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

But, I digress. My tangent is distracting us all for the point of today’s rant.

Pointless, cheezy, salesy, uninvited emails via facebook.

I recently received this from someone in one of my groups:

When Britains Got Talent start Susan Boyle took the stage in front of the three judges, it was all the audience could do to stop themselves from laughing. In front of them stood a 47 year old woman with an unpolished appearance who was certain to humiliate herself in front of millions. Then she did something extraordinary. She sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from the West End musical Les Misérables so beautifully that she received a standing ovation and is the talk of the UK. Her audition which has since been put on Youtube has received tens of millions of views.

So what business lessons can Susan teach us?

1) Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Susan was written off before she’d sung a note. But not everything is always as it seems, sometimes it’s worth giving people and services a chance before writing them off. They may just surprise you.

2) A book is always judged by its cover.

The audience’s reaction to Susan was hardly surprising. Were we all being cynical? Well yes, but that’s human nature. Even though your product or service may be outstanding, people tend to make quick judgements. Is your website, packaging or marketing conveying the right message?

3) Be extraordinary

Susan isn’t a huge hit because she sang the best version of” I Dreamed A Dream”, there are better versions around if you care to look. She’s a huge hit because people were not expecting her to be so good. The fact that she exceeded everybody’s expectations made her performance extraordinary and something that people want to talk about. Is your company creating things worth talking about?

Finally a big congratulations to Susan who will continue to chase her dream. Something we should all be doing.

DO YOU SEE HOW LONG THIS IS?

And it’s not even from a friend. I don’t know who any of these people are. This some yodle esposing yodle-um for (who’s exactly?) benefit. I don’t get it.

1. FACEBOOK IS NOT A BLOG

your blog is a blog. posting a link to your blog is cool. I can read it if I want. It doesn’t clutter up my facebook page. that’s cool.

2. FACEBOOK IS FOR FRIENDS

I have friends that ask me questions about my business on facebook. I answer them.  That’s it. if it’s more than one paragraph I call them or email them offline. Every business owner I know and respect handles this the same way, so you might want to also.

3. FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS SEND SPAM

And you shouldn’t either.

R

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

Sending Announcements
In response to overwhelming demand from group managers, we have created the ability for you to send group announcements directly from your LinkedIn group to your members, via email. Your announcement will also automatically be posted as a discussion within the group so members can comment on it together.

As membership in LinkedIn groups continues to explode, we hear increasing concerns from our members about how their privacy is protected. Now that we have the Announcement feature, and in response to these concerns, we have removed the ability to download or view member email addresses.

RSS Feeds into Groups
Posting news items into groups has become very popular in the past couple months. So we’ve made it even easier for you to spark discussions around news and other Web content by enabling you to add RSS and Atom feeds to your group. You can pick up RSS and Atom feeds from your favorite sites around the web. News items from your feed will automatically show up under the News tab.

Managing Job-Focused Discussions
Group managers now have full control over whether to enable the jobs discussion capabilities within your group. The jobs area enables members to discuss job opportunities in these difficult economic times without cluttering the main conversation, and like all discussions it’s free.

LinkedIN’s made all email addresses private in groups – good for the group member but not so good for the group owner, especially if you were merging that group into your newsletter databases. The other thing we’re missing is the geographic management – I’ve got a colleague who has one group for her entire association – regardless of chapter preference – so now we’ll all get eachother’s notices… because she can no longer filter “only orange county” like she could in her email marketing platform. As is the case with upgrades, once they start they rarely stop, so I’m sure we’ll see more over the next few weeks…

Rebekah

It doesn’t matter what it is; a newsletter, postcard, fun picture or a sample of your work, sending anything out to your address book on a semi-regular basis is good for business. Let’s be clear: I am NOT advocating sending out a digest of boring crap that you think is important. I am NOT cheering for the rights of the cheezy sales guy sending me a 3-page long “regular priced 199 but for you it’s 99 (if you order in the next 10 minutes)”. I am ABSOLUTELY NOT endorsing the emailing of a daily quote that will be the first thing I curse at every morning….

What I am always encouraging of is the sharing of your brand and your personality in a way that betters the lives of those around you. If you are a online video company send me one of your coolest videos (if you have cool videos… if you don’t then just make one that’s funny) every month. If you’re a celeb photographer send me something no one else has seen yet. Are you getting the drift yet?

The trick to a great newsletter/eblast/marketing thing is

1. Be consistent with your personality.

If you are funny then your email should be funny. If you are overly stuffy then your email should be funny. If you are boring your email should be funny. If you are nerdy (like me) then it wouldn’t hurt to share something that will make everyone else feel a little more smart than they did before (I share my tech love of the month). Just don’t over-educate people – keep this short and entertaining!

2. Give the audience something that matters to them.

I know you want to sell your widget. Or talk about how cool you are. Restrain yourself. Think for a minute about who your ideal client is – a CFO? CEO? Small Biz Owner? IT guy? What really matters EVERY DAY for this ideal client of yours and what could you give them that would help this? Is it a coupon to the mac store, or the inside scoop on a new product (that has nothing to do with your products, but is consistent with your brand as “smart techie person”). Maybe your contacts would like to know about an upcoming charity event, or a community day at the park. Giving value doesn’t necessarily mean giving a discount on your product – but giving value always means make your readers day better than it was before your email.

3. NOT trying to “trick” anyone into something

If you are giving a coupon away, just give it away – don’t make people fill out a survey or give you their email addy – you already had it to send them the email with this amazing coupon!!!!! I know some sales coaches that tell you a 3 sentence “sales tip” at the top of their newsletter, and then go into 3 pages about how super-fantastic-incredible their coaching services are. I even know a girl that sends out “quotes of the day”… every single day… and I love her sweet heart, but it’s an automatic service that she doesn’t send every day – she pushes a button once and then forgets about it… while I get ANOTHER email in my inbox that I don’t HAVE TO read… it’s rather tragic.

So if you can take these 3 tips to heart I think you’ll shortly be a part of this wonderful newsletter family I find myself in – welcome to a world where people are happy to hear from you and ask to be on your mailing list.

R

*Author’s Note*

Please don’t think I hate email. I love love LOVE email. I just greatly dislike junk email. I also really really REALLY like saying hi and keeping in touch with colleagues. I just greatly dislike junk email. Notice a pattern?

You know who you are, and what you are selling, but do we?

It’s easy to tell the biz owners and salespeople that feel they must “educate” their customers before making the purchase. This “educating” often turns what should be a 30-second commercial or introduction into a 90-second or (even worse) 5 minute explanation… the handshake becomes a hand-clasp and pretty soon the person your talking to starts sweating and looking for the door.

Don’t worry – I’ve been there too. In fact, we all have (come’on, admit it!).

Educating your customers comes after they become your customer, not when you are shaking the hands of strangers at a networking event. What we need is a quick snapshot of who your prospects are, if we are to have any hope of recommending one or two of our colleagues to you.

So keep it simple, stupid – tell me your name, your company name, and the simple-est explanation of what you do that you can possible come up with… how do you know if you’ve got it? If you can tell the neighbor’s 6th-grader what you do in 3 sentences or less and they get it – or ask you more about it – then you’ve hit the mark.

An example:

my buddy Lesley Sattin over at monkeyjoespeak introduces herself as someone who does “stuff with your logo on it”

Doesn’t get much more simple than that, does it?

Here’s why: anybody +everyone = nobody

If you cannot give me an example of the perfect person to refer to you, then I am unable to mentally search the roster of 2000+contacts I have to find a great potential client for you. If you the business owner cannot narrow your focus, how can I the colleague that wants to help you out, do it either?

So try a few suggestions that will help you to not only craft the perfect 30-second commercial, but also better enable me the faithful referr-er to send you gobs of business leads:

1. Pick 1 or 2 “sample customers” to talk about. Maybe one is a really “successful business” example, and the other is less so (if you walk around telling everyone your ideal client is pathetic, who would want to admit they need you?).

2. Think of 1 or 2 of your best clients from recent years. What did you do for them that was so spectacular and how did it make their lives better for working with you? The happy ending stories are what people want to hear – doom and gloom marketing doesn’t make people want to hang out with you.

3. Pick 1 or 2 companies that you want as your client and ask everyone you know to introduce you to them. Even if the room your talking to doesn’t have that referral, they will think of a company just like your sample and want to help you with a connection. trust me.

4. Don’t be afraid to focus. A little focus will go a long way in building meaningful relationships. On a business management level, focus in a particular industry or market segment can help you to measure results, and then you can have an educated understanding of whether or not the selected industry or market segment can work for you. I’ve worked with dozens of people who thought their ideal client was xyz, but discovered they had the best working relationships with abc… but they didn’t know either way until they focused on each segment and measured the results.

5. You are forgettable. So am I. If we don’t make an impact and give our audience(s) something to associate with us as business, as a business owner, or as an individual, we will be forgotton. Focusing on 1 or 2 examples gives a cornerstone for people to remember you by. This is why taglines are so useful. Try a few out and see what people respond to. I’m the marketing maven because someone teased me once and called me a maven, I used it a couple of times and people remembered me, and so now it sticks. I didn’t pick it, but it helps people remember me, so I’m sticking with it regardless.

Now that you know these tips and tricks – please share them! Let’s kill the “anybody” and “everyone” schpeal, for everyone’s sake!

-pun intended-

R

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.

It’s worth noting also that eMarketer found a correlation with shorter email subject lines and an increase in the read rate – take away from this that your subject line can be more important than the content. What good is fantastic content if your audience never reads it because the subject line is so NOT interesting?

Cheers,

Rebekah

Walking the Show Floor

In addition to checking out the competition, walking the floor is a great practice for a multitude of reasons. Booth Setup. No matter how many years or how much money you spent in developing the perfect booth,  times change. Cruising the aisles is a great way to stay current. What booths are the busiest? How does the layout encourage people to hang out in the booth? What colors and styles are showing up more and more? Many people forget to also look for what doesn’t work. It never hurts to keep an eye out for the items in a booth setup (or in the way the staffers are interacting with patrons) looking for where people get bored and walk away. You don’t do that, ok? Learning from others both positively & negatively is the way to go.

Meet your Neighbors. You never know what new product/brand will be the next overnight success, just because you do or don’t like it, doesn’t mean the whole world agrees with you. Meeting your neighbors (aka networking) can give you buddies for future shows, tips on new shows to attend, and even connections for growing your business. The newer your product or service is, the more proactive you should be in getting around and meeting the neighbors.

Before The Show

Many people totally miss the boat on this one. The organizers of your show have a myriad of resources you can take advantage of. I’ve never attended (or even heard of) a show that didn’t do press release distribution to the press pre-event. Many shows even have online tools that allow you to go through and search attendees and exhibitors to setup meetings and events. I’m a big fan of downloading the Exhibitor list in advance and highlight the ones I want to visit at the show (colleagues call it the disneyland map – my show floor map with booths I want to visit highlighted). More often shows are even putting together cocktail parties or other networking events, these can be fantastic opportunities to meet attendees, exhibitors, and members of the press – without the ’sales’ setting of the show floor. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO please for the love of all business hopes everywhere, PUT YOUR PRESS KIT IN THE PRESS ROOM. Some shows these days are going digital – so you don’t even have to print this stuff out. Should a press person happen to stop at your booth – GIVE THEM SAMPLES – treat them like the avenues to advantage that they are. I’ve seen soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many exhibitors completely blow it here. If keeping your samples at your booth just in case someone wants to place an order is more important to you than 20,000 people reading about your product – your business is in MUCH MORE trouble than a couple of orders can cure.

Post Event

Call the people you said you were going to call. Send thank you notes to the folks that let you borrow their ladder during setup, or shared their power hookup with you. Email the visitors you collected cards for. Send a note to your connection at the show. Debrief your show team about how the event went and what you want to do about it next year – write it down, put it on the calendar, and get it done…. before you get back to the office if possible. You spent all this time and money getting ready for the show, you ought to be just as diligent when wrapping it up.

Hopefully some of these tips make it through to the folks I see at every show complaining about how slow it is (while one row over is hopping – because their staff isn’t so busy complaining they can’t pay attention to the visitors), and some of the folks I see that are almost-famous can get that edge they were looking for. Trade Shows are a valuable part of the marketing plan for 95% of the business world, it just takes the right show with the right setup for all the elements of success to fall into place.

Cheers,

Rebekah King