RSS
 

Author Archive

Customer Relationship Management Going Social

18 Mar

We are now at a time where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are a regular and expected component of successful business operations. Companies like RightNow, Salesforce and NetSuite have helped rapidly advance this industry over the last 10 years.

and 2010 is the year when these tools are going to see some of the coolest improvements to date.

Why?

Because this is the year when activity in social media and branded customer communities will be truly integrated with the advanced contact management capabilities of CRM tools.

We already began to see movement in this direction in 2009 – though in a relatively basic manner that was just scratching the surface.

Soon we are going to see some extremely useful information coming from this integration.

For example, by automatically tracking who is making positive referrals about your business – you will be able to easily find great candidates for customer loyalty programs and customer marketing efforts (like case studies, regional user group participation etc).

Similarly, if you can automatically flag customers who are complaining via social media – you can improve the immediacy in which you identify and manage at-risk relationships.

All this while improving your ability to accurately forecast non-renewals.

Now the integration I am most excited about (largely because of my experience managing Agile Commons) is that between branded customer communities and CRM tools. Customer communities contain a wealth of candid and valuable information – information that is often underutilized in business intelligence.

There is huge value in easily knowing who is submitting support cases so you can prioritize appropriately for your most important customers.

And by providing quick access to the desired feature improvements associated with a given contact, Account Managers will have the ability to easily speak to the unique priorities of each customer. How helpful will it be to see all the contacts who voted for a newly delivered feature request – and easily reach out to them with some welcomed news?

I’m just touching on a few of the benefits, but hopefully this gives you a glimpse into how social integration is beginning to strongly improve the effectiveness of CRM tools.

Keep your eye out for some significant moves on this front from all of the main CRM tool vendors.

 
No Comments

Posted in Marketing, community management, social media

 

Is Your Car Connected? Chances are it will be

17 Feb

­

With personal wi-fi technology now becoming affordable and common place, look out for the next big boom,

the internet connected car

According to ISuppli Corp, an estimated 62.3 million consumers will have Internet access in their automobiles by 2016, a sharp increase from the 970,000 at the end of 2009.

Predicted Growth for Connected Cars

Wow! that’s some serious growth – and a potential game changer for many current industries.

  • why am I going to pay for Sirius satellite radio when I can just stream Pandora in my car?
  • why am I going to rack up high cell phone bills calling my friends and family when I can use Skype via my dashboard to connect for free?
  • why should a trucking company continue to supply its vehicles with CV radio’s and dashboard GPS units when they can use Google Maps & restricted online chat instead?

I’m just scratching the surface, but I think you get the idea about how this change in internet consumption will disrupt many existing industries. With such large growth likely – I predict many big business opportunities for the companies who are quick to identify, embrace and facilitate this shift in consumer behavior.

Even if this forecast is inflated, It’s going to be interesting to see how this growth pans out over the next 5 years.

 
No Comments

Posted in Marketing, opinion

 

Did Your Power User Slip Through the Cracks? A Personal Example

09 Feb

Today’s Lesson – Never let a contribution to your community go unanswered.

Case in Point – Kelly Barratt.

Kelly Joined Agile Commons in December 07 – and in retrospect – was perhaps one of the strongest contributors we had back then.

We had other active users  – but Kelly took it a step further than most by creating her own blog/discussion area in our community; Kelly’s Agile Journal. Just the act of navigating our community’s admin settings to create her blog was an investment larger than that made by most of our users.

As a community we did okay for a little while, with our company founder even responding to a few of her posts. But as the engagement stopped, so did her activity.

Kelly hasn’t logged into the community since March 2008 – which was 2 months after her final contribution.

Walking in her shoes, I can see how I too would become disinterested if I was putting hours of effort into a community that didn’t engage my contributions. I bet if we had continued to engage her posts, and had gone even further and highlighted her work to the broader community, we would have been privileged to many more of Kelly’s thoughtful entries.

As a takeaway from this, I encourage you to take the extra effort to give acknowledgment to all contributions to your community (or life for that matter).

And if you notice in retrospect that you dropped the ball by not engaging one of your own users, why not reach out to them and let them know your appreciation and regret?

 
No Comments

Posted in Marketing, community management, social media

 

Are You Practicing Thoughtful Reduction?

27 Jan

Last October I read a blog post from colleague Ben Carey that continues to resonate with me:

Finding Simplicity Through Thoughtful Reduction

In it Ben makes the astute observation that as creators, humans often get caught up in expanding and adding more – even though as consumers we generally get the most pleasure out of the simple and focused (i.e. Flip video camera, Garmen GPS).

When Ben started at Rally, I noticed pretty quickly that he has an awesome ability to make very simple hand drawlings that clearly represent complex subjects. What I didn’t realize then was that this is just a manifestation of how he approaches his entire life process.

As Ben suggests in his post:

The next time you are faced with an opportunity to improve or modify your process, or your software, or your life – think about what you can remove instead of what you can add.

Take a little extra time to remove root causes instead of adding workarounds. Think about how to communicate more clearly instead of how to communicate more. Think about the things that you can stop doing instead of the things that you can start doing.

I think he’s really onto something here.

If we all make a conscious effort to regularly evaluate how we can improve our many life processes , good things will happen. We will become more focused, productive and intelligent – all while creating products that become the same.

I for one am going to make a conscious effort to approach both my work and life wearing a lense of thoughtful reduction

 
No Comments

Posted in Marketing, opinion

 

Keeping Your Community Focused – Why Less is More

18 Jan

Keep Your Community Focused

Keep Your Community Focused

When building an online community, it can be easy to get excited about all of the cool and unique ways you can interact with your users.

Questions, reviews, introductions, general discussion, link sharing, event calendars, idea generation – the list goes on and on

all of these are great things – but only when used in moderation


This is a lesson I learned first hand managing Agile Commons.

When we launched the community in 2007, it had many different sub-areas: Community Blog, Greening Ideas, Conference Reports, Project Management Discussions, Book Reviews, Favorite Quotes – you name it, we had it.

What resulted was long periods of inactivity in many of the sub-areas. Even though we were seeing a strong uptake in our keys sections, the inactive sub-areas gave off the appearance that the community was being underutilized.

I led a redesign in early 2009 to combat this, and one of the first orders of business was to combine posts from 8 different discussion areas into one “general discussion” zone. This made it much easier for users to find new discussions, as they now only had to keep up with one area.

The community appeared more vibrant and the lurkers who were previously tentative to put effort into a post, now felt more confident that their potential contributions would be engaged by the community.

This resulted in a significant increase in the amount of new posts we were seeing from our users.

So in my experience – having Less options creates More activity.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Marketing, community management, opinion

 

I am a Member of a Community of Thinkers

08 Dec

Last Friday Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke created this statement that they are encouraging be shared around the blogosphere.

I work closely with Jean and know how truly passionate she is around sharing, facilitating and enjoying the benefits of community and collaboration.

Though more specifically tailored to the software industry – its values are something we all can all reflect upon as we interact in our own professional communities.

“A Community of Thinkers”

I am a member of a community of thinkers.
I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
I challenge each community in the software industry to:
    • reflect and honor the practitioners who make its existence possible;
    • provide an excellent experience for its members;
    • support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
    • exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members;
    • engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
    • embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and,
    • thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.
    • I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviors, and that people who exhibit these behaviors will become leaders.
    I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.

    ”A Community of Thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Please attribute to the distributor of your copy or derivative.

     
    No Comments

    Posted in community management, opinion

     

    [Video] Chris Brogan Presentation at New Media Atlanta

    02 Dec

    I’m a big fan of Chris Brogan. He has become one of the most prominent figures in blogging and social media essentially by being himself.

    He is a little rough around the edges – but is genuine, insightful and very engaging. I highly recommend reading the recent book Trust Agents, which Chris co-wrote with Julien Smith. I read it 4 months ago, and have seen a big uptake in the effectiveness of my social media campaigns as a result of applying its techniques.

    My most important takeaway?

    Promote others 12 times as often as you promote yourself. Seems excessive, but if you’re trying to make strong connections and build advocacy – these type of goodwill touch points are highly influential.

    Anyway – I encourage you to watch this presentation he gave at New Media Atlanta last month. Its a long video in blog terms, but is full of great information and well worth the time.

     
    No Comments

    Posted in Marketing, opinion, social media, video

     

    What QN5 Records Taught Me About the Power of Community

    23 Nov

    QN5 Records - a good example of community

    Interesting where one gets their inspiration.

    In regards to Community Management – I’ve read books on the subject, countless blogs, and even attended conference sessions.

    Perhaps the place I’ve found the most inspiration from is the community associated with the hip-hop label QN5 Records. I first stumbled upon the site in 2004 when searching for album information and it was immediately clear that this was different from other music websites I had been to.

    What was the difference?

    They had a forum where all of their artists were available, active, and engaged.  Gone was the the “I’m too busy, mysterious, important and/or cool for my fans” attitude. Instead it was replaced with a transparent, appreciative & and all around warm atmosphere.

    Fans could now not only get to know the artists on a personal level – they could get to know each other on a personal level.

    The power of creating these connections is best showcased each August when the label’s fans ascend on New York City for what is called The MegaShow.

    In the months preceding the event, NYC locals post threads offering up their spare couches, out-of-towners organize road trips from 300 miles away, unofficial pre-parties are scheduled and people from as far as New Zealand are sharing news of plane ticket purchases.

    In almost every single one of the post concert reviews, people talk about how meeting all the forum members in person was among the most gratifying parts of their experience. And while QN5’s ability to put on a great show shouldn’t be discounted, the produced takeaways from these events are far greater than “that was my favorite concert”.

    People talk about how seeing this event changed their lives, how this is now their second family, and how much they will genuinely miss each other waiting for next years event.

    Much more of a childhood summer camp vibe than a hip-hop concert.

    This example taught me that by creating a community around their brands, companies can produce customer experiences that are beyond what can be achieved solely using traditional forms of interaction.

    Simply put, it pays to connect your customers.

     
    No Comments

    Posted in Marketing, community management

     

    [Video] The Death of Music Criticism – as Said by a Prominent Music Writer

    19 Nov

    Christopher R. Weingarten (Music Writer for Rolling Stone) gives a profanity laced – but very poignant speech about why even successful critics like himself will be out of a job within the next few years. Looking at my own habits, it’s true that it has been quite a while since I’ve looked towards a magazine to put me on to new music.

    Another example of how blogs and other user generated content have changed the way consumers are forming their opinions.

    Warning - this is a profanity laced rant, but honest and very funny.

     
    No Comments

    Posted in opinion, video

     

    The Impact of User Created Content on Search

    17 Nov
    The Sun is setting on company controlled search

    The Sun is setting on company controlled search

    Was reading mashable today – and saw an article highlighting some interesting new figures from the just released white paper The State of Search

    Most notable of their findings is that “77% of Twitter, Youtube and Facebook listings that appeared for brand searches were controlled by a party other than the marketer.”

    This is good news to me – because it validates a lot of my convictions about the importance of what I work on at my job. It puts statistics onto a point I was driving towards at a social media strategy presentation I gave last week:

    The sun is setting on the days where companies are able to “own and manage” their search engine reputation.

    The explosion of user generated content – combined with the soon-to-be standard of using one’s social graph to provide personalized search engine results, means a quick and significant shift in how consumers will be forming product opinions via search.

    Soon you will see your friends opinions show up right next to the corporate homepage for a product (even if you’re too shy to ask for their opinion in the first place). Imagine how much influence this gives Mr. 40,000 Twitter Followers when he reports on a negative customer experience. Wouldn’t it be great to harness that type of influence from your business’ glowing supporters?

    This helps me emphasize why being proactive about social media involvement is a vital piece of a marketing strategy. By being active, engaged & helpful in this space -  companies can positively influence their brand sentiment and set themselves up for success when this transition in search behavior occurs.

    So choose not view this shift as a threat to your company’s current “search engine excellence”.  View this as an opportunity to produce the type of customer experience that will get your customers talking. There are some large opportunities in store for viral referential business for the companies that are building a happy and vocal customer base.

     
    No Comments

    Posted in Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, social media

     
    « Older Entries
    Newer Entries »