Join the growtoonists each Friday for a humorous take on marketing, social media, and current business events.

Kacy Maxwell is a guy who loves his work, family and a good challenge. See more of his cartoons at EverythingIsMedia.com.

Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

-Jeff Bezos, Founder/CEO Amazon

Guest post by {grow} community member Kathi Kruse

How important is it for your to look your best to a potential customer?  Today many companies are still ignoring what’s said about them online, both positive and negative.  Some want to put their heads in the sand and wait until the Internet “just blows over.”  Folks, your customer is online most of their day and night. They’re talking about you.  Pretending they aren’t is a risky proposition.

Your customer loves the consumer review site Yelp.  Why? It’s local and it’s easy to use.  They look forward to sharing their experiences because it allows them to invest in the community … and in turn get value from the experiences of others.

For many consumer businesses, online reviews are becoming a critical component of decision-making. Car shoppers, for example, are increasingly relying on Yelp and other ratings sites.  84% of people say that online reviews influence their buying decision (Nielsen). Reviewers can also gain influence. Many of these reviews and consumer experiences also reverberate through Twitter and Facebook.

Make no mistake, Yelp can make or break many businesses. For many B2C and service businesses, Yelp may be the most important marketing channel!

What’s the best way to make sure you’re getting some customer love on Yelp?

The key is to have a rock-solid internal process for capturing and maintaining a steady stream customers who are willing to write reviews.  Understandably, many of your frontline sales personnel may feel awkward about asking for a review, but you can put it in a way that makes the customer comfortable:  “Our business is based on referrals.  Would you take a moment to visit Yelp and refer us to your friends and family?”  This is a great start to your internal process but it’s only the beginning.

I’ve developed a proactive system of capturing reviews and maintaining a consistent stream of “referrals” from your customers. Here are six ways to get your Yelp groove on:

1.  Designate an Online Reputation go-to person who’ll take ownership of your implementation plan.  They will be responsible for getting grassroots participation from your staff, as well as monitor and respond to the community.

2. Signage. Create awareness with your customers and your staff.  Display “Love Us on Yelp!” signs throughout the store. Entryways,  sales offices, customer waiting area, customer service and the cashier area.   Give customers a card to take with them that reminds them you’re on Yelp.  Put memos on paychecks, repair orders and invoices to create awareness too!

3. Reach out to your Raving Fans. Every salesperson has them, especially those that’ve been with you a long time. These customers go out of their way to do business with you.  Ask them to share an honest review – don’t push for positive – just their honest opinion.

4.  Hold a monthly contest with the staff. Nothing motivates like a cash prize!  Example: if the store gets 20 reviews by the end of the month, you’ll draw a name and that person wins the cash.  Have the drawing open to all employees so you’ve got everyone motivated to achieve the same goal.

5. Recognize staff members who get 5-star reviews. A gift or a nice mention during the weekly sales or service meeting goes a long way.  When the other employees see it, they’ll be eager to be next.

6. Email marketing. Do a “Love Drip” campaign with a catchy subject line and a nice call to action.  Provide a link to your Yelp profile so it’s as effortless for your customer as possible.

Stellar online reputations do not happen without grassroots participation from your staff.  Leverage the power of your employees and institute an internal process to be proactive about your online reputation.  Get your groove on and let your customers feel it, baby!

How is Yelp affecting your business?  Any more ideas you can share?

Kathi Kruse specializes in automotive social media and online reputation coaching for the automotive industry.  Connect with her at her Kruse Control Blog and on Twitter: @kathikruse 

By Contributing {grow} Columnist “Social Steve” Goldner

Creating an emotional connection between customers and a brand is probably the Holy Grail of marketing.  Most often, brands strive for this by being the pinnacle of something and then reinforcing that position at every touchpoint.

Maybe the easiest brand to think of in this sense is Apple.  Apple is cool, the hipster of technology.  And they have achieved a level of fanatiscm with their customers by being the pinnacle of innovation and design and then continually reinforcing this message.

Emotional branding goes beyond loyalty and almost creates this “I-am-with-<brand-name>-no-matter-what” mentality.  Recently I was reminded of the awesome power and massive strength of emotional branding.  And this story has nothing to do with a brand you might find in a store.  It involves well-educated, smart people acting in what I consider to be an irrational manner … all for the their love of a brand.  The people I am talking about are my friends (hopefully still my friends after this article) and family.

The brand I am referring to is Joe Paterno, the beloved, long-time head coach of Penn State University’s football team – up until the time he was fired under a cloud of child sexual abuse scandals.  No, Paterno was not charged with sex abuse.  But after a long career of being an icon of integrity, he was ultimately vilified because he had not alerted law enforcement officers about the horrific events when he knew of them.

Joe Paterno was the Penn State University brand.  The passion and emotion of alumni toward Paterno is unbelievable.  Many of these alumni are people from my own network – tons of friends and family that are so emotionally tied to PSU and Paterno, that they refuse to let the scandal tarnish the brand.  This is the acme of emotional branding — a bond so strong that even the most heinous blunder cannot deter the support, love, and admiration for the brand.  I am not emotionally tied to the Paterno or PSU brand and I cannot fathom how bright, intelligent people refuse to move from this irrational, emotional connection. But there it is.

And while the example I highlighted above consists of repulsive allegations, it does represent a situation brands would legitimately want to aspire to – establishing such a bond with your audience that they will stand by you, and defend you, no matter what.

So are there any positive lessons about emotional marketing that we can learn from the Paterno case?  Create brands where winning is a shared experience and then reinforce it.  How does your ideal customer win with your brand?  Incorporate this ideal into every aspect of your product or service.  When building emotion into your brand, think about leading your customer through a continuum:

Emotional Stage 1 – How you get someone interested?

Emotional Stage 2 – How do you get someone to consider a purchase?

Emotional Stage 3 – How do you continually reinforce that their purchase decision was absolutely the right decision, the “winning” decision?

Emotional Stage 4 – How do you create a loyal customer such that they want to continue to buy your product and/or are most receptive to cross selling and value add purchases?

Emotional Stage 5 – How do you create a brand ritual (www.brandrituals.net) so that your brand becomes part of your customer’s life?

Emotional Stage 6 – How do you get your audience to be your cheerleader?

You could literally create a blog post on every single one of these steps and it would certainly be a fascinating concept to explore. But on the social web, where consumer emotions can turn on a dime, doesn’t it make sense to start building loyalty in a truly emotional way?

Steve Goldner is the Senior Director at MediaWhiz where he leads the social media practice. Steve has been a marketing executive for the past 20+ years and engaged in social media for the last 4 years. You can follow him on Twitter @SocialSteve and visit his own blog at http://socialsteve.wordpress.com .

A few years ago, I was speaking at a social media event in New York. A student wrote me and said, “I would love to come to meet you but I can’t afford the $375 ticket!”

I ended up working out a “scholarship” for this young person to attend but I started thinking about the chronic problems on the social media event circuit:

1. The tickets are so expensive, excluding many students, young professionals, and those in career transition who really need to attend the event. And because the events are usually in New York or L.A., the travel and hotel costs can also be significant.
2. Networking opportunities were limited. The speakers took the stage and then escaped to their lounge or the airport.
3. It seemed like every event had the same people over and over again. Chris Brogan. Guy Kawasaki. Gary V. Aren’t there any new voices we need to be hearing from?
4. There is a “glass ceiling” on the circuit. Unless you are an A-Lister or conduct an aggressive popularity campaign to get voted on to a SXSW panel, you simply had no opportunity to be invited to speak at a major event, no matter how worthy your ideas.

I just don’t think that all social media events should be so elitist. So I decided to do something about it. With the help of dozens of volunteers and the extraordinary efforts of the Social Media Club of Knoxville, I helped found Social Slam, an inclusive social media event.  It has been a tremendous success. In our inaugural year we sold out three weeks before the event and had 430 attendees from 17 states and Canada. This year we are raising the attendance level to 600 — and I don’t want you to miss this event on April 27!

This is what is different about Social Slam:

• This is the best social media educational value in America. By far. Every person involved in the event — including the speakers — is volunteering their time. That allows us to keep our costs low and offer a rock bottom ticket price of $79, a fraction of what you would pay anywhere else. This is a conference built from the heart, not to fatten a wallet.
• But that’s not all. With the help of our sponsors, for that low ticket price you also get breakfast, lunch, an after party, a free book, and other valuable benefits. We’ve even created a special $99 hotel deal. So you can literally drive or fly to Knoxville, stay over night to enjoy our parties, and attend this event for less than it would take to buy a single ticket to any other event!
• Networking is a priority. The speakers are generally available to meet all day. Time is built in to the program to meet new friends and share ideas.
• 

  Knoxville TN, Home of Social Slam 2012

  We are featuring world-class speakers including Mitch Joel, Gini Dietrich, and Tom Webster (and you might even hear from me!) but we’ll also feature some amazing, fresh new voices like multi-media whiz Stephanie Wonderlin, blogging sensation Stanford Smith, and content marketing tornado Marcus Sheridan. Where else will you hear inspiring presentations on the spirituality of social media, or how social media saved a bankrupt business?

• The event is held in a park-like setting (actually it IS a park) at the beautiful Knoxville Convention Center. Everybody gets an electrical outlet and the wifi will work!

The Internet was built by volunteers. Our favorite apps like Wikipedia were built by volunteers. Now, the best social media conference in America is built by volunteers too.  Come see for yourself. I can’t wait to meet you there!

Everything you need to know is here: www.soslam.com

The ability for all of us to publish on the social web — to have a voice — is among the most profound sociological, economic, and political developments of our lifetime. It gives us the power to elevate a little boy from Canada to an international singing superstar or to unite a group of people to tear down a dictatorship.

This democratization of power is the central theme of my new book, Return On Influence.  This new power is breathtaking and beautiful. It is inspirational and revolutionary. And, it can be deadly.

We have all seen how social media can be used to bully and destroy. A few months ago on {grow} Leslie Lewis told the story of how her career was destroyed by a social media stalker.  A year ago, a student at Rutgers (where I teach) killed himself after Internet humiliation.

Last week, I was also in a position to use social media power to destroy.

My wife had been admitted to a local hospital for a routine procedure.  We experienced the usual delays and administrative foul-ups (had wrong name on her bracelet!) that we have come to expect from the medical profession but nothing prepared me for the horror I was about to experience.

When I was called to her recovery room (where she was still asleep), I could not believe my eyes. The room was filthy. The trash can was filled with tubes and debris from another patient’s procedure. There was trash all over the floor — paper, a used drinking straw, and pieces of some strange green organic material. Worst of all, there were drops of blood (not hers!) across the floor. I was disgusted and outraged. These were like the conditions I have heard about from missionary doctors working in a Third World country.

I took out my phone and took both pictures and video to document the mess … with my wife sleeping peacefully in the middle of it. Nobody would believe this.

I finally was able to flag down an attendant and angrily pointed out the problem. Her response was “Oh … I didn’t see that.”

Perhaps you could overlook a clear drinking straw on a white floor, but certainly not bright red blood drops or a trash can overflowing with used plastic tubes.

When the surgeon came in, I explained how repulsed I was … and I was still feeling ill about the unsanitary conditions even after the blood was wiped up (with a wet paper towel). He said that he would report it and that I would be getting a call from the hospital administration.

Twenty-four hours later I had not received a call and I was still seething.  My adrenaline was saying “post the video.” Instead, I posted a query on Facebook and asked the world what they would do. The recommendations ranged from “keep it in-house” to “get the media involved.”

I called the patient advocate and reached a voice recording, notifying me that she was only available during certain business hours. I also tried to leave a request through the hospital website but the form was broken and I just got an error message.

Later that day, I received a return call from the patient advocate. She was professional and apologetic and said she would investigate the situation.

Two days after this discussion, my wife got a call of apology from the head of the department and a letter from the patient advocate. And that’s how it stands.

This episode represented the first time in my life that I had a “social media voice” go off in my head … “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I HAVE A VOICE!”  I knew that I could have humiliated this hospital on the evening news … maybe even caused an investigation of some kind. Perhaps I should have.

But whether you agree with my decision or not, I hope you will consider this advice: If you ever get into a situation where you can use your social media power to destroy, don’t let adrenaline make the decision for you.  That’s how people are getting hurt and humiliated these days.

When I let the adrenaline subside, I thought about the situation and realized that if I went public with this, the most likely outcome would be that some hourly-wage attendant would lose her job. I would probably be hurting a family more than a hospital.  That is not what I’m about. That was not the right decision for me.

Every day I see destruction, hate, and viciousness on the web from people who can’t keep their adrenaline in check.  The social web is a place of stunning beauty and terrible darkness … just like the human race I suppose.

I’ll open myself and my actions to public scrutiny because this is an important topic we are all likely to face at some point. Did I do enough as a civic duty in this case?  What would you do if you were in a position to use social media to destroy?

Are America’s fastest-growing companies shifting away from blogging as a primary social media platform?  ”Maybe” could be a conclusion based on new research examining the INC 500 from The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts.

For the first time in the five years that this research has been conducted, the use of blogging declined. Blogging had been steadily climbing as a corporate communications tool — 19% of the INC 500 blogged in 2007, 39% in 2008, 45% in 2009, 50% in 2010 and just 37% last year.

But there is an element of mystery here.  Despite the decline, blogging was considered the most “successful” social media platform for the fourth consecutive year!  In addition, among those companies not blogging, 62 percent are considering adding a blog.

How can we reconcile this seemingly inconsistent data?  Is corporate blogging really declining? I have a theory that would conclude “no,” but before I explain my rational, let’s look at a few more interesting trends from this study:

Facebook and LinkedIn lead the way. For the first time, the platform most utilized by the Inc. 500 is Facebook with 74% of companies using it. Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn.  As you can see in the graph above, video and podcasting use declined in this period. The researchers theorized that companies are spending more time on Facebook at the expense of blogs and video.

Social media tools are seen as important for company goals. 90% of responding INC 500 executives report that social media tools are important for brand awareness and company reputation. 88% see these tools as important for generating web traffic and 81% find them important for lead generation. 73% say that social media tools are important for customer support programs.

Social media investments will rise.  25% of the respondents said they plan to keep their social media budget the same in 2012, and 71% plan to increase their investment by 20% or more. Just one company had a plan to decrease the social media marketing budget.

Monitoring the social media buzz levels off. The 2011 study shows 68% of companies are using social media monitoring tools, down from 70% in 2010, which was the highest percentage of the past 5 years. Only 24% of the companies have a formal social media policy.

Measurement is inconsistent.  When asked how they measured the effectiveness of their social media efforts, executives reported using fans, followers and supporters (26%), web traffic (25%), lead generation (16%), reduced cost of customer support (10%), the value of sales generated through social media programs (7%).

The work is being handled inside. Executives were asked how social media resource needs were filled in their companies. Two-thirds of the companies reported retraining or repositioning existing employees to handle their social media efforts, 10% use external consultants or agencies, 7% have made new hires specifically for their social media efforts.

Are company blogs really declining?

If you just read the headline of this study and looked at the graph at the top of this blog post, you would be hearing a death knell for blogging. But let’s not bury blogging so fast. Let’s apply a little critical reasoning to this study …

• It is important to consider that the data presented by the university researchers is not an apples-to-apples comparison. There is a tremendous “churn” of companies on the INC list. In fact, from 2007 when the survey started to 2011, the list of companies has almost completely changed.
• The authors admit that these changes have impacted the overall statistics in “distinct ways.” Most notably, there has been an increase in companies providing Government Services (a result of “Obama administration initiatives”). The researchers state that Government Services companies are among the least likely companies to blog.  So in 2011, many traditional “blogging companies” were replaced on the list by companies that are unlikely to have blogs.  If the researchers surveyed the exact same sample group, blogging levels may have even gone up in 2011.
• Also notable is that more than 60 percent of the companies on the INC 500 list did not exist in 2005. It is possible that these start-ups are not moving away from blogging to Facebook as the authors surmised.  I think a more likely scenario is that these young companies are STARTING with Facebook because the entry barriers are so low compared to blogging. This would reconcile the curious fact that the companies with blogs see them as successful (why would they quit?) and that most companies who are not blogging plan to do so.
• Finally, another possible cause of the strange drop is sampling error. Only 34% of the INC 500 companies responded to the survey.  Within the stated sampling errors, it is possible to conclude that the 2010 data and 2011 data are nearly identical.

Join the growtoonists each Friday for a humorous take on marketing, social media, and current business events.

Joey Strawn is a social media strategist that loves enjoying a good book and then drawing in it. Check him out on Twitter: @joey_strawn

By Neicole Crepeau, Contributing {grow} Columnist

Traditionally, marketers have researched their customers’ demographics to have a clear idea of their age, gender, income, location, and other traits.

Marketers added psychographics to the mix, allowing them to take into account customer’s interests, values, and attitudes. A step up from the very general information that demographics provide, psychographics enable marketers to speak to customers in a way that resonates with them. Now, in the age of social media and behavioral ad targeting, we have to add another type of data to our arsenal: socialgraphics.

Socialgraphics capture the attitudes, characteristics, behavior, and, most important, motivations of customers online. Understanding an audience’s socialgraphics allows marketers to design internet marketing strategies that attract and retain customers in different online venues.

Socialgraphics helps move your message

The new world of digital marketing requires the kind of research that user experience teams routinely do, but marketers have not always accessed.  Yet, it’s critical information for companies looking to deeply engage consumers and really motivate them to take the online actions crucial to the brand.

Demographics and pyschographics may have been enough when marketers were focused simply on online advertising — finding the right keywords to target an audience was enough.

But in the complex digital world of social media, content marketing, email, reviews, etc., marketers need to find ways to get online users to take specific actions, what I call social actions, such as sharing the organization’s content, recommending it to others, opening emails, writing reviews, etc. To motivate users to take action, you first have to understand what motivates them. That requires a much deeper level of knowledge about user’s psyches.

Levels of socialgraphics

To be most effective, marketers need to understand the socialgraphics of their audience at a minimum of two levels:

Audience segmentation.  If your demographic segment is “college-educated working mothers of elementary-aged children,” you need to understand the general socialgraphics of this segment, too.

Platform segmentation.  An audience segment may behave differently or have varying motivations in different online communities. For example, working mothers may look for emotional support and practical suggestions for balancing work and life in one forum, but be focused on career growth and networking with other professional mothers in another forum. It’s important to understand the user’s motivations within different communities in order to share the right content and engagement opportunities in each community.

The hunt for socialgraphic data

It is possible to find available data to leverage, but chances are, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and dig deep and make your own observations through focus groups or simply immersing yourself in different groups and platforms to understand what is going on there.  Some of the socialgraphic data to focus on are:

• Internet use data—Where do these users congregate online? What sites do they use? What online media do they consume? What times do they use different websites and media? How internet savvy are they?
• Mobile use data—Similarly, what are this segment’s mobile usage traits? Smartphone or not? What activities do they do on their phones? What times are they active?
• Goals and motivations—For different venues, what is the audience segment’s interest or goal in participating? What need does the community fill for this user? What does the user hope to gain?
• Behavior—How does this audience behave online, particularly in different venues? Do they create content or just consume it? Are they frequent sharers or posters? How do their patterns of creating, commenting, or sharing differ and what triggers the differences?
• Emotional and pyschological needs–What emotional needs does a given community fill? What emotional needs is the user filling by participating online? How does the user want to be perceived online or in different communities?

Socialgraphics as competitive advantage

At this point, it appears that few companies do the kind of research necessary to understand user’s socialgraphics. In fact, in a November 2011 McKinsey report surveying marketers, 38% of respondents said that their company had basic demographic data on each customer. But only 18% reported having psychographic data, such as interests or attitudes. It’s probably safe to conclude that even less had socialgraphic data.

In a noisy online world increasingly cluttered with content, understanding your customers this deeply may be the only way to create a point of differentiation for your brand in the long-term.

Does this make sense to you?  Are you starting to think about customer online behaviors in your strategies?

Neicole Crepeau a blogger at Coherent Social Media and the creator of CurateXpress, a content curation tool. She works at Coherent Interactive on social media, website design, mobile apps, & marketing. Connect with Neicole on Twitter at @neicolec

I know you LOVE these funny Twitter bios.  Yes, they’re real and they’re fabulous. Here we go!

@organising
Let me bitch at you every day until you sort your shit out.

@Newtoblogging
Maybe I should rethink this, when I spelled it Blooging at first.

@danecook
When I tweet, I tweet to kill.

@maurastl
Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together.

@SALJmum
Making the Snuggie look good since 2009.

@fiona_mca
Trying to elevate small talk to medium talk.

@ankurtz
Currently starring in my own reality show titled, A Modern Cinderella; One Girl’s Search for Love and Shoes.

If you can’t view this video, Click here: Content marketing success at a medical practice

I first reported my friend Lisa Reath’s remarkable success marketing her family’s medical practice in 2011.  Since then, Lisa has continued to develop extraordinarily effective social media marketing initiatives. In this video, I describe her latest innovation and she is going old school!

How is she using a cook book to increase brand awareness in an unusual and authentic way?  See for yourself in this video!

By the way, if you’re interested in purchasing this fantastic cookbook for $20, Lisa will donate ALL proceeds to a local food bank.  You can reach her at lisareath (at) msn.com to purchase this fantastic book!

What are your thoughts on this highly unsual marketing idea?