Author: Dan Blank

Building Your Brand Online, One Smile at a Time…

Social media is not just changing how companies market themselves, but how they relate to their customers entirely. Customer relationship management is becoming a core part of how brands operate on the web, and companies such as Radian6 are offering some pretty neat (and expensive) tools for companies to track and connect with their customers online.

What is interesting about this is that customer relationships via social media are less about marketing promotions, and more about being human. Brand reputations are being established and nurtured by connecting with their customers one person at a time. Businesses are being created one smile at a time. This is how loyalty is built, and the new norm for branding.

Some companies are getting accolades for simply letting customers know that they will do right by them.

We have come to expect less. We expect a complicated phone tree when we call ‘customer service,’ so much so that we are amazed when a human picks up the phone. We expect to be told that when a product breaks, it is somehow our fault, and are made to feel guilty that we didn’t buy extra insurance for it.

So customers put up walls, and look for ways to take advantage – a sale, a coupon, a discount store. But this is changing – we are reverting back to the idea that all businesses are small businesses.

When a brand makes us smile, we are almost shocked into sharing it with the world. So we share that news… with friends, co-workers, and the world. More and more, this happens on social media.

So we are seeing this work both ways – brands reaching out to customers, customers reaching out to their communities. For both sides, this is an opportunity, to be more human.

Do we have relationships with brands? Yes and no. We have relationships with people who represent those brands. These people represent ideas, ideals even, that the brand adheres to. Ideals that we adhere to. For some brands, this is meaningless. “Customer service” is written on the wall, but employees are judged by how quickly they can get a customer off the phone. Efficiency is the goal.

But other brands do try to represent ideals. What is happening is that – because of social media – ALL brands are feeling the pressure to move in this direction. To do right by their customers and what they believe in.

Are you a brand? No. And yes. It’s just a word. Your ‘brand’ is what you choose it to mean, if anything at all. For some, it represents what they believe in, or the value they offer others. As our personal and professional lives are both thrust online, having a ‘brand’ is a way to separate the two. It is also a simple tool to communicate who we are, what we believe and the value we share.

Thanks!

-Dan

Huge Opportunity for Publishers & Professionals: Social Media, Education & Niche Markets

As I mentioned the other week, I am unbelievably excited about the future of online education. Today, I want to talk about this topic in terms of professional niche markets.

When people talk about “education,” it is often assumed that the target audience is those under 21 years of age. But I’m interested in how we educate ourselves as adults, how learning is a lifelong process.

I have been studying various ways that people are approaching more formal classes via the web. And I see incredible things happening, and incredible potential.

I am not talking about simply connecting people with information, that is only part of the equation. Education goes beyond delivering content, it extends to mentoring, fusing connections between students, and supporting the many psychological needs around learning. Giving someone a list of things to study is very different than teaching those things, and forming a teacher-student relationship.

People don’t pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to MIT just for the information in the book. People don’t pay thousands of dollars for continuing education for the course material alone. People don’t travel to expensive conferences just to hear the sessions on the stage.

They go for the connection – to other students, and to other experts.

Roger Ebert recently wrote about how Twitter has given him a voice again. What this means is that social media gives EVERYONE a voice, regardless of your location, age, economic class, experience, etc.

Access to information was the first phase of the online revolution. Access to each other is the second.

What I am seeing is our ability to scale this access. One way is forums – I have leveraged two of them in the past six months, both focused around online marketing:

  • Third Tribe Marketing – a monthly subscription site for those looking to grow their business online.
  • DIY Themes – when you purchase one of their WordPress themes, you are given access to forums, filled with amateurs and experts, sharing ideas and technical knowledge on how to leverage and customize the themes.

In both cases, access to these forums are a compelling selling point in their products. And both deliver – if you choose only to read, there is a TON of useful information shared by a variety of voices. If you choose to engage, you see powerful relationships form, and reputations being built as people help and grow their expertise.

And both of these forums require payment in some form or another. For Third Tribe Marketing, I pay $27 a month (the cost has since gone up), and for DIY Themes, I spent $160 with them, and was given access (I could have spent much less – around $80 and been given the same access.)

Everyone talks about ‘free’ on the web in terms of both content and networks. And sure, most of the web is free and will remain free.

But for specialized niches where people have targeted needs and a deep desire to connect with experts, grow their own skills, and become a part of a community – it is not unreasonable to put a price tag next to that. In fact, for many online businesses (and especially online publishers), I think this is a HUGE opportunity for revenue.

This is not about finding a way to ‘monetize’ their audience – it is about providing incredible value, and truly growing their careers and interests. Sure, professional organizations and business media can build out these systems. But I also think you will see more independent groups begin creating curricula around business & professional topics, and even brands leverage education as a form of content marketing.

For online publishers, this is an opportunity to move beyond the fragmented culture of simply producing article after article (or blog post after blog post.) Education is goal oriented, and can profoundly shape the lives of those you serve. The measurement is not if an article was published, but if a student moved their career in the right direction. If value was created in your market.

Thanks!

-Dan

Midnight is Where the Day Begins

Why is it that some people seem to lead superhuman lives, with incredible achievements, and others are crushed under the weight of basic chores, such as laundry?

Why is it that we find inspiration in those who achieve, who pushed themselves harder, held themselves to a higher standard, and questioned basic assumptions that lead to ridicule on their path to success?

Why do so many people watch sports? Why do we care about the World Cup? Why are shows such as American Idol and Dancing with the Stars so popular?

Why do we read and learn?

Why do we dream?

I often look at those who are successful as a source of education & inspiration. What I discover is that their lives are ruled by a different set of definitions than most people.

Their days don’t start at 9am and don’t end at 5pm.

They don’t blindly follow “best practices.”

They don’t make the safe, expected choices.

They challenge the rest of us, merely by achieving. Because if they have, it shows us the opportunity we failed to see and work towards. This is why the media culture loves tearing down celebrities. It pulls them back down “to our level.”

U2 has a line in one of their songs: “Midnight is where the day begins.” I have always been fascinated by this lyric. I regard it as a challenge – to defy my own expectation, to do what it takes, regardless of commonly held rules.

When the day begins at midnight, you are not winding down, you are winding up. You are getting a jump on the world five hours before most other people. You are viewing it in an entirely different manner. The boundaries of something as simple as a day have changed.

This will be viewed as stupidity by some, and opportunity by others.

When you are viewing your goals – throw out even the most basic definitions of what it takes to succeed. Because the more your exceed these expectations, the more you are differentiating yourself from everyone else who is struggling to achieve the same things you are.

Instead of you all following the same lock-step patterns and trends, you have blazed a new path. And as the saying goes – that will make all the difference.

Thanks!

-Dan

Why Caring is a Powerful Business Advantage

Olivier Blanchard penned one of the most incredible blog posts this week:

“21 things my dog taught me about being a better man.”

After having to putting his dog of 15 years to sleep, he shares lessons he’s learned from her about how to be human, and how those lessons can apply to business:

“Don’t ever forget that what makes a business truly great isn’t technology or design or a fancy logo. Those are expressions of something deeper. Something more visceral and powerful and true. What makes a business great, what makes it special, worthy of a connection, worthy of trust and loyalty, admiration and respect, even love, always starts with a beating heart, not a beeping cash register.”

“No company can ever be great unless it can tap into the very essence of what makes us want to connect with each other, and no executive or business manager or cashier can ever truly be great at their jobs unless they also tap into the very thing that makes genuine human connections possible.”

I’ve talked about this before – the idea that caring is a powerful business advantage, a quote I first heard from Scott Johnson.

Sometimes, those in big business try to justify that they can’t afford to slow down enough to care. Caring is hard to control and hard to scale. Caring is scary, especially enabling others to care. A company may issue rules to staff as to where and when they can ‘care,’ eg: when they can bend the rules to serve customers and solve problems in non-traditional ways. Lack of measurable ROI may stop these efforts before they start.

This is why social media is having success stories around things like ComcastCares. That they are seeking out customer problems, not hiding them behind phone trees, where they avoid even customers who are desperately seeking solutions. Companies tend to view customer service by the resources it took to deal with them (eg: lowering time spent on customer service calls), and not whether they put a smile on someone’s face. Tony Hsieh from Zappos focuses on this in his new book Delivering Happiness.

You care when you ask “Is everything okay.” You don’t care when you tell people to call customer service, that it’s someone else’s problem to deal with you.

This is why caring is such a competitive differentiator for your brand. Here are some ways to consider it:

Caring is Hard.
There are no business rules around it. It’s hard to create a system for. It is about giving up control. About trusting your employees – all of them – even the hourly workers.

Caring Makes You Smaller, in a Good Way.
When you care, you are more approachable. You go from being a faceless business to becoming a local business, regardless of your location. It makes you seem smaller, regardless of whether you are.

Caring is Not Just an Output, it is an Input.
Caring is not about talking, it’s about listening. Doing so allows your customers to break through. When you open yourself up, you understand that your business survives at the will of your community, not because you control them.

Caring is Sustainable, Trends Aren’t.
Twitter is not what you should focus on. How you can build a competency to care about customers through a service such as Twitter is what you should focus on. Caring works in good times and bad. It makes the dips less deep, and the peaks higher.

Caring is the Best Research Tool
It means you are always listening, always testing, always iterating. It means you are open to new ideas – to innovation. It means your company has a future because you understand that you don’t have all the answers, that you can’t control everything, that you need to constantly evolve.

Caring Builds a Legacy
What are you creating? What will you look back on in 10 years? Is the product or brand you are developing something that your child understands? Is it your legacy? The ‘thing’ you do is not always as important as ‘how’ you do it. People don’t care much about most shoe stores, but Zappos is a brand people care about. People don’t care about a lot of gadgets, but care a lot about those that Apple creates.

Let me know if I can help you integrate caring into your business.
Thanks!

-Dan

A Crowd is Not a Community

Many brands are jumping into social media in order to engage their “community.” People talk about how many Twitter followers, or page views, or Facebook Likes they get, and how they are “managing” that community.

But a crowd is not a community.

Just because a brand has 20,000 Twitter followers, it does not mean they are connected to each other. That is the opportunity those 20,000 Twitter followers affords you – to become a leader, to enable these people to become connected.

When you go to a shopping mall, do you look at the thousands of customers as a community? Nope, they all just ended up next to each other at the mall. If you go a level further, and go into The Gap. Are all the people in that single store a community? You could argue that there is a common thread that lead each person to that brand. That they are somehow connected by worldview, style, or a number of other factors.

But they are strangers. They wouldn’t lend a fellow Gap customer $5. They have little interest in the goals and experience of those around them.

They are just customers. And this is what many brands fail to understand about the people that they serve. They don’t feel connected with other customers. They don’t feel connected with you. If you are The Gap, they may simply be connected with a shirt that is on sale. So, they are connected with price, the color blue, and a button-down short sleeve style.

Think branding is more powerful than that? Then why are Loehmanns and T.J. Maxx and Marshalls so popular – discount stores with a hodge-podge of brands.

What this means is that a brand needs to understand the segments of their audience – and as they move online – this needs to transfer. All of your Twitter followers are not equal. They are merely an opportunity for you to understand and serve.

Here are some tips on how to do it:

Identify Your 1,000 True Fans
Find out which members of your audience are willing to take action and engage with your brand. Offer them something and see who bites. Then, make those people smile. They are the ones most likely to praise you to their friends. Put 90% of your effort to the most important 10% of your audience.

Don’t Look at Any Metric That Isn’t Combined With Another One
Quantity metrics, such as followers or page views – in aggregate – are not actionable. You can have 5 million Twitter followers and still go out of business. When measuring what coverts to business, combine metrics across platforms: social media to newsletters to events to websites to print.

Create a Street Team
Bring together those who love what you do. This is not about them being loyal to you, but about you being loyal to them. It’s not about their belief in your brand, but their belief in a common idea that you help represent.

Listen More Than You Talk
Don’t just use social media to monitor how often your brand is mentioned – monitor the topic. Listen. Engage. Talk only when you are helping.

Lead, Don’t Manage
Moving the crowd around a room is not leading, not inspiring, not serving. That is just moving things around, something that many managers spend too much time doing, in hopes that one of those round pegs fits into a round hole. Leading is harder, and takes much more subtlety. It takes more risk. It affords less credit to the leader. But it is wildly more powerful.

Understand the Ecosystem
People are fickle, especially when it comes to ‘brand loyalty.’ That’s why you have to serve deeper needs, not just surface level momentary preferences. Scared that your community will flip on you, just as everyone left MySpace for Facebook? A crowd does that, a community doesn’t.

Thanks!

-Dan