Are you ready to handle a Social Media Crisis?

Everyone can benefit from a dynamic platform like Social Media, if exploited correctly or turn into a graveyard if not dealt smartly during the times when it matters the most. In the world, physical or virtual, where disasters are waiting to strike, it is best that you are prepared before hand for the situation. A Social Media Disaster Management plan has to be incubated and inducted to everyone in your Community Management and Public Relation Team.

Social media disaster strikes when you are either going all wrong or you aren’t able to meet your customer’s expectation. In either case it is essential that you own up, come out brave and communicate surely but humbly. Social media is eyed by your customers, investors, employees, media, etc, each of which will have a different point of view to look at your social media conduct and you have to live up to it all!

Social Media Disaster can strike in many forms, some of which are listed below:-

• Online reputation maligned by customer by complaining, creating hate communities or blogs or sites. It becomes a disaster when within matter of hours it gets world talking about it.
• When your product has performed poorly and media is busy taking down your name.
• Your ex employees go bad mouthing about your management, reveal secrets, leave no stone unturned to paint your image black.
• When panic surges amongst your people- natural disasters, fake news or rumors surface, industry is badly hit, etc.

Social Media Disaster Management Stages

• Crisis Identification:- Social media monitoring would help you see through this stage, in fact if you are involved in this regularly then you might even avoid the crisis and deal with it at nascent stage. Follow the talks and understand what exactly is being said and the general sentiments of the public about the situation.
• Insight Identification:-  Get to the crux of the matter. Explore from where the crisis arise, who are people talking, which mediums are being used, how it is affecting the company’s image, do you know the authors, what is the volume, etc.
• Goal Setting:- By the end of your crisis management activity what is it that you expect? Control over negative comments, more positive talks trending, the authors becoming positive influencers, your target audience (investor or customer or employee or media) is happy and satisfied by the end of it, etc.
• Plan Communication:- Shape a strategy to counter this disaster by apt and strong communication program. First devise what would you communicate, how are you going put the whole crisis in front of people, what would be the tone, who would be speaking, etc. You need to figure out which are the right platforms or mediums you need to be on, where you have to create base and accordingly customize the message or content strategy to meet the platform's needs. Remember each platform is a different market.
• Make a Team:- Social Media Disaster Management Team which must include Community Manager, a PR and a Senior Management representative so that the communication can be designed, approved and executed easily and each one is on the same page!
• Execute the plan.

Social Media Disaster Management can be avoided with ongoing social media monitoring activity! Are you ready to handle a social media disaster?

Have you brought out your A-Game when it comes to Content?

Why is everyone all of a sudden talking and writing about content?

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience -- with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Social search is becoming an important way of finding and filtering relevant information. 

When you create content, you need to keep in mind what attracts customers and prospects, and their friends. Educating, informing, and creating with them are all ways to engage people in a conversation with you. 

It should therefore not be surprising that the reasons why your content marketing strategy fails are:

(1.) You don't have one -- you think fulfillment just means you stick all you've got on that landing page, mini site, or newsletter, and pray something will stick. 

(2.) You don't understand the difference between interruption and content marketing -- you think that because you have something to sell, you can push it out there and get people to but it because you say so.

(3.) Your content does not provide value -- the worst offenders will ask for information on customers and prospects to give them something that doesn't really tell them anything new, just to get people's email address.

(4.) Your in-house experts think it's marketing's job to write it -- while we agree that marketing professionals need to be in the content business, it's a very bad idea to assume that they need to be proficient in every kind of conversation, even those where they'd be clearly not the experts.

(5.) You think that changing the title to last month's paper will work -- this is akin to starting a brand new relationship on the wrong foot. Will your customers believe you next time, after experiencing this kind of stunt?

(6.) You invite people in for one topic, then you give them something else entirely -- another dangerous assumption is that people don't pay attention. They won't if this is the kind of treatment you reserve for them. It's like starting a conversation with a great opening, and then putting absolutely no substance behind it.

(7.) Your call to action is not clear, or you have multiple ones -- the main reason why you don't want to do this, of course, is that you won't know what works among the many messages you put out there. When you're focused, things have a way of working out much better for all involved.

(8.) You want too much, too soon -- there's no relationship and you're already asking your customers and prospects to give you something substantial.

(9.) You don't get the anticipated and relevant part of it -- you think integrated and all matching means you're not interrupting. You missed the the opportunity to write custom content specifically to address the needs of the audience you are hoping to engage.

(10.) Your content is all about you, not your customer -- the surest way to bore someone or to become irrelevant quickly is by not being relevant to them.

Your goal is to reach the people who will buy your products and services. Whether your content marketing strategy is fulfilled through marketing or public relations activities, you should think about providing value and worry less about measuring clicks and hits.

Will your customers and prospects find you on the Web when they're looking for what you provide? Will your articles, bylines, white papers, eBooks, blog posts convey that you understand the issues -- from their pain points -- like no one else in the market?

Does your newsletter provide timely, relevant tips, commentary, and information that reveal industry or industry vertical knowledge? Do analysts and third parties pick up your thought leadership in their articles and amplify what you know?

If the answer is no, those are still great places for you to start.

Source: http://www.conversationagent.com

Author: Valeria Maltoni

Is an MVP necessary?

Most often the list of features and capabilities that your product needs to satisfy the needs of your target market and it is huge. When the number of hours to implement everything is well beyond your financial runway or your market opportunity window, how do you pick which features to do first?

 

 

 

 

Let’s first define a Minimum Viable Product. An MVP is simply the minimum set of features that provide the initial value to the user of your product. It is crucial that this first incarnation of your product must show your value differentiation. In other words, not only must it provide that initial functionality for your first users, it also needs to show off why your product is different or unique in the market place.

For example, a smartphone application may show off the integration between the phone’s native features and your application in such a way that the value of your application is extended through the phone. This is a crucial time in the development of a brand new product. Generally speaking, this early version of the product dictates whether the company succeeds or fails.

a. Validation of market assumptions is critical. Even though some market research has been done, at some point one or more assumptions about the needs of the target market were made. In some cases these assumptions are pivotal – i.e. your business rests on whether these assumptions are correct or incorrect. Getting the MVP into the hands of users as well as demonstrating it to experts in the target market, helps to validate some of the assumptions. Course correction at this stage is easier and less costly than when the product is nearly complete.

b. As these early users work with the MVP, they help you to refine the product in such areas as the flow of a specific feature or the user interface. Early users have a tendency to love new technology. They love the fact that they can influence a product’s direction as well as the look and feel in the early stages – at any stage actually, but especially early on. Regular meetings with early users (even if it is in a coffee shop) are crucial in refining the product but also have a side benefit of building a solid relationship. Word of caution: evaluate each suggestion to make sure that it has wide market applicability; creating a product solely based on the feedback of a handful of users is dangerous.

c. The quest to seek funding for your new venture is a continuous event. The days of receiving funding for an idea jotted down on a napkin are long gone. Having the MVP shows investors what value real users will find in the product. It also helps to get the point of your venture across that a slide presentation cannot do. People respond far better to a real product than to a large slide presentation.

But which features do you select? Which market needs do your satisfy first? This debate will be a constant occurrence within your team. Here are a few key points to remember as you go through the process of deciding what features to build.

a. In the end, your target users will use your product to perform one or more specific tasks. The MVP cannot be a set of random disjointed features, but instead must be a set of features that work seamlessly together and allows the user to accomplish the tasks they need. Imagine the team that developed the first bank machine. They probably implemented the ability for a user to withdraw money first. They in all likelihood recognized that this use case was the most important use case – ahead of transferring money, printing account information, etc. The first implementation of this use case most likely had the ability to insert card and enter the PIN, select the amount to withdraw and from which account, and dispense cash. The key here is to understand how your target users perform their primary task today and make sure that they can perform the same task with your MVP.

b. As mentioned earlier, building in your differentiating value is key. Without this your product will be perceived as simply a “me too” product and will not end up getting the interest of your target users and investors. Continuing with the bank machine example. A key differentiator is convenience – the ability to do banking anywhere and anytime replacing the need to go into the bank and wait in line to get money. One can imagine that early machines were placed in the lobby of the bank or in the nearby convenience store. Had the machines been placed inside the bank, making them accessible only during banking hours, they would not have garnered the enthusiasm of the target users.

In summary, the MVP is crucial from an investor-pitch perspective as well as from a product-refinement perspective. Both these activities are crucial in the early stages of a new venture. The trick is to choose the right set of features for the MVP. Make sure that the user can perform one or more or their end-to-end tasks. In other words, make sure that the use case is implemented enough to provide value to the user. The implication here is that you have to know your target users rather intimately.

And lastly, the MVP must have one or more of your key differentiators. The MVP needs to set what you are doing apart from other potentially competitive offerings.

Image: Jon Radoff’s Internet Wonderland

Blog Source: http://francis-moran.com