This could be an open door for the content business. For instance, currently aggregators have to get their news the old fashioned way, through RSS feeds and news alerts that they retrieve throughout the day. That is not realtime news.  Using The Associated Press as an example, AP could post their stories to a HUB. In realtime, the HUB can update member websites so that they will always have information first, before any aggregator.   It may not take long for aggregators to recognize the new data on the member sites, but they won’t have it first.

The Internet is about to change

I never got everyone's obsession with being the "first" to receive news. With the current incarnations of the real time web only being able to provide raw, barely digestible, incoherent information at best; it's almost always better to wait for a credible news agency to aggregate and process everything into something more palatable and useful before being consumed.

Posted via email from Mike Villar: Rising Internet Star - Lite

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What I’m slightly anxious of is the fact that, from what I feel and what I have observed in preliminary meetings is that the company expects the Social Media, Community and User-Generated Content aspect of their e-commerce business to be built instead of being cultivated.

Additionally, I noticed the following, if I may, “fears” from the company which tell me that their perspective as far as social media is concerned might be skewed just enough to doom the project to failure:

• Customers will be given a voice. We’re hoping to “moderate” this voice as negative feedback will surely hurt our brand.
• This is not going to make money is it?
• Who’s going to manage it?

This is rather sad. I feel that before a company takes the social media plunge, it must, first, perform a serious assesment of its determination to change itself to become “social-media-capable”–They need to ask themselves if their culture can successfully leverage a medium that is built around genuine relationships. Otherwise, the entire effort will be nothing more than a mediocre mess of outsourced, not crowdsourced, content; fake twitter accounts and Youtube and Facebook accounts that serve as playgrounds of insignificant value for inexperienced marketers within the organization.

Now, to answer the questions above:

Customers will be given a voice. Think about it this way: Somewhere else on the internet, some of your customers are already talking about how crappy they think your product or service is; some of them are already suggesting features–wouldn’t you rather have these conversations happening in your domain where you can manage their feedback better and where you can provide a more direct response to them and open dialogues? You would.

This is not going to make money is it? It may or it may not. But there are countless other things you can gain from this initiative: Like opening a new channel of communication for your customer-facing departments; or “humanizing” your CEO.

Who’s going to manage it? Definitely You.

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Companies who do their business online aren’t entirely different from those who do theirs offline as far as using sub-brands to position products would go. Honda uses their Acura brand to position their luxury vehicle division, Toyota uses their Lexus brand and, online, Six Apart has their enterprise blogging platform in the form of Movable Type and their hosted blogging platform for professionals and small businesses in the form of Typepad.

The question is, for online merchants planning to launch affiliate programs, which route should they take?

Single, Masterbrand affiliate program or multiple programs for sub-brands / Masterbrand program across multiple affiliate networks?

In some marketing circles, there’s been a long-established canon that sub-branding doesn’t do anyone any good. And, while I find this naive, over-simplified and not without a lot of exceptions, affiliate marketers seem to be one of those communities who embrace this as a universal truth.

Argument: Having multiple affiliate programs for different sub-brands or working with multiple affiliate networks cause a lot of confusion and raises a lot of concerns on network quality. Parasiteware and cookie-stuffers, if not controlled in any of a brand’s multiple affiliate networks, make the program generally unattractive to more discerning affiliates.

My take: First, there is value in working with multiple affiliate networks in the sense that affiliates have their own personal preferences in terms of which affiliate network to work with. One affiliate might be in Commission Junction but not on LinkShare or the Google Affiliate Network. Another might be working with Pepperjam and LinkConnector but not with buy.at.

However, in my experience, there is a little confusion that goes on when you launch a program with another affiliate network. Affiliates usually think that the reason you’re launching a program on another network is because you’re closing down the one on the network they’re in.

Some affiliates know that this is a common merchant practice but it is important for you to respond to any questions of this nature and assure your affiliates that your program is healthy in the network it is on and the reason why you’re launching a new program is because you are simply broadening your program’s distribution channel.

Launching a program for one of your company’s sub-brands, like launching a master brand on multiple affiliate networks, is a long tail strategy. Doing so, instead of capturing affiliates who are exclusive to one network (as it is in launching a master brand on multiple networks), and usually because of new price points and specialized product lines, allow you to capture niche affiliates.

As far as parasiteware and cookie stuffers would go, as with any affiliate program, it all boils down to good affiliate program management. If your company’s affiliate program management team is as vigilant as they should be in keeping dirty affiliates out of the multiple programs they manage, then legit affiliates should have no cause for worry.

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Hi Michael,

Does [Company withheld] have any plans for a CRM or customer support project in 2009?

In times like these over 50,000 companies turn to Saleforce.com’s cloud computing model to empower them to follow up on every lead, win every deal, and keep every customer. Not familiar with cloud computing? Visit this link for a quick video: www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing.

Do you have a few minutes this week to talk about your needs for the upcoming year? Or, if you’re not the best person to discuss this, would you kindly refer me to who is? Thank you.

Regards,

Hana Michaelis
[Number withheld]
[Email Address withheld]

My question is: How well exactly is SalesForce’s much touted ServiceCloud and SalesForce for Twitter integration working for them? Because really, if it works as well as advertised, then they probably shouldn’t be sending me Business Development emails but rather, at the very least, an email from their PR people with some sort of explanation, apology or whatever they call “damage control” in PR parlance.

Anyway:

Update (1:21 am):

SalesForce’s Corporate Business Development sent me this email:

Hi Michael,
I understand that point that you make in your blog. I will make a point to e-mail marketing so that they can be more sensitive on their messaging. However, I think that marketing was just making a generalization that some, not all, support agents do not receive the training that they should. I’m sure that many successful agents and organizations do receive adequate training to make them successful. I apologize if this offended you in any way.

Well, apology accepted. Although I still don’t get how a “generalization” could be aimed towards some, not all support agents.

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I think it’s a good first step in aggregating customer feedback, which, more often than not, are fragmented and decentralized. I’ve actually used SalesForce in a couple of companies I worked for before and am quite impressed by this development.

However, something turned me off upon reading SalesForce’s ServiceCloud page which details the SalesForce for Twitter integration:

Where do customers go for service today? More and more often, it’s not the call center. What used to be everyone’s favorite way to access customer service has become a jumbled mess of touch-tone navigation and poorly trained outsourced agents. It’s no wonder customers are looking elsewhere.

Now, here are the facts:

• After college, I started my career working for a BPO company.
• I pounded the phones as a Customer Service Representative who answered hundreds of Directory Assistance calls for Telcos like AT&T and Verizon in a week.
• I was, and still am, proud of the work I did.
• I do not believe I was poorly trained
• Nor do I think a comapny of SalesForce’s stature should be making sweeping generalizations aimed towards outsourced agents–a profession which is part of a multi-million dollar industry in countries like mine (The Philippines).
• I am actually in the market for a CRM solution.
• Tough luck, SalesForce.

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