Pickle Jar Communications

Hello my dear readers. Apologies for the little gap in posting to this blog over the past couple of weeks. Having signed off on a number of successful projects towards the end of August, I took two weeks out to spend a little time in Mexico. Boy could we learn a lot from the Mexican’s in this country about customer service. And knowing the power of new media and how people can and will use it to say bad things about hotels, etc, I couldn’t wait to get back to right some of the wrongs that I had read on Trip Advisor about our hotel.

One of the most striking things for me from the holiday though (with the exception of releasing newly hatched turtles into the sea, swimming with sea lions, scuba diving during a storm at night, bathing in the warm Pacific … sorry, I digress) was the way in which new and, particularly, social media changes the way that we behave on holiday. We announced our safe arrival with text messages back home, I ‘tweeted’ (just to make the folks in grey, rainy England envious of course) on the blackberry from the beach or out at sea, and instead of writing a good old fashioned postcard we created a PowerPoint presentation with some of the photos (thank goodness for digital cameras and small laptops) with the aim of sharing it with everyone via SlideShare. SlideShare failed me on this occassion, so instead I uploaded a pile of photos onto facebook using the hotel’s wifi connection and emailed everyone the link. So, for those thinking that I’m sad for taking my blackberry and laptop on vacation with me, please don’t – it was great to be able to share with my friends and family the wonderful time I was having. Isn’t social media great?