This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Adding a Chief Conversation Officer

“Markets are conversations - talk is cheap, silence is fatal” - from the cluetrain manifesto - Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger

The statement above embodies for many the changed landscape of marketing. Bigco started to embrace this over the course of the last few years and now it’s time for Smallco to aggressively do the same.

This year’s next position for many small business should be a conversation officer - someone in charge of the story.

That officer could be employed to create, curate and sometimes manipulate the conversations that must be coming from your company. In the broad sense the duties of this position should include

Content - this one is pretty simple - full fledged blogger, article publisher, white paper creator and education based marketing materials and webinar creator.

Context - this one is a little trickier, but your conversation officer should employ RSS technology to aggregate and filter the content and conversations going on in every online and offline corner and package it to make it more useful for your organization and your prospects.

Connection - your CCO should be in charge of developing ways to include your customers and partners in the building of your business for mutual benefit. Your CCO should be in charge of the conversations your customers are having after they buy, as they decide to buy more and in the process of becoming a referral source.

Community - your conversations must eventually come together as community. You must facilitate conversation among your prospects and customers, introduce partners and find ways to co-create value. Intentionally hosting the conversation your customers are having with each other is a must.

The primary toolset for this new position is indeed social media, but don’t neglect traditional forms of conversation as well. twitter, Facebook, blogging and RSS must supplement phone calls, lunch and handwritten notes to produce the ultimate, full-bodied, authentic, value-based conversation.

Perhaps you can’t yet invest in a full-time employee to carry out this position, add it to the org chart and start developing the position, because it’s no longer an optional function.

Sometimes getting feedback from you customers is like pulling teeth. But in today’s post, we learn some helpful ways to get feedback that improves your business and improves relationships with customers. The trick is to encourage your customers to actually utilize this a feedback option for themselves and for your benefit. Here are five sure-fire ways to encourage customers to give you the feedback you need.

Make the Process Quick

When your customers are asked to provide feedback shouldn’t necessarily give them a list of hundreds of questions. What if you were in there shoes? While this might seem helpful to you, if a customer has to spend more than five minutes on a feedback form, chances are high that they will either lie or they simply won’t fill it out at all. Try to limit your questions to about five to ten questions with short or multiple choice answers. You can always rotate your questions out when you have enough answers and then find out the answers to new questions that come up.

Make Giving Feedback Easy

Feedback forms which are easy to find and easy to use are the ones that will get used more often. Place your feedback form somewhere along the checkout process when people might be waiting for things to happen - the form will pass the time. Or you might want to create a link in the receipt email that you send to them at the end of a transaction. You might also send out a short email after the transaction is over to see what their feedback might be.

Make Feedback Worthwhile

Some people will want to have something in return for their opinions. If this seems to be the case, you may want to offer a discount on their next order or perhaps create a sort of contest in which one of the names is drawn each day for a prize. If you find that your customers aren’t answering your questions, it may just be a matter of giving them something in return for their time - and it doesn’t have to be something substantial either.

Make Providing Feedback Fun

Feedback forms that are fun to use are the ones that will get used most often. Simple multiple choice surveys are bright and colorful and you can see the results of others surveys as well, if they are set up in a certain way. Perhaps when they click on a certain answer, they will see a picture or they might get a response for their opinion. Try to create a feedback form that is interactive to help engage them and make the time they spend pass quickly.

Make All Feedback Confidential

Customers are sometimes nervous to give feedback for fear they will be identified with a negative response. Make sure that you are not asking for any identifying information, if possible, to show that you simply want feedback and aren’t going to penalize anyone for something that went wrong during a transaction. Of course, this is harder to do when you have a feedback form during the checkout process, so you might want to leave the feedback as a separate transaction.

The value of feedback is immeasurable. It can help you find a new direction for your business or to choose a new product to sell. On the other hand, you might find out about problems that need to be addressed immediately. In any case, make sure that you are reading the answers and responding to them.

This post provided by Scott Oliver who offers free video coaching to help you build a profitable home business FAST. Get an hour of “Website Traffic Secrets” and “Minisite Creation Tactics” for FREE — immediate access here: http://www.InstantWebsiteBusiness.com