YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com

Are You Slow Enough to Succeed in Social Media?

Does this sound familiar? Within 12 months of its invention, 1,200 companies entered the radio “business” in some form or fashion. So said Malcolm Gladwell in a stirring speech given Monday to the AAA Annual Meeting in Scottsdale. In his own, story-filled way, he emphasized the point that we are in a period of unusual [...]

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The Science of Inequality – Finding Your Influential Customers

Does social media breed inequality? Because our behaviors on the social Web leave a noticeable fingerprint, smart companies can modify the way they engage and interact with us, based on our social graph, purchase history, etc. Would the VP of Customer Satisfaction of Southwest Airlines have called Kevin Smith at home (after he was kicked [...]

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Is Social Media Too Big For Its Britches?

Maybe what we need is a little deconstruction. At Monday’s Social Fresh conference in St. Louis, I was delighted to join Sarah Evans, Jason Falls, Amber Naslund, and Zena Weist on the closing panel discussion. During the session, an audience question got me fired up (no surprise, as the Social Fresh attendees were a very [...]

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Nobody Said Social Media Was Easy

Social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s different expensive. In the QA portion of recent speeches, I’ve frequently been asked “this is great, but doesn’t it seem like it will take a lot of time?” Yes. It. Will. Succeeding on the social Web requires daily participation. Whether it’s brand reputation management, PR and influencer outreach, customer service [...]

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Build Your Brand a Social Content Ladder in 5 Steps

Sure, social media takes a lot of time, but probably not as much time as you think. Too many companies and organizations are reinventing the content wheel for every social outpost they maintain. A better approach is to create a content ecosystem that allows you to repurpose and cascade your best information. Instead of a [...]

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Getting Serious About Social Media

My clients at ExactTarget yesterday published a terrific, free executive briefing called Letter to the C-Suite: Getting Serious About Social Media. It includes a dozen letters written to C-level executives (in general) about what they need to do to take social media to the next level. Reading them through, I really wish we could have [...]

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6 Critical Services Agencies Must Provide to Stay Relevant in Social Media

Is there a future for agencies in a social media world? Yesterday, I gave a presentation in Tempe, AZ to Agencyside, a conference of advertising and PR agency owners. I emphasized that to remain relevant, agencies must differentiate themselves by providing advanced social media services, not just the basics. An Enormous Opportunity The huge (and [...]

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4 Reasons the Social Business Evolution Starts Now

Is today the day we start thinking about social media as part of an integrated program? My friends at ExactTarget announced a moment ago that they have acquired CoTweet, the leader in enterprise Twitter management, and will be building a social products lab to add tie-ins for Facebook, YouTube, and other elements of the social [...]

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6 Required Competencies for Social Organizations

Now, marketing is the center of American business. Why? because through social media, customers are praising and criticizing companies in public in a way that requires marketing to triage and respond. Three years ago, if Kevin Smith would have been kicked off a Southwest flight for being too fat, he would have yelled at the gate [...]

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