Are you saying pretty please?

Dan Zarrella is a great thinker on social media. He mines massive amounts of data and bases his recommendations on hard science. This is relatively rare yet needed in the field of social media marketing, and so he’s well worth following.

He recently analyzed 2.7 million tweets and concluded the following that people retweet when they are asked nicely as part of the original tweet. Conclusion? If you have something you want people to spread, ask them - with a pretty please.

How Nonprofit Leaders Make Time for Social Media: Get Started With Small Steps

As a nonprofit leader, the best way to get started on social media is to make the commitment to make the time – like anything new whether it be a new exercise regiment or a diet and especially for learning a new tool, habit, or skill.

Pick something small and an easy win and repeat for 3 weeks. Maybe you want to get started with Twitter – start by summarizing an article you have read and want to share. Don’t say you have #notimetotweet.

Just do it.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Nonprofits

According to David Bakke, a contributor for Money Crashers, there are a number of ways you can market your nonprofit, one method you shouldn’t ignore is using social media. Social media marketing allows you to reach a worldwide audience, and is very cost-effective. However, there are several “do’s” and “don’ts” you must keep in mind.

More here: 5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Nonprofits | GuideStar Blog.

Who is responsible for your nonprofit Digital Community Building?

When it comes to building community and increasing brand awareness, some organizations hire communications, marketing, and engagement staff to handle these activities. And that makes sense -- someone needs to be charged with keeping a close eye on the organization’s community growth.

Jamie Millard and Lori L. Jacobwith also suggest that building awareness for your important work in an increasingly cluttered space can’t be the responsibility of just one person or even a department. When an organization embraces the culture of creating and empowering all staff to become “brand ambassadors,” authentic and exponential growth starts to happen.

More here: Ctrl+Alt+Delete: Rebooting Your Digital Community Building | NTEN.

What is the danger of starting at the top?

It is so easy to fall into this trap. As a buyer of technology, I can't tell you how many times people thought if they just got to me they would get the sale. Even worse was when they actually thought they were going to talk to the CEO. Seth has nailed this one.

When making a b2b sale, the instinct is always to get into the CEO's office. If you can just get her to hear your pitch, to understand the value, to see why she should buy from or lease from or partner with or even buy you... that's the holy grail.

What do you think happens after that mythical meeting?

She asks her team.

And when the team is in the dark, you've not only blown your best shot, but you never get another chance at it.

The alternative is to start in the middle. It takes longer, it comes with less high-stakes tension and doesn't promise instant relief. But it is better than any alternative.

Starting in the middle doesn't mean you're rushing around trying to close any sale with any bureaucrat stupid enough to take a meeting with you (or that you're stupid enough to go to, thinking that a sale is going to happen.)

No, starting in the middle is more marketing than sales. It's about storytelling and connection and substance. It's about imagery and totems and credentials and the ability to understand and then solve the real problems your prospects and customers have every day. It's this soft tissue that explains why big companies have so many more enterprise sales than you do.

You don't get this reputation as an incidental byproduct of showing up. It is created with intention and it's earned.

via Seth's Blog: The danger of starting at the top.

Customer experience trend: The rise of text analytics

Companies are learning that some of the richest insights from customers come from unstructured content like comments on surveys, calls into the contact center, social media conversations, and chat sessions with agents. Companies will shift more of their focus towards collecting and analyzing these types of feedback. Tidbit: Nearly three-quarters of large companies with Voice of Customer programs are using or considering text analytics.

There are also a lot of great solutions out there. It seems relatively cost effective to begin experimenting right now. You can select a tool to analyze comments captured in call center conversations and see the trends on a real time basis. It probably could be up and running withing 6 to 8 weeks.

Do you need a multi-channel messaging strategy?

This is a very good blog on how disruptive social media has become for a business focus on the Customer. If you haven’t been convinced yet, this blog is for you.  The world has changed. Consumers have changed. We have to change to meet the needs and expectations of our customers. Are you ready?

Social media and smartphones are disrupting the established patterns and practices for B2C interactions. To be successful, businesses have to engage with customers through their preferred channels, whether that be mobile, IM or social networks.

The link between technology and consumers is, however, a two-way street. Take, for example, Facebook notifications (the auto-generated email or text alerts you get when someone posts you on your wall or comments on a photo). These alerts constitute B2C dialogue, though they operate under the guise of a C2C interaction.

The initial attraction of social networks like Facebook and other pioneers in the space was bringing groups of people of shared interest together on the web. Adding a messaging capability to the basic web presence extends the social experience beyond the website. Without notifications, you’d have to go online to Facebook to hangout with your friends. With notifications, your friends — and the Facebook brand — come and check in with you throughout the day via your inbox.

This kind of messaging lets businesses participate in, inform, and add value to the social interaction (wall post/sharing) without ever forcing users back to the site.

Why Businesses Must Adopt a Multi-Channel Messaging Strategy

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Screw business as usual....this is the real world

Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, publishing, and culture. His new book, The End Of Business As Usual, looks at the changing consumer landscape, it's impact on business & what companies can do to adapt & lead.

In this video overview, Brian nails it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3hi0V13oag&feature=youtu.be

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The mobile war, transforming customer expectations and business capabilities ...

The Mobile War CEOs should be aware of an approaching tech war -- because its outcome is going to change their customers.  As the Web becomes the AM radio of digital, the mobile App Internet will rise. This market will be dominated by two or three ecosystems -- semi-closed worlds built on a closely fitting set of apps, phones, tablets, computers, operating systems, and partners. An ecosystem owner will possess extraordinary market power -- able to dictate terms to content providers, customers, and application developers. It doesn't matter what you sell -- insurance, pills, cars, energy, bonds -- you'll be reaching many of your customers through these ecosystems in the future.

Social Media Has Transformed Customer Expectations At Every Step Of The Customer Journey After moving to a new apartment, do you need to get a new TV. The first instinct may be to gather information from a few sources. Do you browse online retailers to get an idea of prices, and look atoked at manufacturers' marketing content to understand the latest technologies like 3D TV. After all of that, you may turn to consumer reviews and discussions to get a feeling for whether you would actually find those features valuable. (For example, some customer reviews may help you confirm that you don’t want 3D TV.)

Where did you find those reviews? Everywhere -- there are star ratings and comments on product pages at retail sites (like John Lewis and Amazon.com), technology media sites (like CNET) and manufacturer websites. Interestingly – you get the feeling that the manufacturers still aren't entirely comfortable with the transparency that social media brings. They'd like to put a spin on the message, even if they can't entirely control it -- For example, Panasonic's UK site has a page that promotes "5 Star Reviews Of The Month". Can you think of a situation when you’d want a firm to guide you only to the most positive reviews of its products. Can you?

Business Capabilities Are The Strongest Foundation For Tech Strategy In developing a technology strategy for your organization, what will be your basis for deciding which technologies to pursue, when to pursue them, and how to implement them? In other words, what will be the foundation for your technology architecture and strategy? In considering this question, I assume we agree that technology strategy should directly support improvement of business outcomes, both now and over the long haul. To provide for the long haul, your technology architecture and strategy must be crafted to support a continuous stream of business change, both small incremental steps and large radical shifts.

It is a social revolution. And it isn't going away.

It is a full scale social revolution. So some questions:

• Do you have accounts on all the current social media?


• Are you active and post content?


• Do you respond to others?


• Do you use rich media like photos and video?

This where we are headed fast. For leaders of organizations, do your employees see that you get it? Are you there and relevant? Are you willing to be open?

The future is here and now. Imagine it is the year 2017. Other leaders have been part of the social revolution for years. You decide to start. Will it be too late then?

Related articles

• The social revolution is a trust revolution (customerthink.com)


• Dreamforce 2012: Businesses must prepare for social revolution (itpro.co.uk)


• Dreamforce 2012 Keynote (slideshare.net)


• Salesforce.com's Benioff fine-tunes social enterprise, revolution rhetoric (zdnet.com)

Is Information Technology a support area?

Is Information Technology a support area? The traditional, "keep the lights on" world of technology just won't cut it anymore. Of course everyone expects their laptop to boot up and connect to the network. No one even thinks about it until it won't.

Our business partners expect more. They want us to be strategic. They expect us to know their goals, strategies and can capabilities. The want to know how technology can help them generate more revenue.

And so a revolution is under way. We aren't the guys who "make the trains run on time" department. Or at least, we shouldn't be.

In today’s world, the technology department cannot just be seen as a support area. It must be seen as a critical part of the business. It’s up to the CIO to drive that point home by positioning himself or herself as a strategic partner—with a distinct set of skills and tools at his or her disposal. Take the time to talk to employees that use technology regularly to really understand how they use it. Listen to business line leaders about what their people want and need to succeed—and explain how new systems can enable them to meet those goals.

via IT Implementation Depends Upon CIOs With Social Skills - The CIO Report - WSJ.

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