Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category

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Can a Personal Brand Coexist Within a Corporate Ecosystem

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Photo Credit: Barry Libert/John Spector - WeAreSmarter.org

Companies are in an interesting position.  Customers are demanding new forms of interactions through social tools, mobile, online and service.  Organizational designs are set up to manage external engagement in a couple of ways, Public Relations or Customer Service.  Both of which are highly trained and highly scripted.  Interacting with customers on their terms means lifting the corporate veil to reveal new corporate “voices”.  The new voices are typically experts in their respective fields or simply young enough to not be scared to interact via social media (think Interns).

Within industry though, there is something larger happening.  Something that is beyond havign to deal with new talking heads.  A new model is beginning to emerge that  places importance in knowledge process management.  In the 80′s we placed importance on Cost Arbitrage through IT management, in the 90′s focus shifted to Labor Arbitrage through Business Process Management.  Now we appear to be shifting into a stage of Intellectual Arbitrage placing importance around Knowledge Process Management (KPM).  This shift brings new challenges. 

As social communications proliferate, there is a stronger focus on content.  Content is an asset and should be able to be re-purposed or re-used across other parts of the enterprise to be most effective.  If we expect our employees to become advocates as knowledge managers of our Brand, then where does the corporate brand and the personal brand come together.  If an employee builds a following as a likeable, intelligent ambassador then who owns the intellectual property (IP) around the information?  Better yet, how do you transform the IP into reusable assets across the rest of the organization. 

With this shift into Knowledge Management, companies need to look at hiring practices, employee policies and begin to update.  Should companies look to hire people with strong personal brands or build them after hiring?  There’s not a consistent answer as it will depend company by company.  The real trick is to develop your organizational models on purpose rather than by accident.  So IP issues, strong personal brands, how does a company begin to tackle these new challenges?  This is certainly a conversation worth having and to help moderate, we brought in Daria Steigman to manage the discussion.  Daria has done a masterful job at developing her own personal brand that has become her company’s.  for the discussion, we will use the following topic and questions:

Topic: Can a Personal Brand Coexist Within a Corporate Ecosystem

Q1. Personal branding — good idea or bad idea?

Q2. Can a personal brand coexist within a corporate ecosystem? Can your stars be stars and keep your brand intact?

Q3. Is it okay for companies to ban their employees from blogging?

Q4. Should companies have a succession plan around star employees?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 9 at noon ET.  Follow #sm122 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »

Trolls or Contrarians? The Food Chain of Social Media

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

 We all have people who love us and what we do and we all have people who have different opinions of what we are and what we do.  Companies and Brands are no different.  If you have customers, you likely have people who disagree with other competing Brands.  They purchase your products for a reason and not someone elses’.  The same for contrarians to your Brand.  Those contrarians buy other things for a reason and complain about the way you run your business or make your products.  Before, those contrarians simply did not come to your store and said un-appealling things just in a way that you could not hear them.  And here is where I question the mindset of many companies and brands.

On the social web, you get to listen to what is being said about you (right, wrong or indifferent).  You have an opportunity to connect with that person in a way that was not possible before.  Companies who chose to ignore what is happening in the social sphere are missing an opportunity to promote their side, correct anything that is not factual and simply engage.  Not engaging is quietly agreeing with whom ever is posting negative information.  To be fair, this is not an enviable position at many companies however it is much needed. 

So what to do and how to get started?  This is a vexing question and certainly a conversation worth having.  Let’s suffice to say this is one of those instances where experience matters.  On this topic you definately want to avoid making rookie mistakes so getting someone who has “walked in those shoes” before is important.  This week, we are doing just that.  Peggy Fitzpatrick is a very experienced social media manager and has moderated many communities.  She brings a great perspective to this conversation around the following topic and questions:

 Topic: Trolls or Contrarians? The Food Chain of Social Media

Q1)  How should we address a troll like or contrarian type action within the walls of social media? Acknowledge it? or Let it go?

Q2)  From a marketers standpoint, is there any value to a troll or a contrarian?

Q3)  Have you ever experienced any negative or aggressive behaviors within Social Media? What did you do about it?

Q4)  Has previous negative behavior stopped you from attending chats or any other online activities?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 2 at noon ET.  Follow #sm121 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

 

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Posted in Branding, corporate, Customer Service | 4 Comments »

Building Relationships: Choose Your Social Network Wisely

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Today’s world is fast-paced, uncertain and becoming even more demanding.  This goes for businesses certainly but also for individuals.  Consumers’ lives are packed with real-world complexities and more online and offline distractions than ever before.  Some believe this is why we have had such a strong uptake on social networks as studies show that 1 in 4 people have no one they can turn to in a time of need.  Overall, a recent Pew study reveals that, on average, people have only two people they are comfortable confiding in.  While people may have very few confidants and sometimes may not have anyone to turn to in the physical world, many take solace online with social networks. 

According to the study:

“Internet users in general score 3 points higher in total support, 6 points higher in companionship, and 4 points higher in instrumental support. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day tends to score an additional 5 points higher in total support, 5 points higher in emotional support, and 5 points higher in companionship, than internet users of similar demographic characteristics. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.”

Along with companionship and emotional support the study makes a case for an increase in trust as a result of online social networking activities citing that heavier Facebook users are more than 3 times likely to feel that most people can be trusted.  If you combine these factors, you can start to get a much deeper sense of why people go online.  Whereas many like to dismiss social networks as a place to waste time and play senseless games, there is growing evidence that online social networks are as important within a person’s social graph as any other activities.  Understanding this consumer psyche as a Brand can bring a much different perspective to how to engage and approach building relationships through social networks.  If consumers are going to be more trusting online, one might also conclude they will be less forgiving if that trust is broken.

Are all social networks created equal?  According to the Pew study, Facebook users seem to be more supportive and trusting.  Other social networks that were mentioned included Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.  What was not included were networks related to health, fitness or other hobbies.  It seems these networks might even carry higher levels of focused companionship and trust.  Does this information affect how Brands should approach building online relationships?  Brands have different reasons for participating in social as some are looking to promote a new product, better manage customer service and even develop better relationships with their customers.  Are some social networks better for developing relationships than others? It probably depends on the type of Brand you represent and what you are trying to accomplish.  To help us work through the topic of building trust online through social networks, we got the most trustworthy person we know (at least online).  Chuck Hemann is currently VP of Digital Analytics for Edelman Digital. For the past six years, he has provided strategic counsel to clients on a variety of topics including online reputation, social media, digital analytics, investor relations and crisis communications.  For today’s chat, Chuck will cover the following topic and questions:

Topic:  Building Relationships: Choose Your Social Network Wisely

Q1:  A new study from Pew says Facebook users are more trusting than other people, Agree? Why/Why not? 

Q2:  Which social networks are best for brands to develop relationships on?

Q3:  Developing online relationships, do Brands have to message 1-to-1, Brand-to-1, Brand-to-many?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, June 21 at noon ET.  Follow #sm116 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Branding, Listening | Comments Off

Love All Your Children The Same: Managing Multiple Social Brands

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

Managing one of anything is difficult enough especially in social media.  Now though, you have to manage many social presences, monitor off-board media conversations and map it all back to meeting business objectives – and that is just for one single brand.  Companies today are global and have many brands to contend with.  Whether you are B2B or B2C the challenges are still there with differing levels of complexity.

Consider each brand.  It may be that all of your brand’s managers are completely aligned, have the same goals and working from the same strategy.  Not likely.  What’s more likely is that each brand has their own set of objectives, they have unique needs and they are at varying levels of maturity from a social media perspective.  The uniqueness is important to point out since some brands may need ties to CMS, CRM, active directory (or other single sign-on) and other legacy systems.  Their search strategies are going to be unique and if you want social to help drive your search agends, then care needs to be taken here.  This does not mention mobile needs and other marketing campaigns that need to string together.  Also, this assumes that each department within the Brand are aligned which is, again, a big assumption.

As a corporation with many Brands, what are the options to begin managing your social brand in the most effective, cost efficient and meaningful way?  Is there a separate team for each brand, then you have to manage training across teams and most importantly staying connected as a group.  If one team manages all the brands then you might have a highly skilled team in social but a lack of true Brand knowledge and skills.  The answer is not one way or the other.  It really depends on each company, how they are managed across the enterprise, the social maturity of each Brand, the objectives and how segmented the systems are that need connected into the social environment.  There is no right answer, but certainly some directional attributes that would help dictate a path for companies to follow.

The challenge comes when certain brands jump out ahead of the corporate zone and start socially enabling their own brand.  At that point you have Brand teams with very different skills and approaches that make it almost impossible to consildate even if it did make sense, which essentially limits choices going forward.  So what is the right approach, how do you create a blueprint when you are not sure what the product is supposed to look like? For this week’s discussion we have brought in the talents of Tamsen McMahon.  Tamsen is moving into a new role as VP Digital Strategy at Allen & Gerritsen out of Boston.  Tamsen is an accomplished digital marketer and adept at managing multiple brands for companies.  For this week’s chat, we will use the following topic and questions:

Topic: Love All Your Children The Same: Managing Multiple Social Brands

1.      What’s your biggest challenge/opportunity when managing multiple brands?

2.      Can you use the same team to manage multiple brands?

3.       How do you connect the team(s) to business objectives for different brands?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, June 14 at noon ET.  Follow #sm115 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Does Public Relations Get The “Message” in Social Media

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Public Relations gets a bone as many PR professionals were the first in their companies to adopt social media.  Much like email, PR pros saw this as a great way to distribute messages to a larger audience at a cost that was next to nothing.  Social media became an instant hit in the PR circles for this reason.  For a long time and even still, PR managed much of what happened in companies that was centered in social media.  Now that social media is beginning to grow in importance within the enterprise many feel that social media should be controlled by marketing, CIO or controlled a bit by every department.  However, at a lot of companies, the PR professional is the only one with social media experience.

Here’s the rub, social media practictioners do not believe that social channels are best used for “pushing” messages.  Many marketers are trying to evolve to better “pull” messages from their audience and listen better.  These same practictioners argue that Public Relations does not have a strong history of evolving if you look at how little the Press Release of today has evolved since it appeared over a hundred years ago.  PR pros will argue they have started to evolve much of their work (and the forward thinking ones actually have IMO).  Examples like the new press release, HARO and #soloPR and #PRChat (weekly twitter chats) are helping to advance the ball, but is it fast enough?

Social media is evolving quickly within companies right now.  There are new advances almost daily and practitioners are trying to derive value across the board.  A bit of the issue is the notion of value.  Social media is too new to have a playbook or even a “right” way to do it and everyone has their own version of what value is.  For marketers it’s brand messaging and conversion, for PR pros, its creating and distributing corporate messages.  Therein lies the contention.  From my experience working within Fortune class companies, I’m not sure that social belongs housed in PR for many reasons.  I do, however believe there is value in PR having a social presence and I believe that value will continue to evolve for the better and could re-shape the entire industry as we know it today.

While marketing types whine for control, there is another issue.  Many top marketers do not have any experience in social media.  Some come out of the branding world, some the direct marketing side, others creative.  None of that experience qualifies you for understanding and evolving in social media.  What happens is you get marketers proclaming the best way to use social….who have never used social.  If you don’t understand the medium then it is hard to be as innovative and creative as your customers are being with social.  At that point, you lose relevance.

I think it’s well understood that relevance is key today. With customers, employees, partners and prospects you have to stay relevant.  The question is who is most qualified to run your company’s social strategy?  That is what we posed to Kellye Crane, an award winning, long admired PR professional.  Kellye brings a wealth of experience and is one of those PR innovators who agreed to moderate this discussion for us.  her perspective will be enlightening for sure.  The topic this week and questions will be:

Title: Does Public Relations Get The “Message” in Social Media

Q1:  Has PR become a dirty word in social media?

Q2:  Is there a place for “messaging” on social networks?

Q3:  Can a marketing exec have authority on social media topics without directly participating?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, May 24 at noon ET.  Follow #sm112 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Do Influencers Or Customers Buy Your Products?

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Image Credit: www.bagmadness.com

Social Media continues to wreak havoc on corporate marketers and will continue to do so for a long time.  The days of creating a message and buying a few strategic placements are long gone.  Today there are more cable channels than anyone can watch and the web web is so fragmented that it’s unrealistic to think that a well placed ad can garner even mild interest.  Along with fragmentation, there is an overwhelming amount of data that needs to be considered by marketers to do even the simplest tasks.  When things get out-of-control, we tend to go back to what we know and just put a different spin on it. 

Remember spokespeople?  That one iconic image that would transcend buyers and connect with the masses.  James Earl Jones had “the Voice”; the Beatles had “the Sound” and James Dean had “the Look”.  Connect any of these to your Brand and hold on tight.  Customers would forgive bad service or a little higher prices in exchange for pop-culture style influence.

Digital connectivity in general and Social Media specifically have changed those rules.  The idea of attracting an influencer remains however, in social media at least, the execution of that is entirely mis-aligned. 
There are really no iconic style influencers in social, it’s simply too new.  Most social influencers are early adopters who have gained social media status by being an outlier and who are now seen as having expertise.  These “experts” tend to exhibit influence based upon that expertise.  Take Mommy Bloggers, Social Media Mavens or any other industry.  These people were not even on the influence radar before social media.  Now marketers revere them due to their 30k followers.  The reality is they were early to adopt new technology and were seen as having unique perspective.  As those early adopters gain more status, their views and perspectives tend to become more mainstream and less from the fringe.  As their message becomes more mainstream, their expertise dwindles along with their status.  It’s usually about this time that marketers identify these individuals who have built status, as influencers.  Quick Question – Do these people who have accumulated status by being early adopters truly advocates of you products or just perceived as influencers by some staffer?  Matt Riding created a great dialogue recently around developing an influencer program rather than an advocate program.   The point is that influencer programs are pretty easy to execute, quick and easy to show improvements on certain KPIs (key performance indicators).  Advocacy programs though are much more difficult to execute, they take a longer time to grow and it’s more difficult to show progress on KPIs.  Spending time on advocates do prove very worthwhile.  these are your customers, they spend money regularly with you and you now have the ability to get to know these people better than you could have ever expected…you just have to want to.  Marketers still try to develop social influencer programs but are there really influencers that will get people to purchase your products? 

The next time you plan marketing activities and can choose the quick win Influencer program or the “better-for-the-business” advocacy program make sure you understand the difference to your company and your career.   If anyone understands the difference it is Matt Riding.  Matt is better know in the social sphere of Twitter as @techguerilla and will be leading our discussion this week.  Matt brings a wealth of experience with unique mix of technical, marketing and social know-how.  The topic and questions this week will be:

Topic: Do Influencers Or Customers Buy Your Products?

Q1. Can a ‘influencer’ with 500 followers be as influential as someone with 500,000?
Q2. If context is so critical to understanding influence, do tools such as Klout have value? To whom?
Q3. How can we migrate from ‘influencer’ programs to ‘advocate’ programs?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, May 17 at noon ET.  Follow #sm111 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »

The Rise of the Brand Experience

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

If you look at the top global brands of 2010, you will find traditional brands at the top of the list.  With so many emerging brands across the globe, what does a brand have to do to become a top global brand?

1.  Brand Messaging continues to be a strong driver for marketers.  Where a Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: Customers, Staff, Partners, Investors etc.  The messaging is what I refer to as the communications that is distributed around the aspects of branding like:

  • Corporate slogan
  • Products and services
  • Product names
  • Product features
  • Positionings
  • Marketing mixes (including pricing, distribution, media and advertising execution)

All of this messaging culminates in developing the Brand Promise.  Effectively what the brand stands for or has stood for in the past.

2.  Brand Experience is the what the brand actually delivers.  It’s the culmination of all the touchpoints a customer, partner or employee may have with your brand including your website, social media touchpoints, point-of-sale, post sales service, mobile, and actual use.

The point of this post is to point out the impact that social can and has had that impacts a brand and it’s conversion.  I point out conversion as the driver here because, in my experience, a great product that does not sell simply does not last long.  The same goes for brands.  Where a brand has always been defined by it’s product, social media allows you to redefine what your brand can actually stand for.  It allows you to be entertainers, educators, and more for your followers.

A recent BusinessWeek article discusses GM’s old guard and their approach to building cars in the modeling room without any customer feedback.  The article goes on to praise Dan Ackerson’s (new CEO of GM) customer centric approach to building cars.  The difference of Brand Promise in the past (pre-bailout) and the recent move towards Brand Experience (post-IPO) in the future.  Interesting.

Digital’s impact on brand expression and experience is significant.  Leading companies are still trying to figure out what this new world looks like now that a Brand can expand it’s breadth of what it stands for and now that customers are armed with a whole new set of expectations and capabilities.  To help us sort this out is Michelle Tripp, a Creative Director / VP of Account Strategy at Idea Worldwide.  She will lead our conversation this week around the rise of the brand experience.  The topic and questions follow:

Topic:  The Rise of the Brand Experience

1. Who should be front and center in conversation: The brand name or the brand’s communicator?

2. Are consumers more likely to buy because of the brand promise or the brand experience?

3. How can brands create experiences in a social world?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, February 1 at noon ET.  Follow #sm96 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Social Influence: Meaningful?

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

We know that being popular does not equate to being influential.  On the other side, being influential does not equal popularity either (consider Florida’s new Governor elect Rick Scott is now very influential, yet he is the first such governor since 1916 to win without the popular vote (<50%)).  So is this conversation is circular, another chicken and egg discussion?  There are a couple of ways to approach this topic. 

  1. the much covered approach of popularity vs influence and
  2. the more scientific approach of the forms of social influence. 

The difference of these two topics, especially across the enterprise, is that one conversation can add value and the other typically does not.  So to not bypass a good SEO opportunity, let’s cover both of them.

Influence vs Popularity: you can talk ad nausea about this topic but consider that having a lot of Friends, Likes or Followers online does not mean that you are either popular or influential.  It simply means that you paid a service to use bots to increase your presence.  for companies looking to find industry influencers, they typically rely on tools that mechanize a formula that compares the amount of post with the amount of people who see the posts against the number of people who act (like, share, retweet) on the post.   The point I’ll make here is that scheduling your message to be published at a time when everyone is online and looking for your message does not mean that your message will be popular or influential…only optimized.

Forms of Social Influence – when you begin to apply science to influence there is a chance you will be able to repeat success. First, when we use the term Social Influence, let’s make sure that we are not talking about how influential people are on social networks.  That’s the soft discussion.  We will use the term social influence to mean the study of influence in the context of a group (or social influence) overlaps quite a bit with the research on attitudes and persuasion. Social influence is also closely related to the study of group dynamics, as most of the principles of influence are strongest when they take place in social groups.  As an enterprise, if you are able to understand the science of how people affect the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others (influence) you could begin to shape your engagements much differently that pushing a press release to a group of industry bloggers and calling it a day.  According to Wikipedia, the 3 main forms of social influence come from conformity, compliance and obedience.

  1. Conformity – a tendency to conform in order to receive social acceptance – is generally defined as the tendency to act or think like other members of a group. Group size,unanimity, cohesion, status, and prior commitment all help to determine the level of conformity in an individual.  While conformity is generally disdained in American culture, there are many cultures in the Middle East and Asia that rely on conformity for social influence.
  2. Compliance – refers to any change in behavior that is due to a request or suggestion from another person.  Word of mouth marketing relies heavily on compliance behaviors with foot-in-the-door or bait-and-switch techniques. 
  3. Obedience – This is a change in behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person.  Special interest groups find this method popular.  When there is a chemical spill, toxins in a river, a new national healthcare plan…it is easy for people to follow a distractor based on socially accepted beliefs regardless of truths.

The default for companies trying to figure out who is influencing their “voice” in the market is a tricky one.  The only approach right now is the crop of online tools that have emerged from Klout, Edelman and Hubspot that formulate from forms of popularity that assume influence.  For some companies right now showing movement for the sake of motion is better than nothing.  What this does is provides a false sense of security though as there are no algorithms that measure passion.  Passion can drive tremendous influence if you think about the Bills that pass through congress with a child’s name attached to them.  They are driven by wildly passionate parents who do not want the same thing to happen to any other children.  These parents would never show up as influencers in the traditional sense though.

Where I like the discussion around the science of influence is it opens up broader discussions for enterprises who are looking to become influencers and not just rely on those who seem influential.  After looking at the forms of social influence, companies can uncover new meaning behind their approach in an effort to continuously make them better.  Think about recommendations.  If you understood that your site visitors were simply looking for conformity as a way to influence a purchase decision, you would employ product ratings and feedback.  To take it further, compliance is more than a simple “share this” button, it’s the Groupon model.  I’ve made a decision to purchase this product but I need you to also buy it in order to get the discount.

Sorting out social influence as a science will lead to a much better result than simply looking at people who have large followings or simply talk the loudest in the room.  To help us sort out our discussion this week is Shelly Kramer.  Shelly Kramer is the Founder and Chief Imagination Officer of V3 Integrated Marketing and Kramer & Co who has been written up in Forbes, American Express and the Wall Street Journal to name a few.  Our topic and questions this week will be:

Topic:  Social Influence: Meaningful?

Q1:  How do you find influencers?

Q2:  Can you create influencers?

Q3:  Is Social Influence a meaningful goal for companies?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, December 7 at noon ET.  Follow #sm89 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Enterprise Social Media: Working For Your Online Advocates

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Like hormone crazed teenagers day dreaming in class, Brands are very similar.  We fantasize about creating advocates, yet when we we get them, we’re not quite sure what to do with them.

Everyone has an opinion on brand advocates, how to get them, how to activate them, etc (all good stuff by the way).  Most of the discussion is about getting advocates to do things though.  Get them to write another product review, blog about us and retweet our promo.  If I was your brand advocate, I would need a vacation for sure.

So give them one.  I don’t mean airplane tickets, hotels and coconut drinks on the beach.  Just a simple vacation from doing all your work for you.  Figure out what to do for them.  What could you do for a “friend” of the company that you just do because you like them, not because you expect anything from them? 

Most companies build extensive sytems to manage brand messaging, create brand loyalty through rewards and messaging but you have to do something before you get the benefit.  What if I just got a promotion and started traveling.  I take four trips in four weeks and my typical pattern is four trips over the course of a year.  There should be triggers going off everywhere that are simply meant to create a great experience from my brand.  I may not be at the “Gold” level but if there is a suite that’s available for my stay, give it to me.  The good will business that comes from it is unmatched.  Advocates are created over time with brands that have a strong reputation with me.

A Brand’s reputation is shaped as a cumulative feeling across EVERY personal experience I have with that Brand whether receiving my bill, using the product, calling customer service or seeing an advertisement on TV.

If that’s true, a Brand manager simply needs to create more experiences faster than the customer will create for themselves on their own time.  Instead of sending over a coupon, send a box of your new product to their door to try out.  Leave a bottle of wine on their pillow when they were expecting the bottle of water that everyone else gets.  Instead of focusing on what you can get your advocates to do for you, try spending some time coming up with ideas of things you can do for your advocates…just because.

Brands spend a lot of creative talent on getting consumers to “Like” them yet once they do, companies are not set up to continue to manage the relationship.  With that, our event for this week being moderated for the first time by, what I would consider, an advocate of #socialmedia.  We met Chris Kieff as a regular contributor on our events and now he is moderating his own.  With a great perspective and tons of experience, we are excited to have Chris lead this next event.  The topic and questions will be:

Topic: Enterprise Social Media: Working For Your Online Advocates

Q1: What is the best way to find advocates in social media?

Q2: Now that we’ve identified advocates, how do you build relationships with them?

Q3: How do you enable them to carry your message virally? 

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, November 16 at noon ET.  Follow #sm86 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

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The Social Customer…and What Brands Need To Know

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

You think marketer’s lives are rough, try being the customer.  So much is being thrown at the customer these days, its hard to keep up.

B2B Customers: You used to have a few vendors that competed for your dollars, the agencies were simply creatives and technology vendors simply did technology.  Without all the improvements in technology, manufacturing had many barriers to entry which reduced your choices.  You never heard about how vendors were treating your employees (good or bad) and you never cared how they were performing with other peers in related industries.  Marketing was marketing and technology was, well, technology and never did the two meet.  Decisions were made independently without concern to the ecosystems that are in place today.

B2C Customers: You were able to make purchase decisions simply based on how the product tasted, handled, or felt.  You did not worry about their greenhouse effects, the videos their employees were making behind the scenes or how much the same product cost at other stores within a 7 block radius.  Your friends may have mentioned cool products but you did not have to worry about your friends seeing every purchase you make (remember that Dixie Chicks album you really want) nor did you have to remember if you had ”like’d” the Brand in one of your networks.  You did not care what they were making next because if you did not want it, you would simply just not purchase it.  Forget writing letters to your friends to warn them that the “new & improved” product really wasn’t.

Fast forward to today.  Customers are more equipped through technology and network science to make purchase decisions than every before.  Interestingly enough though, the buying cycle is getting longer, not shorter.  Customer’s purchase paths have changed. No longer do they call you to see if something is in stock or what your hours of operation are. No longer do you get a chance to speak to prospects, they simply search online, visit the first few sites that come up, comparison shop through online and physical stores, review product ratings and comments.  If prospects can’t relate to the things they find in that process, those potential customer simply go away without you ever knowing they were actual prospects.

While purchase patterns have changed, so have expectations.  The expectation is that I, as a customer, can ask a question online to a company and get a response back either from other customer zealots or from the company itself.  The other expectations are that you are being a good corporate citizen (because I’ll find out if you are not) and that my vote counts.  I want to influence the direction of the next product, not as a shareholder, but as a product user and Lord help if my product breaks down before I think is reasonbly expected.

We know that customers are changing for both B2B and B2C and yes, even for B2B2C.  The challenge is that customers have not yet fully transitioned from customer-of-old to customer-of-new so they are still in motion.  They don’t know what they want in a Brand yet however the expectation is still there.  So how do you handle this?  We’ve brought in one of the best thought leaders in this space from one of the most renowned agencies in the forefront of this battle.  Please welcome Chris Carfi from Edelman.  Chris wrote the customer manifesto and has built his career helping companies managing the ongoing customer transition.  The topic and Questions for this week are:

Topic:  The Social Customer…and What Brands Need To Know

Q1:  How has the social customer changed since 2004?

Q2:  How does mobile affect the social customer?

Q3:  Where does the “brand” actually meet with the social customer online?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, November 2 at noon ET.  Follow #sm84 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live

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