Beware of ghoulish cyber-attacks!
Happy Monday and the week of Halloween!
Today, we are going to talk about cyber-attacks and the best practices to try to avoid them. One of the top vulnerabilities is trust through social networking!
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Friday Social Tip: Spend Time on Your Influencers - The 4-1-1
Spend time on your influencers!
I think this is one of the best social media tips I ever discovered.
First, a definition of an nfluencer. An influencer is someone who influences the rest of the clients and potential clients online and offline, usually about 15% to 20% of your followers or fans!
I discovered this concept in a book by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping, The 4-1-1 (for your informtion!) is a way to show value and care to your social influencers.
This concept says that if you communicate 6 things socially, 4 of those 6, or 67% should be showcasing content from your influencers. The other items you should be showcasing are your Point of View or Subject Matter Expertise . The other could be something that is more sales oriented.
Complements of Joe Pulizzi here is a great visual of what this concept is!
5 Tips for a Better Social Customer Experience
Customer experience is a key differentiator for businesses. In the age of social, the experience is even more important.
From some research this weekend around the "experience" area, here are some of the tips I find most helpful in this area.
Top 5 Tips for a Better Social Customer Experience;
- Post relevant content. This technique pulls relevant people to your area. Much like a retailer would leverage a storefront, or product, or specials to get people into the store.
- Use big data to understand your clients needs. I believe the combination of big data and social is a game changer. Using the social conversations that exists, you can learn how to better meet the needs of our clients.
- Be Consistent. Your company will be on a number of social sites, and probably your own website. Consistency in multichannel is crucial. The new Generation C demands it! Be Consistent in brand message and content and service. . Consistency drives trust. Trust drivers loyalty!
- Help your clients. Provide them with social tools to help them decide on your products from the experience. Think about recommendations from others. There is a new type of purchasing recommendation. Instead of behavior driven – if you buy this, buy that because others did this, leverage the power that social brings: “You share these attributes with the people who read this. You might want to take a look at it.”. Gamification and other tools in the social world can increase your customer experience.
- Use predictive analysis to improve both current and future interactions. Anticipating your clients needs keeps them in your camp longer.
7 Key Steps for Social Content Curation - Quiet Marketing
Lately I have been focused on Content Curation as a secret weapon in your Social Strategy. Did you know that 60% of B2B marketers plan on spending more on their content marketing next year than ever before?
What is Social Content Curation? It is a plan to create content, distribute content, promote content, and measure its success in the social world.
7 Steps to Great Social Curation:
- Conceptualize: Before you begin, think through your plan and goals for your social content. Think through details and leave nothing to chance. This requires a lot of preliminary research on your part.
- Plan your space. Select where to place the content. Where you place content will help you shape the content. For instance, content on Pinterest is different than a blog! Did you know that SlideShare is a great place and the largest curation of social presentations? How do you leverage the right tools for your content!
- Know your audience. A good curator needs to understand the audience and to fully communicate and let their Point of View (POV) speak out to the public and to better listen and meet their desires.
- Secure commitment, resources and budget. Who will be your Subject Matter experts(SMEs)? Make sure you secure their time and if you need, money to create the right graphics, video, and pictures to make your content come live.
- Create content. Make sure it is great content. Writing well is a necessary skill for a curator. As is the use of video, pictures, presentations, and all valued content for your area.
- Communicate your content. You have spent a long time on researching and organizing your content; now you want to maximize the viewing for your content and make it truly memorable. Imagine a top rated infographic, or blog. Allow time and budget in order to be able to effectively contextualize your work.
- Have an Opening! Just like a museum curating an art exhibition, make your Social Content opening fun, exciting and memorable. You want to create an exciting buzz so that people will keep coming back. Schedule your opening and begin the opening with a bang -- maybe a SocialChat or a Tweetup. Just as a museum would begin the opening with a live art or music performance or light show, these items !
Social Selling! Best Practice of Engagement!
Have a great cup of coffee and enjoy this week's Social Business Coffee Break!
Today we are continuing our series on Social Selling. Thank you so much for the great response to date!
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TGIF: To #FF or not?
Yes, today is Friday. You will start to see a lot of #FF.
What does #FF mean? Well, starting back in 2009, Twitter fans created this hashtag as a shorthand for Follow Friday.
Should you #FF? YES ! Why? Well it helps you introduce new users to a great social tool. In addition, it allows you to show appreciation and thanks for the followers you have that retweet you, or support your thoughts, and more.
To be authenticate, don't FF just because folks follow you. Do it because you recommend them for a reason.
I like recommending a person and giving great attributes about them, like this:
I avoid doing big groups as to me it doesn't tell me why I should consider following someone.
So given today's Friday ... #FF someone you know!
The Social Sales Team - Knowledge accidents and all!
The Social Sales Team
A good sales team should rarely meet each other. It should, instead, be out meeting customers. It should be working out what your customers want and be maximizing the return for your organization. The problem comes because sales teams have voracious appetites for ideas, comments, case studies, pricing, presentation, market intelligence and so forth. They are generally very poor at following a process and providing forms to fill out and records to keep gets in the way of the sales process. In addition to this, much of what a sales team relies on is experience amongst the members of the team.
The knowledge accidents that occur when they bump into each other in the corridor or at lunch are extremely valuable and efficient to exchange information and catch important snippets. So how do you keep their appetites satisfied, but maximize their time in front of customers?
Make them Mobile
Give them the technology they need to keep in touch easily with the places they need to go to help them in their job. This might be an iPad with a 3G card, or a Mi-Fi device or similar which lets them connect to the office and access your systems.
Collaboration Hubs for Clients
In your social intranet, create communities focused on each of your major customers. Use Wikis, Forums, Activities, Ideation Blogs and all the other tools you need to share everything you have about that customer which would help your sellers. Consider organizing the material around opportunities (perhaps pulled from your CRM system) using tags. That way you can easily find everything about a particular opportunity whilst keeping the structure fluid so that it’s easy to re-use information. For more information on this, please see
Give them some Power Tools
Provide them a social network to interface with other sellers. Teach them how to use the outside social tools . Did you know the most productive sellers in IBM leverage social in their sales process?
One of the best techniques the Sales Team can deploy is to use an informal blog. This lets them express their thoughts, experiences and opinions about the work they’re doing with the customer account without the need for the structure of more formal meeting minutes. It’s in the blog that the seeds of the knowledge accident tree are sown. It’s where short narratives about what’s going on can be captured and stored for the benefit of the rest of the team.
Remember that by putting mobile technology, which is connected to your system in the hands of your sellers, they will be more inclined to participate. If it’s made easy, and they are rewarded for doing so, they will do it.
Social Selling Video Blog! Know the influencers!
Welcome to our Social Business Coffee Break!
We are in the middle of a Social Selling series. Today we will focus on leveraging influencers to help you reach that white space client and to retain client loyalty!
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More followers? Just ask! Follow me! sandy_carter
So I was reading this weekend -- with my broken leg, there is not a lot to do! I learned some interesting things about how to drive more from Twitter --- quite simple actually -- just ask.
In an analysis by Twitter, they found that 4 core ways to get great results from your Tweets are:
1 Ask for a download. Explicitly asking people to download accompanied by a link increases URL clicks by an average of 13%.
2 Ask for a Retweet. Explicitly asking people to retweet increases retweets by an average of 311%.
3 Ask for a follow. Explicitly asking for a follow increases followers by an average of 258%.
4 Ask for a reply. Explicitly asking for a reply increased replies by an average of 334%
So would you guys please follow me on Twitter at sandy_carter and subscribe to my BLOG! Pretty Please!