I jumped into a LinkedIn discussion the other day. The Group was discussing how brands are losing touch with consumers.Certainly the data is increasingly telling. As recently as today, more data isout telling us that most consumers don’t talk about brands on the dominantsocial media channels.

Responses ranged from “…brands were never in touch in thefirst place.” to “companies don’t understand the customer service role”. Iweighed in with the following…

Agree with the above but add the following thoughts. Brandshave often gone into social media channels without a clear understanding ofwhat their customers actually want. IBM (disclosure – IBM is a client of myemployer Text 100) released a Social CRM study that highlighted the emerging gap between marketingperception and social consumer reality. It showed that while brand marketersfelt consumers came to their social networks to feel brand love, they actuallywere more interested in receiving coupons, discounts and customer support.

I think this is compounded by the fact that often the peopleinteracting with social consumers on networks like Facebook and twitter aren’tadequately skilled in this type of customer-facing role. Just look at thegrowing list of social media customer service issues (search for OceanMarketing and Penny Arcade on Google for more on this)! I think the time’sright for social consumer support people to step up and play a larger role insocial network planning and execution.

If you’re interested, I’ve blogged about these points in a2012 trends post – link’s here.  

So that’s my two cents. Anything to add?

-Jeremy

Photo credit: “My Favorite”, Erwss, Peace and Love, cc attribution, share alike http://www.flickr.com/photos/erwss/3129884643/

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Great video from LG. Guess to most people (and vendors!), a thin TV’s a thin TV. But with more than 1.6 million views as of 9 January 2012, you have to assume a bunch of folks have LG=thin embedded somewhere in their brains.

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The social media gap is growing into a full-blown chasm. Onone side, we have companies that are struggling to get on board, having stalledat the twin road blocks of ROI justification and resourcing.

In the middle, there many businesses that have made solidsteps but run the risk of seeing their fledgling communities wither and dieunder the growing threat of recessionary cuts.

And in the distance, we have organizations that are well ontheir way to becoming social businesses. They have vibrant, self-supportingowned media communities while experts from many business functions act asambassadors in earned media networks. Their customers and employees areactively engaged in digital discovery and collaborative service development,and all of this is wrapped up with measurable and meaningful ROI.

But let’s be frank. This is certainly the exception and notthe rule. With this ideal in mind, it seems timely to look the trends that arelikely to shape social business adoption in 2012 and beyond…

1. The year social grows up

The writing is on the digital (or is that Facebook?) ‘wall’…interactive marketing is here to stay. With analysts predicting spendhitting nearly US$80 billion by 2016, social media and digital are no longerthe playthings of pajama-wearing bloggers and tweens. Beneath the headlines,though, there lies another story. Social media is hard. The streets aren’tpaved with digital gold. For example, Reuters recently reported thatfinancial advisors are seeing declining benefits from social media. In the samemonth, The New York Times toldus Facebook visits were dropping.

My company’s client IBM’s Social CRM study highlighted theemerging gap between marketing perception and social consumer reality. Itshowed that while brand marketers felt consumers came to their social networksto feel brand love, the actually were more interested in receiving coupons,discounts and customer support.

In 2012, brands will increasingly be faced with a series ofhard choices. I said in last year’s trends post,that a presence in the big four of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube wasbecoming a non-negotiable. The hard choices come as they realize that buildinga thriving community in each is time consuming and – without firm goals inplace – possibly pointless.

There is a case for maintaining a minimal presence in onechannel – perhaps using it as a bridge to another. For many brands, YouTubeisn’t a strong community option – but is undeniably the video sharing leader.In this example, they should focus on other channels to build engagement whiledirecting consumers to their videos – and then back to other, more appropriatechannels for conversation or to purchase.

All of becomes more complex as brands need to maintain awatchful eye on emerging channels. Case in point is the much maligned Google+which is tipped tohit 400 million users by the end of 2012. Are you there yet?

Maturing social consumers will also start modifying theirbehaviors. Social media overload will see them dropping away from socialnetworks that don’t give them what they need. Those brands that haveestablished social presences should start 2012 by asking their loyal,high-sharing social consumers what they want – and modify accordingly. This isespecially important for those that have plateaued, are struggling to attractnew followers or are seeing engagement levels dropping. The opportunity forbrands in 2012 is for smarter, probably smaller, social networks that are builtaround tangible social customer needs of the vocal, high sharing minority andmeasurable business outcomes.

2. The age of social consumer relations management

The days of customers being happy with 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.Monday through Friday support are coming to an end. Encouragingly, many brandshave responded with social brand media monitoring programs and customer supportstaff in owned social media channels. While things are on the up,  2011saw brands such as FedEx, OceanMarketingand Qantas addedto the pantheon of social media fail case studies.

Clearly, we’re not there yet. An October2011 study from by Conversocial found many retailers failed to respondto complaints in social networks. Secondly from the ‘damned if you do, damnedif you don’t’ school of customer support, issues have also blown up whenattempts at online customer interaction have been judged inappropriate. Andwe’re also seeing backlash when brands have failed to anticipate the likelyonline reaction to their social media marketing attempts.

I predict 2012 will see the emergence of socialconsumer support functions. People with solid expertise in managing and predicting online customerbehavior will play a much greater role in all facets of a brand’s onlinepresence. The social media gold rush days are coming to an end. We need expertshelping to plan and manage discussions. 

Surveys have told us people are lookingfor customer support in social channels, so get your customer support peoplethere. This will force even deeper collaboration between business functions andwith external agencies. It will also force jobs to be restructured as socialconsumer support – with its deeper customer understanding – taking a much morestrategic role in business decisions. Begs a question – will PR become a socialconsumer relations function?

3. Drop the ‘social’ as social business becomesbusiness

Me (left) discussing socialbusiness evolution with Clelia Morales from eBay;Christophe Rocca from SanDisk and Jonathan Jiménez from Vodafone during a Text 100 event in Madrid

McKinsey reports thatsocial technology use is increasingly correlated with operating marginimprovements and market share leadership. Great news, especially for those ofus who see social business becoming, simply, business in 2012, just ase-commerce became commerce before it. This year, we’ll see a rapid adoption of social technologieschanging all facets of business, whether they want to change or not.

The days of a marketing-led social media function are comingto a close. Smart companies are building centers of excellence that aresupporting all business functions in a coordinated fashion. They’re alsoinvesting in training all employees, realizing that the core demands fromsocial consumers are for subject matter expertise, not the size of someone’sTwitter following, Klout ranking or ability to text 100 words a minute. 

Text100 has created an ambitious Digital Certification program where consultants,HR, IT, Finance staff and Office Managers are all tasked with improving theirthought leadership, digital consulting skills, community management andtraining.

Like an increasing number of companies, we’ve realized oursocial consumers want to interact with us through social channels. In responsewe’re redesigning our client support, marketing, recruitment and internalcommunications channels to suit the requirements of our audiences.

The mission for 2012 is for marketers to let go of otherbusiness disciplines. Future success won’t be in their ability to interpretwhat their colleagues in customer service, human resources and so on do anddeliver on their behalf. It will be in their ability to partner, coach andultimately enable these functions.

4. Spokespeople evolved: Executives to experts

A recent GlobalWebIndex reportfound that B2B decision makers were highly socially engaged and ratedconversations with brands on social networks as more influential than webinars,sales presentations, conferences or corporate entertainment. The more complexthe decision, the greater the need to ask questions of experts in onlinecommunities.

Social consumers who make big decisions want to talk to theright people online. We’ve pushed C-level executives into the spotlight formore than a hundred years – and if they’re the right people to manage thesecomplex online conversations then we need to arm them for the discussion.

We’re increasingly managing Digital Academy training for ourclients. These programs help people from customer support, sales, marketing,human resources and so on use social networking channels such as Twitter andLinkedIn to support their business goals. The resulting programs see theseexperts blogging on corporate websites, managing communities in companydiscussion forums, and acting as ambassadors in external earned mediacommunities.

Through 2012 and beyond we’ll see people from all businessfunctions playing similar expanded roles in support of their own objectives.This is a logical next step for those companies that have developed owned mediaproperties across Facebook, twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Based on ourexperience, it’s best to start with one business function, division or productand build a program around someone with a greater aptitude for social media.Measure their success – learn from the things that didn’t go well – and evolvethe campaign around them.

5. Big data becomes business as usual

IDC’s “2011Digital Universe Study: Extracting Value from Chaos” told us the world’sinformation is doubling every two years. Last year saw 1.8 zettabytes createdand replicated. That’s a lot of info and while most PR people would run amile before diving into the data, that’s one fear our profession is going tohave to face.

In 2012, marketers will need to use hard metrics to gaugedigital and social marketing ROI. We’re entering a tough economic environmentwhere even harder questions are going to be asked of the PR tactics we propose.The time for social media experimentation is waning in the hunt for solidbottom-line results.

The answer increasingly lies in what’s being called ‘bigdata’. While the definitions are blurred, at its corebig data means using a range of data sets including competitive information,online data such as social networking behaviors, offline data and customerinformation to enable a three dimensional approach to business decisions.

From a PR perspective the emergence of better, easier-to-usemore targeted tools combined with geo-location technologies will mean data willplay a meaningful role in PR activities. We’ll go beyond reach and“participation” measures such as likes and retweets and instead deriveaction-oriented insights from our metrics.

Big data will also help us understand the individuals we’reinfluencing so we can create more targeted strategies. And if this still makesyou want to run a mile, 2012 will also see a rise in specialist dataanalysts who will increasingly play a role in shaping communications decisions.

I’ll put up part two of this post next week. As always, your thoughtsare very welcome. To discuss directly with me, fire a note to woolf.jeremy@gmail.com

Photos courtesy of flickr users Stuckin Customs, KY_Olsen, Text 100,and Koenvereeken,respectively.

The original version of this post first ran onmy company’s blog, HyperText

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Nice video from Eric Qualman reflecting physical and some rather intangible things that technology has killed over the past two decades.

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I’ve been reading, thinking, speaking and writing a lot about socialbusiness recently. There are many definitions being bandied about. Some call itEnterprise 2.0. Others say the networked enterprise. I keep coming back toSocial Business and I quite like this definition that comes via IBM, a client of my employer Text 100:

A Social Business embraces networks of people to create businessvalue. 

But I’m not writing yet another post about the issues of definition.I’m writing on the issue of application. One of the core principles of a socialbusiness is that constituents (be they employees, business partners, voters,customers and so on) are involved, via social networking technology, inbusiness decisions. 

The best example of this in action is crowdsourcing new ideas from a widerange of stakeholders using  platforms such as IBM’s SocialBusiness Jam. This is absolutely best practice, with the 2006 InnovationJam, for example, bringing together  thousands of people worldwide andcreating 10 new IBM businesses with seed investment totalling US100 million.

IBM is clearly ahead of the curve. But for those businesses startingtheir thinking, there are a bunch of challenges. The biggest single barrier formany business is somehow overcoming the business silos that make inter-functioncommunication and in many cases impossible. Assuming you can get the rightpeople around the virtual table and start bouncing around cross-functionalideas that will make the company millions, stop. Pause. And consider.

Reflect on how many brainstorms you’ve been in where literally hundredsof great ideas are created and everyone comes out of the room energized. Yethow many times have you walked back into that same room months later to tacklethe same problem and realized nothing had been done? All the best intent in theworld means nothing unless you’re also planning to filter, prioritize andimplement. 

And this is hard. It requires resource committed in advance. Itrequires people willing to take charge and make decisions. It requires lobbyingand c-level endorsement and participation. While social media (sadly) is oftenthrown to the nose-ring-wearing intern, social business is business engineeringand change management. 

Before you start on your social business transformation, realize thatthe grown-ups need to get involved on the ground. And realize that this is along-term play that needs sustaining well-after the brainstorm endorphin buzzdies down. There needs to be boring things like consensus, approvals, budgetsand, most critically ownership of the implementation process. In socialbusiness – just like regular business – look before you leap.

-Jeremy

Photo Credit: Afterwards Tom and Eric weren’t exactly sure at whichpoint during their discussion the elephant had entered the room, DavidBlackwell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilestreetlife/4179063482/

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Unpack Your Baggage For A Great Relationship

“Everyone you meet comes with baggage; find someone who loves you enough to help you unpack.” Unknown

Dragging old baggage around with you can taint the most promising relationship. Making your partner pay for the wrongs of exes puts a strain on even the best of relationships. Living with someone who is carrying excess baggage can feel a little like walking on egg shells; never knowing what will trigger the next blow out. Since it is impossible for your partner to ever be perfect enough to not trigger your baggage, it is wise to unpack.

Below are tips for unpacking your baggage:

1. Accept and release your anger. Accept that it is healthy to feel anger about mistreatment. Accept that you feel angry for a reason, acknowledge that you have a right to feel how you feel. Then choose to deal constructively with your anger and find a way to release that feeling, rather than allowing it to turn to bitterness. Clients often find it helpful to write a letter expressing their feelings to their exes and then choose to release and let go, by burning or otherwise destroying the letter and celebrating the purging of those feelings from their life.

2. Rid yourself of reminders. Give back, give away, sell or discard the physical reminders of old hurts. If you are hanging onto stuff that brings you pain each time you use or see it, it may be time to clean house. It can be helpful as a symbolic way to say I am choosing to let go of the past, or to free myself from its grasp.

3. Break the pattern. Carrying old baggage can mean that your partner gets painted with the same brush as your ex. If they say or do anything that even reminds you of something from the past, all that build up hurt and anger falls on them like a ton of bricks. Choose to be in the present and to deal with your current relationship and remember that your partner is not your ex or your parents or whoever else hurt you in the past.

4. Forgive yourself. It is important to accept responsibility for the hurtful things that you did or said in past relationships and to learn from mistakes that you made. Remember that you are only responsible for things that you can control. You are not responsible for your exes choices or behavior. Choose to learn from your past and forgive yourself, rather than beating yourself up. Accept that, in whatever situation you found yourself, you did the best you could at the time.

5. Forgive others. Forgiving those who have hurt you frees you from carrying their baggage with you. You do not forgive them because they deserve to be forgiven or to give them peace of mind; you forgive them because you deserve to be free of them and you deserve peace of mind. Forgiveness can be difficult and sometimes takes years, but it really is the most effective way to unpack your baggage.

Get help if needed. If you strongly feel that your past is interfering with your present and stopping you from having the future that you want, it may be wise to seek help from a professional. Sometimes your partner can help you unpack and sometimes you just need a little extra help.

Improving Relationships Blog

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Are You Keeping Secrets?

“The most valuable, most precious love in the world is the love someone gives you when you can’t love yourself.” Susan Page

Are you keeping secrets? Are your secrets keeping you from being real with each other and having the intimacy you desire? If you are pretending to be someone other than who you really are, your relationship ends up being a hollow facade of what it could be. Hiding from your partner the things that cause you shame or embarrassment does not allow him/her to have the opportunity fully accept you—warts and all. You may end up having niggley doubts that if s/he knew all about you, s/he would not really love you. Because you are hiding parts of yourself, you may spare yourself some momentary pain or embarrassment, but that lack of vulnerability also keeps distance between you.

Openness and honesty is an essential part of lasting, healthy relationships. Everyone has a right to privacy, however if you feel the need to hide your email and cell phone from your partner, chances are you are behaving in ways that you feel are inappropriate. It is not that your partner should read every email or text message that you send, but there should be nothing in those email or text messages that they should not or could not see. When you start hiding things from your partner it is often an indication that you are headed down a dangerous path.

Another thing to remember is that secrets have a way of slipping out, often at the most inconvenient times. It is far better to arrange a quiet time when you are both feeling comfortable to talk to your partner about things from your past that you are not proud of or things from the present that you regret. Even though this conversation may be difficult, s/he would much rather hear it from you than to stumble upon it in some other way. Secret keeping means lying either by omission or commission and deceit always erodes trust! As painful as it may be, it is far better for you to fess-up rather than getting caught in your lies.

You both need privacy, time for yourselves, time with friends, and or separate hobbies. But if during those private times you are thinking or doing things that you feel you should hide from your partner you may be causing more damage to your relationship than you realize. Secret keeping is too often a slippery slope to relationship decay.

Susan Derry, B.Ed., M.S.Psy., R.P.C., C.P.C.
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine

Improving Relationships Blog

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Mathematical Relationships

“Build. Create. Live well, laugh often, love much. It needn’t be a fight all the time.”
Martin Caidin

This advice is the best advice for loving relationships. In our relationships, when things are going well, we usually just drift along, not doing much different; we are content with the status quo. When the relationship starts to go sideways we just fight about every little thing that bothers us, we still are content with the status quo.

Paul McKenna, author of Change Your Life in Seven Days, says that if you want your life to be different you need to do different, say and think different; otherwise we get the status quo. In order for a relationship to truly change and change for the better we need a plan of attack. An idea of what we want and how to achieve that ideal.

There is a need to build the trust between the two partners, where each feels secure and honored in the relationship. Doing this is very simple, two words: “Don’t lie.” Honesty is always, always the best policy. Lying to save some trouble only creates more trouble. There is no such thing as a little lie; it is just a lie, not the truth, a fib or whatever you want to call it. Bottom line is that it is a lie.

Relationships are place to create the life you want. Ask yourself what it is you want from life, from your relationship? Be creative, shoot for the moon if that is what you want, just trust yourself and your feelings about what it is you are seeking. Dream large, it is the large dreams that create change.

The most important part of this is the next line in the quote, to live well, laugh and love. Life is not about the end result. Even if you know exactly what it is you want out of life you will be happiest working at achieving it, not reaching it. Enjoy your time living your life, laughing and having fun. Loving each other with a powerful thirst for love and life. Creating a life worth living, not just plugging away, building up treasures in heaven; but enjoy that little piece of heaven right now.

The secret to a long lasting happy relationship is mathematical. A ratio: five to one. That is it, very simple, five positive and good things done for every one negative thing that happens between the two of you. So does that mean no fighting, no disagreements, no being upset, of course not. It means that all couple do those things, they fight, they argue, they disagree, often disagreeably, they do get upset. The secret is that for each of those types of engagements there is at least five good things happening within that relationship.

They are anxiously engaged in a good work, that good work is building and enjoying a great relationship. They trust each other, accept each other as they are, they forgive, forget and let things go. Little things stay little things and bigger things are dealt with thus, when there is a blow out it is not relationship shaking. Having fun together is the best way to build up the five good things.

Enjoy each other, each other’s company, do things together, like work together, play together, cry together. Life has enough troubles and trials without out partner becoming one of them. One of the best ways to build up your relationship is to face life as a team. You will say you know what that means and you do that, but do you really.

In a fight does your partner become the problem, the thing, the object of your anger? That is not the sign of a team. What needs to happen is that the focus comes off the other person and switches to the real problem. The scenario looks like this; the two of you are sitting together, side by side and the problem is out in front of you. It is now not “you are the problem” but “we have a problem.” And now “we” can solve it.

Five to One. Remember it. Practice it.

Dallas Munkholm, B.A., B.Com., R.P.C.
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine

Improving Relationships Blog

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A Look In The Mirror

The foundation of all good relationships if the relationship that you have with yourself. It is time to take stock of your relationship with you. You can begin by noticing your daily habits and whether they are nourishing you or draining you. How do you feel about you? How well do you take care of yourself?

Rate your self-care:

Physically – Do I exercise at least three times a week? Do I eat healthy food and drink enough water? Do I get enough sleep? Is my space organized and clutter free?

Emotionally – Do I have healthy ways to reduce my stress level? Am I living in and enjoying the present? Do I speak positively to myself? Have I worked through my personal and family issues in therapy if necessary?

Intellectually – Am I continuing to learn and grow? Do I find ways to challenge and stretch myself intellectually?

Spiritually – Am I aligned with positive so that I will attract positive into my life? Do I worship as I choose? Do I have something wonderful to look forward to each day? Do I practice gratitude?

Socially – Do I live in a nurturing home environment? Do I have a support network I can depend on?

Appearance – Do I take care of and respect my body? Do I wear clothes that flatter me? Do I smile often?

Integrity – Do I say no when I mean no and yes when I mean yes? Am I firm and stick to my personal standards? Do I only make promises that I am willing to keep?

Time Management – Do I have a relaxing daily routines? Do I find time to do what I most want to do, not just what I should or have to do?

Rating your self care is not intended to make you feel bad. It is intended to make you aware of areas where you may need to improve. Make and keep a promise to yourself to be more diligent in taking care of yourself. Remember that self care is not selfishness. Although sacrifice is an important part of loving relationships, we cannot have great relationships if we sacrifice who we are in the process. Nourish yourself with positive thoughts; practice acceptance and gratitude within yourself. When you have a great relationship with yourself, your relationships with others will improve.

Susan Derry, B.Ed., M.S.Psy., R.P.C., C.P.C.
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine

Improving Relationships Blog

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