Dell Commmunity Forum Got me thinking: We are excited about changes happening with the Dell Community and are in the midst of a migration to a single platform where we will be able to integrate Dell community forums, blogs, and wikis. Its another step to connect and further build community, applying some of the newer social media tools while offering additional features for customers to further connect and communicate with each other. The Dell Community forums have been part of Dell's heritage since the mid/late 1990s when we started these online chat rooms so that Dell customers had a place to connect, share and learn online and together. More than Products/Services: The Value of Customers Connecting, Sharing and Being Connected
On the advice of Hugh MacLeod I recently read Welcome to the Creative Age: Bananas, Business and the Death of Marketing by Mark Earls. Just by chance, Hugh also just blogged about Mark Earls book, social objects and "purpose ideas," something else I have been thinking about lately. Hugh also interviewed Mark over at Gapingvoid (its great).
The Value of Connections: Mark Earls notes that companies getting attention in today's cluttered marketplace are businesses who deliver something of value beyond the physical reality or intangible associations to which we are happy to ascribe economic value. He notes this concept is not the traditional "brand value." Rather it moves toward a sense that the business is offering to change the world for the customer and with the customer...the business and customer are connected through "purpose ideas" that engage emotion and form human bonds....sort of like a tribe.
Tribes: Connecting, Leadership and Value: Seth Godin in his new book, Tribes, states
"Thinking about stuff is easy because we can see and touch and hold the stuff....Tribes, though, aren't about stuff. They're about connections...unlike the residue of stuff, the tribal connections you can create with leadership grow, they don't fade....those connections lead to more connections. The tribe thrives; it delivers value and it spreads...tribes are longer lasting and more effective"Godin notes you don't tell Tribes what to do, you don't "manage" them or their effort. For those interested in the whole issue of social media and "losing control," guess that sort of sums up that argument in a whole new way. Godin also notes the importance of leadership (read the book). He points to three key elements for building tribes and movements are:
- A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we're trying to build;
- A connection between and among the leader and the tribe;
- Something to do -- the fewer limits the better (organizations tend to focus on this and forget the others).
Value of Customers Connecting/Relationship ROI
On a recent trip to visit the Queen of PR measurement, KDPaine, I stumbled upon these signs from a turn of the century corner store. I wonder what the ROI was on these signs and whether the company ever knew or asked how or why these signs impacted customer decisions? More importantly, I am betting these signs did not foster the kind of tribal connections or benefits associated with connections that go beyond a product purchase....Just a guess on my part.
Social Media ROI Moving Us to New Grounds? While there continues to be a debate about the ROI of social media and its development, I wonder if it offers us the opportunity to move beyond traditional measures of sales and brand image to better understand the true nature and value of connecting with customers? For a great discussion check out Jason Falls' Social Media Explorer blog.
Social media measurement still has a ways to go in the development stage. However, the tools available start to take us in a direction to understand engagement and connections, moving us beyond eyeballs, clicks, awareness, share of voice, or hypothetical sales results....although you can measure those too.
Value of Engagement: if you know what it is you want to measure, then often the web analytics can be found to deliver information that supports or more accurately helps business understand "engagement"....not a bad first pass for understanding tribal connections. Google analytics (and other web analytics programs) start to answer questions about who is engaging with us on a regular basis; in what way; did they ultimately make a purchase from us and do they continue to have an online (and even offline) relationship with us.
Value of Listening and Learning: Using social media measurement tools and analytics, we no longer have to guess about whether customers are talking about us at the corner store or over a coffee at the diner. And, we can hear it all, not depend on whether it breaks as a media story. There is a business value to real time feedback that any business can use to constantly improve its products, services, customer interactions and overall business. Business changes based on that feedback have value.
Thoughts? In what other ways do you think social media could result in better and more effective ROI measures for business?
