"We do all of these things" @VodafoneUK

A couple of months ago, I was doing some groundwork on the social media strategies of some of the top brands in the mobile phone operator market. I was initially looking through each of their social media pages. There were some of the questions I wanted to try and get answers to. Does the brand have a specific strategy on a particular channel that is identifiable from interactions on the page? Is there two way communication or is it just the brand shouting in to deaf ears? What is the brand trying to achieve through their presence on these social channels? 

One of the brands I happened to be looking at was Vodafone. I landed on the @VodafoneUK Twitter page and found it interesting. There were the names of the staff designated to handle the interactions on the page and a quick look at the page would have told any person that Vodafone were basically answering their customers questions and issues they were experiencing with the service. The page just screamed "customer service". Nevertheless, I decided to scroll down through almost a week's tweets just to make sure I wasn't missing anything obvious. At the end, I just confirmed my initial assumption that the page was being used primarily as a customer service channel. 

Then I read what they had mentioned in the 'Bio' section. It mentioned that the page was meant for promotions/offers, competitions and product news. It didn't say a word about customer service. I found that strange and decided to ask them. 

It's probably a good thing that Vodafone were saying they were doing just what their online audience was demanding of them. Still, I wasn't entirely convinced because when you have a majority of the tweets answering customer queries and complaints, something related to customer service ought to be part of the bio section. 


The company's headline on the page is what a lot of people would look at when they started to 'follow' them. If people just looked at the tweets they would in all probability think just like I did and send tweets if they were having trouble with their services. So its no wonder that they had to do "what people ask us" as those who didn't read the Bio section will look at the tweets and say "Well, looks like we can just ask them about that problem we're having over here". What I found even more puzzling was that they had  a separate account called @VodafoneUkdeals that was meant for deals and online exclusives which now has this headline.

After my tweet to them, I kept visiting the @VodafoneUK page once in a while to see if there was a change but for a few days it didn't happen. Recently, I happened to check back (I was trying my luck on their #mademesmile campaign; that's another story if you're interested) and I did see something different this time. 

Vodafone probably realized that they had made a mistake. The 'Bio' now is a lot more generic and does not spell out anything specific that they aim to do on Twitter. So it was either just oversight that caused the mistake or there was a flawed social media strategy, wherein they were not exactly clear what they wanted to use Twitter for. I think it's the latter, as they still don't seem to be entirely sure if they should use it for multiple activities or just customer service. This is true for a lot of brands who are just "there" on social media websites but are still very unclear of what they aim to achieve out of that presence.

I don't want to claim here that I prompted the change on their Twitter page, but when asked they didn't acknowledge the fact I was pointing to and then changed it in course of time.  What does that say? Well, I'll let you make up your mind on that one. 

"Salman Butt caused Old Trafford defeat" - Wenger

In a shocking revelation almost a week after Arsenal’s loss to Manchester United, Arsene Wenger has finally admitted that the actual reason for his team’s loss was not the Old Trafford pitch. After being criticized for blaming the pitch in sections of the media and by a lot of Arsenal fans (me included), Wenger obviously had to come up with a better excuse. 

At a press conference today, Arsene was put under the microscope again regarding the loss by the media and with an uncharacteristic slip of the tongue said, "I believe that Salman Butt.. err... Cesc Fabregas could have played better". Cesc Fabregas was thought by us all to have come on to substitute Tomas Rosicky in the 64th minute of the game. As it turns out it was actually Pakistan cricketer Salman Butt!  Wenger then owned up to the fact and then in his usual factual way said, “I firmly believed it was just that Csec lacked a little strength, technique, togetherness (and 5 more of his keywords) on the day. Then I discovered it was not Cesc when he disappeared after the game." Butt had escaped to a posh hotel in London. Wenger continued - "If it was actually Cesc we would have won 3 or 4 nil”. He was obviously forgetting that United had scored a goal in the first half itself.  When a journalist in the room pointed that out, his reply was, "From where I was sitting I could not see it. I will have to look at the replay and see if it was a goal." Another journalist in the room who also happened to be an Arsenal fan was about to fling a microphone at him in disgust before he was reined in by his colleagues. In those few seconds Wenger showed that he is as good as his players when it comes to being silky and slid out of the room. 

Apparently, it all started when Wenger was boarding the flight to Manchester, saw Butt, and thinking he was Fabregas asked him why he came even though he was injured. Butt replied, “I just have to play this one game for my team.” Wenger, obviously happy with his ‘captain’s’ commitment took him on board. Little did he know that Butt was talking about a totally different 'game' and 'team'.

Undercover reporters from The Guardian newspaper, desperate to publish some news that criticizes Arsenal, have since released a video from a hidden camera which was placed in Butt's hotel room, in which he is seen receiving a bundle of cash for what his 'team' called a "match-winning" effort. When asked about the game Butt responded with the same lack of confidence that you see in his footwork when he’s batting. Biting his nails he said, “I am completely innocent. I just wanted to win the game for Arsenal and I think that I have performed to the best of my ability.” On further investigation, it was found that Salman Butt had made plans to go to Old Trafford about a week before the match. His 'team' then asked Butt to run on to the pitch during the game assuring him that a bet on the incident will have high stakes. Butt was to receive his share of the payoff if he managed to stay on the pitch longer than one minute. Butt couldn't believe his luck to be on the actual team and wanted to use the opportunity to get some much needed match practice which is impossible when playing for the Pakistan cricket team. "Once I'm on the field, I concentrate on getting settled and staying there for the 'team'. The pitch was turning a lot (now we know why Arsene said "bad pitch") but I fought hard to stay there", he said. He was nervous but of course aware that he could escape by getting back home to share his earnings with who else but the PCB, so that they could in turn blindly claim that England had fixed their football World Cup match against Germany to divert attention.

The real Cesc Fabregas wasn't available for comment as he was busy on Skype. Yes, his friends in the Barca team are reportedly using the new group video chat option to lure him to the Nou Camp in January itself. Sam Allardyce who wasn't even asked to comment came forward to say, "Well, these are not valid excuses. I can do much better than that" hinting that he might be interested in the Arsenal top job that he will never get, after his sacking by the new Blackburn owners who think the best way to start "great things" at the club is by removing a manager who was not doing too badly midway through a tough EPL season.

Disclaimer: As you have definitely figured out by now, the post is entirely false. Just a rant from a frustrated Gooner who cannot take more lame excuses for Arsenal not winning the BIG games. For the record, I still am and will always be an Arsenal fan and I still think Arsene Wenger is one of the best managers in the world. I also have Cesc's squad number on my Arsenal shirt, so there's no question about the great admiration I have for his game.

Credits: Thanks to @vikasgowda20 of Buffering Brain fame for sharing this link which inspired the post. So its not me who originally thought Butt and Fabregas look alike. I obviously do see it now though. Do you?

An Online CV With a Difference

In my last post I talked about people's inclination to grab others' attention through Facebook status updates and also at the end talked about how employers nowadays were looking at job applicants' social pages to form a first impression (Germany do have restrictions now). You can argue endlessly with regard to the merits of using online behaviour to judge an applicant before even meeting the person but since it is already prevalent that is a pointless argument . Ever since my interest in Web 2.0, social media, SEO and related areas grew a few months ago I have been discovering and learning new things and also experimenting with tools that I might not have otherwise noticed. 

Going back to the point about getting people's attention, for a job seeker, its of course employers whose attention is desired. I happened to come across a couple of websites/tools that I think might be extremely beneficial from a job-seeker-point-of-view. I've just started experimenting a bit with one of them called Flavors.me. It is just a platform where you can create an entire page which you can then use to do the talking - for you  and about you. The demo video on the website is great and captures pretty much everything that can be done using Flavors.

Picture Courtesy Themecraft 

The great thing about this tool is that the entire page is just about you. On online searches too, there is a good chance of this page being found, and from here you can direct anyone to all you other social, professional networking pages, blogs etc. As my professional interests are in the internet space, my CV would be incomplete if I didn't include links to my presence on these social pages. For starters a platform like Flavors will save some space and allow me to say a bit more about myself in the other sections of the CV!

An account upgrade at US $20 will give you access to real time stats, more layouts and fonts, the option of including a contact form and a listing on the Flavors directory. An option to also buy a domain is in the pipeline. These options could be extremely useful for freelance professionals and small/home businesses who/which may not have the time or technical know-how to set up their own website.

The second website is called About.me which seems to be a similar kind of platform. It has not been fully launched as yet. It will be interesting to see how different it will be from Flavors and what extra features it might have. I've reserved my URL, so hopefully I'll be getting confirmation that I can start using it very soon. 

If you're still reading I assume you are yet to try these so give it a shot and let me know what you think. Before I conclude this post, if you haven't already heard of a 2010 Business Management graduate named Kyle Clark you might want to take a look at how he got himself the job he wanted.

Update: (Dec 13, 2010)
I just read an article (courtesy @beastoftraal) related to people who have used innovative job search techniques. Whether good or bad, they surely are different.What are your opinions?

And by the way I've also just added the Disqus widget below which allows you to comment using Twitter, Yahoo etc. so there's a few options for you! :)