Sep 18, 2013 | Customers, Lean, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Courtesy Michael Taylor
“5 why’s” is a tool that started life in the Lean Thinking toolbox, but in reality is simply common sense. In effect, make sure you understand the real cause of the problem facing you before you start deploying solutions, otherwise you risk treating the symptoms, not the cause.
It is a tool applicable to any problem or challenge, even the reluctance to engage with social media that I see so often with SME’s.
Following is an edited version of a of a recent conversation I had with a bloke running a successful small business, as he confronted his social media demons.
Bill: I have to get off my arse and start using Social media.
Me: Why?
Bill: Because all my competitors are using it.
Me: Are you losing any business to them, are you generating business you expect, or are you just lonely?
Bill: Don’t know, but I think it is expected
Me: Expected by whom?
Bill: Customers?
Me: Which customers, and what do they expect?
Bill: Not sure?
Me: wouldn’t it be wise to be clear about what you wanted to communicate, and to whom, which might offer some clues about how to best achieve the outcome?
Bill: Probably.
That conversation led into a useful session better defining his value proposition, then considering the tactics to be deployed to reach his best prospects, which included some “toe-tipping” into social media.
Social Media is not a panacea, and it is not a description of one thing any more than a label of “Cars” is a description of all the cars available. You still need to decide what you want to do with it, how much you will spend, and how you will measure satisfaction before you make the shortlist, and eventual choice. It is just pretty clear that in a modern world, just like cars, it is hard to avoid Social Media, it is everywhere.
Sep 2, 2013 | Communication, Management, Small business, Social Media
Digital technology has offered all of us an astounding range of opportunities to challenge and interact with our social environment, creating as we go. Gary Hamel has summarised them into a “5 C” list,:
Contribution
Connection
Creation
Choice
Challenge.
You read them, you just know the truth of it, but the next step, the really hard one, is how to harness the potential energy unleashed by these revolutions.
As a consultant to small businesses, I find no lack of energy, determination, and intelligent, informed risk taking, but I do find that the digital revolution has marched past the capabilities of many of the established businesses, and as time passes, the gap just becomes wider.
Recognising the presence of the capability gap, and finding a way to bridge it is rapidly becoming the most significant challenge faced by SME’s. Until that bridging has happened, digital is a millstone rather than a freedom, and freedom feels great!.
Go for it.
Aug 30, 2013 | Change, Marketing, Social Media
As a boy, I used to go to the local grocer with a few bob in a knotted handkerchief, get a standard bag of goodies, bread, butter, and a few chops in return. The grocer knew what my Mum had sent me to get, and she knew about how much it would cost, and any discrepencies were fixed up later.
Those days are gone, the days when there was a personal relationship, when people were the centre of business, and trust was not something we thought about, it just was there.
In today’s terminology, business was social.
What replaced it was an industrial model where scale and machines dominated. It does not matter much weather you are thinking about cars, supermarkets, or farming, the analogy holds, just the timing changes a bit.
Impersonal, disconnected, and trust has disappeared, which is perhaps the greatest loss.
Now however, the people seem to be making a comeback.
The advent of social media was at first just another “mechanical” thing, it offered scale and access with little humanity, but as it has evolved, and the platforms developed, so have our behavior patterns and expectations.
Social media is becoming a “humanity enabler” that offers the benefits of scale and automation, but that is enabling the reconnection of people. Trust is also making a comeback, just think about the value you put into the reviews on Amazon or Ebay, whilst you do not know anybody who has done the reviews personally, they are way better than a paid advertisement.
I do not see the pendulam swinging back again, as we are becoming so re-engaged with people, but I guess it will, and those that see the inflexion points first will be, as usual, those that have the opportunity to make the most of them.
Aug 27, 2013 | Communication, Lean, Marketing, Social Media
Lean thinking is well established in manufacturing and office operations, but social media?
Hardly?
Lean thinking is all about the removal of anything that does not add value to the customer. So, if we extend this a bit to potential customers as well, given that Social media is now being extensively used in marketing programs, and ask ourselves weather that post, tweet, or message of some sort is adding value, or just clogging up the recipients feed.
For most of us, time is our most valuable resource. Therefore, it should be incumbent on us as responsible marketers, setting out to gain the interest, and trust of customers, not to waste their time with trivia, irrelevance, and what amounts to directed SPAM.
Most people reading this blog are still working out their menu of Social media usage. Each platform has differing characteristics of usage and ecosystem of users, and like most software, most users leverage a small percentage of the capability. Once you spend a bit of time and recognise which platform suits the way you want to interact, be ruthless about removing the “waste” by saying goodbye to those that are not worth the investment of your time.
However, the advent of automated marketing is adding another dimension. Once a marketer has your email address and christian name, it can be hard to recognise a robot from a real person, and often the “Unsubscribe” button is hard to find.
Not a good way to engage a potential customer.
We should be asking ourselves a few questions before we send out anything:
- How does this communication add to the sum of knowledge “recipient” has?
- What value is that knowledge to “recipient” , or are we just filling a quota?
- Where is the humanity of the message communicated?
Tough questions, which will both increase the response rate, because to answer them takes time, research, and sensitivity, and annoy less recipients, simply because the message will add value by addressing their needs.
Aug 6, 2013 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Many SME’s do not engage with Social media, or do so at a very superficial level, having a facebook page, and wondering why people do not flock to them with their wallets open.
These are the most common I hear:
• Not enough time
• Just for the kids
• Do not know how to use it
• Waste of effort
• Why would I put my business in the same place as all those stupid cat photos
• I have been successful doing this for a long time, why change now
• I hate sitting in front of a computer, much more important stuff to do
• My neighbor went on it, and she got stalked, why would I want to risk that?
• Nobody I know uses it
• My customers all know about me anyway
• It is just a fad
• My employees will waste the time I am paying them to work for me talking on facebook
I am sure you can think of many more.
Now, here are a four things that will happen as a result of the above:
• Others will control what is said about your brand and business
• You will be failing to communicate with a substantial proportion of (most) products markets. Leaving aside incontinence pads for ageing baby boomers, every product is being discussed on social media, somewhere by your potential customers.
• You will be seen, when you are seen (refer below) as “behind the curve”
• Invisibility equals commercial death, and visibility these days is all about Social media
If that is what you want, easy, do nothing, but Social media is not going away. Many of the ways we communicated last century are, by contrast, going away, so if commercial survival is on your bucket list, you had better get with the program.
Jul 31, 2013 | Communication, Social Media
“We just clicked”
It’s an old expression to describe the situation where you meet someone, and find a lot to talk about, mutual interests, and an immediate comfort in each others company for some reason.
In the digital world, it means something entirely different, implying a “friending” of someone on a social site, or a “click-through” on an e-vertisement or link on a site.
The key difference is the presence or otherwise of a real person, not an avatar, not a site, or a blog, a real person, whose hand you can shake, eyes you can smile into.
The value of a real relationship, one with a person, should never be confused with the number of “friends” on a social media site.
Humans are social animals, and while we might call this thing taking over our lives “Social media” it perhaps could be better called “Anti-Social media”
