What Happened To Target’s Canadian Brand?
Let’s first ask the question, ” What Is A Brand?”.
It’s not a Logo , it’s not a Name….a brand is a series of expectations that people have of your product or service, based on the promises you’ve made.
Using that as the definition of a brand, answering the question of what happened to Target’s Brand in Canada, it was broken from the moment they opened their doors. They didn’t keep their promises, lower prices, more selection, and so on.
They broke their promises, and now they are closing 133 stores in Canada….why? Because you didn’t trust them when they said they would make good on their promises. You had a bad experience with Target Canada.
So what’s your businesses Brand? Have you gone the traditional Industrial Age way of thinking, where your brand is a logo or a name, and don’t really care, or have you decided to give your market positive experiences, based on the promises you kept, reflecting how much you do care. The later is the new connected business model, it’s open & it’s free….The Open & Free Business Model.
Social Media Is Not A Business Model!
Dare I be so bold to say it, Social Media is not a business model.
I struggle with the resistance of business owners still today, hanging onto old ways of doing things, trying be in control, running around in circles trying to keep up, business has changed / is changing to where you must deliver your product or service to your customers, if you don’t, they’ll click and be gone. It wasn’t long ago when you had to go to the store, we used film for pictures, we no longer need a land-line, and kept current reading newspapers, now we just have to make a few clicks on a mobile device!
Customers are taking away the business owners power, they are choosing how and when, and how much they’ll pay. This has very little to do with Social Media, it does have everything to do with how business really is, and eventually you will either embrace it, or continue to resist it…either way, you’ll have to change how think about your customers, and how you run your business. Sure there will always be certain types of business that need manual labour, but many of those jobs, as much as you don’t want to believe it, will be lost to automation, this technological change will be devastating to the families relying on those jobs.
This has very little to do with Social Media, it does however, have everything to do with The Open & Free Business Model!
Social Media is NOT a business model, you don’t plug your business into Social Media, you plug Social Media INTO your business.
Do you prefer Blogs Or Social Networks?
Today I ask the question:
“Do you prefer comments on a Blog, or conversations on FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Social Networks?”
I prefer Blogs, I like to keep the conversations here, not spread over multiple Social networks, at least here everything is self-contained. It’s easier to pull together smart thinking when all the comments and thinking are in one site when a question is posed. Now, having said that, you’ll notice this Blog doesn’t get many comments, maybe my content just isn’t interesting, or people just don’t agree and don’t take the time to let me know. It matters not, this is my space, it’s also a space for people who are interested, like-minded if you will, in my research, my point of view, my perspective, my foresight…it gets cataloged here on this Blog.
Now, I can’t control where you want to talk about my ideas, my blog posts, I just go where you are….when I have the time. The easiest way to get my writing…sign-up for my updates, then it hits the Inbox, that’s where we can have real in-depth conversations.
I understand it’s easier to comment on a Social Network, I publish to Social Networks with the hopes you will come here, at least then you might look around, read more and get exposed to more of my ideas and thoughts.
So if you aren’t commenting here, you may have already answered my question, or maybe…you never thought about it before. Never the less, feel free to comment here, I would love to get your view on the topic.
Do you prefer Blogs Or Social Networks?
2 Things Entrepreneurs Must Do to Win Big
It’s simple really, but most of us miss it.
1.) When the idea arrives, you serve the idea.
In order to see it thru, you must be committed to the idea, you serve the idea until it is satisfied. The idea might not be what you had hoped for, but you still must serve it until it’s the best it can be.
2.) You have to feel compelled to tell someone about your idea before you go to bed. That’s how good your idea has to be.
If the idea is the best, and it will work, if it’s a good as you truly believe it is, then you must tell someone…if it’s that good, you won’t be able to help yourself, you’ll be desperately trying to tell someone before you turn in for the day.
My Predictions On Blogging 5 Years Ago – Was I Wrong?
Five years ago, March 1st, 2010, I wrote about what Blogs might look like in 5 years, I also threw out some numbers that I predicted would happen. Let’s go back and see how close I was back then.
Here is my opening paragraph:
“I can’t help but wonder what blogging will look like in 5 years, blogs for the most part are static and becoming integrated with Social Media Tools. There’s only 1.7 Billion people on the net and over 235 Million Blogs out there. Projections clearly show that over the next 3 – 5 years 5 Billion people will be on the Internet. Will Blogging be the primary platform? I don’t think so, everything is going more and more mobile, on the go.”
At that time only 1.7 Billion people were using the Internet. There were ONLY 235 Million Blogs, and data also suggested that in the next 3 -5 years there would be 5 Billion people using the Internet.
Today, over 3 Billion people are using the Internet, that’s 2 Billion short of projections, but that’s mostly due to the speed in which Internet access could be provided. Google & 3BNetworks are making the Internet available to all the 3rd world countries, but not as quickly as they had hoped.
The number of blogs on the Internet today is, well….seemingly impossible to track, there is no accurate count that I’m aware of.
Let’s look at paragraph #2:
“Will there be a place for blogs? Will there be a need to for content to be new and fresh multiple times a day? The money won’t be the content, it will be in the filtering and curation of content produced. More products or systems will be invented to manage all this data, data will be connected to data, there will be a huge need for filtering.”
There was a time, recently…that blogging was considered dead. But ask the question, will there be a place for blogs? Obviously blogging is not dead, and there is still a place & need for blogging. The money in blogging is actually the content, original content…there is bigger money in the curation, and the delivering of that filtering and curating. It’s kind of like the retail market, the channel of distribution, more information, curated, and lower prices. Whoever has curated a large amount of data, and has figured out how to deliver it to the masses at a low price, and even free, is making large piles of money. Not much has changed here, the old way, or the old attitude still prevails here, in terms of how we think about business, and how it is being done. One thing still rings true, it’s impossible to read every blog on the Internet, so those who filter and curate have a leg up.
And the last paragraph:
“There is much to do, and it will be interesting to see how things scale as the rise in Internet users climbs to 5 Billion. How will it impact your business? How will it impact your blog? How will we rise above the noise we can’t rise above now? The answers are forth coming, but we haven’t figured them out yet. We better hurry, time is running short. Will this blog even show up on the radar screen, it barely does now! So many questions and so many unanswered. We spend hours a day working on our blogs thinking it will look and feel the same years down the road. But I can help but wonder, what will blogs look like in 5 years?”
All these questions are still valid today, why? It boils down to one thing….we still haven’t made the paradigm shift. We are still hanging on to the old ways of doing business, organizing business, and we are still trying force feed an Industrial Age to the masses. We just can’t seem to embrace the change required, it’s too hard I guess.
In some circles, change is happening just for the sake of change, and in others, it’s moving to fast to accept as a new way of life. No matter how difficult it might be to make this paradigm shift, the blog doesn’t appear to be going away, everything is just more mobile. Mobility is here to stay, and is also changing, technology is being embedded into everything these days, including our clothes.
So, was I wrong? Sure, but not because I should have been, I was wrong because most of what I saw, and see today, is just taking longer, but it’s still going to happen. Is blogging dead, not by a long shot…you’re reading it now : ) And yes, there is still much to be done. To be honest, I’m disappointed in where blogging is today, but that to is changing. I am concerned as well, technology is fooling us, we are allowing it to control our lives. Texting and driving is all the proof I need.