Remember, Perception Is Everything
So here it is, its Wednesday March 12th, 2014, a beautiful sunny day here on the west coast of Canada. I fetched my snail mail this afternoon, I opened an envelope addressed to me. No, it wasn’t bills or bad news, it was…well, I wasn’t sure what to think. Most of the world knows who Mayor Rob Ford is, if you don’t know who he is, he is the Mayor of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has admitted to smoking crack cocaine, and is a binge drinker, along with host of other issues. There’s a much deeper story, but I don’t have the time, the patience, or the space to write it.
So, in the mail today I got a direct mail piece, they used Send Out Cards (www.sendoutcards.com), so, a card, I have never done business with them before, or know anyone who works for them, so they’re soliciting via the shotgun approach. This card was from a financial firm in British Columbia, getting the card was fine, but what was on the cover….well…. rather than me say it, I’ll show you:
Now I understand what they’re trying to do, but I felt like they were going for the cheap humor, potty jokes. The question, “What do employee benefit renewals and elections have in common?”gets lost in seeing Mayor Rob Ford’s picture to me. Call it shock marketing, hoping the negative will be a positive conversion experience. The sell inside the card, I removed the company name & phone number. Here’s the inside message:
Would you consider this a good direct mail piece, would you use the picture of Mayor Rob Ford as your cover, is this a good marketing idea or bad? Would you do business with this company? What is your gut reaction, impressions? Remember, perception is everything.
The Best Way To Predict The Future
The Best Way To Predict The Future, the words from a famous leader are, “The best way to predict the future is to create it”! The man who said these words was, Abraham Lincoln. Which proves, we….man / women, have been thinking about this for a long, long time.
I was chatting with a friend this morning, about the future, married kids, and our ages, it was fun but bothersome at the same time. I was consumed by the feeling that, I’m running out of time. I may spend hours on end looking into the future, where business is going, and how it will change, but I don’t worry about what MY future looks like, to a small degree.
Creating your future sounds simple enough, but it rely’s on a great many things not in our personal control. You could plan your life, write it all down on paper, then try to live it exactly as you laid it out, but the odds are, you probably got off course along the way, like a boat on water, in a massive storm. You see, I think Abraham Lincoln was talking about something else, he was seeing a bigger picture, as if standing on top of a mountain, and looking out at what could be, watching at what was happening, and how it would have to change, but there was only really one way it would come to fruition.
The only way, the best way to predict the future, is to create it, not by just saying the words, giving lip service, it doesn’t happen unless you take part. That’s the real message from the President, get involved, build, be a member of society, and a creator of the future. Help build a community, be a part of that community, in that you would be living in a future you helped create, where ever you happen to be in this world. The future is not built by one man or women on this earth, it’s built with the help of many. So inspire your tribe to create your preferred future, and bring many along on the journey, you have the power to create the future. The old saying goes, “many hands make light work”, go and make something happen, make the world a better place.
Social Networks Have Become Mainstream Channels
Social networks now behave like mainstream channels. I’ve spent several years on Social Networks, and have notice that they all have become mainstream. They’re no longer different from TV, Radio & Newspaper, all you have to do is watch all the yelling, telling, and fire hosing of ads and links to selling products and services. Many would claim that’s just what they’re all for, I’m not convinced.
We live in a connected economy, we no longer fall for mainstream tactics, because they don’t work well for connecting. The biggest reason it fails, we all have control over our most prized asset, our time. We don’t want anyone to waste it, or take advantage of it. So why is it still happening, two reason’s might be, it still brings results, or connecting costs too much, time & money. Or, they figured out what quality story telling is. Quality story telling always wins. The story telling looks and feels differently on each social network, because we don’t act the same way on all of them, we talk differently on FaceBook over Twitter. So the easy thing to do, just blast, just let the fire hose go full on, on all social networks. But the audience is not the same on all social networks, success with each of them requires you to do some research and looking at data, what’s really happening.
Remember when we were told, God gave you two ears and one mouth, use them proportionately. We have fallen to our old habits, we like to talk more than we listen. People today, want you to listen, they don’t want to you to talk so much they can’t get a word in edge wise, they want to take part. It’s not just TV, Radio and Newspaper that yells at you, all the social networks are doing the same thing. They’ve all become mainstream, and I’ll bet, you think nobody is paying attention to your activity on social networks.
The secret, the way to win, is quality story telling, but the way your subscribers, your readers, your visitors, and your customers want it, NOT the way you think it should be, and that’s the hard part. You already have what it takes to tell your story in a quality way, the world and those who are paying attention to you, want to hear your story. So tell it!
20 Seconds Of Courage
Have you ever watched a movie that made you sit and ponder, made you go hmmmm…., maybe made you cry, that made you feel good about yourself, or maybe, it inspired you. Or maybe you met someone who made you think there has to be a better way. Every now and then, you hear something that makes you stop and wonder what you’re so afraid of, what stops you in your tracks. And yet, with only 20 seconds of courage, you could change your life, even your world. Just 20 seconds of courage to make a decision.
Most of us are real busy getting ready to get ready, we’re good at it, so we keep doing it. And then there’s other times when we just act, we don’t even think about it, we just do. Which of the two inspires you most, getting ready, or doing? In my younger days I just did things, I rarely thought about what might happen, good or bad. I never really thought about the cost, emotionally or financially, I just took risks. I have to admit, I rarely ever sat down and got ready, putting my ducks in a row. Today, I still don’t know if it would have changed anything, if I had spent time planning and getting ready. Most of the time, I just thought, all I need is 20 seconds of courage, and something great would happen, and it usually did.
Those risks were in my head, there was and probably never will be long drawn out plans, trying to get everything just right before acting. Personally, I don’t believe you learn as much from planning as you do from doing. But that’s my story, you’re not me. I do however, believe in you, and I know you can muster up 20 seconds of courage to make a decision to do something great. Ready? Go!
Future Of Business – What Kind Of Business
Considering all that is changing, how business is changing, how global and yet how locally our businesses must be, does your business line up with that future? Is your business social, or is it traditional? Does your business advertise on the Internet as part of its marketing mix, or do you stick with traditional modes of advertising. There are many questions to ponder when starting a new venture, but the main questions is, what kind of business, what structure, what type, and will it meet the needs of the economy.
The new economy is a connection economy, how does your business connect consumers, how do you connect to other businesses. Just using social networks is not connecting, depending on how you use them, most use them as another channel to yell, flood, to do what you’ve always done. You use them with a traditional mindset, it’s not connecting, it’s telling.
The traditional way, meant you had to have ads in the yellow pages, maybe you ran radio commercials, and you mostly used Newspaper. You never had to consider the Internet as part of your mix, and most still don’t have a clear understanding of how it works, and how to you use it for business. Today you have to think about where to best spend your time & money, adding the Internet as another way of enticing consumers to your business, to buy. But consumers act differently online, or do they?
More than ever , there is much to consider, it’s not black & white as it was back 30 years ago. The Internet is 25 years old, and brings with it challenges, and incredible opportunity. Asking yourself if you’re on LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus is the new normal today, knowing what to do on them, and how to leverage them, is not normal, not like Radio, TV, and Newspaper. But you’re already figuring that out aren’t you.
Business is getting much more complicated, it’s causing you to rethink what kind of business. Traditional or The Connected. And what does a connected business model look like, it’s the Open & Free Business Model. And that you can learn here on owengreaves.com.
