Peter G McDermott

Blog

  • Great Customer Service Is Easy As Pie

    Today I got a good old fashioned lesson in great customer service and it all started with pie.

    Ice box full of pie at Sylvan Park Restaurant
    This is the ice box full of pie that taught me the most valuable lesson in great customer service.

    Brittani and I were wandering through a neighborhood and decided to have breakfast at a meat and three. The humbly named Sylvan Park Restaurant was our choice for one this particular beautiful late Saturday morning.

    I hadn’t eaten breakfast there, only lunch, on several occasions over the last few years. We argued whether or not they were open for breakfast but noticed a slew of cars in the parking lot and knew we needed to give it a try. Immediately after sitting down, we were enveloped by the dated decor and incredibly reasonably priced menu. It was really a trip back in time.

    This wasn’t my first trip to Sylvan Park Restaurant. A few years ago, my sister from Pittsburgh had come to visit. While we were there the waitress offered us lemon meringue pie. She was insistent on telling us about how the pies were made fresh and in such high demand that they would have to separate literally hundreds of eggs each week just in order to keep up.

    The pie was delicious and the time and care that the waitress took to tell us the story about separating eggs became a bit of a thing between my sister and me. Each year we would take turns buying each other a different type of egg separating gadget to celebrate the memory of our visit to the restaurant. The waitress’s story left a lasting impression on us about the hospitality of Nashville and the quality of food at the restaurant.

    As I was paying for our breakfast this morning, I walked by a glass cooler filled with beautiful coconut creme and pecan pies with a white board sign above it listing all of the day’s fresh pies. In an effort to remind my sister of our memorable encounter, I took out my cell phone to snap a photo to later send to her. Before I could even return my phone to my pocket, a member of the restaurant staff, a lady in her 60’s with blue jeans and a simple “Sylvan Park Restaurant” t-shirt walked over and exclaimed, “What are you doing!?”

    Quickly, feeling guilty, I tried to explain to her how much my sister in Pittsburgh loved their pies and that I was going to send her the picture to remind her of our long ago visit. She looked at me calmly with a smile, looked over at Brittani and then leaned in and softly asked me, “would you like to take one home?”

    I sighed with great relief. The lady had taken me totally by surprise; I was overwhelmed with gratitude. “Of course!” I emphatically replied.

    The lady disappeared into the back of the restaurant, brought a cardboard box for the pie, began folding it and very carefully and skillfully placed one of the coconut creme pies inside. As she came over to present us with her offering, she made sure that we would go straight home to place it in the refrigerator.

    We were so surprised by her act of generosity, we didn’t know what to do or what to say. I presented her with a $5 tip as a token of my appreciation. I didn’t want to offend her hospitality by offering to pay for the pie, but I wanted to make sure she understood how grateful I was. As I was about to walk away, Brittani asked her the simplest of questions, “What’s your name?”

    “Regina,” she replied. “My sister owns this place.”

    She went on to explain the that the restaurant is closed on Sunday and they don’t always sell out of pie on Saturday but she wanted to make sure this particular one had a home to go to tonight.

    Although I will never understand why the lady thought to surprise me by offering such a lovely treat, her hospitality and thoughtfulness will leave me talking about that restaurant and my particular experience for years and years to come. That one moment. That one exercise of selflessness and thoughtfulness will always remain with me each and every time I see an ice box full of pie.

    It doesn’t matter what you sell, how much it costs or who is there to buy it, if you want to create a strong and positive reputation for your business, treat your customers with respect. Every once in a while, do something special because the special moments are the ones that get shared.

  • Google+ Opportunity: Create a Community for Your Local Community

    Recently Google announced the launch of a new feature for Google+, Communities. Since the announcement there have already been 20,478 communities created (according to circlecount.com). Community topics range from things as broad as Space (35,252 members) to things as small as Miniature Gaming (189 members).

    The success of these communities will rely greatly on the amount of time and effort that has been put into them. Creating a broad topic and failing to moderate will quickly turn your community into the Wild West, filled with off-topic conversation and tons of spammers. However, if you mix the right ingredients, you can grow a vibrant community full of rich conversation, new discoveries and awesome connections.

    Community Members Gather for Fundraiser
    Nashville Community Members Gather for St. Jude Children’s Hospital Fundraiser Event

    If you want to create a community, but haven’t decided what to make it about, let me give you a suggestion: think local.

    One of the things that Google+ offered us was the ability to connect with everyone around the world and discover people with like-minded interests. Now all of this discovering has been a lot of fun, but it doesn’t mean much when you’re not at the computer or using the app on your phone. Luckily, I have begun to make a lot of local real-life connections through Google+ that I meet and spend time with in the real world (thank you #Ingress).

    There are millions of cool and interesting things happening around the world, some of which you might be able to participate in, but for the most part, probably not. It’s important to get out from behind the keyboard and your touchscreen and interact with the real world.

    I created a community called Nashville+ because I was beginning to notice other members of the the Nashville “community” (funny how that word has another meaning, eh?) starting to embrace Google+. There was a huge opportunity to connect those users and give them the conduit to share interesting stories, photography, local news and other things like restaurant reviews.

    The Google+ community I created is pretty small and somewhat stagnant at the moment and I’m fine with that. Like any good community, I want to make sure I have the correct foundation before I start bringing in the people to keep it moving. Once I get the categories sorted out that I like and plant some seeds for conversation, I’ll start contacting local businesses and individuals and offer them the opportunity to connect with other community members.

    One thing to be careful of, though, is to make sure that the community doesn’t turn into a giant billboard. The last thing I need is every restaurant and bar posting their specials every day. What I would like to see is people sharing their experiences with different businesses and events. I would like to see people showing the human side of the community. Because, that’s really what community is all about.

    Nashville+ is in its infancy, but I already have a few great things planned.

    Do you have an idea for a local digital community? What are your plans for success?

  • Your Community Sucks and Here’s Why

    A Guide to Jump-Starting your Google+ Community

    We are now on day six of Google+ Communities and people are starting to learn a number of things very quickly. First and foremost, if you missed the opportunity to be the first to create a unique community surrounding one of your interests, don’t worry. It’s not about being the first, it’s all about being the best.

    The first thought that crossed my mind when I heard that Google+ was releasing a communities feature was whether or not there would be a community for people that like to manage communities. It seems meta, I know, but it is very likely that the creators of these communities would like a forum to share their knowledge, tips, tricks and questions, while making a few important connections.

    Since creating the Community Moderators community, we have had over 1,100 unique members join. We have had dozens of people’s questions answered, some very interesting feedback expressed towards the betterment of communities, and most importantly, a fellowship of people with like-minded interests.

    In my last post, I talked about how Communities could be the answer to your biggest circle management nightmares. That theory only works if you are dealing with successful communities. So how do you make your community a success?

    Bring the right people into the conversation.

    A community is much like a new house, it is not going to build itself. However, it does require some of the same fundamental features of a house. It needs a good foundation, support beams, and protection from the elements.

    Abandoned House near Hooper's Farm to Oast House Archive
    Photo: Abandoned House near Hooper’s Farm by Oast House Archive (Used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0)

    The foundation of my community is a group of people that share passion for a common interest. Without the foundation, we would have no place to establish our pillars for success. Finding the people the are right for your community is tricky. Of course, you could always spam out to all of your followers and ask them to come and join, but what is in it for them? To attract valuable members to a community, you must show them the value of becoming a member.

    For the Community Moderators community, the value was easy to demonstrate, if you come and join us, you will learn from other community moderators, have a chance to ask questions and gain valuable insight towards growing your own community. It sells itself, really. However, for some community topics, it may be harder to market value. Regardless, if you can cast your community in a light that shows value to potential members, you are more likely to attract members that are likely to actively participate in the conversation.

    Support the conversation and keep it going.

    As a community moderator, you will quickly find that you cannot answer every question and stimulate every conversation. The remarkable thing about having a community, is that the members of your community can work with each other to answer questions, create engaging conversation and exchange valuable content relative to your topic.

    Initially, it may be difficult stimulating the level or quality of conversation that you would like to see within your community. Just like in a cold room, people are often shy and do not want to be ridiculed for their opinions. Start with some light conversation. Break the ice with your community. Show them that you all have humility and good will and can learn from each other.

    As more people become more comfortable with sharing their thoughts and ideas, the conversation will begin to grow. Before you know it, you may have to call for some help to make sure the conversations are headed in the right direction and that people are familiar with your community and its guidelines.

    Protect your community from the elements.

    The Internet is like any other place in the world. It has good people, it has bad people and it has some people that just don’t know any better. Your job as a community owner is to ensure that you are moderating your community in a fashion that is not restricting free speech, but keeping out unnecessary commercial solicitations, spam and otherwise annoying contributions.

    When you begin to protect your community from spammers, trolls and bullies, keep in mind that you are not InterPOL and your function isn’t to control what every member of your community has to say. Your just to to facilitate the conversation, keep it rich, keep it on topic (if necessary) and keep the evil doers at bay.

    When deciding how to moderate (not police) your community, you might want to consider establishing a Code of Conduct or set of Community Guidelines. I have worked with the Google+ community at large to create an open-source set of Community Guidelines that you can find on github. These guidelines are free for you to use, interpret, change or use how you would like. If you would like to contribute to the project, please free to do so.

    Keep in mind that your community guidelines should be general, light-hearted but also clear and concise. Your goal is not to create a rule for every possible situation, but to express to the community that certain behaviors such as hate speech, bullying or spam will not be tolerated. Set the tone early and remain consistent and your community will respect your efforts.

    Most importantly, as you watch your community grow, remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

  • How to Better Manage Your Circles in Google+

    With the release of Google’s new “Community” feature on Google+, you can take a deep breath and stop trying to sort each and every person you come across into the right interest-based circle. The community function allows you to focus on not only who you are interested in, but what you are interested in. As communities begin to develop and mature and you continue to use them, you might find yourself spending less time managing your circles.

    Photo By Leo Reynolds used under Creative Commons 2.0
    Photo By Leo Reynolds used under Creative Commons 2.0

    Communities take the guesswork out of circles.

    Up until this week, you were charged with the task of keeping up with people on Google+ exclusively through circles. If you found someone that was also interested in Technology, you might have added them to your Tech circle, but realized they are also passionate about cats. You hate cats. Communities solves that problem. Sometimes we aren’t as interested in the people we interact with as we are interested in the topic at hand.

    Now with communities, you can focus on conversations focused around topics that interest you and not just people that may have said something interesting at one point in time. No longer do you need to blindly create circles centered around topics in fear of “missing” something relevant. With communities, you can rely on quality curation of the content you’re really looking for.

    So what should you do with all of those topical circles, or the random circle shares you added? Give them a rest. Go into the individual sliders and pull the volume down to ‘Mute.’ Give it a week or two. Notice a difference? Less noise? I guess you can live without that circle after all…

    5,000 People, That’s It?

    The notion of being able to “follow” 5,000 people is ridiculous and if you claim to be able to do it with any sort of consistency, then you have super-human powers. In fact, a study with Facebook users found that if you follow too many people, you might become unhappy.

    “Among the group who read updates, the study revealed that having 354 Facebook friends seemed to be the tipping point after which people were increasingly less happy with their lives.” – Menshealth.com

    When you look at the way you manage circles on Google+, ask yourself “Why did I follow these people?” Maybe you thought that keeping in touch with a group of people could lead to a new job. However, if you were following people just because you thought the picture they posted that one time was interesting, you are probably circling for the wrong reasons.

    Today I chatted on the phone with Laurie DesAutels, a talent acquisition expert that specializes in connecting with people based on their skills and talent. “If I’m going to be interacting with 5,000 people in my circle, I’ve got to be kind of picky. I want it to be people that post regularly and people that I want to see in my timeline.”

    She went on to say “It’s not all about quantity, it’s about quality.”

    Use your circles to connect with the people that you care about.

    Keeping your topical correspondence and your personal/business correspondence separate has just become that much easier. Focus less on strangers that only peak your interests 10% of the time and start focusing on the people you care about through your circles and the topics that interest you through communities.

    Now that you have a degree of separation between relationships and interests, you should be able to better strengthen and develop your relationships while enjoying more relevant content centered around your topics of interest.

    Give it a try, hit the mute button on your random circles and leave the Home stream to people you care about.

    What do you think? Are Google+ Communities the best thing since sliced bread, or just another distraction? Will Communities help you turn down the noise and turn up the volume on the things you love?

  • Reactions to Communities: The playing field is being leveled. (Guest Post)

    So on the whole, I think most users are finding that Communities are a very useful and, a few tweaks notwithstanding, well implemented feature. But a few users, particularly those with medium to large followings, have been expressing a lot of doubt and negative feedback, and I have an idea why.

    When circles were the only method for connecting, the “playing field’ for engagement and audience was extremely uneven: a brand new user had almost zero chance of their post being seen, even if it was of tremendous quality, while some users with (inexplicably) large followings were posting crap like copypasta from chain emails and having it reach What’s Hot. Contrast this to Reddit, where as +Carter Gibson showed a few days ago, a new user with great content can reach the “Front Page” with their very first post.

    Communities change this. Suddenly, a new user can join a Community on their very first day and make a post to an audience of thousands of people. And I have a hunch that if it’s good content, it will be seen and engaged with by a great many of them.

    So my theory is this: while much of the negative feedback represents legitimate room for improvement, there’s a not-insignificant portion that is the result of a changing playing field. Users that have come to love being one of the select few who have large audiences are inclined not to like that. Most of these users have nothing to worry about, as their followings came about as the result of posting great content. But I have to believe there are some who have either gamed the system through shared circles or posted repeated crap to build a following, and those audiences are going to leave in a hurry for the increased quality and relevance that Communities will offer.

    The great news for everyone else is this: Communities are going to make great content king. They offer everyone an opportunity to post to an interested audience, not just those with big followings. And I think that’s a plus.

    [author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://petergmcdermott.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/zachaphoto1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]I’m fascinated by technology, science, and the things that make us tick. My current long-term pursuit is to major in Computer Science and Neuroscience in order to research brain-computer interface technology, particularly the commercial applications it holds.[/author_info] [/author]

  • Why People are Enticed by Headlines

    You’re here aren’t you?

    But why?

    If I had named this post “Strategies for Increasing Click-through Rates” you probably would not have found my post. Odds are you found this post because of social sharing. People share posts or “curate” them when they find them to be relevant, topical or humorous, and usually do so when they fit within their brand’s interests.

    When titling your blog posts, try to keep in mind who your audience is. You cannot write a title that is going to entice everyone so focus on the people that you want to join your tribe. If you’re a food blogger, you want to attract people that enjoy food to your blog, not chemists and woodworkers, so make sure your titles are attractive to people that share your interests.

    Keep them short. Remember, people will hopefully be tweeting and sharing your posts through social media, so if your title is more than 100 characters, it’s probably not going to fit into a tweet with a URL. If your headline is long, make sure the important bits are in the first few words in case your title gets truncated when shared.

    Last, but not least, keep them topical. There is nothing worse than having a misleading headline. Attracting people to your website to generate traffic is a strategy used by every successful website, but by misleading viewers through irrelevant headlines, you are destroying your brand or website’s reputation.

    If you use these few tips, you should see more and more people clicking your links and sharing them across the web. If you want to learn more about how to get your brands message out through social media, send me an e-mail or visit my consulting website, McDermott Media. If you found this helpful, please remember to share!

     

  • Affiliate Purchases: A Nice Way to Say Thanks This Year

    Over the last year, I have spent a lot of valuable time and effort evangelizing a new social media network. I have consulted with some great minds, held discussions with very influential people and have heard some amazing stories from the people I have met. During this time I have done my best to share what I have learned to allow you to benefit from my knowledge.

    Because the work I do online is not related to my vocation, it is strictly a labor of love. I am not paid for my time on Google+, my evangelism of the network or the tutorials I share. Apart from a small bit of AdSense revenue that I receive from my YouTube videos, this is strictly a volunteer effort.

    Without having to solicit you for donations or putting a “tip jar” up on my website, I thought I would ask you to do something even simpler. If you shop during the holidays for your friends and families and sometimes find yourself using a website called Amazon, your purchases can help pay for my web hosting, domain registration and bandwidth necessary to run this site.

    If you would like to say thanks, you don’t have to pay me in cash, simply make your Amazon.com purchases through my affiliate link (http://goo.gl/k3df4). The small affiliate revenue generated will go a long way in ensuring that I can afford to keep this website up and running. If you would like to go further, please feel free to visit my Amazon Wish List this Christmas and send me something swell. Some of the items will help me create better video content, and utilize my mobile and tablet devices more efficiently.

    Whatever you do this holiday season, be sure to thank the people that have shared knowledge, help and guidance in all of the things the interest you. Thank you all for being a receptive, interactive and well-engaged audience. I appreciate all of your participation and attention. If you have reached out to me in the past via Google+ notifications and I haven’t responded, please don’t be offended. The best way to get in touch with me is always through e-mail: petergmcdermott@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.

    Happy Holidays,

    Peter

  • An Enchanted Night at the Tennessee Democratic Headquarters

    After a delicious dinner prepared by Executive Chef +Garrett Pittler, +Brittani Fox and I had the pleasure of attending the Election Results Party hosted by US Congressman Jim Cooper. The event, which was hosted at the Loews Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel, was filled with happy smiling faces, local politicians, business people and outstanding citizens. I was elated to have the opportunity to meet with re-elected US Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee’s 5th District to congratulate him on his victory as well as newly elected Davidson County Clerk Brenda Wynn. After Obama was projected to win the election, the room erupted with cheers. I even had a chance to share my excitement with Erika Lathon of FOX 17 towards the end of the party. Here are a few photos from the event. (Click Here for Full Post on Google+)

  • A Week In Review: Taking Content Curation on Google+ to the Next Level

    A few of Google+’s power users, such as +Mike Elgan, have touted the network as their new blogging platform. I have to concede that the majority of my content creation and curation takes place on Google+, but I’m not completely satisfied.

    The way Google aggregates your posts and content doesn’t make your list of posts easily digestible. Looking at my profile, you’ll see a mess of status updates, long form posts, photographs, check-ins and shared posts from other creators.

    What I would really like to see is a way to organize my content on my profile. Not in the quirky way you organize posts on your Facebook timeline, but in a blog-like fashion, much like Blogger.

    Until then, we have a great tool at our disposal. We now have the ability to embed Google Docs into our posts. Embedded today for your enjoyment is my last week of quality content. I’ve sorted out some of the less valuable content and left you with what I call my quality posts.

    Take a look at the Google Presentation and let me know what you think of the idea. This is a fairly simply presentation to compose, can be easily assembled, shared and gives me a vehicle to notify my audience without spamming them 25 times during the week.

    Setting one up is easy. Just launch Google Drive, create a presentation and add links to your favorite posts. Once you’re done, share away. Since you’ve digested everything into a neat package, your followers might not mind a notification in their inbox…

  • How Google+ Is Different From Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn

    Once You Get It. You Get It.

    +Google+ is quickly gaining adoption and finding itself integrated in all corners of the web from +Sarah Hill‘s work on +KOMU 8 News‘ interactive live format featuring Hangouts, to +HuffPost Live‘s adoption of hangouts and audience participation.

    Unlike the three other major social networks, Google+ works a little differently. Of course you can use Google+ to connect with your friends, colleagues and family, but there is so much more you can gain from it. (more…)