Latest Blog Posts
Do Social Reviews Really Help Your Business? @SocialEmployee #book #review
Do reviews actually help your brand attract customers? We already know that people really trust peer-to-peer social recommendations, but does that extend to the realm of product reviews? This is a question we asked ourselves repeatedly during the marketing of our best-selling book The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, 2014). We knew that good word of mouth was helping to drive book sales, but how much of that came from reviews on sales pages like Amazon? Did these reviews affect buying decisions at all, or were they simply there to boost our egos? While we may never know specifically what kind of affect these reviews had on our sales, the general answer is that social reviews are very important to your brand and product offerings. Here are the numbers: Eighty-one percent of people research products, and 61 percent read reviews, before buying (source: MineWhat). Customers read between 1 and 10 reviews before purchasing—and 82 percent actively seek out negative reviews to get a more complete picture of the product (source: PowerReviews). Nearly 90 percent of people say they consult reviews at least occasionally to make purchase decisions (source: Entrepreneur). Not only do people prefer having ready access to products reviews, but the quality and volume of those reviews can affect your search engine results as well. The more reviews about you, the more likely you are to show up in search queries. Of course, there are some nuances to how brands get reviews and prospective customers interpret them, so let’s take a look at couple basic considerations for good product reviews. Are Too Many 5-Star Reviews Bad? As we say so often here at Blue Focus Marketing (@BlueFocus), authenticity rules the day in the digital bazaar—and sometimes customers’ quest for it can manifest in remarkable ways. According to recent data from Northwestern University’s Spiegel Digital & Database Research Center, too many five-star reviews for a product or service can actually steer people away from your product. At first glance, this seems counter-intuitive. After all, if your product has tons of perfect ratings, it must be the real deal, right? Well, not really. Unfortunately, there will always be people looking to cut corners, and plenty of services exist for buying reviews, followers or anything else to boost visibility. The good news is that people are pretty savvy these days. They know that some people will cook the books on their product reviews, and as a result the perfect five-star review has become a little bit of a red flag of in-authenticity. So while it may feel counter-intuitive to some, it’s actually good to get a few two-, three- or four-star reviews thrown into the mix because it shows that your products are being reviewed by real people. According to the Northwestern University data, products with reviews between 4.2 and 4.5 stars get the most purchases. So although those negative reviews can bruise the ego, they’re nothing to lose sleep over—and can actually help your sales. The Reviews Must Be Valuable Whether one star or five, reviews are supposed to be helpful to others considering a purchase decision. So whether you liked the product or not, it’s up to you to explain why. Good reviews provide context, explaining either the merits or drawbacks of a product—or both—and why these elements led to the...
read moreThe Possibilities of a Moment: Reflections on #IBMConnect 2016 #tech
In every aspect of our lives, digital has redefined how we experience the world. When we cook, we use apps like Allrecipes to guide us along. When we’re out with friends, coworkers, or business associates, we pose for pictures using the built-in camera on our smartphones and send the images across our social networks. When we need transportation or tickets to an event, we pull up apps like Über or Fandago to facilitate our requests. If there’s something we need to get done, there’s a digital solution ready to take care of it. The digital experience makes us smarter, more connected, and more efficient. And at an electric event like this year’s IBM Connect 2016, the digital experience is an essential tool for anyone hoping to keep up with all the many exciting conversations, panels, and presentations during the four-day event. Unable to make a panel? Just wait for video of the event to go up on a company blog! Everywhere at Connect, there was something new to take in around every corner. Make Every Moment Count The mantra for the conference was a simple, powerful directive, actively embodied by IBM GM of Enterprise Social Solutions Jeff Schick: make every moment count. And when I saw everything IBM was doing to make that concept a reality, I couldn’t help but feel a tremendous sense of optimism for the future of workplace engagement—and the social employee. Everywhere at the conference was an acute focus on the digital experience and individualized employee engagement. Driving these efforts is IBM’s revolutionary Watson technology, which is being applied to help employees engage and collaborate in surprising new ways—all while allowing businesses to grow data and create new business value that would have been both unaffordable and unimaginable even a few years ago. Innovation from Moment to Moment One of my most memorable encounters was a private tour of Design Studio with other prominent analysts and IBM influencers. During the tour, I had a chance to preview IBM’s Innovation Lab products, such as Enterprise Cognitive Assistants, with IBM’s Matt David demonstrating how artificial intelligence can improve the efficiency and social connectivity of employees using data, behavior, and context, enabling the assistant to provide the right information at the right time. These processes were also showcased in Jeff Schick’s demonstration of Verse, an enterprise communications platform designed to improve workflow and prioritization. I also had an opportunity to attend The Future of Work session, which included speakers Heidi Ambler, Suzanne Livingston, and Luis Benitez. So what is the future of work? At IBM, their vision begins with a simple, employee-driven directive: Give employees less work and more collaborative tools, support a cohesive experience, and build tools that facilitate communication both inside and outside the organization. This could be said to be the social business equivalent to the ages-old philosophy to work smarter, not harder—a perfect compliment to IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative. Magical Moments After the Future of Work session, I joined Heidi Ambler and Suzanne Livingston at the annual Women’s Executive Lunch, hosted by Katrina Troughton. The experience was warm and engaging, full of great conversation and insights from some of the best and brightest in social business. It was a great pleasure moving from table to table listening what all these powerful women had to...
read moreHow SocialStudent Improves Engagement and Collaboration @KatyTroughton #IBMConnection #education
What is IBM doing to help empower students to better engage, collaborate, and take a leading role in the social age? This is the question Katrina Troughton, General Manager, IBM Social and Smarter Workforce Solution, addressed during a panel at the 2016 IBM Connect Conference in Orlando, Florida. During the panel, Troughton spoke with Professor Peter Cardon of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, along with students Bree Mayer and Jamie Winger, about their participation in the IBM-sponsored SocialStudent Competition. The goal of SocialStudent was to provide participants with a real-world collaborative environment similar to the ones they’re likely to experience once they’ve graduated and entered the workforce. Using IBM-based tools, students from USC, the University of Arizona, and Aalto University engaged in a virtual platform to collaborate on a series of predefined deliverables for the team project. During the panel, Professor Cardon appeared especially pleased with the competition, speaking to the urgent need for emerging graduates to not only learn the tools and processes necessary for collaboration, but to develop a mindset more open and accustomed to these social best practices. Check out the SocialStudent homepage to learn more about the program and where it can go from here. To see what participating students had to say, check out the video below: Good Food, Good Conversation Also while at IBM Connect, I was able to attend the Women’s Executive Lunch, also hosted by Katrina Troughton. Just like last year, the event was a great opportunity to meet with many of the prominent women in social business, to hear their thoughts on what the coming year has in store, and to discuss the growing presence of women in leadership roles at forward-thinking companies such as IBM. It was a great pleasure moving from table to table hearing what all these women had to say. And the even certainly was timely, with recently released research from the Peterson Institute finding that businesses with greater gender diversity earn greater profits. Truly, such findings underscore key principles of social business, that broader collaborative engagement leads to improved business outcomes—and not just with women, but with diverse members of the digital bazaar from around the globe. Does SocialStudent sound like a promising step forward to you? What do you think of the Peterson Institute’s findings? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Also, don’t forget to check out my other post on IBM Connect 2016, where I highlight the work Jeff Schick is doing to reimagine communication and collaboration. Below are recent endorsements for The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, August 2013) by Tom Peters and David Aaker on their social networks, but if you want to see more of their endorsements click here. In The Social Employee, we go behind the scenes with several leading brands—such as IBM, AT&T, Dell, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, Cisco, Acxiom, and Domo—pulling the lid off the inspiring social business success stories that have propelled these companies into the 21st century. These cutting-edge brands have all come to the same realization: the path to social business lies through empowering the social employee. See what others are saying about The Social Employee and order your copy today! Please check out @SocialEmployee media buzz! “Great brands have always started on the inside, but why...
read more@KatyTroughton Shows How SocialStudent Improves Engagement and Collaboration #IBMConnection #education
What is IBM doing to help empower students to better engage, collaborate, and take a leading role in the social age? This is the question Katrina Troughton, General Manager, IBM Social and Smarter Workforce Solution, addressed during a panel at the 2016 IBM Connect Conference in Orlando, Florida. During the panel, Troughton spoke with Professor Peter Cardon of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, along with students Bree Mayer and Jamie Winger, about their participation in the IBM-sponsored SocialStudent Competition. The goal of SocialStudent was to provide participants with a real-world collaborative environment similar to the ones they’re likely to experience once they’ve graduated and entered the workforce. Using IBM-based tools, students from USC, the University of Arizona, and Aalto University engaged in a virtual platform to collaborate on a series of predefined deliverables for the team project. During the panel, Professor Cardon appeared especially pleased with the competition, speaking to the urgent need for emerging graduates to not only learn the tools and processes necessary for collaboration, but to develop a mindset more open and accustomed to these social best practices. Check out the SocialStudent homepage to learn more about the program and where it can go from here. To see what participating students had to say, check out the video below: Good Food, Good Conversation Also while at IBM Connect, I was able to attend the Women’s Executive Lunch, also hosted by Katrina Troughton. Just like last year, the event was a great opportunity to meet with many of the prominent women in social business, to hear their thoughts on what the coming year has in store, and to discuss the growing presence of women in leadership roles at forward-thinking companies such as IBM. It was a great pleasure moving from table to table hearing what all these women had to say. And the even certainly was timely, with recently released research from the Peterson Institute finding that businesses with greater gender diversity earn greater profits. Truly, such findings underscore key principles of social business, that broader collaborative engagement leads to improved business outcomes—and not just with women, but with diverse members of the digital bazaar from around the globe. Does SocialStudent sound like a promising step forward to you? What do you think of the Peterson Institute’s findings? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Also, don’t forget to check out my other post on IBM Connect 2016, where I highlight the work Jeff Schick is doing to reimagine communication and collaboration. Below are recent endorsements for The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, August 2013) by Tom Peters and David Aaker on their social networks, but if you want to see more of their endorsements click here. In The Social Employee, we go behind the scenes with several leading brands—such as IBM, AT&T, Dell, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, Cisco, Acxiom, and Domo—pulling the lid off the inspiring social business success stories that have propelled these companies into the 21st century. These cutting-edge brands have all come to the same realization: the path to social business lies through empowering the social employee. See what others are saying about The Social Employee and order your copy today! Please check out @SocialEmployee media buzz! “Great brands have always started on the inside, but why...
read moreAt #IBMConnect, @Jeff Schick Demos #IBMVerse and Unveils #ProjectToscana IBM #SocBiz
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the IBM Connect Conference 2016 in Orlando, Florida. As was the case the year before, the event was a whirlwind of activity, with exciting conversations and fascinating new tools to be discovered around every corner. From the time we first began writing The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill) to this year’s event, I have seen firsthand the vision IBM has for the future of business—and it begins with employee engagement. This theme echoed throughout the conference halls. With more and more data coming out demonstrating the power of social employee engagement and collaboration, even social business leaders like IBM have showed a renewed focus in their efforts. At the forefront of the this new social employee push is Jeff Schick, GM Enterprise Social Solutions, who said, “More engaged employees lead to more engaged customers—and more successful organizations. They can achieve things that are simply remarkable.” Working Smarter with IBM Verse Schick brought this message with him as he discussed two exciting new IBM initiatives. The first was IBM Verse, which Schick described as a revolutionary tool for the “era of cognitive business.” At the core of the Verse concept is workflow and collaboration made simpler. Employees at any company have a variety of notification and messaging tools at their disposal, but these tools rarely add up to a unified, intuitive experience. With Verse, IBM offers organizations an all-in-one tool for communication, content sharing, and scheduling—and all powered by Watson. Verse combines analytics and user behaviors to help anticipate what’s important to you. It helps you focus on what you need to know and whom you need to talk to—and tunes out the stuff that’s not as important. The platform achieves this through a variety of features, but at its core is the ability to create project groups among your coworkers. Once created, relevant team members are accessible with a click, each with a digital summary of what they have worked on together and links to useful content shared between the two. An action center keeps workers updated on project and file changes as well, accelerating sharing and eliminating redundant or duplicate project files. You can watch the full presentation in the video below: Introducing Toscana Schick also unveiled another IBM project aimed reimagining collaborative workspaces called Toscana. While still in development, what Verse will do for e-mail communication, Toscana will do for collaboration spaces. When it’s time to get down to work, Toscana will be employees’ go-to platform, providing interfaces for simplified messaging and conferencing, a shared file library, and extensive mobile support. But here’s where Toscana will really shine. The platform is designed to easily integrate with IBM’s existing Connections architecture, enabling users to draw data from across the Connections platform and integrate into the Toscana workspace. And with Verse also on the way, this one-two punch of enterprise offerings is sure to reaffirm IBM’s status as a global leader in employee engagement and connectivity. If these platforms are a sign of things to come for IBM, I can’t wait to see what they unveil to stakeholders at next year’s conference. Were you at the 2016 Connect Conference? Share your experiences in the comments below! Below are recent endorsements for The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, August 2013) by Tom Peters and David...
read moreJoin Wharton’s 6th Annual Super Bowl Tweet Meet Feb 7 #WhartonFoA #SuperBowl #SuperBowl50
Honored to be an invited Wharton Future of Advertising Tweet Meet panelist for 6 consecutive years. It’s that time of year! We have a lot of fun tweeting commentary before, during, and after the game using #whartonfoa – as much or as little as your real world party festivities allow – to reflect on how advertisers are leveraging the big game and delivering on what advertising could and should be as we look to the future. The Basics: Use the #whartonfoa hashtag to appear on the live tweet stream on the WFoA website Start any time – pre- and post-game tweets are highly encouraged And at the end, pick the winner(s)… and not so winner(s)…along with your rationale...
read moreAMA #ContentMarketing Workshop Coming to Chicago Mar 3-4 #Content
I am proud to announce that, on March 3 and 4, 2016, I will be delivering an AMA Content Marketing workshop in Chicago. It is still early in 2016, and your need to create or fine-tune a powerful Content Marketing Strategy is more important than ever. This workshop includes key strategic elements from brainstorming and storytelling to content distribution, and team structure to ROI — in a highly interactive format. Today’s prospective buyers have greater access to consumer information than ever before, and they are using it to make informed purchase decisions. Is the right content reaching your audience at the right time in the right place and in the right stage of their decision journey? “Content Marketing is all the Marketing that’s Left.” – Seth Godin People have shorter attention spans and we are all becoming more visual. Now is the time for brands to develop and deploy an effective content marketing strategy. I have delivered this workshop across the country many times to dozens of attendees who recognized the need to pick up their game. Discover how your brand can benefit from content marketing. Learn to create and publish marketing content across all relevant touch points where your brand interacts with customers. Create a content marketing blueprint that meets your customer’s informational needs, drives leads, and helps to achieve the revenue goals of your company. #THINKCONTENTMARKETING CONTENT DRIVES THE ULTIMATE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE From the AMA: This workshop will focus on how to create and leverage the myriad forms of content to promote businesses, retain customers, influence word of mouth, close the decision gap on prospects and leverage content as a brand differentiator. Learn to deliver great content in the right forms and places, and in a way that is specifically mapped to your audience’s information needs and buying stages. “Traditional Marketing Talks at People. Content Marketing Talks with Them.” — Doug Kessler Here are the details >>> What: Content Marketing 2016 with Mark Burgess Place: Summit Executive Centre, 205 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60601 When: March 3 and 4, 2016 – 8am to 4pm each day Previous article written for the American Marketing Association’s Elevate blog: “Periscope is Ushering in the Coming Content Renaissance.” http://blog.ama.org/periscope-is-ushering-in-the-coming-content-renaissance/ Follow me on Twitter...
read more[VIDEO] Why Is Social Leadership So Important? #Leadership #HR #EmployeeEngagement
![[VIDEO] Why Is Social Leadership So Important? #Leadership #HR #EmployeeEngagement](http://bluefocusmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Why-is-social-leadership-so-important-F-1024x430.png)
The conversation around social media and the workplace is evolving at a rapid pace. In the early part of the decade, everyone was focused on the concept of the social business. Another realization soon followed: In order to have a social business, you have to have social employees. But while an essential tenet of social employee culture is individual empowerment, having a well-positioned mentor or two certainly can’t hurt. Enter the social leader, the player/coach ready to show their fellow employees how to engage in the digital bazaar, build a personal brand, and use internal communication tools to both inspire and collaborate with their coworkers. As the saying goes, the best way to learn is to do—and the social leader is the embodiment of this philosophy. Here’s how it works: As demonstrated by our work with the Economist Intelligence Unit and IBM, social leadership is a foundational concept to us at Blue Focus Marketing (@BlueFocus). Social engagement—whether with internal or external stakeholders—is at its core an experience-based process. Theory and best practices help, but the real learning comes in the application of this knowledge. This is what makes social leaders so important. They’ve scouted ahead, taken the risks, and established winning practices for others to learn by example. They’re the ideal guides, opening doors and offering counsel, but letting aspiring social employees take the lead on their own. The best social leaders: Ask questions. Yes, social leaders are coaches at their core, but how do you coach if you don’t know what your players need to learn? Good social leaders are naturally curious. They want to know what concerns others have on the social adoption curve so that they can focus their expertise in particular areas. Start conversations. Answering a pressing question is always helpful, but more important for skills acquisition and critical thinking is putting that question into a larger conversation. Then, within this conversation, they can share their experiences, the questions they had, and the solutions they came up with. Then they will open the conversation to their communities. What would others do in the same situation? Is there a better way to do things? Seeks mentors. The social ecosystem is only growing. There is a lot to learn, and while no one can possibly become an expert in all of it, social leaders want to know as much as they can, and they will seek out the brightest stars in order to find them. As they say, if you’re the smartest person in the room, find a different room. The best social leaders are both learners and teachers, seeking places where they can build their knowledge and then share that knowledge with others. What is your organization doing to build social leaders? Share your thoughts on social leadership in the comments...
read moreExperiencing a Brand’s Customer Experience Firsthand #Rutgers
Rutgers Graduate MBS students IKEA field trip On September 23, 2015, for my Rutgers University graduate class in Market Assessment and Analysis, I was pleased to orchestrate a trip for 35 students in the MBS Master of Business & Science program. The students participated in a unique project that included a local field trip to global retailer IKEA. The field trip was part of course requirements to complete a semester-long project to analyze the renowned brand’s customer experience (CX) strategy. The project also includes an analysis of the company’s digital and social marketing strategy and content marketing approach, and recommendations for how IKEA could best meet its marketing objectives. The final project will include identification of key metrics to track performance and business results. The in-store IKEA customer experience played a major role in the analysis as students assumed the role of marketing consultants to observe and assess the brand’s overall presentation from the ground up. What Is Customer Experience (CX)? Customer experience is the process of providing an unforgettable experience to your customers at every touch point—online, on the phone, on social media, and in person. It is the realization that, as the CX thought leaders at Sprinklr put it, “Your brand isn’t your company. It isn’t your marketing message. It isn’t even your product. It is the sum of your customers’ experience at every brand touchpoint. Because of this, understanding the CX is essential to modern marketing, as it teaches students that a brand’s strength comes not from a single element, but in how all those elements work together to create a unifying whole. Driving this point home was the idea that any customer experience is a work in progress. While brands such as IKEA have worked tirelessly to build a strong CX over the years, they would likely be the first to admit that there’s always room for improvement. And with this in mind, my students were more than willing to engage in the exercise. The field trip portion of the assignment focused on evaluation of the in-store portion of IKEA’s customer experience. The students’ final project will include creation of a customer journey map to help them understand, explain, and recommend improvements to the existing customer experience. After observing the CX from the customer’s perspective and identifying key customer pain points, the student teams are in a better position to recommend improvements in customer experience design. For more information, send an email to: psminfo@dceo.rutgers.edu or call 848-445-5117. Information sessions are run throughout the year. Please visit the Master of Business & Science page. Where Science Meets Business: The Master of Business and Science Degree The Master of Business and Science (MBS) degree is an innovative science master’s degree at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The MBS degree is part of the national movement of Professional Science Master’s (PSM) programs that brings together master’s level study in science, mathematics, or engineering with “plus” courses in business and policy. Science concentrations include: Agriculture & Food, Engineering, Life Sciences, Computer & Information Sciences, Health & Wellness, Math & Statistics, and Sustainability. The Master of Business and Science Degree (MBS) is a professional master’s level science degree combining applied science and technology curricula with targeted business courses. Source: MBS | Master of Business & Science. http://www.mbs.rutgers.edu ...
read more[New Video – New Thinking on Social Employees] What’s In It For Me? #WIIFM #HR
![[New Video – New Thinking on Social Employees] What’s In It For Me? #WIIFM #HR](http://bluefocusmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Whats-In-It-For-Me.jpg)
[VIDEO] “What’s In It for Me?” Use the Win/Win to Unlock the #SocialEmployee #WIIFM For many in today’s plugged-in social workforce, it’s not enough to be content with simply getting the job done. Today’s employees want to know that what they’re doing is both valuable to the company and beneficial to their careers. And with the average worker changing jobs 12–15 times in their lifetime, it’s easy to see why this “what’s in it for me?” (#WIIFM) attitude has become so prevalent in the workforce. The #WIIFM question can also be leveraged into a powerful win/win scenario for both brand and employee. How? Simply put, when employees understand the value of a task or project, they are more motivated to not only do their job, but also to excel at it. We are proud to share our latest video, “What’s in It for Me?”, to demonstrate how this might play out in the workplace: As we demonstrate in our best-selling book, The Social Employee (2013), the organizations that know how to engage their employees produce the most value both for their business and for their workforce. Here are some tips to master the #WIIFM and help your employees excel: Give employees opportunities to learn new skills. Providing opportunities for active social learning creates not only a happier workforce, but also a more skilled one. Further, it can also help your organization identify skilled leaders and teachers within your ranks. Provide regular feedback. Organizations like Adobe have begun replacing outdated annual review and “rank and yank” systems with regular employee check-ins. This allows employees greater opportunities to learn and improve and reduces the chances of a project going offtrack or over-budget. Incentivize achievement. A recent Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey of millennials found that career advancement opportunities and incentivization were the top two factors in attracting today’s top employees. Make sure a job well done is noticed and rewarded, or watch your brightest stars seek opportunities elsewhere. What is your organization doing to answer the #WIIFM question? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Below are recent endorsements for The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, August 2013) by Tom Peters and David Aaker on their social networks, but if you want to see more of their endorsements click here. In The Social Employee, we go behind the scenes with several leading brands—such as IBM, AT&T, Dell, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, Cisco, Acxiom, and Domo—pulling the lid off the inspiring social business success stories that have propelled these companies into the 21st century. These cutting-edge brands have all come to the same realization: the path to social business lies through empowering the social employee. See what others are saying about The Social Employee and order your copy today! Please check out @SocialEmployee media buzz! “Great brands have always started on the inside, but why are companies taking so long to leverage the great opportunities offered by internal social media? . . . The Social Employee lifts the lid on this potential and provides guidance for businesses everywhere.” —JEZ FRAMPTON, Global Chairman and CEO, Interbrand The Social Employee offers an unparalleled behind-the-scenes look at the social business success stories of some of the biggest brand names in the business world, including IBM, AT&T, Dell, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, Cisco, Acxiom, and Domo. These cutting-edge...
read more
