Here’s the golden rule I always followed as an IT business guy, marketer, publisher and digital strategist: I only care about the customer of the customer. No matter how you look at it: no business can succeed if it doesn’t make sure that its customers can make their customers succeed. In the social era we have started calling this the audiences of audiences of audiences, etc. The only way to make that success happen is integration and it requires a collaborative culture. An open letter to the CxO.

Let me give you an example: if I work for you as a consultant you’re just one of my customers. Your people and teams are my customers too. If they don’t feel compelled to do what makes you succeed, as a manager or a business, you will not succeed and I will not succeed. They must feel comfortable and gratified in their life, work and experiences.

A customer culture is a collaborative integration culture

It’s my role, your role and that of management to create engaging experiences for employees. And, guess what: that’s what employees expect from IT as this recent blog post by Forrester indicates. Of course, it’s not just about IT. Employee engagement is customer engagement and is the task of everyone in the business. If you know how to engage employees, you know how to engage customers. And engagement is what makes people productive, passionate and collaborative.

Expensive words, I know. It requires change, processes and lots of time. And some employees can’t be engaged at all. That can be a sign it’s time they look for a more gratifying job.

On top of your internal customers, you have your external customers. Those that buy, for instance. Other businesses partnering with you. Consultants, bloggers and the ‘external’ workforce of freelancers, etc. Some of them can even be hybrid such as the employee in the new ways of working and the customer in a peer-to-peer relationship. In order to make you succeed, I need all of them to succeed as well. To make people buy from you, you need to be their business partner in the true sense. You need to help them achieve the goals and the very reasons why they work with you to start with.

Everything is integrated and connected. This is the age of integration and without a collaborative, holistic and unified approach it simply doesn’t work, especially in a digital business reality. And it requires changes:

• The customers want integrated experiences and are connected.
• The brand message and touchpoints need to be unified and consistent.
• Technologies (back-office and front-office) have to be integrated.
• Teams, processes, communications, marketing, etc. must be integrated and unified.

And in the end it’s all about customer experiences, cross-channel and cross-divisional collaboration/optimization and, indeed, a very connected and integrated economy (where one false Twitter message from a hacked press agency can nearly crash a financial system).

The Age of Integration and the connected and unified customer-centric imperative

Let’s take a closer look from two perspectives: internal organization/management (the role of the CxO) and marketing. The reason I pick these perspectives is not a coincidence as you’ll read below.

The collaboration between C-level executives and the lead over digital

There is a lot to do about who will take the lead in this integrated era where digital is more pervasive and game-changing than ever before.

As you might know Gartner predicted a while back that the CMO would drive IT investments more than the CIO by 2017. And immediately the already existing discussions regarding the ‘lead over digital – and IT – debate’ multiplied.

• Some analysts made the case to get a Chief Digital Officer on board. Some say that’s the future role of the CIO, others see it as a new role.
• Other analysts said the lead over IT/digital should remain with the CIO and that the CIO had to become a business leader, an evolution that is de facto happening in many cases and as research shows. But it  is far from actualized – despite the rosy picture some surveys depict – as Edwin Hageman, CEO of BT Benelux wrote in an excellent post yesterday, referring to research and market feedback (disclaimer: BT is a customer but I fully stand behind the blog post).
• Another (new) role that often gets mentioned is that of the Social (Business) Strategist, who then often gets a role in the collaborative and digital decision process as well.
• Some analysts see the lead over IT – partially – moving to the Chief Customer Officer. After all, and as explained, it’s all about the customers, both the internal and external ones. And the customer is very ‘digital’ today.
• Finally, other analysts think the role of IT and digital technology has become too important to leave it to the CIO. As Edwin points out, there is a disconnect between CIO and other members of the C-suite and there’s also a huge perception problem.

The customer doesn’t care who leads

The lead over digital and IT in practice is a debate without a one-size-fits-all answer as each company is different and the CEO, CIO, CMO, and CxO have a name and a face. You don’t hire job titles, you hire people. And which of all these new management roles should you have in your organization? Furthermore, the customer (and his customer etc.), around whom our businesses are revolving and the debate is partially about belongs to everyone as Edwin writes. And at the same time he belongs to no one. He expects optimized experiences, respect and service and doesn’t care about who takes the lead. It’s the task of all C-level executives to understand how digital technologies enable the business to ensure those experiences, internally as well, and how they can contribute to the bottom-line in so many ways you can’t even imagine.

Integration is a matter of collaboration and collaboration a matter of processes and technologies enabling these processes in a customer-centric way, especially for the internal customers using them. And this brings me to marketing, my core business.

The age of integration and the digital marketing priority

People sometimes ask me what it is I do exactly as they get confused. Am I some professional blogger? I write about so many topics that seem so disconnected at first sight: IT, digital business, interactive marketing. No, I’m not a blogger. However, I do blog. Am I a social media strategist? An email marketer? A B2B marketer? A social business thinker? No, I’m a marketing and digital business consultant. By definition that means I focus on the customer and by definition that means I work in an integrated way, more than ever in this age of integration.

The reason I mention this is that people like to be able to categorize and label you. It’s comfortable and reassuring. But it’s also a sign that thinking in a customer-centric and integrated way is not common-place yet. And that’s exactly the reason why many digital marketing and business projects still fail: because we can’t look beyond the tools, tactics and channels.

It reflects the business culture and how hard integration and a collaborative mindset and – more importantly – way of working is. By not having that integrated view we miss out on important issues. Because, guess what: IT, management, collaboration, social media, digital business, technology, etc., it’s all connected.

Examples of the disconnected culture: content marketing

A while back I started a blog on content marketing. Why yet another topic (and who needs another blog about that)? Well, content is crucial in everything we do and it has always been so. But in that content marketing space the exact same thing is happening as in all other – digital – marketing areas before: we don’t look at it from a customer-centric and integrated perspective enough.

But that’s exactly what we need. Some examples.

• The integration of digital and offline marketing and the buyer journey. Most customers – certainly in my area, B2B – use search engines in their buying journey. So we invented search engine marketing and started optimizing for search engine rankings. What determines your rank in search engines on top of all the technical details today? The content you provide to people across their buying journey (here you have content marketing), how relevant it is for them, the social interaction around it (social media and community come into play) and the relevance of the content for the search query of the buyer (here comes the overall customer experience). And we haven’t even touched what to do with those prospective buyers once they interact with us yet.
• How do you get a ‘culture of content’ as some call it? Well, if you have a collaborative structure and work in an integrated way you don’t have to look for all the content you have in your company because you know where it sits. If you have a customer-centric perspective you know what content and channels people need to prepare the buy. And if your teams work in an integrated way, you can nicely integrate everything you do and what your customers need, regardless of the channels or labels.
• How do you choose a content marketing software (and why do you even need it)? First of all, it needs to serve your business goals and these goals depend on what customers are looking for in order to solve their challenges and buy from you, with all the intermediary touchpoints (and sharing etc.) in mind. But it also needs to serve the needs of your internal customers: the people that are expected to work with it. And why do they have to work with it? Because content marketing is not an island. And guess which department really needs to be involved? Indeed, IT. And your digital marketing team. And your social media team (that often drives the demand for content marketing). And the people that will create content. And sales that will follow up on leads. And customer service etc.

These are just a few random examples from my marketing perspective but I think you see the picture: everyone is involved and everything is integrated. IT is connected with social business. Social business is connected with content marketing. Content marketing is connected with…IT.

And this goes for EVERYTHING as it simply but apparently hard to implement about the customer. In the broadest sense.

The role of the CxO in the age of integration

The role of the C-suite? To create the conditions in which it can all happen, taking into account the needs, problems, challenges and collaborative realities of everyone involved. And that’s a message for the CEO, as much at it is for those CxOs protecting their silos.

Make it happen (and don’t expect a consultant to do it entirely for you).

Here’s the definition of management in very simple words: getting things done by getting people doing things. Enable people to do things. Get it done. Dear CEO, the CIO, CMO and all the CxOs are your allies if you allow them to and if they have that collaborative mindset required in the age of integration. If they don’t have it and don’t want to focus on the customer and getting their teams aligned with overall business, you know what to do.

The role of the CIO and the CMO is changing. But so is that of the CEO. Connect and integrate. You have no choice.

Will 2013 be the year of smartphones and multifunction devices in general? Will it be the year of mobile? Of course it will. However, the past years were the years of mobile and multifunction devices too and I expect so will the coming years. The use of multifunction devices, smartphones and tablets clearly continues to change the way people buy and interact. They also impact the ways we work and how social is increasingly spreading across the enterprise in general. Social business and mobile are more related than we often think.

Technologies have a disruptive effect on business because people embrace them. And the increasing adoption of multifunction devices will continue to impact us all. As you might know, at the latest edition of CES, multifunction devices were all around. Not only in the presentations and new products and technologies that were shown but also in the mind of consumers that didn’t even know about the event.

At the occasion of CES, Accenture presented the results of research it conducted the way consumers purchase and use consumer electronics. It has consequences for the consumer electronics industry itself but also for media consumption, marketing, retail, banking and other activities where these devices are intensively used. However, it has also important consequences for the way we work, collaborate and communicate, with an important role for social CRM and social business.

Context-aware technologies, as we see them arriving in TVs and gaming consoles, for instance, reshape the user experience and the ways we interact – literally – with the services offered by these devices. The exact same phenomenon can be seen in the differences between how people buy or inform themselves on tablets versus smartphones. Different screens , context and experience equals different business consequences. Context awareness, 3-D cameras capturing gestures, NFC and augmented reality join the ranks of the overwhelming amount of technologies that got introduced in the multifunction devices and often mobile devices these past few years: gyroscopes, sensors, cameras, compasses, you name it.

Multifunction dominance, social CRM and social business

Location and context of use become increasingly important and at the same time location becomes of no importance for consumers themselves: they increasingly share, inform, ask, compare, buy and interact, regardless of time, space, location and context. Mobile marketing will continue to grow but not simply as advertising. It will become as multifunctional as the devices people use are and as the multi-channel or omnichannel behavior of consumers.

Furthermore, although that vast and vague concept called ‘mobile’ is often mentioned from a marketing viewpoint, it’s about much more than that. The whole business will be impacted – and in many enterprises it’s already the case. Evolutions such as the consumerization of IT and BYOD, often driven by employee demand to be able to access data and work resources when on the go, is just one example.

• Social/mobile CRM. The use of CRM, for instance, grows as sales people and field reps get access to mobile CRM. Aberdeen Research conducted a survey that clearly showed sales reps and other workers would use the CRM system more and better if they could access it in a mobile way. Research by CSO Insights, showed 64% of sales people reach their goals against 58% when no mobile CRM is used. Needless to say that CRM – more specifically Social CRM – is one of the components of social business. Again social meets mobile to transform traditional processes into proactive social business possibilities. According to a survey of 223 CRM decision makers by Nucleus Research, the use of mobile capabilities in CRM increases average productivity by 14.6%. Especially among salespeople, productivity gains are showing. Social CRM has a positive impact on productivity as well (11.8%), Nucleus Research adds.
• Collaboration. Other examples include an increased possibility to collaborate and take decisions, regardless of time, place and platform. Accenture found nearly 60% of consumers say it improves their productivity to take conference calls and use collaboration tools from their personal devices. Nearly one-third of respondents use their smartphone for work-based social networking and social collaboration (tools). 39% of tablet owners use work-based social networks and 33% use collaboration tools on their tablets.
• Connecting different worlds. There is also the ability to bridge online and offline activities, as we see in the omnichannel customer service and retail evolution but also in other business areas and with connected systems as important drivers.
• Cloud adoption. Finally, refering to the previous point of integration and bridging systems and online and offline, let’s not overlook the importance of the impact mobile devices have on the ‘de facto’ adoption of cloud services, again an important component of social business from the technology perspective.

We have passed the stage of SoLoMo (Social, Local and Mobile) and are moving towards integration around customers, people, teams, projects and purpose. And it’s not just about the screens we use today anymore either. Some key takeaways from Accenture’s report in that regard:

• As said, consumers increasingly want multifunction devices.
• The ‘big 4′ (PCs, HDTVs smartphones and tablets) are all climbing at double digit rates.
• All of these ‘big 4′ are fighting over the multifunction preferences of consumers.
• Consumers become not only channel-agnostic but also platform-agnostic.

Mobile, consumerization and social collaboration – source Accenture

The latter fact is important for marketers who are developing mobile apps or integrated mobile campaigns and adapting their channels such as email to the mobile reality today: people use multiple operating systems and are not afraid to experiment. But the same also applies for your employees. Add to that the fact that the ‘other screens’ will continue to become more multifunction, new devices and the challenges and opportunities become clear.

Multifunction means multichannel but also multipurpose. Work and ‘social business’ are part of that evolution and the devices and screens merely the input and output of connected systems driving that purpose without us realizing the technology behind it. It’s business: social, mobile and digital. And always human and driven by what people want. Multifunction devices are part of that changing ‘want’, across all business functions.

‘Mobile’ and ‘multifunction’ are catalyzers in what makes the lines blur. It’s the blurring of the lines and the dissapearance of traditional silos and disconnected systems/processes with more autonomy for teams across the enterprise that helps driving social business and changing collaboration.

That’s disruption. And opening the doors for more agile, satisfying, real-time, people-centric and bottom-up innovation.

A few years ago I wrote a piece on the commoditization of content (marketing) in a social jungle. Last year I took it a step further with what you could call a rant about the ‘big content marketing fail’. I was pleasantly surprised to see that many people using content marketing (as I do) wrote similar posts taking a critical look at the evolutions in content marketing. I added a list of some below.

I like these attempts to ‘look beyond the obvious’. It forces us to ask the right questions. Of course, all these opinions and posts haven’t changed the world. There is too much noise for that. Many people still use content marketing without a clear purpose or just for the sake of it, usually influenced by someone who says that without content marketing you’re nothing. The same phenomenon happens in social media (marketing). There are even almost religious fights over who’s right and who’s wrong about this or that in content marketing or social media marketing. Allow me to give you an answer why these fights often happen.

The role of content and social media: everyone is right

It’s hard to believe there are still so many views on the role of content and social media for marketing and business purposes. It’s about PR, reputation and social capital. No, no, it’s about sales and lead generation. OK, but what about engagement and conversations? Hey, did anyone look at customer service? Social sharing, inbound traffic, branding, the customer experience,…

Same thing in content marketing: it’s about storytelling. Oh, no, it’s about giving buyers the information they’re looking for. Yeah, but what about traffic, links and SEO, we need traffic, right? And isn’t social often about traffic too? Well, if it wasn’t, then why would we share all the time? Just because we’re so empathic and caring? I don’t think so.

Why this confusion? Who is right and who is wrong? The easy answer: everyone is right. The whole fight over what exactly is the role of content and social media for marketing and business goals has nothing to do with what you – and your colleagues, customers, connections and networks – can actually achieve with content and social.

It has everything to do with the fact that both content marketing and social media marketing are umbrella terms that by definition can be used for a broad variety of reasons. And the big debates simply happen because many different people with many different backgrounds, experiences and roles are active in those very broadly defined fields (and now and then because it serves other, hidden, goals).

Content marketing: who’s involved?

Let’s take content marketing, for instance. Who is using content for marketing and business purposes? A few examples:

• Demand generation and sales people.
• Conversion optimization experts.
• Brand marketers.
• Campaign builders.
• Bloggers.
• PR people.
• The website folks.
• Social media teams.
• Support & service crews.
• Comunity & relationship marketers.
• Product marketers.
• Email marketers.
• Copywriters and content producers.
• …

The list goes on. Content plays a role in the work of all these people as far as it improves what they do – and thus to which degree the goal is achieved. You need manuals to support customers. You need brochures to inform prospects. You need papers, eBooks and other content (be original please) for each important touchpoint. But you also need good content to turn visitors into customers. You need it as a social object in social media. And you need a good narrative and storytelling (not the same as telling stories) for branding. Finally, without some good personalized content, there is not much to email or tweet, is there?

The problem? Navel gazers and silos

The problem is that most of these different people don’t speak the same language and don’t understand each other. Someone who is specialized in direct response marketing or website optimization is not per se a branding expert or good at community marketing. And, in case you doubt, branding still matters a lot, even if it’s mainly about experiences and perception.

Many of the similar fights and debates in the area of social media marketing can be brought back to the same – human – challenges. Bloggers with a PR or media background are no sales experts. Social customer service people don’t necessarily understand what the branding impact of a good ongoing story via a mix of social and other channels can be. And setting up loyalty programs is entirely different from acquisition campaigns.

So, again, who is right? Everyone. Except if they start defending “their” views on the role of social media or content in marketing because of their backgrounds and personal context (industry, expertise, prior experiences, etc.) instead of their goals.

Who else is wrong? Everyone having an opinion about the role of social or content as it is approached from the perspective of the “other side”, a side he or she doesn’t know. The navel gazers that can’t get out of their specific niche activity. You can’t expect everyone to be a generalist-specialist. But you can respect the expertise of the ‘other’.

If you don’t know branding or PR, don’t say social is just good for sales. If you have no experience in demand generation or sales, don’t say social is just good for brand- and relationship-focused goals. You can find a gazillion more examples yourself.

The really sad thing? The ongoing debates show that there are still way too many silos standing in the way of a collaborative, customer-centric and properly planned and integrated approach. That’s really sad. The navel-gazing and lack of focus on overall goals, taking into account what can be achieved by a mix of efforts revolving around the customer and purpose instead of the own island of expertise and division.

Smart decisions are easy

The value of content and social nor their role are defined by what you do for a living or in which department you sit. It’s defined by 1) goals, 2) ‘target group’ and 3) results. So, use content and social where it makes sense. And don’t use it when it doesn’t make sense and is just done for the sake of it.

A recent flagrant example I saw was the launch of a website/blog filled with tips on healthy eating by a local yoghurt brand. They even mentioned it in their TV ad. Nice, I bet many people will look for healthy eating advice there, especially as there is just content and nothing more. It’s just another useless ‘content platform’ that serves no purpose, isn’t updated, follows the pure campaign mentality and has been oversold by an agency saying how cool content marketing is. I’m sure it will sell lots of yoghurt.  How hard is it to make a smart decision? Purpose, customer focus and common sense, that’s all it takes.

Look around you for more examples and feel free to share them. We can all learn from cases.

Some of the promised content marketing (debate) blogs:

• Content Marketing New Year’s Resolution: Give Up Shopping at the Content Mall
• The Content Marketing Echo Chamber
• Customer Experience Trumps Content Marketing
• Let Me Wave my Magical Content Wand
• There Is No Wasted Content

Well, there have been many more and even big debates on Forbes. Feel free to suggest more links.

In a previous post I looked at how the ‘people and process’ part matters before all in what we call social business (WIIFM, speaking the same language, common intended benefits, etc.) . These two P’s are not new but repeatedly get overlooked, especially when technological and societal evolutions are still in the hype faze. History has a tendency to repeat itself. This post makes the case for social business pilot projects.

Regardless of the exact definition of social business, we’re talking business and thus inevitably people, processes and purpose, your third P if you so desire and like P’s. Social business pilot projects and smaller test cases are great ways to break through the clutter of the hype and help making purpose and benefits tangible and understandable for those involved. They also result in know-how and lessons that can be used by the whole business for future projects.

Pilots are not always the best choice: the broader context

Obviously, pilot projects are not always a good idee. The value of pilot projects depends, among others, on:

• your business culture
• the scope of the project
• how you define social business
• whether the project can scale
• needed resources
• expected return
• people that need to be reached to draw representative conclusions and achieve the desired benefits.

So, the size of the company and representative nature of the team plays a role too. If a social business pilot project works this doesn’t mean that all lessons are learned, let alone can be applied to a broader context.

However, often pilot projects will rise key issues when properly planned and conducted, certainly from a cultural, human and organizational viewpoint. It’s exactly the possibility to look (again) at your business (processes) that is often overlooked in all types of digital and social projects. The scope of the project needs to be in tune with the long-term intentions but in practice the degree of buy-in is seldom broad enough in initial stages where deplying to broad does more harm than good. If you have a clear consensus with a smaller team and scope for a pilot, larger buy-in will follow in case of success. In reality, pilots will even lead to awareness among executives, who see possibilities they didn’t before and start wanting more and broader projects.

The feasibility of social business pilot projects has changed

On the other hand, pilots shouldn’t be an excuse for fear and a lack of management. A few years ago running smaller social business projects was less feasible than today. And here the technological aspects come into play. When we talked Enterprise 2.0, we talked big projects and often big changes. The emphasis was more on building collaborative intranets, corporate Facebook’s, etc. So, it seems obvious that a few years ago many experts adviced against running social business pilots. But times have changed and they often do make sense, if conducted with a focus on all aspects and not only technology.

Today there are more potential applications, more alternatives and more cost-effective means to achieve an (intermediary) social business project end that fits in a staged approach. Competition among vendors is also higher and integrated solutions in the cloud enable smaller businesses and projects.

Furthermore, the people aspect becomes – finally – more important again in what has been for far too long a technology-dominated debate.

Before starting a social business pilot, you need to check whether it’s worth the while or if you better start on a larger scale but in recent years practice shows that in many cases pilots provide lots of benefits, certainly when the initiative is used to make an internal case with clear buy-in to do so. To be able to apply the learned lessons and deploy on larger scale, it’s clear it’s best to already plan the next stages, after the pilot. Pilots are not always the best way to go but in many circumstances they are, especially in the current market environment.

Key success factors? Connect all the dots from the start, look beyond social and focus on the project goals in the broadest context possible. And look at the human factor, always.

Advantages of a social business pilot project

One of the great benefits of social business pilot projects is that you can conduct them using the very processes, social psychology skills, agile team formation rules and lateral/vertical collaboration mechanisms powering them.

Especially in cross-departmental and even international smaller projects, focused on one specific goal and involving external collaborators, they teach a lot about the collaboration, optimization and culture challenges in the enterprise.

On top of management issues, disconnected systems challenges, diverging priorities within the business and socio-psychological factors, they nearly almost show how everything you do in social business projects succeeds or fails with people, the will to participate (your fifth P), proper management/coaching and employees.

Without a clear employee buy-in and involvement and explanation from the start failure looms. Obviously, the same applies for other key stakeholders, depending on the scope of the project or pilot. Referring to my previous post, the underestimation of the human dimension is one of the reasons why firms predict a rather slow and gloomy picture for social business. It doesn’t have to be your picture.

Remember that the implementation of new types of collaborative processes and technologies that require/support these processes, is often a good opportunity to take another look at the “efficiency”, to use that word, of your organization overall. This is also the case if you want to start implementing analytics or ROI processes, for instance: there is a lot that will surface. Grab the opportunity and learn from it. If the scalability, math and representativity make sense.

Social business pilot projects

So, pick that pilot if possible and justified. Just start with a relevant project that benefits everyone involved. And involve everyone that needs to be involved in a human way.

We are warned. Gartner predicts 80% of social business efforts will not achieve intended benefits through 2015. There is a problem with that prediction and the perception it creates. In practice, social business is a huge Babylonian confusion. In order to know how to succeed, it’s essential to speak a common – business – language and to ask ourselves a few simple questions to start with.

The lack of speaking a common language within the enterprise, let alone within the global context, is always a reason for failure. Just look at other umbrella terms such as social media marketing or at the incapability within many organizations to properly measure across silos due to non-standardized metrics and Key Performance Indicators.

Here are three simple questions to start with:

- What is social business anyway?
- What benefits do we intend to achieve?
- How do we track success?

These basic questions are not asked often enough and we speak about social business as if everyone knows what it means or defines it the same way. Reality check: that’s a myth. In practice, there is a huge confusion and setting it straight is part of the answer how to avoid social business failure. The human dimension is key in succeeding: good old people, processes and purpose.

What is social business anyway?

The social technology dimension. In the scope of most analyst predictions and obviously most technology vendors, it’s about using social technologies and applications for business purposes. Which business purposes? In practice, today collaboration and customer-facing processes (with marketing and CRM leading the pack) are prominent, which is already a limitation of what it can be.

The social/behavioral perspective. Others refer more to dynamics and underlying principles of phenomena driven by the social and mobile reality and most of all its impact on how people behave, interact, inform themselves, form communities, co-create, etc.  Gamification, the reversal of processes whereby the “customer” takes center stage, sharing and networking principles and crowd-sourcing are a few of these phenomena.

The process and management view. A third segment of definitions looks at management styles and processes, the creation of different approaches to processes within the enterprise and its ecosystem, new business models, changing ways of working, constructing agile teams and forming decisions beyond traditional and slow management structures. In essence this equals making existing business functions more efficient, fluent and free from traditional silo models.

The ‘social’ in social business. Finally, there is a group of people emphasizing more human principles in the way we do business and behave as businesses in the world around us. People-centricity, an increased focus on ‘human values’, social good and even social responsibility, which is really where the definition of social business corresponds most with what it originally meant.

This list of different groups of definitions is not even exhaustive and obviously it overlaps in several areas. Gartner’s Mark McDonald (see video below) by the way defines a social organizaton as “one that is able to bring together all the talents, interests, experience, insights, knowledge of their people in ways that are independent of the vertical top to bottom hierarchy or end to end process orientation to create sustained value” (via Michael Brito).

A Babylonian confusion called social business: avoid it

However, it shows why there is a lot of debate on the value and success potential of this umbrella term, social business. How can anyone agree in this Babylonian confusion.

Maybe it would indeed be better if we drop the term social business altogether, just as ‘social enterprise’, and talk more about digital business as that’s a term we can easily understand and dissect:

1. Using digital technologies to improve business functions.
2. The increasing digital dimension of the ways people consume, interact and whatnot.

Yet, probably it’s best to not talk about social business at all, at least within the enterprise and discussing strategy and management with executives. No one needs to sell a social business project within the enterprise. No one cares. What we want is more efficiency, satisfied employees, loyal customers, etc.

Social business is not a religion. Becoming a social enterprise (not in the CSR sense), conversation company or other similar ‘ideals’, is not a goal. You don’t get happier customers or employees, nor achieve better results, if you get featured as a very ‘social business’ or a good ‘conversation company’ on some list (yes, marketers and bloggers make such lists and – worse – some even make checklists to see how worthy your business is of such labels). Reality check: it’s just good for PR (which is important too I guess) but doesn’t improve business.

Social business will only succeed if we look at it from the practical – human and team reality – perspective. Collaboration tools will not make your employees collaborate better.

Social business: cool, what’s in it for me?

Implementing social technologies throughout the enterprise will deliver zero results if the other two questions are not answered:

1. What issues are we trying to solve or competitive advantages are we trying to achieve (the intended benefits).
2. How will we make it happen and know if it works.

That last question is not just about processes. It’s about speaking the language customers, partners, employees and managers speak. No one wants to be collaborative or social if he doesn’t see what that means without the buzzwords, gets the benefits within his area of activity (why we should love pilot projects) and sees the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). It probably isn’t an understatement if I say the WIIFM factor, involvement degree, human interaction part and overall people element are all crucial.

Social business people business – source Infosys

Social business – or whatever you want to call it – does not only require management buy-in. Social business requires organic and informed participant buy-in, based on tangible advantages. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and looking at what makes it get eaten and taste well for everyone is really not a matter of technology.

Then what is it? That’s for coming – more practical – contributions. However, speaking a common language is essential in it. And listening/understanding probably even more.

The tools and solutions are important if they make the processes and outcomes achievable. If we focus too much on them we’ll see happen exactly the same as we saw and still see in other technologies.

The number of businesses using marketing automation software just to send mails is huge. The percentage of companies using their analytics tools to the fullest – and acting upon resulting data – is really low. Just take a look at all the solutions you have bought, installed and underuse for more examples.

Failure is a choice and a certainty if you put hype and technology before processes and people. It’s no different in social business.

Through cross-channel engagements and delivering the right content and information at the right time and in the right environment, we can optimize the relevance and return of everything we do as marketers. It’s as a I wrote in my previous post about customer empowerment.

Omnichannel marketing and omnichannel retail, as they are called now and then, are hot. And the reasons are obvious: the multi-channel and multi-device behavior of customers.

However, often we tend to focus on just the promotional dimension and forget the omnichannel customer loyalty side of things. As the people of Kobie rightfully state in the infographic (via MyCustomer.com) below, there is more to the omnichannel ‘big picture’. One of the missed opportunities certainly involves what happens with the data, Big Data, coming from all the different touchpoints and channels.

And this is certainly the case from a customer loyalty perspective. “Too often marketers fail to incorporate loyalty early enough in the omnichannel big picture“, the infographic says. And it continues: “it’s not about offering a discount, it’s about offering someone the right offer at the right time”.

That’s indeed what we often talked about on this blog. Customer loyalty is a matter of consistent and valuable customer experiences across touchpoints and it is not even only about the right offers alone.

The essence of omnichannel customer loyalty

The experience begins before someone is actually a customer and so does loyalty. It starts by offering the right answers to the right questions people want when trying to find out more about a product, a service and a business.

It’s a promise that has to be kept alive and grow through the entire customer lifecycle with Customer Lifetime Value or Customer Lifecycle Value (LTV or CLV) as an end goal. It starts with acquisition the infographic says. In reality, it starts earlier.

The question is which tactics, channels and metrics you need to make sure the Customer Lifetime Value is optimized. Because one thing is sure: for your business goals, loyalty is more important than ever.

Check out why and discover the essence of omnichannel customer loyalty in the infographic.

Omnichannel customer loyalty and CLV

We all talk about the empowered consumer and it’s safe to say that consumers indeed dispose of more ways to inform themselves, interact and buy when, where and how they want. You don’t really need studies to notice customer empowerment. Just ask any retailer of consumer electronics, for instance. People still ask for advice but they know better what they want than ever before. And they use digital channels to inform themselves and to buy. The effect is felt in several industries and certainly in retail.

The changing buying behavior and the multi-channel information gathering processes consumers display are impacting business and it’s not just about Generation Y or Generation C for that matter. The fact that consumers are more empowered is one of the reasons why businesses adopt a cross-channel touchpoint approach and use social media, for instance. Customer – and consumer – empowerment is directly related to the end of marketing as we have practiced it.

Despite channel fragmentation and changing consumer behavior, we have more ways than ever to offer relevant customer experiences across all touchpoints. The power of the customer isn’t new, it’s just stronger. Building marketing strategies and integrating around the customer is a matter of understanding customer needs/preferences and acting upon these insights.

Customer empowerment and customer needs: drop the lattes and get out

A while ago, Gerry McGovern, wrote about how “the trend towards greater and greater customer empowerment requires a deeper and deeper understanding of customer needs”.

In his blog post, Gerry quoted a book by Tomer Sharon,  Search UX Researcher at Google and author of ‘It’s Our Research’. Quote: “When people, teams, and organizations develop new products and services, they tend to have endless discussions about what users or customers need, who customers are, and what features the design of their offering should have.” It’s what Gerry calls “designing with five smart people in a room drinking lattes syndrome”.

Indeed, “there are no facts inside the building” as Steve Blank said and “we need to get out of the building”. In a digital business world, getting out means getting out on the Web too.

Focusing on the customer needs is not about gut feeling or intuition, general best practices, bringing smart people around the table and taking decisions about what we and especially the HIPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) in the room decide anymore.

So, what is it about? It’s about getting the right data and insights, and turning them into action.

Five ways to turn customer empowerment into action

• Asking what your customers want might not be the best idea from a design and usability perspective (there’s a gap between what people say and do) but it is certainly not bad when it boils down to information, communication, service and product preferences.
• We often make the mistake to think we know what our customers want if we put ourselves in their shoes. And while empathy will certainly help in everything we do, it’s not the best option: you are not your customer.
• Insights matter most. In usability they are gathered by conducting all sorts of tests. In the ways we interact with our customers, the same goes be it in somewhat different ways: analyzing customer behavior across channels to get a holistic view, data on campaigns, etc. Obviously these data need to be turned into insights and actions.
• We shouldn’t forget the role of (A/B and MVT) testing either. Testing features enable us to set up tests and (automatically) pick the best message or landing page but in the end testing is really about what the customer prefers.
• Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of using online surveys, NPS and customer feedback within a customer service scenario. People do know which movie they liked or not and how they felt about a specific holiday destination. Integrate! However, don’t forget the quid pro quo, make sure you don’t overdo it and value input by acting upon the customer feedback!

The days of intuition are over. Those of gaining an integrated customer view, backed by solid data, and continuous optimization have come. ‘Get out there’. In real-life and online. Certainly now real-life increasingly shifts to digital life in the ways we search, prepare, buy and interact.

The term ‘connected consumer’ pops up on virtually every blog that covers social media and digital marketing. As usual, the danger is that in the end everyone talks about something different when using the term. Furthermore, it’s important to understand the connected consumer if you want to serve him well. So, here is what you should know about that connected consumer.

Everyone understands what the word ‘connected’ means so let’s skip that part. While I’m writing this, I’m looking at a book in my ‘library’, called ‘Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution’ published in 2005 and written by Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden.

Unfortunately, for the authors, we don’t often talk about ‘connected marketing’ but about ‘social media marketing’ (too bad, really, since the latter term emphasizes the media too much).

The connected consumer and connected devices

It’s obvious that people are more connected via digital channels and hubs of common interest nowadays. It’s also clear that we use more connected devices. In a 2010 overview of the usage of connected devices, The Nielsen Company, used the term ‘connected consumer’ in that context (PDF opens, slideshare below).

In May 2011, IBM released a report, called “The connected consumer challenge” (PDF opens, slideshare below).

Here as well, the focus was on the adoption of connected devices and the consequences.

So, is there a…connection between the connected consumer and the increasing use of connected devices (and platforms)? Yes, most certainly. Wait a minute: isn’t everyone a connected consumer? Yes, of course. Even my dad, who has no Internet, is a connected consumer: he gets influenced and influences other consumers as well. He’s a consumer and he’s connected.

But that’s not how we use the term ‘connected consumer’ today. It’s also less about connected devices and more about a specific group of consumers. Sometimes we even talk about the ‘hyper-connected’ consumers. They are consumers that are…more connected than the connected ones. Still follow? OK, time for another slideshare.

Personal networks of trust and Generation C

In 2009, Razorfish, always good for excellent reports, released ‘The Razorfish Consumer Experience Report’. In the summary below you will notice Razorfish speaks about the connected consumers as people who embrace social media and actively build their own trusted personal networks, among others.

It’s clear there is a new breed of consumers who are very connected in that sense. They know what they want, they are – more than others – in control over their buying journey and the ways they interact with businesses. They want great customer experiences, demand you to be relevant, find and share information in new ways and show the behavior of Generation Y: connected and online.
Meet The Connected Consumer

In “The End of Business As Usual”, Brian Solis calls them Generation C. As he says on his blog it’s “…anyone who places increasing emphasis on technology as part of their daily routine…their behavior mimics that of Millennials and as a result, they prove elusive or immune to traditional marketing and service”.

Multitasking and multiscreen, always on, engaged in a cross-platform way, mobile, predominantly female, connected, different and empowered. That’s Generation C.

Do you have to focus all your marketing efforts on Generation C? Of course not. You still have your ‘less connected’ customers to service well too.

From disconnected to connected

However, the ‘connected consumer’ is there and by understanding what he wants and acting upon it, new opportunities arise. In order to turn them into action, you need to understand how Generation C connects and know the connected consumer decides differently.

And obviously, you need to really understand them, listen and act in relevant ways. But, then again, that goes for all consumers and how often aren’t we still disconnected from them?

More data on the connected consumer in the sense of ‘Generation C’ in this blog post by Brian Solis. Do you have to focus all your marketing efforts on Generation C? Of course not. You still have your ‘less connected’ customers to service well too. And all customers are connected in a cross-channel way nowadays. Look at those touchpoints and you’ll see why. And focus on regaining their trust.

Even if my message is to be channel-agnostic and think integrated with the “customer” in the centre, people need to learn how to use the channels as well. So, there is some training to be done on phenomena such as Twitter, LinkedIn and community marketing. This post is about one such ‘channel’, microbloging king Twitter, but most of all about people and one in particular, Chuck Kent.

My personal Twitter rules

When working on the Twitter training, I started looking back at my own Twitter behavior and realized I didn’t like it. I had forgotten why I even started using it and had ignored many of the rules I once decided to follow. My rules, not everyone’s rules. Some examples? OK, here you go:

• Use lists so you can follow the tweets of people you deem interesting for one reason or the other.
• Update those lists and add people you follow to one so you know why you started following them in the first place. Because guess what: you forget.
• Be human and say thank you now and then. Not as a strategy but because you care. Sure, I’m not stupid: Twitter is not the place where you will normally chat with your kids, partner, best friends or dog but, hey, there’s nothing wrong with being you, right?

Over the years I started breaking my own rules. I follow over 4,500 people now. That’s a lot. So I started making lists again and started unfollowing here and there. I don’t want to be too hasty and drastic about it. People deserve some time.

How Twitter works today: it’s different for everyone

Amber Naslund

However, I fully understand Amber Naslund who had to write about her unfollow “operation” and she hit the nail with the post she wrote about it. Respect. You can read ‘How Twitter Works Today…And How I’m Using It Now’ by Amber here. Chris Brogan did the same thing once and I get that. People sometimes get fed up with the whole Twitter game some play, you know.

I won’t do such a thing, simply because I’m not Amber or Chris. And Twitters works differently for everyone. Normally people send tweets, right? And the last time I checked people were different. I fully get the ‘why’ of Amber’s post and agree with most of it but I tend to think, well, a bit different.

No worries though: I’m not the kind of person that checks who unfollows him or, worse, tweet about it. I mean: get a life, right?

Follow Friday and the illusion of being too busy

Another mistake – again, according to my own rules – I started to make is send these mass #FF tweets. You know, the hasty “#FF @johndoe @susandoe @xyzdoe @whatnot @whatever” messages. I prefer to do a few #FF or Follow Friday tweets to one person at a time and saying why. By the way: #FF was not launched by Twitter but by users. Chris Brogan was one of the people helping ‘spread the word’ as you can read here.

Follow Friday – source Mashable

But you know how it goes: we are always in a hurry. We create states of urgency. Busy is the new buzzword. Even at home sometimes; look around you. “Dad, can I talk with you about xyz…”? “Not now son, daddy is busy”.

You’re never too busy to listen to someone for a few minutes. You think you are but you’re not. Real-time, always online and always working everywhere is not a must, it’s a choice.

Back to #FF. No one is forced to send Follow Friday tweets. Heck, most people I know don’t do it and that’s cool. But if you do it now and then as a token of appreciation or gratitude, make it personal. Again: busy is a self-chosen state of mind. I like to send a Follow Friday tweet now and then. And I have a list of people I like to talk with, be it on Twitter or any other social network or in real life.

I call it my Chat & Watch list. you can check it out here. If you’re not on it and think you should be: I’m working on it and it doesn’t mean I don’t like you or anything like that. Go and read Amber’s post.

Socially (dis)connected?

Although I use probably all the social networks you do, I use most of them for work. The social network that suits me best? Anything that has to do with photography and creativity and a small local social network on which I can put some silly poems and connect with people I know in real-life. I don’t like Facebook to be honest. I plan to do more on G+ for business reasons. And the only social network I really use for both business and private reasons is Twitter, out of all the ‘bigger’ platforms.

Here is a confession: my work as a consultant can get pretty lonely at times. You have customers and people you work with but most of the time you’re sitting there alone. Isn’t that ironic? My work involves using social media a lot and my life is not that social at all.

Real-time does not equal real life, trust me.

Do you know Chuck Kent? Here is why you should.

Chuck Kent

A few weeks ago I wrote a very personal post and one of the people who commented on it was Chuck Kent. Earlier this week, Chuck sent me – and others – a tweet about #SocialSong Saturday. Never heard about that before. So today I checked it out. You know what Chuck does? He sings a song about the people he wants to mention instead of just sending a #FF tweet. It’s funny. It’s creative. It’s beautiful. It’s real. And it’s so darn personal. If you think it’s silly, I for one am glad to be mentioned in his third weekly #SocialSong. It makes me smile and feel grateful. And I’m not even in the Christmas mood.

What Chuck does means more to me than being in any list of marketers whatsoever. It beats LinkedIn’s silly Skills. It beats #FF. It beats being one of the Top 50 whatever. Because it’s real and it can’t get more personal. Here’s a guy that takes some time to think differently and do something all of us are often too…busy for. I should also add that I can’t sing or play the guitar though (that was a joke).

So, go and watch all Chuck’s three editions of #SocialSong on Chuck’s copyclatch blog and watch his second one below, mentioning some folks I follow too such as Joe Pulizzi, Heidi Cohen and Pam Moore. By the way: it’s not a coincidence I don’t put up the one in which I’m mentioned. Because that’s what it’s still about: the others. Now and then.

Thanks Chuck. Merry Christmas. And this is a love blog instead of a Twitter love song to you ;)

PS: sure you can get cynical about this. So could I. Cynical is my middle name. But not in this case.

Everything evolves and so does marketing. Today, things evolve faster. The pace of change in the ways we think about marketing goes hand in hand with the pace of technological innovations. Unfortunately, we often forget that the essence never changes: it’s about goals, customers, touchpoints and context. The multiple contextual dimensions of an integrated and customer-centric marketing view are so essential you will read more and more about context marketing in coming months. So, yes you read the title right: this one is about context marketing…in context.

The term context marketing is not new. Some speak about contextual marketing as well. However, it got picked up by more people after HubSpot’s INBOUND 2012 conference this summer where context and context marketing was among the main takeaways as so many people resumed them on their blogs.

Virtually all rock stars at the event of the marketing automation vendor, said how important context, content and the customer are.

Why do we need love introducing new marketing terms all the time? Is it because everything constantly changes or because marketing thinkers just love to come up with new jargon that serves them well? You know the answer: it’s both.However, I can’t remember a time since we started talking about marketing with such a constant avalanche of new marketing lingo. And I can assure you it’s not because everything evolves.

So, what’s the thing about context marketing? At Inbound 2012 HubSpot announced the new version of its’ marketing software, and it’s not bad at all. For the record, I’m a HubSpot partner (but essentially vendor-agnostic). HubSpot also coined the term ‘inbound marketing’. Unless you have been on a very long vacation, you know what it is: an umbrella term for tactics aimed at getting prospects, decision makers and their networks discovering you. Or better (in my definition): finding what they are looking for. A few reasons behind it: the changing behavior of people when preparing to buy, less trust, decreasing impact of interruption, disgust of marketing BS and monologues, media proliferation, etc.

As buying is often a group process and we now have social media and that other umbrella term, social media marketing, marketers start putting not only their customers first but also the networks of trust and influence of their customers. It’s essentially about value and information chains. That’s nothing new, it’s just more visible and powerful. One of the ways we try to attract new customers is by using content (marketing). Good content responds to customer needs, preferences, emotions, reasons, purpose and stages. Sometimes a simple manual is better than a series of blog posts, trust me. Bad content doesn’t respond to anything except reach. That’s why we need to get rid of the pure publishing mania.

Content serves goals and whether they are about branding, informing, enabling being found, strengthening existing customer relationships and whatnot: it needs to be relevant in a very contextual way. That’s not new either as you can read here. When launching version 3, HubSpot emphasized how inbound is a good mix of content and context. The term context marketing got picked up.

The danger of umbrellas and the purpose of marketing

I have nothing again umbrella marketing terms as such, on the contrary. However, I despise them when they are glorified and people don’t see the bigger and very simple picture of marketing anymore. HubSpot pointed out some important evolutions and convinced many marketers to think differently by using the term inbound marketing (it also helped business of course), Joe Pulizzi’s content marketing has improved the way many marketers nowadays work with content, etc. Along with social media marketing, these sets of tactics and strategies all helped stress the fact we should look more at what people want, decision processes, value, influence, conversation and so on. That’s what the ‘good’ experts learned from it, thus joining the ranks of marketers who understood it’s all about optimizing and designing for the customer (experience) and results since long before digital, let alone social, even existed.

So, I have nothing against the terms until they become misunderstood, misused or the center of all attention. Marketing is not about social media. It’s not about content. It’s not about being found. And it most certainly is not about just tactics and channels. However, that’s how all these umbrella terms are looked upon by the majority of ‘experts’. Some people build businesses they call inbound marketing agencies or worse, Twitter and Facebook marketing shops.

We can use these terms to grasp the underlying realities and understand the best practices and cases of what we know as content marketing, inbound marketing etc. That’s good. That’s great. As long as it serves a purpose.  Being found is a means to an end, sharing valuable content too.

The purpose, however, is not doing content marketing, social media marketing, inbound marketing, omnichannel marketing, touch point marketing, social business, digital business, Facebook marketing or whatever terms we have to describe a set of marketing and/or business tactics, strategies and views. The purpose isn’t creating and sharing content neither. It isn’t combining channels such as social media and email. It isn’t getting juicy links. Hell, it isn’t even getting  clicks or traffic (and certainly not fans).

Marketing is about making sure the business makes money, the customer is happy, and the profit goes up. To make that happen you use a mix of strategies and tactics, whatever you call them.

Content marketing is great. Inbound marketing rocks. Social media marketing is a must. As long as you use it all for the right reasons and in a relevant way to fulfil your goals: not traffic and fans but the right contacts who want to become your customers when you do a great job. Or regaining the trust so many businesses and marketers have lost. Or finally start listening to what your customers want, sometimes explicitely shouting it out.

However, the absurd focus on channels,  new media, technologies and tactics we have been witnessing in recent years, is dangerous. Every single day I have to read marketers don’t see the benefits or ROI of social media marketing yet. Every single day I have to read about the success of channels or tactics A, B or C. It makes me sad because it doesn’t matter but most of all because real marketers are swamped and confused. They get distracted from what really matters.

Customer-centricity is contextual by definition

What truly matters is the goal and how you’re going to achieve and measure it. And, yes, the goal is making money (and having better margins and happier customers). The fastest route to achieving that is by profoundly understanding what your customers want, how they behave, how they inform themselves, what makes them tick, how their networks influence them, etc. The only reason you want to know that is because you want to make it relevant and remove the obstacles in the buying journey, customer life cycle and different possible online actions, whether it concerns shopping, sharing or seeking service.

That’s customer-centricity. It doesn’t mean you need to be the slave of your customers. It means you have to be smart, excellent and have a very deep understanding of the people that are your market: the customer and what makes him happy or succeed. And most of all the customer experience, across all touchpoints. It means putting customers first (and do define customers in a very broad sense) and, indeed, looking at the context.

Last summer Ray Wang wrote about context from an engagement strategy perspective, emphasizing the need to move to right-time as HubSpot does (see below) and he defined seven dimensions of context drivers (see graphic). Let me tell you: there are more and they matter in all forms of customer-centric marketing. Ray did a good effort. Now look at the context of your customers, touchpoints and business.

Seven Drivers for Context In a Right Time World by Ray Wang

A customer-centric marketer by definition is a ‘contextual marketer’. Look at all the touchpoints. Look at the channels people use, the environment, they use them in, what content they need in which stage of their life cycle, emotions, whatever. You need to move towards that single view.

David Meerman Scott advised attendees of INBOUND 2012 to drop the campaign mentality. Great.  Gary Vaynerchuk preached to really, really, truly care for your customers and about people. Cool. Gary also said that if content is king, context is God. Fine but what’s new? Shouldn’t we know all that?

Then, what is context marketing and why does context matter?

Context matters a lot. People are at the center of all efficient marketing. That’s why good marketing is by default integrated and focused on improving touchpoints in an integrated way. The customer is one, understanding the context within which he moves, lives, buys and shares is essential, regardless of when, where and how.

Understand the realities behind the terms and look at your customer and their context first. This is how good marketing has always been done. If it takes a term such as ‘context marketing’ to get that, so be it. Someone has to write the book. And HubSpot has to sell its’ software.

So, what’s context marketing? Marketing. What is the context? Behavior, preferences, intentions, business goals, needs, triggers, life cycle stages, user experiences, psychographics, screens, preferred information channels, networks of influence and much more. What’s new? Nothing. It’s still about touchpoints and a holistic approach, revolving around the basics of good marketing.

PS 1: I have to disagree with HubSpot that context marketing is delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time. If that’s it, then context marketing is just a mix of content marketing and good old customer-centric marketing automation with a twist of personalization. Or maybe just simply customer-centric and integrated marketing? Or what about dialog marketing or even conversion optimization: isn’t that about right content, right channel, right time? But, again, who needs the term? Really? There is a thin line between educating and inventing new words to sell your stuff. Context is everything and everything is contextual. It’s that simple. And difficult at the same time.

PS 2: Don’t talk about context marketing or contextual marketing in real life (or even content marketing or inbound for that matter). It isn’t important, the C-suite doesn’t care and your customers just want you to be relevant. Furthermore, I bet your colleagues will often confuse with contextual advertising.

Example of retention stage touchpoints

“This is the age of the customer”. “You need to see the world through your customers’ eyes”.  Two simple sentences from a video of Touchpoint Dashboard. I discovered this customer experience and touchpoint mapping tool a few months ago when it was still in Beta. Apart from a quick test, some feedback to the folks behind it and showing it in presentations in Belgium and The Netherlands, I haven’t done much with the tool ever since. But it’s not because I didn’t want to. I know I will use it for future projects and so should you.

Touchpoint Dashboard is a web-based touchpoint and customer experience mapping tool allowing you to map and visualize customer journeys and the different touchpoints for any given business model and all possible scenarios. Even if you already do touchpoint mapping or customer experience mapping (I know, there are other tools but this one is unique), I advise you to look at it (watch the video below to see why).

For the record: I am in no way related to the company just as I was in no way related to Spredfast when they started and I advised you to watch them too. I just want you to work in a more customer-centric and efficient way.

Touchpoint Dashboard has evolved quite a bit since I started using it. Back in October the company also announced an integration with Facebook so brands can use focus groups on the social network (as many do by the way) to comment on their customer journey maps.

I’m not going to write too much about the platform. You just have to check it out. Very simply said, TouchPoint dashboard allows you to map different potential customer or user scenarios (such as ‘looking for a new bank’ as you can see in the screen shot below from their banking demo) and the various points of interaction (marketing channels, branches, etc.) via which touchpoints occur.

Main window banking touchpoint demo

Visualizing and detailing touchpoints

For each touchpoint you can define different details such as the name of the lifecycle stage (eg. ‘looking for a new bank’), the touch type (eg. ‘mass media’), performance metrics, whether there’s a moment of truth or not, pain points, etc.

In the detail window of each touchpoint (called the Touchpoint Billboard) you also find the comment feature for Facebook I just mentioned (see screenshot below).
Again, I strongly advise you to give it a go if you want to – and you should – focus more on the customer experience and on different touchpoints.

Touchpoint detail options with Facebook comments

Even if the tool is essentially about visualization (with reporting, exporting and charting features): it forces you to look at your marketing in an integrated and customer-centric way. Furthermore, it forces you to think – and collaborate. Don’t see it as a replacement of working with buyer personas though. Look at it as a complement, also when you use marketing automation software that has similar features on board.

And, keeping my recent posts on content (and mapping) and on the role of context but most of all the customer reality in mind, that’s the only way to go.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth overview after the holidays and maybe an interview but don’t wait for it and take a test drive today. And in case you’re not interested: just listen to the beginning of the video to remember what marketing is all about.

www.touchpointdashboard.com

I feel a lot. Certainly now. Cancer. Mother. Fear. Limits. An end. Loss. You know. There are millions of people suffering and millions having cancer. There are no lessons to learn. But when driving back home yesterday night, after having dropped everything and visited my mother, I wrote a blog post in my head. It’s more or less this one.

When we have a hard time we often don’t want to share it publicly. The downs. The things that happen when you least expect them. It’s so much easier to pretend we’re strong, deny our pain and even ignore reality.

We don’t want to whine or complain, fearing rejection and hiding what doesn’t fit with the image we like others to have and with what we learned we had to be in order to be accepted. Rules. Values. You know. Yet, whose rules and values? We don’t want compassion. We prefer acting as if everything is allright. We want to take responsibility, are told to be strong and hide our weaknesses. Or at least, what we believe are weaknesses but in reality are strong and real human emotions. We often pretend we are so grand and independent. Online and certainly in this ‘connected world’, it’s regularly the only thing we tend to show: what’s ‘good’ and ‘acceptable’ according to the standards of the ecosystems in which we grow up, work and live.

Connected in isolation?

We also long for easy explanations. Efficiency. Time. Reasons. Motivations. Ratio. Yet seldom real reflection and emotion. The Web is full of quotes about strength and leadership. Courage. Realizing our full potential. The virtue of power and getting up after you have fallen. Sometimes it looks like one giant block-calendar with tweetable ‘wisdoms’. Watch Pinterest. Or your Facebook timeline. Motivational quotes are the silent emanations of what’s in reality a disconnected world where screens allow us to hide more than ever before and we need quotes where a human touch lacks. We like to believe we are more connected though. Social. And to a certain extent we are but at the same time we get lost, isolated and trapped in a world of simplification.

Yet, the reality cannot be captured in some silly sentences and in shallow connections. Our social reality is weakening. Yet, understanding the human mind and the invisible ties that connect us is essential in everything we do. For a living too. It’s what helps us make the difference by being genuine. Real feelings, real contact and the complexity of our behavior and emotions.

We are connected, it’s not black and white. Yet, the ties are often so quiet and invisible they seem gone until something happens that makes them surface and show how fragile and isolated we really are. Cancer. Pain. The great connector. Isn’t it ironic?

Human behavior is not always what we like it to be

Quotes (source unknown)

Our emotions and social bonds are not just the ‘positive’ ties and traits we like to display to the world. The strength we like to herald. It’s also about other, very real relational feelings we all have and too often ignore. Anger, jealousy, pain, selfishness, the desire for power, envy. They never show up in quotes. They never are mentioned when we speak, as marketers, about psychology. We prefer to base ourselves on the naïve teachings of Maslow. Positivity over reality. Marketing. A simplistic pyramid.

There is so much more than that. There are no quick and easy solutions or magical motivational quotes. We like to believe there are so we can cope with the fears we all have and like to hide as long and far as we can. We are not divine. Our emotional life is not about biology and brain cells, the predominant approach in this era of science and belief in the glory of technology. It’s not just about simple positivity, behavioral approaches, quick taps on the shoulders or tweetable quotes either. Who we are and how we interact goes far deeper than what the eye and ratio can see. We just need to acknowledge it. If we don’t we’ll never understand the ties that connect us nor understand what it is to be human.

It’s also about admitting that we are not in control as much as we like to believe. And that we are not just valor, courage and capable of realizing our full potential. We can be weak, angry, selfish and jealous. We’re human. We try. That’s enough. We don’t have to be heroes. We don’t need quotes and labels confirming our very right to be.

Maybe I’m writing this to reach out. Maybe I’m sharing. Maybe I’m preaching. Maybe I’m agry. Or selfish. Or sad. Maybe writing is all I can do in order to keep the pain away.

Lessons learnt? None whatsoever. I don’t know. I feel confused. Just this: human behavior is not always what we like it to be nor what we like to see. It’s not simple either. The only way to be social is to be human, truly human. In all dimensions. Complete, integrated, bad, and good, whatever those words might mean. And emotional.

It’s OK to have pain and be real. It’s OK for you as well, mom. And it’s more than OK to show and share it. Leave simplicity where it belongs. Accept reality and complexity. Or just try.

This blog post tells some personal stories and takes you a bit back in time. In case you don’t feel like fully reading it, prefer the rules of short copy and want to read the conclusions first then this is for you: we are massively killing content marketing and are making the same old mistakes we always have. So, if you care about your budget and your customers read this.

In 2001, I acted as the administrator of a small company , called WebWare. It was acquired by my then employer and basically had a local portal, a good e-newsletter and some content in its portfolio. My employer and the original founders of the company, who still had a stake in it, asked me to come up with a plan. I was active in media, online publishing and digital marketing strategies at that time and didn’t have to think long about the way forward of that small business. I had them redesign the logo so the first ‘W’ looked like a crown and the baseline simply became ‘content is king’. We would specialize ourselves in online content (no one used the term content marketing yet).

Content is still the ugly duckling – especially good content

Looking back at it, the whole idea of ‘content is king’ of course was stupid but as always you have to see things in perspective. In those days digital marketing was basically about building websites, sending emails, measuring what happened and of course search and display advertising. However, everyone overlooked content.

I was obsessed with content since long before. Not for the sake of it but because I discovered what it could do if you looked at what people want and seek, even in the most complex go-to-market scenarios: helping resellers sell using the right (back then printed) content. And it always killed me to see that businesses and large organizations often spent millions to build heavy websites with the latest state-of-the-art technology while forgetting to take into account what – prospective – customers were looking for and what they wanted to read or find on those websites. The whole process was upside-down and budgets to make websites (and the access to the content they contained) user-friendly, relevant and efficient were close to zero. In fact, they still are close to zero, obsessed as we are by reach.

Of course content is not king. But we needed to make a clear statement: ‘stop making websites no one will ever visit as you don’t give a damn about your potential customers’. In fact, I could shout similar things today: ‘don’t think that putting some high-profile mavens after a password-protected blog equals community marketing’. I don’t even want to talk about who or what is king. If you don’t know by now that marketing is about finding the best route between customer needs/preferences and revenue, you really should consider a career move. This simple fact hasn’t changed. Only the mix of touchpoints and channels, buying behavior and the steps from needs and preferences to conversions are continuously changing. Now we have to include factors such as social, mobile, etc.

But deep down nothing has changed. And sometimes I wonder if I should laugh or cry to see that all of the sudden social media pundits are becoming content marketing advocates and discovering good old marketing stuff such as conversion and touchpoints or contact moments. Some just don’t call it conversion but stick a very expensive fluffy label on it. And some present it to the world as the next big thing. ‘Look at what I came up with: social and conversion’ (applause). Yet, let’s be positive: finally they start to understand that marketing has something to do with integration and customer-centricity. Hurray.

From content marketing to marketing content

Still reading? OK, here comes the main course. In 2009 I met Joe Pulizzi (wonder what you think about this post, Joe) and the year after that I was happy to help him carry out the message called content marketing, as an editor of the European version of Chief Content Officer, the publication of Joe’s Content Marketing Institute. Joe knew what he was talking about and he still does. The importance of content WITH THE CUSTOMER AND REVENUE IN MIND and within the context of individuals and cross-channel touch points was loud, clear and obvious.

Content was still treated as an ugly duckling because the bottom-line and needs of customers just didn’t get into the thick heads of many marketers thinking about new strategies in ivory tower board rooms. In fact, content is still treated as an ugly duckling. Have you seen how companies writing mediocre content for a few dimes and with nearly no understanding of the businesses they are hired by (and thus also the customers of these businesses) are popping up? Have you noticed how all the sudden your company is getting a nifty social media software or an advanced marketing automation software that sits there and is utterly underused because no one has considered the content needs? You know what I am talking about and you know it’s true.

It gets worse. The attention for content marketing has exploded. It’s at least as hot an umbrella term as social media marketing (and now that HubSpot offers email features, inbound marketing will fade away soon).  What’s the result of that explosion besides the fact that the value of good content is underrated and underpaid (in case you doubt: good means efficient and relevant)? That we are living in a nightmare whereby we have started marketing content instead of using content for marketing.

The price of the success of content marketing

You want to know some of the consequences? Here you go:

• Buyers are drowning in a tsunami of stupid, irrelevant and totally unoriginal content. Moreover, they keep getting it in the same old boring formats they don’t want anymore and have to do the same old things to get access to it. The least we can do is respect the intelligence of people, be that tidy bit creative and make clear what we have to offer. I guess it depends on the industry as well but from where I stand I see a lot of crap that is written purely from a sharing and SEO perspective and far away from the content buyers want.
• You have to be a rocket scientist to find a decent piece of informational content and isn’t just a repetition of the same crap you’ve read elsewhere twenty times. Do the test. Try to find something really relevant and intelligent about any marketing topic. It’s a swamp of tips, tricks and the same tips and tricks (and other nonsense). Disclaimer: this in no way means I consider my blog posts to be better: you still decide.
• We get swamped by often useless and boring visual ‘creations’ that work because we live in a ‘snack culture’ and are told visual content works. Infographics that are hiding facts and showing what their creators want to show, anyone? Of course, visual works. And so do words. But who do you want it to work for? And what do you stand for? We can adopt numerous more content marketing ‘formats’ and ‘techniques‘ but can we start with what matters fo customers and business goals first instead of repurposing like maniacs or innovating just for the sake of it (unless innovation is what you sell maybe)?
• Our inboxes are bursting with invitations for webinars, new eBooks and absolutely crappy documents. The more we get them, the less we want them. Especially as they all look the same. And if we dare registering for one, someone at the other side mistakes our interest in the content with us being a sales-ready lead (phone call coming….). I guess that if this happens in our industry, it will happen in other (B2B) markets as well.
• Every single social channel that used be fun at some point is rapidly overwhelmed by stinking repetitive content, adapted to the channel and format, but utterly ruining all the fun (Instagram, Pinterest?). We broadcast all the time until it becomes boring.

Is this always the case? No. Am I thinking a bit black and white? Yes. True, some smart marketers look at their customers and touchpoints first and then start asking what content is needed to get from A to B (yes, to get there, these days we often need to pass by C, D and E as well). However, most are just fighting over the mass, popularity and reach mania. So I reserve myself the right to shout we are increasingly doing it wrong just as in 2001 I shouted that content is king.

My content marketing prediction 2013: many content formats will lose their credibility

Of course you want to ‘be found’ but here is my prediction: if we continue like this the value of several content marketing ‘formats’ or content sources will take a deep dive in the list of what and who buyers trust during their buying journey. Forget the create and share mentality for a while and do me one favor.

Just ask yourself what content you need. Don’t know?

So what is the content you need?

• First of all the content you need to be relevant for your customers, generate revenue and keep your customers (before we even start talking advocacy).
• What your customer wants to know to make an informed decision and assist him in taking this decision (make it easy).
• The content the customer needs to fulfil his goals and you need for your most important business goals before, during and after the buy (touchpoints!).
• What helps you voice your story in an authentic way towards your – prospective – customer’s circles of trust (OK, you can use words such as influence and whatever leadership here, for once, although I prefer advisorship and credibility).
• The content you need for other personas and people that do not enter directly in a pure commercial relationship with your business such as media, partners, investors, etc.
• Content for other marketing purposes such as moving from customers to loyal customers, customer service, branding (yes, that matters) and beyond.

It should be so obvious that we don’t focus on the creation and distribution of content the way we do today with an increasing focus on ‘mass’ and the marketing of the content as such. And it should be equally obvious that the content we do need has to be so much more than the mediocre and cheap stuff we often serve.

I bet that a large percentage of the content you create makes no sense at all when you honestly ask yourself these questions. And I bet that you miss a large percentage of the content you(r) customers look for across the key touchpoints.

As always, feel free to comment.

The 3 U’s apply to collaboration as well – source: Nicola Millard (Scribd)

I haven’t been blogging a lot in recent months. Since nearly five months we started working with BT Global Services. Many departments, countries, languages and actions: you can imagine it learns one a few lessons on digital business and collaboration. Some facts and data.

Social business is all about people, integration (the silos, remember?) and collaboration. That’s how we often describe it. But as always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Social business is first of all a matter of creating the mindset, space and processes in which collaboration can occur. It’s an essential part of the digital business evolution that is channel-agnostic, speedy and multi-device.

This is essential and in practice it involves several people and requires you to work together from the very start. Everyone is your customer and it’s crucial to understand what all stakeholders (internal and external) want YOU to know. In a collaboration context, this is translated in a focus on, among others, usefulness and usability.

1. Agility and content are not a fad

Forget about the real-time economy for a moment. Just think about the speed of doing business. As a new and very exhaustive report (135 slides with data, anyone?) from BT Global services clearly indicates slow decision making and communication is a cause of what the research calls ‘The Collaboration Paradox’.

Simply said, being transparent, flexible and agile is not theory. It’s at the very center of success.  The processes of decision-making need to be faster. More importantly, they need to change. This is what makes social collaboration and the technologies enabling it so interesting: the possibility to participate in vast operations as if you still were that small business with rapid decision cycles.

As Nicola Millard (read her post, ‘#socialmediauseful‘) writes in her paper ‘The networked watercooler: virtualising collaboration’ (get it via Scribd), one of the big strengths of social collaboration platforms is that they combine communication with content. Access to content, knowledge and information is also a crucial part of the possibility to speed up processes and keep up with rapidly changing customer and market realities. Remember Digital Darwinism.

The collaboration paradox survey found 56% of global execs is faced with slow decision making by managers and colleagues and 36% simply does not have information at hand. At the same time, however, real-time collaboration is seen as very beneficial.

Real-time collaboration

2. Everyone is involved

A second lesson to remember regarding social business is one that is well-known by many but ask yourself how ready you are? Everyone is involved. It’s a logical consequence of what I just wrote but it goes further. Social business is business. However, a social enterprise requires a very strong integration of IT and all different business functions. It’s clear social and digital technologies play a crucial role here.

More importantly, however, the role of IT is changing and more closely related with business objectives than ever before. In social business projects, no department is left out when striving to achieve that common goal, which in the end is about optimizing the business and the customer’s experience. Moreover, to become a social enterprise you need a combination of lateral, vertical and diagonal approaches. The team is real and virtual at the same time. Marketers need to learn this lesson too.

The buy-in of C-level execs is important and so you need to be very clear about everything you do. But, at least as importantly, you want to engage your internal customers, the many voices, ears and faces that constitute your brand, business and stories AND that make collaboration succeed. Saying that participation is a cornerstone of collaboration is no fluffy theory. It’s a harsh reality when you want to succeed.

3. A staged approach matters

When I started working with BT on this project, several criteria played a role. You could consider them extra conditions for success:

• One or more internal champions.
• Clear goals and ability to make the case (regardless of stakeholders).
• Buy-in and people.
• A collaboration mindset.
• Knowledge and content.
• An ability/will to truly listen.

However, the one that was crucial, as pilots in a few countries clearly showed, was a calculated and staged approach. Many businesses just want to ‘do’ social. However, every step you take needs to make sense and be properly calculated and tested. In this way, social business is a lot like marketing optimization and that shouldn’t even be a surprise: staged and incremental simply works best if you don’t want to lose the overview and build a solid social house. Note: even if you work in a staged way, having a clear overall view and vision for the future is a must.

4. Trust and initiative are key

Finally, trust, trustability and the freedom to take initiative are essential. In the white paper, ‘The great technology take-up’ where experts from several domains share their views on collaboration (and – not by accident – foreworded by Don Tapscott), trust, initiative and many of the mentioned real-life lessons I have the opportunity to experience every day, often come back.

I wrote a blog post about it for the BT Let’s Talk blog which you can read here (thanks to Molly Flat of ’1000 heads’, for picking it up for a blog post on trust in her ‘spotlight on social triggers‘ series).

Stay tuned for more and in the meantime: start collaborating and integrating. The need to optimize efficiency and focus on human needs and smooth processes has never been higher. You know what I am talking about…

Content in context – deconstruct to reconstruct – picture by Loes van Dokkum

The presentation will be uploaded by the organizers one of these days but it’s an unfinished story for me (and it was a good test to see how people would react).

The topic of content in context has been on my mind since over a year now. In fact, it was the title of a book I wanted to write with Joost de Valk. However, one has to prioritize, customer first, right? And time does get a scarce good.

So, expect an updated presentation and more after this hectic period. In the meantime, I promised attendees at the event I would follow up with some posts. Well, here is one.

Stop content-centricity

We have been saying content is king for a long time. About a decade ago, it made sense. Businesses were building websites without relevant content too often. It was the age of brochureware.

Today, content and content marketing are hot topics. However, we should let go of some myths, as I will tackle them in a follow-up post, and of the increasing content-centricity which I see happening all around me. It’s time to deconstruct in order to reconstruct and reconnect.

The center of context – picture via Lobke Heisen

What’s at the centre of marketing efforts? It’s not content. Who or what is king? Content? Customer? Channels? Context? Cash (goals)? As a matter of fact, I’m fed up with the ‘this is king’ messages. Everything deserves attention in a world where optimizing is crucial and overlooked all too often.

In the end you optimize for two reasons:

1. Customers, in the broadest sense of the word (e.g. also the customers or connections of your customers/readers/connections).
2. Goals by making people achieve theirs. That’s why I advised everyone at the conference to read Ram Charan’s ‘What the Customer Wants You To Know’. It is and always has been about chains of value as I have been covering before.

At the same time, we should start deconstructing what content really is. Just as we should look deeper into the meaning of words such as customer, media, channels, community, touchpoints, intent and preference. We use them too easily until they become concepts, we base our strategies on. But they’re dynamic, always changing and richer than we think if looking closely at them.

At the conference – picture by Bonnie Dubois

What is behind customer preferences? What are media? What defines a touchpoint and makes it relevant?

Content singularity

Let me give you an example. We often look at content as a social object people can interact with and/or as a chunk of information that is seen as one. I call it content singularity.

Take a blog post, for instance. Normally it’s written with an audience and goal in mind. If we’re good, we also pick a style, tone of voice, topic and context that matches the preference and need of the reader we would like to ‘touch’. It can be pure information during a specific stage of the buying journey (where content is more than ever k…ey), entertainment or whatever else – mainly emotional – goal. But we look at it as one single piece of content.

When dissecting it we can do much more with our content if we put it in context. This context can be very broad and encompass many elements: emotion, reading or ‘consumption’ environment, time, intent, previous interactions, cross-channel behavior, etc.

It’s a vast topic. I guess it’s not a coincidence I felt that my presentation only touched 10% of what I wanted to share when I finished it (and that after showing my fourth slide or so, I only had 5 minutes to go).

We all create content all the time. The people who have been tweeting at the event, the pictures of Haarlem I took the evening before to make my presentation more contextual, the tweets sent by people that said they would attend the conference and thus gave me an indication of who they were and what they wanted are an example. I also used the Twitter profiles of these people in my presentation, again contextual relevance (and emotional connection). Finally, their pictures are illustrating this blog. I guess you get the point.

Sharing content is creating content (and ripples)

The essence of content in context – picture by Gitta Bartling

One of the points I wanted to make is that content in context also means that each chunk of content we share is a social object and content as such. The act of sharing content should also be seen as an act of creating content that requires context. As other speakers will now, often the things people tweet don’t correspond with what we actually mean. And the same goes for blog posts or other forms of (mainly but not only) digital content. Sharing is interpreting and adding context. This is not a challenge, it’s an opportunity. Sharing really is creating.

Your goals and the context in which the content you will create or share gets read/seen should be in your content. You can’t separate both. Furthermore, the style of your content is not only defined by the general best practices and the typical results of content-centric ‘black and white’ thinking. It isn’t always about stories, etc. Sometimes buyers just want plain simple and informative content. Sometimes people want long and exhaustive texts instead of easy snacks.

Take these contextual factors into account when creating content, even if it’s by sharing. You define the message and hashtag in your Tweet. You define the context you add when you share a piece of information on Facebook: you can change the ‘write something’. You can change the headline. You can choose a thumbnail and change the block of text that shows by default.

You shouldn’t change it just for the sake of it or to mislead people but to turn that piece of content into a new one that makes it more relevant and contextual for the people you want to reach.

Content in context – sharing on Facebook

The example in the screenshot from Mashable has a clear headline but how many pieces of content don’t? Mashable also took care of the summary but how often do you seen this isn’t done at all? And what if you changed it? You can add that contextual content yourself to be contextually relevant.

Finally, look at the picture. Mashable mentions Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in the post. What if they had put Costolo’s picture in the original post? Or a visual showing something more relevant instead of the stupid Twitter logo I am forced to show (I can of course how nothing at all) if I would share this? I would at least have a choice.

Looking at all these tiny details might seem over the top. But guess what? It’s easy and pays off to look at them. And conversion is about tiny details, as is relevance. Some people want to see faces and others graphics. Adding them in a Facebook share, for instance, can make what you share a piece of content that serves your goals better and is more relevant for your readers/followers/customers.

Every little chunk of content, including a share, is sacred, as long as it’s contextually relevant. That’s content in context: the context of the “audience”, the interactors at “the other side” and their networks. In the end, it’s about optimization and an integrated view on content marketing and other tactics, around the customer and target segments.

This is just a very small example of what you can do once you start putting content in context and dissect and deconstruct. Stay tuned for more.

Thanks Bonnie Dubois, Gitta Bartling, Loes van Dokkum and Lobke Heisen for the pictures you took of the presentation and the content you thus created within your sharing context.