There comes a point in time where we all crack under pressure. Today, that’s me.
You probably notice I have not updated for a while and I’ve received a steady flow of emails; thanks to those who asked if I was still with the living. Most just assumed it was due to my great Canadian tour. It is very flattering to be receiving regular e-mails asking for new blog content and I thank you all for that!
To be honest I’ve written plenty of new content but have held it back. Not because I’m out of the blogging world but because I am transforming my role in the blogging world. Over the past few months I have been working with @KathyMagrino (Owner / Marketing Consultant with TheWriteWay.com and Adjunct Professor in Communications & Journalism at Rider University) on a co-blog dedicated to providing thoughtful, useful, deep and practical posts in marketing, technology, social media, management and operations for small business and soloists. We’re even working on some fantastic workbooks and self evaluation kits!
The venture is at a point where we will be going public in a month. We have few things left to nut out and little technology left to solve. Keep tight, there will be plenty more blogs from the both of us very soon.
Like most of us I meet many new people each day. The questions that inevitably comes up is ‘Where do you want to be’? All too many say they are working hard to make the ‘big money’ and retire early. They usually have drive, determination and smarts.
These are the last people I want to be associated with.
I do what I do because I like it. I’m interested both personally and professionally, to the point where those lives are one in the same. Often I’ll work obscene hours and I’m always trying new things. My work comes from a place of personal interest, not strictly goal driven outcomes.
It’s why I think people like me will often end up winning. We don’t work off an hourly clock, performance outcomes and raining competencies. We work from passion. People notice this and in the long haul there is nothing more valuable.
Ask yourself: Which one are you?
There is one thing you and I probably have in common. We are always explaining this ’social media’ stuff and how it can be applied to business. The possibilities are endless really. I’m going to share my K.O. when in heated discussions with luddites and fear mongers. Words can’t explain my point as eloquently as the interactions I’m posting below:
I @’ed some questions to Travelocity and received prompt responses. The following day I received a #followfriday from the Travelocity team.
For most of us Twitter is a hybrid; but one application is to put questions to a broader community and request feedback. It may be ‘has anybody had experience with company xyz’ or ‘I need a new mobile carrier – any ideas?’. Why shouldn’t a company be actively searching its industry and own name for potential leads (for 20 dollars a year many services will automate this for you).
So what happened? I was impressed that Travelocity spoke to me in such a public forum. I felt like they cared. I was dealing with a real person. I was impressed that they found me (without me referencing their Twitter directly). Even when it was slightly more expensive I booked nearly everything through Travelocity. They won me over. Twitter is a free service and a tweet takes half a minute. No phone queues or expensive hold systems. 30 seconds alone won Travelocity $4-5,000ish of upfront business and many more long-term bookings from many similar competitors. On top of that I’m suggesting them to most of my friends.
For something so cheap and easy, can your business afford to not be doing that?
Some more good examples (I’ll keep in the field of travel).This is by no means an exclusive list but are the two most prominent that come to mind.
- I am following WestJet on Twitter due to having flights booked with them. One tweeter mentioned that he had booked tickets for the family to Los Angeles. Westjet responded over Twitter with a simple ‘good luck and have fun in Disneyland’.
- Virgin America are very interesting and really get ‘it’. I’ve all too often seen excited tweets of ‘just booked VA tickets to xxx’. Virgin will usually respond asking for photos which are promptly posted to the Virgin Twitter.
How special and valued do you think these customers feel after these interactions? Using a free service, minimal manpower and no marketing effort customers & potential customers have been pleasantly surprised and engaged by a brand; usually becoming more than just consumers but supporters and mouth-pieces.
Anybody who follows me on Twitter is likely still recovering from my 5 day rant about LiveNation’s inability to sell me tickets. Not because there were none left, not because I don’t have the money, but because their billing system ‘won’t work for non-US and Canadian customers’.
Why? Probably because nobody else sells the tickets. In too many eyes there is seemingly no reason to innovate or try new things when you have exclusivity / a monopoly. With this attitude you are just shooting yourself in the foot. Monopolies rarely last. Instead of thinking ‘how can I defend this position’ (which seems to be the crux of my degree) it should be ‘how can I extend or re-invent this position’. The best defence, after all, is a good offense.
In my case nobody could help so I ended up buying 2nd hand tickets off ebay. Who would have thought a show which is struggling to sell out would want me (and many others in their position) to support the scalpers.
It was a while ago now that I tweeted there would be more personal updates on this blog. As most of you already know I am about to begin a year long trip where I will be based in Canada with travels throughout most of North America.
I’m unsure to which degree I should include these in *this* blog and as always thought I would put it out to my Twitter followers, ‘What do you think?’.
Initially I was going to keep minor personal updates here so I don’t distract from the business side of this blog and to run a separate travel blog. The other side of me is saying to include regular updates under the same banner in a ‘travel’ section.
My concern with merging the two is it might get a little messy and take away from the core purpose of the blog. It could also be distracting and make the topics look unrefined. However, on the positive side this blog is mostly opinions and including more personal travel information may add the desired personal touch. It’s one of those decisions I am really unsure about, but I struggle to get past the ‘scattered focus’ criticism.
So I ask you, my Twitterers, for opinions, ideas and whatever comes into your head. Either way I am in the process of getting a custom design / optimization for this blog to move away from the ‘out of the box’ themes.
First of all, apologies for my lack of absence over the past 3-4 weeks through all online mediums. I was quite sick and didn’t have the energy to contribute. As my friend @phycodes said when I made my first tweet in weeks ‘I was glad when I saw it. I thought you were dead’. Sadly neglecting this world means weeds (spam, emails, rss feeds) get out of control so I’m sorting through as fast as I can. If I haven’t responded to your contact it will happen, just give me a little time.
Being off the internet for so long gave me some fantastic perspective though. I see all too many ‘consultants’ (though everybody is these days) talking about how using the internet is going to double, triple or quadruple revenues.
What these people seem to forget is that while the internet may have reached a tipping point in Western Countries, ‘Social Media’ really has not. All too many connected people (my parents for example) struggle to track products online. It’s a generational thing and sometimes the Yellow Pages / local newspaper really is easier.
Being so active online makes it very easy to forget how the others live. If you run any form of local, offline or small business the internet is likely an extension, not the solution.
Ask yourself, do you target the others? Do you even know who they are and how? Before getting caught in the hype did you cover the bare basics for promoting your business? Or did you just forget about them and let somebody steal a very profitable, local and cheap market from you?
Ad rates are declining! The sky is falling. Print media ad rates have plummeted to an all time low. I need ads that engage me! Media will only survive selling value added services!
How many times have we read some ‘guru’ say this about newspapers, magazines or even websites? To a large degree it is true and there certainly are better ways to connect with consumers. Personally I feel there still are some applications for mass ad marketing, and while it will never provide the returns it once did a much earlier factor than customer engagement attributed to it’s demise, going overboard!
Above are all of the ads I found when logging into Myspace on a single page! 7 adverts, with 1 advert containing 4 more. Reading todays weekend newspaper I found over 16 ads in the first 8 pages. There comes a point where people say enough is enough and stop listening. Seth Godin describes a similar situation where he asks people who have just read a newspaper to describe any ad they saw. The response? Usually none are recalled.
Instead of plastering every available inch with an advert, showing restraint and allowing few ads on a platform will likely increase their effectiveness and value. Marketers will probably notice the difference and instead of suffering reduced revenues publishers will likely be able to charge a large premium.
Disclosure: I still don’t see this as being an easy out for incompetent marketers. The effectiveness will increase but there is still no excuse to not focus on customer engagement and to communicate directly with a niche. But for those who need to reach a large amount of people the premium will surely be worth it.
Sometimes the hardest thing for me, and I’m sure for many others, is to pull back cold turkey on a business which I have become emotionally or financially invested in. Thankfully that is exactly what I managed to do just a few days ago.
I was planning on purchasing a music portal. Music is a logical business extension for me and the portal was an easy start. One of my long time business partners, Aron Kerr, would also be involved. Sure we were going to spend around double the asking price to renovate the site, bring it back up to our standards, add some features and encourage the current user base (with less than 7% of it being active) to return to the website. Still, we liked the company, the script and connections were a good start and we figured that bringing back just 20% of the users would make the investment worthwhile.
Sadly, the asking price then doubled. A new buyer had joined the bidding process. Quickly we clamored back together to increase our bid – but before submitting it I decided to take advantage of the 8 hour window and sleep on it. After the heat of the moment was gone we changed strategy and ended our bidding. A small increase in price was acceptable for our plans but doubling meant that the entire nature of our strategy had changed. It was hard – we were both very emotionally invested in the company and knew we could do well with it. But with the upfront cost doubling, and us still needing to pitch in another 50% to change the site fundamentally, the company no longer held a value for us. Yes, there are still sore spots but ultimately we made the right call, buying a business while on an emotional high is never a solid idea.
Just remember, every time something changes don’t immediately adapt. Sit back and think ‘is this now something I want to be involved in?’.
What has happened on our end? We had the connections and a solid business plan, coupled with a passion. For the price we were going to spend on a poor design and an inactive user base we are now able to:
- Get our own custom portal developed, with all of the changes we wanted
- Have the Iphone and Facebook applications we wanted developed
- Design the logo and website
- Incorporate the new company
- Make contact with the people we need to contact
- Place 30 classified ads to attract those who read newspapers
- Place a full colour, half page ad in Guitar World (US)
- Run Google Adwords and Facebook Ads for a month to continue attracting customers
For the same money beforehand, we were buying 400-500 active users, a renovated website and a half built facebook application. All in all I say stepping back was well worth it.
This blog is way overdue; sadly I have been a little busy. Better late than never eh?
Several weeks ago now we all heard about The Pirate Bay founders being found guilty of copyright infringement and sent to prison. For those who don’t know, The Pirate Bay is a website where users share torrent files; while the site does not encourage illegal file sharing it is certainly not prevented and is in fact where most of the traffic comes from. Who were the biggest pushers of the verdict? The music and film industries.
Upon reading comments and the commentaries on blogs and in the media I noticed a resounding message ‘they should not have gone to prison’ or ‘I will never pay for music again’. I find that pretty ironic – most of the people who use the website don’t pay anyway – that is it’s purpose. If you want to ‘try before you buy’ there are many free and legal services out there!
Yes, I know the music industries business model is outdated and becoming obsolete. Personally I also think that, considering the costs and profits, music is terribly overpriced and major labels are facing a slide into obsoleteness. Yes they need a new business model.
But, the bottom line is for now, that material is copyrighted. These labels own that music. Accessing it is not a right, it is a privilege. If we choose to access that music we do so on their terms – if they feel that buying a $30 CD is the way, that is what you do to access the music. If you think a t-shirt is too expensive you don’t just steal it, you don’t buy it. Same applies with music – if you disagree with the model buy elsewhere. I just get a little frustrated with these people who feel it is their god given right to listen to music which these companies create. If I create a product I expect to be compensated at what I think is fair. If people buy at that price, even while complaining, it is priced well. However, if it is not priced well, or the method of distribution is poor, people will simply not buy it and I will either re-evaluate my model or lose all of the profits. That would be my choice – it is not the consumers right to access my product. Same applies for music.
Should these guys have gone to goal? Yeah. They did break the law and steal a companies product. They got what they deserved. Like everybody else, if you don’t like it, switch to a competitor (there are plenty of nimble, smaller labels) and consume their products. Music is a business, not a right.
If you really want to make a statement begin supporting all of the bands trying these new methods of distribution. If labels see it working they are likely to try it. That might make an interesting blog post for next week – where else the music industry should go. But for now we are using their tools and their product, if you don’t want to play by their rules simply don’t use it.