What Clients Need in The Age of Social Media “Firehose”

 

As part of the Biz360 10th Anniversary interview series, I have been chatting with several long-term employees of the company, from different job functions and perspectives. Most recently, I had a chance to catch up with Eric Israel, our VP of sales. Here’s what we talked about:

MO: Eric, thanks for joining us today. Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Biz360, how you got here, and why you decided to make Biz360 your professional home for the past 7 years?

EI: My name is Eric Israel, and I am the Vice President of Sales at Biz360. I am responsible for sales to new customers, as well as maintaining and expanding current client relationships. I am approaching my 7^th year with Biz360, and to this day remember the excitement I had after my interview with our Founder You-Mon Tsang. It was an easy decision for me to come to Biz360, as my background had been in large business intelligence applications and data mining. It was clear to me that an enormous value could be provided by Biz360’s solutions to businesses. I knew they (businesses) required the actionable insights that could be gained from understanding what was being said about them in the media.

MO: Thanks, Eric! Can you tell me how Biz360 has changed over the years?

 

EI: When I first joined Biz360, most companies were skeptical about the level of analysis that could be done with technology and software applications. I remember spending a lot of my time with clients educating them on what can be done. Most people were using samples of data vs. everything that was available to them. With the pervasive expansion of information available online, it became clear to our clients that using software was the only way to gain a competitive advantage. Today, when I speak with people in the market, they are expecting the technology to do even more than I thought could ever be done. We have clearly come a long way in such a short time.

MO: Eric, How has your role changed since you joined almost 7 years ago?

 

 

 

EI: The sales team here at Biz360 has seen a lot of change over the last 7 years. When Biz360 first came to market, we spent a lot of time educating the clients on what was truly available to them. There was a huge investment made in education and putting perspective around the change that businesses could make. Today the market has been educated and exposed to change so quickly. The time to market is a lot faster. The other area that has changed in a dramatic way is the content. The volumes and types content are simply staggering. What’s a Tweet? No one asked what the editorial page was or if the information was in print? We all knew. We need to help clients understand what the next Twitter will be. The sales team at Biz360 must be on the bleeding edge of these new developments.

MO: From your vantage point, how has social media affected what clients need from their technology intelligence solutions,and how we sell to them?

 

 

 

 

EI: I would say that the market’s needs fall into three main categories: Speed, Relevancy & Metrics. Social media moves so quickly that clients have to react in real time. What is hot this morning could be quite old this afternoon. On top of that, the language style that people use in social media is different from the formal writing we were taught in school. Clients want to be sure that the data they are looking at is really about them, and not erroneous content. HP does not want mentions of Harry Potter, and Computer Associates does not want mentions regarding the state of CA. When trying to understand with whom to engage, clients demand that their technology solution point them in the right direction. Clients simply can not respond to every post about them. Our technology needs to let them know when not to mind a comment because it does not matter. This is done with specific metrics around impact, engagement and tone. We at Biz360 show our clients how engaged people are in their conversation, whether or not those conversation are impactful, and what is tone is of those conversations.

MO: What do you think our clients will be looking for in the next year? What about 2 years? 5 years?

 

 EI: It is clear from our clients that they are looking for one platform to perform a number of functions in social media. In short, marketers need to find ways to help their business grow. At Biz360 we are showing our clients how to use social media to acquire new customers, retain the ones that they have, as well as engage in the conversation while learning about their space.  Couple that information with effective community management, customer support, and using this new channel for promotion – and you see the business flourish in social channels.  As we move further into maturity of this market, you will see social media metrics integrated with other operational metrics used to run the business. This unfiltered voice of the customer will be an invaluable part of the integrated mix model marketing that the most sophisticated companies are using today. The most exciting part is that we can get people there today!

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Tags: 10th anniversary, interview series

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 11:37 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any coments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a coment, or trackback from your own site.