Take this little quiz to see if your organisation is ready for a customer community or conversational marketing;
 

1. There is a process in place to constantly measure customer satisfaction&sentiment. Not just on-line and not the annual customer satisfaction survey. Regular sampling. Y/N
2. Management calls a number of customers, happy and unhappy each day or week as part of their regular duties. Y/N
3. You have a social media policy for staff that as a starting point assumes they are already participating. Y/N

[caption id="attachment_1139" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="ROFL: micro-blogging on micro-blogging?"] [/caption]

"The market for something to believe in is unlimited..." (Hugh McLeod) And guess what, that new fangled thing - the internet and its social media offspring - just lowered the threshold on entry to that market!

[caption id="attachment_1041" align="alignnone" width="160" caption="Don mashing-up marketing as we watch"][/caption]

I sometimes wonder why you would want to work anywhere else in marketing other than social media. It's new, it's exciting, it is online so you have lots of quick data and it's growing in rigour. And as the effectiveness of other channels declines, social media is attracting the attention of sharp research brains. Good stuff!

In the last month we have been chin-deep, managing&moderating a mixture of client; blogs, idea exchanges, ratings and twitter channels.

We seem to read a lot of Forrester. I guess they have a focus on the sort of direct marketing / social media mash-up our customers are struggling to implement.

Money does make the world go round - if nothing else the Global Financial Crisis has demonstrated this hypothesis in a dramatic fashion. There are global warming skeptics but few 'money makes the world go round' skeptics have you noticed? Arguments are generally about how much of the planetary rotation is due to currency, not if. I digress.

  [caption id="attachment_566" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="West Australian Harley Owners Group"][/caption] I have just finished reading a great article by Fournier and Lee - the first of these authors was 'Vice President, Enthusiast Services' at Harley Davidson. Her advocates routinely tattoo the brand on their bodies!

What's in a name? Well, a lot it seems, if you are setting the scene for an ongoing discussion. Take this blog site for example...  we are talking with marketers, customer activists (eg other bloggers!) and indeed anyone interested in how brands can engage with customers and prospects online to achieve their marketing objectives. And... in a manner that represents a genuine exchange of value! Bit wordy isn't it! A label would be handy...