Happy New Year from YUP! To start the year off on the right foot, we will be exploring the theme of resolutions for the month of January. Whether old or new, resolutions aim to bring finality, both to foster new beginnings and bring old stories to a close. Like Janus with his eyes looking forward and back, January bridges past and future experiences, always reaching for the consonant determination of present situations.

First and foremost for this blog, in particular, is David L. Rogers’s The Network Is Your  Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age. It’s rather obvious that digital and social media are rapidly becoming standard marketing tools, but with so many companies, so many applications, sites, feeds, trends, and the greatest interconnected audience ever known, how are we to navigate through the milieu?

Rogers’ five strategies are:

• ACCESS—be faster, be easier, be everywhere, be always on
• ENGAGE—become a source of valued content
• CUSTOMIZE—make your offering adaptable to your customer’s needs
• CONNECT—become a part of your customers’ conversations
• COLLABORATE—involve your customers at every stage of your enterprise

Sounds simple enough, but acknowledging the challenges is only half the battle. Rogers goes on: “Many business leaders see a promising new digital strategy and simply jump in, trying to emulate another company’s success without thinking through their own objectives or how the strategy might best fit their own business, customers, and competitive landscape.” Digital platforms are reinvigorating the voice of the individual, and the special makeup of each business is no less unique in the new marketplace. In fact, the personal touches matter more than ever.

The practical book is intended to guide its reader through these new business practices and strategies. By using over a hundred case studies of best practices and offering suggestions for how customer-driven marketing will transform with future shifts and changes for businesses and customers alike, Rogers caters to his own readers, showing them how network ideas can be channeled for the successes of their own businesses.  The book ends with a self-assessment quiz and how to continue the conversation online with the author at www.davidrogers.biz.

You’ll soon see evidence of Rogers’ insight coming through YUP’s own initiatives. With that in mind, cheers to the New Year, and we’ll be looking forward to hearing from you soon.