10 is much more than just a number…

Reflections on what 10 years represent after leaving corporate and committing to the entrepreneur’s life…

Ten years ago I left the safety and good money of corporate c-level income and co-founded Digivizer with Clinton Larson. Clinton and I had worked earlier together at Macquarie Bank and when you know someone is super-smart and a good person, it makes it easy to decide to start a business with them. Clinton had also studied data analytics, lead a number of Customer Insights & Analytics team and had been COO of Memetrics, focusing on driving website performance and brought significant experience in managing and harnessing large customer databases to drive significant wins for businesses taking a data-driven marketing approach. 

I had spent the previous five years as President and COO, at ASX-listed electronics design software company Altium and saw the start of the global growth in intelligent devices first hand. Altium’s customers were designing and manufacturing them on our software, and many of the world’s products were beginning to be designed, not just manufactured in Asia, China in particular as the movement from “ imitation to innovation” was well underway. 

Watching first hand the speed of change and the phenomenal growth of China, now recognised as global economic power, together with a number of technology advancements driving innovation within smart devices, it was a powerful motivator for me to unlock the opportunities this created.

Specifically, as smart devices became more prolific, and social media had platforms to accelerate their growth, consumers became increasingly empowered. Consumers now engaged and interacted from wherever they were, whenever it suited them, on their mobile phones. And there was a lot of new insights able to be gained from the billions of digital footprints that were being left across social, digital and device usage. 

I was also an early adopter of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (and subsequently of all social platforms), and travelling often gave me new perspectives on how fast they were growing and the relative population infiltration and scale to what previously could only be reached through traditional media. The 100’s of millions of users in various platforms and forums (now billions), were far greater than the just over 20 million Australian population. That in itself was astonishing, but with digital and social being able to create active conversations and engaging relationships, it opened up a new world of customer engagement, marketing and business opportunities, including easier global reach.

Given all businesses everywhere are looking for more efficient and effective ways to acquire, cross-sell, retain and drive greater loyalty and referrals, it seemed clear that with digital opening up opportunities everywhere, there would come the need to measure effectiveness, in real-time, across these multiple channels, at what we now call the speed of social, managing and analysing millions of pieces of data.   

Thus, we opened our doors to Digivizer on 15th October 2010, with the promise of helping businesses grow through a better understanding of their customers and to help them gain a greater ROI through digital channels. 

Defining a future

While our core vision for the company hasn’t changed – to help businesses grow with a better understanding of their customers and a greater ROI on their digital marketing investment, we have pivoted and expanded the platform coverage and offerings as they themselves changed.

This has become increasingly important and relevant over the past 10 years: customers are now researching, buying, selling, influencing companies, markets and governments. We are moving more and more of our transactions online – both B2C and B2B – with increased acceleration due to COVID-19 in the past 10 months.

As organizations have understood the need to find better ways to acquire, grow and keep their customers, it has become increasingly more expensive to do so in digital without an effective digital strategy that uses the customer engagement data found throughout the digital marketing experience.  

Key growth milestones in past 10 years:

  • Initially it was Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin Social that we analyzed and worked with. Our platform now includes Instagram, Youtube, Google, Influencer tracking, hashtag tracking, organic search and web performance, across owned, earned and paid media 
  • Identification and permission-first tracking of influencers (across all their social) working with brands in platform, after recognising that people were following, engaging and sharing posts at a faster growth and higher engagement rate than they were of brands. We were early in identifying influencers, and now the ability to track them with permission is fully supported in our platform.
  • Incorporating and then spinning off a new company goto.game in 2017, after seeing the growth of gaming and esports as an interest area and driving significant engagement and a different type of content creator emerge.
  • Think Global from day one. We started in Manly, have grown out of 2 other offices and expanded across Asia and global, with over 60% of our revenues now earned outside of Australia. This focus on global has helped us serve some of the world’s largest multi-national companies, attract talent due to our footprint and customers, and has also helped with foreign exchange rate wins. It is meant we measure our success on global terms not the smaller Australian market.  
  • Starting with enterprise technology and then realizing that we were limiting our growth to a smaller number of businesses who could afford us, we pivoted to deliver our platform via SaaS, opening it up to thousands of users that could not have been served previously.

My biggest learnings (some painful!):

  • Corporate is safe, starting and growing a business is hard work. Much harder than I realized. I still don’t earn (by a factor of 4) what I did in corporate and yet the excitement of the challenge and genuine rewards that come from starting something that didn’t exist, building an engaged team that believes in your vision and helping thousands of customers is incredibly motivating and what I feel I will reflect upon as my most fulfilling period. If I am honest, I don’t feel the sense of achievement I did earlier in my career where success was more predefined and incrementally achieved, but I love that it is me who is defining the line of ambitious success and the strategy to get there. And the challenge to realise the value in invested by a future cash-investment or acquisition event, or in the value we create ourselves. 
  • Building a platform based on using formally negotiated API agreements in a fast changing world, can put you at risk from their whims and directional changes. Initially our model was built around ubiquitous free data, but as those models have changed, privacy laws have changed, paid advertising on platforms have grown, we have had to be in a continuous state of fast innovation and deployment. This ability to identify and fast move is now deeply embedded into our culture and I believe is why we are still here today, and the hundreds of companies that started in social and digital media analytics around the same time as us, are not. 
  • It’s never too early to charge for value. We started doing so in our second month, using our embryonic technology to deliver unique audits to larger companies about the state of their data and the insights they were missing. Bootstrapping sharpens your focus and gives you purpose. 
  • Be prepared to burn your boats – we couldn’t do enterprise analytics platform development and SMB software at the same time, at the size we were. We significantly grew once we put ourselves behind one platform strategy – a SaaS one for everyone – and although late into our journey (we launched our SaaS platform late 2018), it was the best decision yet
  • Be good to people everywhere and help them grow their careers. The world is small and after 10 years, so much of our business continues to be referred from previous and existing customers and employees. And now our business is larger, we have been able to help and invest in other startups and accelerators to fuel their own innovation. Feeding and supporting the ecosystem grows everyone and everything, including economies.
  • Running agency services (as requested by our customers) to take advantage of real-time insights and the software business, can be both rewarding and challenging. Like all cobblers, our own shoes are often the last to be soled – we know exactly what clients and agencies need, and we scope, test and use our platform ahead of releasing. There are huge advantages in “eating your own dog food“, but when you grow, you keep putting your best people on the biggest, most- immediate client revenue opportunities. When you double this with mostly boot-strapping, short-term opportunities can easily take precedence over longer-term opportunities. This tension is recognised and we happily support the two business models as we learn so much in helping our customers of all sizes grow and we accelerate that with our agency services taking advantage of our platform. But it remains a constant challenge to ensure we put our best people to marketing our platform.
  • Raising money is hard and distracting. I wish I had raised more money when I first raised (which was incredibly fast and easy and I should have put more time into!). We have mostly bootstrapped since which has plenty of upsides around our autonomy, but now I see that having given away more at the start, to have greater cash now to help us scale a SaaS platform, would have helped us grow faster.
  • Don’t give away too much sweat equity. It is a balance to know how to engage talent at the start when you can’t pay them, to allow for enough equity to reflect longer working paths and manage dilution further in your journey of growth (and fundraising).
  • Resilience is a learned skill. I’m so grateful for so many good people who made significant contributions during our first 10 years. It can sometimes be painful to recognize that some people are better suited to specific stages of growth, that is, the people who helped you get to here might not be the people who help you get to there. Being in a startup, or being part of a migration from startup to early-growth, is not for everyone. Growth is not for everyone – some of our earlier leadership team did not like the larger company and changing pressures 
  • Insights are interesting and valuable, but you need to build in capability and actionability of them to be of value to organizations.
  • While I am grateful for my MBA (good discipline, great people you meet, and it was my final strategy paper that I raised money for Digivizer around), nothing provides greater learning then launching a start-up and growing. We joke at Digivizer that every 6 months equals a mini-MBA. We are in continuous learning mode and one of the huge upsides of understanding digital and analytics is that everything can be measured. Keep doing more of what works, stop doing what does not (or does not fast enough). 
  • Culture is everything. You cannot do it all yourself. When you are scaling fast, burning boats or pivoting, you have to have a culture that supports this level of disruption, changing roles and flexibility. Hiring smart, talented people who get things done, are infinite learners and not arseholes, are key to protecting the vision but not being afraid to keep getting better at the ways we can achieve it. 

Back to the future

To predict precisely how the next 10 years will unfold would be foolish, but I am confident that with growth and variety in the number of platforms, smart devices, knowing what is automated and human engagement together with the growth in digital advertising spend – organizations will need to increasingly understand their customers and what matters to them. They will need to invest in platforms that help them know how to drive the greatest measure of delight and ROI. Digivizer will continue to spot these trends and insights and will answer this increasingly valued need of businesses.

Whilst the way we engage and work with our talented employees is changing, one thing I am confident of is that it will be our amazing employees who drive our growth and I look forward to rewarding and celebrating success with them. 

As for me and the next 10 years – I have a lot still to drive and deliver for Digivizer. I know why investors will often back a serial entrepreneur, the lessons you learn are invaluable. And while some lessons were painful, and some I would have done differently (and will do differently if I start another business), I remain a committed learner and am passionate about returning value to our early investors and employees, and importantly (and with great excitement) to help thousands of businesses grow and to help them gain more from their investment in digital marketing.   

Thank you to my family who have backed me, and to all of you who have supported and encouraged me over the years and who continue to believe in our continued growth and success.

This article is also published in LinkedIn.

A personal observation of travel time – the impact of mobile technology

Photo: Manly Fast Ferry

Quelle horreur! – my iphone battery died just as I entered my 20 minute Fast Ferry ride home last Wednesday at 6.15pm. I usually use this time to catch up on emails and I felt at a loss about what to do with this time. I could have enjoyed the gorgeous view of Sydney Harbour. Instead, I thought it opportune to observe my fellow travellers, to answer the question, “what do other people do on their journey home”.

My data sample was 50 people.

  • 80% were on a mobile device
  • 2% were on computers
  • 2% were on tablets
  • 14% were reading printed materials (<1% on kindle)
  • Fewer than 1% were in conversation, which was double those that were looking out the window and those that were writing on notepads or in notebooks

Of those on their mobile device:

  • 9% were on the phone/talking
  • 29% had earphones in/watching a screen with some occasionally smiling/laughing – I presume they were watching entertainment or perhaps a Ted Talk – they were not engaging with their screen
  • 29% were scrolling – quick-flicking through their phone feeds (I am guessing most were social but they could have been flicking fasts through newsfeeds or emails)
  • 1% had earphones in and just were listening to something, perhaps music
  • the balance, also just under 30%, were engaged in some form – e.g. texting, typing, engaging with the content they were viewing.

It may have looked a bit creepy with my notepad, pen, and staring at people whilst jotting notes and creating tallies – but I was struck by the enabling power of mobile technology.

The question for me is whether we are using this time most effectively, or just conveniently.

I like to plan my day and use the morning before I leave for work to prioritise what I need to do (including what I want to do on my trip in). But I am definitely more lax just catching up on emails on the way home.

How do you use your travel time? Purposively?

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

Digivizer starts new venture to tap into $65 billion APAC gamers’ market

Digivizer has launched a new venture — called goto.game — to tap the global esports and online games market.

Goto.game is a new media hub and ecosystem 100% focused to deliver value for gamers, influencers, esports and brands. This is directly born out of our seven years of analysing the digital footprint of people across social and search platforms, and providing strategies and services to some of world’s biggest brands.

As with a fire, a new business needs three things: fuel, a spark, and oxygen.

For goto.game, the fuel was the gap in the market, to provide a meaningful ecosystem that brings gamers, influencers esports teams and brands together.

The spark was the realization that gamers, influencer and brands were all being short-changed. Our data let us understand and engage with the influencers, the gamers and the players in the market, what they sought, and how they interacted. We’ve been doing this, on behalf of clients and as Digivizer ourselves.

And we have proven two things: it must be authentic and it must be real.

The oxygen was the desire among gamers, influencers, their fans and brands to work together in new ways. Gamers and esports teams want to connect with commercial sponsors, without compromising their values and how they would authentically stream, play and engage. Brands want to understand how to work effectively in what for many remains unfamiliar territory. And fans want to enjoy their gaming without feeling “sold do” by anyone.

The result is goto.game — a gaming destination run by gamers for gamers.

But fires and new business ventures need one more thing: intent. You have to want to light the fire, and you have to decide to commit all to a new business.

With the data and the validation of the new market to support us, we’ve made that commitment, and lit the fire!

So: why esports and gaming? The gaming space is not new to Digivizer. We’ve provided social and digital insights and services in this market for clients that include Lenovo and Intel over the past three years. We’ve engaged some of the biggest influencers and esports teams in the APAC region, generating highly successful activations, streams, content and sponsorships, providing gaming and non-gaming brands with opportunities to be involved in the lucrative esports market.

And we have hired dedicated gamers to head the new company.

According to digital and online games research company Newzoo, the market is worth AU$131 billion globally, AU$65 billion across APAC, and AU$1.5 billion in Australia and New Zealand alone. There are more than 1.1 billion gamers in the APAC region and 12 million in Australia alone, according to Newzoo.

Our own analysis of the market, and our work at events such as PAX, RTX and this year’s Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) esports event in Sydney, makes it clear that there is a huge opportunity to fill a gap in the market. Over 7 million live views of IEM and 92 million in-content views for a single event represent audiences almost double those of mainstream TV viewing numbers, including the major traditional sporting AFL and NRL grandfinals.

And we have seen this market grow, in size and in the number of engaged fans who influence each other.

Respect (and data) at the centre of everything

Our strategy for goto.game is to bring these three groups — gamers and influencers, their fans and brands — together in a new ecosystem that treats everyone with equal respect, adds expertise and value at every point in the engagement, and uses real-time data to understand what’s working and where to go next.

For fans, influencers and brands, this is about creating a win-win-win, with content and contexts that matter to them. We have been thrilled by the overwhelming support we have received from the wider gaming influencers and esports teams across the APAC region, and from partnerships with the major social and streaming platforms.

Goto.game will be headed by Digivizer’s gaming team specialists Phid Oldfield and Jack Hudson, highly credible gamers and streamers in their own right, supported by a team of gamers including their content and advertising specialists.

Some of the goto.game team. From left to right?—?Jack Huddo, Fran Meliton, Emma Lo Russo, Phid McAwesome
Some of the goto.game team. From left to right—Jack Huddo, Fran Meliton, Emma Lo Russo, Phid McAwesome

Goto.game is already talking to top-tier gamers and esports teams, and I’d like to thank launch clients AKRacing (which is launching a new specialist gamers’ chair on the goto.game web site), Intel, and Legion by Lenovo.

Finally: how do Digivizer and goto.game connect? With real-time data and insights. Our technology, six years in the development and refining, powers and sits underneath both businesses.

To strike that first match becomes an easier decision when you have the best-possible information about what might happen next!

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

Are boards being let down by their senior leadership teams?

The Australian Financial Review’s Tony Boyd raises some amber, if not red flags, in his recent article about the lack of preparedness, of most of Australia’s listed boards to the reality of the mobile-first world in which they now operate.

Deloitte cites an Australian smartphone adoption rate of 84% (rising to 94% if you’re under 24), calling Australia a nation of hyper-connectivity and exceeding many western countries permeation rate. With 17 million Australians on Facebook, with most of us checking in at the moment we awaken and checking out just before we turn off the lights for the night on our mobile devices, businesses who ignore mobile as a platform to entertain, inform, engage and delight their customers are at their peril.

We agree with Tony Boyd’s assertion in conversation with Stephen Scheeler that boards need to see digital and social as ways to know much more about their customers, and thereby create better customer experiences.

Given most companies spend between 10 to 15% of revenue on marketing, with now over half going to digital, boards should be asking to see digital and social insights and results in their board packs as a matter or priority.  The beauty of digital is that everything is measurable.  Measuring the ROI of investment in digital should be continuously reported to help organizations learn and do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

Boards need to hold their leadership teams accountable to appropriate investment in the strategic thinking and tools necessary to enable them to engage directly with customers, and to track every activity into and away from their websites, digital messaging and social platforms through to conversion.

While it should be assumed digital is an essential part of delivery, the real opportunity is in the ability to delight the customer and create friction-less, positive and outcome-driven experiences when and wherever the customer wants.  Measuring the delight and sentiment of customers in relation to their total experience (including digital experience with your brand), and by focusing on continuous delivery of experience improvements will provide the type of stickiness and advocacy businesses and boards are looking for.

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

Brands and CMOs: don’t compete with creators and storytellers. Instead: inspire, invest in, and support them

Marketing has always been about achieving the best results by getting the right message to the right person at the right time using the right channel. That mantra remains as true as ever, but the techniques, long-accepted and built on the now-crumbling foundations of broadcasting messages at anonymous audiences in sufficient numbers that some of these messages eventually stick, are increasingly redundant.

What’s changed is the consumers. They are to be found on their mobile devices, managing their everyday work and personal life commitments, making choice about who to like or engage with, and to turn to, every waking minute. Overwhelming consumers with mass-market branded messages is increasingly ineffective, often prevented by ad-blocking technology, becoming expensive quickly, and still often misses the individual and their context.

The consumers are in control. And the secret to engaging with them lies with the true creators and storytellers.

Last night Digivizer supported Thom Whilton and Lisa Teh, natural storytellers, entrepreneurs and creators with whom we’ve had a long partnership, at the launch of their new book Australian Style: The Who’s Who of Fashion.

The book builds on Thom and Lisa’s on-line content and editing success, and celebrates Australia’s fashion industry innovators, leaders who create Australia’s leading designs, and those who tell their genuine stories to the industry and to consumers.

I joined a panel alongside Daniel Watts, managing director of Thames and Hudson Australia, Janice Breen Burns, former fashion editor of The Age, Lisa Teh, and blogger and influencer Lana Wilkinson as moderator. Despite our different backgrounds and careers, early consensus appeared:  a brand telling its own story no longer holds the same equity and interest for consumers. Consumers want a new and different story to be told by someone they trust, one that is entertaining and informative, and that aligns to their passions and values.

Thom Whilton & Lisa Teh, co-authors of Australian Style: The Who’s Who of Fashion

The evidence is in the data. Digivizer’s analytics show that those brands that work with great creators and storytellers gain greater consumer engagement, loyalty, interest and sales. They outperform those trying to control the branded messaging and solutions.

Brands must understand that to win, they must deliver the best experiences and provide great reasons for individuals to engage with them. One of the best ways to do this is to work with the people consumers already turn to for information and inspiration: the creators, the innovators and the storytellers who have already earned and built engaged communities of like-minded individuals sharing common interests, passions and values.

Consumers are savvy. They know who is being authentic and what is contrived, and they spot undeclared paid-for influence or comment. Even ahead of increasing regulation around declaring paid-for comment, brands should look to earn consumers’ respect for what they really help create, rather than look to trick or mislead. This comes through investment, inspiration and collaboration of these exciting possibilities via this new generation of creators and storytellers.

The process of engaging with individuals starts with great stories, but consumers quickly vote with their thumbs on their mobile devices. As they do, they leave clues about their intentions, connections, needs and preferences, many with the expectation that brands will act on these clues and engage with something of interest and relevance.

The opportunity sits in the precision of being able to act on these real-time actionable insights intersecting with the actual conversations and content engagement taking place on the social web.

The choice for brands seems clear: embrace the new role that supports, commissions and inspires the storytellers and creators to deliver genuine and inspiring collaborations that in turn fuels real Australian and global innovation.

Brands need to invest in, not compete with, the creators and storytellers.

This article is also published on LinkedIn.
Australian Style: The Who’s Who of Fashion was launched Wednesday 8 March in Melbourne, as part of the 2017 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival IDEAS program. Follow the social conversation at #australianstylebook #vamff. Digivizer was the primary sponsor of the event.

 

How to win in today’s social world

Businesses that master real-time, mobile-driven mass-personalization will win in today’s social world.

The foundation principle of this is being where your customer is.

Consumers by nature will naturally look for the easiest way to get what they want.  For businesses to provide relevance and value, you need to make it easy for them to reach you and be there when they need you. This means making it easy for them to search, engage, assess, buy and measure in a highly personalized way.

It also requires businesses of all sizes to know more about their customers. To know what is of interest to them, what they are engaging with today, and then to personalize and serve up relevant content and offers based on each customer’s declared interests, life stages and activities.

This is much more than simplistic monitoring of social media posts, this is live insights actioning.

Those that adopt this approach to selling and marketing see significantly greater results.  And since consumers always vote either with their feet (and wallets), those who do this well will win.

This has been talked about over the past few years, but few companies do this, and those that are early adopters here tend to be large enterprises.

Small and medium businesses deserve to benefit as well, and they can more and more as real-time technology that analyses the social web and serves personalized content through social channels in real-time becomes available.

However it needs to start with the desire first to create great customer experiences and using the large amount of data on social to do what we have always wanted to do as marketers. That is to get the right message to the right person at the right time using the right channel. The wide adoption and real time sharing and engaging nature of social allows for this.

Those who harness the power of this data source for personalization and creating great experiences will win.

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

Hope powering change

Last night I attended the Sydney Festival event Hope 2012 with the theme “Citizens seizing the day”.

My name is HopeSocial Media was hailed as one of the agents of change.  Certainly it has made it possible even in oppressed societies for citizens to reach more people and help gain momentum and support for their plight and desired change (think recent people lead change in Egypt as well as community support generated for those affected by QLD Floods, NZ & Japan Earthquakes etc).

However social media really only represents an easy, low-cost, high reach and engagement channel.  It is not the channel that brings change but the opportunity it presents and the people who engage within it and the messages they share.

Listening to the personal stories of the great speakers last night and those across Australia, there were some common and consistent messages that suggest a blue print for bringing about change. They point to the cause of which the channel is only the conduit:

1) Hope Powers Change – you must first genuinely hope to bring about change . Hope then provides the fuel and momentum for you to continue in the face of adversity, inequity, barriers, and power imbalance. Hope also binds people together behind a common cause.

2) It starts with the first step – no matter how small, everything you contribute to bringing change no matter how small can make a difference.  The benefits of taking 1 minute of your time, showing or demonstrating your encouragement and support, donating something small (time, message, money, resources).  Just taking an action can generate, add-to or complete some great act of change in someone’s life. It has the added benefit of impacting you positively too.

3) Look for, understand & stand for basic human rights – equality, freedom, opportunity  for everyone – how can you ensure this is enjoyed by everyone. Identify how many of your rights you take for granted that are not available to others.  Identify the basic human rights that are being challenged all around the world including in our own back yard (and our legislation).

4) Connect directly with people affected – it is too easy to be disconnected from the person and people who needs help.  Listen to their story.  Listen to their hope.  It is impossible to ignore and will help you know the right action to take.

5) Have Courage – it requires courage to stand up, have a voice, be counted and more importantly to act.  It starts with the courage to ask yourself “why is this happening and what can I do to change it?”

It felt easy to applaud those making changes last night however significantly more difficult and uncomfortable to ask ourselves how much are we doing at the individual level to bring about change.

It matters not how much we have done to support required changes in the past, only how much we can do moving forward.

I reflect on the great George Bernard Shaw quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

It points to the need to stand resolute and that we must first look to ourselves as the instruments of change.

May 2012 be your year.  Allow Hope to power the change you desire.

Commonwealth Bank – Women In Focus 3 day conference 2011

logo-commonwealth-bankEmma is a keynote speaker addressing the Commonwealth Bank’s 2nd Women in Focus conference, held at the prestigious Byron, at Byron Bay 31st August – 3 September, to approximately 100 key banking clients on “How the Social Web is changing the way we do business”.

Emma will be presenting latest research, different value and view points into the social web, some case studies and will lead a workshop session on how to leverage the social web across your entire go-to-market strategy and how to link your activities to specific business outcomes.

If you would like to know more about Emma’s presentation or would like Emma to speak at your next event, contact Emma at emma@emmalorusso.com.

To find out more about DIGIVIZER’s unique capabilties in delivering the social footprint of the people you know (your customers & prospects) and the people you wish you could know (new leads & influencers), visit www.digivizer.com.

To find out more about Commonwealth Bank’s Women in Focus Community, visit www.womeninfocus.com.au.

Socializing your organization…

We are all connected (Image Dimitri Vervitsios)Social Media is not just for the geeks, techos and the under 30’s. No manager can ignore the increasing power and influence of the social web.  People are connecting, sharing, listening, influencing, growing the relevance of their networks every day.

It is easy to see that as technology advances at such rapid rates, the rules of marketing, customer and employee engagement have changed and must continue to change.

Most managers accept you can’t ignore the social web.  The question really becomes for each of us:  “How can I add value to my organization in determining where and how the social web can be leveraged to deliver solid bottom line outcomes?”

Connecting the social web to organizational value:

Building your brand is largely based on how your brand is perceived by your customers.  You don’t own your brand  – your customers do! Your customers are already choosing to watch, connect, discuss and engage with your brand.   Aden Young of DigitalBuzz noted in his December post “that 67% of people on Twitter follow a brand (that they will purchase), in comparison to only 51% on Facebook. Yet on Facebook 40% of all people follow a brand in comparison to Twitter’s 25%.”

Easy to conclude that the social web should not be seen as an add-on channel, but rather an extension of your business, providing customer information and the means to engage that should integrate into every aspect of your business.

Opportunities include:

Screen shot 2011-02-09 at 7.02.47 AM

WHAT QUESTIONS CAN AND SHOULD YOU BE ASKING?

Here are just some of the questions you can be asking your organization.

  1. Customer Journey – how is this being captured and managed from possible interest>engagement>purchase>repeat purchase>advocate>evangelist> influencers?
  2. Social CRM – how and where does (& can) the social media insights fit into the broader marketing and customer engagement, sales and support strategy?  Your communications strategy? How is this being integrated and implemented in real-time?
  3. Lead generation strategy – where and what is involved in leveraging the triggers provided within the social web in relation to your known customers and your ideal customer target markets?
  4. Employee Power – How does your digital strategy allow for you to grow, harness and leverage your employees? Your partners? Your franchisees? What is their role in this? How can they be involved in utilizing social media? What guidance and more importantly, permission and encouragement do you need to provide?
  5. E-Commerce – Thinking beyond “bricks and mortar” and your current go-to-market model, where and when will your e-commerce platform sit within this? Where and how do you drive traffic to and from this site?
  6. Retailing – How can you grow your online brand and customer engagement to drive traffic into store?
  7. Business Information – How are you overlaying the insights gained from the social web as it relates to your customers,markets and ideal new customers and markets?
  8. Measuring – How do you measure all the above?  Once you embark on a digital strategy that includes leveraging the social web, how can you be sure you are being successful?  What measures, insights and returns can you gain? How real-time is this?

These are just a few questions to start the ball rolling.   What else do you think should be added to this list?

How can you (the non-geek/non-social web expert) get involved in harnessing the social web and add even more value to your organization?

When One Business Just Isn’t Enough: How to run a portfolio Business

Emma was recently interviewed by Suzi Dafnis of Australian Businesswomen’s Network.  Here she introduces Emma to her network as:

“For many of us, running one business is more than enough. My guest today runs two businesses. Emma Lo Russo is an experienced innovator, organisation leader and marketer. She has brought together her experience gained from leadership positions across a broad spectrum of industries to two businesses.

Digivizer, a business that delivers the digital footprint of the people you know (i.e. your clients) and the people you should know. Digivizer looks at who you should connect to through social media and Validity Coaching, a collective of experienced executive coaches.

Emma joins me to talk about the pros and cons of running a portfolio business, that is, a collection of businesses. We look at:

  • Does running two businesses impact the effectiveness of one or more of the business?
  • How can a split focus help you get better business results?
  • What are the challenges of running more than one business, and how do you overcome them?

Enjoy this interview with Emma Lo Russo.”

http://www.abn.org.au/site/article/Video-When-One-Business-Just-Isnt-Enough-How-to-run-a-portfolio-business-Emma-Lo-Russo-interview