relationships – Page 5 – THE SOCIAL CMO Blog

MY TOP TEN REALIZED BENEFITS OF TWITTER ~via @Sbarro CMO @SarahMcAloon

August 18, 2013December 20, 2014 by Ted Rubin

Guest post by Sarah McAloon… originally published at Full Impact Marketing

I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter recently, both my personal use of it and for the brand I work on @sbarro. For the last year I’ve been on a Twitter deep-dive and I’d say I’m an intermediate with ~900 followers.

I wanted to write this blog to help other executives realize the opportunities that I have found in Twitter, for themselves and for their brands. If you know anyone who can benefit from Twitter please feel free to forward.

Give your Brand a “Personality Test”

July 10, 2013December 20, 2014 by Ted Rubin

Have you given your brand a “personality test” lately? When you think of big brands that stand out, what comes to mind—just their product, or how their communications make you feel about them? It used to be that mass advertising was the way brands developed a personality, but that’s no longer the case. With today’s social communications being so important to a brand’s reputation and perception in the marketplace, finding a way to involve your friends and followers in building that personality is essential.

I’ll give you a few good big-brand examples (personal disclaimer… Duane Reade and Mastercard are Collective Bias clients).

Twitter basics… In My Humble Opinion

August 16, 2012August 16, 2012 by Ted Rubin

The mistakes I see being made is trying to measure Social engagement with the same tools we measure every other digital touch point. In my view email, search, even banner ads, have spoiled marketers into thinking everything can be and must be measured with the metrics used to gauge success in other mediums. I am not sure of what the next stage will be for you, but in the beginning, when you are building your Social Media audience, and testing, I have three stages with which I measure… #1 is Audience growth, #2 is Reactivity… getting them to take an action, and #3 Stickiness… keeping them coming back, engaged and interacting. After you achieve all these I feel measurement will easily follow depending upon what is important to you and your brand.

If you want to continue to reach your market in this social media age, the marketing focus needs to be on building relationships, and metrics need to expand beyond ROI (Return on Investment) to include ROR: Return on Relationship™. If you are not engaging in your field of expertise on Twitter someone else is, so the first issue is that you are missing that opportunity and handing it to others. Second… if you are not talking about your business, your customers and prospects probably are, and you are not there to participate, engage, interact and most important for your business… listen and lead.

Be Good To People and Just Be Nice

August 8, 2012 by Ted Rubin

I am a big believer that doing good, and just being nice to people, begets good treatment in return (part of that “Return” on Relationship)… for the most part. Therefore there is a return, just not necessarily from a particular act or specific relationship. I am not referring to this in a spiritual or cosmic sense. What I mean is that by building a reputation for putting yourself out (whether as an individual or a brand), doing good for others without expectation of something directly in return from that person, and generally being nice will most definitely add to your life in so many ways. People will notice, talk about it, spread the word, and in general most will treat you better, do for you, and watch your back because of the way you treat people.

This is not just a theory, but something I have put into practice personally and professionally. I make it a part of my daily life, try to help brands to understand, and have had a great deal of personal success and fulfillment in this respect. And yes, this is a basic tenant of Return on Relationship™ …simply put the value that is accrued by a person or brand due to nurturing relationships. ROI is the specific measurable, $’s and cents value, ROR is the value (both perceived and real) that will accrue over time through loyalty, recommendations, sharing and trust. A “Brand” is what a business/person does, and a “Reputation” is what people remember.

Be Good To People and Just Be Nice… for no apparent reason other than it makes the world a better place, makes you feel good, and will benefit you in the long run. Shoot me… I am altruistic :-)

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou

Originally posted at TedRubin.com

Does Big Data Kill Big Thinking?

May 27, 2012May 27, 2012 by TheSocialCMO

Big Data is a popular term today that references the huge volumes of business and consumer data being collected and stored by organizations, which cannot be effectively data mined due to the limitations of commonly used software tools that capture, manage, or process the data.

While first diagnosed in the science, government, healthcare and military industries, the vast volumes of consumer data being produced through social technologies has landed this reality – and this problem – on the desks of CMOs globally.

Not only is data being produced at lighting speeds, the devices used to produce, broadcast, measure, store and share that data are on the rise, which then fuels further content generation. The cycle is creating a Big Data cyclone that organizations will continue to struggle with.

12 Most Important Things We All Can Control

October 24, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

There are so many things in life that we simply cannot control (as is especially clear right now, around the 10 year anniversary of 9/11), but what about the things we CAN control? As human beings, we have the power of reasoning and choice, both of which give us substantial control over our own life situations… we just need to be reminded of this from time to time. Following is my reminder list of the 12 Most Important Things We All Control:

12 Most Important Ways to Build Relationships and Get ROR

July 6, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

If you want to continue to reach your market in this social media age, the marketing focus needs to be on building relationships, and metrics need to expand beyond ROI (Return on Investment) to include ROR: Return on Relationship. So how do you build and strengthen relationships with your audience (as a whole, and as individuals) to increase your ROR? Here are 12 ways to do so:

1. Listen

If you want to be heard above the growing social media “noise,” you need to first listen to your consumers so when you do speak, you get it right. What are they saying, what are they feeling, what are their pain points, what solutions do they need?

Hitting The Lazy Button

June 18, 2011June 19, 2011 by TheSocialCMO

Aided by social communication tools, are we becoming lazy communicators with lazy friendships?

Yesterday I posed this question on Twitter: do you ever feel that your use of social media is resulting in more, but SHALLOWER relationships? Even perhaps making long-term friendships shallower? A few people responded with a hearty AMEN and few people said NO WAY. How about you?

It’s not “social media’s fault”; the word choice of “your use of social media” was very intentional. The tools are what we make of them, just like the tools that came before. And you know I love them as much as the next ~~addict~~ enthusiast. Through them, I have met all of you amazing people and I don’t take that for granted.

How to do Twitter in 15 minutes a day

November 15, 2010 by TheSocialCMO

“Twitter users are the most influential consumers online,” concludes Exact Target in the research report Subscribers, Fans, and Followers. When I was with Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo, recently in Indianapolis, he told me there were over 160 million registered Twitter accounts. It’s safe to say, Twitter is growing in importance as a part of one’s marketing mix. The challenge is, how to find the time to “do” Twitter. Here’s how you can do Twitter in 15 minutes a day or less.

Growing your network

Use search.twitter.com or Google to find 5 leaders in your industry and follow them on Twitter
Follow back every real person who follows you
Follow 5 people who participated in a tweet chat discussing your topic. Here’s a mega list of Twitter tweet chats.

Growing your relationships

Scan your @mentions and reply to every human who addresses a tweet to you
Scan your direct messages and reply to any that don’t look like auto-generated messages. Nearly 99% of all my incoming direct messages are auto-generated. Many people call them “junk mail,” and nearly everyone calls them spam. No doubt you’ll come up with your own vocabulary to describe them.

Growing your influence

Scan your “home” stream of tweets posted by people you follow to find relevant content for your followers and retweet it.
Share 4-5 links to other relevant content around the web (blog posts, news articles, research, polls, surveys, etc.). You can use your RSS aggregator (I’m using Google Reader at the moment) to “harvest” relevant content to share via Twitter.
If you write a blog, share a link to a recent post. Twitter readers may give you grief if all you do is share your own content, but if they know you’re also sharing other valuable, relevant content with them, they’ll be glad to see your content, too.

While’s there’s much, much more to leveraging the power of Twitter, if you’ll follow the outline above, you can get started in Twitter right away without it consuming too much time. Over the next few days, I’ll share more ideas to help you use Twitter to expand your online presence, and yes, to add Twitter as a meaningful part of your sales system.

Trey Pennington