Noesium | Integrative Digital Thinking

Bob Pearson, past VP, Communities and Conversations at Dell,
and President of Social Media Business Council,
shared 15 key trends and observations for leaders of great brands at Third Tuesday Toronto.

An excellent list of wisdom – keep them in your wallet!

1. Customers are co-shaping your reputation everyday – are you accidentally outsourcing the building of your brand?

2. Leaders will identify issues before they happen – customers assume we are listening to their issues in real time

3. You realize that your customer does not care where you want them to go – customers are part of their own liquid network

4. You know that <1% of a customer’s tome is spent purchasing a product – 99% is spent browsing and socializing; build trust there when you are needed, not when you need the customers

5. E-commerce will become E-community – in reality, <1% time was spent buying online but 99% spent browsing and socializing

6. You focus on how people consume content and understand how it is changing – customers decide where they will learn and it is not via advertising

7. Media world is not changing, it changed – 74 of 100 top outlets are blogs/online sites; 3 of 4 boggers look to each other for next stories; conversations drive influence and recommendations

8. There is not a destination for customers – visiting a site is not ther goal, not matter how pretty the site; they expect the company to “be there” when needed

9. Syndication of content matters more than traffic – micro-communities grow and fragment simultaneously; customers drive preference; what’s your content syndication plan?

10. 10-20% customers call each year due to problems – 80-90% will not call the company despite problems, few will call you just to catch up

11. Customers want to do 3 things to help each other – share ideas, share product knowledge, solve problems

12. We don’t have to measure trust internally, we live it – e.g. employees help each other

13. We judge people on  how they interact with us – customers do the same thing

14. Preparing for yesterday is ineffective – old models and habits hold back innovation (what Dell calls the “anti-bodies”)

15. Understand ethical behaviour is a key part of maintaining trust – don’t support flogs or splogs; if you would never create a fake ad, so why a fake blog post?

Bob Pearson can be reached on Twitter @bobpearson1845