Aaron Strout on Location-based Marketing

Stay tuned for my forthcoming Webcast with no other than Aaron Strout, co-author of Location-Based Marketng for Dummies. W00t!

Conférence : les réseaux sociaux pour les TPE et travailleurs autonomes

C’est une réalité : les micro et petites entreprises – 200 000 au Québec (statistiques de 2007) – sont nombreuses à se frayer une place sur le marché. Leur réalité diffère de celles des grandes entreprises : les moyens financiers et humains dédiés au marketing sont moins importants et par conséquent les stratégies mises en place casi inexistantes. Plus souvent qu’autrement, tout se joue autour de la force de vente. Les études et les blogues arrivent au même constat.

A l’occasion des soirées réseautage organisées par Montréal Accueil, j’ai eu le plaisir de présenter l’approche 2.0 du marketing et envoyer un message fort à tous les participants, en grande partie des entrepreneurs : établir votre présence sur les réseaux sociaux pour rencontrer deux objectifs

• vous faire connaître sur la toile
• créer une relation durable avec ses prospects/clients.

Les grands joueurs (Nestlé, IBM) qui se sont lancés au tout début nous ont apporté de nombreuses bonnes pratiques et parfois des écueils à garder en mémoire active. J’ai pu également décrire mon expérience personnelle de campagne sociale que vous retrouverez sur Yazziness (version française à venir), apporter quelques trucs et astuces et en annexe, des outils pratiques, disponibles en ligne.

Une chose est certaine, les implications liées à une stratégie de présence sociale diffère largement du modèle marketing d’autrefois :

1. désormais, les clients vous font (ou pas) de la pub en conversant en ligne, avec ou sans vous et qu’il serait stratégique de savoir ce qu’ils disent sur votre secteur d’activité, vos concurrents, etc…
2. investir du temps sur une base régulière, voire transférer une partie de votre temps allouée à la vente traditionnelle pour engager la conversation avec vos prospects et apprendre à connaître leurs motivations.

Bien sûr, nous sommes au premier balbutiement ici au Québec mais les réseaux sociaux n’ont pas de frontières comme j’ai pu le démontrer dans ma présentation que je vous invite à lire. Il s’agit donc d’un survol et d’autres modules vous seront proposés dans les semaines à venir, notamment la bonne utilisation de Twitter, savoir engager la conversation.

Remerciements à Mme Céline Chabée à la fois membre du CA de Montréal Accueil et fondatrice de 7acoach ainsi que M. Christphe Berthet, Directeur du développement NACC pour son accueil au Carrefour Desjardins.

J’accueille vos commentaires et questions!

Diana Yazidjian, MBA
514 961 7020

Premier commandement Facebook : “Tu conserveras tes commentaires”

Je lisais dernièrement que Facebook n’autorisera plus les marques à supprimer les commentaires qu’elles jugent inacceptables. J’ignore si cette politique est entrée en vigueur mais je peux déjà vous dire que ça posera problème. Je m’explique.

Force est de constater que ce n’est pas parce que les entreprises ont franchi le pas en créant une page Facebook ou Linkedin que ça y est, tout roule! Bien au contraire, ce n’est que le début du cours.

C’est pourquoi nous sommes entourés d’une myriade de consultants et d’experts dont leur mission est d’éduquer les entreprises sur ce changement de paradigme : la transparence, l’intégrité, ce qu’il faut dire, ne pas dire, comment répondre aux commentaires” Bref, les politiques éditoriales et la charte de conduite en ligne pour faire court. Si les entreprises n’ont pas été initiées à ces principes et qu’elles apprennent que FB leur interdira de supprimer les commentaires, savez-vous ce qui va se passer?

Il n’y aura plus personne. Les entreprises canadiennes ne sont pas au stade de maturité sur le plan des réseaux sociaux, elles sont plutôt en phase d’apprentissage. Mon avis : Facebook pourrait faire preuve de patience et attendre qu’une majorité des entreprises aient atteint un niveau “avancé” de gestion de leurs communautés avant d’enclencher des mesures qui pourraient être perçues comme draconiennes.

Qu’en pensez-vous?

En savoir plus sur le Facebook QI

How We Forget in a Jiffy

I have enormous respect for Malcolm Gladwell and having not read Isaacson’s biography, I will prevent myself from drawing hasty conclusions regarding his book review that was published in The New Yorker this morning.

I suppose [Steve] authorized the content of his biography yet, why is the media focussing on his shortcomings? Have we already forgotten his drive to perfection and delivering flawless products over and over again? Wether he was a tweaker is besides the point.He saw opportunities, turned them into ideas and the rest is history. Having read the entirety of this review, I was struck by the constant bashing of a man that is no longer here to respond. I’m hoping that the book conveys a more positive note.

For a nuanced analysis of the Man’s biography see Fox News “He was an innovator…we used to promote success and if they [Entrepreneurs] put in hard work they could benefit from whatever they made..”.

Google minus

All things considered, I’m an irregular blogger with writing peaks followed by a looong silence.I guess changing continents last year, settling my family in their new environment can explain this, in part.

My reading/posting/commenting habits are, however, regular. Great bloggers and experts inspire me and I faithfully read their posts. To name a few @aaronstrout, @missrogue, @chrisbrogan, @ygourven.

I enjoy exploring the latest sharing platforms but sooner than later, I end up focussing on 2 or 3. A word on Google plus, or rather Goo minus. From the outset, I was very excited to try out this platform which was a way to help us forget the buzz flop. Soon after, my excitement wound down. Who wants to manage circles or subsets of subsets of subsets in..your free time? I remember giving up on my Twitter lists some short time after it was launched. Isn’t it challenging enough to manage your life balance between work, family and friends? Adding on the task of granular tagging just makes engaging less attractive.

My Sharing Pattern on G+

On G+, I now accept most people as contacts after a “background” check (respectful posts, no profanity, etc..). I created a “public” tag and my posts run through that pipeline. That’s it, that’s all. After all, like most of us, I embarked on social networks to engage in conversations and see what’s cooking here and everywhere around the world, to get the knowledge curve growing.

Thanks for reading and feel free to drop me a note!

Jobs :

The passing away of Steve Jobs has left a void for me, personally.I salute his love for making products with customers in mind, for taking technology out of its silo, for making it clear that tech is no longer for the privileged few, for being stubborn, rigorous and light-hearted all at once.

I looked back at his Stanford’s commencement speech in 2007 and remembered where he got his thirst for improving our lives through innovation. Having been brought up in a middle-class household (the story of his adoption is incredible), he had a strong sense of survival and the unwavering willingness to reach for a dream.I’m taking a short-cut here but I’m convinced that his street-savviness was key.Improving the world is how he sums it up.

I was not an Apple fan back in the 80′s.I had my first computer in 1983 with a DOS interface and that’s where my tech knowledge ended.I remember one of my summer jobs working with designers who were sworn to Apple where I would pick fights with the mouse.Lap tops were not common currency at the time. Then, I went on to other things and banned Apple from my life. In the late 90′s, I began seeing macbooks everywhere I went, airports, cafés and I remember thinking that the users didn’t “look” like mac users, me and my misconceptions.

Technology For the Average User

Working with R&D teams on web projects in Europe, my daily mission consisted in ensuring that the customer voice was heard and that it translated well into the products or services. In other words, I challenged and challenged: “is this feature in line with what customers expect/want/need?” “do you think the customer will want to fill in 8 forms in order to register?”, etc.. Some days were more difficult than others.Some wanted to develop the feature because it was so innovative technologically even if it did not make sense from the customer viewpoint at that given moment.How many times did I hear “It’s not made for the average user” or “the customer will eventually learn and grow to love it”? Progressively, we began engaging the customer into the development phase and that did wonders. Developers realized one important thing:customers and they do not always agree on what makes a product great.

Then came the iPhone. A moment in history. A proof of concept that simplicity, performance and innovation can come together to make a perfect product. I remember thinking : “hey, he [Steve] put himself in customer’s shoes, heck in my mother’s!”. His thinking was intuitive and that was missing in IT. As VCs and start-uppers were trying to find the next best thing, he was walking in my mother’s shoes.

Thank you Steve for making this possible and for crushing the belief that technology is made for technologists, and that technology made simple is absurd. Thank you for the mac-pc ads, thank you for that talk with B Gates, thank you for sometimes throwing a tantrum in front of inconsistency. I’m hoping the next generations will keep that drive, that your successor will do you proud. IMU.

CRM is alive and doing well…or is it?

With all the talk on co-creation, CRM has taken a back seat. No more pulling the customer to buy but engaging the customer in the design process. I would just like to point out one simple fact: in CRM, there is Relationship and that’s what gets the ball rolling. To develop a relationship, you need to start on something, i.e. purchase history, lifestyle data, verbatim and so forth. How did co-creation become the latest buzz if it’s not through customer data analysis among other things?

I believe that CRM has begun a soft decline due in part to poor ROI. The mistake businesses make too often is systematically associate CRM to technology, without checking first whether the organisation has “shifted” . That shift means making sure employees are all working for the client. For CSRs who have a privileged direct relationship with customers, that would mean noting every interaction, getting to know them throughout their lifecycle. These interactions add on to the knowledge base and help in engaging customers.

It’s twice the challenge to lead employees to customer-centricity AFTER having implemented CRM technology. For two reasons:

• in the first stages of CRM deployment, bugs and unclear processes generate frustration and hence a negative perception of what CRM stands for
• the notion of customer is a foggy concept and everyone has their own definition which is, more often than not technology-driven, CRM techies having paved the way.

In a nutshell, there is still room for “pull” but we must make customers want to share their personal data. It’s all in the shift. No shift, no customer insight, no relationship.