Peter Shankman shares how to create loyal followers and brand evangelists by making your brand better than the rest. Plus, how being brilliant at the basics leads to success.
The biggest problem that I think employees make is that they go to work and immediately take off their customer hat and they put on their worker hat. Well, that’s a problem. You have to keep on your customer hat because you have to understand how the customer is feeling. Any customer that comes into your business for any reason, has a problem.” –Peter Shankman
Peter Shankman blames ADHD for most of his success. He is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out (HARO) but in his little spare time he is a NASA Advisory Board member, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Dell, angel investor with multiple start-ups, sub-4 marathon runner, Ironman and B-licensed skydiver. A tweet of his was voted one of the top 10 Tweets of 2011 by ABC News and Twitter. He currently lives in New York City with his two-year-old daughter, an overweight psychotic cat and his beautiful wife. Peter recently authored the best-selling book Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans.
Think Like A Journalist Quote
“Social media provides an avenue to build relationships with media outlets and have an ongoing relationship with reporters.” –Amy Jo Martin, CEO & Founder, Digital Royalty
Success Quote
Be brilliant at the basics.
If you can’t change the people around, change the people you’re around.
Career Highlight
Receiving the Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University.
When It Didn’t Work
Peter had an idea that he thought was a great idea but it never really took off the way he wanted it to because he hadn’t done enough research. Find out what the company was and how it ended up for Peter.
Top Tips
- Empower employees to be able to fix customer problems.
- Train employees how to be problem-savers.
- Avis is a good example of a brand that is offering quality customer service. Employees are empowered to help customers.
- You can always train an employee but you can’t make them care about the customer. Hire the right people.
- Customers are the new marketing: they share what’s good and bad about a company.
Multimedia Resource
Twitter. Facebook. Google Hangouts. Shazam. Imager. Tumbler. HBOgo. Evernote. Dropbox. LastPass app.
