Part II: Inspiring Story

Inspiring Story: Team RadioShack

Don't Get Carried Away on Social-Media

There is a lot of hype out there on how social-media can help your business grow. While this is true in some respects, it is very important to realize the effort required to maintain a social-media campaign is quite extensive. The appeal of social media is quite enticing to many businesses, and for good reasons. Social media is the only medium in the electronic world that provides the exposure that some advertisement mediums can never promise. Moreover, social media is a tool that you can initiate instantly with minimal costs. So what’s not to like? While social media can provide a great marketing platform for a business, the demand of maintaining it for a reasonable return is not negligible. The most common misconception about a social media campaign is that it will operate with minimal involvement from internal resources of your business. So as you consider the social media as a tool to promote your business keep the following in mind:

• Dabble Most of us probably have an account with one of the social-networking sites, but if you have limited exposure go ahead and explore. This will at least provide you with an idea of what is involved.

• Develop a social-media plan Don’t just jump straight in, but DO evaluate and develop a plan that captures your goals and objectives with a timeline.

• Who’s in charge? Are you going to directly manage the social media efforts (ie tweeting, responding to Facebook fans, blogging, etc.). To be effective, you must spend considerable time on all the mediums that you select, so it is crucial that you have someone allocated to be the social media manager. Otherwise, like anything else, if it is not assigned, it will fall through the cracks.

• Topics Establish your topics for the at least the next month. You can maintain the same topic over a period of one day to one week, but it is essential that you change it up. Keep in mind that your fans or followers are looking for something interesting that can impact their day.

• Measure Think of a few ways that you can measure success. This can be the number of fans you have on Facebook, level of interaction on your wall page, followers on Twitter, conversion to purchase from any of the above, etc.

• Measure again Now that you have a lot of followers, how many are buying, what revenue if any is being generated from your efforts on social media, do you need to make an adjustment. Or maybe you don’t have a lot of followers, what do you do next?

It's Not an Overnight Thang

We are creatures of immediacy. Our world today has been intricately developed to cater to our incessant desires of “NOW MATTERS”! The less time we spend somewhere and the quicker we can receive the service or product, the more satisfied we become. UPS and FedEx can deliver a package practically to any point in the world overnight. We can purchase almost anything we want without ever taking a step outside of our home; scratch that, you can purchase anything you want in the world, anywhere you are in the world, as long as you have an internet connection or a smart-phone. When using your credit card, you no longer have to sign for some purchases. The fact is, we are evolving with an infrastructure that serves and conditions our expectation of instantaneous return. While this is rewarding as consumers, this concept and expectation becomes problematic for business owners.

For business owners or entrepreneurs this concept of immediacy is in direct conflict with the reality of growing and nurturing a model that realizes return over a period of time, which may not be aligned with our conditioned expectations. This is problematic within a majority of circumstances in the business world, and we have to ensure that our strategic plan does not integrate objectives and goals that are unrealistic in relation to the timeline.

At the highest level, your planning should consist of short and long-term objectives and goals. This categorization should provide a means in simplifying your expectations for your tactical initiatives. Furthermore, it provides you the ruler to measure your progress and helps to calibrate your expectations and minimize the tendency to react to situations which were previously perceived as a threat.

Within each short and long-term objective, ensure that each is practical and achievable. With marketing activities, it is essential for a small-business to consider budget and resources. A simple evaluation of activities in regards to impact and ease-of-implementation is beneficial, as it provides a process to prioritize your marketing. Practical and achievable, this will set the tone of your expectations.

Change: How Will You Get Noticed in 2010?

My wife considers me “Metrosexual”; I won’t define it but you can look it up at Wikipedia. I am no longer as concerned about my appearance as I used to be(okay maybe a little), primarily because I live in Central Oregon (being athletically fit is more of a concern here), have four children and have now been married to my beautiful wife for 13 years! However, in the last few months, I have decided to engage in a little experiment. I have been making a few changes to my fashion and appearance without going “over-the-top”, all the while keeping tabs on how my family, friends and acquaintances react or do not react. Keep in mind that in the last four years I have maintained a fairly simple approach to my wardrobe; however, with a little bit of flair that is not always within what is considered normal in Central Oregon, thus... metrosexual.

The changes I made were to wear a scarf more regularly, a hat that is not of the baseball variety (duckbill), ankle boots that would not be considered formal in metropolitan cities, and a hairdo that is not my typical style. I, of course, wore these at varying times in different combinations, and never all at one time, so as to minimize the “make-over” impression. Needless to say the reactions were plentiful.

The most interesting observation I made were the repeated comments to the changes. Even after two to three weeks into the change, my circle of family, friends, and acquaintances continued to comment. The hat of course was probably the most popular, garnering the most comments, while my wearing the scarf and changing my hairdo were not far behind. The shoes certainly made an impression but were not nearly as successful in soliciting praises as the previous three. I could go into detail into each one, but the take-away from the story is that change gets attention. No matter how minor the change, your audience takes notice.

Integrate an element of change into your business in 2010 and get noticed.