by Daria Steigman on August 4, 2011
I heard Linda Ireland speak last week about how to strengthen the customer experience on social media platforms. A key point she made during the MarketingProfs Webinar is that customers are demanding–to be heard, authenticity, speed, support, interaction, reaction–and you’d better be ready to meet their needs.
Ireland also walked through 10 tips for connecting more effectively with your customers. My top three takeaways:
1. Know which platforms work best when. A blog can be a great way to connect with prospects or to educate existing customers with ongoing or evolving needs, but it’s probably not the best platform for addressing customer service issues. The more you understand where your customers are in their buying cycle and how they interact, the more proactively you can plan where you should be engaging with them.
2. Customer experience is about what happens AND how customers feel. Ireland’s point: you (the business) impact both.
3. Focus on your customers, not your competitors. Ireland glossed over this at the end of her presentation, but I think it’s the most important takeaway. Too many companies are so busy worrying about what the competition is doing that they forget why customers interact with their brand in the first place. Don’t imitate. Instead, create your own customer experience.
What’s your top tip for strengthening the customer experience online?
Photo by lulu (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
Customer Experience,
Customer Service,
Linda Ireland,
MarketingProfs,
Social Media
by Daria Steigman on April 11, 2011
If Steve Rubel is right, there are some fascinating digital trends to plan for in 2011.
During a recent MarketingProfs Webinar, Rubel highlighted 11 digital trends, including location-based services, thought leadership, and social media schizophrenia (e.g., information overload). From his list, here are five that stand out:
- Attentionomics, or the concept that it’s not enough to reach people (e.g., eyeballs or numbers)–you have to grab their attention to drive behavior. A couple ways to do this: using visualizations and creating digital embassies within your social networks.
- Digital Curation, which Rubel concisely defined as “separating the art from the junk.” This is a big one for me, because right now we’re focusing on aggregation far more than curation (think paper.li and similar “auto”-curation tools).
- Integration Economy, or the concept that the way we communicate will demand that people collaborate more across an organization. I’ve been talking about shattering silos for a long time, so I hope Rubel’s right about this one.
- Ubiquitous Social Computing, or what Rubel said involves “optimizing for mobility, not just mobile.” A couple ways to do this: designing for multiple platforms and thinking about integrating social sharing into your products.
- Transmedia Storytelling, which is the concept that technology is changing the way stories are told (think Avatar, Toy Story). Rubel said that “narrative is no longer a whole,” and that we must think instead about “connecting the dots.”
What stands out for you? And what trends would you add to the list?
Photo by Phillie Casablanca (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
Avatar,
Data,
digital curation,
MarketingProfs,
Silos,
Social Media,
Social Networking,
Steve Rubel,
Toy Story
by Daria Steigman on March 15, 2011
During a recent MarketingProfs Webinar on managing your online reputation, C.B. Whittemore said that “negative stuff isn’t all evil.” She cited a study that found that 64% of people trust social media more when there are both positive and negative comments.
This makes sense. I’m more likely to value reviews when there’s a mix of good and bad. First, the mix gives me context. Second, I have some faith that the company didn’t just flood the channel with its own evangelists.
So why are so many companies afraid of negative comments on their Facebook page, on a blog post, or in other social outposts?
Here are four reasons to embrace negative comments:
- Negative comments can alert you to a problem (real or perceived) that you might not know you have. Embrace the learning opportunity.
- Negative comments give you a chance to explain or clarify your position. For example, say 50 people are carping on Facebook that you won’t extend a promotion. What would happen if you said “sorry you missed this one” and offered them a code to sign up and get advance notice about your company’s next promotion?
- Transparency builds trust. It’s okay to disagree with a customer, a client, or a prospect. We’re not clones.
- A concerted campaign of negativity can energize your evangelists to come to your defense. (First, of course, people have to trust you.)
When I was president of my condo board, there were a couple of co-owners who didn’t like to take no for an answer. They’d call me up and state their case. I’d listen, and then politely explain why what they wanted wasn’t feasible. Then they’d come to the public meeting and ask the same question. My response: “As I told you when you called me earlier…”
If this were online, would anything have changed? I don’t think so.
Photo by Stefan Cloo (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
blogging,
CB Whittemore,
Facebook,
MarketingProfs,
Social Media
by Daria Steigman on November 1, 2010
According to Jeremiah Owyang, true social media integration doesn’t exist.
In a fascinating keynote speech at the MarketingProfs B2B Conference last week, Owyang walked through an 8-step roadmap for integrating social media and your (corporate) Web site. The aim is to identify where you are now, where you want to be, and to move slowly and strategically forward.
The framework starts from the point of no integration and moves toward an ideal:
- Do nothing (while the conversation is happening around you in other platforms).
- Link outward from your Web site (i.e., send traffic away with links such as “follow us on Twitter” or “follow us on Facebook“).
- Link away, but encourage sharing (i.e., “I’m now following Company X on Twitter,” which offers some social endorsement).
- Extend your brand in social channels (i.e., mirror your corporate brand experience elsewhere, a.k.a. “fishing where the fish are”).
- Aggregate the conversation on your Web site. (Think Skittles, which centralized discussions on its site. The downside, of course, is loss of control.)
- Use social log-ins (i.e., Facebook Connect or Twitter Connect. Think H&R Block. While this may increase sign-ups, you lose the opportunity to collect e-mail addresses and other key data.)
- Social log-in triggers sharing (creating a social or interactive experience that enables users to stay on the site while interacting with both the company and their friends/peers, and to recruit other people into the social network. The challenge is that this requires planning, the right technology, a solid campaign strategy, and extensive resources.) Pepsi Refresh, for example, lets people vote for their favorite ideas and share them with friends on Twitter and Facebook. Dell IdeaStorm triggers consumers to recruit friends to vote for their ideas.
- Seamless integration (the idea that you won’t be able to tell the difference between your Web site and a social site).
Owyang said that seamless integration requires a fundamental change that we’re not yet ready for. “The idea of sending traffic to a .com is an old way of doing things,” said Owyang. In the future, “you’ll send traffic to people and the networks.” He also suggested that the future Web will be sorted around people and contextual situations (not URLs).
Pretty heady stuff. I’m still somewhere between Step 2 and Step 4. Where are you, and where do you want to be?
Photo by ming1967 (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
Dell IdeaStorm,
Facebook,
H&R Block,
Jeremiah Owyang,
MarketingProfs,
Pepsi Refresh,
Skittles,
Social Media,
Twitter
by Daria Steigman on October 27, 2010
I was just looking over a short report on business-to-business marketing put out by MarketingProfs and Forrester Research. According to What Works in B2B Marketing 2010, the top three challenges facing marketers are lead generation, increasing product/service awareness, and reaching decision makers.
While the first one was no surprise (lead generation is consistently one of my top challenges too), I was a bit surprised to see the other two on the list. Maybe that’s because, as a small business owner, I find that social media has made it far easier to identify and reach out to key decision makers in companies. It’s also made it easier and more cost effective for small companies to build brand awareness.
What’s your take?
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Tagged as:
Brand,
Business,
Business Development,
Forrester Research,
Lead Generation,
marketing,
MarketingProfs
