Social, Shmocial, Twitter, Tweety Bird, Facebook, Faceblah!

Posted on | August 5, 2009 | No Comments

Now that I have your attention in less than 140 characters (the twitter limit) let’s talk about the big buzz around social media, social marketing and Word of Mouth (W.O.M.) marketing, etc…  I think this is some great PR and hype around some old fashioned - good ideas.  There is nothing wrong with that as one of my favorite innovation discussions is the new idea vs. the old idea repackaged.  I felt it would be fun to talk frankly about this stuff and boil it down to a few good take aways and share some insights from my perspective to get you to think about this in a different way.

• The Magic of it all!-  I think it is wonderful that the Internet can facilitate a scope and breadth of conversation not possible before it’s invention.  However, technology will not create this phenomenon on its own.  You need to have a good mission, vision and value proposition all supported by a product or service that meets and exceeds the perceived value the customer has paid.  Oh yeah, you had better also have outstanding customer service.  Money is tight these days and we are changing our opinions on spending money as a society.  It is REALLY EASY to move to a competitor.

• Technology does not equal “no human interaction” – Just because technology is enabling massive reach and capability it does not mean that we have eliminated people from this process.  Let’s put the “social” back in social media.  Mining data about your customer is great but actually engaging them and talking to them live is way more valuable.  This is especially true when your competition is not!  Trust me most of them are not.  They are busy building iPhone Ap’s and cool Facebook sites.  Here is an idea…Pick up the phone.  If you are the CEO call 5 customers per day.  That story will go a looooooong way when you are looking for referrals…  Oops, I mean W.O.M. marketing.  If you think this is silly or you do not have time you should retire.  Things are changing faster than you are.

• MEASUREMENT-  Ahhhhhhh, the Holy Grail of Web Marketing 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever we are on.  Yes there are some things that can be measured.  Conversations, threads, forwards, comments, web traffic, conversions, drop offs, eCommerce purchases, etc…  How about we measure increase in sales and customer service/experience scores?  After all, for profit businesses want to sell more stuff and make more profit right?  And if you are doing that without improving your customer experience you are making it hard on yourself.  I want my customers to sell for me.   I want them to buy from me over and over and over.  Finding new customers is really hard.  Shouldn’t I make sure I keep them once I have them?  Do not get caught up in the nitty gritty out of the gate.  Execute small projects that you can measure very specifically on the two metrics mentioned. 

I have reached the 500 word limit imposed on me by the “blog police” so I better sign off…

GREAT CARTOON FROM Mashable / Hubspot – http://mashable.com/2009/04/17/social-media-cartoon-flitterin/

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