While social scoring platforms like Klout, etc, can help identify who could potentially be influential from a brand amplification standpoint, the business return – dollars in the cash register – has been more problematic to solve.

Likes, shares, blog posts and more are discussed abundantly when it comes to reviewing a campaign using social scoring as the lead means of influence identification. But likes and shares don’t pay the bills.

This was one of the key reasons Sam Fiorella and I wrote Influence Marketing: as marketers and users of influence campaigns ourselves, we knew the real return on influence had to be lead generation, customer acquisition, and moving the customer along the purchase life cycle.

With that approach, brands could better understand where their customers are, and how they could help solve the problems they faced.

Essentially, we take influence away from the superstar bloggers and social media rock stars, and place the emphasis squarely back on the customer, and work back from there.

To give you an idea of how this looks, this second teaser video from our upcoming video series to complement the book looks at what happens when the customer is placed at the centre of the marketing circle, and how that leads to financial and customer return on your brand’s influence campaigns.

This post contains a video. If you can\'t see it displayed properly in your feed, click here to view it directly.

What’s the Return on Influence Marketing? originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

In my role as Chief Technologist over at ArCompany, and from a love of technology in general, I test, play with, compare and recommend all sorts of different platforms, software technologies and solutions.

There’s just something about the promise and potential of data and technology – when used properly and for the benefit of customers as well as the business – that gets my motor running (sorry, Steppenwolf fans!).

An interesting side effect of this is you get to see firsthand why certain social software technologies succeed while others fail, even though on paper they may look the same.

The ironic thing is, the ones that fail could easily avoid their fate – or at least have a better chance of avoiding it – by simply being better prepared.

They Don’t Understand the Space

One of the biggest mistakes where I see companies tripping over is building a platform for a space they have no experience in. Being a great coder or developer is one thing; being a great developer or coder for a space you don’t understand is another.

With social media offering a real-time and often pervasive invitation to look at how people converse with each other, and what opportunities this offers for brands and organizations, the potential for true customer understanding is huge.

But this level of understanding comes at a price – you need to understand text analytics, ontology, and how these two interconnect when it comes to identifying emotional triggers in a conversation.

Because each social platform has its own little nuances, this task becomes even more convoluted. If you, as a software company, don”t have the personnel that understands these nuances and what that means for data analysis and filtering, your platform will be rendered ineffective.

Too many companies would rather place this important part of the puzzle in the hands of developers only, instead of partnering developers with the kind of data analysts and human language scientists that can turn a so-and-so platform into something so much better at connecting the human dots.

This immediately limits the usefulness of the platform. After all, you wouldn’t ask a learner driver to get behind the wheel of an F1 race car, would you?

They’re In It Just for the Money

Businesses need to make money. That’s a given. As I’ve said several times before when talking about influence marketing and how companies should be using it, I challenge any business to stay afloat on goodwill and social proof alone.

But here’s the thing – when you create something purely with the intent of making a lot of money, and not really caring about the quality of the product or the customers that will be using it, it will more often than not bite you in the ass.

While he receives a lot of criticism about his platform, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg always struck me as having the right mentality when it came to this issue.

We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

Fourteen words. A simple mission statement in fourteen words. Yet it’s one that has seen Facebook become – arguably – the biggest social software platform in the world.

It’s a mantra the likes of Apple and Google follow. By putting the needs of the user first, and building solutions that will actually benefit them and solve their problems, success is the organic end result.

The way Apple products seamlessly connect to each other via the iCloud platform; the way Google+ drives every Google product touch-point when it comes to interacting with Google’s customers.

It wasn’t luck or chance that saw these three companies, and others like them, make this focus on the end user the core product feature. Each company knew that by offering something that just works, and isn’t complicated or trying to be something it’s not, money would follow.

Too many social software platforms enter the space thinking that social media is the golden goose for profit. It can be; but not if the sole intent is to make money and to heck with the user experience.

They Don’t Understand Community and Content

For many startups, marketing dollars are a luxury. While some companies are fortunate to have generous investors from day one, the majority of startups, especially in the social space, don’t enjoy that umbrella.

For these companies, content and community are two of the core methodologies for getting people to know about you and/or your product, and why they should use you over your competitors who have been established for a while.

Not only that, but you’re walking the talk as well as just sharing cool soundbites. This is just as true for established companies – the social space is a hive of conversations, groups, communities, chats and more. Get the right people for that part of your company’s growth and you’re giving yourself a fighting chance of success.

Look at companies like Marketwired, with Sheldon Levine; or Salesforce MarketingCloud, with Trish Forant; or InNetwork Inc., with Daniel Hebert and Kelly Jennex. The first two companies are well-established, while InNetwork Inc. has just come onto the scene in the last few months.

All three, though, share the mindset that content and community will help them not only grow awareness of their products and what their company does, but also create a loyal user-base as well as drive innovation through the feedback from their communities, and the content that community leaves points of view on.

Too many social software platforms, unfortunately, see content and community as a burden rather than an opportunity.

So instead of hiring the right people that can truly drive this part of the strategy, they instead do nothing or, perhaps worse, hand over the reins to engineers or developers that – through no fault of their own – are clearly out of their depth.

The three companies mentioned above show what happens when your social footprint strategy is as key as the social software you’re developing.

Wake Up or Break Up

In the last 12-18 months, there’s been a lot of consolidation in the social space. Some of this is through choice; some, through financial needs.

Either way, these companies have continued to evolve and, for the most part, improve. Because they’ve continued to keep the right people; stay on the right path; and concentrating on the user experience as much as the cool development experience.

Newer platforms coming into play continue this mindset. Guys like oneQube, TrendSpottr and SqueezeCMM, for instance, place utility and solutions over features and vapourware.

They understand the marketplace:  what works, what doesn’t, and – more importantly – why. It’s not rocket science, yet so many social platforms make it look that way.

Then again, they only have themselves to blame. A CEO of a company that’s struggling in the space right now once said to me,

It doesn’t matter what we build. Good marketers can market shit.

While that might be true, it’s also a damning statement on your goals and vision, or lack thereof. While you might be able to sell shit, customers and users that can’t use that shit will soon move elsewhere, where their needs are actually met.

Leaving you to wonder why it’s your company that’s now in the shit…

UX image: headspace

Why Social Software Platforms Fail originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

Influence marketing is at a crossroads. As we know it today, influence marketing is primarily defined by social scoring platforms like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex.

However, while these platforms are decent starting points for brands looking to identify influencers, they don’t really go deep enough into contextual and situational human relationships to offer a true metric of influence.

What’s needed is a bigger understanding of how the human psyche works; what makes us tick as people; what impacts our decision process; and where we can predict paths of influence based on transactional relationships, where historic interactions can be merged with current knowledge and the likelihood of a future action based on that knowledge.

To get to that level, though, we need to move to the Third Wave of Influence Marketing.

The First Wave of Influence: Celebrity Endorsements

While Dale Carnegie can arguably be called the Grandfather of Influence as we knew it before social scoring entered the fray, it was the late Dan Edelman and his championing of celebrity endorsements that ushered in the First Wave of Influence.

Edelman saw the value in connecting celebrities with brands to share that brand’s message. The middle of the last century saw Edelman employ people like movie star Vincent Price to be the voice of the California wine industry, and people like baseball legend Nolan Ryan and activist Gloria Steinem.

This type of brand recommendation resulted in several successful campaigns, and turned Edelman’s fledgling self-named company into a global public relations powerhouse.

However, in recent years, the sheen has started to dull with celebrity endorsements. In 2008, Bloomberg BusinessWeek published an excellent article on the dangers of celebrity endorsement, which included (lack of) relevance of the celebrity to the brand.

On her agency blog, Margie Clayman took it one step further and highlighted the worst case scenario for brands when using celebrity endorsements – that of the celebrity “going rogue”.

Tiger Woods and his infidelity; Lance Armstrong and his doping scandal; Oscar Pistorius and the killing of his girlfriend (drawing comparisons to the OJ Simpson murder trial).

The combination of dangers associated to celebrity endorsement, as well as consumers becoming smarter when connecting the dots between endorsement and context, paved the way for the next wave of influence.

The Second Wave of Influence: Social Scoring

The social web has opened up a veritable treasure trove of opportunities for individuals to become the “new celebrity”, or influencer. By having access to social networks, blogging and more, everyday web users can grow a sizable audience and loyal following.

Brands began to take notice of this and naturally wanted to connect. There was just one problem – old school broadcast messaging didn’t quite work on the new web. Instead of connecting with influencers, brands came across as spammy. They needed a conduit.

Enter social scoring.

Early movers in the social influence space like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex saw the opportunity to create a platform that could connect these social influencers to brands looking to use them to promote their goods.

Soon, public scores were attached to individuals, with the higher scoring ones being invited to accept free products from brands, in the hope of exposure to that influencer’s audience.

This was all well and good, until the cracks started to appear.

Questions arose over the validity of the data being used, since it was just based on publicly available information versus more in-depth conversations happening behind closed networks and privacy settings.

People also questioned the right of these platforms to create a public profile and attach a score to you, without your specific content.

Privacy violation was also a hot topic, as well as the creation of profiles of minors – a big no-no for the social networks where the scoring platforms were scraping information from.

Perhaps the biggest crack was the resulting shift in how influence was perceived. Instead of context and micro relationships, influence was now judged by a score and how well a user played into the algorithm of the scoring platforms.

Even today, after improvements to the data, people with social scoring profiles can see their scores drop if they stay away from the likes of Twitter and Facebook for a few days. This “you’re only influential if you’re online” approach has left people questioning the validity of scoring as a method of influence.

Much like celebrity endorsements before them, social scoring platforms are being questioned over the context of how their influence is measured, and where the true transactional influence – that where trust, relationship and more comes into play – sits in their algorithm.

Which leads us to the next wave.

The Third Wave of Influence: The Business of Influence

The biggest problem facing brands today when it comes to influence marketing is the actions and end result that come from their campaigns, and did they result in leads and customers.

While there are various aspects to an influence campaign – short term buzz, new product awareness, donation run for non-profits, etc – the long tail aspect is often forgotten: customer acquisition and loyalty.

The reason for this can be attributed to many things, but the biggest overriding factor is clear – brands are still using influence marketing campaigns as one-offs, and with a campaign mindset.

This means they find their influencers, agree on the promotion, let the influencer do his or her thing, and then analyze how successful that campaign was.

However, this misses a huge opportunity – to turn influence into true advocacy, and build a loyal and engaged army of fans that are also customers. To do this, brands need to start looking beyond the short-term (potential) viral effect of an influencer, and instead address the needs of the customer via the influencer.

A CRM platform like Nimble can help in this process, and taking influence beyond buzz and into true actionable business return is the natural next step.

Otherwise, the current direction of influence may erode brand trust. The recent indifference to the Kred and LinkedIn Top 1% emails showed early signs that perhaps consumers are getting tired of where we are today.

Instead of generic, we need to address complexity.

• We need to decipher opinions of those that matter and how they impact us;
• We need to adapt to fluid influence and how it continuously changes;
• We need to move beyond public personas and into micro influencers;
• And we need to stop confusing popularity and amplification for influence.

But most of all, we need to place the customer at the heart of the influence circle, and understand their needs; where they are in the purchase life cycle; and who immediately impacts their decisions based on their current situation (financial, emotional, etc).

The stage is set for The Third Wave of Influence Marketing – all it needs now is you.

This post contains a video. If you can\'t see it displayed properly in your feed, click here to view it directly.

The Crossroads of Influence Marketing originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

Bloggers are a breed apart from many other online outlets. That’s not meant in a grand or condescending way – just that it takes a very different mindset to be a blogger, and one that stays the course.

Of course, a large part of this success comes from the readers a blogger attracts. These readers turn into subscribers, turn into loyal members of your community, turn into “brand advocates” for your blog.

Essentially, your readers dictate much of how your blog is viewed by the interactions both on your domain and on their own networks. So why would you want to treat them like chumps?

You’re not treating your readers like chumps? You’re looking after them? Are you sure? Let’s take a quick check.

You’re Killing Their Eyes

Content is King. It’s the rallying cry of many bloggers – and, for the most part, it can be true. After all, without content, you have no readers, right? But what good is content when it’s surrounded by a craptastic design?

For those of you that were born before 1990, I have one thing to say to you – GeoCities! Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. For the benefit of our readers who’re not as ancient as me, GeoCities was Yahoo’s website building platform. It was meant to offer an easy option for non-technical people to be able to build their own sites.

The problem was, once you give a non-technical person the key to tech tools, chaos ensues. Cue some of the ugliest pieces of crud ever seen online!

Jump forward to today. With tools like WordPress and Genesis (affiliate link), it’s never been easier to get a professional-looking website or blog up-and-running quickly and without too much hard work.

If you want to encourage readers to enjoy your site and stick around for more, then make your place welcoming. After all, would you go back to a dayglo pink website with yellow font and dancing pixel people? Exactly.

• Takeaway. You want to encourage readers to come back? Make your offering an attractive one.

You’re Acting Like a Cheapskate

One of the big trends in blog reader behaviour is the rise of mobile browsing. With the popularity of iPhone, Android and tablets, web browsing behaviour has shifted dramatically in the last 12 months and will continue to move towards mobile.

So why aren’t you looking after your mobile visitors?

If you’re using WordPress, for example, there are a host of themes that are built with a responsive design.

This means no matter what browser display your visitor comes in on, the site will adapt (check this blog out on a tablet or smartphone, and then compare it to the web version). Again, Genesis offers several themes in this area – check out their Theme Chooser tool and select Mobile Responsive.

If you’re happy with your existing theme, you might be using something like WPtouch to offer a mobile version of your site. But here’s the thing – why are you using the free version?

As useful as it is, it’s actually very limited – it doesn’t even support threaded conversations on the comments, for example. Which, if your blog has a lot of comments, can soon lead to an unholy mess where replies to comments aren’t in context, and the conversation can soon become messy and convoluted.

For as little as $49, you can add a whole host of features by upgrading to WPtouch Pro. Dedicated iPad styling, retina support, theme styling, threaded comments and much, much more. That’s got to be worth $49, no?

• Takeaway. Your readers add value to your blog. Are you treating them as valuable?

You’ve Joined the Mail Service

Remember when you first started blogging, and your passion was burning to be the best blogger out there? You were going to write the most amazing posts, start the most intense conversations around them, and attract the coolest audience.

And, you kinda achieved that. So you got lazy, and started posting any old stuff. You’d take a picture and write some nonsense about the hidden meaning behind it for small business owners.

Or you’d write a Top 10 list that offered absolutely nothing new to the topic of that list, or the people/services on it.

Or you’d write a post about how awful it is to be you, and that you should be able to write what you want because it’s your blog and your readers should be grateful you’re still churning out content.

Stop this. STOP THIS NOW.

No one cares about bloggers that feel they’ve conquered the market and can do what they want. Readers came to you for a reason – they don’t want a diluted version of that, because you want to get fat off your affiliate ads and crappy ebooks.

You want to be an awesome blogger that everyone wants to read? Then write the quality content that first made readers come to your site – every time!

Sure, share your ebooks and premium courses and affiliate ads – but make sure they offer value to your readers just as much as they offer dollars to your pocket.

Don’t sacrifice what made you great by attaching it to the mundane. Be great the way you aspired to be great.

• Takeaway – the minute you start mailing your content in, stop blogging. It benefits no-one.

These are just three of the ways you’re short-changing your readers. You might not like being told this, especially if you’re guilty of any of the points above.

Then again, doing the right thing doesn’t always come easy. But the results are more than worth the effort.

Quit Treating Your Blog Readers Like Second Class Chumps originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

The culmination of over three years worth of client research and implementation, discussions with technology vendors, concerns over the impact of scoring on peoples’ livelihoods and more, the fruits of that labour is almost ready to be shared.

I won’t lie – it’s exciting to know that the methodologies Sam Fiorella and myself are presenting in the book will soon be out for all to read and share feedback on.

It’s also a little nervy, since the approach requires a shift in thinking on how we define influence – and, by association, influencers – today.

Thankfully, early feedback so far has been great:

After reading [the free sample Chapter 5], I can tell you it’s a phenomenal chapter that leaves one hungry for the parts on either side of it. Assuming the rest is like Chapter 5, they have certainly written the book that will transform the practice of influence marketing. Evy Wilkins, VP Marketing, Traackr.

Loving the book and its approach – this stuff is incredible. Hessie Jones, CEO, ArCompany.

The sample chapter has certainly made me want to read more; it is thought-provoking. Tema Frank, CEO, Frank Online Marketing.

Brilliant; truly groundbreaking. Tonia Ries, Founder, The Realtime Report.

If we can make people think and reposition how they approach influence marketing today, and see feedback like the early examples above turn itself into business results for readers of the book and the companies they represent, we’ll be happy.

Sales are definitely key (and also help our publisher feel safe that they didn’t sign up a couple of duds when they signed the paperwork with us!) but it’s the transformation in thinking, and shifting influence back to the source – customers – that will really validate the book for Sam and myself.

Which brings me to this special pre-order promotion if you order between now and May 10.

Influence Marketing Book Pre-Order Offers

As part of the launch week, Sam and I have come up with some offers that enable anyone, from solo entrepreneurs and professionals to business owners and executives of organizations, to take advantage of.

Because our goal is to transform the discussion around influence, these offers range from digital to physical and will really complement the book and the methodologies within, and help your business understand and succeed in this important marketing tactic.

So, the offers.

1. Pre-order one copy of the book and, as readers of this blog, I will include a free copy of my Parables of Business ebook, which offers business tips and advice through the art of storytelling.

2. Pre-order 5 copies, and receive a guest byline for your blog or publication from either myself or Sam, between now and the end of 2013.

3. Pre-order 20 copies, and receive a free, business-specific webinar presentation for your employees and/or clients.

4. Pre-order 50 copies and receive 3 hours of digital or influence marketing consulting. This will include an overview of your business’s target audience, their purchase cycles, and how to filter who influences them directly based on our Customer Centric Influence Model.

5. Pre-order 100 copies, and receive free, on-site presentation to your employees/executives, and/or clients. This also includes identifying your influence marketing goals and providing a framework for your business to follow, based on audience and our Customer Centric Influence Model. You simply cover flights and accommodation for either Sam or myself.

Note: These offers apply to both the digital as well as print versions.

Why You Should Buy Influence Marketing

Prior to the launch of the book, the companies Sam and I work at carried out a survey of over 1,300 professionals, PR consultants, marketers and executives around the topic of influence. The results were clear.

Influence marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of the marketing landscape, and businesses and organizations are looking to allocate more time and budget to the space in the next 12 months and beyond.

However, they’re looking for true business results and moving beyond social scoring and into a more detailed, targeted and measurable methodology. The Influence Marketing book provides that and more.

We present detailed breakdowns of successful influencer campaigns, both by us and from brands, where identification of true influencers and who impacts their purchase decisions at any given time led to both top line and bottom line results.

We present a blueprint for your business to use – which technologies meet your needs, how to create influence paths (the glue that holds all influence marketing tactics together), and how to not only address the influence question strategically but, more importantly, make it a long-term part of your business’s success and less of a short term hit.

We’re biased, obviously, but we do firmly believe we’ve written a book that will change the influence conversation forever. By writing a business book in the truest sense, we’ve also laid the foundations for your business to be successful and do things the right way in this space for all your influence marketing campaigns.

But I’ll leave it with the words of Evy Wilkins, VP Marketing of Traackr, one of the influence platforms leading the charge in the next wave of influence.

Sometimes a book changes the way we do business. Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing will be one of those books.

The first step is almost here – let’s get started. You can pre-order either print or digital versions from your preferred bookstore below.

Note – to take advantage of the various pre-orders here, simply forward a copy of your sales order receipt to info@influencemarketingbook.com with the message header Pre-Order Promo – X Books Ordered, provide your preferred contact details, and we’ll be in touch to arrange. 

Special Pre-Order Promotion for Influence Marketing Book originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

As a business resource, Slideshare stands pretty much head and shoulders above most other content platforms.

From presentations to educational content and more, you can find information and curated media on pretty much any topic you have an interest in.

As a research solution, Slideshare offers analysis from some of the smartest minds on the web across all verticals. These include standard presentations, videos, multimedia and more.

Which brings us to this week’s Sunday Share.

Every week, I’ll be sharing a presentation that catches my eye and where I feel you might be interested in the information inside. These will range from business to content to social media to marketing and more.

This week, a thoughtful presentation from Carlos Domingo, President and CEO of Telefonica I&D.

With the arrival of Google Glass and the buzz around where technology is taking us, Carlos offers us a timely look at how disruptive technologies have changed our lives forever, and what it means for our children and their futures.

Enjoy.

The Sunday Share – Disruptive Technologies and the Digital Revolution originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

The image in question is the one below.

The messaging behind the campaign is simple – while Liking unicef.se (unicef Sweden) on Facebook is all well and good, and they certainly wouldn’t discourage that, it costs money to actually carry out the work unicef and other non-profits do every day of the week.

That makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is potentially alienating the very people you’re pseudo-criticizing in a campaign like this, by implying slacktivism doesn’t do any good.

Slacktivism and What Defines Action

A relatively new term, slacktivism is regarded as follows:

Slacktivist activities include signing Internet petitions, joining a community organization without contributing to the organization’s efforts, copying and pasting of social network statuses or messages or altering one’s personal data or avatar on social network services. – Wikipedia

To use the slacktivism definition with regards the unicef.se ad, the suggestion is all the social activity in the world (in this case, Facebook Likes) isn’t going to save lives because it’s not resulting in hard cash.

That view is echoed in a comment on Gini’s Facebook wall around the ad by marketing professional Lisa Byrne:

People think clicking like means they are now supporting in some way cos they’re spreading a message – it’s all too easy a copout. I love what Unicef did – CALL TO ACTION PEOPLE!

This implies that unless hard cash is being donated, or a more substantial action taken other than Liking a status update or Page, then it’s not really action at all. Which, while that viewpoint is understandable, misses the longer tail picture.

The Benefits of Slacktivism

In their excellent book Social Change Anytime Everywhere, authors and  non-profit specialists Allyson Kapin and Amy Sample Ward share case studies, examples and methods on how to support non-profits via social media (as well as through “traditional” methods).

In Chapter 2 of the book, they look at the slacktivism question, and offer a very balanced overview of both pros and cons.

From the book:

Regardless of the era (this isn’t a new phenomena), the emphasis and effort spent on spreading information and raising awareness has always resulted in people doing what organizations ask, even if it’s considered slacktivism.

Liking a Page, liking a post, and all the rest are not the actions and real impact you’re looking for, ultimately, but those actions are important! Why? Because, through them, people are telling you that they will do what you ask to support the cause.

As both Kapin and Ward point out, while the end goal may be financial donations, the path to making those donations happen can come in many forms, and the act of spreading awareness – even through something as simple as a Like – is part of that path.

Taking it further is Steven Edward Streight, a New York-based senior copywriter and trustee for a local non-profit. In Steven’s words:

I am a trustee of a local non-profit. The grant writer told us that Facebook Likes, Comments, and Shares actually do help with getting grants and donors, because social media interactions indicate we are reaching out to the community and the community supports what we do (Peoria Historical Society). So I believe that the non-profit is wrong.

This endorsement is a perfect example of why slacktivism, even though it may not be a financial action, should not be dismissed as not adding anything to the bottom line.

The ROI Equation

Back in 2009, I founded a social media-led charity project called 12for12k. The goal was to find 12 charities, and support a different one throughout the 12 months of 2009, and hopefully raise $12,000 per charity throughout the year. Hence the name 12for12k.

I was fortunate to be surrounded by some very kind and awesome friends – people like Susan Murphy, Jon Aston, Darin Bernston, Rachel Kay, John Haydon and many, many more who believed in the project and donated their time and expertise for free.

Since the aim from day one was to give 100% of donations to the supported charities, this free expertise was a Godsend.

However, as focused and as determined this original small group was, there’s no way in heck we’d raise $12,000 between 6-8 people every month. And this is where a combination of awesome supporters and slacktivism came into play.

We created avatars that people could display on Twitter and Facebook. We connected with blog partners who would feature each new charity every month. We asked people that couldn’t afford to donate to simply share or blog posts and other content across Facebook and Twitter.

And it worked. I can give you at least fifty or so examples of people struggling financially, but who worked their asses off at getting the charities in front of more fortunate friends (from a financial point of view).

Those passive little 12for12k avatars that started popping up across social networks? People saw them standing out from others, and asked about 12for12k and the charities we were supporting.

This led to several mainstream media news stories and features about the project.

The end result? While we didn’t hit the overall goal of $144,000 across 12 charities, we did raise more than $91,000 in 12 months, and a further $9,000 in the first month of 2010.

A Clear Definition of Action?

These examples, and many more like them, highlight a simple fact – while unicef’s ad may be technically correct, it doesn’t start and end there.

No-one is denying that non-profits need donations to carry out the awesome and often-hard and unrecognized work that they do. It’s why between 30,000 and 60,000 non-profits are believed to close each year – and that’s just in the U.S.

The truth of the matter is, we need to support non-profits financially, and ensure the causes most at supported by non-profits can actually be helped. But to suggest that slacktivism isn’t helping is doing a huge disservice to those folks that can’t afford to help financially, but want to help in any other way they can.

This is where social media-led action – or slacktivism, if you like – can raise awareness and put a charity in front of the very people that can not only donate at that time, but become involved more deeply with the charity and support for years to come.

Turn these people away, and the next non-profit to “fail” could be one that doesn’t see value in all forms of support beyond financial.

And one final piece of irony, that made me smile wryly when I saw the unicef ad – UNICEF USA approached 12for12k early in 2009 to partner with them, and that partnership happened in June 2009.

I guess a project that uses slacktivism as a key component can offer benefits…

Why Diminishing the Benefits of Slacktivism Isn’t A Great Idea originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

In their excellent book Humanize, authors Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter share their insights into why a truly successful business needs to take the reasons social media has enjoyed exponential growth as a business imprint, and implement it across the organization.

It takes more than simply activating staff on social media and being more “approachable” as a business on the social web – it’s a complete mindset and culture change, for which many organizations today are still not ready for.

It’s probably one of the best business books on this topic today, and is highly recommended.

But as well as offering a roadmap into why organizations need to adapt the social mindset to succeed in today’s business landscape, Humanize – and the underlying concepts within it – raises another, much more important factor: that of empathy as a social currency.

There’s More to Being Human Than Simply Being a People Business

Leading website Ragan.com, a destination for communications and PR professionals globally, published an article detailing the case of a waitress that worked at pub restaurant chain Hooters.

In the article, Sandra Lupo shares how she had to undergo surgery to remove a brain tumour. As a result of the surgery, she was left bald and sporting a scar from where the surgery left its mark.

Upon returning to Hooters, she was advised by her boss – via the Regional Manager for that particular locale – that she would have to wear a wig to hide her baldness.

Lupo couldn’t afford to pay for the wig; the manager of the restaurant wouldn’t cover the cost.  Lupo wore a borrowed one which caused scalp irritation so she stopped wearing it, her hours were cut as a result, and because of this chain of events Lupo quit.

She’s now suing the restaurant from a disability angle, which the restaurant is contesting.

Lupo’s case, and the article at Ragan.com, raises a key point that many organizations are failing to address today, when looking to turn their business into not only a social business, but one where the culture throughout is pervasive with the right mindset to begin with, from the top down.

We’ve spoken with, and helped, several organizations that have implemented cultural shifts. Shifts that:

• Have enabled employees to become social ambassadors;
• Have identified weak processes and pivoted where needed;
• Have empowered people of all levels to help drive decisions because they’re the most suitable to do so, even if – by rank and seniority at the organization – they’re more junior.

And while this shift is important and offers validation of where we believe business needs to be moving, there are still many organizations that employ this approach and yet forget the core tenet of being human, or a social business, or a people-led organization.

And that tenet is empathy.

Empathy is a Social Currency

The greatest customer service assistant – whether in a retail environment or on the other end of a phone line in a call centre environment – knows that when a customer complains, it’s almost universally never directed at them in person.

Rather, it’s the brand that’s coming under fire.  With that knowledge, the CSA can adopt two approaches:

• Tow the company line no matter what claims the customer may have that could be counter to the organization’s edict;
• Apply empathy to the situation, placing themselves in the customer’s shoes, and working together to resolve the matter with no need for an escalation process to be invoked.

The former option may be the company’s preferred method, when working to the letter of the law, but it’s the latter that will leave a far more satisfactory outcome and potentially set that customer on the path to becoming a true brand advocate.

This approach has been taken with the more successful companies on social media; accepting that there will always be instances where a message was lost, a promotion was poorly timed, or a response took longer than normal.

As social media opens up multiple channels for the connected consumer to air grievances on, so the need grows for organizations to move away from just being a people business when it comes to customers, and adopt to being a provider in the empathy business as well.

But this should absolutely not be restricted to the customer on an external basis only – it should also be extended to the internal customer as well.

The Culture of Empathy for the Internal Customer

Smart organizations know that employees are also customers. They may not always buy the company product – that purchase still needs to earned by delivering on the sales promise – but they do help shape the purchase decisions of their family, friends and social connections.

Even away from the immediate connections, your employees – and their passion for the organization – are core to how your bottom line is affected.

When potential customers contact a business with regards a product, they don’t care about the sales team now. They’ve already researched the product online and through trusted peers, with 71% of consumers making a purchase based on social media referrals and 74% of consumers preferring social network peer connections to influence the decision-making process.

With the traditional sales team now being bypassed for their recommendations, customers are looking to talk directly with employees immediately attached to the product or service the inquiry is about.

According to Inc., if that employee isn’t up to speed with the product and the company’s support, future plans, comparisons to competitor products, hands-on support and more, that customer becomes a lost opportunity and will move on to your competitor.

As every organizational development trainer knows, the valued employee not only stays with the organization longer; they want to be an embedded part of the organization across multiple areas, and not just where their current position may limit them to.

And the way to value the employee? Empathy.

In the case of Sandra Lupo and Hooters, it could be argued that Hooters did nothing wrong legally. If part of the Hooters “experience” is the physical make-up of the waitresses, then Hooters could have a case that Lupo’s appearance didn’t match the company prerequisite, no matter how questionable we may feel that stance is (if, indeed, that is the company stance when defending the suit).

But the company line isn’t always the best one; nor does it have to be strictly adhered to.

The greatest leaders know that the ability to divert from a course of action, or a path that’s always been trod, is the biggest differentiator between a good company and a great one.

In the case of Hooters, the cost of providing a custom wig for a waitress would allow them to maintain the outward requirements of front-facing waitresses, while understanding and alleviating the pain of someone whose appearance is temporarily “different” through hugely unfortunate circumstances.

Instead of facing a legal case, they have shown belief and support for the people behind their company’s success – the very cultural approach that turns a people business into a human organization.

The Path to Empathy Starts Here

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is in thinking the only requirement to be successful on social media – or business, in general – is to be human. That is, be your customer’s friend and speak to them as one.

Yet, as Humanize shows, and as many brands have found out, “being human” is not the same as humanizing your organization. Nor is it something your customers truly want.

In a report commissioned by the Corporate Executive Board, one of the key highlights that the report identified is consumers prefer simplicity in the decision-making process, leading to an 86% chance of interest turning into a purchase. Perhaps even more tellingly, only 23% actually cared about a brand relationship (or friendship), which counters the posit you need to be friends with your customers.

Instead, the most successful organizations were the ones that were empathetic, in the word’s truest sense:

…the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; – Merriam Webster dictionary.

By understanding what it means to empathize, an organization can implement the culture needed to serve both internal and external customers to drive increased loyalty, engagement, advocacy and collaboration through involvement across the board.

Understanding the Mindset of Employees and Customers

Tracking software with advanced text analytics algorithms are beginning to identify true nuances of conversations between people. Nouns, verbs and adjectives can be layered upon the bigger conversation, and detect mood swings, emotional states, hidden messages and more.

Externally, being aware of these states of mind can help organizations prepare a message for individual customers (based on group personas as well as individual ones) that help show empathy to a current situation, and how your brand can help.

Internally, with tools like Yammer being widespread across many organizations, organizations can identify an employee who feels unappreciated or who has a great idea that isn’t being promoted. This clearly needs treading carefully with regards privacy and the employer/employee relationship, but is worth the effort to agree on with all parties.

Experiencing the Feelings of Another

There’s a reasonably popular television show called Undercover Boss, that explores what happens when the CEO of an organization is heavily disguised and placed into the workforce for a week, to see how well the company is run and identify the great people doing great things.

While not every organization’s CEO needs to do the same, remembering what it was that made your company such a great place to work in the first place is something that should be revisited often.

Adopt an open office policy where every employee’s views can be heard without bias or fear of recourse; spend a day on the job of various department workers; visit the facilities provided, like cafeteria and the quality of services provided to employees while in your care. Be an employee again to experience where your organization needs to make changes.

From a customer point of view, follow their footsteps at every touch-point of their connection to your organization. How does customer service handle their call; what does tech support look like; how are your resellers treating them; how are your complaints heard online when voiced? Be the customer again and resolve the issues before your competitors do.

Being a people organization is one thing; being an organization where people are human and empathize with the flaws as well as the strengths of other humans connected to the organization, both internally as well as externally, is where the true people part comes into play.

The challenge is yours to accept.

A version of this post originally appeared on the ArCompany blog.

Empathy is a Social Currency originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

As a business resource, Slideshare stands pretty much head and shoulders above most other content platforms.

From presentations to educational content and more, you can find information and curated media on pretty much any topic you have an interest in.

As a research solution, Slideshare offers analysis from some of the smartest minds on the web across all verticals. These include standard presentations, videos, multimedia and more.

Which brings us to this week’s Sunday Share.

Every week, I’ll be sharing a presentation that catches my eye and where I feel you might be interested in the information inside. These will range from business to content to social media to marketing and more.

This week, an excellent re-imagining of the Art of War, from John Lane, Vice President of Strategy/Creative at content marketing agency Centerline Digital.

As content continues to be one of the key factors for success in any marketer’s toolset, this presentation adapts the teachings of Sun Tzu and shares several excellent case studies on how brands are adapting to the new content-driven marketplace.

Enjoy.

The Sunday Share – Content Marketing Art of War originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.

So I’m delighted to have Chapter 5, “Situational Influence: A New Model for a New Era” available for you to download for free today. It offers a pretty good idea of the approach Sam and I are taking with the book – we want it to be a thought-provoking business book and one that makes you look at how we define influence marketing today.

The book provides a blueprint that moves influence marketing beyond simple brand awareness and into sales acquisition and customer life time value measurement.

This downloadable chapter also offers a nice introduction to what’s to come, as it’s the bridging chapter between where we’ve come with regards influence marketing today, and where we believe the market needs to evolve to tomorrow and beyond.

You’ll also find the detailed Table of Contents, which will give you an idea of the discussions and premises we present in the book proper.

I hope you enjoy the chapter, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below, so please do jump back over and leave your feedback once you’ve read this chapter.

And, of course, if you did enjoy the chapter, then the book is available for pre-order today. Enjoy!

Click the book image to download the sample chapter.

Free Download of “Situational Influence”: Chapter 5 of Influence Marketing originally appeared on Danny Brown - Social Media * Marketing * Influence under a Creative Commons license.