Live Tweeting Makes Learning more Lively

It took me a while to join the Twitter bandwagon. I didn't understand it, couldn't wrap my arms around it. It was foreign to me, and I couldn't grasp the significance and was oblivious to the relevance .

Note: For a great application of using Twitter for learning, read this review of the L2 Social Media Graph at George Washington University.

Then why is it that today, I tweeted almost the entire class presentation, all 90 minutes of it, even the one that I gave? On this drizzling Friday, a day that I was actually happy to be sitting in class looking out the dreary window from time to time, listening to the Best Buy presentations (all 5 of them) over and over again, I made a dramatic decision to stay engaged.

But as much as my sleepy-stained eyes and my brain-fried, body-weary self could tolerate, I had to pinch myself to stay focused. That's when I realized the potential and unleashed the power of the Twitter-enabled backchannel. When I started tweeting in class, just by virtue of the fact that I was typing in permanence, I was conscientious of what I put down, even if no one bothered to look.

By making of-the-cuff comments of what the speaker was discussing (discreetly, of course), I was able to engage both sides of my brain completely, as if I was having a discussion with the speaker as well as the rest of the class. In a sense, it was backchannel brainstorming, leveraging on real-time online conversation alongside real-world live spoken remarks. It may seem rude and indifferent, but I'm becoming more and more convinced, that in this new world digital age, it's becoming more and more standard and collaborative.


When tweeting in class, don't forget to create and use a hash tag.  Let everyone in class know what it is and of course, inform the professor.  And the best thing -- one doesn't even need to be present to engage in live tweets.

On this rainy and long class day, no other classmate bothered and was even aware that I was talking with them.

But if by chance, some of them would hop on the Twitter backchannel bandwagon in the future, receiving real-time feedback from them would be critical in enhancing the total classroom learning experience, and would also serve as an immediate critique for the lecturer once he/she gets back from the podium.

Best Buy's Customer Centricity Model

There are many critical and relevant lessons to be learned from Best Buy's customer centricity model. In this blog, we will be dissecting this model's strengths and weaknesses.


Click here to see the Best Buy Customer Service Survey.

Best Buy customer-centricity model consists of a very meticulous kind of stereotyping—the idea was to identify the most profitable customers and “shower them with knowledge and attention.” (1)

Their Major Customer Segments are

1. Barry -- Affluent Professionals who want the best technology and entertainment experience

2. Buzz --- Active younger males who want the latest technology and entertainment

3. Ray -- Family man who want technology to improve their lives -- practical adopters of technology and entertainment

4. Jill -- Busy suburban mom who want to enrich their children's lives with technology and entertainment.

In 2005, Brad Anderson became CEO of a $30-billion-a-year company that was Number 1 in consumer electronics for the last ten years, accounting for 16.5% of the market share.

But in 2006, Brad Anderson felt that his company was fully in the "maturity" phase of the life cycle, and sensed that profits could soon decline.

The decision to turn to the customer-centric model was fueled by the need to gain a competitive edge over similar warehouse stores like Wal-Mart, the now defunct Circuit City chains and Target.

After a broad market analysis, Best Buy determined that customers signaled that they cared more about customer service than deals in pricing.

CEO Brad Anderson then spearheaded the customer-centric model to make his chain

with nearly 120,000 employees more "talent powered and customer driven." But during that time when the economy was good, customers were willing to spend more to be given special attention at stores.

Evaluation:

Best Buy tried to cover too much ground--it was trying to sell both to the barrys (older men with money) and those looking for deals.

"Centralizing" a store requires a huge investment , tailoring them to cater directly to the sales and demographics.

Instead, companies like Apple, spend enormous amounts of money on their brands in order to build an image. Although there are mp3 players with more functions than ipods (and cheaper), Apple still dominates the market. If you do not have an ipod, you are just not cool enough, and you're also cheap.

Best Buy should have stuck to catering only to customers shopping for high end products or the deal seekers.

Weakness:

What began as a good idea became too far reaching. Too much money was spent n training and hiring its employees.

The in-between space of shelling out customer centricity in more and more of its stores and integrating the centricity model into every business decision, became Best Buy's weakness.

Blue Shirts become customers “techy friends,” there is a “hip” element in the image. It is a flip on the usual stereotype of nerds/techy types

Blue Shirts focused on developing a deep understanding of the customer’s needs

They were not just experts on products but solutions (knowing how to bundle products and what to offer customers depending on their needs)

See section “centricity” for an explanation of the method: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/04/03/8373034/ How is Best Buy doing in 2009?

The central question is whether it was smart for Best Buy to apply its centricity model to every part of its business

Centricity stores are now run like a small business, and managers are expected to develop relationships with the most profitable customers—they are given the freedom to tailor stores around a neighborhood’s interest

Best Buy has acquired various companies that it also applies the centricity method to—at some point, Best Buy has spread itself too thin.

My take on it: centricity works in certain specialized populations but it becomes too costly if it is overly-relied on

(1) Rajiv Lal, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Irina Tarsis, "Best Buy Co., Inc.: Customer-Centricity", Harvard Business School, Oct 16, 2006

Facebook for Branding

As a public affairs officer, I live and die by the power and force of Facebook.

This enormously popular and powerful social media site is where I maintain connections with many of my friends and professional colleagues, many of them I have not seen or heard from in years.

That is why I am stunned when I stumble upon colleagues in this business who refuse to "jump onto the facebook bandwagon."

I also heard from some, that they will just wait to join when they are ready.  But social media is not like the rest of the internet.  If you don't join now, you'll just have a lot more to catch up when you finally do.  Who has the most amount of friends on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc.  It's not like the internet, where you can just buy friends. They come with time so you better be online now gathering them, and quality ones I might add.  Frankly, social media marketing is getting harder and harder every day.   The internet replaced door-to-door, but tomorrow, door-to-door social media marketing will surely return. Just you wait and see.

It was not until early last year that I also enlisted in the social media army.