I met some terrific people at the meetup and enjoyed the discussions which focused on reviewing some of Seth Godin’s blog posts. I particularly enjoyed talking with others about his post What’s the Point (July 2010). After the discussion I started thinking back to a blog post by Forrester’s Augie Ray’s from a couple of days ago, Do You Want to Succeed in Social Media or Social Media Marketing.

All of this got me thinking more about the effort that companies aren’t putting into customer engagement. In Linchpin, Godin says, “Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back.” He paints these people as “victims” of a societal education that teaches people to fit in: “For hundreds of years, the population has been seduced, scammed and brainwashed into fitting in, following instructions and exchanging a day’s work for a day’s pay.”

I think very highly of Seth’s ideas and am a fan of his blog and books. In Linchpin he reaches out to inspire people to understand that they have a brilliance and a genius to be more and break out of the norm by contributing value and creating something precious. I love that idea and hope people take heed, but I ponder whether he’s right about society’s guilt. Societal norms certainly have a major impact on how people act and behave in their careers, but I think it has much more to do with the high value our society seems to place on laziness.

Too often workers in every industry look to do the least amount possible to still receive their paycheck and move on in their career toward desired goals. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with efficiency or looking to accomplish a goal by using fewer resources, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Our society, particularly in America, seems to think freedom means free and doing as little as possible is good. But that’s not very rewarding. Freedom as a right doesn’t mean you deserve to get things for free. Doing as little as possible to get by doesn’t inspire others and rarely results in amazing innovation. I say it’s time that our society reconsiders the value proposition on putting in time and effort to accomplish something. Remember the saying, “an honest day’s work?”

Now I’ll turn my attention on these ideas stated above in regards to businesses. So many companies are jumping on a social media bandwagon of some kind trying to get at consumers in a new way, but they look at hiring interns and consider social media a free activity. Many wonder why their social media efforts are not yielding a high return on new customers. Do these businesses really think they’ll get something for nothing?

Social media as a platform (or many new types of platforms depending on your view of social media) is a major innovation in communication and companies should be taking advantage of the fact that this new medium gives them a greater opportunity to engage with their customers. To Listen, Speak, Care, Share and Build Relationships with their customers and other stakeholders. Instead, companies are being lazy. They’re using social media as a new means of talking “at” people and expecting people to just accept that. Just because they put up a Facebook Fan Page doesn’t mean their interacting with customers. Think of how often you go to a store or a restaurant and you’re treated badly or ignored or have a bad experience trying to find items, return purchases, understand a glitch in your bill. How long have you sat on hold waiting to talk to a customer service representative only to be rerouted to another person who also couldn’t help fix your situation and eventually you’ve spent 10 hours, hundreds of dollars and now don’t even want the service you are locked into for a year on contract?

I hope that this blog post helps inspire companies to understand that putting a bit of time, money, effort and other resources into using social media, and consequently, improving their customer service, store offerings, products/services and support lines so that people had a reason and desire to “friend” them on Facebook or tag new products and recommend their services. Offer your customers something novel–offer them an energized commitment to caring about their needs and wants and providing them with the best possible services and products. Then put up your fan page and Twitter stream as a means of sharing information with them, but also as an invitation to engage with your company, to provide feedback and build trust so that they want to remain your customer and recommend you to others.

Since there aren’t more hours in the day, why do some people and businesses try to boil the ocean?

Recently I’ve taken on a new client in an industry that is completely new for me, which is super exciting for me, skin care services and products. From business and marketing perspectives they have a lot going for them, but they also have a lot of challenges they’ll need to overcome to take their business to the next level. One of the main issues for this client, and many of the challenges they face have arisen because of this, is that they’ve inadvertently been trying to boil the ocean.

If you haven’t heard this phrase before, it’s used as an illustrative term for saying you’re trying to do too much—perhaps to the point of detriment. In the case of my new client, they have so much going on they aren’t really seeing results from anything. They’re stretched so thin they can’t devote enough time to any of their initiatives. Their ideas are good, but they don’t have the budget or man power to do it all. They’re messaging is also going in too many directions at once to try and hit every possible audience so it becomes muddled and confusing. They have a great story, but aren’t telling it with focus to a targeted audience.

Whether your a small startup just getting things going, your a mid-size company in growth-mode or your a big corporation, the ocean is a big pool! Think about the pool you swim in and focus your efforts there. Don’t try to do everything at once. Don’t stretch your budget and human resources across too many tactics. Base your marketing decisions on your annual business goals (with longer-term goals in site). Choose a strategic marketing direction that is within your budget and human resources. Select your marketing tactics, activities and tools that are manageable within your resources and make sense for your audience. As your business grows, so will the size of your pond!

I had several great conversations over the past couple of weeks with Ooga Labs‘ people. Very interesting company. They are:

… a group of software engineers and designers developing several consumer Internet businesses at the same time. We come up with the ideas ourselves, and once a company finds its product/market fit, we might raise outside capital for it. We like to build digital consumer services that have a chance to touch tens of millions of users and make the world a little better than it was.

They have several cool properties already (PlacePop, MedPedia and WonderHill) and are about to launch a new one soon. I’ll leave it to them to announce what their new property is, but I’ll add my 2 cents–it’s going to be very cool.

Anyway… After meeting with them, I doubt they’ll mind my putting these words in their mouth–they probably define marketing in the 4-letter word sense. I can’t blame them. There is a lot of reasons why marketing has gained this reputation, even though there are a lot of great things that marketing professionals have done to positively increase their customer view of them.

What do you do when your profession starts to be viewed this way? What all do people with this view see as “marketing”? Do they realize that marketing is more than advertising? Many don’t. Many think that marketing is trickery–a plot to get people to buy stuff they don’t want or need. Unfortunately, there are companies that operate that way. But we marketing professionals have a choice. You can step up and say, “Marketing (as a 4-letter word) is dead. The conversation, the customer and audience engagement, the honest interaction, the straight-forward information, and the genuine listening and caring about what people need and want is King. Long live the conversation!”

As a marketer, to adopt this mind set and make it effective as an approach for your company/clients it may mean going back to your business and marketing plans. You may need to alter, adapt or amend your brand identity and certainly you’ll need to embrace some new technologies to allow your customers to freely communicate with you (2-directional conversation). You’ll need to release some control over your message and embrace what your audiences say, both good and bad, and face them head on.

The best advice I can give you is to jump in and start listening to the marketing industries market conversation. There you’ll find out the disappointing news of diminishing Return on Investments for many activities, but also the incredible upside of emerging tactics. As a starting place here is my Twitter Marketing Conversation List. Check it out. You don’t need to spend oodles of time participating if you don’t want to, but listening to what people are talking about, sharing and exchanging of ideas will jump start you into a new way of approaching your profession.

“Conversation: the informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc., by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy.”

But notice that the dictionary hasn’t caught up with the times. It’s 2010, Dictionary People! This definition specifically says “spoken” and “oral” and leaves out all other forms of communication available for the 2010s and beyond. With all the killer Web2.0 and social media networks, apps and tools, the “interchange of thoughts, information, etc.” can now be done via typed discussions (Twitter and forums for example), imagery (Flickr comes to mind) and multi-media (such as videos on YouTube with spoken and written words paired with music, graphics and other imagery.)

What is poignant in this definition is “the information interchange of thoughts, information, etc. … between persons.” A blogger and Tweeter I regularly follow, John Cass, wrote a post today titled Is Content Taking Marketers Down The Wrong Rabbit Hole? This struck a chord with me because I’d planned on writing about Making Conversation 2010 Style today. As John points out, companies need to consider the “social element” of social media rather than using it as just another outlet for their self-serving content.

Their are practically endless options now for where to converse with your target audiences, but the point is to have a two-way conversation that helps you build relationships with those individuals. Social media platforms, networks and tools are brilliant for this. They give your company the ability to listen (and then internalize) what people are saying not only about your products, but about their wants and needs. And you can respond to those individuals in a public forum so that others can read and benefit from the conversation (most people are Listeners–they don’t participate in the conversation but they listen and hear what others say.)

Also, these social media tools currently out, and coming soon, can help you be more efficient in conversing so that you aren’t trying to talk to all 1 million (or more) of your target audience by phone or in person. 2010 conversation style allows you to be much more efficient while reaching many more people. Sure, use these tools to tell people about your great content you’ve created, but also use the tools to get to know people and listen to what they want and need. We all know that the point of business is to sell your products, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be pals with your customers too. You listen to them, you help them fulfill their wants and needs with free, helpful advice, as well as with your products, and they’ll be more likely to buy from you and influence others to buy from you too.

Happy New Year and happy conversing!

Through a FB application, a charity who meets the eligibility requirements just needed to connect their FB page to the Chase Community Giving application so that individuals with a Facebook profile could locate the charity and vote for them. (A great win for FB too, to get more FB users!) The basics of Chase’s program include the corporation donating a total of $5million: via a first round of voting, the 100 charities to receive the top amount of votes all receive $25k. In a second round of voting, those top 100 vote recipients have a chance to explain how they would use the top prize funds and individuals with FB accounts then vote again. The organization to receive the most votes in round 2 will receive $1million and the top 5 runners up will receive $100k each. Finally, Chase Community Giving Advisory Board will select one or more nominated Charities to receive donations with a combined total of $1,000,000.

The Brilliance of the Campaign

1. Chase has received incredible exposure both in online communities and networks (FB, Twitter, blog posts, etc.) as well as traditional media coverage. As of this posting, the Chase Community Giving FB page has more than 853,000 Fans (to vote, you needed to become a Fan of their page.)
2. Chase has racked up lots of good will. Even if you weren’t a Chase customer, you probably think more highly of Chase once you saw that they were giving this money away. Most people don’t realize that many of the nations major corporations have philanthropic arms and continually donate funds to charities. With this campaign, not only do they just do what they’ve been doing–donating money to increase good will–but they’re getting exposure that is incredible. And they’re putting the decision-making power of where that money should go in the hands of regular people–even people who aren’t their customers. Now, when you’re looking at changing banks or opening a new account, won’t you be more likely to seriously consider Chase?
3. By allowing charities to sign up for participation in the contest and allowing anyone with a FB account to vote, as well as adding other outreach tools to the bottom of each page (like Tweet about this, etc.) they encouraged people to spread the word for them and made it easy for them to do so with the added social links.

I could go on about the benefits they’re receiving, but if you’re a marketing communications professional, you can probably figure out many others. So I have just one thought for Chase–What could they have done better?

Unfortunately, non-profits are probably one of the slowest groups to embrace social media. Maybe they made a Facebook page already, but they aren’t updating it and they don’t know how to reach out to others in their audience to tell them to go to FB and vote. It’s like the issue “just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come.” What Chase might have done that could have extended this campaign a bit more was to offer Charities (perhaps in an offline way) help in how to do some outreach, build online profiles, tell their audiences about participating, etc. They could have teamed with a social media company to develop a few how-to guides that charities could use or even get some interns employed through Chase to help charities set up their FB account and connect them to participate in the contest. I searched for a number of charities to vote for that weren’t participating and found many, many charities that figured out how to participate, but had only a couple votes–they didn’t get their audiences to vote for them.

Social media programs may seem “free” but to do it right and make it work, for non-profits and for-profit companies, you need someone who can give real guidance. Maybe some of the Chase winners will use some of the funds to help build their social programs so that they can sustain their own awareness and increase donations and program participation far into the future.