We First is committed to providing the best training in the world to help you become a top social brand. So over the next three Tuesdays, we’re offering over 45 minutes of free branding training to help get you and your team get ready for 2014.
In today’s first video, The Social Business Marketplace, you’ll understand exactly why you need to rethink your brand’s strategy in this new era of customer-driven marketing. You’ll learn:
– 8 technology trends reshaping marketing and brand engagement as we know it
– 3 key principles to navigate the new marketplace
– 6 engagement tactics to inspire and keep the loyalty of your customers
Watch the free training video now and below is a brief summary of the first section of the training: Eight technology trends that are reshaping the marketplace.
1. The web is being re-built around people. Now both search and social algorithms filter and offer up content based what you already read and what people in your personal network like and recommend. And check out this great post from Intercom about why “cards” are the future of the web as we move away from page destinations towards completely personalized experiences built on an aggregation of many individual pieces of content.
2. Social tech is being adopted by consumers before brands. Today brands are constantly struggling to play catch up with new consumer technology and how to integrate these new behaviors and user experiences into their own existing systems and strategies.
3. Real-time, seamless, personalized engagement is now expected. With all the personal information and opinions we as consumers now put out in real-time and public social forums, if your brand is not listening and re-engaging with your customers via their preferred channels or offering them relevant content, why on earth will they continue to engage with you?
4. Information is increasing exponentially. Not only does it seem like there’s a hot new channel every day (think Twitter, to Instagram, to Vine) but auto-publishing tools like Hootsuite and IFTTT means it’s easier than ever for anyone to instanteously add their content into the mix across every conceivable medium.
5. Competition for consumer attention is increasing exponentially. As we all drown in information it’s extremely hard to not only capture attention in the first place, but also maintain it over the long-term as costumers can get easily distracted with new engaging content.
6. Our information and relationships are available anytime, anywhere. With smartphones and tablets, our lives now exist in our hands and in our pockets. If your brand isn’t effectively operating in that space, you just aren’t relevant anymore.
7. Companies will be distinguished by the quality of their listening. Whether it’s simple tools like Google alerts and Newsle, or more complex ones like the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, your ability to leverage tools that help you best listen, understand, and respond to your customer demographic will determine your success.
8. Citizen and customer activism is on the rise. As a result of a shift from broadcast traditional media to dialogue-based digital and social media, one need only think of Netflix and Quickster, the push back against the insensitive remarks by the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, and the public outcry over the devastating loss of life due to the collapse of the apparel factory in Bangladesh, to realize that companies are now in a dynamic dialogue around accountability with their customers.
Watch the rest of the video to learn six winning customer engagement strategies and please share this training video with your team.
Stay tuned for next week’s Free Training Tuesday!