The Voice of the Customer… Are You Listening?

 

 

With all the noise online today, people are tuning out things like advertisements and promotions from brands. When considering a product or service, what’s more important to them are the thoughts and opinions of their friends—especially in social media.  Reviews have become the first go-to resource for most people searching for something online these days, so brands need to pay attention to this trend.

For instance, when you’re looking at books to read on Amazon, don’t you check out the reviews to see what others thought about the book before you hit the “Add to Cart” button? It’s human nature to seek out the opinions of others who have tried something—from the books we read to the music we listen to—and especially big-ticket purchases.

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MY TOP TEN REALIZED BENEFITS OF TWITTER ~via @Sbarro CMO @SarahMcAloon

Guest post by Sarah McAloon… originally published at Full Impact Marketing

 

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter recently, both my personal use of it and for the brand I work on @sbarro.  For the last year I’ve been on a Twitter deep-dive and I’d say I’m an intermediate with ~900 followers.

I wanted to write this blog to help other executives realize the opportunities that I have found in Twitter, for themselves and for their brands.  If you know anyone who can benefit from Twitter please feel free to forward.

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Ted Rubin shares, with @newscomauHQ’s @ClaireRPorter, the top 10 things businesses are getting wrong on social media

Using social media to broadcast a campaign or initiative isn’t social media, says Ted Rubin.

BUSINESSES should stop tweeting so much and shut up and listen to what their followers are saying about their brands on social media, according to Ted Rubin, Chief Marketing Officer of social media company Collective Bias.

And he would know. Of all the CMOs in the world, Ted has the most Twitter followers.

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Most People are “Lurkers” in Social Media…

HEART-LURKER

 

 

 

 

 

Most people are “lurkers” in social media. They are consuming your content but not responding. You are still building a relationship with these people, and they “do” participate… it is just vicariously via those who do engage and interact.

There are many lurkers, searchers and readers who may never interact, or even post, but still have a great deal of value.

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Why Twitter is My Favorite Social Platform

 

 

Twitter gives you a view into what anyone and everyone is talking about, the ability to easily build a following, and immediacy.

I believe Twitter is a tool that leads to other forms of social sharing. I consider Twitter a place to lay the groundwork where other people pick up things.

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The Power of Community in Social Media ~via @GenFabulous

by  on July 11, 2013 in Coffee with ChloeGenFabTVSocial Media – VIDEO interview below

Last year at BlogHer I had the chance to meet Ted Rubin, co-author of Return on Relationship, in person, but didn’t take it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTm5jhlYhTs&feature=player_embedded

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Badgeville Partners with Yammer to Enhance Employee Performance and Engagement

Badgeville, the gold standard for gamification, today announced a key integration that builds on its partnership with Yammer, the leading provider of enterprise social networks. With this integration, companies can enhance employee performance by leveraging Badgeville to reward high-value user behaviors across the enterprise, and showcase them in the Yammer Ticker, a real-time activity stream.

“We are committed to partnering with first-class business applications to create a powerful social layer across the enterprise, increasing visibility and insights in every corner of an organization,” said An Le, VP of Business Development, Yammer. “Badgeville’s behavior platform helps us deliver on that vision by rewarding employee performance and pulling those key milestones into Yammer where the whole company can discover them.”

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If You Build It, The Leads Will Come

It’s quickly becoming the mantra of interactive strategists: lead or be led. You either lead your online community, or they will lead you. There’s no stopping the swell of communal opinion generation that has become the hallmark of our society’s online engagement.

The most die-hard critics of social media are beginning to utter: If you cant beat them, join them. But is simply joining the online community enough for a business to discover the elusive Return on Investment from social media activities? Many practitioners call this the catch 22 of the medium: overtly selling in social networks is counter-community and quickly kills your following; not selling is counter-intuitive to most business culture.

So if selling is counter-intuitive to community-building where do the leads come from? My philosophy has always been to let the leads find me! Its quite ingenious if I do say so myself! Why sell when, if done right, social media will have people lining up to ask for my service? Sound good? It is, but its not easy to achieve.

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Using Twitter for Marketing and PR: Do the Pros Practice What They Preach?

It seems that everyone claims to be a Twitter expert these days. Of course, most are not. But several of the real Twitter pros I know—including those who have written books about using Twitter as an effective marketing and public relations instrument—have figured out how to best leverage the 140-character microblogging tool to promote themselves, their books, their firms, and their clients. And some of them actually follow their own advice!

How Smart Marketing Book Authors Use Twitter

For example, Mark Schaefer of Schaefer Marketing Solutions is the author of the book The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time. He and his firm provide affordable outsourced marketing support to address both short-term sales opportunities and long-term strategic renewal.

Mark uses Twitter to help deliver on that promise for a number of his blue-chip clients, including Nestle, AARP, Anheuser-Busch, Coldwell Banker, Scripps Networks, Keystone Foods, and the U.K. government. He also very effectively promotes himself and his book on Twitter as part of his own marketing, branding, and relationship-development strategy.

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