Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 30: Home Depot FTW

When I received the call from my podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, late in the day last Thursday, I knew something was up. Jennifer is a pro at picking her communication channels and she and I normally communicate via direct message on Twitter. Occasionally we escalate to e-mail but we rarely ever talk on the phone save for our post-Quick-n-Dirty podcast calls where we do a post-mortem of the show.

My instincts were right and Jennifer's call was to let me know that she might not be able to do the show Thursday due to a tidal wave of work that landed on her desk. Fortunately, Jennifer and I plan for these things and I knew immediately to go into backup plan mode. Within 20 minutes of her call, I had my good friend and former colleague, Rachel Happe, on the hook (HT to Jim Storer for the assist). And while I missed the usual chemistry I've developed with Jennifer over the course of 30 shows, Rachel was a pro and helped keep the show running smoothly (even spending a healthy dose of time in the chat room engaging our regulars).

As always, you can hear an audio archive of last week's show (along with all our other archives) here.

Our social network/app of the week was CauseWorld. I think Rachel summed it up best when she said that it was like FourSquare but for social good. That about says it all. I've downloaded the app on my iPhone and intend to play around with it a bit (what's better than checking in to venues while earning "karma" points that can be translated into real dollars that help causes like victims of the Haiti earthquake). There's a good write up of the service over on TechCrunch.

Next up was our featured guest, Sarah Molinari of Home Depot. Sarah is actually the person that Tweets out of the Home Depot Twitter account so if you've ever asked Home Depot a question, chances are you've talked to Sarah. During our conversation, the ever so graceful Ms. Molinari talked about Home Depot's approach to engaging customers. She was also willing to talk about how they "listened" and admitted that they didn't pay as much attention to competitors' or industry keywords as maybe they could but only because they were so heads down focusing on all the existing customer conversations about Home Depot. We even got to talk about Home Depot's Nascar race team [link updated on 2/2 - thanks Sarah!] on Twitter -- a topic that Sarah was very well versed in. All in all, she was an absolute joy to have on the show.

Our "Tweet" of the week was none other than Mr. CC Chapman. If you don't know CC, there are a few things you'll quickly find out about him 1) he's a great blogger and podcaster (focused on social media AND daddy blogging) and 2) he's a teddy bear of a guy. So helpful and humble. In Rachel's and my opinion, he is a MUST follow.

Last but not least came our point / counterpoint about tactical vs. strategic community management. Rachel and I did less debating since we haven't spent a lot of time taking sides on issues but spent more time outlining the benefits of the different approaches one could take when it came to community management. Rachel in particular made some excellent points on the strategic side so it's worth a listen (check out last 5-6 minutes of the show).

I'm looking forward to getting back to business with Jennifer next week. Details about the show will be on the Quick-n-Dirty site.