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socialexpressions · 6 years ago

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A primer on the social media influencers

These are influencers in social media strategy template excel, the outer analysis piece of the tactical plan should identify the important individuals interacting with the client. Influencers comprise a key audience part that engages with or maybe is the target of on the web content. For the purposes of typically the strategic plan, we should examine links between the main influencers, motivational factors for having with specific influencers, understanding characteristics of influencers (tone of voice, personal manufacturer, history on platform, report on personality traits, types of relationships along with network connections they have, and so forth ), and the influencers’ latest relationship with the content.

The complete state and health on the client’s community should be applied. Identifying the various platforms on what a brand has a presence is very important, but so is going over the overall nature and exclusive characteristics of the community to each platform. Each community has many views, attributes, and motivation factors that make its associates an important target for proposal by a specific client. Social websites strategists also need to evaluate the community’s share of voice in the business, which essentially means what size a position the client plays from the overall conversation within the group. You will be able to see the analysis on the social media content and some essential components to take into account when considering all of the social media platforms a company or client has used. Through this analysis, you will need to list every single place the client has an founded presence; analyze the client’s overall content, voice, along with community; classify the type of company structure it is in; along with determine who are its key influencers, its share involving voice (percentage of the client’s voice compared to the total number involving competitors in the market), and exactly analytics can be collected in order to how engaged it is inside industry and community. On this information, the positives (successes) as well as any short-term or maybe long-term obstacles (challenges) should be addressed here. Recommendations according to these points can be offered. These steps give the social media marketing manager a comprehensive view regarding what is going on with competitors, so that you can identify any gaps that may be (1) the focus of the advertising campaign, (2) the key point regarding messages and creation regarding content to be strategically performed, or even (3) a jumping-off point to brainstorm creative ideas to be able to integrate into the social media program.

The last part of the social media connection audit is the competitor research, probably one of the most important record elements in a social media preparing plan. By understanding just where your competitors stand, you can figure out what areas you need to address, but in addition what factors, assets, and also characteristics really define an individual and your client on social media marketing.

Several steps need to be considered for this part of the process. 1st, make sure you are able to identify which usually brands, individuals, or agencies to keep your eyes out regarding when it comes to the strategic program. It is important to note not only who will be already established in the very same space, but also who is growing and emerging as powerful competition. Distinguishing between who will be established and who is rising is absolutely critical. Audiences develop and change, and we must evaluate how we can support our current relationships, and also which groups we need to contact. We have to be aware of who is growing in our particular industry and also market and making a label for themselves on social media. Once we do not take advantage of opportunities to get to these individuals, our competitors may. Attention is the currency we could driving for in the social media marketing industry, and without a partnership connection, this will be lost.

An intensive competitive review takes place program by platform. The main social media marketing platforms need to be noted in this article, but we also need to try looking in new and innovative places. Watch for the places where competition are experimenting, which provides people with an idea of their total strategy and position in the market. While it is important to note which usually platforms competing companies are as well as to observe their vanity metrics (followers, who they are following, and so on ), it is more important to take into account how and why each uses each platform. For example , are usually company’s voice on each of such platforms? What is the overall health and also stability of each community the business is a part of online? Are usually key members of the business team engaging with other folks and sharing their knowledge with fellow professionals (Twitter chats, guests on pod-casts, speaking engagements at high-quality events, etc . )? Provides the company featured its first-class or most notable campaigns within the last few few years? Were any of it is campaigns noticed for all the completely wrong reasons? We need to be aware of the clients’ overall relationship with the community based on what did for them in previous strategies and what has not.

To the good your ability, identify competitors’ overall organizational structure while using same guidelines we adopted for the internal audit. Just where does social media fit on their behalf? Are they placing social media properly level as the rest of the organizations? What do their leaders carry out online, or how do they will view social media? Identifying these kinds of extra steps can fresh paint a picture for competing sets of how they practice, view, and also use social media as an company.

Analytics are not only useful for an enclosed audit, but also provide substantial insight as part of the competitive research. Most organizations work on their particular or with a third-party seller (e. g., Sysomos, Sprinklr, or Salesforce) to collect and also analyze listening and tracking data. There is no reason you can not analyze publicly available info about your competitors, too. It truly is one thing to identify key competition, but collecting and assessing data demonstrating their on-line successes and failures brings further depth to your aggressive analysis. Evaluate brand brings up, overall influence, relationships together with key influencers, individuals who are in favor of for and talking about the brand name the most, and how the brand articles is doing compared to other brands around other metrics (share regarding voice, engagement, interactions, effect, etc . ). Data, specifically social media data, can serve as helping evidence to help make a point and also nudge a decision from one way to a better one.

Accumulating this type of background research is a lot regarding work, but the payoff as your strategic plan will probably be well worth the time and effort expended at this point. There are no shortcuts to the step if you wish to produce a totally informed strategic plan.

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socialexpressions · 6 years ago

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The Omnichannel Differentiation Strategy

As the main aim of an omnichannel approach is to provide the best services for the customers through cross-channels and technology is the backbone, based on the analysis, the company’s implementation strategy thus focuses on people who are the customers and employees, as well as the technology. Specifically, their main foci are on customer relationship, knowledge and technology alignment, customer’s trust, security, and data confidentiality. A detailed description of each aspect is provided in the following sub-sections.

Managing Customer Relationship

While traditional marketing and retailing focuses on location, the company strongly believes that the ability to manage customers is crucial for business survival and this is consistent with their understanding that business is about interaction. The wedding business requires the company to ensure that employees have specific attentive skills. This is because wedding and marriage is one of the important events in one’s life. Therefore, customers could be emotional at any stage of the processes and each single detail matters, including the design of the wedding card. Hence, great patience is the key to winning customers. Specific examples were responding to customers’ queries promptly and using nice and humble words even in a tense situation, especially if everyone in the family thinks his/her idea is the best. While there are channel differences in offline and online communication and information delivery, the principle that the customer relationship is fundamental to the business is upheld in both interactions.

Studies have concluded that telecommunication technology, such as social media and social networking, helps in establishing closer business-customer relationships. However, it requires ‘smart’ adoption as improper usage may kill a relationship. In a specific case, when WhatsApp was introduced and available, the company utilized it as a means to communicate with customers. However, by communicating via WhatsApp, the company noticed customers were highly demanding for prompt and real-time reply. Failure to respond on time caused the company to lose potential business. Therefore, they have shifted to private messages on Facebook (FB).

With FB, customers could tolerate a slight delay in response. As the customers are worldwide, the company is ensuring a good communications system for servicing customers by providing working shifts and so communication is available 24/7.

In addition, the company has placed a very heavy emphasis on treating customers with appropriate manners and language, including body contact in a physical environment. The company ensures all team members are well trained, especially for handling customers’ complaints. Personal mentoring is provided for new employees. Based on the interview material, the company shared their practices in dealing with customer complaints and dissatisfaction. When there are issues or complaints, the relevant member of staff will be advised and coached for better service management in the future.

Creating and Retaining Customers Trust

Ensuring the trust of customers is another fundamental requirement. Trust exists when customers feel safe not only during the online/offline transaction but also trust the products and communication. Trust is created by both tangible and human traits. The physical factors include building a trusted business image, and creating a functional and user-friendly online business. Trust is expressed through product commitment, reliable business processes, and ensuring customer satisfaction. At the same time, creating customer’s trust through human traits requires the company to always exhibit responsiveness, honesty, and politeness, as well as placing the customer’s interests as the top priority.

Studies have found customer trust increases when information systems that meet the expectation of the customers are deployed (Ha and Stoel 2009). Hence, the company is continually revisiting its position in e-commerce by upgrading the database system, hiring bloggers for promoting the business via social media, making professional videos for YouTube upload, and hiring professional photo editors for enhancing the card images on the website. As a result, customers are more confident when they see the business is in tune with online trends.

leadership development goals examples

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socialexpressions · 7 years ago

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What Considerations Should I Put While Deciding on a Wallet?

Following various factors must be considered before deciding on a wallet for bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency:

Go for cold or offline storage, if one possesses big amount of coins.The examples are paper wallets or hardware-based wallets. This way, a hacker does not have access compared to storage to devices connected on the Internet always.

Go for software wallets when doing small transactions. The examples are mobile based, cloud based, website based, or from a device connected on the Internet. When a user is transacting a small amount of bitcoins, the risk of losing that amount reduces.

Backup the keys; create a physical copy. In case of loss of software wallets, the bitcoins become irretrievable unless a backup copy in cold storage is available.

Currently, there are many bitcoin wallets, with their own set of features and functionalities. Various factors to consider are listed as follows:

Accessibility

Amount of coins

Anonymity

Ease of use

Security

Storage media of private keys and public addresses

Remember, a bitcoin wallet does not store actual bitcoins. In fact, bitcoins are not stored anywhere. A bitcoin wallet stores the private keys to one’s digital currencies, including bitcoin. A user can see the bitcoin balance using the public and private key. The private key resides in the wallet, which can be used to perform a transaction.

What Is a Good Time to Own Bitcoin?

I personally got interested in bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies as recent as 2017. While understanding the risk, I went ahead and invested in bitcoin and other digital currencies via an exchange using my credit card. I certainly missed the earliest wave, but invested in it with optimism that these digital currencies will soar higher. Again, I stuck to the philosophy of not investing more than affordability to lose it.

There is a drastic difference in the risk appetite of every single individual. One must use their own diligence, understand the risks and possible usages before deciding to own digital currencies.

How to Own Your Very First Bitcoin

The various methods to own your bitcoins are via buying, earning, or mining. Regardless, the first step is to have a bitcoin wallet. Previous topics have covered the considerations to select a wallet. Let us assume you have decided to own a physical wallet—hardware based or paper based due to safety reasons.

In case of an online wallet, a credit card can be set up for buying bitcoins or other digital currencies. In coinbase, one can set the digital currency, its amount, and frequency of transactions.

In this paragraph, I am going to share what I did to own my first digital currencies. On coinbase, I had set purchase of bitcoin, Ethereum, and litecoin for 100 U.S. dollars every Monday and the cycle repeated after three weeks. Hundred U.S. dollars’ worth of bitcoin on first Monday, 100 U.S. dollars’ worth of Ethereum on second Monday, and 100 U.S. dollars’ worth of litecoin on third Monday, with cycle repeating after that to purchase 100 U.S. dollars’ worth of bitcoin on an upcoming Monday. A confirmation e-mail confirms the transaction has taken place. I took this approach as an enthusiast to learn cryptocurrencies first hand. I do have interest in mining of other altcoins, but not bitcoin at this stage. Personally, I do not want to invest huge amount toward the hardware and software for bitcoin mining. However, I am totally open to perform mining of comparatively newer digital currencies, where I can utilize my home laptop. Also, for my online stores, I have decided to accept bitcoin as a media of exchange.

More I am getting into this world of digital currencies, more it is making me interested and create more confidence that these currencies are going to stay here, and evolve more. The blockchain has use cases wherever imaginable. This is certainly a revolution in the digital world and has the potential to change how we are going to do business in the future times. I feel glad to be part of these digital revolutions, that is, World Wide Web, dot com, and upcoming blockchain. It gives me more motivation to learn more about blockchain and cryptocurrencies from online courses so that there is enough wisdom as an end user and as a subject-matter expert on this topic.

Post contributed by thought leadership blog

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socialexpressions · 7 years ago

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Getting to Know the Perceptron

Artificial neural networks got their start in the 1950s when Professor Frank Rosenblatt developed the first perceptron essentially a single node (a building block) in an artificial neural network. The perceptron acts like a tiny machine for making decisions. It takes several inputs, multiplies them with their corresponding weights, totals them, and performs a mathematical function on the result to produce an output.

Imagine a perceptron as a small circle. Entering that circle are three inputs, each shown as an arrow. Let’s call our inputs x1, x2, and x3. Out of that perceptron you have one output, again shown as an arrow. Because all arrows are pointing in the same direction, this is a feedforward perceptron.

So let’s use this perceptron to make a decision for your social media strategy. I love tacos and typically consider three factors to determine whether I’m going to eat a taco at a certain restaurant. My three inputs are as follows:

x1 is whether or not the restaurant is clean.

x2 is whether or not there is a Spanish version of the menu, because a Spanish version of the menu usually indicates that the restaurant serves traditional food.

x3 is whether or not there is a sombrero on the wall because in my years of travel I’ve found that a sombrero on the wall usually means it’s a bad Mexican restaurant.

Now I’ll assign binary values to each of these inputs. While binary values are usually zero and one, they can be something else, such as one and negative one. I’ll use one and negative one, so when I multiply input values by the weight of each connection, I won’t get 0. Here are the values I’ll use:

x1 = 1 if the restaurant is clean and x1 = –1 if it’s dirty.

x2 = 1 if the restaurant has a Spanish version of the menu and x2 = –1 if it doesn’t.

x3 = –1 if the restaurant has a sombrero hanging on the wall and x3 = 1 if it has no sombrero on the wall.

Now suppose my perceptron weighs all of those factors equally and performs a simple addition/subtraction function. It adds 1 (one) if the restaurant is clean and subtracts one if it isn’t, adds one if the restaurant has a Spanish version of the menu and subtracts one if it doesn’t and adds one if no sombrero is hanging on the wall and subtracts one if a sombrero is hanging on the wall. It performs this function, and if the total meets a specified threshold, I’ll eat at the restaurant. If it doesn’t meet that threshold, I won’t eat at the restaurant. I determine that the threshold must be 2 or higher.

I come to a restaurant and discover that it’s dirty, has a Spanish version of the menu, and no sombrero on the wall. I feed my inputs into the perceptron: x1 = –1, x2 = 1, and x3 = 1. My perceptron totals the binary values: –1 + 1 + 1 = 1. It then compares that total to my threshold of 2, and because that value doesn’t meet the threshold, my perceptron produces an output of 0, telling me not to eat at this restaurant.

Unfortunately, this perceptron is too simple to be of much use because it would tell me to eat at a particular restaurant only if it meets all three of the conditions that are important to me. It also has no way to learn. All it does is perform its addition function and spit out the recommendation — thumbs up or thumbs down.

To improve this perceptron, let’s assign relative weights to the inputs. I like a clean restaurant, so I give that connection a weight of 3. I really like more traditional Mexican food, so if there’s a Spanish menu I give it a weight of 6. A sombrero on the wall is a minor annoyance, so give that a weight of 2. Again, I set my threshold at 2.

To account for the weighted inputs, the perceptron multiplies each input value by its weight before making its decision. Now suppose I arrive at a dirty restaurant with a sombrero on the wall that has a Spanish version of the menu: x1 = –1, x2 = 1, and x3 = –1. The perceptron multiplies these values by their respective weights and totals the results. The equation would look like this:

(–1 x 3) + (1 x 6) + (–1 x 2) = 1

If I come to a restaurant that’s clean, has no Spanish menu and no sombrero on the wall, the equation would look like this:

(1 x 3) + (–1 x 6) + (1 x 2) = –1

With this function and these weights, I would eat at a restaurant only if it had a Spanish version of the menu and was either clean or had no sombrero on the wall or both; for example:

(1 x 3) + (1 x 6) + (–1 x 2) = 7

The good news is that the perceptron can learn, by adjusting the weights, as I feed it more data. Suppose I feed it data that shows I’ve eaten at Mexican restaurants in the past that don’t have a Spanish version of the menu. It can look at that data and adjust the weights to make the model more accurate. It may decide to lower the weight of having a Spanish version of a menu to 4 and increase the weight of cleanliness to 4, in which case I might eat at a restaurant that’s clean, has no Spanish menu and no sombrero on the wall:

(1 x 4) + (–1 x 4) + (1 x 2) = 2

The perceptron could also add bias to increase or decrease the output as a way of improving the accuracy of the output.

Keep in mind that these examples are oversimplified. The key points to remember are that a perceptron performs a function on multiple inputs to produce a single output, and that a perceptron can learn by adjusting the weights of its inputs and by adding bias.

An artificial neural network may contain hundreds or thousands of these perceptrons, each of which accepts input and performs a function on that input to produce output. The perceptrons in the input layer accept the input you feed into the machine, produce outputs, and pass them to perceptrons in the hidden layer. Those perceptrons pass their outputs to other perceptrons until the collective outputs are passed along to the output layer. The output layer delivers the results.

Note that a perceptron or individual neuron in an artificial neural network is often referred to as a single-layer perceptron. Artificial neural networks with hidden layers are often referred to as multi-layer perceptrons.

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socialexpressions · 7 years ago

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Legal issues and the defense of a brand

This is as much of a concern for luxury goods in particular for watches, perfumes, leather that is needed here to at least give some indication of the methods available to treat the issue.

Brand Protection

Brand registration

The first step with any new brand is to register it. The registration must be done by country and by class. At first, you do not need to be registered throughout the world; indeed, most of the European countries which have signed the Madrid Convention requires only one entry. However, registration in the United States, Japan, China, and in Latin American countries is essential not to do this is to leave the way free for local unscrupulous companies to register the name for counterfeiting activities.

registration Renewal

Registration does not remain active forever. You may, depending on the country and the legislation in force, last for five or ten years. This means that every year you must renew about 20 percent of all recordings at a cost ranging from h200,000 and h400,000 for each of the ten aforementioned classes.

To renew your registration in a given class, the local authorities will require proof of use. If nobody takes legal action for lack of use and loss of the original recording, things should be fine. It should be taken such action, however, the judge can be very challenging.

For example, in 1980, Paco Rabanne has been the leader in the field of men's eau de toilette in Brazil. It 'been heavily advertised and had a strong awareness at the local level through digital advertising. However, as customs duties on perfumes were very high, local distributor of the company it was smuggled products in the country. When the court demanded proof of payment of import duties, these may not be submitted. The judgment of the court was that the mark was never officially been present in Brazil and is enacted decline in Classes 3 and 5. The brand was then immediately recorded by someone considered by the company to be a counterfeit operator, but the Brazilian courts they continued to consider the user to be genuine brand for many years.

Very well-known brands can combat this situation indicating the worldwide brand awareness and, in some cases, the fact that the brand is the patronymic of a given individual, and that local operators know the state the world of the brand when recorded and It was therefore not acting in good faith. Paco Rabanne in the end he managed to recover his name in Brazil, thanks to the fact that the brand has been the official name of Mr. Paco Rabanne, but it took six or seven years to enforce this judgment.

In their core business, luxury companies generally do not have difficulty to protect and renew their brands. In categories of by-products, it is not so simple. For example, to protect themselves against nonusage actions in the branches 24 and 25 Cartier has developed a range of scarves. Very famous brands that have no fragrance business would do well to make a scent of series every three to five years, and bill their foreign subsidiaries or distributors to ensure that there is not the slightest proof of use, in the form of receipts payment of customs duties, in many parts of the world.

The potential dangers of not protecting the recording rights are evident in another case involving Cartier. In Mexico, an individual has registered the trademark before Cartier itself, opened a Cartier store, and traded Cartier watches before the company could regain their full registration rights. For many years, Lacoste has had problems in Hong Kong and China, with a registered trademark locally, crocodile, which had a similar logo. Trademarks finally came to an agreement that the Chinese company would change its logo so that it would not be confused with the Lacoste crocodile.

While registering for any brand can be difficult, costly and tedious, it is absolutely necessary, and it is even more to the perfume houses. Dior, for example, must record both its brand and each of its individual products: Poison, Dolce Vita, J'adore, Fahrenheit, Eau Sauvage, Capture, and many others.

The original recording

It is not easy to record a new brand, because, for perfumes with names such as Romanticism, Romantique, or romantic it is likely that the name has been registered and is already in use somewhere. In general, brands are generated through creative group discussions or creative sessions, after which perhaps fifty names have come for consideration. A first run on the Internet will likely eliminate most, if not all, of these: the names are already in use or may have sufficient legally acceptable evidence of use to discourage their adoption. Sometimes a letter to a company indicating a desire to start legal action for lack of use and the confiscation of his early registration mark can give rise to a possibility of buying such registration. Where there is no real evidence of use, this can be done for h10,000 to 20,000. Where there are strong records worldwide and convincing evidence of use, this can rise to anywhere from h200,000 to 500,000. This is not a simple argument.

When Paco Rabanne launched his fragrance La Nuit, it was possible to sell all over the world except Venezuela. Caron had tried and failed to get permission to sell its fragrance Nocturne because a local producer has had an eau de cologne registered under the same name. Caron had tried to buy the name or negotiating a coexistence agreement with the local producer, but to no avail. So Nocturne Caron was sold with a special label, La Nuit, in Venezuela. However, he was willing to release the name of La Nuit if Paco Rabanne could get a cohabitation agreement from local producer, allowing Caron to sell her perfume Nocturne under that name. Paco Rabanne has tried, but never succeeded, and his fragrance La Nuit has never been sold in Venezuela.

Fighting counterfeit Activities

Some activities are considered legal in one part of the world and illegal in others. Let us examine some of these before, look at the specific case of China, and then move on to what we call the lenient countries.

Imitations and matching tables

In the US, supermarkets sell cheap perfumes with labels proclaiming: ""If you liked Youth Dew by Estee Lauder, you'll love our No.36"", or ""If you liked Chanel No.5, you will love our No .17. ""In most countries, these products, known as imitation, would be prohibited because there are only feeding off the awareness and preference for established brands. Elsewhere they would be seen as unfair competition or, to put it more accurately, commercial pests, but in defense of US consumers feel that these products provide fair value to the customer and reduce selective luxury perfumes homes for what they really are : suppliers of a particular scent that can be copied. Every country has its own system and their own specific characteristics.

Match tables are imitations of the German equivalent. Here, the perfumes are sold under a number that corresponds with the customer usual, the most expensive brand of choice. To link openly any known brand name with a matching numbered cheapest brand is prohibited by law as unfair competition. Its companies have found a way around this: as long as they and their sales staff do not make these connections, in writing or orally, the products can be sold in this way. Again, consumer advocates are very much in favor of these products and this approach, and these sales are strong.

What can brands do about this? The answer is, with both imitation and matching tables, absolutely nothing. In other countries, such practices would be very strongly opposed. This is not unlike the Thais T-shirt with the name Chanel, Dior, Prada or embroidered on the front. These products are clearly false and are clearly perceived as such. In a sense, they have the undesirable result of the success of the brands. Whether these things have to be fought against it is questionable, since consumers who buy these products are well aware that they are not buying the real thing.

Chinese and Korean Counterfeits

Tourists walking around in Seoul or Shanghai will be stopped quite frequently by people offering fake watches, shoes, or bags. If they show some interest, which are not conducted in a shop in a back street somewhere, and are then presented with the greatest number of copies of luxury watches as they could hope for. It seems as if every single brand of watch is on offer, along with any number of bags. While the clocks sometimes do not work for more than two or three minutes, the bags are pretty much no risk, even if the product finishes are not in line with those of genuine products.

Again, some may say that it is not necessary to fight such counterfeiting activities, because those buying knows that the products are fake and they would never have bought the original articles. This is to put the product of genuine and fake brand in two different market segments. A Japanese or other Asian customer would not be interested in a fake product; they appreciate the legitimacy of authentic products too high. The Americans, too, are not interested in anything other than the genuine article. The only people who are really interested are the Europeans, who believe that they are smart and can get a good deal, and no one would know the difference anyway, which is almost never true.

The fight against counterfeiters is never a simple task. It requires both the will and the means to address the entire distribution chain, from those who offer false in the streets, the shops of back-street, to the wholesaler, and manufacturer. Although the manufacturer is found and sued, machinery and equipment are simply moved to another location or sold to another company, and the cycle will start all over again. While it may seem an endless struggle, it is a necessary, if the development of such infringement must be curbed and its volume reduced.

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socialexpressions · 7 years ago

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Importance and necessity of social platforms for companies

social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and search engines and many others. These platforms include Facebook and Twitter are classified to be the most effective in its reach and impact among consumers. Recent reports indicate that makes social media to advertise the activities at least once a day on Facebook is said to reach 22 percent of their fans in the week.21 currently 44 percent of all small businesses are using social media to ensure visibility, self-promotion and connect with their customers. Fifty percent of small business owners reported gain new customers through social media strategy, mainly through Facebook and LinkedIn. The main reason is that nearly 51 percent of Facebook users and 64 percent of Twitter users are more likely to buy from brands that follow.

Although it is clear that the company's reputation may not be available in all groups, where today, Twitter and Facebook have immediate and extensive changes in relation to community groups, a group of key stakeholders can make or break a company's reputation and put in doubt the identity of the company.

Other statistics on social media for companies obtained from a list created by Schoenfeld, indicate that while other businesses have an active presence on social networks, you can still see as a tool for marketing and self-promotion. 24 After further observing this list, we see that many large companies, such as Pepsi, Best Buy, Comcast, Dell and JetBlue began to invest more and more dollars marketing campaign social media. For example, Best Buy has more than 2,500 employees helping customers on Twitter and even bought television advertising to publicize its initiative on Twitter. What's more, 68 percent of small businesses plan to increase their marketing activities in social media and 56 percent of Twitter users say that the use of micro-blogging services and communication for commercial purposes.

In terms of non-commercial users, more than 40 percent of users do not friended brand on Facebook or MySpace, 46 percent of users of Facebook says, talk to them or recommend the brand, 20 percent of tweets on Twitter are products (applications and components of the device), 44 percent of users Twitter recommended the product and 58 percent of people said that if the entries of the bad experience with a product or company, the company would like to reply to a comment. There is no clear evidence of the growing influence of social media users to discuss products, advises, for one brand over another, and expect to hear if you have had bad experiences with the product. So, with the rapid increase in the use of social media, organizations that are not adapted to the online environment, to continue to fight to maintain its corporate identity, not to mention their improvement.

Then it becomes a function of the organization continually fight to keep their reputation, image and identity, especially among the stakeholders (internal and external), the public and society. Generally, organizations use specific communication strategies of the company and various public relations exercises. While the perception of the organization's image, reputation and identity between different actors largely depends on the performance of the organization, products or services offered, and the quality of services offered, when they participate in its diverse involved in the issues affecting stakeholders in relation to the organization, will be a key element in maintaining positive corporate identity in relation to these matters.

Among the various stakeholders, both internal and external organizations, traditionally also be required to board members, shareholders / equity, internal stakeholders and external suppliers most in the organization of the supply chain. However, when it comes to customer / client organizations, interest groups, who pay for and consume offered by the organization's products / services, proved deficient organizations actively engage with them. And when usually associated with a ""spray and pray, or"" ""maintenance and support"", ie either too much or too little in this particular group of stakeholders (users / consumers).

In addition, organizations committed to these consumers, they want to know their likes and dislikes and how they perceive the organization through customer surveys, efforts to market research group and focus. They are specifically made to find ways sales, margin, or products and services to consumers in cross-selling, but not necessarily to really engage with them and find out which of these consumers need, as opposed to the company wants to sell them. While it can be said that getting to all the customers of the organization will be one of, if not impossible Hercules, this argument is invalid because of the emergence and proliferation of social networks in recent years.

Examples of the impact on social platforms corporate identity

Johnson & Johnson Case

Executives utilize proven marketing, advertising and public relations techniques in a new way, a place where ""word-of-mouth"" can make or break a brand, with little effect. Case in point, in which Johnson & Johnson encountered some problems for the marketing and sales of your favorite shampoo for children with toxic chemicals that are banned as an ingredient. They sell a product with banned chemical was a minor problem, which sells a version of the product (no chemicals banned) in other parts of the world, and the second version (of banned substances) in the United States, the US, Canada and China. On the website of the Club of mothers, where mothers interested in communicating with each other in regard to this particular issue, indicating an immediate intention to boycott all products of Johnson & Johnson.

These conversations between mothers referred to, is just one example of how users of these products, goods or services to mobilize and impart information and other consumers change their minds. Social media has given them not only a way to communicate and connect with like-minded people, but also a way to learn, help, guide, inform others, and above all give users and consumers a voice that can change attitudes and minds and often intransigent behavior groups or organizations. In this case, it was a series of products with international giant Johnson & Johnson. For Johnson & Johnson, was contrary to their values, ""values that govern our behavior are stored in our it was even more a shame, because this alleged practice (sale of products with different ingredients in different parts of the world) I think that puts the needs and welfare of people who first serve "". 27 Then I had to stay actively involved in this particular group of consumers (mother's stomach), on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like, to convince them that this practice of selling the same or similar products with different ingredients (especially forbidden) will change.

This is an example martial society through the effective use of social networking sites to try to manage their corporate identity, image and reputation. If he began to attract consumers from the beginning and in the spirit of trying to meet the needs of their customers and do not try to find ways to sell their products to consumers, and Johnson & Johnson will be able to maintain not only his reputation, but to improve it.

The investigation in the case of traffic

Another company that tried to respond directly to the consumer is the Research in Motion (RIM). Although they had a few other issues to deal with the last (changing of the guard at the top, the Blackberry Playbook does not work well on the tablet Apple iPad, Samsung, etc.), the greatest crisis of recent times is the Blackberry was the blackout of 2011, which led to more than 70 million subscribers BlackBerry who lose connectivity and access to their phones to 4-5 days.28It only on 4 Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM came excuses -line and confess directly to BlackBerry users around the world excuses 0.29 and sincere and real, was issued later than it should be, to the dismay of millions of Blackberry and confusing for customers business communication researchers.

Domino Pizza

RIM's case, in contrast to the way Domino's Pizza has responded to a video uploaded on YouTube of fraud by two of its management employees.30 Domino quickly found out that the film was a hoax, but the use of traditional media (TV, newspapers, etc.) to reach their customers to inform them. At the same time, most of his clients, most of them online, wondering why Domino did not respond directly to the blogosphere or on Facebook or Twitter, etc. However, the president implemented rapidly and within forty-eight hours to charge the video in the same medium, YouTube, talk directly with these entities, assuring them that it was really a fraud, thanking them for their hard work (bloggers recognize the location of the restaurant, where he was shot in a false and informed Domino) and commitment to improving not only communication activities Domino, as well as their products and services. Domino kept his promise and within a few months, consumers have started to see a significant difference in the quality of the products served in the restaurant Domino.

This agility is rarely seen by large companies, especially because they do not seem to understand the power of social media, but also because they are still driven by profit, not the motivation to really listen to the needs of its customers and taking actions in their media of choice. People have access to the platform, which gives them a voice, while some items can not be heard, millions of objects can change the attitude, corporate behavior, and even governments.

The remainder of this chapter will describe some statistics and trends in the use of business social networks, online presence of some companies higher ethical (as ranked by Ethisphere), social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter, and discuss some ""reasons for his apparent success in the use of these places.

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socialexpressions · 8 years ago

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Formulating Customer hypotheses

The best way to remain objective about your assumptions is to write hypotheses that can be tested with customer feedback.

A Great Hypothesis Focuses on the Customer’s Limitations, Not Your Own

Sometimes it can be difficult to separate our own internal or technical limitations from those of the customer. For example, we might believe that the lack of an effective search algorithm is causing customers to be frustrated.

We may construct a hypothesis that focuses on what we are lacking: We believe that, because our search algorithm produces ineffective results, customers are unwilling to create an account on our website. This inwardly focused hypothesis already biases us toward one solution (adjust the search algorithm so it produces better results). It doesn’t explore who the customer is, what they’re trying to do, and how poor search results affect them.

This hypothesis is ineffective in its ability to help us gain greater insight about our customers. Are we sure that search results are the thing that’s preventing customers from subscribing? If so, how effective do the search results need to be to get customers to purchase a subscription?

You may have heard the phrase “correlation is not causation.” Be careful that you’re not ascribing undesirable customer behavior to your own product’s limitations. The two may be completely unrelated.

For example, you could invest a great deal of resources, increasing the speed and quality of search results, only to find that it had little effect on increasing subscriptions.

That’s not to suggest that improving product quality is unimportant; however, we must continually ensure that quality of our product reflects what the customer wants to achieve with it. We shouldn’t invest time and energy on things that have little customer impact. If spending months to shave a couple of milliseconds off your search results has no discernable impact on customer satisfaction, it may not be worth your investment.

Imagine this hypothesis instead: We believe that customers without an account prefer to see their results in order of closest to farthest from their location when searching for providers on our website.

This hypothesis connects the customer’s motivation to one of our site’s limitations. In other words, the customer wants to see results from closest to farthest, but we can’t provide that functionality, because they don’t have an account.

If we validated this hypothesis, we may decide that offering this functionality is of a high priority. Additionally, the specifics of this hypothesis help the engineering team understand what functionality we’re looking to enable. It focuses their attention on one piece of functionality where we can improve search results (i.e., allowing customers to sort by location without having to log in to an account).

Formulating Assumptions into Hypotheses

We give you an activity to help you collect your team’s ideas or assumptions. Having a chance to “diverge” and get everything out there is a great way to see all the possible ideas and perspectives. We then like to “converge” by getting the teams to focus on a handful of possibilities presented. Typically, we do this by trying to find similarities or patterns in the group’s thinking.

To help with formulating hypotheses, we provide our teams with a hypothesis template for each stage of the HPF. This helps them take their assumptions and formulate them into consistent hypotheses that can be tested. You can use these templates to help you get started, but the important thing to note isn’t the syntax of the hypothesis, but rather the specific parameters we focus on at each stage. In short, you may need to alter the language of the hypothesis template to meet your needs, but we highly encourage you to keep the parameters.

Depending on where you are in your development cycle, you can choose to start at any stage in the HPF, but for now let’s look at the hypothesis template for the Customer stage: We believe [type of customers] are motivated to [motivation] when doing [job-to-be-done]. We start each of our templates with the statement, “We believe.” Some teams struggle with this because they might not have enough information to make a bold statement about what they believe. For example, if a team had been working on desktop software for over a decade and was suddenly tasked with creating a mobile app, they might feel uncomfortable making claims about what they believe mobile customers want.

These hypotheses templates shouldn’t feel like legally binding contracts. It’s a simple statement that illustrates what you believe given the information available to you. In the early stages of development, you might be operating with your gut instincts. That’s perfectly okay, but it’s better to capture those instincts so that you can appropriately validate them.

Most likely, your first hypotheses will be proven wrong. Therefore, you’ll need to iterate them over time. It’s a skill that can be sharpened, and you’ll find that you’ll get better at writing hypotheses the more you do it.

The Parameters of the Hypothesis Progression Framework

Each of our hypotheses templates has parameters that are highlighted at the stage they reside in. In the case of the Customer hypothesis, there are three parameters: [type of customers], [motivation], and [job-to-be-done]. These parameters will be carried throughout, helping inform the remaining stages. This is the progression of the Hypothesis Progression Model.

Type of Customers

Continually learning about your customers is paramount to the success of our framework. Throughout all stages we’re interested in getting to know the specifics of the customer we’re targeting. The Customer stage is where we define the customers we’re targeting; however, it’s important that we maintain the type of customer we’re targeting to avoid confusion. For example, we might be looking at building an app for education. If our app would serve both students and teachers, it would be a mistake to talk to only students. There would be characteristics that differ between students and teachers, and it would be important to know what those are. By continually identifying and segmenting the customer you are talking about, you can ensure the team has a shared understanding of whom you’re targeting (and whom you’re not).

Job-to-Be-Done

The job-to-be-done parameter, based on Clayton Christensen’s Jobs Theory, is the task the customer employs to reach their goal. Essentially, Christensen says that customers don’t simply use products, they hire products to complete a job for them.

For example, a customer doesn’t want a drill, they want a quarter-inch hole. Therefore, they “hire” a drill to achieve that for them. Depending on the merits of the drill they choose, it will perform that job well or poorly.

We could write an entire book on just Jobs Theory alone, but there are plenty of them already out there. For now, all you need to know is that it’s important to separate the job you’re exploring from the motivation of your customer.

Imagine we work on a website portal that helps customers find local service providers in their area. Think of services like lawncare, childcare, housecleaning, and others.

Let’s say we’re interested in improving our customers’ experience searching our website for local providers. We might ask our customers all sorts of questions, like how they use the search feature, what results they clicked on, or whether they use the site’s advanced search tools. We might conclude that our customers’ motivation is to “quickly find what they’re looking for.” However, this perspective is too general and lacks the specifics needed to make meaningful impact with the customer.

It’s true that customers want fast search results, but it’s the underlying motivations for those results that provide the insights we need to make innovative products.

For example, a customer comes to our site because he’s motivated to find quality childcare. He could “hire” our search feature and quickly receive a list of providers in his area. However, we still didn’t help him achieve his goal, because he’s unable to sort the provider satisfaction rating from highest to lowest. Effectively, he has no easy way to discern which provider offers the highest-quality care.

In this example, if we separate the job-to-be-done (searching the site) from the motivation (finding quality childcare), we could track our product’s performance against these parameters separately. This separation allows us to track multiple jobs as they relate to the customer’s motivation. Our customer may have tried searching for a provider, but he might’ve also asked for recommendations on the member forum or read through provider reviews.

We’d want to know how each of these jobs performed in helping the customer achieve his goal.

Problem

If you’re in the business of creating products, then you’re in the business of solving problems. Therefore, it’s important that you continually track the problem you’re trying to solve and continually validate that problem with customers. This will help keep your development on track and away from feature or scope creep.

To effectively use the Hypothesis Progression Framework, it’s important that you and your team become competent at writing hypotheses. Writing great hypotheses can be a bit of an art form, but with a little practice, you’ll find that you’re able to create them very quickly.

A great hypothesis: can be tested; reduces risk; is specific; separates the person from their behavior; focuses on the customer’s limitations, not your own; and can be measured. Let’s review these principles a little more closely.

A great hypothesis can be tested When you begin to test your assumptions with your customers, it’s easy to fall into a false belief that, to “win,” your assumptions must be proven right. This is an improper mindset for working and testing hypotheses. In fact: An invalidated hypothesis is just as valuable as a validated one.

We’ll repeat this, in case you didn’t read it the first time: An invalidated hypothesis is just as valuable as a validated one.

There are two positive outcomes for the results of evaluating social media strategy. If you get results that align with what you expected, then your hypothesis has been confirmed. If your results are unexpected, then you’ve made a discovery. Both outcomes are equally important.

We learn just as much when we’re proven wrong as we do when we’re proven right. In some cases, we learn more. You shouldn’t use the Hypothesis Progression Framework as a scorecard to determine which team member “has the right answers.” If you’re doing this, you’re missing the point.

The HPF should be used for continual learning and exploration. You should absolutely document when a hypothesis has been proven wrong. This will save everyone from treading on old ground or repeating the same mistakes. Create a culture that celebrates not just when a hypothesis has been validated, but also when a discovery has been made because a hypothesis has been invalidated.

A great hypothesis reduces risk

Note that when a hypothesis has been validated or invalidated, it doesn’t become fact. You should think of hypotheses as an instrument to reduce risk. If you talk with 20 customers who all validate that your hypothesis is true, then you should feel as though you have greater confidence that it is. Therefore, you must continually test your hypotheses to “de-risk” your product social media strategy. By validating or invalidating what you know to be true, you grow your understanding of what may be successful and what may not be.

A validated hypothesis is not a guarantee, it’s a window into what could possibly be true. You should prioritize accordingly. The riskier the decision you’re trying to make, the more you want to try to validate the hypothesis that supports that decision.

We should strive to have the highest possible confidence in what we know to be true before we launch. It allows us to set expectations, position our products effectively, and better predict the outcome.

A great hypothesis is specific

When working with teams, writing hypotheses for the first time, we find they try to “cast a wide net.” The belief is that if their hypotheses are applicable to more people, it stands a greater chance of being validated or invalidated. Having a nonspecific hypothesis leads to nonspecific answers. Let’s go back to our previous example: working on a website that helps customers find local services providers like lawncare, childcare, and petsitting. Let’s say we want explore why customers might use this type of website. So we decide to try to validate the following hypothesis: People want to save money on services.

There’s a high likelihood that this hypothesis will be validated. After all, who doesn’t want to save money on services?! If we chose to use the validation of this hypothesis as justification to pursue our idea, we would be on shaky ground. In a sense, all we’ve validated is that people want to save money on services, not that they want to use a website to search for service providers.

Additionally, this type of general hypothesis will lead to uninformative conversations with our customers. It doesn’t drill down to the specifics of the customer’s motivation and will generate customer feedback that is all over the map or unhelpful.

Let’s take another look at the Customer hypothesis template and see how it can be used to drive at a more specific hypothesis:

We believe [type of customers] are motivated to [motivation] when doing [job-to-be-done].

We believe working parents who have children under 12 are motivated to find quality childcare for an affordable price when searching the internet for service providers in their area.

What if we found this hypothesis to be partially invalidated? Imagine we talked to working mothers and we discovered that they didn’t trust online searches when it came to their childcare needs; instead, they often preferred to use recommendations from their family and friends. They wanted to keep their search limited to people whose opinion they valued and trusted.

However, when we talked to fathers, we found that they valued having the greatest selection of results over personal recommendations. Fathers were more concerned about “missing out” on a great childcare provider, because none of their friends or family knew about it.

That would be an important discovery. We would want to iterate our hypothesis and start tracking mothers and fathers separately:

Invalidated

We believe working mothers who have children under 12 are motivated to find quality childcare for an affordable price when searching the internet for service providers in their area.

Validated

We believe working fathers who have children under 12 are motivated to find quality childcare for an affordable price when searching the internet for service providers in their area.

This segmentation will help us continually appreciate that mothers and fathers will use our site differently when it comes to searching for childcare services. It could affect the entire strategy of our website, what features we create, and how we target (or don’t target) them to each customer segment.

That is why specific hypotheses are important. These subtle distinctions have huge consequences.

A great hypothesis separates the person from their behavior

It’s very easy to create an identity around someone’s actions or behaviors. This can lead to convoluted hypotheses that are difficult to draw specific conclusions from. It can obfuscate underlying issues and motivations that are more critical.

For example, imagine we want to create a retention program to encourage customers not to leave our website that connects them to local service providers. We call these customers “churners”; they’ve created an account and engaged with the site for a couple of weeks, but haven’t returned in over a month. We might have a hypothesis about why they haven’t returned:

We believe churners left our website because they are no longer looking for a service provider.

This seems like a legitimate reason for leaving our website; however, it’s lacking because it focuses only on the behavior of churning — not who the customers are and what motivated them to engage with us in the first place.

How old are these churners? What is their level of skill or expertise with using the internet? Where do they live or work? What was their motivation for coming to our website in the first place? Did they fail to find a provider because there wasn’t a desirable one in their area, or because the search tool was too confusing to navigate?

It’s important to resist the urge to put the behaviors you’re trying to correct (e.g., slow adoption, bad reviews, refusal to upgrade to paid service) in your hypotheses. It wraps the customer’s identity around the negative behavior and makes it difficult to understand who they are and what truly motivates them.

If our strategy were to focus only on correcting behaviors that don’t align with our business goals, we would end up distancing ourselves from our customers and fall into a combative “us verus them” mentality.

The key is to align our business goals with their goals.

A better hypothesis would be:

We believe customers who have limited knowledge of the internet find it difficult to search for providers on our website, because they don’t know what keywords can be used to narrow to produce meaningful results.

This hypothesis gets at the heart of the type of customer and the unique problem they’re having (which is resulting in churn).

If this hypothesis were validated, we could explore how we might provide keyword suggestions to help customers conduct better searches or automatically provide customers with local providers without requiring them to conduct a search at all.

A great hypothesis can be measured

Hypotheses must be measured objectively to determine their accuracy. Without these criteria, how do we know if our hypothesis has been validated or invalidated?

Imagine our goal is to help customers learn about premium features on our website. This is functionality that is available through a paid subscription. Let’s say we had a hypothesis like this:

We believe that customers using a free account are frustrated when searching for local service providers, because they need to see review comments, which are only provided through a paid subscription.

This is a good Problem hypothesis; however, what customer comments or behaviors will help us validate or invalidate whether it’s true?

To help you measure and track your hypotheses, our playbooks rely on a blend of qualitative, quantitative, and “soft” quantitative data. Let’s explore their unique differences.

Qualitative data

Effectively, this data is used to approximate or characterize your customers. It may be characteristic attributes or customer quotes that perfectly capture a common sentiment. We often say that while a picture is worth a thousand words, a direct customer quote can be worth ten thousand words.

Qualitative data helps you tell a rich and complete story that can raise your team’s customer empathy. It brings customer depth by highlighting characteristics that allow you to make an emotional connection.

Imagine you’re sharing with your leadership team something you learned from your customer development, regarding your paid subscription model.

You could say: We learned that our customers don’t find the paid subscription valuable. Or, you could share this direct quote from one of your customers:

I really don’t see the value of a paid subscription. I mean, you guys are charging a lot and most of the stuff I see here — these premium listing things — I mean, you should just be offering that for free. Look at your competitors! They offer all this stuff for free! Not only would I not pay for this, I would probably tell everyone to avoid your website, because you’re clearly trying to rip people off. Seeing this kind of makes me angry, to be honest.

Which quote do you believe would compel your leadership team to act?

As you begin to talk with customers, it’s important that you’re not simply checking boxes and adding up totals, but that you’re engaging in active listening and trying to capture their voice and unique perspectives.

These comments and quotes help enrich your data and boost your confidence that your hypothesis has been validated.

Quantitative data

During product development, we tend to rely on more traditional quantitative measures like satisfaction ratings or scores that determine intent to use. These numerical scores can be easily monitored and measured throughout your exploration.

You can certainly supplement the measurements we use in our playbooks with your own KPIs (key performance indicators), goals, or business metrics.

For example, you may have a survey asking customers to rate how valuable each of your premium subscription offerings is.

“Soft” quantitative data

“Soft” quantitative data is data that doesn’t have statistical significance. These are numbers that allow us to track if there’s a signal, without bringing in heavy formulas or statistical rigor. “Soft quant” measures are great when you’re trying to measure the effectiveness of a design iteration or the number of times a sentiment is expressed by a customer.

For example, we may decide we’re going to count the number of times customers express that a feature should be provided for free. If we talked to 10 service portal customers and 8 of them mentioned that our premium listings should be free, that would be a signal worth investigating.

Identifying measurable criteria for your hypotheses doesn’t have to be complicated. Before testing your hypotheses, you should consider the signals you think you may hear from customers to either validate or invalidate your assumptions. One of the best ways to identify these types of signals is to formulate a Discussion Guide.

Formulating a Discussion Guide

The Discussion Guide is a tool that we use, in each of our playbooks, to help formulate the types of questions we will ask customers to validate our hypotheses. What questions we ask and, more importantly, how we ask them, is a critical component of how we test our hypotheses.

Having a solid strategy, before talking with customers, is a great way to ensure you and your team come back with meaningful results. We use our Discussion Guides to help teams have a shared understanding of the questions they want to have answered. Building social media strategy guide first ensures that teams are asking the same questions, in the same way, so that their results can be compared efficiently and effectively.

Let’s go back to our example website that helps customers find service providers. Imagine we wanted to talk to customers about any negative experiences they may have had using our search engine.

If we were to ask, “What do you dislike about our search engine?” this, of course, implies that the customer disliked something. They may feel compelled to find something they didn’t like, even if they thought the overall experience was fine. Effectively, we’re biasing customers toward our conclusion that we believe something is wrong with our search engine experience. This type of question would only seek to confirm that bias, because customers may feel obligated to name something so they could properly answer our question. Here are some examples of nonleading questions that we could include in our Discussion Guide: Tell me about the last time you tried to search for a provider on our website. What was that experience like? How often are you able to successfully find a service provider you are looking for? How do you know you’ve been successful? How confident do you feel when searching our site? Do you feel like you’re able to find the best results? What makes you feel that way? Have you ever had trouble finding a provider on our website? How did that make you feel? If you could improve one thing about our search experience, what would it be?

Notice how these questions are open-ended. They don’t evoke simple yes or no answers. Our Discussion Guides are intended to evoke a conversation. You want to open the space that you’re exploring with customers and have them fill in the gaps with their own experiences and perspectives. Trust that customers will naturally talk about what matters to them, and structure your questions to help them do that.

Formulating Ideas

While we’ve emphasized the notion of formulating your assumptions into testable hypotheses and Discussion Guides, we also need a method to formulate product ideas.

As we navigate from customer development to product development, we need ways to help us generate ideas on how to effectively respond to the customer’s problem. We employ activities like “How might we?” exercises, sketching, and storyboarding to help formulate ideas at this stage.

#digitalmediastrategy

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