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Engagement

A swing and a miss.

March 2, 2007

Posted by leah.jones

Oh dear sweet Chicago Transit Authority... You tried. I give you that, you tried, but it was a swing and a miss. In Chicago, the CTA is the group that runs public transportation. And a couple years ago they took a big step into the community when the chairwoman Carole Brown started blogging.

That isn't the swing and a miss, that has actually been quite successful. People are reading and commenting--each post has 90-200 comments. CTA riders finally feel like they have a way to interact with the PERSON in charge. Not a phone tree, not an email that disappears, but a public forum to ask questions.

What I'm referring to is a comment I got on my blog last night. Each year the CTA brings us the Santa Express. A train decked out with Christmas lights, silly North Pole advertising, CTA employees dressed like elves and one flatbed car with Santa riding in it. Make no mistake, this isn't a Holiday Train, this is a Christmas train.

I get stuck on it every year and find it very awkward. I don't really do Christmas and I tend to pan the experience on my blog. Yesterday someone from the CTA got to the place on the to do list that said, "Find blogs about Santa Train and leave the following comment: Thank you for enjoying our train. Please check for next years Holiday Train schedules at www.transitchicago.com. They will start showing sometime by the middle of November./ Thank You & HO-HO-HO. PS. Check youtube.com for cta holiday train videos. "

Apparently nobody told this person to read the posts first. Before copy/paste/repeat, READ THE BLOG and see if they enjoyed the experience of being on the train. I know it is tempting to copy/paste, copy/paste, copy/paste and sometimes for proper messaging certain parts of an email need to be the same across the board.

But please, please, please if you have been authorized to make comments for your company or for your client, READ THE BLOG FIRST. Please.

And not related to the comment on a post that wasn't pro-Santa, if you are going to make a MySpace page for your brand, make sure it is consistent with your message. The CTA Santa has a page that doesn't exactly scream Christmas.

UPDATE: The CTA has redone the CTA Santa MySpace page and it is much more on target. Well done!

posted by leah.jones

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