What Drove Steve Jobs to Become a Great Leader?

November 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Late Innovator Mastered Both Thought Leadership and Executive Leadership

There are many words that are used to describe Steve Jobs.  Innovator. Visionary. Genius. But just as important as all of Jobs’ thought leadership and business innovations was his leadership ability.

Steve Jobs was a college dropout who was fired by the company he would eventually return to and make legendary.  Upon his return to Apple he became more direct and decisive than he had ever been before.  As for performance?  Well, the proof is in the numbers.  And while plenty of people are familiar with Steve Jobs’ accomplishments, in this post, I take a closer look at what motivated him to become such a great leader.

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Want more?  Check out Part Five of this Five Part Series on great leadership and business innovation. To watch the rest of the series, check out Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.  You can reach Butch Stearns on Twitter @ButchStearns, and you can reach Tyler Pyburn on Twitter @TyPyburn

Filed Under: Management, technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The State of Social CRM – Mapping the Vendor Landscape

October 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is part one of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they break down the who, the what and the how of Social CRM.

 

If you ask 10 people ‘what is Social CRM?’ you are likely to get 10 different answers.  Industry watchers like Esteban Kolsky and Mitch Lieberman have certainly helped to frame the discussion.  And in dealing with customer interactions and all the related front-office processes, many people already know the basic concepts of CRM.  But how does the addition of social channels, analytics, campaign tools and even customer-to-customer interactions change what we know about CRM?

In this series I’ll aim to break it down, and provide some perspectives on the various aspects of Social CRM based on what I’ve been seeing over the past few years, as well as my background covering the CRM space dating way back to the mid-90′s at Yankee Group and Extraprise (early Siebel partner) and perspectives as a marketer. Yes, my CMO role may color how I see things, but hopefully the way I look at things is relevant to other marketers and at least a useful starting point for others.

In general, Social CRM combines the traditional roles of the call center, the marketing programs, and the support systems (and of course sales, but not as much as the other areas) with the social channels and social data to put a more personal, social spin on the role of CRM. In a way we are also combining the business side (traditional process-centric CRM) with the consumer side (social interactions and connections). With this in mind, when mapping the Social CRM landscape, it’s helpful to think of four main functions or categories:

  • Listening,
  • Support Communities,
  • Fan Marketing, and
  • Sales Automation.

Check out the video below to see how these parts fit together and what vendors have emerged as early leaders in each category.  And next time we’ll start to drill-down into each category, starting with social monitoring and listening tools.

 

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Filed Under: customer retention, Marketing, Sales, technology Tagged With: , , , ,

Social Media Contests – 4 Popular Models

August 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 
This is part one of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they discuss social media contests and how they’re effective as a marketing tool.

One of the most effective ways to engage with fans and followers on social media channels is with interactive contests, games and promotions.  In fact I saw this potential first hand as a co-founder of fan marketing platform Offerpop.  In this series we’ll take a look at 4 of the most popular contest models, and how they can be deployed on both Twitter and Facebook to not only create engagement, but also generate word of mouth so you can reach new audiences.  Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the most popular models:

Types of Social Media Contests

 

Depending on your business goals (attract fans vs. provide fan benefits), different models may make sense.   For example, sweepstakes are great for building awareness and growing followers, while quizzes and polls provide a simple way to entertain and engage with an existing audience.

Also, while Twitter is more of an open environment with less restrictions when it comes to running contests, Facebook has set rules that brands must follow (there’s actually a set of promotions guidelines that Facebook has published and periodically updates).  One of these rules is that you need to build and manage your promotion using a third party tool or promotion builder, like Offerpop, Wildfire, or Buddy Media.  Check out our discussion to learn more – and in the next segments we’ll dig into each of the specific contest models and explore some successful campaigns and approaches.

 

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Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email,abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Tyler Pyburn is a host at The Pulse Network and can be reached on his twitter or e-mail, tpyburn@thepulsenetwork.com


Filed Under: Business Instruction, business strategy, Communication, Customers, Marketing, referral programs, technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

TPN Finance, Groupon’s Future?

August 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

Tune in every Thursday at 9:40 a.m. ET for TPN Finance where Stephen Saber, CEO of the Pulse Network, roams every topic a business leader could encounter from business ethics to social media’s ROI.

 

via money.cnn.com

 

Articles like this are not good for any company, but especially for companies that has been scrutinized as much as Groupon for it’s unusual accounting meterics, because it raises the question is its business model flawed.  My motivation for bring Groupon’s woes up is in the interest of bringing up a larger issue that circles the online business community.  The dot com boom had every leader cramming for eyeballs not profitably, that was awry and we saw a bust happen because of it, now revenue has become the issues for them and that is where Groupon is struggling.

 

via techiemania.com

 

On this episode of TPN Finance, I analyze how measuring upon profitability is a great way to value a business and if profitability is a pickle for the online medium why would companies choose to solely run on that domain instead of storefront.

 

Please feel free to comment on the post or reach out to me on e-mail: ssaber@thepulsenetwork.com
Filed Under: business strategy, location based service, Marketing, technology Tagged With: , , ,

The Pulse Network Solutions – Twitter Promotions

August 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 
This is part four of a five part series between Butch Stearns, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they explore the lifecycle of digital marketing and the new solutions offered by The Pulse Network.

 

In this episode Butch and I look at Twitter and how this social channel has emerged as a key communication tool, listening platform and even an efficient ‘list builder’ for digital marketing campaigns.

From a marketers’ standpoint, Twitter is deceptively simple. Find some folks to follow, reply to a few tweets, push out updates, and repeat. Yet, when you think of Twitter as a campaign platform with some similarities to both Facebook, in terms of running promotions, and email marketing – but with a self-building list – its potential gets pretty interesting.

And if you are focused on reaching influencers as part of a B2B marketing campaign, Twitter become even more attractive.  Especially when you consider that the profile of many early (and heavy) Twitter users is concentrated around analysts, marketers, media types, and technology buyers.

Functionally, Twitter also plays a distinct role vs. Facebook and LinkedIn.  If Facebook and LinkedIn are all about a ‘place’ (for your content and discussions), Twitter is more of a ‘time’ – where you interact, and sample what’s hot, and link your friends to what’s interesting.  But in many cases that content lives elsewhere – like on your blog or Facebook page.

Successful social marketing is about programming, and aligning with the language and social gestures of each channel. At a high level, there are three steps we follow at TPN when building your presence on Twitter and launching a campaign: an assessment of your goals, content mix and audience; development of a campaign calendar; and promotion building – think contests and fun ideas that promote engagement within your community (using a tool like Offerpop). For example, we promote our Inbound Marketing Summit event through different social media by creating promotions on both our Facebook and Twitter page, and amplifing these programs via special hashtags and our website and email newsletters.   Remember – even while you focus on one channel like Twitter, it’s all about engaging everywhere!

 

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I’d love to hear what you think.  How are you using Twitter as part of your marketing mix?  And in case you missed Part 3, I explained how our Executive Briefing 3.0 helps to break the bottleneck in getting executives to blog and post on social channels like Twitter.

 

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email, abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

Filed Under: business strategy, Communication, Content, Marketing, technology, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

E-mail Marketing, Best Practices

August 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 
This is part five of a five part series featuring Stephen Saber, Chief Executive Officer of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, Chief Operating Officer of The Pulse Network, in which they discuss the changing landscape of e-mail marketing.

 

 

The most effective e-mail marketing is making it a conversation.  The customer is expecting a humanized relationship with the company so purely blasting is doomed to fail at the start.  I give the example of Jeff Pulver, who immediately after someone registered for his event would send out a personal e-mail thanking them.  The dialogues that occurred after that e-mail were outstanding and really helped personalize the event.  E-mail marketing is alive and well in business its simply just using it properly to gain the most out of it.

 

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Check out the rest of the series here: part one on how e-mail marketing has changed, part two on how to make your e-mail content king, part three on how to push out your e-mail marketing, and part four on how to measure success on e-mail marketing.

 

 

Stephen Saber is the CEO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.


Filed Under: business strategy, Content, Marketing, technology Tagged With: , ,

E-mail Marketing, Measuring Success

August 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 
This is part four of a five part series featuring Stephen Saber, Chief Executive Officer of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, Chief Operating Officer of The Pulse Network, in which they discuss the changing landscape of e-mail marketing.


Measuring success in e-mail marketing use to be pretty easy but as technology has changed so has success in the field.  One of the manage changes has come in the end of the demographic and the rise of the psychographic.

In the end understanding the psychographic informations facilitates in driving the conversation that keeps the customers around.

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In part five of the series we discuss what is the best way to e-mail market.

Also check out part one of the series on how e-mail marketing has changed, part two where we discuss how to make your e-mail content king, and part three in which we tell you how to push out your e-mail marketing.

 

 

Stephen Saber is the CEO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

Filed Under: business strategy, Content, Marketing, technology

Email Marketing, How and Where

August 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

This is part three of a five part series featuring Stephen Saber, Chief Executive Officer of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, Chief Operating Officer of The Pulse Network, in which they discuss the changing landscape of e-mail marketing.

If you believe in the survey done by Hubspot, then the next question is what type of content needs to be pushed through e-mail.  This is where marketers are contending with a multichannel message*.  I dole out some tips on how to understand your channel and your target market.

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In part four of the series we will focus on e-mail marketing metrics.

Also check out part one of the series on how e-mail marketing has changed and part two where we discuss how to make your e-mail content king.

 

 

Stephen Saber is the CEO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

*During the interview I stated that the multichannel study was done by Mashable, it in fact was conducted by Marketing Profs.

Filed Under: business strategy, Content, Marketing, technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Email marketing, E-mail Content

July 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is part two of a five part series featuring Stephen Saber, Chief Executive Officer of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, Chief Operating Officer of The Pulse Network, in which they discuss the changing landscape of e-mail marketing.

In a survey done by Hubspot, they discovered the more content you put through your channels the more click through you will receive.  A simple tweet from your corporate account can easily get lost in a marketplace filled with over 180 million unique visitors a month so how do stay away from simple guerilla marketing?  I give my two cents in this part of the series of how to make your content king.

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In part three of the series we will go into the how and where of e-mail marketing.

Also check out part one of the series on how e-mail marketing has changed.

Stephen Saber is the CEO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

Filed Under: business strategy, Marketing, technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

E-mail Marketing, How email marketing has changed and is it still valuable?

July 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

This is part one of a five part series featuring Stephen Saber, Chief Executive Officer of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, Chief Operating Officer of The Pulse Network, in which they discuss the changing landscape of e-mail marketing.

E-mail technology has advanced over the years mainly due to the tools that it allows now.  On the other had consumers have also changed because their ability to consume the e-mail is everywhere.  In this part of my series, I explain why E-mail marketing is still a valuable tool for businesses and how to target the audiences.


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In part two of the series we will break down the type of content you want to be pushing out for your company.

Stephen Saber is the CEO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

Filed Under: business strategy, Marketing, technology Tagged With: , , , ,