While many people are using Facebook for social purposes, small business owners are trying to use it for business purposes. Having clear goals and a strategy for engaging in social media for business purposes is important. On Facebook, there is an opportunity to grow connections to people in your targeted niche. The following video covers why you might want to do business on Facebook, what some of your goals should be, and how to connect with your target market.
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While social media may be all the craze these days, it is important to link your approach to using it back to your business objectives. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be.
There was an article in USA Today on how Social Media Like Twitter Change Customer Service. It covered how more than half of the Fortune 100 companies use Twitter to provide customer service. Now, while I am a fan of social media and embrace its use in business, I believe companies must be careful in how they do it. In order to meet the expectations of the Twitter-sphere, to provide customer service on Twitter means having lots of people on the watch for a mention of something said that should be addressed immediately.
Comcast has 11 people and Microsoft, just for their Windows 7 product, has 7 people responding to customer service related posts. Companies are spending millions to do this. While it is only a fraction of the multi-billions of dollars spent on customer service, it seems to be moving the trend in a direction that is not so good for business.
Social media can, and often does when applied appropriately, drive down the cost of doing business, and in particular customer support costs. Support communities with both the company and, more importantly, other customers and product experts can provide answers through forums seems more efficient for everyone. Everyone learns and has their needs met faster when common questions are shared, suggested answers are proposed, near real time fee can be shared, and solutions are verified. Better yet, the next person with the same issue can benefit instantly from early exchanges.
The use of Twitter to provide customer support has the potential to do just the opposite of what is good for business and their customers. Instead of the cost going down, using Twitter can drive more one-on-one requests for support and therefore higher costs. It can make it difficult for other user of the company’s products to provide their experience (there is a low probability of someone having a group of people they follow on Twitter just because they use the same cable TV company.) Additionally, as the tweet stream vanishes over time, so does the knowledge with it.
In contrast, support communities allows others, including non-paid employees, to handle questions that arise, retains the knowledge, and makes the knowledge search-able by others with the same issues.
It might be interesting to learn a little more about how Dell is using Twitter. In the article, although they have multiple Twitter accounts, they weren’t the ones to respond to the tweet. Someone told them how to get in touch with a Dell expert. Was that expert a Dell customer service rep or perhaps someone active in Dell’s support community? In this instance, it appears as though Twitter was used as intended, to pose a problem and have someone, not necessary the company, help point them in the direction of a solution.
Sending people to the support community with your 140 characters might train people to go to the most helpful and cost effective place first instead of starting with Twitter.
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When designing marketing messages and campaigns, the whole point is to encourage consumers to purchase your products or services. However, most marketing efforts miss the mark because the focus is in the wrong place. Instead of thinking about your product and services and what you want to share about them, thinking about the customer’s perspective will drive radically different behavior and results.
What this video to understand what a difference perspective makes in marketing.
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Sometimes it’s just your attitude and mental toughness that stands between you and your accomplishments of seemingly impossible feats.
Short video of interesting statistics on social media. How is it likely to impact your world?
The training we receive in our formative years has a powerful influence on us as adults. The ways we learn to win as we are starting out tend to shape our view of how success is attained. The only problem with this is that as you become more successful, the rules for future success change. Unless you learn the keys to succeeding at higher levels, your progress is destined to come to a screeching halt.
Individual contributor – When I give her a job, I know it will get done
When we start out, it is important to understand how to become a successful individual contributor. Individual contributors are those who can master a task well. When given a goal and parameters, they are technically competent and understand all the details on how to accomplish it. Demonstrating mastery of the technical skills of delivering the product or service is key to advancement.
Click here to read the full post
Organic company growth is typically seen as something that is steady. Five to twenty-five percent a year growth is deemed reasonable and in many cases aggressive. Hockey stick growth, that which is 50, 75, 100+ percent growth in a single year and then sustained at high rates in a few subsequent years, is usually thought to only occur through acquisitions or mergers. This does not always have to be the case and a shift in planning processes may in fact make periods of rapid growth possible organically.
Frame of reference for planning makes a difference
Most planning processes are done annually and look at where a company is today as the basis for determining where things will be in the next year. Realistic growth targets are established based upon current performance. Forecasts are often done taking that growth out three to five years. With the current situation as the frame of reference, it is difficult to justify large changes in growth with out an acquisition or some other exogenous force.
Since some companies do experience hockey stick growth organically, we know that it is possible. What are rapidly growing companies doing that is different from those who experience modest growth and how to they plan for it?
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I just saw a Tweet (for those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, this is what their micro-blogging posts are called) with a great time saving tip. If you listened to this month’s Forward the Action Call on personal productivity, you heard me discuss the increased demands technology has placed on all of us. People now expect answers to their emails in minutes, not days or even hours. With a crowded email box, the effort of answering emails could take hours daily. This time in not spent forwarding your agenda, so what can you do?
The Tweet I read recommends leveraging another current trend/expectation. If you are responding to an email from your Blackberry or iPhone, people expect much shorter answers. In fact, they are honored that you took the time to respond to them at all since you are clearly away from your office and engaged in some other activity of importance. They know that you sent the message from your phone because the signature line tells them.
So here is the recommendation, change the reply line (you can do this just temporarily) on your desktop to read “Sent from iPhone” or “Sent from Blackberry”. Then you can send much shorter responses – like one sentence or phrase – to all of those emails.
Kind of innovative. What do you think?
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Your life is the most important enterprise of which you will ever be a part. There are a host of proven tools and techniques from the business world that are available to you to help you succeed. As we can see from the state of our economy today, many business CEOs have been asleep at the wheel and did not do what was necessary for their companies to be able to weather this current financial storm in which we, and the rest of the world find ourselves.
Not surviving however, is not an option for you. Take your role as CEO very seriously and equip yourself to not only survive, but to thrive and have all the impact your desire.
Have a powerful day!
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You always have a choice in life. If you think you don’t have time to do something that is important to you, you have really just made a choice to prioritize something else ahead of it. If there is something you feel your boss is forcing you to do at work, you really do have a choice. You are choosing to comply because of the implication that not complying may have on your job and career. If the law requires you to do something – you are choosing not to have to go to jail or pay a fine. You can choose your reaction to situations, and what you think about them. You have a choice about everything in life – as long as you remember that you must also bear the consequences. Embracing this simple truth will rescue you from a life of victimhood and propel you into be a powerful agent of change both in your life and the world.
Have a powerful day!
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