You can find Loic Le Meur at www.twitter.com/loic and his product at www.seesmic.com

1. Look for your contemporaries

I get asked nearly every day “why would I want to use twitter?” which is kind of silly, because no one person can tell someone they’ve just met what social media tool will appropriately connect them to their consumer. I don’t know you – I don’t know what you sell and I don’t know how you sell it. I don’t know the things that will kill you online: like being lazy, or having terrible customer service (when your csr hangs up on them you can bet they’ll twitter you about it), or having a terrible product. These are all things my clients and I talk about, and find the best course of action. Of course you probably want to see what your competition, kindred companies, and clients are doing – so a tool like Tracking Twitter makes that very doable. I am sure I’ll be using it to watch brands grow in their strategy, and see what their results are once these profiles have been active long enough to gain measureable results.

2. Learn what works

@Jetblue (the twitter handle for Jet Blue Airlines) just rocks. The airline presence is fantastic and in addition to giving you a headsup on specials, they give you great travel tips that will make your trip easier (security tips) and less boring (answers to questions about what movies are playing). If you do any kind of travel service then you should learn from them. Really.

3. Get comfortable with your persona

The 2nd most common question I get about using twitter (and any social media really) is “what should i say?” my answer is typically “what should you say?”. It comes back to the who are you/what do you do conversation I mentioned earlier. For tech companies and b2b firms there is often a tendency to be authoritative, to provide information (which typically means to be as boring as you can possibly imagine). Burger King has an icon – the king – and that’s who is doing their twitter-ness (check out @burgerking). He’s hilarious, and totally in sync with their current branding. On the tech side check out @delloutlet and any of the other dell twitter-feeds – it’s estimated that dell’s done over 1 million in business via their twitter handles in 2008… take that those of you who tell me twitter is a total waste of time!

The biggest and most important thing I can tell you is to think – think about what your goal is on social media, what you want to accomplish, and who should be working toward this goal – then you will have the direction to make “what should i say” a simple question with an easy answer. ’cause that’s what it should be.

@rebekah_king

Deepening Customer Loyalty Through Social Media by Aaron Strout

When was the last time you said to yourself: “Wow, I’d recommend this product or service to a friend”? Within the last month? Six months? If you have to think about this question, you’ve already made my point. Over the last 50 years, outsourced manufacturing, poor customer service and an overall commoditization of products and services have served to erode consumers’ affections for most brands.

While the idea of diminished customer loyalty may be disheartening–after all, if customers aren’t loyal, they don’t rave about your brand to other customers and they certainly can’t be tricked into forking over a greater share of their wallet–all hope is not lost. In fact, smart brands like Dell, Ford and Sears are starting to see increases in brand affinity as a result of their social endeavors.

Before we talk about some of these examples, let’s start by reminding ourselves why loyalty is important. Arguably the biggest benefit is highlighted in an article by loyalty guru Fred Reichheld, titled “Leading with Loyalty.” Based on research Reichheld’s employer, Bain & Company, conducted last year, “companies that enjoy [the] ‘loyalty effect’ grow at better than twice the average for their industry.”

If doubling your growth rate isn’t enticing enough in and of itself, Reichheld also proves in his landmark book, The Loyalty Effect, that “as little as a 5 percent increase in retention can improve a company’s bottom-line profitability between 25 percent and 85 percent, depending on the industry.” Not too shabby, but also easier said than done.

Let’s take a look at how a few well-known companies are using social media to dramatically improve their customer loyalty:

•   Dell Computers: As recently as 2005, Dell was struggling mightily to keep its customers. Complaints of poor customer service combined with a scathing barrage of bad press stemming from stories of laptop batteries catching on fire led CEO and founder, Michael Dell to tap current “chief blogger” Lionel Menchaca to help right the ship. Through a campaign of open and honest communications via the Dell blogs and proactive participation by its employees in Dell’s support forums, customer satisfaction and loyalty have started to come back in full force.

•   Ford: It’s no secret that the auto industry has come under heavy scrutiny over the last 12 months. The big three in particular have suffered huge PR and sales hits during that time as they attempt to figure out what’s next. During that time, Ford made a giant leap into the world of social by bringing in social media head Scotty Monty. Through tools like Twitter, Scott’s blog and Ford’s Sync My Ride community, they have slowly begun to win back customer and influencer confidence. Ford still has a long road ahead, but they are reaping the benefits of being reconnected.

•   Sears: you’ll be surprised to find out that the company you used to know as Sears is not your father’s department store. In fact, you may be surprised to know that Sears launched its SKU community last summer, and now has more than 200,000 members.

According to VP of Community, Rob Harles, Sears is starting to see some little wins with their community: “Overall, customers are starting to feel that they are being listened to, core members skew toward being some of the most valuable/profitable customers and the ability to reach out to customers and solve their issues proactively is definitively turning around customer perceptions.” Rob mentioned that in one extreme case, the SKU community turned a client from “I would never shop with you again” to “I have put my store card back in wallet.”

If Dell, Ford and Sears can do it, why can’t you?

For anyone interested, here are a few steps to help get you started:

1.   Listen first – You may already know why your customers aren’t as loyal as they might be. If you don’t know, you should start by listening to what they are saying.

2.   Engage – Unless you are one of the lucky few brands that instill passion in your base, think about giving your customers a reason to engage with you. This is most easily and simply accomplished by offering compelling content that is not about your company’s products, but is germane to the customers’ lifestyle. Wrapping this content in social tools makes it more scalable and repeatable.

3.   Measure – If you are diligent about putting steps one and two into practice, make sure you measure. Not only will it help you gauge the effectiveness of your program, it can help you get more funding to fuel it–especially during tough economic times like we’re living through now.

You can also follow them on Twitter (465 friends at time of writing this blog) and become a fan of their new I Wear Read 4U campaign on facebook… Let’s see how it does over the next few months.

Ted McConnell, manager of interactive marketing and innovation at P.& G., said, “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads in Facebook.” His remarks were offered as his personal reflections, not the official position of his employer, and were available on the Web in a podcast of the talk

I read about half of this article before I went on a mission: searching to see if I’ve somehow missed a trend shift (rip van winkle style sleeping for a 100 years?) and facebook became a dead medium. Thankfully after scanning through over 2000 articles on my google reader archives I find no such horrid news… So I return to my original thought – it’s P&G’s marketing approach that is ineffective, not Facebook itself.

Let me just tell you I am biased – I run a business based on consulting marketing firms on how to integrate social media platforms like Facebook into their traditional marketing programs. I do this not because I’m some social media devotee, I do it because I’m 1/2 creative and 1/2 geek – firmly believing technology should be used to make life EASIER, not as the life-sucking fad-track that it is when you don’t use the tool well. It’s simple – hand my grandmother the quilter a hammer and she’s not going to get much done – hand her a needle and thread and you’ll have a new blanket in short order. (I know – I’ve seen her produce 3 of them in the last 3 months)

So back to the point – P&G clearly hasn’t harnessed the power of the social media network.

Brand pages won’t make anyone uncomfortable about privacy issues. But one has to have a compelling reason to seek out these pages. The P.& G. spokeswoman pointed me to its “2X Ultra Tide” page. Here one finds an 11-month-old campaign, “American’s Favorite Stains,” where members can post their “favorite places to enjoy stain-making moments!” When I checked last week, it displayed a grand total of just 18 submissions, including two from P.& G., two from someone at The Onion and one-word posts like “Tidealicious!”

Stagnant pages don’t produce results

Back in April of 2008 Facebook released the Facebook Pages Insider’s Guide, outlining the key strategies of successful marketing on the site. The top 3 strategies were:

1) Regularly adding engaging and useful content
2) Letting fans participate in the conversation
3) Expanding their distribution with Facebook Ads

Now the NYT article author says the P&G’s Tide campaign content had not been updated in 11 months.. but if you look at the page it’s been only 6 months. Either way, does that sound like “Regularly adding engaging and useful content” to you?

P&G aren’t the only offenders here, just scroll through some of your favorite brand facebook pages and I’m sure you will find more and more examplse – if they’re even online yet. Using Social Media as an effective marketing tool requires a change in way we evaluate a campaign. Unlike a television or direct mail campaign, these “identities” on facebook stick around… forever. This is both a negative and a positive – on the positive side you have sticking power.. but on the negative side you have sticking power even if the campaign isn’t effective.

So what if you created a page for your brand and created your very own brand “identity” online? Not just a TIDE page, but the Tide page that’s run by Susan – the Tide Mom – who goes through everything the average tide mom goes through – shares her tips tricks and “war stories”, uploads videos of related topics, takes pictures of kids messy-ness (maybe creates a submit the nasties stain photo contest?)… Wouldn’t that sort of identity be one that mom’s would connect to, be engaged with, and then participate in?? Better yet, you could create individual identities for your unique buyer profiles

In his remarks to the club, Mr. McConnell said, “All brands want consumers to be their ‘friends.’ Oh, boy, do they!” But speaking for himself, he said he had reservations about the very premise. “I don’t want to be best friends with a brand,” he said. “It’s just stuff.”

So stop making it just about the stuff… make it about the people and you’ll see results. After all, Social Media is all about being SOCIAL – and that requires human participation and interaction. It’s not merely a formula, it’s a community.

Are clicks and impressions still the standard for online advertising success?

As a publisher, are clicks and impressions still the standard for online advertising success? If not, what are you attaching every dollar to? Social media platforms like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter allow you to spread a message quickly to a captive audience, but what good are 20,000 friends and one million video views if there is no direct dollar amount associated to it? An impression and a click are tied to a dollar, but if you’re not using these as the benchmark then what good is your inventory?

So are clicks and impressions still the standard, or can you convince your CFO that having friends is more profitable?

I’m finding more often that this is a common question, as the traditional marketing methods give way to the more interactive and social mediums. It can all be very confusing (I know, I’ve inspired many MANY headaches), but there are some simple things to know which may clear this confusion up.

Having friends (or fans or peeps or followers) can be thought of as building a bigger vehicle for marketing delivery. The more traditional rules of marketing still apply: we must create a COMPELLING message that inspires the viewer to TAKE AN ACTION. No matter how big the vehicle is, the accessories, the finishing touches, the reaction it inspires in the audience is key.

All successful marketing programs accomplish this – whether it’s a branding campaign whose call to action is forward this item to a friend, or a sales campaign which asks you to click and order. All the impressions in the world will not take the place of an impactful message.

Some of the things that have changed is in the audience:

• they hate fakeness – unless the gimmick is how fake you are and then it’s funny
• they want to be entertained
• stop being so stuffy – (ref: entertainment…don’t take yourself and your brand so seriously)
• If you promise something (award, giveaway etc), GIVE IT… and let everyone know about it

Now get out there and make some friends!

Rebekah King
Social Media Marketing Maven
www.rebekahking.com
www.linkedin.com/in/rebekahking

Parents love their kids, but everyone deserves a break once in awhile. If you don’t have family or friends nearby who would be willing to watch your children while you and your partner grab some together time, or even if you’re a single parent who just needs a break, having access to a trustworthy babysitter is a sanity saver.

It can be tough to find the right person to care for your kids if you’re new to your neighborhood or if you’re a new parent. If you’re in need of a caregiver-for-hire for a few hours, then here are some ideas on how to use the Web to find someone near you.

One thing worth noting is that there are a number of websites out there that can help you find a sitter for the kids. You can divide them up into two groups: sites that you can use for free; and sites that charge some kind of fee (normally a subscription fee) to give you access to their database of child care providers.

You can read the rest here: http://mashable.com/2008/10/17/how-to-find-a-babysitter-online/

An economic downturn and technology advancements will lead to increased coupon usage among U.S. shoppers, according to survey results released today by Toronto-based ICOM Information Communications (ICOM).

Of the 1,529 U.S. consumers who responded to a recent ICOM survey conducted in mid-February, 67 percent said they are much more likely, or somewhat more likely, to use coupons during a recession. The breakdown was 45 percent much more likely and 22 percent somewhat more likely.

Which really seams like common sense. Interesting though was the breakdown included by age and by region, and this little tidbit:

When it comes coupon technology, 58 percent of respondents believe their coupon use would increase if they could download a coupon from the Internet and have it automatically connected to an electronically swiped frequent shopper card.

Of that 58 percent, 35 percent said they are much more likely to use such a card and 23 percent said are somewhat more likely. AOL, Kroger, General Mills and Procter & Gamble are currently testing such high-tech coupons.

Wha-whaat? you mean I don’t have to clip at all? I’d become die-hard in a heartbeat for sure. I’m lucky enough that I don’t need to use coupons in my shopping, but I choose to whenever possible. Why? Because who doesn’t love a great deal? Why not save a buck or two if you can?

And truly, I have to admit that if they go through all the trouble to make ‘em, I’ll use em.

I’m a total consumer.

Read the article yourself here, if you are so inclined.