How Hilton Hotels Manages a 24/7 Social Media Operation

This is Episode 11 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Vanessa Sain-Dieguez, Social Media Director at Hilton Worldwide. Read on for insights from Vanessa, and Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: 27% of people go through other channels before calling customer service lines).

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Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment, Thanks to Speechpad for the Transcription

Jay: Here we are again on a Monday. It is episode number 11 of Social Pros. I’m Jay Baer with my trusty sidekick Eric Boggs. Eric my friend, how are you good sir?
Eric: I’m doing just great, Jay. Excited to have Vanessa on the call today.
Jay: It is going to be fantastic. Our friend, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez from Hilton Hotels is going to join us in a little bit. Heck of a Masters this weekend. Check a little golf tournament out this week?
Eric: Absolutely none. My wife and I are in the process of moving, so I was packing boxes and doing heavy lifting all weekend.
Jay: Man, I tell you what, it was something. It was something to see.

Jay’s Thought of the Week

It’s been kind of a crazy day in social media, right? It’s been nuts. It’s crazy. It feels like social media from two years ago. Just all kinds of chatter going on and people getting riled up. Big news of the day, right?
Eric: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Instagram and Facebook, which I guess won’t be big news by the time you guys are listening to this on Thursday, but on Monday it was a big bomb that was dropped on everyone.
Jay: Yeah. Okay, I get it. Facebook buying Instagram makes perfect sense to me. Gives them a lot of access to photography and photo content and a whole other way for people to share experiences and now they’ve got the Android app. Get it, totally smart.
I really think Google+ should have bought them. Would have been a way better move for them, and maybe they tried to, we just don’t know. I’ll tell you what. Eric Boggs, a billion dollars? A billion dollars for Instagram?
Eric: You know what I would do with a billion dollars, Jay? I would have hired movers to pack the boxes so I could watch the Masters.
Jay: I was going to say. I have actually had movers pack me the last two times I’ve moved, and that, my friend, is an investment worth making. You should have called me and said, “Hey, by the way, should I have somebody actually pack my shit?” I would have said, “Yes, Eric Boggs, you should.”
Eric: Too late for that, Jay. My independence DIY impulse is so strong. I can’t help myself.
Jay: It’s true. Your entrepreneurial spirit extends to packing boxes.
Eric: And refinishing hardwood floors and you name it.
Jay: I know.
Eric: But back to the task at hand here in terms of Facebook and Instagram. We’ve had the benefit of a few hours of I guess social media chatter and punditry. To me, the thing that hasn’t been talked about enough is I don’t know the CEO at Instagram’s name, but this guy deserves a gold medal. They just raised $50 million on a $500 million valuation, which is insane in and of itself. I imagine the back story on this, the negotiation and the posturing, is legendary. That’s how you get a billion dollar price as a company like Instagram. To me, that’s the hats off to the Instagram guys. Well played, sirs.
Jay: Yeah, and a billion dollars for ten employees? Give me some of that. That’s one of the things that you see in this version of tech bubble that we didn’t see so much in the last version. We saw crazy multiples and insane valuations and things like that, but a lot of those companies in those days actually had quite a few headcount, because they were doing things that required additional computing power or customer service power or drop ship or things like that. Now you can put on a show in the barn and knock out a billion dollars. Not that anybody can do that who wants to, but it’s a different era.
I guess as somebody said, Jeremiah Owyang actually said a moment ago on Facebook, you’ve got to realize it’s 1% of what Facebook’s likely IPO valuation is. While a billion dollars is an eye-popping number, if it’s 1% of your valuation to acquire something that has as much cultural impact as Instagram, maybe it’s a good bet.
Eric: And also to knock out one of your top competitive threats.
Jay: Yeah, exactly. To keep it out of the hands of…
Eric: Yeah, now Google and Twitter can’t buy it.
Jay: Yeah.
Eric: I imagine there’s some business development guys at Twitter and Google that are maybe having some difficult conversations or maybe scratching their heads, wondering why they didn’t move more quickly or even moved at all.
Jay: And it feels like so many of those guys are always the bridesmaid, never the bride, right?
Eric: Well, I’ll tell you, it’s a good day to be the number two photosharing iOS app. I don’t know what Instagram’s biggest competitor is, but…
Jay: Hipstamatic, probably. They were first.
Eric: Yeah. Good to be those guys I bet. I bet they’re getting phone calls. If not today, soon.
Jay: No kidding. We should have somebody from Instagram on the show, but that’ll never happen now. We missed our window of opportunity on Social Pros. Episode 11 could have been the one where we presage the billion dollar buyout.
Eric: Yeah, and who knows how that could have worked out for us.
Jay: You see Mitch Joel announced today on Twitter that he just finished his 300th podcast? I wanted to come through the screen at him and say, “Show off.”
Eric: Yeah, starting my 11th. Eat it.
Jay: Yeah, starting my 11th. 289 more episodes and we’ll be caught up.
What is the social media stat of the week?

Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: 27% of People Try to Resolve Their Issues Another Way Before Calling Customer Service Lines

Eric: Ah yes, indeed. The social media stat of the week comes from… I guess it’s a management consultancy or a research group called the CFI Group. I think they’re based in Michigan. They conduct an annual survey called the Call Center Satisfaction Index, which is terribly unsexy. Call centers and whatnot.
The full report was $500, and I’m a cheapskate so I don’t have all of the details, but the press release headlines that hit the wire I guess it was last week are pretty interesting, in that they point to a broad trend that we’ve brought up a couple times.
In short, they surveyed all these people, consumers, and found that before they called a call center, 27% tried to resolve their primary issue elsewhere before picking up the phone and dialing. The primary alternate channel was the Web. That’s kind of the statistic. More customer service is moving to an online self-service model.
The nugget that they followed behind that is that the advent of the social web and social media and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and everything else is that people have these bad service experiences with call centers. But they also have good service experiences with call centers, and they’re finding that the good tweets and Facebook posts about the good are on par and usually exceed the bad. There’s a sense that social media is actually mitigating negative word of mouth for these large customer service organizations.
Jay: It’s amazing that the self-serve information trend has been so clearly documented, not just in customer service but in content marketing as well. You look at Google’s zero moment of truth research, which shows that in one year, from 2010 to 2011, the number of pieces of information that consumers consume before making an e-commerce purchase went from 5 to 10. Doubled in a year. We’ve talked on the show before that the trend toward multimedia communication, things like Instagram, and we’ve said that, “Johnny don’t read.” Johnny don’t want to talk to a live person either.
Eric: Exactly.
Jay: Because if I can find the answer faster myself from my phone in my pants than I can calling you, why would I call you? Even if it is a positive outcome, it’s a waste of time.
It’s interesting. What I find unfortunately though is some companies don’t deliver very good service via phone, but then also don’t have very good information available via Web. It’s the worst of both worlds for the customer.
Eric: Yeah. The interesting part to me is how the data seems to point to the good canceling out the bad. I think a few years ago the social media world was nervous about what people might say when you make yourself available as a brand or a service organization.
Today that’s not so much the case anymore. The case in point that I thought of when I read through this and read the blog posts online was that I thought about my Twitter audience and how much they complain about flights. At this point, everybody has complained about every airline imaginable, and they’ve had the worst experience imaginable with Delta, United, American, you name it.
But there are also so many good tweets about in-flight WiFi, free upgrades, free drinks, whatever. At this point, I’m immune to any and all posts about the customer experience on an airplane. To me that was what struck a chord is that social makes everything more transparent, both the good and the bad. The goal of a community manager might be just to manufacture enough good to cover up the inevitable bad that pops up.
Jay: Good becomes the social version of playing the Google search results game. It’s the same idea. Push down the bad and elevate the good. We’ll see. It’s a good topic and a good stat of the week, because it ties in very nicely to our special guest of the week, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez, head of social media for Hilton Worldwide, who I’m sure has some thoughts on social media customer service integration.

Special Guest: Vanessa Sain-Dieguez of Hilton Worldwide

Jay: Vanessa, thank you for being on episode 11 of Social Pros.

Vanessa: Thank you. I’m sorry that I’m not Instagram for you guys, but hopefully a good consolation prize.
Eric: Where’s the billion dollar payoff, Vanessa? Geez.
Vanessa: Yeah, seriously. I would have liked to have been part of that as well.
Jay: It’s not Instagram, but you are in fact my favorite vegan. That’s something to be said on the show.
Vanessa: Oh, thank you. There you go.
Jay: To Eric’s point, I think you were probably listening to his run down of this week’s social media stat of the week. What do you think about that? Certainly hotels are probably in the same ballpark as airlines in terms of people’s visceral reactions, both good and bad. How has the ability of customers to complain or praise Hilton hotels via social media changed the way you guys think about customer service?
Vanessa: Absolutely. We’ve got ten brands under our Hilton worldwide portfolio. They range from our flagship Hilton luxury brands all the way to Hampton, which is a more economical option. When social media was becoming really exciting a few years ago, we were really interested in it because we saw an opportunity to create a relationship with our guests.
It used to be that it was only when you came into our hotel or when you called and had a problem on the phone that we had the ability to build that relationship with you. Now it can be a daily relationship, and of course that involves the negative and the service opportunities.
We just see it as a huge positive, because we oftentimes have the ability to turn someone’s experience around while they’re on property, before they leave, before they have an opportunity to be really upset about maybe what happened. We can turn that around if we’re listening effectively. For us it’s a total win- win.
Jay: One of the things that’s always been fascinating to me about social listening and social CRM in the hotel business is most people’s interaction with hotels takes place in the evening hours. How do you staff that? Do you have people working 24/7? Are they working night shift? Most brands are really still in your business hours version of social listening, but I’m not so sure that makes the most sense for you guys.
Vanessa: Yeah, we being a hospitality company have no choice but to be a 24/7 operation. Something could go wrong at any moment in time, so it’s very important for us that we’re listening at all hours of the night. We’ve seen the real successes come through when it’s the middle of the night and someone’s air conditioning goes out, which is never pleasant and we want to make sure that it doesn’t happen. But if it does, the fact that we’re listening and can handle it and service it in the middle of the night always gets us big kudos, and people are really impressed by the depth of our listening that we’ve implemented.
Obviously, that’s a huge process, a huge undertaking when you think of nearly 4,000 hotels worldwide, the scale and the processes that we had to go to get to that point were very long and cumbersome. Now we’re really glad we got there.
Jay: That’s passive-aggressive hall of fame when your air conditioning goes out in your hotel room and you tweet it as opposed to calling the front desk. That is truly fantastic.
Eric: That might also be Social Pros podcast hall of fame stuff.
Jay: Thank you. You sir, avoid conflict is what you do.
Vanessa: It’s been really interesting. Sometimes they are calling the front desk and they tweet as well. They’ve just got to get it out and that’s fine. We’re all social media users, and we know how that goes.
But it is interesting, the social dynamic and the shift in what you were saying earlier. Sometimes people just don’t want to talk to a person or see a person. I would say in hospitality we don’t see that quite as much. We still see the need for connection and the desire on the guest’s part to have a conversation with our front office manager or customer service representative on the phone. But there are those people who just want to tweet about it and have it handled. Luckily, we’ve more often than not been able to get that to them. It’s been a big win for us.
Jay: Because you’ve got the ten brands, can you tell us a little bit about your structure internally? You’re the strategic head of social, but you’ve got different people in each brand that lead social operations. Then, as you mentioned, you’ve got different people listening in different parts of the country. Could you org chart that for us a little bit? Because you have a really fascinating way of going about it I think.
Vanessa: Yeah. We’re a really big organization, so we’ve taken a really decentralized approach to social media because we have so many of our properties at the local level engaged and we firmly believe in that. There’s only so much governance and centralization that can take place.
I think the structure that we’ve decided upon is really a home run for us. Basically, I sit at the center. I’m responsible for overseeing strategy company-wide, making sure that we’re using these tools in the right way and pushing boundaries, becoming a social business across the board.
Then, of course we have the more strategic brand-level initiatives on each of the ten brands. We’ve also got other departments activated as well. Then we have the local level as well. There’s a lot of integration, a lot of back and forth sharing that’s taking place at the enterprise level.
For us, if you’re that gentleman who’s tweeting in the middle of the night that his air conditioning went out, there’s a lot of different people that have to be involved to make sure that service recovery is excellent. We’ve made sure all those key players have a seat at the table and are involved in our strategy. It works really well.
Eric: Vanessa, when you get a tweet from @EricBoggs, do you know that I’m Eric Boggs of Durham, North Carolina, eric.boggs@gmail.com, or is it just a passing, you see the tweet, you reply, and you’re done with it?
Vanessa: We always do a little investigation. Depending on how common your name is will determine really what we can find out about you based on our customer history. There is definitely a whole process that we go through of identifying who you are and when you’ve stayed. We want to make sure that when we engage with you, we know that you called us last week or you stayed with us a month ago.
Eric: Can you describe that process a little bit, or is it secret sauce?
Vanessa: It is secret sauce, so I can’t. I will say I think that we’ve done a great job. I think that we still have work to be done. I don’t think anything is 100% these days. There’s always room for improvement, but I think that the strides that we’ve made are definitely in the right direction, and we’re looking to figure out how to make it 100% every time and scale it across every organization, every department.
Eric: Sure.
Jay: How do you internally measure the effectiveness of the panoply of social programs that you are involved in? Do you have some KPIs that you report beyond fan acquisition that you’re thinking yeah, this sort of proves that it’s worth the considerable effort that it requires to do it at the scale that you’re doing it on?
Vanessa: This is the constant elusive ROI question of what’s the value we’re getting out of this, especially as you think of our scale. We can certainly measure our brand activity, but a brand may have several hundred pages that are active on Facebook or Twitter handles.
Getting down into that more detailed, measuring is something that we’re focused on. Broadly speaking, we definitely look at the basics. I don’t think there’s any way to get around that as much as I sometimes don’t enjoy the basic numbers, but of course we report on the basics, and we’re really trying to dig in a little bit deeper, understanding the true effect that this is having on our business and our business objectives.
I can’t share the specifics, but we’re constantly looking for new ways to measure and see the impact that this really has on conversion and long-term relationship.
Jay: Somewhat similar to what Eric was mentioning earlier, do you actually record in your customer database, so you say the Hhonors database, do you actually record here’s who this person is on Twitter or Facebook if you’re able to tie that together? You have that unified data store?
Vanessa: We’re working towards that. Again, that’s one of those pieces that isn’t 100% yet.
Jay: They’re hard, yeah. It’s not you. It’s not like that’s a piece of cake or anything.
Vanessa: Yeah, it’s really hard. I can’t say that we’ve proactively done that. Now, certainly if you come to us and you have an issue via Twitter that we’re servicing you on, we’re certainly recording that information indirectly. We’re getting that handle and other information, but we don’t have a really good process yet for getting all the details related to your total online identity and building those in. I have yet to meet a vendor who does that. So if you find one, maybe send them my way.
Jay: They’re all working on it.
Vanessa: Yeah, exactly.
Jay: The easiest way I think is through social sign-in, people like Janrain and guys like that. I think that’s probably the easiest way to get rolling, but it’s not foolproof certainly.
Vanessa: Yeah, certainly. Then there’s always the issue with an enterprise our size, you have so many different systems talking to each other, figuring out that integration is a critical step.
Jay: Yep. Eric is going to love this. I want you, Vanessa, to talk about Hilton Suggests, which is one of my all-time favorite social media programs.
Vanessa: Oh, you’re so nice.
Jay: I absolutely love it, because it is the manifestation of what I always preach. Be social, don’t do social, and helping first and selling second, all those things that I say all the time. Tell us how it works. I think it’s an amazing program, and talking about something that doesn’t have an immediate ROI indicator but still goes into the “delighting customers” category.
Vanessa: Yeah, Hilton Suggests is one of my favorite projects. If I’m allowed to be biased, I would say it’s probably my favorite project. I just think it’s so authentic, it’s so genuine what we’re doing, and it’s providing so much value to the organization not only on a customer level but on an employee level as well.
When I joined, we had Hilton Suggests in beta form. We were testing it in a couple markets. Basically, what it is, is it’s looking for people asking about what to do in a market. You’re going to Dallas. Maybe you’re looking for a great steakhouse, maybe you want a great cowboy shop. Whatever it is that might be authentic to Dallas, you need to find the right resource to go to and ask that.
As you’re asking the Twittersphere this, we are listening and we can reach out. We have a local Dallas representative, a team member, at one of our hotels in Dallas that is watching this and going to respond to you and give you their authentic, local, trusted recommendations. It’s purely non-sales-y. It’s purely social. It’s a really great program.
Where we’ve seen the real benefit is actually I would almost argue that I think the benefit it gives our employees could possibly be higher than the benefit it gives our customers. I’ve already seen some employees be promoted based on their activities with this program, because it’s giving them access to new tools and technologies.
When I created the team and really scaled it out, I told them, “You don’t have to tweet. I’ll teach you how to tweet. I just need you to be passionate about Hilton and passionate about your city.” I taught a few people how to tweet, and they’ve become our rockstars.
It’s really nice. It gives them skills that they can add to their job set and bring forth to their departments. It gives them just pure joy during the day. The time that they spend on it, they just tell me sometimes they get addicted and they’re like, “I can’t stop checking it at night. I’m sorry I’m tweeting so much. I just love it.”
That’s been really great. Then on the flip side, the customer side, people are just shocked that we are listening, and something that’s always an interesting conversation is we’re not always recommending Hiltons. If you need a boutique hotel in a city where we don’t have a presence, I’ve told my team, “Be authentic. Tell them the boutique hotel that you would tell your best friend to stay at.” It’s not about getting their hotel stay this year or even next year. It’s about the long-term relationship, and they’ll appreciate that Hilton helped them out and long term come back and stay with us.
Even today, I was looking at the stream. After we helped someone, we don’t always know who we’re helping. We just helping them because we see they’ve asked a question. This woman came back and she’s like, “By the way, I’m a Gold member. You guys have a lot of room nights with me, and I love Hilton.” Here we were helping our guest and we didn’t even know it. That was great.
Eric: That’s a very cool program, Vanessa. I didn’t know anything about it.
Vanessa: Yeah, it’s really fun.
Jay: I wanted to keep you in the dark before the podcast, Eric. It’s more spontaneous interaction that way.
Eric: Yes. Thank you, Jay.
The people that are tweeting on behalf of Hilton Suggests are Hilton employees that live in Atlanta, Georgia, or are passionate about Atlanta, Georgia, and this is a full-time thing they do, or just part of a broader piece of responsibility?
Vanessa: Yeah, it’s part of a broader piece of responsibility. Obviously, we had certain criteria we were looking for. But what’s been really great is one of my star team members in the group is the HR manager. Not to say HR isn’t great at social, but they’re not the first group that would come to mind when you think of who’s really going to rock it at social. This HR manager is awesome.
Similarly, not surprisingly, in San Francisco the gentleman I have working on it is our director of food and beverage. Of course, he knows all the great places to go, all the great places to eat, because that’s his job. He’s using his core competency in another way. It’s been really exciting to watch them expand their skill set and utilize these tools in a new way.
Eric: Vanessa, I’m going to San Francisco for a few days next week. I’m going to tweet and wait for a reply from Hilton Suggests.
Vanessa: There you go. I promise you will get one, very quickly.
Eric: All right. I’m going to do it right now.
Jay: What has been the strangest Hilton Suggests interaction?
Vanessa: The strangest interaction, and Jay I know you’ve heard this story, but it’ll be new to Eric. Eric gets all the new news today. The strangest interaction is, so we are present in Memphis. So one of our team members was watching this one day and a gentleman was tweeting for help because his dog was sick and he needed a vet. So my team member in Memphis, he’s got a dog. He knows a vet that he goes to. So he recommended his vet. Now, a lot of time you would think, oh, the person probably just didn’t even come back or thought it was weird. Well, the guy ended up taking his dog to this vet. The vet took care of the dog. He was so elated. he came back and said, “Wow, look at that. Hilton taking time out of their day, recommending a vet to me. The vet was awesome. Thank you so much.”
Again, Jay, I think you had on your blog at one point friend on mine awareness. This is about being a friend and being a trusted resource for our guests, not just, “oh come stay with us on your next vacation.”
Jay: What I love about that is it by definition is the long play. You’re building a relationship and capital in that relationship that maybe will pay off for your brands at some point in the distant future. Somebody’s going to have the decision faced about which hotel do I stay at some day, and maybe that comes into your ledger, maybe it doesn’t. It’s certainly not the kind of thing where you can monetize it tomorrow or next week or next month, but yet the fact that the company puts the resources against it to do that kind of program I think is really exemplary and admirable.
Vanessa: What’s really great about it is the gentleman responding. I didn’t even see it right away. The gentleman responding, it was purely authentic. Here he is just sitting there and he’s like, “Oh, God. I have a dog. I’d be really upset if my dog was sick. I’d want help.” It was totally genuine that he offered a recommendation. It wasn’t to sell a room or to make them like Hilton. It was an authentic person-to-person interaction.

Social Pros Shout Out

Jay: Let’s have you talk to us about your Social Pros shoutouts. This is the part of the show where you, Vanessa, get to tell us and everybody else out there, the dozens of people that are listening right now, what inspires you in social media.
You’re inspiring us with Hilton Suggests and other things that you’re doing. What inspires you? Books, blogs, clowns, sporting events, what do you like?
Eric: Start with clowns, please.
Jay: Yeah, please start with clowns. That’s a blog post, “Top Seven Clowns.”
Vanessa: I actually don’t like clowns. I’m one of those people.
Eric: Krusty is number one by the way.
Jay: That’s true. He’s not even a real clown.
Vanessa: I’m not a clown person. I was thinking about this today. I have such a wide number of blogs that I follow. Jay, I’ve got to say, I love your blog. Every time I read it I get so much great information. I love watching the comment thread evolve.
One of my favorite blog posts that you did not ironically is the 70% of companies don’t respond to Twitter complaints, which fits into this conversation nicely. I love that the dialogue continues to go on. Yours is one that I really continue to always come back to.
Jay: Thank you. Check is in the mail.
Eric: We should also stipulate that the Social Pros shoutouts cannot include Jay.
Vanessa: I know.
Jay: Yeah, let’s do that.
Eric: Sucking up to the host doesn’t work, Vanessa.
Vanessa: It’s not sucking up, I swear. As Jay alluded to earlier, I’m a new vegan, so that’s taking the majority of my nighttime life away of researching vegan blogs.
Jay: Because it takes forever to cook anything if you’re a vegan. That’s why.
Vanessa: What?
Jay: It takes forever to cook anything.
Vanessa: Oh, no it doesn’t. No it doesn’t. I’ve found a new love for social media actually being vegan, because the content discovery is great. Connecting with vegan chefs and using Pinterest to find recipes, I mean it’s just…
Jay: I was going to say, I bet you there’s a vegan Pinterest world out there isn’t there.
Vanessa: Oh, yeah. It’s great. I’ve found so many recipes that I’ve never found elsewhere, which is bizarre. It’s been great. Sorry. I feel like my social shoutout was totally lame.
Jay: Well, you can have more than one. What else do you like?
Vanessa: What else do I like? In general with social media, I just like the ability that this offers to break down silos and break down the norm and really challenge the status quo. I think in this business we’re constantly trying to redefine what normal is, and so it’s definitely an exciting journey to be on. I think working for a company like Hilton Worldwide that has such strong relationships with our guests, it can only get better if we do social effectively. It constantly motivates me and challenges me every day to think, how can we do this more effectively? What tools should we be paying attention to?
Jay: I really like how you said that, allows you to redefine what normal is. That’s really well said. I might have to borrow that.
Vanessa: I give you permission.
Jay: Thank you. Eric just tweeted Hilton Suggests about extra feather pillows or something, so be prepared.
Eric: I tweeted and told them that you said they could give me a free room in San Francisco.
Vanessa: Oh, ouch.
Jay: She can’t. She can’t do anything.
Vanessa: I can’t. I don’t have the strings that people think I do.
Eric: Just define it as the new normal and you’ll be fine.
Vanessa: There we go.
Jay: The new normal is to give away hotel rooms to anybody who asks for them on Twitter.
Vanessa: I like it.
Jay: Well done Eric Boggs.
Eric: Just think of how delighted I will be.
Vanessa: You would be very delighted, that’s true. At the very least, I will make sure you’ve got a great restaurant recommendation to go to, okay?
Eric: That will also delight me.
Jay: He got a room with a view at least. Hook a brother up.
All right. That’ll do it for episode 11 of Social Pros. Vanessa, thanks so much. It’s fantastic having you on the show. I love, love, love what you’re doing. Thank you for the kind words about Convince & Convert, that was very nice.
Thank you Eric Boggs and the good people at Argyle Social for being the signature El Guapo sponsor of the Social Pros podcast. We use Eric and Argyle Social for all of our social media stuff at Convince & Convert. Also want to throw a shoutout to our friends at Infusionsoft, who we use for all of our email. In fact, we launched a brand new email product today called the “One Social Thing.” And our friend Jim Kukral at Digital Book Launch who’s also a sponsor of the podcast.
We will be back next week. Who’s on the show next week, Eric?
Eric: Derek Halpern from Social Triggers.
Jay: Derek Halpern from Social Triggers. That’s going to be really interesting. Have you ever talked to Derek?
Eric: Yeah, I’ve seen him at a few Social Fresh conferences. He is a live wire and a smart guy.
Jay: He is. We’re not going to have enough Skype for that kid. We’re going to need more bandwidth.
Eric: Yeah, I’ll call my provider and get a ten by ten pipe just for that show.
Jay: Perfect. He’s got the whole user experience, usability, make people click and do your bidding thing down to a science, literally. So that will be a fun show, looking forward to it.
Vanessa: If I remember, he presents without slides. That’s how prepared he is. His presentation rocked.
Jay: He can’t handle slides. He can’t handle that kind of…
Eric: Slides can’t handle him.
Jay: Exactly, exactly.
Vanessa: Yeah, I think that’s appropriate.
Jay: Unchained.
All right, that’ll be fun. Thank you everybody. See you next week.