Name: Vanessa
Email:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessadimauro
Personal Blog: http://blog.leadernetworks.com
Bio: Vanessa DiMauro is the CEO of Leader Networks. A pioneer in business-to-business community building, Vanessa has been creating successful online communities and networks for more than fifteen years. Vanessa is a popular speaker, researcher and author on the topics of online communities, social and professional networking, and Web 2.0 for business. With a research background, Vanessa takes the approach of a cultural anthropologist to help businesses effectively use social media to get closer to their customers, generate revenue, innovation and tangible ROI. She has founded and run leading online professional communities such as Cambridge Information Network (CIN) for Cambridge Technology Partners, Computerworld Executive Suite and CXO Systems' Peer Visibility Network. She consults with many organizations on Web 2.0 for business and has a blue chip client list which includes Cisco, Cognizant, EMC, LexisNexis, The Palladium Group and SAP. Vanessa DiMauro was recently named a 2009 Research Fellow for the Society of New Communications Research and also serves as an Executive- In-Residence at Babson College, for the Olin School of Management. Women in Technology International (WITI) named Vanessa DiMauro one of "Boston's Most Influential Women in Technology". She holds both a B.A. and an M.A. from Boston College.
Posts by :
- Tweet when you can on mobile and string the tweets together into a blog post
- Sign up a guest blog or two to cover your busy period and show valuable activity
- Write a blog post that aggregates or rounds up other people’s blog posts and ideas
- Is social media typically regarded as a trustworthy source of information for professionals?
- Does social media offer effective tools to access information, advice and engage in professional collaboration? How do they compare to traditional off-line networking?
- What are the tools and sources of social media that professionals rely on to make decisions?
- Will social media change the business and practice of enterprise-level operations?
- Close to a quarter (23%) of respondents identified themselves as CEO of their organization; 50% as “Director” (24%) “Manager” (24%)
- Company size ranged from less than 100 to over 50,000 full-time employees
- Age was well distributed with the greatest proportion in the 36-45 range
- 25 countries were represented, with 58% of respondents living in the US
- All respondents were either the decision makers or influenced the decision process within their company or business unit
- Traditional influence cycles are being disrupted by Social Media as decision makers utilize social networks to inform and validate decisions
- Professionals want to be collaborative in the decision-cycle but not be marketed or sold to online; however online marketing is a preferred activity by companies.
- The average professional belongs to 3-5 online networks for business use, and LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are among the top used.
- The convergence of Internet, mobile, and social media has taken significant shape as professionals rely on anywhere access to information, relationships and networks
- Decision-makers are broadening reach to gather information especially among active users
- Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% – combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust)
- Three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions
- Reliance has increased for essentially all respondents over the past three years
- Younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals.
- There are more people collaborating outside their company wall than within their organizational intranet
- The era of Social Media Peer Group (SMPG) has arrived and information will travel at a business velocity that has never been seen before enabled by the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies.
- Traditional cycles of decision-making are being disrupted by SMPG
- Managing and influencing professional decision-making will be the major challenge as professionals often do not seek the information that marketers want to share online.
Who Owns Social Media and Why It Should Not Be You
July 1st, 2010Determining who is in charge of social media can be a daunting task. Even when social leadership is channeled through the executive suite, it does not stop at the executive level. Often the question becomes “who owns social media?” within the organization.
For many new initiatives, he who first touches the new “thing” becomes its ultimate owner. The department which leads the first or most visible social media project establishes the initial beachhead of control over its eventual programmatic development. But does this accident of innovation deliver the best results for the organization?
The battle for control of social media most frequently involves three warring tribes: Marketing vs. IT vs. Legal. In addition, if the executive suite is paying attention, roving bands from HR and Customer Care will also join the melee.
Marketing argues that social media is an extension of their strategic marketing and brand management activities, so social marketing should be part of their other digital efforts such as email campaigns and the website.
Over in IT, the keeper of the tool sets and standardization efforts, the CIO claims ownership over all things social. After all, they will be required to support it.
The Legal department offers this opinion: as the group charged with managing compliance and even investor relations, they will have a sizable stake in compliance, social media policy and monitoring efforts, especially if they need to understand the social buzz to manage any potential liability.
There are some organizations where many departments seek to own the social efforts and secure the budget and staff needed to succeed. In others, no one wants to hold the social “hot potato” due to the uncertainties and risks it introduces. Which department head at BP wants to take ownership of Tony Hayward’s infamous Twitter gaffe?
The Social Media Cooperative
Let’s consider a new social media “ownership” model. One that creates a new, collaborative approach where no one department or group should be responsible for social media for the organization or company. Call it co-ownership or the social media cooperative.
Hold off on those knee-jerk reactions for a moment. Sure, many of you will argue this is impossible — every successful innovation needs an owner — so collaborative ownership is ridiculous and a recipe for disaster. Instead, let’s run through the reasons for why co-ownership is a crucial and constructive step.
Speed to market. While developing a social strategy is not an emergency, social is here to stay. Social’s unprecedented adoption rates make it a necessary operational element and a critical success factor for today’s organizations. They must have an ability to act and react quickly — there’s no time to waste. Battles over ownership consume valuable time, where a co-ownership model, at the very least, puts all the resources and goals in the same room at the same time.
Shared budgets. Single owners mean single budgets, so when one group takes ownership, their budget control can exclude funding for social media initiatives outside the ownership group. We all know about “skunk works” projects that succeeded without access to established budgets. But how many more equally vital and valuable initiatives have disappeared without a trace without budget support? Co-ownership places responsibility for funding on all the interested groups, and not incidentally, broadens the base of support for adequate funding.
A single story with many narrators. Line of business ownership inevitably skews the tone and tenor of the social media conversation. If marketing owns social media, it’s about marketing. If IT owns it, the emphasis is tools. If legal sets the agenda, rules and compliance … rule. Instead, co-ownership enables the creation of a single “story” for the organization, told by many voices. The goal is to have the whole organization enable social media and give groups inside and outside an opportunity to influence the conversation.
Why Co-ownership Works
I worked for a consulting company called Cambridge Technology Partners. Like all new employees, I needed to undergo New Employee Orientation, or NEO. We learned about the company’s mission, messaging, key customers, go-to people and filled out lots of forms.
In the middle of the second day of training, the head of Sales, Chris Greendale, gave a talk about the sales process. At the end, he asked all staff to stand up and put our hands in the air. With some reluctance — consultants don’t like games but do know how to follow instructions — we did. Then he asked us all to repeat the following mantra: ”I’m in sales. We are all in sales.”
The point? Each one of us would touch a customer or client, and we would directly or indirectly represent Cambridge to that customer or client. This mantra became part of the corporate culture. We each had a personal responsibility to make valuable contributions to company best practice whether we were part of the sales organization, a consultant or in finance. We had co-ownership of the company’s goals.
The same need and opportunity exists for social media. While some may have direct responsibility for carrying out social media projects or have an MBO based on social media success, each employee has an opportunity and a responsibility to represent the company well when engaging online. Perhaps there is a need for an “I’m social for my company” battle cry – followed by training and support to understand what that means, in every organization.
Social Media Is A Relentless Taskmaster: How And Why To Gain Control
June 8th, 2010Social Media is a relentless taskmaster. Once you begin participating in a social media marketing or thought
leadership effort, it is hard to stop posting — even for a moment. It is a cognitive treadmill with no obvious stop button. At least, that’s what so many have been told. However, sometimes we must pause to regain control — to buy time to think, to write with quality and assess the impact of what we have to say — before we actually say it. There are certainly plenty of examples where someone should have stopped to think before sending. Recently a couple of public figures made serious errors when using social media: BP’s CEO Tony Hayward decrying on twitter that he too is tired of the oil spill problem and wants his life back and Sarah Palin’s Facebook blowout blaming environmentalists’ demands for safe offshore drilling as the root of the oil spill crisis. Perhaps Palin’s comments, while misguided at best, do give us, the reader, a deeper insight into her true point of view. However, each made a significant mistake; damaging stock prices and investor relations and taking serious heat in the media, each with a single keystroke. While they gave us some deeper insights into their points of view, we have to wonder: why did they do it? It’s not totally their fault. Chances are they stepped onto the social media treadmill and the need and desire to keep pace with participation overshadowed the best practice of thinking before you speak, or tweet, or post something inappropriate on Facebook. Thoughtless? Yes. Harmful? Certainly! Pressure to engage overriding better judgment? Likely. While proper discretion is necessary on the social media track, the bar for honesty and authenticity on social media is also set very high. In some small way, I appreciate that they did not outsource their voice to their PR agency of record and, instead, communicated openly. For the past 6 weeks, I have been a dedicated road warrior with multiple trips to visit multiple cities. Many client engagements, conference talks, book preparations and the like mean I have been, frankly, too engaged with the in-person world to put posting on the priority list. I stepped away from my blog and my twitter stream temporarily. My absence was noted: the blog readership dropped a bit and I missed opportunities to engage online with friends and colleagues. I began the blackout period with the best of intentions – each day planning to write and translate some of the thoughts and ideas that I was experiencing in the face2face world into the social media world. But as it turned out, I never found the time. So some great ideas and experiences were lost to memory or became book chapters but not tweets or blog entries. I made the active decision not to participate at a period in time when I was too busy to think critically and too tired to contribute well-formed ideas of value. In many ways, I think this is OK. It represents the true nature of the ebb and flow of social media as a collaboration platform. Aside from dedicated customer care initiatives, which require constant attention, it is important for bloggers to step off the treadmill every so often and place a premium on what they offer online. Quality ultimately wins over quantity, despite the current thinking that one must produce articles with extreme regularity in order to build a following and make an impact. This current “wisdom” is the driver behind much of the low quality information broadcast on the channel. Silence can sometimes be a more effective communications tool than fluff and empty words, especially when it signifies “I’m listening” or “I’m thinking” rather than simply going dark. With the benefit of hindsight, I have come up with a strategy for the next time in-person schedules overtake my social media participation. Here are three tips to help avoid “going dark:”
When I ran a large online community of business professionals, I would tell my moderators that when they noticed a significant drop in online participation, that was precisely the best time to reach out to members with an offer to help in some way. When members get too busy to participate, often it’s because they need help. Travel for work, a business crisis, a professional point-of-pain can often account for participation lapses in online communities. A community’s goal should be to serve its members’ needs when and how they need service. The goal is ultimately to give more than you take. That is the true essence of community – both online and offline. Keep the three-fold rule in mind: give three times for every single request. While we shouldn’t make too many allowances for poor judgment online – as in the case of BP’s CEO and other potentially damaging social media indiscretions — at the end of the day it is important to remember that the “humanness” of social media interactions drive the value of this medium. It’s probably best to slow down the communications pace when it becomes unnatural, rather than partake just to achieve the illusion that ubiquity is the most important outcome. Quality always matters most.
You May Not Be My Online Friend, But You Influence Me
April 15th, 2010I am growing weary of all this social media silly talk about trust and friendship as it applies to professional collaboration online. I have online “friends” in my knitting community and my travel community, for example, but my professional networks do not yield friendships in the real, down-and- dirty, share a beer or drive me to the airport at 5am kind of way.
What my social media peer group (SMPG) offers is a fruitful and productive idea exchange.I share experiences and thoughts with my SMPG about my work life and the situations I encounter on a professional basis. I also have a cadre of thought leaders I go to for new ideas and subject matter expertise in areas I don’t know about. This useful give-and-take helps me avoid missteps and brings new ideas to the table.Given the global nature of the internet, social media peer groups can be very far-reaching, with knowledgeable people around the world influencing each other about professional decisions.The opportunity is there for individuals and organizations to participate — in the right ways.
All too often, professional communities take their cues from consumer-facing social media sites and experiences. We have greater access to public, consumer-facing instances of social media, and thus try to adopt their practices for professional peer groups.I believe this is a real mistake.
The rules of engagement for professional networks are different.The presumption of trust and the goals of achieving trustful relationships on professional networks should be reexamined. The current model of striving for trust online in professional settings is fundamentally unachievable. Nothing in the world will replace a good old-fashioned face-to-face handshake or a business dinner, where stories can be shared and the gritty nuances of the project and the politics are revealed.This is how professional trust and intimacy develops.
In business, social credibility stems from expertise, accomplishments, battle scars and length of service in ones given profession.The credible people are those who have fought the good fight, won some and lost some, and have the stories to prove it. Voracious use of social media is no substitute for these badges of honor, no matter how actively one participates in an online dialogue. Lack of experience or know-how becomes ever more obvious when someone shares information without a solid foundation of understanding.In this new social economy, the currency of authority is deep knowledge.Enthusiastic participation does not always equal expertise in practice.
Companies that use social media to reach their professional audiences online — buyers and prospects — too often confuse trust with respect and influence. An organization has to educate and inform their audience about the firm’s position, products and services in the market place — not be their “friend.” Firms who endeavor to create a social media presence to attract new customers or retain existing ones should become invaluable to the buyer. By sharing ideas, case studies, thought leadership, industry trends and happenings, companies and individuals can insert themselves into the specific area of professional knowledge and help grow it. Offering specific knowledge and useful guidance is the foundation for building respect and influence, and for staying top-of-mind when the buyer has a service or product need.
The Dali Lama once said: “Share your knowledge, it is the way to achieve immortality.” To gain professional legitimacy online there must be a dedicated focus on sharing the knowledge that one person or a company has amassed over time, and letting that information help inspire or inform others. Even if a buyer never calls you back or orders your widget, you have helped shape how that buyer thinks about their industry and job, and they are more likely to recommend you to a peer. Though social means, you or your firm have influenced and earned the respect of that buyer. That’s worth a lot more than a “fan” badge or a place on a “friends” list.
Finding Your Company’s Twitter Voice
January 20th, 2010I have been as excited about Twitter as I have been about the advent of the fork or the football – I’m not intrigued by the thing- only the application of it. 
Twitter is a utensil that provides a single basic function with stylistic differences that are determined by the user’s agility with the tool. Now, before all the Twitter “gurus” get up in arms – the definition of utensil I am using is “any instrument, vessel, or tool serving a useful purpose,” so it is indeed relevant.
To play out my football analogy – that pigskin in one guys hands is a silver bullet; in anothers, it wouldn’t suffice in a backyard mudball game.
In fact, I am a Tweeter myself and given this great, recent Haiti tragedy, when the search began to find Haitian who are close to me and my family, we turned to Twitter as the fastest channel to get information. This was the first time my Leader Networks persona and my personal voice have blended online.
In thinking about Twitter for business, more and more clients are bubbling up a desire to get a Twitter channel. Predictably, as a curmudgeonly strategist, I repeatedly ask “what do you want to accomplish?” and “what are your business goals for use?” to help figure out whether it makes sense or not.
Taking on a Twitter account for business after all is no small task and in *many* cases not a good idea for the company to begin with. Sure its free to get one, but the need to maintain it, staff it, monitor and respond to interactions can be quite costly from a staffing perspective. After all, the point is to engage so the better you get at Twitter, the greater the accountability.
The next step after determining the business rationale, is to figure out what is the most appropriate “Twitter Voice” for the company. There are many compelling voices on Twitter – personas, companies, experts sharers. Some focus on connecting and others serve as information channels. Most successful Twitter business voices are both consistent, persistent, and useful to the audience in some way.
Too many organizations just open an account willy-nilly and see what happens, or learn about an account that some well-meaning employee opened months after its been in operation. Good sometimes, bad often but definitely not strategically ideal.
A better approach is to think through the strategic intent and voice of the twitter stream – what will it do for your company? Who will be in charge of it? What is it’s main goal? What is the Twitter Voice and how aligned will it (should it) be with the company voice?
In some cases, a more human Twitter voice can serve to take the “edge” off a company’s opacity. In other cases, it can help a large company seem more initiate responsive. It can demonstrate thought leadership. It can be witting, and charming and wise. But, it is best practice to make an informed choice and not just inherit the voice that happens to come out unintentionally as your company is speaking to potentially millions of people!
Here are some examples of effective twitter voices for consideration:
1) Product-Centric Voice: In this strategy, the business humanizes the corporate voice by giving an identity to the channel.Using the example of Dell, they have broken out the different channel products into distinct twitter channels as a way to streamline interactions and make them most productive and relevant. This strategy is particularly well suited for larger organizations with multiple product lines.
2) The Voice of the CEO (or other notable spokes-model): Often ideal for SMB or those with a particularly gregarious spokesperson, the Voice of the CEO often blends personal and professional information in the twitter stream. This strategy allows the company to grow closer to its customers through the blending of information styles and by creating opportunities for customer intimacy and (the perception of) relationship building. One great example is Richard Branson, Virgin’s CEO who is a delight to read due to the personality of the stream.
3) Customer Care Online Voice: By bringing customer care online to the Twitter-verse, companies can often be more responsive to their users and buyers in a 24X7 environment by sharing information interesting to the customers and fielding customer care issues online. This is a “traditional” use of a new customer service tool.
This Twitter Voice is in some ways the easiest to implement because it clearly is a shared endeavor between a number of customer service representatives and can be staffed accordingly. Because it is clearly a group account, there is no need to have a witty voice or a consistent persona as is the burden when some of the other Twitter Voices are outsourced. A great example is Orbitz’s Twitter account.
These are some examples to consider and there are many more out there to learn from. But the moral of the story is there is a place for Twitter in business, sometimes, as long as the goals and outcomes are well thought out, there is a clear plan and approach to the Twitter strategy and an operational plan that is well suited to achieve the goals of the effort.
Twitter can be a viable business channel for some organizations but does require a strategy, tactics and staff.
Why You Need A Social Media Policy in 2010
January 11th, 2010Lurkers Matter
January 9th, 2010Every online community or social networks has lurkers- people who read messages but never post, who join groups but never participate. This is a common aspect of online life. I too am a lurker on many occasions online. I read, I think about what has been posted and on many occasions, I compose responses either in my head or on the screen, but never push the send button. 
There are many reasons for this behavior – in some cases, the idea of responding is too challenging – maybe my ideas aren’t good enough or my point of view isn’t salient enough for prime time? Perhaps, as a senior professional, a CEO, I feel the need to refrain from exposing what I *don’t* know, and therefore don’t participate (which I suspect is a common condition in professional networks). Other times, the pure logistics of the day prevent participation – a phone call or interruption prevents me from completing the task of posting.
The role of the lurker has often been examined in research about online communities- but it has mainly been to quantify the numbers of lurkers but not to explore their value. I believe they are an often overlooked style of member.
One of my first publications in 1995 (!) was “Active Readers–What Benefits Do They Gain from an Educational Telecommunications Network?” where my colleague Gloria Jacobs and I studied what lurkers – or what we preferred to call Active Readers did offline with the information and ideas they found online. We specifically focused on those elusive community members who visited the community frequently, spent time regularly on the community but were silent members.
Much to our surprise, we found that the Active Readers are a vibrant and engaged group of community members. They often took the concepts they read online and brought them into their professional lives – in real life. They shared information in meetings, talked about what they learned and even referred people to join the network or community even thought their participation was never traceable online.
Active readers often considered themselves a part of the online fabric of the group and were often more engaged than those who posted or participated on occasion. They frequently brought value to the community and helped considerably in extending the reach.
As the rush is on to assign ROI to the professional communities so many companies have created, it is important to consider these people when factoring the benefits and reach of the communities. Current social media tools can’t even begin to track or trace impact of the Active Reader when capturing the data about the members at large.
Therefore, I believe it is important to reach out to the Active Readers to find about their participation experiences, include them in redesign efforts, find out what their needs are accommodate them as much as those who are visible. In other words, value them and treat them as an important part of your membership base.
Fifteen years after my first exploration of this topic, I am pleased to see a resurgence of interest in this group – the lurker, the silent member, the Active Reader – because they matter. A fellow community builder just launched a new blog called Lurkers Anonymous that will be dedicated to exploring the topic in depth and worth a read, even if you don’t comment!
The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks: Social Media’s Impact on Decision-Making
November 19th, 2009I am thrilled to share key findings from research that Don Bulmer and I conducted called The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks. The research was conducted as part of our 2009 fellowship with the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR). Don and I began this research this summer in efforts to explore a greatly overlooked area in social media – how decision-makers are using social media in their work.
A great deal of attention and research has been devoted over the last few years to evangelizing social media as a new form of customer-centric relationship building. Build a network or use social media to deepen customer intimacy has become the mantra of today.
However, what is often overlooked is the impact of social media to change behaviors, and the potential to use social media to impact a professional’s decision-making processes. While everyone is endeavoring to capture the mind-share of the buyer, few understand what success truly looks like.
In an effort to better understand the impact of social media on business, we conducted research (as a first step) to examine the role that social media has on decision-making among business professionals. Specifically, we sought to understand the following:
The methodology for this study involved a mixed-methods approach supported by quantitative data gathered via an online survey of 356 professionals to understand their perceptions and experiences with social media in support of their decision-making. Select interviews of 12 professionals were also conducted using a semi-structured interview guide as part of the second phase of the study.
Key demographics of the research include:
Below are key findings and an executive summary of the research. The full report will be available over the coming weeks through SNCR. A presentation of results with detailed charts are available on the SNCR website, now (located halfway down the page).
Six Key Findings From The Research Include:
1. Professional decision-making is becoming more social – enter the era of Social Media Peer Groups (SMPG)
2. The big three have emerged as leading professional networks: LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter
3. Professional networks are emerging as decision-support tools
4. Professionals trust online information almost as much as information gotten from in-person
5. Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years
6. Social Media use patterns are not pre-determined by age or organizational affiliation
Executive Summary of the The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks Report:
The convergence of the Internet, Web 2.0 and mobile technologies has created a disruptive shift in business. The era of Business-to-Person (B2P) communications driven by all things social (social media, social networks, and social influence) has emerged as a new model for engagement and Social Media Peer Groups (SMPG) have evolved to take important and influential shape in a new business and economic environment.
This shift has disintermediated many long-standing marketing, communications and selling beliefs that have traditionally guided how companies interact, support and collaborate with their customers. We now work in an environment where companies have diminished control over the reputation of their brands, products and services as the wisdom of crowds increasingly dictate the rules of reputation management and selling.
Through the use of social media, customers and prospects now have an almost instantaneous platform for discussion of their ideas, experiences and knowledge. Increasingly, the use of social media is playing an important role in the professional lives of decision-makers as they utilize the tools and mediums before them to engage their decision-making processes. The social nature of decision making has increased with impressive strength connecting generations of professionals to each other – changing the dynamics of customer relationship management, marketing and communications, forever.
In today’s global environment of a vast network of seamlessly connected devices (one billion people connected to internet and 4 billion mobile phones) information has the capacity to travel at a business velocity never before seen. 400+ million people are sharing billions of pieces of content and experiences each week through the online exchanges. Communities of practice, professional networks, e-mail, SMS are the sort of tools that enable multi channel access for individuals (employees, customers, partners and suppliers).
We are finally a part of the long-promised global virtual and collaborative work environment.
Online communities and professional networks have arguably changed the way we do business and are, in themselves, new ecosystems, virally creating communities within communities that drive brand recognition and brand experience – beyond the control of most companies to manage. Professional networks facilitate vast interactions, connections and networks of people by enabling collaboration anywhere and at any time.
Through this research we focus on professional use of social media – and it all comes back to the strength of the relationship.
Human relationships and peer-to-peer decision making are inherently interrelated. We make decisions about who we trust in work settings based on a number of factors – one often being proximity. With social media, proximity is often superseded in the trust factor by relativity or like-mindedness.
Is this person knowledgeable? Credible? Believable? Do we share the same views and networks – on or offline?
Because belonging to a peer network or online community requires us to perform publicly, to share our background by way of a profile, to display our professional connections and networks, trustworthiness is in many cases more tangibly determined. Peer Groups can now be formed by idea sharing and virtual collaboration as easily as the proximity based groups that often form in office settings.
Enter the era of Business-to-Person (B2P) communications and the emergence of Social Media Peer Groups (SMPG).
Through the use of professional networks and online communities, decision-makers are connecting and collaborating with peers, experts and colleagues far and wide in an on demand environment, about the issues that keep them up at night. The impact of these far-reaching business networks is becoming clearer every day as millions of consumers, partners, suppliers and businesses discuss and share their professional experiences with each other with increasing levels of trust and reliance.
It has long been known as truth that peer endorsement is the single greatest decision-making accelerant. Through social media, peer influence cycles are happening at a velocity never before seen, and in many ways, companies are losing the ability to control their messages. They need to get back into the relationship cycle but on the terms set forth by the SMPG.
Participating in the SMPG relationship requires a behavior change on the part of organizations – one dominated by valuable content and genuine contributions, transparent honesty and a commitment to follow where the decision-maker wants to lead.
What does this all mean?
1. Social Media is supplementing the traditional professional decision-making cycle with great affect
2. Challenges are facing marketers who endeavor to mange or control social media network content
3. The greatest opportunity business has is to engage collaborative influence – via immediacy of impact through social channel
We look forward to your comments and thoughts about this study – Here is the link to the download.
What Customers (Really) Want and How To Give It To Them
October 23rd, 2009Social media is undoubtedly changing the relationship companies have with their clients.
In the past, when we wanted to know what customers or clients think, an organization would go out and conduct extensive focus groups or, more likely, make a hopeful guess and then create a product or service based upon that guess and hope it sells. But this is all changing.
Customers and clients are intensely talking about the brands they like on blogs and in online communities. They are expressing their joys and frustrations on Twitter and other instant channels with our without your invitation. So now the challenge has moved from the act of formalizing feedback cycles through structured customer insight groups, to keeping up with the insights that are freely and frequently being offered 24X7.
Recently a study of 1300 American and multinational companies conducted by e-Consultancy found that fewer than half of the respondents had implemented a clearly developed customer engagement strategy. However, the study showed a high level of awareness of the need for such a strategy.
Executives are beginning to appreciate the importance of engaging customers online and to invest heavily in methods to capture the customers’ attention and retain consumers’ interest. However, one common misstep in the process is that companies often (too often) believe they know what the customer wants from them. 
They then often skip a critical step in the planning process – namely to ask the customers or clients what their needs and expectations are from the company. Instead, there is an inclination to either ignore the social channel, or to take it all at face value – and put equal weight to every tweet or opinion.
While ad hoc customer insights are decidedly important, not all clients are created equally. Some generate more revenue for your company or have a larger footprint than others and therefore should be given more attention than others.
Due to the sheer volume of feedback from the social channel, the tendency is to focus on the “squeaky wheels” without heed to their impact on the large client ecosystem.Often times, the social channel feedback is centered on tactical issues – a problem with customer service, a broken product, a frustrating single experience and do not focus on the more strategic issues that may be more important for the business to get a handle on.
Key clients would be well served by a customer engagement program that combines an informal and formal inquiry process. And, it should start with understanding where the prospective user base’s current process or experience gaps are – what keeps them up at night or causes issues, problems or inconvenience.
A driving goal of any social media program should be to use the digital channel to accelerate a business process and make it easier for the customers to interact with your company. Therefore, it remains important to explore, through both the social channel and more traditional insight programs, the points of customer discomfort and/or need.
