Colleges are "Missing the Basket" during March Madness

Some colleges are “missing the basket” this season during March Madness.

With all the upsets during this year’s March Madness, a great opportunity has developed to gain some valuable advertising for their respective school through the use of social media.  This is a perfect example of where a properly managed social media program can impact enrollment.

Last year we had Butler University.  This year we have Creighton, Belmont, and St Mary’s.  While their alumni and friends know where these schools are located, the average fan or more importantly, the average high school junior or senior doesn’t.   The use of a well-run Twitter or Facebook campaign could realize immeasurable returns on enrollment.  At $33k+ for Creighton,  $19k+ for Belmont, and $38k+ for St. Mary’s, successfully recruiting even a few students by taking advantage of the publicity options available by participating in the NCAA Tournament can be invaluable.  After all, who wouldn’t want to go to a college or university whose athletic programs offer the student body the opportunities to participate in big time college athletics? 

If anyone can think of a better time to enhance your school’s reputation and public awareness, I’d love to hear it.  With all the options available today for companies to take advantage of social media outlets, it’s surprising I’m not seeing these schools “trending” on Twitter. 

There are many companies who provide outsourced social media programs for those companies who don’t possess the computer skills or staff to manage it themselves.  The extent to which a company jumps in to social media can also be dictated, for far less overhead cost than it would take to hire a full time staff to manage it.

To find out more information on the available social media options for your business or brand, please contact me @davehanron and I’d be happy to help.

Let's Talk Cold Calling

Let’s talk sales cold calls for a little bit……

Sales managers have been beating the concept of business development achieved through cold calls into sales professionals for decades. When I first started in sales at AT&T in the 1980’s, I had to go through a “role play” scenario where I made the initial appointment, sat with the client and fact found, then developed and presented a solution based program. My skills were “assessed” by a team of sales managers and trainers and I was hired because I followed what was considered proper process. I was practicing “Sales 101”.

When I was in my 20’s and starting out, this was overwhelming and I was brainwashed by the managers that this was the time proven method towards success in sales. After years of mediocre results following the classroom methods taught by sales managers, I learned cold calling is really a waste of precious time which a salesperson could better spend closing leads, not trying to generate them at a clip of less than 2% per attempt (and if you’re seeing 2% success rate on your cold calling, congratulations! You’re doing GREAT!)

Problem here is today’s companies typically have two types of executives:

The first type is people who have large capital to invest and fund the start-up of the organization. This is the true wildcard. Many of these people come from financial backgrounds, and feel the best way to run a profitable company is to watch every dollar and purchase the lowest priced product or commodity on the market. In the short term, this approach may save money, but the lowest price isn’t always the best option. In addition, most of the companies run by those with financial backgrounds look to buy low, and then sell their own product high. This inconsistent approach will in the long run, most likely cause the business model to fail.

The second type of executive is those that have worked their way up the corporate ladders, either through operations or sales. These are the most difficult folks to cold call. They’ve been through the ringer, know the “ropes”, and have used all the “tricks of the sales trade” that get taught to up and coming sales personnel.


Problem is this type of executive often manages today’s sales people, and employs yesterday’s sales management statistics (number of cold calls x close ratio = number of sales). This just doesn’t work. If you have a 2% success rate of presenting a proposal via cold calls, neither you nor the company will ever make any significant revenue. Think of the major league baseball player….if he had 2 hits per 100 at-bats, he’d have a 0.020 batting average and would be out of baseball within weeks. Why sales managers keep pushing the cold calling technique with results like this is puzzling?


So how do we develop new business leads, contact the appropriate decision maker, and close the sale?

Today’s intelligence explosion through the internet and other social channels is the wave of the future. Every show I watch on TV is trying to get their message (product) to “trend on Twitter” or be “liked on Facebook”. Many of us have fought the evolution of social media’s usefulness, but we need to accept the fact that it’s here to stay. Next time you’re sitting at home, watching your favorite show, pay attention to the “pop-ups” on the screen, telling you how to “follow” your favorite actor, or “like” your favorite product.


If social media is working for the most successful shows aired today, why can’t it be successful for your product and brand? It most certainly can.

Let’s look at a quick scenario…..last time you were interested in purchasing a new product, whether it be a TV, a car, a plane ticket, or almost any other commodity, how did you buy it? Did you run down to the closest store and buy the first one you saw? Maybe….but most likely you researched it on the internet and compared your options. This is what we need to accomplish for ourselves in our professional career.

If you are in sales (or looking to get into sales), sign up for Twitter. Start following a few people within your industry and before long you’ll begin to build a list of “followers”. As your list builds, you will see your name start to appear more prominently within the various internet search engines, creating a presence for yourself. If you work this over time, you will begin to see prospects contacting you, looking to buy your product. Most decision makers today will search on the internet for a supplier, and the more prominent you name is in the search results, the better your chances of being contacted.

I have written several previous posts about additional methods to assist on developing brands and increasing your search results. Check out “Can Twitter Really Do That for Me”, posted on 5/11/2011 and “Social Power by Use of Personal Sites” posted on 10/26/2010 for some more specific info on building a personal brand.

I’d enjoy hearing any suggestions you may have to help build a brand and drive customers to your sites. The more input we are get, the quicker we’ll develop new sales techniques to succeed in today’s information age.

Social Media & A Bad Economy

Today’s economy is definitely going in a downward spiral.  Companies are making personnel moves to cut costs to remain profitable.  After 5+ years of economic downturn, are ongoing layoffs and operating budget cuts still the answer?

In any economic model, the basic principle of “Supply & Demand” can be applied.  Is it a sound financial decision to continue to reduce a company’s payroll and marketing budget (which will reduce the “Demand” side of the equation as fewer new customers are brought into the mix, in turn reducing the “Supply” side of the business which is represented by the company’s products which generate the revenues necessary to run the company) to keep profits and EBITDA (a widely used term by those in finance, “Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation & Amortization) at a targeted level? 

Let’s talk about that for a bit…….

By cutting marketing and advertising budgets, a corporation can certainly give the appearance of maintaining profits at an acceptable level.  But is that decision a wise decision by the company’s executives in the long run.  By cutting marketing, future sales will inevitably be lost….and new sales are the lifeblood of any company’s future.  Many of today’s marketing efforts rely on the use of social media.  While social media may seem “free” to the individual user, the cost for corporate programs can reach as high as $10,000+ per month.  The problem we face is being able to quantify the value of social efforts.  Implementing and maintaining a sound social media program can be extremely labor intensive for large corporations.  In order to justify the budget required to maintain the social media efforts, the program directors have the difficult task of demonstrating the “Return on Investment” or “ROI”. 

Demonstrating ROI on a social media program has been debated over and over recently and there are many opinions on how to do it.  Some companies count “Followers” on their Twitter account, some look at “Friends” on Facebook, others look to reviews on Digg or Yelp as a success.  But how do you turn this into real dollars when trying to present to a Board of Directors looking to slash the budget?

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer.  It is individual preference on how to present your case.  I’ve always kept track of prospective customers generated by my social media efforts and could easily track the closed sales resulting from them.  But I’m only one person.  When we talk corporate level social media with hundreds of people working on it, the reach of ROI becomes exponentially larger and more difficult to demonstrate. 

If you have had success representing ROI from your social media program or have any ideas or thoughts on how to do so, I’d be interested in hearing them and helping everyone learn from your experience.

Note about the Author:  Dave Hanron has more than 20 years proven experience in corporate sales and marketing and possesses a bachelors degree in Economics from the University of Rhode Island

Hurricane Irene, Gillette Stadium, & Social Media...a Great Story

Hurricane Irene….another big topic for social media.  As the latest hurricane swept up the east coast of the United States last week, millions of storm victims stayed in touch by using the various forms of social media.

Twitter was feeding the local news casts with up to the minute local events like downed trees, power outages, flooding rivers, and more.  Fox 25 Boston spent a good portion of their storm coverage simply reading their “tweets” directly from the web. 

Facebook users were also heavily engaged.  My small following of Facebook “friends” were busy posting news about trees down in their yards, tales of sad children with no power to watch TV or play video games (remember those days?), etc.  Those without power were typing away on their smartphones and iPads.

In the days following the storm, Twitter and Facebook were used extensively to criticize the power companies for the perceived lack of attention to the power outages.  Whether true or not, residents of the Boston suburb of Foxboro were particularly harsh in their opinions of Gillette Stadium getting power restored in time for the New England Patriots’ Thursday night home game against the NY Giants while the majority of the town remained without electricity.  The Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, and his staff reacted to the story swiftly, explaining that the home of the Patriots actually ran off a sub-station in the nearby town of Wrentham and that the Patriots had paid a substantial sum to the local power company in 1996, National Grid, to have upgrades done to the substation in case of an outage.  According to James Nolan, senior vice president of operations, administration and finance for the stadium and the Patriots, ''This would guarantee that we would still have power if the feed was lost from one of the substations,'' he said.

Mr. Kraft also reminded people that the New England Patriots and his other business interests had donated the use of their privately owned backup generators to the town to help provide emergency power for key locations in Foxboro.

This story is a great example of how monitoring and reacting to social media feeds can have a dramatic impact on a business brand.  While the Patriots were initially subject to criticism because of perceived favoritism by National Grid, they did a great job of turning it around by explaining to the public they had not only funded the improvements to the substation, but that they also had donated their own private generators to the town.  What could have been a publicity nightmare was handled swiftly and professionally due to the presence of a social media monitoring and engagement program.

IMO, I think the Patriots should be commended on their handling of this potentially damaging publicity, and their quick actions of presenting their side of the story.  As more and more people are exposed to social media, the need of monitoring will continue to grow exponentially.

If you are interested in learning more about available programs, drop me a note @DaveHanron on Twitter or email me at d.hanron@earthlink.net

Is Your Business Engaged with the Consumer?

How engaged is your company?  Have you added an interactive component to your web site so Consumers can share their sentiments?  Do you have a full time staff whose function it is to listen and react to your Customers’ comments and concerns?

The explosive growth of today’s social channels like Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Digg, Linkedin, Consumer Complaints, and many, many more has created an instant need for businesses to respond publicly to the conversations and topics brought forth through social channels.

Only a few short years ago, the typical business website would contain non “click-able” pages of information for a Consumer to review. There’d be pages for product descriptions, the dreaded  “About Us” page that is only read by sales people, and usually some legal stuff like privacy disclosures. The leading edge companies might have had a video of some sort but the with the dial up internet connections of years ago, many Consumers couldn’t realize the true benefits of video.  All this has changed with the readily available high speed connections most of us have today.

These days if your company doesn’t have a “page” on Facebook, a “username” on Twitter and Digg, or a “profile” on Linkedin, you’re business is not involved in the social conversation and may be doing tremendous harm to your business name and brand.  By not participating, you are taking one of the biggest risks of your professional career :  not knowing what is being said about you! 

Years ago, it was pretty difficult for a single Consumer to cause any harm or add any significant value to a business reputation.  Methods of communication were pretty limited.  Maybe the Consumer could file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, or write an editorial in your local paper, maybe even call in to a local radio station and get 30 seconds of air time, but ultimately, there weren’t a lot of options and the audience was very limited. 

Same problem with a recommendation.  If a Consumer had a great meal at a restaurant or received excellent service from their cable company (I know, that’s highly unlikely) options for praise were just as limited. Maybe a call to the owner of the business or a letter of praise about the specific employees involved, but again, unless someone saw the letter of praise hanging on a wall somewhere, there was not a great deal of benefit for the company to be derived from this type of positive feedback.

Today’s social media channels have changed all this.  A Consumer actively involved with Twitter or Facebook can literally have millions of “Followers” or “Fans” they can reach out to instantly and either positive or negative feedback can have a dramatic impact on a business or brand.  Comments can spread like wildfire, allowing a single point of view to go viral and become known worldwide almost instantly.  If not handled appropriately, the results could be catastrophic for a business.  For example, the data breach Sony experienced with their Playstation 3 online was publicized worldwide only moments after it happened.  It involved up to 77 million Consumers!  Think of how many X-Boxes must have been sold in the following weeks because people were afraid to be compromised using a Sony Playstation?  Sony has been trying to repair their reputation ever since.

In order to effectively protect your business name and brand, you need to develop a social strategy to gather information, and engage your Customers and potential Customers.  Add a blog to your web page, create a “feedback” page for your Customers to use, consider a “live chat” feature to interact immediately, and add video sessions to your site and if possible, use different employees when you film them.  We all like to see fresh faces and it creates a picture of a more diverse company if you have more faces in front of the public.

How many people remember the auto attendant “Claire” from Sprint PCS?........A big pet peeve of mine is on the “Contact Us” pages where you click on it and it goes to an email address like Support@abccompany.com  I always recommend to businesses that they make this piece more personal, and have it go to a person of some sort.  It doesn’t have to be a real person, but it can be made to appear as one.  Many companies have created “People” to engage Consumers.  Just create an email that goes to something like Claire@abccompany.com and you’ll get a lot better feedback.  You can still route it to a group of support reps if that’s your plan but it definitely gives a better personal presentation that the Consumers' experience with your brand matters to your business.

And lastly and most importantly, you must monitor the social conversations about your company and brand.  You need to develop a staff to listen and react to any publicity, either negative or positive about your products.  If you respond quickly to negative discussions, you will limit the impact of them.  If you respond to positive praise, you will gain tremendous benefits from the good publicity.  You’ll need to contract with a company to provide the monitoring capabilities for your business and then create a plan to deal with what you uncover.  If you search within your existing staff and don’t have the required skill set to handle this task internally, don’t ignore it as it will not be going away any time soon…….Outsource the process to a professional.

Contact me @DaveHanron on Twitter or leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to assist in your selection of a supplier for your social media research or development.

Where is Butler University?

Founded in 1885 and located 5 miles from downtown Indianapolis, Butler University is home to more than 4,000 students. Butler is ranked as the 2nd best university in the Regional Universities Midwest category of the 2011 U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges. This same publication ranked Butler as the No. 1 "Up-and-Coming" institution among Regional Universities Midwest, and one of 68 nationwide. Of their incoming freshman class for 2011-2012, 50% ranked in the top 10% of their high school class. Pretty impressive stuff…….



But who REALLY knows Butler University? When I was looking for colleges coming out of Boston Latin School in 1981, I had never heard of Butler, never mind thought of going there. This morning, odds are most of the US population knows of Butler University. Why? Because they made it to the finals of one of the world’s premier sporting events…the NCAA Basketball Championship……for the second year in a row! And the national press coverage they’ve been getting has opened our eyes….I was asked twice yesterday by friends “Where is Butler anyways?”….


I think we can all agree that questions like “Where is Butler anyways?” should make the Butler University administration rethink the use of their advertising budget.  After all, we all know Harvard is in Cambridge, Mass, Notre Dame is in South Bend, and UCLA is in Los Angeles.


While the Cinderella story didn’t have the ending Butler was hoping for as the Bulldogs fell to the UConn Huskies last night, 53-41, the Butler season remains a great storyline for millions of fans.


Now is the perfect time for the Butler administration to jump all over the publicity and start a campaign to boost the University’s recruiting efforts. With a jump start from the national press coverage they’ve received, a good, focused informational campaign targeted at high school juniors and seniors would greatly enhance the reputation of Butler University and lift the school to new heights in the recruiting arena.


Not only would this approach help the Bulldogs to continue to recruit world class high school athletes for their sports teams, they also could reach out to more world class scholars to consider their university. There are loads of National Honor Society students who don’t play interscholastic sports, but they may be participating in the marching bands for those teams. Or they could simply be a fan of great college basketball and want to have the opportunity to attend championship level games on their home campus as part of their college experience. What student wouldn’t want to go to a university whose sports programs offer them the opportunity to travel the United States with their friends, attending some of the country’s most prestigious campuses, while supporting your school and getting a great education, all at the same time?


The problem is how could the administration get the message of this great school out to the future high school graduating classes? Social media…..that’s how!


Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flicker, Foursquare, MySpace, and hundreds of other sites are all helpful in delivering your message to the public. The issue is how to get it done?


Like it or not, Social Media is here to stay.  Social Media is an information explosion taking place before our eyes. Most of us are involved in it in some way, shape, or fashion, even if we don’t recognize it. Think you’re not part of the craze? How then did you find this post? Social media….that’s how?

If you have a story like Butler’s or want to create one to capitalize on the opportunity to generate more buzz about your business’ brand, drop me a note @davehanron on Twitter or Dave@socialstrategy1.com on email. I’ll be happy to help provide advice on developing a targeted social media campaign for you.

Measure of ROI on Social Media

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about “Social Media” through sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Yelp, Linkedin, etc, etc. Busineses know they need to embrace the craze but how do they justify the cost of hiring a company to outsource their on-line strategy?

In the past, traditional options like an advertising agency were used. They had their place in time, just like the typewriter. Ad agencies were great for the task but technology has passed that concept by. Print media, radio media, and TV media are expensive these days, limiting the number of companies utilizing those old school methods to the big boys. Just think about it…a 30 second ad at the Superbowl this year cost a whopping $3 million! Wow!

http://www.socialstrategy1.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/case_studies/wp-Social_Media_and_Super_Bowl_Advertisers.pdf

Today’s information age has opened the door to opportunity by utilizing the internet and taking advantage of today’s growing social media craze. Businesses have the opportunity to cast their brand over a vast viewer market in seconds, if their campaigns are managed correctly.

Problem is many businesses don’t know how to measure the return on their social media investment. My view on that is simple. Ask yourself how much is an interested customer worth to your business? Basically, this is your average gross revenues derived from 1 sale multiplied by your “close” ratio.

In other words, if your company sells widgets, and the price of a widget is $1,000, then the value of an interested prospect is $1,000 ÷ the number of prospects required to make 1 sale. If it takes you five prospects to close one sale, ROI is $200. ($1,000/5 prospects = $200).

Now that we have the formula on the table, let’s apply it to real life business. If you open a Facebook account for your business and obtain 100 "likes" of the business in the first month, based on our previous formula, the ROI on your first month's effort would be $20,000!

Of course, from this the production cost of the widget, and the cost of your sales staff's efforts must be deducted, still leaving a hefty profit!

Let’s work through the numbers …..100 “Likes” means 100 interested prospects. If it takes 5 prospects to get 1 sale, the 100 “likes” should equal 20 sales. 20 sales x the average value of a sale ($1,000) equals $20,000!

This formula works equally well across Twitter, Yelp, Digg, etc. So it’s pretty simple to see the ROI available by simply putting some effort into building a social media presence. The companies that do will flourish; those that do not will go the way of yesterday’s typewriter……

To learn more on how to take advantage of the programs available to help develop your social media presence, please contact me at dave@socialstrategy1.com or on Twitter @davehanron.

Does Twitter scare Google?

For more than a decade, Google has held the unofficial title of search engine “king”.

When friends are sitting around the table, discussing virtually any current or past subject, almost universally people have different opinions or memories on the topic. I’m sure you’ve heard or maybe even used the catch word phrase “let’s Google it?”. I have.

Just recently, I’ve begun to hear a few people start saying they don’t “Google” any more, they “Bing”. Now most of the “Bing” talk has arisen from the influx of smart phones using Windows Mobile as an operating system. Windows Mobile comes with Bing as it’s default search engine. That, coupled with the fact that Windows Internet Explorer now comes with Bing as default, all seems to be targeting Google’s dominance.

Where does Twitter search come in? By sheer volumes, Twitter search doesn’t seem to be much of a danger to Google’s position at the top. However, with the hunger of today’s social media explosion trending towards the need for real time updates, Twitter seems to have several advantages over Google.

Here are a couple examples why I feel Twitter search may be gaining an edge.  Twitter gives instant access to the current chatter on a given subject. I took the liberty of Twitter searching Japan this morning and the results seemed endless, just within the last 5 minutes of “tweets”. It gives personal experiences and opinions that many of us prefer reading over yesterday’s stale news.

A second advantage of Twitter is it can be used in real life. I saw an example on the evening news yesterday of how people are using Twitter to create “Tweetups”. A “Tweetup is defined by Wiktionary as a “real life meet up of two or more people using the social media site Twitter” (http://tinyurl.com/22rb8es ). Gretchen Kinder (Twitter name Clownface3) met up with Trish Fontanilla (Twitter name TrishoftheTrade) for the first time and their friendship never missed a beat. They had been following each other on Twitter and exchanged tweets daily. It seemed to both of them they'd known each other for years.

Another great example was last night….I was watching Fox 25 news in Boston when anchorwoman Sara Underwood did a feature on the Japan earthquake and was able to contact a US citizen in Japan, (whom she located via Facebook; she could have used Twitter just as easily), then connect to him for an interview over Skype. How times are changing! This illustrates today’s move towards the use of real time chatter and makes me believe Twitter search may yet pose a threat to Google. Only time will tell……

As always, I enjoy hearing your thoughts on this and l hope to see many comments on this one!

Social Media.....Hype or Money Maker?

Social Media….I’m guessing you’ve heard of it? If not, you wouldn’t be reading this post.

Today’s information explosion is growing exponentially, fueled by sites like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Digg, MySpace, YouTube, Flicker, and thousands more. Sure, we all enjoy using them, but are they really a way for businesses or individuals to capitalize on the growth and actually earn some income?

I’m going to spend a little time and give my take on the trends.

People typically begin slow in the social media world, usually by opening a Facebook account because one of their friends has told them it’s the trendy thing to do. Some people start with a Twitter account. It really doesn’t matter.

If you’re looking to get return on your investment (ROI) you need to start by building your social “Brand”. How do you accomplish this? You’ve already started by opening your personal gateway to the social environment by using Facebook and/or Twitter.

Next step is to gain followers or friends. How do you do that? It takes a bit of effort but everyone can do it…start “tweeting” on your Twitter account. You can either write your own comments or “re-tweet” someone else’s. You can also “tweet” an interesting article that you find. I think the best approach is a combination of the 3. Be creative. Add picture to your tweets, using free app’s like YFrog or Twitpic. Remember, people like to read interesting stuff and you’re competing with millions of others for their time. Get to know your audience.

Once you successfully accumulated a following, keep expanding it by adding other means of communication to your social toolbox by creating a personal or professional blog. The Huffington Post is today’s #1 rated blog (Technorati research http://tinyurl.com/yg5gxnv). The Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) has more than 800,000 followers on Twitter. While this may not be the biggest Twitter following (according to TwitterStats, that would be Lady Gaga with more than 8,400,000 followers http://tinyurl.com/ddjtdd ), it has led them to being the most viewed blog on the internet.

Now that you have your blog, begin posting it on Twitter and Facebook to gain even more exposure to your brand. The more exposure your brand gets, the easier it becomes to monetize it. Think of the Dunkin Donuts “Keep it Coolatta” social campaign…..

The campaign incented the public to snap pictures of themselves and post them on the Dunnkin Donut Fan Wall on Facebook to win prizes including air conditioners, Jet Blue vouchers, Flat screen TV’s and more.

The reaction was fantastic and generated more than 20,000 additional followers for Dunkin Brands.

There are lots of companies out there today who are looking for heavy traffic “brands” where they can place advertisements for their merchants’ products. By partnering with one of these firms, you can start monetizing your brands and get your ROI flowing. To find some of these companies, simply Google or Bing “digital advertising affiliate programs” and you’ll find dozens of them.

Do your research, pick one, and you’re on your way to increased ROI…….all through today’s information explosion of social media.

To learn more on how to use social media to grow your business, contact me at Dave@socialstrategy1.com or @davehanron on Twitter

Social Media vs. Social Intelligence

I’m sure we’re all getting bombarded by Facebook and Twitter information from people calling themselves “Social Media experts”. If you’re like me, it’s getting to the point where you ask yourself how much “social” is too much “social”?

This brings us to today’s topic: What exactly is “social media" and what does it do for me?

“Social Media” is defined by Wikipedia as “the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue”. In other words, everyone using Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Linkedin, etc are using and contributing to “social media”. If you’re a bit more advanced and are “blogging”, then you’re contributing to the social media explosion.

Today’s businesses are just beginning to realize the role social media is currently playing and will continue to evolve into in the future. Where in past years, if you had a bad experience with a merchant or ate a bad meal at a restaurant, you’d tell a few close friends and relatives and that would be the end of it. Very little real effect took place on the business reputation, good or bad.

Today, people may have thousands of followers on Twitters, making it as simple as picking up their Blackberry or iPhone, logging into Twitter, and writing a quick one sentence review of their experience. This review quickly reaches all their followers and with “re-tweeting”, there’s no way to count how many people are notified of an experience with a business, good or bad. The results can be devastating to a reputation or fantastic for a company, depending on the temperament of the Tweet.

Here’s where “Social Intelligence” comes in. Businesses need to more than just follow their reputations with free services like Google alerts, or Trackle alerts. The business may or may not capture all of their social mentions with these services, but the bigger question now becomes what do you do with them?

The consumers must be engaged in order to gain value from the social media explosion. Social intelligence is the knowledge of how to handle the conversation about your business.  It includes having a  plan in place to respond immediately to comments once you find them, both positive and negative and requires many companies to employ a full-time staff to address this. It includes developing pro-active campaigns to improve or direct the conversation about your brand.  It may drive business to your website. There are many components of social intelligence. Far too many to address here...

It’s a fact in today’s tight economic market that many companies can’t (or won’t) expend the resources to hire additional personnel to handle this aspect of their business, and their current group of employees is either too busy or not trained to deal with the social media explosion.  It’s the current and next generation of employees (recent college grads and those students still in college, high school, and middle school) who will be coming into the workplace fully engaged with the need and skills to work in social intelligence.

Think back 10 years ago…..pre-requisite for employment may have read something like “working knowledge of MS Word, Excel, & Powerpoint a plus”. Today’s job listings might include something like..”at least 5 years of Twitter, Facebook, and blogging experience a must”.

Scared? You’re not alone.

There are solutions available today to help you through attaining and successfully developing and using social intelligence to help your business profits move forward as technology continues to evolve.  If you’d like more information on how to manage your company’s social intelligence programs, please contact me.

I’d enjoy hearing any other solutions or comments you may have so please leave your comments and forward to any friends or colleagues you may feel are interested in “social intelligence”.

Great Twitter Tool

Are you “Social”? Do you use Twitter? Facebook? Digg? Linkedin?

If you’re just getting into the cyber social scene, here’s a great application to add to your social toolbox.

If you enjoy taking pictures and posting them on Facebook, but struggle when trying to express your views on Twitter, try signing up for Y Frog (http://www.yfrog.com/) and download the mobile app. to your mobile device. YFrog is a product of Imageshack, which has been hosting images and videos since 2004.

YFrog is a free application that works from your desktop or mobile device. YFrog seemlessly integrates with your Twitter account and allows users to add photos and videos to their Twitter posts. Users can post directly from the YFog interface, making “tweeting” and “re-Tweeting” a breeze! Currently, YFrog is available for use from Blackberry and Android mobile devices. For you iPhone users, the application is available using Tweetdeck.

So, next time you find yourself at the scene of a newsworthy event or in the presence of a person of interest, grab your cell phone camera, snap the picture and “Tweet” away. Stats have shown that the average “tweet” stays in cyber space for no more than an hour (http://tinyurl.com/6ly6nfw). “Tweets” containing pictures have a shelf life of nearly triple that!

2011-- Is Social Media the New Las Vegas for Business?

$50 billion! Too much money to rationalize for most people…..but that’s just what Facebook was recently estimated to be worth (http://tinyurl.com/22qp7p8) by Daily Finance. Groupon worth ~$6 billion! Mind boggling numbers unless you are the Yankees or Red Sox.

The expected boom of social media sites can be compared to the explosion of Las Vegas after World War II in 1945. Lavish resorts and glitzy hotels with casinos begin to dominate the city and tourism takes over as the #1 employer in the valley. In the 1960’s Howard Hughes invests in Las Vegas, buying up numerous casinos and “gambling” turns into a legitimate business called “gaming”.

On May 15th, 2005, Las Vegas celebrated it’s 100th birthday, holding the title as the largest metropolitan city founded in the 20th century. In 2009 the American Gaming Association reports that annual gaming revenues topped $5.5 billion on the Las Vegas Strip properties (http://tinyurl.com/38jjoou).

Jump ahead to 2011……Facebook, with more than 200 million users worldwide, was just valued at ~$50 billion. Groupon valued at ~$6 billion. Linkedin pondering an IPO , looking to raise ~$2.2 billion. All this social media buzz and the wealth associated with it started in 2003 when Mark Zuckerburg, a Harvard University student, started “Facemash”. In 2005, “Facebook” was officially launched with an initial purchase price of $200,000 for the domain name. And the rest is history!

Based on the market capitalization estimates from Daily Finance, since 2003, social media sites have created value in excess of $50 billion! Not bad for a 7+ year old fledging industry. Better than Las Vegas!

We’ve seen many of our gadgets over our lives go awry due to advances in technology. Remember 45’s, 33’s, 78’s, VCR’s, tape recorders, reel to reel movies, adding machines, typewriters, DOSS, TV antennas, wooden shafted golf clubs, “BIG Wheels”, Asteroids…..you get the picture.

Today’s business professionals are all chasing the buzz terms we refer to as “ROI’, “EBIDTA”, “margin”, “IPO” as indicators of their success as business entrepreneurs. Problem is in order to achieve these buzz words, they require sales professionals who can convince other executives to purchase their products. The sales industry has suffered over the last decade as yesterdays managers become today’s executives and won’t take “cold calls”. Today’s decision makers typically were promoted or advanced from yesterday’s managers who taught the sales techniques of the 80’s & 90’s. The “assumptive close”, the “affordable close”, the “conditional close”, the “summary close”, all were techniques taught and developed in years past. With the days of successful “cold calling” going the way of 33’s and 45’s, the successful sales professional has had to adapt their efforts to the information age of the 21st century and begin using social media to build, nurture, and grow their professional relationships.

The use of Linkedin, Twitter, Yelp, Groupon, Facebook, blogs (yes, like this one), email, Digg, etc are vital to continued sales success in the 21st century. Sounds simple, right? Wrong!

In order to properly utilize each of these methods (and a successful sales effort requires use of all these sites and more), it would take hours and hours to visit, search, post, reply, tweet, blog, etc. No time is left for the fun part of sales……selling.

The goal here is to become “social”, build a brand awareness for yourself as a sales professional, and have today’s decision makers want to purchase from you, not be sold by you. It’s much better to be a successful order taker than a frustrated sales person.

There are a number of great tools out there to help you manage your brand awareness and on-line reputation. To get additional info, and get a demo on how a social media engagement program can benefit you and your company, contact me for your free demo on how the Social Strategy1 “Engage” system can streamline your daily social efforts and help your profits soar in 2011!

3rd Party Landline Billing

Lot’s of press these days…some good, some bad on landline phone billing as a payment option for digital merchants. Let’s face it, in today’s recessionary economy, credit is getting tighter and tighter…banks are lowering credit limits and raising interest rates on credit cards. Maybe our parents had it right…my father once said ”Dave, whenever possible, don’t use credit…it only gets you in trouble. If you can’t afford to pay for it, you don’t need it”.

More and more, today’s consumers are looking for alternate methods to pay for their purchases. This has led to the onslaught of new payment options, from Paypal, to pre-paid subscription cards, to Google checkout, to Amazon Payments, and yes, Bill to Landline.

One common factor in all these alternatives other than Bill to Landline is that they all ultimately refer back a credit or debit card provided to the processing company. While Paypal, Google, and Amazon all deal with the consumer settlements for the merchants, the funds are still ultimately under control of Mastercard, Visa, or AMEX.

Bill to Landline is the only true alternative giving the consumer the option to purchase a digital good WITHOUT the use of some type of credit card. Merchants that use Bill to Landline must go through an extremely thorough background review, including company and officer background and fraud checks, marketing material reviews, sales and sales verification script reviews, post-sales confirmation reviews, and customer service policy reviews.

I know, you might ask “Can an unscrupulous merchant sneak through the approval process and cause bad social media reviews for a Bill to Landline company?”

Unfortunately, as it is with all the other methods, the answer is “yes”. It happens. Not all people are trustworthy and occasional a bad merchant might sneak through and cause bad press for the billing company. Today, please be assured that the billing companies are working hard through social media monitoring and engagement to deal with these issues as quickly as possible and to shut down any merchant found to be in violation of their set of standard billing & practices policies, up to and including issuing refunds to the consumer on services and goods not received or not properly authorized.

That aside, the Bill to Landline service offers a great revenue stream to merchants, helping to capture a sale from a consumer who otherwise would have left the checkout page without ever purchasing the digital good.

To find out how Bill to Landline can help grow revenues for your e-commerce company, please contact me at dave.hanron@ildmail.com

Social Media Continues to Evolve

According to today’s Yahoo Finance, http://tinyurl.com/2ewc9ya , a Google executive said the number of people connected to the World Wide Web will nearly triple in the next ten years. According to Nikesh Arora, president of global sales and business development at Google, Web consumers will rise to 5 billion by 2020, compared with about 1.8 billion today. "We're going to have a problem...it's going to be very hard to find the information that's relevant to us," Arora said, adding that the Internet will contain 53 zettabytes, or 53 sextillion pieces of information, at that point. "The distinction between the offline world and the online world will go away," Arora said. Because of this ongoing expansion of the internet, social media will continue to evolve into the next generation of consumer support. Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, You Tube, Yelp, Google, Linkedin, Zoom, and Jigsaw are just some examples of websites developed to increase the ease in which consumers can voice their opinions on today’s businesses. As more and more consumers begin using the internet, a need to stay on top of these types of consumer “tweets” is growing rapidly and those companies that embark on a process to address social media will flourish. Those companies ignoring it will be left behind. Social Strategy 1, a division of ILD Corp., has developed an outsource solution for business to follow their social media mentions and actually “engage” the consumer. Knowing how your company is being “tweeted” about is one thing. While a traditional search engine optimization (SEO) company can tell you how many times your company is mentioned and an online reputation management (ORM) company can help deal with the complaints, actually knowing how to make these mentions work for YOU it is another thing entirely. Knowing what to do about it requires a trained professional analyst with expertise in developing business plans to “listen” to the consumer, “learn” about the consumer’s’ needs and then “engage” the consumer, addressing both positive and negative comments. Don’t let dust settle on the information you receive from the internet. Put it to work to enhance your company. If you are interested in seeing how Social Strategy 1 can help your business with its social media needs, please contact me to set up a no obligation, risk free assessment of your business. I will include access to our on-line reporting dashboards, analyst recommendations and other pertinent components of the SS-1 solution. I can be reached at dave@socialstrategy1.com