I have finished my second marathon!

This time in Vienna! After my first marathon two and a half years ago, and a period of reduced level of physical activity, I decided to prepare for my second marathon. Since this time the marathon was held in the spring, I had to excercise during the winter, which proved to be more difficult due to the weather conditions. Nevertheless, I finished it, without any injuries or exhaustion, but I cannot be happy with my race netto time of 4:23:48, which is mediocre at best, even by amateur standards. I promised to myself that the next time I will again run the marathon under the 4 hours!

Apart from that, the Vienna marathon is one fine example of excellently organized sport event. Even with more than 30.000 participants, there were no delays in any part of the event, from registering and issuing race numbers, to the delivering of medals and refreshments. Adding to that the nicely designed course that goes by most of the landmarks of Vienna, and rarely repeats itself, you get the Marathon that is worth taking part in.

What do customers want from a relationship?

In the last yar or so, having some kind of a presence on social networking sites like facebook become almost mandatory for businesses of all sizes. Remember when 15 years ago, the people stopped asking do you have an e-mail, but instead asked what is you e-mail address? Or,"What is your web page?" instead of "Do you have a web page?" Similarly, the questions like "Can I add you as a friend" are more and more common in comparison to the questions like "Are you a member of Facebook?".

In such a situation, it quite natural for businesses to join the crowd and start interacting with customers on Social networks, with the probable aim of establishing their presence, building the their brands, building the loyalty, getting new dcustomers and, of course, indirectly increasing their sales.

Nevertheless, things are not easy as they look on the firs sight. Merely establishing your presence on Social sites is far from enough as customers don't really behave according to our expectations. Fof all of you looking for a way to benefit from Social networking sites, I highly recommend reading the recently published IBM study on Social CRM! The most interesting part is the big gap in perception of the sutomer-business relationship between two groups. But, the other findings are also very interesting.