Strategic Public Relations

Surprise & Delight: Remind Customers You're Paying Attention

Sometimes we're so focused on creating new customer relationships that we can lose focus on current customers.

It's one reason why retailers spend billions annually on customer loyalty programs.

But there are also simple ways brands can remind customers that their business is valued. Some businesses celebrate the anniversary when the customer first started using the brand. American Express users proudly display "member since" on their cards. There are arguably many untapped opportunities in the stacks of data we accumulate about our current customers.

LinkedIn Lands 100 Million Users
When I received the above email, I was reminded of this concept. I'd already seen the news that LinkedIn passed the 100 million user milestone. But I was not expecting a personalized email from LinkedIn founder, Reid Hoffman, telling me I was user #138,721. You can see where you are in the count by going to your profile on LinkedIn -- it's part of that page's URL.

While LinkedIn is being highlighted because of it's size and it's growth, the site is making sure current users know they are part of this success. Did Reid send me that email? No. Is this email one of as many as 100 million? Yes. Did it still make an impact on me? Yes.

Are there unique, simple opportunities to surprise and delight your customers?


Cross-posted to my work blog.

Influence at SXSWi -- and a #throwdown with Fast Company

Post-SXSWi, I've recovered and even dug out a bit. There's still a metric ton of content I want to post. But I will point you to some posts I wrote as a contributor to The Cincinnati Enquirer's SXSW blog during the event.

During the melee in Austin, David Binkowski, Krista Neher, Saul Colt and I sat on a panel to discuss the topic of influence. Below is the director's cut of slides. We did not get through all of them, so I added a few as well as some links for reference in the speaker notes. I went long in the Slideshare version as we addressed some of the questions folks were asking on Twitter. We just ran out of time before we could answer them.

In discussing what Influence is NOT, we got into celebrity influence. This brought up everyone from Charlie Sheen (popular vs. influential), Ashton Kutcher (broad/absolute influence) and Kenneth Cole (did his errant tweet have a positive impact?), to Klout (one site can't do all the work), Chrysler (a missed opportunity for the brand to be human) and Kim Kardashian (relative influence with a specific group).

SXSW 2011 - Influencer #Throwdown: Defining Influence Once & For All

Fast Company Throws Down
One reason we ran long was a special, unexpected guest. Fast Company Senior Editor Mark Borden discussed the panel singling out the Fast Company Influencer Project in our session description. "Influence 'experiments' like Fast Company's project do more harm than good when it comes to defining and measuring influence." Borden's point is that the project was test and learn...and Fast Company did learn from it. Good point. And in hindsight the fact that we didn't ask Mark to sit on our panel is a miss. We're glad he stopped in.

But we stand by our comment. I have more of an issue with social voting projects as a whole. As I've said here previously "When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can be executed well and can have an impact. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric."

Recaps, Cases & Tweets
In addition to what we did talk about, one case study I wanted to discuss focused on how to find influencers. A team of folks at my employer used a process we have in place to create a blogger outreach list. It was trained on the top 20 influencers discussing DIY, home design/improvement projects. You can see more in the slides on how the list was created and the impact it ultimately had on the results.

We got some great questions and some great feedback from attendees. You can get some more back story from the discussion via our Twitter transcript if you want to dig. Or check out  recaps from Christophe Jammet and Kellye Crane. I'm also looking forward to doing a point/counterpoint on "Content is King" with Bazaarvoice's Ian Greenleigh in the near future.

"Instead of counting the people who reach, reach the people who count
My colleague's quote helps me conclude this post. There's no silver bullet, automagic shortcuts for finding influencers. While we'd (always) love better data to measure at a more exact level -- to identify different influencers at different points in a consumer's brand interactions for example -- it's a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures.

Key influencers are more than likely different for each situation/brand/project. Tie it all back to business goals and you'll be able to focus your efforts if nothing else.

#sxswcares about Japan and needs your help

This post is to alert you to #sxswcares -- a site to collect donations for Japan relief efforts in light of the tragic natural disasters.

In less than 24 hours, as of this post, #sxswcares has raised nearly $5,000 in donations.

You can donate too at the site or just donate to the relief cause. Separately you can text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation to help.

As I noted earlier*, many are reaching out to social media to try and connect with what's going on and to try and make sense of it all. Twitter is one of the most obvious first stops. It's great to see SXSWi use it to help make an impact with #sxswcares.

If you're so inclined, please alert others to this effort or another option of your choosing. Thank you.


*My time at South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) will be summarized here at some point. In the meantime, I'm helping The Cincinnati Enquirer cover the event here.

SXSW Cares #sxswcares uploaded by David Armano

867-5309 -- Facebook you've got my number

Tommy Tutone - "Jenny (867-5309)" 

With apologies to the classic song shown above: “I got it, I got it! I got your number on the Facebook wall!”

News that Facebook will make user phone numbers and addresses available to external sites is generating an understandable and expected outcry. 

“The plan to open up users' address and phone numbers to third-party sites and services marks the latest frontier in Facebook's often controversy-fraught efforts to encourage users to be more liberal in sharing their data and online activity.” Via HuffPo 

Facebook’s continual nips and tucks to its privacy policy are accompanied by the usual reactive approach to user awareness. We’ve seen this play out more than a few times during the six year old site’s existence. It’s consistent if nothing else. 

Free Sites and User Entitlement
Users spending more time than they care to admit on sites like Facebook tend to develop a sense of entitlement. “I’m storing MY data on this site, Facebook owes ME.” And while I can understand this sentiment, I don’t agree with it. Facebook owns the site. Read their terms of service and learn what else they own. And with more than 600 million readers and display ad revenues that will eclipse Yahoo in the coming year, they’ve also got gravity. 

Consumers need to take greater personal accountability for their personal privacy. I say this as a fellow consumer and not a marketer. As a marketer, I see an opportunity that has NOTHING to do with the user data Facebook is making available.

Proactive Privacy: Marketers stand to earn a lot of consumer trust if they sound the alarm on these changes. Facebook is not doing it. Legal would plotz if they thought I was trying to make a brand accountable for Facebook with their customer base. I’m not saying they should and need to think through this point. But as marketers create in depth customer profiles that include social data, we should understand the implications Facebook creates and identify opportunities to help our customers do the same. 

What does privacy mean to YOUR consumer? This should guide your decisions on how much you should become involved in privacy issues and trends. At a minimum brands need to be aware of them. 

Personally, I’m wondering if I don’t have a startup opportunity here. Consider a company that can help consumers easily centralize and note the various data they’ve shared with sites and, more importantly alert them to changes in the terms of service for those sites. A Google search may show me it’s been done, but there’s some value to a company that can help consumers become aware of the byzantine morass of privacy details and their implications.


Cross-posted to my work blog.

Engagement: Getting Brands and Consumers to Commit

We talk a lot about creating engagement between brands and consumers. And that's because social platforms are an engagement tool, not a broadcast tool.

But after awhile, it can start to sound like we're trying to arrange marriages. Perhaps it's the fact that several of my coworkers were recently married or are preparing to walk down the aisle. Either way, we can over complicate consumer engagement as much as we can over simplify it.

Too Complicated?
When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can do a lot over the long term. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric. This example from TED shows a simple, powerful way to engage consumers and achieve qualitative metrics.

And while this New Orleans-based example might be considered a bit esoteric, it is from TED after all, there are just as many examples online from brands including Starbucks and P&G.

Empower MediaMarketing, my employer, has detailed more than a few simple ways to engage with consumers. There are any number of ways to bring online efforts into the age of participation. and still be able to measure the end result.

Too Simple?
In preparing for an upcoming conference focused on blogging, a fellow blogger remarked that she's "tired of brands puking swag all over bloggers and expecting them to clean it up." She means she's tired of brands taking a one-size fits all approach -- pushing products and logo-laden tchotkes at bloggers and expecting a glowing post in response.

Per usual, whether it's the customer, a blogger or a member of the media, it takes an approach customized to the individual. 


Cross-posted to my work blog.