The Ants are proud to be a sponsor at the Lithium Social CRM Virtual Summit on Tuesday, November 11 – the largest online conference for Social Media and CRM professionals. The Social CRM Virtual Summit is a five-hour online conference, which includes webcasts by industry leaders in an interactive exhibit hall, a resource center with extensive materials for download, and a virtual networking lounge to chat live with speakers and prospects.

The virtual event is featured in two time sessions on November 11th.

• 5am to 10am PT / 8am to 1pm ET / 1pm to 6pm GMT, or
• 10am to 3pm PT / 1pm to 6pm ET / 6pm to 11pm GMT

Social CRM Virtual Summit Agenda

The social media revolution has changed everything, including how customers choose to interact with companies and each other online, and where they turn for trusted information. This virtual summit comes at a time when companies are starting to see tangible financial results from deeper online engagement with customers, and will explore the current capabilities of and future for Social CRM.
At this five-hour live, virtual summit you will experience:

• Webcasts by industry luminaries such as Mike Fauscette (IDC), Bill Johnston (Forum One), Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group), and Ray Wang (Altimeter Group) in a virtual auditorium
• Scheduled live chats with industry experts and practitioners from companies including Barnes and Noble, Lenovo, National Instruments, Redfin, Best Buy, Juniper Networks, and T-Mobile
• Keynote speeches from CRM thought leaders, Paul Greenberg (The 56 Group) and Brent Leary (CRM Essentials)
• An interactive exhibit hall with dynamic sponsor booths, including Genesys, ON24, Ant’s Eye View, Forum One Communications, CRM Media, Cognizant, and Liveperson
• A resource center with dozens of valuable white papers, podcasts, and presentations for download
• A virtual networking lounge to meet other like-minded professionals through live chat

During your time at the Social CRM Virtual Summit, please stop by the Ant’s Eye View booth that will be hosted by Caitlin Angeloff. Caitlin will share the “how” aspects of making your brand promise a reality.  She will step you through our methodology for guiding organizations through the process of transforming customer experience and brand engagement by activating and embedding the customer voice in to every aspect of your business. 

Register now. It is free and requires no travel budget.

Peers help you by sharing current business examples and provide you with good feedback and validation. The output is ideas which are usually adaptable back in your office when you return.

Captivators are thought generators. They introduce you to something new – a new concept or fresh perspective on an established problem. They provoke thought, provide with you a lens to go back to your office and evaluate your operation and get you thinking.

Now which conferences have these types of people? Well almost every single one. So now how do you filter the good from the mediocre? I look for conferences that are organized for ways to develop some immediate relationships that I can keep active once the conference ends. Marketing Profs Digital Mixer does a great job on this front. I am currently attending this event, and this is my second year – best testament for events is repeat customers.

Some other events I enjoy attending: WOMMA Summit, Forum One, plus select company events like Bazaarvoice’s Social Commerce Summit

Travel budgets and time are tight, so you have to make choices. Conferences can be valuable to instill new ideas back into your business. What conferences or summits have you attended and recommend? Why?

What I have learned is – online listening to your customers is about reading.  There is no tool that is going to eliminate the need for you to truly listen to your customers.  The tools just make it quicker, easier, and even a little fun!  Listening only to influencers will not tell you what your customers are saying.  You need to listen to all discussion on different media types (forums, blogs, tweets, tags).  Forum discussions can give you a very different view than blogs alone.  For example, forums can help you understand the pain-points for customers and where they are having to use the community to fill a void (questions not answered in user guides or problems with performance).  A blog mentioning the same product might take a look at features and compare to competitor products.  Both are valuable to someone in your organization.  Of course, these media types are not restricted to these roles and reverse often, making it imperative to listen to discussion on all media types.

Comments are where a lot of the value resides – It’s more to read, but do not pass up on the comments.  They are a huge indicator to what people are thinking. A blog post may (or may not) be influential, but the comments tell you what other people are saying – sometimes in large numbers.  This is powerful stuff!  While not always negative, the 1oo+ comments to: Thousands of Hotmail passwords leaked online indicate that people are genuinely concerned about the security of their accounts and they value more details on the issue.  The post itself will not do that for you.

Lesson for the day: A tool is anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose.  Don’t expect a tool to listen to your customers without you.

When a research firm like Gartner writes about one of your projects as “a milestone in the maturity of crowdsourcing-based support models”, you know you’re doing something right. And Steve Alter, the Product Manager for the Microsoft Answers support community knows that feeling… since Gartner was writing about his project.

Answers was launched in 2008 to support Windows Vista and now has nearly 50,000 solutions to users questions, with 80% of the answers coming from the community participants. The site is a giant, generating more than 13 million page views and more than 4 million unique users last quarter alone! Needless to say, Steve knows community.

Which of course meant that we knew we had to add him to the Ant’s Eye View team! Please join me in welcoming out latest Ant, Steve Alter. Steve starts at AEV today as a Social Business Strategist, based in our Seattle office.

Steve’s background is impressive and diverse. In addition to Steve’s work on Answers, he also managed engagement opportunities between Microsoft and community influencers through the Microsoft Valuable Professional (MVP) program, driving feedback, advocacy, and participation in peer-to-peer support to achieve business results.

And of course he’s the only Ant with a background in the theater. Steve has always claimed that his passion for community and crowdsourcing was forged during a decade as a producer and director in professional theaters across the country.

Please help give Steve a warm welcome to the Anthill!

UPDATE: If you’re going to be at Community 2.0, Steve is a speaker. Say hi and it’s likely he’ll buy you a drink.

This past spring, the North Texas Chevy Dealers worked with Velocity Marketing and CBS Radio to put together a very cool blogger outreach program. In short, the program targeted 5 moms. As you’ll see from the interview below with project lead Amy Krause, the SVP at Velocity Marketing, the impact of even this small number was huge. Who says influencer programs need to have huge numbers to be effective??

On with the interview!

How would you explain the Mommy Madness program?
We realized the power of word of mouth over any other kind of communication. Now, more than ever, we see that with blogs and social media – word of mouth is happening to a greater amount of people at the same time and…faster! As a marketer, I feel it’s important to “join in” the fun rather than try to direct the conversation. And you need to be confident of your product. In this case, the Chevy Traverse was the perfect product to put in front of moms in a very casual way. Our goal was to get 5 local moms who like to blog into the all-new Chevy Traverse, love it (like we knew they would) and tell their friends about it. We had a contest for moms to nominate themselves to be a part of the “Chevy Traverse Mom Squad”. In addition to letting them check it out, we put them on “missions” with their vehicle – to the grocery store, to a baseball game, on a “girls day outing” and let them write about their adventures in their Chevy Traverse. Each “mission” was fun for the mom and their family and showed off attributes of the Chevy Traverse. During the “Mommy Madness” program, people could register to win an all-expense paid trip to a spa for them and their friends by voting for a mom. The winning mom also got a trip. It was a fun program!

There was an interesting combination of players involved (agencies, CBS, Chevy dealers, etc). Can you talk about whose idea this was?
This was a program that I thought of after having so many friends, who are moms, start to blog. I thought that it would be great to be able to bring together some moms who blog, and let Chevy give them more to write about – be a part of the family adventure. The vehicle is just perfect for moms. I then brought CBS Radio/Dallas into the fold and we brainstormed together – they added all the details, execution and creative to the program so it was a great partnership. I then presented it to the local Chevy Dealers who were thrilled to do this local media promotion.

Many other car companies are doing blogger outreach and loaning cars for a few days. Why go so far as to loan your cars for 8 weeks?
We felt like in order for the blogs to gain traction, we needed to do the program for 8 weeks. We would have fewer moms involved, but really be able to give them a sense of the vehicles they are driving.

Convincing five dealers to donate (or at least donate the “new” moniker) on five pricey vehicles must have been quite a feat! Can you share some of the surprises and frustrations to making a great program idea actually get sold in?
There weren’t any frustration or surprises. The dealers were all very excited about the program and thrilled to be doing something different.

How did you select the five moms?
We read all the entries and chose the moms based on what they wrote on their entry and checked out their blogs – we had several people take a look at all the entries.

Talk to me about your challenges with the legal department; loaning 5 cars for two months must have made the lawyers more than a little nervous!
The dealers loaned the cars and had the moms fill out the proper paperwork that the dealers would have anyone fill out. In some markets we rented the vehicles. It wasn’t an issue.

You did something most brands are scared to do: you put your volunteers to work. The Moms were tasked with specific activities as part of their participation. How did that turn out?
It was interesting. We learned a lot about that AFTER the program ended and we asked many of the mom’s for feedback. Evidently, we didn’t ask them to work enough! The tasks that they were asked to do were very much a part of their regular routine and we helped with that task. For example, going to the grocery store…a family outing…a girls trip to Massage Envy. The moms were thrilled and we were able to showcase the attributes of the Chevy Traverse in each mission.

Now that the program has ended, what surprised you the most? What would you do differently?
I was surprised at how very creative all the moms were with their videos and their blog. They were all fantastic. I couldn’t have had better brand ambassadors than these moms! What also surprised me was how much they wanted to sell the Chevy Traverse. Some moms organized test drives with their local Chevy Dealer, one mom brought some sales people to her house and had her neighbors over who all got a walk-around of the vehicle. They were far more creative than me.

As far as what I would do differently, I think we will make the program a little shorter. Some of the missions may change and we’ll add a mission in that supports the community and possibly support a local non-profit.

Many marketers don’t think that a number like 5 would be worth their time. How did these five scale to deliver program results?
It’s important to note that this was a local program, sponsored by the local Chevy dealers – not a regional or national program. Since it was a new program, we wanted to start small and take our learnings from there and go bigger. We didn’t know what kind of results to expect just using select radio stations and moms blogging!   

I know it’s tough to share results, but… Can you share some results about how successful the program was?
We did the program in three markets – Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston and Kansas City. Between the dates of 4/17 – 8/10, we could attribute the sale of 46 Chevy Traverses’, 44 people bought another Chevy vehicle and 17 people bought a GM product. A total of 107 people bought a new vehicle. And we’ll keep measuring the program. In addition, we had over 873 test drives of the all new Chevy Traverse… thanks to the moms!

I had dinner in Chicago last week with a leader from an online infrastructure company. Our dinner conversation included a small business office supplier. This office supplier started in retail and is well known for excellent customer service and product selection. The type of customer service that people repeated positive stories about how well they were treated. As this office supplier moved into online commerce, the core successes became impacted by trying to copy online competitors. So the office supplier started to execute many processes poorly instead of a few core tasks exemplary. 

Why does this happen to good companies? As company’s growth rate slows (economic conditions, competitive shift), business leaders look at competitors or industry metrics as their premier yardstick. Changing your yardstick can risk focus on internal core functions and when customers notice, your existing business revenue is at risk. Too often business try and convince themselves that dialing back customer service or product quality will not make a difference with customers or just a few customers will notice.

Before you change your focus, ask your customers why they choose your company over a competitor or substitute.

I ran across a great example of simple, offline idea to revitalize community. Every year  school starts back, new families move in, returning families get back in routine of drop off/pick up of school children. But challenges are always  present with start of school year, one in particular is encouraging volunteerism. Caraway Elementary (Austin TX) is no different. During the busiest time of the school day, the end of the day with child pick up; is when new and old families brush shoulders, but never have cause to stop and connect.

Watermelon Wednesday was started (not my idea, Liz is the brains on this) to get families to stop and connect. Eating watermelon outdoors drives a social behavior and it is healthy (moms like healthy). People stop, talk, and eat watermelon. You don’t see people eat watermelon in the car or walking quickly across the parking lot. But watermelon gives families a chance to stop and socialize. And when families stop and socialize, it opens up the discussion to learn about volunteer opportunities.

How do you know it is a success?

• Traffic: Families come back a second, third time, fourth time
• Mentions: Kids ask when is next Watermelon Wednesday. Event becomes part of the week they plan for.
• Conversion: New volunteers sign up for school volunteer vacancies
• Costs: 4 watermelons a week

This concept is not new, but reminds us about ways companies can have simple and meaningful ways to connect with customers. Companies should be in a position to host forums for stakeholders to connect and let the conversation flow. Too often the event turns into just the company talking about its agenda – not the type of party I go to a second time around.

Next challenge is that watermelons will soon be out of season in Austin. What replaces Watermelon Wednesdays in October (and beyond) to keep the school community connecting? If you have ideas for Caraway Elementary or an observations of a business connecting, please comment below.

One of my favorite authorities on Listening is David Alston, VP Marketing, Radian6. Last year David coined a term “social phone” in a post “Consumers are shouting into your brand’s social phone”. The message was consumers are now using multiple communication tools to reach your company, but some web 2.0 tools did not appear on company’s radar. That was the problem of 2007-2008. In 2009, many companies have experienced 1 or 2 benefits from listening case studies (Southwest Airlines, Dell), but still question about why do I (insert business name here) need to listen.

For the pragmatic audience, here are 7 business reasons to listen:

1. Early Warning Radar for product quality issues or customer dissatisfaction
2. Become Visible on the Web - learn the keywords your customers are using and fine tune your SEO
3. Learn from your Competition by tracking conversation about your industry and competitors
4. Identify and Thank your Fans – you have brand ambassadors and detractors, find them and engage to get your brand story told and re-told
5. Enhance Customer Service by providing support where customers are online
6. Humanize Your Brand by participating in relevant conversations
7. Identify Industry Influencers – and identify where they are online so that you can connect with them

OK, but it is still hard, do I hire a VP of Listening for my business? Probably not best starting point.

Ant’s Eye View’s methodology working with brands has 4 steps:

1. Listen
2. Organize
3. Engage
4. Measure

What we found was our first step of Listening was understood; but too often our clients did not have the time or expertise to set up a listening process. Without Listening, updates and course corrections to strategy and implementation are at risk for being outdated and non-relevant. So Ant’s Eye View made a great hire – Jennifer Hughes – and launched Listening 360 – a economical way for companies to start listening without delays to conduct the rigor to set up shop inside the enterprise: technology evaluation, staffing/training, and producing reports. 

Listening 360 is a turn key solution. Data is great, but I want business insights. Listening 360 provides the data + insights of the topics relevant to your business, enabling business action to solve a problem or capitalize on an opportunity.

You will be surprised what you will find out about your: brand, products, services, competitors, or industry. If you’d like more information or to schedule a briefing on our listening service, please contact me or Jennifer Hughes.

Hot on the heels of our staff addition announcement last week, the Ant’s Eye View crew is happy to announce our latest addition: Caitlin Angeloff!

Caitlin joins AEV as a Marketing Director, focusing on helping to bring traditional and non-traditional marketing excellence to AEV client projects.

Before joining AEV, Caitlin ran a successful consulting practice focused on projects like the launch of Microsoft Windows 7 to the IT professional community. She also served Director of Integrated Marketing for Entellium.com, a leading on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) company where she oversaw brand awareness, web marketing and channel marketing.

Caitlin has a strong background in Product Marketing, Corporate Communications, and Customer Relations. In short, Caitlin brings the discipline of traditional marketing together with the excitement of non-traditional and emerging marketing methods.

A Seattle native, Caitlin started her career in marketing as an intern for Seafair, the city’s annual summer celebration, after earning a BA in Speech Communications from the University of Washington.

When she isn’t working, Caitlin hangs out with her husband and teachers their two-year-old son how to use multiple technology devices in preparation for nerds taking over the world.

We’re terribly excited to have Caitlin join us full-time. Please give her a warm welcome…and stand back as the Ant Power grows stronger by the day!

The Ant’s Eye View team has four sessions in the SXSW 2010 Panel Picker this year. We need your help! Can you vote us up?

It’s Never What They Say, It’s What They Mean
When someone yells online, it’s easy to get caught up in the negativity, seeing visions of doom and gloom. But more often than not, negativity is a form of passion. This session will introduce you to the fine art of translating community discussions into actionable decisions.

Ensuring Everybody Goes Home Happy
This session will convince you that any company/community relationship that is not built on the belief that success doesn’t exist unless “everybody goes home happy”, company and community members alike. You’ll learn how to find the right balance between serving your community while also delivering business results.

Social Business Vitamins
Discover the overlooked, but essential mental vitamins necessary to prepare the social body to function inside the Enterprise. Case studies that showcase what needs to in place to operate and benefit with the myriad of social tools and content.

Watch Out For The Ugly Babies
Everyone has seen an ugly baby, but no one has given birth to one. Online Communities are similiar, a lot of online communities are ugly and need help, but the parents who gave birth to the online community site are last to realize. Learn some ways to prevent ugly babies and if you believe you have one, get ideas to help your community become more attractive for your audience.

Welcome Jennifer!

Jennifer joins AEV from Dell, Inc. At Dell, Jennifer was the manager of the original customer outreach program that found negative customer experience issues and assigned talented technicians to resolve customer’s service complaints. All of the outreach started with an online mention of Dell or Dell products. Results were cited in Business Week where negative sentiment decreased from 49% to 22%. Jennifer has held positions in Customer Service, Online, and Corporate Communications, all with one focus – improving customer engagement with the brand.  We’re proud to add another proven practitioner to our team of professionals here to help our client achieve success with social customer engagement.

Jennifer is a native Texan, where her family roots run deep.  She is a wife to Richard and mother to twin boys, Hayden and Holden.  She loves tackling local sprint triathlons, but you are more likely to find her kayaking on Lady Bird Lake in preparation for her next Adventure race.  She says she does it for the fitness, but we know she really likes the adventure!  Jennifer wrote about how she used technology in all areas of life in the Cyber Sisterhood Blog for Dell.

You can follow Jennifer on twitter: @jenn_hughes 

More to announce soon!  Our ant’s are becoming an army and are on the march!

If you’d like more information or to schedule a briefing on our listening service, please contact Sean McDonald or Jennifer Hughes.

Sean

Call to Action – between now and September 4th:

• Create a free account and review the session proposals on the SXSW Panel Picker 
• Once registered click over to the Interactive programming in the Picker and do an initial sort of “Ant’s Eye View”
• Add commentary and vote for your favorites (and hopefully that includes the Ant’s Eye View submissions below).
• Spread the word (e.g., blog, tweet, shout ) about SXSW Interactive. Voting ends September 4.

Watch Out for the Ugly Babies (Sean McD – Colony Master)

Everyone has seen an ugly baby, but no one has given birth to one. Online Communities are similar, a lot of online communities are ugly and need help, but the parents who gave birth to the online community site are last to realize. Learn some ways to prevent ugly babies and if you believe you have one, get ideas to help your community become more attractive for your audience.

Questions that will be addressed:

Social Business Vitamins (Sean McD– Colony Master)

Discover the overlooked, but essential mental vitamins necessary to prepare the social body to function inside the Enterprise. Case studies that showcase what needs to in place to operate and benefit with the myriad of social tools and content.

Questions that will be addressed:

It’s Never What They Say, It’s What They Mean (Jake – Ant Wrangler)

When someone yells online, it’s easy to get caught up in the negativity, seeing visions of doom and gloom. But more often than not, negativity is a form of passion. This session will introduce you to the fine art of translating community discussions into actionable decisions.

Questions that will be addressed:

Ensuring Everybody Goes Home Happy (Jake – Ant Wrangler)

This session will convince you that any company/community relationship that is not built on the belief that success doesn’t exist unless "everybody goes home happy", company and community members alike. You’ll learn how to find the right balance between serving your community while also delivering business results.

Questions that will be addressed:

Progressive employers are moving to an interview style that focus on insights and application of insight to solve today’s business challenges. In a few years, I predict the personal resume evolves into the Social Resume. The Social Resume contains your experience and demonstrates your insight. The social resume content is a combination of your thoughts and accomplishments combined with the public commentary on your social publications. Already HR departments are using social content to invalidate candidates. Why not use social content to validate candidates?

Blogging is a great social experiment for anyone to demonstrate insight. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs and 54%of bloggers post content or tweet daily- anyone with a passion can blog. And it costs just a bit of your time. If you are currently working at a company and they lack a blog, suggest they begin and if you are passionate, start blogging about your area of interest and experience (relating to your industry, your profession). If you are self employed, a student, or in between jobs; then start your own blog about your passions related to your career interests.

Frequently I am hearing from marketing professionals (way too often) that they have to become active in Twitter and Facebook. Disclosure: I like and use both twitter and facebook, and was proud member of the Dell team that were early pioneers in both of these online tools to engage with a large audience. But somewhere, somehow, Twitter and Facebook are being positioned as must have marketing activities for brands across all industries. Why? Some answers: “Because our competition is on Facebook and has a Twitter handle. Or I read Dell made $2 Million on Twitter, therefore my company needs to have a presence.” Yikes, not the best criteria for allotting your marketing resources. This is a Ready, Fire, Aim answer.

This euphoria reminds me of the Drive for Viral in 2005. Viral was the “new way” to do marketing, CMOs gave the order: “Go get a viral campaign”. And off marketing teams went to agencies and required a viral campaign. What got overlooked is viral is an outcome of good content, that should be the objective anytime you publish content – make the content shareable and memorable. Somehow viral became the holy grail for marketing. Viral was nothing new, just a misunderstood objective.

Facebook and Twitter might be suffering from the viral syndrome – shiny objectives that are not fully understood, and marketing professionals blindly chase the shiny objective. Social media and sites like Facebook are never a substitute for great products and great service. Job One for Marketing -listening and delivering products and services that woo customers. Once you do that Twitter and Facebook, plus a hundreds of other online activities can be the virtual water coolers where your brand, your products and services are discussed. Your role as a brand is Listen and Engage with customers on the web. What you should be planning is not just what will your Facebook fan page will look like, but how are you going to have a sustaining, value added presence.

I am looking and asking for examples of where a brand adds value by participating in Facebook. If you have any send them my way. I am most interested in Facebook fan pages delivering incremental revenue to a brand and how it is measured.

But how do you add value? Answer: it depends on the nature of the conversation. Here are a few scenarios and ways that anyone can join the conversation and add value:

1. Say Thank You. If you read a customer’s post about they just purchased a new gadget from your company, they are showing excitement, pride, accomplishment. This is a great opening for you to say “thank you, congratulations on your recent purchase, and if you have questions, reach me at ….”
2. Help. When you come across a customer having trouble with your company, your product; they need attention and help. You might not be the person that can resolve the customer’s issue, but at minimum you can let the customer know you read their post and will make a connection back at the company to offer assistance.  Better option is for you personally find out the answer and make sure the customer got the help they need. Great examples are: Comcast Cares or Dell Customer Advocate Team – teams dedicated to provide assistance across the web.
3. Make a Connection. The social web provides tremendous value for all of us to evaluate products and services (prior to purchase). At times you will find customers asking questions, like: “I am considering a flat panel TV, what are the most important features should I consider?” if you are an employee of Sony and find this post, it can be very tempting to spout off all the great tech features and offers on Sony TVs. Instead provide the customer with some suggestions of 3rd party sites that discuss the merits of flat panel TVs. It will shock the readers, that a company that sells TVs would not go for the sale. What this demonstrates if that you have the customer’s interest first and you are confident your products stack up well against the competition.

You will know when you add value. Your audience will continue the conversation by saying thanks, or retelling your shared experience, or bragging about how your company actually read and responded to something a single customer wrote.

In the last week, I delivered two different presentations. At the end of both presentations, a few members of the audience asked questions and said “great presentation…I like the part when you said…”. No one said, “great power point slides”.

Instead of building a lot of power point slides; tell a story. Stories are memorable. Slides usually are forgotten. Remember Show and Tell in kindergarten, that was your first opportunity to tell a compelling story to an audience. At 5 years old, usually you are too nervous and just want to sit down. But you also did not labor over power point slides.

Stories have never gone out of style, just buried in business presentations. Next time you need to communicate a message to your audience, plan to tell a story. And if you are really bold, only use one power point slide with no words, just an image that symbolizes your story.

We’re looking for a real listening wonk. Someone who gets excited about data, loves playing with tools like Radian6 and Visible Technologies, and has been dying to let loose their entrepreneurial spirit to create a strong, profitable team focused on helping businesses not just collect data about what the world thinks of them but can also turn it into insight.

Is this you?

Ants Eye View will operate a listening practice for existing and new clients. A listening practice will provide clients with real-time online conversations (from customers, prospects, competitors, suppliers, shareholders) about clients’ brand/products. Online conversations provide a company with an opportunity to engage with customers, prospects, influencers about their brand/product. Insights can include: product feedback, purchase evaluation criteria, competitive offerings, customer satisfaction. Online conversations include: blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, tags (images and videos), tweets.

1. Work with tools to establish a client profile. Profile will include topics and keywords used to identify relevant online conversations. Refine topics and keywords with client based on the online conversations returned via listening platform.
2. Establish with client weekly metrics package including volume of online conversations, primary sources of online conversations, business insights and recommendations.
3. Provide client with daily HOT list – “hot” online conversations with recommendations/actions clients should take to prevent public embarrassment or legal risk. Also insights and recommendations can be opportunity for client to accent the positive mentions occurring on the web.
4. Manually score sentiment (negative, neutral, mixed, positive)
5. Conduct any client training on tool, reports, or outreach process
6. Establish him/herself as the AEV Listening GURU/Advocate. Actively participate in online conversations about this topic across the web (and offline at key events). Drive thought leadership to always demonstrate/challenge the power of Listening.

Apply at the Community Guy Jobs Board or drop us an email. But hurry, we’re moving fast on this one!

What brands usually want and how they achieve it is still disjointed. Brands say they want long term, solid relationships with customers. Contests are not the type of achievement you should be putting in your trophy case. Brands that use a lot of contests create one positive relationship for the winner and nothing for the thousands of participants. How many of us have entered a contest, lost, then felt more positive about the brand hosting the contest? The only people that come back for seconds to a brand for the next contest, are the truly desperate consumers (want something for free) and small children (don’t know any better).

Sweepstakes and Contests do have a purpose – i.e., build awareness, but too often can be panacea for lack of a customer relationship and just a quick way to build your email list or twitter followers.

Sean McDonald

Does social media make us act on our best behavior? It depends somewhat with your personal outlook of human behavior. Is the natural, human tendency to act good or bad? I try to think the best of people, that humans want to treat other kindly, but sometimes we need some oversight.

Since almost everyone (ages 12+) has a camera phone and desire to share what ever they see, feel, hear, taste, and smell; we could be forcefully reminding each other to be honest, social media is acting as oversight or audit of our behaviors, even in advertising.

I took this picture in New York City (downtown area). It caught my eye, they did not say “we are the lowest priced”, but inserted “probably”. Not too clever, but it got me thinking. How will advertising messages, especially product claims change from agency creations to user generated?

Yes, there have been different ads with user generated content (Frito Lay Super Bowl TV Ad). But are we ready and poised to start aggregating the input from thousands (or millions) of customers for a particular product, and get collective voice into ads?  Not today, but one day the creative could come from the social collective and generate a more honest, field tested message.

The medical community might tell you that blended fruit and ice don’t actually contain any addictive qualities, but I’m not convinced. I’m physically unable to pass a new smoothie shop without stopping to sample the wares. I can’t see “smoothie” on a menu without feeling a longing.

Last week I downloaded the Yelp.com iPhone application and tested it by… you guessed it… looking for local smoothie shops. To my extreme pleasure, I discovered Icey (http://www.yelp.com/biz/icey-garland), a new shop that had just opened down the street. Within hours, I was inside ordering my first smoothie. (It was far and away the best I’d ever had)

As I walked out of the store, tasty smoothie in hand, I found myself wanting to do whatever I could to ensure their ongoing existence. Horror stories abound about the failure rate of small businesses, and this simply can’t happen to Icey. Where would I get my fix if they close the doors??

If they ask (I’ve already volunteered), here are 6 points I’d share with them about how they can build Word of Mouth for their incredible business.

Tell a story

Icey isn’t just a “smoothie shop”. They’ve created a menu that includes Bubble Teas, Sweet Ices, and a range of non-traditional items. Why this menu? What makes it unique? Give me something I can learn, then in turn share with others to show how smart I am. For instance: “Sure Icey doesn’t have the boost powders like Jamba Juice, but that’s because they offer such fresh ingredients, they don’t need to”. (I’m making that up, but you get the point.

Help me decide

When I see a new menu item that I don’t understand, I’m more inclined to revert to my old standby than I am to try something new. With pictures, descriptions, samples, and encouragement, help me branch out. When I have a teacher, the shop is my classroom. And a classroom inherently encourages frequency.

Drive repeat visits through awards

A friend of mine has been on a quest to achieve the coveted “Gold Plate” status at a local pub, the Flying Saucer (http://www.beerknurd.com/). You see, the pub has hundreds of beers available, and when you’ve tried all of them, you are immortalized by having your name put on a gold plate, hung on the wall. Not only has this program given my buddy a reason to come back regularly, it’s also given him an incredible knowledge of beer. The more Icey introduces their customers to the full menu, the more likely they are to come back. And the more knowledge these customers have, the more likely they are to bring a friend with them that they can show off their in-depth knowledge to.

Do something to stand out

When the Icey staff hands over your hand crafted drink, it comes in a plastic cup with a sealed sheet of plastic on top. So sealed, in fact, you can turn the cup upside down without the slightest risk of spilling. The way you actually consume this drink is to punch a hole in the top with an oversized straw. If the drink really is “unspillable”, why not hand over the drink upside down?

Brand everything

While I was walking around the shopping center, tasty drink in hand, I noticed that the cups didn’t have any sort of logo on them. How were people to know that this delicious looking concoction was created by Icey and not Starbucks?

Have a web site

This may be a bit obvious, but build a basic Web presence with your location info, a bit of your story, and an overview of what you serve. This doesn’t need to a complex, data heavy site, but it should look great. The primary goal is creating a destination that can be emailed, blogged, and generally shared. (You’ll notice I had to use the Yelp.com link to get you to them in the beginning of this post) The incredible cupcake bakery, Sprinkles (http://www.sprinklescupcakes.com/) launched with an incredibly lightweight site, which even helped them create an ambience of exclusivity.

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UPDATE: One more point I’ll make that wasn’t part of the of the original post…

Listen to experienced professionals

Seriously, this seems basic but when you’re getting freebie consulting from high paid, highly experienced professionals you might want to considering following their advice. I’ve been talking to a number of small business owners locally since the original post went up about their marketing efforts. The one piece of advice I’ve consistently give each and every one of these small business owners is simple: Buy Word of Mouth Marketing , read it, and then we’ll sit down and talk about how to implement the principles of the book.

You know how many have both bought and read the book? None.

As a small business owner, I know how difficult it can be. I understand how many hours go into running the business. But if you’re not always, and I mean ALWAYS thinking about how to drive your business to the next level, you’re failing. There’s are plenty of reasons a vast majority of small businesses fail, and lack of forward planning is big one.

I think ROI got a bad wrap.

ROI is thrown around anytime someone outside of Finance needs to justify a corporate spend. What I have found, is that execs first want to understand the costs of establishing a social media operation. Understanding the costs is how we started at Dell. Our social media operation was born out of a customer service crisis, over time as we evolved, our measurement improved to understand where Return was manifesting back into the business. Dell has even published some ways to measure the “R” (Twitter earns $2million, Groundswell Chapter 8).

My advice is address head-on the ROI question. ROI should always tie back to a business objective. No ROI is bullet proof; so don’t try to over-correct for Social Media ROI. Be honest, use assumptions (and footnote) in your ROI calculation. Don’t make the ROI a goal seek for a number that someone has stuck in his/her head. Dig deeper when someone asks for the ROI, it might just be the “I” they need.

• Product brands have users (consumption)
• Service brands have customers (service)
• Product brands obsess about product innovations (research)
• Service brands obsess about business operations (fulfillment, returns and customer service)
• Product brands create capabilities (features and functions)
• Service brands create experiences (memories, feelings and accomplishments)
• Product brands describe the attributes of their product (form, function, specification and differentiation)
• Service brands describe the attributes of their customers (wants, needs and affiliations)

It’s interesting to look back as a service and operations guy on a long career in a Product brand company (Microsoft).  It’s even more interesting to look at the work I drove with superusers/influencers.  The interesting aspect of that?  Influencers intuitively convert product brands into service brands –  it’s the end to end experiences they notice most.  All the more reason if you are first and foremost a product company to learn how to obsess about your influencers and your operations – they can lead you to think more like a service brand.

And yes, as I started this, I do think brands that win will win based on service and the most immediate and actionable lens on the quality of your service is the conversations in social media…it’s time to listen, organize and engage!

Sean

Maybe it’s the phrase “social media” that throws people into an immediate panic.  Maybe it’s because so many of the examples discussed online are B2C examples instead of B2B and many of our clients are B2B?  And maybe it’s because we’ve all been asked about ROI so much, that we go straight to the business case and metrics discussion without boiling it down and making it really simple.  I was reminded of this as I prepared to give a talk to a group of social media, and in fact Marketing “noobs.”  The question I was asked to address was the one I started with – why does it matter to a business?  As I looked over some of my more typical content I found that I was in the weeds with detailed business cases, influencer models, relationship marketing, word of mouth programs, awareness to preference measurement frameworks, the works…

Well, for sake of keeping it simple on a Saturday – let’s just make it about one simple (although complex) thing:  TRUST

Who do you trust for advice about products?  About services?  When’s the last time you bought something significant without looking at some sort of consumer media online like reviews?  Who do you trust more, that company representative or web page…or a fellow user?

So here’s to the first word out of my mouth on this topic for the coming month…TRUST!  It’s all about trust.

Sean

Having spoke to many brands, repeatedly we discuss relationships. The question I pose is “what type of relationship do you want with your customers? Do you want a marriage? Or do you just want to date casually and see other people?”

A marriage (a good marriage that lasts) requires nourishment: sharing, sacrifice (at times), giving without expecting something in return, yielding to the other’s point of view. The marriage produces Trust, Love, and Respect – necessary to build a lasting relationship. Trust, Love, and Respect are what any brand will say “Yes, I want that.” But brands can answer too quick. What a company should first ask is, “do I want to marry this customer and what am I prepared to do from now until death do us part?”

As a customer I will start by dating the brand. Smart brands understand this is a period of courting: they woo me, demonstrate all the best things about the company (showcase products and services) to get me to the altar. And if the brand delivers on their promise a marriage can ensue. But this is where a lot of brands stop short. They get me to the alter and we exchange vows. Then I don’t hear from them until a problem arises or they have something to sell me. Think of your offline relationships – you know the friend or relative that only drops in your life when they need something – not a great relationship – not one you brag about or refer to others. The brands that I remained married to- connect with me, they do not let me down, they are there when I need them, they consistently deliver great products/service, they apologize if they screw up. And over time as the marriage ages, you have built up deposits of Trust, so one screw up does not end in divorce.

Think of the brands you Love. You Trust them because they have been there for you (good and bad times). You defend them, you share your experiences with others. Both the brand and customer are happy and committed to each other. As Andy Sernovitz reminds me, “Happy Customers are your Best Advertising”. Amen.

Brands, please remember – I can divorce you at very low cost and the break up is immediate. But a divorce for you is expensive – you are losing my revenue and I am influencing my network to reconsider their relationship with you. You then have to date a lot more people and get them to the alter – takes time and money.

For those interested, here are a some of the brands I Love:

• The Beatles
• Costco
• Ralph Lauren (Polo apparel)
• Levi’s (jeans)
• Justin Boots (Roper style)
• Maker’s Mark  (I am a Maker’s ambassador – this program got me to the altar)
• Dell (spent 11 great years there, love now is more like parent/child – I know Dell’s potential, want to see them rise to better days)

And here some brands I am seriously dating:

• Acura (I drive one, they still have some work to do, but I am close to saying “I do”)
• Apple (iPhone, currently using it and loving the device)

What Brands do you Love?

In our work at Ant’s Eye View, we work with a mix of product and service companies.  It struck me that companies that think of themselves as service companies tend to get this more natively – they see the service they provide as a defining opportunity for their brand.  Disney is a great example – in particular the parks and resort experience – where the brand really is the creation of an experience – or more specifically, family memories.  Zeus mentions Zappos as another great example.  That clarity of purpose around experience creates a very natural foundation for social media engagement.  It can help you segment what conversations (in the sea of social conversations) are highest priority for engagement.  Those conversations that demonstrate the truth of your promised experience hold great opportunity for engagement – likewise, those that highlight your defects can provide clear calls to action for you and an opportunity for customer recovery. While the listening, organizing and engaging process still offers some challenges, the urgency to participate is clear.  The advantage here is that service brands tend to evaluate, manage and refine every touch point with their customers and look at their operations end-to-end.  In this way, a service brand can build clear social listening and response tactics into their current structure that are incremental in terms of change management.  I’d argue that if you took a service brand, say Disney or Zappos or Nordstroms, and told them they had to cut 10% of their costs, they’d have clearer decision criteria for how to approach that challenge that kept the brand front and center. I’m not saying cutting 10% would be easy, unburdened by rigorous internal debate and conflict, or that it wouldn’t negatively impact their business or brand, but it is far easier to understand the process through which difficult decisions would be made.

On the other hand, companies that see their products as the brands often have a different challenge.  It’s hard for me not to pick on the brand I’m most familiar with:  Microsoft, or perhaps even more specifically Windows – though I think this can be broadly applied.  In this case the brand experience is defined by the experience you have with the product (or products) and not with the “company” – Microsoft.  This is where operations comes in for a product driven brand.  Unfortunately, too often in this case operations are bolted on only as necessary and are DISCONNECTED from customer experience management.  Want an example, how about customer service or product support.  If you own consumer Windows, who do you call for service?  Dell?  HP?  Gateway?  Lenovo?   Not Microsoft.  Even if you are an enterprise, who do you call?  Probably your own IT. The problem here is not that this was a bad model, it was brilliant for a long time.  The problem here is that operations represents a set of hardened and individually managed silos.  So, not only is customer experience fragmented, but accountability for experience is disjointed and poorly, if ever, reviewed end-to-end.  And, let’s face it, in product driven companies, even when reviewed end to end, pay careful attention to who’s at the head of the table – the product/engineering organization.  Now, let’s layer on social media / community engagement.  Now you’ve got a forum post or blog somewhere that is celebrating Windows or attacking Windows – who is accountable?  The answer is either everyone or no one – which is kind of the same answer.  And, it’s unlikely you could even get all the parties in a room that needed to be to decide who is accountable – not that a meeting should be needed.  Looking at Microsoft as an example, I’d probably offer this competitive assessment.  Google, Apple, IBM – these are not the biggest competitive threats.  IMHO, the single greatest competitive threat to Microsoft is a deep lack of customers!  WHAT?  Yes, that’s right. Microsoft has 100s of Millions of users, but users are not the same thing as customers.  They are Dell or HPs or Best Buys customers…and Windows users.  This is a huge challenge for an enormous brand that will be very expensive to solve and even more expensive not to solve. 

The take away here:  Operations is Sexy of course!  Product driven brands like Microsoft’s portfolio need to triple down on operational excellence and implement clear end to end customer experience listening and engagement processes and ensure they have EMPOWERED audience “czars” that not only own the experience, but have the power and authority to drive product, process, licensing, policy, service and business model changes necessary to achieve success.

What do you think?  How might this apply to the product companies you work for or with?

sean

Well Twitter has Oprah and Ashton to thank for widespread awareness.

Even before celebrity endorsement, more and more social network sites have come alive on the web. Why do we have the need for more and more social network sites? Could it be…current solutions are missing features? Social network sites have a short life span because users get bored? No switching costs for the millions of users to move from one to another or add another social tool to list? Or is it $ – the promise of high valuation, low cost to start, in hopes to sell for millions? Regardless, take a look at Top 10 Social Media Sites That Should Be Next In Line To Be Oprah-Fied  from Social Times.