I had the pleasure of presenting with Mark Boncheck at LiNC, where he shared his ground-breaking research around brand engagement in the social era. Mark's basic message is simple: The most successful brands don't push, they pull.  A kind of gravity field pulls customers and their communities into orbit around the brand, resulting in extraordinary levels of social engagement that are a wonder to behold.    Apple, Nike, Starbucks, Barclaycard, Sephora--what is it about these brands that draws people in to actively participate with them? And, why is it their competition has been unable to create the same level of passion? Well, it turns out there are seven core elements that make up brand gravity, and by incorporating these elements into your social engagement strategy, you too can create your own gravity generators.     The core elements that make up brand gravity are:   Shared purpose – working with your customers to realize a mutual benefit Customer journey – interacting  with your customers across on- and offline, physical and virtual Intrinsic value – ensuring each interaction is valuable, regardless of whether there is a transaction Social currency – exchanging social objects that foster and build relationships Peer engagement – creating opportunities for customers to engage with each other Little data – helping customers use data for their own benefit Return on engagement – turning relationships into revenue What I like about this model is that it can be applied not only to your brand, but also to community and social initiatives as well. To that end, we've partnered with Mark to create a Community Gravity Index that measures the strength of a community's pull, and an associated diagnostic for prioritizing your community engagement initiatives. We've bundled this up into an onsite workshop that is available to all Lithium customers through Lithium Professional Services.   In future posts, we'll dive into each of the core elements, showcase Lithium customers who use these elements to generate community gravity, and discuss how you can apply these examples to your own communities. In the mean time, check out Mark's posts on brand gravity, and let us know what you think.       Jeff Saenger is Vice President Social Strategy Consulting at Lithium Technologies and leads the social strategy team at Lithium. Jeff brings 20+ years experience in leading service organizations in companies such as Oracle, Siebel and UpShot. You can connect with him on linkedin           ... View more

We're excited to announce the formal launch of the Social Strategy Consulting Group at Lithium. The establishment of this new team   represents a natural evolution of our company as we look to add key services that help   our customers maximize the value of their Lithium powered social initiatives. Our focus will be on bridging the gap between business strategy and project execution - to help our customers build a reliable model for deploying social customer experiences that deliver measurable return on investment. We've learned a great deal by working with and listening to our global client base, which now is in excess of 300 companies. This gives us a unique perspective on the best practices for building and managing winning social customer experiences and the key strategic elements needed to ensure high ROI and long term engagement with your customers. We want to put that knowledge to work and have already delivered successful results to several Lithium clients.     Why this new service? We launched the social strategy consulting service for several reasons: 1. First and foremost, many of our customers have asked for this type of service and   recognize the value that this strategic perspective can bring to their business. 2. Our market is in a state of constant change, and we want to help our customers create competitive advantage using the tools and language of social. 3. We will leverage what we learn from our work to make our product offering even better   - something that will benefit the entire Lithium customer community. 4. We want to be the partner of choice for any customer/partner that is serious about social.   Examples of our work We have already begun   engagements   with several customers, helping them define their social strategy for marketing, commerce, support and innovation. On the marketing front, we are working with a major US retailer to develop a go-to-market strategy for a new community focused on creating long-lasting peer engagement with their customers and store employees. This retailer has been very successful at engaging their customers on a periodic basis (through marketing campaigns) and now we've developed an evergreen program with the goal of driving increased brand loyalty and higher purchase frequency.   On the social support side, we are working with several long-standing customers to help them take their current social support model to the next level. This work involves measuring performance of their existing community, benchmarking against Lithium best practices and creating a strategy for how to improve their overall performance.   Meet the team Our team brings decades of experience in strategy consulting, social media, monitoring/analytics, innovation, and crowdsourcing:   Xavier Jimenez - Xavier is our guy for digital branding, digital marketing and digital measurement best practices. He brings over 10 years of experience working with fortune 1000 retail and marketing customers including Microsoft, Best Buy, T-Mobile, Sephora and 24 Hour Fitness to help them uncover key insights to build brand success. Cesar Castro - Cesar's strategic consulting experience includes business strategy, innovation strategy and social strategy. He has worked with our customers in both the U.S. and Latin America and brings a diversity of industry experience (Pharma, CPG, Financial Services) to the group. Louis Peters - Louis has worked with most of   our top customers in the social support space and brings product management, professional services, and enterprise software experience to the team. Kevin Kendall - Kevin is passionate about customer/user experience design. He has deep knowledge of how to design successful customer experiences across multiple form factors including tablet and mobile. He also brings deep experience in the telecom industry, having worked or consulted for some of the largest companies in this sector.   As businesses continue to recognize the value of the social customer experience to create deeper customer engagement, reduce service costs and increase product sales, the need for a cohesive social strategy is more important than ever. Our team exists to help companies set this roadmap to success. To learn more please contact me at: jeffrey.saenger@lithium.com     Jeff Saenger is Vice President Social Strategy Consulting at Lithium Technologies and leads the social strategy team at Lithium. Jeff brings 20+ years experience in leading service organizations in companies such as Oracle, Siebel and UpShot. You can connect with him on linkedin           ... View more