BIZTECHBUZZ in the world of social, cognitive, IoT and startups

Tag: social media (Page 7 of 25)

Digital Tip of the Week – Customize the URL of your LinkedIn public profile

A customized URL will make your profile look more professional and easier to share with your contacts. The default LinkedIn URL for personal profiles has a lot of number at the end. You can use your own name and surname (if they have not already been taken) and make it look nicer. To do so, go to the editing options of your profile and click on Customize your public profile URL down on the right-hand side.

Mark Schaefer: building influence is not about buillding campaigns!

Mark Fidelman from Forbes caught up with Mark Schaefer (Author, Blogging Consultant) as part of our influencer program at SXSW. What did the two talk about? Influence! Mark Schaefer was one of the first to discuss this evolving space in his book Return On Influence. As he points out, as marketers and brands try to get their messages through, it is becoming increasingly important to turn to the most authentic advocates.

But rather than just thinking of building campaigns, you need to need to think of building relationships and think long term!

Follow Mark Schaefer on the wonderful ‘Grow’ blog!

Continuous Customer Engagement!

I was reading last night about engagement. In my book “Get Bold” we defined engagement as the emotional connection with your client or employee, usually created by exceptional experiences that are integrated, interactive, and identifying.

A Social Business connects people to expertise. It connects individuals whether customers, partners, or employees as networks of people to generate new sources of innovation, foster creativity, and establish greater reach and exposure to new business opportunities. It establishes a foundational level of trust across these business networks and thus a willingness to openly share information, developing a deeper sense of loyalty among customers and employees. It empowers these networks with the collaborative, gaming, and analytical tools needed to engage each other and creatively solve business challenges.

engagement contin

Enagement is a great goal but Continuous Customer Engagement is the next turn of the crank.  It is about systematically interpreting and evolving a comprehensive understanding of an individual in order to engage that individual in a productive manner in any brand interaction.

The word “productive” is used very intentionally. As marketers extend their focus into customer experience and engagement, that idea of service is critical.

An offer may indeed be the right action in some cases. However, in other situations, the customer may be seeking information or struggling to accomplish a task. Marketing organizations in the leading companies that we’ve evaluated are differentiating themselves with their ability to interpret the customer’s need and determine the best possible action to take at any point in time and at any stage in the customer lifecycle.

Continuous Customer Engagement Rules: 

Those companies that practice continuous customer engagement have a set of rules.

  • First, they break the typical silos and barriers to that get in the way of being customer focused and treating customers more holistically. The expand the traditional aperture of marketing and think about how they will serve best serve the customer.
  • Second, they are beyond using “omni-channel” as a hype term. They are focused on building and creating a system of engagement that integrates and enables the the channels with rich, contextual customer insight and decisioning capabilities that enable them to listen and interact with customers much more effectively and dynamically.
  • Third, they foster a customer-centric and authentic culture that focuses on establishing a win:win with the customer. These marketers focus on helping the rest of the company understand and empathize with the customer. They also work to ensure that the company has a clearly establish set of core values and then lives by those values in every way that it operates.

Does your company practice continuous customer engagement.

What are the attributes of a Social Advocate?

Yesterday I spoke to my team on how to be more of a Social Advocate.  This Advocate role is very important to companies because studies show that more people listen to word of mouth vs brand content.

Since I had this as our #1 question, I decided to do a quick blog entry on it as well to share more broadly!

A Social Advocate is a person who is passionate about your brand and references you in the normal course of business.  The recent Global Web Index, found that exclusive content motivates 21% to become a advocate brand.

Their characteristics are those of a Trust-builder, an Idea challenger, and a client advocate.  They specialize in the art of the conversation, asking questions, listening, and sharing a point of view.   They become the Go-to Person, …not just present in Social Media, they position themselves as credible and influential sources in customer networks.

Are you an Advocate?

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