SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY — When you are trying to "fabricate" Word of Mouth (WOM) for your offerings, who do you think of approaching first? Chances are that your first choice is to enlist the help of your most loyal customers. After all, they have the success stories to tell others, they like you, and you have an existing relationship with them – it’s a "no-brainer." In reality, additional WOM from that group will have the least impact on your sales...

SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY — Give away something for nothing and people will say “yes please.” Give away something for almost nothing and people will say "what’s the catch." By nature, people do not want to do a whole lot to get something especially if the activity will step outside the bounds of their normal daily routine. A month ago I had the privilege of helping Funjet Vacations execute a Social Media giveaway...

SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY — One of the more promising areas of focus for social business transformation is customer service. This week at e2.0 I attended a panel discussion of social customer service moderated by Clara Shih. It was an interesting discussion and I think there are some good solid practices growing up, enabled by some new tools. Since I've managed support organizations for a few software vendors in the past and I've done a lot of research on social business I started thinking about some of the possibilities for changing the way we think about customer service...

SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY — “It’s not rocket surgery.” That malapropism became a bit of a mantra at last week’s Inbound Marketing Summit. Social media isn’t complicated. When you boil it down it’s about listening to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you. The IMS speakers shared several case studies (yes, too many of them mentioned Comcast and Zappos) on how organizations have embraced social media to connect with and built trust and affection among customers. None of the examples required hyper-specialized knowledge or technology for a company to connect with people. So why is it so difficult for so many companies to successfully integrate social media?...

SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY — Kraft today announced that Australians have voted for a name to replace the seriously unpopular and high criticised iSnack 2.0. Kraft gave customers the opportunity to vote for one of six names in response to the negative publicity. We’re told that around 10,000 customers voted for Cheesybite, equivalent to 36% of the total vote making it the most popular name -- just pipping ‘none of the above’. What seemed like a good idea to involve its customers in the process of naming a new product has turned into a significant issue for the marketing team and senior management...