Technology has humanized the user experience by making it easier for people to communicate and share information.

Meanwhile, many businesses have used technology to go in the opposite direction, to dehumanize.

Look at customer service, which has sadly become a (near) robotic experience at many companies. Look at email marketing where companies send emails from an email address like “please-do-not-reply@we-hate-getting-email-from-you-com”.

Put aside all the usual stuff about social media offering great opportunities to promote your products, overturn negative experiences and build long-term relationships.

First and foremost, social media is a call for humanization in how you communicate. Social media has humanized interaction, technology has humanized the experience, but only you can humanize your business.

Here are 30 questions to ask yourself to help you humanize your business:

• How do we communicate?
  • Are we communicating in a human way?
  • What do our customers think of the way we’re communicating?
  • Are we consistent in the way we communicate?
  • Are we speaking the same language as our customers?
  • Are we enabling our customers to engage with us in a community or a dialogue (as opposed to a monologue)?
  • How do we go about transparency, authenticity and accountability?
  • How does our company culture support the humanization of our business?
  • How can we change or improve our business processes?

• How do we turn experiences into relationships?
  • How do we define our customer experience?
  • What are the things that truly matter to our customers?
  • How well are we communicating compared to other companies within and outside our industry?
  • How can we involve our customers as part of our brand?
  • In which ways are our customers sharing experiences and information about us?
  • Why are they sharing those particular experiences and pieces of information?
  • How can we promote positive interactions?
  • How do we deal with negative interactions?
  • How can we scale our communication to deal with a growing amount of customer interactions?

• How can we create value for both our customers and our business?
  • How can we leverage customer interactions for the benefit of our business?
  • How are we measuring our success in customer engagement?
  • Are we recruiting the right employees to help us humanize our business?
  • How can we empower our (first line) employees to represent our brand?
  • How are we rewarding our employees and our customers for contributing to our brand?

• How can we innovate?
  • How can we build or strengthen our customer community?
  • How can we match our products and/or services to the demand, expectations and values from the market?
  • Can we work with peers and/or competitors in our industry to provide value to the community?
  • How do we integrate online and offline communication to create a better customer experience?

I also made a SlideShare presentation with the 30 questions:

What are other things businesses can think about to humanize their business?

Photo credit: Aaron Bulger

The line-up is filled with people from various businesses eager to share their thoughts and experiences. Learn how social business is applied at companies like KLM and Microsoft. Xaviera Ringeling, Fred Zimny and Arjen Hof will give useful pointers on social media and customer service. Oh, and I’ve been asked to perform some tricks too.

The best part: we’re doing it for free. So head over to this page now and reserve your seat!

Online Customer Engagement

Social media has caused its fair share of brand debacles, but it’s also catalyzed great success. With an increasing number of people sharing their experiences online, pressure is mounting on businesses to learn, adapt and participate. Especially in the customer service arena, interactions are no longer necessarily private.

With growing expectations from the general public—and skepticism always lurking around the corner—it’s vital that businesses understand how to make the most of their online presence. As speakers, we’re committed to providing information, advice and findings that are of value. In turn, we also expect attendees to surprise or challenge us with their experiences.

If you’re looking to take control of your social business program, join us. We promise to make it worth your while.

The Cornerstones of an Online Community Strategy

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts on online engagement. I appreciate the willingness of businesses to make the most of their customer interactions. In particular, I’ll be addressing the following topics:

• The Nature of Conversations Learn what causes people to share their experiences online and understand to what extent it matters.
• Customer Activation Take what you’ve learned from customer interactions to activate a whole new group of customers.
• Corporate “Social Business” Responsibility Get an understanding of how customer interactions can become the cornerstones of your social business program and how to tie them to what matters to your business.

Yes, this event is good promotion for me, but no, I will not be sales-y. I know you’re not the person who visits an event thinking “Gee, I hope someone will sell me something”. No, you’re there for the content and to meet like-minded people. I’ll do my best to contribute to that.

In A Nutshell

• What: Customer Service Seminar 2011
• When: Thursday, May 26, 2011
• Where: MeetInc – Straatweg 1, 3604 BA, Maarssen
• Cost: FREE (as in beer)
• Website: http://www.customerserviceseminar.nl/

If you think this event will be of value to you, or if you know people who would benefit from attending, the registration page is here. I hope to see you on May 26^th!

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business (covered in parts A, B and C)
• Internal considerations (covered in parts A and B)
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided social media myths into three categories:

1. Adoption and Diffusion related myths
2. Engagement-related myths
3. Business-related myths

Today, we’ll look at social media myths related to communication and engagement.

A great number of myths and misconceptions circulate around social media. Here’s my attempt at clearing the air to show where we truly stand:

• Social media is for broadcasting messages If this was true, it wouldn’t be social. This doesn’t mean that you can’t broadcast if it’s relevant to your network.
• Social media is about conversations It can be about conversations, just like it can be about broadcasting. The “social” in social media relates more to the content than the method of transmission.
• Consumer engagement is always the right thing to do There’s difference between doing something that can’t hurt and something that’s right. It can’t hurt to engage with your consumers, but is it worth it? If they’re wondering where they can buy your product, do you reply by chit-chatting about the weather? Be conscious about what you’re using social media for and you’re not using social media for.
• Social media is informal Twitter might come across as glorified text messaging, but not all social media is informal. There are bulletin boards, professional networks (like LinkedIn), and blogs that require more formal behavior and communication. In addition, the tone with which you communicate in social media shouldn’t deviate too much from the tone with which you communicate in your current endeavors (e.g. website, brochures, emails).
• It’s impossible to build relationships online I’ll admit that social media has changed the definition of “friend” to a certain degree, I don’t think it’s impossible to build quality relationships. On the contrary, social media enables you to build relationships with people you wouldn’t otherwise get in touch with in the first place!
• Set it and forget it You can’t create a Twitter account and expect people to come to you immediately. It’s like moving into a new house, telling nobody the address and expecting people to drop by. Fact remains that you need to put your presence out there.
• Social media is about quick wins While it’s possible to make a big splash quickly, there are many more long-term benefits. Social media is more about rolling a snowball down a hill than about making a big splash in the pool.
• Content is king I love this one. How many great books do you not know about? Probably plenty, right? How do you know they’re great if no-one tells you? My point is that content isn’t everything, it’s just the start. Distribution is the bridge with your audience that will make your efforts successful. Put your efforts into both content and distribution.
• Viral marketing is king This is a fun one too. Here the focus is on distribution but it’s always hard to predict virality. How do you exactly create a viral video? You don’t; the community decides whether your content goes viral, not you. Yes, there are factors that give you a better chance at success—and we’ll discuss some of them later this year—but there’s no such thing as off-the-shelf viral content.

If you know any other myths related to communication and engagement, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Next week, we’ll look at business-related social media myths, see you then!

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business (covered in parts A, B and C)
• Internal considerations (covered in parts A and B)
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided social media myths into three categories:

1. Adoption and Diffusion related myths
2. Engagement-related myths
3. Business-related myths

Today, we’ll look at social media myths related to adoption and diffusion.

A great number of myths and misconceptions circulate around social media. Here’s my attempt at clearing the air to show where we truly stand:

• Social media is still immature While the adoption of social media around the world is still growing, it is by no means a new phenomenon. Bulletin boards have been around for more than 20 years, blogging and instant messaging for more than 10 years, and social networking for more than five years. Social media has been around for a while, but its significance has taken flight in the last five years because of the scale of adoption; not because of the novelty.
• Social media is a fad The fact that social media has expanded across platforms and geographic boundaries up to a point where it plays an integral of many people’s lives today should be enough to debunk the myth that social media is a fad. Social media’s growing adoption and diffusion, and its profound effect on social business has meant that new business and operating models are under scrutiny and development to best deal with a changing environment.
• Social media is for the children Funny enough, children are not as active on social media as most people think. Television and mobile are the platforms of choice for that demographic and the average user ages for popular social media sites support this. The average age of Facebook and Twitter users is around 30, MySpace around 25, and LinkedIn around 40.
• Traditional media is dead Yes, print media has been in decline, but—as mentioned above—new business and operating models are being developed to cope with emerging technology. Nevertheless, it’s nonsense to proclaim that print, television and radio are dead. All media channels will be able to co-exist side-by-side with social media and strengthen one another in the process.
• Mass marketing is dead Related to the previous point of co-existence, mass marketing isn’t dead either. If anything, social media adds depth to the width that mass marketing accomplishes.
• Email is dead Another demise that is greatly exaggerated. Email isn’t dead. You’ve probably noticed that when checking your email this morning, or when you got an email notification of this new post. Email won’t die anytime soon either, it’s too common, too versatile and too standardized.

If you know any other myths related to adoption and diffusion, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Next week, we’ll look at engagement-related social media myths, see you then!

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business (covered in parts A, B and C)
• Internal considerations
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided the reasons to participate in social business into two categories:

1. As-Is and To-Be
2. Company Readiness

Today, we’ll look at a company’s As-Is and To-Be considerations for getting into social business.

The first step of the analysis phase should already give you a solid idea of where you stand in the social web. Let’s revisit two key points that relate directly to your organization:

• Current Activity Are people gathering online to talk about you, your brand, your products/services, your employees, et cetera?
• Platforms Where do the people go to online to talk about you? Are they being influenced or are they the influencers? Find out whether and how they would welcome your participation.

Most importantly, really ask yourself why you’d want to participate in social business. If you’re getting into it just for the sake of doing it, you’re going to have a hard time. I’m not saying you won’t be successful, but your efforts will be less focused.

There are some that claim that if your consumers aren’t active on social media, neither should you. I don’t necessarily agree with this. That your consumers aren’t actively involved with social media now doesn’t mean they won’t in the (near) future. Part of the game of social business is being able to anticipate the future direction of your consumers and being prepared to capitalize on their movements.

To get a better idea of what your social business mileage will be, it’s important to give brutally honest questions to the following questions:

• Interest Can you tie into people’s interests, passions and/or hobbies?
• Community Are (the opinions or facts about) your brand or your products/services compelling enough for people to form or participate in a community?
• Niche Are there existing communities where your consumers are gathering right now that you can tap into?
• Showcase Can social media offer you a way to demonstrate the value or quality of your products/services?
• Expertise Does social media offer you an (extended) audience to demonstrate your knowledge, thought leadership or other innovative qualities?
• Coverage Are you already being talked about online? For example, if there are major blogs talking about you, this offers opportunities to post comments or write guest articles.
• Value Are you able to provide your consumers with information—directly or indirectly related to your products/services—that is helpful or entertaining?
• Influence Can your consumers actually influenced by social media to make purchases?

You don’t need a resounding “Yes” to all the above questions to get success in social business. However, asking yourself these questions give you an idea of how far your brand could stretch in social media.

We’ll talk more about value and effectiveness as we roll on in this series, but next week, we’ll look at assessing company readiness for social business. In the meantime, all your feedback is welcome!

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business
• Internal considerations
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided the reasons to participate in social business into three categories:

1. Marketing
2. Reach & Community
3. Internal reasons & Reasons to avoid social business

Today, we’ll look at prevalent marketing-related reasons to participate in social business.

• Attractive Workplace If your company embraces social business and values its importance, you’ll make yourself a more attractive employer, especially to younger generations.
• Employee Engagement By allowing employees to understand social business and to engage with coworkers and customers online, you’re able to create a more engaged workforce.
• Business Intelligence Just like using social media can help you uncover more details about your brand and your customers, it can also help you stay up-to-date on what’s happening in your industry. Keeping up with industry news and with your competitors allows you to identify threats and opportunities as soon as they break. You’ll also be able to learn from competitors’ actions within the social space.

Social business isn’t for everyone. Many of the reasons we walked through the last few weeks will apply to many businesses, hopefully yours as well. At the same time I realize that social business might not be for everyone. Here are a number of cases where social business might not be for you (right now):

• Privacy and Regulation In industries that have strong privacy and regulation concerns, social business can cause major damage. You could proceed with caution but definitely consider whether it’s worth it.
• Big-Ticket Business If you only have a handful of big customers, you’re more likely to meet face-to-face or over the phone. You could add limited social media but it won’t provide you with the most value.
• Internal Turmoil Whether it’s an unhappy workforce or skepticism from upper management, if it doesn’t seem like your company can’t buy into the social business philosophy, you’re better off postponing any plans.
• Strategic Deficiency If the overall corporate and marketing strategy is not yet in place, it’s harder to find a specific role for social business. Some aspects of the early phases of social business can help plotting a strategy but they don’t carry a strategy.

Feel free to leave any feedback and/or nuggets of wisdom in the comments. Next week, we’ll continue to focus on the internal side of social business by looking at internal considerations.

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business
• Internal considerations
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided the reasons to participate in social business into three categories:

1. Marketing
2. Reach & Community
3. Internal reasons & Reasons to avoid social business

Today, we’ll look at prevalent reasons to participate in social business related to reach and community.

• Global Reach Social media is borderless and you can use it to reach a global audience and marketplace.
• Targeted Niches Maybe global reach isn’t for you. No worries, social media also offers targeted communities or communities within communities that you can be of value to. Whether you’re looking to engage with sports fans, shoe lovers or cooking fanatics, there’s bound to be communities dedicated to those interests.
• Communities You can also leverage these common interests to fuel your own community, like a forum or a Facebook Page. Members of such a community can become loyal connections of your brand who will help spread the message about you to their networks. Both niche communities and your own communities allow you to build and maintain a relationship with your customers and your brand’s fans.
• Customer Experience Using social media, you can provide a better customer experience. Whether it’s, for example, a community to get people to talk about you or an active Twitter account that provides customer service, you’re able to foster deeper engagement with your customers.
• Offline Relationships Social media can be used to extend your existing offline relationships with customers by giving them extra touch points to communicate with you (e.g. a customer service channel on Twitter) or to find more information (e.g. a YouTube channel with how-to’s or behind-the-scenes videos).
• Innovation Stay ahead of the curve by utilizing social media tools and platforms that may not have reached critical mass yet, but are highly relevant to your business. If you run a local business (e.g. a shop or a restaurant), location-based services like Foursquare or Gowalla can be great tools to explore.
• Feedback The feedback that you gather through social media can be put into action in your products and/or services. You’re able to hear directly from your own customer base what the areas of improvement are and you can meet or exceed their needs by responding appropriately.
• Partnerships Through social media, it’s not only possible to find (prospective) customers, but also to find new partners for your business. These may be promotional or sales partners, but could also be suppliers or manufacturing partners. Establishing partnerships can help you improve or expand your business.

Let me hear it if you have more great reasons for getting into social business related to reach and/or community. Next week, we’ll look at internal reasons as well as reasons to avoid social business.

Yesterday, I talked about social media causing marketing to shift from messages to experiences. Today, I’ll take a closer look at how two very typical marketing activities—PR and advertising—have fared with the advent of the social web and how such developments underline the need to re-focus marketing activities.

Public Relations

PR is exactly what it stands for: Public Relations. It refers to people, relationships and a long-term commitment to building reciprocal value. Despite developments in the PR industry and a number of worst cases, the underlying premise of PR has never been about creative spin, email blasts with press releases or begging for publicity whenever a new product/service is launched.

In fact, the negative spiral in which some parties find themselves in will be detrimental to them. The increased levels of transparency and interactions spurred on by social media will force these parties to change their methods of working as “broadcasting to” becomes “interacting with”, “message” becomes “experience”, and “audience” becomes “conversation partners”.

True PR has always been about being a subject matter expert and being able to establish relationships with influencers based on that expertise.

Social media strengthens the principles of PR even more because PR professionals have access to more tools and platforms to share relevant content and establish relationships. Furthermore, PR does not merely deal with mainstream media anymore. Everyone can be the media these days and this extends the possibilities for PR even more.

It is up to PR professionals to identify and cultivate a community of presence and influence that caters appropriately to each relevant member segment. These member segments can consist of members of mainstream media, (niche) bloggers, consumers, et cetera. Each segment will have different needs and expectations, and each segment also has its own community.

To achieve this, a number of actions are required:

• Devise an approach that relies on continuous engagement rather than publicity spikes.
• Craft a communication and content marketing approach that offers the most relevant—and thus valuable—information to each part of the community.
• Prioritize the communication approach that efficiently and effectively increases awareness, drives empathy and inspiration among advocates, from the top down and/or bottom up.

I’m calling it communication because it should be about the whole interaction process. The message should no longer be the sole focus. Instead, the experience becomes a more dominant aspect as it becomes obvious that “what one says” is not as important as “how one says it”. The interaction has to be so compelling and inspiring that people—whether they are journalists, bloggers or consumers—are enticed to act on that information.

Advertising

Increased media involvement by consumers has also affected advertising. Advertising has always been a one-way medium that tries to hit home a message to an intended audience. However, advertising is not the most trusted medium by consumers. Numerous surveys and researches have pointed that out. Nielsen’s 2009 Global Consumer Survey shows that many advertising methods are less trusted than, for example, consumer opinions and editorial content.

Nevertheless, advertising shouldn’t be disregarded because it still plays an integral role in many business models. Websites where free content is offered or social networks that users can join at no cost in exchange for displaying (targeted) ads are examples of such business models.

Re-Focusing Marketing Activities

Organizations are just as much a part of the social web as consumers. Organizations will increasingly have to surrender the interpretation and distribution of their messages to individuals on the social web. On the other hand, they also have an opportunity to create content and listen to these conversations about their company/brand/product/service or their activities. Therefore, organizations might lose some of their control in the transmission and the dissemination, but they also have a certain degree of input and insight in the conversation.

It is up to organizations to leverage the various marketing activities in play to establish their presence on the social web and to gain value from participating. Marketers will need to understand how each activity contributes to their goals and define a purpose for each activity.

Tomorrow, I’ll elaborate on this through the “Online Value Framework”. For now, your thoughts are welcome.

The Fundamentals series continues this week with a look at how social media has impacted marketing. This will be a three-part series that looks at marketing in general, public relations and advertising. At the end, I’ll present what I see as the “Online Value Framework”.

For marketers, the fundamental power shift from organizations to individuals has also been noticeable. With individuals being able to talk back, one-directional mass marketing has lost its edge as a way to get a message across.

However, social media is not there to emphasize polarization. It is there to promote relationships. Just like any relationship, the business relationship between marketers and consumers is a game of give and take. Marketers will need to give (attention, value, quality et cetera) in order to take (money, positive brand perception et cetera).

When a marketer does not give enough, the consumer will lose interest and the marketer is unable to take from the consumer. The opposite holds true as well, a marketer who gives something relevant consistently builds a relationship where consumers have higher levels of brand perception and trust.

Marketers still need to remember that taking is also part of the relationship. Exchanges like a value proposition and a call to action for giving a product or service with real benefits and value keep the relationship real. Remember that relationship marketing is not solely about relationships, it is about marketing as well.

Social media has also made relationships branch further than the exchanges between an organization and an individual. Individuals are also building relationships of trust and value among each other. As such, organizations may not be the de facto source of trusted information for consumers. The relationships consumers forge with each other can negate the relationships that organizations have with consumers. However, they can also be amplified as positive exchanges between organizations and consumers are shared and expanded through consumer-to-consumer relationships.

As a result, social media marketing is not about marketing to people but marketing with people. Social media does not belong to anybody. Marketers and consumers both inhabit and populate the social media space. The relationships between people are built on relevance, attention and trust, and these relationships are built through an on-going series of exchanges and experiences.

Since no-one owns social media, marketers and organizations cannot own these exchanges and experiences either. However, they can facilitate them. It is up to marketers to go beyond campaigns and to establish relationship platforms that host the exchanges and experiences among consumers and between consumers and organizations.

Examples of platforms that organizations can create are:

• Experience Platforms Elevate the organization’s offering from just products or services to a platform where the brand experience can be shared. For example, a food manufacturer can start a community where consumers can share recipes and cooking tips.
• Crowdsourcing Platforms Activate and leverage the knowledge and expertise of consumers to make them the drivers and creators of ideas, content and changes. Crowdsourcing increases consumer participation and sense of involvement while it provides the organization with feedback that is market-relevant.
• eCommerce Platforms Extend the online presence and direct people traffic to a branded store environment. This decreases the odds of people from leaving the branded website to a different eCommerce environment or to an offline store.

The chosen platform(s)—whether it is a self-hosted platform or a 3^rd party platform (like Facebook)—must still tie into the principles of establishing relevance, attention and trust.

The comments are yours.

Brandfighters

This is a video marketing agency that capitalizes on crowdsourced user-generated content for company marketing, i.e. users are asked to create (hopefully viral) videos for a brand. OK, where do we need the agency? Jan-Paul, interestingly enough, mentioned that Heineken was surprised that the quality of the submissions was so good. I don’t see why a big brand wouldn’t and couldn’t just bypass an agency in such cases.

Mober

This company aims at providing a SMS service with which restaurant/cafe patrons can place orders. I think this service doesn’t tie into the overall hospitality industry well. The problem is that whereas it can simplify or create an extra option for consumers, it creates more headache for restaurant/cafe holders. The logistics, technology and process changes may not be worth it. It’s a lot of trouble for fighting a symptom rather than a cause. Bad or sub-par service cannot be solved w/ an SMS ordering system.

Bureau Vijftig

This is a marketing agency specialized in reaching people over the age of 50. Interesting business projections and a growing market. However, I did find it funny that they used a cliche to break a cliche. If it’s more about behavioral properties than demographic properties, it might blur the concept.

Beemway

Social media agency that does brand campaigns with widgets, things and other stuff ;) Focus was on segmentation and targeting, but the ROI question was a bit dodged; Hans said that it should be played “smooth” and that an initial focus on sales/conversion usually fails. “Smooth”? I think value and relevancy are more important. I thought these pitches were about novelty?

31 Volts

Interesting opening, 80% of service providers thinks they’re delivering excellent services yet only 8% of clients feels the same way. This agency aims to bridge that gap. Their service consists of helping businesses make changes to their service provision to make customers more satisfied. Bit disappointed about the business model re metrics and effectiveness. I don’t really see the innovation either, the takeaways contained a lot of basic marketing stuff.

Verdict

The audience will get the chance to vote on the best pitch. Here’s what I looked at:

• The problem and the solution
• Market (customers, suppliers, competitors, etc.)
• Business model

All things considered, here’s how I’d rank them based on only the information they provided today:

1. Bureau Vijftig
2. 31Volts
3. Beemway
4. Brandfighters
5. Mober