Happy Monday! This coffee break is dedicated to those companies who always put the client first!
Tag: Marketing 2.0 (Page 3 of 15)
I recently participated in a webinar with some top executives from SAP, Chubb Insurance, CitiMortgage and nonprofit Human Rights Campaign along with the Editor-in-Chief of Target Marketing Magazine, Thorin McGee.
We got together at the Union Club in NYC to discuss some of the questions about managing multichannel marketing in today’s business environment — utilizing the latest social tools and techniques, addressing new audiences such as Generation C and millenials, and how to stay ‘connected’ both internally and externally.
We’re taking the topic further this week in a FREE webinar sponsored by Target Marketing, where we’ll explore more on this topic, including testing new channels and using metrics to determine success. I hope you’re able to join me for this free webinar on Wednesday, December 4, starting at 2:00 pm ET.
Register NOW and don’t miss “The Secret to Managing Multichannel Marketing”. Bring your own questions to the webinar .Click here to register!
Communities are essential for Social Businesses. All communities go through a community maturity model.
1. Potential: Planning phase of maturity. It typically involves setting up the community elements required for long term success such as roles and responsibilities, strategy, mission, membership planning and activities.
2. Formation of the community. Having a great community manager is a key factor of success. During the formation, the initial members and influencers
3. Building and Evolving. The community builds and evolves as it forms. The best communities stick to their goals but evolve in the way they reach them. Typically building and evolving involves driving traffic to community and increasing member participation. The topic of content curation is also one that grows and questions of contribution of content and consumption is reviewed. The community may review how to improve quality of content and how to train the leaders.
4. Operationalization. A community that has made it to this stage, has begun to do analysis adn use the insight to drive to its strategic objectives. Typically, the metrics are around Collaboration, Consumption, and Contribution. Opportunities, Risks and learning are then applied. This is the time to develop detailed action plan to achieve goals, maintain and monitor activity plan and content strategy, identify potential content gaps to feed to harvesting plans
and to train community members on social.
5. Adaptive. This final phase is where the community now takes on the personality of the members. It enables the community manager to drive the goals to the next level.
At IBM, we do Health Checks for our communities.
These health checks do the following:
- Ensure the communities have the design for success
- Clearly defined strategy and active plans
- Produce Healthy communities
–High volume of collaboration, contribution and consumption
–Connecting people to experts and people to quality strategy content
–Ensure Community roles and responsibilities are clearly defined
–Facilitate business benefits that lead to important organizational value
- Utilize the Brokerage Service to ensure long term vitality and maturity of the community
–Consistently high participation, collaboration and contribution and consumption from the community members
Holiday season is upon us! Black Friday is one week away. I am already planning my Thanksgiving dinner, my Christmas cards and caroling, and New Year’s Plans!
So let’s start thinking about this holiday season!
Did you know that people use social differently during the holiday weeks?
They increase their searches on social networks around products and potential gifts, recipes, and fun. This typically occurs starting now through early January. Their use of mobile goes up using the mobile device to show online and compare when they go into the store.
And don’t discount Twitter it plays such a role! So get ready!!!
You have to watch this one! This behavior way of blending recommendations will have a major impact on the market!
This infographic is courtesy of Masters in finance and researched by Merrill Cook.
Happy Monday and the week of Halloween!
Today, we are going to talk about cyber-attacks and the best practices to try to avoid them. One of the top vulnerabilities is trust through social networking!
Spend time on your influencers!
I think this is one of the best social media tips I ever discovered.
First, a definition of an nfluencer. An influencer is someone who influences the rest of the clients and potential clients online and offline, usually about 15% to 20% of your followers or fans!
I discovered this concept in a book by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping, The 4-1-1 (for your informtion!) is a way to show value and care to your social influencers.
This concept says that if you communicate 6 things socially, 4 of those 6, or 67% should be showcasing content from your influencers. The other items you should be showcasing are your Point of View or Subject Matter Expertise . The other could be something that is more sales oriented.
Complements of Joe Pulizzi here is a great visual of what this concept is!
I overheard today someone discussing not wanting to live their life in a “fishbowl”. And then I thought about our social world. We actually do everything in a Digital Fishbowl. The new generation (we call them generation C – connected and in control!) grew up this way and so it feels natural.
But what really are the benefits and the concerns to this new world?
Benefits:
- Sharing of information. Social networking enables sharing helpful information. Did you know that 52% of bloggers are parents who are seeking information to help their family in some way. And there are social support groups for illnesses, and technical support. I love this aspect about sharing in the fishbowl!
- Think global act Social. Social networking allows us the ability to communicate globally. I loved the fact that over 500 friends around the world supported me in my broken leg through Facebook, and twitter. For businesses, this implies that the global view can be learned.
- Social is the ultimate personality test. The digital fishbowl allows us to discover through social analytics the intrinsic traits that include what motivates you, what you believe, and your fundamental needs. Computers can derive people’s traits from linguistic footprints. That hasn’t been widely applicable before, because where do you get those linguistic footprints? Now, you can do that with social media and digital communications we have the big data we need!
- Efficiency. The digital fishbowl enables us to be more efficient. For businesses, they can crowdsource their next product or strategy. Sales can reach more contacts. Video makes our visits more social and less time consuming.
Some Cons:
- Lack of personal touch. The digital fishbowl can be addicting and many I know communicate now mostly through text, tweets, and facebook. You lose something in doing that.
- Anything that you do can leak out. And maybe before you want it to! There is a risk to being social ! (I think the risk of not being social is greater however!)
- You cannot keep negativity at bay — and digital amplifies it! We see this in schools with cyberbullying and even with some companies. The biggest question that I get asked by small companies is how do I handled untrue remarks.
What do you think? Do you like living in a digital fishbowl?
Customer experience is a key differentiator for businesses. In the age of social, the experience is even more important.
From some research this weekend around the “experience” area, here are some of the tips I find most helpful in this area.
Top 5 Tips for a Better Social Customer Experience;
- Post relevant content. This technique pulls relevant people to your area. Much like a retailer would leverage a storefront, or product, or specials to get people into the store.
- Use big data to understand your clients needs. I believe the combination of big data and social is a game changer. Using the social conversations that exists, you can learn how to better meet the needs of our clients.
- Be Consistent. Your company will be on a number of social sites, and probably your own website. Consistency in multichannel is crucial. The new Generation C demands it! Be Consistent in brand message and content and service. . Consistency drives trust. Trust drivers loyalty!
- Help your clients. Provide them with social tools to help them decide on your products from the experience. Think about recommendations from others. There is a new type of purchasing recommendation. Instead of behavior driven – if you buy this, buy that because others did this, leverage the power that social brings: “You share these attributes with the people who read this. You might want to take a look at it.”. Gamification and other tools in the social world can increase your customer experience.
- Use predictive analysis to improve both current and future interactions. Anticipating your clients needs keeps them in your camp longer.