Close the Loop and Win!

One of the latest old/new techniques being purported across the netisphere currently revolves around surveys. 

Numerous emarketers are driving webinars relating to this hot topic.

This current drive brings up an old school methodology from Public Relations that is quite relevant and needed in all marketing endeavors and that is "feedback."

Mike Long of Magic fame is presently launching his Area51 marketing group.  All of which offers throughout a steady availability of feedback screens as you access and view his many informative videos relating to emarketing tactics and business building strategies.

Mike has emphasized the relevance of his consumers feedback in the creation and deployment of future endeavors.  User feedback gives Mike and others like him a real time view of user opinion and desires.  It enables his group to drive products and services that are currently relevant to his primary customer base.  It also enables him to develop new future project concepts based on questions or responses he receives.

One of the keys to his strategy is that he and his company actually monitor real time these questions and feedback posts.  Why?  Because they are the clearest view of the mind of your most critical asset; your customer.

I applaud Mike's use and dedication to this strategy and know this critical feedback loop is pivotal in his long term business development.

So why would a company launching an online social campaign care about what their users are saying?  As I stated above without listening to your customers you lose out on important relevant topics, ideas, planning and business development opportunities.  

A tertiary use of these comments and questions may also define a more rabid user group within your greater mass database.  consumers who identify with a specific brand are far more likely to take time to share, question and dialogue with companies they feel passionately about.  These may become your greatest advocates and best fiscal supporters if you listen, react, communicate and answer. 

Close the loop to stay in touch and build a broader connection to your greatest supporters and customers.

Here's To Your Success!

 

Kenneth "socialFIEND" Knapp 

CEO, socialFIEND.com

How to Build Rapport But Avoid Becoming a WII FM Bore, “What’s in it for me radio all me all the time.”

Hi, Nick Cutter with Sharper Knives and Shears. You bust’em or rust’em we bring back the edge with pleasure. Sounds corny yes… You probably haven’t heard a pitch like this come out of a network contact at a chamber event but you have heard some doozeys over the years.

Many marketers will attempt one of two tactics while networking:

1.Present their pitch, exchange cards and move on for future follow up
2.Open conversation in an attempt to get you talking about you to make you feel like they care and are a good listener... This is an attempt to build trust.

But there is another way to build rapport without making others feel like you are being fake or too pushy in your efforts to build your referral database.

I’d like to offer an approach with a different tact that might simply fit a normal mode of conversational style we are all accustom to.

How many times have you sat on a plain, train, bus or subway and opened a conversation with someone sitting immediately next to you? We do it all the time. You know the moment that uncomfortable silence falls on a situation where you are very close to another human being almost sharing your comfort zone buffer and then it happens Out pops a question or comment. It’s really an invitation to dialogue. That allows the receiver to accept or deny.

Wow could this train take any longer to load? I guess I’ll be in the office fifteen minutes late as usual then they respond: Ya it’s like this all the time. You’d think the city would figure a way to get us to work on time for once. BAM! You’ve done it. You just broke the ice and have opened a mutually beneficial conversation with an unknown contact. You are networking! You have also built a sense of trust given their response, you both think the trains in your city have a scheduling and management problem and it bugs you. Rapport is building in just one exchange; you found out you are similar in at least one way, and you have a common problem.

So how does this relate to networking? Good question. When we network we seek like minded individuals who may improve or enhance our professional lives in some way. Perhaps we need referral partners to build revenue-generating business, or we need solution providers to enhance our pool of resources to your customer base. Whatever the case might be we need an active database of professionals who if given the chance would think of us, assist us on a mutually beneficial project and perhaps use our product or service if the need arises.

Basically we are looking for people we find interesting and like to talk. Overtime that like and enjoyment of corresponding may end up in a business relationship. We are looking ultimately to invest ourselves in others for our mutual long-term benefit.

So why do most networking groups teach their members to create a standard pitch? First I think the pitch is good if presented in the right way as a group introduction at event to allow listeners to label you as a certain type of professional or when used only to answer a question. And not used to open a dialogue with total strangers.

RULE #1: Don’t maintain a WII FM mentality. It’s a fact human nature tends to put our needs above the needs of others. And some truly focus on the ONE way too much. Generally those types of professionals are easy to spot. Don’t be one of them.

RULE #2: Give, Ask, Receive. So what is Give, Ask, Receive. Here’s how it breaks down (this is greatly over simplified):

GIVE a compliment or note something special about the new contact

ASK them an appropriate question that leads them into an open honest dialogue

RECEIVE usable information to build a trust building dialogue that leads to a business card or information exchange that has merit, trust and meaning.

Think about your natural behavior in public. Have you ever stood in line, waited for a plain for more than an hour with a group of other people? What happens? Over time you naturally lower your guard and seek out human contact. Over the course of minutes or hours a relationship develops that makes you feel at ease and more comfortable with your surroundings. You get a laugh, ease some tension and pass sometime. You build rapport.

This is a prime example of human nature and our desire to connect with the people and world around us. We want to share in this ride we call life.

So instead of shoving a boring 30-second pitch down someone’s throat employ a Give, Ask, Receive tactic in your interactions and watch your referral database grow.


In pursuit of happiness,

Kenneth Knapp
Founder/CEO
socialFIEND.com

Social Communities are our personal declarations of independence!

“Give me liberty or give me death exclaimed,” Patrick Henry in the presence of our country’s for fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. Is it coincidence the social networking site Freindster.com founder, Jonathan Abrams also launched his social liberation brain child in March 2002 some 227 years after Patrick Henry’s historical call to arms?

There was a time in human history before 2002 when global media conglomerates spoon fed audiences programming and advertising straight into their living rooms. Not knowing better American’s gobbled up these visions of dreamy existence, perfect lives, shiny cars, and magical products.

Over time however the status quo tired of being told what to wear, to listen to and what to think.

Then came a new dawn, an era of interconnected intelligence and data; an intricate network of human consciousness; of free unbridled information. Over time these interconnected masses of stored knowledge were made accessible to billions worldwide. Friendster.com sent the call to arms against mass media and content control. The era of consumer generated media and content development was born!

The “information age” was born again after 2002 and human beings began claiming their stakes in a world where they would now dictate for themselves what was relevant, powerful, persuasive, interesting and meaningful.

But why is this need for individuality so strong in our nature. Why must we seek to be free, liberated, respected beings with purpose and creative agency to express ourselves?

Les Giblin once wrote…
“Whatever name you want to give it – “human dignity,” “personality,” or what-not—there is something deep in the heart of every man and woman that is important and demands respect. Every human being is a unique, individual personality, and the most powerful drive in any person is to maintain this individuality, to defend this important something against all enemies.

This is why you cannot treat people as machines, as numbers on a register, or as “masses,” and get by with it. Every effort that has been made to deprive human beings of this individual worth has failed. It is more powerful than armies and prison camps. It proved more powerful than the feudal lords who tried to turn people into serfs. It proved more powerful than Hitler’s armies. And it set the stage for our own “land of the free”; for the Declaration of Independence, if you read if carefully, is really a declaration of independence for the individual. It derives its power not because it sets out certain rights for a certain group of men, but from the fact that it proclaims certain inalienable rights for ‘all men.’”

Today we experience Friendster, FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Second Life and hundreds of other ever proliferating niche social communities where community members are sharing,, chatting, blogging, linking, nudging, poking, thinking, growing the network by adding their personal perspective to every post, online relationship, image, video, article, story, twitter and flake. Social communities are independent and dynamic and so are the residual relationships that develop as interaction in these networks grows.

We sit today at the precipice of a new realization… The call to arms has sounded and you are beckoned to heed the call to join the revolution. Social communities give everyone the right to share their voice, their vision and their influence on what interconnected communications and technologies will be over time.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Welcome to liberation! Enjoy your pursuit of happiness today!

Kenneth Knapp
Founder/CEO
SocialFIEND.com