The Socializers | customer-centric business

Insight-driven Action and Customer-Centric Operatives

admin January 24, 2011 No Comments

Insight-driven action in a data-flooded age must be heart-centered. The most important segment of the customer-experience cycle is post-conversion (something was bought), pre-evangelization (the customer tells his/her friends). In that sweet spot, brands must engage the user in dialogue, be open to education BY the customer and take action based on opportunity occurring in the present.

A core list of key influencers drops one very quickly into mine-able territory for content, business connections, tools, and relationship. Useable social intelligence delivers punchy actions with targeted influencer graphs in which to carry out those actions. Chris Ramsey, EVP BizDev, Radian6, writes, “Social media is a two-way communication platform, not a broadcast platform, and it’s all about engagement and relationships.” Amber Naslund, Director of Strategy for Radian6 writes, “Social media marketing is contextually appropriate, just-in-time marketing where you find a chance to engage authentically, and you take it.”

Companies ought to consider the benefit of having in-house curators and/or relationships with 3rd party curators of vertical-specific content. In this way, they will own verticals and niches and be seen as authorities in both the internal development AND in listening to the customer of this niche. Those brands who rule niches through curation will be seen as thought-leaders. And the only way to be a true thought-leader is to spend plenty of time listening. We derive powerful insights and even more powerful action by listening.

Klout CEO and co-founder Joe Fernandez writes, “…target the few key influencers who have authority around a given topic and allow them to tell the story. The message is then amplified up through the network to reach a large engaged audience that trusts the message sender. We’ve basically flipped the funnel upside down.” The weaving of reflection AND action within such an approach is masterful and demonstrates the ideal ethos of actionable intelligence. Creativity around one conversation, one circle of influencers, one city can lead to immense opportunities. Product-centric thinkers are second to customer-centric action-agents. It is simply more practical to be relational vs. transactional in today’s business climate.

We live in times when independent operatives, moving swift and fast, have become more successful than giant entities, moving like cruise ships. Such operatives have an idea, angel-fund the idea and balloon the idea into a global community. Or such operatives provide specialized deliverables like comprehensive social intelligence reports (Business Intelligence), Community Manager training/supervision and Social-Action tools training.

Transmedia, OnDemand and the power of listening to audiences

admin August 15, 2010 No Comments

By Nathaniel Hansen, CEO, The Socializers

If more Marketing Managers at Fortune 500 companies/major media companies truly understood the potential of future media delivery channels like GoogleTV PAIRED WITH “content-informing-intelligence”, there would be a mass re-organization of dinosaur-age ad/marketing agencies whose teams have yet to even train in social monitoring/intelligence tools AND have none of the talent-identification capabilities that a CAA or William Morris has. Those same Marketing Managers would then turn to social business agencies for the following process:

(a) pre-product dev intelligence gathering/listening,
(b) demographic-savvy content/product design RELATED TO what is discovered/analyzed from conversations in the social fabric of the internet,
(c) Relationship Architecting with related Social Strategy to identify ideal Key Influencers (and their content), thus paving the way for seamless and swift introduction of said content into the fabric of communities hungry for it,
(d) on-going listening that creates a virtuous cycle of this process.

The future leaders of transmedia will use the process above as just one of their approaches in expanding possibility for those who interact with media, advertisers, media/content producers AND communications entities. Transmedia and the associated processes that will bring this fabulous new way of interactive relationship to programming IS the future of CONTENT IDENTIFICATION AND PRODUCTION.

Colin Donald of FUTURESCAPE.TV says it best in the following comment on an article entitled Struggling for control: The humble channel-zapper is evolving in ways that will shape television’s futurein a recent edition of The Economist magazine:

“Internet-connected TVs lead to massively increased choice and require next-generation EPGs to help viewers navigate the wealth of content.

One solution backed by many in the industry, like Rovi, is to develop social EPGs that let friends recommend TV shows and videos to each other, via social networks or via systems which use data from social networks.
However, the implications are even more radical than your article suggests.

When Futurescape.TV recently researched this nascent social TV sector, we concluded that Facebook and Twitter are already battling for key roles in the TV industry as Internet-connected televisions transform TV into a social medium.

The two social networks have an actual or potential commercial role across the entire TV value chain.

For instance:
Global pay-TV, estimated at $250bn in 2014, needs social recommendation and discovery services because these encourage viewers to subscribe to more expensive packages and buy more video-on-demand – Facebook and Twitter are both major providers of social data.

Facebook in particular has a highly developed social graph of people’s relationship with entertainment content, from the ubiquitous Like button, integrated into many broadcasters’ Web sites. Both it and Twitter own considerable, detailed data about people’s behaviour, such as discussing TV shows and sharing links to videos.

As your article described, set-top box middleware and EPG providers similarly need social network data for recommendation and discovery – the European EPG market alone will be worth $555m by 2014.

TV manufacturers’ strategy to provide video-on-demand direct to viewers also requires social recommendation, while their connected TV apps enable viewers to interact with Facebook and Twitter on home TV sets. Facebook aims to tap the $180bn worldwide TV ad market, competing with broadcasters for brand advertising – Google TV and similar Web-on-TV systems will put Facebook and Twitter targeted ads on TV screens.

Facebook and Twitter buzz affects TV ratings, while broadcasters that use the social networks for viewer engagement are effectively sharing their audiences with them.

The social networks know in real time how people react to TV programming – this is an essential supplement to Nielsen-type viewing data.

Integrating social networks with EPGs is only one manifestation of a profound and permanent change in the television industry, a change through which Facebook and Twitter are positioning themselves as major industry players.”

The teams working on Oprah’s new cable channel and on eBook sales strategy at Bertelsmann’s Random House are contending with issues related to the new possibilities in transmedia and how to make content delivery platforms lucrative for their shareholders WHILE giving users the most flexibility in interacting with their portfolios of content. Those media publishers who acknowledge the value in being customer-centric vs. product-centric in their offering AND develop platforms that allow maximum interactivity WILL win!

To quote Ali Valdez, a senior Microsoft sales leader, “Their customers will be their marketers. Their customers’ social network friends will be their new customers. Full transparency, good and bad, will drive innovation and competitive pricing. The consumer will win. Those brands that enable consumer victory will share in the bounty.”

TO SUM UP: Combining research from tools like Recorded Future, the world’s first temporal analytics engine (a video intro to Recorded Future here), and Radian6, a leading social media/network monitoring solution, media companies now have the opportunity to LISTEN to audiences that have OPTED OUT of traditional marketing channels and are OPTING INTO new, socially chosen/recommended channels. They then are able to match valuable information from conversations within the social fabric of the internet WITH market trends and probable future events to create product/service/content offerings with previously un-paralleled precision. Existing portfolios of content may be re-purposed into countless monetizable and USER-GENERATED interactive communities.

Understanding the future requires observation and listening and it is a Chief Customer Officer who will teach this to marketing staff, brand managers and community managers.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to your audience is to listen

admin May 23, 2010 No Comments

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~ RACHEL NAOMI REMEN

Listening is one of the most attractive traits in a fellow human being. Interest is sexy, and shows that you want to see into the other person. Learning another’s likes, favorites and passions transforms the relationship into one of transparency and intimacy. A classic rephrasing of intimacy is In-To-Me-See.

In the world of social media marketing, listening is a critical element to the humanization of a brand, the discovery of key influencers, communities and conversations where your product or service has an audience. There are loads of tools for listening, all with different slants on the art and science of gathering intelligence. But a critical aspect of this equation is the EQ (emotional intelligence) of the analyst looking at the data (even if the tool has already performed some intuitive filtering).

To use a dating metaphor: when your date really listens to you, he/she will be tying his/her chosen topics into what you are saying, weaving the two hearts at the table, on the blanket, or on the beach together. This weaving of hearts is just as important in social media marketing, where community managers and small business owners have the mandate to engage in one-one dialogues with customers or segmented niches. Such dialogues are not simply about opening up and letting things go on a natural course. As Charlene Li says in her latest book, Open Leadership, “Being open requires more —not less—rigor and effort than being in control.” The best relationships are ACTIVE!

Listening IS Invitation

Active listening has long been a practice amongst psychologists and psychotherapists, and is no less important in the realm of social networking. To actively listen one might consider the following important actions (adapted from the Council Circle tradition of co-listening):

1) Maintain eye contact with the person speaking (In cyber-space, this means using the filters in the listening tools in an intuitive manner so as to properly segment your audience based on keywords, keyphrases AND other verticals that are attractive to that niche. sCRM is all about this CONNECTION of information from databases to extract precise lists of keywords relevant AND resonant to your audience).

2) Be relaxed but present. (Check out Jet Blue’s twitter account. Their staff are interacting with customers in an uplifting, humorous manner).

3) Be still.

4) Listen from the heart. (The heart is THE most important muscle in social media marketing!)

5) Allow the story to unfold. (The Nestle Facebook fiasco is a classic example of a Community Manager rushing in prior to thinking the consequences through).

6) Listen carefully and the person speaking will always tell you what they need.

7) It’s not your job to “fix” the person who’s working.

8) Common mistakes to avoid:

DON’T give advice (unless asked for). (In social networking, Community Managers/Business owners have the mandate to be problem solvers. To truly solve a problem one must listen first. The key distinction between an Advice-Giver and a Problem-Solver is ACTION!)
DON’T “swap stories” to reassure the person who is speaking
DON’T interpret the meaning of his feelings
DON’T interrupt discharge of emotion (laughter, tears, etc.)
DON’T talk very much
DON’T ask questions for your own information
ONLY ask questions to lead the person deeper into feelings & his own re/solutions.

The most common mistake: Trying to show the person speaking what a good, understanding, perceptive, kind, helpful … person, counselor, leader … you are.

Listen, listen, listen! (That’s really what we all need!)

To return to the weaving metaphor, when one weaves strands of past subjects into the current conversation, a common point of reference is established. The social fabric of the internet is one of the most dynamic environments humanity has EVER engaged in…having the tools to listen is critical (science), knowing how to listen is an art that takes practice or comes naturally. Good community managers are EXCELLENT listeners who hear the heart of their audience and give the customer what he/she wants. And that is what makes GREAT customer-centric business, the current HOT method of marketing.

David Deida, the relationship author, writes, “Who we trust in a business situation is based on how open we are. Openness is bodily openness, muscular relaxation, heart openness as opposed to hiding behind some emotional wall, and spiritual openness, which is actually feeling so fully into the moment that there’s no separation between you and the entire moment.” Openess, feeling and intuition are INHERENT traits of the successful social media marketer/networker.

When the hubless wheel turns, Master or no master can stop it.

admin May 23, 2010 No Comments

Getsuan said to this students: `Keichu, the first wheel-maker of China, made two wheels of fifty spokes each. Now, suppose you removed the nave uniting the spokes. What would become of the wheel? And had Keichu done this could he be called the master wheel-maker?’

This Zen koan identifies precisely what leaderless organizations, user-generated communities and social networks are fomenting NOW!

Who is turning this wheel, brand OR consumer? I say consumer! http://theconversationprism.com/1900 (click on wheel to enlarge).

When the hubless wheel turns,
Master or no master can stop it.
It turns above heaven and below earth,
South, north, east and west. ~ Getsuan

Reflections on The Dachis Group/SOMESSO Social Business Summit

admin May 18, 2010 No Comments

Reflections on The Dachis Group/SOMESSO Social Business Summit by Nathaniel Hansen

(Held on March 18, 2010 at Limkokwing University in the Mayfair District, London, UK)

Published originally on May 17, 2010 in Marketing Week, Greece’s leading marketing publication. www.marketingweek.gr

On March 18, 2010, I was the sole representative of Greece in the External Customer Facing Social Solutions case study group at the SOMESSO Social Business Summit in London. The summit was a invitation-only event for leaders in social business theory, solutions and practice. I was invited due to the pioneering work I have been involved in within Athens, a true blue-ocean environment for social business integration. At the summit, our joint project in the External Group centered around providing a solution for a large bank. After the session, I had many confirmations of what businesses need as they enter the social fabric of the internet.

OVERARCHING THEMES:

• Businesses need simple, efficient solutions, which tie internal, external and eco-system elements together.

• De-mystification of the social business process and education in the possibilities.

• Our businesses must be customer-centric vs. brand or product-centric.

EXTERNAL FACING SOCIAL SOLUTIONS:

• MARKETING: Creation of simple, effective and proven strategies for social media marketing success. A blended approach with traditional media is advised. Marketing projects must always begin with a Digital Brand Assessment, where intelligence about where the brand is currently functions as a baseline for achieving gains in social equity and understanding of the CLV (customer lifetime value).

Marketing Departments and advertising organizations MUST understand the importance of getting their customers and audiences involved in the co-creation of their offerings.

• PR: Training of existing PR staff in simple monitoring software and remedial techniques for reputation management.

INTERNAL BUSINESS PROCESS SOCIAL SOLUTIONS:

• HR: Training of HR Director on what to look for in an adept Community Manager, Online Brand Ambassador, and Chief Customer Officer. Training of existing staff in social networking best practices while at work and out of the office, instituting company-wide rewards for employees who act as brand ambassadors.

In the social oriented business, the CCO plays a central role in communicating to brand managers what the customer wants.

• sCRM: Training of COO and Executive staff through one-day seminars on how to use their existing databases for quickly building their social equity (eg.- followers and fans in specific social properties + what serves this community).

In the coming 12-24 months, Greece and the Balkans will see a deepening involvement in social business due to an overwhelming migration of audiences from traditional gathering points. Studying best-practices and successful case studies from mature social markets will be an essential action toward creative solutions geared toward Greek and Balkan audiences.