social business – THE SOCIAL CMO Blog

Dear [insert business name], what’s your promise?

June 26, 2012 by TheSocialCMO

You say you want to get closer to customers, but your actions are different than your words.

You say you want to “surprise and delight” customers, but your product development teams are too busy building against a roadmap without consideration of the 5th P of marketing…people.

Your employees are your number one asset, however the infrastructure of the organization has turned once optimistic and ambitious intrapreneurs into complacent cogs or worse, your greatest detractors.

You question the adoption of disruptive technology by your internal champions yet you’ve not tried to find the value for yourself.

Are brands wielding more influence in Social Media than we thought?

May 9, 2012 by TheSocialCMO

As one who has read, dissected and written about many a study regarding social media, brands and consumers, I can tell you I for one was quite surprised to see read the findings of a survey recently conducted by Market Force – a worldwide leader in customer intelligence solutions.

In querying more than 12,000 consumers in the US and UK, they wanted to see how consumers engaged with varying industries – retail, restaurant, travel, entertainment and financial businesses to be specific, via the big dogs of social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

The Path from a Social Brand to a Social Business

May 7, 2012May 7, 2012 by TheSocialCMO

I’ve been a long-time supporter of MediaTemple’s (MT)Residence program along with Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, and many others whom I respect. I wanted to share my “7 questions to answer to become a social business” with you here..

Social Media is pervasive and is becoming the new normal in corporate marketing. Brands who get this right are starting to build their own media networks rich with customer connections numbering in the millions. Right now, Coca-Cola has over 34 million fans on Facebook, but they’re hardly alone. Disney follows just behind with 29 million fans, Starbucks boasts 25 million, and Oreo, Red Bull, and Converse play host to over 20 million fans. If we were to look at other networks such as Twitter and Youtube, we would see a recurring theme. People are connecting en masse with the businesses they support and new media represents the ability to cultivate consumer relationships in ways not possible with traditional earned or paid media.

Why You Shouldn’t Rely on a Social Media Ringer

August 21, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

Let’s hire a ringer!

Or so goes the quick answer at many a business when they’re trying to figure out how to get their arms around social media. The temptation is to go out and scoop up someone with name recognition, with a prominent presence on the latest social networks, and put them in the driver’s seat for your social media strategy. That takes care of everything, right?

Not quite.

It’s awesome to hire talented, accomplished people. It’s even better to hire talented people that have skill sets and expertise that might not be prevalent in your company. But it’s very, very important to look at the long term play. Make sure your ringer is part of the picture, even an important one, but not the basket in which you’re plunking all of your eggs.

14 Best Practices for Brands to Grow their Audiences in Social Media

August 17, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

As a consumer, you are blasted with the same request over and over, “Follow Us on Twitter, Like Us on Facebook” As a consumer however it is more than natural to ask why should I or what’s in it for me? These are questions of which a significant number of businesses cannot genuinely answer.

Businesses are realizing the importance of establishing a presence on Twitter and other vibrant social networks. In many ways, hosting a branded account is now common practice, a required extension to the push channels created through email, traditional marketing and web sites. What businesses are still learning however is that creating a channel, hosting a channel worth following, and building a loyal audience is a far greater challenge and overall investment than initially anticipated. At the same time, the realization that a shift from a push mentality to that of two-way interaction is nothing less than disruptive to the operation of business as usual.

Today a notable number of businesses are approaching branded social channels from a ready, fire, aim approach. This method conjures a façade of achievement when in fact, any progress, if at all recognized, is short term and shoddy at best. Many focus on numbers without first analyzing who they’re trying to reach and why and more importantly how engagement satisfies the needs of their customers. To build vibrant communities in social networks, businesses must develop a remarkable and diversified channel strategy that reinforces the brand and communicates tangible business value and exudes customer-centricity. Without a mature content and engagement strategy, a great unfollow and unlike movement is inevitable.

If they can do it…

May 28, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

Yesterday, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney announced that it would allow its advisers to use social media platforms, providing all 18,000 advisers access to LinkedIn and Twitter in June and graduating to Facebook soon after that.

It is the first large financial firm to do so, marking a sea-change in the industry’s resistance to adopting potentially confidentiality-threatening tools. Morgan Stanley’s only real social toe-dipping to date was the infamous report on How Teenagers Consume Media they commissioned from a 15-year-old on work experience.

However, Andy Saperstein, head of wealth management says, “Many of our clients have been demanding social media. Many of our advisers have been demanding it.”

Of course, it’s the clients that probably made the most impact. Staff are one thing, but when the guys who pay you big bucks start to demand something, you sit up and listen.

Customer-centricity Begins with Creating a Culture of Change

May 28, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

Customer-centricity or getting closer to customers is often the focus of many executive meetings I attend these days. The question always arises, “how can we use new media to get closer to customers?”

The answer is not, develop a social media strategy to start engaging with customers. The answer is, change. Any organization that focuses on operations, margins, and efficiencies over customer experiences will find itself unfavored by tomorrow’s connected customer. It’s difficult to see the customer or empathize with them if you’re focused on a spreadsheet. It’s impossible to change if you can’t see what it is they value.