They might interview some customers to find out which social media platforms bring them value. They might even ask about the kinds of content that would be most relevant and help run their businesses. But what if I told you that you could start to confirm aspects of your strategy on the fly, in real time, with every visitor to your website.

In this article from SEOmoz about Keyword-Level Demographics, which I only kind of understand because I am not a programmer, it talks about combining the referring search keywords with a visitor’s Facebook profile. Well, I don’t understand the code in the post at all, but I get the big picture. You can create a link between keywords and demographics and the author suggests a handful of applications of the functionality. Confirm that your personas, or target prospects, are coming to your site using the keywords you expected. And show them custom content to increase the likelihood of conversion. Sounds pretty cool to me.

One of the biggest challenges is you have to get website visitors to opt-in to the Facebook connection on your site. Although this is the common practice of many websites, some people do have privacy concerns about sharing their Facebook data with third-party websites. Consider an incentive for them to opt-in to the connection, as it will provide them a better user experience.

Let’s break this down into elements of a strategy call and response:

1. Strategy: Develop a unified keyword strategy to drive traffic to your company website or blog.
Allows you to confirm that your preferred keywords are working for you.

2. Strategy: Develop personas based on existing customers, interviews and market trends
Allows you to confirm key demographic data of website visitors

3. Strategy: Optimize website for maximum conversions
Allows you to show custom content based on demographic data

Did the power of this idea strike you the same way it struck me? Did you want to call up your web programmer and get this one the roadmap of your website? Are there other things you could do by combining keyword data with demographics of your website visitors?

Jeffrey L. Cohen is a social strategist at Radian6 and the co-author of the forthcoming The B2B Social Media Book. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.

These sorts of questions, and many more about how our personal information is being used by businesses, float through the heads of people regularly as they wander about on the web. With the induction of social media into our daily lives, those questions have exponentially increased in number, and it doesn’t take much to find someone doubting whether they should share their latest online purchase with their Facebook friends or sign up for another e-newsletter.

The increased levels of general consumer awareness and wariness about information sharing make it imperative that you, as a business, stay aware of rules and regulations surrounding customer data use and are open about your data gathering policies and any changes you make to them.

So, what do you need to make sure you’re doing to avoid breaking the rules and alienating your customers?

Know the Rules

This seems obvious, but with new social networks popping up so fast and new information becoming readily available on the web on a daily basis, the rules change quickly. Keep up to date with all regulations from your government’s consumer affairs arm regarding data gathering and sharing and consumer privacy.

Of course, it can be hard to stay updated or even understand what you should and shouldn’t be doing when you have to wade through pages of legalese. If possible, have your legal team create an easily understandable “CliffsNotes” version of those federal policies to be shared in your internal community. If that isn’t possible, work with legal team to identify the regulations most relevant to your communications and update and share that information regularly with your Marketing and PR/Communications departments and executives.

Don’t take chances with any vague clauses or statements in these policies; seek out clarification and always err on the side of caution. When it comes to federal privacy regulations, the last thing you want to be doing is skirting the line between solid and questionable data use.

Air Your Clean Laundry

It’s likely you’ve already got a privacy policy included on your website to ensure you’re covering all your bases. But when was that policy last updated to include your social media activity?

Are you collecting user information from Facebook and/or Twitter to create targeted ad and marketing campaigns? If so, have you included clauses in your privacy policy that account for that information collection and use? If your business is directed toward kids or is a financial institution, have you accounted for the additional rules and regulations created specifically for your industry?

And lest you think burying your privacy policy is a tack you can get away with, the United States Federal Trade Commission recently cracked down on a well-known brand for not clearly disclosing their data tracking and collection practices around certain branded communities and specific member involvement (disclosures were put at the bottom of a lengthy end-user license agreement).

Make your privacy policy easy to find and alert your customers when you’ve made changes to your policy. We’ve made our privacy policy easily accessible within our website homepage’s navigation and update it regularly, as needed.

Give Them a Way Out

Opting in and opting out of something is not just relegated to newsletters these days; you can give your customers opportunities to opt in or out of sharing certain pieces of information about themselves when they choose to share details about your products via social networks. Even if they choose to share quite openly, provide an opt-out option at all times. Make it easy for them to change their information sharing preferences at any time, and be honest with them about what they’ll be putting out into the world if they choose to interact with and promote your brand via social networks.

This is a quick look at what companies should be doing at a basic level to protect their customers and stay in good standing with them, as well. How are you ensuring your social media marketing efforts don’t alienate your customers and prospects? Where do you draw the line between using social media data and leaving it in the confines of your secure customer information databases? Share your tips and stories with us in the comments!

“Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.” -Marshall McLuhan

As if foreshadowing the birth of social media and the hue and cry around online privacy and security issues, Marshall McLuhan summed it up in one succinct sentence: Publication is a self-invasion of privacy. And in a day and age when everyone and their mother (literally) is a publisher, whether via Twitter or LinkedIn, through a blog or on a Facebook page, it begs the question: If you are putting yourself out there, then where does online privacy and security even fit in? What if, when it comes to social media and its many platforms, privacy and security have gone the way of the Dodo bird?

Let’s face it, before social media crashed the online party, security and privacy tended to be more of an ‘in versus out’ issue. Corporations needed security to make sure nothing came ‘into’ their online corporate bubble, to make sure their online properties were secured so information wasn’t easily accessible by outside individuals. ‘Hack’ was the new four-letter dirty word. Corporations used firewalls for security lest employees ventured somewhere unsavoury. They also made things secure for their consumer with encrypted payment pages for online buying, that sort of thing.

As for the general public, they had to be careful of what they were putting ‘out’ onto the Internet, that their blog privacy settings were set and secure, that they didn’t use their birthdays or their kids names as passwords, and maybe, most importantly, that they didn’t reveal too much sensitive or private personal information — birth dates, where they live, where they were born, job info — you know, the stuff identity thieves use.

Then along came social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are fundamentally non-private and by extension not secure. Their value, for business, and their fun, for everyone else, lies in the sharing and publishing of personal information. And it’s a level of online sharing that even those of us at a *ahem* reasonably young age still find astonishing. Yet these networks seem to be at the root of more privacy/security concerns than anything else online. Huh?

We mentioned the business value of social networking sites up there, and we talk about it here daily. It’s no secret that corporations make money using customer information and statistics. The sudden tsunami of personal data available online — published voluntarily, however, via social networking sites — raised that bar, and blurred the lines between what companies should have access to and what they shouldn’t.

For the sake of argument only, let’s use Facebook as an example. Google ‘Facebook’ and ‘privacy’. What you’ll see is article after article describing one or another attempt by Facebook to tweak its privacy settings, and the inevitable backlash by its members who rabidly protest these changes as an attack on personal privacy. And here’s why: With the latest software, everything from our age range, what neighbourhood we live in, our average salary, what car we drive and whether Black Swan or Inception might tickle our fancy can be determined from a few clicks of a mouse or select keywords. The Wall Street Journal wrote a great article on data sharing, which is extremely lucrative, and one of the fastest growing businesses on the web.

There’s no denying that Facebook is a business, and a mighty successful one at that. And in 2007 it got its hand slapped for exactly this type of data sharing. For members who thought it was more of a benevolent sorority club that anyone could join, the idea that their personal information might be ‘used’ was a bit of a shock. And they freaked out. Online petitions were circulated. Pundits wondered if this might be the tipping point, if people were going to be scared away from Facebook and social media in droves because of risks of privacy invasion. But, a bit like Chicken Little, that didn’t happen. And it’s still not happening. Just last April, the company was called on the carpet for the same type of data sharing. Yet, today, Facebook has 500 million active users. Think about that. For all the teeth gnashing around its privacy hiccups, people still joined — and are still joining — in droves. Here’s why: What Mark Zuckerberg does in response to the rallying cries of ‘off with their heads’ is a little bit of crafty and a whole lot of smart. He gives people the tools to opt out, the opportunity to change their settings. Which makes them feel more secure. Are they completely private? No. Is their information completely secure? No. But as long as they can control, within reason, their page settings, they feel better.

The bottom line is, social media changed the Internet landscape. It’s always seemed a bit hypocritical to get up in arms about online privacy and security in between posting to Twitter, sharing on Facebook, detailing your job history on LinkedIn and becoming mayor of your local Starbucks on Foursquare. (And we haven’t even touched on sites like Blippy, where you share your credit card purchases with friends.) In researching the online privacy/security issue, and asking relevant questions regarding where and how it fit into this new world of social networking, we concluded it didn’t. It couldn’t. Privacy and security are virtually the antithesis of the transparency and immediacy of social media. There has been an evolution, though. What you can have — indeed should insist you do have — is CONTROL.

Below are some tips that will give you a bit more control, both personally and professionally, while adapting to and adopting social media.

Personal Control

Tighten your privacy settings: Remember that Facebook, MySpace, and other social sharing sites want your information to be shared. That’s why the default privacy settings are usually as loose as they can be. But Facebook, and many other similar sites, offer customizable privacy settings that allow you to limit who can see what. Limit sensitive data, like email addresses and phone numbers, to only your friends, to better protect your privacy.

Share less: If there’s something about you — information or a picture — that you don’t want the world to potentially see, then don’t share it online. Pictures showing you out drinking or at a party, for example, might be something you want to keep to yourself and out of the hands of possible employers or even from family. The easiest way to keep info private is to not share it at all.

Use dedicated e-mail accounts: Thinking of signing up for a new social network or starting a blog? Worried that you’ll be flooded with spam and phishing emails if you do? Then take the steps to protect your e-mail and set up dedicated email addresses, something like “myspamaccount@gmail.com”, for example. Use this account for your social networking sites and other online activities. That way, if you do become a victim of spam or other unwanted emails, your primary email is still safe and protected.

Corporate Control

Increase employee awareness: People can change the way they behave in social networks only if they are aware of the security risks. Therefore, organizations should inform their employees about the risks present in the social media and raise their awareness of the fact that even seemingly harmless information can reveal too much about the company or people’s private lives. Providing continuous information about new threats and maintaining rules of conduct can further help with employee awareness. It is helpful to appoint a social media expert within the company who acts as a permanent contact for employees with questions and concerns.

Establish firm processes: Administrators need to remain up-to-date about the most recent risks on the web. It is therefore advisable to establish firm processes that are systematically linked to daily workflows. For example, administrators should make sure to download the latest security updates. These seemingly mundane mechanisms enable IT administrators to identify network attacks quickly or to avoid them altogether.

Maintain a strong set of rules: With in-house guidelines, network administrators can define the network areas and applications that can be accessed by specific people at specific times. This makes it possible to control and monitor access to critical data, and to track such access at any time, which reduces the risk of information falling into wrong hands through unauthorized channels. Companies should also take compliance requirements into account. The important thing is to keep the policies up to date and adapt them to changing circumstances.

So, what do you think? Has social media nullified the principles of online privacy, and by extension security? Do you agree with our theory that privacy and security, when it comes to social networks, have gone the way of the Dodo bird? And if not, why not?

For the rest of this month Radian6 is going to take an in-depth look at a few facets of online privacy. Privacy, by dictionary definition, is the freedom from unauthorized intrusion. And we all know what unauthorised intrusion feels like, both personally and professionally. We’ve all experienced the crawly’ness of a close-talker at a cocktail party. And companies big and small go to great lengths to keep strategy, sales figures, financial statistics and R&D information from their competitors. When leaks happen, heads usually roll. Yet, as a community, we more or less live our lives on the Internet nowadays. In fact, smart phones — which are outselling desktop computers — have made ‘online’ so ubiquitous that the only time it truly registers is when we can’t get there. Throw in retina scans and full body X-rays, GPS and Google Earth, and one might wonder why the issue of online privacy is still, well, an issue.

WWMD?

When it comes to best practices around online privacy, it turns out Mom was right after all — common sense will keep us fairly insulated. Things like trading online databases or not providing for safe online transactions are generally bad. But should we ensure that every bit of online information remains private?

Cyber-footprinting was a fairly new and 1984’ish concern years ago, but it’s now common knowledge that you can’t swing a cat online without leaving bits and pieces of personal evidence behind. Offline companies ask for postal codes or phone numbers for those same bits of personal evidence. One postal code can reveal approximately 14,000 things about a consumer. And they use them for market research. Why should it be any different online? Call it the 21st century’s customer survey or census report.

You Told What To Whom..?

Speaking of marketing, social media opens a unique kettle of fish. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are inherently non-private, their very conceit is the sharing and publishing of personal information. Yet they seem to be the root of more privacy concerns than anything else online. Companies are hammering out policies around social media engagement and networking in the workplace. What will you allow and not allow your company’s social networking ‘voice’ to do and say on your behalf? Do you understand the privacy concerns your customers have regarding social media?

Who was that masked man?

There’s another angle to the issue of online privacy: That what is really wanted is not privacy at all. It’s security. Businesses need to provide secure online shopping avenues and never give out a phone number or address. Customers don’t want to be cyber-tracked. Are the lines between privacy and security blurred? People who track online fraud and cyber crime suggest that too much privacy might not be a good thing, that online anonymity is a dangerous game.

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt made this prediction about the future of information: “True transparency, and no anonymity.”

What do you think? Can too much privacy be a bad thing? Or is the opposite the real problem? Are corporations responsible for protecting consumers’ online privacy, or should personal responsibility come into play? How can you build trust with your online consumers so they’re willing to share themselves with you? How do privacy issues affect your organization, big or small? Or do they?

We’ll be discussing all these aspects of online privacy and more throughout the rest of February and offering up tips and suggestions for making sure your business and customers are as protected as they want and/or need to be. Have any specific online privacy subtopics you’d like us to tackle? Let us know in the comments!

As businesses implementing social media strategies, we’re reaching past that point of overzealousness and blundering. Not everyone, mind you — the adoption curve is still steep – but those that jumped into the fray early on are finally finding their footing, and their customers are adjusting to that. This means consumers are becoming even savvier. We, as buyers, now have even higher expectations for being able to reach companies and get problems resolved, we are more scrutinizing and critical, and we have few if any qualms about publishing our criticisms on the Internet for the world to see. Because we know you’re listening.

So what does this mean for you, businesses? It means that you can’t just appear to have it all together on the social web. You might’ve been able to do that a couple years ago, but that’s no longer the case. You can’t just appease us by saying, “Yep, we heard you!” Great, you heard us, now do something about it.

Rather than go on in this vein and put the fear even deeper in you, let’s look at some ways you can adjust the inner workings of your business to make sure that what you’re hearing on the social web is being sent to the right people within your company and that there’s a process in place to either act on that information, log it for future review, or respond back with proper reasoning as to why it’s not possible.

Creating Your Internal Spokes

We’ve found that for ourselves and many other brands the hub-and-spoke model of internal structuring for social media adoption is one of the most effective ways for listening, acting on, and processing social media-based information. The hub of your social media efforts not only acts as an internal resource for social media adoption, they act as liaisons between your community and the various departments that make up your business.

While focusing on creating a strong and efficient social media hub is important, you can’t ignore the importance of selecting a strong lineup of spokes (e.g., department liaisons who act as points of contact for your social media team) to connect that hub to the rest of your organization. That selection process is almost more crucial than creating your hub, because those spokes will be the ones overseeing the information absorption process.

Some traits to look for in potential spokes include:

• The ability to communicate clearly and concisely and simplify concepts
• A strong understanding of social media and how people build relationships with each other and brands through these communication channels
• The ability to easily build relationships within your organization
• The willingness and confidence to go to whoever necessary within your organization to get answers
• A record of following through with requests in a timely manner
• An understanding of the customer’s perspective

If you can’t find all of those traits right from the get-go, identifying people who are enthusiastic about social media communication and are able to convey the needs of customers is a good start.

Mapping Your Processes

The information and opinions about your brands and products that come through the social media pipeline can be tagged with multiple labels. Some of that data is customer service oriented, some is product related, some relates to sales opportunities, and some might be more business development focused.

The mass amount of valuable feedback and qualified inquiries a company can receive via the social web makes it imperative you devise a well-mapped system that allows your hub and spokes to sort, organize, route, respond to, and track all of that in a timely fashion.

When creating this system, you’ll need to consider:

• The types/focus of comments and questions you receive
• The comments and questions that aren’t necessarily directed at you but are relevant to you
• Your organization’s current processes for resolving issues and receiving feedback through more traditional means of communication
• Setting external expectations with customers about your problem resolution timelines
• Setting internal expectations with departments about your problem resolution timelines
• Clearly identifying the people within your organization who are responsible for getting customer service issues resolved and feedback processed
• How you want to respond to different types of social media posts and brand-related topics
• In which social networks you want to be most responsive
• Which current information absorption processes can be streamlined to create a more efficient workflow
• How you want to track and log what comes through social media and how it’s handled internally

When you’ve considered these factors and more, go through the physical exercise of creating mapped social media processes. Developing a visual decision map can be extremely helpful in taking away any guessing as to who is responsible for what and speeding up the information absorption workflow.

There’s so much more to the picture, but these are starting points for you to think over. As mentioned above, consumer expectations are changing and you must adapt and amend your social media programs and processes to accommodate that change. What else would you add to these lists or to the bigger picture? How do companies need to adapt their internal structure, communication, and workflows to accommodate the influx of social media-based feedback and questions? Share your thoughts in the comments!

While we don’t advocate mapping every single interaction to a T, you do need to draft a comprehensive strategy for outreach and engagement that accounts for uncontrollable factors; has a solid foundation of basics, like a clearly mapped timeline and detailed expectations of influencer participation; and includes reasonable goals and metrics for measuring success.

Here are some key points to consider as you build out your influencer program.

1. Create a thorough, organized list of the influencers you’ve included in your program to distribute internally. This list should house a variety of information about each influencer — including links to their online social profiles, blogs, any past programs they’ve been included in, and additional content and commentary they’ve published — and organize it in a way that’ll help those internal folks executing the program understand who they’re working with and give them a leg up on connecting with each person. This list should be a living, breathing document that is updated regularly and distributed to everyone involved in social media outreach, so your internal teams know how your company is defining influence and identifying its influencers.
2. The fundamental tenet of your influencer program should be to emphasize how you can help your influencers, not the other way around. If you take that path, you will get these brand VIPs talking about your products and services in positive ways, which will build your reputation and draw in new business. This creed of sorts should really weave through the entirety of your organization, but if there were ever a place to make sure it rang true it would be within your influencer program. Your customers are savvy shoppers and they know your products better than most, if not better than you — treat them as such, learn from them, and you’ll see just how successful a well-constructed influencer program can be.
3. Do not ignore the value of exclusivity. Part of the reason many well-known influencer programs work is because they offer exclusive looks at and experiences with new products that haven’t reached the market yet. Usually that exclusive experience is tied directly to the product’s launch, and it can do wonders for making your influencers feel valued and privileged that you let them see what your company’s been up to.
4. Build real relationships with your influencers that extend past the length of your program. These people believe in the work you’re doing to such a degree that they’ll promote it on your behalf, and that’s saying a lot. Be grateful for their participation and show them that appreciation often. Remember, they’ve opted into this relationship with you — it’s not like they have any commitment to you other than what you’ve asked of them for the duration of your program.
5. Develop your metrics and measurements for success based on the outcomes you want to see from this program, not the activity that will be happening. If your main goal is to increase sales through this program, benchmark your sales numbers right before the program starts, as it starts, and at regularly spaced intervals throughout the duration of your program. To add even more context, overlay this data on top of your sales numbers for the same time period last year. If brand recognition and increased online mentions are what you’re working toward, benchmark your current levels of brand mentions and track those through the duration of your program. The key is to measure and report on the outcomes of this program, not just the activity.

There’s much more to think about than just these points, and we’re hoping you’ll add those considerations we didn’t cover here in the comments. What else must be accounted for when creating a solid influencer program? Share your thoughts!

Social media purists generally support the strategy of creating and using influence rather than popularity to reach set goals, but that support is ultimately relative to what one’s social media goals and objectives are and how they’re being tracked and measured. While there aren’t many situations in which popularity is more valuable than influence, there is one we can think of quickly…

When Popularity Matters

Simply put, popularity matters when you want a lot of people to potentially view your stuff, when you’re looking for eyeballs and increased awareness. Now, we could hop on the proverbial soapbox and say that potential reach and the sort of broadcast mentality that supports the reach metric aren’t very effective in social media, but making a broad statement like that is a recipe for disaster. There’s always an exception to the rule, which means there’s a chance you’re that company whose market responds well to celebrities touting your goods, and maybe even prefers that over other means of social media communication.

Even if that’s not true all the time, there are multiple factors that feed into what your market will grab onto and what they’ll ignore. The more research and analysis you do on the back end around your community, the more you’ll be able to see if there are any instances in which using the popularity of a celebrity or larger entity will work in your favor. Review all the response you’ve received from your social media campaigns so far and pull out the trends in consumer behavior to get a handle on what types of social media activities resonate with them.

The Relativity of Popularity

One important thing to consider is that popularity can also be relative to your industry; in many instances, relative popularity can be even more effective than that of a random but widely known individual. An obvious example is how large brands like Nike and Gatorade might use well-known athletes to promote their products. In both these instances, the celebrities they would select to promote their brands work in fields that require the use of products that companies like Nike and Gatorade provide. The connection between “athlete” and “athletic apparel” and “sports drinks” is a close one, so it makes sense for these brands to use the popularity of well-known athletes to help market their goods and services.

Now, you might be thinking you’re not a big brand like Nike and your market is nowhere near as exciting, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t well-known people within it that could be great to employ for promotional purposes. Let’s admit that in these instances we’re walking a much finer line between popularity and influence, but notice how the emphasis is still on using the influence of a widely-known individual, not that of the average consumer.

It’d be interesting to hear from folks who’ve found that popularity has worked in their favor more than influence. Do you have any examples to share? If you do, why do you think popularity worked so well? The comments are yours.

This not-so-phenomenal phenomenon is something marketers are beginning to take note of and tap into, as was shared in this AdAge article about what type of conversational content is truly relevant to people these days.

In the article, author Matthew Creamer shares a couple anecdotes about BlackBerry and the company’s penchant for simple conversation. Essentially, BlackBerry has made a few “mundane” references and asked some simple, non-brand questions of its followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook, and has received much stronger response to those comments and questions than was expected.

While the monetary result of this type of conversation is up for debate, the truth is that there is value in simple conversation. Where brands need to be strategic with this simplistic style, though, is in making informed decisions as to where it makes the most sense to invite those conversations, and what “simple” conversation is within the context of the brand.

Some additional questions you need to ask when considering the value of online conversation to your brand (and the type of conversational style you might want to adopt) include:

1. What is your brand personality? In the article, Creamer offers up another example of a simple conversational style, sharing how Oreo uses it to connect with its fans on Facebook. For Oreo, a fun and lively, yet light conversational tone matches its brand personality, making it easy for fans to hop into the fray of cookie chatter without having to make a large mental leap from brand personality to execution. Oreo poses questions that match its brand personality and let fans share a bit of themselves and their experiences with Oreo products.
2. What are your goals for online engagement? Yes, we’re hammering the goal setting principle home here. What the heck are you trying to achieve by talking to your customers online? Are you engaging with them to provide customer service? Are you aiming to improve the recognition and reputation of your brand? The type of conversation you inspire ties directly to your goals for engagement, which means this type of light-hearted, “mundane” conversation really might not be a good tack for your brand. Explore what it is you’re trying to do, in detail, to see if this conversational style is truly right for your company.
3. Who will be creating and managing these conversations? If you read through the Oreo cookie example, you’ll see that, despite the free-flowing feel of their conversations, their chatter is planned carefully and executed by a group of folks skilled in connecting brands with people. To get the voice and conversation where you want it to be, you’ll need to have the right people in place.

There’s so much more to this conversation than what fits in a single blog post. Keep it going in the comments, please? Tell me what you think — is conversational, “stream marketing” the way of the future? Where does it fit?

Maybe it’s Just a Phase?

For many brands the emergence of social media feels like a phase. It isn’t. In most cases the market stopped listening to them long before social media came along–it’s only much more obvious now. The consumer now has a stronger voice, and it’s not afraid to use it. It’s also networked in a way that amplifies that voice and gives it more confidence. It simply will not tolerate being ‘parented’.

So What’s a Brand to Do?

If the market has changed, then so must the brand. Fortunately, there is a growing list of brands that realize it’s up to them to evolve their approach if they want to continue to maintain and grow their customer base. So what can a brand do? Here are 6 ways that help brands better relate:

1. Start by listening. To borrow from Stephen Covey, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” What does the market like about you and what do you need to improve? How do they want you to help them? Listening is the first step in building a relationship.
2. Share content of value. Share content that lets the market decide on it’s own as to what it’s going to do. Also, share what others are creating. Chances are your market will trust content from friends before you have a chance to build a solid relationship with them. And remember, a consumer knows when they are being ‘promoted’ to so it’s not content about how great you are.
3. Line up for them. Meet them on their turf and stop making them fit into your schedule and processes. They will tell you when they need something, so be attentive and listen for the cues to show up, and then help.
4. Collaborate. Stop assuming you have all the answers. You most likely don’t, and your market doesn’t like the attitude that comes with anyone who thinks they do. Slow down, stop trying to convince, and work with your market to innovate and test assumptions.
5. Get to know friends of friends. Constantly be looking to develop more relationships. Consumers look to each other for advice so aim to build friendships with the friends of your market. Who knows, they may end up being potential customers or advocates themselves.
6. Be willing to make mistakes and own up to them. Behind every brand are human beings, and human beings are far from perfect. Let your personalities shine through and be willing to attempt to change. Yes, you will most definitely stumble, but if you are honest in your attempts and quick to apologize, then your market will give you kudos for trying. While they are allowed to be demanding, they are also human themselves and they will cut you slack if you are trying your best to improve.

As marketers, what other things can we learn from this analogy?

Being a parent is not easy. We have no instruction book and we often learn the hard way through trial and error. One of the biggest challenges is knowing when to adapt communications styles as children grow into adults. So, I got to wondering, as marketers can we learn from the lessons of finding a successful parent-adolescent style of communication? Please take a read and let me know if we can.

One-way Communication Works Early On

As a parent you have a number jobs to do including looking out for what’s best for your kids. You have a lot of experience to draw on and often use your unquestioned authority to dole out commands on just about everything.

For the most part, this one-way delivery works pretty well for most day-to-day tasks for both you and your child. It’s a pretty efficient system–your child trusts you to do what’s best for them and, unless they are tired, hungry, or just in one of those moods, he or she accepts the unidirectional communication style without too much fuss.

Adolescent years? Think again

Then come the adolescent years and that one-way stuff communication style goes right out the window. As your teen starts the process of becoming an adult they begin to make their own decisions on what’s best for them. They start listening to their friends for input more than they listen to you. They expect to be asked to do things, not told, and even when asked they are pretty good at sniffing out if a request is actually a command cloaked as a question. They have their own opinions and expect to have those opinions respected and listened to. They have finely tuned hearing and have no problem ignoring anything they don’t believe to be valuable to them at that moment.

What you discover as a parent, and usually through painful trial and error, is if you want to engage your teen, you need to stop talking and start listening. You need to adjust your approach. It’s best to make suggestions and to collaborate with your child, and do this with no predetermined expectations of any particular outcome.

Relationships count more than ever.

Traditional Marketing First Evolved When Consumers Trusted Institutions

For the most part, traditional marketing approaches today were born out of an era of mass marketing developed in the 50′s and 60′s. During this post-war period institutions were trusted and always seen as having our best interests in mind. Brand X dictated, “You need this product,” and we went out and bought it in droves.

This command-and-control method was efficient and effective, and it seemed to benefit both the brand and the consumer. The traditional marketing industry blossomed into the multi-billion-dollar play that it is today.

The Consumer Matured

Then something changed along the way. Consumers matured. They stopped trusting institutions. They stopped listening to those one-way commands unless, on a rare occasion, it met their demands at the moment. They started looking to their friends as trusted advisors when they needed recommendations.

Consumers found their voice and with the advent of social media it was as powerful, or even more powerful, than any brand’s.

Oblivious and Acting as “Parental Units”

Unfortunately, like many parents, some brands still cling to the old methods of command and control when communicating with their marketplace or community. They still shell out one-way commands: “I’m the boss, listen to me. I know what’s best for you.” They rarely really listen, and relationships are only a focus when they need something from the prospective customer. Sure, they try to act cool and to entertain in order to get attention of the market, but for the most part they are ignored. Ironically, while avoiding changing their communication style, brands have become used to this extremely low feedback and often get very excited when a response rate breaks into double digits.

To their prospective market they have sadly become ‘parental units‘–to be tolerated and used only when the market feels they’re worthy. This is not a fun place to be no matter if you are a parent or a brand.

Have some thoughts to share on these parallel relationships between parents and their children and brands and their customers? Do so in the comments, and come back on Monday for the wrap-up!