Brian Feener

I admit it - I wear one of those flashing Bluetooth headsets. It makes me look like I’m talking to myself, but it allows me to type and talk at the same time.

If businesses understood that a Bluetooth headset is the example that they should follow for their marketing strategy, their services would be more efficient and more user friendly.

1 - A Bluetooth headset eliminates the inefficiency of a wire in favor a semi-periodic charging time. (Over the weekend, I set up an internet service with Company X in my new apartment. In order to access the wireless password, I had to enter in a universal number while plugged into the modem. I didn’t know that I had to do this, but could have done so on my own with simple instructions if they were printed on the machine. Instead, I was on the phone with cust. service for over 15 minutes. )

2 - Your headset, once paired with your phone, does not need to be repeatedly paired again and again. (Over the weekend, I placed a technical support call into Company X. And then another and another and another. All-in-all, I probably called 10 times. I had to give my phone number at about 2.5 times for each call. If it took me 2 seconds to enter my number and 4 to speak it out to the cust serv. rep., figure that I wasted over 2 minutes on the phone JUST giving my phone number. Now times that by 1000 calls in a week. And a million calls over the year.)

3 - You can buy a headset for $10 (like mine pictured below) or for $150 (like the eliph Jawbone). Both are effective. I can use them with any cell phone with BT capabilities. (As a customer, I don’t care about “unusually heavy call volume.” All it says to me is that you haven’t planned ahead or haven’t found an innovative way to get me off hold, out of the queue, and get my problem solved without destroying your bottom line. It is YOUR fault, Company X.)

To summarize:

1 - Find inefficiencies by breaking down your process. There’s always SOMETHING that can make life easier on your customer and be beneficial for the company, too.

2 - If you aren’t doing anything to develop data past its pure form, then you’re wasting your (and your customer’s) time.

3 - Not everyone is the same or has the same needs. It’s not the customer’s role to adjust to your business - it’s the company’s role to adjust to the customer’s needs.

John Mayer is a contributing blogger to honeyee.com and he’s posted about a t-shirt he received in the mail and was able to reflect on the nature of ascribed value.

He says on the post Master Chang:

Intrinsically it’s just a yellow shirt, but it’s been given a story. And when you can connect something seemingly benign with a story, things begin to matter. The shirt doesn’t even fit - it’s a medium - but that’s not the point. Owning it ends a long outstanding search for something, and that’s what makes the waiting so much fun - it psychically charges the final moment of calling it yours.

For those who had waited out until the iPhone was a little bit more affordable and had 3G, have hope! Not only are you getting a more value out of your phone in terms of money spent, but you are also able to have that Big Moment of opening the box after waiting for so long.

For the comments: How can you add value to a product without making it cost more?

Social media (or social networking) can provide the same benefits and present the same risks as any other marketing initiative. In the same way that a telemarketer or television commercial can present a message and provide a call to action, social media is simply another arena to communicate an idea. Whether that idea is specific to a campaign, promotes the organization’s core values, or whose purpose is organizational awareness, the central idea is the key component to any social media venture.

Social media is unique from many other forms of marketing because it allows for unfiltered, self-perpetuating customer responses to the messaging. Those customers often are tied to the success and failure of the products, whether it is by emotional, financial, professional, or other means. Many times, the responses are written with candor, humor, or additional insight, engaging other readers and responses.

Give-and-take between the content provider and the content consumer, whether monitored, filtered, or otherwise, is what drives social media. Otherwise, it is simply another web-page.

There are two keys to always remember about the messaging.

1. Consistent and relevant messaging are the vital to realizing return on investment. Erratic posting schedules, off-topic banter, inconsistent messaging, and other ills will almost surely guarantee that the programming with not be successful. Furthermore, adhering to consistent and relevant messaging will not guarantee returns.
2. Social media will not fix a weak marketing message. Social media is not a “purple pill.” Giving a campaign the aspects of social media will not guarantee returns.

Enlisting the help of a 3rd Party site is worth the time and effort to upload and update content when:

• There can be a positive return on investment, including, but not limited to contacts, revenue, page views, or brand image.
• The overall image of the brand is improved.

To the peanut gallery: Thoughts?

Picture a High School valley girl: “That shirt is so last season.”

Picture your customers: “Your website doesn’t work in BrowserX.”

Do you think that the valley girl cares that the shirt is vintage? Or that the shirt is so ahead of its curve that it’s for TWO seasons from now?

Do you think that your customer cares that your website works perfectly in IE6? Or that the site works BETTER than perfect in Opera Mini?

Especially in tech, if you’re not serving your customers on today’s needs, they will migrate. It’s just the way it is.

….

This is true for all knowledge workers as well. Can’t figure out Excel but need to work out budgets? Familiar with the AP Style Guide but not Chicago? Trying to get into the global marketplace but don’t understand Chinese and Indian economics?

Guess who is responsibility it is to know these things.

Guess who is judging you about the fact that you don’t.

Add your thoughts in the comments.

I was updating my main website today and put something called Spring Widgets on it so that I can aggregate my feeds into one central location.

I showed my buddy Mills, who said “I would want to customize it a little more.”

While, yes, it would be nice to have really custom, perfect widgets for my site, I got these in 15 seconds.  And then I’m done. 

Sometimes it’s better to go custom.  Sometimes it’s better to go now.  What other factors are out there to take into account? 

Add your thoughts in the comments.

Speed metal, hip-hop, cool jazz, and salsa all employ different rhythms to sound the way they do.

The thing that they have in common is that each typically has a drummer to keep the beat.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKQgDY0pZ68]

The fascinating thing is that each has a different style of drumming, each has a different set up for the drums, each keeps different time, but they all work.

What if your rhythm is off?

What about your business? Can you survive a missed high-hat or a errant snare? Would it be worth changing the rhythm to make things sound different than the rest of the pack? How about if you put salsa rhythms in your hip hop song? Do you want every song to sound the same? Do you want every song to stand on its own?

Rhythms are predictable. That’s why you can clap along to them. Customers like to clap along.