In September at the beginning of the season I posted a short article related toNFL teams Follow-to-Follower ratios on Twitter.  In short, NFL teams like most major brands do not follow back their fans or customers:

As you can see, the average NFL team was following back just 0.46% of their fans in September.  That ratio now stands at 0.40% which means the average follow back strategy didn't change much over the season.  Now that the Super Bowl is over I've taken the time to update these statistics to see how the league performed in other areas.

I’m where I am today because of the 1980’s oil crash.  If not for the oil crash I may not have gone on to get my MBA.  If not for the crash I probably would not have ventured into the technology industry, first with NCR Corporation and then other organizations.  For that matter I may not have moved to Ohio.

 

I was from Iowa, in the heart of the corn patch.  But after completing my BBA in 1981 from Abilene Christian University I could see that the West Texas oil patch was booming.

Are the targeted executives you are trying to get the attention of using social media to shop, or are they really looking for prospects themselves?  Perhaps both, with some education and networking mixed in; I don’t have any market research to state a firm conclusion.  However; I do believe that most executives are tuned-into station WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) just like the rest of us, and they are seeking to promote their company and causes too.  That’s why I find it interesting that so many meeting requests contain the following leading sentences:  

It was a lively face-to-face business networking event.  As you might guess, social media was a hot topic.  Of course business cards were exchanged as many of the attendees represented agencies that promise to be able to bring social magic to a brand.  But what I found most interesting happened later, when I visited several of their corporate social media pages.  What became clear was that many of the profiles had not posted content in several weeks, and in some cases, months.

I penned “Customer Intelligence Is Meaningless If You Don’t Tie It to Strategic Action” many years ago.  Over time that article has been used by several organizations in their training materials as a way of demonstrating the importance of customer service and its impact on the customer experience.  One aspect of that article that is rarely commented on, but no less interesting, is the action I took related to my search for a local service supplier when my incumbent vendor did not satisfy my needs.

WhenDilbertand his peers poke fun at marketing trade show tactics they’re often referring to the use of “booth babes.”  Now, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article (The Evolution of Auto Show ‘Booth Babes’) it appears the auto-show model is coming back.  I blogged on this topic in November 2007 (Using Marketing Booth Babes) and that post created a very spirited discussion.  Usingsex to sellhas been a tactic in advertising since its beginning.  But most of the audience (both men and women) who responded to my original post clearly thought this practice had a great deal of downside risk.

When was the last time you paid the full retail price?  According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal (Attention, ‘Discount Junkies’) about 15% of shoppers generally pay full price for items and don’t bother searching for sales.  At the other extreme, a fifth of online shoppers are considered true “discount junkies,” people who make purchases only when offered discounts.

 

Discount shoppers are clearly reluctant to spend on premium brands if value is missing.  In fact, in C.

Has rational ignorance impacted your organizations social media activity yet? Rational ignoranceis the decision not to become more informed about something because the perceived cost of the additional intelligence in terms of both effort and expense is more than the expected return on the knowledge gained.  It kicks in for most of us when we believe we have reached the point of diminishing returns in relation to the value of acquiring additional insight.  More than likely, your organization started its social media journey with great excitement, and a willingness to invest and learn; now most of your staff barely knows about the changes to the InMail policy on LinkedIn, and it’s been weeks since they tweeted.

Mistakes were made. We've heard that before - many times. The phrase first made famous by the Nixon administration was later used and re-used by many politicians - Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, to name a few. People generally aren't fond of admitting their mistakes. I'm not. Businesses are the same. They don't like to talk about their mistakes certainly not publicly - but not even within company walls. How mistakes are handled within a business says a lot about the people who lead that organization.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (“Basic Costs Squeeze Families”) stated that consumers have seen little growth in their wallets and remain skittish with discretionary spending.  Of course, if you own a business that depends on people having jobs and disposable income you didn’t need research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to tell you that consumer spending is sluggish.  TheBlack Friday report card was underwhelming, and your calls and foot traffic are down.  So, what’s your plan?