Why Your Special Offer Isn’t
Social media and its impact on business only exists because of the larger trend of customer information and consequent choice making. 15 years ago, most of us didn’t care so very much about where our meat came from, or which rental car company we used, or what type of permanent marker we wrote with – […]
Why Social CRM Needs to Be Less About the Social and More About the Customers
Today’s guest post is by Kevin Troy Darling, Social Media Program Manager at iLinc Web Conferencing, who has been writing all his life, but only marketing pays. To paraphrase Tina Turner, we don’t need another acronym. The debate on Social CRM (sCRM) could easily become a distraction. We have many good tools at our disposal […]
Social Listening and Analysis for the DIY Inclined
If you are conducting any level of online reputation management or campaign tracking using social media data sources, you have to get beyond the obvious. The point of tracking software isn’t to determine how many tweets were sent mentioning a company, it’s to figure out what those tweets say, and what the business ramifications are. […]
Is Twitter for Business Even Worth the Trouble?
We built our own Frankenstein. We are spending countless employee hours tweeting, retweeting, responding to tweets, figuring out whom to follow, secretly following celebs and athletes, and designing custom Twitter backgrounds. Nobody forced companies to get involved with their customers in this way. There was no law, edict, or pitchfork-wielding band of angry citizens. We […]
Why Influence Mining is the Next Gold Rush
Inherently, we understand influence. It’s in our DNA. We know that a grizzly bear has a marked impact on its surroundings, and can change behavior in ways that even the fiercest badger cannot. The tsunami of data being created, collected and parsed every second of every day now makes influence identification instantaneous, and possible from […]
You’re Pissed Off at the Wrong Guy
Of course it’s upsetting when a customer slams you via tweet, status message, blog comment or humorous video. But it’s not like social media created negativity, it just puts a magnifying glass to it. Do you know why you don’t get angry when customers call customer service and say all kinds of crazy, depressing stuff […]
Kurrently Revolutionizes Real-Time Search With Twitter + Facebook Results
Editor’s Note: Kurrently is no longer available, however, we recommend using Social Searcher which has much of the functionality that Kurrently used to have. Check it out at http://www.social-searcher.com. The future of real-time data didn’t come from Google. Or Microsoft. Or IBM. It came from a Canadian computer sciences student who uses his free time pretty […]
4 Steps to Drive Sales with a Social FAQ
One of the key benefits of social media that’s not talked about nearly enough is its ability to mitigate doubt and confusion among fence-sitters. Yes, your prospective customers are confused and uncertain. After all, why would they even be coming to your Web site unless they had questions about your product or service? To be […]
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 […]
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 […]
Ignore Foursquare at Your Peril – An Analysis of Potential
Are you too dismissive of Foursquare (as well as Gowalla and the other geo-location apps)? I’m starting to hear a lot of smart people scoff at these services, primarily along these lines “Why do I care where someone is eating for lunch?” The last time I heard that line of reasoning en mass was when […]
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 […]
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 […]
Do You Know Your Customers Enough to be a Social Media Hit?
Guest post from Susan Baier, a 20-year digital marketing strategy veteran with an MBA in Entrepreneurship. Her company Audience Audit provides strategic marketing support and audience segmentation research that helps organizations understand their customers better. Being relevant to customers isn’t about just using their first name in an email. True relevance grows from a […]
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 […]
Is Your Social Strategy Proactive or Reactive?
Is your social media program about asking, or answering? Like Sonny divorcing Cher (or was it the other way around?) there’s a schism coming in social media between companies using it for marketing, and companies using it for customer service and CRM. Thus, one of the first questions I recommend you ask about your social […]