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Mari Smith Interview – NMX – TheSocialNetworkShow.com

May 18, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

I had a chance to “sit down” with top social media expert Mari Smith. It was a pleasure and a privilege to chat with Mari while we discussed the future of Facebook (Brands, you don’t want to miss Mari’s insight here, especially on what she would like to see on fan pages!)

Mari Smith is passionate about people! She is a Relationship Marketing Specialist and one of the worlds foremost experts on how to use Facebook for both business and personal reasons.

Fast Company dubbed Mari, the Pied Piper of the Online World. With her popular blog at MariSmith.com, and her large loyal following on both Facebook and Twitter, Mari is considered one of the top resources and thought leaders in the world of new media. She frequently appears in media locally and nationally. She also travels the United States and internationally to share her wisdom and provide social media keynotes and in-depth training. Through her consulting and training business, Mari helps individuals and business owners to understand and integrate proven social media marketing strategies.

Make sure to follow Mari on twitter: @MariSmith

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Want to see how to get an ROI from Social Media? Check out these fun videos:
Video 1: Building the Business Case for Social Media
Video 2: How to Measure the ROI of Social Media
Video 3: How Social Media Benefits the Whole Company

Here’s My book on How Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Want to get more info on the business use of social media? Connect with me here:
Twitter: @drnatalie
LinkedIn: DrNataliePetouhoff
G+ : Google Plus posts
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/natalie.petouhoff

Filed Under: Dr. Natalie's Blog Tagged With: brands, Business, consumers, Dr. Natalie, Facebook, fan pages, interviews, mari smith, marketing, NMX, ROI, SCRM, smROI, social media, social network show, sugarcrm, Twitter

Social Customer Service—A New Breed of Consumer is Emerging

May 11, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

The social customer is a radically new breed of consumer. They post online in e-review sites, in public forums, on blogs, on Facebook and Twitter. They don’t hold back. And these unabashed posts are in the open for everyone to see—other potential and current customers, competitors, your board of directors, etc. so it’s become impossible to ignore.

Reward and Delight Customers with LiveOps

Watch this short video to see how LiveOps can help enterprises tackle the challenges of today’s customer interactions—quickly, easily and efficiently.

Learn more about Social Customer Service and LiveOps

Enter your information below to gain access to the following resources:

Social Customer Service Webinar, presented by Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, prominent Social Strategist and Evangelist, and Sanjay Mathur, LiveOps SVP of Product Management.
White Paper, “Social Customer Service: The Pivotal Driver of the Social Enterprise,” by Dr. Natalie Petouhoff.

Want access to these resources? You can get them by clicking here.

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Here’s My book on How Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Filed Under: Dr. Natalie's Blog Tagged With: consumer, Customer Experience, customer service, Dr. Natalie, Facebook, LiveOps, marketing, PR, SCRM, Twitter, webinar, white paper

The Social Consumer – An Interview WIth Mike Krigsman and Vala Afshar at the NMX Conference

May 4, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

I had the opportunity to interview Mike Krigsman and Vala Afshar at the NMX Conference about their views on the intersection of the social consumer and businesses. What do businesses need to understand about the social consumer? What mistakes are they making? And what does it look like when business do a great job of interacting with the social consumer. These two experts share their insights with me.

About the interviewees:
Vala is the Chief Customer Officer and CMO at Enterasys which is a Siemens Enterprise company. A critical component of Siemens Enterprise Communications, Enterasys answers the challenge, bringing a new level of intelligence to IT, with solutions that include wired and wireless network infrastructure, advanced security, and network management. He is also an author, Inventor, Blogger and his posts can be see at: huffingtonpost.com/vala-afshar/

Vala can be found on twitter at: @ValaAfshar

Mike Krigsman provides strategy consulting, writes about CIO issues and the cloud for ZDNet and contributes to the Wall Street Journal.
Mike can be found on Twitter at @mkrigsman

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Here’s My book on How Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Filed Under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Dr. Natalie's Blog, Dr. Natalie's Social Network Show, Leadership Tagged With: @mkrigsman, @ValaAfshar, B2B, best practices, Business, customer service, Dr. Natalie, Enterasys Networks, Facebook, internet, Interview, LinkedIn, marketing, NMX, NMX conference, PR, ROI, Siemens Enterprise Communications, smart phones, smROI, social consumer, social media, social network show, tablets, Twitter, Wall Street Journal

Take Action with Marketing… Guest Post by Paige Musto

April 29, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

Join the #MktgActionChat moderated by Business Strategist & Consultant, Dr. Natalie- @DrNatalie. This is a monthly chat dedicated to bringing together progressive marketers looking to gain insight, get advice and discuss next-generation marketing and social concepts that help drive business revenue.

There you will be able to connect with thought leaders, and network with the movers and shakers helping to redefine marketing as we know it. Share your thoughts on where the marketing world is heading.

This space [#MktgActionChat] is for discussing trends, sharing the latest news and best practices, and kicking around thoughts and ideas with today’s marketers and business decision makers.

The first #MktgActionChat kicks off on Tuesday, April 30^th at 6:00 p.m. PT, and will reoccur on the last Tuesday of each month at 6:00 p.m. PT.

In the first TweetChat, @DrNatalie will discuss “How Smart Companies Can Leverage Agile Marketing to Better Brand their Business.”

Think of agile marketing as “right in time” marketing, which has evolved as a way to stay up-to pace with the new speed of business. Today, there is a new business norm, in which companies are expected to engage and respond to customer/prospect inquiries more readily and quicker than traditional response times.

The heightened transparency that social has created has forced companies to think of customer feedback in real-time. This transparency can be a double edged sword for those companies who have yet to implement a true social response strategy to inquiries. Those engaging on social platforms want immediate feedback and if it takes your company hours to reply, that can be perceived as unresponsive and not listening. On the flipside though, transparency can be a positive thing for companies as they can easily take advantage of topics, trends and events that are receiving heavy attention and impressions, and interject their brand into the conversation at the right time.

We want to hear your thoughts on this topic. Add your voice to the conversation, use #MktgActionChat.

Filed Under: Events, Marketing Software, Social CRM, TweetChats Tagged With: Act-on, Agile Marketing, marketers, marketing, MktgActionChat, TweetChat, Twitter Chat

Webinar: Demystifying the ROI of Social Media

April 29, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

As businesses adopt social media, executives are asking to substantiate the budget requests. While most corporate initiatives require a business case and estimated return on the investment to a business, social media is one initiative that many business leaders are unsure how to quantify.

Social media expert Dr. Natalie Petouhoff joins Crimson Hexagon’s Vice President of Marketing Wayne St. Amand to cover how PR professionals, Brand Managers, Product Managers, Product Development and Marketers can benefit from the deep insights that social media monitoring can provide.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

Real social media monitoring case studies with the data that drove business decisions.

How to set-up your social media measurement program.

How to calculate ROI of social media.

This webinar is a “must watch” prior to planning your next marketing budget. You can view it here.

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Here’s My book on Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Filed Under: Dr. Natalie's Blog Tagged With: Business, Crimson Hexagon, Dr. Natalie, Facebook, marketers, marketing, PR, ROI, smROI, social media, Twitter, Wayne St. Amand, webinar

The TOP 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter: A Study by @DrNatalie & Big Data Cruncher InfiniGraph.com

April 26, 2013 By Dr. Natalie 1 Comment

Wondering what brands are the most engaged on Twitter – this New York Times article explores that? We did too. I began the study by looking at the brands who had the most Twitter followers. We took a list of 100 of those brands and using the InfiniGraph.com platform, we added those brands into system which did the big data crunching. Mashable has a ton of articles on how social networks like Twitter are trying new things to increase engagement. Here’s a recap article about the study and the engagement of brands on Forbes.

There’s certainly lots of definitions of engagement. Here’s a great article by Jay Baer who interviewed David Armano on how brands need to create a iterative strategy around engagement- micro-interactions & incremental customer experience victories. The LA Times has many articles on how brands are using social media and networking. Jon Swartz writes about the abundance of platforms for customers to engage on, hinting that perhaps more is not the answer. Maybe really understanding what engagement means is a beginning. In this case, the InfiniGraph Engagement Platform looked at Twitter engagement as measured by RT’s, clicks and @ replies.

Study of the 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter on Mashable which provides a very nice overview of the study’s results. The results of the study are in this report found here:

Here’s the of the top 25 most engaged brands on Twitter:

1. Notebook of Love2. Disneywords3. ESPN4. Funny Facts5. PlayStation6. Disney7. Chelsea Football Club8. BBC Breaking News9. NASA10. CNN Breaking News11. Instagram12. YouTube13. Facebook14. NBA15. Arsenal16. The Onion17. Disney Pixar18. FunnyorDie.com19. CNN20. National Geographic21. UNICEF22. Dropbox23. MTV24. WWE25. Chanel

Here’s more details on how the study was conducted:

1. We looked at the brands with the most Twitter followers and created a list of 100 of the most followed brands for the month of February 2013

2. We used InfiniGraph.com to crunch all the “BIG” Data in this report

3. See the Engagement Analysis and Platform powered by InfiniGraph

4. The 100 brands with the most followers were put into the InfiniGraph Platform for the time period of 02/2013 to 03/2013

5. The InfiniGraph Platform took the information about each brand and gathered the data you see in this report:

• The volume of posts

• The level of engagement

• The content that is shared by each brand

• What days / times during the day it is shared and

• Compares and ranks it

6. Then the InfiniGraph system creates the graphs you see in this report.

Wondering how your brand’s engagement compares to your competitors?

You can find out by following these steps:

Search on your own brand at: http://smo.infinigraph.com
Or click on the industry analysis on the right
If your brand is not in the system, request that it’s added
Then select the brands you want to compare to your brand and run the report in InfiniGraph
Study the results of the comparison
Compare how much you post vs the level of engagement
Study the other brand’s engagement capabilities and tactics
And make changes to your strategy and tactics

The study was commission by Nestivity and Evolve Capital. And in full disclosure, InfiniGraph is a client of mine. And I am proud to be on InfiniGraph’s Advisory Board.

Filed Under: Big Data, Dr. Natalie's Blog, Featured, Social Analytics, Twitter Tagged With: @drnatalie, Arsenal, BBC Breaking News, Brands on Twitter, Chane, Chelsea F.C., Chelsea Football Club, CNN, CNN Breaking News, David Armano, Disney, Disney Pixar, Disneywords, Dropbox, ESPN, Facebook, Funny Facts, FunnyorDie.com, InfiniGraph, Instagram, Most Engaged Brands on Twitter, MSNBC, MTV, NASA, National Geographic, NBA, nestivity, New york times, Notebook of Love, Pixar, PlayStation, The Onion, Top 25 Engaged Brands on Twitter, Top Engagement on Twitter, Twitter, UNICEF, WWE, youtube

Join the #MktgActionChat Tweet Chat April 30th

April 22, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

The future of business is about shared experiences. We learn the most from others in similar disciplines—the ones in the trenches — using the latest technologies and implementing the next-gen programs. Sharing experiences with one another enables us to think outside of the box and inspires us, enlightening us about new campaigns, methods, programs or technologies that have been tried and true. Without the exchange of ideas, we might not have ever thought of incorporating these new strategies into our processes.

Gone are the days when we trusted a company to provide us with all the information we need to make purchasing decisions. You can thank social media for equipping us with a vehicle that gives the consumer greater access and insight into a company, its ecosystem, and its on-the-ground reputation. As a result, we are more informed and educated buyers.

What if you had a social platform to share your experiences and the best practices others have gleaned? If you are a marketer, business owner, entrepreneur, social strategist or big thinker, and care about marketing, we invite you to join us at the monthly #MktgActionChat moderated by myself, @DrNatalie .

The first TweetChat kicks off on Tuesday, April 30th at 6:00pm PT, and will reoccur every last Tuesday of the month at 6:00pm PT. In the first TweetChat, we will discuss “How Smart Companies Can Leverage Agile Marketing to Better Brand their Business.” Add your voice to the conversation: use #MktgActionChat.

This TweetChat is a virtual forum dedicated to bringing together progressive marketers looking to share insight, get advice and discuss next-gen marketing and social concepts that can favorably impact business practices and the bottom line.

The chat is a rapid-fire exchange between the moderator and everyone following along #MktgActionChat. The real-time aspect of the dialogue is exciting and also later when the full transcript is repurposed into a blog for easy reading consumption.

Make your voice heard. Join #MktgActionChat: http://www.act-on.com/mktgactionchat/

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Here’s My book on Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Filed Under: Dr. Natalie's Blog Tagged With: Business, campaigns, customer service, Dr. Natalie, Entrepreneur, future of business, marketing, MktgActionChat, social media, social platform, social strategist, tweet chat, Twitter

Paid Content vs Unpaid Content: Interview w/ Matthew Mitchell of MediaPass

April 20, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

I got to chat with Matthew Mitchell, president of MediaPass, and we talk about how to increase subscriptions to blogs, as well as Mommy Bloggers.

MediaPass is a powerful, easy-to-use subscription solution for online content. With a bit of code, web publishers can instantly monetize their online material—articles, videos, podcast, and more—with zero upfront cost and very little effort. Invented by experts in online subscription models, MediaPass helps web publishers push past the revenue limits of advertising into a more profitable future.

Is there someone in the Social Media industry that you’d like me to interview next? Let me know by dropping me a note on my Twitter or via e-mail!

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Here’s My book on Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Filed Under: Dr. Natalie's Blog Tagged With: best practices, blogs, customer service, interviews, marketing, matthew mitchell, mediapass, paid content vs unpaid content, ROI, SCRM, smROI, social media, social network show

Game Based Marketing: Interview at NMX – The Social Network Show

April 16, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

This week, I interview an up and coming game base marketing company at NMX and we talk all things gamification.

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Want to see how to get an ROI from Social Media? Check out these fun videos:
Video 1: Building the Business Case for Social Media
Video 2: How to Measure the ROI of Social Media

Video 3: How Social Media Benefits the Whole Company

Here’s My book on Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Filed Under: Dr. Natalie's Blog Tagged With: badges, Business, customer service, CustServ, Facebook, gamification, leader boards, marketing, NMX, PR, prizes, ranking, revenue, ROI, smrc, smROI, social media, Twitter, video, youtube

Exceprt from “Like My Stuff”: Socially Responsible F-commerce

April 12, 2013 By Dr. Natalie Leave a Comment

Socially Responsible F-commerce

As the awareness around sustainability and social responsibility increases, brands are doing more and more to donate to charities and do more for their communities as part of their day-to-day strategies and operations. What is social good? There are many definitions, but the context I am referring to in this e-book is the ability to do good using social media. In particular, Digital Millennials that use social media tend to like to work for companies that emphasize charitable giving as well patronize brands that care.

Brands need to become aware about specific attitudes, perceptions, and sentiments of Millennials as well as how they align their spending with their own interests, passions, and community. Many Millennials say that the charities they support are one of the ways they express themselves. They feel that regularly donating your time to help others in need is a sign of success and accomplishment. They want to know how their donations or efforts will impact others or make a difference. Brands need to enter this type of endeavor with care. Millennials are also very skeptical of brands that take up social causes and may question the true intent of the sponsoring brands. If a brand wants to go down this path, they must make a commitment that demonstrates the ongoing attitudes, behaviors, and actions of the brand.

Old Navy

Old Navy was founded in 1994 and named after a bar in Paris. The Old Navy Facebook page is intended to be an online hangout for the Old Navy community. There customers and fans can learn about upcoming sales, new styles, contests, promotions, and more. And customers can leave a comment or ask a question on the wall.

Most importantly to their fans, Facebook is a place for their audience to become part of cause marketing programs and social good campaigns. That’s because one of Old Navy’s target audiences is people who truly care about social responsibility. Their Feel Good program appeals to people who are about making the world “Bright, colorful, and playful.” Old Navy connects their sense of style with how they view the world and invites customers and fans to join them in making a difference.

They invite fans to join them at an in-store event celebrating the Boys & Girls Club. A portion of sales during the event go to supporting that charity. They also have “Operation Troop Donation.” This is a program that supports the troops and their families by creating care packages. The Flip-Flop Relay invites customers to bring their pre-loved flip-flops into Old Navy Stores to be recycled into playgrounds. The “It Gets Better” program helps educate people about all types of love. Old Navy donated 10 percent of their Gay Pride t-shirt sales to the “It Gets Better” Project.

While these are not direct e-commerce plays, they are part of a very smart marketing campaign to appeal to a very loyal demographic. A company that shows that they care, that they give back, and that they are “human.” This is a far cry from brands of yesteryear. This kind of humanizing of a brand can create loyal customers and advocates and influencers who spread the “good word” of their company via social media, reaching millions of Old Navy’s target market. And that is essentially the hallmark of understanding and utilizing social media for PR, marketing, and advertising.

Within Facebook, Old Navy has a section called Hot Ticket. Here a fan can enter their name and when they click on submit, they are given a personalized ticket for 30 percent off. That can be shared with their social network, Tweeted, and/or printed out.

Ettitude

Ettitude is an Australia-based company that sells environmentally friendly products made from bamboo and organic cotton. Ettitude was founded on the simple idea that everyday products, such as clothing, bed linen, towels, and stationery, could be made much more responsibly and contribute to making the world a better place, as well as look good and be affordable. Their goal is to give people who care about their family and the earth the ability to easily adopt a greener, more socially responsible lifestyle. Ettitude does this by providing a range of premium and unique eco-friendly products in a quick, convenient, online shopping environment. Because they have such a compelling store, it is a natural for people to want to share this among their social graph.

When I was on their website to do some research for this book, I was impressed with their use of their traditional website as a “Facebook sharing moment.” Here’s how this works: I was on the About Us page, and I went to highlight some words on the site and a widget popped up and enabled me to share what I highlighted with my Facebook connections. This is a brilliant word-of-mouth strategy to create awareness for the brand, and because their marketing message is something people can get behind, i.e., being more socially responsible, the ability to share that website information may even translate into shopping cart dollars.

When you click on the Facebook icon to share your highlighted information, it asks the customer to allow permission to connect to Facebook and post on my Facebook page. The ability to allow your customers to find things they like about your company and post to their friends can be a very good PR and marketing awareness tool. Especially for a company like Ettitude, which has a very share-able brand story around social and personal responsibility.

Looking for more of my ebook? No problem, you can get it by clicking here!

At Social Business Builders,
we work with brands & software companies to deliver increased revenue and decreased costs.
Our Motto? Learn. Share. Grow!

@DrNatalie L. Petouhoff
310-919-8467

Want to see how to get an ROI from Social Media? Check out these fun videos:
Video 1: Building the Business Case for Social Media
Video 2: How to Measure the ROI of Social Media

Video 3: How Social Media Benefits the Whole Company

Here’s My book on Businesses can Drive Sales on Facebook: Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans