What the Hassel Map implies is that a focus group of 1 isn’t necessarily a bad thing, look – as Adrian notes –how Netflix got kicked off, but what’s really important is that once you’ve had that selfaware ‘a ha’ moment you need to action it and grow it out beyond the one person group and truly experience what your customers are going through…at every point of contact, and make sure that its living up your brand’s promise.

What also struck me when reading this is the notion that we can’t simply lump consumers into one bucket, we need to dive a little deeper and understand consumer types versus only consumers.  The argument here is that your customers are at different points in their, and your, life cycle and understanding this and adapting your offering to it can only lead to good things.  Mr. Slywotzky closes with a great thought that there’s a gap between what consumers buy and what they want.

Ok so what’s the net takeaway here…at the risk of repeating myself, the net takeaway is that you need to listen to your audience, consumer, customer, user, agent or whatever word you like to use, just find a way to listen to them and more importantly, put yourself in their shoes and see what they see when they interact with your brand.

So will you be Hassel Mapping anytime soon?  Drop us a note and let us know what you think.

We would say “What’s the value in having a million unengaged impressions? Wouldn’t it be better to have a hundred thousand conversations?”

Well its great to hear someone else taking up that charge, I just read this great post by Jason Rosenthal, CEO of Ning, in Forbes – http://onforb.es/qcznoQ – and he completely nails it when he says that its better to have 100 intensely engaged individuals versus 100,000 likes.  He makes a few other really key points but it all centers around the notion of moving from broadcast to conversation.  I know that I have a bias with this, especially given that one of our products/apps (www.knctr.com) was really built on the notion of social conversation and entertainment, but that notwithstanding, the premise having a conversation with and not at the consumer has always been at the core of what we believe.

So what do you think, Social Depth or Social Breadth?  Drop us a note and let us know.

It was announced today, http://selnd.com/qcySJG – that Walmart, bought One Riot, those with the “Killer Social Targeting Engine” (their words not mine), to better be able to connect with customers.  They speak of the intersection of social, mobile and retail being and how this will help give consumers what they want at any time.  Coming off of the idea that Social Business is the future, this acquisition by the world’s largest retailer, makes for some really interesting thinking.  Big Brands buying out development and research shops…is this what the future of Social business looks like or is it just a case of not being focused on the core business?
Drop up a note and let us know what you think.

This great article by Drew Neisser in @FastCompany (http://bit.ly/q0iOF2) should make you question whether your company is simply waving at social media as the blogs, articles, posts and tweets float by you, or are you truly committed to making your enterprise a social business.

The subject of the article, IBM’s Ethan McCarty, asserts that the time has come to move from social media to Social Business and that Social Business is the future even for companies, like IBM, who are aren’t even selling to consumers anymore. My takeaway…inherently you need to be committed to being social to have a successful social strategy. You can’t farm it out, you can’t set up a page and call it a social strategy. You, and your company as whole need to be engaged, and engaging, in a social dialogue, hey if IBM can do it….

So what do you think, are you a Social Business or a Social Bust? Drop us a note and let us know.

Can’t argue that. However, it got me thinking of other ways that startups can take advantage of Social Media that weren’t noted in the piece.

Using social media as a coherent and actionable approach to updating investors and the investment community (especially if you are a public start up) can save an incredible amount of time for the senior team as they deal with ensuring that the messages are always clear, and consistent.

Educating and training your supporters on where, when, and how to find the information is critical…and as the piece suggests, requires a great deal of commitment. But the opportunity – not to mention efficiencies – far outweighs the short-term challenges and provides a great outlet for idea mashing and just as importantly feedback.

To answer my own question here: no, results and social media are not an oxymoron. We just need to help people define what real results should be viewed as.