Month: January 2009

A Twist on Experiential Marketing

I ran across a video of a T-Mobile ad on Swiss Miss today. It’s cool that they got so many dancers out to pull off this stunt. But what I want to point out is how T-Mobile has the right idea of combining a live event, mobile phones, and the Internet.

Think about how it is now a given that if something cool is happening, people just whip out their cameraphones and start taking pictures or video. Invariably, this sort of thing ends up on Youtube or some other video sharing site. With this live event, people will always remember what T-Mobile did, they’ll have video of it, and will share it with their family and friends. With the popularity of multimedia phones, any event can be recorded and shared across the world. People naturally want to share their experiences. This is advertising people WANT to share.

Watch the HD version if you see the option.

How Much Does Social Media Cost?

One of the most frequent questions people have when talking about social media in the business is, how much is this going to cost the company? I can understand that there are several concerns for any business, like productivity, control of the company’s image, what are recurring costs, and any number of concerns. Adweek has an article titled Beware the Social Media Siren. I can’t pretend to know each and every concern, but let me address some of the main ones here.

Productivity and social media

It is an illusion that if your employees are not on social media that they are spending their time working. The get up to go to the bathroom, stop by the water cooler, to ask their co-workers what they are doing after work, in non-productive meetings, making personal phone calls, and probably even side-stepping your corporate network through their smartphones to use social media. Productivity comes in little spurts throughout the day. The rest of the day is just killing time between spurts. I propose that if you want to keep social media under control, you should probably require your employees to use it. We all know that as soon as we require something it stops being fun. Seriously, there is one case of a company that has most, if not all, employees on Twitter, check out Zappos. Obviously, they’ve taken this to an extreme; but guess what, they’re still in business. If social media were such a waste of time, wouldn’t they have stopped by now?

But we have an image to maintain

The reason why social media works in a company like Zappos is that instead of social media being an escape from the daily grind, it has a focus. Your company can use the socializing that would occur anyway to promote the business. Think about it, your employees could secretly spend time on social media, or openly do it while promoting your business. In companies where social media is forbidden, the employee does not mention, promote, or offer help people who have expressed frustration online. If you aren’t online to participate with your clients, what image does that give? They are talking about your company anyway; wouldn’t you rather resolve any problems before word gets out that your company left somebody dissatisfied?

Are there any recurring costs?

Most social media is free. Unless you are creating your own home-grown variety of community, your upfront cost is minimal. You already pay for internet, your employees have computers and mobile phones, many employees are already on social networks, and many are interested. All your company needs is the green light to sign up and go. You may want to spend a little time setting some ground rules, like no nude pics, so that everybody is clear that their online presence has a business purpose. The tools are there, you just have to use them.

When hiring social media consultants

If you aren’t sure about undertaking social media in your company, you can hire somebody to help you put a plan together. In the article I mentioned above, there is a very good case for companies not hiring out their social media presence. Social media is not a hired out campaign. There is good reason to believe that rather than hiring a marketing company for your company’s social media initiative, it is best if your company does its own social media in-house. This, of course, would save your company money and increase your understanding of what people are saying about your company directly from those who use your products and services. If you are considering the use of social media for your business, look for a consultant who will work themselves out of a job. The good guys know that once you know the ropes, you can take it from there.

Working in the Intenet Cloud




King Cloud

Originally uploaded by akakumo

One of the things I like to teach my clients is how to use the “internet cloud” to work and collaborate. If you have been to enough seminars and trainings, you’ll often see that your computer or network connects to others by passing through a cloud anytime somebody makes a drawing on how the things connect together. The cloud will typically be the Internet. When you have software that runs on the Internet, you have Cloud Computing.

If you have deep pockets, like all startups do, you can afford to buy brand new computers with the latest software, and set up the most amazing computer network. If you’re not in that league, you don’t have to shell out oodles of money to keep up with the Joneses. You can get some really powerful services that can help you run your business; and they run on the Internet.

What types of services you ask? Well, there are websites that let you create documents, share them, store them, and even publish them for the public to see. There are collaboration websites that can help your team stay in touch on a project, stay in touch with remote offices, or even bring in outside people to the project. There are Customer Relationship Management sites that allow you to keep data on all your interactions with individual clients much like large companies keep when you call their customer service line. You can even do your accounting online.

Many of these tools are free up to a certain level. When you do pay for service, it is often on a monthly basis and somewhat evens out on what you would have spent to buy the software. The greatest benefit to cloud computing is that you can access your information from anywhere that has an internet connection. You typically don’t need heavy duty computers to run the services, just one with a web browser. You don’t have to worry as much about backing up your files, And, you typically don’t have to upgrade every year. Whenever these services upgrade their systems, you automatically get the benefit.

There are many advantages to managing your business information on the web instead of your office computers. The way we use our office technology is continuing to evolve. Just keep cloud computing in mind before you make your next software purchase. Chances are, there is an online alternative.

How Do I Integrate Social Media In My Business?

As the popularity of social media continues to grow, many businesses are beginning to ask how this medium fits into their business model. Chris Brogan asks questions in his post titled Aligning Social Media Within Companies. He has a ton of comments on that one. Some people describe social media as a tool. Others call it a strategy. Is it PR or Marketing? There is a lot of discussion going around as to what social media is or isn’t. It seems to be a tool that nobody knows how to use or everybody is an expert. So, how is the typical business owner or manager supposed to know how social media ties into their business when even the “experts” can’t agree?

The Grocery Store Analogy

The way I see social media is as an extension of people and organizations. Let me use the analogy of the supermarket. When you walk into the store, you pretty much have an idea how things work. You walk up and down the isles to find what you need. Every once in a while you have trouble finding something. What do you do? Do you look for the customer service counter? Some stores have one, but usually if you’re just looking for yams, you’ll ask the first employee you see. You don’t care if it’s a cashier, sacker, or manager. You just need somebody who knows how the store is organized to point you to where to find the yams.

Translated to social media, you want that ability to talk to somebody, anybody who can help with your problem. You don’t necessarily need one super employee who can solve any problem, just a liaison who can point you in the right direction. The first one you stumble upon will do. Yes, businesses can designate one guy to be your social media contact, or they can empower their cashiers, sackers, stockers, and managers to help. Not having a social media presence is like having all the staff working behind the customer service counter. The customer has to go hunt for somebody to get help, not exactly customer friendly. When you simply want to find yams, you don’t want to have to stand in the customer service line to ask.

Who’s In Charge?

The type of product or service you provide will determine who is in charge of your social media initiative. It is conventional wisdom amongst the social media crowd that people will talk about businesses whether they are involved in the conversation or not. Anybody wishing to control their message is better off being online participating in the conversations. Two ways of participating are to designate one person or a small group of people, or to empower almost everybody in the organization. In politics, for example, you may want one person in charge of the message because there is an art to saying things without burning bridges. Not everybody has this talent. But if you’re manufacturing park benches, so long as all the employees recognize their benches are the best, it doesn’t matter who says it, online or offline.

If you designate the one guy to do it, then your company takes a risk in that the one guy builds his own audience. When the one girl takes his place, she almost has to start over again because everybody will be looking for the one guy who moved on. She’ll have to re-establish relationships and learn the ropes. She’ll have the dual role of being a person and the company to your customers. For any worker, your biggest asset is the network you create while working at your company. Every time you lose that one guy, you have to rebuild the network.

In the other scenario where all or many of your employees participate in social media, customers will talk to the first available person. If that one person leaves, any other can be easily substituted because the customer knows in advance that they are all equally able to assist. Each employee only owns a small portion of your company’s social media contacts and may even share some of them with other employees. We’ve all been ticked off from time to time when an employee sheds any responsibility by saying, “it’s not my job.” Spreading out the social media responsibility means that it’s everybody’s job to help the customer.

I Thought Social Media Would Help Me Make Money

The only way you make money is by selling a product or service. Social media does not do either of these any more than your telephone does. The key difference is that whereas a telephone conversation is ethereal and one-to-one, social media is one-to-one and one-to-many. One employee can deal with an individual or with the public. In addition, social media is indexable and searchable. That knowledge is transferable. But going back to the searchable part, you can find leads interested in your product or service almost as soon as they express their interest. Social media doesn’t make you money, it helps you find and connect with people who need to exchange their money for your product or service. After the sale, social media helps you keep that connection to ensure customer satisfaction to keep them coming back for more. In the case where you have a client who is bad for your business, you can help them find a company better suited to their needs, like the competition.

Social Media Won’t Make You Smarter

You’ll notice I hardly mentioned any services other than Twitter. This is because the services are not one-size-fits-all. Furthermore, the social media services merely extend and amplify our reach. But for them to work, we still have to know who to reach and how. If you are a successful business person, social media won’t make you a better business person; your IQ won’t go up. Rather, social media can make your job easier by giving you options much like you choose your club when playing golf. You use different ones for different situations. Your God-given social skills are still the force behind your social media presence. For the company as a whole, your company culture is what the public will see.

If your company has poor internal communications or a dog-eat-dog culture, people will see that online and offline. If you’re a bad golf player, it doesn’t matter what club you use, you’ll still suck. Social media doesn’t have built-in functions to help you deal with irate customers. Calming the customer will depend on your own skills. Whoever you or your company are in real life are what you’ll be online. So, get your company squared away on how to deal with your customers now before you enter social media.

I Missed How to Integrate Social Media. What Are You Saying?

There is no integration of social media. You either let your employees use social media as employees or not. Set your policy to reflect your goals. To find out how your customers want to connect with you, ask them which social media services they prefer. Use them all and see which ones get the best response. If your customers speak Spanish, wouldn’t you have your employees learn Spanish? If your customers speak Facebook, then learn Facebook. You may find that the Marketing people prefer some services and the Accounting people prefer others. They have different audiences and should probably use different services. Let those connections happen organically. Just as you can’t predict whether something can go viral, you can’t expect that you’re organized approach will take your industry by storm. You can’t standardize relationships. As in life, the strength of your relationships is what will ultimately matter when it comes down to whether you make the sale or not. Make relationship-building your guide for integrating social media into your business just as you use conferences and corporate events to network.

Get Beyond Self-Doubt

Last night, I posted about how you have to listen to that inner voice that tells you to do the right thing with respect to your career. When you go against that voice, your days will be long and you will be looking at the clock for 5 pm to roll around. Has that voice been nagging you? Why haven’t you listened? I know why.

Fear of failing is what makes us fight the inner voice. Many times self-doubt keeps us from confidently making a choice and carrying on. So what happens when you fall? Tim Ferriss shares a video about Nick Vujicic to help put things in perspective. The answer is, you get up.

My post was about going freelance. There is always the reality that you may fall flat on your face on the quest. But, I figure the alternative would be to stay at a job that is not fulfilling your needs and fall flat on your face there. In this economy with layoffs and hiring freezes, there was always the possibility of being knocked down anyway. In any decision you make, there is never any guarantee that you will not fail; there is no sure thing. One must get beyond self-doubt and reach for that goal or career that will bring satisfaction with life. You can’t have the triumph of getting up if you never fall.

Listening to Your Inner Voice

Every once in a while, I stumble across a blog post that resonates with me. Freelance Switch has a post titled “What’s Your Inner Voice Telling You?” I can say that I really identify with what Ian MacKenzie wrote. It resonated with others as well, make sure to read the comments.

Prior to my previous job, I had that same voice telling me that I had to break free. I asked my boss at the time to allow me to work part-time so that I could pursue other interests while still maintaining some steady income. We did this for a while until another job offer came up. I don’t know what possessed me to accept it. Going from part-time to full-time was not going to placate the voice. I fought that voice in all the months that I worked there until a family emergency made me realize that I was not doing what I was put on Earth to do. I resigned that same day and have been freelancing since then.

Yes, it is scary. The money isn’t as much as I was earning at the steady job yet. It will probably take me a while to make up my previous salary, but there are other benefits that bring me satisfaction. For example, writing this blog post would have been outside of the scope of my job. Keeping up with social media and marketing trends would simply be a waste of time. With freelancing, there is the benefit that I can pick and choose my clients rather than have them handed to me. I can devote time to doing things for my family rather than try to have a family life in the evenings and weekends. I don’t have to drive anywhere or buy lunch if there is no work. That alone drove me really crazy; if there is no work, I’d rather go home than have to “find” something to do or have to be present to put in my hours. There is plenty for me to do that often does not relate to what I am employed to do. As a freelancer, I have the freedom to do those things that bring value to my life and enrich it in ways that I cannot explain. I can focus on doing the task and then going on my merry way.

I felt set free when I went part-time, and it made me happy. Going against that freedom made me unhappy again. Even during these economic hard times, I feel some satisfaction in knowing that I don’t ever have to worry about losing my job because I have multiple jobs. Even when I worry that maybe there won’t be work, the voice tells me that I am doing the right thing. And then I get another job that pays a bill. When my logic tells me I’m nuts, the inner voice soothes those worries. Ever since then, opportunities to be what I was meant to be have cropped up. All I have to do is carry them to their conclusion to create the career of my dreams. Some of these are paid and some are not. What freedom to be able to choose.

Don’t Count on a Leader

Chris Brogan articulates a great concept in that you should create your own small and powerful network to help you achieve your goals. As a part of the network, of course, you would help others achieve their goals. If you are a social media or new media fan, the tools are there for you. What is stopping you.

What made the biggest impact for me is Chris’s note

The trick is this- don’t make me or anyone the hub. Lead. Find your groups. Reach out. Set group goals. Execute. Move to a new group. Fluid.

I often find myself urging others to make things happen. The reality is that many of the things I do are not any easier for me than they are for anybody else. I’m naturally shy; it takes a lot of effort to go out and talk to people. I don’t necessarily enjoy being a leader, yet it often gets hoisted upon me. Of course, as I grow older, I accept the roles that aren’t natural to me because I understand that somebody has to do them. As much as they make me uncomfortable, I recognize that they make others uncomfortable as well.

Effectively, what Chris Brogan says is right in a way, don’t make somebody else the hub. Become the hub. Make your fate revolve around you rather than somebody else’s coattails. Don’t count on a leader to improve your situation. Make it happen yourself.

Selling Has Always Been About Relationships

Chris Brogan has an interesting post about changing your lead generation methods. He is correct in that lead generation is changing. People are beginning to tune out mass marketing. We can now fast forward on commercials on our DVR. We download movies and music rather than go down to the store or rental place. We listen to commercial-free satellite radio. The newspapers are dying, so obviously people aren’t looking at ads anymore. More and more, it is evident that broadcasting is becoming more expensive per lead.

Lead Generation Was a Conversation Technique

When you get down to it, however, broadcasting has been a conversation technique. You interrupt everybody and let them know that you have something to sell. Then, a few who might be interested can ask questions. Everybody else goes about their business. It is at the point when the lead shows some interest that the sales person begins to form a relationship. Like walking up to a stranger at a party and striking up a conversation, mass marketing has mostly been a way of striking up conversations with strangers. At that point, both parties determine if it is a relationship that should be continued or allowed to wither.

How Lead Generation is Changing

Selling these days seems to be taking a different approach; at least returning to the old ways before broadcast media. You need to have the relationship first before you even begin asking for the sale. You have to provide something of value before you can ask for what you value in return. More and more of my business, for example, seems to be referral-based. I could not count on the referrals if I did not do a good job and provide good advice up front. In many ways, having a good relationship with your client allows them to seek people who they think could use your service and get along with you. In fact, they look good with their friends for referring me. There are plenty of other people in my line of business; what sets me apart? It is the relationships that I maintain that bring business and opportunities. Well, that and doing a good job, of course.

Does Social Media Change Lead Generation?

I’m inclined to say yes, but not completely. There are some types of sales that simply won’t evolve to social media, like selling farm implements or materials to the Amish. In addition, there is a segment of society that values price over quality. Social media is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Social media is simply an extension of what we ought to be doing anyway, except that you can reach more people in one day through social media than you could face to face. But the principle is the same. You have to have given your customer enough value that it is only natural that they call on you to sell them the solution to their problem. You have helped them better their condition to the point that they need what you offer; you have empowered them.

When you go to your preferred grocery store, you expect some value from them. They either save you money, keep the store clean, are always friendly, or some combination of factors. The store provides something that you value and are willing to give them your business. I used to work at a party store where our cost from the manufacturer was equal to the same product at retail price at Wal-Mart. Our value was that we provided assistance to our customers, helping them choose and plan for their parties. What we offered was valuable enough that our customers were willing to pay more for the exact same product. IN OTHER WORDS, we had good customer relations. There may have been some value in extending our reach to the internets, but that would simply reflect what we provided at the store. The value would not have come out of thin air.

How about B2B sales?

I have seen cases in which one salesperson has burned bridges with several clients, which resulted in his company not having business with them again. Social media wouldn’t help him be a better person. I often ask around about somebody before I do business with them. Having online friends makes the process infinitely easier. I like to know how the sales guy’s relationships are with other clients. For many who start out in Internet marketing, it seems like social media is a great, inexpensive way to browbeat your clients into submission. It doesn’t work that way, the very same tools often serve to get the word out about you and the poor value you provide.

Back in the days before mass media, you did business by word of mouth. Those who had good relationships with their customers often had the most business. You knew who the good butcher was; if he ran out of something, you’d settle for the other guy. Now that social media has affordably extended our information reach beyond our geographic area, we have ways of finding out who the good butcher is from people we trust who may be across the country. People who have to deal with you can get together and talk about you, good or bad. The flip side is that you can use social media to listen in and change the way you relate to your customers so that you can increase your value in the relationship. This way, you can empower your satisfied customers to confidently refer new business to you. By being valuable to them before the sale, it is only natural for them to do business with you when they need what you offer.

Collaboration Illustrated by Google Docs

I am a big fan of cloud computing and collaboration. I saw this video and could not help posting it. It is a great way of showing what can be done with online tools. The use is a bit frivolous in the video; but it does show the power of collaboration that cloud computing brings. Google Docs is a service that allows you to create and store your work documents online. They take that a step further by allowing multiple people to work on the same document without having multiple versions emailed back and forth. Everybody has the original. Google Docs is only one of many online tools available to help your team work together and avoid work bottlenecks.

WebWorkerDaily » 3 Key Web Working Tools for Students

Here is a great post by WebWorkerDaily titled 3 Key Web Working Tools for Students «. The tools go through use of Wikis, Forums, and Project Management sites for coordination and collaboration with classwork.

I do agree that these tools are a great advancement for academic collaboration; however, I must point out that many students have not had the need to use these tools and will likely be avoid using them. I would say that the tools are most appropriate for non-traditional students (old folks like me) who have been in the workforce and have needed these tools due to hectic schedules.

Touching off on the use of Forums, I tried using Yahoo Groups for a class a few years back. The Yahoo Groups included file storage and threaded conversations. I think they even included chat back then. Roughly everything you need to keep people organized on a project was in the group. In one case, the group was younger students; the Yahoo Group never caught on. They were always on campus and could easily meet for study groups. In the other case, it was a group of older students who had families and jobs; they had no reservation in making use of the web tools to collaborate on the project.

This may have changed since then. With the proliferation of smartphones with email and web browsers, it is possible that younger students find online collaboration more convenient than face-to-face meetings. Even so, one student has to have the knowledge that these tools are available and take the initiative to set one up. I’m predicting that the non-traditional student is more likely to have that knowledge and initiative.