ribes have a purpose that is different than business thinking and media influence of the past. Tries aim to improve situations, thinking and old business models. Tribes recognize constraints to progress and use their collective voices to remove old constraints created by past thinking. Tribal behavior will change institutional learning models of the industrial era; here is what you need to know to do what others want you to do.

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The Gathering and Influence of Tribes

An article in today's London Metro paper startlingly reports that in the Global Top 10 for businesses who use

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Twitter in business

We all remember the ‘Dell Hell’ of 2005, where journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis vented about his frustrating dealings with Dell on his blog. This sparked a ‘blog storm’ as Dell consumers with similar frustrations linked to Jarvis’ blog, which eventually received widespread press coverage.

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Case: Dell Adapting to the Importance of Active Listening

Engaging the "social" customer is a topic that is getting a lot of air time these days for good reason. The more customers migrate to the social web the more engagement becomes a priority for successful brands and is tied to the overall customer experience. Moving from a transactional relationship to one of trust and engagement is fundamentally about the customer experience; positive or negative experience trumps everything else.

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Engaging Customers on Facebook

Last September TSC released the results of the inaugural Social Customer Engagement Index survey, performed in June 2010. The survey was done in partnership with the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP), and focused on how successful the professionals in our combined communities view their employer’s efforts to engage customers via social channels – from a customer service perspective.

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The 2011 Social Customer Engagement Index – Results, Analysis and Perspectives

CRM, SCRM, Sales 2.0 are topics that always create debate and controversy. They are topics that everyone has an opinion about—and the opinions are varied. Sales professionals complaining about “spending more time updating the system than selling, “ managers worried about “are we getting the return on our investments in these systems,” vendors and consultants all weighing in with differing opinions on these systems – sometimes increasing the confusion.

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New Trends in CRM - an eBook!

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Do you know why your consumer transacts with you?

It’s one thing to influence someone to check out your product, but do not be mistaken to think that it will directly result in an actual transaction taking place. Of course, if you choose the right person of influence, they might, in turn, decide to tell their friends and family about their experience (pleasant or not) and that will probably result in some sort of transaction.

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Adjusting Our Decisions: The Influencer Movement, Scores & People Who Decide It All

I was preparing a lecture recently for a postgrad course at the Digital Marketing Institute and was struck by the data on one of the charts I had compiled. The chart was painting a picture of the relative strength of the various categories of online commerce in Ireland. It was based on an examination of the top 250 most trafficked websites where visitors’ primary purpose was to purchase products or services.

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Online Commerce is Already Social

There are a number of ways in which brands can benefit from the social media experience. From market research to the announcement and promotion of special offers and events, opportunities to leverage this technology abound both locally and globally. But for all of the hype and interest in social media, there are still plenty of folks who think it’s just a whole lot of talk about nothing.

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Social Media Engagement and Branding: The Seinfeld Guide

A new study from GroupM and comScore states that 40% of consumers who search for products to purchase are taking a social activity as a next step to finalize their buying decision. And the activity can be seen from the other direction as well: 46% of consumers who use social media are searching for products to expand the basis on a product range to take a decision.

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Study: Search and Social Amplify Purchase Decisions

We are all familiar with the marketing mix: Product, Place (i.e. Distribution), Price and Promotion. It is drilled into our heads in college and it is reinforced with corporate structure. The problem with the marketing mix is that it does not consider the customer, it only considers the product. Perhaps with the advancement of technology, we should have better predicted that a 58-year old concept might require rethinking.

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Rethinking the Marketing Mix from the Customer’s Perspective

Interesting panel at MediaPost’s OMMA Global yesterday, which sought to answer the question many marketers have been grappling with — what is the actual meaning and value of online fans? Very timely topic given many global brands now command fan bases as high as 20 million and are expected to double their investment in advertising on Facebook this year to over four billion. And as Justin Kistner from Webtrends highlighted in his preceding presentation, 35% of consumers buy more after becoming a fan of a brand on Facebook, and ads aimed at fans enjoy an average click through rate (CTR) is 35% compared to 7% in regular online ads. With stats this high, it’s no wonder brands need to start taking Facebook fans more seriously

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OMMA Global – What Is the Worth of a Facebook Fan?

The fact is that there are many iterations of Foursquare users. Among early adopters, finding a unique way to use Foursquare is almost a badge of honor. What I would like to see, and furthermore what I think fits in with the philosophical underpinnings of the founders of Foursquare and these other services, is to turn real-life into a game.

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The Next Step for Foursquare

We consumers are changing and so should marketing discourse. We are moving to pull-based models, we own conversations and change loyalties by a simple click away. Providers and advertisers are welcome to directly ask and get our cooperation and responses.

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First Buds of Contextonomics – User-side Personal Data Trading