This presentation, delivered to the Charlotte chapter of the Women Presidents' Organization, focused on an in-depth look at how three companies have used social media to build their businesses. The three case studies include Fiskar's Fiskateers, Zappos.com, and Louis E. Page, Inc.
38. Thank you for your time! Brian Hamlett is the President and owner of mPower Consulting, an online marketing consultancy based in Charlotte, North Carolina. His goal is to “Make the Web Easy” for businesses and organizations to leverage the power of the Internet to fuel growth, increase sales, attract new prospects and build strong relationships with customers. He is routinely invited to speak to groups on topics such as: social media for businesses, online marketing strategy, building better websites, using the web to cut operational costs, and digital relationship-building. Contact him or learn more about him by going to: www.mpoweringu.com
Notas do Editor
We have learned to value our own attention and now know how to control what our focus is placed on. We make our determination within 5 seconds of focus. The world is screwed up, we’ve learned we have a voice in helping to make it better. This goes for companies and the products and services we use from them. We want you to start listening to us instead of just “telling us how it is.” Engineers are the worst. We say customer uses it “this” way, customer tells us they use it “that” way. Engineers (company) says they’re wrong, customer goes to competitor. We’ve come to realize that the world is run by humans, not brands. So we want to “know” the humans behind the brands so that we can determine if we trust them, believe in them, and want to help them. We want a relationship instead of just a receipt. Employees are not “assets.” Customers are not “transactions.” We live in a time with a focus on self-empowerment. We have access to millions of bytes of information that can help us from everything including how to make green been casserole to how to change the oil in our cars. Education is the new currency for trust and credibility, which lead to transactions. Let’s solidify these points before we move on. How many of you change the channel on TV during commercials? My communication only reached 10% of you. How many change the channel on the radio during commercials? My communication only reached 5% of you. How many of you quickly flip the page in magazines if it is an ad? My communication only reached 1% of you. How many of your glance at the billboards? My communication reached 20% of you. But did you remember it later? 0% How many of you walk away from an active conversation with another person? My communication reached 100% of you. Not only that, I held your attention for longer than that 30 second TV/radio spot. I held your attention longer than it took to flip the page or pass that billboard. Conversations are the best platform for communicating your message, because they engage the person.
Fiskars did not look in-house to find employees to become the connection, they went out and found customers that are passionate about Fiskars products and what it allows them to do and they recruited them. This doesn’t always have to be the case, the key is to have the passion and the ability to communicate as “one of them” (your customers.) Fiskars knew that they needed to engage their audience in a more direct, continuous manner to ensure the relationship was continually developing and solidifying. Thus their platform started with a blog and grew to include other platforms such as message boards, photo sharing, online videos, Facebook and Twitter. Fiskars understood that the value of Social Media and Web 2.0 techniques was not in that it created the complete relationship, but that it provided the opportunity to meet their customers face-to-face, thus solidifying the relationship. By requiring interested customers to submit their request to join through an application process, they in turn created a sense of “exclusivity” which created a feeling of “special recognition and access” thus putting emphasis on membership.
1. The message board post started in August 10 th , 2009 to Today. It has 14044 replies. Wouldn’t you like your customers to share THAT much with you.
Fiskars did not look in-house to find employees to become the connection, they went out and found customers that are passionate about Fiskars products and what it allows them to do and they recruited them. This doesn’t always have to be the case, the key is to have the passion and the ability to communicate as “one of them” (your customers.)