Okay — truth be told, many of us are still wrestling with pieces of the new tool-set. (Please submit all workable Social Media marketing strategies.)

But while in pursuit of promising new connections in an undeniably dynamic marketplace, it may be timely to revisit the tool that has always shaped, and will again change the discussion.

Spot The Common Thread

Spend a few minutes visiting with a lawyer or a doctor who built a successful practice twenty-five or thirty years ago. Turn the discussion to how the practice was developed and the response will be something close to “I did good work; the word spread; and the practice grew.”

Find a retailer whose product isn’t the cheapest, but for whom customers exhibit intense loyalty. (Yes, they exist.)

Or talk to a client of one of Carl Sewell’s auto dealerships in Dallas, Texas where the idea is to transcend selling a car today in favor of creating a customer for life. (If you haven’t read it, the book is a “must read.”)

The thread that runs through these and a relative handful of other examples is the importance of the client/customer experience.

While companies invest heavily in innovation, go-to-market strategies, creative marketing communication and reward mechanisms, are we spending more than an afterthought on the experience clients (or targets) have when engaged by even the intangible aspects of a company. Certainly, benchmarks exist for creative budgets, production costs and even customer “loyalty” initiatives. But when it comes to what prospective customers actually experience, otherwise sophisticated strategies focus on comfy waiting room chairs, a cup of cappuccino or a “we appreciate your business” flyer stuffed in with an invoice or statement.

I should confess that I’m pretty big on comfortable waiting areas and a good cup of cappuccino. That said, if we believe a handful of tactics are the things that engage the market, and build enduring relationships, we have not learned the age-old and most basic lesson of successful marketing endeavors.

If the objective is to move one round of widget production, empty shelves of current inventory, sell one car, or sign one consulting contract, you likely quit reading a couple of hundred words ago.

But for every enterprise interested in creating customers for life — or, maybe even more valuable, loyal advocates for your brand — effective marketing comes down to what customers/clients/prospects experience when they encounter your company, product or service. This is really the essence of brand: is what your clients and targets experience consistent with what your message promises? Does the experience transcend or fall short of expectations?

There is little doubt that creative genius is able to engage for a season. But those who seed the stuff that turns to word-of-mouth muscle believe in creating, and invest in delivering an ongoing experience.

Market shifts and media innovations will inevitably distract many. Those focused on engaging the market in the experiences from which enduring relationships are born are the companies that will be left standing.

Eric Fletcher

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There are some guiding principals to Relationship Commerce. None seem drastically different on their own; though they seem radically new when applied to the realm of commerce:

Relationships matter. Discovering something you love is great, learning about it from someone you trust is even better.

Buying from someone you like is way more fun than buying from a BIG-BOX robot.

Shopping can be better.

Relationship Commerce is simple yet novel, it’s buying from people you know and trust.

But in a fast paced, digital world, defining and maintaining our relationships has become unexpectedly difficult. Social Media has enabled us to connect with an infinite number of individuals; it has given us the tools to extend relationships that years ago would have been impossible. Yet make no mistake: “Social Media is a facilitator of relationships, but it is not the relationship itself.” You have to give to get. No relationship can survive without trust; it’s so simple in concept yet not always easy.

With effort, a relationship may begin from the request of a Facebook friend or following someone on Twitter; but make no mistake – that initial request or follow will never create the relationship. Trust is built upon interaction, when you’re true to your word, authentic, and genuine. To build relationships online, you (as a brand or individual) have to offer value in return. Be it via valuable information or personal introductions, engagement and interaction will remain key.

By asking questions and proposing ideas, you can engage your followers in such a way to give them the ability and reason to respond. Then when they do respond, interact with them to solidify your relationship, lest it fade away. Directly acknowledge their response, ask follow-up questions and share their insights with others. Follow me on Twitter (@tedrubin) and you’ll see what I mean. The more responsive you are to your audience, the more responsive they’ll be to you. And that’s where relationships are born.

It is this interpersonal exchange, the relationship, which differentiates Relationship Commerce. Life is not just about financial exchange, and neither is commerce.

The way I see it, we’re overdue for a revolution in retail. So many of us have been sharing our passions and discoveries, it’s about time we acquired tools that empower us to share in the economic benefits. I believe that our economy is experiencing a monumental shift towards an era of increased self-sufficiency. We all need to learn to earn… to provide for ourselves. We can’t continue to live dependant upon the (one time) security blanket of big corporations, parent companies and traditional jobs. They may not always be there.

How many of you spend more than 10 hours a week on your online presence? 15 Hours, 40+? How many times have you recommended something to a friend and how many times have you made a purchase based upon the recommendation of a friend? How many of us wish that our passions, our energy and our influence could evolve away from pure hobbies and into a revenue stream? Relationship Commerce, sharing what you love with others and facilitating their ability to buy it, easily can be a piece of that puzzle. That’s how it can make shopping better.

This is truly what I call ROR: Return on Relationship, and I believe it’s what the future holds for shopping, for commerce and the economic wellbeing of each and every one of us. It’s Relationship Commerce.

Ted Rubin

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1. Capitalizing on Complexity, Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study 2010 by IBM is a compilation of 1,500 face-to-face conversations with chief executive officers worldwide. Rare insight into “the world as they see it and, ultimately, what sets the highest-performing enterprises apart,” IBM’s CEO portfolio is a game changer. Examining strategy process, decision style, and leveraging the information explosion are explained in detail and interspersed with case studies. “The world’s public and private sector leaders believe that a rapid escalation of complexity is the biggest challenge facing them….And they identify ‘creativity’ as the single most important leadership competency” for businesses navigating through these unprecedented, first of their-kind experiences.
2. Woe Is I, the Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O’Conner. An excellent resource for those who still have no idea when to use who or whom, its or it’s. In the “Department of Hot Air,” she notes we don’t “dialogue” or “interface” with people, we talk and work together. And it’s perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition. The first grammar book you’ll really enjoy reading, O’Conner’s witty style distills the strength of powerful language.
3. Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell. Running a business or leading a company team demands a working knowledge of basic economics and a healthy dose of curiosity to question convention. Sifting facts from rhetoric, before investing in or projecting business changes, is a critical enterprise skill. In a 24/7 news cycle, it’s tempting to accept the trending topics on Twitter as facts, as opposed to sentiment, opinions, or observations. Sowell presents the facts surrounding several generally accepted truths like foreign aid, urban sprawl, incomes, social mobility, and the middle class. “Subjecting beliefs to the test of hard facts is especially important when it comes to economic beliefs because economic realities are inescapable limitations on millions of peoples’ lives.” Fact-checking and truth-finding may be tedious and unglamorous, but necessary to fill the data gaps and to help us make the most informed decisions.
4. April 1865 by Jay Winik. A chronicle of the last 30 days of the Civil War, Winik’s storytelling gift is masterful in spite of his 451 pages. Words like redoubtable, redolent, and brevetted are a refreshing change for the unsuspecting reader. Understanding the three hours at the McLean house in Appomattox, the generals and soldiers leading in battle, the country’s emotional pulse and clash of passions, and the potential for failure as a nation helps clarify current definitions of crisis. The final chapter titled “Epilogue, To Make a Nation,” is a prized reveal of American manufacturing, innovation, and invention: “On a quiet farm in Dearborn, Michigan, William Ford, who had avoided the war, was indulging his pride and joy, his two-year-old son Henry. With 90 acres, a handsome two-story house surrounded by evergreens, a pear tree, an apple orchard, and a large willow, the father felt the life of the prosperous, self-sufficient farmer was the American dream. But William would soon become deeply disappointed with his son, young Henry’s attention span repeatedly wandered…. ‘Henry’s not much of a farmer, he’s a tinkerer,’ his father sadly concluded.” Henry Ford was in good company with other captains of invention and industry including Thomas Alva Edison, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.
5. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie is chockfull of practicalities on winning arguments, becoming a good conversationalist, changing people without giving offense, and practicing encouragement. “Every minister, lecturer, and public speaker knows the discouragement of pouring himself or herself out to an audience and not receiving a single ripple of appreciative comment. What applies to professionals applies doubly to workers in offices, shops, and factories and to family and friends. In our interpersonal relations, we should never forget that all our associates are human beings and hunger for appreciation. It is the legal tender that all souls enjoy.” To enrich your soft skills, make this book a loyal friend.

Free enterprise, English, economics, history, and good manners: Never underestimate the Return on Information of a great read.

Anne D Gallaher

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If you’re a large organization like Aurora Healthcare, you’re going to benefit from a more formal plan, for these reasons, according to Jamey Shiels, Aurora’s Director of Marketing:

“Our social marketing strategy is planned and documented. We have a corporate plan and smaller plans for internal partners that feed the larger plan. The documentation is critical for keeping groups focused on the long term strategy and goals. While documented, the material is not lengthy, one to two pages and is flexible to adapt to performance, user feedback and overall activity. Our success and ability to measure becomes easier to achieve with this approach.”

Yet, on the flip side, if you’re an individual, a small business, or a small, grassroots effort, having the “plan in your head” can be enough.

When Joe Sorge from AJ Bombers spoke at the Milwaukee Interactive Marketing Association earlier this year, he talked about not having a formal strategy: “I just really like to talk to customers.” It comes naturally and organically, to Joe. And that is awesome. Yet it’s also a huge mental shift for planners like me who are used to having a strategy for everything.

When we got #saveteecycle underway, being a planner, I started to write a plan. And while that discipline can almost always help crystallize efforts in some way, there was so much to be done in such a short time that I ended up deciding that the hour I would have spent putting the plan to paper was better spent just making it happen.

Had I put a Save Teecycle plan on paper, it would have contained these incredibly simple “strategies.”

1. Involve as many people in the community as possible.
2. Create lots of ways for people to contribute.
3. Encourage people to come up with their own ways to contribute. Offer direction, when asked, but not control.
4. Ask local businesses to help, in big ways, and do everything possible to create value for them in the process.
5. Be guided by the belief that Miracles Can Happen, when we all work together.

There is a reason why WhatTheF*#kIsMySocialMediaStrategy.com exists. I interpet it as commentary that social planning is not rocket science, to the point that when you are writing it, it often seems ridiculous. I’m not belittling the discipline; again, in larger organizations, it is much more complex to make social business happen, and having a written plan can help align the many planets.

So the answer to “Do I need a formal social media plan?” is really super simple: Do what you need to do to make it happen.

When you do a social plan, it needs to be incredibly flexible and dynamic. But that a topic for the next post.

Do you need a social plan, and why? Or, do you prefer a more organic approach?

Susan Spaight

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People grew tired and weak from being browbeaten into submission to the point where apathy set in when it came to believing in, mobilizing and exercising their power as an individual within society.

The ability for people to communicate, organize and take action around an issue or idea had become very slow, difficult and costly. Even more significantly, the poor results often seen by those who actually made the effort led many to accept “Is it really worth the bother?”

So as long as you weren’t trying to take their house, car or TV set many just accepted the status quo, letting the few rogue change agents, often branded as “wackos” fight the good fight for everyone else.

Enter the rapidly accelerating and soon to be pervasive use of social media and all of the above inertia and apathy is being blown away faster than you can say Michael Moore!

Just consider the below points:

1. Social media has potential to connect all people in the world in the very near future on a one to one and more importantly one to many basis.
2. Cost to communicate messages, organize, raise funds and take action on any issue or point of interest then becomes truly negligible.
3. Major social media influencers then become the catalysts and facilitators of change.
4. Ability to document and share in real time the positive impact and clearly demonstrate results, and actual ability for individuals to ignite change, will mobilize more and more to wake up from the slumber of apathy.

Right now social media driven change is just a snowball starting to roll from the top of the hill, set to increase in size dramatically and grow geometrically with every revolution in internet communications, social media tools and the rapid proliferation of fixed/mobile internet devices to the point of ubiquity.

So what are you going to try and change today?

Jeff Ashcroft

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Before we get into the 5 keys, let’s first reach an understanding on what online demand generation really is.

First, this is well beyond generating a “lead” through a form or SEO/SEM tactics, although these may form a piece of the overall process. The way I like to describe it is this…

“From the point of first contact to the last time they (the customer) touches your online presence, you have created a defensible brand position in their mind for your product or service that leads directly or indirectly to self-qualified prospects for long term customer relationships and near term revenue.”

The art of generating demand, particularly in an ever increasing complex and noisy digital marketplace, requires an increasingly simple and targeted approach.

1. Create a Consistently Positive Customer-centric Experience

Nothing will kill demand faster than a negative or roller coaster customer experience. As human beings, we love positive experiences; even Goth kids like to feel good by pretending to feel depressed – and acceptance within the experience is part of that positive experience.

A positive customer experience is actually quite easy to design once we understand and align with what customers need.

• Be customer-centric by removing all the brand ego from your site and replace it with a deep understanding of your customer. This is far more impressive and memorable than your hype.
• Let others praise you, don’t praise yourself. The absolute most trusted opinion on you comes from your customers. Put them at the fore front of your marketing and ensure the praise/testimonials align with what your prospective customers are looking for. And don’t fabricate it, someone will eventually find out.
• Help them feel good about their decision to use you. This is the vital acceptance part of the experience where you prove not only that you are on of them, but also that by aligning with you they will gain acceptance of their peers and seniors.

2. Keep it Simple – Keep it Focused

Simplicity is an enabler and focus ensures you only reach the right people with the right message. But simplicity and focus need to go well beyond this for demand generation to work effectively and efficiently.

Simplify your experience and the corporate website. The greatest results my clients have eve had happened when they simplified their website and focused on a few specific target markets.

• Strip out the content and sections that don’t add value
• Don’t say it in ten words when 5 will do.
• Convert content for key ideas and solutions into visuals; a large portion of the population relies on visualization as their key internal processing factor.
• Focus the website on the target market only; leave doorways for others to find their way (partners, investors, current customers) to their own portals.

3. Embed a Custom Demand Generation Process

I can’t express how much of a difference this can make to a demand generation program and it has two critical elements.

a) The overall demand generation process needs to be designed to target specific groups of prospects. This means aligning with how they will experience your brand, not how you want them to experience it. So many times, the approach is so generic it fails to stand out or resonate with anyone.

b) Embed a custom demand generation process on your corporate website. This is probably the #1 failing of most large companies online and represents the biggest opportunity to turn traffic into revenue. A website demand gen process has these critical elements:

• It aligns with the customer decision making process
• It engages and enables progressive decision-making on every page
• It appeals to a target prospect regardless of where they are in their decision-making process.
• It enables options for follow-up immediately and down the road.
• It feels natural and builds confidence/trust as they go through it.

4.  Play the Long Game

So many companies are driven by short term goals that they forget about the huge potential of the long game. In my experience only a fraction of prospects actually buy on our terms, i.e. immediately or within a quarter, the majority however, buy on their own terms which can be anywhere from 3-24 months. It amazes me how many companies do not focus on long term nurturing especially now that social media has made it so damn easy.

Playing the long game is easy, but it takes patience and the right strategy. To do this, you need to create a program that is easily sustainable while treating everyone equally. Social media plays a critical role at this point for “on demand” brand fulfillment as does your integration with more traditional marketing tactics such as events which allow prospects to meet and build real life relationships.

I have always though of this is the art of business romance. Treat it like you are wooing a potential mate or a thousand as the case may be… Pay them enough attention to keep their interest but not enough that you will be perceived to be needy or inefficient with your resources.

5. Integrate Seamlessly Within the Greater Customer Experience

Nothing stands alone anymore, not even the much ballyhooed social media channel. Online is only one part of the greater customer experience. The greater customer experience covers every customer touch point and includes indirect touches such as referrals or social media conversations not controlled or influenced by your company.

I have always looked at the integration of online demand generation with the greater experience like Swiss cheese. You need to perforate your demand generation experience model to allow prospects to pop in and out of different channels easily and without diminishing the experience.

Here are a couple simple guidelines to follow to more easily integrate your online demand generation program with other channels:

• Make the website the hub of your communications; everything leads to it and it leads to everything.
• Cross promote content and channels. Most ad agencies fall down on this big time but tying your online and social elements to tv, radio and print campaigns (and vice versa) is critical.
• Tracking and measurement needs to be adapted to look at the whole picture, not just web.
• Adapt the program regularly to adjust for change in customer need or preferences.

Applying this Approach to Your Company

I am fond of a crawl-walk-run approach on new things. Get one aspect right, then move on to the next element and keep integrating them together. The rewards of this approach can materialize quite quickly, especially if you have a wide net pulling traffic into your website.

A recent client success of mine used just two pieces of this approach (number 1 and 3) and experienced a significant increase in all key metrics as well as a substantial increase in online revenue. They have now begun to work on rule number 2 and expanding the program to other divisions of their business.

If you have become frustrated with the results of your current approach or are looking for something to help you stand out from the crowd, give a couple of these rules a try. Just remember to keep whatever you do simple and manageable.

I enjoy hearing your thoughts on this and look forward to your comments.

Cheers!

Jeff – Sensei

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I have been reading REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Hansson. With each chapter I feel as though I’m sitting in a church pew and listening to the preacher tell me things that are happening; things that have already happened and now that I know and have been told, some things that just shouldn’t happen at all.

I’ve read so many books on PR, Marketing, Networking and more. Now with starting a new business. I needed honesty. And I like Jason and David’s honesty in REWORK. They did it. They made mistakes. They thought it through. They decided on it. And REWORK and it is working beautifully!

So,

• I will get something or somethings wrong.
• I won’t over analyze. I will set some goals and then…
• I will swap “Let’s think about it for let’s decide on it,”
• And then just do it.

Because I am trying to start a business. Not a start-up. And in the early stages, without funding or investments, I’m not trying to be the hero of the seminar business, I’m just trying to have a business I love. I want to build a seminar business based on core values that I expect when attending a seminar/conference or retreat.

• I want to participate and get involved in the discussion, while the discussion is happening.
• I want to walk away enlightened, smarter and challenged.
• I want to get back to the office and get to work on some of the concepts I’ve learned.
• I want to bond with those attendees where we have similar obstacles, challenges and successes.

And I am only looking to compete with one person and that is myself. Since reading REWORK I can stop being afraid of possibly making a mistake. Because I will. Not looking forward to it. But I am human.

Oh, and another lesson I learned that is not mentioned in REWORK. Not to listen to those who want to tell you how to run your business. Those who want to ride your coattails and to achieve their success “at your expense.”

So she is thinking. She is learning new lessons. She will continue to REWORK to make it WORK.

Thank you Jason and David for REWORK.

Cd Vann

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That’s exactly what Jeff Milliman, the 1980 NCAA cross country champion, did in 1998 for Olivier Blanchard. Olivier wrote about his experience with Jeff in a 2005 blog post called That Bond of Trust. I caught up with Jeff today at his new home at Go Run, a part of Go Tri Sports, in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.

Please note a few really cool things about this social story:

• Jeff just did what he always does: listens to people and then applies his knowledge to try to help solve their problems.
• Jeff is willing to take a risk in order to fulfill his passion.
• Jeff did the unexpected and went the extra mile and SEVEN YEARS LATER the object of his generosity, Olivier Blanchard, wrote about it. (How many shoe salesmen have people writing glowing stories about them seven years after the sale, or seven hours?)
• Jeff’s act of generosity and Olivier’s act of gratitude enabled an long lost friend to reconnect with Jeff after nearly 20 years apart.

That means you never can tell when the harvest of your generosity will come.

Olivier wrote about Jeff five years ago. I’m writing about Olivier’s 1998 experience with Jeff today. Olivier says he’s sent many people to see Jeff. I’ve already sent several folks to him, too, because of Olivier. Jeff’s generosity and trust makes him incredibly influential. However, if you go see Jeff, you will KNOW he doesn’t care at all about how much influence he has. He doesn’t need a score, or his avatar in a magazine, to tell him he’s influential. He just doesn’t care about his influence—he just wants to make sure you have the shoes you need to do whatever it is you want to do. That’s all.

Seems like a good way to extend one’s influence is to take a risk to ensure customers succeed.

_______________

To see Olivier Blanchard in person and hear more about developing and delivering memorable stories, register to attend the September 24th Social Story Conference in Greenville, South Carolina.

To get the perfect running shoes for you, visit Jeff Milliman at Go Run, 400 E McBee Avenue, Greenville, SC 29601 or call him at 864-232-9400.

Thank you to Verizon Wireless for helping make video vignettes of Social Story available.

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Yesterday, I went kayaking on Green Lake. It is Wisconsin’s deepest lake at 237 feet deep, and it is wide and windy. Paddle anywhere near an open bay, and you need the upper body strength of the Hulk to keep going. So I clung pretty close to sheltered shoreline. But, what I was thinking about was mostly this lesson I have decided is the most important thing I need to bring home from vacation.

In paddling, and in life, it is not actually necessary to paddle furiously the entire time, as is my tendency and I suspect most of yours.

It is actually OK to stop paddling, float for a while, and just look around you, savoring exactly where you are at this moment, rather than the next point at which you are trying to arrive.

If the swells are up and the wind is high, you might start getting pushed too close to a place you don’t want to be. So, you’ll need to redirect yourself from time to time.

And then, when you’re ready, you can start paddling furiously again, with renewed strength and focus.

This morning, I sat on the bench in this photo with my latte and gazed directly across the lake, at the point where my lovely childhood memories live (see previous post). And while I may or may not have shed a couple of tears thinking about how my past compares to my overall present non-vacation state of being, it’s a healthy thing to have one eye on the past, if it helps you redirect your future.

I had to overcome a lot of pressure to come back from vacation yesterday, to attend a meeting today that was planned long after this vacation was planned. And as important as my work is to me, it will never, ever be more important than this time to break away with my family to just enjoy the beauty of the moment and reflect on how we want our future to be.

What do you think? Are you capable of stopping the frantic paddling, to just float on the waves for a while? The last time you did so, what was the result?

Susan Spaight

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This is only the sixth #MMchat we’ve held and see #MMchat for more details on MarketerMonday Chat our previous SPECIAL guests, transcripts and our upcoming schedule.

Thanks again to Kent as well as all of you #MMchat tweeps who joined us and participated in this interesting and very interactive chat!

Check out the full transcript of tonite’s chat at http://bit.ly/KentHuffman and please join us in two weeks as @ScottMonty joins us! Scott Monty is the Head of Social Media for Ford and a member of the @TheSocialCMO Crew and will be joining us September 13th at 8:00 pm EST to discuss Encouraging Executive Participation in Social Media!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

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