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February 23, 2012#

How to enchant customers

The process of creating a deep, delightful, mutually beneficial and voluntary relationship with customers is called enchanting them. From Dale Carnegie to Robert Cialdini, people have explained how to make this happen, and now there’s another tool for you to use. They’re called simply Facebook Pages (often called “fan pages”), and there’s never been an online tool as powerful for enchanting customers.

http://www.openforum.com/articles/how-to-use-facebook-to-enchant-your-customers
February 22, 2012#

Mediocrity in the Romanian business world

In February I started a partnership with “Cariere” Magazine. Once a week I’ll publish an article about marketing, social media or communications. I will speak both to customers an companys trying to give an overall image of the current online marketing world.

The first article is about Mediocrity and how professionals in Romania tend to ignore their personal brand.

În trecut un job mediocru, la care te duceai zilnic, pe care îl tratai cu mediocritate și unde făceai o treabă un pic mai mult decât mediocră era salvarea. Salvarea din mediocritate. Are sens?

Read the full text in Cariere Online.

image (c) http://www.gapingvoid.com/
February 21, 2012#

Break or make a project

Most of the time you have a great relationship with your agency. They get the work done and make you happy. You get to show off some great products or results, and that’s that. But sometimes things go wrong, not because anyone wants them to, but because they just do. And you have to start over with a new agency. You send out requests for proposal and you wait for a response. But how much work do you really put into this documents? Do you have any idea how much they can break or make a project?

Yesterday I was in a meeting, most of the day, with a government organization, here in Romania. They are trying to make a shift not only in what they do online, but also in the way they perceive the online space. It got me thinking. When you choose an agency where do you start from? What do you look for? When you choose a technical one it gets even harder! For example:

1. If you don’t have a template for the offer you expect to receive, you will receive offers drawn up in all sorts of ways: excel, template, word, print, hardcover or digital. You will have to try and find the differences and the similitude while also trying to be objectives in the choices you make.

2. If you don’t have specific requests for certain tasks how will you be able to evaluate them? For a simple task like “The website has to run on an Open Source CMS” you could get two different answers, both in a different price range. WordPress or Drupal? How do you know which one is better for you?

3. When you ask for SEO services, tell the agency what you are thinking of. SEO for example could be a basic set of simple tasks or could be a full on-going strategy. What do you need right now. Don’t let them guess, because most of the time they’ll get it wrong.

Avoid all this and eventually you’ll be throwing less money out the window. I’m not trying to tell you it’s impossible to pick the right agency for the job, what I’m saying is that you should me more careful about the little details that could make your life so much easier.

 image (c) http://www.greenbuildinglawupdate.com
February 19, 2012#

From Social Media to Content Marketing

Friday I’ve spent part of my day over at Radio 21‘s head-quarters. It was one of the best experiences I had as a trainer so far and I wanna thank all the guys (and girls) there for a great time.

The session started as usual with everybody talking about their past experience and the objectives they were trying to achieve trough this learning opportunity. Myself included. I got to know their marketing policy and the way a radio station operates.

I started the discussion focusing on social media interactions and community building, with high regard to what you can and should measure when calculating return on investment. But all this lead to a pressing argument about content relevance and how interested the user actually is in what you have to say.

They learned about content planning and content marketing, different types of approach to the same piece of content and ways to generate reactions.

All this effort culminated around the user and around his need of “belonging” to a certain group. How you talk to them, how you regard them and how and when you start a dialogue.

Everybody was fascinated by the way everything fit into place and of the clear overall picture that the training brought among the marketing team.

A question still remains for me, though. When promoting a radio station what comes first? The music or the DJs? It’s a question that has been bugging me ever since I worked with KissFM over at MB Dragan. So, what do you think?