best

How should you treat your best customers?

Here’s what most businesses do with their best customers: They take the money.

The biggest fan of that Broadway show, the one who comes a lot and sits up front? She’s paying three times what the person just three rows back paid.

That loyal Verizon customer, the one who hasn’t traded in his phone and has a contract for six years running? He’s generating far more profit than the guy who switches every time a contract expires and a better offer comes along.

Or consider the loyal customer of a local business. The business chooses to offer new customers a coupon for half off—but makes him pay full price…

If you define “best customer” as the customer who pays you the most, then I guess it’s not surprising that the reflex instinct is to charge them more. After all, they’re happy to pay.

But 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? That customer, I think, is worth far more than what she might pay you in any one transaction. In fact, if you think of that customer as your best marketer instead, it might change everything.

Seth Godin

Introducing #Link4Lunch ~ A New Way of Sharing!

Always thinking about methods of encouraging and improving the productive sharing of quality information on Twitter, this week I have come up with the #Link4Lunch Hashtag.

It seems that many folks around the world are now are foregoing reading a paper at lunch and instead are looking at what others are posting on Twitter on a relatively random basis while scarfing down their sandwich or tofu & avocado salad.

So the concept is quite simple and aims to improve this user experience of casual lunchtime Twitterowsing through utilizing #Link4Lunch. What I am suggesting is that each tweep interested in participating in #Link4Lunch select what they think is the BEST and MOST INTERESTING link they have come across in the last 24 hours and post it between the hours of 12:00 noon and 1:00 pm using the hashtag #Link4Lunch.

I would suggest that each person only select and tweet one link each day and ensure that it is of GREAT quality to be their #Link4Lunch tweet. And honestly if you don’t have something you think is a great post, article, pic, comic, news story or something else then DON’T tweet a #Link4Lunch that day.

So here was the very first #Link4Lunch tweet I made today at 12:20pm and I plan to do the same everyday with the BEST link I find to share with all of you in the Twittersphere who follow @TheSocialCMO

To make it easy to follow everyone’s #Link4Lunch contribution each day I have already established a page on WhatTheHashtag http://wthashtag.com/link4lunch so that you can easily watch the #Link4Lunch stream without getting any mustard on you!

So I hope you all will give #Link4Lunch a go tomorrow between 12:00 noon & 1:00pm and we’ll all see where this one goes!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

9 Ways to Breathe Life Into Your Blog

grow

I’m not much of a numbers hound.

I don’t pore over my stats with a fine tooth comb, I don’t obsess about unfollows or subscriber numbers or any of that stuff. In fact, I don’t even have that nifty little widget here to tell you how many people subscribe – even though I understand the benefits of social proof – simply because it’s never been that important to me.

So it’s a bit contradictory for me to say that I’m proud to have recently crested 10,000 subscribers for this blog in the two years I’ve been musing here. It’s been an amazing adventure, and one I intend to evolve, shape, and carry forward for a while to come. I thank each and every one of you for making this place the rewarding adventure it’s been.

Read more