While I’m out of the office, I’m sharing a few of the Greatest Hits from the Jaggers Communications blog. This set is from the year-to-date 2012. I hope you enjoy them now if you missed them the first time around:
Dear Charlottesville, 
I love you.
On Tuesday, I joined my team at your Chamber’s Spring Luncheon. We were a sponsor and Marijean said a little something about communications. People clapped. It was great.
I got a chance to chat with Rachel of Alison Partners about innovative business thinking and how her background in design has greatly influenced her company’s success in organizational strategy and development. This was followed by a booming, passionate speech by Mike London, UVA Football Coach. I nearly strapped on some cleats. The speech and supporting football clips did exactly what they were meant to, shook us out of our post lunch daze and made us sit up and listen. Finally, I had the privilege of sitting with Amos Gilkey of CleanWaveGroup. He was explaining to me how his company is a catalyst for inventors needing a business plan and technological ideas that need shaping and packaging. Their support translates into new revenue streams and growth into overseas markets.
Charlottesville, I love you. I love that this much passion and excitement dwells in a town of 100,000. I love that we could go to a winery, a presidential estate, and a talk on innovation in the same day if we wanted to.
Sometimes I think you get a bum wrap being compared to DC. You may be small. But you, my friend, are mighty.
Sincerely,
Erika
Just like VH1 and late night infomercials, we are coming up with a greatest hits compilation.
Click to enjoy a brief, musical interlude: Greatest Hits of the 90s.
Unlike those two, ours will be mostly about our area of expertise: social strategy, public relations, crisis communications and brand positioning.
You’ll notice we added a “Newsletter” tab at the top of the page. Please take a moment to sign up, and you’ll receive our brand, spanking new newsletter very soon.
As PR, branding, and engagement professionals, we see it as our jobs to “maximize engagement” and help our clients start and maintain conversations and relationships with their customers. So it’s tempting to base success on the quantity of those efforts sometimes. How MANY connections, and is it more than last month? How MUCH content publishing, and is it enough to keep our clients “top of mind?” Marketers are rewarded (or fired) based on the ROI of their efforts and the increased sales they generate through them. So more relationships are always better, right?
Well, according to this excellent article in The Harvard Business Review, not so much. Their research has uncovered a few myths about how customers really interact with their favorite brands, mainly that people really DON’T hold brands in as high esteem as they do friends and family members–in fact, only 23% in the study said they had a relationship with a brand. So don’t attach unrealistic expectations to those other 77%. They aren’t interested in connecting at that level.
Secondly, interaction does not build relationships–shared values do. So no matter how often you’re communicating with a customer who doesn’t share your philosophy, you’ve wasted a lot of time and effort. Find the customers who share your values and make sure they are satisfied with every aspect of what you do. Be authentic. Of the consumers in the HBR study who said they have a brand relationship, 64% cited shared values as the primary reason.
Third, frequency of contact doesn’t really enhance these relationships. Treat EACH interaction as precious. Ask yourself–does this email make my customer glad they know about us? Are we providing value in every post? Are we providing useful, actionable information or joy? If so, then five or ten really well-timed communications can have far more power than 300 canned marketing speeches. The last thing you want to do is overload them with more of what we all claim we’re trying to avoid–NOISE.
Treat your customers they way you would like to be treated, and focus on those customers who share your values. Somehow that seems so simple.
I’m taking a little time off, and for me, it’s important that that time include disconnecting from social networks and the internet, in general. Because my work is so intimately tied to platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, I’ve got to refuse to log in, otherwise risking getting sucked in to engagement that will take away time and focus on the task at hand. A client who is a small business owner like me advocated going without checking e-mail while I’m gone and, indeed, I’m going to attempt this. “You’ll hate yourself for it if you do,” check e-mail while away, she said.
What’s the task at hand? Total relaxation. An opportunity to rest and refresh. Time to celebrate friends and explore new places.
I’m lucky that I have a great team, people I totally trust to mind the store while I’m away. That, and trusted friends and family give me the peace of mind I need to shut off, shut down and just chill (hopefully there’s a beach in my imminent future). I am a big proponent of taking time away from work — I don’t admire the workaholic or the business owner who has “never” taken a vacation. Where’s the fun in that? I strongly encourage the people I work with to take time away, to value it and reap the benefits of it. YOU should do it, too!
I’ll be back with great stories of adventure and (hopefully) uneventful travel.
