Social Media. What Do You Call It?

In our constant quest for common sense and desire to reach common ground in conversations about social media, we delight in clarity and agreement about terms and meanings.   

That's why it's refreshing to follow the thinking and writing of Jeff Zabin, who writes for Chief Marketer and would like to discuss with us, Social Media Monitoring and Analysis: Call It What You Will.

His entire article is worth reading--several times.  He make so much sense when he writes,  "Consider the diversity of terms widely espoused over the past couple of years to describe a set of technology solutions now offered by upwards of 40 marketing vendors and deployed by a rapidly-growing number of major companies within the realm of consumer-generated content. These terms include brand monitoring, buzz monitoring, social media monitoring, market influence analytics, and online consumer intelligence."

He offers a special report, free, to help us all understand each other better while we use all of these terms and work toward something simpler and consistent in meaning 

Co-sponsored by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, an Aberdeen Group report will be published in January and Jeff is offering a complimentary copy, when published, to all readers who take the short survey at www.aberdeen.com/survey/social_media.

Jeff Zabin is a research fellow at the Aberdeen Group, where he covers customer management technology, and is the author of "Precision Marketing."

Personally, I know this is good because the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is involved.   They are based in Chicago and this summer I got to know Greg Fine, who worked at WOMMA and had just arrived for his new job as director of communication for the Association Forum of Chicagoland.   I am a member of the Association Forum, which s an association of association executives.  Essentially, it's a group of savvy builders of all kinds of professional communities and industry communities.

Small world.  Through only three degrees of separation, I can identify with everything Zabin writes about and trust that he is helping, more than further confusing the conversation about social media marketing.

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Customer Made:Always the Trend to Watch

Everyone who thinks customers count more than your fabulous product, wow service or fancy office, raise your hand.

Okay, now everyone who actually listens to customers and turns their wishes into your next service offering or product--just for them, raise your hand. 

Am I getting through yet?  Let's try this.  Everyone who wants to go to the bank more often and with bigger checks, raise your hand.  Ah!  I see you are starting to get the connection between customers and cash flow.  There's some excellent help this week for you. Everyone who wants you to succeed hopes you will invest 10 minutes in reading and actually thinking about what you discover in TrendWatching.com--an independent and opinionated consumer trends firm, relying on a global network of 8,000 spotters.

Trendwatching.com is a super popular blog here in the Duct Tape Marketing Channels encampment on your computer screen.   The featured topic this week is Customer-Made and this is a trend that you need to watch, understand, embrace and completely understand.

Read the whole story.  Get a grip on how this absolutely will affect your business and your life. The authors write, "From a business and innovation angle, we’d like to argue that the CUSTOMER-MADE trend, co-creating with your customers, is the most important one to watch. Not because everything has to or will be co-created in the future, but because tapping into the collective experiences, skills and ingenuity of hundreds of millions of consumers around the world is a complete departure from the inward looking, producer- versus-consumer innovation model so common to corporations around the world."

Start at the beginning.  Understand what Customer Made means.  Learn what it is NOT. It is not feedback without an answer. It is not do-it-yourself.  Nor is it customization or personalization.

Why does this trend hit our hearts and heads at the same time?

"For decades, consumers have been saving up their insights and rants about the stuff they consume, simply because they didn't have adequate means to interact with companies, or with other consumers for that matter. No longer."

Who is doing what with Customer Made?  Find out.  How well you understand "Customer Made" elements, own it, and run your business by it will determine how well you will do in the future.

Blogs as An Industry

Dear Duct Tape Marketing Blog Faithful,

Just when you thought it was safe to come out -- when John Jantsch promised to stop using the "B" word, here comes someone who is going to launch a blog, to report and analyze the developments in the blog industry.  The new blog is titled "Tech~Surf~Blog ... It Comes In Waves"  and it's founder and owner is technology industry veteran Graeme Thickins.  He rolled it out a few weeks ago at a major event for the who's who of bloggers.

Were you there?

Here's what makes this so much fun.  Normally, when folks want "industry statistics" and "complete numbers on a business" they go to the national association that represents the industry. There are more than 100,000 associations and some 22,000 of those are members of the association of associations, called ASAE (American Society of Association Executives).  This amazing fact comes from my 20 years as a member of ASAE, published author for their national magazine--Associations Now, and willing volunteer on their national committees and prestigious awards programs.

The reason that each of these industry organizations collect millions of dollars in dues, publications sales and convention revenues each year is to be the "one source of all information about the industry we represent" and to present that information before Congress or other places where they are invited to be the authoritative voice for many companies or thousands of professionals.

We went to the ASAE offices, here in Washington, DC, to see if we could find the blog industry leaders that Graeme is blogging about.  We searched the membership roster for the National Association of Blog Research Professionals and came up with nothing.  We searched also for an American Society for Business Bloggers and found nothing.  The Association of Internet Researchers is about a close as we could come--not a member of ASAE; rather, an academic research group.

This may be a wild guess but we will go out on a limb and say nobody is paying a nickle to do research on the state of the blogging industry or salary studies on everyone who is blogging. 

Let's follow Graeme and see what he finds and reports.  If you are a member of the American Blogging Association or some other group that is the last word on the development and economic impact of the blogging industry, please come back and comment.  Better yet, send me an email.

Another Lightning Experience

Just for you, I did the promised follow-up to the Journaling for Customers blog, checked the spelling and as I went to hit the "Post" key, lightning struck.  Within three seconds there was a brilliant light, this popping and frying sound in the room with all of the computer systems, then total darkness, followed by a really loud crack of thunder. Within a few minutes we could see, by candlelight, that the beautiful blog, crafted just for you, was wiped out.  And there was no Internet or computer system.  That burning smell was our router.    Customer service by our IT support company was fabulous and we were in business the following work day.

What does this mean?  For one, I'm not rewriting that blog because I can take a hint. When lightning strikes, do you think you are really suppose to press your luck and recreate that same blog? Oh no.  Let's look for another sign about how to turn information about customers into cash flow.

It came Monday morning in the Daily Strategic Attraction Action Tip from Perfect Customers, Inc. and I encourage you to read it for yourself. The three specific steps you need to do next are in that tip sheet. Go to the site, sign up for the free daily tips and go to the drop down archive list to get the one for today. It looks like this 2005/07/18.

Before we discuss the very large profits that business people are making by following CRM principles, such as listening to customers, identifying the most valuable customers and serving them to the level Tom Peters calls WOW, we need to nail down the fundamentals of dialog. 

If you have never done this, then start today with a whole new attitude of adventure and discovery.  What if I'm right?  What if you have been working way too hard for too little money, simply because it was all about you instead of all about your customer?  Remember that journal we talked about in the last blog?  (Okay, go back to the blog before this one and refresh your memory.)  You are listening and writing down the answers to those few, very important questions, right?  Now you go back to those same customers and follow the advice that comes from Jan Stringer and Alan Hickman, co-owners of Perfect Customers, Inc.

Tell your customers why they are valuable to you and your business. Collect even more, extremely valuable information and insights about what you can do to create even more customer value.  Write it in that journal. If you wish, you can act on that information in an immediate way.  If you have more than 20 customers, we have to talk about CRM, your database and how you are remembering everything that every customer told you, then sharing that in real time across your enterprise, whether that's all in one building or shooting e-mails to the handheld computers in the hands of members of your company in airports and meeting rooms across the country.

What happens next? Keep going on your customer communication journey and journaling.  And come back here tomorrow to let us all know how you are doing.  We'll take the next steps, together, into CRM land. We'll engage an expert guide, Paul Greenberg, and his CRM Blog to make the next steps easier, if not more enjoyable.

Journal Your Way to More Customers

Welcome back and thank you for sending this blog around to your friends while waiting for me to return from vacation.  Alaska for a week is all about discovery and one of the first things we discovered is there is no way to blog when you get no signals for cell phones and Internet connections may not happen for days, depending on where the satellites are.

The next discovery was actually a reminder from John Jantsch in his latest book, Blog Lightning - How To Create and Promote Your Small Business Blog In A Flash, about the value of the journal.   One benefit of the journal is the way it is always handy to encourage immediate capture of thoughts, amazing facts, conversations, names, reflections and insights.  As Jantsch points out, writing in your journal as you experience each day seems to assure you that writer's block will not happen and you can harvest from your handwritten notes, the most interesting tidbits to share with others.

Let's look at the direct connection between the journal and achieving tremendous success as one who attracts and keeps loyal, profitable customers.  The journal is a pure listening experience.  The jounal never interrupts or talks back.  It just takes in everything you have to say.  The more information you put in the journal, the more valuable it becomes.

What do you think would happen if you listened to your customers and best prospects that way?  The power of customer relationship management (CRM) was with us hundreds of years ago, before we had computers or bookstores in every shopping mall that featured those cool journal books, right there up front, near the checkout lines.  Try this exercise for the rest of the summer and see how a habit of journaling every day builds business, because of better listening.

First, get a journal you will carry with you everywhere.  They come in all sizes, from pocket size to oversize and it's a book of blank pages, sometimes with leather or fancy covers.  If you are always losing pens, get a journal that comes with a pen attached.  At all times, be ready to write. Typing in your PDA doesn't count.  You need to feel the paper glide under your pen and allow for a total range of expression, including sketches. Journals need no batteries or recharging. For this exercise, you make it a one-topic journal, "Customers" and start by listing all of the customers you want to keep and start another list, a few pages over, for all of the customers you know by name but have not "signed up" or sold yet.

Next, set up appointments, by phone or in person, to listen, and listen deeply, to one of those customers each day, including weekends.  You can do more than one, but the point is don't skip a day. In person is best but phone can work well.  Instead of talking, just tell the customer that you are working on your listening skills and you would appreciate their help.  You are going to only ask questions, not make comments.  Further, you will only ask questions if they stop talking or you need to ask them to answer a different questions, in order to keep your listening attentive.  At first, before you get good at this, ask the person you are listening to if they will remind you to shut up and write in the journal, should you backslide to your blah, blah, blah mode.

If you are not sure what the most powerful customer listening questions are for your business, use the questions recommended by Hall and Brogniez in their book, Attracting Perfect Customers:

1. Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
2. Who is the most important person to you in the world?
3. What is most important to you in the world?
4. What do you want to achieve before you leave this world?
5. What do you really love about your life?

How does this build business?  Remember everything they tell you and resist every urge to respond with anything other than, "Thank you very much.  Would you like to have another conversation after I think about everything you have just entrusted to me and see if there is something I can provide or make for you that connects with what is important to you?"

Come back tomorrow to this blog and we can journal together on how to turn this valuable information in your journal into deposit slips at your bank. Meanwhile, go ahead and practice your journal talents by commenting, right here, on this blog item.