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Confusion Doesn’t Look Good On You: Profile Your Way To Clarity
Dec 31st
If confusion and overwhelm was an outfit, I would tell you to take it off, because it doesn’t look good on you. If it’s old, worn out and faded, then let it go.
What you wear should enhance what you have instead of playing up your weakness. In fashion, the goal is to wear what looks good on you. I’m saying clarity and balance looks good, so wear it well and wear it often. But how?
In “What Not to Do: The Most Important Decision You’ll Make,” John Mariotti says, “Refocus your time, talent and money on the important things, the big things, that will make a difference.” Sometimes that’s easier said than done, but here are two things worth your time—profiling your profitable passions and your ideal customers.
The goal is to understand your passion and your customers.
Profile your profitable passions
What do you want to do and can it pay for your lifestyle?
Ivana Taylor shows you how to find your passion and turn it into a profitable business. But it takes effort. You not only need to discover what you are interested in, but you must also find the market who would buy the product or service and the language that would get their attention, using tools like Google, eBay and Amazon.
And after you find the right niche, then it’s time to put more effort into clearly identifying your clients.
Profile your ideal customers
Who do you serve, what do you they want, where are they now and how do you reach them?
The last three questions become much easier to answer when you figure out the first one.
Ivana says:
“When you narrow your message…to a group who values what you are selling, then the rest of your marketing system becomes obvious and easy to implement.”
I spent a lot of time confused and it didn’t look good (or feel good) on me either. To profile my target client I used 3 of the 8 creative ways to profile ideal customers that Ivana mentions—complaints, Web traffic and character descriptions.
Understanding what my clients complain about and the types of people visiting my site based on my Alexa.com profile made it easier to create a character sketch of my target audience. And when you understand what your target audience looks like, then you can figure out where they shop, what they read, where they go to have fun, etc. All that knowledge creates opportunities to meet, market and serve them.
Now that’s a good use of time. Get clear and then get busy.
Confusion Photo via Shutterstock
Confusion Doesn’t Look Good On You: Profile Your Way To Clarity
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
4 Reasons Paypal Doesn’t Deserve Your Money
Nov 16th
At first glance, Paypal sounds like an amazing service; transfer your points/gold/dollars/XP from one account to another in a matter of seconds, making it just as easy to buy from eBay as it is to open a small online store. But there’s a dark side to Paypal which has been emerging more and more as of late.
Services like Dwolla have emerged to compete with the behemoth, offering considerably lower fees and less inconvenient ‘validation’ time periods. The negativity surrounding Paypal extends further than just its terms and conditions — the company’s choices regarding socially relevant matters have been criticized as well. Here are four reasons Paypal doesn’t deserve your money.
“Funds Release” Time
PayPal has recently implemented a policy which allows them to withhold merchants’ receipts up to 20% in a ‘rolling reserve’ (to cover chargebacks and refunds) for up to three months. Small businesses were outraged, but PayPal stood their ground and stuck to their canned email responses when contacted with pleading emails. Businessweek lambasted the new policy as ‘disruptive to cash flow’ and said it could put some companies out of business.
Although Paypal claims that it notifies its sellers of the policy 30 days before implementation, many upset customers claim that they weren’t contacted by Paypal whatsoever. Companies successfully using the service for years and years.
High Rates
The more expensive the transaction, the higher the fee charged by Paypal. There’s a 2.9% transaction fee on each sale, plus a additional $0.30 per transaction. International sales, however, pay a 3.9% fee. It sounds small, but it adds up. A sale of $500 is charged a fee of $14.80. That’s fourteen cheeseburgers, a movie ticket, a lawn chair from Target, three large Red Bulls, or two whole lunch specials from the Chinese place. Three, depending on where you live.
The fees aren’t the only bad part; the way they came about were pretty shady. PayPal created the fees, available for viewing in their ToS section and nowhere else, without notifying anyone. They snuck them onto the website and quietly began charging unsuspecting customers.
Other services have popped up, charging smaller fees or none at all. Dwolla is one, and charges $0.25 per transaction, regardless of the amount. Dwolla is also interesting because they don’t rely on credit or debit cards linking to each account; they simply hook up your bank account directly to their service. WorldPay and SagePay also offer similar services.
Deplorable Customer Service
Paypal is notorious for responding to customer concerns with cold, indifferent canned responses. Most importantly, it’s hard to find a phone number on their website, especially if you don’t have a PayPal debit card or aren’t a pro number. The premium number is costly to use. Multiple emails asking for help are answered with the same copy and paste response.
Although every company has a few unhappy customers, googling ‘Paypal sucks’ turns up a slew of angry blog posts by people Paypal has burned. Most complaints are about unreasonably banned accounts, transactions gone wrong which end up getting ‘rectified’ at the victim’s expense, and the dreaded ‘verification’ suspension Paypal seems to randomly place on accounts belonging to legitimate small businesses.
The impersonal responses are insulting and condescending, repeating the same vague phrases in every email. Chris Rossi, for example, was permanently banned after purchasing a programming service from a vendor. When he looked into the matter, it turned out that the vendor had been banned for the sale of pornography — causing every single person he had ever received money from to be banned as well, regardless of what the sale was for. All five emails from Paypal include ‘Your account has been permanently limited. Customers who are permanently limited for violating the Acceptable Use Policy are not permitted to open new PayPal accounts” and don’t address his long list of evidence in his defense at all.
Bad Decision Making
Paypal is, overall, bad at making decisions. Internationally recognized as less-than-the-best, the company is prone to reversing transactions, charging fees, withholding money, and canceling accounts without notice or a response afterwards.
In 2010, Paypal suddenly reversed all exchanges marked as “personal” coming in or out of India. Without notification, they screwed over hundreds of people and many businesses who were left with overdrafted accounts — not only had many vendors already withdrawn the removed money, but others were left uncompensated for services they had already completed.
During the same year, donations to Cryptome were frozen and $5300 removed. PayPal refused to explain this action.
A few months later, two other legitimate and high-traffic accounts were closed without notice or acceptable response. Finally, the Wikileaks fiasco ensued in December 2010 when Paypal permanently banned an account taking donations for WikiLeaks. A PayPal VP eventually admitted that this was the result of pressure from the US State Department.
A government puppet with little to no respect for the customer, nor how he or she is treated, doesn’t deserve your money. Even if you settle for Paypal, the other services are at least worth checking out.
View full post on Business Pundit
Your Playing Small Doesn’t Serve Anyone
Sep 9th
Your Playing Small Doesn’t Serve Anyone
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
The single behavior that prevents business owners, or really anyone for that matter, from realizing the incredible potential that lies in their business is playing small.
Small is easy, small doesn’t attract attention, small is comfortable, small doesn’t offend, small doesn’t raise eyebrows, small keeps that little voice in your head quiet, small doesn’t hurt as much when you fall – and small keeps you right where you are.
Thinking small robs you and your business of the art of serving your own personal purpose in life and building a business that inspires others to do the same.
Now, don’t confuse what I saying with the idea of growing a big business – what I’m talking about is thinking bigger about what you’re capable of, about your role as the inspirational leader of your big idea.
Allowing yourself to think and act much bigger is one of the greatest ways to tap your own individual potential and build a bigger you.
The problem with thinking small about things like the higher purpose of your business, the real vision for what’s possible in your business or the audacious brand you know is achievable is that it you won’t be inspired in ways that requires you to take massive action.
Think about a goal you’ve set. Oh, and just for fun, pick one you didn’t achieve. So, why is it you didn’t achieve it? My guess is because it was a little goal. It was likely something you had little trouble imagining you could accomplish, but also something that didn’t require you to change much – and so nothing happened.
In order for a goal, or more to the point, the building a business that inspires you and all that come into contact with it, to come about it needs to stir up doubt. In fact, it needs to create enough doubt that you have no idea how it would come to pass. You need to connect with a feeling of purpose that excites and inspires while at the same time makes you uneasy about stating it publicly.
I’m not suggesting that you make up some audacious, pie in the sky, dream that you quickly dismiss. I am, however, suggesting that if your idea about the higher purpose your business is to serve, the place in the market you know is waiting for you to fill, or the obvious innovation that will inspire others to follow isn’t big enough it won’t force you to change your behavior in ways that would make it true.
Let me give you a simple illustration. Let’s say you have a business and you commit to increasing revenue by 10%. Now, you may not know how you’re going to get all that new business, but maybe a little tweak here or there to your website might produce enough increased conversion to get it done.
What if, on the other hand, you committed to double your business or take it up three times the revenue you generated this year? You may have no idea how you’re going do this, but would it be safe to say you might start rethinking everything about your business?
What if starting today you looked out three years from now and saw something totally bigger? What if you dared, not to dream, but to accept the awesome potential locked up in you and serving your ultimate purpose in life?
In order for you to think bigger it’s important that you believe you want it to be so, that you can glimpse it being so, and that its pull is strong enough to make you question all that you need to change in order to make it so.
Go ahead, I dare you.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Managing Inventory Doesn’t Have to Be a Holiday Hell
Nov 30th
This is a guest post by Shipwire’s Nate Filmore.
For all those non-believers out there, here’s a news flash: Hell exists — at least, inventory Hell does. Just ask any growing online seller preparing for the holiday onslaught, and you’ll likely hear stories of long nights spent poring over an Excel spreadsheet tracking sales and shipments.
If the seller has inventory in multiple locations the spreadsheets get more complex, in many cases routing orders and tracking inventory in a variety of locations — be it their garage, a brick-and-mortar storefront or an overseas warehouse. Often, these merchants are trying to balance inventory management with their other sales, marketing and administrative responsibilities as well.
But weary merchants, take heart: There are better ways to manage geographically dispersed product this holiday season.
Keeping Up With Booming Holiday Sales
In general, e-commerce business growth is hardly anything to complain about, especially as the world emerges from a recession. By all accounts, the darkest days are behind us.
ComScore reports that U.S. online retail spending reached $32.9 billion in the second quarter of 2010, which is up 9 percent as compared with a year ago. Google’s latest research shows that consumers are feeling good about the 2010 holiday season too: Sixty-four percent of shoppers plan to spend the same or more this year, as compared with the 2009 holiday season. Finally, eMarketer recently published that e-commerce spending is expected to grow 13.7 percent to $51.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, topping last year’s fourth-quarter sales of $45.2 billion, according to a new forecast published by eMarketer.
While all this holiday action presents great opportunity for buyer conversion, it also presents pitfalls for online merchants who don’t have airtight control over their geographically dispersed shipping and inventory. Consider this: PayPal and comScore report that 46 percent of buyers abandon their carts because of shipping rate inaccuracies. Another 23 percent do so because of inventory inaccuracies. Given these statistics, the pressure’s on: Online merchants can hardly afford to stumble in the shipping and inventory management game.
Weigh Your Options
So when holiday orders come flying in and inventory expands in a merchant’s various warehouses, the once-adequate Excel spreadsheets no longer cut the mustard. Since inventory management is critical to running a profitable business, a more robust way to route and track orders across warehouses and the supply chain is required.
To that end, online merchants have a couple of options when it comes to inventory order management solutions to alleviate the headache of inventory management, and to subsequently improve efficiency and customer service.
Outsourcing your inventory and shipping to a product fulfillment company (also called a 3PL or third-party logistics company) is one way to eliminate inventory and shipping hassles. Here are a few professional tips as you approach outsourcing.
* “Try before you buy.” Get a free trial and do an “end-to-end test” by sending the vendor sample inventory and routing it back to yourself.
* Seek transparent pricing. Avoid long-term agreements and hidden costs like volume commitments.
* Invest in growth markets. Look for a global warehouse network with warehouses in your growth markets.
* Connect via software. Online sellers should require a software platform that you can easily plug into your Web store, and, of course, eBay.
* Fit your business. Some sellers will outsource all fulfillment, some will not. The solution should fit your business as it grows and changes.
* Help yourself. Require great customer support because you are paying your outsourced fulfillment partner to handle problems as they arise.
If you keep some or all of your shipping in-house, you can serve your business by looking for an order management solution. An inventory order management solution takes over where your Web site ends, and helps you manage orders through a process that includes routing the order to the inventory location, processing the order, facilitating pick, pack and ship operations, and tracking the shipment until the buyer is happy. Here are some thoughts for considering an order management solution.
* Hosted software. If you don’t want to buy, maintain and upgrade software you want to get Web-delivered tools — the order management equivalent of Hotmail or Gmail.
* Try before you buy. Get a free trial and make sure the solution matches your needs.
* Ensure interoperability with your shopping cart. Your shopping cart and order management software should work hand-in-hand.
* Automated validation and order screening. Shipping addresses should be validated and orders should be automatically scrubbed for validity.
* Multi-carrier support. As your business grows your shipping complexity will increase. Your order management software should help you select shipping options and simplify your growth.
* Multi-location support. Make sure your order management software can intelligently route orders among multiple ship-from locations. Examples include warehouses, outsourced warehouses, retail stores, drop-ship suppliers or maybe even your garage.
Make a list of all your business requirements and then price shop providers to find the best match for your business.
Tips for Taking Advantage of the Holiday Surge
Whether you want to shell out big bucks for inventory management software or would rather rely on an outsourced SaaS-based inventory management service, the basic requirements for attracting and keeping customers this holiday season — and every season — remain the same:
* Shipping price accuracy. Errors in shipping rates will lead to shopping cart abandonment. Make sure your shipping rates are accurately quoted and reasonably priced.
* Fast and free shipping closes deals. Find a way to offer fast and or free shipping to increase conversions. Here are six free shipping tips.
* Shipping transparency. Your buyers should be notified at every step of the order process. This is a great place to cross-promote while you inform your buyer.
* Correct shipment. There’s nothing worse than receiving the wrong shipment. Take time to ensure the accuracy of each order at fulfillment.
* Timeliness of shipment. Receiving a late shipment ranks high on the list of annoyances, especially during the stressful holidays. Again, optimized shipping methods can help here, offering ideal delivery times.
All that’s really needed to achieve these particular requirements is a bulletproof shipping and business inventory order management system. With that in place, the once-overwhelming holiday shopping surge and accompanying inventory Hell will be a thing of the past. Keep in mind that the issue is not necessarily where you’re keeping your inventory. Rather, it’s how you access it, how well you keep tabs on what’s available, and how inexpensively you can get it to a customer. Conquering these hurdles practically guarantees your success.
Official bio: Nate Gilmore is the Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Shipwire product fulfillment, a provider of inventory order management software and outsourced order fulfillment with warehouses in the United States, Canada and Europe.
View full post on Business Pundit
7 Reasons Your Site Doesn’t Convert
Nov 3rd
It’s frustrating. As a proud small business owner, you put a lot of time into your site and perfecting its content. You’ve segmented your customers and have created targeted landing pages to attract them but, for some reason, they’re not converting. What are you to do? It’s time to tweak and troubleshoot your landing pages for ultimate success!
Below are seven reasons your landing pages may not be converting for you and how you can help turn it around.
1. Too Many Distractions
One mistake folks often make crafting landing pages is to throw everything they have related to a topic on one page. The hope is that if you list everything, something will catch a user’s eye. However, that’s not actually what happens. What happens is you muddy up their conversion path by either overwhelming them into taking no action at all or encouraging them to take an action that doesn’t put them on the correct conversion path.
Instead, limit the number of distractions and products you place on a page. Be confident that if customers find one thing they’re interested in, they’ll look around for the rest of what you have to offer. You don’t have to throw it at them all at once.
2. Important Content Is Hidden
One of the basic tenents of journalism says that if you want something to get read, you have to put it “above the fold” (that is, in the top half of the paper’s front page). The same thing goes for content marketing. Make sure the most important bits of your content, the ones that are meant to drive customers to do something, are in a place where users will actually see them without having to page down. There’s no point in having exceptional content if you’re just going to hide it in the basement. Put it front and center to help it do its job.
3. You Need Stronger Calls to Action . . .
. . .or maybe you just need a call to action, period! The call to action you place on your landing page is often what either compels (or doesn’t compel) someone to do something. If your pages aren’t converting, then it might be a sign that you need to tighten up your calls to action. To get better at persuasive copywriting, do some reading over at sources like Men With Pens, Copyblogger or Problogger. Any of these blogs can help you learn to how to speak to your customers in a way that encourages them to take action.
4. You Need Stronger Direction
You know the conversion path you’re trying to set for customers. Can they identify it? Are you making it seamless or are you allowing them to veer off course because things aren’t clearly laid out? If you’re not sure of how well you’re pointing people in the right direction, take a look at your analytics. If you find that lots of people are abandoning the process at the same spot, it may show you that something odd is going on in a certain part of the conversion process. Maybe you can tighten up your writing, maybe you need to remove a distraction link or maybe it’s something else. Either way, you want the flow of your page to be clear to those reading it.
5. You’re Sending Them Away
Another reason people may not be converting is because you’re accidentally sending them off the desired conversion path. Do you have a link back to your home page in the same place you’re encouraging someone to “check out”? Do you mention your other product pages from the landing page of another? Do you link to a funny YouTube video for comic relief? If you do, you’re giving people an excuse not to buy from you. Don’t put extraneous links on pages that are meant to funnel people into a shopping cart and get them to make a purchase. People will do anything not to buy. If you give them an option to get out, they’ll take it.
6. You Scare Them With Too Much Text
I don’t know about you, but when I land on a page that has 6,000 words and barely any white space, I hit my back button. It doesn’t matter how interested I was in the product or how engaging the copy might be; it’s too intimidating to tackle. If you want people to convert, make sure your pages are lightweight, scannable and easy to process. If you’re overloading them, you may end up scaring them away.
7. They Don’t Trust You
A final reason customers may not feel comfortable purchasing from your site is that they don’t trust you. That could be the result of a number of things. For example:
- You don’t have an About Us page. Or, you have one but it doesn’t feel “real.”
- You don’t list any contact information like a real street address, phone number, social networking profiles, etc.
- Your site doesn’t look professional.
- Your content is filled with typos, grammatical errors or is too informal.
- Your content isn’t engaging or doesn’t show that you’re committed to your customers.
- You can’t be found on social media.
If any of this sounds familiar, then I’d encourage you to go into your site and amplify these trust factors, as they’re often the deciding factor for customers looking to purchase from an SMB.
The point of your landing pages is to attract customers and get them on a specific conversion path. If this isn’t happen, you need to start testing/tweaking to find out exactly what’s setting users off course and how you can rectify it. What landing page problems have you experienced? How have you combated them?
7 Reasons Your Site Doesn’t Convert
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Consumer Reports Doesn’t Recommend iPhone 4
Jul 13th
Just in time for Wednesday’s release of the Droid X, Consumer Reports has decided it can’t recommend the iPhone 4. Here’s more:
Consumer Reports’ engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.
We reached this conclusion after testing all three of our iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of CU’s radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber. In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers (see video: IPhone 4 Design Defect Confirmed). We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.
Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4′s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that “mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”
The tests also indicate that AT&T’s network might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4′s much-reported signal woes.
Consumer Reports recommends you use the 3GS instead.
D’oh.
This is only helping the Google PR machine, which is very on top of things after releasing App Inventor yesterday.
Apple needs to show evidence of a battle plan, and soon.
View full post on Business Pundit
Buying A Franchise With A Well-Known Brand Doesn’t Guarantee Success
Jul 12th
I know that lots of people go into franchise ownership because they feel that they can piggyback on an established brand, thereby increasing their chances of success. That’s certainly logical thinking. But sometimes, business defies logic.
For instance, take a look at the SBA’s loan default rates for 2 of the 10 most popular franchises, as reported by CNN.com. (It’s taken from the SBA’s own data)
- Subway Reported SBA Default Rate: 7%
Reported Number of SBA Loans: 2,292
Reported Total Amount Dispersed: $391.8 million
Reported Average Loan Size: $170,928
- Quiznos Reported SBA Default Rate: 25%
Reported Number of SBA Loans: 2,019
Reported Total Amount Dispersed: $291.7 million
Reported Average Loan Size: $144,458
Let’s examine these two franchise chains:
Between them, there are thousands of franchises populating the globe. Interestingly enough, they’re both in the business of selling submarine sandwiches. (I have no idea why subs are so popular, but maybe we’ll explore that in the not so distant future.)
Investment wise, they’re both also under $200k. The roles of the franchise owners are the same, too. So, why do they have loan default percentages like this?
In the case of Quiznos, accusations of price gouging, locations being opened up too close to each other, and unreasonably long franchise location approval times, have been the topic of discussion in the past. Read this BNET story from 2005.
In a March, 2009 article published over at Franchise Times, it was reported that “the company is close to reaching a settlement on a class action lawsuit filed in 2007 on behalf of over 3,000 people who had paid $25,000 franchise fees and never opened a store.” 37 other lawsuits had been settled by the end of 2008, and according to the article, it seems that a lot of the problems are at least being acknowledged.
Quiznos has approximately 5,000 franchises, worldwide. According to the numbers in the CNN.com article referenced, over 500 of the 2,019 SBA loans that were doled out, were never repaid.
Subway, a 32,000+ unit global franchise brand that will probably surpass McDonald’s in franchise units, has had it’s share of franchisee discontent, also. In fairness, extremely successful billionaire entrepreneurs like Subway founder, Fred DeLuca, will always have detractors.
Subway has also had its share of lawsuits. Here’s one that involved a soldier who was deployed over in Afghanistan, who lost both of his Subway franchises. In Chicago, 78 people purportedly got sick in February and March of this year, after eating at a local area Subway, and had to be hospitalized. Lawyers are busy filing lawsuits against the owner.
Did you know that $600 million passes through the Subway Franchisee Advertising Fund Trust (SFAFT) annually? (In the US) Franchisees of Subway pay 4.5% of their gross sales into that fund. Not only do the franchisees pay into that fund, but they control it, too. Well, they did.
DeLuca had given up his control of the fund in 1990, and signed a new franchisee trust agreement. However, in April of 2006, he presented franchisees a new franchise agreement. The franchisees rejected the agreement, and the last four years have been pretty ugly, with lawsuits filed from both sides. Interestingly enough, the franchisees happen have their own board of directors for this huge advertising fund, (who are volunteers) and they try to best decide how the money should be spent. Subway sued them.
On May 4th, a settlement was reached, and Subway now controls the fund. No one really knows what this will mean for the 14,500 US franchises that rely on advertising to meet their revenue goals. They really don’t seem to have much a say, all of a sudden.
Quiznos and Subway are both great examples of solid branding. Customers flock to both chains, while lots of prospective franchisees have them on their radar screens when they start “thinking” about franchising as an option.
When I consult with folks that are considering franchise ownership, there’s one constant; Almost all of them want to escape the sometimes dysfunctional environment that large corporations can have. Whether it’s chain of command issues, management infighting, or “the direction” of the company, folks that want to get into a business of their own really want to avoid all of that. But, is it realistic?
The world of franchising isn’t perfect. There’s bound to be problems. Humans are involved. Buying into a well-known brand doesn’t guarantee success.
If you decide that becoming a franchisee of Quiznos or Subway is right for you, then by all means, go for it. Just make sure that your choice of a franchise business to go into is more about you, than it is about the brand. You can do that by matching your skills to the opportunity. If you have the necessary skills needed to run a fast food restaurant, then you may want to look into these two powerhouses. Just make sure that you do really solid due diligence. The information you need to make a fact-based decision is a lot easier to find now, than it was five, or even ten years ago.
Buying A Franchise With A Well-Known Brand Doesn’t Guarantee Success
View full post on Small Business Trends
Why Social Media Doesn’t Matter Anymore
May 25th
Why Social Media Doesn’t Matter Anymore
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
The hype over social media still echos, but it just doesn’t really matter anymore. Recent surveys suggest that small businesses are still slow to adopt social media and it also doesn’t matter anymore. Social media agencies, departments, and experts don’t matter anymore.
The idea behind the hype, measurement and rush to claim guru status revolved around the tools and the platforms, all of which were new, none of which really were the point.
The reason social media doesn’t matter is because, upon further review, it doesn’t exist beyond a label. While all the categorizing, classifying and departmentalizing was going on, that which was called social media simply settled into the center of marketing and business strategy and behavior. Everything that we called social media is irrelevant and mislabed – there’s a new way of doing business and marketing for sure, but it’s a behavior and focus on customer involvement that’s become a new norm – and that’s all there is to it.
We don’t need social media tools, social media plans, social media agencies, or social media departments, we need marketing strategies and tactics that are informed by a terribly heightened customer expectation. I’m not the first marketer to suggest this for sure, the idea of engagement has always been a part of the social media thread, but we aren’t moving fast enough to stamp out this idea that social media is somehow still a new and meaningful concept – now that we understand what actually happened it’s time to drop the term, concept, and confusion and focus on what really matters.
Prospect engagement matters
If we’ve learned one thing over the last year or two, it’s that prospects are drawn to the ability to interact with the companies, brands, and messages that they choose to absorb. Marketing and sales must include this desired behavior in order to even get an invitation into the prospect’s decision making world.
Customer experience matters
Traditional lead generation is dead, we’ve all accepted this by now, but what’s replaced it? If being found by prospects is the new form of lead generation awareness, then trust is the new form of lead conversion. Trust happens rapidly when customers have an experience worth talking about. A remarkable customer experience is the most effective form of lead generation
Collaboration matters
The Internet has enabled a world where we can work in conjunction with prospects, customers, suppliers, mentors, advisors, and staff in ways that make the finished work a personalized experience infused with the real time input. Community sourcing is a practice that underpins all product, service and business development activities.
Fusion matters
Another powerful lesson gained over the last few years is that offline activity is enhanced, rather than replaced, by online activity. The careful fusion of hi touch business building that’s done face to face with hi tech business building that enables more frequent, personalized contact and communication is the secret to delivering the most advanced customer experience.
Let’s stop measuring adoption of social media and go to work on simply measuring effective interaction in marketing.
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View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Banning Social Media Doesn’t Work, Education Does
May 5th
What does your inhouse social media policy look like? Does it include banning employees from using sites like Twitter and Facebook during work hours? If so, you may want to rethink it. Because, well, it’s not working.
eMarketer reported on a new study from security solutions provider nCircle that found three-fifths of US security and IT professionals say their company has a social media policy and that 40 percent of those policies actually ban all usage of social media while on the job. This is comparable to last year’s report that 54 percent of CIOs ban social media in the workplace. However, even though employers may have legitimate (though, outdated) concerns for not wanting employees engaging in social media during work hours, nCircle’s Director of Security Operations Andrew Storms rightly calls strictly banning it a ‘knee-jerk reaction’.
From eMarketer:
Even though almost 40% of respondents ban employee social media use, this type of policy is a knee-jerk reaction to the serious security risks associated with social media and is not necessarily effective.
It’s not effective because, like it or not, social media is part of your employee’s lives the same way that texting and checking personal email is. Nearly twenty-four percent of Facebook users say they access the site “all the time” while at work, with 35 percent admitting to accessing it occasionally. That type of use isn’t going to die off simply because employers ban use. And if employees are going to be out there in social media during work hours, wouldn’t you prefer them use it responsibly? Perhaps to help promote and foster your brand?
And again, like it or not, social media is also part of your business. Just because you’re not engaging in it, doesn’t mean your brand isn’t being talked about. And just because you can (theoretically) keep employees off during “office hours”, doesn’t mean they can’t go home and get your brand in trouble from the safety of their home computers.
Instead of banning, educate.
Create social media policies that don’t prohibit its use, but instead show employees the proper way of engaging and what they are and are not permitted to put out there about the company. Oftentimes employees get themselves (and you) into trouble because they don’t realize they weren’t supposed to share something or they’re not aware of the dangers. By educating them on the proper use, you grow a team of brand evangelists instead of creating an environment where folks not thinking tweeting about how much they hate their job.
How do you go about educating?
- Define what “social media” is and which sites fall under that classification.
- Talk about what can and cannot be discussed – ie company secrets, company information, legal situations, offensive comments, libelous statements, meetings, personnel, etc.
- Show them social media policies from other organizations. I recommend checking out this online database of social media policies.
- Explain how social media can help the company and how they can be part of that – how to engage customers, how to share information, etc.
- Offer social media training, if possible.
The important thing is to realize that social media isn’t going away and it’s not going to become less part of your employees’ lives. Banning it won’t work, but education employees on how to use social media responsible may.
Banning Social Media Doesn’t Work, Education Does
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