Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
Seth Godin has it exactly right when he asks in a recent blog post, “…what if you define ‘best customer’ as the person who brings you new customers through frequent referrals, and who sticks with you through thick and thin?”
In other words, what if we define “best customer” as “strongest Brand Advocate”? How would that change the way we think about and treat our Brand Advocates?
The really great thing about social media is this: it’s faster and easier than ever to ignore, alienate and piss off a customer!
Case in point. As quick background, I joined Weight Watchers 9 days ago (not that I’m counting). It’s not a brand I ever thought I would associate with, but, well, that Jennifer Hudson TV commercial sucked me in, to tell you the truth. I know how to lose weight (lots of experience), but counting calories has gotten tedious so I thought maybe there’s something to this whole “points” thing.
As much as we might not want to admit it, something negative about our brand will be said sometime by someone in a social network. It might be due to a change, or something out of the brand’s control or only one little misstep in many months, but chances are, that unfortunate experience will be shared. Such is the nature of information-sharing through social networks.
But it’s that same nature of social media that also gives us a powerful antidote to negative commentary – ENGAGEMENT.
We might be tempted to cover any negative feedback with a huge push of positive messaging, stating and re-stating how wonderful our products and services really are. This attempt at damage-control, however, does little if anything to protect our brand reputation. Whether or not our products and services are usually terrific doesn’t matter to the person who had a different experience with our brand, nor to those closest in their social network. What matters to them is the one unsatisfying experience they had.
This is where engagement becomes vital. We can stay disengaged and pretend nothing negative was said, but ignoring those comments won’t keep them from spreading quickly through various social networks. If we choose instead to engage with the consumer(s) making those comments, we have a huge opportunity to help positively change the perception of our brand.
All of you wonderful marketers, public relations, advertising and communications folks out there who have a lock on and already have a dialed in plan for social networking and the impact it will have on your brand and/or business need to read no further. For the rest of you, I suggest you may want to learn what a wikibrand is.
After beginning the book with a short history of on brands and the phases of brand development since 1860, co-authors Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover compare the period of transition to social we are now currently in, to the Mad Men period of transition from radio/print to television.
But the power to be gained by transitioning to a wikibrand mindset really comes from recognizing and developing a better understanding of, then leading your organization across the Marketing Divide (see below graphic). Even more importantly, the book explores how marketers, through leading the migration across this divide to a social future, have the opportunity to again elevate the marketing function to it’s rightful place leading the parade of an engaged and dynamically connected company and it’s community of customers.
Not sure if this is another Mad men reference, but the authors also lay out and detail their FLIRT concept which represents Focus, Language and content, Incentives, motivation and outreach, Rules and rituals and lastly Tools and platforms. This represents the construct Moffitt and Dover recommend to build out a wikibrand and I will leave it to the authors to further convey as they explain fully in the book.
Once you’ve mastered the concepts around flirting, it’s time to get your wikibrand show on the road with what they describe as “Incubating Your Wikibrand Community” including sharing insightful methods for community development, internalization, management and of course measurement & metrics.
Wrapping up, in his Foreword to the book, “Reinvention of the Brand” Don Tapscott suggests this may be a seminal work and I tend to agree. I say this because too many marketers out there are still treating social as an oddity and handling it with their kid gloves. If Wikibrands does nothing else(and it does), it should through the logical analysis and evolutionary brand progression provided, lead marketers still offside with social to the realization that it is far from an oddity, but rather a portal to our emerging future.
Jeff Ashcroft
Full disclosure: For purposes of transparency, we did receive a review copy of the Wikibrands book.
One word that seems to be getting more attention with every new Twitter and Facebook account that’s added.
What does it mean, is it important, how do you measure it and which tools and methods best reflect this ephemeral new elixir? The Social CMO Crew has now been hard at it for just over a year generating more than 300 posts and I thought this would be a great opportunity to take a retrospective look through these focusing on this theme of influence.
In looking at all the blogs we’ve created, there are four words that resonate and help us to better frame this discussion, and these are Trust, Relationships, Social Capital and of course… Influence.
Social media is hot, hot, hot, and it can be tempting to just dive in and ride the social media wave without any specific plan. That’s a great way to guarantee misjudging the swell and getting tossed around underneath the wave. That’s what social media marketing without strategic intent will get you– possibly a few lucky “rides” for your brand messaging, but also a predominance of mis-steps and wasted time and effort.
Now that more businesses are getting on the social media marketing bandwagon, it’s no longer enough to just include a generic “use social media for marketing” line item in your brand growth strategy. You need strategic intent. Gary Hamel defines strategic intent as “An ambitious and compelling dream which provides emotional and intellectual energy for the company and defines the journey to the future.”
Do you want your social media efforts to lead to high-quality leads and recognition from your industry? While both of these goals can be reached, many marketers attempt to accomplish too much at once. They may use only 1 social media profile to try to bring leads to their websites and share the latest industry trends with their peers.
This approach can work if your customers are also your peers and would be interested in both your thought leadership and your products. However, if your customers are from other sectors, you may need to consider another strategy. When your social media messages speak to different audiences, you’ll have a hard time engaging anybody. For example, a potential customer from the retail sector may see your blog posts about the future of the software industry and assume that your content is not relevant.
It’s becoming more and more clear that women’s online communities are the true powerhouses of trust.
Social networks have their place, but it’s the online communities that women trust the most for brand and product referrals.
New research not only backs up that claim, but hits it out of the park.
This may be a spectacularly unpopular opinion. But it is just that, one opinion. I mean no offense to those of you who anxiously await your latest Klout score, I really don’t. That’s your personal choice, and I respect that. I just want to express why, for me personally, none of this is about increasing my Klout score. I’m not even signed up for Klout and unless someone can convince me that it’s essential to my further professional development, I intend to keep it that way.
The best, most candid article I have seen on the topic of Klout and other influence measurement tools lately is this: Twitalyzer and Klout. In it, Eric Peterson says:
“I personally think that any company or individual who is making a hiring or contracting decision based on our data, Klout scores, or any number is making a huge mistake! No disrespect to Klout, or any of the other measurement services out there, but there is no calculation that tells you nearly enough about an individual to allow you to make a buying, hiring, or any other kind of personal decision. At the point where we are making personal decisions based on a single number — one that even in a transparent system like ours people still don’t take the time to understand completely — our humanity has been lost and, in my humble opinion, we are better off turning the damn machines off and calling it a day.”
Amen, Eric.
Your content is the most important aspect of your blog. But, how you deliver and present your blog posts often dictate whether a note a post will get read.
There are plenty of blogs out there just begging for attention, but they lose the reader with lengthy diatribes or perhaps they don’t even attract readers at all. Maybe that blogger is you.
Not to worry. We’ve pulled together five simple tips to help you take that killer content of yours and build an awesome blog post that’s more likely to be read and shared.
Let’s get started, shall we?