360DigitalInfluence

The new era of consumerism is one in which each and every consumer has a powerful voice. It is one that touches brands across the spectrum, from the families of food, beverage and personal care brands within multinational CPGs all the way to modern B2B technology companies who are in turn focusing on the new voice of the consumer and how this affects their lead generation and sales cycles.

As marketers working with social platforms we focus a lot on influencers and building influencer relationships. However this new social consumerism means that we need to turn our attention to looking at the empowered customer as the new powerhouse that must be considered and included in any advocacy program. This does not need to be a huge expensive operation and can start with something as simple as a thank you.

Here follows five easy things any company or brand can do today in taking the first step to growing a new breed of influential and empowered customer advocates, both on and offline:

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I’ve noticed something lately I can only describe as the Personality Paradox (mostly because I’m a big fan of alliteration).

It’s simple:  When it comes to engaging in social media, bigger brands (alliteration! OK, I’ll stop pointing it out.) tend to have smaller personalities.  This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

In the case of a big brand there are myriad factors that can cause this Paradox.  First off, having a big personality takes a ton of effort and focus.  Add to that regulatory/compliance issues, organizational challenges, multiple marcom agencies, new management and a million other things, big and small.  Or worse, simply losing sight of the customers who got you there in the first place.

The perfect parallel is a rock band.  The unsigned band playing half-filled clubs is going to cherish every fan – no autograph unsigned, no photo request denied, no interview not granted, no Tweet unanswered.  But as that band gains a following and eventually breaks, the demands on their time and attention increase, forcing them to (1) triage inbound requests and (2) start speaking to their fanbase as a whole, rather than as individuals.  Oh, and as their egos inflate, they often quickly forget their most loyal base.

(photo courtesy of Arne Hendriks)
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Right now, many of us have a solid grasp on how to leverage Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Tumblr to build online communities, promote their latest events/products/services and generate overall buzz about our clients’ brands. But what about LinkedIn?

What about the fact that LinkedIn is reaching 100 million members worldwide as we speak?

Maybe the fact that LinkedIn has company pages that smartly showcase how users are connected to brands and make it easy for them to recommend them?

The knowledge of LinkedIn’s growing recommendation engine that provides insights on companies & jobs that may be perfect for its members?

Today’s launch of LinkedIn’s student job portal that leverages the networks of students & recent graduates to recommend jobs & illustrate connections that may have been forgotten?

Or even LinkedIn’s API development that allows brands the opportunity to tap into LinkedIn’s growing network?

Every one of these opportunities benefit both the user and the brand. Every one is an opportunity for the brand to extend its reach, showcase its prowess, grow its credibility and have the best talent at their companies. We can help our clients do this with LinkedIn. continue reading

Who doesn’t love a dramatic finale to a TV series? I’m particularly partial to Top Chef and Top Chef Masters finales where finalists on both shows are often faced with the challenge of preparing a complicated bevy of courses intended to tell stories about who they are as chefs. Such challenges speak to favorite childhood memories and what inspired contestants to become professional chefs. The personal stories are often incredibly moving and include pictures and/or videos of the chefs as children and in their first professional kitchens.

I could not get enough of Chef Hubert Keller as he transformed viewers back in time to his parents’ European bakery, where I could practically smell the baguettes baking in the oven. I even imagined myself harvesting clams with a young Rick Moonen and his father, inhaling the salty air of the New York seashore where they talked about life and their futures. Watching and hearing these esteemed chefs share their heartfelt stories not only made them more accessible (after watching weeks of cutthroat competition), but also prompted me to seek out more information about them and how they were inspired.

In my quest for chefly knowledge, little did I know that Bravo TV had already provided me with biographies of all of the chefs, recipes, blog posts by several of the judges and chefs, photos, recipes, recaps and the ability to live chat (using Cover it Live) with other fans during the show. Like Bravo TV, many brands and organizations are embracing different forms of storytelling to better connect with their potential customers and incorporate more human elements into their outbound communications.
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We are very excited to announce that we are a proud sponsor and participant of an upcoming virtual conference brought to you by our friends at PRWeek next week. With new applications and social media tools emerging every day, staying up to date on the latest trends in social media innovation is critical to our business as PR professionals.

The PRWeek Lab will take place Wednesday, June 2 and Thursday, June 3, 2010 and will provide an online resource for PR professionals on the most recent social media trends, tools, and strategies, thought leadership, and case studies- all without leaving one’s office. The online platform includes live webcast sessions, keynote speakers (such as Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak and Ben Edwards, VP of Digital Strategy and Development, IBM), as well as exhibitor booth environments for follow-up questions, live chats, and material downloads. PRWeek Lab will be a fully interactive experience, with Q&A throughout, as well as polling of all participants on the quality of the content and the future of social media. No other PR event will bring you closer to the action that is driving today’s social media innovation.  Please visit here for additional details.

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Earlier this week I had the chance to present at one of the largest annual meetings of customer care professionals in the world, the SOCAP International Symposium. SOCAP stands for the Society of Customer Care Professionals, and among other things, its members include the folks in charge of running call centers, managing customer response teams and sometimes branching into running loyalty programs as well. If marketing is all about the outward appearance of a brand and perception, then customer care (more than any other group) is focused on the reality of what your brand actually is.

This battle between perception and reality, interestingly, is where the divide between customer care and marketing usually arises. The larger the company, the more divorced these two disciplines seem to be - often only meeting at the last stages of planning a marketing campaign to finally discuss coordinating. Not surprisingly, a key theme I quickly saw during the SOCAP event was that the communication between marketing and customer care needs to get stronger across the board. In particular, there were 5 themes that emerged for me (as a marketer) that define what customer care people would love to see from us more frequently (continue after the jump to read): continue reading