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It Ain’t Whatcha Do, It’s The Way That You Do It…

It Ain’t Whatcha Do, It’s The Way That You Do It…

The Injection trim.. and that’s what gets results!

This may seem a little trite for a business sustainability and CSR blog.  After all, thinking about your business’ effects beyond the simple commercial supply of product or services is the very definition of sustainability.  However, a particularly pertinent example surfaced last week.

Archimedes Pharma is (according to their website) an international specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the oncology, pain, neurology, and critical care sectors.  One of their products is sodium thiopental, whose Wikipedia entry states:

Sodium thiopental, better known as Sodium Pentothal (a trademark of Abbott Laboratories), thiopental, thiopentone sodium, or Trapanal (also a trademark), is a rapid-onset short-acting barbiturate general anaesthetic. … Thiopental is a core medicine in the World Health Organization’s “Essential Drugs List”, which is a list of minimum medical needs for a basic healthcare system. [Read more…] about It Ain’t Whatcha Do, It’s The Way That You Do It…

Spin and Story: 2 Different Things Entirely

Regular readers will know that we sometimes host guest writers. I invited Ian Berry from Differencemakers Community to contribute his views on being remarkable.

Ian Berry CSP FAIM is a writer, mentor, and international business speaker. He is the Founder of Differencemakers Community, an online and in person home for individuals who wish to increase their differencemaking and who want to find collaborators to work with in order to increase the scale of differencemaking in the world.

Over to you, Ian.

R for Remarkable and ReputationYesterday I drove past the BP service station where I normally do business and went to a competitor. In the process I wondered how many people are doing the same, even if unconsciously?

BP’s story of beyond petroleum signaled an intent at least that the giant company was different to the rest and prepared to create a future without oil. Of course because of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, BP’s story now looks like spin and their reputation is in tatters!

Remarkability

Role model companies are such because their story is not spin.

Role model companies differentiate themselves from the rest because they do business in remarkable ways, think Virgin or Cirque du Soleil, or any of the companies I have referred to in previous posts.

How we are remarkable is a key to our story however unless there is relevance, remedies, backed up by reputation our story can soon become remarkable for all the wrong reasons or worse spin that we all take to mean as a story without substance.

Relevance

What is your cause? Are you impacting the communities in which your business operates in positive and productive ways? Are your products and services relevant to the needs, expectations, and desires of people? Is all that you do good for our planet? A no answer to any of these questions means you are not 21st century relevant and soon it won’t matter what you do because you will have declining customers and less than the required high levels of engagement from your employees. It is a long way back from here.

Remedies

Do your products and service/s provide solutions to your customers’ and society’s challenges and problems?

Design in its simplest form is the activity of creating solutions says former Vice President and Chief Designer at Nokia Frank Nuovo.

Are you designing your products and services so that they provide genuine solutions for your customers? And do your products and services provide solutions to society’s challenges as well?

As Bjorn Stigson, the President of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development says: Business cannot survive in societies that fail.

Reputation

Conducting business in remarkable ways, being relevant, and providing remedies to customers’ and society’s challenges are all reputation builders; however what you do in moments of crisis, or when you are under pressure can either enhance or kill your reputation.

BP has so far failed to rise to the occasion. How about you? When the pressure is really on, when trouble is all around you, do you rise to the occasion with your story enhanced or do you need spin to seemingly get you out of your mess?

Remarkability, relevance, remedies, and reputation are all keys to creating and sustaining a compelling story, and for me a compelling story is the first thing we need to ensure our businesses stand out from the crowd.

Be the difference you want to see in the world

Ian

Thanks, Ian!

Statistics and Predictions for the Future of Marketing Strategy

big data marketingHow will marketing strategy change in the next five years? That’s the question Gigya tries to answer in its new white paper, “5 Ways Marketing Will Change in the Next 5 Years.” Three words dominate Gigya’s predictions—data, permission, and personalization.

There are real statistics that show how the focus of marketing in recent years has already shifted to these three strategic imperatives, and that shift will dominate the next five years. Gigya shares the following statistics to back up its predictions:

  • The big data market will grow at an annual rate of 31.7% through 2016, which is seven times higher than the overall growth rate for information and communications technology. (via International Data Corp.)
  • An estimated 2.2 million terabytes of new data are created each day (via Autonomy)
  • 90% of big data is unstructured, “human information” from Twitter updates, Facebook posts, website clicks, and so on.
  • Data collection volume increased in 2012 from an average of 10 collection events per page to 50. That’s a 400% increase. (via Krux)
  • 40% of users decide not to log into a website or app using their social network accounts due to concerns about how their personal information will be used.

With those statistics in mind, here are the five predictions Gigya offers in its white paper for the next five years in marketing strategy:

  1. Massive data collection across multiple touch points becomes standard.
  2. Marketers get a firmer grip on the data they manage.
  3. Social media grows into big data.
  4. Permission marketing becomes the norm.
  5. Programmatic marketing ends the age of generalizations.

For marketing experts and practitioners, these predictions probably don’t come as much of a surprise. Big data, mobile, and personalization have been the big buzz topics for more than the past 12 months and will only continue to grow in importance. I think the most interesting part of the white paper is within the section about the need for marketers to get a “firmer grip” on the data they manage.

The white paper suggests the need for “modern dynamic databases equipped to handle large, varied datasets,” which data scientists and data analysts need to “mine, synthesize, and convert into actionable insights.” Those are two very different parts of the big data puzzle, and each deserves attention. The tools are meaningless if you don’t have the expertise to turn a massive amount of data into something useful. Similarly, the brightest minds can’t do much if they can’t collect and crunch the data in the ways they require to extract the actionable information.

What do you think about Gigya’s predictions for marketing strategy in the next five years? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Ilker

5 Steps to Generate Revenue with Big Data

cloud big dataAccording to a new white paper from Gigya, “Harnessing Big Data to Grow Revenue,” there is a significant gap between collecting data from social media and using that data to create targeted brand marketing campaigns. Gigya explains that by using social logins on brand websites, companies can close this gap and generate new revenue.

In simplest terms, social logins enable website visitors to log into that site (or mobile application) using their preferred social media profile usernames and passwords. Rather than remembering a separate password for the brand’s site or application, the user logs in with his Facebook account or Twitter account.

In its white paper, Gigya explains that, “users who log in to a website using an existing social identity are essentially granting that website permission to access their first-party social data such as full name, interests, education, social connections, email address, location, and more.” It’s a huge opportunity that most companies are missing.

However, collecting user data through social logins is just the first step to actually generate revenue with that data. Gigya offers five steps to successfully collect and use that data:

  1. Use a “dynamic-schema, secure, cloud-based solution” to store and manage all of the social and behavioral data that is collected.
  2. Implement social logins whenever possible.
  3. Use automated data capture to ensure data collected is accurate since social profiles change frequently.
  4. Increase user engagement to collect more data through social plugins on brand websites, commenting, sharing, and so on.
  5. Integrate the collected data into third-party marketing platforms, such as email marketing, advertising, web analytics, and recommendation tools, to personalize marketing campaigns.

I would add that another important step is to hire talent that understands how to extract meaningful and actionable information from the data that is collected. This is an area where most companies are faltering. Collecting, storing, and integrating data into various systems and tools is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what the data actually means.

Data can be extracted and manipulated to tell just about any store an analyst wants, but hiring a person or team of people who understand data and marketing can be challenging. In other words, great marketing data scientists are few and far between in 2013, but the importance of the role to a company shouldn’t be undervalued. After all, effective data evaluation can make the difference between revenue generation and revenue losses.

What do you think about the big data gap? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Dave532

7 Tips for Hiring the Right Social Media Manager

Decided you need a social media manager? Jeff Herbst has some pointers for how to hire the right person…

With Facebook valued at around $100 billion, Twitter and LinkedIn valued at around $8 billion a piece, and Google jumping into the social game, it is official: Social media is exploding.

It is no longer possible to ignore or deny the value that social media can have for your company or brand. It allows you to connect and interact with consumers in a genuine way that was never before possible.

It is real, and if you haven’t yet incorporated social media into your marketing strategy, you had better start soon. But you can’t simply jump on Twitter and start tweeting. It takes a comprehensive strategy to make social media work for your company.

Hiring a qualified social media manager is a great place to start. Here are seven tips for making sure you hire the right social media manager to handle your company’s social strategy:

1. Check their previous work

The right social media manager will be able to prove they can walk the walk. Like any other branch of your marketing strategy, social media has some well established success metrics. Facebook Insights provides daily feedback for the performance and growth of your brand’s reach. Facebook’s ad platform comes complete with a robust reporting system that calculates conversions and ROI. Twitter tracks followers, retweets and mentions.

A worthwhile social media manager will be able to point to previous work and illustrate how they were able to accomplish company ROI goals with a comprehensive social media strategy. Ask to see all of their work and the relevant metrics to prove that they have done more then set up a fan page and post the occasional tweet.

2. Ensure they have broad experience

The right social media manager must have broad and varied competencies. Managing social media will be a combination of advertising, community management, customer support, PR, crisis management, reporting and analytics. For this reason, you will want a jack-of-all-trades in the marketing sense. He or she must be able to handle it all, and all at once.

3. Look for traditional marketing experience

You may be looking for a social media manager, but you still want somebody who has a traditional marketing background. In order for them to understand your corporate goals and how social media fits your existing strategy, they should have experience that clues them in to the intricacies of managing a brand outside of social media. In other words, your social media manager must be more than a youngster who spends an obscene amount of time on Facebook.

4. Make sure they have social influence

Perhaps the most important success indicator is social influence. It takes more than regular posts to really develop social reach and engagement. You need a professional who has taken a company or brand and helped it establish real social influence.

Do a Klout check to see what they are made of. If the candidate’s past experience, or better yet their personal social brand, does not show a good influence ranking, they are probably not somebody you should entrust with your social strategy.

5. Are they versatile and current?

As good as a candidate’s previous strategies were, they might not be appropriate for your brand. Social media is, above all else, a dynamic and rapidly evolving industry. The right candidate will demonstrate adaptability and a love for unleashing the next great tactic. When interviewing, ask the candidate what his or her favorite new innovation is and how they would use it with your brand. Ask them about a recent Facebook platform change and what they think of it. Make sure they have a passion for being on the cutting edge and in the know.

6. Are they connected?

Another simple, yet great indicator that a candidate is right for your company is whom they are connected to in the social media world. You will want somebody that rubs elbows with other social media experts and stays in close contact with other innovators in the industry. Peruse their social network profiles and see who they have been talking and working with. As the old adage says, tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.

7. Look for social grace

Last but not least, make sure your social media manager is in fact social. At its core, social media is marketing socially. A manger will be interacting with customers daily. Does the candidate come across as friendly and outgoing, or shy and hesitant? Chances are, a candidate blessed with social grace will be a more successful social media manager. After doing your own research, trust your instincts on this one.

Thanks, Jeff!

Jeff Herbst is a marketing strategist for MBA@UNC, the University of North Carolina, which allows students to receive an MBA online from a Businessweek top twenty ranked program. Outside of work he is an avid reader and kayaker.

Brands Reach Influencers with Klout for Business

klout 100Klout is known as a tool to quantify a person’s influence online. Whether you like the way Klout measures online influence or not, the tool is useful for brands that want to connect their messages with people who have the eyes and ears of the brand’s target audience.

Until recently, brands could offer influencers products and experiences by awarding them Klout Perks. Now, companies can access analytics about how influencers are engaging with their brands on Facebook and Twitter with the launch of Klout for Business.

According to the official Klout for Business launch announcement, businesses can learn which topics their audiences are influencing others about, so they can deliver more focused content that drives word-of-mouth marketing. The Klout for Business dashboard will identify the influencers among the brand’s Twitter and Facebook followers along with key demographic data such as age, gender, and location.

These are just the first steps to growing Klout for Business. Tim Peterson of Adweek reports that the future of Klout for Business could include targeted advertising integrated with Facebook and Twitter and external data integration where businesses could upload their own customer data to Klout for even better targeting.

Mobile VIP Perks are already being tested where Klout users with the Klout mobile app installed on their mobile devices can be identified by the business when the enter that business’ store or physical location giving the business the opportunity to personally greet that customer or extend a special offer. Tim explains,

“Klout has tested the [Mobile VIP Perks] product with some small restaurants in San Francisco and concuted a bigger test during SXSW with Cirque du Soleil where influencers got upgraded seats for a performance. ‘It’s a really exciting feature that is getting a lot of interest from businesses. We’ll be rolling out to big partners with it soon,” [said Klout CEO Joe Fernandez].”

Klout reports that content produced by Klout influencers drives four times as many retweets on average as content posted by non-influencer social media users, and people who see content from Klout influencers are more than twice as likely to click through to an advertiser page. Furthermore, Klout claims that people who visit product pages recommended by Klout influencers spend more than twice as long on that site.

Undoubtedly, brands will be very interested in Klout for Business, and Klout is heading in the right direction by working towards offering a complete enterprise marketing platform based on its algorithmic models that analyze billions of data points to create influence scores. Once brands can integrate their own customer data with Klout data, Klout for Business should really gain traction.

What do you think of Klout? Klout for Business? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on measuring influence and marketing to that influence.