Successful Blog

Does Your Business Embrace Technology Meaningfully?

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A Guest Post by
Matt Krautstrunk

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As bloggers we understand how important interacting with a community on social media is for exposure. We tend to refer to social as “new media,” however when you think about it, some of the ancient social media channels (Myspace, corporate blogs) have been around for over 7-10 years now. The progress that marketers have made on social media channels has almost pushed the medium to maturity, it’s time for corporate structure to follow!

Building Social Media Into Your Corporate Culture

Social media is being used by more and more people to accomplish almost everything from a job search to answering common questions. Just to reiterate how fast social media is growing. See below: According to Econsultancy

  • Tweets grew 250% since January 2010
  • LinkedIn Users grew 100%
  • Facebook grew from 350 million users to 640 million users in one year

But in the B2B marketing industry, social media should extend deeper than just having a LinkedIn. It should be controlled internally and leveraged within each employee. Your employees can be used as vehicles to spread messages about your company’s products and services. With this obviously comes inherent risk, but since social media such a transparent vertical there should be internal social media policies in conjunction with your marketing strategy.

Social Media Policy

Companies are still trying to find a balance whether they should encourage or hide employee social media use. Everything from, the decision to associate your businesses name with employees on social media to governing social media use, social media policies can be laid out to leverage your marketing strategy internally.

For instance, some companies have requested their employees create a separate Twitter account that is strictly professional. This has two key benefits, one is the fact that businesses are able to gain awareness and engagement from each employee’s Twitter, and the other is minimizing the risks associated with standing behind an employee who tweets inappropriate personal material. Businesses should design a clear policy framework for how social media can be used to create synergies not catastrophes.

Improving Workflow

Embracing social media within your company may have some risks, but empowering employees with social media embrace can help your cause. For example allowing employees to tweet during workdays can improve morale and communication efforts. Strategically integrating tools to work within your business can give meaning to each of your departments, according to Charlene Li, analyst at Execunet (http://insights.execunet.com/index.php/comments/creating_winning_social_media_strategies/best-practices/more) , “Anyone can be influential with these tools. Salesforce.com has a new Twitter-like product and calls the people in the company using it, the “Chatterati.” “This internal social group is the connective tissue in the organization,” Li noted. “There is real value being created as people use these tools to get the job done.” Social media is a core element of these innovative companies communication technology, making their employees better, more informed workers. There is an opportunity here for collaboration in the cloud; your employees will have the ability to express opinions and suggestions easier than ever before.

One of the biggest challenges to embracing social media internally is letting go of control. Executives should embrace this technology meaningfully instead of fearing the repercussions.

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Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on document management systems for Resource Nation an online resource that provides advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs. You can find him on Twitter as @mattkrautstrunk

Thanks Matt! Great case for taking social media seriously.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Free Webinar: How to Rapidly Network and Brand Your Way to a 7 Figure Business

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Lewis HowesBuilding a business is about building a brand and connecting with people. With today’s extensive social technologies, the barrier to entry is reduced to a proper understanding and knowledge of how to leverage these tools. Lewis Howes knows this better than anyone else. From being unemployed and crashing on his sister’s couch to becoming a well-established business owner, author and professional speaker in a matter of a couple of years – Lewis knows the ropes when it comes to bootstrapping your business.

Join us on June 8 to hear Chris Garrett question Lewis about his use of social media, webinars and networking to discover:

  • Lewis’ story from being unemployed, sleeping on his sister’s couch to launching a seven figure business
  • The #1 network for connecting with high net worth individuals AND top tips for profiting from it
  • Why webinars have been crucial in generating income, and the key mistakes people are making that hold them back.
  • How to networking like a master, no matter what kind of personality you have, and how your network can boost your business

Sign up today!

GoToWebinar Brought to you by your friends at GoToWebinar and SOBCon

From Neil Patel to Ben Franklin: Do You Learn from History?

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Guest Post
by Riley Kissel

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Old Word Wisdom Ensuring New World Success

Upon sitting back and listening to Neil Patel ( @neilpatel )discuss some of his greatest achievements and losses he didn’t skip a beat when asked what his biggest professional failure was. In fact, in Patel’s eyes, failure isn’t quite the correct word. Patel referenced a time when he lost million dollars on a web hosting business in Rockwall Texas. From that loss came something he prizes most in his profession; learning a valuable lesson. This is part of the dogma that has made Patel so successful. It’s not out of a revolutionary idea or approach but it’s his good business sense coupled with old world wisdom that’s allowed him to become a top 100 blogger and consultant for numerous Fortune 500 on SEO, and all before the age of 21.

As the co-founder of KISSmetrics and a founder of Online Poker Lowdown , a poker tip site, Patel has always valued the strength and endurance of wisdom and lessons over the fickleness of ideas. He values each triumph and failure in equal measure and upon loosing those million dollars he states that, “I learned that you don’t invest in ideas. You invest in people. Ideas can change over time, but good people will always stick it out until they can figure out how to make a business succeed.” This is just a part of the tapestry of Patel’s approach and has enabled him to climb to such great heights.

Patel attributes much of his success to the lessons that he learned as a child. In various situations he references bits of wisdom handed down to him from two of his most valued mentors: his parents. It’s been through leaning from mistakes and applying those lessons that has enabled him to be such a success. Patel states that his parents, “didn’t groom me into being a businessman, but instead they just taught me what their parents taught them”. These lessons ranged anywhere from getting the most from your money to using the resources that are available to you instead of buying something you don’t necessarily need. These lessons were basic but their efficacy has been substantial at ensuring Patel’s success in the online world.

One can’t help but notice a strong resemblance in Patel’s approach to the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin.

Where does your approach fit with what has historically built success?
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Riley Kissel is a freelance writer who covers many industries with style. You can find out more about him at RileyKissel.com

Thanks, Riley, for simply showing how great thinking has built great success.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Audience Is Everything – Do You Know Your Audience as Well as You Know Yourself?

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Content Isn’t Audience, But You Knew That

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When I gave a keynote at the EdNet conference, where I met with many old and new friends in the business of publishing. I ended up in the most interesting conversation with one in particular, a man who was connected to me from years ago when publishing in print was my life. We got to talking about how publishers were facing the need to move from shelves of books to information that moved across the Internet.

He said, “I love books. I love seeing them stand on the shelves. I understand why everyone wants to keep making them. But I also see why we need to move our thoughts and ideas to PDFs.”

First I winced, then I smiled, then I laughed.

“What?” was what he said.

“You’re thinking of the paper web. A PDF is just a digital form of a paper document and almost as much of a pain. It’s not really part of the web. It’s a gated and separate location. I have to leave where I am to click over to where it is, wait for it to load, and then I’m stuck inside it. Switching back and forth takes for ever. It’s like asking me to go to the corner to buy a book.”

“Ah, I suppose I should be saying content.”

“Content on a blog or a website is easier to access. Yep that’s for sure, but content isn’t the end.”

I asked him to tilt his head to consider this question, “How many books sit on library and living room shelves that were chosen with great intentions then never read?”

If your goal is to sell books or to sell content, then keep your eye on them.
That will happen is that you’ll grow your sales and find ways to get more books in peoples hands and more visitors to your content.

But all of the thoughts that writers worried to express and the reams of ideas that could be changing the world may become good piled in the good intentions of book shelves and feed readers — parts of collections that never get read.

The book, the pdf, the website, the content isn’t the destination the audience is.

Know Your Audience as Well As You Know Yourself

An airplane traveling from New York to Chicago is off course 98% of the time. Still it gets there. Why? The pilot is always adjusting with his destination in mind. Do you listen to your best audience and tweak what you do to keep your content in their sweet spot?

The audience is your destination. If you’re writing for yourself, you’ll head in a different direction than if you’re writing for people learning what you know. It may sound obvious, but it’s still worth stating — if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to get there. If you think you’re going everywhere or writing for everyone, you’ll end up nowhere.

Too often authors and bloggers don’t think through who their readers will be. As a result a blog post or a book title gets our attention but doesn’t keep us interested. Don’t write for the fad or the lastest content trend, write for the people who are exploring the idea behind it. Then when they change their direction, you can change yours with them because your relationship is with the audience not with the content.

Have you really thought through who your audience is? Here are some questions to help you do that. Take a shot at answering them all in one sentence.

  • Who am I writing for?
  • How are they like me and how are they not?
  • What do they care about?
  • What will get their interest and keep it to the very end?

Write down your audience profile. Revisit it often. Adjust it as your readership grows and you get to know them better.
Use it to guide what you choose to write.

Now that you’ve got a clear destination. Other decisions get a whole lot easier.

Do you look at what you offer from the audience view? How does that work for you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

What George S. Patton Said That’s Crucial to Your Business

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A Historically Relevant Guest Post
by Terry Crenshaw

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Historically Relevant

Generally speaking, it’s probably fair to say that the principles of success possess a kind of across-the-board relevance, an applicability to most any endeavor you could mention; while the particular precepts of success may vary from one enterprise to the next, the universal concepts are basically the same. Maybe it’s for this reason the business world is one so pregnant with analogies. Sports metaphors come into play in the business world all the time, but even more prevalent might be military analogies – metaphors suggesting that the very traits that make for a successful general might also yield an effective business owner.

Loyalty

In that spirit, there’s a familiar quotation from General George S. Patton that’s worth mentioning in the context of business success. The war hero once famously said,

“There’s a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.”

Loyalty – not from an employee to the company, but from the company itself to the employees. What a novel concept.

I can’t help but think of this principle as I consider the examples of businesses such as Whole Foods – a company that is consistently voted one of the Top 100 best places to work, and a company that performs well against its many competitors. There’s something to be said for Patton’s philosophy, and it seems like no big stretch to say that it’s applicable to companies like this; could the fact that it’s both a highly profitable business and a business that treats its employees well truly be a coincidence?

I doubt it. At any rate, the factors that could be at play here are numerous, and while they’re not particularly obscure or hard to deduce with the simple tools of common sense, they might warrant a brief repetition. For starters, there are some obvious financial considerations to be made here. We know that happy employees are more likely to stick it out with their jobs rather than go looking for employment elsewhere; less turnover means less time wasted on the recruiting and training of new employees. It means a more streamlined and efficient business in general, even.

And if you think that loyalty is the only military virtue that translates into a business setting, just consider these further examples – historically relevant business strategies that resonate even today.

Adaptability

For one, we could champion the virtue of adaptability. This is obviously a crucial military trait; a strategy must be altered to fit the nature of the enemy forces, and even the terrain on which the battle is being fought. In much the same way, a business has to adapt to the times, and to its competitors. We have seen airlines adapt to the changing demands of air travel – in particular, we’ve seen Southwest abandon the hub-and-spoke model, and they should at least be given credit for trying to change with the times. On the flipside, we’ve seen McDonald’s adapt to the changing needs of consumers, and to new economic realities; they’ve cashed in on the premium coffee and smoothie trends furthered by companies like Panera, but also ensured that these products are priced to meet the budgets of recession-affected diners.

Strategizing

We could go on. What about strategizing – the importance of long-term thinking about the future? Barnes and Noble did it with the introduction of their E-Reader, the Nook. They saw where technology and reading were headed and jumped on the bandwagon – leaving companies like Borders to flounder

Expansion

And what about expansion? The history of military conquest is one of empires gradually expanding their domain, in much the same way that Amazon steadily grew from a bookseller into a merchant of just about anything you could name.

These are all companies that have learned from the military – and more broadly, from history in general. And what they have to show us is that changing with the times – strategizing, planning, adapting – is important, but there’s also something to be said for time-honored principles. This fine line is tough to walk, but of course, we can always look to the past for sterling examples of how it is done.

What have you learned from history?

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Terry Crenshaw covers economic trends in the United States and writes for www.peterorszagsite.com. Terry is especially interested in tracking the ideas of Peter Orszag and other economic experts as the economy attempts to recover from the recent recession.

Thanks, Terry, for the reminder that great thinking has always been what wins the day.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!