The sharing economy will change everything. Get on board, or get run over.

By Mark Helfen

The sharing economy, the collaboration economy, the peer-to-peer economy. Under any name there will be big changes in successful business models. The changes in customer power will be even greater than the effects of rapid social media adoption. Companies of all sizes will either need to get on board, or get run over.

So says Jeremiah Owyang, speaker at the Monday, November 10 SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG meeting. He is Associate Director and Founder of Crowd Companies. With both Brand Council and Innovation Network, the business helps large and small business navigate the new collaboration economy. Owyang works as a connector or catalyst, helping both large businesses and start-ups take advantage of the sharing economy.

The meeting will start at 6:30, and be held at our regular location, Detati Communications, located here. Owyang’s talk is titled How to Apply Uber and Airbnb Strategies for Your Business.

The wide adoption of new technologies, including social media, smart phones, and an always connected network has changed the company-to-customer dynamics. Customers can buy and sell to each other, not just from traditional businesses. As with social media, businesses have lost even more control of the flow of information, products, and now even money.

Some of the examples are well known – Uber and Lyft for transportation. Airbnb replaces hotel rentals. Kickstarter serves as a replacement for venture funding, at least at the small scale. The New York Times has a recent article about Uber changing, at least somewhat, nightlife in auto addicted Los Angeles.

But some of the examples he discussed were new, at least to me.

Shapeways is a service that produces objects that use advanced 3D printers. When Hasbro, the toy manufacturer noted that people were using the service to make copies of their licensed toys, they could have attempted to use copyright and trademark law to shut them down. Instead, the supplied design files to Shapeways, allowed customer to make whatever they wanted, and took a percentage of what Shapeways charges their customers.

Another example is children’s toys. Instead of buying Legos for his young daughter, Owyang rented them from a company called Just Play.

Whole Foods saw that Instacart was going through their stores to fulfill orders for same day grocery delivery. Instead of stopping and trying to run a competitive service on their own, Whole Foods cooperated and gave the delivery service access to the store’s inventory database.

Owyang has a large chart titled Framework: Collaborative Economy Honeycomb visible here. It shows an impressive number of businesses already sharing.

This is an irreversible movement, not a trend according to Owyang. The business model and supporting technology started in 2008, at the trough of the recent recession. As the broader economy has taken off, he sees the collaborative economy rapidly growing. Supporting this are behavioral changes: the value of access over ownership, the activation of idle resources, and crowd sourcing that requires the adoption of open standards.

From the point of larger companies, the collaboration economy shifts markets to be more local, disrupting global business models. It also empowers freelancers, who will be a larger fraction of all workers. The “crowd” can be a business of its own, bypassing inefficient industries – with Uber and the taxi business as an example. Companies either need to become part of the new model, or get run over.

Owyang says there are over 9000 startups in this space, with a more than $6 billion of venture funding. One example is Google Ventures, which put $258 million into Uber. This is a strategic move for Google, which is competing with Amazon, among others for delivery to customer’s homes. Google has used Uber cars and drivers allow same day delivery of shopping orders to customers. Compare that with Amazon using FedEx, or owning their own delivery network, or maybe using drones. In the end, efficiency will win out.

So come by Monday, and see if your business can be at either end of the new peer-to-peer economy.

Sign up at Meetup.

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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LinkedIn as a platform for engagement and brand awareness

By Mark Helfen

The new LinkedIn has moved way beyond being a repository for resumes.

Well, to be fair, it was always more than that. But recent news reports about the network have noted its success in helping, or even replacing traditional recruiters. Job seekers and recruiters looking to fill positions use LinkedIn to connect with potential employers, find employees, or get a reference into a company.

It’s still the premier site for business to business networking. But they have expanded their role, becoming a platform for engagement, and now, promoting your brand or company. If you come to Monday’s SVForum MarketingSIG, you will leave with a concrete understanding of you can use this for your business.

At the next SVForum MarketingSIG, Yumi Wilson will speak on the topic How to Leverage LinkedIn to Raise Brand Awareness. We will be meeting Monday, October 13 at Detati Digital Marketing, starting at 6:30. Ms. Wilson’s title at LinkedIn is Corporate Commutations Manager. Her other title is Associate Professor of Journalism at San Francisco State, which gives some flavor of her focus.

I first met Ms. Wilson about a year ago when she conducted a class for journalists in using LinkedIn to find sources for news stories. It might not be immediately obvious, but another way of looking at LinkedIn is a very large worldwide network of subject matter experts – and potentially the perfect place to hunt for that elusive news source. In her role she started the LinkedIn for Journalists group, which currently is at close to 70,000 members.

Her job has now expanded to helping corporate communications people raise awareness and promote their businesses and brands, and as has formed a new LinkedIn group – LinkedIn for Corporate Communications. Monday night’s talk will included concrete and specific ways to use the network gain from the expanded capabilities of the network.

One example is Pulse, a new feature that allows you to write and publish a blog on LinkedIn. Your writings are available to all 100 million or so LinkedIn members, are searchable both on and off LinkedIn, and can gain you followers in addition to your network connections.  Your writings are shared with all of your connections and followers. Originally the ability to publish on Pulse was restricted, but now any LinkedIn member can use the feature. It’s always hard to get a new blog noticed, but the business focus of LinkedIn might give you an edge in connecting and engaging with an audience.

Company pages are another feature that can be used to promote and raise awareness of your brand or business. The basic company page is free, but there are also paid services to promote your posts to selected audiences.

Wilson also spends time counseling people on “optimizing” their LinkedIn profile. A more optimized profile will appear higher in search rankings. LinkedIn’s search function has become quite sophisticated, and getting found among 100 million people is a challenge.

The session promises to cover specific features and how to best use them to promote either yourself or your brand.

 Sign up on  ---->

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen
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Social media is over. It's just a part of the broader digital transformation.

By Mark Helfen

Social media is over.

That doesn’t mean it’s unimportant, or not useful. But the digital transformation of businesses is happening so quickly that individual technologies like social media platforms are “embedded” in broader changes. Social media is but one piece of a larger digital revolution. It combines with technologies like mobile, big data analysis, geolocation, and an ever growing list of new ideas that together upend old business models.

How can companies respond to such radical change? One way is to create a single point that will focus strategic thinking on an effective evolution. Assigning a person the role of Chief Digital Officer, or CDO is a start.

At our August 11 SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG meeting R “Ray” Wang will speak on the topic Demystifying Digital Transformation: Do we All Need a CDO. The meeting will be at our usual very nice location, Detati Communications, starting at 6:30.

Wang is Founder and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. Founded in 2010, Constellation has 20 analysts serving 300 clients. They describe themselves as providing “disruptive technology research for market leaders,” helping their clients transform their business model in response to the avalanche of change. Wang promises to think “beyond the orthogonal” and to be intentionally provocative.

“The business model is changing so fast that a better product or better service is no longer enough,” said Wang. They may not even be required. The “sales funnel” is broken, the “customer journey” model is broken. Customers now hold all of the power.

Into the maelstrom of change, the CDO needs to light the way. It’s too big of a job for one person. Rather, the CDO needs to enable the rest of the organization to be digitally savvy.  He or she needs to be an evangelist, calling to action the range of CXOs, where X could be CEO, CIO, COO, CMO, etc…

There is no single background for the job. Wang’s view is that the person needs to combine quantitative skills with poetry - a balance of left and right brain. If the CDO succeeds, they could very well work them self out of a job in a few years as digital thinking becomes diffused throughout the business.

This number of C-level executives might seem far away from a small entrepreneurial startup. But Wang believes there will be opportunities for small companies to support the digital business model.

So come by next Monday, and get a view of the future of the digital business.


Sign up on Meetup:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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If you want to engage customers, you need to understand the profound difference between storytelling and presenting the facts..

By Mark Helfen

If you want passionate engagement with your current or future customers, you need to connect “south of their head” – where their feelings, wants, and concerns are. You can’t lead with company or product facts when customers are now in charge of the interaction.

Or so says Barry Feldman of Feldman Creative, who will speak on Kiss My Glass - How to Create Passionate Relationships between Your Brand & Buyers at the next SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG. The meeting will be on Monday, July 14, 6:30 at our usual location, Detati Communications.

Feldman has a unique view on communicating, branding, and positioning. His experience includes 25 years as a copywriter, so while he develops strategy and assembles and leads teams, he is a “word guy,” and still does the writing. He has an eclectic view of marketing – for example he recently posted a pean to his new, old fashioned landline telephone.

He has seen and contended with the marketing power shift from businesses to customers over the last few years. Before the millennium businesses, and money, controlled the brand experience using advertising and direct mail. But now Google, web pages, and social media have moved power to the people. Before your customers ever contact you, they have done their research and formed an impression.

Feldman’s response to this change is to create passionate engagement – the kind that gets attention, gets customers to care enough interact, to share what they have learned, and eventually to buy from you.

You can’t do this with web pages spouting facts about your products. Instead you need talk to your customers interests - “south of their head” to where their feelings are, the things they really care about in their lives. An example is Red Bull – “caffeinated sugar water.” The company displays extreme sports in their marketing, rather than talking about flavor or pharmacology.

It took me a few minutes to get the “kiss my glass” meaning, but after an explanation, it became clear. Feldman has clients all over the world, some of which he has never met in person. Instead of a face-to-face relationship, they have a screen-to-screen relationship. Or maybe better, a passionate glass-to-glass connection.

Feldman has spent time studying “the art and science of engaging real people,” and he will talk about not only why you need to create engagement, but also provide how-to guidance to get your engagement strategy going. In his words, “there is a profound difference between storytelling and presenting the facts.”

He has examples of engaging marketing programs, and maybe a few that don’t work as well. If you have a favorite web site, or work for a company that you want Feldman to show and comment at the meeting please send him a note, or bring it to the meeting.

Feldman also seems to have an eye for personal branding (note the hat.) While that isn’t the topic of this meeting, it’s worth checking out a list he co-wrote titled The Complete A to Z Guide to Personal Branding.

So come by Monday night, and learn how to create passionate relationships with people you might never meet.


Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mark_helfen

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Content may be King, but context is queen, and conversion is the ace

By Mark Helfen

Content is king has reached buzzword status – the “phrase du jour” for digital marketing. But if everyone is creating piles of content, how does yours become noticed and effective. Effective, meaning it results in prospects entering the sales pipeline and eventually becoming customers.

According to Niki Hall, speaker at the June 9 SVForum Marketing SIG, you can “amplify” the effectiveness of your content by engaging the key influencers in your market. If content is king, Hall will extend you thinking to “context is queen,”, and “conversion is the ace.” Context is where and how prospects encounter your content. Conversion means a customer responds to the content and moves forward in the buying process.

Her presentation is titled Playing the Influence Game – Powerful Tools to Win The Hearts of Your Customers. She will give tips and strategies to implement your engagement program, with the intention of increasing conversion. With 60 to 70 percent of customers researching on-line before contacting your company, your content strategy needs to work well.

The meeting will be at our new and very nice location, Detati Digital Marketing, starting at the usual time of 6:30.

Hall is Vice President Corporate Marketing at Polycom, Inc. Polycom makes those cool star shaped speakerphones you've probably seen in many meeting rooms. The company has expanded their product offering to a much broader range, supporting human collaboration over a dispersed geography with the idea you can “defy distance.” Her range of responsibilities is also quite broad, including brand and reputation management, content strategies, and all web marketing. Her responsibility for analyst relations reflects both her background, and the essential ingredient for multiplying the effectiveness of marketing content.

Hall will bring her own guest with her - Zeus Kerravala, principle and founder of ZK Research, to give an analyst point of view.

She created Polycom’s influencer program, which was effective enough to win this year’s Influencer of the Year Award from SiriousDecisions. The award notes how the program “can help an organization drive more valuable influencer relationships and outcomes by using unique approaches to target and interact with both traditional and non-traditional influencer types.” Exactly what she will be giving tips and tools on at our meeting.

The right influencer can help validate your product or your company’s value proposition, and amplify your message. Hall relates one case with Polycom where conversion reached 70 percent, much higher than the typical 10 percent.

“But not all influencers are created equal,” said Hall. She looks for three criteria to decide on which analysts or influencers to engage: Customer reach, share of voice, and ability to reach the financial decision makers on Wall Street.

At Monday’s presentation, Hall will talk about the difference between influencing and engaging the analysts that can help you multiply the reach of your message. Her talk will include tips and tools on finding and identifying the right influencers, how to best engage them, and how they can help your marketing effort. And for a small startup, some help in getting noticed.

Please sign up:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: hlinkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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