Richard Telofski

on "Irregular Competition"

Archive for June, 2008

Radian6 Responds in Record Time

Jun 23

Posted by Richard Telofski in Truth | 1 Comment

Last Friday I posted a question as to whether Radian6 blew off a demo appointment that they had had with me at work. Turns out that they didn’t blow me off, but the appointment was mishandled.

Almost exactly 36 minutes after I posted the Radian6 story, David from Radian6 gave me a call. I was impressed. 36 minutes. That’s not bad. And it says a lot for the responsiveness of their system.

David explained that the sales rep handling my account was out sick that day and no one picked up the slack. David also indicated that he checked the sales schedule and said that the demo had not been booked on the schedule by the sale rep. He admitted that the situation could have been handled better and that it would be brought to the attention of the sales rep. David also said that the sales rep was new, having only been with Radian6 for about a month.

As I mentioned to David, I was once a new sales rep myself and people do get sick so I understand.

But let me conclude on a positive note. When David phoned me, 36 minutes after my post, it was 6:03 PM ET, on a Friday night. I was just walking out of the office. Yet, David was monitoring the web for Radian6 mentions. And what’s even more commendable is this. David was in the Atlantic time zone, in Canada. It was 7:03 PM, on a Friday night, where he was.

That’s dedication.

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Did Radian6 Blow Me Off?

Jun 20

Posted by Richard Telofski in Truth | 1 Comment

At work, I recently contacted Radian6, the social media monitoring system, for a demonstration session. This process started on Tuesday, June 17, 2008.

After an exchange of emails with one of their account reps, who shall remain nameless for now, I thought we had landed on a day and time for the demo. Apparently I was the only one who thought that or else they just decided to blow me off. It’s rather hard to believe the latter or, for that matter, the former.

The demo was scheduled for today, Friday, June 20, 2008 at 10AM ET. I waited patiently for a phone call at the appointed time, but it never came. At 10:37AM I sent the account rep an email. It’s now almost 5:27 PM ET, and I’m still waiting for an answer.

It’ll be interesting to see if Radian6 picks up this complaining post in their own monitoring system.

Stay tuned, I’ll let you know how this works out.

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Be a Passionate Blogger, Please

Jun 19

Posted by Richard Telofski in Tactics | No Comments

In the blogosphere, there is an expression: “Content is king.” This means that great, relevant content attracts interested readers. Sounds reasonable. But how do you make great content?

Simple. Be passionate. If you are going to write about something, write from the heart. Write about what interests you and the result will be great content. Certainly this makes common sense. But remember that you are writing in a business blog. Remember that you’re not just writing for an audience of one, yourself. You’re writing for an audience of potential clients or patients, and you must also take their issues of concern into consideration.

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Be Blogroll Charitable

Jun 18

Posted by Richard Telofski in Tactics | No Comments

What goes around, comes around. Blogrolls may not seem important on the surface, but down deep they do some important work.

A Blogroll is a listing of other blogs which are provided to readers as a link to complementary or otherwise interesting information. A Blogroll also serves a function of building important inbound links and relationships. How?

Often, when blogger B finds that their blog is listed in blogger A’s Blogroll, blogger B will reciprocate by listing blog A in blog B’s Blogroll. The way the Blogroll listing is originally found is that it shows up on the blogging software’s administration page.

Links bring traffic to the blog from other blogs. Readers of other blogs will peruse the blogroll and often click through to blogs listed on the Blogroll. (A cute blog name will improve your chances of getting clicked upon in a Blogroll). This process, by definition, creates interactivity between the two linked blogs.

These inbound Blogroll links are also important because they are used by search engines to rank the importance of blogs and thereby their order in search engine results. In the “mind” of a search engine, importance is directly related to the number and quality of links that point to a blog. So having a Blogroll is a tool used in getting a link to your blog on another blog, and in improving your blog’s search engine ranking, which also goes toward increasing interactivity.

What goes around, comes around.

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In Market Research, Count the Heartbeats Not the Fingers.

Jun 17

Posted by Richard Telofski in Truth | No Comments

I picked up an interesting book over the past weekend, Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts. Super book. Reminds me a lot of the Medium is the Massage by Mc Luhan, not only in concept by also in design. In Lovemarks, Roberts talks about products and services that go beyond the loyalty level of brands, or trademarks, and become lovemarks.

The book makes many sterling points, but one that sticks out in my mind this morning as I blog is this. On page 179 he says, “I’m looking for research that counts the beats of your heart rather than the fingers of your hand. Research that connects with the inner life of the consumer.” What this says to me is the qualitative research of the consumer soul is superior to the quantitative research of the mind.

This is the kind of information that’s available in social media: the unguarded soul, the truthful writing, the honest outpour of emotion, absent reason, that occurs when people blog about or discuss in social networks product and services.

There’s a wealth of heartbeats out there. We just have to count them.

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Take a Survey and Focus

Jun 16

Posted by Richard Telofski in Strategy | No Comments

One of the biggest problem I hear about in business blogging is topic ideas. Yes, even I have that problem now and then. Here’s a way to tackle that one.

Find out about what others want to read. After you talk to your clients or patients or customers, make a few notes as to what the subjects of conversation were. Certainly, you’ll not want to include anything of a personal or confidential nature, but you can probably get an idea from conversation as to what general topics are of great interest to your clients or patients or customers.

If this idea doesn’t work well enough for you, then take a survey. Hand a survey form to your clients/patients/customers before they leave your office/store. Or ask them to take a survey that you’ve posted on your blog or standard website. Use Technorati.com to find potential topics of interest to include in the survey. Structure the survey to reveal the topics that are of greatest interest to your clients or patients. Use a Likert Scale. That’s the “Answer on a scale of 1 to 5″ part that you see on a survey. And then keep this in mind.

In a business blog, you need to serve two masters: your readers, of course, and yourself. If you don’t’ serve your readers, you won’t be read. If you don’t serve yourself, by writing about that in which you are most honestly interested, your posts will becoming boring. Your readers will sense that, and the whole thing will fall apart.

So when the survey results come in, look for a match between the subjects that interest you and those that interest them. Focus on those areas of confluence. Don’t deviate until you take another survey revealing different areas of common interest.

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Competitive Intelligence in LinkedIn?

Jun 13

Posted by Richard Telofski in Tactics | No Comments

I’ve seen a lot of people discussing this possibility recently. Sorry. I don’t have any links to which to refer. But this idea is just sticking in my brain.

Fascinating. Drawing a social map via the connections that are found on LinkedIn.com. Sure. It makes sense.

Let’s say you’re examining your competitor and find that the key marketing person has an account on LinkedIn, with several hundred connections. The nature of a company is nothing less than a collection of its employees. And its employees determine in which direction, and how efficiently, a company will turn. Start examining those connections.

What kind of skills are possessed within those connections? What skills are not possessed? For example, if this marketing person has more connections in PR field, perhaps that means that this marketer would lean more heavily on PR as a marketing tactic than advertising. Do any of those connections contain skills in social media? If so, or not, that tells you something right there about whether this marketer would lean on social media as a tactic. But don’t stop there. Look at the connections of the connections. Where do those skill sets lie?

Another thing to look at on LinkedIn is the Answers section. Now, if you’ve ever been in the Answers section, and participated, you’ll know it takes lot of time and effort. Check your targeted marketer out in this area. Are there a lot of answers posted by this this person? If so, that can tell you that this guy has way too much free time. So what’s that say about your competitor’s marketing program? You might wish to examine the questions and answers themselves to get an idea as to the level of your target’s expertise.

LinkedIn is just a veritable treasure trove of competitive intelligence. Check it out.

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