When your customers are members

What's the difference between "members" and "customers?"

By 吉田宅浪 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Excerpted from ForwardMetrics article published Jun 3, 2013.

The members of an affinity group-- trade association, alumni club, professional association-- are far more
vested in the company they keep than the patrons of drugstore or clothier, for instance.

 Hence, the "rewards" cards and other membership-like incentives that retailers create in order to turn
shoppers into "members."

Customer servi ce for your members is based on a more personal relationship. Find ways to keep
it that way:

• Answer all their questions;
• Address all their concerns;
• Acknowledge that belonging creates a special bond

How social is social media?

Our postings, often detailing all aspects of our lives, are like ships passing in the night as our "followers" and those we "follow" struggle to keep up with the copious information being shared.

One catches a glimpse of what the other is doing on the way to yet another post. Chronicling life's events may be more interesting to the chronicler than the "Friend."

Do we really connect through these notes about what we're doing, who we are with, where we find ourselves? Do our random thoughts hold the attention or fire the imagination of our correspondents?

Was actual letter-writing more "social" and intimate than all the FB sharing we do?

Is posting to LinkedIn, or Facebook, tweeting, or pinning just another play for the fifteen minutes we all crave? On LNKD, and FB, and in the Twitter-scape, we are all authors! What we do and where we are doing it is in the open and published.

On the other side of social media, we have an avowed purpose to enhance our business lives. Does social media work on that other level to spur our business interests? Does that LNKD announcement further our careers, bring in new business, keep us actively in touch with our customer base? Is our company profile served by blogging, and posting?