Customer Feedback Is Here To Stay

So as many of you know or should know, one of my previous roles was as CMO for SuggestionBox.com and in that role I was able to watch a market start to form around customers. These select group of companies like Starbucks, Dell, Zappos, Comcast and a few others were paving a path for others on how to leverage customer feedback in the areas of customer service, conversational marketing and innovation. Now if you look at blogs like Customers Rock or Experience Matters; you'd think ... "Why isn't everyone adopting these best practices?" or "How can I capture customer feedback and improve my customer relationships?" I'd say the answer is as simple as installing some type of customer feedback widget (there are tons) and then responding to every single one, but you have other things to do like run your business, pay invoices, interview employees, attend events, etc. For the purpose of efficiency, I want to make a recommendation to take 15-20 minutes out of your day and explore what Uservoice is doing in this space. Their recent funding news in WSJ shows that they are on the right track and will be around for awhile.

Japanese Variety Show Comes To US via Hulu and Joost

If you've seen "I Survived A Japanese Game Show" and "Wipeout" you've probably been exposed to some good ole Americanized reality shows that put their contestants through ridiculous experiments and challenges. But all these are merely ripoffs of the authentic Japanese Game Shows that have existed for years. One of the ones we've been exposed to recently was Gaki No Tsukai. This group of comedians seem like the Japanese version of Jackass, a group of young guys out of West Chester, PA that push their bodies and friends to the limit everyday. Gaki No Tsukai has now been part of recent US launch on Hulu.com and Joost.com. Both video sites have picked up the the episodes and created channels to show off this hilarious japanese video content. In addition to the Hulu and Joost channels (this is only available in the US), there is Gaki Attack, where with your Twitter.com account, you can experience the weapons used in the Gaki episodes and send attacks to your friends on Twitter. What better way to celebrate your love for your friends than slapping them with some Yamasaki or a wonton noodle?

Here are the links to each website:

Hulu - Gaki Channel
Joost - Owarai - Japanese Variety Show
Gaki Attack Twitter App - Join the battle and show your inner ninja

Final Open Web Awards Update - The Winners Announcement

The Open Web Awards Winners Are Here!!
You can read about the news over at Mashable.com as well.

Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks

Winner: Netlog
Runner-up: Platinum Lounge

Embeddable Widgets

Winner: Qoof
Runner-up: Sprout

Blog Plugins

Winner: ShareThis
Runner-up: AddThis

Social News

Winner: Help a Reporter Out
Runner-up: Hubdub

Social Networking Applications

Winner: Aritition
Runner-up: Digsby

Social Bookmarking

Winner: Diigo
Runner-up: ShareThis

Search & Social Search

Winner: Scour
Runner-up: Artiklz

Sports & Fitness

Winner: Gyminee
Runner-up: FitFiend

Photo Sharing

Winner: ipernity
Runner-up: TinyPic

Video Sharing

Winner: ffwd
Runner-up: YouTube

Start Pages

Winner: Google
Runner-up: iGoogle

Places & Events

Winner: Doodle
Runner-up: Muchmor

Travel

Winner: SpottedByLocals
Runner-up: GeckoGo

Music

Winner: Noisetrade
Runner-up: Last.fm

Social Shopping

Winner: Pikaba
Runner-up: A Full Cup

Fashion

Winner: Coolspotters
Runner-up: Polyvore

Celebrity & Gossip

Winner: Oh No They Didn’t
Runner-up: BollyScoops

Mobile Applications

Winner: Evernote
Runner-up: MocoSpace

Dating & Romance

Winner: Zoosk
Runner-up: DateHookup

Wiki

Winner: Encyclopedia Dramatica
Runner-up: WikiHow

Politics

Winner: Politics4All
Runner-up: CreateDebate

How-to

Winner: A Full Cup
Runner-up: College Cram

Environmental

Winner: Ecomii
Runner-up: Gazelle

Non-Profit Causes

Winner: Stop Political Calls
Runner-up: SocialVibe

Online Games

Winner: Playfish
Runner-up: Power Pets

Niche Social Networks

Winner: The Star Tracker
Runner-up: Wadja

Vote For Your Favorite Nominees - Mashable's 2nd Annual Open Web Awards

I decided to donate my blog to help support Mashable's 2nd Annual Open Web Awards. When you sign up to do something like this you don't think, eh I'm not really going to make a difference. Then I thought, if I don't do this it's like not showing up to vote 2 weeks ago. I've got a lot of colleagues and friends who are nominees this year and I'd like to think I can help support their efforts and the web community by asking my blog readers to take 2 minutes, choose a category and pick your favorite company. To make it even easier for you, here is the voting widget!

A New Digital Team is Born

So in case you haven't heard the news, SuggestionBox.com had layoffs about 1 month ago. As with the other 200,000 people that were laid off in the tech space, we all searched for our new path. Well my path has led me to partnering up with Adam Levenson, former Product Marketing Manager at SB. Working with Adam over the past year has shown to be very positive in that we complement each others skill-sets and don't mind rolling up our sleeves to get it done, whatever that may be.


So Digital Operative was born. You could call us a boutique digital agency focused on digital strategies for marketing and technology. Our focus will be helping companies engage their customers and have them participate, whether that be in an online community, guerrilla marketing campaign, social app or just improve their overall user experience on their website. We both have work experience across many areas from UI design to PHP development to SEO to Go-to-Market Planning.

What you get when you work with us is a supercharged, agile team that can see the big picture, focus on getting the little wins and create some buzz around what you're doing. At the end of the day we're data guys, we love measuring ROI, making decisions based on analytics and having the data to support and shifts in strategy.

So if you're a top 50 interactive agency, need better customer engagement for your website or need to drive awareness and conversions via digital marketing; go to www.DigitalOperative.com and contact us.

thank you for subscribing to this blog and I'll also be blogging at the Digital Marketing blog.

If you want to follow what I'm up to, check out my Twitter page.

Startup Marketing Strategies and Tactics

For the past 12 months I've been putting all of my efforts into SuggestionBox.com and I wanted to share some of the things that worked on the marketing side that I actually got to implement. The article is posted at Gooruze.com, but I feel it offers some great examples of things you can do to ensure that you are utilizing the most of your time when creating marketing strategies at a startup.

Provide Your Feedback And Enter To Win A Netbook

Andy Beal over at MarketingPilgrim launched a new contest to help improve his Trackur product and given people some incentive for sharing their great ideas. Simply submit a suggestion for what Trackur can improve and Andy will pick the best suggestion on Oct. 3, 2008. Contest details here.

A Chance to Speak To The Community

Recently I had the chance to sit down and have a conversation with Becky Carroll over at Customers Rock! blog. We were talking about how SuggestionBox.com came about and how it could help companies during the current economic downturn. In every organization each person has their own perception of how the product addresses a pain point for someone and that is refined by the ultimate vision. Focusing on the customer relationship with the company and finding ways to help make that better was my segment of our vision. Read the conversation.

Here are some interesting data points that reinforce why connecting with your customers now can help you avoid over-binging on that marketing campaign, guessing on product price points and other day-to-day thoughts you have on your way into the office.

• According to Nielsen Research, 49% of consumers plan on spending less due to the economic squeeze.


• Everyday consumer spending is taking a beating, with some 56% of 3,359 online shoppers surveyed April 29 to May 23 indicating that they are cutting back because of the weak economy and growing inflation - source


• Retail-focused ETFs taking a dive - source


• Consumer spending takes toll on retailers as inflation rises - source

My Personal Tweet Cloud

So if you don't know what Twitter is, it's a micro-blogging tool to keep people updated on what you're doing. Simpler than that ... You can post endless 140 character posts on what you're doing and people follow your activity.

So I loaded my Tweet Cloud again to see where my textual relevance laid. Check out my cloud here. I'm going to break it down into categories to see if there is anything interesting at all :)

Top 5 Twitter Words:
New - 147 occurrences
Great - 136 occurrences
Twitter - 85 occurrences

Actions:
Heading - 68 occurrences
Thanks - 57 occurrences
Going - 54 occurrences
Getting - 39 occurrences
Listening - 37 occurrences
Trying - 23 occurrences
Wonder - 23 occurrences
Working - 19 occurrences
Doing - 16 occurrences

Topics:
Twitter - 85 occurrences
Time - 59 occurrences
San Diego - 54 occurrences
Blog - 49 occurrences
Feedback - 49 occurrences
Today - 48 occurrences
Love - 45 occurrences
People - 45 occurrences
People - 45 occurrences
Marketing - 44 occurrences
Event - 42 occurrences
Home - 36 occurrences
Office - 34 occurrences
2.0 - 32 occurrences
Team - 32 occurrences
Customer - 28 occurrences
Supernova2008 - 23 occurrences
SuggestionBox - 22 occurrences

People I Converse With The Most:
@jbrewer - 25 occurrences
@ConversationAge - 17 occurrences
@armano - 15 occurrences
@rebelstance - 14 occurrences
@funktalking - 13 occurrences
@andybeal - 12 occurrences
@jowyang - 11 occurrences
@stoweboyd - 9 occurrences
@jcrites - 9 occurrences
@groovybrent - 9 occurrences

Conversations Around The Web

Today I'm taking the time to point out some insightful blog posts that are focused around conversations, positive change in the world and action.

• Scott Monty of Crayon leaving focus on one color, Blue.



• Read the Crayon Manifesto if you call yourself a Social Media Expert ... really? I think there are visionaries, strategists, but experts? Who knows it all?



• Follow Doc Searls if you've heard of "Markets are conversations" and the Cluetrain Manifesto.



• If you're interested on some current news around Social Media Marketing read this and gain some insight into Samsung's newest campaign.



• If you're just getting into this thing called Conversational Marketing, read Kelly's blog post about using Conversational Marketing to market yourself and read the comments about some marketers' own manifestos.

I try to update my blog as much as I can, but am currently splitting my time between my Twitter account, Gooruze account, Flickr page, new CMO role with SuggestionBox and being a devoted husband :)