The World Revolves Around Me

Would I consider myself self-centered? Umm... I don't think so. However, I must be pretty important if most of the companies that I 'do business with' want to have a relationship with me. Of course, I'M THE CUSTOMER!!

We all know that consumers are vital to any business. Actually, RELATIONSHIPS with consumers are vital to any business. This is where the idea of conversational marketing comes in to play. Here are a couple of things that came to my mind:

• Conversational marketing increases a company's interaction with its customers. This must take a lot of guts, trust and humility on the part of the company. But this is the way it should be, right? We must admit that there a few companies that make products without adequate input from the consumer. I think that this shows their pride, or maybe lack of 'business smarts'. It also shows how much a company is interested in listening to the customer every step of the way and making products based on the customer's preferences.



• The idea of traditional market research is possibly thrown out the window with the inception of conversational marketing. Conversational marketing is the intentional step of the company taking ideas and the 'work in progress' to the consumer. Traditional market research may be temporary and only at the beginning and end of the product development. But, with conversational marketing, it is on-going.

Do you notice that the idea of conversational marketing kind of revolves around the idea of an on-line community? Kind of similar to social networking? Once again, technology, the internet, social media and online communities are revolutionizing the world!

Hey, I Need Some Help!!

So, have you ever logged in to your FB account and seen a status update that said, "I'm thinking about getting highlights, what color do you think I should get?" Well, I have.

This is an example of social networking in its truest sense. I can ask 682 of my "closest" friends for help, and I readily get it! I think that using FB, and other social networking is a great way to spread information and get information, REALLY QUICKLY. For example, if I had a friend who had a horrible experience with a company's customer service, I definitely would want to know about it. I could avoid the torture from that company in the future.

I remember once when a particular company tried to rip me off for some vitamins I bought. Boy did I wish I had FB back then. That would have been on my status IMMEDIATELY.

All jokes aside, companies should really consider using social networking to improve their customer service, in order to avoid the wrath of the social 'networker'. Companies can also use online communities of their customers to troubleshoot and help each other.

I think that this is the future of CRM. Isn't it funny how social networking is taking over the world?

Reality Mining

The idea of reality mining has intrigued me. After doing some research on reality mining, there was one common trend that I noticed. Most articles mentioned that reality mining has positive outcomes on organizations and can help to improve social interactions within companies, and thus overall organizational effectiveness. Because reality mining data show conversation patterns and who employees are interacting with at work, it is suggested that this can be used to enhance social interactions.

I would like to argue that reality mining, through monitoring how people interact with each other at work, may not have remarkable positive outcomes, as researchers are raving about. The reality mining idea may be slightly incomplete (it is in its infancy stage), as the question of record comes in to play. Some employees do not communicate via phone with their co-workers. Conversations may take place at coffee machines or in lunges. Thus, if my social interactions are monitored by my reality mining data, it may lack my interactions outside of my phone usage. Second, it is challenging to measure the 'quality' of conversations, and thus the quality of social interactions with team members or employees. Not because two people are in a shared physical location, means that they have positive social interactions or share an intimate social network. For example, I may have a habit of going to a work lounge to read, and another co-worker has the same habit, but we are not interacting, and in fact, may not be a part of the same social network at work.

A question that came to mind was in what organizational setting would reality mining be most useful in? Second, how does reality mining help me when working with fellow employees and to build an organizational community? I can see various advantages of reality mining in organizations, like tightening an existing network. However, the major concern and critique is the inability to judge the content of monitored social interactions, and how this translates to further building a true community and teams within organizations. For more helpful information on reality mining, please see http://www.slideshare.net/sifra/reality-mining-nathan-eagle.

First Blog

My name is Jodi-Ann, a second year MBA student at American University in D.C. I have created this blog for a Social Networking class that I am taking. On my honor, all posts and ideas are my own. I hope you enjoy these blogs for the next eight weeks!