Amid the Noise and Haste

Making Twitter More Useful for Business

John Jantsch over at Duct Tape Marketing has some great tips for making your tweets more useful, especially for tracking ROI...a few of his suggestions include:

• Let’s say I find a site I think is cool and tweet it. From my dashboard I can see lots of folks jumped on that and passed it around and also thought it was cool. Bingo! - I’ve got a topic for an expanded blog post.
• Let’s say I write a blog post and point it out on twitter - I can get real-time feedback, over and above comments, on how hot the topic was
• Let’s say people seem to like certain types of tweets, judging by how they interact, than others - could that help me tweet better?

Really, this is all about connectivity and thinking outside of the box to find new ways to share content, and other's.

Helpful tools John shared for doing this, and tracking results include

HootSuite

CoTweet

SU.PR

Objective Marketer

Team Building

When it comes to companies with many different deparments the unfortunate downside is silos.  Each department can become so focused on their own tasks at hand that the other departments become secondary in priority.  There are two key things I have seen when this happens:

1. Departments are made up of people (the people part usually gets lost); and
2. Departments need to work together as a team to keep the machine running

The Reforming Project Management Blog had a great list of questions to ask when dealing with "Team Communication and Health."  Asking these questions can help identify gaps in communication that can then be addressed with team building exercises, lessons in communication and development.

• To what extent is the team positive?
• To what extent is honesty and trust evident?
• To what extent is the team learning and improving?
• Is morale improving, steady or declining?
• To what extent are team members being open and honest with each other?
• Are there barriers between trades and professions and if so How high are the silo walls?
• How long or short are tempers?
• To what extent are team members collaborating?

Friday Fun: Left Brain vs Right Brain

Are you a "big picture" oriented thinker with spacial perception and maybe a little impetuous?  Or, are you detail oriented, practical and more reality based?  Steven Levitt from the Freakonomics Blog points us to Marginal Revolution to find out.  Which way is the dancer spinning; clockwise or counter-clockwise?  Your answer will tell you which side of the brain you tend to use.

My question is, if I stare long enough I can actually change the direction I see.  So does that mean I'm a little left brained and a little right?  Or, am I just out of my mind?


Technorati Tags: perception reality thinking

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Is Price Your Only Differentiator?

John Jantsch over at the Duct Tape Marketing Blog points out a key flaw in many business descriptions - and how to break out of that mold!  Here is the exercise he suggestes

Go to the web site of your four biggest competitors, copy the
introductory paragraph from their home page and paste each on a
document. Now add the same from your own web site. Lastly, black out
any mention of the names of the firms and pass this page around the
office or to anyone familiar with your business.

Now what can this show?  Can you even pick your company's description out from the competitors?  As John points out, "what is usually painfully obvious is that each of the companies is saying essentially the same thing."

Can your customers really read the difference, the reason why they should pick you instead of their customers?  If not, all they can do is choose by price.

Instead of dollar signs as a differentiator, I suggest that you describe your company with the most simple words - no jargon!  Amid the noise and haste of business-speak and language, filter the noise and simply tell your customers what you do.


Technorati Tags: marketing

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Am Law 200 Firms are Becoming Social

By way of Doug Cornelius of KM Space and Kevin O'Keefe over at LexBlog, I found out that 8 of the top 10 Am Law 200 law firms, those with the highest gross revenue, have social networks on Facebook.  That's pretty big news.   Law firms have traditionally been slower to adopt less traditional means of marketing and business development.  But as Kevin points out, "Lawyers, amongst others, should focus on how examples of new media can
help instead of disregarding them because others use them in an
unprofessional or non business-related way."

Here are the firms with the current number of network members from each firm from Kevin's post:

1. Skadden, Arps 379 Members
2. Baker & McKenzie 728 Members
3. Jones Day 286 Members
4. Latham & Watkins 291 Members
5. Sidely Austin 199 Members
6. Mayer Browne No Network
7. White & Case 370 Members
8. Weil, Gotschal No Network
9. Shearman & Sterling 225 members
10. Kirkland & Ellis 192 Members

Scott Glavin from Enterprise 2.0 wrote about this, tipping off Doug Cornelius, and pointed out a few business uses of using a social networking site such as Facebook:

• exploring who else in your organization has the same interests and connecting.  Professional networking, but via the net.
• sharing media and updates with colleagues such as photo’s and business travel plans
• general exploration of how web2.0 can be supplemental to company goals

I think one of the biggest hurdles of adopting this new technology is eduction.  Scott's points are a fantastic entry point for why networking within a firm or company has benefits.  Internal communication is key to helping grow a business and social  networking enables this communication.  I encourage other firms and companies to adopt social networking as well. 

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Test Your Company's Customer Focus

From the department of common sense:

Shannon Holman over at If You See Something Say Something points us to A Three-Question Test of Your Company's Customer Focus from John Hagel of Edge Perspectives.  As yourselves this:

1. Who in the organization holds real decision-making power? Is it the organization that manages relationships with the customer or is it some other group?
2. What are the primary measures of performance for the firm?
3. What is the primary focus of the brand promise of the company?

From John:  "The companies that really succeed in the customer relationship business will have no trouble meeting this test.  All the rest had better decide which of the other two businesses they really want to focus on."

Social Volunteering - Making a Difference

If you haven't heard of SixDegrees.org, I urge you to check them out.  Here is a description from their about page:

You've probably heard of the Six Degrees concept. Any one person (including me, Kevin Bacon) is connected to any other person through six or fewer relationships, because it's a small world. SixDegrees.org is about using this idea to accomplish something good. It's social networking with a social conscience. Through this web site, you can support your favorite charities by donating or creating fundraising badges — as well as check out the favorite causes of other people, including celebrities.

I set up my own badge which you can see in the right hand column just below the fold of my main blog page.  I choose Hands Together Inc., an organization which is close to my heart.  I worked with Hands Together in 1992 and travelled to Haiti with my high school, Cathedral High in Springfield, MA.  We brought medical and school supplies to different poverty stricken areas such as Cite Soleil and Brunette.  And I am pleased to see how far the organization has come since then.  Here is a bit more about their programs:

Hands Together carries out its mission through projects and programs aimed at improving the quality of life for the very poor - primarily in Haiti.

Through schools, orphanages, nutrition and feeding programs, medical clinics, sustainable development projects, and partnerships with local leaders and communities, Hands Together is building a better world for thousands of suffering people in Haiti. Hands Together volunteers contribute to this work through organized delegations and programs for those with specialized training like doctors & medical professionals, builders, water well technicians, mechanics and teachers.

You can learn more about Hands Together on their site www.handstogether.org.  You can donate to Hands Together by clicking on my badge or you can find your favorite charity by going to sixdegrees.org.

Social Bookmarking - Video from Common Craft

The folks over at Common Craft have done it again.  Another great little tutorial video explaining social bookmarking and how easy it is.  I hand over the mic:

We made this video because we want others to feel the power of social bookmarking and how it works to make web pages easier to remember, organize and share.

This video is focused on Del.icio.us, but you could also try social bookmarking sites like Magnolia or Furl.

Click To Play

I have my del.icio.us bookmarks set in the right hand column of this blog, take a look!  You can also read more about social bookmarking in a few of my other posts:

• Social Bookmarking as a Knowledge Management Strategy
• Social Bookmarking to Generate Traffic for your Blog

Customer Service: A Continuous Cycle

I like to post about customer service because I think it is encompassed in every aspect of a business, from marketing to sales to IT.  Customer service is internal and external.  If your customer service isn't up to par well then your business suffers.

But customer service I think is cyclical pattern.  Coming in is customer feedback, good and bad.  Going out is not just the services provided but the partnership that is formed when customers and business work together to develop the best possible products and services that not only serve the customers but make the business better.

Jim Hasset speaks to this on his blog post, "How to turn customers into partners."  One of the points made here is that this cycle must be continuous because businesses are going global and changing constantly.  I hand the mic to Jim:

Clients must grow into partners. Partners expect solutions, trust and value-added service – exactly what David Maister described in his classic book, The Trusted Advisor. Wilson warns that any relationship – whether a marriage, a friendship, or a business partnership – is dynamic and always changing. You’d better plan to keep working at it, so that the change is in the positive direction.

What changes is your business making?  How are you working with your clients to turn them into partners?  A few key questions Jim Hassett provides come from Larry Wilson’s book Stop Selling, Start Partnering:  The New Thinking About Finding and Keeping Customers (p.96):

“What are your [client’s] goals?
How do they make money?
What can you do to help them expand their business?
Who are your [client’s] customers?
How can you help add value to your [client’s] customer?”

Notice most of the questions are about your clients, not about your business.  But asking questions like these help you to look internally to help develop solutions which will help grow your business.  The cycle continues.

Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work - New York Times

Shannon from If You See Something Say Something blog points us to an article in the NY Times about Usability Professionals.  I hand the mic to Shannon:

From the Department of Understatement:

SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it.

Link: Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work - New York Times.

But it's great to see usability and user experience design getting ink, especially in the Money section of the Times.

A lot of times, it is hard, amid the noise and haste of product development and user experience, to see the disconnect between form and function.  It seems though, according to the article, that the fog may be clearing a bit.  This is definitely good news.

From the Department of Understatement:

SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it.

Link: Technology’s Untanglers: They Make It Really Work - New York Times.

But it's great to see usability and user experience design getting ink, especially in the Money section of the Times.

A lot of times, it is hard, amid the noise and haste of product development and user experience, to see the disconnect between form and function.  It seems though, according to the article, that the fog may be clearing a bit.  This is definitely good news.