Think On Your Feet or End Up On Your Ass

Your competition never sleeps – are YOU sleeping?

Thinking On Your Feet May Just Save Your Business

Surviving as a small business takes brass. Are you ready to make your business stand out amongst all the competition? Are you willing to invest considerable time and money to make it happen? Do you have a vision for your marketing? Are you trying to hand off responsibilities and say, “I have a Facebook account and it hasn’t increased sales”, Social Media must not work?

Some Questions for the small business owner to think about:

• Is your business successful now? Successful businesses are constantly evaluating the terrain, sizing up their competition and try to stay one step ahead at the least. Market leaders don’t have to be the biggest players, just the most informed. If you understand the web is the present and the future and just don’t know where to start perhaps some Internet Consulting services may be your best move initially.

 

• Is the market growing, shrinking, or stagnant? Have you carefully thought about the future? When was the last time you asked yourself, “Have my sales hit a plateau?” What can I do to increase sales? Thinking about your business is something that owners can forget in the course of day to day operations. One day they look up to find themselves chasing the market instead of changing the market.

 

• Are you looking to Social Media or a new website to save your business? Upgrading or adding a website is a good start but if your market is small and saturated with competition, you may want to explore a niche. Ask yourself, “What do I do better than any other business in my field?” Sometimes the best website and marketing in the world is not your answer. A different business or business model is. You’ll never hear that from the SOS. (short for snake oil salesman)

 

• Is your product or service still viable? It’s been said that the kiss of death for any business is gaining an increasing share of a declining market. At some point the well runs dry and then what? Have you thought about alternative uses for your products or services?

 

• Has your market shrunk or are your clients exploring alternatives to your products or services? Has your market shifted or dried up? Is there still room for growth in your industry? Can you sustain increased sales with your in-house talent?

 

• Why should we care? Glitz and glamour only go so far. Remember the Where’s the Beef ads? Where’s the steak in your offerings? Is your business prepared to give the kind of customer service that makes clients stay with you even if your not the cheapest? Advertising agencies call this the unique selling proposition which is just a slickster way of saying be unique.

 
There is a reason this post has 20 questions (well 23) and is written in an interrogational style. Consumers are more savvy than ever. Forget the fluff and deliver. We Do. Ask any Pittsburgh Internet Marketing clients of Blackball Online Marketing.

Doing Social Media Well – Listening

Listen To Be Heard

We, as a society have been preprogrammed since birth to talk first and listen later. It started in the crib when we cried and got a response from our parents. Some folks haven’t stopped into their 80’s.

Businesses are the same way. And with good reason, before social media there was only push advertising. Businesses cried out to their captive audiences and all who would listen. Television, radio and print all work this way. Public Relations were a lot easier because there was time to formulate and craft nifty responses to all the woes they faced.

PR never faced a response that was so direct and carried the weight that it does with social media. And with everyone listening in now, responses lend themselves to be as straight-shooting as possible, timely, and obviously help address the problem. This all has to come from good listening skills. Can you imagine the outrage the tobacco companies would have faced in the Age of Social Media?

Thinking about this now, blogging about listening is rather odd. There is no direct response, more a delayed reaction which gets muted by time. However, listening is a skill we all should be honing because that’s what actually gets us heard. Sounds bizarre, Listen to be Heard? Yes, Listening allows us to formulate concise and definite responses that are quality in nature and more likely to be heard provided they are timely.

Listening well has the ability to turn a negative experience with a customer into a customer for life. Good, bad, or indifferent, our responses are to the point. And fast.

OK, Mr Smarty, how do I listen better? This is the trick…

Social Media is Simple like our Social Media Isn’t Hard post states.

Follow our guiding principle of Social media, “Helping people is Good Business.” Use your own voice for Social Media of course. Your audience is smart, they can tell.

Don’t push, mention with politeness and provide helpful follow-up feedback like our No Pushing Please in Social Media post states.

Scale your Social Media campaigns so you can keep up with what’s being said. It’s pretty hard to listen if you’re unable to hear or keep up with the conversation.

Always be mindful of your audience. Some are masters and some are newcomers. Take the time to learn who’s who and don’t be afraid to help.

We are constantly trying to become better listeners and sometimes blogging about a topic brings out points we didn’t expect. Such was the case with this Pittsburgh Internet Consulting post. Thank You for reading this. Please sign up to the blog to get our posts delivered by email or RSS. Send us a comment and see how well we do.

What’s So Hard About Social Media?

Social Media Isn't That Hard

I see a number of Ad Agencies not sure what to do and how to incorporate Social Media into their repertoire. In the advertising sense, some of them try to apply the standard broadcast methodologies to it, while others do this, some do that, and some don’t do anything. It’s a new medium, and everybody is fumbling around with it, (at least we’re doing something) whether they want to admit it or not. But what makes Social Media (which is simply another cog in the Internet Marketing wheel) such an axis shift for Ad Agencies is it’s an environment and atmosphere for conversation and exchange. This makes Social an active and maybe a “perceived” participatory medium, just like the name implies, and so unlike any of the staple “broadcast” mediums that Ad Agencies skill-sets have evolved and adapted for. This makes sense, because for the most part broadcast mediums were all any of us really knew, until the Internet, to get the skinny on what services or products were around. Traditional broadcast mediums were and are a one way street… and a brand could keep its distance.

The one alternative before the Internet to have a conversation and exchange with a producer, seller and customer was by going to a market place, like a farmer’s market for example, where people congregate, shoot-the-breeze, and the conversation is king – with broadcasting relegated to the back seat.  But that’s all changed. A gazillion’ of us, and growing, are yakking away on a turf called Social Networks, brought to you wherever-the-hell-you-are thanks to the Internet.  Words aren’t so much broadcasted here either, they’re exchanged. And if the Social Network explosion has proven anything it’s that broadcast advertising doesn’t work as well with people in an environment where conversation, exchange and expression can happen, and obviously flourish. Broadcast advertising isn’t going anywhere though, hell, it’s an American staple, like baseball and apple pie, it just isn’t “the top banana” like it used to be, it’s “part of,” meaning it isn’t the biggest dog on the block anymore.

Go to a social function, networking event, maybe a non-profit, this or that, and people are talking, listening, conversing, expressing themselves, not so much of the broadcasting stuff going on, then, after some good conversation you might hand them a business card or suggest they go to your Website or give a call. This is pretty much what happens within the Social Networks – only digitally, it’s a nurturing ground for rapport - first and foremost.

And therein lies the rub for a lot of Ad Agencies. Some of them just might have to learn to converse with people again - not broadcast to customers. Putting the stuff aside that makes the Social Media choice possible maybe the future of some Ad Agencies is in their past, with guys like David Ogilvey, who’s advertising said something perceived genuinely  worthwhile to people of a particular interest group, which in turn led to a bit of a conversation within that particular interest group, which in turn persuaded parts of that particular interest group to say “you are now worthy enough to try and sell me on your product – so take your best shot – because you don’t have long.”

Smart Ad Agencies know they have to adapt themselves to Social Media by thinking another way. Not a new way, just a way they always knew and maybe some forgot.  All the same, I haven’t seen yet the entry of a new medium replace any of the old, maybe knock the king-of-the-hill medium down a few pegs or shove it around a little, but that’s about it. And sometimes, depending on the type of new medium, when it’s hatched and takes hold, it can really throw a monkey-wrench in the works - which seems to be what’s happening now with Social Media, (that’s kind of an understatement I think).

Based on that mumbo-jumbo, let’s look at a few of what I see as the fundamental hurdles some Ad Agencies need to contend with as far as Social Media goes:

First: At the core of what a lot of Ad Agencies are about is winning awards, pure and simple. It’s difficult in the current Ad Agency Award structure to hand out a “paper-weight”  for the most stunning print ad and the most breathtaking TV spot or the most acid-trippy Flash Site when Social Media is not print, it’s not TV and it isn’t Flash.

Second:  The nature of Ad Agencies is to think in terms of we, (the ad agency) broadcasts, the consumer receives, while the Social Networks just keep saying “nice try buster, but that dog just doesn’t hunt here.”  So, if the heart of Social Media isn’t a message displayed or broadcast on a billboard or TV, or an acid-trippy Flash thing-a-ma-bob, what is it? Well, from our experience it’s a “Table for Two” (thank you Clue Train Manifesto) which I’ve peppered-up a bit to say a “Table for Two with Seating Accommodations for a Zillion.”

Third: A lot of Ad Agencies still just wish all this Social-Media-Network-Conversation stuff would just go away. It’s probably not.

So, before we put a sock on it, a thing we’ve learned about Social Media, (and we’re just scratching the surface) is this: For the most part the Conversation is King and Broadcast Advertising is Court Jester… and we’ve picked this up mostly from our clients.

On one of my next ramblings, which will happen to be in the form of a Blog post, I’ll share with you deep down what I really feel Social Media is about. It’s one word, one of the oldest words in history, and if you base your Social Media escapades on it we believe you’ll have a shot at some success…and we got a client to thank for this little insight too.  Maybe we should be paying our clients instead.

Hasta la vista, baby.