Expose Yourself. I Dare You.

“The lesson is, we all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change. We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both the ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past.” -Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel

I have a question for you… What is one of the largest public relations and customer communication problems facing companies?

I can help you out… it is ignorance and the decision to simply not listen. This concept can stem from every corner of a corporation or a small business. The CEO chooses not to listen because they simple do not know or a small business owner decides to ignore the ever changing world of customer communication.

We are experiencing a shift in how customers relate to brands. You can no longer hide behind a massive white paper, public relations firm, or marketing campaign.

The time is now. Expose yourself. Take the dive into the world of online communication. Start a corporate blog. Start a twitter campaign for a product. Get your customer service department trained in the ways of social media.

Can you feel the winds of change blowing through your window? Or did you decide to yank it close…?

Only to experience it being shattered.

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The Most Valuable Commodity is Information

“The most valuable commodity in the world is information.” -Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in Wallstreet.

Oliver Stone understood the value of content and information while writing the movie Wallstreet in 1987. In the movie the concept of information is a little skewed because of the nature of the film but the idea still reigns true.

Gordon Gecko used information to learn about competition and his employees and the same goes for business owners across the globe. The global competitive landscape is demanding more from marketing and communication departments.

While I do not condone using information unethically… I am speaking more on developing thought leadership and trust behind your brand. It is important to create content that is valuable to your consumer… your demographic target… your niche as a company.

What are you creating that is helping your customer? What are you writing, sharing, and adopting that can change the way people view their daily routine?

Killing the Machine with Social Media

First off… a side note… If you are not reading Convince & Convert by Jason Baer you should be. He always gets me thinking and brainstorming on new methods and ideas to marketing through social media.

If you were to think back to the days of (what we will call) old-school marketing…the days where big money won and the more you broadcasted the higher the return…it can be debated that the marketing arm of many companies ran much like a machine. Yes, there was some creative thought process involved but the communication model was more machine-like than we would care to admit.

They (the machines) started churning out hundreds of thousands of ideas in order to plaster on our minds the benefits of their products and services. More often than not, it worked.

In the age of the Internet, open collaboration, and social media the machine is slowly dying and giving way to a more sophisticated school of thought. The customer is now crafting the message of brands. The customer has castrated the machine of marketing and created a new form of communication.

In the words of Jason, social media is now at the forefront of the customer experience. The thoughts and ideas of brands are no longer crafted in the board room (which many people would like to believe) but created in our living rooms, restaurants, gathering places, and keyboards.

As a business owner it is up to you to listen to this message. To never ignore the potential that social media can have on your brand and welcome the unison of voices which are the PEOPLE who love your product… and..

the people who do not.

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Twitter More Important than LinkedIN for Business

I love polling. Sometimes you take it for what it’s worth… and sometimes it blows you away. I stumbled across a post by ReadWriteWeb about a polling completed on LinkedIN asking their members What is the most important new platform for brands to master?
and the results?

Talk about an interesting development? Facebook even beat out the famous business networking site for social media brand development! What is even more interesting is that small business owners made up 76% of the votes (out of a total of 3,600).

What does this mean for marketing and social media?

Business owners are starting to take notice of the growing trend in the social media world and the ability for businesses to use networks to drive revenue. The influence of the social Internet age is growing exponentially.

My question to all the business owners and marketing directors is this… What are you going to do with this information? Is it time to take the dive and joining the Twitter or Facebook community?

Is your brand going to be hurt if you do not join the masses?

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Redefining Your Customers with Social Media

There are many applications for social media when it comes to your business. We can talk about everything from content sharing, increase of qualified search traffic, or content creation. There is still one way that ranks in the top 5 reasons to use social media…

Turning Your Customers into Evangelists

We all hear the term… customer evangelists and to be honest, we have no idea what that truly means. Social media tools and the medium itself has finally created a way to truly reap the benefits of global communication with your best clients and friends.

You have the ability to use social media to empower your customers. You are creating a medium that turns your customers into the sounding board for your business story… and ultimately your business growth.

The next time you start to define your social media marketing plan… remember to include turning your customers into evangelists… one link at a time.

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Social Media Marketing to Increase by 48%

Thanks to Chris Baggott at Compendium Blogware for pushing this data at me. I have seen the graph before but not the updated version. Chris’ post talks about the merit of SEO and email marketing being at the forefront of the increases in online marketing budgets over the next year… I wanted to focus on the third one..

Social media marketing.

It is encouraging to see social media marketing and SEO sliding into the top three spots in the online marketing budgets of companies all over the world. It shows that businesses owners from all over the world are taking a closer look at sites like Twitter and organic search engine optimization in the form of blogging (guessing there).

What does this mean to the business owner?

In my opinion, you should follow the trend or get left in the dust.

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What Business Blogging is Missing

I was reading a post by Megan Glover over at the wonderful company Compendium (check them out) called 5 Blogging Goals Every Marketer Should Consider. Her post is excellent but there was one thing missing: the human touch.

Here are the top 5 Blogging Goals Every Marketer Should Consider:

1. Increase organic search traffic.

2. Boost referral traffic to my website.

3. Generate more inbound leads.

4. Increase email and catalog subscriptions.

5. Sell more product.

Now before you go all haywire on me and send hate mail… I do think this list is excellent but there is a part of me that still holds onto the communication goals of every marketer and PR firm:

1. Communication: You should email all commenters and give them a “Thank You” for posting on your blog.

2. Talk About What YOU Do: Your personality needs to shine through no matter what you are selling. Tell stories about helping clients and clients helping each other.

It is really dependent on your strategy and the product you sell but there is always the chance that you will focus TOO much on selling your product or service and alienate the people that could become TRUE evangelists.

If you want to become a thought leader in you industry you need to talk more about What You Do not about your product.

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The Strange World of Social Media

The majority of us are strangers right? I mean… we talk on a regular basis and exhange links but there are few that you can actual call “trusted friends.” And yet we love what we do. 

I love getting up in the morning and having multiple conversations with people all over the world. I love sharing content with enlightened minds just trying to understand concepts of design, marketing, social media, the Internet, and life. 

The majority of us are strangers but we share a common bond: interest. There is a common thread that ties all of us together: the social web. Our interests keep us coming back and keep us in the loop.

When marketing and creating relationships with customers over the web it is important to remember this… the killer of all.

Your customers want to relate to you and in the strange world of social media it has become easier to relate, share, and communicate. 

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Business Is Always About Connecting

I was reading a post over at SmartBlog on Social Media and it had a quote by the Mzinga CEO Barry Libert:

“GM never thought of themselves of being in the business of connecting people, which is why they’re going bankrupt,”

Pretty valid thought if you ask me. Should all businesses be involved in connecting people with each other? Better yet… should businesses search for that lofty goal of connecting people who use their services to people who do not?

My opinion… Yes they should.

Business has always been about connecting. If you look back into history there has always been some type of connection between two people that created a company…

whether it was a deal that was signed or an idea sparked out of thin air.

The Internet has given way to a landslide of communication. You now have the ability to connect with every demographic on the face of the earth. What is your company doing to connect?

I am not going to sit here and say that the demise of GM was based around their inability to connect… but it is a valid point.

What are you going to do tomorrow to make it easier for customers and potential customers to connect?

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Why the Breakdown of Communication?

We are evolving.

I have probably used the word 50000 times since starting this blog. The concept of evolution is not new. As a human race we evolve on a daily basis. So why the breakdown in the evolution of communication?

Marketing departments are dying.. and it is not a slow death.

The professional marketing world is quickly flipping… churning.. burning through old thought patterns… and (hopefully) emerging on the better side of customer relationship management.

You are managing your customer relationships using communication.. you also gain customers by using marketing. We all know that every facet of your company is a marketing vehicle… from the delivery boy to the CEO.

It is important to embrace new forms of communication from the newspaper to the radio… the television to the Internet. This is no longer about “social media” this is about adapting to the changing environment.

The last question posed is this…
What happens when you don’t evolve?
You die.
What’s the next step?

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