With social media absolutely booming, many business owners are trying to keep up with the times and get their company name out in the cyber world. For most small business owners, however, finding the time to keep up with their social media efforts can be very challenging. Finding the right person who understands your industry and can portray your business well over the web may not be the easiest task. The right person needs to be able to position your company in a way that will help you meet your company goals and help make your business a success.
David Armano with Harvard Business Review gives six ways to help business owners find the right person for their social media efforts.
“As organizations move their social media strategies from theory to practice, they discover a difficult truth they must confront: Finding the "perfect" social media talent is practically impossible.
To start, the field is flooded with thousands of self proclaimed "experts" who have reinvented themselves to take advantage what looks like a growing business opportunity. Maybe they do know social media, but many don't. They need to be vetted.”
Read more…
Showing posts with label Social Networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Networking. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Technology Isn't Everything
We all love our technology – email, social media, our websites and our PDAs. Technology is a great productivity tool and most of us have a hard time imaging life without electronic communications. However, there was a time, not too long ago, when we didn’t have email, laptops, smart phones, etc. As business leaders, we need to be able to leverage technology but maintain relationships.
Business owners will often say that people are their greatest assets. But in fact, their people are PEOPLE. And no amount of technology can replace human interaction. I am seeing too many business leaders using electronic communications as their primary way of communicating, in some cases it is their only form of communication. When is the last time that you dealt with an employee or vendor issue by issuing a tense email rather than having a meeting or picking up the phone and have a conversation?
Yes, it is easy to hit the send key at any hour of any day from anywhere. But there are times when in-person human interaction where you can see body language or at least hear voice tones. All too often, the tone we mean to send in an electronic communication is interpreted very differently by the receiving party.
I know of a business owner’s employee who received a very terse email from the owner. The employee was upset; the owner wasn’t clear in their communication and didn’t bother to talk to the employee before sending the email. The employee, who previously had been a high producing employee, suddenly went to “average” according to the owner. After having conversations with them, the employee felt that it wasn’t worth the extra effort to go above and beyond if the owner was just going to hide behind email and send messages without getting all of the facts because they wanted to deal with an issue quickly and easily.
We are a social species and thrive on interaction with others. The work environment is no different, our employees, vendors/suppliers, partners, etc. are great assets but more importantly they are human. To be a great leader you need to develop relationships, not just electronic communications. Technology should be used to enhance and improve the relationship, not take the place of 1-1 communications. I love my Blackberry and other forms of electronic media but email, tweets, Facebook messages and the like are not a replacement for in-person meetings or an old fashioned phone call!
Business owners will often say that people are their greatest assets. But in fact, their people are PEOPLE. And no amount of technology can replace human interaction. I am seeing too many business leaders using electronic communications as their primary way of communicating, in some cases it is their only form of communication. When is the last time that you dealt with an employee or vendor issue by issuing a tense email rather than having a meeting or picking up the phone and have a conversation?
Yes, it is easy to hit the send key at any hour of any day from anywhere. But there are times when in-person human interaction where you can see body language or at least hear voice tones. All too often, the tone we mean to send in an electronic communication is interpreted very differently by the receiving party.
I know of a business owner’s employee who received a very terse email from the owner. The employee was upset; the owner wasn’t clear in their communication and didn’t bother to talk to the employee before sending the email. The employee, who previously had been a high producing employee, suddenly went to “average” according to the owner. After having conversations with them, the employee felt that it wasn’t worth the extra effort to go above and beyond if the owner was just going to hide behind email and send messages without getting all of the facts because they wanted to deal with an issue quickly and easily.
We are a social species and thrive on interaction with others. The work environment is no different, our employees, vendors/suppliers, partners, etc. are great assets but more importantly they are human. To be a great leader you need to develop relationships, not just electronic communications. Technology should be used to enhance and improve the relationship, not take the place of 1-1 communications. I love my Blackberry and other forms of electronic media but email, tweets, Facebook messages and the like are not a replacement for in-person meetings or an old fashioned phone call!
Friday, July 10, 2009
How to Generate Buzz
If you’re like most organizations, the sales team is on your back. Or you are part of the sales team. They—or you—need more customers. You feel like you are being stretched in 10 different directions. On top of everything, your budget just got slashed and your team is dwindling.
Through years of experimentation, testing and evaluating results, here is a methodology that absolutely works. The methodology is designed to increase customer acquisition quickly while minimizing the cost. The great thing about this system is that it is a system. It really isn’t voodoo rocket science but sometimes common sense approaches are overlooked in favor of the latest quick fix elixir.
Here’s the Five Step Process
1. Understanding Your Customer
In this all-important first step the goal is understanding. To persuade someone, to motivate someone, to sell someone something, you really need to understand that person and their point of view. You need to begin to understand the people you are trying to communicate with by creating a profile that will help you gain a “feeling” for them.
2. Defining the Offer
Now, you must communicate the features and benefits of your product or service to the customers. Most people overdo the feature part instead of emphasizing the benefits. Remember, people do not buy things for what they are; they buy things for what they do for them. How the offer is delivered is part of the system. A dedicated area on your website can be created to describe the offer. The offer can be a quick tour of your product/service, a web event or webinar, white paper, special pricing or information. These components are relatively inexpensive to produce and can be leveraged in a variety of ways.
3. Setting Up the Processes
This is the nuts and bolts phase of the system. When a prospect registers to attend an event or receive one of your offers, they are entered into the sales cycle. It is very important that a system be put in place to capture the prospect’s contact information and to understand their level of qualification and buying interest. The more information you can gather, the better targeted a marketer you can be. The system can be a complex database or a simple word document—most importantly it should be a system that works easily for you.
4. Go to Market Plan
Here is the heart and soul of the program. It is where the rubber meets the road. Once you understand your customer, have a good offer and processes in place, you must develop a plan. The plan includes the strategies and various tactics targeted to the appropriate audience. Among the most effective marketing tools available today are direct mail, email, newsletters, social marketing (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) collateral, user conferences, partnership marketing, public relations and last but certainly not least referral marketing. You must plan those tactics to work together as a campaign and then execute, execute, execute.
5. Measuring Marketing Results, Increasing Sales
Tracking your lead generation campaigns and seeing the results for yourself is the real power of this methodology. You’re building a bridge between your marketing campaigns and your sales efforts. You have a system set up with your processes, but the real trick is to analyze and measure the results to see what works and doesn’t work and then only repeat the successes.
Through years of experimentation, testing and evaluating results, here is a methodology that absolutely works. The methodology is designed to increase customer acquisition quickly while minimizing the cost. The great thing about this system is that it is a system. It really isn’t voodoo rocket science but sometimes common sense approaches are overlooked in favor of the latest quick fix elixir.
Here’s the Five Step Process
1. Understanding Your Customer
In this all-important first step the goal is understanding. To persuade someone, to motivate someone, to sell someone something, you really need to understand that person and their point of view. You need to begin to understand the people you are trying to communicate with by creating a profile that will help you gain a “feeling” for them.
2. Defining the Offer
Now, you must communicate the features and benefits of your product or service to the customers. Most people overdo the feature part instead of emphasizing the benefits. Remember, people do not buy things for what they are; they buy things for what they do for them. How the offer is delivered is part of the system. A dedicated area on your website can be created to describe the offer. The offer can be a quick tour of your product/service, a web event or webinar, white paper, special pricing or information. These components are relatively inexpensive to produce and can be leveraged in a variety of ways.
3. Setting Up the Processes
This is the nuts and bolts phase of the system. When a prospect registers to attend an event or receive one of your offers, they are entered into the sales cycle. It is very important that a system be put in place to capture the prospect’s contact information and to understand their level of qualification and buying interest. The more information you can gather, the better targeted a marketer you can be. The system can be a complex database or a simple word document—most importantly it should be a system that works easily for you.
4. Go to Market Plan
Here is the heart and soul of the program. It is where the rubber meets the road. Once you understand your customer, have a good offer and processes in place, you must develop a plan. The plan includes the strategies and various tactics targeted to the appropriate audience. Among the most effective marketing tools available today are direct mail, email, newsletters, social marketing (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) collateral, user conferences, partnership marketing, public relations and last but certainly not least referral marketing. You must plan those tactics to work together as a campaign and then execute, execute, execute.
5. Measuring Marketing Results, Increasing Sales
Tracking your lead generation campaigns and seeing the results for yourself is the real power of this methodology. You’re building a bridge between your marketing campaigns and your sales efforts. You have a system set up with your processes, but the real trick is to analyze and measure the results to see what works and doesn’t work and then only repeat the successes.
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