Open up your mind and say, ahh...

I have to be honest, the headline is a bit hypocritical. I spend most of my time helping businesses embrace the opportunity to understand customer needs and engage with them in ways that they appreciate and value. Contrary to popular belief however, everyday consumers aren’t flocking to social media to build relationships with their favorite brands or local businesses. The truth is that consumers are using the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, et al. to connect with friends and family. But, that’s not all. People also follow those who help them better understand the world around them, share their interests, or introduce moments of desired distractions.

In early 2011, IBM conducted a survey of roughly 1,000 consumers for its annual CRM Study. One of the questions asked of participants sought to shed light to the subject of why consumers were active on social networks. At the top of the list with 70%, no surprise, was the aim of connecting with family and friends. In second with 49%, consumers revealed that they were looking to stay connected to relevant news and information. Just behind with 46%, consumers expressed the desire for entertainment. And, last but certainly not least, 42% wished to share reviews of company or product experiences.

So where does that leave businesses? After all, the original Social Media Manifesto celebrated the opportunity that would eventually unite organizations and customers in a new generation of oneness, co-creation and innovation. How can organizations build a relationship with people if their primary use for social networks is to connect to the people they already know or wish they knew?

The good news is that consumers do wish to connect with businesses, just not in the way we might have originally envisioned. According to the same study 23% used social networks to interact with brands. Yes, consumers are connecting with brands, but it’s not as pervasive as we assume. To improve the number of connections and also increase retention, we must learn the reasons for why consumers connect with businesses, what they expect, and how to captivate their attention now and over time.

As consumer use of social media matures, their expectations grow. Your challenge is whether or not your organization can not only meet their needs, but anticipate and exceed them. This is the time to stop looking at social media as merely media in social channels and to start getting to know customers and their priorities and designing programs and a supporting infrastructure that socializes customer and employee facing roles, departments, and functions.

In August 2011, Lab42 surveyed Twitter users about their habits driving brand engagement. Believe it or not, 11% claimed that connecting with brands was the only reason they initially used Twitter. What does that tell us? People needed resolution or attention and Twitter represented the most logical choice for immediate satisfaction. On the other hand 10.6% stated that they do not follow any brands at all. Not all is bleak however. The study does indeed bring good tidings for worthy businesses.

30.6% of consumers follow 1-5 brands
19.6% follow 6-10
17.8% follow 11-20
9.8% follow an astounding 31-50

Depending on how you view these numbers, the glass is either half full or half empty. I believe that the state of the glass is determined by the actions surrounding it. For example, are we pouring or drinking from the glass? As Twitter is still growing, I see the glass is half full. Therefore, the time to invest in a sincere social media program that meets the needs of the various roles consumers may play in your business.

Theses roles include:

- Customer
- Prospect
- Advocate
- Detractor
- Co-creator
- Employee

The studies above reflect that consumer engagement is only just beginning. Consumers are not just connecting because they can, they do so with intention and increasing expectations. No matter where you are in the social media maturity cycle, the questions you have to answer will guide your strategy and evolution. It’s never too late to integrate an intelligence system that constantly examines the 5 W’s and an H.E.:

1. Who
2. What
3. When
4. Where
5. Why
6. How
7. Extent

The answers will help guide a useful, value-driven and an evergreen strategy and engagement program that attracts and retains consumers. Without careful or relevant engagement, businesses risk running anti-social campaigns that cause social blindness or far worse, disconnection via an unfollow or unlike.

We go about our lives quite tangled up with other people’s lives, whether we want to admit that or not. We carry with us tangles from our past connections, and tangles from worries about future events that haven’t even unfolded yet. These tangles affect our choices and decisions and feelings all the time, if we let them.

Untangled

This has been on my mind for a while, as I’ve been learning to see my own tangled self. I wrote about taking back your strings not too far back, but with the context that we let other people twist us up with their own choices. The more we come to see this, the more we can help ourself get untangled.

Yesterday, I let someone’s tangle frustrate me. (Let’s be honest: every day, we let people’s tangles get in the way.) With great visibility comes no small number of critics, and though I’m learning every day how to let people’s criticisms be their own, I’m still occasionally susceptible to prodding. But why should I care about someone’s opinion of me? That comes from their experiences, their tangles, their view of the situation. I don’t know this person, and yet, I carried around frustration all day, slept, and then woke up thinking about him this morning. How un-useful.

I spoke with someone else yesterday whose choice of spouse caused both sets of grandparents to stop talking with her for over a year (tradition thing). Here she is, happy and in love, and looking forward to starting her new life, and because it didn’t follow the tangles of her culture, her blood relatives chose to cut off connections to her. She didn’t tell me this with sorry, only a sense of the fact that it’s unfortunate, but with a smile on her face for what she did have: a loving husband and a future.

We can’t choose how our relatives feel about us. We can’t choose how our loved ones think about us and react to us. We can’t alter how those people at work speak about us when we’re not there. None of that is ours.

You Own Your Head

What you can do, however, is work on yourself, is accept yourself as you are right now, is start to fuel your own personal inner fire of belief without any external sources. It’s not that you don’t value the thoughts of friends and people you love, but instead, that you accept them as simply that: thoughts and input from the outside world. If every time you speak to a group of people, they yawn and look away, accept that maybe you’re boring them, but don’t take it any further than that. Don’t read minds. Just take that information and decide what you want to do about it.

In the above example, maybe you’re talking to the wrong people about the right stuff. If you’re passionate about dance but you’re talking to a bunch of farmers, maybe that’s not a good fit. (Maybe it is.) But own your head, and don’t let their tangles snarl you.

We Are All Ugly Ducklings

I heard somewhere recently that most every “popular” kid growing up in school ends up being the “average” adult, and that most of the most famous and celebrated people in our culture were the “weirdos” and the marginalized when they were in school. And yet, everyone walks around with that huge sense of inadequacy. It’s rampant.

I once met a billionaire. (I’ve met a few, but this is the story of one.) Here he is, very successful by many standards, and about to speak at an event, and I said something to him, partly in jest, and he reacted with a fear that maybe people wouldn’t like him. But he was an ugly duckling, like so many others, with weird views that didn’t match those of the people who fed him their tangles. And he went on to succeed, but still he carried that seed fear of being inadequate, because of all the tangles that had wrapped around him over his life.

Untangling Takes Practice

If you want to untangle, it’s a matter of staying vigilant. Everyone’s opinion is a tangle. Every emotion someone brings to your situation is a tangle. Every judgment someone makes is a tangle. Every PRAISE you get is a tangle (Wow, I almost forgot to mention that praise is every bit the same as something negative. The more you believe your own hype, the more tangled you become in other people’s affirmations).

Watch for them. Accept the tangles as theirs. Note that you don’t get to judge the tangles. You bring your own to them; don’t doubt that. But just accept every thought, opinion, value, and emotion outside of your own as someone else’s tangle, and then try to steer clear of them. Yes, we’d love for the people we love to be happy. But even that isn’t our duty. It’s not our job to make people happy. It’s our job to live in such a way that we hope to positively impact other people’s happiness. (See the difference?)

Are you ready to start untangling yourself?

Twitter continues to impress its supporters and critics alike. With 100 million active users, one billion Tweets published every day, and a fresh round of funding, Twitter’s monetization strategy continues to mature. In addition to licensing deals for its coveted fire hose and a future revenue stream tied to analytics, Twitter’s blue bird truly flies with the help of its expanding portfolio of Promoted products. The company is now releasing its latest offering, and it’s the most controversial product yet. New Promoted ads currently in a limited round of tests, hit streams even if users do not already follow the brand but are “like” those who do. Notoriously conservative in pushing ads to its fiercely loyal audience, this move represents a Mad Men moment for Twitter as it ventures into bold new territory.

The new form of in stream ads are an extension of its existing Promoted Tweets product where ads are placed at the top of the stream if the user already followed the company. Additionally, brands can used Promoted Tweets tied to search to plug directly into the interest graph. The first ad produce released by Twitter helps brands reach people who search for relevant keywords by serving up a promoted Tweet related to the search. Twitter is expected to also introduce self-service products for smaller businesses later in 2011.

Twitter’s other advertising products help brands reach consumers by attracting attention in the active panel that frames the Tweet stream. Through Promoted Accounts, brands can buy an opportunity to increase the number of followers. And, with Promoted Trends, brands tempt users with intriguing words or hashtags to entice click-throughs.

Companies such as Starbucks, Virgin America and Coca-Cola have actively invested in a variety of Twitter’s Promoted products since the beginning and each claim that Twitter’s ads consistently deliver worthwhile performance. Brands continue to line up to be among the first to experiment with these new media buys.

In a marketing world where media is neatly divided into paid, earned, and owned (P.O.E.M.), Twitter forces marketers to think beyond the traditional banner mindset. I spent the last couple of years studying the new opportunities for brands in the new media world and vehicles, channels, and mindsets required to use them effectively. The new take on media was released recently with the help of JESS3 as The Brandsphere. It introduced Promoted and Shared as two new channels to round out paid, earned, and owned. For example with Twitter’s new Promoted product, brands are encouraged to look beyond flashy graphical elements or using images or names of friends as bait. Twitter is carefully monetizing its popular service by requiring brands to lure consumers through clever word play, linked by interests that drive noteworthy experiences. Brands now need to rethink the click-through experience to take consumers on an extraordinary journey to not only perform well, but also reinforce the value of Promoted products as they introduce potential disruption to the precious Tweet stream.

Will Twitter’s new product pay off? Advertisers are certainly willing to give it a try. In a recent study conducted by Pivot, 60% and 32% of brands that experimented with social advertising, including Twitter’s Promoted products, found the new form of advertising very useful and useful respectively. Of those we polled, 93% had deployed social ads on Facebook and 78% on Twitter.

When it comes to consumers and how they feel about Promoted ads in Twitter, Lab42 found that only 10.9% say that they “are annoying and take away from the Twitter experience.” For this moment in time, consumers are open to Twitter’s cautious expansion of new advertising products. In the same study, 24.8% had already reported seeing Promoted ads related to relevant brands. Another 21.6% have received discounts offered through Promoted Tweets, 21.2% found new brands, and 14% have retweeted Promoted Tweets.

If you look at the doors that Twitter’s promoted products open, you start to get an idea of just how far this can go.
Promoted products can reach people based on interest, device, geolocation, behavior, and demographic. Indeed, Twitter’s Madmen moment has arrived. The company must now look at innovating not just how to sell media opportunities, but also work with brands to consistently deliver value and unique experiences that consumers appreciate rather than disregard or revolt against. Here, Twitter’s competition is itself as this is an opportunity that’s theirs and only theirs to win or lose. Even though Facebook is for all intents and purposes a competing network, budgets will continue to fund experiments in both and many other social platforms as brands experiment with reaching consumers where their attention is focused, their social streams.

Apple is well known for being a tight ship, but apparently one of its board members forgot to batten down the hatches. That would be the most famous member of the board: Nobel laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Speaking at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in South Africa, Gore interjected the following aside into his speech: “Not to mention the new iPhones coming out next month. That was a plug.”

That may not sound like a huge blunder — after all, the fact that the iPhone 5 is going on sale at some point next month currently ranks as one of the world’s worst-kept secrets. But take note: nobody at Apple has officially confirmed it yet. Even the October 4 unveiling, leaked to AllThingsD Wednesday morning, is still just a report. Nary an invite has been seen.

Note also the plural in Gore’s aside. It is possible that he was referring to multiple copies of the iPhone 5, but that seems unlikely — especially as we’ve been hearing rumors for months of a lower-cost, lower-memory version dubbed the iCloud iPhone.

Gore has been an Apple board member for more than eight years, and this is the first time we’ve seen him let slip even the slightest detail on an upcoming product. Given the company’s code of secrecy, such an unwarranted statement in a prepared talk — he wasn’t even being interviewed — counts as a major breach of discipline.

If this were an Apple employee, or even any other board member, we’d fear for his future at 1 Infinite Loop. Gore, of course, is a heavy-hitter at the company who’s done a lot of work on making Apple products more sustainable and reducing his carbon footprint. We’re guessing he gets a pass this time. But Tim Cook, take note: Your ship is not as tight as you might like.

via TheNextWeb

I’m into day two of the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, part of the #FutureM events that are dedicated to showing how big a tech and marketing town Boston really is. I spoke yesterday, as did author Ben Mesrich. Today, I’ll see Guy Kawasaki, Tim Hayden, and Dan Heath, among others. It has me thinking about speaking and speakers.

Great Speakers Tell Stories

A great speaker doesn’t simply preach from the stage. They tell illustrative stories that explain their points. Professor Youngme Moon talked about brands that we feel passionate about, and used Mini as one of the examples, including some of their powerful advertising. More so, she shared her own feelings about the brand and how the story related to her. These tales give us more to consider than simple numbers and data points.

Great Speakers Connect to the Audience

My biggest failing as a professional speaker right now is that I allow myself to wander deeper and deeper into a rapport with the audience, sometimes forsaking the narrative of my presentation for that spark of connectivity. However, if you get it right, that balance of presenting and connecting with the people in the audience, it’s golden. We are a society used to being entertained through glass. Break that glass and touch the audience in a way that reminds them that you’re right there. (Maybe just don’t overdo it like me.)

Great Speakers Deliver Takeaways

Not to turn this into my own personal therapy session, but where I also could use some improvement is in the department of giving the audience some direct takeaways, some actions to take, some things to do when they get back to their lairs. A great speaker not only inspires, educates, and motivates, but she or he gives some “serving suggestions” so that the audience can take these ingredients and make something useful to themselves.

Practice Wins Every Time

Practice these three elements in your speech-giving, even if your content is fluid. Make sure you check yourself for the first and third elements, stories and takeaways, and then be ready to touch your audience with a real connection. The more you work on this, the better your speaking will be.

Me? I have more practice ahead. The people who I want to serve deserve the best.

New media marketing is creating an undercurrent that is shifting the very foundation of business. Without a full understanding of what’s possible, a clear view to the future or an idea of the strength or extent of the market undertow, executives cautiously embrace emerging social and mobile channels based on guidance of internal champions and external pressure from competitors and customers alike. But, leaders can only lead when their vision is focused and direction is defined. The ability to execute becomes paramount and the gaps that exist between goals and capabilities must be identified and solved for quickly to stay the course.

Metrics are critical indicators of performance and progress yes, but when new media enters the fray, more questions than answers cloud the ability to see beyond the horizon. And, as new media becomes increasingly disruptive, innovation and a bit of clairvoyance are required to serve up new hypothesis that help leaders make decisions in the absence of history or precedence. It is in these times when competitive threat is equal to, or in some cases less than the threat of digital Darwinism. When technology and consumer behavior cause change faster than your ability to recognize and adapt (and lead), we surface the first and potentially dangerous series of slipping points that like the game of Chutes and Ladders, cause us to fall further away from our position or intention.

By the Numbers

These days, solutions are more experimental than they are evident. As a result, businesses rely on what they know. In this case, existing metrics and frameworks are applied to help ease testing and experimentation. Earlier this year Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association published the results of its annual CMO Survey. Among the findings, we learn how executives are applying traditional metrics to new media to measure performance. Additionally, we can compare the current trends in measurement to this time last year to get a view into how businesses are adapting measurement against new opportunities.

At the top of the list, we see that traffic (hits/visits/page views) is the most important metric according to the report, increasing from 47.6% to 52.2% in one year. Naturally, repeat visits rank second at 34.9%. However, a less important metric, the number of followers or friends, commands the third spot at 34.1%. This represents a huge jump from 24% the year before. Clicks to action were surprisingly positioned in fourth with 29.3%, up from 25.4%, with marketers tracking conversion rates from visitor to buyer. I would have expected this in second or third. And, oddly enough, the importance of measuring sales fell from 17.9% in 2010 to 13.3% in 2011. The importance of measurements such as revenue per customer also plunged from 17.2% to 9.6%; customer retention costs dipped from 7.7% to 6.4%; and, profits per customer dropped from 9.4% to 4.8%.

At first glance, I can’t tell if these numbers represent the migration of an organization toward a culture of customer-centricity or a culture of compromise. Are these numbers falling because they’re difficult to measure or is it because they’re not important? Certainly with all of the discussions about ROI and the importance of proving the ability to meet customer needs while triggering meaningful outcomes, we could find a way to improve engagement strategies beyond the 3F’s (friends, fans and followers). To survive digital Darwinism, we must challenge ourselves and management to migrate toward relevance and significance. That means new metrics are necessary to measure a new direction.

Over the last several yeras I’ve met with countless business leaders seeking input into the insights and corresponding metrics necessary to listen, learn, engage, and adapt in a new era of empowered consumerism. In fact, I believe that a significant gap exists between existing metrics and those required to chart new courses toward relevance. For example, one metric that I hear more often than not is the reduction of inbound customer inquiries as a result of DIY or automated knowledge bases. Of course, if the customer can answer their own questions, they won’t need us. But, that same metric is carrying over to social media. If a Tweet can resolve a problem, the company has succeeded in reducing the inbound burden to the contact center. At a time when executives claim that getting closer to customers is a top priority for 2012 and beyond, how is it that we can employ metrics that continue to do what businesses have done so well over the last couple of decades – the ability to move further away from customer engagement through barriers of technology?  Customers just want to hit “0″ to talk to someone live. The same is true for new media. Customers are in control of their own experiences, what they share, and how they make decisions. Businesses can either accept this reality and work towards a collaborative business model of co-creation or simply choose to not be part of the long-term equation.

With the reduction of inbound metrics, we should explore acts of increasing customer engagement as a way of cultivating meaningful and productive experiences. It is through the generation of positive experiences that we can assure the materialization of other important business drivers such as sales, referrals, acquisition and retention costs, etc. More importantly, we can ensure relevance. Everything begins with understanding what it is that customers want and mapping these findings to what executives are driving toward. In the process, you may in fact find that a gap exists. But discovering the gap is what you’re supposed to do when the future is uncertain. It is what you do with this new found awareness that defines your place in the hearts, minds, and wallets of customers and prospects.

Ignorance is bliss until it’s not. After all, if ignorance is bliss, then awareness must be awakening.

Just when it looked like the saga of the new 747-8 freighter was behind them, Boeing has been handed another setback. Launch customer Cargolux decided not to show up to take delivery of the first plane this week. The Luxembourg based company notified the plane maker on Friday that the big ceremony that had been planned to celebrate the newest 747 entering service was not going to happen and it was rejecting the first two airplanes.

And it all comes down to fuel efficiency. Well on the surface that’s what it comes down to, but Qatar Airways new investment in Cargolux might point to a bit more twisted battle involving Boeing’s other new airplane, the 787 Dreamliner.

The 747-8 freighter made its first flight back in February of 2010 and like Boeing’s other new airplane, it has suffered a few setbacks since then. But with the flight testing complete and the first two airplanes out of the paint shop, Boeing was ready to start delivering the new freighters this week. In fact Cargolux had planned on taking delivery on Monday at Paine Field where the airplanes are made, and making the short 30 mile flight to Sea-Tac airport south of Seattle and begin hauling freight the next day.

Instead the two 747-8s with Cargolux paint jobs still sit outside the factory at Paine Field north of Seattle and the freight operator and Boeing are negotiating over how much being a little less fuel efficient than initially promised is worth.

Boeing announced to customers many months ago that the 747-8F wasn’t quite going to meet the fuel burn goals that had been set out at the beginning of the program. According to Aviation Week & Space Technology, the freighter is 2.7 percent off the projected fuel efficiency. It’s not uncommon for the first several airplanes off of a new assembly line to miss projected performance figures. But the customers and the manufacturer usually come to an agreement long before the handing over of the keys. And yes, there is a ceremonial handing over of the keys, even though they aren’t actually used to start the airplane.

Boeing and engine maker General Electric are working improvements to the new airplane they claim will makeup 1.6 percent of the efficiency shortfall. But the improved efficiency will not be available until 2013.

The last minute rejection of the new 747-8s is likely influenced by Cargolux’s newest stake holder, Qatar Airways. A deal that was put together months ago, Qatar Airways 35 percent stake in Cargolux was finalized on September 11. And according to Flightglobal, there might be some sour grapes between Qatar Airways and Boeing over the 30 787s the airline has on order.

Meanwhile, Boeing is still going full steam ahead with the delivery ceremony for the first 787 to launch customer All Nippon Airways this coming Monday. ANA will be taking delivery of its first airplane and is expecting to fly customers some time next month.

Photo: Boeing