The Millennium Marketer

This is the height of geekdom.
I didn’t really know what I was signing up for when I registered. All I knew is that it was on Yahoo! Upcoming and it looked like it was happening on a good day.

The details:
BarCamp from Noon to 4 p.m. at Swedish American Hall.
On Upcoming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/859363/

I just realized that this is a BarCamp. If you don’t know what BarCamp is it is a gathering of people discussing a subject, and it’s unorganization at its best. People go, and they say, “What do you want to talk about?” and then the discussion begins. I had a taste of this at Web 2.0 Expo where there were Birds of a Feather and Web2Open sessions. They were about the same flavor: a bunch of people discussing something they were interested in.

I’m not really sure what it is that I am getting myself into, but it should be an interesting discussion and a deep dive into the social media fishbowl. Plus there is a party afterwards from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. with Mashable. I’m planning to asking a few folks there, “Why did you come here, what attracted you, etc” and I want to see exactly how “niche” the social media crowd is….is it birds of a feather flock together or rather people of different strokes learning from one another?

I just received my new Palm Centro in the mail today and I am thrilled! It is always fun to have a new toy. “Productivity” in this case is over rated because most people who use smart phones are use them for both business and fun.
It’s important to remember when to use which features–yet another reason why GTD is very useful for setting priorities, and processing projects. We are in a world where technology-created-ADD is extremely prevalent.

One thing that is really exciting about this phone is the camera feature, which will allow me to create voice interviews or web cam posts, so hopefully some of those will come on the fly if I can manage to use all of the phone’s features.

This is a good opportunity to consider Sprint’s sign-up process and look at how well they are doing at managing new customers. I joined through the Sprint Employee Referral program and got a special deal, so already I am more inclined to want to be part of Sprint than not.

GOOD
Quick service at a reasonable price: I bought the phone online, which made it really easy. The package arrived quickly just two days after it was ordered. Reps were readily available to answer questions immediately after the phone was activated.

BAD
Interruptions: In the transfer of the lines, Sprint called to activate the line, which made us suspicious about phishing. It was also an interruption of our day having to deal with the issue right away instead of when it would be most convenient.

Referral Roadblocks : I got my phone through a referral and wanted to make sure the referral went through. Once my phone was activated, a customer representative answered to verify the address and other information related to the phone line. I asked about getting the referral bonus, and the customer service representative said I would have to call back after she confirmed all information. That is two times I have to dial, although I can see how it would be beneficial for the rep to be available to answer any questions about the new service.

Sprint, as your newest customer as of today, I give you three stars. Two off for the interruption of my work with the shiny new toy and three for a nice phone that arrived promptly and the activation was easy.

I would have preferred to have the referral and activation information in the box, though so I can feel more empowered as a customer to choose the time of day I would like to activate it.

But thanks for the shiny new phone and a much affordable phone plan!

Photo source: TechFresh.net

Continuing on my last post on marketing metrics, I discovered a very valuable post to add to my knowledge base called “The Real ROI of Blogging.”
Traditional Marketers typically ask, “How do you know if social media has a high ROI?”
Lewis Green suggests that ROI does not have to be measured in terms of revenue.

Well we all know that revenue is not the only driver of marketing success. Green lists the following as terms of measuring blogging ROI:
* Create great customer experiences as measured by the happiness levels of our customers?
* Result in loyal clients?
* Result in revenues and/or profits?
* Result in leads and referrals?
* Result in getting us noticed?

I imagine it would take some very tight processes and collaboration with your sales and support teams to identify loyal clients and recognize referrals. This is great for companies who have recognized that organizational process is important from the very start and have been able to maintain a work culture of collaboration. But what about companies that are growing from a traditional, commission-based sales model where secrecy is valued to protect the livelihood of the individual rather than the good of the entire company and customers?

As I understand it, it will take leaders who are driven and committed to start addressing the sales team as a unit, change the way the sales people are paid out and create a network of collaboration across the organization–not at all an easy task.

How have you handled metrics and organizational processes within your company? Feel free to comment and discuss!

Metrics in marketing is a toughie. It is made easier by online marketing tactics, such as Facebook, YouTube pages. Still, the challenge oftentimes with a site like Facebook is that people will join groups or Fan pages, never contribute and perhaps they will not remember that they joined in the first place. Especially if there is not much activity in those places.

There are two big questions for marketers that challenge the profession:
How do you keep customers from being disengaged?
How do you measure their loyalty?

This came about as I was trying to define a set of metrics for a business. Defining a set of metrics is challenging because you have to start with the outcome and then define the issues that would explain whether your analysis is unbiased. It bothered me that it could be so arbitrary, such as “Increase sales by 20%”–and how do you know you are doing that through your marketing campaigns? And does this really matter to your customer? Even if you track page views for a website, there is no real way to know whether someone consistently visits your website, unless they consistently leave comments on your blog.

Here are a few articles that I am reading on the subject. I will update this list with more, but if you know of any good links related to the subject, feel free to comment as well.

There have been some ongoing conversations this week where people are saying, “Should I join Plurk?” or “I joined Plurk…am figuring this out.”

I say, who cares? We’re so caught up in how many people are following us or how many people we are following. I’m bemused at my current follower to following ratio of 73% because I know it’s the high school instinct of “wanna be popular” kicking in every time I take a look at those numbers. Then again, there are a few “spammy” followers who want to say, “Hey I’m a company you should know about” or “I have a blog you should read.”

Followers like “CashGiftingPays”…I’ve now caught up to your games and I’m saying, dude that does not work. I’m getting over the excitement of having followers, so there!

Here is my personal policy on “following.” I think marketers have to pay attention to this because I’m not talking about simply advertising things. I am talking about engaging your consumers.

Let’s not forget that the value in any one of these tools is in the conversations that we have with one another. At least that is true for me. I look at the links that people attach to their brief 140 word bios to see if they are worth following. If you are a business trying to say, “Hey, I’m here, and I’m following you,” that doesn’t create any relevance.

I follow people I admire and also my due diligence in following others back as a thank you. These make up my group of peers and mentors. Then, there is a third group of people who are the most serendipitous: the ones I start having conversations with elsewhere. They make up mainly two groups of people
1) Co-workers, meaning people I work with on projects of interest
2) Fellow bloggers

The value in this is having conversations that lead to events, the discovery of new tools and new insights, and most importantly having a supporter or two in my daily life in a space that is still very elusive to most.

So, before you join Plurk and get all overexcited because you now have a new opportunity to be popular somewhere or follow social media gurus like a sheep following the herd, think it through. (I am guilty of both) but I think in the case of Twitter and sometimes FriendFeed, it was a good move. I am learning so much from everyone.

Do you really need a new app to manage and are you having solid authentic conversations right now? Make sure you have friends, fans or followers that you can trust and give them the quality time that they need. Find quality conversations instead of quality apps.

Also, if you are someone with a ton of followers, does it creep you out when you get a few more? For example, I follow people I respect and/or admire, but would you find this weird?

This in vague response to: Human3rror.com, What the Plurk?