Eurostar have been taking a bit of flak over the last couple of days. Not for the obvious thing that comes to mind, their trains breaking down and leaving thousands of travellers stranded, but for their lack of social media monitoring. Thousands of travellers gave them a hammering on the social media networks, primarily Twitter. This Techcrunch article gives you the essence.

Eurostar committed the classic social media mistake. They set up the usual Facebook page and Twitter account to promote themselves, however they weren’t listening. Social media is about holding a two way conversation, listening aswell as talking. So, they took a hammering on Twitter and their agency wen’t into crisis mode trying to rescue the situation. Interestingly, their agency has posted a blogpost about Eurostar and their social media strategy here (you get a sense of “we told them” but they didn’t listen) and if the interviews given by the Eurostar CEO – Richard Brown – are anything to go by, they probably aren’t that bothered. There’s a big lesson to be learned here, social media is not about selling on the web, it’s about engaging on the web. Eurostar will get over it because they have the monopoly on a route, if they were an airline, they’d be left for dead. Nevetheless, it’s an important lesson – at their cost – for the rest of us.

Chatting with someone on the phone earlier today about the rough day they were having, prompted me to write this blog. We’ve all had them. The day from hell where you had a difficult meeting, phone conversation or interaction. What’s worse is if you knew it was coming and had a few days to think about it. So, in no particular order, here are my tips to get through them: -

1. Don’t worry about it too much (if you know in advance). Invariably things never turn out as you imagine them and are often nowhere near as bad. If you let ” the voices” take over, you’ll just create stress for yourself.
2. Break the day down if you know you have different meetings on different subjects. Treat each one as its own challenge (cyclists use this to get up big hills, just keep aiming for small landmarks and eventually you’ll get up). Approach each event separately.
3. Put yourself in the other persons shoes if it’s a meeting or difficult conversation. It can really help you with your approach.
4. Get on with whatever you need to do as soon as possible. Don’t procrastinate or leave things. If something needs to be tackled, do it, it stops you worrying about it.
5. Make some notes. You have to learn from difficult experiences, so understand what you could have done better for next time around.
6. Apologise early if it’s down to you. No one likes anyone who tries to shirk blame or pass the buck, be big enough to admit it if it’s on your watch.
7. Put the day in context. It might be difficult, but how does it compare to having a terminal illness? You’d know what worry is then.
8. Take a break. It’s important to stay focussed and your head clear. Make sure you eat, stretch your legs and get some fresh air and a chance to just absorb everything.
9. Prepare. Don’t go into a difficult situation without knowing the background. Read up, put a bit of prep time in and you’ll feel more confident.
10. Remember that tomorrow is another day. Shakespeare once said “This, too, shall pass.” A great sentiment to end on.

One of the lines I’ve used recently in presentations is that the “Customer is no longer King, they are King Kong“. What I mean by this is that your business reputation is now almost entirely in the hands of your customers as they have the capabilitity to rampage through your communication strategy using social media tools. Wanting higher levels of transparency and authenticity, they aren’t there to be manipulated with a clever PR campaign or shallow words. I’m constantly surprised by the number of businesspeople I meet who don’t get this. Seeing social media (still) as some plaything for Gen Y. They couldn’t be more wrong. A shift in convention has happened. User Generated Content (UGC) is the most powerful weapon that customers have in their armoury to reject bad service, inconsistencies in Corporate values or to tell the world how great you are (more powerful than any advert you can place). So many businesses shy away from feedback, only wanting to hear (or publish) the good stuff. By listening to their customers using social networks, invaluable interactions can be made, potential crises averted or wonderful new brand evangelists can be discovered. Get on, get listening, join the conversation and get learning.

Two nice things happened to me today. I’d like to share them with you. Firstly, completely out of the blue, someone I’d recently bumped into on Twitter – but subsequently met in person on a business trip and got on really well with – posted a very flattering recommendation about me on Linkedin. Secondly, a CEO of one of our major customers dropped me a line to tell me that a presentation I delivered in London last week was the best he’d seen all year and in his Top 10 of all time presentations. It made me feel great. It reminded me of something I once read which said that “Leadership is a lonely business”. I don’t necessarily agree with that as I think you can provide great leadership and sustain great relationships in parallel. Nevertheless, it’s great to receive positive feedback and a reminder that a compliment costs nothing.

It’s good to manage e-mail, not let e-mail manage you. Returning from a time zone +9hrs means that during the time you’re in meetings etc, hardly any e-mails come in, so you really focus on the job in hand and aren’t distracted by the constant flow of inbound messages. The e-mail starts to get busy again from around 5pm in the afternoon (Japan time), when it’s the evening and you’re out having your dinner. So, I ended up clearing e-mails first thing in the morning and it reminded me of an important lesson relating to how regularly to read your mails. That is, rather than have your e-mail constantly on, instead to only log in a couple of times a day instead and batch clear your inbox. It makes it much less interruptive. I used to do this, but I’ve got out of the habit. I’m going to do it again as of next week as I’ve a lot of big picture thinking to do over the coming weeks and I want to keep my mind clear. Why not try it yourself? It’s a bit of a leap of faith in the early days, however – in time – it’s a much better way of feeling in control.

It’s been quite a week (hence the lack of blogs). Been all over, planes, trains and automobiles and it carries on next week. The important thing is that I’ve been busy doing the right stuff, not busy being busy. My diary for Q1 next year is filling up at a – slightly frightening – pace, how is yours? Time managment is becoming a real issue for many people. Hyper-tasking being the catch phrase of the day, whilst people juggle their very busy lives, looking to optimise every second of down time, Twitter and Blackberrys are typical examples of technology we use to fill those gaps (such as airport transit waits/delays).

I came across an interesting Twitter application yesterday which you can see here. It’s a very clever little app where you type in a # followed by the short name of your airport and it shows you all the people that are (or have recently been) in the same airport. A great way of connecting with real people (which is what social media should all be about) if you have some downtime. Life continues to get quicker and quickr and quckr, the key thing for me is using technology to manage your work time to enjoy your downtime, not to let it totally rule your life.

Well, not exactly. They’ve called in the administrators whilst they try to find a new buyer for the beleagured bookstore. There was an almost “Woolworthesque” outcry from its loyal customers this week when the news broke that the doors might be closing. Those hundreds of thousands of “loyal customers” who indulged in a Starbucks whilst reading their favourite paper, mag or book for free, (then popped it back on the shelf before logging on to Amazon to buy it cheaper) now have one less place to “try before they buy”. That’s a bit harsh, I know (I was one of them, so I can say it with some authenticty, although I generally always walked out with something). So, our High St. continues to die. Deal hungry consumers don’t want to know about overheads, high rents, landlords or staff pay rises, they just want to get the lowest price. Service? You should be thanking me for shopping here! Ironically, like Woolworths, Borders had a brilliant days trading as the consumer vultures flocked to the stores to bag their cut price bargains, “It’s such a shame, erm, are you buying that?”. Shallow but fact . Waterstones must be happy. Their results haven’t been brilliant, one less competitor to worry about. But what for our High St? Condoned to clothing retailers, furniture, charity and coffee shops. We (the consumer) have to recognise that High St. shopping locations come with a price tag. You can’t run a retail chain on internet margins, you have to accept that things cost a little more when you want them now. Amazon isn’t picking up an unexpected impulse purchase, it’s transactional. It isn’t instant gratification, it’s deferred gratification. I for one am sorry that Borders may be disappearing, the Jones family are regular visitors on a Sunday for a coffee and a read, perhaps that’s why its got the institututional feel that Woolworths had. So, let’s all throw a handful of soil as another retail coffin gets lowered into the ground. Now, who’s next?