Positioning Your Company for Growth in 2012

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Where will your company be this time next year? Will you be celebrating record profits or planning a bankruptcy strategy? The answer depends on what you do now to prepare for tomorrow. Business as usual doesn’t exist anymore. Our marketplace has changed from a multichannel environment to a maze of channels and platforms that distract buyers and stretch limited resources. Maintaining a presence on all of the relevant networks is impossible for small businesses and fiscally irresponsible for large ones.

The economic downturn combined with an influx of new opportunities to connect with customers is overwhelming to even the most seasoned marketing teams. When faced with so many choices and dangers, running seems to be the only answer. Some dart from platform to platform hoping to catch a viral wave that will rain a revenue stream. Others run away from everything new seeking comfort in the tried and true tactics that have delivered past successes. Both strategies are fear driven paths to failure. When everything is said and done, a divided house cannot stand and those rooted in the past will be left behind.

Change is hard. People naturally resist it until the pain of remaining in the status quo exceeds the fear of the unknown. Vision of a better tomorrow shared with the passion of a believer is the only way to move some from the comfort of days gone by. The team responsible for the future of the company has to share the vision. They don’t have to agree on the path, but the final outcome is dependent on their ability to see a better tomorrow.

Maybe the real question is where do you stand? Are you so rooted in the past that the future will pass you by? Or, are you waiting with an open mind, willing to walk through the door of opportunity and do the heavy lifting? The tactics that got your business where it is today won’t take it to the next level. Change like you’ve never seen before is required.

Positioning your company for growth requires a solid plan that encompasses every corporate function, department, and person. The business has to work like a well-oiled machine where every gear provides leverage to the one next to it. The process won’t be easy but nothing worth doing is ever easy. Here are some steps to get you started on moving your organization to the next level:

Assemble

Start with an open mind, blank paper, and the people you need to make it happen. It is helpful if you do this at another location but if that isn’t in the budget, clear your conference room of everything that reminds you of the status quo. List your corporate strengths and weaknesses and then do the same for your competitors.

Analyze

Dig deep into your customer file so you have the best possible understanding of their behavior, buying patterns, and preferences. Keeping customers active longer is the best thing you can do for your bottom line. It increases the return on acquisition costs exponentially.

Brainstorm

Where can you improve service and satisfaction without significantly increasing costs? What do you need to do to offset weaknesses? How can you be more accessible to your customers? What channels are you missing that can make a difference in your business? What customer needs are unfilled?

Eliminate

There are always more ideas and opportunities than there are resources. Select the best and prioritize them by commitment and return. This will help you choose when and what to do based on available resources and potential return.

Strategize

Effective action requires planning. The survival rate of companies managed by knee-jerk reactions and seat of the pants methodology is extremely low. Having a plan provides vision and direction. There may be detours and rerouting along the way, but mapping out the strategy is the best way to keep your business moving forward.

Implement

The best laid plans are worthless without implementation. Executing your strategy inspires confidence and provides feedback that can be leveraged into growth and profitability. Don’t finish the year with a list of things we could have done. Finish it with a compilation of “this worked, that didn’t”. This is the foundation that supports sustainable growth.

Revise

Perfection is impossible. The very best strategy will have components that don’t work. Continuously monitor the progress, eliminating the things that don’t work and expanding the ones that do. In the end, everything may be completely different from the plan but it will be tested and successful.

Celebrate

People need wins to remain motivated. If you are constantly pushing your team to move forward without celebrating the progress, they will burn out. You’ll be left with a failed strategy because it didn’t reward the people who make it happen. Celebrations must be inclusive, crossing departments and divisions. It is only when everything and everyone works together for the greater good that your company will reach its full potential.

Remember

Moving a company to the next level is a process. Trying to plan it in a few days won’t deliver the results you want. Give it time to gestate and expand in your mind so you and your team have full ownership of the process and results.

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How to Use the New Twitter to Embed a Tweet in Your Website or Blog

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The new Twitter is more than just a new look and layout. Embedding tweets is now much easier. Borrowing a page from the YouTube playbook, Twitter is offering code so you can share an interactive tweeting experience with visitors to your website. Using it increases the visibility and lifespan of special tweets.

The process is simple. Please note that it only works if you have enabled the new Twitter.

Go directly to your Twitter page or the user’s profile for the tweet you want to embed. Do not use a third party access.

Choose the tweet you want to share.

Position your mouse pointer on the tweet. Some selection criteria will appear on the tweet.

Click open.

Click Details. It opens the tweet with the option to embed this tweet:

Click Embed this tweet. A pop-up appears with the code already highlighted.

If you don’t want to alter the code, use Ctrl-C (press ctrl and the letter “c” simultaneously) to copy it. Or, you can position your mouse pointer on the highlighted code, right click and select copy. Go to the place you want to embed the tweet and use Ctrl-V (yep, it’s just like Ctrl-C using the letter “v”) or right-click paste and “Voila!”, you’ve embedded a tweet!

If you want to control the position of the tweet (left, right, or center), simple click the appropriate alignment button and the code automatically changes. How cool is that? You can create HTML code without having to actually know how it works! The highlighting goes away but you can fix that easily by clicking on the code.

Here is the embedded tweet:

Your readers can reply, retweet, and favorite the tweet from within your website. There is also the option to follow the person who created the tweet.

Happy Tweeting!

PSS: If you don’t have the new version of Twitter, read “How to Enable the New Twitter” post.

PS: If you want to kickstart your social media strategy, check out “Social Media 4 Direct Marketers”. It is an ebook with 90 Pages of proven tactics to move your social media marketing to the next level.

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How to Enable the New Twitter Design

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Twitter has had a makeover. They have redesigned the site with a new look, brand pages, and improved functionality. Whether or not this effort to remain relevant in the social media world will work remains to be seen, but the new design is worth a look.

According to their announcement, they will slowly roll out the new version. If you can’t wait, you can get it now if you have access to an iPhone, iPod (with Internet access), iPad, or Droid. The directions Twitter provides are simple, but they didn’t work for me as easily as implied.

Direct from Twitter:

“Download the latest version of Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android to get access to the redesigned Twitter on your computer.”

It sounded so easy that I expected to invest a couple of minutes in transitioning from the old Twitter to the new one. I upgraded the Twitter app on my iPod, signed in, tweeted a couple of times, and then checked it out on my computer. My excitement turned to disappointment when I saw the old version:

Confident that it was the cookies or cache, I deleted all of my browsing history on my PC, removed my account on the iPod, added the account back, tweeted a couple of times, and returned to my desktop. It was still the old version.

Could it be the browser? I closed Firefox, deleted browsing history from Explorer, and opened Twitter. It was still the old version. UGH! This was not turning into a fun experience.

Maybe it would work with Chrome? Nope.

Opera? Nope.

Safari? Nope.

When all else fails, start over. Thinking it could be an iPod issue, I uninstalled the Twitter app from the Droid, downloaded the new version, logged in and tweeted a bit before returning to the desktop.

After clearing out the cache and cookies for all of my browsers and rebooting my computer, I tried again. And, again, there wasn’t a new version of Twitter. My punching bag started calling my name. Loudly. A few rounds later, I felt better but there still wasn’t access to the new Twitter. I walked away for a few hours. When I returned, lo and behold, I had access to the redesigned platform.

Wondering which parts worked, I tried it with other accounts. Here is what worked:

  1. Download the latest version of the Twitter app to your iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Android.
  2. Log in to Twitter and use it for a minute or two.
  3. Clear out your browsing history on your PC (sorry Mac users, I didn’t test it on a Mac. Presumably, it works the same way.)
  4. Wait. Using the punching bag to release your frustrations is optional. The wait varied from a few minutes to a couple of hours.
  5. Login to Twitter on your computer while holding your mouth just right.

If you try this, please share your experience so it will help others. Happy Tweeting!

PS: If you want to kickstart your social media strategy, check out “Social Media 4 Direct Marketers”. It is an ebook with 90 Pages of proven tactics to move your social media marketing to the next level. Click here for more information.

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Mission Possible: Create a Better Tomorrow for Your Business and Life

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Busy-ness is the enemy of business and life. It replaces creativity with the illusion of security. The processes put in place to increase productivity and provide consistent customer experiences block the innovation required to find new growth opportunities. People are creatures of habit that prefer safety and security to chaos and risk. Given the choice between doing what they always done with little pain and moving into unknown territory, most will stay put.

A company starts to die the day that the need for stability takes precedent over the desire to innovate. When the economy is good and competition is weak, death takes longer. Management has the opportunity to identify problems, resolve issues, and create new streams of income before time runs out. We don’t have the luxury of a good economy and minimal competition today. We live in a global economy that is filled with chaos and worthy opponents. It is an innovate or die world.

The past is gone, but don’t worry. It wasn’t as good as some people would have us believe. The future can be much better but we have to put a solid foundation in place to make it happen. The first step down the path of success is opening the doors to opportunity. We cannot move forward if our time is spent maintaining the status quo. We have to stop what we are doing and invest our time in planning for the future.

If your first thought is “yeah, right. I can’t even keep up with what I have to do and you’re asking me to add more to my list” I promise you that participating in this mission will free your time so you can enjoy life and the successes that go with it. We’re going to start small and build a foundation. Your success won’t happen overnight, but when it comes, external events won’t take it away. We’re changing the way you do business and live your life. There is bonus for doing it well: The trickle-down effect benefits everyone in your life.

If everything is great in your company and your life, then you probably don’t need to participate in this challenge. But if you want your life to be better, I invite you to join me in “Mission Possible: Create a Better Tomorrow”. It is a series of challenges designed to take you and your business to a new level.

The first challenge is imagining a better tomorrow. Invest five minutes each day in thinking about how you want your business and life to be in five years. Find a quiet place where you can spend five uninterrupted minutes with a pen, notepad, timer, and your thoughts. This place is an electronic free zone. Phones, computers, tablets, or any other device that pings, connects, or interrupts your flow of thoughts are not allowed. Set your timer for five minutes and start visualizing your business and life in five years. (You may want to get a timer that doesn’t tick if the noise will distract you.)
If you have been entrenched in negativity, it will be hard to imagine a positive future. Use these questions to get you started:

  • How do you spend your time? What are you doing? Who is participating with you? What’s fun in your life?
  • What does your office look like? Is it in a state of the art modern structure or quaint historical building?
  • Who are your customers? What do you like best about them?
  • What purpose does your business serve? How does it help others? How does it help you?

Use the notepad to document your thoughts as you go. When the timer dings, the exercise is over for the day. Put everything away until the next day when you repeat the process. At the end of the week, compile your notes so you will be ready for the next challenge.

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5 Social Media Strategy Red Warning Flags

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Is the time your marketing team spends creating killer content a good investment? Or, is it a huge waste of resources? Calculating the return on investment from social media activity isn’t simple cause and effect. Influencing people to use their money to buy your products and services is a process that includes establishing trust, generating good will, and motivating action. If marketing was a box of crayons, social media requires all of the colors to create a masterpiece.

There are so many nuances to social marketing and service that it can overwhelm seasoned marketers. The winners either get lucky or have a social media plan that provides measurable results. Luck is for amateurs. It’s nice to have but should be a bonus not an objective. Creating a strategy with clear objectives is better.

The strategy that works best for your business fits your corporate culture. Objectives, tools, and presence will vary but every activity needs to move people to action. When people are actively participating in your community, they are more open and responsive to marketing. Calls to action include clicking links, commenting, and sharing but choose the content wisely. Everything needs to move people closer to a quality shopping experience and positive buying decision.

If you aren’t seeing a return from your social marketing investment, look for these red flags:

  1. A focus on customer acquisition

    Acquiring new customers is a byproduct of a successful social marketing strategy. The best plans start with your company’s customer base and builds from there. In reality, if you can use the social platforms to entice customers to increase their lifetime value and lifespan, then you are winning the game. A community of 1,000 customers is 100 times more valuable than one with 100,000 prospects. Focus on your customers and they will introduce your company to their friends.

  2. No formal social media plan

    If you don’t know where you want to be, how will you know when you’ve arrived? Creating a plan of action requires your marketing team to assess opportunities and risks before jumping in. The process is important because it helps why you are participating and the best way to do it.

  3. Conversations with peers instead of customers and prospects

    Chatting with peers can provide insight and information but it doesn’t drive sales or service. If the majority of the conversations are about the state of your industry, customers and prospects won’t join in. Use personal accounts to talk shop with your peers.

  4. Idle chitchat

    Small talk is for cocktail parties and water coolers. Chatting about the weather, pop culture, and social media drama attracts comments but does little for increasing revenue or reducing service costs. Active communities that aren’t talking about your products, service, or company 50-90% of the time are a waste of corporate resources.

  5. Failure to measure

    People that say social media can’t be measured are testing your knowledge or showing their ignorance. Measuring results from the social channel requires solid benchmarks and a willingness to dig deep into the data. It isn’t easy but it can be done. Successful strategies include measurement guidelines.

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