Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Lauren is smart, savvy, and a pioneer of e-commerce. She literally wrote the book on shopping. It's her firm's Mystery Shopper's Survey that E-commerce Guide cites in their article, "Survey Says: Customer Interaction Key to Online Sales."

Me? I'm a social web strategist. I translate the culture and help businesses use online tools to create communities. My own blog has 80,000 comments. I'm also the founder of a social-web business blogging conference called SOBCon.

Our strengths, our networks, our skill sets are complimentary. As we talked we found that we're both saturation learners. We don't just take on a subject. If we're going to do something, we learn it to our fingers.

We talked about how if you land on my blog and you don't like me, you click away in seconds and I never know. It's efficient. No hurt feelings. No social burden; no time wasted talking to me. If you stay, we're self-sorted. If I live up to what you expect, we've got a relationship. If I'm consistent and helpful, I become a trusted source.

I pointed out how smart people use social Web tools in a highly effective fashion, like a new sort of telephone: one to many to connect to the right people faster.

Until I called Lauren two days before that breakfast, she'd never heard of me and I'd never heard of her. We both live in Chicago, but I can't imagine how we might have met. If we had, I don't know how many months it might have taken us to get to where we were in that couple of hours.

Relationships start more quickly on the Web. They can move from a self-sorted online conversation to the telephone to introducing friends to a meeting at a breakfast table in the East Bank Club in Chicago in a fraction of the time it would take without that online interaction.

As the restaurant servers were setting the lunch tables, Lauren and I were planning. She could see ways that she could help my readers and the folks at my conference understand the realities and nuances of e-commerce. I'm all for helping her network see how we engage huge communities to come back and visit us daily bringing their friends and ideas. We're drawing forms and considering next steps.

No need to say how huge that was for both us. I'm sure you value your network as much as we value ours.

Now as to how I got to meet Lauren in the first place . . .

A few weeks ago I woke in the middle of a "3 a.m. something needs doing" night. About 4 a.m. when that particular something was polished and on its way, I opened Twitter and sent a message that said, "I'm working on sponsor kits for SOBCon09. Anyone want one?"

Soon, I was "talking" with an author/journalist from California, a potential sponsor from France, and a man who later invited me to participate in a podcast. The podcaster, Jim Peake, was interviewing high-profile social media experts for his upcoming book. We got acquainted, the relationship grew, and the conversation about the Internet, social media, publishing, and business relationships hasn't ended. We have core values, key people, and like experiences in common -- in essence, we were already friends. We just hadn't met.

Jim said to me, "There are two people you really must meet. One of them is in Chicago. The other is in New York." They were Lauren Freedman and 1to1's Ginger Conlon, who--as you may have guessed--read my work, told me about her customers, and then invited me to write a blog post about social media. So I wrote this one.

Jim trusted enough to introduce us. We trusted him. We "self-sorted" on his recommendation. Still it was a social tool that connected me to Jim. I never would have met Jim, Lauren, or Ginger without Twitter and a "3 a.m. something needs doing" night.

The ROI of the social Web is the value that relationships have always had multiplied by the reach and speed of the Internet. To find it on the P&L, it's in the results of the conversations and the relationships. Look at the efficiency and cost of business with vendors and customers you trust. Compare the numbers to those of the vendors and customers you don't. The answer really shouldn't be a surprise.

Relationships and trust are the ROI and they clearly impact the bottom line.

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Liz Strauss is a social web strategist and founder of the social-web business blogging conference SOBCon.