Social Media Tools Week - Nov 16 - 20th - Over 30 speaker about social media tools and best practices. http://xeeurl.com/A01414
If you tweet about it use the twitter hash tag #SMTW
Please invite your colleagues, peers, customers, friends
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Can You Segment Your Twitter Followers and What Value Does That Bring?
The matrix below was first posted on Social Media Today and was create by Ogilvy (an ad agency) for IBM. Although the original post was called “Have You Considered Segmenting Your Social Media Strategy?”, the matrix primarily speaks to how you can use Twitter and, secondarily, who you will be speaking to.
One of the commenters to this post asked how you go about segmenting your followers. I believe that Twitter is a good prospecting tool, so I gave the question some though thought and wrote the following:
Customer Relations:
Your customers can be searched by name, but you may have problems knowing if the John Brown that you found is your customer – or not find your John Brown because he is JayBrown on Twitter. However, you can still do pretty well with a Twitter People search. The other approach is to actively promote your Twitter presence through other means so that your customers proactively follow you.
Potential customers can be promoted to via your website and other outreach mechanisms. You can also find them by doing searches on content and geography (if location is important). Content and geography associated with user accounts can be done through various Twitter search tools. You can also search directly on Twitter using your product / company name to see if people are tweeting about you – or search on your product category to determine who is interested in what you are promoting. Also try putting a hashtag (#) in front of your product category to see if there is are people who are regularly tweeting about your product category. For example, #CRM is being used for people who are interested in CRM software.
Crisis Management:
Crisis Management is usually an infrequent event. You should have found many of the people you need to follow when you implemented your Customer Relations and Corporate Reputation Management programs. In a crisis, you will want to tweet to customers, potential customers, industry leaders, news media people and interest groups. You could do a search on your company name the day that a crisis breaks and quickly try to follow those people, but it will be tough to implement something like that when you have a big crisis on your hands. You should focus on tweeting to your followers, DM’ing (Direct Messaging) those that have a lot of followers or who seem particularly negative, and re-tweeting people who are supporters.
Corporate Reputation Management:
Industry leaders can often be identified through blogs, conference speakers’ lists, authors, etc. and then found on Twitter through a People search. The area of “news media” is a little broad, but editors, columnists, etc. who cover your industry can be best identified offline – then found though Twitter’s People search. The same is true for industry / interest groups. Also remember that influential bloggers, not just the mainstream media, should be found and their Twitter accounts identified.
Event Coverage:
Just like with any product promotion, everyone should be tweeted about upcoming events. However, you can go a step further and ask for Twitter account names when someone shows interest in an event or actually signs up. Then, create a Twitter account just for that event and have these people follow your Twitter event account. Also, have every event description or online registration form have a “Tweet this” button, making it easy for people to share their enthusiasm.
Product Promotion & Sales:
Again, tweet to the customer and potential customers that you are following (and who are now following you) about product promotions and sales. However, if you have a direct sales force, encourage your sales reps to have their own Twitter accounts and follow their own customers and prospects. A personal tweet helps keep the human element alive and the follower might even DM (Direct Message) the sales reps asking for more information.
Issue Advocacy:
Issue Advocacy is really the not-for-profit version of promotion, sales, and support. However, some organizations are both looking for money from donors and looking for volunteers (think Big Brothers / Big Sisters ). They need money to keep the organizations going and volunteers to deliver their services, but the donors and the volunteers are different people.
One of the commenters to this post asked how you go about segmenting your followers. I believe that Twitter is a good prospecting tool, so I gave the question some though thought and wrote the following:
Customer Relations:
Your customers can be searched by name, but you may have problems knowing if the John Brown that you found is your customer – or not find your John Brown because he is JayBrown on Twitter. However, you can still do pretty well with a Twitter People search. The other approach is to actively promote your Twitter presence through other means so that your customers proactively follow you.
Potential customers can be promoted to via your website and other outreach mechanisms. You can also find them by doing searches on content and geography (if location is important). Content and geography associated with user accounts can be done through various Twitter search tools. You can also search directly on Twitter using your product / company name to see if people are tweeting about you – or search on your product category to determine who is interested in what you are promoting. Also try putting a hashtag (#) in front of your product category to see if there is are people who are regularly tweeting about your product category. For example, #CRM is being used for people who are interested in CRM software.
Crisis Management:
Crisis Management is usually an infrequent event. You should have found many of the people you need to follow when you implemented your Customer Relations and Corporate Reputation Management programs. In a crisis, you will want to tweet to customers, potential customers, industry leaders, news media people and interest groups. You could do a search on your company name the day that a crisis breaks and quickly try to follow those people, but it will be tough to implement something like that when you have a big crisis on your hands. You should focus on tweeting to your followers, DM’ing (Direct Messaging) those that have a lot of followers or who seem particularly negative, and re-tweeting people who are supporters.
Corporate Reputation Management:
Industry leaders can often be identified through blogs, conference speakers’ lists, authors, etc. and then found on Twitter through a People search. The area of “news media” is a little broad, but editors, columnists, etc. who cover your industry can be best identified offline – then found though Twitter’s People search. The same is true for industry / interest groups. Also remember that influential bloggers, not just the mainstream media, should be found and their Twitter accounts identified.
Event Coverage:
Just like with any product promotion, everyone should be tweeted about upcoming events. However, you can go a step further and ask for Twitter account names when someone shows interest in an event or actually signs up. Then, create a Twitter account just for that event and have these people follow your Twitter event account. Also, have every event description or online registration form have a “Tweet this” button, making it easy for people to share their enthusiasm.
Product Promotion & Sales:
Again, tweet to the customer and potential customers that you are following (and who are now following you) about product promotions and sales. However, if you have a direct sales force, encourage your sales reps to have their own Twitter accounts and follow their own customers and prospects. A personal tweet helps keep the human element alive and the follower might even DM (Direct Message) the sales reps asking for more information.
Issue Advocacy:
Issue Advocacy is really the not-for-profit version of promotion, sales, and support. However, some organizations are both looking for money from donors and looking for volunteers (think Big Brothers / Big Sisters ). They need money to keep the organizations going and volunteers to deliver their services, but the donors and the volunteers are different people.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Social selling - What does it mean in reality?
How much more salesy can you get? How much harder can you beat your sales force? How much more pressure can you put onto your customers? Didn't you overstep the line long time ago?
Social selling is a new art, a new discipline, a more effective way to deal with more customers and be there when the opportunity is opening up. Clearly - there is nothing new in sales since 5,000 years. Yet once every 20 yeras we dramatically fine tune our engagement. Remember when "reference selling" - "consultative selling" - "whatever selling" - was better than what we did before?
Before:
Traditional sales people work cyclic with their sales quota and product promotions. They reach out to customers when they feel it is about time to reconnect. "Long time no see" - "Hey - I wanted to reach out to you..." - "We talked.... I wanted to follow up ..." And whatever other monotone phrase you have to RESTART a connection that cooled down over time. The worst of all - the client knows you want to sell something and a barrier is building up immediately.
After:
Now - I want to walk you through a 5 step process to give you an idea what Social Selling means:
Assumption:
You are well verse with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, StumbledUpon etc. AND you recognized that most of your clients and their influencer are there too. If not - never mind.
1) Understand
Understand who are the most important influencer of your client - internally and externally, like colleagues, peers, friends, supervisors. You find them all in their social networks. Create a list of all those people (you may use SRM tools like XeeSM) and make that list the core of your social engagement. Biggest change: You no longer focus on the “social geographies” like Twitter or LinkedIn to pick up some news or inputs - instead you focus on the people relevant to you, regardless where they are.
2) Visit
Visit your most important clients at least every other day on their key online presences, may it be Facebook, LinkedIn groups, Twitter, YouTube, Stubled, Digg... Make sure you are present at all the relevant places (not relevant to YOU but relevant to THEM).
3) Listen
This is not the typical "listen to your customer" - I know you do that every day. This is about understanding their needs, fears, issues, challenges, whether or not it has something to do with what you are selling. You will learn all that by reading their posts, tweets, comments... Be helpful in any way you can. Listen to their conversations. Find a way to be helpful. You will learn more in 1 hour reviewing their posts and conversations than in six stiff and business focused face to face meetings - never sure if you even get that far.
4) Converse
Leave a note on their facebook wall, tweet with them, ask a question, introduce them to people who maybe relevant to them, let them know about great links you found that maybe helpful to them, comment on their blogs, groups... - do everything but DO NOT SELL Take an hour or two every day and you will be able to touch more than 5 times as many clients than the best sales guy in the world doing this the traditional way. Find out what resonates and you get to a relationship before you even picked up the phone - to just leave a message on their voice box. You will be greeted at your first phone call like you've been friends for years. You will think: "Cold call? how embarrassing were those times".
5) Navigate
You will know if and when the client is in the mode to talk to you about something YOU need help with - like selling your product. Then you make yourself available face to face, on the phone and in any conceivable way to attract your client. At this point you know everything about them AND they know everything about you. You have a relationship! If this is all done right, you will socialize and the order will come in without you asking for it or selling the old way - remember: "The best sales people in the world never sold a thing".
____________________________________
There is no more "follow up". There is no more "long time no see" and there can't be anymore "just thought I reach out to you to blah blah blah..."
There is only consistent communication, knowing what your clients are up to on an ongoing base, omnipresence whatever their concerns are. You cannot allow leaving your customers alone - you will need to watch them like a guardian angel. There cannot be another case where the customer made a purchase decision without you being aware of.
That is what social selling really means. ~80% of purchase decisions are based on recommendations. You need to be part of that "recommendation Chain". If you and your products are not recommended, you need to settle for the 20% of the deals that where based only on price or other random mechanism you have no control over.
In other words, here is my definition of social selling: "Social selling is a sales technique, leveraging social media, to get and maintain a 360 degree picture of the clients and their influencer on an ongoing basis. It allows sales people to manage and maintain 5 times as many active customers compared to traditional techniques. Social selling allows an average sales person to become a top performer simply by using tools and techniques that allows them to socialize in a way that was only accessible to the top sales guard in the past."
Let me know if I can be of any help with this
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
Social selling is a new art, a new discipline, a more effective way to deal with more customers and be there when the opportunity is opening up. Clearly - there is nothing new in sales since 5,000 years. Yet once every 20 yeras we dramatically fine tune our engagement. Remember when "reference selling" - "consultative selling" - "whatever selling" - was better than what we did before?
Before:
Traditional sales people work cyclic with their sales quota and product promotions. They reach out to customers when they feel it is about time to reconnect. "Long time no see" - "Hey - I wanted to reach out to you..." - "We talked.... I wanted to follow up ..." And whatever other monotone phrase you have to RESTART a connection that cooled down over time. The worst of all - the client knows you want to sell something and a barrier is building up immediately.After:
Now - I want to walk you through a 5 step process to give you an idea what Social Selling means:
Assumption:
You are well verse with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, StumbledUpon etc. AND you recognized that most of your clients and their influencer are there too. If not - never mind.
1) Understand
Understand who are the most important influencer of your client - internally and externally, like colleagues, peers, friends, supervisors. You find them all in their social networks. Create a list of all those people (you may use SRM tools like XeeSM) and make that list the core of your social engagement. Biggest change: You no longer focus on the “social geographies” like Twitter or LinkedIn to pick up some news or inputs - instead you focus on the people relevant to you, regardless where they are.
2) Visit
Visit your most important clients at least every other day on their key online presences, may it be Facebook, LinkedIn groups, Twitter, YouTube, Stubled, Digg... Make sure you are present at all the relevant places (not relevant to YOU but relevant to THEM).
3) Listen
This is not the typical "listen to your customer" - I know you do that every day. This is about understanding their needs, fears, issues, challenges, whether or not it has something to do with what you are selling. You will learn all that by reading their posts, tweets, comments... Be helpful in any way you can. Listen to their conversations. Find a way to be helpful. You will learn more in 1 hour reviewing their posts and conversations than in six stiff and business focused face to face meetings - never sure if you even get that far.
4) Converse
Leave a note on their facebook wall, tweet with them, ask a question, introduce them to people who maybe relevant to them, let them know about great links you found that maybe helpful to them, comment on their blogs, groups... - do everything but DO NOT SELL Take an hour or two every day and you will be able to touch more than 5 times as many clients than the best sales guy in the world doing this the traditional way. Find out what resonates and you get to a relationship before you even picked up the phone - to just leave a message on their voice box. You will be greeted at your first phone call like you've been friends for years. You will think: "Cold call? how embarrassing were those times".
5) Navigate
You will know if and when the client is in the mode to talk to you about something YOU need help with - like selling your product. Then you make yourself available face to face, on the phone and in any conceivable way to attract your client. At this point you know everything about them AND they know everything about you. You have a relationship! If this is all done right, you will socialize and the order will come in without you asking for it or selling the old way - remember: "The best sales people in the world never sold a thing".
____________________________________
There is no more "follow up". There is no more "long time no see" and there can't be anymore "just thought I reach out to you to blah blah blah..."
There is only consistent communication, knowing what your clients are up to on an ongoing base, omnipresence whatever their concerns are. You cannot allow leaving your customers alone - you will need to watch them like a guardian angel. There cannot be another case where the customer made a purchase decision without you being aware of.
That is what social selling really means. ~80% of purchase decisions are based on recommendations. You need to be part of that "recommendation Chain". If you and your products are not recommended, you need to settle for the 20% of the deals that where based only on price or other random mechanism you have no control over.
In other words, here is my definition of social selling: "Social selling is a sales technique, leveraging social media, to get and maintain a 360 degree picture of the clients and their influencer on an ongoing basis. It allows sales people to manage and maintain 5 times as many active customers compared to traditional techniques. Social selling allows an average sales person to become a top performer simply by using tools and techniques that allows them to socialize in a way that was only accessible to the top sales guard in the past."
Let me know if I can be of any help with this
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
Friday, October 16, 2009
Social Media Profiles - Tips on Photos and headshots
Wendy Soucie 1987
Social Media Profiles – Tips on photos and headshots
When was the last time you really looked at the picture you are using on your social media profiles? Does it give the perception you hope for?I had been using a photo taken for a press release that was twenty years old. It was good in its time and I looked younger, but it was in black and white and by others standards, a bit dated. After putting up with digs by friends when I used it for a quarterly community voice column I was writing, I started to think maybe I should redo. When I started to get very engaged in social media I knew it was time.
Pictures on social media profiles are very important.
1. It builds on consistency across profiles and messages2. People can see exactly what you look like
3. If you have a common name, you can be better identified
4. It feels more trustworthy
Are you using an old picture or another type of avatar?
Getting the picture done right is worth a little extra time, attention to detail and in many some cases may be worth having a professional get a series for catching you in various poses and attire. Amy Lynn Schereck recently presented at the Social Media Breakfast – Madison and talked about copyright, attire, makeup, jewelry, and posing. I am a firm believer in using a plain, old, real picture of you. Others feel there is more flexibility in using transformed pictures or cartoons. Specific tips on what to wear and how to take your own pictures for social media profiles is covered well at Lisa Stewart – Creative Goddess.Do I use casual or professional photo?
Wendy Running on the Ice Age Trail - Bill Beers Photo Credit
It ended up being a mashup of looks across all my sites.
As I started to grow my network, I connected with professional contacts more deeply and they wanted to connect with me on sites they were more active on, such as Facebook, Slideshare and even Youtube. The separation between business and social began to blur.
None of us can afford to be perceived as just business or just social. If your potential clients only connect with you on Facebook and non of your professional and business interest are evident then they will only think of you from a social perspective. The same occurs on places like LinkedIn – your connection may only see and experience you as a serious business person only talking about the latest award, closed deal, business related activity. You need to mix up these spaces with your personality.
I am both social and professional
I found it difficult to only be social / casual on some sites while trying to maintain strict professional comments and business related ideas on others. I also realized that I not singularly one or the other. If I am being authentic and showing people who I am, I have a lot of fun in life, take the work I do seriously and with great passion but I try not to take myself too seriously and love to find the humor in what I do. Laughing is not an option in life – it’s a requirement. So I decided to move to one picture for all my profiles. The benefit of this was• Consistency across profiles
• People will recognize me (those in my network see me much more often in business attire)
Besides, I can add other pictures to Facebook, Flicker and Picassa to show other sides of what I do.
Quick but Professional
Wendy Soucie - Amy Lynn Schereck Photo Credit
The negatives to this picture were the dark back ground and my dark hair, but I had a blazer on and simple jewelry so it was useful for my immediate needs.
Headshot done right
The most recent update was also done by Amy Lynn Schereck in a studio with controlled lighting, non seasonal attire, simple and limited jewelry and a dark (black) suit coat. It is simple, professional and works across all my profiles and business needs. This matches the way I dress every day for business so I feel it reflects me.
Wendy Soucie 10-09 Amy Lynn Schereck Photo Credit
What do you do if you are not a suit and tie person?
If you have jobs, occupations or business that you would never wear a suit for - don’t. Amy was nice enough to give me permission to use a few examples of people in other occupations.A chef and restaurant owner
Amy Lynn Schereck Photo Credit
Gary Nski, Photographer with tools of his trade.
- Amy Lynn Schereck Photo Credit
Before and After
For someone interested in doing a complete redo with a professional sitting and selected attire, consider Dabney Porte
. She has used several pictures on her social media sites that tie in nicely with her facebook and twitter pages. Dabney lives in Baltimore, but I have met her in person and she is as lively and vivacious as her pictures convey. She has a sassy but professional concern about her clients and they absolutely love her attitude and the help she provides. I have connected with her on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
New Dabney Porte picture
picture 
Old Dabney Porte Picture -
Picture - I think her pictures reflect her style and her personality!
Take a look at your profile pictures. Do yours do the same?
Thursday, October 15, 2009
1,000 Registrations for Social Media Tools Week so far
Nov. 16-20, 2009, the Social Media Tools Week will show products in action, best practices and more. The all online event serves attendees in the US, Europe and Australia/APAC. With over 1,000 registrations, already, this will be the largest social media online event of the year.
Tools and best practices
We'll show the top reporting tools, the big 3 in networking, (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for business) we'll do several Twitter tools, social bookmarking, social media management tools and announce Social Relationship Management tools.
You can register for a free ticket.
Online - yet interactive
But Tools Week is not only passive participation. By Nov 16 we will provide a social media directory with over 100 business relevant tools where all participants can vote on and help all of us understand how you liked them. If your favorit tool is not on it - just add it.
Please create a XeeSM (your personal social site manager) with all your social sites on it. The day the Social Media Tools Week starts all participants will be able to connect with others on their preferred networks. Sharing what you saw and liked. So you may get to know likeminded people from around the world.
You may want to confirm your participation publically on our Fan Page and see who else is going.
We added it today
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Med
That means: The Social Media Tools Week is an all online event but with a lot of possibilities to connect with interesting people around the world.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Help With Choosing and Using Social Media Tools
A week in November dedicated to how to use social media tools for business
In some recent social media workshops I’ve been struck by how much appreciation there has been when we presenters have taken some trouble to explain and demonstrate how various social media tools work. Even down to basics like how you go about signing up for Twitter or Facebook or on other sites.
It’s made me realise how mysterious and even confusing some of these tools can be for people who are new to them.
Come November, there will be an excellent opportunity for people to learn, from a range of social media practitioners, how various tools work and how they can be used effectively in a business context.
Spread over five days, from November 16 to 21, the Social Media Tools Week will feature a program of keynote presentations and what are described as “career development sessions”. There is a detailed agenda on the event site.
And according to the web site “Early bird registration will get a free pass …”. I’ve registered, not just because I love free, which I do, but more importantly because it’s an impressive group of speakers, from whom I am confident I can learn lots.
A special feature of the programming is that the timetable has been devised so as to accommodate, as far as possible, a range of time zones from US, Latin America, and Europe, to Australia and parts of Asia. Nice one!
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Social CRM Debate: What is it? And are the Two Terms Really Compatible?
I am not a CRM expert but a social media consultant, so I will treat myself kindly and say that I have an unbiased view on CRM (sounds better than saying I’m inexperienced). However, I do know enough to know that - using the broadest definition of the term - customer relationship management is not a bad thing. If we all managed our relationships better, everyone would be happier.
However, CRM seems to be more about data mining to better exploit customers (and I am using "exploit" non-judgmentally). The top-down approach is what - ultimately - gets in the way of developing relationships with customers based on trust. I think that being "social" with customers and potential customers is a very different thing. Through social media you have the ability to relate in ways that are similar to real life. The difference is that you can connect with hundreds of people, not just a dozen or so. Social media is obviously enabled by technology, but it is essentially about the people who converse there.
I think that companies like Oracle and the multitude of CRM vendors are not going to create products that enhance relating in the social media. For one, the solutions are not all that complex to build and there will not be enough money in it for them. Anyone who comes up with a way for people to put their many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in various buckets so that they can relate to them as a group of individuals will succeed. It is tough to have to go to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, TripIt, etc. to see what individual people are doing.
If I were a sales person, I would want to be able to more easily engage with my active prospects or my top customers as a group. I would want to be able to see what Joe Brown was doing and get engaged with him, then look in on Mary Jones, then Charles Williams. It is a simple flip from the "place" perspective (Facebook. Twitter, etc.) to the "person" perspective that will make social media easier to use and obviate the need for CRM.
http://XeeSM.com/CatherineSherwood
However, CRM seems to be more about data mining to better exploit customers (and I am using "exploit" non-judgmentally). The top-down approach is what - ultimately - gets in the way of developing relationships with customers based on trust. I think that being "social" with customers and potential customers is a very different thing. Through social media you have the ability to relate in ways that are similar to real life. The difference is that you can connect with hundreds of people, not just a dozen or so. Social media is obviously enabled by technology, but it is essentially about the people who converse there.
I think that companies like Oracle and the multitude of CRM vendors are not going to create products that enhance relating in the social media. For one, the solutions are not all that complex to build and there will not be enough money in it for them. Anyone who comes up with a way for people to put their many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in various buckets so that they can relate to them as a group of individuals will succeed. It is tough to have to go to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, TripIt, etc. to see what individual people are doing.
If I were a sales person, I would want to be able to more easily engage with my active prospects or my top customers as a group. I would want to be able to see what Joe Brown was doing and get engaged with him, then look in on Mary Jones, then Charles Williams. It is a simple flip from the "place" perspective (Facebook. Twitter, etc.) to the "person" perspective that will make social media easier to use and obviate the need for CRM.
http://XeeSM.com/CatherineSherwood
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