http://www.smac.org/about/

Title: Social Media Advertising Consortium LA Salon Invitation
Location: IPG Emerging Media Lab     5700 Wilshire Boulevard    Los Angeles, CA 90036
Link out: Click here
Description: This is a busy week! I’m also delighted to be among the panel at the Social Media Advertising Consortium LA Salon. So what else are you gonna do with your Thursday evening? Come on down!

What: Join SMAC members for a lively discussion on how agencies and brands are testing, succeeding and testing some more in social media. A panel of top brands and agencies will share insights, look at best practices, campaign successes and discuss what’s next in measurement and research. Discussion followed by networking, wine & light hors d’oeuvres.

Who:
Damon Berger, Director of Digital Marketing, 20th Century Fox
Nichole Goodyear, CEO, Brickfish
Joe Marchese, President, SV Networks
Brent Marcus, Senior Digital Strategist, IPG Emerging Media Lab
Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Chief Strategist at Weber Shandwick
Beth Mansfield, Director of Public Relations for CKE Restaurants

When: Thursday, June 24, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (PT)

Where: IPG Emerging Media Lab    5700 Wilshire Boulevard   Los Angeles, CA 90036

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Who is Social Media Advertising Consortium?
SMAC – the Social Media Advertising Consortium fosters collaboration throughout the entire social media ecosystem, diving deep into critical issues and staying ahead of this constantly evolving industry. By bringing together buy side, sell side, and research professionals to develop relevant standards, comprehensive research and definitive measurement tools, our goal is to grow revenues and increase engagement. SMAC members are groundbreakers. Entrepreneurs. Thought leaders. Together, we form a community that feeds off each other’s creativity, creating an environment for learning and discovery.
Start Time: 6:00 PM
Date: 2010-06-24
End Time: 8:00 PM

Gravity Summit: Social Media 4 Business

Title: GRAVITY SUMMIT AT UCLA SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FOR EXECUTIVES
Location: UCLA Faculty Club http://facultycenter.ucla.edu/directions.htm
Link out: Click here
Description: I am thrilled to be included among the speakers at the GRAVITY SUMMIT AT UCLA via Gravity Summit’s SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FOR EXECUTIVES

Here’s the details– Love to have you join us! Especially if you are in Los Angeles! And there’s a special guest coming, Neal Schaffer. He will be talking about how to use LinkedIn to find a job! So if you are out of work, come on down and network!

#jobchat with Neal Schaffer starts at 5

The Twitter hashtag is #gravsum

Event Details:
Tuesday June 22, 2010
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Cost $40
Register at http://www.gravitysummit.com/

WHAT: Evening Business Program on Social Media for Executives Attire:  Business Casual; Includes refreshments and executive networking

WHEN:       Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Registration Opens 5:30
6:00 – 9:00 PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY - We will start on time

WHERE:     UCLA Faculty Club, UCLA Campus
480 Charles Young Drive East , CA  90095
Hacienda Room

DIRECTIONS AND PARKING
http://facultycenter.ucla.edu/directions.htm – Parking in Lot #2 $10.00

Gravity Summit looks forward to seeing you on Tuesday evening June 22, 2010 at the UCLA Faculty Club  on the UCLA Campus in Westwood, CA for the Social Media for Executives Evening Program.  We have been called the ‘gold standard’ of Social Media conferences and look forward to meeting each and every one of you.

FEATURED SPEAKER:
Wing Lam, Founder and CEO, Wahoo’s Fish Tacos
“THE COOLEST CEO ON THE PLANET”

PANEL:    Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Chief Strategist, Weber Shandwick
Dan Webber, CIO, Avery Partners
Stephen Kruger, CEO, Interactive Buzz
Judy Mod, President, Social Executive Council; Principal, Social Gastronomy

A  very special THANK YOU to our Industry Sponsor, Social Executive Council. The Social Executive Council (SEC) is invitation-only, for executive officer (CXO) or senior executives who are the social leaders within their organizations, and for the social strategy and social media leaders (Director and Above)

AGENDA
5:30 – Registration
6:00 – Networking

6:30 – Welcome – Beverly Macy, CEO Gravity Summit
6:45 – Featured Speaker – Wing Lam, Founder and CEO Wahoo’s Fish Tacos
“The Coolest CEO on the Planet”

7:15 – Panel: Social Media in the Enterprise
Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Dan Webber, Stephen Kruger, Judy Mod

8:30 – Wrap Up
9:00 – Adjourn

**This is a private club.  There IS free wireless access.  The Twitter hashtag is #gravsum

(#jobchat with Neal Schaffer starts at 5)**

***SPECIAL NOTE:  We are a “green” seminar.  Please print (or download) and bring with you the attached AGENDA document for your reference.  ***

Start Time: 5:00 PM
Date: 2010-06-22
End Time: 9:00 PM

At F8, Facebook.com ’s developers conference in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, announced the use of plug-ins designed to embed its social networking service into third-party sites. As the FinancialTimes.com reported, “The initiative is designed to put people at the center of their web experiences by providing more meaningful connections.”

Companies might like the idea because –with the more than 400M members, Facebook’s plugins could drive a lot of traffic.

The “Like” Button

How does it work? Let’s say a Facebook user was on a website. They would be able to click on a “Like” button –on stories or products they want to share with friends. Their friends would see a pop-up window that shows their friend’s activity on the site and allows them to share comments.

As the NewYorkTimes.com story said, “It would, in essence, allow Facebook friends to enjoy those sites together.” If you want to follow some additional great coverage of F8 and other tech news, check out @benparr – he’s got the goods.

Focusing on the Big Picture of Social Business

As many of my readers know… I am very focused on the customer-facing aspects of social media. That means that I always have a keen eye towards wondering what each of the new developments will mean to companies and their ability to enhance or at least maintain their customers’ experiences — i.e., in particular their ability to deliver a quality brand-equity enhancing experience –otherwise known as customer service.

While the idea of the plug-ins theoretically sounds like a great idea… it could also lend itself to a PR nightmare. Let’s say for instance, that someone is sharing about something. And let’s say that a number of those people weighing in on that shared product or service are not too happy. What could happen is a spiraling of unhappy customers sharing their unhappy experiences.

So what can companies do as they adopt the Facebook (FB) “Like” button? Get a little satisfaction.

What do I mean by that? For many companies, their Fan Pages or in this case,  extended fan experiences are or will become a company’s “other” homepage. Companies are finding that these “fans” or customers  spend a significant amount of time on FB and thus are possibly a great way to engage their most social customers.

More Engagement Means Doing Less of “The Ostrich”

What I predict will happen, is that, as more and more companies are embedding these “Like” buttons — not only will they increase engagement… they are likely to also increase the amount of feedback. While many Facebook-type initiatives are started as a PR/Marketing effort, the social net has become a place where consumers can scream very loudly and to millions about their disdain for a company’s products, service and overall attitude towards customers.

This addition of inter-connectivity or third-party FB “Like” buttons doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t adopt the “Like” button. But it does mean that you need to be strategically ready to handle the additional customer service issues that are likely to explode.

And note that adding a “Like” button IS NOT the cause of more customer service issues. If the issues are there, they are being talked about — at the watercooler, at the cocktail party and somewhere on the internet. So its not about whether you adopt the “Like” button, its about whether you take your head out of the sand and stop doing the “ostrich.” Stop pretending that your company, its products, its services and they way it handles customer issues isn’t being talked about. It is. Start thinking strategically about how you are going to handle them.

Don’t Under Estimate The Need For Customer Service Interactions

Customers view your Facebook Fan Page-type interactions as another channel to interact with you on. And they assume that you– the brand –will be there to answer their questions, acknowledge their ideas, etc…   But companies who are not planning ahead often underestimate the need to provide service & support via the fan page-type initiatives.

I’ve worked with many PR and Marketing professionals who didn’t anticipate the amount of Customer Service they ended up doing when they interacted with customers via social media. By not planning ahead and supporting all you social media channels properly, you can essentially alienate your most social customers.

Facebook Fan Pages have roadblocks that make it hard to serve/engage customers. For instance:

• The Wall has no search function (This translates into  costly, repetitive responses)
• Information on the wall has no permanence–as engagement/activity increases the wall “turns over” faster.  (This means there is (limited exposure of valuable content to fans and companies are having to answer the same questions over and over — inefficient & ineffective… (In addition, This means that there is limited value to internal teams/systems to garner that value information and feedback to make changes, improve products and services, etc…)
• The information is “locked” inside of Facebook — ( That means no SEO, and you can’t use that information other places ([brand site for example])

What is a Company to Do? Getsatisfaction.com

Here’s what I think the real news is: Get Satisfaction has partnered with Involver to solve these problems by building an app that recreates Get Sat within the Fan Page. What does this combo provide? Here’s a couple of advantages:

• Allows users to search to see if question has already been asked (benefits both company & customer).
• Since the information is stored in the Cloud, the Fan Page content can be syndicated to other places (search engines, community on a brand page, etc…)

If Facebook is part of your social media business strategy, then you’ll want to think strategically about how all of your functional disciplines are affected. (Note: I did not say functional departments. I am encouraging clients to move away from functional silo’s and think in terms of social business.

Social business means that you are considering how all social interactions affect your company — every single person, department and especially how they manifest in your customer’s experiences.

If you want to learn more and join an interesting discussion TODAY on social business, check out the Facebook Social Engagement Hub Webinar.  Here’s a link to it:  http://bit.ly/SEH-GetSat

It’s at 11 AM PST TODAY. I’ll be there. Will you?

Luv to hear your thoughts about these new developments on Facebook and how your company is leveraging them.

Learn. Share. Grow.

Dr. Natalie

Follow me on twitter — www.twitter.com/drnatalie

GetSatisfaction.com Newest Addition: Involver

Here’s is a candid interview with Sean O’Driscoll of Ant’s Eye View:

Learn. Share. Grow!

Thanks for tuning in! Dr. Natalie

www.twitter.com/drnatalie

You can learn more about Sean at http://www.antseyeview.com/blog/

and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/seanodmvpt

Jeanne Bliss tweeted me to thank me for writing about her book. And as we got to talking, she provided me with a link to the first chapter of her book, just for you:

http://www.customerbliss.com/pdf/Chapter%201%20I%20Love%20You%20More%20Than%20My%20Dog.pdf

(may have to copy and paste the URL)

Chapter 1: Your Decisions Reveal:  Who You Are and What You Value!

It’s very generous of Jeanne to provide me a link. I hope that you take advantage of it!

The chapter starts with a quote from Walt Disney:“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

Walt Disney, The Master of the Customer Experience

Companies that are loved by their customers make decisions differently than other companies.

The common denominator, according to Jeanne, is that these companies bring consciousness and humanity to the decisions they make.  When you make decisions that respect and honor your customers, your customers will grow your business by word of mouth. They will tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

Remember that Breck Shampoo commercial back in the ’60s that used this as their tagline?

The most important thing a company can do is to form an army of cheerleaders and publicists urging their friends, neighbors, colleagues and strangers to get behind your company.

Have we ever seen this in action? Sure we have… Land’s End for instance. That’s where Jeanne started her customer experience career. The founder of Land’s End, Gary Comer, described Jeanne’s job as:  nurturing the “conscience” of the company through the decisions they made as they grew. And they experienced 20-30% grow per year. Their stand? Long-term growth was dependent on retaining their strong emotional connection with customers.

At that time, the stories customers told about Land’s End, revealed their values. They drove not only customers to the company, but also an engaged and loyal employee base. Land’ End need over 200 employee volunteers to answer all the, “I love you, Land’s End!” mail they received each month.

And have we seen this lately? Yes, at Zappos.com When Tony and Alfred started Aappos.com they didn’t have money for large advertising or marketing programs. They made the conscious decision that the way they would build and grow their business was to provide such great service, interactions and experiences, that they tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

And 2009, Amazon.com bought Zappos.com for over $922 Million.  That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it.

And its not that these types of companies are perfect. It’s not that every single interaction is perfect. What is so is that they have a huge reserve of gratitude from their customers, that if and when a mistake is made, that customers are willing to be more forgiving. Especially when that tender, loving care is how they deal with the mistake or issue.

As Jeanne would say, “The decision is yours.”

]]> http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/free-chapter-1-i-love-you-more-than-my-dog-by-jeanne-bliss/feed/ 0 http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/i-love-you-more-than-my-dog/ http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/i-love-you-more-than-my-dog/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:48:40 +0000 admin http://drnatnews.com/?p=357 Could it be that easy? Love I mean? The kind of love that you earn when you have nurtured the consciousness and congruence of the heart. Where intention and motivation match. Where you have decided to “be there.” Where you have clarity of purpose. Where you can be real.

You might think I am talking about a romantic relationship. I am. But not the kind that you might think. It’s a kind of love that is rare. That is cherished.

There is an energy that comes from being believed, from being trusted; its like coming home. We all crave it. We all desire it. We want to emulate it. When our intelligence, our creativity, our emotions and humor blend, and is acknowledged by another, we realize our full potential.

Amazing Authors: These are the words of an amazing author, Jeanne Bliss. And the title of this post is the title of her newest book. When I met Jeanne, at the Earth Cafe on Melrose, I met someone who created an indelible mark of kindness and passion that makes people want to be with her. She emulates what she writes about. She is someone you love more than your dog. (Or in my case, my cats!)

What is Jeanne’s book about? She writes about the kind of corporate America we all dream of. Of a place that we ourselves can believe in. Of a place we are seen, heard and respected. Of a place where customers are seen, heard and respected.

Book Reviews: One of the things I wanted to do in this blog is to share the amazing insights from the various authors of books that are creating the shift. So this is one of the first of many posts about amazing authors, their amazing stories and their ability to take words and fashion a story that moves from where we were to where we dream is possible.

Author Jeanne Bliss and her dogs!!

If you haven’t picked up a copy, you need to. And when you read it, don’t just read it, absorb it. Use it as a way of evaluating how you and your company does business. Ask yourself, “Do my customer’s love us more than they love their pets?” And if not, why?

Follow Jeanne on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeanneBliss

Happy New YEAR! 2010! Dr. Natalie (follow me on twitter.com/drnatalie)

Learn. Share. Grow.

Partial List of Companies In Jeanne’s Book:

1. Rackspace

2. Griffin Hospital

3. The Container Store

4. W. L. Gore

5. Zane’s Cycles

6.Trader Joe’s

7. Cutomer Ink

8. Wegman’s Food Markets

9. Chik-fil-A

10. Harley-Davidson

Is your company on this list? Or mentioned in Jeanne’s book? If not, why not? And what can you do to begin the shift towards being beloved?

Brent Leary CRM and Social CRM Expert

While I as attending Oracle OpenWorld, I had a chance to talk with Brent Leary.

In this interview, Brent shares his thoughts on social CRM, where companies are and where they need to go:

• How social CRM is lending itself to  mobile devices
• How smart phones have transformed into a business phones/ nearly mini computers
• How the rise of smart phones is forwarding social CRM
• The devices he uses, including a Flip Video camera, iPhone, Blackberry, Olympus OS10, a netbook…
• The hashtag communities on twitter and how they forward in-person meetings: establishing and connecting with people you might never have gotten to know…

Click below to listen to Brent’s insights: (the video is 6 minutes long, so it may take a minute to load):

How Smart Phones Are Driving Social Media Adoption

You can follow Brent on twitter- he is at: www.twitter.com/brentleary

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To participate in more conversations on Social CRM, follow me on twitter: drnatalie and use the Twitter hash tags: #SCRM #CustomerService #VSCRM #SocialMedia

Learn. Grow. Share.

Esteban Kolsky, Social CRM Expert

Esteban told me that his opinion on whether companies will truly become “social” depends upon their ability to collect, analyze and implement social feedback- from both employees and customers.

Most of the feedback in the social cloud is unstructured. So then the question becomes how does a company make sense of this unstructured data cloud?

Esteban gives his thoughts on:

• Enterprise feedback management – the old way and the new way- via social CRM
• The need for real-time responses to customer social interactions
• The differences between monitoring customer feedback interactions and creating actionable insight: sentiment, cost, the affect and the next steps of the company based based on the feedback and comments in the cloud
• The voice of the customer, customer experience and executive oversight of integrating these into business
• The business value of adding social customer interaction feedback to your company.

Click to hear Esteban’s thoughts on measuring the value of Social CRM: (the video is ~6 minutes long- so it takes a minute to load… but be patient… its worth the wait…)

Esteban Kolsky on Measuring the Value of Social CRM

You can follow Esteban on twitter: he is at http://www.twitter.com/ekolsky

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To participate in more conversations on Social CRM, follow me on twitter: drnatalie and use the Twitter hash tags: #SCRM #CustomerService #VSCRM #SocialMedia

Learn. Grow. Share.

Anil Dewan, Director of New Media, KCRW

While at the 140tc  Conference in Los Angeles, I had the honor to interview KCRW’s Anil Dewan, Director of New Media and learn how they are using social media to attract fans,  interact with them and serve them better!

You can follow him on Twitter at @AnilDewan and you can follow KCRW on Twitter @KCRW.

Here’s the interview with Anil…

Here’s a snapshot of KCRW’s website page on “how to interact with us using social media sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.”

KRCW's social networking website page

This gives those that are not familiar with social media clear information on how to become a social interaction fan of KCRW.

How to Connect With KCRW on Facebook

KCRW's instructions on how to connect with them on MySpace

KCRW's Twitter Page