Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’
Don't Just Be a Business – Be a Social Business
I came away from a business meeting today and I couldn’t stop shaking my head, it seems business owners just can’t see past the next project or payroll deadline. Yes payroll is important, but only looking two weeks out seems like a bad strategy to me, call me crazy. The other funny thing I find with business owners is, they love to be social, take you out lunch, buy coffee and go to business conferences. But why can’t they see there business as social, leveraging their current base of customers through social networks. It seems the “social” part is only something they do personally rather than letting their business be open and social.
Being a social business means you are listening to, interacting with, and letting the conversation be the sell for your business. I understand that scares the day lights out of business owners but, imagine what might happen if you let your client base communicate with you in a more intimate way. Being a social business means you are open and transparent, collaborating instead of dominating, making it easy for your customers to do business with you without the controlling red tape. Giving them simple and easy ways to make payment, providing packaging that’s attention getting and making sure the interface is appealing and easy to navigate. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it, then why isn’t it happening with more regularity?
If you ask a business owner if their customers are the most important part of their business, what do you think they would say? I bet they pat their backs raw with a glowing report on how they support and give their customers the best service. But if you gave the customer an opportunity to answer that question would it be the same glowing review? Allowing your customers to express themselves, and share their experiences in dealing with your brand (you) is a scary thing isn’t it, why? You don’t really believe that you are giving the best service and providing the best products, thats why. If you did you would let your customers speak for you, it’s called word of mouth, and that’s at the very center of what a social business is.
The more digital we get, the more it’s about the experience with a brand, then asking the very people that had that experience, what they thought and how they felt about dealing with you. This is where the trust begins to show itself, if your customers trust your brand and service, you get a good grade, but if not…..
The truth is, business owners have to make a paradigm shift, we are in a connected world and getting more connected each and every day. A connected and networked audience is dramatically different than the audience you used to be able to control. The control mechanism is breaking apart and business owners don’t know how to deal with that problem. You cannot control a connected audience, pure and simple. Why? People are re-grouping on the fly that’s why, they are fickle and always on the move. To keep them you have to do something special, create a magnetic brand that builds attraction and trust, then you can turn that attraction into a transaction.
Business owners think about this, the more in control we (you) are, the more out of touch we become with our customers. Don’t just be a business, be a social business and get connected with them.
So is your business just a business, or is it a social business? If you don’t know or would like to learn what that might look like for your business, attend my workshop April 30th. Send me an e-mail for details and to reserve a seat: owen@owengreaves.com
Mini Workshop – Book Your Seat Now – Seats Still Available.
Social Media = The Open & Free Business Model – Workshop
Book your seat NOW – 1st Come 1st Serve – ONLY 20 10 Seats available!
How to give your content away and generate revenue!
This mini workshop is being held in Abbotsford, B.C., and will touch on three primary areas:
TRENDS
We’ll look at trends and what’s happening around the world, and how these trends will impact your business online & off. Today there are 1.7 Billion people on the Internet, in the next 3 – 5 years that number will be 5 Billion. How will you get their attention?
THE OPEN & FREE BUSINESS MODEL
This is not a skill set, it’s a paradigm shift and this shift is painful, I’ll layout why and what this model might look like for your business, I’ll also show examples of how businesses are using this model. We’ll talk about Content, Social Media Strategies and tools.
BREAKOUT SESSION
By the time we get to this section, you’ll already have some new creative ideas, and ways to increase revenue. We’ll work through how you can build & implement your ideas with your staff.
When the workshop is over you will have a much better view of what’s coming, a framework to help you adapt, plus you will have a simple step by step approach for implementing new revenue streams.
The workshop will be held on April 30th, Noon – 4PM and it’s just $100. There are only 10 seats available and are on a 1st come 1st serve basis.
To reserve your seat please reply ASAP by e-mail at owen@owengreaves.com for all the details, DO IT NOW!
The world is coming, and I look forward to helping you get ready.
Owen Greaves Consulting
Domino's Pizza goes to the People
This is yet another example of how companies should go after new money, using traditional media tools and Social Media as the primary tools. Not every business can afford to do this but you can scale it to fit your budget if you get creative enough. Getting new customers is what it’s all about, I’m willing to venture that Dominos won new customers because they went out and made Dominos fun.
Watch the video at PizzaHoldouts.com and then think of ways you could generate new money from your existing product or service. While you’re there, be sure to follow them on Twitter & FaceBook, you can even order a Pizza!
Guest Post by Ronda Payne – Social Media & Sanity
Ronda Payne
Social Media & Sanity
I’m a writer. Let me rephrase that: I’m a writer and an extrovert. See the problem? I’m an extrovert, passionate about my introverted occupation. So, I built a network through social media to keep me sane.
Not long before taking the freelancing plunge, I created a profile on FaceBook. Friends said it was great to stay in touch, but I mostly used it for games. I’d heard of Twitter but, I couldn’t understand the point. Who cared that I’d just had sushi for lunch?
Within a few months of going out on my own, I began feeling isolated. I missed the ability to shout out my office door and get a reply more significant than the dog poking her head in.
I embraced Twitter. I started ‘following’ local ‘Tweeps’ and other writers. I began to see the point. It was a shout out the office door, a connection with others who were shouting out their office doors. I dropped the games on FaceBook and began status updates and interacting with my ‘friends’.
FaceBook is primarily personal, but sometimes I share with work contacts – it’s relaxed and less tactical. Twitter is more work-related, but I do occasionally mention that I’m going out for sushi for lunch!
Sure, I fell into the ‘time-suck’ trap, then, I got a grip – I check FaceBook in the morning when I start my day, or I’ll pop in if someone sends a note. Twitter, I limit to browsing recent tweets and ‘tweeting back’. I do this only when I take a break to avoid constantly checking in. I don’t scan through pages of tweets – because, like the office door, it’s a moment. It’s okay to miss what someone has shouted out.
Social media has become a manageable, necessary part of my business life and, although I’m on other sites, Twitter and FaceBook are my mainstays. There are people there I look forward to seeing and if I’m facing a challenge, or want to share, I shout out my office door to them.
Sometimes I get an answer, sometimes I don’t. The point is that I can seek out advice from the network I’ve built and know that there are people on Twitter and FaceBook who respond when they can.
While social media is a business tool that allows me to connect with others and discuss work issues, for this extrovert, being able to shout out my office door is a tool to staying sane.
Ronda Payne
What Will Blogs Look Like In 5 Years?
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 reflect 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.
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 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?