James Kane & Loyalty

What makes a customer loyal to a company, brand, or organization? James Kane is the leading expert in the field of loyalty and he helps companies and non-profits take customers from satisfied to loyal. Loyalty, he explains, is beyond satisfaction, when the customer is thinking about what the company did for them yesterday, and moves the customers to think about what they can do for the company. One of the best examples of company loyalty is Apple. Talk to any iPhone users and you know they will sell you on the product. Imagine having every single one of your customers as a commission free salesman for your company. That is the strength of social media, but you have to have loyal customers to make it really payoff. Kane works with a lot of associations and I was lucky enough to meet him at the Special Libraries Association Leadership Summit in Atlanta last month. Jim is conducting a Loyalty Pilot Project with five chapters of SLA to determine how to expand loyalty and build membership. The themes of the project are membership, leadership, remote members, vendor relations, and community. Each of the SLA chapters took one of the five main themes and spent months developing new programs and trying new strategies to enhance loyalty. Overall the message was clear, the way to build loyal members is to get them involved. The members develop a sense of belonging and purpose which keeps them involved and they sell the value of the association to their peers.

Here's a clip of one of Kane's presentations Satisfied vs Loyal on Vimeo. Find out more about Jim on his website and watch for his two upcoming books, The Loyalty Switch and Virtually Loyal.

Casual Friday: The New Maps

The New Maps are not just an Americana-laced pop/rock band from Austin, Texas, they are the creative outlet of business researcher Michael Hill, colleague of righteous Bizologist Laura Young. In addition to Hill on vocals, guitars and piano, The New Maps features Paul Grotevant on upright bass and vocals, and Jeff Olson on drumkit. The band, which formed in early 2011 and spent the last year playing shows around Austin, released its 11-song debut, These Parts, in January 2012. In addition to original songs by Hill and inspired performances by the band, These Parts features guest vocals from Hill's former Marmalade/Mudville Nine bandmate Kim Vance Baker and a re-imagined version of Bruce Springsteen's epic "Badlands." The album can be purchased digitally via iTunes or Amazon.

The history of The New Maps traces back to the mid-90s Denton, Texas scene, where Hill cut his teeth writing songs and serving as bandleader for acts like Marmalade, Mudville Nine and 12lb.Test, while also playing lead guitar and singing harmonies for Slobberbone and former Fever In The Funkhouse leader Nick Brisco's solo project, the Nick Brisco Band. Meanwhile, native Austinite Grotevant was in San Francisco playing bass with the likes of Matt Bauer and alt-country orchestra Angel's Camp, and another native Austinite, Olson, was finishing up grade school.

Fast-forward to 2010 and Hill, back in Texas after a 6-year-stint in the Pacific Northwest, was performing with with fellow First Grade parent Grotevant, a founding member of The 145s, at Austin coffee shops. In early 2011 the duo invited Olson, sometime member of Balmorhea, to play a show with them at legendary Austin live music haunt The Hole In The Wall and The New Maps were born. Shortly thereafter, the trio took to recording and, a little less then a year later, These Parts was released. For more information, please visit the band online at www.thenewmaps.com.

Casual Friday: Deep Thoughts

Do you feel like killing some time this morning while the community pot of coffee is brewing?  Trying to find that just-right segue for your upcoming PowerPoint presentation?  Check out Thinkexist.com, an excellent source for inspiring and funny quotes on just about every element of the human experience.  You'll need to create an account to peruse more than a few pages into the results lists, but it's worth it in my opinion.  Browse through the alphabetical topics to Business, and you'll find over 250 quotes for that word alone.  Other business-related topics to also peruse include: Success, Politics, and Money. Here are a few zingers to start your day:

“To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art” -Chinese proverb

“Business is like sex. When it's good, it's very, very good; when it's not so good, it's still good.” - George Katona

“Don't tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I'll tell you what they are.” - James W. Frick

“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” -Mark Twain

“Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.” -Earl Nightingale

More Love This Valentine's Day

Last year was a good year for Valentine's but this year is even better! According to the National Retail Federation spending is up 8.5% over last year. Yep, sweethearts are going all out this year to show the love. "The average person celebrating the holiday will shell out $126.03...the highest in the survey’s 10-year history. Total spending is expected to reach $17.6 billion!"

"Total spending on jewelry is expected to reach $4.1 billion, up from $3.5 billion last year. Second to jewelry, those with a case of the love bug will spend more than $3.5 billion on a special evening out. Consumers will also spend $1.8 billion on flowers, $1.5 billion on candy, $1.4 billion on clothing and $1.1 billion on gift cards."

This year, "more than half of all tablet owners (53.8%) will use their device to research products, compare prices, redeem coupons, look up retailer information or purchase products. Four in 10 (40.4%) smartphone owners will use their mobile device to do the same." I've seen a lot of commercials for those same tablets and phones on sale for Valentines, so maybe you'll be lucky and get some new tech from your favorite techie.

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson CBS Interview

In case you missed it, JCPenney's CEO Ron Johnson was interviewed on "CBS This Morning" today. Fascinating interview where he responds to the "controversy" of choosing Ellen as the new face of JCP, their new pricing strategy and plans to skip all that 4AM Black Friday hoopla. We have to say, this makes us wanna shop at JCP:

We Owe Forbes a Cocktail

Business researchers are asked all the time to provide financial data on private companies, and as you can see here and here, we love any resource that helps us pin down those numbers.   Today we’re looking at one more resource from none other than Forbes, the reporting powerhouse that puts forth juicy lists on all sorts of stuff including rich people, good colleges, and small companies. The good people at Forbes have, for the past several years, been making a list of America’s Largest Private Companies, and even better, they’ve freely posted it online for our benefit.  Here's the complete 2011 list.  Besides an estimated revenue, (for which Forbes details their methodology) this ranking also includes industry and employee count criteria, both of which are sort-able features.  Below is an excerpt from the list- the top chemical companies.

Thanks, Forbes!  You kick @$$, and we at bizologie love you dearly for it.

bizologie Favorite Tools: batchgeo

One of our new favorite tools is batchgeo which allows you to take geographic  information you have in a spreadsheet or from a table on a webpage and turn it into an interactive map. Not only can you map out your locations, you can also color code them to group like items on the map. Once you've got your map set up the way you like, batchgeo will give the map its own link to share with whomever you like. They also provide the HTML code in case you want to embed it to a webpage. It's a wonderful time saver and all at the low, low price of free. They have a professional service available as well if you need more features, but I was able to produce some pretty handy maps using their free version. Check out the video below for a quick tutorial on batchgeo.

The Sweet Sound of… Data

I was getting my hipster on, listening to a song called Love Show by Skye, and for whatever deep reason, it prompted me to think about researching the music industry.  Without further adieu, I've put together a list of five great resources, in no particular order, for freely available music industry research: 1.  The RIAA-  Not necessarily the first name we associate with “giving stuff away freely,” but the infamously-terrifying-to-college-students trade group has a research tab that includes downloadable reports on shipment data, music’s economic impact, and of course, the effects of piracy.

2.   The IFPI- aka the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, it’s another major industry trade group akin to the RIAA, and in fact the RIAA links to a handful of the IFPI’s reports from its research page.  Nonetheless, it deserves its own mention, especially for its in-depth Digital Music Report that it has published for five years now.

3.  Digital Music News-  Not only does it sport a spiffy logo, but it also has an excellent selection of industry news and graphic-laden summaries of studies with titles like:  “92% of Music Fans Still Prefer Ownership...”, or “81% of iTunes Collections Never Get Played. Ever...”, or “Whoa: 3 Stores = 94.4% of Indie Digital Revenues...”.  It returned great results with keyword searches like: “study” or “trend” or “marketing”.

4.  Billboard.biz- The business research offshoot of the main Billboard publication, it has several categories of industry news, e.g. retail or branding, plus genre-specific news too, e.g. Latin or Dance.

5.  The Music Business Research Blog- A 2+ year blog that’s going strong, it’s run by Dr. Peter Tschmuck, an industry expert and university professor.  Concerning this endeavor, he states:  “This blog for Music Business Research is designed as a scientific discussion forum on all issues of music business/industry in all its manifestations.”  Not only is it an intelligent blog, but it also includes downloadable theses and papers that were generously contributed for Dr. Tschmuk’s cause.

The Business Journals for Private Company Research

If you spend any time conducting business research, then you know that finding private company research can be really difficult. Especially if the company is new or small. Private companies are not required to release information about themselves to the SEC,  so tracking down things like sales figures, revenues, private equity funding, company history or future company plans can be trying at best. One of our favorite resources for private company information is "The American City Business Journals" or, more commonly, BizJournal. BizJournal comes out every week and covers 62 markets nationwide. Some of their information is subscription-based but a fair amount of it is available freely on their websites. While it's possible to search their main site for companies, I typically go straight to my local BizJournal, Austin in this case, and start my local company search there. Austin is a town of startups, including Whaleshark Media, MapMyFitness, UShip, BuildASign and countless others. I've had great luck finding in depth articles about most of them in our local BizJournal. As an example, this article on Whaleshark Media, tells me when the company started, how many employees they have and how much money they've raised and who the investors are. Not bad for free, easy-to-find information.

Another helpful thing to do is follow the national BizJournals and your local BizJournal on Twitter. The local one is especially helpful for keeping up with not only local businesses, but also events going on around town. You can follow  the national account @bizjournals.

Casual Friday: Moondapple Bead & Lego Lamps

Today we're featuring  local Austin artist, Katheryn Hill. Kathy makes beautiful lamps made from found and recycled items, like gemstones and legos. Below she explains how she got started and what goes into her art: This is art with a side job. These one-of-a-kind handmade lamps are made to either convey a message, show your favorite talismans, be a good luck charm for your house, describe who you or your family is, and no matter what, they start a conversation and definitely say a lot without a word being spoken.

I needed to make extra money while my new husband and I moved to Seattle with no credit cards and the cost of living from Denton to Seattle was quite a difference! I taught myself how to make jewelry and sold them for years. With time, I accumulated a lot of inventory of all kinds because not all beads make good necklaces or earrings. I held on to them and one day I had a brainstorm- light would look really pretty coming through all these beads!

I wanted to make my sister something special for her birthday so I tried my first lamp using the beaded lamp shade. It was a hit! I have branched out with all sorts of lamps. I love to find materials at garage sales. The ugliest old jewelry can be used. I found one of those long, wooden necklaces with African animals carves on it and used them for my niece's nursery lamp that had an animal theme!

One of my favorites was for my father-in-law who said that he "liked my lamps but they weren't his cup of tea". About 5 minutes after he said that I dedicated myself to making one that he'd want. He's an avid bass fisherman and I made a lamp with fishing gear, all kinds of baits, bobbers, etc. and he loved it! This is when I officially switched to fishing line to make the strands for the shade! I wanted my mother-in-law to take part too, so I added charms that fit with her hobbies and personality, and then decided to add the grandchildren with small picture frames on the shade. The lamp base is a tree so now they have a scrapbook with a side job along with a family tree. It's really cool seeing the grandkids gently looking at it to find their baby pictures.

And after a few years, my son asked when he could get a lamp but not with the beads. Hmmmm....He's planning to be a lego master builder one day, so I decided to go with legos.  That was great fun adding the windows and doors to let the light out. You have to keep the shade as is and add the legos to it or the legos would melt if the bulb is too strong.

Part of the fun is I can garage sale shop and antique store and goodwill shop for the lamp bases, old ugly jewelry that no one wants anymore and buy recycled legos to make my treasures.  I love getting jewelry that people have saved for years and don't know what to do with after years of keeping them in a box. Some things just shouldn't be jewelry... wooden animals on wooden necklaces- not a good idea.

Each piece is so unique. I am unique in what I do and how I put this stuff together, and it is for you, the unique individual that will have the only lamp of its kind made especially for you. It is a great way to make a house a home, and a useful way to add light and art to your life.

Katheryn Hill Light up your life with a custom made lamp by moondapple!

You can check out Kathy's lamps and find more information on her Etsy page.

Re.vu Visual Resume

Looking for a cool, easy way to revitalize your resume? According to this WSJ article, some companies aren't even taking traditional resumes anymore. Re.vu offers a way to get you online quickly. It is a "complete rethinking of what a resume can be. You no longer have to cram your experience and expertise onto a plain white piece of paper." By creating a colorful infographic of your experience you give your resume a boost and give yourself a way to stand out from the herd.

Re.vu makes it easy to transfer all your experience and education right over from your LinkedIn account. You can choose from one of the 13 designs or upload your own background image.  Then just fill in for your vital stats, job duties, and skill evolution and the site creates visual representation with the click of a button.

And, for those companies that are still a little more traditional, you can upload your resume so that a hiring manager can print out a paper copy.

Here's a sample of what I was able put together in under 15 minutes. It's just a start, the tricky part is rethinking your work experience and putting it into numbers that tell the best visual story.

How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?

We bizologie girls are dog lovers, so we're always fascinated with statistics on pet ownership. Previously, we talked about the American Pet Products Association and their survey results for spending on pet supplies, food, medical care, etc. and today we thought we'd showcase a couple of other resources we like for pet owner statistics. The most recent Census data on pet ownership is from 2006 and has a great breakdown of ownership by income and household size:

And if you'd like to estimate how many pet owners are in your neighborhood or city, the American Veterinary Medical Association has a cool calculator for figuring out dog, cat, bird and horse ownership in your area. Simply provide the community population and they'll give you an estimate. Be sure and check out their formulas for how they arrive at their figures.

So, how much is that doggie in the window? The one with the waggley tale?  Well, according to the ASPCA , a medium sized dog could run you about $695 a year.  Assuming your best friend averages about 11 years, that's nearly $8000. We think Spot is worth every penny, but it's definitely a consideration when adopting a pet.

Enthused for Ethical Consumer

As the green movement evolves and companies try to better attract new consumers and maintain old ones, they need to focus increasingly on not only whether they (and their competitors’) goods are made of x% recycled materials, but also whether overall they are operating a good business. Enter the Ethical Consumer Research Association Ltd.  This UK based company has offerings in products/services research for consumers, and consultancy services for businesses, by training a high-powered-morally-righteous-lens on the companies producing them.  Ethical Consumer scores the brands based on 19 factors broken down into these categories:  animals, environment, people (e.g. workers’ rights & supply chain management), politics, and sustainability.

And since they are such a nice company, we appreciate that they’re freely giving away with registration, 1) the surface-level charts of companies’ scores on everything from bread making machines to travel insurance, and 2) lengthy reports on the ethical factors impacting that good/service that you’ll find by scrolling down the page.

Check out their current freebie chart for cell phones.  Based on the example of the phones’ abysmal scores, one can readily see the potential for brand differentiation by evolving into a halo-worthy institution.

Free Webinar: Beyond Newsletters

Beyond Newsletters: Better Ways to Inform Your Users Tuesday,  January 24, 2011, 9 am CST - No Charge! - Register

Whether you use newsletters in your marketing mix today or are considering them for tomorrow, there are innovative new ways to simplify the internal newsletter creation process. Also, there are a few newsletter alternatives that you may want to consider when deciding how best to accomplish the goal of keeping users informed. In this webinar, you'll learn some tips and tricks you can apply today to give your newsletters the lift they are looking for.

Webinar hosted by FreePint - Family of sites and publications reaching over 100,000 information workers monthly

Casual Friday: Tech N Style

We love Mikala Bierma and her "Disappointing Gay Best Friend" series, but the stylish librarian in us really gets a kick out of "Tech N Style". Keep 'em coming, Mikala!

Aflac Workforce Study

Aflac, the company that provides supplemental insurance and is best known for their silly commercials, published their 2011 Workforce Study last summer. The study examines employees' satisfaction, impressions of benefits, and beliefs about voluntary benefits. Plus, they provide information on company benefits by size of company and by industry for education, government, health care, and retail. One interesting tidbit is that 41% of those surveyed said a well-communicated benefits program would make them less likely to change jobs. And, 46% percent said their HR departments communicate too little about employee benefits. The latest white paper from Aflac the"New Normal" report addresses this issue about using benefits to keep employees satisfied and on the job, and provides insights into the latest employee benefit trends and highlights challenges businesses are facing in this new economic landscape.

We here at bizologie always tout associations for sources of information, but also check out company sites for industry statistics and any studies they may publish for public consumption. Yes, it may have some bias, but it also provides some excellent free market research!

Business Source Complete

It’s 2012, we’re back, and we mean business!  Well actually, we mean business no matter the year, so what better way to start 2012 than with one of the most fundamental business research tools:  The Business Source Complete Database, or BSC as well affectionately call it. BSC is just one subject-specific database from a vendor named EBSCO, and EBSCO’s full repertoire of subject databases spans practically every major field of study.  I looked up EBSCO in its own database (not unlike Googling for Google) and the first result, an August 2011 Datamonitor360 report says EBSCO Publishing is, “the world’s most used for-fee internet research service.”  EBSCO is so ubiquitous of a research tool that the odds of your local library having a BSC subscription are pretty good.  (Public libraries may have several useful tools beyond BSC, e.g. Reference USA.)  If they don’t, you might check with your local college/university and see if they allow guests to access their databases.

Simply put, we use BSC all the time for business research.  While it might not be updated up-to-the-minute as some other databases like Factiva, its sheer breadth of scope spans a bit of everything: all manner of trade and popular news, industry reports, popular publications like Harvard Business Review, and scholarly articles.  BSC is generally our second stop after Google.

Tips:

1.  As a friendly reminder BSC is not Google; try searching with fewer keywords at the onset, and then limit your results.

2.  If you’re doing research that spans multiple topics and your library/university has subscriptions to many EBSCO subject databases, you may see the Choose A Database button which lets you search across them.

Casual Friday: Favorite Sites for Home Design & Decor

We bizologie girls are home design junkies. We love house tours, HGTV, furniture shopping, and open houses. With a little help from our friends, we've painted our houses inside and out, backsplashed our kitchens, updated our landscaping, obsessed over any number of furniture choices and even remodeled our bathrooms. Here are a few sites we love for home design inspiration:

• Apartment Therapy--"Saving the world, one room at a time", Apartment Therapy is one of our favorites. They focus on apartments and small houses so most of their ideas seem affordable/attainable and they always have great ideas for storage. We love that the AT community is as passionate about design as we are, making the comments sections sometimes just as helpful and interesting as the posts themselves. You don't see that every day!
• retro renovation--Created by Pam Kueber, who remodeled her 1950s house, retro renovation is your "daily dose of mid century renovation resources… design inspiration… fun finds… and a growing community of people all interested in cherishing their postwar 40s, 50s 60s and 70s homes."  We love Pam's passion for maintaining the integrity of older homes.
• Pinterest (Home Decor Page)--You can't beat Pinterest for great ideas and their Home Decor section provides endless hours of decorating yumminess.
• Overstock--Love Eames chairs, but on a librarian budget? We know the feeling. Head over to Overstock, type in "plastic chairs" and presto! Fantastic Eames knock-offs for a fraction of the price. Emeco "Navy Chair" at $450 a pop too much? Overstock to the rescue again. Simply type in "metal chairs" and you get two chairs for $135 that are perfect replicas of the "Navy Chair". We love Overstock for keeping us in the lap of luxury on a shoestring.
• Ikea Hackers--We all know shopping Ikea is one of the most affordable ways to furnish your house. But to keep your living room from looking just like your neighbors', check out Ikea Hackers who share ways to repurpose and personalize all sorts of different Ikea products.
• Catalog Living--Now that you've got your house looking like the pages of a catalog, it's time to laugh about it. Catalog Living offers a "glimpse into the exciting world of the people living in your catalogs".  Not only is it fun to keep up with the antics of Gary & Elaine, it's a great place for ideas and every entry is sourced in case you want to buy the products that will  make Gary & Elaine green with envy.

The Thank You Economy

Gary Vaynerchuk of wine fame is now the guru of social media. If you are a Vayniac you may already know that Gary has taken the lessons he learned from building an online empire with WineLibrary.com and has published two books and started his own consulting firm, VaynerMedia, to help companies move into the future of business - social media. To Vaynerchuk it's actually the old way of doing things -- getting to know your customers and making a real connection. You know, like the neighborhood businesses of yore used to do. By forming a real relationship companies can humanize their brands. He says it's all based on using social media to listen to customers, not what most companies are doing now which is pushing information to customers and trying close the deal too quickly. Check out Vaynerchuk's interview with Piers Morgan about his new book, The Thank You Economy.

Holiday Greeting from bizologie

Happy Holidays from bizologie! We couldn't think of a better way to wish you the best this season than with an e-card from geoGreetings. Their slogan is "how geeks show they care." That is us! If you want to share the geeky love of Google maps and cool buildings with your friends and family it is super easy to make a card and send a link.

We'll be taking some time off so we'll see you in the new year!