This makes it easy to monitor the web for mentions of your brand — or for mentions of your competition, or your key execs, whatever — via a RSS reader.

I use Google Reader for RSS. Here are some of the searches I’ve set up to scan blogosphere, the news wires, Technorati, and Twitter:

(click image to enlarge)

Simple, relatively comprehensive, and free!

• Monitor Your Brand With HowSociable.com Monitor your brand across 22 social media sites. ...
• The New Distinction: “Housefile vs. Aquisition” Meets “Brand vs. Non-Brand” Even from a previous buyer, an order following a non-brand search is likely incremental....
• Search Tip: Brand vs. Non-Brand Results For many search advertisers, paid search ads on the retailer’s brand name (Brandname”, Brand Name”, BrandName.com”) generate 20% to 50%...

Social media is clearly valuable as a mechanism for customer relationship management: responding to negative feedback on the social media “wires” can be a great way to manage brand image. Social media can be a material source of new customers for niche businesses. Tea fanatics are friends with other tea fanatics and can introduce each other to their favorite brands through Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

But most commodity retailers, those who sell merchandise made by others and who compete with firms selling exactly the same goods, have had a hard time using social media to drive meaningful sales. Brand affinity has less meaning for Target and WalMart than it does for Victoria’s Secret.

Last week I wrote a post on Lifetime Value in which I argued that an often overlooked value comes from happy customers telling their friends how great Acme is. The question struck me then: is there a way for retailers to use social media to encourage word of mouth marketing?

Here’s the idea: The Customer places an order on your website. On the order confirmation page is a link to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace and text to the effect: “Thanks for buying from Acme! If you Tweet “I just got a great deal at Acme!” we’ll send you a coupon for $5 off your next order!”

This requires either a human, or some software to fire off some sort of single use offer code to the person, but that doesn’t strike me as impossible. Acme could put a limit of one code per order on the offer to prevent abuse. Pretty clearly, there’s no way for Acme to know whether the person Tweeting that actually placed an order, but “paying” folks with a small coupon applying to a subsequent purchase isn’t exactly cash out of pocket, and if the person didn’t really place an order, but just wants the discount and is willing to say nice things about your brand to their network of friends that may not be so bad.

To me this is much more compelling than asking customers follow Acme on Twitter or be Facebook friends. The idea is to get the message out to their friends, not to the customer…you already have their email and mailing address. Seems to me that you’d also ask for the referral at the right time (they just placed the order and are feeling the love for you) with the right level of incentive and the link to Twitter (or Facebook perhaps, as Twitter may not have long term legs) just makes it that much easier.

Has anyone tried something like this? Is this old-hat? Am I nuts?

• Test Your Social Media Marketing IQ Test your knowledge of the marketing implications of social media on this 40 question test. ...
• Social Media 101 for Online Retailers: 4 Activities to Shape Your Strategy The March MCM "Effective Website" column suggests 4 fundamental activities to online retailers developing their Social Media strategy....
• Social Networking Is Not A Business — But It Might Be Soon "In social networks, on the other hand, users show up to find friends; ads are, at best, irrelevant to that...

If this is an issue and you’re running Akismet (recommended), you can tell Akismet to blacklist comments containing “.ru” in the comment body, name, URL, or e-mail. Go to Options > Discussions. Here’s a screenshot.

• Akismet Fights Blog Comment Spam Our blog just crossed the 100,000 mark on spam blog comments....
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• Spam Bayes If you're seeking a reasonably good Outlook spam filter, try Spam Bayes....

Less effective for brand names consisting of multiple words.

It isn’t a full-blown social media tracking solution, but it is a simple, useful, and free tool.

Link: howsociable.com

• Monitor Your Brand Online Via RSS RSS feeds from search results make it easy to monitor your brand across the web....
• Search Tip: Brand vs. Non-Brand Results For many search advertisers, paid search ads on the retailer’s brand name (Brandname”, Brand Name”, BrandName.com”) generate 20% to 50%...
• The New Distinction: “Housefile vs. Aquisition” Meets “Brand vs. Non-Brand” Even from a previous buyer, an order following a non-brand search is likely incremental....

Last Thursday and Friday 30 people from 18 of our client companies joined us for networking and deep conversation about online marketing.

The main event on Friday included my take on Search Marketing in 2008 and some great tips from Larry Becker on website effectiveness strategies.

We then branched out to discuss:

• Setting efficiency targets for marketing programs and how the incremental view plays into that,
• How clients addressed Multichannel Credit Allocation and where they see that going,
• Catalog circulation strategies and prospecting in 2008,
• Social Media. From video and blogging to Facebook, Twitter, etc. What was worth doing, what seemed to be a waste of time at this point.
• Email frequency, open-rate benchmarks and strategy,
• SEO strategies and the merits of outsourcing some or all of those efforts,
• Affiliates and strategies for controlling the bad actors without dismantling the program entirely,
• The power of purls — personal urls — as a marketing tool,
• and much much more.

The Summit showed that many folks were wrestling with the same complex issues, and that most retailers were struggling to meet “plan” this year, particularly since July.

The event also confirmed for all attendees what we had always known: RKG has really smart clients. Many great insights shared both in the public forum and in more private networking contexts throughout the event.

As we plan for future events, clients: please let us know what you’d like to see in terms of content, format and locations so we can make what was a great event even better! And, if you’re not currently a client, but would like to be… :-)

Thanks again to all who participated!

• Shop.org Annual Summit ‘07 Shop.org's Annual Summit is approaching: Vegas, September 17 through 19. This show is the online retailing event of the year....
• RKG at the Shop.org Annual Summit This year's gathering is being held September 15-17 in Las Vegas. RKG will be leading roundtables and providing 1:1 Website...
• Catalog Success: 2007’s 50 Best Tips For Multichannel Success We were pleased to see two of our tips selected by Catalog Success for their list of the 50 best...

In world where everything is transparent, what is going to happen is that people who are good, who come from the heart, are going to win.

And people who are bad, who have horrible intentions, are going to lose.

Understand this: anything you do is going to be known.

– Gary Varynerchuk of WineLibraryTV

• Google, Opacity, and Transparency A repost of a SEL article, suggesting that opacity is Google's Achille's heel, and that Extreme Transparency is the solution....
• Bidding Technology: Requirement #1 The first installment in a series on critical technology and know-how associated with bid management in 2008....
• The technology matters alot. The people matter alot too. We're proud of our technology. We're just as proud as the great folks here who run it....

Here’s the video:

video link

Here’s the page of links mentioned in the video: rimmkaufman.com/nemoa2008

This talk does not have any grand unifying theme. Rather, it is a random grab-bag of Marketing 2.0 ideas related to online retailing that I find cool. The intended audience was catalogers, so some of the topics or suggestions may be less novel to folks hanging out on the cutting edge of the blogosphere.

I recorded the talk and optimized the Camtasia recordings for Youtube. Boof — some sections were just a smidgen longer than YouTube’s 10 minute rule. So instead I put them on Yahoo’s JumpCut. That’s why the video looks like five sections spliced, and why the image quality isn’t great — it seems optimizing production for YouTube is less optimal for JumpCut.

• Video: Customer Centric Paid Search Marketing Providing searchers what they really want also gets retailers what they really want: more sales. ...
• Search Marketing Essentials for Online Retailers Still time to sign up for "Search Marketing Essentials for Online Retailers", happening tomorrow over at Marketing Profs....
• 17 RSS Marketing Ideas 17 ideas for using RSS for online marketing....

Mike Ullman, III
Chief Executive Officer
J.C. Penney, Inc.
6501 Legacy Drive
Plano, TX 54024

February 28, 2008

Hello Mike –

Me again.

You’ve probably not yet had time to respond to my previous letter, but I wanted to follow up, as we’ve received more customer service mail intended for you.

Jerome is seeking some help with his hutch — his comment is here.

A nice woman in Illinois sent you, via postal mail to our PO box, a two page hand-written apology. It seems she shoplifted a shirt from one of your stores as a teenager and now regrets that. She apologizes and enclosed a $22 check made out to J. C. Penney. I’m forwarding her letter and her check to you in today’s mail.

I’m still uncertain as to why your customers are choosing to reach out to you via our blog…..

In my prior note, I asked your opinion of how blogging is changing the relationship between customer and corporation.

I’d enjoy hearing your views on that. Would you be up for a phone interview?

Cheers –

[signature]

Alan Rimm-Kaufman
President, Rimm-Kaufman Group

PS. A similar customer service issue was posted to our blog comments about a TitleNine order; their CEO Missy Park jumped in and responded.

• Is Mike Ullman Listening To The Blogosphere? Are You? Does blogging change the relationship between corporation and customer? I think it does....
• Merry Christmas, Mike Ullman We'd welcome JCP customer relations to our blog to describe how to reach JCP customer service....
• JCPenny’s Mike Ullman on Customers And Change Ullman on the typical Penny's customer: "She has too little time, too little money, and two little kids."...

Because purple cauliflower (orange, too) is a purple cow.

What aspect of your product is so notable that people are compelled to blog it?

Hattip: Seth Godin’s blog (the real Seth!)

• The Toyota Prius is a Purple Cow Remarkableness changes the relationship between prospect, customer, and marketer. ...

But we live in a TIVO society. Businesses are being built around the desire of many to avoid advertisements. How do we get consumers to voluntarily watch a commercial?

Involvement is the critical piece.

One mechanism: Make it so funny that people pass it around to their friends, a la the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” series, which have translated into hundreds of thousands of “free” impressions. However, this is a branding play, and as much as I enjoy the spot, I’m not sure it makes me any more likely to buy Bud Light.

1-800 Flowers is trying another approach. The idea? Have people send in their own “How we fell in love, story” for Valentines Day, the winning entries get a prize. The notion of creating an involvement mechanism is great, and I’m hoping that someone will be kind enough to share some insights as to how well this “worked” for them and what they learned from the experience.

We also believe that instructional videos will be a powerful medium for getting the message out to potential customers. Our friends at Crutchfield have put out shopping guides for HDTVs and Car Stereo installation guides. We think Zales could put out video guides for selecting the perfect engagement ring.

The potential for extracting value from this new medium is there. It will be fascinating to watch it evolve as we all try to figure out how to make it work for us.

Ideas welcomed!

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• Yes, I’m Human. No, I Can’t Decode YouTube Captchas. Today's pet peeve: illegible captchas. ...