing doesn’t always need to cost a lot of money. Creating funny, original video and leveraging an already large user base can be used to increase sales.

2. Burger King and the Sacrifice Facebook Application

Sadly, the application was shut down as quickly as it started by Facebook, citing privacy concerns. Regardless, the application was beautifully built and the idea was perfect. Burger King built in the ability to share it, the incentive to use it, and added just enough humor to make the campaign a hit.

Lesson: Successful and viral campaigns don’t just test out social media, they jump in it. Pushing the envelope can create the buzz that makes your campaign memorable.

3. Starbucks Asks for Your Advice

The site allows users to submit suggestions to be voted on by Starbucks consumers, and the most popular suggestions are highlighted and reviewed. Starbucks then took it a step further and added an “Ideas in Action” blog that gives updates to users on the status of changes suggested.

By empowering their exceptionally web savvy consumer, Starbucks strengthens their campaign to add a personal touch to coffee.

Lesson: Thinking of ways to build your company are great, but directly asking your consumers what they want, is better. Acting on that information and doing it publicly is key to the success of this campaign.

Starbucks has also embraced Twitter, you can see their stream at @Starbucks.

4. Sun Microsystems and the CEO Blog

It’s not the number of hits that make his blog a social media success, but the openness on it. Positive and negative comments are allowed, and even the most inane are approved. Transparency from the highest position in a company trickles down and increases trust from consumers.

Lesson: Social media is a culture of transparency and honesty that must be embraced, leading by example is one of the best ways to introduce it to a company. Few things are better than a CEO that blogs or uses twitter.

Sun Microsystems also has a network of blogs, friends on Facebook (), friends on Twitter, and their own Twitter account as well.

5. IBM With Lots of Blogs

IBM capitalizes on the intelligence of their employees to give consumers insight into what happens behind the scenes. By giving the industry experts they’ve hired a voice, IBM is able to highlight the people behind their products. Users get to see how IBM operates, and are given a direct connection with IBM employees.

Lesson: Having a CEO that blogs is great, but increase the number of blogs and you increase the number of connections. Leveraging your employees to write about what they love conveys the corporate dedication to the industry.

You can also find IBM on Twitter giving updates on events from their calendar.

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6. Zappos on Twitter

The idea of micro-blogging and the sense of exceptional customer service is ingrained in the corporate culture. Most Zappos employees have an active account, and the Zappos site has a page that aggregates all the streams.

The reason why Zappos stands out on Twitter is because of their ability to bring the company to life. The Zappos CEO has lent his personality to the company brand, a personality that is friendly, helpful, funny, and trustworthy. They use Twitter to highlight interesting facts, and to talk to their consumers. Talking to Zappos is like talking to a friend that happens to sell shoes.

Lesson: Take a CEO that twitters, add in a great personality and you have a recipe for social success. Ingraining social media into the culture of a corporation means that every consumer interaction is personal.

Zappos also does a great job of using their blog and Facebook to engage their avid fanbase.

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7. Comcast on Twitter too

Comcast has found a way to offer exceptional customer service to their consumers, but the thing that really makes them stand out is how well they monitor discontent. Complain about Comcast and you can bet you’ll hear from @comcastcares to see if they can help.

Lesson: Being active on Twitter is great but tracking and seeing who’s mentioning you, is the next step. Social media allows for the possibility of great customer service, and with it, better brand loyalty.

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8. Ford and Social Media PR

The basic story is that there was an internal gaffe where Ford’s legal department sent out cease and desist letters to forum owners using Ford trademarks. Obviously the story was twisted and changed, and in the end people were outraged.

What makes this a success story for social media is that Scott Monty (Ford’s community manager) was quick to find out what happened and let us know the true story. Not only that, but as things were being fixed and a compromise was ironed out, the public was informed every step of the way.

Although we don’t know if social media has shown a direct return on investment for Ford, the public relations fiasco it helped avert (think Motrin) should help make the case for more funding for social media.

Lesson: Social media can be used to inform consumers in real-time of how a corporation is reacting to events that affect the customer. Transparency in the process and access to constant information can help stop a negative story from going viral.

9. Graco Uses Pictures on Flickr

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Flickr isn’t the center of their campaign, but they promote it heavily with the Graco blog which also creates an incentive for others to submit pictures. The photographs help highlight the people behind Graco and the consumers using their products.

Graco takes their strategy one step further by introducing offline marketing in the form of community gatherings. The pictures from these meet-ups are posted to the Flickr page, further humanizing the community around the product.

Lesson: Social media doesn’t have to exist wholly online. Blending offline marketing with online efforts can build a community around a brand.

Graco has a blog and leverages Lindsay Lebresco (the corporate blogger for Graco) to be active on Twitter.

10. Dell Doing it Everywhere

Dell is also one of the few companies to publicly state that they created a return on investment from Twitter. Apparently, Dell’s social media efforts help create “$1 million in revenue“.

Lesson: Social media isn’t all about ROI, but it is possible. Creating cross-platform strategies can lead to the most success, especially when your demographic is already Internet and technologically savvy.

It all begins with finding ways to start that conversation. Media Post Insider, one of the trade publications  I read daily, has written a post with 3 great ideas that outline how you can get that conversation started— today. Darrah MacLean, the author of the post, suggests that “in our status-update-obsessed culture, people want to have their opinions heard and valued. By being a good listener, you plant the seeds of loyalty.”

Don’t put off today what you need to do for tomorrow. There is no time like the present!

Best Nicole

When was the last time you asked your subscriber base to share their thoughts? Three months ago? Six months ago? 12 months ago? Never? (Say it isn’t so.) Staying current with your audience keeps you grounded in reality. It helps you know what’s really going on, not just what you “think” is going on.

In our status-update-obsessed culture, people want to have their opinions heard and valued. By being a good listener, you plant the seeds of loyalty. As you take a look at your plans for 2010, you might want to add in one (or all three) of the strategies below to help get the conversation started.

1) Survey Says. 2009 resolutions are history, but 2010 resolutions are just getting started. So, how will you do things differently this year? Better yet, how do your subscribers want you to do things differently? There’s no way to know for certain unless you ask. With your customers fresh off their holiday shopping sprees, now is the perfect time to tap into their online and in-store shopping experiences. To encourage participation, consider throwing in an incentive for taking a survey, as Moosejaw did. Another idea would be to tap into your Facebook fanbase and Twitter followers. Simply post a link to your hosted version of the survey email

2) Product Reviews. More and more consumers are turning to product reviews to help them make their purchasing decisions. Why not make a 2010 resolution to show your site’s product reviews some love. Zappos and Sephora get fancy by dynamically populating their review requests with photos of recently purchased products. An even fancier bonus would be the ability to post my recent product review and product shot to my Facebook page! To launch their product review push, Lululemon introduced a “we heart feedback” campaign in the middle of December. While we could debate the timing of the messaging, the branding of it is really inspiring.

(Sidebar: Adding a little copy like “Purchase this item for someone else? Forward this email so we can get their feedback.” is a great solve for when the product review email goes to the purchaser vs. the gift recipient.)

3) Preferences Please. As we move more towards personalizing content and creating meaningful social experiences, we’re going to have to put our preference centers and profile modules to work. Take Sephora, for example. I’ve heard from many sources that they truly use their preference center to help customize emails for subscribers. After receiving this Beauty Insider Update email, I now realize why I get the generic versions” I never filled out my beauty profile! I’ll be excited to see how my email experience changes now that I’ve given them all kinds of details to work with. Taking the update request a step further, Piperlime includes a preference center message in each and every email. Now that’s dedication.

“To further wow her, DeLeon provided pizza for 350 people at the Chicago Social Media Club, an organization DeLeon was initially unaware that Korin was involved in.

“Ramon successfully kept my business, and his professionalism, timeliness and attention to every customer is what keeps me coming back for more,” says Korin, founder of interactiveAmy.com Social Media Consultancy.

To date, the video apology has been embedded more than 87,000 times (the number of times the video’s HTML code has been pasted in online). A Google blog search brings it up on countless blogs in dozens of languages.

AMAZING! For all of those that are still questioning how social media can provide ROI, “this is how we do it” as the song says. Better yet, this is an example of how a small business is leveraging social media to build its brand—via sales, brand evangelism and marketing for new customers. I know that if I were in Chicago, I would be searching out Ramon Deleon’s pizza chain. Customers want to know that you care, that you are listening to their challenges and finding ways to not only solve them—but to recognize an error has been made and make it right. This tells them that businesses DO care—they are human and they want to make sure your next experience superceeds your expectations.

How easy can it be? SHARE with us your experiences and how you’ve leveraged social media to express your challenges and how the business in question did or did not react in kind.

Enjoy this great post!

Best Nicole

When it comes to social media, it takes a lot to impress Amy Korin.

Her resume includes digital strategy for global companies like Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Sun Microsystems and Zappos.

But her local Domino’s Pizza joint left her “completely shocked.”

On a rainy Sunday night, her Domino’s Pizza order took an hour to arrive and then was the wrong pizza. She turned to Twitter to vent: “hardly any room for human error, but still a mistake.”

What followed went way beyond the mea culpa tweet increasingly more common in business today.

Ramon DeLeon, managing partner of seven Chicago-area Domino’s stores, saw the tweet and contacted her immediately.

The correct pizza was already on its way. But “he insisted that he would make it up to me, and WOW me.  He certainly did just that!” Korin says.

Organization:

Domino’s Pizza (7 Chicago-area franchise stores)

Social Media Tools Used:

• Twitter—2,500 followers, @ Ramon_DeLeon
• Twitter search
• Tweetlater alerts (now SocialOomph.com)
• TweetPhoto
• TweetDeck
• Viddler
• Flickr
• Monitter

Results:

• 7 successful Domino’s franchises
• Doors opened to provide pizza for large groups
• Hundreds of thousands of impressions of one video alone
• Dozens of blog mentions

“The only way to put out a social media fire is with social media water,” says DeLeon.

The next morning, Korin found a new tweet from @Ramon_DeLeon: “@interactiveAmy we will make it up to you” with a link to a video apology from DeLeon and his store manager.

Korin in turn shared it with friends, family and contacts across her social networks. “Pandora’s pizza box had been opened,” she said.

To further wow her, DeLeon provided pizza for 350 people at the Chicago Social Media Club, an organization DeLeon was initially unaware that Korin was involved in.

“Ramon successfully kept my business, and his professionalism, timeliness and attention to every customer is what keeps me coming back for more,” says Korin, founder of interactiveAmy.com Social Media Consultancy.

To date, the video apology has been embedded more than 87,000 times (the number of times the video’s HTML code has been pasted in online). A Google blog search brings it up on countless blogs in dozens of languages.

It’s just one example of how self-proclaimed “pizza guy” DeLeon has built his business in a competitive pizza city like Chicago.

“Using the tools of social media, I’ve been able to put Domino’s pizza on the social media radar map in Chicago,” says DeLeon.

Take-Out from Domino’s Pizza’s Ramon DeLeon

1. Be ready at all times.
An opportunity to “wow” can arise anytime. Carry the tools you need—and spare batteries.

2. Do the unexpected.
Going beyond inspires people to share.

3. “Put social media fires out with social media water.”
Counter negative online comments online, with something unexpected.

4. Thank customers creatively.
A creative thank-you goes a long way, especially if it’s sharable like video.

It’s 1 am Monday, Get Selling

When the Domino’s sales week ends each Sunday night, no matter how good the week before was, DeLeon can’t stand a register that reads $0.

“There are people awake at 1 or 2 am and they’re not eating my pizza!” says DeLeon. “I start thinking of hospitals, police departments, fire departments, gas stations, maintenance people in high-rises—all these people who are in the middle of their day right now.”

That’s the mindset that took DeLeon from a pizza delivery guy at age 19 to a seven-franchise managing partner today. From the start, he’s exceeded not only Domino’s expectations but customers’ expectations as well.

In 1998, DeLeon offered customers online ordering seven years before Domino’s corporate. To maintain a personal connection, he began communicating with customers via pager and AOL Instant Messenger in 1994.

Today, his arsenal of electronics on hand has grown to two web-enabled cell phones, a digital camera, a Flip video camera and spare batteries. Back at the office, DeLeon sits in front of four giant computer screens monitoring social media activity—perhaps a micro version of NASA central command.

With tools like Monitter, TweetLater (now SocialOomph), TweetDeck and instant messaging, he waits, watches and responds as fast as possible to keep customers happy, proving “You’re never alone with Ramon DeLeon!”

He Creates It

DeLeon has proven to be incredibly adept at creating content that people want to share. How? By instigating memorable customer experiences.

“With every single delivery or order, we are part of someone’s life. No matter how redundant the process is, the end result is not the same,” he says.

When Chicago resident Theresa Carter tweeted happily about her Domino’s order, DeLeon sent her a video thanks straight from London, where he was speaking to a group of Domino’s franchise partners.

“When I saw that thank-you video from Ramon—from London—I was blown away!” says Carter, president of The Local Tourist. “Now when I want pizza, I automatically think of calling one of his stores and feel guilty if I go somewhere else!”

Carter then made her own video thanking DeLeon for the pizza, proving that he gets big reactions by going beyond.

His contagious enthusiasm comes through in 64 creative videos on Viddler.com (under DPZRAMON):

• Telling customers about Cyber Monday deals, offering coupon codes
• Getting MC Hammer’s autograph as a thank-you for a blogger
• Documenting his trips around the world to speak about social media
• Presenting a giant dummy check to a guest pizza maker, and trying to deposit it in an ATM

He posts photos of special offers on TweetPhoto and Flickr, which encourages even more sales.

They Share It

If DeLeon can get customers to share their positive experiences with others, “even if it’s just with your cat,” then he’s succeeded.

To that end, he makes it easy to share experiences online. After ordering using the online pizza builder, customers can click on a Facebook link, which populates their own Facebook status with details of their pizza order.

Or customers waiting for orders at DeLeon’s stores can take a snapshot in front of a “Photo Op” poster featuring breadsticks and all of DeLeon’s social media handles. He finds customers post those pics on Facebook and Twitter right then, creating even more impressions of Domino’s.

11″ x 17″ pizza box fliers highlight DeLeon’s Twitter wall

The pizzas on his menu even have Twitter hash tags to encourage customers to share what they order.

He uses prime ad space—the top of pizza boxes—to showcase what he calls his “Twitter Wall.” An 11″ x 17″ flier lists the top customer tweets mentioning his stores.

“I try to promote customers as much as I can,” DeLeon says. “If I keep my customers in business, then my customers keep me in business.”

A customer poses in front of Ramon’s “Photo Op” poster

Customers Do Facebook for Him

One of DeLeon’s stores serves Northwestern University and its 15,000-plus students. Yet surprisingly, DeLeon does not have a Facebook fan page. In the days when only .edu emails could get accounts, he was desperate for one.

“I even thought about enrolling to get a Facebook acount,” he admits.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to. He learned a Northwestern student had started her own Domino’s group, “Dominos Is Better than Papa Johns.”

“I try not to come across as advertising, but as word of mouth,” he says.

To give students something to talk about, he started taking photos of every campus event where Domino’s was involved, including images of students holding coupon signs.

He posted them, with a Domino’s logo on each bottom corner, on his www.nudominos.com website. Students would download the unprotected photos of themselves and then share them on Facebook.

Today, students take their own shots and post them, and often tag the pizza box with DeLeon’s individual Facebook ID.

By connecting with students, DeLeon invests in relationships that he hopes will continue as students move into the workforce.

He also reaches out to the administrators of Facebook groups to offer special discounts. In response, all those group members experience Domino’s and post their own comments.

Create Addicts and Advocates

With sales and social media success, DeLeon now speaks to Domino’s franchise owners all over the world—drawing the first-ever standing ovation from a British Domino’s group. Dozens of blogs have featured him and he’s a top draw at social media conferences, where he rubs elbows with Starbucks corporate and social media celebs like Gary Vaynerchuk.

But he insists he isn’t doing anything truly different than 20 years ago as a pizza delivery driver. It’s still about creating unexpected customer experiences.

“Social media is just modern tools to do something very basic in business,” he says.

“I want people to get addicted to the experience of Domino’s. If they go somewhere else, I want them to feel a void in their body. ‘It’s good but it’s not the same.’”

Ann Handley, author for Mashable.com, writes about what we can learn from these creative and resourceful businesses who understand the power of connecting and engaging with their customers!

Check out some of these incredibly innovative businesses. And they’re all related to street food (something we all love)! Take a break as we can all learn from them.

Hmm time to eat!

Best Nicole

“Twitter* is still a scary, untamed frontier for many businesses,” Fortune wrote last week. I hear a similar refrain from the marketers who are part of the MarketingProfs community: They know that they should be engaging online, but they don’t have the foggiest notion of how to do it.

Lots of businesses on Twitter are doing it right. But, lately, I’ve been finding inspiration less from those companies that have become the poster children for leveraging social media (this means you Comcast, and Zappos, and Dell) and more from the lesser-knowns: not just the little guys, but the littlest of the little guys. I’m talking about street food vendors.

Time was that lunch from street vendors meant limited options. But no more: Street food vendors have expanded both in number and cuisine. In New York City, this growth has recently led to a kind of food fight over turf. But elsewhere, it’s just meant that you can get vegan ice cream sandwiches or East Coast lobster rolls (in San Fran!) as easily as you can score a slice of pizza pie.

Twitter may not be the sole driving source (no pun intended) behind the growth of street food vendors—undoubtedly the economy has done its part to encourage the otherwise unemployed to find an inexpensive way to make a living. But, nonetheless, a growing number of street vendors have been leveraging Twitter in innovative and interesting ways, serving up lessons for any business.

1. Find your target market. (Sometimes, less is more.)

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The best use of Twitter for your business, of course, is to start gathering followers in your target market. Aside from a few exceptions, you won’t find street food vendors on Twitter with tens of thousands of followers, as their target markets are geographically constrained. Rather, street food vendors focus on getting the right followers.

Lunchtime lesson: 1,000 followers who will actually do business with you are ultimately more valuable to your business than 100,000 less-engaged people.

2. Create demand.

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New York City’s The Treats Truck writes updates so vivid that you can almost smell the cookies and brownies baking. It also does a great job of creating a sense of urgency in a purchase:

Others stay top-of-mind with hungry (or potentially hungry) customers, like the way Food Shark publishes its daily menu of Mediterranean-by-way-of-West-Texas food via Twitter:

Or check out the “food porn” photos shared by Vancouver’s Japanese hot dog stand Japa Dog:

Lunchtime lesson: Communicate the breadth and depth of your products or services on Twitter in a fresh, compelling way, and in a manner that speaks directly to your customers’ needs.

3. Humanize a brand.

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NYC’s Chef Shack (run by two NY chefs) does a great job of monitoring any conversation online. When caterer Molly Hermann praised the truck’s Indian spiced donuts, the Chefs responded:

Profound? Not really. But such simple efforts can go a long way to make customers feel appreciated, and to humanize your business.

Or consider the way Rickshaw Truck, which sells steamed and fried dumplings in Manhattan, fosters a personality behind the brand:

Here’s the way Big Gay Ice Cream Truck shows that the dessert circuit isn’t always a bowl of cherries:

Lunchtime lesson: Be real. Reveal a little bit about the people and personalities who run your business so that your customers can connect with you on a human level.

4. Share news and updates. (Even when it’s bad news.)

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Twitter offers a platform for regular and instant communication. The mobile bake shop known as the Cupcake Truck, in New Haven, CT, publicizes its locations and hours, which change regularly, of course. But even less-portable companies might consider regularly communicating business updates or other news (and how it affects your customers):

Or think about sharing some love by calling out awards and/or customer reviews:

Look at how Seattle’s Skillet Street Food used Twitter to rally customer support when it got into hot water with city officials over permitting issues:

And Durham, NC’s OnlyBurger (”the only burger you’ll ever want”) uses Twitter to keep its customers in the know when things literally break down:

Lunchtime lesson: It might be obvious to share the good stuff with your customers, but consider sharing the less-good, too. Doing so allows your customers to rally around your otherwise sound business. What’s more, your audience will likely respect you more for being honest and forthcoming. (Or, at the very least, you can tell your side of the story.)

5. Gather customer feedback.

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I particularly like the way many food vendors treat their clientele as resources, not just customers. Here, Washington DC’s Streetflow Mobile, which sells frozen yogurt, solicits street intelligence, literally, when it asks its customers about the best place to find city parking:

Lunchtime lesson: Use Twitter to solicit and listen to customer suggestions and opinions. Treat your customers as resources for the kind of feedback that informs product development or other business improvements.

6. Run fun promotions.

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NYC’s Waffletruck regularly runs Twitter-specific special promotions to its followers:

Lunchtime lesson: Take a page from Dell’s playbook on this idea: Use Twitter as a vehicle to run certain social media-based promotions and specials. Your followers will begin to readily anticipate them.

7. Create a sense of community.

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Organizing face-to-face tweetups for Twitter followers is one way of extending your community into the offline world, especially as it will connect your customers to each other (not just you). The nature of that event should reflect your market, of course. Magic Curry Man in San Francisco fostered that sense of customer community by organizing a singles meet up:

Or consider connecting your business to a larger cause, like San Francisco’s UrbanNectar does with its Twitter presence:

Lunchtime lesson: Creating a sense of a customer community around your business furthers your clientele’s engagement with you and your products or services. And connecting your customers with each other strengthens both their relationships with each other as well as with you.

8. Integrate your efforts.

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Twitter is only one tool in the social media shed—or, in this case, one dish at the social-media buffet table. Like any marketing effort by any business, it works best intertwined with other tools in a marketing mix, like a website, or Flickr*, a blog*, YouTube*, or whatever.

Lunchtime lesson: Done well, Twitter is plenty fulfilling for connecting customers with your business on an immediate and intimate level. But it’s even more nourishing when it’s served up as part of a bigger spread.

Today’s post from Mashable.com, written by Sherylin Lauby, gives you 5 ways to make your business more transparent. As the old saying goes, “Honesty is always the best policy.” Although it’s not always easy and hearing negative things is not what you’re aiming for, an on-going quality relationship with your customer is worth everything.

Best Nicole

You can hardly have a conversation about social media today without discussing the concept of transparency. More and more, companies are incorporating transparency into their marketing efforts. Why? The reason, according to Debbie Weil, a corporate social media consultant and author of The Corporate Blogging Book, is because customers and stakeholders increasingly expect it. “It (transparency) is the new operating standard,” she said.

Transparency is about being open, honest, and accountable. It’s about responsibility. People are listening to you and making evaluations and decisions based upon what you say, and as such, it’s important to take responsibility for the messaging you put out there. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh explains it best, “I think people worry too much about bringing their personal selves into business, when I think the way to succeed in today’s world is to make your business more personal.”

For those looking to refine their social media messaging, here are five ways to become more transparent.

1. Don’t Fake It — Talk About What You Know

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Web designer Jeffrey Zeldman talks about web design. That’s it. And, he’s good at it. If you want to know about web design news and info, he’s the king. Literally: Business Week even dubbed him the “King of Web Standards.”

Zeldman’s example teaches us that transparency is about being who you are. Talk about the things you know and can do well. You can actually enhance your personal/company brand by sticking to what you know. Then make sure you have a list of go-to people or lifelines that specialize in related areas. For example, I’m a human resources consultant. I’m not an employee benefits consultant. So, when my clients ask about employee benefits, I refer people to one of my colleagues. This makes me look good, because I’m not trying to be something I’m not, and my clients get the right services and information they need.

It’s just as important to be viewed as a person with a lot of talented resources as it is to be viewed as an expert.

2. Have an Opinion, But Stay Open to Other Views

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We all know that part of transparency is being responsible about the information you share. As Weil mentions, “If you’re an organization using a blog or other social media to ‘get closer’ to your customers you’re never going to reveal proprietary information, internal office politics or forward looking financial information. Common sense reigns.”

This also applies to offering your opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-opinion. In fact, I find it quite educational to hear different viewpoints. It’s really nice to read a well-thought out stand on a particular issue.

But when you offer your opinion, think through the implications. What happens if others don’t agree? A recent example involves Whole Foods, a company that has embraced social media at many levels. They have created a presence for themselves on Facebook* , Twitter* , YouTube* , and other social media sites. CEO John Mackey’s recently published an op-ed regarding healthcare reform that caused a minor controversy among Whole Foods customers. In response, the company wisely kept to their social media philosophy and encouraged comments (both positive and negative.) My takeaway from this incident: people might not like the opinion, but the company remained open to hearing differing views and criticism. That kind of openness earns respect.

For some businesses, taking a stand on social issues is a part of their culture and something we, as consumers, come to expect. Having an opinion is actually a part of their marketing strategy. Ben & Jerry’s actively promotes corporate social responsibility. Their most recent announcement, changing the name of the Chubby Hubby flavor to Hubby Hubby in support of same-sex marriage, is simply a part of the iconic corporate culture they are known for.

3. Be Truthful

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I know, that sounds obvious, but keep in mind that part of transparency means putting all the pertinent details out there. If you neglect to include something – that others might have thought was important – this will impact your online credibility as much as lying outright.

One way the truth is sometimes challenged is when new projects or initiatives are implemented. When Facebook revised their user terms of service, for example, the company did a poor job of communicating the changes to users. As a result, Facebook was forced to go on the defensive when users instinctively mistrusted certain changes that affected their user rights. Everything in social media is so immediate and change in general can sometimes be hard to digest. Surprises can be met with an equally swift response.

When considering and implementing changes, it could be beneficial to use crowdsourcing for gathering information, announce changes in advance, and garner customer buy-in. Then, roll the changes out in phases. This can alleviate confusion and negative perceptions.

4. Be Timely and Responsive

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Because social media is so immediate, you need to start or participate in conversations as they happen. Recently, a fairly high-profile Twitter user was in Miami for a business meeting. The meeting was extended and he needed to find a hotel for the night. He sent out a Tweet asking for hotel recommendations and got very limited response from local hotels. Since I live in the area, I retweeted it for him, and three days later a Miami hotel got in touch to ask how they could help me. Major FAIL.

If you are going to be a part of social media, then remember that timeliness can often mean the difference between success and failure.

Timeliness is also important when a crisis or controversy is occurring at your company, Weil told me that, “you can always blog and/or Twitter that you are aware of the situation, working on the problem and will get back to people as soon as possible.” That’s better than leaving people hanging to draw their own conclusions.

5. Think Community

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None of us can or should operate as an island in social media. Transparency means creating community, giving credit, and being caring.

While some industries, such as the cruise industry, are natural fits for using social media to build community, there are other industries that are not traditionally known for building community turning to social media as a way to educate customers and generate ideas for new products and services. Mashable* recently published a post, for example, about how banks are turning to social media as a way to build community, which is proof that just about anyone can benefit from growing their community through social media.

Another key component to understanding community is knowing your audience. Companies like Disney have realized that it’s not only important to be kid-friendly, but that they need to appeal to parents as well. They launched Family.com in 2008 as a way to share info with moms and dads.

While it might appear on the surface that transparency is nothing more than telling the truth, sometimes telling the truth is hard. In general, we don’t like to let people down or admit mistakes, and transparency is about putting our unguarded self out there. But embracing transparency will help you to be more open, honest, and accountable and connect better with customers.

For all the retailers out there—here is a winning formula!

Best Nicole

Fortune Magazine) — One morning last winter Louise Kahrmann de Muller, a Paris-based publicity executive, was headed to London. Sadly, Air France lost her luggage. For most business travelers this would be an annoyance. For Kahrmann de Muller and the dozen fashion editors she was traveling with, the lost luggage was a tragedy.

Each had packed carefully choreographed outfits for Fashion Week, two per day for the next seven days — and Kahrmann de Muller’s first event was that night.

As she headed from the airport to the Mayfair Hotel, she did not panic. Instead she grabbed her BlackBerry and started shopping on a website called Net-a-porter.com.

By the time she met up with a group of Parisian fashion editors to mourn their lost outfits at the hotel bar, a van from Net had raced through London traffic and delivered a dress from the cool new designer Thread Social to her hotel room. She wore it that night to a party at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

It’s not just these moments, when Net rescues a fashionista in distress, that have made the London-based website into a retailing wunderkind (last fiscal year’s results: $134.5 million in sales and $16.6 million in pretax profits).

What Net founder and chairman Natalie Massenet (mass-in-ay), 44, has done is combine on one website the thrill of shopping at a chic boutique with the pleasure of reading a fashion magazine. Net not only showcases and sells clothes but also publishes a weekly online glossy that decodes the latest trends.

And by mixing these two addictive leisure activities — shopping and perusing a magazine — into one designer drug, Net is doing for $2,000 Calvin Klein dresses what Amazon did for “The Da Vinci Code” and iTunes for Coldplay.

As a result the company is growing exponentially at a time when many purveyors of luxury goods are struggling.

Net’s total sales were up 45% for the first 13 weeks of its fiscal year (beginning Feb. 1), while sales at Neiman Marcus Direct (the side of Neiman’s business that includes its web and catalogue sales) are down 14% for roughly the same period

 Net may be small when compared with other Internet retailers like Zappos, the online shoe store that topped $1 billion in sales last year and was recently acquired by Amazon.com. But the space Net operates in is growing — particularly in the U.S., where a new study conducted by Forrester Research projects that web sales will reach more than $156 billion in 2009, representing 6% of the total U.S. retail pie.

Because of Net’s global reach and its ability to predict the trends, it is already playing a significant role in transforming how designers reach customers in this growing marketplace.

With an emphasis on service that includes the option of same-day delivery in New York City and London, Net is riding a tidal shift in how women shop.

“The retail experience is not what it used to be. I hate shopping, but I love shopping online,” says Kahrmann de Muller of why she spends about $1,000 a month on the website. “I work hard. I don’t have a lot of free time, and I don’t like salespeople hovering over you if you walk in wearing something fabulous or looking down at you if you’re wearing gym clothes.”

Net-a-porter is profiting from industry upheaval too, as the traditional bonds between designers, department stores, and fashion editors have begun to fray.

Some designers have become less dependent on department stores as they have aggressively opened their own boutiques. Meanwhile consumers have come to expect new merchandise more frequently, thanks to the web and fast-fashion retailers like H&M.

Traditionally designers have shown their spring collections in the fall (and fall collections in the spring) so that store buyers could place orders six months in advance (and magazine editors could likewise prepare their coverage). In the era of the iPhone, consumers can’t understand why they must wait so long for a product they have already seen on the runway.

Nor do consumers appreciate the mixed messages they receive from department stores and fashion magazines: Buyers at department stores generally base their orders on sales figures from the past, hoping to repeat their successes, while fashion editors often gravitate to the most avant-garde pieces, which will make dramatic pictures.

“So you have one industry that was very forward-thinking and one that was very backward-thinking, and stuck in the middle is the consumer who was being told what to buy but not necessarily where to find it,” says Massenet, whose editorial and buying teams travel to shows together. “So by creating a site that does both, we think the place where the time-starved consumer gets her fashion news will also be the place where she chooses to shop.”

Massenet foresees a world in which designers will rebel against long lead times and start taking collections directly to the consumer through their own boutiques or over the web.

Indeed, in February 2008, as Halston was being relaunched under new management, the company struck a deal with Net-a-porter to sell two dresses the day after its debut runway show. See the dress on your computer on a Tuesday; wear it Wednesday night.

There are other sites that Halston could have worked with. Bluefly (BFLY) has more traffic in the U.S. than Net-a-porter but has a lower average order ($250 to Net’s $820). Shopbop.com is owned by Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), but it lacks Net’s prestige in the fashion world. Nordstrom’s website, which had annual sales in its last fiscal year of $698 million, dwarfs Net’s revenues. Yet Halston’s CEO, Bonnie Takhar, chose to work with Massenet.

“Net-a-porter is the only luxury global e-tailer,” she explains. “First off, it is set up on a distribution scale to really service 170 countries. And then, second, Natalie’s portfolio of other designer brands, her merchandise, and her content in my opinion are really the best in the world.”

Net-a-porter’s global operations

It’s a Tuesday morning in May, and the company’s London headquarters is buzzing like a trading floor. Today a mini-collection designed by Stella McCartney is scheduled to go live on the site. The items that McCartney created exclusively for Net include a jumpsuit (yes, “Charlie’s Angels” fans, they are back) as well as several pieces featuring a cloud print from Peter Blake, the British pop artist who incidentally created the artwork on the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” (Stella is a daughter of Sir Paul.)

Net’s offices, situated in the dome of a former department store called Whiteleys, have been retrofitted as a bullpen. At rows and rows of computer terminals sit some of Net’s 454 employees: buyers, personal shoppers, editors, art directors, and marketing teams. The click-click of keystrokes mixes with the click-clack of Christian Louboutin heels.

The focal points of the office are two giant flat screens that track orders as they come in, a motivational tool that reminds everyone that this is all business. The top screen shows an image of the products and the price of each order as it is placed, along with a running tally of the day’s sales figures. The bottom one depicts a map of the world that rotates to show the origination point of the latest order.

“Almaty Kazakhstan $806″ moves across one monitor as the locator screen tracks over Europe and past the Caspian Sea before alighting on the business center of the former Soviet Republic. The locator map then shifts to “Hamburg, Germany,” while on the adjacent screen a $350 organic cotton tee with that Peter Blake cloud print drifts by.

Claire Jessup, a PR executive at Net, begins ringing a bell to let those who missed it know that a Stella McCartney item just sold. The clanging is a throwback to the days when the company was just a handful of people working out of a studio, and each sale merited a celebration.

An air horn blasts from another side of the office, indicating that theOutnet.com, the company’s newly launched discount channel, just rang up a sale. (On theOutnet you’ll find a Diane von Furstenberg dress knocked down from $895 to $403.)

“We used to yell ‘Ka-ching!’ every time we booked a sale,” says Massenet as she walks through the bullpen, pausing when she notices a scarf-hood combo (known as a snood) move across the screen. She is almost giddy at seeing a trend that Net-a-porter has been pushing editorially gain traction with customers, so she yells, “Snood alert!”

Even before the snood is off the screen, the fun is over, and a race to get the merchandise into the hands of its purchaser begins. Net operates two distribution centers: one outside London and the other in Long Island City, N.Y., just across the East River from Manhattan.

The warehouses are anonymous industrial buildings on the outside, but inside they bloom with designer dresses, coats, handbags, and shoes. The clothes are elegantly packed with tissue paper and put into Net’s signature black bags.

Delivery is by UPS for regular orders in the U.S. and DHL for the rest of the world, but rush orders in New York and London travel in black-and-white vans staffed by deliverymen who are allegedly hired for their looks and manners. In a company with no brick-and-mortar stores, the deliverymen are one of the few points of actual customer contact.

The London distribution center processes about 1,000 orders on a typical day, but “when it is raining at lunchtime, we know it is going to be a big day,” says Paul Layton, Net’s director of operations, because office workers tend to eat at their desks and go shopping online.

From stylist to businesswoman

Massenet has been interested in fashion since she was a little girl, and as she got older she suspected she might want to be an entrepreneur.

If you were going to breed the perfect style guru, you might take a Chanel model (as Massenet’s mother was) and have her sitting at Paris’s Café de Flore, where a Hollywood publicist might chat her up (as Massenet’s father did).

Natalie grew up in Paris and Madrid until the age of 11, when her parents separated; then she returned to Los Angeles, where her dad and paternal grandmother finished raising her.

She looked forward to school vacations and being with her mother in Europe. It was on her return trips to California, armed with cutting-edge clothes, that she began to understand fashion’s power.

“When I got back to school in the fall, I remember everyone asking me, ‘What are you wearing? That’s so weird.’ And I would say, ‘Oh, you laugh now, but in six months you’ll all be wearing it.’”

After graduating from UCLA she worked as a stylist and a fashion writer for Women’s Wear Daily and eventually for the British magazine Tatler. In 1996 she married Lehman Brothers banker Arnaud Massenet (he is currently a managing director for Gottex Fund Management Europe). By 1998 she was living in London and expecting the first of her two daughters. Deep down she knew she wanted to start a business.

“I didn’t want to be that person at a dinner party just saying, ‘I could have been, I could have been.’ And I had fallen in love with my computer, and I found myself talking to friends of mine who had fashion businesses and saying, ‘Oh, my God! You have got to go online. You can sell directly to your customer worldwide. This is how I want to shop.’”

One day Massenet stopped by a Barclays bank and picked up a pamphlet titled “Are You an Entrepreneur?” “I called Arnaud and I said, ‘Honey, I’m starting a business!’ And I think he said something like, ‘Great! What’s for dinner?’”

To launch the business Massenet needed three things — backers, vendors, and a name for the company. Her initial vendors were friends, including Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon and handbag designer Anya Hindmarch, who immediately understood that there was a potential market of what Massenet dubbed “cash-rich, time-poor” women.

Initially she wanted to call the company What’s New Pussycat? but she was talked out of it because the name might attract the wrong sort of traffic. So she thumbed through a fashion dictionary until she found her inspiration: prêt–porter, French for “ready-to-wear.”

The first round of capital, for $1.4 million, was raised in 1999; it was followed by a second round in 2004 for $8.2 million. Her early financial backers — and to this day Net’s largest shareholders – understood the concept right away.

The first was Carmen Busquets, daughter of a wealthy Venezuelan industrialist. Years before Net launched, Busquets ran a boutique in Caracas called Cabus. Part of what made Cabus special was the way Busquets would attend the runway shows in Europe and mail images to her best clients, who could then pre-order from the designers. While backing the startup of Net, Busquets personally vouched for Net’s creditworthiness to designers with whom she had long-standing relationships.

The site went live by accident on June 10, 2000. Friends and family were the first customers, but then the base expanded to three primary groups: media executives, financiers, and independently wealthy women. (Net does not carry men’s wear and has no immediate plans to do so.) Net is now adding new customers at the rate of 1,200 per week.

Two years after the launch, luxury-goods conglomerate Richemont came onboard. (Today, on a fully diluted basis, Richemont and the Busquets family each own 28% of the privately held company, with the Massenet family owning 17%, other founding shareholders 11%, and employees — both past and present — accounting for the remaining 16%.)

But the business didn’t begin to break even until 2004, after Mark Sebba, a former investment banker at Wertheim Schroder, joined the company as chief executive officer. Prior to Net, Sebba, 60, had worked as finance director of two new-media businesses.

The recession hasn’t hurt Net, which seems to be benefiting from the way many women are steering clear of stores but still shopping under the cover of the web — a trend known in the industry as “stealth shopping.”

Another trend that Net is helping foster is an explosion of unique personal style: Shopping on the web has caused women to lose their hang-ups about seasonality or wearing hemlines at a prescribed length.

As Massenet puts it, “The minute you’ve got a global market, then seasonality is much less important because it is always summer somewhere. And also, with access to so much product all the time everywhere, it’s a lot less about equipping yourself for a season than it is about just shopping. The concept of ‘Everybody, turn left and wear a mini! Everybody, turn right and wear a maxi!’ is over. There’s an amazing movement toward individuality.”

Holding on to its success

Net-a-porter now runs the risk of becoming a victim of its own success, with imitators springing up on all sides, and of Massenet walking a fine line between Cinderella and Marie Antoinette in terms of her portrayal in the fashion press. (The website fashionista.com recently ripped Net for holding up an $11,255 jumpsuit as the “ultimate in status style.”)

More vexing is that eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) and Amazon.com may soon expand their fashion e-tailing efforts. Merchandise not sold at auction now accounts for roughly half of eBay’s business, and executives at the company have been reaching out to high-end designers about creating their own virtual kiosks. Unlike Net, eBay has no plans to buy inventory; it will just provide virtual real estate for designers. Amazon too may be getting into Net’s kitchen with its acquisitions of Shopbop and Zappos.

Then there are Richemont’s rival luxury conglomerates — LVMH and PPR. Some of PPR’s brands, like Stella McCartney, sell merchandise to Net; others, like Gucci, which has e-commerce sites in 10 countries, do not. Prada and Louis Vuitton have also eluded Net’s reach.

Speaking of Vuitton, its parent company, LVMH, is in a state of flux when it comes to its e-commerce: The company shut down the shopping portion of its site, eLuxury, this summer. But LVMH brands, including shirtmaker Thomas Pink and beauty retailer Sephora, have e-tailing sites.

Regardless of who enters its space, Net’s attitude is “Bring it on,” since the same tactics that have allowed the company to show exponential growth during the recession — innovation, global reach, and an authoritative fashion voice — will probably help it remain a few clicks ahead of the competition. This summer the company was the first luxury retailer to go live with an application for the iPhone that allows customers to shop directly and securely with just a few finger motions.

Arguably the best gauge of Net’s rising importance as a retailer and an arbiter is where Massenet now sits at fashion shows: in the front row.

“When I started, we were all in standing room only,” says Holli Rogers, Net’s buying director, who joined after stints at Chanel and Neiman Marcus.

For Massenet, though, getting to the front row has not been without its sacrifices. “I still haven’t gone to read a story in my youngest daughter’s class yet, which I keep getting reminded that I need to do,” she says.

But ten years into the venture, with a strong management team in place, Massenet now allows herself one indulgence that may sound like heresy to fellow web entrepreneurs. Her recently purchased weekend house in Wiltshire, England, is beyond the reach of cellular service, so on Friday nights when she and her husband are driving to the country, she turns her BlackBerry off for the weekend.

Come Sunday nights, though, the rattle and hum of e-tailing begins anew, and Massenet is thinking expansively.

The Net-a-porter formula may be scalable, and Massenet has plans to add new lines. Not every ex-stylist clutching a pamphlet from Barclays would have had the foresight, as Massenet did back in 1999, to register several domain names, including pret-a-beaute.com and petit-a-porter.com. And those domains may become live sites of their own.

So look out, Beauty World. Watch out, Retailers of Children’s Clothes. Massenet may soon be disrupting your world.

Jennifer Openshaw writes an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal, that outlines how using social media tools such as blogs and twitter can lead you to success. There is no time for you as a business to put this key marketing strategy on hold. Dive in—success awaits!

Best Nicole

Twitter. Facebook. Blogs. Let’s face it: It’s nearly a full-time job just to keep up with these new media tools, never mind to learn them well. But how can you use them to strengthen your current career or, even better, to build yourself into a brand?

Think about online shoe retailer Zappos, which, thanks to its Internet-savvy CEO Tony Hsieh, has grown to $1 billion in revenue in about eight years. OK, the service is great everyone says, but that’s not the only thing going for it. Hsieh – and many others from Ellen DeGeneres to up-and-coming politicians, home-based business owners and concerned employees – have embraced online social media tools to take their names, companies and aspirations to the next level.

Though most experts agree there’s no substitute for face-to-face networking, using social media tools can help you become a thought leader in your space and even drive customers to your business.

“Let’s say you’re an insurance salesman and you’re really passionate about what you do,” says Jason Falls, vice president of interactive media at Doe-Anderson, a Louisville-based brand building firm, and author of the SocialMediaExplorer. “If you blog about it, then people searching the Web looking for third-party recommendations or information about insurance are apt to find your blog because you’re posting frequently and it’s relevant to those keywords.”

In essence, Google Inc. (GOOG), through its search engine, will crawl for information based on a person’s search terms and suggest this as a place you might go to learn about insurance, Falls notes.

“You start to develop a following not only as a thought leader or expert in the field but also as the preferred place to purchase that particular product or service,” he adds.

As an entrepreneur myself in the online world, I’ve been fascinated with how these tools are taking off. I’ve also been concerned about how ordinary people can increase their value on the job. Here’s a look at how you can use these tools to boost your career or maybe even save your job:

-First, pick your niche. Today, it’s all about niche specialties. What’s your forte? Whether it’s shoes [Zappos], humor [DeGeneres], or even topics you’d think not even your mother would care about like customer service or bowling, it’s all about knowing something that others will find valuable. And if you’re worried your expertise won’t attract others, think again. Did you ever think you’d see a cable show “At Home on the Range?”

-Know what you want. If you’re going to spend time using social media tools, then know why you’re doing it in advance. Do you want to become an expert to get into the media? Do you want to generate customers for your company? Do you want to help build your product’s brand? Are you looking for another job? Remember, companies – just like you – want to keep up with these tools. So why not turn yourself into a voice or knowledgeable expert for your company by taking what you know to the social media world? (Before going too far with this, check your company policies and with your management team to find the “win-win” for everyone.)

-Blog about it. Take your expertise to the Internet. While you could certainly write for other outlets – whether it’s your industry newsletter or magazine – the blog benefits you because you are building a relationship directly with your readers and can respond and manage content. You might even leverage others to join you as writers for your cause. And most blogging platforms today are free and easy to use, like wordpress, LiveJournal or Blogger, owned by Google. Others, such as TypePad, offer additional services for a nominal fee. Either way, be sure to take advantage of RSS feeds to allow others to get your blog postings automatically.

-Get linked. So you can’t keep up with all those social networking sites? Join the club. But probably the most important is Linked-In because of its high concentration of people searching for professional contacts or services. Falls recommends not only the basics of building a profile, but also joining groups. Remember that insurance expert? That expert can now jump into the “Answers section” and answer questions (check the directory organized by topics or search for key words), further positioning himself/herself as an expert. The more active you are, the more credibility you build.

-All the talk About “T.” Everyone, including Oprah, is now getting into the Twitter action. Sure, you can create your Twitter account and handle (mine is @jopenshaw) so others can follow you and your “tweets” of 140 characters or less (no kidding!). You can also send tweets out from your phone (just activate your mobile device from your Twitter profile) so that when you spill that Coke onto your jeans – as Hsieh did – you might send out a humorous tweet that you’ve just spilled it on the other leg to even-out your blue jeans!

If you really want to use Twitter to build your brand, check out search.twitter.com where our insurance expert once again can show what he knows: he can search for relevant terms like “car insurance” and start monitoring the conversation. When someone posts a question, he’ll be alerted and can respond to that person. Falls points out recent changes to Twitter that allow your answers to be seen by anyone monitoring the conversation, not just by those following you.

Are you guaranteed to build your brand, business or job with these social media moves? No, not at all. But you can avoid common mistakes and even use these new tools to land a better job in your organization.

Just remember: Face-to-face communication still has much more impact. As Falls notes: “That offline action of truly networking with people at events or conferences is very powerful in building your personal brand.” So don’t fall to the temptation of replacing your normal networking with new online tools. Remember, too, the tools are tools – you need to do the right things with them.

That said, it’s all about getting an edge, and the new social networking tools make that easier than ever.

Business Week features a great article about building a brand through public speaking. Such a great idea. The article talks about the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hseih. He says he tries to book 3 or more speaking engagements a week to help build his brands profile. Many of us are now familiar with Zappos. What hit home for me in this article is the fact that he talks about delivering happiness in a box. His company’s theme for  inspiration is  happiness, service and culture. He finds ways to tell stories that connect each of these themes with how his company does business so successfully.

We all want to be inspired. We all want to be attached to something we believe in. Who doesn’t want to be apart of a brand or service that will inspire them? It’s a real recipe for a visitor to want to come back over and over again!

Best Nicole

“Happiness in a box.” That’s how one customer described the feeling of receiving her shoe order from online retailer Zappos.com.

Much has been written about how Zappos cultivates a culture dedicated to exceptional customer service (it famously offers $2,000 to employees who quit during its mandatory four-week training program for new hires, although few people take the offer). What’s less known about Zappos is just how much time CEO Tony Hsieh has dedicated to spreading the Zappos gospel to most anyone who will listen.

During a recent interview, Hsieh told me he gives anywhere from one to four presentations a week, speaking at a variety of conferences and “pretty much anything” in Las Vegas (the company is based in the Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nev.). According to Hsieh, entrepreneurs and business owners should give as many public presentations as possible to support and help build the brand. “It’s one thing to read about your company, but when a customer can associate it with an actual person, it creates a deeper, more meaningful connection to the brand,” Hsieh told me. Here are Hsieh’s three tips to building a brand through public speaking:

•Speak about topics you’re passionate about. Although Hsieh started an online shoe retailer, he’s most passionate about customer service, corporate culture, and happiness. Yes, happiness. “Tony, what does happiness have to do with selling shoes?” I asked. “At Zappos, our higher purpose is delivering happiness,” said Hsieh. “Whether it’s the happiness our customers receive when they get a new pair of shoes or the perfect piece of clothing, or the happiness they get when dealing with a friendly customer rep over the phone, or the happiness our employees feel about being a part of a culture that celebrates their individuality, these are all ways we bring happiness to people’s lives.”

Speaking about a topic he’s passionate about, Hsieh engages his audiences and teaches them something new in the process. In a 55-slide PowerPoint deck, Hsieh devotes no more than five slides to a corporate discussion of Zappos data. The rest is dedicated to explaining how Zappos achieved its success ($1 billion in gross sales in 2008) and, most important, what the audience can learn from the Zappos story.

•Tell personal stories. Hsieh begins and ends every presentation with stories that reinforce his themes of happiness, service, and culture. He typically kicks off his presentations with the story of working at a company he founded and finding that, once it had grown to a hundred people, he dreaded going to work because it wasn’t fun anymore—the company had stopped hiring people based on how well they fit the culture. That story serves as a bridge into a discussion of why culture is so important to him today.

Hsieh likes to end his presentation with what he calls his pizza story. One night, he and some vendors returned to a hotel room late. Someone in the group was craving pizza and was told room service had ended. As a joke, Hsieh suggested calling Zappos. You can probably guess the end of the story—even though Zappos doesn’t sell pizza, the customer service rep found a list of local pizza places that would deliver to the hotel. It’s a fun story that seriously reinforces Hsieh’s theme of customer service.

•Don’t “sell” your product. Hsieh’s goal in a presentation is not to sell shoes; it’s to inspire his audience. Inspire them to do what? I asked Hsieh. “Inspired to provide better customer service, inspired to improve your corporate culture, inspired to learn more about the science of happiness,” Hsieh responded. Most presenters fail to make the distinction between selling and inspiring. According to Hsieh, a brand is a shortcut to emotions. Decide what emotion you want your brand to stand for. Hsieh’s presentations hardly touch on the subject of e-commerce, and neither do his blog or Twitter posts. Instead, he takes every opportunity to write and speak on customer service, culture, and happiness. “Ultimately, it causes people to be more attached to the brand and the company. You’d much rather support a company that inspires you than one that doesn’t,” says Hsieh.