social media

Three Companies that Started down the Trust Path with Customers First

They do it by talking about and engaging with topics and content that will make their customers smarter. Or they share tidbits that are fun and engaging, and share the love. These are the secrets of successful corporate blogs - and ...READ»

Five Companies that Fix their Story to Inspire Service

Branding as a strategy means little if the customer experience is not there. If your story doesn’t align with what you do, all of the clever tactics you can come up with to follow your lofty goal will not make the cut.Unless you can ...READ»

Would CPG Brands Compete with their Own Channels for Customers?

AdAge writes an interesting article about going beyond online ads to eCommerce opportunities for CPG brands. Will it pay off? Services are easier to deliver online. A few product dot-bombs in the early 2000s made us keenly aware of ...READ»

Customer Issues and the Bottom Line

Many marketers spend a considerable amount of time calculating the ROI of campaigns by looking at cost per lead (CPL) or Web conversion numbers. You are probably quite smart yourself to the ways of lead nurturing and its importance in ...READ»

Innovation and Failure

There is a good relationship between innovation and failure. As Monica Harrington shares, Microsoft Bob gave plenty of very smart people a run for their money - and lessons to take to their next project.   Those are familiar ...READ»

Mad Men and Trust Agents

They’re at the opposite ends of the conversation spectrum. The show context is that of media and advertising, two areas that are undergoing rapid change - some would call it a decline. Mad Men captivated the public’s imagination ...READ»

Fluency in Customer Conversation is a Key Business Driver

There is a reason why this publication is called Fast Company. The US has an even shorter attention span than many places I’ve had the fortune of spending time in. I’ve been writing about customer conversation here for more than ...READ»

How to Give Your Company Service Deadlines

Usually it’s the customers who give you deadlines - and sometimes ultimatums - on service. Needing something done by, support within “x” time, service at “y” time and place. What would happen if you turned that concept on ...READ»

How you can get the Most out of Customer Service

We spend so much time talking about how to improve customer service that I thought one post on how to improve customer attitude would be time well spent. If you think about it, we call a customer support line only when we have a ...READ»

How to Map to the Social Media Engagement Profile of Your Customers

You probably already know that Forrester’s social technographics profile can help you analyze the social profile of your customer base. As authors Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li explain in the book Groundswell, people increasingly use ...READ»

How to Answer the Social Phone

It seems that if there are many ways to listen in the social Web, there are also many reasons with the ways to answer. Tom Asacker puts it well, we define ourselves both according to what we identify with and what we reject, and given ...READ»

Facebook and Twitter Offer Businesses Opportunities and Challenges

Facebook and Twitter offer businesses both opportunities and challenges around the world: About 60% of users are outside the United States.READ»

• Mr. Social: Ashton Kutcher Plans to be the Next New-Media Mogul

Optimizing Blog Post Headlines in WordPress

If you were to develop a site seven or eight years ago, you would likely need at least a basic understanding of programming codes like HTML or Javascript. Such coding was a significant barrier to entry for many non-digitally savvy users. The game changed when WordPress was developed in 2003. Since its release, Wordpress has grown to an incredible...READ»

Creating a Valuable Network of Business Relationships

“We all exist within this complex network of human development. Today, the human network’s reach and complexity have nearly exceeded our ability to understand what we are creating and how it affects us.” We have emerged from a period of excess and frivolity, where objects and things...READ»

Social Media: Does It Help or Hinder Productivity?

Does the use of social media in the workplace benefit organizations and educational institutions and help productivity or hamper productivity? That's a question many leaders and educators are debating in organizations, even while students and employees immerse themselves in social media for both personal and business purposes. This article will examine both sides of the question, and show how it's clearly connected to a much bigger question of organizational change.READ»

Are Connections or Followers more Important: LinkedIn or Twitter?

In early April 2009, we witnessed a social media milestone: Ashton Kutcher collected 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Since then, Oprah has begun tweeting and the microblogging site has been the social network darling of the mainstream media. What does it mean to have a network on Twitter? Could Ashton Kutcher ever collect 1,000,000 connections on LinkedIn? Probably not. But why?READ»

Top 5 Tips to Increase your Social Capital on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a turning into a social media heavyweight — with just over 50 million users, the social networking site is turning into a must-have for professionals. Developing your social capital on LinkedIn is increasing in importance as more job-seekers flood the market. Getting a leg-up on your competition is crucial if you’re going to compete. We’ll discuss how to build your social capital by carrying on the...READ»

Celebrity Tools: Micro Video Captures the Tweets and Tribulations of B- and C-Listers

Micro-video site Vidly (formerly TwitVid.io) has launched its new video commenting feature Vidly Express with the help of a rapper Chamillionaire. As you can see on his Web site, the feature allows users to record a video reply ...READ»

Social Capital and Friend 2.0

What is the meaning of a friend in the digital space? Does the definition of a friend change from one social network to another? Is a friend on Facebook any different than a MySpace friend? The value of user connections vary from one social network to another, which ultimately impacts social capital building strategies. Let’s first examine the differences between two...READ»

Social Capital 101

Social Capital 101 “Let me introduce you to someone who might be able to help you.” Some people build their entire reputation around this one line. As Malcolm Gladwell outlined in his breakthrough work, The Tipping Point, those who say this line most often are called Connectors. Essentially, Connectors are match makers. They have an enormous amount of…READ»

Become a Fan to Lower Prices for All: Is Intel's Facebook Ad the Future of Advertising?

Intel has teamed up with Sprout Inc.--a company heavily involved with social media-based advertising--to launch a new interactive Facebook promotion that's pretty clever, and which might just indicate one possible future for ...READ»

The #5 Way to Sell More By Using Social Media - Twitter

I recently blogged about "The #5 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media" - http://bit.ly/40xGYE - Twitter.In that blog post I offer $2,000 worth of sales training or coaching or advisory services to the person who provides the most ...READ»

The #6 Way To Sell More By Using Social Media - WordPress & FeedBlitz

I recently blogged about "The #6 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media" - http://bit.ly/ReZQ2 - WordPress & FeedBlitz.In that blog post I offered $1,500 (in sales training or coaching or advisory services) to the person who ...READ»

Does your incentive system work?

I recently had the opportunity to talk with executives about the issues they experience with incentives implementation, and what we call in Drive Business Performance, the multiple "currencies" of performance.    We ...READ»

Are you the victim of "decisional set-up"?

In a recent Harvard Executive course I took, our decision making class instructor said - "it's not the information you HAVE that clouds your decision making, it's the information you DO NOT have".What a brilliant way to summarize the ...READ»