Posts Tagged Social network
Goal: Build a Community – Simple, right?
Posted by umangshah in Customer Experience, Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing on January 28th, 2010
The term Community has changed quite a lot in recent years. Jimmy had a similar point with Social Networks a while back in his post about the Three Degrees of Influence but I want to discuss it more in context of one of our primary marketing goals. For most people, the term Community refers to an online forum. This is very limiting and really doesn’t do it justice. Community managers probably resent this, which, I am sure, is one of the reasons Jeremiah Owyang is trying to institute a Community Manager Appreciation Day.
For most of us, this is one of our top (if not the top) goal of our Social Media efforts – create a community where members feel comfortable interacting with each other and with your organization. Why? Relationships deepen. Synergies are created. Information is exchanged. Customers are engaged. In short, magic happens. How do we do this? This can be a real challenge.
Two things that can make it a lot easier: Technology and Metrics. There are lots of options when selecting a community platform vendor. Conveniently, I have been asked to judge the 2010 Social Networking category for the SIAA Codie Awards and I will be evaluating a few of them. Without going into too much detail, the first organization that I met with, INgage Networks, has a very compelling offering in this space. They won this category for the last two years and they actually offer a whole lot more than just a community platform and I suggest you check them out. (In the spirit of objectivity, as I evaluate others, I will share more information about them as well.)
When it comes to selecting and sharing metrics, you should approach it in the same way that you build your Integrated Marketing Strategy. You should go in prepared with a firm grasp of your goals. An old but really good blog post on developing metrics is Tara Hunt’s Metrics for Healthy Communities. Basically, set goals and objectives and then create metrics that stringently test those objectives. Keep the audience in mind when selecting specific metrics. And be sure to consider both qualitative and quantitative metrics. She lists a lot of great suggestions for specific metrics. Read her post for the details.
Picking the right platform and creating the right metrics not only sets up for success but implements a method to test and correct your approach, as needed. I hope this is a thought starter. I would like to hear your ideas about community building too. To all of us building or growing online communities, good luck!
(Check out the link below for apply this thinking internally within organizations. This is exciting and will be another blog post)
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12 “Days” of Customer Thank You Ideas that Become Gifts to Your Organization
Posted by Lisa in Customer Experience, Customer Marketing, Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing on December 17th, 2009
Please pardon the seasonal theme, particularly as we at CubedConsulting believe that relationship sustenance begins, continues, and hopefully never ends with creative and comprehensive ways of acknowledging your clients and receiving testimonial and reference collateral in return throughout the year, but it “tis the season”… If you can catch your breath at this time of year, we at least hope that you may have time to give some thought to the introduction of innovation to your customer reference and relationship programs using some of these ideas:
1. Send your Top 100 Clients a Flip Mino and ask them to record and upload a clip about your services and solutions.
2. Create a YouTube Channel and record holiday greetings from key customer service contact people. Film people you may not traditionally consider but have important customer contact roles.
3. Offer to exchange audio testimonials with vendors who are also clients.
4. Write a post for your corporate blog that singles out top clients and charitable activities in which they have participated or interesting accomplishments of theirs this past year. Don’t tie yourself to information that is solely related to their relationship with you: just acknowledge them.
5. Add rotating refreshed holiday greetings to your email signatures that single out indiviudals, companies, etc. with which/whom you do business. Create a template that your sales, marketing, customer organization can change out every day throughout the holidays (and then create one for the rest of the year)!
6. Announce your plans to launch a customer community blog with “insider” access to development roadmaps, key technical personnel, your CEO, etc. Offer a “room” or discussion thread that is not monitored by you.
7. Run a contest asking for videos of the funniest, non-traditional (but appropriate) use of your services and solutions and offer the winner a free pass to your next user conference.
8. Run a contest (with similar rules) offering the winner fifteen minutes of telephone access to your CEO.
9. Offer to include your clients’ corporate charity of choice and information about donation and participation in all of your January 2010 promotional collateral.
10. Assign a top client to an employee with whom they traditionally do not interact. Ask your employee to make a phone call or send an email thanking them for their business this year. This might demonstrate that your entire organization, not just their account and sales representatives, are committed to the relationship.
11. Add thank-you messages to all of your social media channels and make them personal. We expect that you may have sent our some holiday greetings, but use the global reach of SMN and the ability to personalize to extend this effort.
12. Take a breath. Give yourself and your clients a break by promising that you won’t ask them to take any more reference calls or be interviewed for a case study, press release, or anything else until next year! 
Our sincerest wishes for a safe, relaxing, and joyous holiday season to all of you!
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Chickens and Eggs in Social Media Execution
Posted by Lisa in Customer Marketing, Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing on November 21st, 2009
As much as we love technology at Cubed Consulting, our mission is to help our clients develop comprehensive, appropriate, measurable, attainable, and sustainable customer relationship and marketing strategies. Although we enthusiastically Tweet, do status updates, ask to connect in Linkedin, and even create surveys in Facebook; we are ever cognizant that the selection of which e-playground we choose for our outreach and relationship-building is driven first by a clear understanding of our business goals and objectives. We have worked for and with both small and Fortune 100 clients who have adopted an approach to social media execution without examination of their purpose or alignment with customer relationship, sales, and marketing plans and quite frankly, made a mess of things. We spend our time helping you understand and articulate your goals first and then assist in the selection of the appropriate social media tools and measurements; posting frequency and content; and integration with other strategies, applications, and efforts. There may be some consistent truisms to corporate social media interaction, but you will never hear “Everybody MUST have a Twitter account” from us. You will get recommendations about specific tools after we analyze how best to meet your stated needs. To illustrate this approach, let’s look at a very skeletal example:
Objective: Create more corporate/brand awareness in new communities.
Tactics:
1) Traditional marketing outreach and collateral to new communities:
2) Leveraging existing or new social media outlets to establish relationships and create conversation.
a) Join New Groups in Facebook, Linkedin, etc. applications that map to new demographic profile.
b) Use Twitter Lists, hash tags, etc. to gauge and generate interest in solutions, company etc.
c) Produce audio/video/other collateral relevant to message and launch.
d) Etc.
My point is not to delineate the steps of our engagement process, but to demonstrate that the selection of tools, applications, and approach FOLLOW not DEFINE our social media decision-making. If the objective were to gauge interest in a new solution or product, we may not advise establishing a Facebook or Linkedin presence until the research around communities of interest had determined that those were the appropriate venues.
I’m looking forward to “meeting” many of you and exchanging thoughts!
Regards,
Lisa
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We Have to Change the Way We Change
Posted by Jimmy Maher in Customer Experience, Customer Marketing, Integrated Marketing Strategy on November 12th, 2009
Anybody who has ever owned an aquarium knows that you can only change a certain amount of the water at a time without upsetting the delicate bacteriological balance that keeps ammonia and nitrate levels safe for the fish. This principle might also be applied to organizations. How often have we seen sweeping changes in organizations that fail to address the issues that they have been targeted at, yet cause huge disruption and uncertainty, which eventually ripples through to the customer with unintended consequences.
In an insightful article by social entrepreneur Zenna Atkins in the Guardian online at http://bit.ly/2Eryg5, the author advises against the “big bang” approach to change, in favor of the incremental approach. Atkins argues that it is better to have multiple listening points, both internally and externally that enable an organization to be constantly aware of what is going on. This provides the necessary intelligence that allows the organization to evolve gradually to keep pace with ever changing customer needs. Listening posts might include customer and employee surveys, social media (blogs, customer forums, Twitter etc.), focus groups and direct conversations.
The bottom line – establish listening posts internally and externally. Introduce change in continuous small increments to allow your organization to become accustomed to each new state. Use the same listening posts to evaluate the success or failure of the change. Your customers and employees will be glad that you listened and acted.
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The 3 Keys to Social Media Success
Posted by umangshah in Customer Experience, Customer Marketing, Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing on November 10th, 2009
Why are you on Facebook? What do you hope to accomplish by using Twitter? Do you have a plan for all those audio and video testimonials that you are creating? Does your overall web presence clearly communicate how your customers can (and should) interact with you through each channel? If not, don’t read any more of this blog post. Go figure out why you are doing what you are doing then come back and figure out how to make the most of your Social Media Marketing efforts to achieve your goals.
For the rest of us, the recipe is actually simple. It’s the preparation and execution that can get complex. We get caught up in all the possibilities that the web and Social Media offer us. In fact, when you read this blog post, don’t read too into it. Don’t try to get fancy – just stick to the basics.
1. Be Genuine – Above all, be yourself (as a person and as a corporation). Remember, that our customers are very smart and they know when we are not being real. Our customers connect with us online so they can engage us in a personal, candid dialogue. Remember, if they want to read the polished Press Release they will pick it up off the Wire. Give them more – don’t just tell them that you are great (even if you are) but instead show them what makes you so great. Maybe it’s the great people you have that work with you. Maybe it’s the high value you put on customers. Maybe it’s your quirky approach to business. Whatever it is, don’t be afraid to show the real you. (I feel like your Mom giving you a pep talk)
SIDE NOTE: It’s also ok to share the bad with the good – it demonstrates candor and establishes credibility.
2. Provide Value – What do your customers want? They may want discounts (who doesn’t). They may want information. They may want to be heard. They may want to laugh. Whatever they want, give it to them and give it often. More often than not, especially in the B2B space, the answer is not just money. Trust me, it’s not just about money – it is about a mutually beneficial relationship. In the end, Value is different for every customer and every organization. Pair what your customers want with what you can offer but figure this out quickly because, without this, your customers have no reason to engage you and, worse, they have no reason to recommend you.
3. Interact – We have spent more than a century providing static content to our customers and prospects. Our marketing message has been one way and we never knew, for sure, if anyone was listening to it. Social Media is changing all of that. We now have the ability to engage in conversations with our customers in ways we couldn’t before. We can get feedback and adjust accordingly in an instant. Social Media empowers our customers to evangelize our products and services. The best part of all of this is that our customers actually want to interact with us online. We, as a people, are spending so much more time in Social Networks than ever before. Take advantage of this trend and engage your audience and interact with them through the channels that they are already comfortable with.
In Social Media, to be successful, you don’t need a persona, you don’t need to bribe, and you don’t need to be polished – but you do need a plan.
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Three Degrees of Influence
Posted by Jimmy Maher in Customer Experience, Customer Marketing, Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing on October 30th, 2009
Many years ago my father-in-law took his family on a day trip to Muir Beach, just North of San Francisco. It was a very warm day and parking was hard to come by. He observed a lot of cars parked in the red zone on the road approaching the beach, so he also parked there, figuring that because so many others had done it, it was somehow OK. He was livid when he returned to the car later to discover a parking ticket and was no less livid when he noticed that everybody else had gotten ticketed too.
How our behaviors are influenced by others, is the subject of one of the most fascinating and informative books I have ever read – Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. In the book the authors present the scientific evidence of how we not only influence our friends, but also those that are three degrees of separation away from us, in other words – our friends’ friends and the friends of our friends’ friends. Their book examines not only epidemics of disease, but also suicides, politics, happiness, sadness and many other human experiences.
The book offers interesting insights, based on real science on how ideas and beliefs can go viral. These insights into human behavior can shed light on troubling events such as asset bubbles or even genocide. It seems that our primeval need to belong in groups (who would want to be an outcast when cannibalism and human sacrifice was commonly practiced) can overwhelm our rationality and our morality with terrible consequences. The good news is that the effect works in reverse also so that positive outcomes such as altruism and social justice can also be contagious. The case in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where 44 Liberian orphans were adopted by various local families is a wonderful example.
In Chapter 8 of the book, the authors describe how our behavior in virtual communities mimics our behavior in the real world. Apparently, attractive avatars in Second Life are more confident than plain avatars – regardless of the sex and looks of the real person who “owns” the avatar. In the popular online game “World of Warcraft”, a virtual disease spread in much the same way as a real disease might spread. These findings offer new avenues of experimentation for social scientists exploring the human condition.
The key takeaway is that each of us has influence over others, even over those that we have never met, but who are within three degrees of separation. If we are depressed, we can depress others. If we are happy we can, with little effort on our part, cause happiness in others. This book should be required reading in schools and colleges. Perhaps understanding our propensity to follow the crowd and the potential negative outcomes, might prevent some of our more destructive behaviors.
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Harvard’s Twitter Study – It’s about time!
Posted by umangshah in Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing on June 12th, 2009
The twittersphere, blogosphere, and my email have been flooded with people buzzing about the recent article, Twitter hype punctured by study, on the BBC News Technology page. Everyone knows how passionate I am about Social Media and I, for one, think this study is just what we all needed.
A couple of the key takeaways from the study were the conclusions that Twitter is not a Social Networking tool and is, instead, a broadcasting vehicle – shocking!!! (not really) I never viewed Twitter as a Social Network; instead it has always been a channel to broadcast a message. The entire concept of “What are you doing?” reinforces that point. Unfortunately, many of the responding messages focused on inane, almost minute-by-minute, updates of narcissistic individuals – this has really given Twitter a bad name. NOTE: Just because a website asks you what you are doing, doesn’t mean you have to answer…constantly.
Twitter can be effectively used to share content with people that want to know about it. Furthermore, leveraging Twitter as a listening post is probably the most compelling use of all. Tools such as Tweetbeep.com are really great at helping you get some real value out of Twitter by delivering gems of information to you based on keyword alerts and by filtering out the nonsense.
The Twitter following is huge. Organizations (and current Presidents) have used Twitter properly and with great success. With the release of this study, my hope is that people get creative about using Twitter to share valuable, relevant content with groups of people that are listening. As always, there is a right way and then other ways to use Social Media and this study can help us focus on finding better approaches.
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Initial thoughts from the 2009 Customer Reference Forum
Posted by umangshah in Customer Marketing, Social Media Marketing on February 19th, 2009
Stay tuned for a blow-by-blow of the highlights from the 2009 Customer Reference Forum (CRF) but, in the meantime, here are my initial impressions after the three day conference.
- *Social Media is King* – The Forum was keynoted by Laura Ramos from Forrester Research. I will be posting on this specifically but her primary message is that Social Media is here whether people like it or not. In fact, if you are not already involved, you are behind the curve and you risk being left behind. Laura’s presentation was the perfect segue into my workshop on Thursday. As you can imagine, I am going to be talking a lot more about this.
- All of the speakers were great – Let me start by making it clear: I’m not just saying that because I was a speaker. While I am quite happy with the workshop that Rhett Livengood and I facilitated on Social Media, all of the speakers were very interesting this year. It is going to be a hard-fought battle for the “Top Speaker” award. <shameless plug>Vote for Umang!</shameless plug>
- Networking is worth the cost of admission – The Forum is largely unchanged since inception and the opportunities for professional networking have always been, by-and-far, the best part of attending. Every year I attend, I walk away with a stack full of business cards and my head hurts (in a good way) from all the ideas I come up with in talking with the other attendees and vendors. Speaking of which, I met a new vendor in this space, TechValidate, that really impressed me! I am going to do a full review of their offering and will post shortly.
I am looking forward to continuing those conversations on the Customer Knowledge Sharing Network (CRKSN). CRKSN is a set of non-competitive online communities (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) focused on Customer Reference Marketing knowledge sharing. You should know that CRKSN is not affiliated with the CRF, which is for the best, in my opinion. If you are interested in joining, please leave a comment and I can help you get set up. Again, stay tuned for more in-depth thoughts on the Forum in future posts.
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