Month: January 2011

The Social Compass is the GPS for the Adaptive Business

Over the years, I’ve written extensively about the need to extend opportunities in social media beyond marketing and customer service to set the stage for the social business. I believe that the impact lies beyond the socialization of business; it introduces us to a genre of an adaptive business, an entity that can earn relevance now and over time by listening, engaging, and learning.

In October 2009, I worked with JESS3 to visualize corporate transparency and authenticity for the release of Engage.  In the process, I realized that those two words, transparent and authentic, didn’t carry tangible business value to leaders and decision makers.

Please, before you think about engaging in social media, I need you to do two things…be transparent and authentic in all you do.

Got it? Good.

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The Fallacy of Social Media Reciprocation

You are not entitled to attention.

You are not entitled to a follow-back on Twitter simply because you follow someone. You are not entitled to blog subscribers or comments simply because you publish stuff. You are not entitled to clicks to your junk or signups for your newsletter or any thing of the sort.

In fact, you are not entitled to anything.

The web is not a democracy, nor is this an egalitarian society. Giving of attention when it’s such a precious commodity is not something to be done in some empty gesture of validation, and as the attention giver, I and only I will decide how I’ll approach my connections online. My reasons aren’t yours, nor should they be. You don’t decide the value in paying attention to you, I do. This black-white, good-bad, hard-and-fast-rules of engagement stuff is ridiculous at best, and pathetic at worst.

If you honestly need someone to follow you or friend you on a social network to find self worth or acceptance, it’s really time to re-evaluate your priorities.

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Step aside, Aspiration… INSPIRATION is the way to go

Forget Aspiration in the years ahead… the new challenge is to give customers INSPIRATION for your brands and products.

I’m not suggesting we throw away our sales and marketing goals (aspirations), just that we give more value to the concept of INSPIRING our customers as a valid marketing tactic.

If your organization’s internal focus is on easily-measurable metrics, that’s the message that will leak out to your customers – that each customer is just another number toward your goals.  If your focus is instead on INSPIRING your customers, they will feel that difference and want to engage with your brand and your products.

I state this as a challenge because it is not easy to inspire someone, especially when the digital atmosphere is overloaded with competing messages now that brands can so easily share their messages through social media.  Your brand needs differentiators now more than ever, but if you can INSPIRE your customers, you will get – and keep – their attention.

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Journalism, entrepreneurialism and stories

I’ve just come out of the news:rewired conference about the future of journalism both buzzing and confused.

Why confused? Well, how many of these people in any way love what they do? From the tone and energy of most of the speakers you’d have thought the arctic chill had come early. Maybe they were going for ‘calm and authoritative’. It mostly came across as ‘bored to be here, bored to be talking about this and bored by you.’ Fair enough, if you’re trotting out generic stuff about two-way connections with readers. But some of the other stuff was actually quite interesting. It’s amazing how persistently unfashionable enthusiasm is in the UK.

Why buzzing? Well, partly thanks to Mary Beth Christie from FT.com who, on the topic of monetising online media, called for a ban on the term ‘paywall‘. Shopkeepers do not erect a paywall for us to buy milk. Bus drivers do not erect a paywall that we bang against before bleeping our Oysters. We pay for content, just like we pay for bread: we don’t demolish democracy to get there.

But mainly I’m buzzing thanks to freelance interactive producer Philip Trippenbach’s talk on stories vs interactivity. Stories have traditionally been the lifeblood of the media, but situations or issues that are complex, systemic, non personalised, and non localised are actually stifled by the distortion and personalisation of narrative – what they need is interactivity. Events need stories, systems need interactivity.

From Trippenbach’s blog summary of his speech

Class is one of the most influential systems in the world, and Trippenbach is currently producing Britain’s Real Class System for the BBC. This will take the form a nationwide interactive survey that then becomes interactive visualisation, so viewers can mashup, personalise – yes, create stories – from the rich wealth of data. This is definitely a man who loves what he does, and does it well.

I’m a story fetishist, and this transformed the way I see stories, interactivity, and the media. Dude.

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Fences make good neighbors

Fences make good neighbors — even in the social media world. 

 Too many brands assume that the most effective way to market in this digital age is to use social media to post and tweet as many marketing messages as possible to the widest range of potential consumers across the greatest number of social networks.  Spread the word to anyone and everyone, and hope someone believes enough in your message to create a connection and become an advocate influencer for your brand.  

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Filling the Big Content Gap

In social strategy there is always something missing and something to improve. But there’s one area where I see a big gap.

First, the good news. Brands are starting to ‘listen’ to what people are saying. There are great listening and social media management platforms available, such as Spredfast (plug disclosure…I’m an advisor). However, it’s typically a few people inside the company that are paying attention to user generated content. There’s still a long way to go to make this listening penetrate the depths of an organization to achieve what I call “Customer Oxygen”.

Then, there’s the analytics. There are a lot of ways to analyze the data of what people are saying. Many solutions are out there. The gap here is in making the analysis actionable and operational.

But then, once the listening and analysis is going, brands have the biggest challenge with content. What do they say? How do they say it? They have difficulty finding their ‘social voice’, and figuring out what to say where.
This is the big content gap.

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Five Tips to Keep Your Head Above Water with Social Media

There are so many different avenues when it comes to social media, and for someone just getting her feet wet, it can really seem daunting.  That’s when you call on an expert, like Laura Click of Blue Kite Marketing, who can bring it all down to size.  If you haven’t dipped your toes in the social media waters, this guest post will give you the courage and steps you need.  Thanks, Laura!

Facebook. Twitter, YouTube. LinkedIn. Oh my! It’s certainly enough to make your head spin. Although social media offers considerable value to small businesses, it can be challenging to make sense of it all – especially while juggling everything it takes to run a successful business.

It can be very easy to get overwhelmed with social media even before you dive in. And, once you do, it can quickly consume your time and prevent you from doing the other necessary tasks to build your build your business.

So, how do you make sense of it all and keep your head above water? Although there’s not one simple answer, there are steps you can take to make sure social media doesn’t get the best of you.

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Does your product pass Social QC?

Advocates are a whole new type of quality control: social quality control.  

If your product is fantastic, when identified and energized, your Advocates will spread the word like wildfire. Social networks and traditional word-of-mouth will start buzzing with your product, and sales will reflect your Advocates’ delight.

But your advocates won’t try to get someone to buy your sub-par product, and they certainly won’t apologize for you or your product.  Don’t try to make your Advocates do that work for you, because they won’t…and they shouldn’t have to.

The sale starts with your product, not your Advocates; your Advocates are simply the reward you get for ensuring your product is and does everything you promised it would (if not more!).  Your strongest relationships are built on trust – trust that your brand is committed to producing quality products and services – and if you don’t deliver that top-notch product, that essential trust is quickly lost.  Along with the sale. 

You might be tempted to use social media to over-highlight the best parts of your product in the hopes that the disappointing parts won’t be noticed.  But even the best social media relationships can’t perform magic… they won’t make up for a less-than-great product.

However, the good news is that when your product is strong and does carry through on your brand promises, advocates, through their social media relationships, can skyrocket your product sales.  Advocates engage, word gets out, and sales happen.  As Seth Godin said in his recent blog post, (Consider the category of ‘without apology’) “People will go out of their way to buy and recommend products that don’t require an apology.”   They will go out of their way for you.  Because they want to… because your product is what it is supposed to be and has passed Social QC.

Don’t waste your time trying to hide your product flaws.  Invest your time in making a flawless product, and give your Advocates something to get excited about!

Ted Rubin

If your product is fantastic, when identified and energized your Advocates will spread the word like wildfire.

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

The surgery lasted an hour and a half longer than we expected, but they called and warned us from the operating room.  When Dr. Conter came out to explain what happened (during what was supposed to be a routine hernia repair surgery), we got answers to a question I asked several doctors last fall, following the removal of my husband’s cancerous kidney: “there seem to be some digestive issues; what might those be?”  Our surgeon found the bowel intertwined with a larger than anticipated four-pocketed hernia.  After unraveling the mess, he removed six inches of the upper bowel that couldn’t be saved, put things back where they belonged, and closed him up.  Dr. Conter remarked how amazed he was that Cliff hadn’t had a bowel obstruction, hadn’t had significant pain, and could process food at all.  We’re most grateful for the skill of this surgeon, his staff, and the fifth floor nurses at Lancaster Regional Hospital.

So, I’ve been (over)thinking, what questions might have the caught the attention of those two doctors so that this situation could have been better diagnosed?  This story could easily have had a much more unpleasant result. 

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Embracing Social Change in 2011

It seems predictive posts are all the rage right now so in my own mad style, I’ve taken a look at the tea leaves in order to share some “Sensei-riffic” (trademarking in the works) predictions for marketing, social, and the relationship between customers and brands. So rather than give you the usual obvious predictions, I am going to take a step towards the ledge and peer into the darkness. The signs I see  herald tremendous change that is just off the radar. 

So sit back, relax, and prepare to have your liberal marketing senses offended while enjoying or becoming outraged at this rum-nog fueled post! Cheers! 

Prediction 1: Social CRM will be a huge failure. 

Why? Because you cannot quantify an emotional human relationship no matter how hard you try. The quest to do so has begun anew with sCRM. To be clear its predecessor CRM is about numbers, not people. What other system does that to people? Right! The prison system! 

The same people who created CRM are now pushing sCRM. Same shit, different steaming pile. CRM completely dehumanized the customer by reducing the relationship to math. Next it is horribly lop-sided designed to deliver insight into how to get more money from a customer, not how to build a better, mutually beneficial relationship. Does it actually benefit the customer in any way? 

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