I was okay with the privacy setting concerns. I was okay with the liberal usage of my personal info for the sake of advertising. I was even okay with their attempt to create a near universal currency – Facebook Credits – that aimed to totally eradicate modern consumerism as we know it.

But this? This is too much.

The recently launched Timeline layout takes your entire Facebook history and organizes it into a neat, easy-to-creep chronological history. With just a couple clicks, visitors to your profile can now time warp back to your earliest days online. If you’re a Gen Y’er like myself, that probably means your old back & fourths with high school sweethearts and bickering acquaintances are now instantly viewable by people like, say, your roommates, family members, or perhaps even your boss.

In other words, the apocalypse is here.

It’s one of the biggest in-your-face changes that’s ever been made to the service, and one that will prompt many users to re-evaluate their relationship with the platform. In my case, it led to a drastic social media cleanse, which I documented in a post titled The Night I Deleted 83% Of The People From My Life. I was not alone. Countless friends and readers responded to the piece, telling me that they felt the same way; the social network experience was just becoming too big a beast to responsibly maintain.

Timeline has the potential to distort both how we think and the way we’re observed. Let us examine 3 areas of concern in increasing order of severity:

1. Old Wounds (emotional nuisance)

Whereas previous generations were forced to rewind old mixtapes or visit kitschy ice cream parlors to pay emotional homage to their old beaus of yesteryear, we can now revisit and over-examine our past relationships in about the same amount of time as it takes to check the weather.

It’s not just romantic ghosts – think of all the dated social affiliations and connections you’ve accumulated throughout the years. Digging up gossip fuel and incriminating dirt on one of your friends has never been easier. A new browser tab here, a clickity click there, and presto! You’re now free to sift through each and every interaction you had with the people you once held true to your heart. It’s like pouring salt on old wounds. Or perhaps, more accurately, browser cookies on weakened firewalls.

God I hate the Internet.

Perhaps a stronger and more emotionally evolved person would be able to treasure this newfound opportunity to revisit past relationships. I’d rather saw off my left thumb with a sea urchin. To each their own, I suppose.

2. Judgment of Character (professional liability)

I started using Facebook when I was 16. You remember being 16, right? No? Let me refresh your memory. You sucked. Like myself, you probably said a lot of dumb things trying to impress people or be funny. Perhaps you even discussed Wham! That’s expected of you. After all, you were a kid. Never fear - assuming you were born before the 90s, those silly notions are but distant memories, safely nestled away exactly where they belong: in the past.

My generation is less fortunate.

Our entire dopey adolescence is documented online in great detail. And since many of us – having grown into adults and young professionals - now have Friend Lists that include coworkers and even bosses, the availability of said conversations/photos/thoughts is alarming. Would you really want your supervisor or director leafing through a personal journal you kept in the tenth grade?

This is particularly distressing when you consider the increasing popularity of social media background checks as potential employers begin to sift through your online profiles with an increasing degree of attention and scrutiny. After all, they don’t want your social misdemeanors to shine poorly on their company. One can only imagine how difficult it would be to find a suitable candidate for prime minister had today’s politicians been tweeting since prepubescence.

The pixilated skeletons in your digital closet have never been easier to uncover. Perhaps it’s time to change the locks.

3. The Ability to Forget (psychological cancer)

In his book Delete: The Virtue Of Forgetting In The Digital Age, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger looks at the cumbersome mental effects that archival tech mediums have wrought upon us. Thanks to the digital revolution, our capacity to remember is as strong as our nearest internet connection. The distant past has become no further than a few clicks away, making our personal histories inescapable and clouding our ability to make unbiased contemporary decisions.

In other words, it’s difficult to focus on the present when it’s so easy to look back on what’s happened in the past.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for preserving memories. Matter of fact, it’s something I wish I could do a better job of. I wish I took more pictures or recorded a daily journal. The ability to continually revisit and learn from the past is one of the greatest blessings modern technology has provided us with. But I think recollection is far better when it happens on a macro-level. I much rather reminisce via the collective feelings and memories that have permanently burned themselves into my mind, as opposed to referencing an old wall-to-wall my friend and I had about 2 Fast 2 Furious five years ago. There’s a reason you remember certain things, right?

Analyzing your past will become a far more daunting experience when you can instantly wade through thousands of pristinely preserved conversations and exchanges. It’s sensory overload and it could hurt us. Wouldn’t it all be so much more genuine if we focused on what we remember vs. what we have archived? If we began to spend more time looking forward and less time curating what’s behind us? I have a feeling it just might make things a lot more enjoyable.

Then again, maybe I’m just petrified of my past.

Brook Johnston is a copywriter for FUSE Marketing Group in Toronto.

Content Remains King
Nothing earth shattering here but an important concept to keep in mind as we race to be the most creative, the most innovative and the one that really stands out. We can do all of that but if our content isn’t relevant and engaging, we will sell no widgets.

Coolest Title of the Year – CCEO
Chief Customer Experience Officer seems to be the new “C Suite” title as I met a few in 2011. I applaud the focus being put to customer experience and am most intrigued at where these CCEOs are coming from. The three I met in 2011 had all risen through different functions in a corporation: From IT, Customer Service/Operations and Marketing. And they all reported into different areas – none directly to the CEO (Chief Executive Officer). My own crystal ball forecasts a continuing focus on customer experience and I would like to think that more marketers will embrace the expanded role of ensuring engaging and relevant relationships with current and prospective customers.

Social Media is Still a Playground
While we’ve all likely heard of a few social media aha moments, overall, the playing field remains wide open and I don’t believe anyone has unlocked the true potential of this new media. What we did see in 2011 is many more companies entering the playground and interacting on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook (among others). I’m hoping that in 2012 we will learn more about the infrastructure necessary and the need to actually target in this wide open space. A solid strategy with metrics and measurability will be key to sustaining spending support.

Dawn Marchand

When you’re starting an online business, you probably have no shortage of ideas, motivation, and grand plans for the future of your enterprise. But there is one notable area where you likely have a short supply: finances. Unless you have personal reserves or an already-set collection of investors, there’s a good chance that your ideas will have to initially be implemented with a tight budget in mind.

This budget extends to your marketing efforts. While it is important to advertise your business and work to gain exposure, it is impossible to take out large ad campaigns or to simply throw money at the situation. Instead, you need to find approaches that maximize the benefits while minimizing, as much as possible, the costs you need to occur for them to be realized.

Along those lines, here are a few tips for marketing your startup, working to gain some initial exposure, and for accomplishing this without paying a dime:

Use Social Media

This goes without saying, but social media can be an incredibly powerful tool for boosting your exposure without incurring any costs. To this end, create a Facebook page for your business and open a Twitter account. Post status updates and Facebook and try to accumulate “Likes” from among your colleagues, family members, and friends. Doing so will insure that a larger number of people see your business on their News Feeds.

Study The Competition

Even if you aren’t in a niche industry, your business likely has a specific focus that is closely matched by only a few internet competitors. Study these competitors to get an idea of how they market themselves –especially, how they market themselves for free. Do they post articles on forums or other sites? How do they utilize social media? Does it appear as though they have mailing lists and newsletters?

Communicate

A successful marketing campaign cannot simply be done behind a façade of internet anonymity. Instead, it is important to talk to people in the industry, whether on the phone, at conventions, or through email. Ask them advice but also ask them to spread the world. You may even get some helpful tips in the process.

Go Offline

While limitless, the internet still has its limits when it comes to marketing. This is especially true for a small startup that is looking to gain traction and exposure. If you operate in a niche industry or have a determinable customer base, you may have more success looking to reach this demographic offline in the early going. Does your target consumer group interact offline? Is there a place they go (ie a given retailer) or a way they communicate? If so, you may want to make yourself a part of that community.

These are just a few tips for increasing your exposure during the early days of a startup, when visibility is low and money is tight. The options available in this situation may not be as appealing as those you could find on a larger budget, but when done correctly they can return dividends nonetheless.

Author Bio: Sam Peters is a blogger who frequently writes for entrepreneurial and tech blogs covering topics from online marketing to the newest gadget and mobile web news.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Free Marketing Tips For Internet Startups

Technorati Tags: budget, low cost, start-up

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• We would have best practice guidelines in understandable language instead of legal speak – while increasing employee knowledge and engagement in best practice compliance requirements
• We would enable tactical solutions that capitalize on the full potential of social technologies to transform our business strategy
• We would know how to get these solutions to market faster
• And most important, we would create greater customer value

If your organization doesn’t have these youth experts, there are many sites such as the innovation centre for excellent resources and tools on how to engage youth, and many online relevant conversations (Linkedin - truly engage). Adults well prepared to engage with youth can look forward to seeing the benefits of new ideas and energy, and decisions that reflect the real work in which people live. As a relatively tech savvy late boomer, I am regularly inspired by customer service ideas for Twitter, how to drive brand engagement on Facebook, and new ideas for using social networks for recruitment and major gifts strategies. I’m eager to pair up each functional unit lead with a youth mentor to help formulate strategy across our geographical and business unit verticals. Teams quickly identify high impact / low risk solutions and I hope to create a social business strategy council of youth advisors - to help answer our social media questions and quickly close gaps. I’m guessing I’m not alone….Are you seeing your employee’s personal social technology adoption rates speed past your firm’s ability to deliver social business strategies? Are you struggling with how social media will help your organization achieve its goals and objectives in the next six months? Do you need to introduce your senior team to social media in a way that helps them understand the potential business value? Is the person with the most subject matter expertise wearing ear buds two desks over and being completely overlooked?

Laura Graham-Prentice

Response Expectations

Most of us have got beaten down by the way things seem to get done.  Perhaps a non-scientific indication of that is shown by some quick searches on Google.  The number of items in the Google search is an indicator of the degree of public interest in the phrase that was searched for.  Here are the results we found at this time.

One might infer from these numbers that a slow response is almost inevitable and that more often than not inappropriate responses will be given rather than the appropriate responses one wished for.  Getting a fast, speedy or timely response is clearly a much less probable outcome.

IT

If rapid responses are the exception, does anyone regard them as a priority that deserves extra effort and resources?  In this article, we will discuss the two sectors that seem to feature most prominently in such online discussions.  All sectors of society now rely on electronic communication and insist on always-on availability of information.  It is therefore not surprising that the IT industry believes that the speed of response is critical.

You have to be fast in today’s marketplace and no department feels the heat more than IT, according to four of the Enterprise CIO Forum Council members.

People must have an attitude that ‘faster is better than best.’ Something that solves 33% of a problem today is better than something that solves 100% of a problem in 18 months. Many companies sacrifice speed for perfection or false precision. Often data or solutions can be ‘good enough’ to take interim steps and action.

Of course faster is also more costly and here the IT department must balance the need for a response with the cost of achieving that.  That is why a major computer supplier such as Dell offers Speed of Response Options.

Get parts and labor fast — upgrade from next-business-day on-site service, which comes standard with Dell ProSupport, to same-day or mission-critical on-site service.  This will help keep client systems up and running, and minimize data center downtime.  This  flexible approach to technical support allows you to choose the response time you need to support your business. This flexibility helps you not just keep your users up and running and your data centers operating at top speed, but also enables you to keep your IT budget under control.

Public relations

Another area where rapid responses are needed is that of public relations, for businesses and for governments. Adverse publicity is often utilized by critics who know how to work the media.  Unless prompt action is taken, what starts as a minor negative incident can mushroom into a very costly major event  A typical example of what is being done can be seen in Washington DC where the White House has beefed up on its online rapid response.

The Obama administration has created and staffed a new position tucked inside their communications shop for helping coordinate rapid response to unfavorable stories and fostering and improving relations with the progressive online community.  Jesse Lee will move from the new media department into a role in the communications department as Director of Progressive Media & Online Response.  This signals that the White House will be adopting a more aggressive engagement in the online world in the months ahead.

Lee's Twitter account could also become an interesting window into the status of the always emotional, occasional testy dance between progressives and the president.

The reason why politicians would aim to get involved in social media is that social media are giving individuals channels within which they can ensure their views are known and shared.  A major organization can either get involved as a participant in the debate or remain the subject of the discussion. This is an area that many businesses realize they should be involved in but they are unclear on how best to do this.

Lost Opportunities - Potential Customers

Given that most companies will take the easy way out and remain faceless entities that do not get involved, this is an area where a company can easily stand out from the crowd and from its competitors.  All that it takes is to think ahead and plan the resources and the format of your Timely Response, both for potential customers who may contact you and for important happenings in the market place.

An appropriate and informative timely marketing piece not only shows you understand an issue well (and are relevant and capable of addressing it), but also shows that you are a proactive person within a dynamic company that is not afraid to take a stance in their industry and with their customers. You can also offer potential calls to action that may trigger your customers to approach you for expert advice or information.

This is not a major cost activity.  All that it takes is that you are alert to opportunities (which you should be anyway) and that someone has the responsibility for acting as the voice of the company. The key requirement is that the response be rapid. Delay will mean that you're just lost in the crowd.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Rapid Response – When is it needed?

Technorati Tags: government, public relations, rapid, response, slow, timely

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Recently TLC network launched a show called All-American Muslim to showcase average American Muslims who live in the community of Dearborn, Michigan. Kind of like the US version of our Little Mosque on the Prairie in Canada but more of 'reality' version.

Well sure enough one 'group' called the Florida Family Association (FFA) protested that Lowe's Home Improvement was advertising during this show and demanded that Lowe's remove all advertising. Surprisingly, Lowe's obliged the FFA and pulled all advertising while All-American Muslim was broadcasting on TLC.

Subsequently, all hell broke loose and Lowe's is in a very difficult situation. On one side you have people applauding and supporting Lowe's decision to pull the advertising. On the other side people who have been loyal customers are very disappointed in Lowe's decision. This one opinion piece from Time illustrates that the criticism of Lowe's actions has been fierce.

So Lowe's tried to calm things by directing people to this statement posted on their Facebook page earlier this week.

"Lowe’s has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance. We strongly support and respect the right of our customers, the community at large, and our employees to have different views. If we have made anyone question that commitment, we apologize. Thank you for allowing us to further explain our position."

That should have been the end of the issue, right? Not quite. The aforementioned post on Lowe's Facebook wall generated over +3600 Likes and +18,000 comments many of which were very nasty. I don't have a problem with people taking opposing viewpoints on an issue as that is a hallmark of democracy and freedom of speech. I do have a problem with the disappearance of civilized discourse and debate.

And now the toothpaste is out of the tube and we need cleanup in all aisles. Lowe's is going into the critical holiday period as a retailer and many customers are now calling for a boycott of their business, returning purchases and/or cancelling their accounts. Many customers who are Muslim are in that key target market that home improvement retailer like Lowe's covets.

But the outrage isn't only limited to Muslim customers as Christians, Jews and even Atheists are condemning Lowe's for their actions. You really have to feel for Lowe's being in such an untenable position.

And what kind of online public relations nightmare would it be without user-generated content? A parody Lowe's Global PR Twitter account was created and a Republican Congressman from California started following it believing it was a real Lowe's Twitter account, tweeting them he supported Lowe's actions.

The actor Kal Penn of Harold & Kumar fame tweeted this 'video' (caution on language) of his parents having a meeting with Lowe's executives to his +100k followers on Twitter. He then asked his followers to sign an online petition demanding that other brands advertising on TLC do not follow the example of Lowe's.

So far the online petition has over 21k signatures but other brands like Green Mountain Coffee have taken notice and made it clear that they disavowed the actions of FFA. Russell Simmons has stepped up and bought all of the advertising slots on TLC during the show that were vacated.

It doesn't stop there either. Lowe's has now been threatened by the hacker group Anonymous which has has already gone after the FFA website and said Lowe's is next.

Some media pundits have suggested that Lowe's shouldn't have advertised with such a potentially 'controversial' television show in the first place. Lowe's should have shown better judgement while conducting their media buy. But 'controversial' by whose standards? So could the hit television-show 'Modern Family' being targeted and having its advertising pulled because it features a gay couple? It's a slippery slope for marketers fraught with danger.

Having said all that, my view is that any company (including Lowe's) has the right to advertise where and how they see fit. Just as I have the right to shop where I see fit and to share my thoughts with other consumers. I'll also state that I've been a long-time Lowe's customer as they have offered terrific service over the years.

One friend of mine wonders if Lowe's reaction to pull the advertising was honest or out of fear of losing customers who supported the FFA. Perhaps they gambled thinking that caving into the demands of one group wouldn't have mattered. Ultimately no one is a winner in this situation except for TLC who might get better ratings/awareness.

But the bigger issue for marketers and brands is this - if this can happen to Lowe's could it happen to you? Are you or your agency prepared for this kind of situation? Do you have contingency/engagement/crisis plans in place? If so, are they good enough? If you make decisions, is digital and social media considered as it relates to them? Can you be held hostage to the agenda of a specific interest group? If you were Lowe's what would you have done differently to avoid being caught in the midst of a public relations firestorm? If you make a decision are you prepared to stand by it and not backtrack even when it impacts your reputation/bottom line?

There are no 'all-in-one' answers like some tool found in aisle 12 but the aforementioned are just a few of the questions we must ask ourselves as individuals and leaders of brands and organizations. I can already see Lowe's as a case study that students in business schools will analyze for years to come.

Lowe's tagline is 'Never stop improving' perhaps we should all pause and take heed of those words.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

Recently TLC network launched a show called All-American Muslim to showcase average American Muslims who live in the community of Dearborn, Michigan. Similar to a US version of Little Mosque on the Prairie in Canada but more of 'reality' version.

One 'group' called the Florida Family Association (FFA) protested that Lowe's Home Improvement was advertising during this show and demanded that Lowe's remove all advertising. Surprisingly, Lowe's obliged the FFA and pulled all advertising while All-American Muslim was broadcasting on TLC.

Subsequently, all hell broke loose and Lowe's is in a very difficult situation. On one side you have people applauding and supporting Lowe's decision to pull the advertising. On the other side people who have been loyal customers are very disappointed in Lowe's decision. Time is one of many media outlets critical of Lowe's actions.

So Lowe's tried to calm things by directing people to this statement posted on their Facebook page earlier this week.

"Lowe’s has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance. We strongly support and respect the right of our customers, the community at large, and our employees to have different views. If we have made anyone question that commitment, we apologize. Thank you for allowing us to further explain our position."

That should have been the end of the issue, right? Not quite. The aforementioned post on Lowe's Facebook wall generated over +3600 Likes and +18,000 comments of which many of which, were very nasty. I don't have a problem with people taking opposing viewpoints on an issue as that is a hallmark of democracy and freedom of speech. I do have a problem with the disappearance of civilized discourse and debate.

It appears the toothpaste is out of the tube and cleanup is needed in a few aisles. Lowe's is going into the critical holiday period as a retailer and many customers are now calling for a boycott of their business, returning purchases and/or cancelling their accounts. Many customers who are Muslim are in that key target market that home improvement retailer like Lowe's covets.

The outrage isn't only limited to Muslim customers as Christians, Jews and even Atheists are condemning Lowe's for their actions. You really have to feel for Lowe's being in such an untenable position.

Furthermore, what kind of online public relations nightmare would it be without user-generated content? A parody Lowe's Global PR Twitter account was created and a Republican Congressman from California started following it believing it was a real Lowe's Twitter account, tweeting them he supported Lowe's actions.

The actor Kal Penn of Harold & Kumar fame tweeted this 'video' (caution on language) of his parents having a meeting with Lowe's executives to his +100k followers on Twitter. He then asked his followers to sign an online petition demanding that other brands advertising on TLC do not follow the example of Lowe's.

So far the online petition has over 21k signatures but other brands like Green Mountain Coffee have taken notice and made it clear that they disavowed the actions of FFA. Russell Simmons has stepped up and bought all of the advertising slots on TLC during the show that were vacated.

It doesn't stop there either. Lowe's has now been threatened by the hacker group Anonymous which has has already gone after the FFA website and said Lowe's is next.

Some media pundits have suggested that Lowe's shouldn't have advertised with such a potentially 'controversial' television show in the first place. Lowe's should have shown better judgement while conducting their media buy. But 'controversial' by whose standards? So could the hit television-show 'Modern Family' be at risk and have its advertising pulled because it features a gay couple? It's a slippery slope for marketers fraught with danger.

Having said all that, my view is that any company (including Lowe's) has the right to advertise where and how they see fit. Just as I have the right to shop where I see fit and to share my thoughts with other consumers. I'll also state that I've been a long-time Lowe's customer as they have offered terrific service over the years.

One friend of mine wonders if Lowe's reaction to pull the advertising was honest or out of fear of losing customers who supported the FFA. Perhaps they gambled thinking that caving into the demands of one group wouldn't have mattered. Ultimately no one is a winner in this situation except for TLC who might get better ratings/awareness.

But the bigger issue for marketers and brands is this - if this can happen to Lowe's could it happen to you? Are you or your agency prepared for this kind of situation? Do you have contingency/engagement/crisis plans in place? If so, are they good enough? If you make decisions, is digital and social media considered as it relates to them? Can you be held hostage to the agenda of a specific interest group? If you were Lowe's what would you have done differently to avoid being caught in the midst of a public relations firestorm? If you make a decision are you prepared to stand by it and not backtrack even when it impacts your reputation/bottom line?

There are no 'all-in-one' answers like some tool found in aisle 12 but the aforementioned are just a few of the questions we must ask ourselves as individuals and leaders of brands and organizations. I can already see Lowe's as a case study that students in business schools will analyze for years to come.

Lowe's tagline is 'Never stop improving' perhaps we should all pause and take heed of those words.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

The prevailing opinion is that social media is a free marketing channel that is good for sharing information but has little consequence on reputation and business results. It is important to distinguish between social media and social networking. Social media is content created by people using publishing technologies. Social networking is focused on building online communities with shared interests and activities. It is also important to understand how users engage in social communities. The 90-9-1 Principle of “participation inequality” applies here- 1 percent of people create content, 9 percent edit or modify that content, and 90 percent view the content without contributing.

There is some good news. Those CMOs who have adopted Social Media successfully have used carefully crafted strategies that are aligned with their corporate business plans to cover three broad areas: increasing employee engagement, engaging customers and prospects and strengthening the company’s reputation. CMOs must consider some important facts about Social Media:

Engage employees

Here are some surprising insights from the 2011 Arcus Employee Engagement Research Report. Only 20 percent of employees are engaged with their organizations, the remaining are actively disengaged. Moreover, managers rank internal communication problems as the top barrier to productivity. 55 percent of employees feel they work in silos and only 28 percent of employees say their companies are effective in communicating with them. Social media can help. Here are three steps you can take to address these gaps:

• Create a “You Ask, We Answer” Forum. A key tool used by CEOs to leverage social media is to open a highly transparent two-way communication channel with employees. A “You Ask, We Answer” forum hosted on the company’s Intranet will enable employees to post questions with an anonymous post option. The response time is important. A 24 hour turn around will increase employee confidence and also demonstrate that the channel is important to the management team. Mandating an answer to every question also reinforces the transparency of the channel. The benefits of the Intranet Q&A strategy includes a deeper understanding among employees of the corporate strategy, the challenges faced by the company and how employees can help with a shared decision making process.

• Recognize Performance. A second strategy is to use the Internal channel to recognize outstanding employee performance. A monthly recognition program with an outline of the case that led to the award can inspire employees to find new and innovative ways to solve problems.

• Empower employees to blog. The third strategy for the Intranet would be to encourage Employee blogs. This allows employees to share ideas, knowledge and solutions within the organization. A scan of these ideas may allow the company to tap into new strategies to increase client satisfaction and solve problems that may otherwise not be apparent. Employee blogs also allows quick insights into departments and issues such as gaps in employee development, leadership issues or product sales related challenges.

Engage customers and prospects

• Define your social networking strategy. A good strategy is focused on sharing useful content that is of interest to your network of customers, employees and partners. A good strategy will also allow you to identify success points in your social media plan and leverage information that can position your company as a leader and innovator. A key driver of the process is a continuous and ongoing stream of relevant information that we call a “drip strategy”.

• Engage your contacts. Most of us have a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Few of us really understand how to leverage the platform. Leading social media users will tell you that it isn't about the number of connections, it is more about the quality of connections. A good gauge is to ask if your connections would recommend your company or your work. A higher percentage of recommenders means your social strategy is working harder for you.

• Foster a community. Your sites should promote active participation and foster a community as part of an enhanced shopping experience. This is facilitated by a high level of social interaction and consumer-driven content that support the shopping experience and deliver superior value to the customer. A community can be a valuable asset to help your customer support team solve problems quickly and efficiently. Fans of your company can connect directly with other customers and offer solutions that could strengthen customer satisfaction.

Strengthen your social commerce strategy

• Focus on destination branding. Making your brand a destination is likely to drive your social commerce strategy. Create a channel to listen to what your customers are saying and respond and act quickly to criticism. Our research shows that customers can be a valuable source of feedback on satisfaction drivers and their input can dramatically increase sales. The approach allows more informed decisions about social commerce strategies and improvement of the customer experience. A key measure of success is how many of your customers become your advocates.

• Monitor online conversations. It is critical to monitor in-market conversations about your brand and products. A better understanding of the tone of conversations can provide valuable indicators of the value your brand delivers to customers. A good social media strategy will include metrics that provide insights on activity, sentiment, share-of-market, and themes of online conversations. Thought leaders who are also prolific bloggers are closely monitored. With a sound impact measurement strategy, companies will be able to assess the return on social media investments and also offer benchmarks for ongoing social media activities. Companies can use analytics tools such as our Reputation Analysis and Management Tool for a real time, on-demand and in-depth understanding of the reputation of their brand on the Web. An advanced analytics tool searches, tags, and indexes topics on the Web. It can filter thousands of online content sites and identifies relevant brand and reputation information by applying discovery tools that interpret content trends and provide deeper visibility into impacts on strategies and sales.

• Leverage key social networking tools. Explore emerging trends in social media tools such as Widgets (portable carts (e.g., zazzle.com) and brand engagement (e.g., lemonade.com), social bridging (enable shoppers to log into e-commerce sites without a registration ID) and Mobile Social Networking Applications (allow users to access social networks from their smartphones). These cutting edge tools create seamless interfaces with customers and your brand. They encourage more frequent interaction and robust two way communication.

Benchmarking your social media strategy can provide surprising insights about where and how you need to recalibrate your approach. Email me for best practices from 1500 companies and viewpoints of CEOs on social media.

Merril Mascarenhas

A teaching moment for marketers

The Occupy movement is different and could potentially become a teaching moment for marketers. As you see in the video below, produced on the one month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, most protesters don’t know where the movement is going or what it should achieve. And yet they are united by common themes and beliefs.

According to posts on Wikipedia, "The original protest began on September 17, 2011, and by October 9, similar demonstrations were either ongoing or had been held in 70 major cities and over 600 communities in the U.S. Internationally, other "Occupy" protests have modeled themselves after Occupy Wall Street, in over 900 cities worldwide.

A catchy 1% and 99% slogan certainly helps (My favourite- "The 1% have Addresses. The 99% have Messages"). There is even a claim that the protests were initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters.

Elevating the conversation

One lesson that resonates with me is the importance of elevating your conversation with consumers. Find a big theme that is above a specific need, want or desire. The theme represents a deep insight about a belief that needs to be unearthed. It is rare that campaigns dig that deep. Most focus on insights, benefits and product features. Our research indicates that campaign ideas that have withstood the test of time are based on basic beliefs that connect a group of consumers.

Merril Mascarenhas

For many (if not most) organizations – social media engagement tends to land in that procrastination bucket more often than not. We all know it is important. We all know the long term gains that ongoing engagement can provide. But if we just skip today – will it really matter? And then, just one more day? And then eventually, we realize 2 months have gone by and it has become too easy to keep it on the bottom of the list.
I am a huge advocate for all organizations – both for those in the non-profit and for-profit sectors – to stay actively engaged in the social media space. And I believe it’s critical for all of us in the marketing sector to do so on a personal level as well. How can we improve our business success if we don’t know what the consumer sentiment is out there, if we don’t understand where our consumers are engaging, and if we aren’t playing in the space that our customers are living every day? And how can our organizations gain consumer belief that we are engaged with them, if we take long spells off… and yet, here I am, 2 months into a new job and new routines, and realizing that the busy-ness of my life has gotten in the way of this important part of the business of my life. My active engagement first slowed, and then stopped over the past 2 months, as I justified to myself every day that I would “get to it tomorrow”. Luckily – “tomorrow” came today. And as I jump back into it, and get myself back into a routine that keeps active engagement a daily part of my life, I thought I would write a quick post to urge all of you to do the same. …. Unfortunately it’s also been a couple of months since this blog made it up to the top of my list, so figured I’d correct that at the same time.

So please, remember – no matter what industry you are in – stay active in what is happening with your company, your competitors and your customers. Know where people and businesses important to you are, and what they are saying. And structure your day in such a way that it doesn’t make it to the procrastination bucket. It doesn’t need to take too much time, but it does need to be consistently acted upon.

Now if you’ll excuse me – I’m feeling a need to tweet.

Vicki Waschkowski