True Love for Customers [Love in Business Series]

True Love for CustomersTrue love for customers reveals how nonprofit, commercial and government organizations of all sizes can create much stronger relationships and business by transforming how they relate to customers.

Philosophers, clergy and psychologists have long acknowledged love as the most powerful force between humans. Love connects people like nothing else can, I think because love touches and binds together so many parts of the brain simultaneously: Love stimulates the reptilian brain because it’s related to survival. It is central to the limbic brain, which is grounded in emotion and memory. And love throughly engages the neocortex in art, ideals, and many other forms.

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Ethnographic Research for Cross-Border Business

Ethnographic Research Cross Border BusinessEthnographic research for cross border business shows how to apply ethnographic research of social media to reducing the risks and costs of doing cross border business and deals. Ethnographic research can transform the value proposition of international business because it’s a very efficient way to conduct due diligence, to study the behavior and motivations of the people that the deal proposes to serve. Unlike traditional research methods, which are relatively slow, costly and qualitative, ethnographic research of social media combines qualitative richness with quantitative analysis. It’s faster and less costly, too.

Ethnographic research for cross border business can dramatically improve the depth and breadth of research for business and corporate strategy, market entry strategy, customer development, human capital strategy, product management, and others since it allows teams to consider more users and to assess their behavior and motivations, which can improve the value of more costly research.

Imagine that you can get deep qualitative and quantitative data on what your proposed clients, customers, employees and partners are discussing among themselves, specifically about the business scenario you propose to address. Ethnographic allows you to validate, with real people, […]

Many Businesses Live In Fear—How to Break Free

Many Businesses Live In Fear: How Trust Drives Down Firms' Risk and Fear[Updated] Many businesses live in fear, and how to break free reveals how fear and risk can be sharply reduced by increasing trust among employees, customers and partners.

I have learned many surprising things while practicing experiential social media, but one of the most astounding is the realization that most business practices, especially those that concern people, are grounded in fear and mistrust. This ties businesses in knots, but few people realize it because it’s accepted as normal. This post aims to open your eyes, so you can start noticing how fear and mistrust operate in your firm. Then I’ll offer numerous ideas that can help you to reduce fear and risk by increasing trust.

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7 Social Business Transformation Tools [CDO Guide to Social Business Part3]

7 Social Business Transformation Tools provides digital executives the vital tools of online engagement, from the Social Business Life Cycle and Social Business Strategy Use Cases to the report that ranks social business advisory firms in their ability to help firms transform.

Social Business Transformation Tools

7 Social Business Transformation Tools is Part3 of the CDO Guide to Social Business for Transformation. The tools it describes encapsulate thousands of hours of hands-on experience with strategy and in-the-trenches execution work with global brands, and they explicitly address the ins and outs of people, process and technology. Part3 includes links to tools’ full versions, so CDOs can use it as a dashboard.

The Guide to Social Business for Digital Transformation helps Chief Digital Officers to understand and act on rapidly improving stakeholder relationships, productivity and business performance. The Social Business Competency Center has even more resources. The Chief Digital Office has other competency centers in Mobile, Big Data & Analytics and Ecommerce.

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The Social Business Enabler of Digital Transformation [CDO Guide to Social Business Part1]

TheSocial Business Enabler of Digital Transformation reveals how social technologies have changed the economics of interacting and collaborating, and it presents four ways that Chief Digital Officers can use social to lower risk and boost returns of digital transformation.

The Social Business Enabler of Digital Transformation [CDO Guide to Social Business Part1]Social business competency is pivotal to digital transformation because it combines four unusual characteristics. First, it makes interacting and collaborating an order of magnitude faster and less costly than current processes; second, few organizations understand how to use social business to interact with key customers to boost profit, so leaders enjoy rare advantage; third, when compared to ecommerce, mobile and big data & analytics investments, social business shows results quickly and costs less. Lastly, social business reveals what stakeholders really think when organizations aren’t in the room, so it’s effective for due diligence and “requirements analysis” for ecommerce, mobile and big data investments.

As Social Business Enabler of Digital Transformation explains, social business has a two-fold value proposition for Chief Digital Officers: they can use social directly to drive reputation, innovation and […]

How Social Technologies Have Disrupted Organizations [CDO Guide to Social Business Preview]

How Social Technologies Have Disrupted Organizations is a quick overview of the business and social environment around commercial, government and nonprofit organizations that sets the context for using social business for digital transformation.

How Social Technologies Have Disrupted Organizations [CDO Guide to Social Business Preview][UPDATED] Social technologies are quickly changing the context around why people buy products and services. Leaders of organizations in business, government and nonprofit sectors harbor a false assumption that is becoming lethal in the digital social age: they assume that products and services have inherent value to customers and constituents. In fact, products and services represent costs to customers and revenue to producers and service providers.

Customers must use products or services to create outcomes that are personally or professionally meaningful. The use of the product or service is where the customer or constituent produces value. This is why they buy. “So what,” you might be thinking. In this post I’ll show how digital social technologies are weakening mediocre products and services and how organizations can use social business to strengthen their offerings. Read a more in-depth treatment in […]