We have our Winners!

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Crowdsourcing experiment:

Name my client’s software.

I recently decided to try a little experiment. One of my clients has a major piece of client-facing software, which they…

1. Use to enable their services
2. Offer freestanding as a licensed product
3. Offer as Software as a Service (SaaS)

One of the things they’d like for me to do is rename this piece of software. I have a few ideas that I’m going to throw into the mix, but overall, I’d like to try this as a crowdsourcing experiment.

What’s in it for me?

I’m going to give out Amex gift cards in the amounts of $100, $75, and $25 to the top three finalists.

So what do I do?

1. Read the description in the section below
2. Comment on this blog post with your suggestion. Make sure there’s a way to contact you in the comment, or…
3. Use the contact form on the Realize web site and send your suggestion. Make sure I can identify it as a suggestion for the contest, or…
4. Add your suggestion to the discussion on the Realize Facebook page. (It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you decided to like us, too), or…
5. Send me a direct message via Twitter. (@johncloonan), or…
6. If there’s any other way you can think of to contact Realize and leave us a suggestion with your contact info, go ahead.

Then what happens?

After reaching a critical mass of suggestions, I’m going to submit the most-frequently-suggested to the decision makers at my client. Whichever one is chosen will receive the $100 Amex gift card. The $75 and $25 cards will be awarded to the person who first suggested the next most-frequently-suggested names. I’ll also publish a list of the best of them here.

Description

The Client:

Core brand values:

• Agile
• Innovative
• Objective
• Efficient

What does the client do?

They manage the workforce supply chain, but what does that really mean? It means they provide services and solutions designed to save clients money and time on acquiring and managing their workforce, but don’t provide staffing services.

How about the software?

In short, the software automates the purchase and processing of professional services and labor, and provides near ERP-level data back to the client for decision support.

The value propositions of the software include:

• Creates process simplification and efficiency
• Provides data for management decision making
• Creates visibility into workforce supply chain processes

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I love articles like this one. I think Kievman has missed the point of doing social media for business and of marketing in general.

Marketing is about ROI.

If companies haven’t been able to find the real-world results of their social media efforts, there are two distinct possibilities. Either they’re not doing social media effectively, or they’re not measuring it correctly.

I’d be willing to bet that DemingHill’s largest Fortune clients care about ROI as the first thing of importance, but they understand that all the activities that Kievman mentions in this article are tied to strategies that bring measurable ROI.

Relationship building creates ROI by creating brand equity and increasing net promoter score. Kievman mentions “creating communities of key constituents.” Why do you do that? Those key constituents are either going to be influencers or buyers. Another point Kievman misses is that customer service, brand monitoring, brand awareness, and crisis management can all be performed or influenced via social media.

This statement is really problematic to me: “…if you are not converting outside of social media, social media will not help you convert and improve your ROI.” If an activity has a net zero effect, that’s truly money for nothing. The whole raison d’etre of marketing is to increase conversion. Does it have to be direct? No – very few marketing activities are direct.

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I was speaking to the North Fulton Small Business Owners this morning, who, by the way, are a really fantastic group. Not a huge group, generally 15-20 people, but really dynamic and very networking-savvy. While talking to these folks, I got a question that I’ve been getting quite a lot lately about separating your personal from your professional profiles.

My answer – you can’t.

Sure, it’s technically possible on individual outlets to do it with privacy settings and company pages, but why would you? Some of my best business leads and referrals come from people who, had I decided to try and separate my personal and professional lives, I would have placed in the “personal” category.

Let me offer a couple examples. One of my old high school classmates has connected with me on Facebook. Not an uncommon occurrence, you’re thinking. He’s become a pretty regular reader of this blog, and a fan of Realize on Facebook as well. He has recently connected me with a friend of his who is on the adjunct faculty at Rollins College. She has invited me to speak to her new media class virtually, as a practitioner who isn’t there in Florida, and who has a broad base of geographically dispersed clients across industries. Had my “personal” friend not been as aware of my business, I’d have missed that opportunity.

One other opportunity came in today that started the same way. Another high school classmate, also connected to me on Facebook, has unbeknownst to me, been reading this blog and generally following the activities of Realize. I received an e-mail from him today through the contact form on the Realize Web site. He runs a large seafood business back in my hometown, and is looking to us to help him solve some pretty serious marketing issues. Again, a “personal” contact that resulted in business.

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Got the faculty guide for the first course I’m teaching at Shorter College in 2010 today “Understanding Markets and the Environment.” Looks like it’s going to be a great class, and a tough one. It uses the newest edition of a book I used for my MBA, which helps me and the students. But you know, something seems to be missing. I’m trying to figure out where I’m going to work in social media.

The answer? Probably everywhere.

It has influences in a lot of places. It has changed the process of economic exchange. The digital domain has virtually eliminated hard money, and I’m seeing a lot more barter these days, as well, particularly among social media mavens who can add value to each others goods and services.

Market research has not yet completely changed in methodology, and the statistical concepts remain sound. But what about the concepts from Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds? If ever there were concepts suited to the digital domain and social media it’s market research and crowdsourcing.

Segmentation has become ever more important, and more interesting as customers self-segment on social media. It has, however, become easier to identify your lightning-rod customer and your brand ambassador.

What’s going to be difficult is teaching about advertising. I know this text – it’s all about traditional advertising models. I’m curious to see if it even mentions social media in this latest edition. Somehow, I doubt it.

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It’s election time in lots of locales, and that has made for some interesting social media bedfellows, if you will.

I’ve heard more about local and state elections and referenda than I could imagine possible – or that I really care to know, to be honest. Some of the state issues are interesting, since they have bearing on the overall national agenda, but the local stuff isn’t quite so fascinating.

A case in point: I recently spoke to the Roswell, Georgia Kiwanis club on Using Social Media to Build your Business, a presentation I thought went very well, and it garnered me a few local Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and LinkedIn connections. Well, many of those folks work for the municipality, are running for public office, or are campaigning for someone who is running for public office.

I’ve heard more tweets about voting for various city council candidates in the last week than I can shake a stick at. I can’t vote for these folks. I don’t know their platforms. In many cases, I don’t know what party they represent.

I’m hoping that I’m the exception in these Tweeters follower group – but I doubt it.

One particular gentleman running for State House truly has missed the point of community-building, both off- and on-line. I met him in person at the Suwanee Business Alliance. (Great local business alliance, by the way). He came on really strong – classic politico – shaking hands, introducing himself, immediately launching into his pitch, starting with his party affiliation. I politely excused myself, letting him know that I’m not a voter in his district. I didn’t tell him that I was in general disagreement with his party’s politics. Maybe that was my mistake.

He somehow got hold of one of my business cards. I hand them out like water, so it’s not surprising. The next thing I knew I was getting his direct e-mail campaigns, he was following me on Twitter, I got a friend request from him on Facebook, he invited me to become a fan of his campaign on Facebook, and he asked to connect with me on LinkedIn. This from a guy who I politely blew off at a networking event!

Know your audience, folks. Targeting is the key, whether it’s on social media or anywhere else. You can very quickly make an enemy of someone who at worst was indifferent. I’d rather have someone not care at all about what I’m doing than actively discourage people from voting for me or buying my product.

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I presented Using Social Media to Build Your Business to the Roswell, Georgia Kiwanis. Great group, and they had a bunch of future Kiwanis from the Roswell High School Key Club. Definitely a good time. A video excerpt is below:

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This above all – to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

When I wrote my last blog post – Client, to thine own self be true, it didn’t dawn on me that in addition to Polonius being right on about branding, he also has a great point about social media, too.

A basic tenet of social media success is authenticity. Your brand has to be authentic. It has to reflect the realities of your company. Your company has to live it and breathe it.

Take Realize as an example. Our brand personality is largely based on my personality. One of the things I’m not good at is sugarcoating anything, therefore one of our core brand values is directness. We try to be direct in everything we say and do. Why? Because our clients would immediately know it if we tried to be something else.

Now extend that to social media – our clients are very much into social media. We have clients on just about every social media outlet imaginable, and they are connected to Realize and me personally as well in many of those outlets. If they saw through our brand, they could very quickly call us out on it. But by being true to ourselves, it must follow, as the night the day, that we canst not then be false to any man.

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Today I had the distinct pleasure of appearing before the Dahlonega Rotary to speak about Using Social Media to create Friendship and Goodwill. I know I had a great time, and I hope they enjoyed the presentation. If you’d like to see it, the video is below.

If you’re a Rotarian and would like to have me give this presentation to your Rotary club, just let me know.

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During my guest appearance on High Velocity Radio, I talked about using event marketing to build your online community, but that’s only a small part of the story. Your offline and online communities should feed each other in an infinite loop.

I attend a lot of offline networking events, and the first thing I do when I get home is go through whatever business cards I’ve gathered and try and find those people on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. For large events, this can be pretty time consuming, which is why I can’t wait for the future that Cory Casciato of Westword postulates, where social media is completely integrated. If I find them, I invite them to connect.

If they connect with me via whatever channel they choose, they’re going to receive notifications of new blog posts, my media appearances, and probably see what events I’m attending on my profile. I’ll frequently meet with people from my online network at real-world events they’ve seen on either my social media profiles or those of my online connections. I’ve also gotten anecdotal evidence from people that they’ve seen or listened to one of my media appearances after seeing it on one of those outlets.

This is where your own events come in. Realize is hosting Food (& Wine!) For Thought on October 28th. We started promoting online earlier today, and already we have a pretty respectable number of attendees, all through social media channels. Interestingly, some of them have already passed the online invitations on to their friends, who have signed up for the event, and will likely join my online community. They’ll then get invited to future events, and get notified of offline activities.

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