Smashing Social Media-I mean Guitars

I have been reading the story about the guitar damaged on a United Airlines flight and the choice of the aggrieved party to capture his trauma and broadcast via YouTube… a year later. The implications for those of us in the B2B world who are still viewing a toe-dip in the icy waters of social media as tantamount to a plunge into a shark-infested riptide, are unfortunate, to say the least. Perhaps I have been a little Pollyanna-ish in my excitement and promotion of these media to my customer relationship and reference colleagues. Perhaps my notion that this environment will be self-regulating is too naïve, assumptive of the greater good, presuming that most consumers are eager for legitimate credible exchange of information and engagement in open and honest conversation and dialogue with the companies with whom they do business. Okay, maybe a little or a lot of the prefacing comments, but before we run shrieking back into our world of 1-800 scripted customer service models, let's take a deep breath.

• The United Airlines "Guitar" Story is ONE Story
  
• United Airlines could have/should have preemptively struck, even prior to having any corporate social media strategy that contemplated triage and response to this type of incident.
  
• The incident could have been quietly handled, as we all hope baggage issues, delayed flights, and missed connections will be OR it could have been "spun" into a marvelous customer service story complete with an acoustic Guitar version of the infamous UA commercials.
  

Jay Baer's blog expresses these points far more succinctly:

"I certainly believe United would have been A LOT better off dealing with this immediately and turning a negative into a positive by co-opting Carroll and his story. Consider the career-based motives of Mr. Carroll, I suspect he'd have been happy to create a positive video about United, had the $$$ and exposure been sufficient.

My fear in all this is that it will paradoxically have a chilling effect on brands engaging in social media, as they become more and more concerned about the veracity of claims. Carroll may have got his, but I'm not sure anyone will benefit but him. Certainly not United and I doubt he'll help social media customer service as a whole." A Social Media Gun to the Head, July 21st, 2009 | Written By: Jason Baer

http://ow.ly/hN0Q

 

Certainly, Carroll didn't keep entirely silent about the damage to his guitar prior to the release of his YouTube? Somebody at United must have been informed, called, shouted at? Was it the lack of response or compensatory action that caused this young artist to act now in such a global way? Who knows, point is that in the B2B world we now can choose to be held hostage by the possible threat of these incidents or we can do what I have advised in the past:

1. Develop a strategy
   
2. Look for opportunities to highlight even the negative Tweets, Facebook Comments, YouTube videos, etc., etc., etc., etc. in an acknowledgement that we all make mistakes but we are willing to address them.
   
3. Be upfront, honest, and quick to respond.
   
4. Move on.
   

I know, I know, it can't possibly be that simple. J

 

Until next time, my regards,

Are we “listening” to or merely “hearing” our customers?

As frequently annoying as my English major history is to my co-workers and friends, it sometimes directs me to nuances in our communication and presentation that although possibly nit-picky to others, at minimum provide me with fodder for blog posts. As I was contemplating some fine-tuning of a social media and networking strategy and the implications of our corporate presence in the wild world of Twitter, it occurs to me that I have been suggesting that an option for many B2B first steps into the SMN world is to "hear" what their customers and others are saying, when I really mean we should be "listening" to them. As a common practice and in our customer relationship and support efforts, we use these words interchangeably when by any definition (you can check me) they really are quite different and depending upon which word we choose as the foundation of our strategy, may have very different ramifications for our success.

Briefly, (I won't bore you with etymology or origin), Merriam-Webster Online offers that the word "hearing" is suggestive of the process and biology by which our ears receive and transmit sound. "Listening" on the other hand, intimates a higher-level neural process of interpretation. If we have a loss of "hearing", we cannot process the stimuli of audio waves; if we lose the ability to "listen", in this context, I suggest that we are missing some key messages that our customers, prospects, and others are trying to transmit. As a direction for our participation in social media and networks and our customer conversation overall, this is a key difference.

I have been writing quite a bit about "listening" to the conversation of our customers, competitors, prospects, and general audience in the SMN world a way to assess perception of our solutions, begin to respond more interactively with various audiences, and fine-tune our messages and products. As B2B's are struggling with whether they should participate in the SMN universe or not and as they do, how they should measure the success of this effort, I think we often get trapped in the numbers game of "how many mentions" "how many followers" "how many leads" "how many prospects" "how many negative v. positives tweets" etc., etc., etc. While these are valuable metrics, I believe that they only provide a slice of the customer conversational dynamic. To me, the true appeal of interacting with audiences in ways other than through "Contact us" forms on websites, is that Twitter, Facebook, etc. afford us with a deeper level of information and idea exchange that is repeatable across many demographics and platforms. Instead of just counting the web hits on our new feature release page, we can assess the tone of the conversation about the release; compare different threads from tech-Twibes to Facebook Fan groups, to closed-user communities, to general user population groups. Conversation in this fashion provides us with a much richer picture of the reaction of our audience and we are using the SAME collateral, potentially, as we would in a static post on our website. I don't think this is as subtle of a distinction as it may appear and it is one of the many reasons I am so passionate about the potential of social media and networking in the B2B world; it imbues our professional conversations with a deeper and more compelling meaning and hopefully, casts the net of relationship possibilities wider.

In a broader sense, I think that the difference between "hearing" conversations about our solutions and "listening" to them can inform our customer support, sales, and roadmap strategies in much more intelligent fashion. I am not discounting the relevance of assessing the number of clients who want us to produce a webinar about the use of one feature v. another in our product sets, but I think that we may be much better informed, prepared, and relevant to their needs if we understand their various use models or proposed implementations of the feature in which they express interest. To me, this is the difference between "hearing" what they want and "listening" to it. Listening to the dialogue around us implies that we are prepared to engage in attentive and respectful conversations. We will ask intelligent questions. We will have some level of information about the other party's interests and demographic and we will reflect that in our responses and questions back to them. We will invite other resources and people to the conversation, as appropriate. We will NOT monopolize the conversation. And most importantly, we will not assume that people have any interest in what we are saying until they indicate so, so we will not continue to go on and on to the same people when it is clear that they are looking for any way to excuse themselves from the conversations, up to and including leaving the room and "blocking" us.

 

Does all of this sound like basic interpersonal etiquette? As I have suggested before, the principles for success in social media and networking conversations are founded in the manners with which most of us were schooled. Be nice; raise your hand; wait your turn; ask about the other person's interests and hobbies; say please and thank you, etc., etc., etc.

As always, my warmest regards,

 

 

Merriam-Webster Online

Hearing:

1 a: the process, function, or power of perceiving sound ; specifically
: the special sense by which noises and tones are received as stimuli
b:
earshot2 a: opportunity to be heard, to present one's side of a case, or to be generally known or appreciated
b (1): a listening to arguments
(2): a preliminary examination in criminal procedure
c: a session (as of a legislative committee) in which testimony is taken from witnesses3chiefly dialect
: a piece of news

Listening:

1
: to pay attention to sound <listen to music>
2
: to hear something with thoughtful attention : give consideration <listen to a plea>
3
: to be alert to catch an expected sound <listen for his step>

So You Went and Set-Up a Corporate Twitter Account

When I was 11, I decided with a friend of mine one Saturday morning that I wanted to have pierced ears. I was supposed to wait until I was 12, at which point, my mother and I were going to make a special day of the event. As a rite of passage, this was particularly important to my mother, yet in the spur-of-the-moment, often impatient "must-have-it-now" mood that has driven many of my decisions throughout life, my friend and I jumped on our bikes, rode to a strip mall beauty parlor and proceeded to bring our ears into adolescence. In keeping with my mother's hallmark graciousness and ability to flexibly accommodate my often challenging rush through adolescence, rather than insisting that the studs come out and that I wait for our special day, she let the earrings remain and I have since had a 30 + history of branding myself with a variety of statements hanging from my lobes.

In the mad rush to participate in the social media and networking universe and not be left looking like an 11-year old in a world full of teenagers, many of us are creating and implementing a corporate presence prematurely, despite advice to the contrary. As a number of my posts have suggested, the pitfalls of launching a social media profile without a strategy are numerous and the depth and breadth of the community that is immediately aware of our launch can mean that a tentative approach to participation is akin to throwing raw meat in the lion cage. In an attempt to channel the grace and ability to roll with the adolescent punches demeanor of my mother, rather than post some "I told you so's", I want to offer suggestions for making sure that your premature toe-dipping may lend itself to a more robust, sustainable engagement in the SMN conversation. So, to all of you who have jumped on the Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, blog, etc. bandwagon without waiting for our "special" moment of carefully planned profile, content and infrastructure decisions, here is your first set of earrings:

1. 
   We Know You're There: It is quite likely that as soon as you have created a Twitter, Facebook or other profile that includes your company name or any information about you, that some customers who have been waiting for you are going to know about it . (Your competitors will definitely know about it!) Even the most rudimentary search engines and crawls are set-up to immediately alert your communities of interest when you have joined the conversation. Just as it was difficult to hide my newly pierced ears until the "right" moment, as soon as a Twitter account is implemented, add-on modules are designed to find it.
   
2. Say Something: Because our digital presence is increasingly obvious and discoverable, it is critical that as soon as you create a profile that you begin to do something with it. Whether the long term strategy for social media participation ends up being passive or not, posting a static account with a basic bio in it is counter to the dynamic of social media and networking ethos all together. Your customer and prospects may run across your profile one time and bookmark or create an alert for it, but if you don't begin even a minimum level of posting, or content refreshment, they will quickly delete you from their search and their interest. The virtual ear holes will close up unless they are rotated, changed, and noticeable.
   
3. Ask/Disclose: Take a proactive approach to engaging your current client base or community of interest. You've gone ahead and established your presence, rather than waiting for people to discover you (and they will) and then responding blankly when they ask what your intentions with the profile are, take the high-ground and query your established communities for what will engage them in conversation with you in these areas. My earlier posts suggest that participation in these environments provides a rich opportunity for us to break-free of our collateral ruts and respond to new and different communities of interest and information needs. One way of "masking" a too premature leap into the conversation might be to try something completely transparent and invite our current clients and prospects to provide suggestions and (gasp) content to us! In other words, take out the diamond studs and offer to let others design your new look.
   
4. Don't Be Shy: This may be repetitive, but remember, particularly in the case of Twitter, this is a CONVERSATION not a BOOK. Post questions, brief comments, ideas, "coming-soon's", etc. Get engaged in the conversation: as quickly as a negative Tweet will be passed around, honest and credible, if somewhat immaturely formulated Tweets and post will be forgiven as long as you are participating in the dialogue. What will be noted and dismissed (and discussed) is a too heavy-handed, formal marketing approach to your participation. The backlash that the thousands of sales appeals on Twitter have begun to experience should be a lesson to those thinking that a Tweet that just directs people to a lead gen page or a sales pitch is going to be enough.
   

The Newbie Twitter Challenge

Rather than continue to opine at the 50,000 foot level about things to do when you have set up a social media and networking presence sans a comprehensive strategy, I thought I'd issue a challenge that contemplates that four tactics outlined above. As long as you've gone and set up a profile, I challenge you to at least minimally engage your potential listeners and conversational participants by doing the following……TODAY

• Search for and find a negative/positive Tweet (blog comment, article, etc.) and ReTweet it (post it, etc.) and ask for comment or respond.
  
• Tweet the question: What would you like to see here?
  
• Identify someone (anyone) in your organization who has responsibility for at minimum, monitoring the social media and networking communities in which you have chosen to participate. Not listening to the dialogue when you don't have a presence is unfortunate enough, but putting yourself out there without any mechanism for responding to the conversation is extremely dangerous!
  

 

 

Very Influential Assets™ - Part II What Are They?

I am finally seeing some daylight in my inbox, voicemail, and snail mail after 10 days in Peru, and quite appropriately the avalanche of information that accumulated in my absence begs some answers relevant to Part II of my musing on the concept of Very Influential Assets ™ and how their identification and promotion in the customer relationship and reference dialogue elevates our conversation with various audiences and hopefully introduces a focus and efficiency to our attempts to delight and attract new audiences to our particular messages. As always, a big fan of the dictionary, I find all five of Merriam's top four definitions interesting in the context of VIA ™ in the B2B customer relationship world:

Influence

1 a: an ethereal fluid held to flow from the stars and to affect the actions of humans b: an emanation of occult power held to derive from stars2: an emanation of spiritual or moral force3 a: the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command b: corrupt interference with authority for personal gain4: the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways : sway5: one that exerts influence

It is axiomatic that certain pieces of evidence collateral are expected and de rigueur in sales cycles and in our marketing efforts. What I have begun to posit in this sense, is that certain of our evidence assets appear to achieve the almost "occult power" suggested by the dictionary. As I have suggested in the past, our presentation and identification of these assets has become a chicken and egg exercise in the absence of comprehensive measurement and evaluation tools for using case studies, interviews, press releases, and most importantly customer reference collateral in our sales and marketing exercises. Often, we consider an asset influential simply because it is associated with our largest clients; it was used by the majority of our sales team; or we just "believe" that it is a strategic and key piece of our information arsenal. I gingerly suggest that we often fall into the trap of believing that information that we present to our prospects and other external audiences is considered influential simply because we have "always" used certain case studies, they become known commodities and we leave it at that. In this part of the Very Influential Asset ™ series, I begin to discuss my definition of influential assets and how we might begin to mine for other pieces of evidence that have the "capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways" in our customer conversation. I make no pretension about providing an exhaustive list of potential Very Influential Assets ™, but in the spirit of this concept and breaking our traditional approach of churning out case studies. The idea here is to kick off our collective creative brain power in terms of thinking about non-traditional assets:

1. Customer conversation goes on in many more places than we think and influential assets are not always produced by us or our key reference clients.
   
2. Just because it isn't a pretty html page or marketing piece with our careful branding, doesn't mean it isn't influential.
   
3. Our competitors may provide us with fodder or material to which we can react or that will inspire ideas.
   

What are the potential buckets of Very Influential Assets ™?

Think internal and external

Think customer and non-customer

Think "People" and "Content"

    VIA™ We May Already Have/Use

1. Okay, of course we include our existing library of audio/video interviews, case studies, press releases, survey results, data sheets, etc. But let's apply some analysis to the determination of whether they are influential or not.
   
2. The laptops of our top sales people. What hidden documents, slide decks, and email messages do our top sales people use?
   
3. Technical documentation, training, company videos. Why not? A well-scripted "how-to" guide may be a better indication of our bench strength in a sales cycle than a quote that says we provide great implementation support.
   

VIA™ To Consider

1. New customer references-always.
   
2. Communities, blogs, and networks that are focused on our industry and solution.
   
3. The Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. profiles and information from our employees.
   
4. Ditto for our customer, our vendors, and our partners.
   
5. Our competitor's blogs, websites, and collateral.
   
6. Comments and posts about our companies, solutions, people, etc. anywhere, anytime, on any topic
   
7. Negative Tweets
   
8. Comments from any employee in your organization; interviews with any employee in your organization-NOT JUST SALES, SME's, OR EXECUTIVES.
   
9. And many, many more.
   

My intention with this exercise has been to emphasize the hidden caches of content that social media and networking participation has exposed as customer collateral possibilities. The next parts of the series will begin to address ways in which we might assess the "very" modifier of your influential assets and how we might align our focus to elevate those assets in new ways in our customer dialogue.

I very much welcome comments and thoughts and as always, warmest regards until next time.

Copyright 2009 Lisa M. Hoesel

 

 

 

 

 

Twitter Time-Out or Mom, I’m really not Call/Email/IM Screening You

I was put in Twitter/Email/Blackberry/IM/ etc. time-out this weekend both due to some slow connectivity issues and preparation for a trip to Peru (more on that on another blog J). As I reentered the 24/7 world to which I am rabidly addicted this morning, I was musing about the evolution of technology over my lifespan and how it has molded my expectations of my ability to instantly connect with those around me or vice versa. I did not have to walk three miles in the snow to get to school, though I did walk, and I did not carry a cell phone with me in case something happened along the way. Our home phone did not even have an answering machine, much less voice mail. If I called one of my friends, and the phone was busy, I called back later. This was the norm. At the time, it did not seem unusual at all to have to wait for a response to a question, more pointedly, to have to wait to even ask the question. In a relatively short (I'm am NOT going to tell you my age but let's say that it's less than five and more than three decades), I have come to demand instant gratification in terms of my ability to communicate, respond, have questions answered and problems solved. In turn, I have set up an expectation, both professionally and personally, that I can be reached pretty much 24/7. I believe the first time I responded to a work email at 7:00 pm on a Friday, I place one virtual foot on the slippery slope toward disappointing my friends and colleagues when I do not/cannot answer their queries or assist them immediately at any time. Friends, this is the world in which we live today. I'm sure that soc-anthrop majors of the future and psychologists of today will dine out on this for years, but the internet and its accompanying social media and networking applications have led a majority of us to share the unwritten mutual agreement that we are ONLINE NOW! I am working on the ramifications of this in my personal/professional life, but in keeping with the theme of this blog, I'd like to share some thoughts for this reality in the B2B customer relationship world. Again, as companies are making the decision to join the Twitterverse (e al), host online customer service chats, and respond to comments on blogs, a majority of their assessment should be devoted to the infrastructure, messaging and preparation necessary for their participation to be effective and not backfire. The rapidity with which our failure to answer the expectations of our audience will be repeated is virtually unrecoverable in today's world. Whether we like it or not, when we join our customers in the social media and networking world, we have signed on to some terms in an implicit, universal, and new culture SLA:

The Terms:

1. We are here when you are: Joining social media and networking applications and groups seems to imply that we are all conversing at the same time. We need to carefully consider the phrasing in our profiles regarding our intent for participating and responding to Tweets, comments, and queries.
   
2. We will respond when you reach out to us: Our hours of customer service and turn-around time cannot be explicit enough. Fair or not, if we decide to participate in certain networks that are designed to facilitate 24/7 conversation and information exchange, we should be prepared to respond 24/7
   
3. We will update our content and our information regularly: the social media and networking world is defined by refreshed, updated, responsorial content, not by static .pdf files.
   
4. If your server/connection/pc is not down ours isn't/aren't either: Our network issues are NOT shared by our customers. If our email, server connection, etc. goes down, and we have chosen to participate in the SMN world, our back-up infrastructure must reflect the culture of that world.
   
5. We are always in the same time zone as you are: 24/7 participation and membership means across all time zones. If I am a global business, then I necessarily must build a support infrastructure that reflects this.
   
6. We are who we say we are: I am increasingly running across B2B social media and networking participants who seem to have jumped on the bandwagon rather haphazardly. The links and profiles point to third-party service providers or content host sites rather than any real place to exchange information, thoughts, questions, or customer service problems.
   

As a last thought, I'll share a story about my current attempt to locate an external hard drive that I ordered early this month. For the time being, I will keep the company name anonymous, as those of you who have been reading my Tweets, blog posts, etc., know how quickly I believe our current 24/7 virtual culture can negatively impact a company's reputation and I am reluctant to do that….yet. I became concerned about not receiving the new hard drive on Thursday of last week. I pulled up my internet receipt, only to find that the email message did not include any customer service contact information or instructions about what to do in case of a problem. I went to the company's website and found an 800 number. I called the 800 number and found no customer service options in their tree. After pressing "1" for support, I left a message in "Nicole's" voice mail. I called back and pressed "2" for sales, and got "Nicole's" voice mail. I sent an email to the alias on the receipt. I did not receive an email back. I filled out a form on the website via the "contact us" option. I received an auto-generated email saying that my information had been received. I DM'd the Twitter profile, and have received no response.

Without belaboring the point any longer, my "implied" SLA with this vendor is that since they are internet-order only, I should receive a response to at least one of these attempts to contact them. And yes, the charge for the new toy has been run……

 

As always, my best.

 

 

 

Social Media Applications for Internal Communications?!? – Absolutely!

I had the pleasure of having coffee this morning with a friend of mine who is a Director for Insights, a global leadership and team development resource. As the conversation wound its way through the dynamics and puzzles of social media and networking use models in the B2B world, she asked me to help her understand how customer references and SMN applications could be used for internal communications purposes. Kathy, my apologies for my profuse and enthusiastic response to your queries, but as I shared with you, I think that there are many internal communications processes that could absolutely benefit from adopting the emerging models in customer reference and relationship management as they relate to the social media and networking trends that are proliferating in the B2B world.

Kathy and I used Human Resources as a metaphor for our discussion and I will continue that mental thread here.

In the customer relationship and reference world, we are beginning to contemplate all of our client assets as potential collateral for shortening sales cycles, deepening and broadening our relationship with prospects, analyst, and other external communities. Many vendors, including References-Online, are beginning to not only offer methods by which sales and marketing teams can present assets to constituencies through email invitations, spotlights, etc., but are grasping the importance of the ability to present materials via communities of interest and social media discussion applications. In previous posts, I have indicated that conversations in these media are happening regardless of our attentiveness or participation, so it certainly behooves us to perform a social media audit/assessment on our own organizations to understand what the dialogue is outside of our traditionally unilaterally fed processes. I believe that the dynamic is identical when we are referring to an internal department such as Human Resources, conveying new policies and procedures, documents, changes in benefits, etc. to its internal constituency. Whether we like it or not, when we release a major change in health insurance and announce it using the standard corporate email memo, the "water cooler" chat that has always happened has now extended to the immediate and much farther reaching world of Twitter, blogs, Facebook status updates, etc. Not only should we be aware and open to this dialogue, but as a participant, an H.R. representative could very quickly gauge the temperature of employee response to policy change, answer questions, provide additional detail, and do this all in a more "social" "human" fashion. Certainly the methodology will vary corporate culture to corporate culture, but bear with me as I carry this idea out.

Hypothetical H.R. Situation that does not resemble any company for which I have ever worked J:

• Once a week, the CEO of a large organization issues a corporate email (or blog post) to the intranet.
  
• He/She announces exciting news, upcoming product releases, and the new enrollment period of the benefits package that will no longer include dental care for dependents.
  
• Everybody ignores the exciting new client relationships, feature release for the premier product, etc. because they are furious about the exclusion of the dental package.
  
• Some people send emails to the CEO; some call the H.R. department; some stew about it over their cubicle walls….
  
• Today, most people get on Facebook, Twitter, their personal blogs, or 'unauthorized' corporate communities and rant and rave.
  

What would be a better alternative?

Hypothetical H.R. Situation that does not resemble any company for which I have ever worked (really this time) J

• The Human Resources department has access to a "customer relationship" database in which they catalogue and link to a plethora of benefits, employment, assistance information, including templates for "spotlighting" changes in packages, advice for tricky work situations, even guidelines about telecommuting and swine flu.
  
• As often as they feel compelled to, H.R. personnel can search for collateral that answers employee questions, send it to individuals with an email invitation or blast a piece to the corporate distribution list. Vendors such as RO will immediately provide tracking information about clicks on the emails AND individual pieces of collateral so that H.R. can begin to assess its reach and response rates.
  
• Better yet, the H.R. team can select critical announcements of benefits assets from their database search and Tweet them under the H.R. Twitter profile, which of course all good corporate citizens follow. If they have the right system in place, the tiny URL that they have included in their Tweet is tracked similarly to content issued in the invitation email. A number of associated applications to the social media and networking tools like Twitter provide them with even more thorough analytics about their followers AND their retweets, in this case, or comments in general.
  
• Though still unhappy about the exclusion of dental benefits for dependents, employees feel as if they have abundant information about the changes, multiple access points to share their concerns without retaliation (see post about responses to negative tweets) and may very well engage more effectively with the Human Resource department, reducing strain on them and reduced use of the Employee Assistance Plan.
  

Bottom line is: Yes, Kathy, I think internal communications processes can greatly benefit from customer relationship and reference modeling and social media and networking applications overall. I've used the H.R. department as a metaphor, but I think the concept applies to all types of internal and external dialogue.

To the rest of you, I, as always, welcome your feedback and comments

Until next lightning bolt strikes, my very warmest regards,

Lisa

Copyright 2009, Lisa M. Hoesel

 

Very Influential Asset™ Part I Introducing the Concept

Customer relationship and reference programs have always been challenged with maximizing the contribution of our key client assets on budgets that seem constantly at-risk, with sporadic executive support, wide variance in effective technology, and a confusing array of measurement and success metrics. For the last seven years, I have had the pleasure of working with clients who are at wildly different stages in the maturity of their customer reference programs. Although our answers to the fundamental questions about customer "referenceability", loyalty, rewards, recruitment, etc. are very different, all customer relationship and reference professionals share the same laundry list of objectives: to identify, recruit and produce the most credible and valuable assets for their programs; to protect that collateral from overuse and fatigue; and maximize their contribution across their organizations. Wikipedia's definition of customer reference management and its focus on advocacy elucidate this common theme:

"… to improve and enhance the level of "advocacy" a set of customers displays related to a vendor's products & services. Specifically, a vendor's objective is to gain referrals and positive "word of mouth" from this advocacy…"

The broadness of this definition both as it relates to the assets that are influential in our practices and its agnosticism as it relates to the delivery of assets to various audiences. As innovative and ground-breaking as the customer reference programs with which I have had the honor of working, are, I think that the ability of customer relationship and reference technology solutions and the emergence of social media and networking as agnostic, multi-threaded customer and vendor playgrounds, demand that we take the next steps in the evaluation of our customer advocates and the content that we deliver to them. Customer reference programs have traditionally focused on very tightly controlling the communication amongst our clients and prospects. The advent of Twitter, Linkedin, etc. etc etc, as credible customer conversation forums have rendered this task nearly impossible, but somewhat paradoxically, afford us with an opportunity to identify and leverage the most influential customer participants in these communities. This thought leads me to believe that a new methodology for approaching the challenge of supporting and enhancing our customer conversations is necessary and appropriate. I have developed a concept that I believe will help tune our programs to accommodate and embrace these trends . With no further ado, I introduce the Very Influential Asset ™ or VIA ™ metaphor.

The VIA™ concept, process and methodology is designed to help customer reference and relationshp professionals target those customers, advocates, and materials that have the deepest and broadest ability to elevate and promote our brands and solutions. My definition of "asset" in this context includes any person or piece of collateral that advances our goals of educating, selling, and communicating our products or mission. By the way, although I am primarily interested in the B2B conversations, I think this concept applies to the B2C, non-profit, and even interpersonal dialogues. When we can identify and spotlight those assets that are most influential for us, our customer reference paradigm shifts from mass production of content to very specific messaging.

In previous posts to this blog, I have written about my research and exposure to the importance of identifying clients who participate in the social media and networking space and for a variety of reaosns, influence by a power of x, more prospects and observers of our brands and companies than others. Jim Watson of Razorsfish, kicked off this brainstorm for me when he spoke to the Social Media Club of Seattle and shared this thought:

"The old 'If we build it they will come' strategy is being replaced by reliance on consumer ambassadors, and finding opportunities to augment dialogue. If you have a good product and good service, even negative comments add to your credibility because they prompt other people jump to your defense."

Customer reference managers have always struggled with defending the value of collateral that they produce and present. We all believe that case studies and press releases are key ingredients in our customer reference recipes, but we have only recently begun to measure not just their effectiveness in sales cycles but their perceived value both by our internal constituencies and external recipients. Quite frankly, I think many of us are still succumbing to the belief that sheer numbers are still evidence of a successful customer reference/relationship program. Even as we have tuned our approach so that it contemplates a variety of customer experience and content, we still measure our efforts in terms of totals rather than ability to influence and contribute. We have carried this B2B myth into our participation in the social media and networking world; note the number of tools available to add followers to Twitter, as an example and the difficulty of determining which of our followers has followers of their own that meet our demographic and interest target goals.

Shifting to an emphasis on Influence, accomplishes several things:

1. Our customer reference resources are strained. In previous white papers and posts, I have argued that social media and networking are not strategies in and of themselves, they are tools. Our customer reference programs are already constrained by budget cuts and the availability of support personnel and infrastructure, if we focus on the number of followers that we have or the amount of content that we post, we are only perpetuating this problem. Concentrating on the customer advocates and content that are most influential for us, alleviates this strain and, has an exponential power to elevate our message.
   
2. We suffer from "dusty shelf" syndrome. Because we have focused on volume rather than value, a number of our customer assets are sitting on our virtual shelves, unused and unloved. By identifying what messages and individuals are most influential for our message and brand, not only can we avoid this perpetual archive, but we may very well be able to re-purpose content that up to now has not seemed relevant.
   
3. $. If our analysis demonstrates that particular customer advocates and certain themes in our business case, audio/video interview, etc content are more influential than others, we will be able to allocate our shrinking budgets to the VIA ™ materials that are most compelling. As obvious as this sounds, I think that we can all "get" the value of spending the majority of our time cultivating indivudals in our customer reference programs that are better connected to their peers than others. If a survey of our sales team finds that they always use one particular busienss case and that when they use it, they close the most and largest deals, wouldn't we be inclined to produce more documetns that are similar to this most influential one?
   

We, as customer reference and relatinship professionals, are bombarded with statistics about our customers' participation in social media and networking (see previous posts) and the absolute truth that conversation and information sharing among our constituents is overwhelmingly more important in their decision-making process than demonstrations by our sales teams. It is clear to me that the more astutely we can identify those participants who are most influential for us in these arenas, the more finely we may tune our message and concentrate our resources. In the next several of months, I will be publishing a white paper that delineates the process steps for identifying, soliciting and promoting your Very Influential Assets™. I am looking forward to your feedback on this concept and approach!

As always, warmetst regards,

Lisa

Copyright 2009, Lisa M Hoesel