Received this LinkedIn note about 1/3 of my contacts having changed jobs or titles in 2010. Not only it’s clever of them to show me pictures – we’re a visual society, vs. simply their names – many of which most of us can’t remember or connect to the right person / context, but each is a hyperlink to their profile. This is right up there with "call your mother on holidays." But I love the question at the bottom of the page – What DID You do in 2010? and a clear, logical call to action – Let Your Connections Know.

From: LinkedIn 2010 Review

Date: January 18, 2011 9:27:31 AM EST

To: David Nour

Subject: David, 413 of your connections changed jobs in 2010.

 

David, 2010 was a year of change. 413 of your LinkedIn connections started something new. Here are a few of them:             See Beth’s new job! » Where is Edward "Ted"? » And MICHAEL? » What did you do in 2010? Let your connections know.

© 2011, LinkedIn Corporation

Sociologists call this being "ambient aware" – the more you know about your portfolio of relationships, the more proactively it helps you manage those relationships. So, here are a handful of questions for you to ask yourself:

1. How well do you really know your "connections" in LinkedIn, "Friends" in Facebook, or "Followers in Twitter?" Amazing that we’ll connect with anyone – regardless of whether we know them or not, respect, trust, or value them or not. I actually heard a presenter tout that he can help you get a 1000 LinkedIn connections in just a couple of hours!! Really? Where do I sign up? Needless to say, I’m no longer involved with the organization who actually thinks this yahoo will add value to its members!
2. Are you using social networks consistently, intently, and strategically – as part of your broader marketing gravity / relationship development efforts? I used LinkedIn for my most trusted relationships. If you want to simply connect with me, let’s do that on Facebook (facebook.com/davidnour, and if you simply want to hear of my thought leadership, follow me on Twitter (@davidnour).
3. How are you listening, engaging, and influencing your most valuable relationships via social networks? The worst thing you can do on social networks is to sell – it unequivocally turns everyone off. The best thing you can do is to listen to their ideas, engage them in a unique perspective, and influence their thinking and call to action.

Would love to hear your perspective on dos and don’t on social networks…

David

Somehow people are surprised that my recommendations work!

A kind note from a recent audience member.

Best,

David

Great advice….

David

LinkedIn just launched a new feature where you can follow key developments in a company’s profile.

Are you following your current or prospective clients?

Who’s following your company and how can you engage them in a relationship?

I’m humbled by what I learn on various social networking platforms every day!

Best,

David

Another satisfied customer – let’s see, that’s 5 copies of the RE book sold so far…

As a follow up to my last blog post on be good at what you do and be visible,

…and back up your visibility with consistent performance! Remember, performance trumps all. Expert first – speaker second!

The changing dynamics in buyer behavior will force many organizations to engage and influence their current and prospective customers very differently in the “new norm” of 2010 and beyond.  Marketing will have to focus much more proactively on one-to-one relationships (as advocated by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers of Peppers & Rogers Group in the early 90s – talk about being ahead of your time!) whether on the corporate website/blog, or a multitude of social networks.

The organizations of 2010 and beyond must become much more astute in how they identify and respond to the ever fluid market dynamics.  In short, they have to learn to engage and influence more and mass broadcast less, participate in communities, set up LinkedIn groups and Facebook fan pages, read blogs and respond to tweets, create conversations, and share photos – in short, Listen Louder! In many ways, social networks are changing the rules of influence and engagement.

Lead ranking, exponential value of listening (often an art) in a dialog vs. mass broadcasting, and quantifiable output in supporting the sales pipeline, will point to the marketing organization’s true efficiency and effectiveness.  This will be far more “hands-on” and at the edge of the business (read: a contact sport) than many marketers are comfortable being involved in (read: a spectator sport today).  Furthermore, marketing’s role must expand from the preliminary prospect perception and motivation, all the way through the buying lifecycle and post sale, customer experience.  We believe marketing has even a longer-term accountability in the retention and profitable mindshare and wallet share growth of a strong customer lifetime value (LTV).

Sales organizations must focus on a greater education across a wide audience, where the recommendations of a fellow user / participant far outweigh that of traditional advertising of the product or service value proposition.  The buyers are doing a great deal of their research prior to engaging a vendor.  If you’re not on their radar in the research phase, you certainly won’t be there in the decision process.  You’re now working in a Social CRM ecosystem where:

Advocacy / Evangelism leads to Lead Ranking which leads to Social Engagement which defines the Customer Experience!

In 2010 and beyond, organizations will suffer from this disruption in their broader markets and individual companies.  As my co-authors, David Ryback, PhD, and Jim Cathcart have captured in ConnectAbility (to be released December 2009 by McGraw-Hill), a range of emotions also are at work from prospects and customers alike, including fear, skepticism, frustration, doubt, distain and even elation.

In the process, traditional customer “no-service” must die.  In a TiVo / Twitter world, customer opinions of the value-add, perceptions of the competitive differentiation, consensus to buy or not buy, and overall experience to remain loyal is formed in an instant.  Brand loyalty itself is getting defined and re-defined daily and without the organization’s finger on the pulse of that real-time brand equity, the organization will struggle to remain relevant.

In a recent personal experience, I felt an enormous sense of frustration in making a web-based software application work with the latest Apple operating system.  Having used TweetDeck to share my frustration, and expressing interest in exploring alternative options, within minutes, this small software was proactively engaged to try to help.  They provided a tweet and a link to resolve the conflict and underlying dissatisfaction.  But they didn’t stop there.  They followed up with a phone call (did I mention that this is a FREE utility?!) and ensured that I was up and running again.  The scenario was unparalleled to anything I have experienced in the past.

Can you imagine anything remotely similar from say one of the airlines, auto or any of a number of other large, traditional companies?  At every opportunity to deliver an exceptional experience, on- or off-line, they tend to stumble upon themselves with what appears to be lack of accountability, caring, competence, or the understanding that in any business, the net new customer acquisition cost is substantially higher than the existing and satisfied customer retention cost.  Furthermore, satisfied customer experiences now share those experiences in real-time online, which can make marketing’s job that much easier or more difficult in reinforcing the brand value or trying to repair it!

Customers in 2010 certainly don’t want to be sold to.  They want to be engaged, be given options, and their decision to buy be reinforced by others who have experienced similar positive reinforcement, hence a consensus to minimize the risk.  They will want education much earlier in the buying process.  Astute organization of 2010 and beyond will more appropriately align the way they sell to the specific manner in which their clients buy, on- or off-line.

In 2010 and beyond, functional silos of marketing, sales, and customer service must evolve to evangelism and experience.  Personal and team-based accountability must rise to achieve the same results if they are in fact focused on achieving the same goals, strategies, tactics and objectives (GSOT).  The roles and realm of responsibilities must become more fluid and the level of expertise must go deeper and wider – not just in products or services, but in the intimate understanding of the customer requirements, buying preferences, and how to engage and influence them – often without authority.

To engage and influence what your customers are thinking, reading, doing; what do they find of interest and value and how you can identify, build and nurture a consistent and value-based relationship with them.  Not as a mass audience, but as individual consumers with unique requirements in the outcome of using your products and services, not simply the input of it.

So, how will you evolve in 2010 and beyond?  Here are three recommendations for your consideration:

1. Independently access your sales, marketing and customer service bench! Are they appropriately aligned, empowered, trained with the right measurements and compensation in place to move their needle to care about the customer experience?

2. Reevaluate your perception of brand promise and brand equity - how well are you testing new market opportunities and tracking the results of every touch point, every interaction, every opportunity to engage current and prospective customers?

3. Do you have the right tools and internal support for one-to-one relationships? It will certainly be more expensive, but in 2010, the table stakes are higher.  What are you willing to do that your competitors aren’t?  Will you take a leadership position in the social network landscape?  Will you lead the learn-dialog-spark-support-innovate and learn again evolution?

How will you remain relevant?

The prevalence of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other social networking tools has certainly raised awareness for personal relationship development and social networking best practices. When the use of the same social interaction functionality is brought into an organization to manage client or customer interactions and partner or supplier engagement in order to enable and manage collaboration within your organization, the mindset becomes one of Enterprise 2.0.

It’s a fundamentally new way of identifying and proactively managing opportunities for any sized organization. It connects you with your clients, prospects, partners, the media, and the business community at large, and it is as critical as the organization’s intracompany relationships.

Although technology is a fundamental cornerstone of the success of social networking, a social networking success story begins with the appropriate strategy. The fact that desired behaviors require support key initiatives will help you understand the necessary tools to enable and enhance such interactions. We believe people will soon give way to blogs, wikis, existing platforms such as SharePoint, and social networking platforms that are much more congruent with the business goals and unique nuances of the teams they support.

What Is Your Enterprise 2.0 Strategy?

It’s critical that you outline a succinct set of objectives, measures, and values before embarking on the technology deployment.  Here are 3 critical points to consider:

1. Don’t confuse vibration with forward motion: ultimately, any social network over time must aim to drive operational efficiency and effectiveness and as such save time and money. Some of the current outdated business processes could be made obsolete with a more real-time collaborative environment. But can you lower client acquisition costs? Can you attract different clients in different markets? How can you continue to push to do even more with less in the current economic climate?
2. Invented everywhere: Although there’s often a great deal of expertise and thought leadership within the organization, Enterprise 2.0 can help extend additional mindset of “not invented here” to “invented everywhere.” By simply extending your pursuit of innovation beyond the traditional walls of your organization, you exponentially extend the reach of the organization to create access to untapped content, thought leadership, and often unique perspective in areas previously unimagined.
3. Relationships first, desired outcomes second: As I wrote in Relationship Economics (Wiley, 2008) “influence the conversation, and you will influence the relationship. Influence the relationship, and you will influence the outcome you desire.” Enterprise 2.0 can deliver both the promise and the potential of the next generation of social networking by raising the profile of key concepts such as customer lifetime value, cost of a bad hire, and supplier relationship management.

The Real Value of Enterprise 2.0

With a succinct strategy and an execution plan, valuation of the success of an Enterprise 2.0 initiative must include a fundamental business relationship metrics such as:

• The initial adoption rate: what is the percentage of your user base that openly accepts a different mindset and the ultimate roadmap?
• Enterprise-wide interaction breadth, depth, and frequency: which parts of the organization are most effectively utilizing not just a current functionality but pushing the collaborative platform to engage and influence others?
• The quality and diversity: not of simply the users but also of the content exchanged within the extent of the organization.
• ROI reinvented: closer look at return on integration, return on involvement, and return on impact – soft assets the organization must find a way to capture and optimize.
• User Retention: to what extent have the original users embraced this new platform? Have you been able to retain them over some period of time? Also as critical is understand that which will keep them coming back?
• Influence and equity goals: non-tangible success awareness and general buzz attained by the users within the extent of the organization.

Beyond the external social networking hubs, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and others, the real promise and potential of the next generation of social networking is to accelerate enterprise profitable growth, attract and retain world-class talent, and execute great organizational strategies.  In a turbulent economy reaching that promise and potential will heavily depend on one’s ability to successfully launch an Enterprise 2.0 initiative.

Stay tuned – we certainly are living in interesting times…