Tag Archives: business

August 13, 2012 · 9:25 am

Stop Behaving Like A Brand

A research study I read last week got me thinking about how I work with my clients on their use of Facebook and other social media.

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Wildfire, a company that makes software for social media interaction (Facebook contest pages, for example) conducted an analysis of 10,000 social media campaigns over the last 9 months and focused on the top 10% of performing efforts.  The point was to identify strategies that seemed to work well.  If you’re interested you can get the report (registration required) here.   As reported by The RealTime Report:

Wildfire finds that for each person who shares content from a campaign on Facebook, 14 new people will learn about that campaign in their news feed. In addition, for every 10 advocates (those who are capable of bringing new followers to a campaign) a brand gets to join its social campaign, they’ll get 13 other people to interact with the campaign in some way. Overall, brands that are highly effective in engaging with advocates and content-sharers via campaigns see three times the interaction (Likes, shares, comments) on their Facebook pages when compared to other brands.

Impressive although I wonder how the transition to Timeline and the inability to set a contest or other Wildfire-type tab as the default on a brand page has impacted the results.  Even so, only 17% of fans share brand activity.  Then again, why should they?  Too many brands are focused on building a bigger audience (generating “Likes”) and not on any sort of collaboration among the fan base.  The companies who use Facebook and other social media well aren’t using those platforms as glorified broadcast channels.  Ask yourself what brands you follow (if you follow any) engage you.  I don’t mean they keep you coming back looking for discounts but they almost seem to be people.  You’re interested in what’s going on with them.

One of the strategies suggested in the report is to provide clear calls to action.  I don’t disagree, but how many of your friends ONLY post messages asking you to sign a petition or do something else that they feel is important but might have little relevance to you?  Providing exclusive content is a great strategy but not if that content only has value to the brand.  What’s the user benefit?

Social media isn’t like other media.  As a company, it’s less about you than it is your consumer.  That can be a hard change of perspective but it’s one companies need to make.  Stop behaving like a brand and start behaving like a friend.  I know of companies that do this well – tell me which ones you think are on that list.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under digital media

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 8, 2012 · 9:47 am

Poison Ivy

One of the hazards of hitting a golf ball a little off line (OK, maybe more than a little) is a close encounter with poison ivy.

Poison Ivy

(Photo credit: Mark Sardella)

It’s everywhere on the course I play. When you keep the ball away from the weeds, it’s not a factor but when you chase one into the edges of the course, you often come home with an itchy reminder of a bad shot.  At some point over the last week I must have had a close encounter with some of it since I’ve now got a few seriously itchy patches on me. This, of course, got me thinking about business.

As you might be able to tell from the photo, the plant has attractive, innocuous little flowers.  As long as you don’t touch the leaves, the urushiol stays put and you don’t itch.  Unfortunately, the oil sticks to everything that touches the plant, and if you touch whatever it was (like a golf ball) later on, you’re probably going to have an allergic reaction that brings on the fits of scratching.  The oil doesn’t go away when the plants die either.  You can get just as bad a case touching a dormant or dead plant in winter as you can in the middle of summer.  The business point?

There are people out there who are just like poison ivy.  We bring them into our organizations because on the surface they seem harmless.  Maybe we notice that they resemble something against which we’d been warned (leaflets three, let it be!) but we’re distracted by something – finding a golf ball, making a hire, closing a deal.  Once we let them touch our business, however, they cause all sorts of harmful reactions and those reactions persist long after we’ve freed ourselves from contact with the plant or the poison.

We’ve all had close encounters with human versions of the plant.  Lieber and Stoller wrote about one – “you can look but you better not touch”.  These people do “come on like a rose” but we’re well-advised to stop, take a hard look, and keep our distances.  The short-term gain is rarely worth the long-term misery.

Want to add any thoughts about someone you’ve encountered like this?  Hit the comments.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,

August 6, 2012 · 8:48 am

What I Learned By Getting Whupped

Yesterday was the final round of my golf club’s championship. I made it all the way to the final match during which I was beaten like a rented mule. I did announce that it was my birthday before we teed off but my opponent’s good wishes ended as soon as we hit the first shots.  I suppose it would be pretty understandable if I was upset, but I’m not. I’ve never made it this far in the competition and the loss wasn’t so much about my playing badly as it was about his playing well. Which is, of course, a business point.

These are a few of the things I learned both prior to and during the butt-kicking:

  • You can have butterflies as long as you can get them to fly in formation.  It’s amazing how much raw energy one can get from being nervous.  You might get it speaking publicly; I got it on the first tee.  My thing was to focus on it  and then to dismiss it.  Noting what’s going on isn’t the same as getting caught up in it.
  • Breaking large tasks down into small pieces really does work.  Thinking about having to win a lot of holes of golf to get to the final was kind of daunting.  Making one good swing to get to the next shot was relatively easy.  Getting revenues to double by the end of the fiscal year is hard; closing one more deal this week seems do-able.
  • Getting beaten isn’t the same as losing.  Avis made a pretty good business being number 2.  Very few categories only can support a single player.
  • Finally, I learned not to compound my mistakes.  It’s hard to hit out of deep rough 200 yards to the green and it’s a much better idea to take one’s medicine, pitch out, and try to knock it close from back in the fairway.  We often make mistakes in business but if we don’t compound them we might just make a surprise par and win the hole.

I realize playing for a club championship isn’t the PGA Tour but it was fun to get a taste of high-level competition.  Like business, it’s far more taxing mentally than it is physically, an ultimately the ability to focus mentally helps overcome the physical challenges.  Fore!

Enhanced by Zemanta

5 Comments

Filed under Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,