Tuesday, October 26, 2010

SMI Conference -- Five ideas from Shiv Singh.

His presentation started with: “The purpose of a business is to create a customer”. (Peter Drucker).

Shiv’s expansion: “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers”.

Not an original thought – it was already posted by Sean O’Driscoll on Ant’s Eye View on January 22, 2009.

Maybe Drucker said: “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” Who knows and does it matter?

I actually do not like the idea of “creating” customers; I like the idea of “attracting” them. For me, “creating a customer” has a feel of manipulation or even coercion to it. When I talk with a prospect, I hope I am able to convey to him or her that my skills as a writer and what I know as a Social Media strategist are of value to their business or career and that for that reason they want to hire me.

O.K. – on to the five ideas:

  1. Create a digital franchise, e.g. a platform for a cause (or multiple causes) to support while getting your message out. Example, PepsiCo’s Refresh Project.
  2. Reinvent display media. Example: add a Facebook “like” button to your banner ads.
  3. Rethink the market model. It is more important to take care of your existing contacts than to acquire new ones. “The consumer experience is everything; branding is second to that.”
  4. Redefine the agency model. Shift from the tradition of client’s brief - the agency’s Big Idea - the execution (with TV ads the main focus) to the new model of “consumer insights, the brief, a group of ideas, many agencies”. (Good for small businesses to know perhaps, but who among us hires an advertising agency for our marketing campaigns?)
  5. Use a SIM (Social Influence Marketing) score to measure results. I don’t ”do math”, so let me just refer you to two others’ take on this:
Social Times: http://www.socialtimes.com/2009/07/razorfish-sim-score-fluent-repor/
Social Commerce Today: http://socialcommercetoday.com/social-media-metrics-sim-score-vs-net-reputation-score-nrs/

Coming back to the point here: your image matters; be sure that you participate in the conversations about you!

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