Social Media Leader Series – Frank Eliason
Thursday, January 15, 2009 | 8 Comments
Posted in: Marketing, Social Media Leader Series, Social Media Monitoring
If you’ve ever heard of @comcastcares on Twitter then you’ve heard of the guy behind it, Frank Eliason. Comcast has become one of the more well-known examples of a company using social media to listen and respond to customer service requests and inquiries. I’ve hung around with Frank on numerous occasions and I’ve generally seen him glued to his BB or iPhone responding to customers at all hours of the day and night. Talk about a dedicated guy trying to making sure customers are taken care of. And now there is an entire team working with Frank at Comcast to assist with outreach and engagement. Frank has a lot of insights to share and I am thankful I was able to tear him away from his BB for a few minutes to capture his thoughts on video. 
“So let’s kick things off, there’s been a lot of talk about the ROI of social media. And in terms of engaging, it appears that there are companies are still debating on whether they should make the leap.”
Response (1:28 min.)
“Some CFO’s might be thinking that an investment in social media during hard-times might be seen as discretionary. Frank, what are your thoughts?”
Response (0:46 min.)
“What do see in the future for Comcast in terms of social media listening and engaging. Is this just the beginning and do you have other things you want to accomplish?”
Response (1:26 min.)
“What about those who say Comcast is a big company in the tech space with lots of customers and online conversation BUT my company only sees a handful of customers discussing online so why should I care about investing in listening and engaging?”
Response (0:42 min.)
“There has been the occasional article talking about a handful of people who question whether companies should be reaching out to consumers who talk about them online. There was an article that mentioned Comcast actually in their discussions. I know that vast majority appreciate the fact that companies make the effort to reach out and since these are public conversations many do it in order to be heard. What are your thoughts on this?”
Response (1:28 min.)
“So what are the results of being there, listening and engaging?”
Response (1:00 min.)
Frank is the Director of Digital Care at Comcast. He’s a great interactive speaker so if you can try to catch him at any number of social media conferences coming up this year. And he’s a heck of a nice guy just to hang out with too. Thanks for the interview Frank.
PS. I also featured on of Frank’s responses in a recent article on social media ROI I wrote for MarketingProfs. Check it out here.
What do you think of Frank’s advice?
* This interview is one of a number of interviews done with various leaders in social media at the MarketingProf’s Digital Mixer in Arizona at the end of October. The theme of the interviews was around why social media is a smart investment for any marketing, PR or community support professional, regardless of the economic climate. Thank you to all those who agreed to be interviewed. Sorry it took me so long to get the edits done
8 Responses to “Social Media Leader Series – Frank Eliason”
David Alston on January 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Thanks Ruth. I appreciate the feedback and the tact To be quite honest each one of these posts has taken me over 4-5 hours to put together in the format they are in now. That’s significantly more than the about 1.5 hours I would spend on an all text post. Video is tremendously time consuming. Shooting it, editing/cutting it, uploading it, etc… It is way more work than I thought it would be, trust me. I would love to have the skills and the time to edit it down into an even tighter package but alas I’m not there yet. Not many folks get a chance to hear Frank speak so I was hoping this would be easier. But I hear you, video is not much of a media snack as text is – was talking about this yesterday. I will continue to strive to be better – please be patient with me Thanks again for your thoughts.
Ruth Seeley on January 15th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I have no quibbles whatsoever with the quality of the video posted, David, that wasn’t meant to be a shot. I had the same quibble with the famous JetBlue videos a couple of years ago – too long – and I don’t have a short attention span, honest. Well – maybe I do for videos, just not for Victorian novels of 600 pages.
But this quibble is one I have with the social media press release as well – I’ve been asked to comment on a few of them and have refrained because my question would have been, if you can’t get a journalist to read a three-paragraph email, how on earth do you think you’re going to get one to watch a 7-minute amateur video and listen to a 30-minute podcast – oh and now the inclusion of all this multimedia content means you haven’t actually SAID anything in your release.
This and Anthony Trollope are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night. 
David Alston on January 15th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I hear you Ruth. I’ve often thought of the same thing. I guess I was trying to bust it up into 1-1.5 minute segments so that people could just watch only the ones they were interested in instead of the whole interview – if they only had so much time. Funny eh, video is the hardest to produce and maybe the least consumed. I’ve even thought of doing 20 second interviews in the future to see how that goes. Or maybe I could have the guests dress in Victorian romance garb. Hmmm, I might be onto something..
Indra Gardiner on January 15th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Thanks for the post David. Appreciate the questions, particularly about smaller companies that may think it doesn’t apply to them. We hear that objection a lot.
We met Frank at blogworld and he is, just as you say, a nice guy to hang out with. Good to hear him talking about the importance of social media.
David Alston on January 15th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Thanks for your comments Indra. Darn, I missed meeting you at Blogworld then. Well, perhaps at this year’s event then. Til then.
Rona Davis on February 23rd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
David,
For what it is worth, I thoroughly enjoyed the small video clips for the answers!! I found it very personal which was quite complimentary considering the topic of this interview!! I liked that they were in small bite sizes of one answer per question, if I had to stop and take care of something I would just pick up at the next question rather than pausing a long video and not remember what I just watched. Above all, I LOVED the personal effect, especially with Frank as the subject since his whole mantra right now is the personal touch!
Great job!
David Alston on February 23rd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Thank you Rona. That might be just the push I needed to get the rest of the dozen interviews done and out there. Or at least a couple more (so I don\’t get too ahead of myself)
Ruth Seeley on January 15th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I think Frank is a totally enlightened human being in terms of both his approach to customer service and to communications (a part of which is social media).
I am, however (trying to be tactful here), wondering about the format of this interview. As a fast reader, I’m not willing to watch all these video clips to find out what Frank had to say. Why’d you choose this format, rather than writing a more traditional post and further editing all the video down into just sound bites/highlights, having it run about 1:30?