Published in the November/December issue of Candy and Snack Today magazine

The Internet connects suppliers and retailers with millions of consumers every day. Discover how networking sites can gauge shoppers’ attitudes, raise brand awareness and reinforce positive associations with the category.

As candy retailers and suppliers explore sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, they are realizing their impact on brand awareness and company credibility.

Social media is definitely sparking consumers, with more than 105 million in the U.S. using these sites. What’s more, two out of three participants in a recent social media marketing industry report noted an increase in web site traffic, subscribers or opt-in lists after investing just six hours per week.

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The visualization runs right in your browser and displays data from the Twitter API.

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We first contacted David via e-mail, and he made himself available the next day to speak to us on the phone. He listened to understand our needs and then described how he could help us with a value chain of activities (e.g. webinar, blogs) that would extend beyond the hour he spends delivering his keynote speech. He blew us away.

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Now, that’s a little different kind of social networking…

Clever though.

Conversely, what’s your impression of relationships? When talking about relationships, most use characteristics such as trust, depth, and vested interest. So, if relationships have been around since the Ice Ages and we all know what they are, why is it that we’re becoming increasingly disconnected? In many ways, we’re losing our ability to touch people!

Robert Putnam, in his book Bowling Alone, clearly describes how our health, our democracy, and yes, even our happiness, depend on a certain amount of social capital. Yet for many, when it’s easier to send someone a voicemail who works three offices down the hall instead of walking over for a conversation, or to send them a tweet DM (direct message) instead of picking up the phone and calling them, is there really any question about the dramatic erosion of our sense of community? Every day, we pass people in our company hallways wearing our company badges (so we know they work there), but we have no idea who they are!

You have an opportunity to build relationships every minute of every day. Yet, most people go through each day with their head buried in checklists. Building and nurturing relationships must become the dye in the fabric, not the patch. Networking functions are patches; drive-by-greetings are patches; insincere getting and giving business cards are patches. Let me save you the time – the Yellow Pages serve the same purpose. Relationships should be the dye in the fabric. They should permeate through who you are and what you do with those most important to you!

Social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can help enable or facilitate introductions, interactions and social exchange of ideas – but they should never replace the fundamental value of trusted, value-based inter-personal relationships. Users of these sites should also never forget that there are three fundamental types of networks: Givers (God bless Mother Theresa), who give altruistically; Takers (we’ve all known some), who only call or email when they want something; and Investors, who see their personal, functional and strategic relationships as their most valuable asset, and consistently aim at more effectively identify, build, nurture, and leverage in a win-win manner those investments for a quantifiable return on their relationships.

On- or off-line, which one are you? If I were to ask three of your colleagues, customers, executives, or even friends, would they describe you as a giver, taker, or a relationship investor?  How do you know?

Your personal and professional success depends on the diversity and quality of your relationships with others, yet most of us don’t spend enough time building, nurturing, and quantifying the key relationships we need to achieve success. That’s where Relationship Economics® comes into play. Relationship Economics isn’t about networking; it’s about learning how to invest in people for an extraordinary return. It’s about understanding Relationship Currency®, accumulating Reputation Capital® and building Professional Net Worth®. It’s about learning the art and science of relationships to get things done in a systematic, disciplined manner.

So, let me ask you again: what’s the strategic value of your business relationships and what will you do in 2010 to enhance your most valuable asset – your portfolio of value-based relationships?

© 2010 The Nour Group, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

David Nour is a social networking strategist and one of the foremost thought leaders on the quantifiable value of business relationships. A native of Iran, David came to the U.S. with a suitcase, $100 cash, limited family ties, and no fluency in English! Fast forward 25 years and he has built an impressive career of entrepreneurial success, both within large corporations and early stage ventures. David is the author of Relationship Economics (Wiley, 2008) and ConnectAbility (McGraw-Hill, 2010), a senior management advisor, and a featured speaker for corporate, association, and academic forums, where he shares his knowledge and experience as a leading change agent and visionary for Relationship Economics® — the art and science of relationships. To learn more, please visit: www.relationshipeconomics.NET or call toll free 1-888-339-1333.

In 2009, our team researched over 400 of these sites in 22 distinct categories – from LiveCasting to Crowdsourced Content.  Although many were great ideas (like SearchMe), they did not become viable products or sustainable companies.  At the turn of the 20th century there were over 200 auto manufacturers.  Similarly, the social media landscape must also evolve from the shiny new toy to a strategic organizational asset instrumental in delivering quantifiable returns.  Just as e-business has become a necessary way to do business, so will social media become an integrated component of our drive to engage, influence, share, store and communicate.

As such, we are highlighting the following top social media trends of 2010:

David Nour 2010 Top Social Media Trends

1. Enterprise Social Networking will evolve with more private communities, less clutter than the public social networks and specific social business applications enhancing customer experiences (i.e. Best Buy’s Twelpforce)
2. Smartphone GPS will fuel greater personalization and location-sharing services with whereabouts optionally appended to every tweet, blog, photo or video we post (i.e. Foursquares)
3. Augmented reality will prove their utility with access to products and services at the point of demand
4. Mobile payments will become more prevalent on various social media sites
5. OAuth will be used to validate identities on internal and external Twitters
6. New interface for ubiquitous status updates across multiple social media sites (i.e. Ping.fm) with the ability to segment my communication to target audiences with contextual relevancy
7. Real-time user reviews will heighten fundamental gap between brand promise and brand equity; poor or no customer service will become more expensive to recover from after an incident
8. Track & Alert will evolve social search with real-time content; comparative computation knowledge engines (i.e. WolframAlpha) will enhance our ability to discern valuable differentiators between competing brands / options for mindshare and wallet-share
9. Brand marketers who invest in value-based content / expertise and conversational marketing will elevate their digital mind- and wallet-share; those who continue to pitch products and services will finally realize that it is dysfunctional online.
10. Your ability to engage and influence off-line relationships will be enhanced with real-time social insights (i.e. Chatter from Salesforce.com) further driving a broader adoption of Enterprise 2.0 functionality
11. Followers will become fans and buyers as conversion metrics gauge social media’s impact on profitable revenue growth (efficient sales) and brand loyalty (effective marketing)
12. Democratized access will drive economic empowerment and political actions (i.e. #IranElection)

How will you embrace a social media strategy to grow – as an individual and an institution?

So, how do you gain notoriety in your target market? 

1. Focus on being the very best at what you do!  Remember – Performance Trumps all!  Read, write, share unique perspectives and provide independent insights.

2. Stay Visible – add value to every interaction, share your insights and give freely of your time and expertise.

3. Consistent with our theme this year: balance great ideas with great execution!

At the end of the day, those who matter, will seek you out!

Watch the brief segment below from CNBC’s The Business of Innovation with host, Maria Bartiromo.

http://www.relationshipeconomics.net/CNBCVideo.html

A June 2009 study from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research found that 89 percent of nonprofits are using some form of social media, and these organizations now are outpacing businesses and even academic institutions in their adoption of social-networking tools. With more than 400 Web sites and tools out there, according to research conducted by David Nour , managing partner of consulting firm The Nour Group Inc., how do nonprofits and associations know where to start? How do they to determine what components fit into their social-media marketing strategy? This article will offer some information on internal versus external social media tools and how organizations can take advantage of them, to maximize their marketing efforts.

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