Naturally our instinct is to change the channel. We ignore complaints, run from them, or remove the people complaining. It is my natural tendency and I am willing to bet it is yours as well.

Sometimes, in fact I would dare say most of the time, the problem isn’t the channel but the conversation. Sometimes it is an outspoken person who finally says what everyone is thinking, sometimes it is a conversation you keep changing channels on instinctively. Usually however there are nuggets of truth in that conversation that are hard to accept.

Couple of case studies. First, United Airlines. In 2008 a local musician watched baggage handlers throwing his guitar around as they were loading it on the plane. After he recovered his luggage he found his guitar broken. This became the United Breaks Guitars incident. The musician went through the channels alerting employees and eventually corporate. They all ignored him, saying he missed a timeline for reporting or that it was an accident.

The musician, Dave Carroll, then decided to use his musical talents and create a youtube video parodying his guitar breakage. The song became an instant youtube hit. United instead of trying to change the conversation changed the channel. The result cost United roughly $180 million in stock value.

The second case study is not an incident but a long trending organizational problem. Domino’s pizza had a problem, it made a crappy pizza. When you are a pizza company making a bad pizza is probably not good for business. Dominos was ranked so bad that it was tied for last place among popular pizza chains with Chuck E. Cheese.

Domino’s customers complained and they ignored them. Employees complained and they fired them. Most importantly in this is not the number of complaints or firings but how many customers went somewhere else or quality employees quit for another job.

Unlike United, Domino’s after changing the channel for several years decided to change the conversation. New CEO Patrick Doyle decided to hear the conversation and find out why it was being said. He then took that very conversation and used it in their favor, changing products based on what customers complain about. The result is that the conversation changed. Domino’s is no longer known for cardboard crust but for customer service. The result is that in the past 2 years Domino’s has seen its stock grown 230+%.

There are hundreds of other case studies that show both sides of the conversation. Companies, organizations, and governments who have changed the channel and lost in the long run or changed the conversation and experienced gains. There are very few absolutes in marketing and PR, but when faced with a crisis of any sort I’ve yet to see this fail.

In the old days when consumer’s main interaction with purchase decision making came inside the actual store marketers got it. Companies spend (and still do) millions of dollars studying buyer flow in a super market or retail store. Marketers analyzed where on shelves the average consumer looked first, some areas have more prestige than others  for example and make a customer feel like the product is of higher quality. They analyzed what flow customers purchased, so the cereal for example is typically placed at the front right of a store and milk in the back left because we knew that customers would purchase milk after cereal, not the other way around, and that is the movement of a typical consumer (front to back, right to left).

In retail and clothing shopping this was also true. Say you run a clothing store in a mall. You place items that typically garner attention toward the front where it is visible from the outside to draw people into the store. Once there you place low selling items between two groups of high selling in order to stimulate sales from people moving between the two product groups.

Mass marketing understood this buyer flow as well. Most high value shopping was done on the weekends. As a result markets would load the Sunday paper up with retail ads, most of them highlighting high value products in an effort to draw consumers into the store. During the week when budget shopping took place (groceries for example) marketers would send out coupons and sales with the desire to attract their spending.

Now, back to my eblast example. Something is lost here. Instead of trying to influence buying decision making moments marketers are just throwing out information to check it off their list. They ignore the flow of the modern consumer. The best time to reach a consumer is when they are about to enter a decision making scenario. Additionally, now you have to understand what device they will be receiving information at when they are into that buying flow and format it for that usage.

For example, recently I met with a large clothing retailer. Most of their purchasing still comes through a physical store rather than online. Most of their online sales are repeat items such as shirts with the same shirt size, underwear, socks, and other items like that. Why is this? Because people want to know that the item fits before they order it online to not deal with the hassle of returns. The decision making happens inside the store for the majority of consumers.

By trying to influence the decision through a midnight email (which thankfully they do not do) they would miss that influential moment. Why? Because the stores do not open until 10, by the time the person read the email in the morning until the time the store opened the influence has passed. Secondly if they did make a decision to purchase online we know that retail type online purchasing is typically done in early afternoon or, increasingly, during the prime time hours (7-10 p.m.).

In this example in order to play on buyer flow the retailer should look for ways to transfer in store buying to online buying through smart phones, because that is the device they have on them when in a store. Also we know that tablet browsing tends to spike as well during the prime time areas, so build a tablet friendly site and work on ways to drive people to that site during that time frame.

Anything marketing outside of the buyer flow decreases ROI and brand identity. The good part for marketers is that data in digital is highly reliable and very easily available. Study your analytics. Set up custom reporting to understand when people are making purchases and how they arrive at that decision. Analyze your email campaigns, don’t just look for open rates, look at click rates and then bring those into the flow of your site analytics to find out when and if those campaigns translate to purchases. Don’t be afraid to play with timing through A/B split campaigns to see what works best for an audience.

Above all learn about your customer. If a customer feels like you understand them then they are more likely to buy from you. Working into a buyer flow is as much about relationship marketing as it is about influencing buying. When I receive an email at midnight I know that the company does not understand me. When I receive one near a decision making point my relationship with the brand becomes positive.

To understand how relationship marketing works in the business world, imagine you are a business owner and you need to hire a person. You can on one hand take open bids (resumes) for the position, sort through the top few which give you the best proposal on paper, spend an hour with each, and then make your decision.

Now throw someone into the mix that you have a previous non-working relationship with. You are familiar with their work because you have spent time with them. You might have a few employees who know this person and provide validation to their work. Your company might work with someone who they have also done business with that can provide an unsolicited recommendation.

Each of these are relationship points for this person. They present a stronger case for hiring than someone who you have no relationship points with. When it comes time to make a hire, yes you may be required to look at the others, but the weight of the relationship often holds true.

The same is the case in business. Let’s say you have a project to bid out. You have to take a certain number of RFPs because that is policy.  One of the companies you choose you have a non-working relationship with. You know their work because you talk about it over drinks. Some of your other friends in the business have used them. You have seen work they have done with an organization you partner with from time to time. When price points are close to equal, as they often are, relationship wins 9 times out of 10.

As a marketer you have to find ways to create these relationship points without trying to sell them anything. Become involved with groups of your targeted audience. Become familiar with which of their associates you have done business with in the past and leverage those connections. Increase relationship points in every single way without going for the kill. Classic marketers talk about having 2-3 touches before a sale. Find 20-30 touch points before the sale, and all of them relationship based.

This increases the marketing cycle a lot, believe me. What you will find though that while your cycle is long, you tend to pull more people into cycle. Each relationship point development might in turn be a relationship point for 3 other potential clients. Additionally as you build relationships you increase the chance of repeat sales and up sales.

In the mix of all of this is social networking. My two personal favorites are twitter and linkedin are great for relationship building. Twitter allows me to keep in touch with what is actually going on in the lives of people I have on a target list. Linkedin is good for establishing those secondary relationship points. You can find who your target works with, where they have been, and people who recommend them.

Can you mix traditional marketing with relationship marketing? Absolutely. But more on that another day.

One of the areas that I spend a lot of time with is innovation. As a part of my dual employment I set on 2 of the state’s largest innovation organizations and interact frequently with most of the other major players both statewide and nationally. It has given me a very in depth perspective of what America is doing to increase innovation.

Often, especially if the government gets involved, we struggle to practice what we preach. As a nation we have come to realize that innovation is about the only chance we to continue to be relevant as an industrial nation. So to help spur innovation we look at how companies in the past have become innovative and try to find ways to promote that. We look at processed brain storming for example. We try to make ideas systematic, if you follow step 1-24 you will churn out a shiny product that will save your company and a nation. We look at traditional models for idea investment. We encourage individual innovators to quickly patent and sell.

The problem with the American innovation initiatives is that it is no longer innovative.

This is not to say that American innovation is dead however. It is very much alive and, well, innovative. We are seeing something truly amazing happen with the social world beginning to take over innovation. It completely changed the way we communicate and market ideas and products. Now it stands a chance at changing how we make them in the first place.

One idea that I’ve fallen in love with over the past year is Kickstarter. It solves a couple of the major problems I’ve seen in my two years inside the innovation world. First there is the whole product market problem. Trying to gauge the potential market for a new idea is always difficult. Many innovators dump a lot of money into bad ideas only to discover no one wants them. On the flip side there are many good ideas floating around that people are hesitant to (or don’t have) invest money in development out of fear that it will not sell. By tying investment into the development with actual product sales these problems are eliminated. If a project meets the funding threshold the innovator gets their money and can gauge the potential market, or not. Plus good products usually get a decent amount of marketing coverage that you could not possibly buy.

The next big step is social collaboration among innovators. I don’t mean teams working on products, I mean products working better with each other. As APIs for digital products become more of a norm an entire industry of new products utilizing those APIs has developed. Soon you begin to have product hubs such as twitter, facebook, Instagram. I saw a number of products at SXSW this year relating to the photo industry that use these APIs to develop new products and if digital even kick out their own API.

This creates a world where as one product innovates other products around them innovate as well. It crosses both digital and physical product boundaries. Apple creates the iPhone and introduces the iOS API allowing for apps. Instagram takes this API and develops an app and releases their own API. Instant print cameras that were once dead take this API and use it to create a physical printer for instant photographs. If any one of these groups innovates the entire chain will. If Apple adds camera features, it enhances the other two. If Instagram enhances their app some of their enhancements can find its way back into the iPhone and the physical printer. The printer itself if successful causes both Apple and Instagram to innovate to support it more.

This is the type of innovation government should be funding and encouraging. This is the future of innovation in the US.

*Note, while I work for innovation organizations and help distribute some of this very government funding, my ideas are my own and as far as I know are not shared by any organization I am a member of.

Over these couple of years I’ve pitched this idea in everything from job interviews to consulting gigs. A handful of people got it, most were indifferent and several outright mocked me. The few that got the idea have shown me examples over and over of how a company can succeed. The ones who mocked me are struggling to stay in business right now. Neither of these scenarios has anything to do with me personally I might add.

A couple of months ago I stumbled across @garyvee’s new book The Thank You Economy. The summary sounded good so I downloaded a snippet of the first chapter. It was right in line with what I have been trying to preach. I immediately preordered the book. I am about halfway through it and I have found confirmation to some ideas and clarity to others. I firmly believe this is the future of marketing.

At SXSW this week I had the chance to hear Gary speak and expand on some of his ideas. At dinner that night we happened across a get together by an interesting new company called Happy Cog. They were giving away copies of The Thank You Economy. I took one with every intention of giving it away. I thought about doing one of those book giveaway contest on this blog, but I struggled with that idea because I don’t think it fits the theme of this book.

About a year and a half ago I met @pstrack. He asked me to go to lunch with him to hear about what I do. I spend a minor amount of money on print every year. I am essentially a small fish in a small pond. Despite that Paul invited me out to his print shop for a tour. When I arrived Paul had a small board set up that said “Welcome Greg Henderson”. It made me feel like I was the most important thing in his day.

Over the past year Paul has never tried to sell me print, I give him my business because I feel like he cares. In this time he has not only gained my business but that of many others. He does this because he makes every customer feel like his interaction with them is the most important part of his day. As a result his business has grown, and he has become a good friend. If he sends me something I listen not because it is a slick email or postcard but because I know he wouldn’t send it to me if it didn’t matter.

I am giving him the copy of the book because I think he embodies this approach. He gets it. It is my way of saying thank you to him. I am giving him the book though with his promise that he will find someone else who shares this same vision that relationships matter and pass the book along to them. My hope is that this will keep going. If the book gets too worn to pass on either buy a new one or let me know and I will buy a new one for you.

Bottom line: Relationships matter. People matter. Don’t create a marketing campaign, create genuine relationship with people. Tell them you appreciate them and mean it. Once the relationship is there the business will be there.

6 degrees of separation theory

If you ever read this blog you know that I am a bit fascinated with a phenomenon known as Dunbar’s number, developed by Robin Dunbar. Again, for about the 20^th time here, Dunbar’s number represents the maximum number of personal connections that one single person can hold at any given time, which is 150. That number has been tested over and over again since the 1990s and seems to hold true.

I am in the middle of finishing a graduate degree in communication as you may know. Initially I took on a project studying the use of social media in delivering health messages to Hispanic populations. This project has been continuously delayed and it opened up an opportunity to study other things while waiting on this project. I decided to return my fascination to Dunbar’s number.

My basic hypothesis is that either Dunbar’s number actually increases when all social communication is used together, or more people reach this number easier and have a wider spread that previously.

It should be important to note that Robin Dunbar himself did a studying on the same idea last year. He focused solely on facebook and finds that the 150 number still holds true. Dunbar theorizes that it has more to do with the size of our neocortex (part of your brain that manages thought) than the ability to connect with that many people.

Why does it matter how many connections we can hold? The rate at which a product or idea is adopted by a critical percentage of a population (diffusion) has been increasing steadily alongside technology and mobility. Innovations such as the telephone, radio, television and the computer/internet have caused bumps in the rate of diffusion. However products and ideas have begun diffusing almost instantly over the past couple of years while physical technology has held basically constant. I believe this is a result of increased connection among people through social networking.

As a marketer and communicator this impacts everything. I think this has huge implications on understanding the overall value of social media. I believe it leads to products and ideas diffusing (or failing) more quickly. It causes more rapid response time, revolutionary changes to marketing strategies and an increased demand for exceptional customer service as part of a marketing technique.

Dunbar’s follow up study focused just on Facebook, which is much more of a passive networking tool due to the way timelines are managed. This I believe is the reason Dunbar was not able to see any changes. If however there truly are no changes I believe people reach the 150 number more easily. This is important because it expands the overall total reach of a community or population group. This allows ideas to spread more rapidly because more people are highly connected.

I will continue to share my research as it progresses on this topic. I plan on reaching out to Dr. Dunbar at some point along the way to try for some collaborative research. Please let me know if you have any specifics or ideas that you would like to see incorporated.

Gladwell was wrong, even though he was right

In October of last year, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a column in the New Yorker magazine stating that social media does not have the power to create social change. Gladwell was immediately criticized by the social media community about his statements. After the Egyptian revolution he has received another round of criticism, and rightfully so. I for one think Gladwell had it right, but not in his social media post, in his book The Tipping Point.

In the Tipping Point Gladwell discusses the American Revolution. Specifically he talks about Paul Revere and how his ride, unlike a similar ride by William Dawes, ignited the fire in the colonies to have them rise up against the British. It was Revere’s ability as a connector and an influencer that allowed the message to spread and motivate people for change. Tuck that little gem away for a few minutes.

The American Revolution, like every revolution pre-2011 was a revolution of vocal minority. Simply put a small group of unhappy people quickly and unexpected by the controlling power rose up to overthrow those in power. Almost 100% of the time these revolutions were militia based, there were very few ways to drive out a ruling power without force. These militias were usually under-manned, under-equipped, but very energetic. The element of surprise was always critical to their success.

Because of this revolutions had to stay small. Ruling authorities start to notice when 100,000 people start stock piling guns. When potential revolutions are noticed early they are quickly diffused. Messages took a while to travel through the masses and were bound to be intercepted before full diffusion. Keeping things small and secret is the only way to go. Historically anyway.

Karl Marx in one of his many social political theories discussed this very issue. He talked about how revolutions were never for the benefit of the masses, simply for the benefit of the minority that is able to pull it off without getting killed in the process. Marx theorized that we will reach a point where the masses will organize revolutions, and when that happens we will see a time period of rapid social change. Of course he later went on to wrap this into his Communist theory and say that this was one of the steps to a communistic society. I am certainly not a Marxist or Communist (I think the idea of a Utopian world is very skewed), but I think he was onto something with the original theory on the revolution of the masses.

So where does social media play into all of this? There is a theory known as Dunbar’s number which states that the maximum number of personal connections that any one person can hold at any given time is 150, for non-personal connections it stretches to about 300. Gladwell even loves this number and discusses it in the Tipping Point at great length. This number limits the size and pace that an idea can spread through a community. You quickly get into overlapping connections within a social group.

I have theorized, along with many others, that through social media we can hold many more connections and begin to exceed the Dunbar number. I believe we can push to 400-500 personal connections and exponentially more non-personal connections. After grad school this is first on my list of major research projects actually. The other major thing is that social groups through social media overlap slightly less than before. Are personal connections are no longer bound by geography, or even calling people one at a time on the phone. They form better and are easier to maintain than previous electronic communication.

It doesn't have to be crazy

I think this is key in the modern revolution. I think because of social media revolutions, which still by the way require rapid formation, can become much larger. It can potentially even create a revolution of the masses. Influencers spread their message to a wider audience more rapidly. Additionally because of the mass nature of the revolution, it does not have to be in secret. The diffusion of the messages happen quick and the revolutions are considerably shorter from start to change.

Another fascinating development is when revolutions happen by the masses, militias are no longer required. This creates peaceful revolutions where the overwhelming demand of the people forces rulers to step aside. These revolutions have the ability to shut down all production and work in a country, control the media, and demand a greater level of change.

Because of the (potentially) more peaceful and mass nature of these revolutions I fully expect to see them increase. Egypt provides an example for how oppressed countries can demand and accomplish change. Just this week we are seeing similar revolutions in Bahrain and Yemen. I predict Uganda and Libya to quickly follow. By summer we will see at least 5 additional countries in the region have some form of revolution.

More importantly I think by the end of 2012 we will see a major revolution in China. Oppressed young workers have shown signs of uprising. These are exactly the type of individuals who can form a mass revolution. They are continuing to find ways around the state censored internet. Once this tips I believe we will see a rapid revolution spread throughout the country.

I have spent the past 10 years of my life as a marketer. In this time I have promoted tourism, fortune 500 companies, government both state and national, non-profit organizations and foreign companies. Some would say I am well rounded, others think I am fragmented. Regardless of your personal opinion of me, in order to work with that wide of a range you must develop an overarching theoretical base and then find ways to apply that to changing situations in order to be successful.

I have discovered that any marketer who comes out saying they have created a magic solution to address all situations is probably lying to you, for starters those guys would already be C level for a top 5 company if they did. So please do not think I am that person. Rather I think good marketer pulls together a mixture of observation, existing theoretical research and a healthy dose of common sense to build their own personal philosophy.

Relational Marketing

I believe in what I like to call relational marketing. I believe that, in a marketing saturated world, customers want a company who focuses more on them than selling the product. As a result my approach is building and maintaining positive relationships with customers. This takes time and effort but organically sales will flow out of this type of strategy and dramatically increase the likelihood for repeat customers, which is honestly the holy grail of sales. This has continued to grow as I have studied relational communication at a graduate level, which has had a profound impact on my philosophy.

Making it work

With this as a base, applying this philosophy across various marketing situations is highly possible. You begin with identifying a core, influential audience and what medium is best to maintain a two-way dialogue. You encourage communication that is both informative and engaging for both sides. You want to learn from your customers about their needs, desires, and complaints and you try to acknowledge and incorporate those messages back to them in your response. Notice in this the listening comes first. Yes you must reach out to encourage communication, but you always listen before taking action.

The main complication is finding the correct communication medium. For small audiences this is fairly easy, you can engage efficiently in one-to-one communication. This worked great for me in state and non-profit marketing, the target audience of influencers is few and receptive to communication. Not so much with others.

The social aspect

On a larger level however things get a bit more complicated, you have to manage potentially thousands of customers. This is where a social marketing strategy comes in. By this I do not always mean Twitter, Facebook and similar mediums. The strategy must fit the customer base, if that is Twitter then by all means use Twitter, but you must find a way to interact with customers as close to where they are as possible.

A case study

Previously I worked for a company who served as the link between a major satellite company and their local installers and service people.  Through this link we provided installation supplies, installation guides, and marketing material to generate local sales. Our core influential audience was the local installation company owners, with the installers themselves and the customers of the satellite company as secondary audiences.

When I came on board our company mailed out 4 times a year a catalogue of installation parts. To order those parts or obtain installation material they had to call back into our company and place their request. Similarly when they were running local marketing campaigns they needed to call a different department, put in the request, and then call again to report the results of the campaigns so that they could be relayed back to the satellite companies marketing division. As you can imagine this whole process was extremely expensive, uncontrolled, and ineffective. The workers were over worked trying to manage it all and the customers felt no love because workers were measured on how quickly they could handle a call and move on to the next.

Doing what I was hired to do

I was brought on to develop a strategy for customers to handle all of this from one single source. The customers had to order parts, request material and managed ads. In the company’s mind if I could create this it would solve all the problems. The company was seeing a steady decline in customers over the previous 4 years. I went to work developing a two-part approach to solving the problem. I created a portal system that would allow customers to access the materials without having to request and manage, track and report all advertising. Tied in with that using a universal login was an ecommerce system that users could order and also pull installation material from the portal if needed.

In no time the vast majority of customers willingly switched to the new easier to use system. However I saw something alarming, the rate at which the company was losing customers remained rose even more. It was this relationship aspect that was missing. After some research the customers were not engaged in social media, did not respond well to email, or any other traditional interaction method. I pulled in the director of customer service and begin to devise an interaction strategy to meet the customers where they were. We had created this platform that funneled them all into one centralized place, why not use that to build relationships with the customers.

Fixing the problem

I went back and built in interaction points throughout the process encouraging feedback, questions or suggestions. Incredibly customers began using these tools. After a few months we started seeing the rate that customers were leaving begin to level off and eventually disappear. Even more important we started seeing sales creep up, even in the middle of the largest recession of my lifetime. Customers became happier and began using us for all of their supplies. Then they began telling others in the industry.

The point

This is just one example of how this type of strategy works. There is no magic bullet, sorry to tell you. By taking a core principle such as building positive relationships however and finding ways to apply it to a situation you can be successful. This requires buy in from all levels of an organization however. Just as I can tell this positive story I can tell another story of trying to do this without the rest of the organization buying in and it failed miserably. The company saw profits fall 200% from the year before I started the strategy. Customers on one level felt cared for and on the other felt ignored and in frustration gave up and went somewhere else.

The point is that your customers will care about you only as much as you care about them. This is a constant ongoing action that you must work at each and every day. If not you come across as greedy and sleazy, which if that happens you need to talk to me about image restoration. Love your customers every day and they will love you back. That is your magic marketing bullet.

This has nothing to do with pay walls online as a lot of people want to highlight. It is all about the content, which in case you have not read a paper in a while, makes up about 90% of what is in a paper. I will explain why this is the problem, but first, a history lesson.

See not too long ago newspapers were the primary way we received information about both local issues and national. Papers would take all the information from the previous day, mostly in the form of newswires like the Associated Press, mix in a few local stories and send it to you. That worked great.

This model began to get a little shaky in the 90’s with the rise and adoption of 24 hour news stations on television. The primary problem with tv news however was that while great for breaking news, you had to wait to hear about topical news that interest you. Papers survived on allowing you to directly get the information you want. Once a day at least.

Internet presented the next big hit to newspapers. This transition was slow at first. The combination of slow support from the news media and limited adoption of broadband internet gave newspapers some time to adjust and get in front of the curve. Most big papers with a little extra resource did. They began leading the way in pushing out news. As broadband adoption rose in the late 2000’s so did the consumption of news online. It became easier to go online and have instant access to what is happening around the world. This was the pull phase, readers went and pulled information from the sources.

Then the 800 lbs. gorilla walked into the room. News sources started pushing information both actively and passively. I get breaking news on email, my phone and socially. Even more critical is that news sources have made it simple to share stories so now I am 75% more likely to read a story that a friend shares.

I said this was not about pay walls, and it is not. These news sources however are freely available and easily accessed. Most of the national news feeds can be found in some form or another online, which brings me back to content. Some local papers panicked when online adoption started to rise. They made a critical business decision to save resources by tapping into more feed stories and hiring fewer reporters for original content. The problem with local papers is not the reporters. I know plenty; most of them are overworked and are given less and less space to show their quality talent.

As local papers began to push out more articles from feeds they began to dig their own grave. I as a consumer am already receiving my national news both by push and pull methods. Most Americans are in the same boat. I start finding less and less information that I want to read in a news paper because it is a feed dump from the day before, most of which I have already read. The stories I care most about, which are the local ones I do not receive from my national news, have be shrunk into paragraphs or ran once a week because of fewer reporters.

See, local newspapers cannot compete with regurgitation of national news. They must look at focusing on local stories and impacts. The day of a catch all local paper is dead and the start of specialization has begun. Papers can no longer focus a once a daily or weekly paper on news items, rather they must move more toward editorials and impact stories.

A clear example of how this works is Arkansas Business. Full disclosure: I have a lot of respect for them; many of their employees have become friends. I advertise and pitch them stories because they do it right. They save (for the most part) breaking news updates for the web. Even then they try to add commentary about how it impacts us locally. They focus the print edition on telling stories about businesses locally and the impacts they are making in the community. This move to a story telling approach is what made them successful in a changing news climate.

Local/state papers in order to survive must shift to this story telling approach. Yes ADG has publications that do this like Sync, but they fail to embrace the concept with their core (and rapidly dwindling) audience. Give people stories they care about and they will start to care about you again. That is how to fix the local paper and people will even pay for it.

As always everything I say is up for debate. I appreciate feedback, just be willing to defend it.

Why should I care?

Here is the reality. If you are a traditional marketer you shouldn’t care. Social media hates you. You push out messages and want no response other than a sale. You think of your customers in terms of sales numbers. You want to be able to tie a marketing event with a consumer action. You want customer service to handle product complaints. You want to disguise the reality of your product in lingo and lies. You should honestly stay as far away from social media as possible because you can’t handle what it means.

I’ve been careful in my consulting to avoid these types of companies. I’ve turned down a number who want to use social media to push a product. To be successful a company practice love, not sales.

Love, in social media, happens when a company who cares more about customers than products. That is a company that cares more about building positive relationships than selling you what is hot today.  The funny thing is that building this positive relationship creates far more product sales than simply selling a product ever could. You should care about social media only because you care for your customers and desire a positive relationship with them. Customers want to be loved, not sold.