“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

T. S. Eliot

The Beginning

When I first put up my blog in June 2008, I had no plan and certainly no ambitions for it. It was just a place to put my thoughts on customer-centric marketing, public relations and communications. With all of the millions of blogs out there, heck, I really didn’t expect anyone to actually read it!

But then… slowly, people did begin to read my blog and comment. It was humbling to know that people were actually reading my words, my thoughts. People didn’t always agree with me and my sentiments, but there was a great conversation around the topic.

As you can imagine, a lot of the conversation included debates around social media. Here are just a few of the lengthy conversations:

• Is Social Media the Same As Marketing?
• Social Media Certification: For the low, low price of…
• Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert Is a Carpetbagger (written with Geoff Livingston)
• Social Media Ghostwriting: The Great Marketing/PR Debate*
• The Four Faces of Social Media

The End

There are many (!) blogs out there for people to read and for the past three years, I have really appreciated you all for taking the time out of your busy days to read my posts, generate conversations, provide insights, and share experiences. It has been a pleasure to get to know everyone throughout the years!

All things must come to an end, including this blog. I’ll leave it archived, but I won’t be posting to it anymore. I plan to spend my “off-hours” with the really important things in my life that I am called to: family and friends, volunteering and outreach, reading (even more!), getting to old and new hobbies, and teaching.

I am not done with blogging. I hope to share some posts at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix and over at the Ruters University Center for Management Development blog. And maybe—if I am lucky—some of my blogging friends will allow me to come visit and drop off a guest post now and again.

Here’s to a new end!

[Image Source: incourage.me]

It’s Mother’s Day weekend! Let’s celebrate moms and how they have turned marketers upside down.

As a marketer, I have been impressed with how moms have worked with companies to make their voice heard and to get companies to understand that if their needs (and the needs of their children and families!) are met with applicable solutions, they will become brand loyal. As people become as comfortable with social media tools and sharing their voices as moms, I am confident that they will follow this path and forge partnerships with the companies that serve them.

I have tapped into four wonderful moms (of all boys!), Christa Miller, Shelli Johnson, Jeannie Cusick Walters, and Becky Carroll who just also happen to be some of the smartest communicators I know. Here’s the advice they’d like to share with fellow marketers and communicators:

Christa Miller, owner of Christa M. Miller Communications and mom to two boys:

“Don’t assume that all mothers’ experiences are alike. Some are very similar, of course, but motherhood is so intensely personal that even our reasons for (example) going back to work, self-employing, or leaving the workforce altogether to stay home are not as cut and dried as the actions you see. (Mothers forget this, too.) Parenting cuts to all our deepest wishes, hopes and insecurities, our most personal life experiences and the way we see this awesome responsibility. Respect that, whether in humor or seriousness, and you’ll win my trust.”

Shelli Johnson, own of Frontier Consulting Group and Have Media Will Travel, and mom to three boys:

“Share a story that I, as a mom, can relate to—any story that some mom will relate to—and you’ll have my attention. If you get personal and make it real, you have me. Promise.”

Jeannie Cusick Walters, owner of 360Connext and mom to two boys:

“I wish there were more messages about how awesome moms are to each other. We’re always helping each other out and supporting one another – it’s not this crazy competition some marketers want to make it.”

Becky Carroll, owner Customers Rock!, author of The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers and mom to two boys:

“Don’t forget that not all moms (and mom bloggers) are mothers only of little ones. We who have teenagers are still moms – and we fondly remember the tiny hands and warm hugs that are sometimes missing at this age… market to that.”

Marketers, understand this: humor, trust, and understanding wins! Moms, what advice would you share with marketers?

Momentum: Moms won’t like your brand if you clutter up her Facebook page with promotions

“Facebook is the place Moms love. 91% of the Moms surveyed have a Facebook account and 62% claim to access it multiple times a day. A very high percentage, 76%, have liked or friended a brand or product on Facebook. Why? Because they liked the brand’s personality or wanted first-hand knowledge on new products or deals.

Why does she choose not to like or friend a brand? She doesn’t want you cluttering up her page with promotions and she’s concerned with privacy. And she feels Facebook is for her “real friends”. Plus she takes into account she’s probably already receiving emails, catalog, direct mail and mobile messages from the brand.”

Yahoo! Advertising Blog: Tips for Marketing to Moms Online During “Me Time”

“Content-matching combined with day-parting is key …it’s not just about reaching moms; it’s about reaching them at the right time with the right message.

‘Whether it’s on a PC or a tablet, the approach should be about creating content and messaging that respects a woman’s need to have both productive time and me time…’”

Marketing to Moms Blog: 8 Changes in the Mom Market over 5 Years

“Millennial moms have redefined Burger King’s old tagline, “Have it your way”. Today’s new mothers expect to customize products, media and even the lifestyle of motherhood. They are applying their pre-baby style to post-baby life and customizing motherhood to their daily activities, personal values, goals and philosophies and expect the products they purchase to be customizable to the motherhood they define for themselves.”

Material Instinct: Product extensions: why new isn’t always better

“When it comes to new products for moms, here’s my litmus test: solve a real problem without making more work for her. Creating another thing for a mom to pay for, own, maintain, and find in her purse is not progress unless it’s truly useful. Otherwise, let’s call it for what it is: preying on her insecurities while pocketing more of her cash.”

Social Times: Marketing to Moms on Twitter? Make Them Laugh

“A new study says that a majority of moms (52%) like to see humor in businesses’ tweets. Further, what moms want most from businesses’ tweets are links to interesting articles/news (71%) followed by links to sales or special offers on their websites (67%) and links to downloadable coupons/discounts (63%).

On Twitter they’re looking for good deals, too, but they also want to be kept informed about news and articles that are relevant to their lives.”

Happy Mother’s Day!

[Image source: SheKnows.com]

I was going to read about social media tools that bring customers and companies together, but then I realized digging into that would take more time then I have this morning.

Instead, I am sharing what I have actually read this morning. This week’s reading is so inconsistent compared to how I normally prepare for this weekly endeavor (which to pick a topic and stick with it) that it seems to be a sudden flare up of MADD (marketing attention deficit disorder). Enjoy!

Jason Keath: Sometimes brilliant creative tells the whole story

Proves that smart advertising just might not be dead, just yet…

Mack Collier: Ford CMO Jim Farley: Social media leading to ‘massive cost savings’ for Ford

“As Jim explains above, social media is lowering the amount of money that Ford has to spend on traditional advertising.  That’s money that can then be spent on product development, customer service, and other areas that improves the quality of the product, as well as customer satisfaction. Which ultimately…increases sales.  So this is another example of social media working indirectly.”

Examiner.com: Marketing Mix -101 – 4C’s The next generation, a historic view

“In 1973, Japanese Professor Koichi Shimizu, who deemed ‘consumer-centricity’ the new strategy to marketing success, helped launch the “4C” model. Differentiation between products or services became a winning proposition. The ability to provide a product or service with higher quality than your competitor and that met the consumer need would likely assure success. This strategy remains paramount in marketing today.”

AdAge: Why You Need Satan on Your Marketing Team

“You need your basic assumptions challenged, and the declarative truths of your agencies and experts (and the media that cover them) not only questioned but aggressively dared. Is conversation inherently good? Is the problem that consumers don’t “like” ads anymore? Are clicks the same thing as handshakes, or lists a synonym for friendships? Do the words you use to describe online behavior have any relevance in the real world?”

Logic + Emotion: Learning To Fly: The Four Stages of Social Business

“…you have to “walk before you run” and as it turns out, the same is true for organizations looking to move from social media as a set of un-connected, chaotic collection of skunk work initiatives to a coordinated and purposeful initiative that works through the entire organization.”

Social Media Explorer: The Social Media Echo Chamber Makes Me Not Want to Listen

An oldie, but goodie. Is this still an issue?

Happy reading! Happy Easter! Happy Passover!

[Image source: The Irreverent Lawyer]

“No company will tell you, ‘I don’t want to be customer centric,’ but do you know the difference between taking an inside-out versus an outside-in approach?” - Ranjay Gulati

An organization’s goal for being social with customers is, presumably, to gain a better understand of what customers want and need. Typically used to warehouse customer data, marketing campaigns, and customer service endeavors, CRM systems now must also capture the social interactions of customers and prospects as well. It is those social interactions— in a natural setting—that will provide organizations with untarnished insights.

More importantly, by drawing the customer closer, the organization will find a refreshing ‘outside-in’ view that leads to budget, resource, and time savings when it comes to new product or service development, customer service and marketing communications.

While Inc. magazine declares 2011 to be the year of Social CRM, we need to question whether or not most organizations have the culture to be social let alone allowing their customers to become an integrated part of their business through social CRM.

Is social CRM bringing  companies & customers together in harmony today? Not for most organizations. There is a long road ahead for social CRM to becoming the norm. But when properly constructed and utilized, it is a road that will pay huge dividends—for both organizations and customers.

While it may not be recognized today, the insights social CRM provides are the customer and market dynamics nirvana that most organizations (and marketers) seek.

Social Media Examiner: What is Social CRM?

“In [social CRM] the customer is actually the focal point of how an organization operates. Instead of marketing or pushing messages to customers, brands now talk to and collaborate with customers to solve business problems, empower customers to shape their own experiences and build customer relationships, which will hopefully turn into customer advocates.”

Jacob Morgan: How CRM and Social Media Evolved to Social CRM

“The voice of customers across the social landscape is forcing organizations to take steps to deliver on the original promises of CRM. It’s a great opportunity. Organizations now have the capability (and the mandate) to listen, interact, and respond to their customers and prospects. They also have the capability to create, facilitate, and enable customers and other stakeholders to interact with each other. Social has opened up new infinite opportunities for innovation, co-creation, and customer responsiveness.”

Ray Wang (Altimeter Group): Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management

“Customers continue to adopt social technologies at a blinding speed and organizations are unable to keep up.  Social technologies continue to proliferate. Because the conversations about organizations increasingly occur outside of the organization’s control in social channels, organizations need to:

1. Discover where the conversations are happening in this new social world.
2. Identify who’s influential and if they are customers or not.
3. Assess friend or foe status and their willingness to engage
4. Determine a tiered approach to engagement or re-engagement.
5. Tie social channels to business value and objectives
6. Bring the social channel back to existing CRM systems.
7. Reallocate resources to support Social CRM efforts

This is the basis for the groundswell in Social CRM. But keep in mind, Social CRM does not replace existing CRM efforts – instead it brings more value to existing efforts and should complement the uber CRM strategy.”

Conversion Marketing Forum: Social CRM and customer-centricity: the social media experts’ point of view

“Adapting a customer-centric philosophy is always something that has to take place throughout the company. A lot of companies struggle while trying to do so, for instance because of departments within the company that act like independent silos from one and another. Customer-centric thinking asks for support from the management, uniform data, integration of platforms and processes, but especially cross-divisional cooperation.”

Conversionation: Social CRM: social media and communities in customer relationship management and marketing

“[McGovern and Zhivago] further write that ‘thousands of customer interviews have convinced them that the ‘company’s list’ and the ‘customer’s list’ are always significantly different – including the items on the list, the specific characteristics of the items on the list, and the priority of the items on the list’.”

Gartner: Social CRM Projects and the Curtain of Doubt

“You will face a wall without slicing up Social CRM into addressable bits. But if you do convince yourself that you do not need everything to be momentous, that there can be greatness in a grain of sand, then you will push through that curtain of doubt and create a self-sustaining culture of measuring each tiny milestone.”

Inc Magazine: 2011: The Year Social CRM Goes Mainstream

“The challenge is that most companies have been wired from the ground up to operate in a world of company-controlled communication, and they’re simply not equipped to engage in conversations. But, the rules have changed,” says Greg Gianforte , founder and CEO of customer experience solutions provider RightNow. ”To be truly conversant with social customers, companies are rewiring their operations to be more customer-centered, more relationship oriented, and more transparent. They’re collaborating across departmental silos, working beyond the capabilities of traditional CRM tools, and weaving social into business as usual. “

The good news is that true Social CRM offers companies a seamless and real-time view across the many different channels that customers converse in, new and old alike (e.g.,Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, chat, phone), Gianforte says.  “With this view, companies can truly get to know and proactively care for their customers, ultimately fulfilling their brand promises, the social way.”

[Image source: Chess Media Group]

Happy reading!

As marketers, how much psychology do we need to understand to make sense of what our customers are doing socially?

Are they trying to tell us what they want or need by engaging? Or, is it simply that they are utilizing social networking to become influential among their peers?

What happens when a customer becomes popular within his or her chosen social network? What are the chances that a brand can piggyback on this newfound influence (i.e. brand evangelism or word of mouth)? On the other hand, could popularity and potential narcissism cause a customer to leap to a more desirable brand that is as equally popular as them?

We know that people join social networks because they want to be part of a group. Should marketers be required to have a deep understanding of group dynamics in order to analyze group interactions and how they may or may not impact business efforts?

Will the more socially advanced organizations expect that their marketers will understand how social networks and psychology affect market dynamics in order to project future revenues?

Psychology Today: The Psychology of Social Networking

“One intuitive hypothesis is that “popular” people (those with vast, far-reaching, and significant networks or contacts) will have connections both in the real as well as in the virtual world; thus the number of people one deals with in the real or physical world should be positively correlated with the number of virtual or electronic contacts one has.”

Alexandra Samuel: Group identity and the psychology of social media

“One of the primary themes of my dissertation was the power of group identity as a motivation for participation. Reading the social psychological literature on group identity, it became clear that people join groups that reinforce positive ascriptive identity — those identities that are positively valued in our society. The practical implication is that you need to organize your community’s membership around identities people feel good about: I’m far more likely to identify myself as a member of ‘parents of gifted children’ than I am to join up with ‘compulsive nail-biters’.”

The Layman’s Guide to Psychology: The Psychology of Twitter, Facebook, and Other Social Networking Devices

“Narcissism is generally not a celebrated trait. Why then is social networking so widely accepted if it is so related to narcissistic tendencies? Is it possible that the internet merely allows an all-to-easy outlet for these tendencies to surface from people who may otherwise not possess them? According to one study, this seems to be the case.

Some people are far more shy than others but to a certain extent we all possess a little of this–even the “kings of narcissism”. Being shy is a defensive measure that allows an individual to protect themselves from ridicule, or worse. The internet has allowed individuals an uncanny intimacy while maintaining a near-infinite level of physical separation.”

CompuKol Connection: The Psychology Behind Social Media

“If you approach your social media marketing campaign from a psychological angle, you will see that people respond to your business offerings and to you as an individual. You will see that they will gladly spread the word about your products and services as well as your expertise in your niche. People will be speaking about you and on your behalf before you know it and that, of course, brings you another step closer to great success.”

MIT Press Journals: Simulating Market Dynamics: Interactions between Consumer Psychology and Social Networks

“Watts and Strogatz ^[18] proposed a model for social networks that describes the small-world and clustering characteristics in networks. This model includes empirically found characteristics of social networks, namely the small-world effect ^[11] and the clustering effect ^[12]. The small-world effect refers to the experience that despite the large population, the map of who knows whom is such that we are all very closely connected to one another. The clustering characteristic refers to the existence of clusters in social networks. People’s circles of acquaintance tend to overlap to a great extent. Your friend’s friends are likely also to be your friends.

Amaral et al. ^[1] showed that the scale-free network hypothesis is more complex. They analyzed different types of networks and found also networks that followed the power law up to a sharp cutoff. For example, a highly connected node may refuse to accept new connections because of capacity and cost constraints, or a well-connected node may die. Amaral et al. ^[1] proposed an adjustment of the Barabasi-Albert model by including the option that a node in the network becomes inactive with a certain probability. Since new nodes can only connect with active nodes, they are able to reproduce different classes of observed networks. This approach may be more correct in modeling consumer networks, as consumers functioning as a hub in a network will be limited in the number of contacts they have.

The results presented in this article indicate that besides psychological needs and decision processes, also the size and shape of the network involved in consumer decision making have an important influence on how the market organizes itself. Especially when the satisfaction per unit of consumption is high, as is often the case with products that satisfy lower needs, the results suggest that the shape of the network has serious consequences for the number of products that dominate the market. The results show that a scale-free network yields a market dominated by far fewer products than in the small-world network with a limited number of random links. Even for low visibility products the hubs have a strong influence on which products other agents consume.”

Happy reading!

[Image Source: thisismarilyn.com]