The recent events in Times Square brought to mind a line from the Dead and a thought about business.
NYC’s bacon was pretty much saved by street vendors. Like security cameras, they are constantly surveying the area near them. Unlike those cameras, they are able to interpret what they’re seeing and make immediate notes of what’s different or out-of-place, which is what happened over the weekend. So of course, this came to mind:
Wake up to find out
that you are the eyes of the world
I tell my clients, when they ask about what marketing points they might attack, to listen. Not to me – to everyone else. To customers and partners first and the rest of the world generally. If you don’t have tools in place to do that, building your listening posts should be high up on your agenda. While many business owners in the Times Square area think the hawkers are a nuisance, I’m sure they’re pretty grateful today that they have those eyes out there. Where are yours?
To a certain extent, I’m sure you read the trades and maybe even have some web sites you go to on a regular basis to try to keep up. Frankly that’s not good enough any more. There’s too much happening on a real-time basis for you to rely on weekly updates. If you don’t know how to build up targeted RSS feeds into a reader, you should learn. If you’re not sorting through Twitter‘s data stream or other social sites to gauge sentiments about you, your field, and competitors, you’re getting left in the dust.
A little more Dead to close but a great reminder:
once in a while you get shown in the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right
Of course, you have to be looking! Are you?
Consult Keith 