I don't think there is anyone at this point who doesn't realize the Internet has forever changed the way business is or can be conducted. To understand the value of the Internet in terms of what it can do for your business, regardless of the market you're in or the size of your business, requires first hand knowledge — participation.
To Start, Keep in Mind:
Key in what the Internet has done via blogs, instant messaging, social networking, wikis, and other online collaboration tools is the ability to have direct contact with individuals — anywhere in the world.
There are many tools, often free, which enable a group to participate and collaborate together in one space for all to share and see the information available in its entirety.
To start with online participation does not have to be public, even with social networking.
You can start within the privacy of your own company and keep it for internal use only.
You can make it a private collaboration between a customer or a vendor.
To begin you need a very specific, simple business goal. The most successful are laser focused, target a specific group, and keep number of participants small.
Small group keeps the committee mindset out of the project, minimizes conflicts, and more likely to stay focused on the goal.
Simple goal doesn't overwhelm the group, easier to set guidelines and rules of use, and easier to make adjustments to get it accomplished, based on user input.
Helps to determine which tools best suites your needs.
Project Ideas:
Plan and coordinate an event
Manage a project i.e., product development, product launch, maintenance program, coordinate market research, create a proposal
Documentation controls of marketing materials
Collect ideas on market changes in a specific market or product area
What is the difference between social networking and social media? How do you approach these so you are productive and provide value in turn?
As mentioned in the previous post the first step in online social activities is to listen. By listening you'll discover not only trends and gain customer feedback, but resources you can use in your business, where key players, customers, and prospects "hang-out" online. Listening gives you the places to start and guides you in how to participate to help you to be productive and provide value when you begin to participate in the conversation.
These two videos by Common Craft video productions give you the value in social networking and social media and perspective on what each one provides.
What are some key business benefits you value with social networking and social media?
You've probably heard or read the first step you take in a social media plan is to listen. Your next thoughts are probably — don't have time, why should I, and even if I want to, how? One place to listen is on Twitter.
The short video produced by Common Craft video productions does a great job of showing you the potential value for your business and how to listen to Twitter conversations.
What are some of the insights you've discovered with Twitter Search?
When you look at your business from within and make decisions based on internal perceptions only you miss out on a very important factor — customer perception.
You can make business decisions based only on the numbers, but customers don't perceive or buy things just by the numbers. You cannot always track the intangibles, but they still affect your bottom line. First and foremost whether it's business to business or business to consumer the driver to buy is emotion. The rationale for the purchase comes later.
When you decide to outsource your support for cost cutting measures only did you take into consideration how that distances you from your customer? What are the motivators for the third party provider? Does it match with your customer's expectations with your business? Will they continue to be your customer? What is the cost of getting a customer? What is the cost of losing your customer?
If you decide to close an avenue of customer communication on the Internet, because of cost or lack of internal support and time do you just abandon the project and leave it like an abandoned building? What perception does this give to your customers?
When you decide to cut back your advertisement, how does this impact your visibility in the marketplace? How does this impact the number of inquiries or leads? Maybe a better approach is to change where and how you raise your visibility in the marketplace?
Here's some interesting research just published by eMarketer.com.
What perceptions are you unknowingly giving your customers?
Starting a business from scratch, growing a company, turning around a troubled company, maintaining success with inevitable upturns and downturns in the market or running a multinational company requires different skills. What does it require at each of these points in its existence? How do you market to achieve the different business goals?
Business growth and maturity — developing marketing intelligence is not something the business does by itself, but is intricately tied to the individuals who make up the company. Everyone is responsible for marketing — whether it's internal or external. What is done within the company always impacts the customer.
Marketing is not something that is done once or periodically — it's always part of a successful company. It takes the business goals — defines what needs to be done and how they need to be implemented in order to be achieved. For a company to continue as a viable business a culture of learning, development, and growing competencies are always in the marketing mix.
Brought together in this video are two well-known individuals that have grown up in businesses started from scratch that grew into multinational companies, which have been part of major technology evolutions in the business world. No matter what scale of business you want to be involved in or achieve, as you watch and listen, imagine all the changes they made in their competencies as their businesses grew up.
