About Natalie Petouhoff

Recent Posts by Natalie Petouhoff

Facebook Your Way To Better Marketing

Who heads up this great strategy? Green Entrepreneur, Chief Ettitude Officer and Social Media for Positive Social Change Enthusiast, Phoebe Yu

Ettitude is an Australia-based company that sells environmentally friendly products made from bamboo and organic cotton. Ettitude was founded on the simple idea that everyday products, such as clothing, bed linen, towels and stationery, could be made much more responsibly, and contribute to making the world a better place and at the same time, look good and are affordable. Their goal is to give people who care about their family and the earth the ability to easily adopt a greener, more socially responsible lifestyle.

When I was on the Ettitude website to do some research for this book, I was impressed with their use of their traditional website as a “Facebook sharing moment.” Here’s how this works: I was on the About Us page, Figure 1, and I went to highlight some words on the site and a widget popped up and enabled me to share what I highlighted with my Facebook connections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1

This is a brilliant word of mouth strategy to create awareness for the brand and because their marketing message is something people can get behind, i.e., being more socially responsible, the ability to share that website information may even translate into shopping cart dollars.

When you click on the Facebook icon, to share your highlighted information, it asks the customer to allow permission to connect to Facebook and post the share on my Facebook page.

The ability to allow your customers to find things they like about your company and post to their friends can be a very good PR and Marketing awareness tool. Especially for a company like Ettitude, that has a very share-able brand story around social and personal responsibility.

Phoebe was able to combine exciting content, promotions and contests has helped her online retail store Ettitude create a shopping domino effect that leverages peer–to–peer influence and drives home 10% Facebook purchases every month. She’s done this via:
• Making use of Facebook APIs to enhance the e–commerce offering
• Structuring the Facebook store and installing plug–ins to improve user
experience
• Mirroring traditional e–commerce sites for ease and security
• Combining social campaigns with F–commerce to extract the maximum benefit

Here’s Ettitude’s Facebook Storefront:

Donating Your Frequent Flyer Miles is the New “Giving Back to Charity”

A friend of mine named Molly does amazing work in the world (she is the founder of Women With Drive). But work takes money, and there’s not always all the money required to do good work. However, recently she has been blessed with unusual donations that have enabled her to carry out her work: people and organizations have payed for her flights.

She was able to attend the Business Innovation Factory (BIF7) conference in September, where she was able to connect with Willow Creek Ministries in Chicago. Their congregation of 20K has a cars ministry that helped Women With Drive to streamline their model of processing/intake of vehicles in order to provide not only cars to their applicants, and also revenue to fund the operations. Molly would have NEVER had a chance to meet with Willow Creek at such high level without the access to the conference.

HERE’S THE POINT: Miles she used to get to the conference were donated by an executive of The HON Company in Muscatine.

Molly also attended the NextGen: Charity Conference in New York City. There she was able to facilitate a roundtable with some amazing women, among them Tiffany Dufu, the VP of The White House Project. She was also able to talk with Craig Newmark

about honing their “elevator pitch” and attracting funders (Craigslist and Craigconnects). Attending this conference she was able to talk to people that she probably would not have had the chance to and make the difference she makes in people’s lives.

HERE’S THE POINT: The miles for that trip were donated from two sources, Lou Imbriano, author of Winning the Customer and CEO of TrinityOne (@LouImbriano) and a board member of the Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine.

Both trips would not have been possible without the donation of miles. Their budget simply could not accommodate it.

So if you are wondering what to do this New Years… what resolutions or donations you can make…  then give this idea some thought, and then take some action. Reach out to a do-gooder in need of some financial assistance and offer them some of your frequent flyer miles or to pay for their flights!  You’ll be glad you made a difference.

Social Networker and Author Dr. Natalie Introduces How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans

Dr. Natalie’s New Book:  Like My Stuff: How To Monetize Your Facebook Fans With a Facebook Store

Facebook or f-commerce to some, may see like a dirty word. Whether you think that or not depends on what your point of view is on adding shopping to social networks. Will brands take the next step to social media ROI with Social Commerce on Facebook? That’s what I address in Like My Stuff.

 

If you ask Mark Zuckerberg, he says social commerce is the next big thing… but of course he does…

The skill with which brands fulfill on f-commerce will directly affect the success not only for their own individual brand, but as an industry as a whole. If social networking shopping sites are not delivered in the spirit of what the customer wants, it will fail. If not for this point alone, brands need to pay attention to f-commerce as an example of how shopping can be integrated within a social network.

My book, Like My Stuff, is about the opportunity businesses have to combine brand interactions and social commerce on Facebook (f-commerce) to increase their sales and promote their brands. Using nearly 50 live, full color screenshots from major retailers such as Macy’s, JC Penny’s and Avon as well as medium to small businesses, LIKE MY STUFF shows why f-commerce is the fastest growing trend and how to do it right or piss your customers off for good.

Potential Pitfalls for f-commerce

Are there potential pitfalls to dealing in f-commerce? Yes, privacy, intrusion, relevancy, engagement and the social fatique gap. Those and other factors are why f-commerce and eCommerce are so different.

Privacy

Let’s look at privacy first. Remember back to 2007? Facebook tried Project Beacon. That process collected the eCommerce activity of Facebook participants on third party sites and then posted a user’s purchases on their friends’ news feed. That didn’t last long because users felt it was a privacy issue to disperse their information and data. There was backlash and many thought this might be the end of social shopping for Facebook. A study from JWT found the percentage of people worried about Facebook privacy and security to be in the 75% range. So if a brand is going to consider social shopping, it needs to be aware of making their customer’s feel secure.

Intrusion

What’s the issue with intrusion and consumers? The conflict for the shopper is when shopping feels likes it is an intrusion in a user’s social network lifestream. A lifestream is made up of the online posts and interactions a person creates in their daily interactions in social networks. Brands who go down the f-commerce path need to understand the nuances of social networks, what works and what doesn’t work.

This book is full of case studies of f-commerce that work. But brands should not just look at these examples for the mechanics of how a brand delivered an f-commerce solution. They must also understand what motivates a customer to click on a “Like” button and what it takes to go from just “Liking” a brand to getting them to redeem a coupon to getting a customer to become a loyal customer with repeat purchases and preference for the brand. To do that brands must become a social experience that is interesting and relevant to their audience. Social currency is the value a brand brings to a customer’s lifestream, i.e., providing relevancy and customer centric engagements that enhance a customer’s life. And social currency is where the return on investment in social media pays off. When brands don’t understand social currency, relevancy and engagement, they become an intrusion.

Relevancy: Know Your Audience

Often understanding what is interesting and relevant is best found by asking customers directly. Too many PR, Marketing

and Advertising firms think they know better. They don’t take the time to do the account planning or research to really understand their audience, their behaviors, their motivations and drivers for let alone for traditional campaigns. Enter social media. If a brand does not listen and understand their online audience, the backlash can be devastating. (Think Netflix- check out my blog post on how Netflix wasn’t really listening or understanding why customers were upset ) That doesn’t mean a brand should not enter into the social media realm. It means they need to go back to school and understand the differences between online and offline customer interactions and the viral nature of a scorned customer.

Get To REALLY Know Your Audience

Brands need to make sure they have someone on staff who understands how to do primary audience research in both social media and traditional methods. Qualitative and quantitative methods of traditional account planning and audience research include:

• Focus groups
• In-depth interviews
• Polls
• Surveys, and
• Ethnography / netnography (observations off- and on-line of the audience behaviors)

Social media monitoring tools like Radian6, Sysomos, Tracckr, etc… lend themselves to account planning and audience research, especially for:

• Primary Research (research conducted by the brand itself)
• Sentiment and share of voice online
• Identification of the top influencers, advocates, customers, brand naysayers and press
• Polls, surveys, netnography, etc…
• Topics influencers and advocates are discussing about the brand
• Customer issues, questions, suggestions and praise for the product, service and the brand…
• Secondary Research (research conducted by other people than the brand)
• Studies other research groups or institutions have produced on the brand, the or category that the brand falls into (consumer products, automotive…) and the customers associated with those groups.

In addition, conversations within online communities- either owned by the brand or third party communities, can reveal very interesting insights for the brand. In particular interest to this book on f-commerce is the use of community applications within Facebook. An example of a community application used within Facebook is Get Satisfaction’s Facebook Solution.

Because the Wall in Facebook changes so quickly, brands end up answering the same questions over and over. The Get Satisfaction Facebook widget allows brands to not only avoid spending time repeating the same answers on the Wall (because questions and answers can be searched on and retrieved), but instead can focus on creating relevant content and interactions that engage customers to participate and make that brand part of their lifestream.

Most social media monitoring tools can only provide Facebook data that is on public pages. Because of the partnership between GoodData and Get Satisfaction, the brand can obtain intimate knowledge of the conversations on their Facebook pages between the brand and its customer’s. And, if the brand has included the Get Satisfaction widget on their website or other communities, that data can also be aggregated.

If a brand doesn’t take the steps to understand their audience, there is no guarantee that the social shopping experience will yield good business results. Why guess, when you can know?

Engagement

In the old days, Marketers counted on customers telling 10-20 of their friends about a product or service. Today with the social web, one customer’s comment, negative or positive, informs thousands and sometimes millions of people in nearly nanoseconds. And reports show that year after year, consumers generally trust the opinions of people they know more than they trust anonymous ratings and reviews posted online. And in comparison, they trust online banner ads and advertisements even less. Social commerce or f-commerce is the opportunity to leverage word-of-mouth to increase the awareness of brand and drive customers through the consideration and purchase funnel.

Social Network Fatique

Brands must begin to think from the social customer’s point of view. Customer’s who use social media are constantly being bombarded with invitations to new social networks. They have to decide where to spend the little free time they have. This means that a brand must provide their social customers direct engagement that acknowledges their understanding of their customers in the social web as well as reward them for that participation in the social experience created by the brand. Customers who do encounter great social experiences influence other customers. That influence can multiply across their social graphs and spark comments, conversations and purchases. To be good at this means that you are a student of “a day in the life of your customers.”

For instance, Nike  built a community where runners can share their experiences about running. There are tools to keep track of the number of miles you’ve completed, etc… This community provides something that runners need and hence they go there. The net-net for Nike is that the more people are inspired to run, the more shoes they sell. But the strategy can’t start with – let’s sell more shoes. Interaction strategy must provide something that customers need and want. Otherwise the brand’s social strategy will fall prey to social fatigue.

Many businesses, big and small, are wondering if they should go down this path? How is f-commerce different than the e-commerce they already offer? And does f-commerce mean that you have to get rid of your traditional e-commerce platform? I addresses these and other questions in the book… if you’d like to order it, click here… LIKE MY STUFF. So Check it out and let me know what you think!

Learn. Share. Grow!

The ROI of Social Media

I’ve been asked… a number of times, where can we see these videos that Kathy Herrmann and I wrote? We created them based on our thought leadership with the help and support of Salesforce.com and www.rebelunit.com (RSA) on the ROI of social media… so I thought I would post them here… so that you have access to them at any time!

Video 1: How to Create to A Business Case for Social Media

Video 2: How to Calculate The ROI of Social Media

Video 3: How Social Customer Service Can Benefit the Whole Company

A Spiral Spin to the Traditional Staircase

Raising the Ceiling for Ceilings

Here are 4 amazing ceilings created in some amazing spaces.

When You Align Yourself With the Right Things

What I love about Simon Mainwaring’s new book, We First is that he is suggests that we not only think different, but act and therefore will feel different. In the model of behavior change, that would mean we need to “be” ,“do” and then “have.”

Simon’s book is the perfect book to set the groundwork and mindset for the “be” — and also for the other parts of “be, do, have,” but in particular for creating a new conscious awareness of behaviors and treatment of people and customers and business.

The book is about how brands and consumers can use social media to build a better world. The We First community is made up of the individual people who want to make a better world by using social technologies. To quote Simon:

Social media is easily mistaken as an end in itself rather than THE tool to connect emotionally around shared values through powerful storytelling.

What we have learned from Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung is that storytelling is a very powerful tool for learning, growth and transformation. And social media is a way to do that with millions online!

If you want to learn more about the We First movement… you can check out the video…

Here are the details on what the “We First” stands for…

We First Manifesto
“We First” is a way of looking at the world. It asserts that we now live in an intimately connected, mutually dependent, global community. It recognizes that selfish Me First thinking hurts business, people we care about, millions of strangers and the planet. It embraces the seismic impact of digital and social technology that is transforming our professional and personal lives. It accepts the challenge of millions of consumers who want brands to be a force for change in return for their loyalty, goodwill and purchases.

It believes that this unprecedented collision of global needs and personal wants, of human emotion and social technology, of powerful brands and newly empowered consumers has the potential to transform our world.

That brands that recognize that their best interests are served by helping others. The We First Community provides them with the most effective strategies, creativity and technology to build their brand communities, profits and positive impact. By working at the intersection of social technology and social change we can all achieve our highest business goals and build a better world.

Ten Core Beliefs of We First

* An inter-dependent, global community requires an expanded definition of self-interest.
* The future of profit is purpose.
* Technology is teaching us to be human again.
* Consumers want a better world, not just better widgets.
* Brands must become architects of community.
* Brands must become day traders in social emotion.
* The evolution of revolution is contribution.
* We cannot separate living and giving if we hope to build a better world.
* Life’s necessities must generate the necessities for life.
* Prosperity is not the wealth of a few but the well-being of many.

This is amazing and I’m thrilled to be able to call Simon my friend. He is a true thought leader!

I LOVE YOU MORE THAN MY DOG! by Jeanne Bliss

Jeanne Bliss tweeted me to thank me for writing about her book. And as we got to talking, she provided me with a link to the first chapter of her book, just for you:

Chapter 1: Your Decisions Reveal:  Who You Are and What You Value! It’s very generous of Jeanne to provide me a link. The chapter starts with a quote from Walt Disney:“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

Companies that are loved by their customers make decisions differently than other companies.

The common denominator, according to Jeanne, is that these companies bring consciousness and humanity to the decisions they make.  When you make decisions that respect and honor your customers, your customers will grow your business by word of mouth. They will tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

Remember that Breck Shampoo commercial back in the ’60s that used this as their tagline?

The most important thing a company can do is to form an army of cheerleaders and publicists urging their friends, neighbors, colleagues and strangers to get behind your company.

Have we ever seen this in action? Sure we have… Land’s End for instance. That’s where Jeanne started her customer experience career. The founder of Land’s End, Gary Comer, described Jeanne’s job as:  nurturing the “conscience” of the company through the decisions they made as they grew. And they experienced 20-30% grow per year. Their stand? Long-term growth was dependent on retaining their strong emotional connection with customers.

At that time, the stories customers told about Land’s End, revealed their values. They drove not only customers to the company, but also an engaged and loyal employee base. Land’ End need over 200 employee volunteers to answer all the, “I love you, Land’s End!” mail they received each month.

And have we seen this lately? Yes, at Zappos.com When Tony and Alfred started Aappos.com they didn’t have money for large advertising or marketing programs. They made the conscious decision that the way they would build and grow their business was to provide such great service, interactions and experiences, that they tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

And 2009, Amazon.com bought Zappos.com for over $922 Million.  That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it.

And its not that these types of companies are perfect. It’s not that every single interaction is perfect. What is so is that they have a huge reserve of gratitude from their customers, that if and when a mistake is made, that customers are willing to be more forgiving. Especially when that tender, loving care is how they deal with the mistake or issue.

As Jeanne would say, “The decision is yours.”

 

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