How to Turn Customer Complaints Into Winning Social Media Content

How to Turn Customer Complaints Into Winning Social Media Content

Lindsey Hancock, Owner of Brand Vixen, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss her time at Big Ass Fans, turning customer complaints into positive support.

In This Episode:

Lindsey Hancock

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Full Episode Details

From Customer Complaints to Support

Customer service is an often-discussed side of social media, but when it comes to customer complaints, the strategy is often to move them out of the social spotlight to deal with them privately.

During her time with Big Ass Fans, however, Lindsey Hancock decided to flip the script and put some of their customer complaints front and center, giving supporters a chance to show their love! It was a gutsy move that paid off. Lindsey says her “hate mail” campaign brought massive engagement and flooded Big Ass Fans’ social feeds with support from happy customers.

This certainly isn’t a good strategy for every kind of customer complaint, but depending on the nature of the concern and the tone of the conversation, it may just benefit your business to keep your customer service in the spotlight!

In This Episode

  • 05:48 – Why Big Ass Fans decided to change their name after listening to their customers.
  • 07:39 – How to build fun and interesting content around a seemingly boring product.
  • 12:51 – How Lindsey blends her personal and professional sides for a successful promotional presence.
  • 14:52 – How to approach a new client relationship.
  • 16:33 – How Big Ass Fans turns criticism into positive engagement.
  • 25:32 – Why taking on freelance work can enhance creativity.

Quotes From This Episode

“I had to have a social presence because I’m not going to trust someone to do my social if they can’t do their own.” — @thebrandvixen

If you have a fun, playful brand and you're posting interesting content, no one with actual customer service concerns wants to hear a canned response. Click To Tweet

“Develop a rapport with your clients on the executive level. You don’t want to end up being just a pair of hands that’s typing. That’s a waste of your time and theirs.” — @thebrandvixen

Resources

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Episode Transcript

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Jay Baer: 00:00 Hey, it's Jay Baer from Convince and Convert, joined us as always by my special Texas friend, he's the executive strategist for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, it is Mr. Adam Brown. Wow, we just heard an amazing sound bite there from Lindsey Hancock, our guest this week on the show. This is a good episode. She really gets it in terms of engaging with an audience. Adam Brown: 00:19 That's such an important piece and Lindsey demonstrates that whether you're a small organization or a large organization, you can create compelling content that drives that level of engagement, but how important it is for the brand to respond back appropriately and accordingly, and I think that's something that we oftentimes miss. Jay Baer: 00:39 Yeah, I thought it was really fascinating what she talks about in this episode that every interaction with everybody is an opportunity to create content, right? She talked about using complaint letters as social media content. She talked about answering unhappy customers and making fun of them, not in a malicious way, but in a way that turns it into content. I think it's a really enlightened view of how social media works today both on the proactive marketing side, but also the reactive customer service side. Adam Brown: 01:08 I agree and I think Lindsey demonstrates that she understands that balance like you just spoke to. You can't be visceral. You can't be rude to your listener, but you have to find that right balance of being clever, of kind of giving them a little bit of wink even if you are kind of in a way playing with them. Jay Baer: 01:24 Yeah, absolutely. I also like that we had Lindsey on the show this week because she's one of the people, and this happens all the time in social, who started off working for a brand and now is off doing her own thing as a consultant. So we talked to her about that a little bit in the show as well, what that transition is like and how it works being out there on your own in the big bad world of social media today. You're going to enjoy this episode with Lindsey Hancock. Her new company is called Brand Vixen. Jay Baer: 01:51 Before we jump into the rest of the show with Lindsey, want to acknowledge this week's sponsors, as always our friends at Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adam, big news because you just released the fifth, fifth State of Marketing Report, which is chockablock full of unbelievable insights from Salesforce 40 100 I think marketing leaders were interviewed for this study, which is an unbelievable dataset, and you'll learn when you download this and I really want you to download this, ladies and gentlemen, the impact of CEX on marketing, how the role of social media is changing, how critical AI is in 2019 and beyond and a bunch of other stuff. It is a blockbuster. It's the State of Marketing Report from Salesforce. I made a short URL for it just so I could remember it. It's bitly/jaysays, bitly/jaysays, J-A-Y-S-A-Y-S, jaysays, bitly, jaysays so that I say that you should download this so please go ahead and do that. It's good stuff. Adam Brown: 02:51 I like the implied endorsement there with the bitly, yes, but, it is a great report. This is the fourth year we've done it. We talked to over 4,000 marketers about what keeps them up at night and what they're doing and not doing that's delivering success for their respective brands. Jay Baer: 03:07 Also, this week, the show is brought to you by our new benefactors at socialmedia.org, which is the quintessential organization for medium-sized and large brand social media managers. Adam, you've got familiarity with the organization. You used to be in socialmedia.org. In fact, you were one of the founding members of that organization back in the day. Adam Brown: 03:27 I was in the organization twice, at Coca-Cola and at Dell, and it's a great place to go when you need to find people just like us and be able to talk to them and communicate to them and throw ideas around. So oftentimes, we don't have the ability to look at another social media practitioner in our office because we're the sole social media practitioner. Socialmedia.org gives us that opportunity to find other people just like us. Jay Baer: 03:53 It's one of the most unbelievable organizations you can be a part of. If you are in charge of social media for a medium-sized or large brands I really, really, really encourage you to consider socialmedia.org membership. If you're like me, a consultant or like Adam who works for a vendor, neither of us are eligible anymore. They kicked us out because we're on the vendor side, but if you're on the brand side, socialmedia.org is a place you can get your problems solved. You can find that community of like-minded individuals and take your career kind of next level most importantly. Jay Baer: 04:25 Here's how you do it. Go to socialmedia.org/socialpros. That's socialmedia.org/socialpros. Fill out the form. They'll screen it, make sure that you meet the qualifications and if you do, you're in and we would love for you to be part of. A lot of folks here, guests here on the program are part of the socialmedia.org community. And fun fact, next week on social pros, our special guest will be Andy Sernovitz who is the founder of socialmedia.org. We'll talk a little more about it next week. Jay Baer: 04:52 Now without further ado, please give your ears or your eyes if you're watching us on YouTube attention to Lindsey Hancock this week's guest on the Social Pros Podcast. Jay Baer: 05:11 Lindsey Hancock, head of Brand Vixen in Lexington, Kentucky. Welcome to Social Pros. Lindsey Hancock: 05:17 Thanks for having me. Jay Baer: 05:18 We are delighted to have you here on the program. You have a really interesting background, one that we don't actually talk about that much on the show in that you used to do social media for a brand and now, you're doing it as a consultant. Talk a little bit about the differences between working for an organization. You were at Big Ass Fans, which is still one of the all time greatest brand names. Actually, let's do it this way. For people who are not familiar, describe the Big Ass Fans brand and what you did for them on the social side and then, we'll talk about what you're doing today. Lindsey Hancock: 05:48 Sure. Big Ass Fans is an HVLS fan company and they were smart enough to build a brand around their name that ... So a lot of people used to call it and say, "Are you the ones that sell those big ass fans?" and they were actually started as- Jay Baer: 06:03 Yes, yes, we are. Lindsey Hancock: 06:03 Yeah. They started as HVLS Fan Company and they realized Big Ass Fans, way better name and they made their mascot a donkey so the marketing really took off so half of my job was done, of course, and I served as the social media director and I managed global social media, US, Canada, Singapore, you name it, and I came up with the content, the ideas, the copy, the planning, the scheduling. All that was in my jurisdiction. It made my job so easy to work for such a fun brand and I got to do a lot of stuff that I know I'll probably never get to do again like going to Las Vegas and campaigning for our mascot for president. That was a lot of fun. Jay Baer: 06:48 They really are big ass fans, right? I mean they're like many, many, many, many feet in diameter and you put them inside a warehouse or something like that to keep it cool. Is that the general principle? Lindsey Hancock: 06:57 Yes. They go up all the way up to 24 foot so definitely big ass fans. Adam Brown: 07:02 There's actually one at a Torchy's Tacos right close to my house here in Austin, Texas and I will tell you, Lindsey, this happened like two years ago before I even had any inkling that you were going to be on the show, but I looked at the fan, saw the name, laughed out loud, pulled out my phone and went to Twitter and found them and found some of what I'm assuming was your work and again, laughed out loud. Lindsey Hancock: 07:27 Thank you. Yeah. I mean so much fun. It was just jokes all day. Whenever people asked me what I did, I was like, "I think I tell jokes for a living. I don't know." Jay Baer: 07:39 If you're creating social content for a brand like that, that if you take the name out of it, right, which is hilarious and you just say, "What do you make?" "We make big fans." A lot of people in social get caught up in "Well, our brand's not interesting. Our brands ... We don't make things that are fun. We're not Pepsi. We're not Burger King." In this case, you're selling fans, which is not, in and of itself, super intriguing to most people. What do you do from a content standpoint? Does it become fan pornography, right? Let me show you all kinds of different fans. Is that sort of the visual motif or do you do something different? Lindsey Hancock: 08:15 Right. You really have to play to the strengths of the fans. They're super effective. They save a ton of money. They are beautiful. Everybody has the same story when they see those fans. It's "I walked into a store. I looked up and I was like 'Wow, that's a big ass fan,' and then my buddy next to me said, 'It really is a Big Ass Fan.'" I don't know, everyday I heard that same story and everybody thought it was a unique story, but they all have the same one. It's really just about playing to the strengths. Jay Baer: 08:42 In a brand like that, how does the executive team think about the role of social, right? I suspect people are going to be like, "Great tweet. How do I buy a fan? Do you guys take PayPal?" That's probably not quite the way the customer journey works. How do you conceptualize the role of social and sort of how social helps the brand make money or save money or both? Lindsey Hancock: 09:02 It's definitely a considered purchase and if you think about not that many people are going to need a huge industrial fan. It's kind of building that loyalty to the brand. A lot of people wanted to buy a Big Ass Fan just because of the personality of the company and- Jay Baer: 09:16 [Inaudible 00:09:16] on their patio, right, you're like we don't do. Lindsey Hancock: 09:18 Right. We did have some patio fans, but it's just it really is building that loyalty and having that big audience of followers who serve as a vehicle for your message. Adam Brown: 09:28 And I think to that point, Lindsey, measuring the success of your social programs in an organization like that where you said it is a considered purchase, they are going to do their research. You certainly have competitors, but I think with your brand recognition, you're in a little bit different strata. Talk a little bit about how you would go back to your leadership and show them and demonstrate to them the ROI that your social programs were delivering. Lindsey Hancock: 09:52 A lot of what I focused on was the engagement with the brand because since I was focused mainly on organic, I would do all the content and if the engagement rate was really high, it just proved that we were giving the people what they wanted to see and not just what we wanted to tell them. Sometimes, that's a little hard to measure, but whenever we did have ads that we ran, I mean the engagement on them was amazing, the web traffic. Some things were hard to prove and others were just kind of obvious. Adam Brown: 10:19 One of the things you told us before the show was obviously, that you're now owner of Brand Vixen and doing kind of your own thing, but the challenges of being a one-person band, both at Big Ass Fans and now as you kind of do your entrepreneurial sole proprietorship right now, the challenges of being creative, of being edgy, of coming up with new content each and every day. I think that's a challenge probably a lot of our listeners have. I'm curious kind of how you pushed through and how you came to work every day with ideas for new social posts, a new angle, a new way of getting things done. I know that's something that's I think is going to be really interesting to our listeners. Lindsey Hancock: 11:01 Yeah. I mean that is definitely the most difficult part. Before I started doing social media, I actually went to school for creative advertising so I started a little early on that path and I didn't really consider social media for myself. Then when I got into it, I was like, "This is a perfect match for my skillset, which is creativity." I love the variety of it and really it's just sitting down and looking at what you've done before that's been successful and iterating off of that. I always tell people not to look at their competitors too much because you'll get a creative block almost from seeing what they did, if it's something you want to beat or you end up competing with them when really, you should be competing with yourself to always improve on your result. Adam Brown: 11:41 One question I get a lot from my colleagues here at Salesforce is "Adam, what do you read every day to kind of keep you up on what's going on in social? What do you look at? Where do you get your ideas?" I'm sure this is something that maybe people even ask you as you now have your own kind of social media and marketing communications agency. What keeps you on edge? What gives you that kind of extra piece of information other than, of course, listening to Social Pros? Lindsey Hancock: 12:11 I am always training and taking webinars and listening to podcasts like Social Pros. I actually went to Social Media Marketing World last year and I saw you, Jay, actually moderating a panel. So I am just constantly- Jay Baer: 12:26 That's never a good way to spend an afternoon, but I appreciate that. Thank you. Lindsey Hancock: 12:29 It was pretty good. Jay Baer: 12:30 Good. Lindsey Hancock: 12:31 Krispy Kreme was also there so that helped. Jay Baer: 12:32 Yeah, Krispy Kreme. Yeah, she's been on the show. She's fantastic. Lindsey Hancock: 12:36 Yeah, and I mean it's really just consuming as much content as possible. That's not a very I guess exciting answer, but really, you just have to read and be willing to be ... you're curious and inquisitive and that's really how I make it work. Adam Brown: 12:51 One of the things that, again, you shared with us before the show was something that I really, really liked. You talked about your promotional presence and you talked about it in a way that you've had to pivot a little bit. As having your own organization, we oftentimes talk about our social presence and our personal kind of positioning online and our professional positioning online, but you talked about your promotional presence, and I love those two words. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and kind of how you present yourself both in that space between your personal space and your business space and how you do it to in case drive more followers for you and to drive more followers for your new organization? Lindsey Hancock: 13:34 Yeah, that's been the hardest thing for me because I don't want to necessarily be an influencer. I mean I think I've joked about standing on my chair while I'm having brunch and taking a photo of my food. That is just not ... I've always wanted to be kind of behind the scenes. I joke that at Big Ass Fans, I felt like the Wizard of Oz because no one really knew who I was and I would ... A lot of people would say, "Your social team is great or the guy who runs your social is amazing," and I love that because you're so anonymous and the people get to connect with whoever they want. They just imagine you to be someone. Lindsey Hancock: 14:09 So putting myself out there as my own entity, I knew I had to have a social presence because I'm not going to trust someone to do my social if they can't do their own and a lot of agencies and social agencies I see, they have a terrible following or they just put quote overlays over nice photos that they didn't take. So I'm really trying to insert some of my presence. My dog, Remy Hendrix makes a lot of appearances on my channel. So I kind of- Jay Baer: 14:39 I think your dog has his own channel, right, is that true? Lindsey Hancock: 14:41 He does. It actually came from I broke my phone and I lost almost all of his puppy photos so I was like, "My friends don't want to see this many photos of my dog so I'll give him his own channel." Jay Baer: 14:52 Nice. Well done. When you take clients on board now with Brand Vixen, what's the first thing you do? Do you kind of look at what they're doing in social today or what's sort of that step 1, 2, 3, you're like "Okay, new client, new opportunity?" Lindsey Hancock: 15:05 Usually, I'll talk to them about their goals and what they want to get out of social and then, I will typically suggest a strategy for them. I try not to do a ... I don't want to take over anyone's social without doing a strategy first because if you don't have a foundation, there's no way for you to succeed. I usually do that and I start with a questionnaire that really gets down to the nitty-gritty of everything that they are looking for, their competitors, just to get a feel of ... 'Cause you could look at it from the outside, but if you have a different idea of what their goal should be, then you're going to end up clashing there. Jay Baer: 15:37 Obviously, it depends a little bit on the client circumstances and the industry they're in, etc., but are there things that in general you would advise clients to do less of in 2019? Lindsey Hancock: 15:47 I think that a lot of people aren't doing enough. A lot of what I see is that they're not engaging with the people who are there or they're just constantly trying to seek out ways to get new followers. I guess that's one thing I would say. Don't focus on that so much. Why would you want to get a huge following if you're not engaging with the people you already have? Start there and then, the people will come. If you post it, they will come. Jay Baer: 16:11 If you post it, they will come. One of the things that you talked about before the show is that because of the name, Big Ass Fans, which in some corners could be interpreted as a little bit risque, maybe in the Adam, sort of Texas deep south, maybe that's ... even in Kentucky perhaps, people are like- Adam Brown: 16:28 It matters where you put the emphasis. Jay Baer: 16:30 Yes. Adam Brown: 16:30 Is the emphasis on ass or fans? Jay Baer: 16:33 Right. Well said. But Lindsay, I think you said that there were some people out there on the socials who were offended or sort of would complain about the name of the company, etc., and that you had to interact with those folks on social. Tell us a little bit about that and how you handled it and kind of what your advice in terms of facing criticism in social media. Lindsey Hancock: 16:55 A lot of the people just had a problem with the name and you're not going to win with those people. I like to razz them a little bit sometimes. You have to really see the difference between a troll and someone who you can maybe get a little entertainment out of, and often if I would joke back with them, of course, you're never malicious, if I would kind of razz them a little bit, then they end up being a fan of your brand, too, because they were putting it out there kind of thinking you'd never have the guts to respond back. But also if you get some of that ... We got hate mail and a lot of it was from way back when they first changed the name so I would- Jay Baer: 17:28 Actually with a stamp on it like in the mail? Lindsey Hancock: 17:31 Yes. Jay Baer: 17:31 Wow. Lindsey Hancock: 17:32 But these were like 10 years old, but I could post that and make a joke out of it, of course, blurring out the names and I mean those by far got some of the most engagement. It's compliment city basically because people are just like, "Oh, they're wrong and how could they not love your brand- " Jay Baer: 17:48 I want to make sure I understand this tactic. You would go into the dead letter file at Big Ass Fans, find angry complaint letters from 10 years ago, take photos of them and put them in social? Lindsey Hancock: 17:59 Yes, absolutely. You couldn't have written them better. Adam Brown: 18:04 [Crosstalk 00:18:04]. Lindsey Hancock: 18:04 Sometimes people thought that they were fake, but they absolutely never faked one. They were just pure gold. Jay Baer: 18:11 We're going to find one of those and put it in the show notes at socialpros.com 'cause that's going to be something that all of our listeners should be entertained by. Go to socialpros.com to see one of Lindsey's fantastic hate letter exchanges from Big Ass Fans. Just as a reminder, every single episode we've ever done on the show, now in our ninth season Adam, you can find- Lindsey Hancock: 18:30 Ninth season. Jay Baer: 18:31 Ninth season, you can find the transcripts and all of the show notes and the links and audio at socialpros.com. I mean when we started doing this show, I was trying to think okay, SnapChat didn't exist. Instagram didn't exist. Pinterest didn't exist. A lot of the things we talk about weren't even a glimmer in their parent's eye and now, here we are. Adam Brown: 18:50 And now here we are. To that point, Jay, one of the things, Lindsey, that you shared with us was that from a business standpoint as you continued to curate and build your agency business, LinkedIn and Instagram are the two most important channels. One of those, it's been around for about the nine years that we've been around. Other, Instagram, has not. Curious to see the two of those put together. You oftentimes don't see LinkedIn and Instagram mentioned in the same sentence. Talk a little bit about that, how you're using both of those to build rapport and business for your agency. Lindsey Hancock: 19:27 One thing I noticed for LinkedIn, and this was kind of a surprise to me, it didn't happen until I decided to leave Big Ass Fans and start my own company, which I'd been working on for quite some time before I actually took the leap and I put an announcement on all of my social channels that it was pretty lengthy about why I had chosen to leave and about my time there, and when I put that up on LinkedIn, I think I had like 500 connections myself and I got 12,000 views I think on that. Adam Brown: 19:53 Wow. Lindsey Hancock: 19:53 So just from people sharing and commenting and my network was invaluable to me. I haven't had to actually seek out any work yet because of LinkedIn and referrals, and I knew it was important for me to strike while I had that reputation of doing the social media for Big Ass Fans because I was somewhat known for that and I mean that was how LinkedIn, which just played role in me getting business. Lindsey Hancock: 20:16 Then for Instagram, on the other hand, it's more of where I show my personality and kind of show more of what I can do because if I'm clever or funny or posting beautiful images on Instagram then that gives people a little more idea of the work I could be doing for them. Adam Brown: 20:33 I think a big part of that, Lindsey, is A, your success and your cleverness and things like that, but timing I think is also a really important part of what you just mentioned. Kind of to go back to one of the things that bugs you around engagement is either not responding at all or taking too long to respond to customers. Probably something that's easier to do in a smaller to medium-sized organization 'cause typically, the social media practitioner themselves is also the person who's responding or engaging. In a larger organization, there could be an entire department that does those types of things. I'm curious when you sit down with your clients right now how you talk to them about engagement, how you talk to them about the responsibility of being and ensuring that two-way line of communication with your social media customers and engagers and participants. How does that work and do you see any tension or overall receptiveness to that idea? Lindsey Hancock: 21:30 I think a lot of people are realizing now that engagement is key. I think that even if they don't know as much about social media as we do, they're invested in that and they'll kind of do whatever you tell them to do, which is the great part of working with these smaller companies. I tell them, too, if you have a fun playful brand and you're posting interesting content and then, you have the Charlie Brown voice answering the people with actual customer service concerns and doing the canned responses of "We're so sorry to hear that you had that problem and we'll get back to you," blah, blah, blah, nobody wants to hear that. If I'm mad enough to complain and that's how you approach me, I'm even more angry. I think that there's a genuine quality that you have to have to engage as well. It's not just saying back to someone the same thing over and over again. If I'm seeing comments and you're under my comment you've said the same exact thing to everyone else, it's kind of a waste of your time. Jay Baer: 22:31 It's hard though because a lot of times in a customer service situation, a lot of individuals feel like that's not the place for personality, right, and so you feel like "Oh, we're doing it right by being boring because nobody wants a clown if they have a complaint," but I think you're exactly right. I mean I wrote a whole book about it, but it's amazing even now, how many brands either A, don't respond to public complaints, which is still slow suicide and B, when they do, it's just copy and paste, right. It's right out of the legal manual, which doesn't feel very psychologically satisfying to anybody. Lindsey Hancock: 23:06 Right. That negative feedback is just as important as any positive feedback. When I- Jay Baer: 23:10 More so I would say. Lindsey Hancock: 23:13 Right. Also, there's a responsibility as the social media person or persons to get that feedback to the rest of your team, good or bad. Customer service especially when I worked at Big Ass Fans, they didn't often hear as much positive feedback 'cause they were dealing with a lot of the negative so I would try to make sure- Jay Baer: 23:31 Also, what's the positive? Yup, the fan still goes in a circle. No one's going to write in a letter, still cools the room. There's no catalyst for conversation there. Lindsey Hancock: 23:42 I will say that Big Ass Fans customer service is pretty amazing. I mean they go above and beyond to help people. Often there were comments that would come in that say "I had this problem, and they took care of it immediately and it was so great," so I always made sure to get that information back to customer service as well. Adam Brown: 23:59 Lindsey, I'm a little curious about that 'cause I think that's one of the untold aspects of what we do as social media practitioners. Without a doubt, we're marketers. Without a doubt, we're public relations professionals. Without a doubt, we're customer service folks, but you're kind of hitting on kind of the research and development side of what we have the ability to do because we are listening to zeitgeist. We're the ones that our pulse on what our customers are saying about us as well as our competitors. I'm curious if you have any tools that you use to get that information back to either people, the clients you're working with today or at Big Ass Fans. Is it reports? Is it sitting down with them? Is it having weekly meetings? What are those tactics to kind of embed all the things that you're hearing into the organization and hopefully, have the organization- Jay Baer: 24:46 She actually writes a long letter and puts a stamp on it and then mails it. Lindsey Hancock: 24:48 Right. Adam Brown: 24:49 There you go. Jay Baer: 24:49 A lot of attention that way. Lindsey Hancock: 24:50 I put something hateful in there to catch their attention, too. Adam Brown: 24:53 Good idea. Lindsey Hancock: 24:55 A lot of the people I work with and at Big Ass Fans, the C-suite were very interested in what we were doing. Since your kind of resume is all just out in public for them to see, they would stop by and ask me how something had done and then, as far as getting the feedback into our team, we actually use Salesforce to do that. So I would put in a feedback that I got that I thought was relevant, constantly I was putting it in, but I'm a little bit of a control freak. I probably could've had a line of people to do that, but I am just like very much I want to see everything and I want to assign individual components to the right person to make sure they get answered. Adam Brown: 25:32 I know one of the things that you told us a little about earlier and you mentioned was kind of freelancing and that you were doing a little bit of freelancing as you began that transition over to creating your own agency. One of the reasons for it was you felt a little bit burnt out and it was the freelancing that gave you this opportunity to spark your inner creativity to kind of get jump started. I'm curious if that's something that you recommend to listeners if they are feeling a little bit tired, if they're having trouble kind of coming up with new and engaging ideas. Lindsey Hancock: 26:05 Absolutely. I really enjoyed the variety of it and I didn't know that I would enjoy it as much as I did. I worked at Big Ass Fans for a while and I thought that I had so many ideas and then all of a sudden, I got to a point, I was like, "I think I might be out of ideas for fans," and I wasn't. It was just I wasn't thinking outside of the box I had put myself in. I think that if you are looking at other industries that people are involved in and you can do some creative things for them, that's only going to make you better at your day job. I think definitely people are afraid that their time will be stretched too thin or their attention will be stretched too thin, but really, it did the opposite for me and it really sparked more creativity. Adam Brown: 26:48 Lindsey Hancock, owner of Brand Vixen. It is so great to have you on the show. You mentioned a little bit earlier on that you have your degree in creative advertising. I'm curious if you felt that that major and that discipline really set you up for social media. Did you go directly into social media or was this just kind of one of the stops on your career to get to this point? Lindsey Hancock: 27:11 Since I was 13 I think and I probably watched a movie or something that inspired me to really want to be a creative director. I knew what I wanted to be and I went to UK and I majored in creative advertising, loved it and then, I graduated and I was like ... and I moved back to Hopkinsville, Kentucky where I'm from and I just applied to every job. I was like, "I got to get back [inaudible 00:27:35]. I got to get out of this small town." Then I actually ended up working for an architecture and engineering firm and I was doing marketing proposals and I was good at it and it was copy, but I just was very uninspired. Lindsey Hancock: 27:48 I was thankful for the opportunity, but I looked around my town and what I could feasibly get involved with and Big Ass Fans was kind of one of those coveted places to work and so, I applied with them and they luckily had me in for a meeting and I actually started there doing a little bit of different ... some email, some kind of promotional things. Then I went to them and I was like "I really would love to do something a little more creative." And then they just recommended ... They were like, "I think you'd be a really good fit for the social media position." That's kind of how that started. Jay Baer: 28:21 That's fantastic. Now I want to know, Lindsey, at what point you decided to organize all your candy before you eat it because that is the most fascinating Lindsey Hancock fact. I want to ... If you've got a roll of Lifesavers, which I know is a very throwback candy, do you take them all out of the wrapper and then organize them by color, same thing with Starburst? Tell me a little bit more about this OCD candy problem that you got. Lindsey Hancock: 28:44 Yeah, I don't know when I started doing it, but I've always been really into patterns like my family makes fun of me about it. If I go to Cracker Barrel, those little games that they have, before I play, I put them- Jay Baer: 28:54 Yeah. Adam Brown: 28:54 The Triangle Jumping Game, yeah. Lindsey Hancock: 28:56 I put them in order, too. I don't know. It's acute OCD I think, but when I do ... I do it a lot with Skittles and I put them all out in a row and it has to be a pattern of some kind. I don't organize them by color necessarily, but it's going to be some kind of pattern. If it's not, I can't handle it. I actually was doing it one time at work and someone walked up behind me and they were like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "Don't worry about. Nothing. Nothing to see here." Jay Baer: 29:22 Nothing to see here. Your Skittles sponsorship is going to come through any minute now that you've been on Social- Lindsey Hancock: 29:26 Yes. Jay Baer: 29:27 I was wondering if iTunes is going to mark this episode as explicit because it's Big Ass Fans. I can't wait to see. That's going to be fun- Lindsey Hancock: 29:32 Maybe. Yeah, my mom's favorite thing to do to me when I started working there was whenever we're around our family members that were a little older, she'd always be like, "Ask her what she does for a living?" So I'd have to say that to them. Jay Baer: 29:46 Lindsey, I want to ask you the two questions we've asked everybody here on the show, now 350 episodes or whatever the number we're at, first question is what one tip would you give somebody who's looking to become a social pro? Lindsey Hancock: 29:58 I think that the most important thing, especially for me, that I've realized is you have to develop a rapport with the executive level, with your clients and a trust level because if you don't, you'll find that they'll try to do it themselves and they'll call you at midnight in a panic because they want to add a hashtag to a post from a week ago. You don't want to end up being just a pair of hands that's typing. That's a waste of your time and theirs. Really, I think that that for me means if something is working well, I'd shoot over an email and say, "Hey, since we made that tweak to this campaign, we've seen these results." Or "Hey, this isn't working. Here's what I plan to do about it." Then when that inevitably starts working, you'll be able to go back and say, "That thing that wasn't working now it is because of that change," and that'll make your life so much easier. Jay Baer: 30:48 Yeah, that's really good advice. I think that's ... Yeah, boy, that's well done. Last question for Lindsey Hancock of Brand Vixen, look her up on the social medias at Brand Vixen, is if you could do a video call with any living person, who would it be? Just like a John Calipari answer like how UK-oriented are you? Lindsey Hancock: 31:10 John's cool, but I would probably ... I know where his house is. I could just go knock and be fine. I think I would have to say Julia Louis-Dreyfus because ... She's on the news a little bit for that Mark Twain award so maybe that's why she popped to mind. Adam Brown: 31:22 Cool, good one. Mark Twain award, yeah. Lindsey Hancock: 31:24 She is just amazingly funny and her career has been just ... She has made all the right decisions and on Seinfeld, which everybody loves Seinfeld. If they don't, I just don't trust them that much, especially if they like Frasier over Seinfeld. Jay Baer: 31:38 You don't trust my children then. I think that the humor doesn't quite get all the way down to Gen Z. They're like, "I don't understand why this is funny." Lindsey Hancock: 31:44 Yeah, it's a show about nothing, but she really made her stamp there because they had centered that show around Jerry and then, there were two other male leads and she just was always constantly pushing them literally and figuratively and she just made herself be known and I think that's so important. Jay Baer: 32:01 That's a great answer and one I don't think we've ever had on this show. Adam Brown: 32:04 Surprising, too, yeah. Jay Baer: 32:06 Yeah, yeah. Well done, Lindsey, a brand new answer to that question which is always exciting for Adam and myself. Lindsey, thank you so much for being on the show. Congratulations with the success of Brand Vixen and obviously your work at Big Ass Fans, goes without saying, although we talked about it here today. Really appreciate your time and your wisdom here on the Social Pros Podcast. Lindsey Hancock: 32:25 Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Jay Baer: 32:27 We're delighted to have you. Friends, don't forget, that Social Pros is also now available on YouTube so if you want to see Adam and myself and, of course, Lindsey, you can go to my YouTube channel, Jay Baer and find the show there. Also, as I mentioned, every show, every episode, every recording, every everything is at socialpros.com. Until next week, I'm Jay Baer from Convince and Convert. He is Adam Brown from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and this has been your favorite podcast in the whole world, this has been Social Pros.  
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