You are here: Home / Archives for intelligence

Are You Listening In The Right Place ?

June 26, 2011 By 5 Comments

Do-you-Practice-Active-Listening-In-The-Right-Place?

No matter what industry / which stage of the business you are in, the classic 5W+1H (Who/What/Where/When/Why/How) questions apply to every step of the way.  Before we continue, I am going to assume you already know the “Why“, if not, please go back to your business plan and find out why you started the business in the first place.

O.K., so here we go;

Who – you want to know who are/were your customers and who will most likely be your advocates for the products/services you are offering.  Have they always like it, or been referred by their family/friends to try it, or they are the gold mine — meaning they are haters-turned-lovers?

What — you want to know what people are mostly talking about; is it you as business owners, the products/services you offer, or they are talking with/about your competitors? What is the context, i.e. sentiment analysis?

Where — you know you have to start somewhere, you know you have to listen to your customers and clients and you know you have to do something if they say good/not so good thing about your business.  The question is, where (which channel)?  You should tailor your message to different channels depends on your market; only 13% of people online are on Twitter, most people won’t like/join Facebook Fan pages if asked to access their and their friends’ personal information, can be overwhelming sometimes, Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration, has a great post here which gives the reasons why Ten is the magic number.

When — this is not about the time of day, it is about when the event occurs that triggers people to talk.  Were they inquiring before making the decision? Did they have great experience and simply want to spread the words or they had unbearable encounter that maybe a better solution can be offered?  Can you avert the crisis and turn into opportunity?

And all the above goes back to the question of WHY, so does the cycle starts all over again.  WHY they want to talk about you and to continue the conversation?   WHY they buy your products/services and keep buying more?  WHY they prefer to talk on specific channels?  WHY they decide to talk at that moment?

So you ask, how do I start this listening?  What tools can I use?  Tool is just tool; you need a human mind to interpret the data and information you have collected.  But if you insist to know, given the cost of accessing legacy platforms providers (Radian6, Sysomos just to name a few) creates barrier for small business owners,  , I’d say DIY by using Google Alert and/or Social Mention;  the brilliant Jay Baer has great resource here , or a recent article from MarketingProfs “5 Free & Easy-to-Use Listening Tools for Monitoring Social Media” can also help you.

Here are some sobering numbers about the real use of social media, from @jasonfalls. EVERYONE should read this http://izmy.us/uF1 . The DIY tools are good enough until your brand gets about 300 mentions per month, and then you’ll want some more analytics.

So, are you listening? In the right place ??

Filed Under: Info & Intel & Insights, professional, Social & Listen & Tools, Thoughts & Reflections Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How Brands and Digital Women Can Work Together–My Takeaways at ShesConnected Conference

October 25, 2010 By 2 Comments

I have to confess that I did a lot of things wrong at the first, one-of-its-kind ShesConnected Conference last week.  When you attend a conference, you do certain things like, (a) taking pictures of and with speakers, conference host(s) also people you get a chance to talk to, and (b) exchange business cards to keep in touch.  I was just excited to be invited and did none of that, shocking, I know,  yet I am contained for the goals I had in mind before head to the conference, which is I learn, I listen and I engage.

I learned a lot from Johanne Thomas Yaccoto , President and Founder of Thomas Yaccato Group Consulting) and Sidneyeve Matrix, Professor in the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University during their presentations.  Johanne talked about how gender intelligence connects women consumers and business growth, Sidneyeve took deep dive into how to click with Millennial Moms; as a researcher myself I could sit there all day absorbing the information and discuss with them, yeah, that’s what I will do at next conference.  I would encourage businesses want to understand women market, check out Johanne’s book, The Gender Intelligence Retailer ; and Sidneyeve’s presentation “How to Click with Millennial Moms“.

I listened to the brands that came came for the day, they were all very interested in this women connected power and how we influence our networks in the social space, the brands are eager to work with digital women but are still in the early stage of figuring out how.  I would give these brands; including KOBO,  Kraft Canada Foods, Maple Leaf, Egg Farmers of Ontario, Seagram’s, Coca-Cola, Smashbox, Bourjois Paris, Calvin Klein Fragrances, Booty Camp Fitness, Look Good Feel Better, credits for just being there, and hope we will see some action steps in the near future.

I engaged with people that I’ve chatted online, have met before or even it was our first hug, to have meaningful conversations, either to get to know them better or potential collaborations, and that was why I probably only met about 22 awesome women that day, still 78 to go!  I am o.k. with it, relationship doesn’t build in one day, engagement is not just 6 tweets.

Here is what I think how can brands and we digital women work together for win-win:

Getting to know us individually — Treat us with respect, we could be Brand’s ambassadors or advocates, but what we represent must resonate with our inner selves.  Ann Dougulas said it well, “Each of us has unique, niche reach”, some runs online magazine like Maria Lianos (@amotherworld), some runs online shopping deals/coupons/contest/forums like Kimberley Clancy (@FrugalShopperCA), some are simply amazing moms like Jen Banks (@abusymommy).  We are all different yet similar in some ways, we have different life style (if you call it style) and needs for our family, take some time to visit our websites and get to know us as person.

Thinking outside of the box — Some brands at the round table discussions asked what topics we write about, some are fashion obsessed, some are interested in exploring foods, the truth is we are into a little bit of everything, don’t forget we are women!  So for brands in food industry think Vicky (@momwhoruns) is a foodie (true!) who can spread words, may also want to know Julia (@NuggleMama) has 5 kids under 10, if she can use the recipes to quickly prepare delicious meal making the whole family happy, shouldn’t she have some say in it?  Or look at me, people who know me knows I don’t cook, so traditionally I’m not the type brands are looking for, but if I can use some ingredients/recipes that make me feel cooking is easy peasy and it’s actually awesome, will my friends and my network listen and curious to find out more? You bet!!

Looking at potential, not scale – Brands, Marketers like to know the scale; website traffic, RSS subscribers, numbers of followers/friends/fans/connections, I get it.  It’s business and marketing budget has to go somewhere.  Choose wisely, sometime it’s better to go with smaller fish.  Why?  Because smaller fish generally appreciate much more when given the opportunity.  Women are not competitive, we are cooperative and we support each other tirelessly and selfishlessly.  We help each other to be successful and cheers for the success.  Everyone starts with small, if brands can cultivate the relationship from the beginning, it’ll last longer.

Hiring your market for your market — Look at some of the successful women today, Erica Ehm (@YummyMummyClub), Maureen Dennis (@weewelcome), Julie Cole (@juliecole) from Mable’s Label (@mabelhood) and many others, all staffed with brilliant women; because they understand what women can accomplish once empowered.  For brands, I would suggest at least one Brand Manager works with one Community Manager, if not 1 Product Manager with 1 Community Manager; providing enough training (if necessary) and support (very important) to make sure this Community Manager is the face and voice to the public.

All of these takes time, but isn’t brand building?  Never before women has the opportunity to let our voice be heard, it should be heard and needs to be heard.  In this digital, social world, brands that qualifying relationship not quantifying relationship will win, because after all, relationship building is not a fast food culture, it ain’t healthy if it is.

Would you agree?  What do you think?

(Big shout out to Donna Marie Antoniadis (@donnaantoniadis) and Mark Grindeland (@mark_grindeland) for hosting the ShesConnected Conference (@sheisconnected), looking forward to next year’s events!!)

Filed Under: personal, professional Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When It Comes to Business, Something Hasn’t Changed, or Has it?

August 20, 2010 By 7 Comments

I recently dug out the following article I wrote about a year ago, comparing the differences of conducting research between business and recruiting. I have no doubt in my mind that, information is power and how you use it can and will decide the success of your business. I’ve said it before “Information is not free at all“, especially the valuable insights that has helped in decision making. Why? Because it’s a systematic process that (a) it takes smart people to create content and share it (b) it takes people time to access the right information (c) it takes intelligence to analyze, to “make sense” of it.

With the hype of social media and internet evolution making information access easier than ever before, I don’t see much has changed in terms of performing business research and obtaining business information.

Do you have different experience? If you are a business owner, how do you go about finding the information you need to make your next decision a smart one, one with no regrets? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

The original article is posted on The Source Newsletter here

….. Being an Information Professional for over 17 years, I have been taught and trained to always looking for authoritative, creditable sources when it comes to business and competitive intelligence.

I started my career with McKinsey & Company where valuable information is critical to client’s success; I spoke to associations sharing industry insights, I searched high & low on commercial databases (Lexis, Factiva, EBSCO to name a few) for valid facts, and I networked with internal consultants to seek their expertise. After that I went to work for a major bank here in Canada, again supporting research for Investment Banking and Enterprise-wide initiatives.

Reputable resources are never fully accessible on the net for free, ….. Since I am a trained Information Professional who works best with visualization, I have drafted a simple diagram here to exhibit in business and recruiting worlds, the ultimate information we are looking for are as follows:

In business, investigation is a ‘must’ process during CI information gathering, “Good Researchers are investigators” someone once told me. After we researchers exercised our curiosity practice and did it in a MutuallyExclusiveCollectiveExhaustive way, it’s really up to the management/business owner to decide whether, and how, to use the information, because behind every good business decision is an information professional.

So, Research is Research, No Matter What. I’ve said it and I am glad I did. This is just my two cents of being a newbie Recruiting Researcher and an experienced Business Researcher.

Share your opinion here and I thank you for doing so.

Filed Under: professional Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

IBM Has Just Wrote The Elevator Speech For Me

March 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My head is spinning, in a good way.  Given the way how internet and technology have evolved, everybody is overwhelmed by data and information overload, need to tackle this critical issue quickly, staffed with IT guys, however not much talk on how Information Professionals play the important roles in this whole process.  Then I heard the IBM  commercial on the radio, even though it’s still selling the system to midsized businesses, what it does is “basically turn data into new intelligence, uncover insight and take action, set you apart and outsmart competitor“.  Bingo !!

A recent McK Quarterly article “The Internet of Things” mentioned by putting the internet of things to work, we monitor the behavior of persons, things, or data through space and time with all the information and analysis; another special report from The Economist touched on managing information “Data, data everywhere” discloses the shock (maybe not surprised?) fact : the business of information management — helping organisations to make sense of their proliferating data — is growing by leaps and bounds. In recent years Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and SAP between them have spent more than $15 billion on buying software firms specialising in data management and analytics. This industry is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion and growing at almost 10% a year, roughly twice as fast as the software business as a whole.

Let’s say you have all the infrastructure, i.e. technology, software, and IT staff in place, but where is that smart trend spotter or dot connector who can turn all these beautiful information into something that’s meaningful and actionable to make impact to the bottom line?  We can teach people very easily where to look for these tools and how to use them, the trendspotters/dotconnetors are people who are intuitive, always on the hunt to satisfy their curiosity.  I really like this website, Information Is Beautiful, the question is then, how do you optimize them to have long lasting, sustainable results?

My head is spinning fast and furious, happily.  You can have all the data and information available, and at the end of day you still need someone to press the button.

Filed Under: professional Tagged With: , , , , , ,