How to Earn and Lock Down Customer Loyalty with Analytics

A First Time Fix is Addictive

The surest path during a recession is to invest in and even overcompensate in making those strategies, processes and systems that directly interact with and enable conversations with customers as efficient and streamlined as possible. Given the choice between spending a dollar on increasing customer loyalty by making your company easier to do business with versus not doing anything, it's clearly better to err on the side of locking down loyalty using analytics.

Analytics are often used in customer service and service management departments for resource planning and forecasting, managing the service management system to optimal levels, also for defining schedule and route optimization, in addition to Fleet Management. All of these strategies for using analytics lead to exceptional internal efficiencies – but let's face it – this economy has sent a very loud and clear signal – it's a very critical time to keep the customers you have and gain new ones through exceptional, over-the-top service. Using analytics to lock down customer loyalty is possible, profitable and a strategy forward-looking company in a broad range of industries are pursuing today.

Key Points

Consider the following key points about how analytics can be used to make service more customer-centered and capable of fulfilling the goal of locking down loyalty:

First time fix percentage needs to continually go up, even faster right now. Do you know what your first time fix performance is? Get a hold of that figure and track it down and then begin to create a time series of it. Chart it over time, work with your service department to figure out how to drive this figure up. Consider it a leading indicator of customer loyalty.

Customers find first-time fixes addictive.

Service Level Agreements (SLA) need to be exceeded during this recession – and analytics can tell you if you can or not. Instead of just "getting by" on the measures of performance you commit to customers on, go after the ones specifically in your SLAs and do an exceptional job on them. When it comes time for contract and service renewals, your service strategies aimed at delivering exceptional performance can form the foundation of keeping the customer.

Attack manual processes that cost you money and automate them over the Web instead – now. Consider the fact that your customers live in a 24/7 world, why force them into a 9 – 5 world that is further constrained by when your RMA Specialists are at their desk. Automate the RMA process online. QVC, HSN and other mass merchandisers who must make multichannel management work to survive are doing this today. On the tech side specifically in the B2B arena, HP and IBM are masters of this as are dozens of component suppliers.

Get your service act together and create a dashboard to measure performance. Realize that service is the path to locking down customer loyalty in this recession. Get a dashboard together and start measuring how you are doing on a set of key measures of service performance. Resolve to do whatever it takes to drive up these measures of performance – because they are measures of your ability to keep customers loyal.

Bottom line: Want to lock in the loyalty of your customers during this recession? Use analytics to measure how you save them time and respect their unmet needs by trying to anticipate their needs with more targeted and efficient services strategies. When in doubt exceed their expectations on SLAs and measure – and celebrate that. That's where the future of any company's viability is.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus at Expert Access

Marketing's Social Networking Revolution

Social networking is exposing several of the most blatant weaknesses of marketing and forcing positive change as a result.  These are deep-seated challenges that persist in marketing, getting in the way of creating more opportunities to interact with, not just talk at, prospects and customers in the future.

The economy’s condition just makes these changes all the more intensely acted on. It’s not that social networking is the panacea; the conversations and transparency they enable are.

Here a few observations of how social networking is changing marketing. 

From Overwhelming To Relevant
Technology-driven companies have a tendency to immediately go into overwhelming their prospects and customers with information.  It’s as if the more detailed, complex and sheer volume of data delivered, the more marketing in technology-dominated companies feel they are doing an exceptional job. 

In fact “Data Overload” makes customers all the more confused and begins to lose them despite their being ideal prospects for products.  Social networking sites like Twitter provide immediate feedback for marketers who are in this comfort zone of data overload; people quit following and listening. It’s the same in the non-social networked world yet online it is so much easier to pick up.  Marketers are getting it and moving to more simplistic approaches to defining prospects, which is the second point.

Simplifying Market Segments
This is another noticeable change of marketers who are making marketing on social networking work.  They have greatly simplified their approach to defining who their target markets are. 

Conversely, when marketers participate in social networks and attempt to be very specific, even granular about their segments, their message gets lost.  Social networks are forcing marketers to simplify who they are and what they do.  The bottom line is that social networks force a very high level of clarity – precision – in market segmentation.

Simpler, More Direct Messaging
Credit the 140 character limit of Twitter for this revolution in simplicity, or the thousands of distractions in social networks competing for customers’ attention, and it is clear to see what marketers have had to tighten up their pitches to customers. 

Ditching the long, winding value propositions for simple, direct ones is happening much faster and with greater intensity now. Fragmented, complex messages are dying fast, while more direct, focused messaging is beginning to win out.

Lessons Marketers Are Learning From Social Networking

The following lessons learned were gained from watching the major change educational institutions, service providers and manufacturers have made to their marketing based on lessons learned from participating in social networking.

Brands No Longer “All Things To All People” They More Concise and Direct. Again credit the brevity social networks require for this change.  Brands are trimming down all the hype and getting right to the point of which they are, what they offer in terms of solving customer problems, and working harder than ever to stay relevant.

Defining segments with greater precision to make them simpler to communicate with. Anyone who has ever worked with a technology-driven company can relate to how complex, even confusing segmentation criteria can get.  From the granular to the grandiose, segmentation criteria are getting real because social networking’s modes of communicate demand succinctness, conciseness, relevance.  This alone has been a big win for marketing. 

Delivering Exceptional Experiences over “Boil the Ocean” Marketing.  From the triple digit growth rates to the seven and eight figure subscriber counts, social networks at first glance are a marketers dream.  Yet in fact social networking is much more about listening than talking.  It’s much more about bringing value to a conversation, whether that is in being responsive to a customer or prospect, solving a customer problem by cutting through red tape, or making opening up and being honest about problems customers have. In a sense social networks transform marketing to its purest form: enabling and sustaining relationships with customers by enriching, entertaining or educating them.

Bottom line: It’s time for marketers to get real and realize that the old practices of “data overload”, complex segmentation criteria and complex marketing messages derail more deals than they create.  Social networking’s’ needs of brevity, conciseness and transparency are in for many companies just the challenges they need to improve today. 

Courtesy – Louis Columbus at Perfect CEM

Marketing's Social Networking Revolution

Social networking is exposing several of the most blatant weaknesses of marketing and forcing positive change as a result.  These are deep-seated challenges that persist in marketing, getting in the way of creating more opportunities to interact with, not just talk at, prospects and customers in the future.

The economy’s condition just makes these changes all the more intensely acted on. It’s not that social networking is the panacea; the conversations and transparency they enable are.

Here a few observations of how social networking is changing marketing. 

From Overwhelming To Relevant
Technology-driven companies have a tendency to immediately go into overwhelming their prospects and customers with information.  It’s as if the more detailed, complex and sheer volume of data delivered, the more marketing in technology-dominated companies feel they are doing an exceptional job. 

In fact “Data Overload” makes customers all the more confused and begins to lose them despite their being ideal prospects for products.  Social networking sites like Twitter provide immediate feedback for marketers who are in this comfort zone of data overload; people quit following and listening. It’s the same in the non-social networked world yet online it is so much easier to pick up.  Marketers are getting it and moving to more simplistic approaches to defining prospects, which is the second point.

Simplifying Market Segments
This is another noticeable change of marketers who are making marketing on social networking work.  They have greatly simplified their approach to defining who their target markets are. 

Conversely, when marketers participate in social networks and attempt to be very specific, even granular about their segments, their message gets lost.  Social networks are forcing marketers to simplify who they are and what they do.  The bottom line is that social networks force a very high level of clarity – precision – in market segmentation.

Simpler, More Direct Messaging
Credit the 140 character limit of Twitter for this revolution in simplicity, or the thousands of distractions in social networks competing for customers’ attention, and it is clear to see what marketers have had to tighten up their pitches to customers. 

Ditching the long, winding value propositions for simple, direct ones is happening much faster and with greater intensity now. Fragmented, complex messages are dying fast, while more direct, focused messaging is beginning to win out.

Lessons Marketers Are Learning From Social Networking

The following lessons learned were gained from watching the major change educational institutions, service providers and manufacturers have made to their marketing based on lessons learned from participating in social networking.

Brands No Longer “All Things To All People” They More Concise and Direct. Again credit the brevity social networks require for this change.  Brands are trimming down all the hype and getting right to the point of which they are, what they offer in terms of solving customer problems, and working harder than ever to stay relevant.

Defining segments with greater precision to make them simpler to communicate with. Anyone who has ever worked with a technology-driven company can relate to how complex, even confusing segmentation criteria can get.  From the granular to the grandiose, segmentation criteria are getting real because social networking’s modes of communicate demand succinctness, conciseness, relevance.  This alone has been a big win for marketing. 

Delivering Exceptional Experiences over “Boil the Ocean” Marketing.  From the triple digit growth rates to the seven and eight figure subscriber counts, social networks at first glance are a marketers dream.  Yet in fact social networking is much more about listening than talking.  It’s much more about bringing value to a conversation, whether that is in being responsive to a customer or prospect, solving a customer problem by cutting through red tape, or making opening up and being honest about problems customers have. In a sense social networks transform marketing to its purest form: enabling and sustaining relationships with customers by enriching, entertaining or educating them.

Bottom line: It’s time for marketers to get real and realize that the old practices of “data overload”, complex segmentation criteria and complex marketing messages derail more deals than they create.  Social networking’s’ needs of brevity, conciseness and transparency are in for many companies just the challenges they need to improve today. 

Courtesy – Louis Columbus at Perfect CEM

Work It Backwards!

Eight Guiding Principles for Creating Marketplace Conversations

1. Don't Pay It Forward

When trying to establish or create marketplace conversations always start with the end in mind and work backwards. Ask these questions:

What do we want prospects to think about you 12 months from now?

Where would like to be?

When you can envision and answer those questions create an Integrated Marketplace Conversation plan that will help you get where you want to go.

Conversations require content and everyone at your organization needs to collaborate on new content strategies ... news, video, audio, web, blogs, documents, Twitter tweets, Facebook channels, etc. ... each designed to keep prospects engaged with you and move them into awareness and from there into interactive relationships that lead to qualified leads and pipeline activity.

2. Each Marketplace Conversation is focused on brand awareness to raise your visibility, using multi-step, multi-media campaigns that integrate:

• News (multi-media news releases and feature article placements)
• Opt-in emailed newsletter articles and promotions
• Direct communications to generate awareness with targeted individuals
• Direct promotional communications to create qualified sales leads
• Content creation, distribution and monitoring social media, particularly blogs, podcasts, and video
• Participation and monitoring of social networks

3. Each Marketplace Conversation to focus on people issues and how they relate to your products.

4. Each Marketplace Conversation is chosen to implant the selected conversations in the minds or your various target audiences.

5. Each Marketplace Conversation is an extended dialogue, with multiple prongs and enhancements to keep it going across an extended time frame.

6. The distribution media will be selected around the target audience for each topic, some will be broad in distribution and others will be slivered around specific prospect segments.

7. Each Marketplace Conversation needs to have attention-getting qualities—human drama, entertainment, controversy, humor or other attention getter so you do not get lost in the clutter.

8. Each Marketplace Conversation to provide validation to support the stories.

Courtesy – Dale Wolf at Perfect CEM

Strategies for Quickly Building an Audience with Social Media

The Web 2.0 social media revolution is in full steam. Are people finding your website?

As an entrepreneur, how do you make your business website stand out among 435 million other websites and more than one million blogs competing for your audience's attention?

It's not as hard as you might think.

To begin, let's look at the demographics of Web 2.0 social networking sites, Myspace.com, Facebook and YouTube.com. This will give you an idea on how to position your message in the Web 2.0 world.

The Web 2.0 Social Networking Revolution

Web 2.0 is a real revolution on the Internet. And these aren't just college kids.

• 62% of MySpace visitors are older than 25 (40% are 35+), and 83% are making over $30,000 a year. Nineteen percent (19%) are making $100,000 and up.
• On Facebook.com, 46% are over 25 and 34% are 35+, but they've got deep pockets. Eighty-eight percent (88%) make more than $30,000 and twenty-three percent (23%) make $100,000 or more.

In the years ahead, these numbers will get ridiculous.

• Social media giant Facebook is currently ADDING a million 25+ (non-student) adults per week to their rosters. That's 52 million new users a year.
• YouTube.com gets over 50 million unique visitors per month. That equals over half a billion a year.
• Facebook and MySpace have the equal daily traffic of Google. Experts predict within the next year they will DOUBLE the daily traffic of Google search.

So your prospects are there. The traffic is there. The spending power is there. So NOW is the time you want to establish your presence on the social networking websites.

Web 2.0 Strategy: Why You Should Be a Maven, Not a Marketer

As a website owner, how should you position your message in the Web 2.0 world?

The increasingly savvy buying public will quickly shun marketers. Internet readers want information from the Internet. They don't want advertising, marketing, or a "pitch."

According to Schefren in his "Attention Age Doctrine," the solution is to become a social media ?Maven.?

A Maven is a trusted authority, like a friend, on the social media websites. As you gain their trust, your audience will return to you over and over again wanting to invest in your advice.

Five Steps to Becoming a Social Media Maven

• Social Media Maven Step 1: Get in the Game
  Begin blogging immediately. Create a video explaining how to solve a problem and put it on YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook with links back to your main website. Just those two things alone will establish more Web 2.0 presence than 90% of your competition.
• Social Media Maven Step 2: Share Your Passion
  Build your Web 2.0 website around your passions. Thirty-two-year-old Gary Vaynerchuk transformed his wine knowledge to his video blog, http://Tv.Winelibrary.com. It now has thousands of subscribers and does $50 million a year in wine sales.
• Social Media Maven Step 3: Be Controversial
  Your audience will remember you more when you challenge the status quo. Controversy sells. Think like the tabloids and the local news channels here. For example, Web 2.0 Business Coach Rich Schefren challenges traditional marketing wisdom in each release of his Attention Age Doctrine special reports at http://www.attentionage.net/doctrine.
• Social Media Maven Step 4: Create World-Class Content
  You will drive repeat traffic to your website by offering top-notch "how to" information. Gary's wine tastings are highly educational on the benefits of wine, how to cook with wine, and how to choose a wine for your special occasion. Rich's reports teach Web 2.0 marketing principles.Remember, as soon as your audience feels that you are "pitching" them, you've lost them. So provide content not advertising.
• Social Media Maven Step 5: Engage in the Conversation
  Web 2.0 is a dialogue not a monologue. Internet businesses profit more when they observe and listen to their communities first before they broadcast their messages. Savvy mavens such as Gary and Rich encourage their audience to ask questions. The answers to these questions then become part of their user-generated content.

How Marketing in a Web 2.0 Social Media Environment Is Exciting

Visualize it like a big radio or television station or movie screen where you're the star. You're building a fan base so you need to entertain, inform, and deliver consistently for your audience.

You have more publishing power at your fingertips right now than at any time in history.

So use it.

Share your passions.

Reveal your trials and tribulations.

Tell your story.

And, watch how quickly your audience builds.

Courtesy - Gary Smith (www.rightbraincopy.com) at Expert Access

About the Author:

Master Copywriter, Gary Smith (www.rightbraincopy.com) has taught thousands of entrepreneurs how to write copy that persuades, motivates and inspires prospects to buy. He strongly suggests using Web 2.0 Internet Marketing Strategies revealed in Richard Schefren's Attention Age Doctrine. Get it now for FREE at: http://www.attentionage.com/doctrine and discover never-before-revealed Web 2.0 tools and techniques to win in the Attention Age.

Resolving To Get Real Work Done With Social Networking In 2009

Social networking’s infatuation needs to lead into real results in 2009.  The passionate evangelists of this new medium need to step up in 2009 and make all the promised potential of social networking pay off.  

Less Time In the Echo Chamber and More In The Trenches

How can you use social networking to save a dying company? How can social networking serve as a means of reconnecting the parts of a company that are falling apart?  What about entire industries and the lack of integration between suppliers?  Or how can you manage a reduction in force and still stay in touch with the critical knowledge these valuable people have?  Knowledge management and the free agent economy – what does this look like in twelve months?  All critical questions and quite frankly social media experts need to spend less time in the echo chamber and get out and be real evangelists – solving real problems – if social networking is ever going to live up to all the hype.  It’s time to put social networking to work in 2009.

There’s nothing magic about all this.  It’s all just about hard work.  For the many social networking vendors out there, all the ROI studies really don’t matter if you can’t show how you made one of your customers more focused, stronger, more capable of weathering a recession because they used your apps. 

All the long-term studies are worthless in an economy that is in completely uncharted waters right now. All that matters is getting deep into the problems companies have who have invested in social networking applications and really learning their businesses, and defining just how social networking applications can help.  Hype is recession roadkill. Results are all that really matter right now.

Recession: A Test To See How Strong Your Company Really Is

Despite the global economic crisis and the fatalistic tone many writers and bloggers have today, this is a time that is definitely going to show how strong each company is beneath the surface.  Companies in business twelve months from now are already completely redefining how they support their customers, how they attract new ones, and how they serve their channel partners.  Is social networking the panacea for all these areas? No.  Hard work and a commitment to completely question how business done is, and then quickly change to be more aggressive and focused than competitors are.  

You can see companies who are already positioning themselves to survive the next twelve months and its uncertainty, and they are taking the following steps: 

• Treating Time A Competitive Weapon.  A short twelve months from now, many companies and people will never view time the same again.  That’s because in those companies who ride out this recession with fewer staff will require more work from fewer people, and the managing of more relationships than ever before.  Social networking will play a contributory role to streamlining jobs and making these goals accomplishable, yet will require tailoring first.  This already is transcending pre-sales, sales and service and will extend into other areas of companies in 2009.
• Putting Customer Retention Strategies on Steriods. Again, forward-thinking companies are already taking the time their sales forces have to delve deeper into the unmet needs of their customers, and working to provide expertise to solve these problems.  Unmet needs emanating out of the complex, difficult-to-solve problems are where the opportunities are in this recession.  Resolving to delve into the toughest problems customers have is all that really matters.
• Overcoming resistance to change with social networking. As the pace of execution quickens during the year there’s going to be major push-back in many companies to new initiatives.  From implementing SaaS-based analytics to better track services and customer costs to launching new strategies for retaining customers, change is going to be constant in many companies.  Social networking will be able to act as a sounding board for companies to share their anxieties over change, confidentially – and it is critical for C-level executives to shoulder their part of the change burden. This has to happen for any company to embrace change and survive.

Bottom line: It’s time for social networking to get to work in 2009, and instead of being fascinated with itself, turn to what really matters, and that is using these applications to serve those most in need: the many companies who are going to fight to survive in 2009.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus at Perfect CEM

What is Success?

In various dictionaries success is defined as the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors. Additionally in current environment success is also directly associated with the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like. But beside what the dictionary says, what is success for you, me and billions of other people who are living on the 3^rd planet from the sun – Earth.

Couple of days back for no reason I decided to sit at roadside tea stall. While chatting with one of the rickshaws puller, I asked him the question about what is success for him? He answered that he doesn’t know what success is. But after thinking for a moment he answered back that he wants to send his mother and father on Hajj. He further gave it a thought, had a sip of tea and said that he will consider himself successful once he can earn the money to send his parents to Hajj and then finally when will be able to send them. It was a cold evening and he barely had adequate cloths to cover his body from the chilly air. While we (rickshaw puller & me) were talking at the tea stall, the owners of the stall jumped in between and said “that he (rickshaw puller) even skips his meal to save money for the Hajj trip for this parent.” I got so much touched, and hence made an attempt to offer a help for the trip. But once he noticed it in my talk, he immediately responded “Sahib (sir) it will be my money and ‘I’ will send them”. I felt so strong about that moment and left the place. I kept on wondering that the entire notion of success for him revolves around the trip to Hajj by his parents.

I am in the middle of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and the same book explains (from my viewpoint) the formula of success or achievement in the following manner:

Hard Work + Luck = Success.

Of course the most of the successful subject taken into the research for the book are highly successful people in their own rights. The book digs deep into some luck or rather wonderfully defined/explained “opportunity(s)” that made people like Bill Gates, people like Bill Joy, people like Steve Job and so on what they are. Outliers begins with a provocative look at why certain five-year-old boys enjoy an advantage in ice hockey, and how these advantages accumulate over time. The book also explains what Bill Gates, the Beatles and Mozart had in common: along with talent and ambition, each enjoyed an unusual opportunity to intensively cultivate a skill that allowed them to rise above their peers. Bottom Line, the book is a highly recommended piece of work. It throws up some wonderful “scientific” attributes of success.

At 60, Professor Ray Umashankar, who has an artificial hip, climbed the 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, to honor his son Naren, who killed himself following a bout of depression. He defined success not being the skill but passion to do a thing. So climbing a 19000 plus mountain even with an artificial hip, just to honor his son was a success.

While I was articulating the above para I noticed that how easily I used the word “just”, without giving a thought that how important it could have been for Prof. Ray to climb the mountain that he forced himself even with the artificial hip. This truly indicates that definition of success in different people’s worldview is different.

Continuing with the attributes of success, I believe and as indicated by Prof Ray that “passion” plays an important role in an individual or collective success. Yes most of us try to do hard work and if luck favor at the appropriate time we taste success. But being passionate in what you believe or what you want to achieve not only plays a critical role but (for me) is the tipping point towards your so called or so believed anticipated success.

Hence with this hypothesis I believe people like Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and other successful figures were passionate about what they were doing, even before they realized what they want to achieve. In the above story of the Rickshaw Puller, the person was so passionate about sending his parents to the Hajj that I was even able to notice a dazzle in his eye when he was talking about it.

The rickshaw puller among others big names have, and are surely putting a lot of hard work but I still truly believe that they are bounded by the spell of passion that has ignited the notion of hard work. Similarly if you see the case of the father - Prof Roy, he was so much passionate to honor his son that beside his physical constraints he was all willing to do the hard work, and I would assume that while he was climbing he must have had the factor of luck favoring him with the right conditions for the climb.

I do not consider myself any scholar in any field, nor do I have any intentions to be one. But I believe that we all have to be passionate in what we believe, what we think, what we do or what we want to achieve. So the formula of success for me is:

Passion + Hard work + Luck = Success.

Similarly I am passionate for someone whom I love & care; working hard towards it, and I know once luck strike, I will taste success. I know that even she knows that…………………………………….

Have A Happy & Passionate Sunday!

Face some stats of Facebook

Some interesting statistics from Facebook about Facebook. Still it forces me to wonder how much money they are actually making. I am sure they must have figured it out or must be working towards it, but the numbers below are purely astonishing.

General Growth

• More than 140 million active users
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older

User Engagement

• Average user has 100 friends on the site
• 2.6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 13 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• More than 2.5 million users become fans of Pages each day

Applications

• More than 700 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 4 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 15 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month
• More than 2 million events created each month
• More than 19 million active user groups exist on the site

International Growth

• More than 35 translations available on the site, with more than 60 in development
• More than 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Platform

• More than 660,000 developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• More than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook Platform
• 140 new applications added per day
• More than 95% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform

Some analysis for the weekend.

Have a good weekend!

Making Cultural Intelligence A Priority in 2009

Cultural Intelligence is the ability to quickly and correctly interpret new and unfamiliar social and work-based relationships and make major contributions to them.  Given the quickening pace of partnerships and customer relationships that often span several time zones, developing this skill set is going to be essential in the coming year for many members of marketing, sales, service, operations and product management.

I’m preparing to teach an International Business next semester and ran into this concept.  I scored myself to see by Cultural Quotient (CQ). It was a great learning experience so I thought I would blog about it.  You can quickly find your CQ score by taking the short quiz in the article linked to in this article as well.

Understanding Your Cultural Intelligence Profile

Christopher Early, professor and chair of the department of organizational behavior at London Business School and Elaine Mosakowski, professor of management at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote the article Cultural Intelligence, which originally appeared in the October, 2004 edition of the Harvard Business Review.  In it they defined a series of twenty questions that measure a person’s perception of cultural cues and their sensitivity to them.  The authors even created a series of profiles that are fascinating to look at once one has scored themselves.  From the provincial, to the analyst who seeks to intricately understand a new culture, to the natural, the ambassador, the mimic and the chameleon, each profile plays a unique role in how they interact with and contribute to foreign cultures.  What is fascinating about the scoring approach regarding CQ is the balance of cognitive, physical and emotional measures that the authors have devised.  The examples given of how those in key positions in their companies have been able to become more effective in working with cross-functional team members in completely different cultures than their own is encouraging.

Key Take-Aways:

• Cultivate Cultural Intelligence in your organization. Encourage an open mindset about having managers determine what their CQ scores are.  Offer the opportunity for those spending the majority of time in new cultures the chance to get additional training as well.

• Find a C-level sponsor to champion investments in Cultural Intelligence.  Companies as devise as HP to Proctor & Gamble have executive-level sponsors who work to support CQ programs, often benchmarking results to show progress over time.

• Use CQ as a means to match the best possible team members with the most demanding tasks.  One disk drive manufacturer was able to do this and saved thousands of hours in lost communication by having an engineering manager sent to Hong Kong who had tested the highest of any other member of their department.  This made it possible to clean up quality problems within a fraction of the time it typically had in previous product generations when CQ had not been used.

• Follow Proctor & Gamble’s Lead and Make Cultural Intelligence a Global Initiative.  Proctor & Gamble credits the growth of CQ as a key part of its ability to innovate as well, all tying back to listening to their customers, channel partners and suppliers more effectively as a result.

Bottom Line:  Getting more done in less time across cultures is going to be key in 2009.  Focusing on how to create more Cultural Intelligence can also transform how innovative and tuned in to customers, partners, and suppliers your company is.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus at Perfect CEM

Social Media & Recession

The facebook campaign has quadruples; are we talking about an emergence of an imperative social media marketing techniques. Statistics on advertising during a recession are not promising, and market(s) | economy (s) | company(s) worldwide are either facing a dramatic downturn or virtually collapsing. So is the recession a boost for social media spending? The answer is a simple yes.

Many ask me that how people with social technologies are changing everything, and as a marketer I still opine that the window is open for all to make money with social media, provided you are ready to effectively brand with social media. The top brands in social media report (2008) clearly articulate & showcase the importance of social media branding.

Things like blog marketing has become a central to online marketing or twitter essential for business, which I am sure many marketers like me never dreamed of, in its early days.

However is it good to just dive down into the pool of Social Media? I am sure questions like is blogging and community a ‘real’ work, is social network-based relationships shallow or stronger and so on pops up either in our mind or in management meetings?

The Art of Listening in Social Media plays an important role in ensuring a fundamentally strong social media base for your organization. Here we are even talking about Barack Obama, the social web, and the future of user-generated governance or how auto marketers should use social media in a downturn or even social media helped reporting in the recent mumbai attacks. The virtue of the “right” social media is enormous. This may even explains that the attribute of social media relies on the most fundamental and effective technique of marketing, which is the word of mouth marketing. Or is this why santa’s marketing works better than ours!

Hence it is imperative to engage in social media while ensuring that we take the "me" out of it and identify the ROI in social media.

As e-mail open rates plunge, social media marketing makes even more sense, as this is a podium where you meet or interact with your prospective customer at the time and space when he/she is looking for either you or what you sell. As marketers it is our fundamental duty to know about our prospect(s) and customer(s), though I wish much like how google knows where i am and everything else i do.

We cannot let our brand to commit suicide by not applying the new rules of marketing. While we can be judgmental to evaluate that why social applications will thrive in a recession but the truth remains still as naïve that we need to keep branding during a recession to reap benefits in stronger or fruitful times.

Teaching Your Website and Company How to Speak Web 2.0

It’s time to get beyond the Web 2.0 windows dressing and truly change what your company is about if you want to succeed using these new approaches to communicating.  Web 2.0 is not about having corporate accounts on Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter or any number of other social networks.  It is however all about listening and committing to create a more interactive dialogue with prospects and customers. It’s also about changing how your company uses content and makes it accessible too.

I’m far from being any kind of social media expert, but if you hang out on Twitter, Facebook or any of these social networking applications you can see what does and doesn’t work. 

And what prompted me to write this post is that the gulf is growing fast between companies who are really embracing Web 2.0 concepts of humility and listening versus those that blare their messages to the world.  I’m offering up a few lessons learned on how to make your website and company to speak Web 2.0 as a result.  Tim O’Reilly’s description of What is Web 2.0? is worth checking out as well. 

Lesson 1: Your Website Needs To Tell It Like It Is
It is astounding how company websites are enmeshed in jargon-filled descriptions that really don’t say anything.  Amplified over Web 2.0-based communications channels, they become even more garbled and unintelligible.    David Meerman Scott has an excellent, must-read blog post on this subject, World-Class, Cutting-Edge Gobbledygook. Go read it now.  It succinctly captures why so many companies struggle to get leads over their websites.  No one can tell what they do! Mr. Scott offers up examples that defy explanation of just what business the company is in.  As a result when these companies get their Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter accounts and start pushing their message to the world no one cares. Why? No one can tell what business they are in.  Before jumping into the Web 2.0 pool make sure anyone can figure out just what business your company is in by looking at your website.  A friend calls this the “mother in law” test. 

Lesson 2: On Social Networks, Responsiveness is King, Follower Counts Aren’t
One of the aspects of social networks that make them so alluring to both companies and people is the real-time feedback of followers or friends.  Lately on Twitter and in the blogosphere in general debates have raged on about follower counts connoting higher relevancy of one person over another, which is ridiculous.

One wonders if Albert Einstein was on Twitter with less than 100 followers would his genius have been discounted? It might have been.  Just as follower counts are irrelevant to someone’s influence in the real world, so it is for companies as well. Don’t waste time worrying about your follower count.  Worry about being responsive and getting customers’ problems solved.  Worry about being honest and worthy of trust as a company.  Worry about being real.  And most of all worry about what you don’t know and what social networks can teach your company about how your customers are changing. Responsiveness truly is King, and figuring out where your customers are going is far more important than just looking at Web 2.0 technologies as the latest marketing communications channel.

Lesson 3: Your Company Needs To Have Skin In The Game   
Realizing that opening up the communications channels with existing customers and potential future ones using blogs, Wikis, social networking sites including Friendfeed, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest will require your company to change too.  Don’t sign up for all these social networking sites unless your company has a mandate for change already – because earning a reputation for responsiveness is so much more important than just using these new mediums for self-promotion.  If the greatest and most positive aspects of social networking and Web 2.0 are going to lead to lasting change in your company, then get a mandate for change. The bottom line is that companies who are making social networking work have significant skin in the game and show their commitment to responsiveness by changing process, policies and procedures to better serve their customers and earn new ones.

Lesson 4: Social Networking Is For People Not Corporate Logos
The proliferation of faceless corporate accounts on many of these social networking sites is understandable yet is the essence of the gulf I’ve seen growing on Twitter for example emanates from this practice.  Comparing the Twitter account @comcastcares who is Frank Eliason, Director of Digital Care for example versus any of the legions of companies who have accounts that are not staffed by anyone illustrates this point. If you set up a Twitter account in your company be sure to have a specific person or team of people mentioned, as Dell does.  The bottom line is that social networking is about people connecting with each other, not with corporate logos.  David Meerman Scott reflects on this development in his blog post Attention Marketers: Time to stop abusing Twitter. 

Closing Thoughts

Teaching your website and company to speak Web 2.0 is not all about rushing out to get corporate accounts on every social networking site you can find.  It is about the following however:

• When in doubt keep the jargon and techno babble out of all Web copy.  Simplify and tell it like it is, don’t obfuscate who or what your company is.  Simplicity is the new black. 

• Producing content on a regular basis is much more important than getting a given page perfect that will stand the test of time.  Streamlining how content gets updated on your website is so much more important than getting a corporate account on yet another social networking site.

• Link like you mean it.  Too often links on site go dead after re-designed and never get fixed, yet this is one of the most critical areas of serving others with content.  Resolve to fix these links and get your entire site audited for navigation now.

• RSS feeds need to be in place before any site goes live.  RSS readers are slowing replacing CNN.com, FoxNews.com and other traditional news sites as are social networks.  Get your content entirely compatible with RSS so it can be quickly and globally shared.

Bottom line: Web 2.0 is all about service to your customers and others interested in your company’s expertise and knowledge.  Serving with a genuine and transparent interest in enriching them and others is truly what matters.  Don’t be deluded by follower counts and all the rest; it just will distract you and your company from what matters most: serving and enriching others and learning more yourself.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus @ Perfect CEM

Five Tips from the Harte for Social Media

All cartoons are by Steve Kayser and courtesy of the illustrious Guhmshoo at www.bitstrips.com

The Need to Break a Social Media Rule

I have learned from being on Twitter that the rules of culture and etiquette, among other things, for the most part, expect a reciprocate follow to a follower. Well, I am breaking that rule ... intelligently.

Here's the thing, as more people and companies become aware of Twitter and Plurk, they don't take the time to see what the culture is like. By not taking the time to do so, they don't see that most folks on Twitter are real people with real names. And from now on I am not following them back.

Here's why. The other day, after checking out a follower's profile (to make sure they weren't a spammer, etc.), I followed them. Here's the response I received:

Ahhh ...

Here's another favorite:

Noticing a pattern?

And my all-time favorite:

What am I, just a number to you?

Today as I was going through my followers, I was greeted by all kinds of avatars (some creepy), crazy names, and one-line descriptions (if any). It was very enlightening.

Five Tips from the Harte

Here are some tips to people and companies who want to join the conversation on social media sites like Twitter, Plurk, identi.ca, etc.

• Use a name, a real name, somewhere. If you don't want to use a name, I suspect you aren't ready to engage in social media or a conversation. I can't have a conversation with "BugGurlz." (Okay, I made that up, but you know what I mean.)
• Don't use Susie234 as a name; spammers do that.
• Use a photo of yourself, not an avatar. Okay, well, I can deal with an avatar if I have other proof you are human and not a spammer (as in a real name somewhere and a description).
• Fill out the description. And not just a one-liner. ("I am a blogger.") Tell us who you are and what you are about; otherwise, why should anyone follow you?
• If you are a company, designate a real person to your Twitter/Plurk/identi.ca account and let them have a voice.

I feel at a disadvantage. You know my name, what I do, what I am interested in and all about me (or at least what I share on Twitter & Plurk). I am asking you to reciprocate. You might be a real person with whom I could have a great conversation, or perhaps a business relationship ... but we will never know.

Trust me. Being real will benefit you more than me—really.

Courtesy – Beth Harte at Expert Access

About the Author

Beth Harte is a marketing and communications professional that started her career when companies barely had e-mail—let alone websites. Experiencing Web 1.0 first hand, she also enjoyed the mad dash toward implementing integrated marketing communications and SEO/SEM.

Beth is also an adjunct professor who has taught both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Classes have included:

• Marketing in a Global Economy
• Marketing Principles and Practices
• Introduction to Public Relations
• Writing for Public Relations
• Issues in E-Commerce
• Proposal & Grant Writing
• Creating and Measuring Customer Value

Beth is currently teaching at Immaculata University. Up next: Community, Government and Global Relations and Writing for PR in the new Master's in Applied Communication program.

Being a firm believer in "walking the walk to talk the talk," Beth will be sharing tips, opinions and observations that she's experienced firsthand or picked up from some of the best marketers, communicators and social media experts in the world.