Central Perk

vineri, 11 aprilie 2014

Social Media: Building Communities

Posted: 10 Apr 2014 05:46 AM PDT

Has your boss ever come to you and asked, "So what is our Facebook growth rate?" and your first thought is, 'ermm…?!' Yes – it's a pretty daunting question.

The thing is, social media isn't as easy as tracking some numbers and then *poof* you magically have your answer. Although you can track data, you can also use other factors to see how well your online community is growing.

Either way, as an online marketer it is down to you. Your job is to get things done and get results for your company or client.

Having only started with Twitter a few years ago after a friend convinced me it was the next big thing, I initially wasn't all that interested. If anything, I was massively confused; "what on earth is a hashtag?!" But, as it grew and larger companies accepted that it was where their audience sat, it got me interested in the mechanics behind it and I turned into a bit of a big brand Twitter stalker. So, call me biased, but building an online social community can be one of the best ways to not only keep up to date with current, changing web marketing factors but also to achieve huge goals for your business.

The fundamentals of building your online community

As an individual, I've helped clients (and myself) build social communities. And, with practicalities (and a little research!), I've learnt 5 core steps forming a structure and process.

(Fogleson, 2013)

Find your goals!

I know, I know, I sound like a broken record. Maybe you hate thinking about your goals, maybe you love them, or maybe you're unsure what your goals truly are. Whatever the case, they are important. You need to be aware of the goals of your business. Goals are the steps to strategy heaven not just for SEO or your social community, but for general day-to-day business.

Use the voices

When setting your goals, it helps everyone in your company to have a voice. Don't invite the world and his wife to a goal-setting meeting, simply ask teams to list their top 3-5 goals. Your marketing team can then filter those suggestions and you'll have a bit more direction for your company.

To infinity and beyond

The goals you set for your company need to go beyond just revenue. Of course, the end goal is to grow revenue, but you also need to decide on the direction you want to take your brand in. How can you focus on your customer and improve their experience? O2 has recently transformed its customer service; it uses Twitter because of it being in 'real time'. Users simply follow @O2 on Twitter and tweet "@O2 #TweetServe". The customer is then followed by @O2 and receives a direct message on Twitter with a verification code to ensure security. Simple yet effective!

Break it down

Whether your goals are realistic or seem a bit far-fetched, it's important that you break those goals down into milestones. This will bring your goals to a level where you can see exactly what you’re attempting to achieve and, hopefully, give you more of an idea of how you can achieve them.

Define those KPIs

If you're a marketer, you'll know exactly what I mean. If you're just reading this because I've posted it everywhere online (thanks!) KPIs are Key Performance Indicators.

Let me explain. Once you have goals defined, it's important that you work on defining what your KPIs are so you can measure the goals you've set in place. I would suggest sitting down before you create your strategy and defining what KPIs you are going to measure so that your expectations remain realistic throughout the process. It's important thing to remember that KPIs are set in place so you can measure whether you have achieved your goals or not.

So what are some examples? Your goal may be to target 20% more males than females. Facebook and Twitter can offer great insights, and have extremely useful tools for you to use so you can see if you are targeting a higher percentage of men. They'll help you'll know if you are on track to reaching your goal. A quick check to see if people are liking or retweeting you is also a simple KPI and a good sign that people are finding your content interesting.

I've been involved in many situations where I've been asked, "How we can grow Facebook likes? We want to reach 400 and we'll be happy". Granted that's social proof, it's something tangible – but Facebook likes are not the be all and end all of assessing how well your Facebook community is or isn't growing.

Create your strategy – be creative!

Strategy…strategy…strategy. This is the part I struggle with. Although it's fun, I always sit and worry, thinking 'where do I begin!

Strategy session

You might find it a good idea to bring a group from your company and have a discussion around strategy, bouncing ideas off each other to compile your plan! It will also allow your employees to feel as though they have a voice.

A year of vision

When working on developing the detailed plan of your strategy, it’s probably a good idea to show all of the creative things you want to accomplish over the next 12 months. BUT, to make it easier, detail the first 2-4 months on a day-to-day or week-by-week basis to help everyone ease into the strategy and ensure you have a detailed road map.

Working on 2-4 month steps towards your goals will allow you time to get some momentum flowing and collect data, but isn’t so long that you can’t alter course if you want to change your ideas or you realise what you want to achieve is unrealistic.

As you move along into the execution of all of this, it can be useful to hold strategy sessions every three months or so. I know, it's a lot of hard work and what about running your business at the same time? Don't panic, it will help to achieve your results in the long run.

The toolkit, minus the spanners!

As you’re planning out your creative strategy, now is the time to select the tools that you are going to use to get the job done! Our typical toolset for building a general community tends to be SEO, social media, content, email marketing, and outreach. For a social community, use your social channels to tell your audience where you are, use email marketing and social buttons so your audience can easily find you, use links to help new users discover you… You can even use offline tools such as business cards, the list goes on!

The Execution

Now that you have your plan written, it's time to whistle while you work! Make sure you have the correct tracking and measurement tools set to ensure you're collecting the right data on your KPIs. Follow your strategy and make sure you are consistent. Of course, somewhere along the line your plan may be derailed, but be careful to stay focussed on your goals and keeping the end objectives in mind.

Analysis

Here is your chance to figure out what is working and what isn't. What is missing? Is more time needed to see ROI? Analyse the data you have collected and then see if that data correlates with your goals.

Whatever the data is that you have collected, don't adjust your goals or KPI's to make your efforts appear better than they are. Otherwise, what would be the point in testing?

The Conclusion

Always begin with creating your goals and then create KPI's so you can see if you are on track to fulfilling your goals. It's important to remember that goals need to go beyond revenue and break them down so you can analyse them and create a strategy. Make sure you analyse your goals honestly and don't adjust your KPIs to fit in with the results of the campaign.

So there we have it! Have you got any experience in building social communities for business? Do you have anything to add? Please let me know in the comments below or via Twitter @KLBennett_

The post Social Media: Building Communities appeared first on White Noise.

Seth's Blog : Thinking lifetime (don't break the chain)

Thinking lifetime (don't break the chain)

The traveling salesman, the carnival barker and the old-time businessman can hit and run. Make the sale, cut your costs, move on.

Today, though, in the connection economy, two huge factors are at work:

1. Subscription. The lifetime value of a customer is high and getting higher. You might buy $50,000 from one grocery store over time. If you own an inkjet printer, it might come to a thousand dollars a year in toner expenses, with a profit margin approaching 90%...

2. Spreading the word. Every customer is also a media outlet and a publisher if she chooses to be. That means that unhappy news spreads far and fast (and that remarkable products and services need lower ad budgets).

But this seems to be almost impossibly difficult for companies to embrace. A simple example:

HP offers inkjet printers at a slight loss, knowing that over time, they'll more than make it back in high-priced toner. When a customer shows up at their website then, searching for a new feature like eprinting or getting their wireless to work, it's both an opportunity and warning sign. Drop this ball and it costs thousands of dollars in lost profit.

At every step along the journey, HP drops the ball. The website, knowing my model and serial number, shows me pictures with instructions that don't match my printer. The site won't let me into the chat support window, because my printer is out of warranty. And when I call, they put me on hold and then route me to an overseas call center. After fifteen minutes, I'm told, "your printer is obsolete, you should buy a new one."

The thing is, a customer is never out of warranty, even if his product is.

Twenty minutes ago, HP knew everything they needed to know to tell me that I needed to buy a new printer. Think of all the ways they could have used this as an opportunity to make it more likely that the new printer would be an HP printer. Instead, they punished me for a quarter of an hour and then demanded I buy something new. They broke the chain.

Sure, I had to buy something, so I bought a Canon.

Of course, it's entirely possible that Canon's support is no better, but that's not the point. Every time the chain is broken, value is lost. I lose value, they lose value.

Think of the interaction at the deli counter or the pump or the bursar's office or the alumni office or on the website from the point of view of the customer and the chain. Where are the moments where you might lose her forever? What are the key places where you need to intervene and invest in the relationship instead of milk it, or drag it through the mud? Assuming that your competitors are just as selfish and metric-driven as you are isn't a great strategy, because you're still losing when you break the chain.

Support is not a cost center, it's a profit center. Treating customers with urgency and clarity and respect (maintaining the chain) is more urgent than ever. But companies are busy measuring time on the phone or cost per hour of support people instead of even trying to measure customer churn.

Think lifetime, all the time.

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joi, 10 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

LA Commission Studies Pension Crisis, Recommends New Commission; Bankruptcy Inevitable

Posted: 10 Apr 2014 11:22 AM PDT

The Los Angeles 2020 Commission studied amongst other things the sorry state of LA's pension mess. In a case of can-kicking extraordinaire, its recommendation was to appoint another commission to further study the problem.

Please consider Report Finds Los Angeles at Risk of Decline

A scathing verdict on Los Angeles's civic health that was delivered in a one-two punch — the second on Wednesday — by a committee of lawyers, developers, labor leaders and former elected officials who make up something of the Old Guard here. The Los Angeles 2020 Commission presented a catalog of failings that it said were a unique burden to the city: widespread poverty and job stagnation, huge municipal pension obligations, a struggling port and tourism industry and paralyzing traffic that would not be eased even with a continuing multibillion-dollar mass transit initiative.

The first part of the report was released in December. Its bleak portrait of Los Angeles's future was designed to break through and draw attention to the city's plight like "an alarm clock," said Mickey Kantor, a former United States Secretary of Commerce who is the co-chairman of the commission, adding that the committee wanted to ensure that the document did not become "another report gathering dust on the shelf."

But as exhaustive as Chapter 1 was in laying out problems, the follow-up presented here on Wednesday was strikingly less ambitious and specific, testimony to what municipal leaders have long said was the intractability of the challenges, the difficulty in getting things done in a community with a history of lackluster civic involvement and an institutionally weak mayor.

On what is widely seen as perhaps the biggest threat to the long-term fiscal stability of the city — the crushing cost of pensions and worker benefits — the commission recommended appointing another commission.

Mr. Kantor and Austin Beutner, a former deputy mayor and Wall Street investment banker who is the other co-chairman, said they did not have the expertise needed to suggest what the city might do. Hence, the proposal for a "Commission for Retirement Security."

"Yeah, we did kick the ball to someone else, because we didn't have the staff at the time, the resources to really do what would be a professional job in coming up with correct recommendations in this very technical area," Mr. Kantor said.

Bankruptcy Inevitable

The 2020 report is sure to gather dust like all studies before and after until the inevitable happens. The inevitable is "bankruptcy".

The only conceivable way LA can meet its pension obligations is to reduce them.
Given that unions will not negotiate, the only conceivable way to reduce them is bankruptcy.

LA is already bankrupt, the only missing ingredient is political recognition of that simple fact.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Putin Sends Letter to 18 Countries Threatening to Cut Supply of Gas; China-Russia Gas Deal Expected

Posted: 10 Apr 2014 09:44 AM PDT

The pipeline of natural gas to Ukraine and Europe is on the verge of shutdown this morning. Putin sent letters to 18 countries demanding upfront payment for gas as Ukraine refuses to pay the price Russia wants.

Please consider Europe Supply in Jeopardy as Putin Threatens Ukraine Gas Cut.

In a letter sent to European leaders and seen by the Financial Times on Thursday, the Russian president said that Gazprom had a contractual right to force Ukraine to pay in advance for gas supplies and in the event of further violation of the conditions of payment "will completely or partially cease gas deliveries".

The letter is the first time Moscow has so clearly threatened to cut gas supplies to Ukraine, a key transit route for 15 per cent of European gas consumption. It marks an escalation of economic pressure on Ukraine at a time when Kiev's new government is already struggling to defuse a stand-off with armed pro-Russian separatists in the country's east.

Gazprom and Ukraine have been involved in an increasingly hostile dispute in recent weeks, with the state-controlled Russian company nearly doubling the price of gas for Ukraine, a move described by Arseniy Yatseniuk, the country's acting prime minister, as "a plan to pressure and grab Ukraine through gas and economic aggression".

Ukraine says it will not accept the newly announced price of $485 per thousand cubic metres, while Gazprom insists that Ukraine pay off its debt.

Putin blamed European countries for Ukraine's economic turmoil, saying that EU member states had contributed to the country's trade deficit, while Russia had subsidised the Ukrainian economy by $35bn in the past four years through lower gas prices and unpaid fines.

30-Year Gas Deal With China Expected

Bloomberg reports Putin Expected to Sign China Gas Deal as Crisis Forces Hand

Vladimir Putin is more likely to sign a 30-year deal to supply pipeline gas to China next month after more than a decade of false starts because the crisis in Ukraine is forcing Russia to look for markets outside Europe.

While Putin and President Xi Jinping will make the final decision in Beijing next month, Russia's need for new customers means it's pushing to complete a deal first mooted in 1997, a manager at gas-export monopoly OAO Gazprom (GAZP) and a government official said, asking not to be named because talks are ongoing. In China yesterday, Russia's deputy prime minister said he "hoped" a deal would be signed in May.

The crisis in Ukraine has increased the importance of Russia's relationship with China, its largest trade partner outside the European Union and the only country in the United Nations Security Council not to censure its actions in Crimea. Until a China pipeline is built, Russia has few export markets for gas outside Europe, leaving it vulnerable to sanctions and competition from U.S. exports of shale gas.

Putin Turns the Screws

Also consider Putin Threatens Ukraine's Imports to Turn Economic Screw.

President Vladimir Putin told his government to develop plans to replace imports from Ukraine and said Russia can't subsidize its neighbor permanently, increasing economic pressure as the government in Kiev battles separatists.

Ukraine's pro-European cabinet accuses Russia of stoking unrest in the regions near the nations' border in a bid to destabilize next month's presidential election.

The Ukrainian government also says Russian bans on goods such as dairy products are politically motivated. The U.S. is providing legal advisers to help Ukraine file a complaint against Russia with the World Trade Organization, Nuland said in Washington.

The U.S. also is working with Ukraine and the European Union in an effort to limit Russia's ability to use the threat of a natural-gas cutoff, Nuland said.

"The most likely source of quick gas for Ukraine in the event of a shutoff comes in reverse flows from Slovakia, from Hungary, from Poland," she said. "This requires some upgrading of infrastructure, it requires some investment, it requires some political decisions."

Putin Has Upper Hand

Notice the hypocrisy of the US complaint that Russia's bans on Ukraine goods is "politically motivated".

What the heck are US sponsored sanctions if not "politically motivated". Was Obama dumb enough to believe Russia would not respond? Or did he simply not care about the consequences to Ukraine and Europe?

By now, two things should be crystal clear

Russia has the upper hand.
More sanctions cannot possibly help.

Finally, the statement by Nuland regarding "reverse flows of natural gas from Slovakia, from Hungary, from Poland," is preposterous.

For starters, the infrastructure is not in place. But even if the infrastructure was in place, precisely where are Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland going to get the gas to send to the Ukraine?

The apparent answer is Russia, and Russia can cut off all gas to Europe in response.

The only thing missing in this sorry charade is more counterproductive bellowing from senator John McCain about putting missiles in Georgia.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

vineri, 11 aprilie 2014

Social Media: Building Communities

Social Media: Building Communities

The fundamentals of building your online community