And in nearly every situation the answer to what is driving behavior is emotions.

Canva.com had an interesting blog post that addressed these emotional responses. In it author and neuroscientist Andrew Tate gives six situations where the content will evoke an emotional response that is favorable to your content, whether that favorable behavior meant views, shares, or likes. As a quick summary of the post they were:

1. Asking a person to do a favor makes them like you more because they assume you are the type of person that’s worth a favor.
2. We want guidance to know what is right or wrong, so we look at the number of responses to give us a gauge of “public” opinion. People like to be part of a crowd and are less comfortable being the first to respond.
3. Fear or discomfort is an excellent motivator for people; use headlines or content that play to these two emotions to get more views, likes or shares.
4. Posts that appeal to emotions capture the attention of more people than posts that appeal to rationality.
5. Create urgency with your posts because no one wants to “miss out” on something—even if they didn’t want or need it in the first place.
6. Confidence attracts an audience. Be assertive with your ideas.

With emotions running the show, then it must mean that social media should show an endless stream of soldiers returning home from duty to surprise a loved one or a lioness tending to an orphaned baby pig? Nope. Too much of any one emotion is…well, too much. (Although I wouldn’t mind those soldier videos. They get me every time!)

What it does mean is you have to consider how emotional responses to phrases or situations can create a response in your audience, and then use this to create a social media strategy that plays to those responses.

The methods you use to get likes for your content on social media from your audience are almost identical like getting your Customers to behave the way you want when they interact with you (i.e. to spend more money on your good and services). Like with social media engagement, you have to understand that emotions drive Customers’ behavior. Then you design an experience that evokes the emotions in your Customer Experience that drive the most value for your bottom line.

Our Emotional Signature® concept addresses the emotions in your Customer Experience.  We undertook two years of research with the London Business School before launching this for our clients. When we came up with the database for the Emotional Signature, we identified 20 emotions that drive or destroy value for organizations. They are: 

In our Customer Mirrors exercise, we help organizations see their experience from the perspective of the Customer. We find that many organizations recognize many moments in their interaction with Customers where they can evoke an emotional response that creates Customer Loyalty and Retention.

The 20 emotions here and something similar to the Customer Mirrors exercise can give you important information about your social media strategy, too. In many instances, you can use these same approaches to amplify your social media engagement.

Humans are driven by emotions. It’s true whether they are buying cosmetics, cars or computers, or liking your post on a feed. When it comes to social media, it is important to understand the psychology behind human behavior. Once you accept emotions are running the show, you can appeal to your audience’s emotions to create a better buzz, get more comments, or even the gold standard (and most elusive) of social media, “Go viral!”

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

How to Get People to Do What You Want

3 Ways to Improve Your Training to the Next Level

Science Proves What Really Makes People Happy

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post Moving Your Social Media to the Next Level appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

“There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

I believe if I share my knowledge I will get paid back (in being talked about…or argued with in many cases!). I have devoted many late nights, long transatlantic flights, train rides, and evenings spent in nondescript hotel rooms to my belief. I have been at it for years; maybe longer than content marketing has even been a thing. With all this time and energy invested in writing books, writing posts came naturally to me.

Having said all of this, if I don’t write what people want then I don’t get people reading. So here are my tips and examples for those of you that want to increase your followership:

1. Be original – don’t copy people.
2. Don’t shy away from controversy – controversy can be good. It causes debate.
3. Be yourself – people can tell if you are not.
4. Be grounded – Don’t take yourself too seriously. I am not a rock star or even a Z-list celebrity, I am just a guy or as we would say in England, a bloke.
5. Be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them – When this happens in social media it can hurt! But don’t take it personally. Learn from it and move on.

Here are some of my examples of the tips:

My most viewed post:
15 Statistics That Should Change The Business World—But Haven’t

Views:         More Than 189,000

Tip:              Headlines that are a surprise draw more clicks; but you have to deliver the goods in the content, too. People like stats.

I am pleased this post performed well. Unlike some of my other posts that received lots of views, it is in my area of expertise, my industry. When a post like this reaches a lot of viewers, I feel like  I am helping progress the field. In this case, my headline promised what my content delivered so the views rolled in. This is the most important thing to know about content marketing: headlines matter. A lot.

My most well liked post:
Secrets of Being Promoted and Earning More Money

Views:             179,074

Likes:              1,784

Tip:              Secrets are good, but revealed secrets are even better.

This post had great views also, but it garnered more likes. Why? Titles are VERY important. People like to hear secrets! This particular post talked about different personality types at many organizations, too, which was of interest to many people that probably recognized themselves or some of their co-workers. While it isn’t necessarily in my field of expertise, this post was fun to write, and my hope is that it helped those readers that wanted to get promoted and earn more money do exactly that. I think it’s important that people see more than one dimension of you and that you are a real person.

My favorite post that flopped:
The Gender Experience-Math, Cars & Vanilla?

Views:         747

Likes:          8

Tip:              Headlines and images are important. Really important.

I am fascinated by the difference between men and women as it pertains to Customer Experience (as to all the other ways, I’m interested in that, too! Lol.) So I wrote a post about how little changes to the experience, i.e. adding vanilla scent to the documents they were working with changed the emotional reactions of women to a certain, anxiety-inducing situation. I published it, ready for the debate and engagement my posts typically enjoyed. The debate and engagement were nowhere to be found. Looking back at this post, I think the image and the headline weren’t as good as they could have been, nor did my story have the same kind of connections drawn to my field as I typically do these days. Maybe I’ll have to pursue a rewrite here…stay tuned!

My biggest mistake:
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly in Customer Experience Recently

Views:         23, 969

Likes:              246

Tips:            Use humor wisely.

When I first started researching this post, I didn’t know who Lululemon was. I’m not what you might call a “Yogi.” But I like to chronicle the Customer Experience journey big brands make because even if I don’t know who the brand is, the readers do. I also like to use humor in my posts whenever possible. I learnt that sometime this can backfire if people don’t ‘get it’. However, in this particular post, I made an error in judgment that I regretted as soon as the first angry comments rolled in from my female readers. Originally, on the “Ugly” point, I made the joke, “It’s Never the Woman’s Fault.” I meant that as a dig at CEO Chip Wilson who blamed women’s bodies for the poor performance of their yoga pants, but my readers interpreted that as my opinion that women can’t accept the fact that they are ever wrong—which is not at all what I meant. I changed it and apologized. All this to say, be careful with your humor.

Content marketing is a great way to share ideas with your audience. I hope these insights help. If you are one of my followers, I sincerely thank you for continuing to read and engage.

I am grateful for the time and attention and only hope that my thoughts and words help my readers have the career and the Customer Experiences they want for themselves and their business. I also hope these tips help each of you in your Content Marketing journey.

What tips do you have for people?  We’d all love to hear your insight in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• What I Have Learned as a LinkedIn Influencer

• If I Were 22: Being Qualified Doesn’t Entitle You to Success

• Driving Value By Driving Emotions

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

The post How I got 200,000 LinkedIn Followers appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Another benefit to social media is cost. Actually it’s the lack of cost. You don’t need to pay for advertising in newspapers or billboards. You don’t need to hire a media company to buy airtime on radio and television. No, you just need to exploit the free or low cost opportunities that social media provides. And, of course you have to create the content and information that you post.

Here are just a few powerful ways that any company can use social media to engage with their customers:

• If customer service is important to you, and it should be, then have someone (or a team) be part of your social service strategy. Monitor the different social channels like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp. You’re not only looking to react to customers who are posting negative reviews or complaints, you are looking to engage and thank the customers who post positive comments.

• One of the strongest social media strategies is content marketing. You will become a valuable resource to your customers when you post information about your products and your industry. The key is to not be self-promoting. Give value and you will develop a following that looks forward to your insights. Post blogs, articles and create white papers that share information on the latest and greatest happening, not just with you and your company, but in your industry.

• Repurpose content from your blogs and articles. Extract a sentence or two from your content and turn them into Tweets. Take short pithy quotes from your articles and “pin” them to Pinterest. Create a slide show of your articles with cool graphics you can purchase from royalty-free photography sites such as BigStock Photo and post them on SlideShare. There are many places you can place repurposed content.

• An offshoot of content marketing is article consolidation. Create daily Google Alerts for any articles, blog posts, or news related to your products and industry.  Read through the alerts for news that your customers may be interested in. Share these articles on Twitter, Facebook and other social channels. Once a week take the top five or ten articles that you’ve read and create a blog post. For example, on Mondays I post an article titled Top Five Customer Service Articles of the Week (and I include the date).  My clients have felt this to be one of the most powerful strategies and tactics they use.

• Are you confident enough to feature your competitors on your website? If so, consider having a semi-regular guest post from one of your friendly competitors or colleagues in your industry. This shows that you really are interested in sharing relevant content, even if it is not yours, with your community.

• Participate on LinkedIn. Don’t just have a personal or company profile. Get involved with the LinkedIn groups. It’s a powerful way to engage with your community. And, now you can publish your articles and blog posts to LinkedIn.

• Have a YouTube strategy. Next to Google, the biggest search engine is YouTube. Posting valuable and informative videos is powerful. If you want to get recognized quickly, then start posting videos. Again, I’ll emphasize that you shouldn’t be promotional. Deliver value. However, it is fine to include a promotional line or two at the end of the video or in the description underneath the video. Just don’t go overboard with the promotion. It should be subtle. Some tips that will help you. First, you don’t have to have a professional studio. Believe it or not, an iPhone has a great camera that is more than adequate for a YouTube video. I would recommend buying an inexpensive microphone to plug into the camera or iPhone, as the audio needs to be good. People will forgive you for not having top-notch video, but they will leave you in a moment if the audio is poor. Creating content for your videos is easy. Just go to your articles and blog posts and repurpose them for your videos.  If you want to get fancy, get an inexpensive software program to edit your videos. If you have a Mac, you already have the software on your computer.

In almost all of the above strategies it is important to remember that it’s not a one-way street. You’re not posting content and moving on. You need to encourage engagement. That means you interact. You welcome and react to comments. You want to have conversations with your community of customers. It’s about engagement. It’s about connecting. It’s about creating relationships. Social Media is a gift. Embrace it and reap the rewards it will bring you.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert and New York Times bestselling author.
Find more information at www.Hyken.com.
Follow on Twitter @Hyken.

The post Seven Ways to Engage Your Customers Using Social Media appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Author Ed Batista addresses this in his post on Harvard Business Review’s blog. He compares to our global connectivity with the famous marshmallow test for kids from the late 1960s. For those of you not familiar with the marshmallow test, the researchers gave children aged 4 to 6 a choice. They could eat a Marshmallow now or wait to eat it for 15 minutes and get two marshmallows. Researchers went on to discover that the kids who waited for the second marshmallow did better in various ways in their lives, from higher SAT scores to other measures of “success.

Batista thinks that information about others around us has become the new marshmallow. When it comes to delayed gratification, however, we are all failing the test.

It’s an interesting point he brings up. There is a new video circulating about how we need to stop obsessing about our screens and enjoy our lives more. I believe in this as well, even writing about the first video I saw about this a few months ago. I think that social media to excess might be the next generation’s big regret.

Batista says that the “blips of information” we crave as grown-ups had its roots in times when we didn’t have access to so much information. As a result, our brains crave information when it is available. We know that it is valuable. So, we look for it often, even when we are embroiled in a complex task that should be our focus…and it gratifies us in the same way a marshmallow does a four-year-old.

Productivity is crucial in one’s work. I read on an airline magazine that Tuesday is the most productive day of the week. The least productive day is Wednesday. I wonder, is that because engagement on Social media kicks up on hump day?

So how do we fix this? Social media is here to stay. No matter how many videos eloquently chastise us to stop wasting so much time looking at screens, we still will. At the same time, we still will need to be productive. When you look at it that way, it feels like an insurmountable problem.

There are ways to overcome one’s bad habits, however, even if they are unorthodox. Consider the method employed by a San Francisco-based entrepreneur. Maneesh Sethi, author and blogger of Hack the System hired a person on Craigslist to slap him every time he lost his focus on the task at hand. Interestingly enough, he paid them $8 an hour to do this. The results were surprising. Before the slapper, his research indicated that he wasted 38% of his time on “other interests, which you and I know as Facebook and Reddit. After the slapper, his productivity rose to 98%. Sethi tried this tactic several times with different slappers, and the results were always good, although better when the slapper was a stranger.

While the method is outlandish, the reason it works isn’t. Sethi said that once he made a commitment to change his behavior, it changed his mindset and facilitated his success. A person can change their less than desirable behavior once they decide to. Otherwise, no one would ever have quit smoking, stopped biting their nails, or turned off any of the Real Housewives programs.

Ultimately, we are emotional beings. We like how it feels to know what’s going on in the world, with our followers, with our posts, and our online community. Sometimes these breaks can serve as little breathers in a complex task.  I’m not saying that there is no place for this activity when you need to be productive. It’s when they become the focus that the problem with productivity ensues.

I like to think that if I had been chosen to do the marshmallow test that I would have been one of the brilliant tykes who waited for the 15 minutes to get an extra treat. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I would have, but my point is that I would like to have been.

So bringing that concept into my adulthood, I must make the mindset that I will resist the information marshmallows that will disrupt my day and focus on the task at hand. The memes and cat videos will just have to wait. And my reward will be that I will finish my tasks, and have plenty of time to go out and catch up on what I missed on my feeds.

How do you resist the temptation to waste time online? Tips and tricks would be great to share for all of us in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Social Media: Will This Be the Next Generation’s Big Regret?
• Customer Engagement: Is Social Media Working for Businesses?
• Union Street Guest house Commits the Worst Social Media Blunder Ever!

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Change Your Mindset for Greater Productivity appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Times are changing. In 2012, Wal-Mart moved Black Friday discounts back across the midnight boundary, exploring the potential for Thanksgiving night shoppers. It worked, and other flagship stores followed suit, including Target and the struggling Kmart stores among others. Other retailers responded to the controversial trend by announcing they would honor their employee’s holiday and stay closed.

Costco, Nordstrom, Barnes and Noble, and Patagonia hold the line on not opening for Thanksgiving. If you are curious who is open and who is closed, you can read this article on dailyfinance.com. It appears that the same arguments between retailers exist. GameStop, a video game chain states the anti-Black Thursday platform eloquently:

“At GameStop we often use the phrase, ‘protect the family’ in reference to our business. A large part of what that means to us is to not open any of our GameStop, SimplyMac, Spring Mobile or Cricket Wireless U.S. locations on Thanksgiving Day out of respect for our store associates and their families and friends. We believe it’s the right decision not only for our employees, but also for our customers. Enjoy this time with your loved ones and we’ll see you on Black Friday.”

When you consider how much longer the list is of stores that are open on Thanksgiving, however, it appears these stores might be the holdouts, and losing the battle of keeping Black Friday on Friday.

Black Friday is a term that emerged in the 1970s and early 80s, representing the day retailers began to turn a profit for the year, or “being in the black.” For many people, the event of Black Friday became the kickoff to their holiday tradition. Together with other like-minded family and friends, shoppers arrive to line up outside their favorite retailer in the wee hours of the morning, bundled against the elements, and still feeling stuffed from the previous day’s feast. This tradition has become a hallmark of American Culture; much like Boxing Day is in the UK.

Last year I examined how the trend of offering deep discounts on merchandise moving from the traditional day after Thanksgiving to actual Thanksgiving was harming the Customers. Employees giving up the national holiday spent with family and friends to report to work are not going to be as enthusiastic about delivering an experience that a retailer has carefully designed for their Customers.

According to Scott Robinson, Senior Director, Loyalty Design & Solutions of Bond Brand Loyalty, the atmosphere around Black Friday as a social event has changed as well. In a recent study, Robinson reveals two important statistics regarding the decline of making an occasion out of holiday shopping:

• Almost 60% of Americans do not see holiday shopping as time to bond or connect with friends or family by making an event of the shopping experience.
• 65% are not more likely to think of holiday shopping as a bonding experience vs. a few years ago.

The adage says that the one thing you can count on is change. Clearly, the long-held holiday tradition of Black Friday has changed. Depending on your point of view, it can be for better or worse.

What hasn’t changed is the importance of Building a Great Customer Experience from my book, which explains that an important philosophy is, “Great Customer Experiences are enabled by inspirational leadership, an empowering culture and empathetic people who are happy and fulfilled.” I wonder if this migration from Black Friday to Black Thursday can sustain that environment for employees, and ultimately the Customers who shop there.

Will you shop on Black Thursday? I am interested to hear why or why not in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Black Thursday: A Black Day for Employees?

• The Customer Is Not Always Right

• The Airline Industry: WestJet, Virgin and Delta Create Joyful Experiences

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX.

Photo: Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images

Post originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.

The post Slow Death of the Black Friday Tradition? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Sainsbury’s Christmas Ad

Sainsbury’s Christmas Ad is appearing in social media feeds around the world. Inspired by a true story that happened during “The Great War” (WWI) Christmas Eve in 1914, it tells the extraordinary story of the Christmas Truce when British and German Soldiers took a respite from the horrors of trench warfare and shared in a little Christmas football.

Sainsbury executives wanted to tell this story with as much historical accuracy as possible as they explain in their “Making of our Christmas Ad” video. They paid attention to specific details that were mentioned in the journals and letters of those who were there, 100 years ago this year. The wanted the ad to be as authentic as possible to honor all the young men and boys who lost their lives there.

To further promote the feelings of pride and gratitude, they took additional steps to support their message. Sainsbury’s reverted to a Belgian Chocolate recipe and produced packaging from the era 100 years ago. Furthermore, they will donate all the proceeds from the sales of these commemorative chocolate bars to The Royal British Legion, a charity in Britain that addressed the social and emotional necessities of current and past members of the British Armed Forces and their families.

When you evoke emotions that create a good memory based on the content of your ad, you create Customer Expectations for your experience. These expectations are tied to the emotions they feel when they watch your ad.

Also, sometimes fate lends a hand. One of the other reasons why this ad is particularly poignant at this time is because of the poppy display at the Tower of London.The poppy in Great Britain is a symbol of Remembrance, as the poppy was the only flower to grow in the devastation of the battlefields of Europe.You will see from this video that a piece of art has captured people’s imagination. This display at the Tower of London, where each poppy represents one British or colonial soldier who lost their life in World War 1.

Here is a drone tour of the remarkable display:

Ads that appeal to emotions are memorable. When they can evoke empathy, joy, laughter, or inspiration from the audience, they connect with us and embed in our memories, colored with the feelings we had when we watched them. It is essential that you connect your Customer Experience to these ads, and sustain this emotional experience for Customers.

Sainsbury’s Christmas ad is an excellent example of using emotions to create a connection and brand promise with Customers, an essential first step to an excellent Customer Experience. May it also create a Customer Experience that fosters Customer Loyalty and Retention, the hallmarks of a successful marketing campaign.

Lastly, and most importantly, it would be wrong of me not to also pay respect to all lives that have been lost in wars. These brave men and women will always be remembered.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Emotionally Engagement and Brand Loyalty: Procter and Gamble Gets it, Do You?

• Guinness: Being ‘Made of More’ with Your Brand

• Thinking Fast and Lazy: Why Do Ads Target Your Emotions?

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Watch A Great Emotional Ad That Is Critically Acclaimed appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

OMG! This is probably the worst social media blunder of all time and moreover it shows the mentality of the mindset of this organization. I have read some doozies in my time about how different companies manage their online reputation, but this one might take the cake…wedding cake that should be smeared and smooshed all over their ridiculous policy supporting faces.

My first reaction was that no one could agree to this. But, unfortunately, they do. In fact in the section on wedding tours, it says they do not have any tours on Saturdays because the hotel is always booked with…you guessed it, wedding guests. I would call them and ask them about it, but it clearly states in their policy that they don’t talk about this policy (or their rates or availability, apparently) on site. Only email. And don’t get me started on the cancellation policy…suffice it to say that I laughed out loud when I read it. How do places like this stay in business?

The more I read, the more exasperated I feel.

In our Naïve to Natural assessment, we talk about how customer-centric different organizations are. They begin with Naïve, which is not at all customer-centric to transitional, and then enlightened, and finally natural, the most customer-centric organizations.  To give you an idea of what I am talking about, Ryanair is Naïve, most organzations are Transactional, (they treat the Customer as if there were a transaction,) and Apple is Enlightened, and Disney, Natural.

Naïve organizations are focused inwardly, on what operations needs and couldn’t care less what customers want from the experience. When we teach this model, we ask people to imagine a shopkeeper who is so focused on stacking the shelves and managing their store they constantly have their backs turned to the customers lined up at the counter. In fact Customers are an annoyance as they constantly buy things and empty their shelves. Naïve customers are not concerned with how their policies affect the experience or how customers feel when they are interacting with them.

Naïve organizations can thrive, believe it or not. There must be certain circumstances present, however, to facilitate that success. These include exclusivity, high demand, and lack of competition. Most organizations do not benefit from these circumstances, particularly in today’s highly competitive and globalized economic environments. As a result, more organizations are focused on differentiating themselves based on their excellent customer experience.

It goes almost without saying the Union Street Guest House is Naïve. They will be added to the examples of a poor Customer Experience. They dictate all the terms, have no interest in making sure their experience is satisfactory for any of the guests, refuse to discuss it face to face, and take their customer’s money if he or she fails to comply. My guess is this must be one fantastic wedding location or no one in their right mind would subject themselves to this kind of treatment.

What frustrates me the most is that just because no one says the experience wasn’t great doesn’t make it great. Threatening and badgering brides to send out an awkward email begging everyone to be polite to the hotel in their reviews does not make an experience 5 stars. It reminds me of the rental car representative who gave me a discount so I would change my negative rating from a six to a ten.  Saying it’s a ten when it isn’t doesn’t fix the experience that is still a six. The problem isn’t my review. The problem is their managers’ or owners’ view of the world leads them to produce such a policy where you bribe a customer to change their rating with a discount in the first place.

If you do not mind the customer experience and how it makes your customers feel when you have them, customers will not have loyalty to you when there is another option. No customer loyalty is the eventuality of any organization that is Naïve.

Considering what I am reading here and the circles I inhabit, I will likely never be invited to a wedding at the Union Street Guest House. Goodness knows if I were, I would never post a negative review about them—at least without first writing a check for $500 made out to the bride and groom. Read here the backlash of negative reviews they have now received. I can tell you with absolute certainty that when the happy day arrives that either of my girls tells me they are getting married that I won’t be exploring my options at this hotel. I have too many opinionated friends that I need to invite!

What are your thoughts on this policy: good idea or ridiculous manipulation?

The post Union Street Guest House Commits The Worst Social Media Blunder EVER! appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

I am reminded as I surpass this milestone of a quote from graphic novelist, Stan Lee:

“With great power comes great responsibility” – Spiderman, 2002

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that my posts give me great power. Nor am I suffering any misconceptions that I now put on my trousers differently than anyone else. But I do feel I have responsibility to share my wisdom especially now that anyone can publish content on the LinkedIn platform.

What I have learned as a LinkedIn Influencer:

1. There are really some great people out there that are very positive. Of course, it takes all kinds of people to make the LinkedIn program work, but I am pleased that so many of us keep it optimistic.

2. Debate is good. I love entering into debate with people on topics. To clarify for anyone who thinks otherwise, I don’t think I have all the answers. We have a saying in Beyond Philosophy. “none of us are as clever as all of us.” The LinkedIn influencer platform is great for debate.

3. Debate is easier on LinkedIn. By that, I mean that it’s better than Twitter. Maybe that’s because I can’t say hello in 140 characters. So while I understand that 140 Characters is Twitter’s thing, I think this limitation constrains debate. I am excited to hear everything my followers have to say, even when they really disagree with what I said, no matter how many characters it takes.

4. You’ll be surprised what are your most popular posts. Some of my top posts have not been about my chosen field, Customer Experience, but instead about Leadership. Look at the following results to see what I mean:

• 41,000 Views: Dealing with Ambiguity: The Business Imperative 
• 33,000 views: Using Humor in Business: Some Practical Advice
• 160,964: Are You a Workaholic or an Outlier?

5. Personal posts are an audience favorite. Make your post engaging. Even though LinkedIn is all business-related, making your posts personal is a great way to reach your audience. Make it simple and don’t hold yourself on a pedestal. You will be shot down. People love to relate to simple everyday examples.

• 55,000 views: How to Build Lasting Relationships
• 21,000 vies: What Inspires Me: The Day I Heard Pink Floyd

6. Be in touch. – My posts on RyanAir, and Wal-Mart caught a mood of people.

• 53,000 views: Wal-Mart Disappoints Wall Street and Customers Alike
• 71,000 views: Ryanair: The Start of Decline

7. People like stats. I was surprised by the success of this post, but clearly it had an affect on readers.

• 124,000 views: 15 Statistics That Should Change the Business World– But Haven’t

8. Not all posts that you think are good work.

• 8,000 views: The Yin and Yang of Familiarity in Marketing
• 4,000 views: State of Customer Service: The Industry May Die Before It’s Fully Grown

The biggest lesson I have learned is that LinkedIn is a great medium for learning and debate and long may it continue. I really appreciate the opportunity LinkedIn provided me when they invited me to be a part of the Influencer program.

Also, I thank you for your time and attention as well. I will continue to work hard be worthy of it.

Please join us for this informative and helpful Webinar on July 15th, 2014:

7 Critical Questions to Improve Your Customer Experience.

The post What I Have Learned as a LinkedIn Influencer appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Forrester’s blogger, Nick Elliot recently published a post proclaiming Instagram the King of Social Engagement. But this revelation followed by saying that the so-crowned king only had about a 4.21% post engagement rate. Even more revealing was that 4.21 % engagement rate was 58 times more engagement than a post on Facebook, and 120 times more engagement for each follower that a brand has on Twitter.

The Forrester study looked at the result of 2,500 brand posts across seven social networks based on interaction of more than 3 million users. The example Elliot gave was using a Red Bull Video from the previous month. Of the company’s 43 Million Facebook fans, only 2,600 of them liked the video. But the 1.2 million Instagram followers liked it 36,000 times. Elliot goes on to explain that while Red Bull is youth focused, they also observed great engagement for brands like General Electric and the Ford Fiesta, that both have a multi-generational appeal.

So it’s clear that people do engage with social media and it does work to some extent. But is also shows that when it comes to customer engagement all the social networks are not created equal. But how do you know which one is best for you and how to get engagement from your customers?

Making Your Social Media Experience More Effective

Whether the numbers of engagement are staggering or not, social media is a key part of your customer experience design strategy in today’s day and age. It needs to be built in, just like all the other channels of your customer experience. And like those other channels, there are some definite considerations that you must include in your strategy.

My book, Customer Experience: Future Trends and Insights covers social media strategy in more detail, but for the purposes of this post, we can drill down to these essential questions:

• What is the Customer Experience you are trying to deliver in social media?
• What are the emotions you are trying to evoke through your social media?
• Is your Customer Experience deliberate in social media?
• What do your customers really want from social media?
• What drives the most value for the organization in social media?

Answering each of these questions can help you decide which channel is right for you, your brand, and the results you are trying to achieve. As you can see, they are the same questions we are typically asking about any part of the customer experience. In fact, this list of questions really reminds me of how you add “in bed” to the end of a fortune cookie fortune. Only instead of “in bed” we add “for social media” to the end of the customer experience questions!

All joking aside, this social media experience has its own expectations and distinguishing characteristics. Each of these questions must be answered with that in mind. But like the other parts of your customer experience, there are rational parts of the social media experience and the irrational (emotional and subconscious) parts of the experience at work, too. A robust social media engagement strategy takes into account all of these factors and uses a metric system to measure results.

Steve Sickel, Senior Vice President, Distribution and Relationship Marketing for IHG, the hotel group that includes Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Crown Plaza, Staybridge, Candlewood and Hotel Indigo, understands the importance of having a focused strategy for your social media efforts. He had this to say in my book:

“We have a business objective we are trying to achieve, and that’s the way we approach our social marketing agenda. I think a lot of companies miss this… a recipe for disaster. We have a very practical approach to our social marketing agenda. We want to drive a business outcome—delivering incremental revenue into our hotels by engaging with our customers so that they shop with us more than the others we’re racing against.”

Sickel shares an example that shows how they used this strategy successfully. They had a special incentive to stay at their hotels that they shared with 150 of their US private community. During the six weeks of the promotion, that original audience of 150 people grew to thousands and drove $300,000 worth of revenue to their hotels. Clearly in the case of IHC, social media is both engaging and working. This example isn’t showing millions in revenue, but if you consider the ROI for the promotion, its return is extremely profitable.

Emotions Are Still an Important Factor in Social Media

It is increasingly important to consider the emotions that your social media strategy evokes for your customers. There are emotions that drive value and those that destroy value in customer experience. These emotions make up a huge part of why customers do what they do. These same emotions play an important role in why customers do what they do on social media.

There are three groups of social media experiences:

• Personal Social Media experiences: This is the type of interaction designed to stay in touch with friends and family.
• Customer social media experiences: These experiences are comprised of consumers wanting to use social media to research before making a purchase of a product or service. They might visit any number of websites or social media pages to get this information.
• Business social media experiences: This is when a user is utilizing social media for business context. Examples of this type of experience include reading or writing a blog post on your area of expertise or focus, sharing industry updates or tweets to expand business knowledge, and/or connecting with people in your network for job opportunities.

No matter which group of type of experience you are using in your strategy, understanding all the layers of the psychological experience is critical to have an effective strategy. What users say they want from social media and what they really want from social media are usually two different things. You have to peel back the layers of research to understand the difference. Then once you understand the psychology behind their moves, you can use an effective strategy to capitalize on this for the benefit of your user and your organization.

I realize that this is just touching the surface of social media strategy and the importance of understanding what emotions drive and destroy value. We teach a program on this called, What Drives Value in a Social Media Experience that helps explain this all in more detail. If you want to download the presentation pdf , click here.

So is it working?

Social media is working and people do engage with it. But it still hasn’t reached a level of overwhelming numbers and millions in revenue. This can change over time as the medium matures and those that are using it refine their strategy and define their desired outcome.

So to answer my question in part, I would say yes it’s working. But don’t abandon all your other marketing strategies yet.

If you enjoyed this post, you may be interested in the following blogs:

• How Emotions Generate $$$
• What Drives Value in a Social Media Experience
• Why We Hate Losing

Emotional Engagement and Brand Loyalty: Procter and Gamble Gets It…Do You?

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Recapping the Journey to Reverse Showrooming

Let’s recap the journey to reverse showrooming, starting with data mining. Data mining was a brilliant move by retailers to identify key indicators for live events in a shoppers life when important supplier decisions are made and using these indicators as a way to know when to target a particular customer for additional marketing.

In our post about data mining, we describe how Target used this data to “target” women who may be pregnant, so that they could become their number one go-to store for their families. Their use of data mining was so good, that they knew a man’s 16-year-old daughter was pregnant before he did.

Now jump to a year or so later, as the rise of smartphones is more and more prevalent. Showrooming rears its ugly head. As more and more customers had access to the web when they were in a retail outlet, they harnessed its power to find the best price on the good or service they were shopping for in the store. Then they would buy the product online and leave the store, making no purchase. Retailers tried to come up with ways to deter shoppers from doing it by dropping prices, blocking access to the web in stores and other activities that didn’t really work.

Which brings us to today, when retailers realize that there was some wisdom to the old adage, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” They are using the power of the mobile device to their advantage. Or in other words, Brick and mortar stores are embracing their online presence to draw customers back into the stores.

What Customers Want From Retail in an Infographic

A recent article on BusinessInsider.com talked about how retailers are doing this and getting more people back in the stores…and buying things there.

This graphic does a great job of telling retailers what customers want as it pertains to a retail experience. Not surprisingly, they want knowledgeable sales associates.

They also want to be able to pay easily, as in no 20-minute check out line. Are you listening Wal-Mart? Probably not…

But there in the middle, the shoppers say, they want personalized offers delivered to them through their mobile device. Although in not so many words they say, “we want you to data mine us.” And if that isn’t enough, they also say they want you to give them access to personalized deals through social media.

If you look at the last column, access to Wi-Fi to comparison shop (the gateway to showrooming at one time blocked by retailers) is important to a large enough section of the shoppers surveyed that it made the graph at 14%.

Retailers Are Maximizing Their Advantages with Reverse Showrooming

Retailers are using their advantages to draw in customers to their stores. From offering free Wi-Fi to give shoppers access to their online apps to sending personalized offers directly to shoppers smart phones for in-store redemption, retailers are fighting back against online retailers with their strengths.

If online retailers have the benefit of offering it cheaper, retailers have the opportunity to train salespeople to be more helpful and create a better customer experience, which has been proven to outweigh the benefit of a low price time and time again. And of course, there is no denying that if you eliminate the hassles of checkout at a store, the idea that you leave with the item you were looking for that moment is a strength that retailers have over online sources no matter how cheap online prices are and how swift their free shipping is.

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