The Big Idea – Give customers what they want!
ROI of Social Media

The Big Idea – Give customers what they want!

Screen shot 2011-02-22 at 2.54.15 PMI keep an eye on a lot of trends in business and online that might impact us or our customers and one we see on the horizon is personal privacy and what is becoming a firmer and firmer set of VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) definition, tools and capabilities.

Here’s a little primer for what you need to look out for –

What is VRM?

VRM is a model of transaction and information management that puts the customer front and center; customers decide what they’ll publish about themselve, to whom and what they (the vendor community) is permitted to do with it.  It kind of takes the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) model, where it’s the company that controls and manages the information about it’s customers turned completely on it’s head.

Social Marketing Conversations Moves to Mac!
ROI of Social Media

Social Marketing Conversations Moves to Mac!

Brents_Macbook.jpg
*sigh*

After more than a few years using a completely PC environment, I find myself using a Macbook Pro on a daily basis.  Here at the ProfitStreams office, I have zero issues about how the device is working for me, but at the home office I have yet to figure out how to configure the Epson WiFi printer I have there – the instructions seem a little cryptic and very little translates over from my experience as a PC.

Why the move?  I’m more deeply involved with the marketing department here and Mac is a favorite for them with the notable exception of the creative director who is using one of the most impressive PC configurations I’ve ever seen – a quad-processor, solid-state drive based system that absolutely SCREAMS through the Adobe Creative Suite like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

I remember Brent Spores early days of IBoughtaMac.com and find some great content there that is helping with the transition, but I still feel like the transition is pretty much an effort that I have to tackle on my own.  This post is a great example; I am using a trial version of Red Sweaters MarsEdit to draft this because I have the paradigm of using Windows Live Writer as my prior blog editor.  Differences include the fact that WLW  is a free tool, MarsEdit is $40 and, interestingly, does not show up in the new Apple App Store. (update – it IS available at the Mac App Store – my bad)

The demo also seem unable to add pictures or images, so my usual tactic of inserting at lease one image per post is not yet possible. (update – Daniel at Red Sweater is awesome!  He helped with just a few ideas and *poof* the image appears!  Thanks @; off to purchase!)

How Will You Address Consumer Privacy in 2011?
Current Affairs

How Will You Address Consumer Privacy in 2011?

KeyholeData_Eye_PrivacyConsumer privacy is about to take center stage in social media marketing.  In 2010 we flowed to the questions about how to establish an ROI and tool vendors responded in droves to help companies uncover and manage the mountains of data.  ROI has become an underpinning of social marketing now primarily because social media is probably the most measurable form of media ever.  It’s the right move to quantify it and connect it to actual revenue for both online as well as offline vendors.

2011 will be the year that focuses on who really owns the data about the consumer though; the ramifications will be felt throughout advertising and marketing from now on.  The vendors that support transparency in the consumer dataset will prosper; those that do not give consumers access and control over their data will diminish.

The drivers for this initiative are varied, but let there be no mistake that the consumer will want to be in charge of their data.  I’ve been following the posts in the ProjectVRM usegroup that Doc Searles and a number of others have generated on Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), which in it’s simplest terms is CRM stood on it’s head – the conversations are very forward leaning in terms of where we’re going and what’s possible even today. 

ODP_LogoA Wall Street Journal series has been tackling the issue and the article by Emile Steele outlines a new initiative from several industry data collecting companies.  It is going under the name of the ‘Better Advertising Project’ (BAP) and the Open Data Partnership (ODP).  The partnership is promising to provide consumers the ability to:

  • get a snapshot of the information that companies have collected about their interests
  • gain more control over that information, from editing to opting out

It looks like they are trying to get in-front of  the rising consumer sentiment around their privacy by providing an opt out capability; notably absent from the list of participants are Google and Microsoft / Yahoo however.

I think BAP will be successful in providing consumers an opt-out capability in alignment with the FTC guidelines, but I think there will be a good deal more noise in 2011 and businesses will want to make sure they dodge this bullet by making their involvement with BAP noticeable from day 1.

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