The Semacraft Blog

originally posted at muchiri.com

Is it the market’s business what you do after hours?  Is it the customer’s business where you sourced your raw materials, whether the CEO is faithful to his wife or even the CMO’s stand on healthcare reform? Shouldn’t all that matters be the product or service the brand promotes consistently at the perfect price, place & packaging?

Divorce rates in the UK currently stand at about 11.5% per 1,000 married couples.  In the US, the rate is at 3.5%.   When you consider that marriage rates in the US are at about 7.1% per 1,000 this means half as many people are getting divorced as are getting married.  Obviously the idea of failed marriages is not a foreign one.  And then there’s the permissive nature of today’s urban society.  So why the outrage at Tiger Woods and John Terry for infidelity?  They are not even in the marriage business! They are sports personalities!

Apparently, the consumer’s business extends to what famous people do when they are not doing what they are famous for. On this side of the new normal customers aren’t choosing which brands to be loyal to solely based on the price or quality, it’s now about the other things the brand does when it’s not ‘at work’. It’s about all the other peripheral things that have nothing to do with how the product is produced.

What do you tweet about when you’re not tweeting about your product/service? What was your last ‘unrelated’ Facebook post? What have you done for your customers lately that had nothing (or little) to do with you?

Lesson for business? There’s no clocking out. You’re at work 24/7/365. You’re not helpful only when customer’s need more information about your product or following up on a proposal you sent. It’s now all about the customer and what they think is important. If your tweets, status updates, videos and photos are all about you then you’re just a self-obsessed brand people have little time for. Find out what your customers are passionate about and become passionate about them. Be helpful on the customer’s terms.

It’s how I think it is. What do you think?

In his article on why brands are becoming media, Brian Sorlis makes a compelling case for why content strategy must be an integral platform on which we build our social media strategy.  Many marketers don’t have a documented content strategy despite aggressively pursuing multiple social media channels as business enablers.  These channels need content that is fresh, relevant and regular.  This means we need a plan.  Like magazines and newspapers, brands now need editors, writers and publishing calendars.

Writers need not be journalists contracted to develop and write articles for the brand on it chosen medium.  They can be staff members who blog about their area of expertise.  They can be brand evangelists who submit articles every so often on their experience with the brand.  They can be anyone!

I agree with Brian on the role Editors are now going to play.  Due to the increasing complexity of communication technology today, Editors need to be the hubs where social media, corporate website, print media and electronic (tv/radio) content generation and distribution meet.  As an absolute necessity, whoever plays the role of Editor (in-house employee or outsourced consultant) will have to be a part of the organisation’s web strategy conversation.

Do you have a documented web strategy? Content strategy? No? What are you waiting for?!