However, how to decide the extent and type of engagement? Does quality/quantity of engagement have any weight?

Yesterday I was talking with my friend who is doing volunteer work with an organization. She is entrusted the task of managing company’s networking accounts.

She told me that she would daily update the account with new articles, updates about the company, chat with few customers online, wish them on their special occasions and sometimes write few quotes. This was her start of the project.

She did this for a few days. After that she was told by the supervisor that, you are not engaging with customers online and that she should not be talking with them, wishing them or writing quotes on the networking accounts. She was asked to simply share the company news and articles related to their industry.

I was surprised with this. My thought about Engagement is that both the parties should benefit. Engagement is Mutual. People are, or take interest in you only when they see some benefit. Taking interest in their lives, knowing their needs and then gradually explaining how you can serve them.

Sometimes he/she may not be your prospective customer, but may recommend one.

Recently Michael Stelzner interviewed Brian Solis on Social Media Examiner about his recent book: Engage .You may view his post and interview here: http://vimeo.com/14553481

Since the field of social media is already crowded, the only way to survive is better engagement.

Share your views of how to engage better and optimize online networking.

The only factor that drives GE, its people, innovation, product and performance in the market is Imagination and innovation. “What we imagine, we can make happen.”

GE’s tagline is more than just a tagline; it speaks for the reason why it exists, which is instilled in all its brand touch points.

All the activities at GE are driven by a GE equation which gives a voice to its mission statement.

(Photo taken by Ed Schipul)

This equation is so creatively made that it is easy for anybody to quickly understand what GE stands for, what is important at GE, and what is its driving force and what is the core brand. It’s like just one equation tells everything, which is easy to remember and associate with.

It proclaims the success factor of GE. GE people are the sum of unceasing curiosity and relentless drive. Their imagination divided by risk multiplied by the square of their sweat, yields breakthrough ideas that make people go WOW.

Which other organization’s do you know of has a strong success factor like this?Share your thoughts here.

Bottled water, by definition is the drinking water packaged in plastic or glass containers.

A single bottle costs an average $1 to $5 while tap water costs less than $0.01.However our concern is not money but health.

Few days back there was a seminar in our residential community regarding bottled water, which demonstrated different varieties of water, showed some purity testing and ultimately marketed their water. I attended the seminar, observed the demonstrations and comparison of water types.

However I think we never had to make choice for drinking water because it is available easily in our tap, but the evolution of different varieties, flavors and marketing has pushed us go out and make a different choice.

If I rewind my life 20 years back and see when daily my mom or grandma would collect the tap water into two pots and we would use it for drinking and cooking purpose. This same process was followed every day. And this used to be a tradition in most of the Indian homes. However this is vanishing .Right now if we go and have a look, we may see a different scenario. Purified water bottles and mineral water tanks have taken the place of traditional tap water. This reflects the success of marketing strategy applied by the water bottle companies to sell their water.

What do you think, which one is better for our health and environment?

Watch The Story of Bottled Water released on March 22, 2010 on storyofbottledwater.org, which tells the story about the evolution of bottled water, realities about drinking water, and how marketing of products, affect our daily decisions.

This video is really an eye opener and clarifies many of our misconceptions about the water we drink. Although this video is a bit long, it’s worth watching sharing it with  friends.

Read for more facts about bottled water:http://tinyurl.com/yzypowh

- Our employees are our primary audience and regular brand messengers/brand ambassadors. They can successfully pass on what they have understood. So it is very much essential that they understand the brand recipe very well to pass it on consistently and in its original form. Further the experiences and messages customers’ encounter, very much depend on their interactions with the employees (mostly company representatives/sales staff and front desk staff).

- Internal brand engagement ensures that all the stakeholders get a consistent and coherent brand message at all the points of interactions, either it is in store, website, fuel pump or a brochure. It would ensure that all the employees know the brand recipe by heart, and can deliver what it needs for the brand to succeed.

- Organizational engagement would also allow us to control the experience our customers get, at all the touch points. If the whole manpower of the company understands what the brand stands for, what it is and what they can do to make it a success, they would be inspired to come up with innovative ideas to make their brand lively. Employees, who don’t know enough about the brand, are actually putting their organization at risk.

- We tend to make mental images and judgments about a company based on the kind of response and experience we get from company staff/employees.

A great word of mouth promotion potential is untapped in internal branding. Not to forget that each and every individual of the organization is responsible for the brand success. There could be no better brand advocate for us than our employees.

For an example,here is a post about Starbucks and the effort it puts after internal branding: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2009/sb20091210_167541.htm

First, and foremost a child’s natural language-learning ability free of correction and perfection.

Second, their learning skill is considerably accelerated by constant feedback from family and friends. Positive correlation and persistent reinforcement nurture the child’s language and learning skills into a full talkative face.
Third, they learn by playing. With their five senses activated, while playing with parents and playmates-“clap, clap…”, “smile”, “what is your name?” etc help them develop language skills that connect them to the outer world.

We as adults still have this ability that we possessed as kids, the skills of self teaching and learning by observation. Sadly, now we know more of grammar and correction of language here and there which forces us to conclude the learning process as unexciting and uninteresting.
In today’s era what are the hurdles we are facing in our learning process? What stops us?
What can we learn from infants to make our journey of learning more fun and exciting?

We would sit in a circle with a group of friends, and whisper a word/phrase or sentence in neighbor’s ear and then our neighbor would pass on the message to another. And it would be passed along person to person. The last person to hear the message would speak out the message as he heard. The more twisted the message, the more fun it becomes. Misunderstanding, misinterpretations, poor communication and language barriers are expected.

Similar to this telephone game, is the game of branding. Rather it is much more serious than a game.

The difference being, one would not want the message to get garbled, scrambled or misinterpreted in any way, especially in a way that would entertain kids. Secondly the players in the branding game are considerably in a large number than in this game. They would include employees, customers, business partners, and all the stakeholders. (Don’t want to miss any player, so mentioned it as Stakeholders).Since the difference is very critical, our message has to be simple and clear to be heard, understood and passed on to all stakeholder touch points, exactly as it started.

So my whole point behind telling this story and comparing it with branding is to highlight the importance of our brand’s DNA, which is a vital ingredient of our brand’s recipe. Once we have a branding idea in our mind, we need to boil it down to a KISS (Keep it Short and Simple) message that captures the core meaning of the brand idea .Much like heating the fragrances to get a strong essence. This strong essence would become our brand’s DNA.

It should be capable to evoke images and thoughts in the minds of stakeholders for remembrance and should be clear to be understood without any help or guidance. And all our stakeholders should have a similar understanding of our brand’s DNA.

Once we have set up our brand’s DNA, then we can decide which branding signals would work the best to communicate the brand message. (TV commercial/ newspaper /social media etc).

This vital ingredient of our brand’s recipe would ensure that our brand message is clear in the minds of our stakeholders and is in sync with our brand idea, business strategy and branding signals.

There was not a single line used in the receipt that did the job of promoting the store’s products/services or rather even appreciating the customer’s purchase. Normally I see them on a white paper, black ink. We preserve the receipts if they are for costly commodities/services otherwise we barely look at them once we leave the store/restaurant or any other place. I have a few smart examples to share, from which we can take some inspiration.

The reason for writing this post is to rediscover the power of touch points (the points of buyer-seller interaction) by capitalizing on our interactions/marketing material/receipts as a bounce back marketing tool. Checkout counter is one such touch point. Let us study some examples here.

Extreme Pita: I often visit this place and with the meal, I get a receipt showing the complete nutrition chart, giving the details of the food I am going to eat- the calorie intake, protein, carbohydrates and a measurement of how much calories we need a day/how much we are having there on a meal. We do see these nutrition facts in Ads (few minute Ads that cost a lot of money), but this receipt works as a smart simple form of advertisement which the customer can read at his own time.

Isn’t this a creative medium to pass on the same message at a very little cost? The receipt also thanked the customer, appreciated the purchase and offered a discount (bounce back offer) for the next purchase.

Another creative use of Receipt is done by Ralphs. On the back of receipt, we can find many attractive discount coupons. I personally preserve Ralphs receipt for car wash and hair cut discount coupons.

Great clips: Get a haircut, and preserve your receipt for a discount on your next cut.

Which other businesses are you familiar with, that are capitalizing on their touch points?

Now that we have recognized its importance, let us start our home work. Let us study the touch points where customers get in touch with us, and generate ideas on how we can capitalize that interaction. Let us examine our marketing material/receipts that we have been presenting to our customers/clients, and play with our imagination and creativity to make it work for us.

Ask questions like: How about putting a bounce back offer to our marketing material/receipts? We can come up with unique bounce back offers suitable to our business and mission. How about having colorful receipts? Loaded with coupons? Receipt made of a paper which is sticky and the customer can preserve it by simply putting it on the refrigerator, like the one we get on pizza box.

We may dedicate budgets for advertisement, branding and promotions, but we should not forget that the key to successful business is at the touch points-where we interact with our customers.

Take away: Success doesn’t need big budgets, it simply asks for our Imagination and Creativity which every one of us is blessed with.

1. Have a Coach/Guru/Mentor
We can start with introspection of a particular area, we want to master at and hunt for a good coach/expert that can help us. This would work best when our coach can also benefit something from us while he is sharing his expertise with us. Reiterating, this coaching time should not be a part of our personal dedicated time. For me books and amazing online website like HubSpot and Mashable are great guides. However I am still looking for a personal coach for SEO who can guide me, a non programmer, in a simple (non programming) language.

2. Have time bound goals.
The key to success is proper planning, execution and follow up. For this, our goals have to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time specific. So if we know what we want to achieve this year, (tangible numbers) we can divide the figure to quarterly goals and then further divide it into weekly targets. By doing this we would be able to measure our efforts, make changes to our plans accordingly and work out for the deviation (if any).Goals can be in personal, professional, social or spiritual area, whatever you are looking for.

3. Plan for the day.
We all know how important a to-do list is. We may just try to remember everything that we have to accomplish for the day, or jot it down on yellow notes, or in a diary or paper pad. People also like Outlook for this activity. This activity becomes very satisfying, once we go on completing the tasks one by one and put a check mark as they get done.  If we make this a habit, it ensures that we never miss out important tasks of the day and are always able to meet deadlines. I like to start with actions that are fun or easy to do, and since they would get accomplished fast, I get a boost that only few are left and I can make it.

4. Introspection time.
Dedicate yourself few hours of the day, may be at early morning or afternoon (whatever time suits you) one hour or two or three. But not more, since we have other priorities. During this time we should fully concentrate on our business/areas of improvement/business reengineering or whatever project we are working on and should avoid interruptions (those which are controllable) like answering phone calls, listening to voice messages, reading emails etc. In nutshell, this is the time just dedicated for yourself, where you can work on your most important priority.

5. Set a Time check.
I like this key the best. Once we have dedicated a time for us, we should put a limit for our self, that within this time I have to complete this task. “All the exams have a time limit”. This would create a bit of pressure to make the best use of every minute and make us accountable. We may also use a timer, to discipline our self and complete our task within that time by staying away from non productive thoughts and dreams. This is like, we first set a dedicated time for self, and in that time, we have deadlines for actions to be done. We may also give us a break of say 5 minutes, after each task is done.

6. Treasure your ideas.
Ideas come to us all the time, but we miss them either by not paying attention or fail to remember them. To avoid missing our ideas, we may carry a small diary, where we can record our ideas. Sometimes it happens that I am thinking on a problem, and I would get a solution in my sleep. Therefore we should always carry something where we can capture our ideas, (a paper napkin would also work). We may also use Outlook, but I like using a dairy which gives a feeling of touch and think while you write.

7. Offer free assistance.
In whatever field we are working, we would have clients/audience or customers. And they have concerns or problems where we can serve them. We need to identify their concerns, and dedicate a time for them, say a particular day of the week or time of the day, when we would listen and solve their concerns for free. This can be in the form of free consultation; free service, free product repair, free oil change (Although I don’t think we can get this for free).We can have more ideas here based on what would work for our business and what would be cost and time effective. HubSpot does this very well by sharing free information and downloadable digests on various marketing topics. I learn a lot from these articles.

This exercise would help us know our customers better and also see them go happy with a solution.This could also be revenue generating, because since it is free we may see more people come to you than usual and we can capitalize on it. Further serving someone for free by dedicating them some time, would also bring a sense of happiness.

So the question is how many of us follow these three simple steps when connecting with the customer or to be specific at the point of sales.
1. Thank the customer/client for purchasing the product/service from you, by having a thank you note inside the product package or service literature.
2. Appreciate their decision of buying from you.
3. Give them bounce back offers.

These bounce back offers could be in the form of discount coupons, free product samples, free service for certain time, exclusive benefits like giving unadvertised free gifts etc. These freebies attract customers to come to you again and again.

Most of the businesses, give bounce back offers like discounts coupons the customer can use next time, free shipping with the next order or 5 dollars cash back on your next order etc. But this has become so common now days that it doesn’t inspire customers enough to remember us when they go out for purchase.

With creativity and imagination,we can serve our customers in a way which would make them realize that we are meeting their need rather then their want or that we are delighting them.

To amaze customers, we can brainstorm creative bounce back ideas that would differentiate us. We may delight them by giving unexpected/Unadvertised benefits. We may do this by offering free purchase of equal or lesser value from the same brand, wishing them on their birthday, sending them freebies and thanking them for being a patron and loyal. This is an area where we can be more creative with our own ideas of what would delight our customers. The best person to generate these bounce back offers could be a sales person, because he would be meeting so many customers day in and out and can find out what would delight them.

This may be little pricey but would keep customers tied up with the organization and also bring lot of out referrals from these happy customers. If done correct, this would also strengthen the brand positioning and remembrance.

We may also deploy different bounce back offers for different category of customers.
We may categorize our customer base as follows:
Strangers – Less Profitable and Less Loyal
Butterflies – Profitable but not loyal
True Friends – Profitable and loyal
Barnacle – Not profitable but loyal.
After trying out with few types of bounce back offers, we need to find out which one works with our target audience and repeating that strategy again and again.
This reminds me of a quote: Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends-Walt Disney
If you know of any organization that deploys such strategies, let us discuss those examples here.

But isn’t this a myth? Can we control nature? No. Then how can we control TIME that flows naturally, is intangible, neutral, doesn’t wait for anybody and has no opinions. The question that arises is, how we can manage something that we can’t control. It would have been amazing if we could control it,then we would have controlled and dragged the moments of fun and happiness and lived them forever and would fast forward the bad times.

If we give a moment of thought, we would realize that actually we are managing our actions so that we accomplish our tasks within the determined time frame. We just can’t add or reduce minutes from the time clock we can just reengineer our efforts in such a way that the task gets done within the timings of the clock.

Again reiterating,Time is beyond human being’s control. So when we are re-engineering our actions to complete tasks within the time limit, what we are doing is Actions Management rather than Time Management.

Wish you good Actions Management.If you like this post,you would also like my other post, Secrets of Time Management.
What are your views on this,are we managing time or our actions?