How one company celebrates the power of being connected Meryl K. Evans, Professional Services Journal Editor interviews Rhett Glauser of ServiceNow Recently, I experienced the power of social media. I lost all applications on my BlackBerry when I installed a major operating system upgrade. Yes, I backed up my smartphone prior to the upgrade, and [...]
Recently, Adam Kleinberg, CEO of Traction, attended the iMedia Agency Summit where he tweeted a running commentary. He made sure he used the conference hashtag because he gets a lot of interaction from other conference attendees and followers. He received a message from someone who said, “I love your tweets. We’ve got to connect when I get there.”
Grasshopper Group is the company behind the 5,000 campaign, a rebranding campaign that included sending five green chocolate-covered grasshoppers to 5,000 influencers. The company used FedEx to create a sense of urgency and authenticity. A glossy white bag with an attached hangtag appeared inside each envelope. The hangtag had a URL leading to a video about the power of entrepreneurship.
Personal use of social media is widespread and is exploding in popularity. Business use is growing and evolving. Are nonprofits like hospitals involved? Yes, and more will participate as time and budgets allow.
Think back 25 years. Can you believe we didn’t have cell phones and a computer in every home and on every desk? The pre-cursor to personal digital assistants, the Palm Pilot didn’t debut until 1996!
Although it’s harder to get started because of size, approvals, layers of decision makers and other complications, more big corporations than ever use social media today.
The concept of the virtual event, long a notion prompting predictions and fears of live events’ demise, has achieved an ironic feat. Far from threatening the vitality and existence of traditional events, virtual events bolstered by social media have strengthened the appeal of in-person professional gatherings across all industries, and will soon be crucial to most brick-and-mortar trade shows.
Since it’s impossible to add another hour to the 24-hour day, I need an alternative. How can I find time to do all the things I need to complete at work? No doubt, many managers/supervisors deal with this challenge. How have you overcome the “I can’t get everything done” syndrome?
— Ed, Manager
At our company, most employees have Internet access at their workstations. Ordinarily, I don’t mind a few minutes of web browsing here and there for a break or even a little personal business. It’s the same as a quick water cooler conversation.
Yet as social media has grown and become a business necessity, more employees have started to hang out on these sites — and not always for work. Am I going overboard in wanting to control the amount of time employees spend online for personal surfing? How can I trust them to get the work done without curtailing this personal web browsing? Or does it really save productivity since they get the mental break they need?
— Nathan
After over five years of service, I recently “retired” from a company to manage my own business full-time. I gave the standard two-week notice and started preparing to help with the transition. The company cut my two weeks short, and my manager was disrespectful to me during the process.
Since then, I’ve been furious with the manager and the situation. I did the best I could to serve the company and was loyal and honest. Having never received closure, I’ve been careful because I don’t believe in burning bridges.
The company did nothing illegal, so this doesn’t call for a lawsuit. And I might need a good recommendation from my manager someday. I think some action will help me get over this, but what? Should I talk to the director or someone else? I’m still burning inside despite trying to forget about the company. Nothing works. How do you work past these nasty feelings?
— Gone, but not forgotten
Despite the Internet’s vast resources, people don’t always find what they need, especially when searching for obscure information or something that doesn’t yet exist. Consider an old song from your teen years that keeps playing in your mind. Maybe you only remember a few words, not phrases or lines. If you spend some time, you may find it buried in the information highway haystack.
The healthcare industry faces a unique challenge, finding ways to cut costs without affecting the quality of patient care. Sacrificing care means the difference between life and death. Furthermore, hospital decision-makers are so busy that they have built shells around them to protect their time and sanity.
In my 20 years in the workforce, it’s surprising that performance reviews haven’t made a difference for my staff. I’m trying to turn this around, so I’ve read up on how to make the most of performance reviews. Yet, I struggle with finding an effective process that benefits the employee, employer and manager.
Do you use the performance review tool or do you do your own thing? What’s the best way to do a constructive performance review that benefits both employees and management?
— Perplexed about performance
Bring together the devil in Reaper, a smarmy guy from The Usual Suspects and a large enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, and you have a business-to-business company that knows how to have fun while teaching. It’s part of the learn, laugh, share and connect philosophy that the supply-chain management company Kinaxis applies to social media.
In my 20 years in the workforce, it’s surprising that performance reviews haven’t made a difference for my staff. I’m trying to turn this around, so I’ve read up on how to make the most of performance reviews. Yet, I struggle with finding an effective process that benefits the employee, employer and manager.
Do you use the performance review tool or do you do your own thing? What’s the best way to do a constructive performance review that benefits both employees and management?
— Perplexed about performance
My company hired me as its first marketing executive. I have a designer and a copywriter who have been here for years. We work together well.
My sales counterpart and I also got along GREAT at first, until I suggested interviewing the sales team to better understand how their customers might react to a social media initiative. Since then, she has found excuse after excuse for me not to speak with them, and our relationship is a bit strained. Is there a way to fix this relationship, or should I try another approach to reach sales?
— Flailing in sales
Article after article says social media works even for business-to-business (B2B) companies. But example after example claims to represent B2B, and is actually for business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing.
Because Dell is a technology company, it walks the talk by always using technology and the Web to support its business. Dell has generated almost $7 million in sales from Twitter alone. Convinced?
Though having similar goals, sales and marketing often compete against each other or butt heads instead of work together to reach their goals. They’re both important to the company especially when they collaborate. As a result, the business grows. Each brings a perspective the other can use.
How do you think sales and marketing should work?
According to “The CMO Survey” by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), B2B companies are upping their social media marketing budgets in both products and services. The next five years shows that marketers will devote almost a fifth of their marketing budget to social media. These results support that B2B marketers are working to improve building relationships and boosting brands.
How will social media affect your marketing strategy?
Do you know the difference between paid and earned media? B2B marketers need to understand the difference between a paid search ad and a Twitter retweet. Or else, the decision could be costly to a company. Earned media using the web has a whole different set of benefits than traditional PR.
What are your experiences with earned and paid media?
Marketing brings in leads while sales follows up. So why would these two not in alignment? One problem could be how some define “alignment.” Crandell believes that a definition that works for all can make a difference in improving sales and marketing alignment.
How would a definition of sales and marketing align help or not?
Are you combining your sales and marketing efforts? This is not the approach to take. Each has its own function. Stein shares his definitions.
For some people, video is a better way to learn about something new to them. Videos can offer more depth than an article and express emotion. Those in B2B who want to better understand how to use social media from a B2B perspective can get all they need in these 10 diverse videos.
Stop writing job titles and advertising jobs as “sales and marketing manager” or some variation. This is WRONG. No one can do both. Each has unique roles and responsibilities. Watch the video to learn about the differences and how to succeed with both.
My company hired me as its first marketing executive. I have a designer and a copywriter that have been there for years. We work together well. My sales counterpart and I also got along GREAT at first, until I suggested interviewing the sales team to better understand how their customers might react to a social [...]
I’m pushing my sales team to add social media to its repertoire. We started with Twitter and tried to train the sales staff; however, they aren’t taking it seriously. They continue to use the hard-sell approach.
“I know half my advertising budget is wasted … I just don’t know which half.” So said Philadelphia retail magnate, John Wanamaker, around the turn of the century. Not much has changed since, when it comes to using print and broadcast media to drum up business —
Plenty of reports including those from Pew Internet show a massive increase in adult use of social networking sites. So why would small businesses not use social media? Some worry about security, some say they don’t have time, some don’t think they need it to succeed. But is it worth ignoring social media when businesses rely on social media sites for business information?
Working the marketing and sales meeting to your advantage by Geoffrey James – bnet Wouldn’t it be great if you could twist those meetings into something useful — rather than just a waste of your valuable time? Never fear, it’s pretty easy to hijack a meeting and make it go wherever you think is useful. [...]
Measure results in Social Media.
Many executives want ROI numbers for social media. But the fact is … “you simply can’t put a dollar value on friendship, and this is the same thing.”
Where do we start? I’m pushing my sales team to add social media to its repertoire. We started with Twitter and tried to train the sales staff; however, they aren’t taking it seriously. They continue to use the hard-sell approach.
Help!
This sales person admits that he takes marketing for granted and asks readers what they think sales SHOULD do. In many B2B companies there seems to be a disconnect between sales and marketing when they should be working together not against each other …
54% of companies unwisely block access to social media. Does your company?
Here are some great B2B finds for the week for weekend reading. * Storytelling for Sales Professionals: Cool little formula for storytelling, useful for more than salespeople. * 62 Ways to Use Twitter in Business: This should convince any doubter that Twitter has value for business. * 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business: You [...]
Texas Instruments paves a way; learn from their approach of using SM in an organized manner with a bite-sized, zeroed-in strategy. They did it right … looking at their audiance’s needs. established behaviors and designed their approach around was discovered.
