I recently spent some time talking to Sarah Morales of Vertical Measures to discuss the new Engage and we wound up having a fun and in-depth conversation that I felts was also worth sharing with you here. Sarah: This is the updated version of the book that championed, “Engage or Die!” What are the main events in social media that have occurred since the last version? Me: The difference between Engage 1 and Engage 2 is less about events or…
The Rise of the Connected Customer and the New Era of Relevance
It’s not a widely kept secret, but customers do indeed keep companies in business. While businesses have long invested in improving customer relationships, the time has come to think beyond efficiencies and automation and examine new opportunities to rethink customer experiences overall. Why? Customers are more connected than ever before. The role they play has exploded beyond transactions and is now influencing the transactions of others as well as contributing to the brand experience at levels never before seen. It’s…
Social Media is not Going to Save Your Business
To truly see opportunities within social media requires viewing the consumer landscape through a different lens… Social media is enjoying yet another gust beneath its wings. Google Plus is rekindling the love affair of social networking among the early adopters and mavens who friended their way to higher Klout scores and also social network fatigue. The numbers of social network users are soaring well past 10 figures. Even celebrities such as Bono, Justin Timberlake, Ashton Kutcher, Lady Gaga et al,…
This is the time to go your own way
I was recently asked to write the foreword for Social Media Geek-to-Geek by Rick & Kathy Schmidt Jamison. I was delighted to help and as always, I requested to publish the foreword here when the book was released. Now that the book is available on Amazon, I’m excited to share the foreword with you here… When I’m asked to research and present success stories and best practices in social media, I often ask a bit more about what it is…
@ is the Universal Sign of Engagement
For decades, companies were very good at pushing messages into markets and talking at people rather than with them. Now companies are embracing the idea of two-way interaction. Monitoring conversations is becoming standard procedure as small and enterprise businesses alike make substantial investments in tools such as Radian6, Sprial16 and Brandtology. And, not only are companies monitoring conversations, they’re adopting social media management systems (SMMS) such as Seesmic and CoTweet to operationalize conversations and platforms such as Objective Marketer, PeopleBrowsr…
Is Your Business Antisocial?
I ask with sincerity, is your business antisocial? Take a moment before you respond. I understand you may have Facebook and Twitter presences. Your business may broadcast on YouTube. Perhaps your executives are blogging. If you’re among the more sophisticated organizations, the team is probably subscribing to elaborate monitoring services to listen more effectively. And, with all of the social objects produced inside the organization, it’s come to the point where a content management system or social media management system…
This is a Time for Leaders to Lead not React
If you’re reacting, someone else defines what you’re going to do, rather than defining what people need to do. Your businesses faces great change. This statement is true about customers, competitors, and everyone else affecting market behavior. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Customer engagement, and specifically customer engagement in social media offers many benefits that businesses are starting to uncover, most of it unintentionally. While many champions knew in their gut that social media…
In Social Media, Your Return Represents Your Investment
Sometimes the path of least resistance unwinds into a far more complicated and arduous journey than we anticipated. In times of change, taking the path less traveled, although initially daunting, proves easier and far more rewarding in the long run. Such is true for social media. I read a review about Engage once that read, “Brian Solis takes the fun out of social media.” The author’s point was that the book took an academic approach when the industry could benefit…
Power to the People: A New Mantra of Business
Exhibitor Magazine ran a feature story on new media and how it is changing the world of event marketing. In our discussion, we expanded the scope beyond events to discuss how people were forcing the evolution of business overall. The result is something quite profound. People are now taking control of their online experiences driven by how they connect and to whom in the social web. This shift changes how people find, share and discover information within their networks of…
Customer-centricity Begins with Creating a Culture of Change
Customer-centricity or getting closer to customers is often the focus of many executive meetings I attend these days. The question always arises, “how can we use new media to get closer to customers?” The answer is not, develop a social media strategy to start engaging with customers. The answer is, change. Any organization that focuses on operations, margins, and efficiencies over customer experiences will find itself unfavored by tomorrow’s connected customer. It’s difficult to see the customer or empathize with…
