Here are some presentations and walk through I’ve recommended to clients and business owners who are looking for a foundation or starting point on using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as ways to increase their visibility and capture the attention of their market.
Twitter for Business:
A 60 minute presentation by Sarah Milstein from Oreilly
Sam Decker wrote a great post on how contribution is greater than communities.
I agree that you can’t build a community just because technology makes it easy to do so, that it is actually useful to your market and to your business. I wanted to point out to small business owners and start ups that a better hook into getting a loyalty within your market is by fostering contributions.
It’s like asking do you have many friends that you can see on the weekends. Then asking how many people would you call at 3 am to help you through a crisis? It’s about the quality of the relationship.
You want your business to cultivate the 3am kind of friends.
The three reasons Decker listed as weighing contribution greater are:
Lower the barriers to getting into your space –web or offline. Let people interact without having to commit to your projects. Let people do something and be involved in whatever you’re talking about. Don’t make them log in to contribute. Don’t make them go through hoops just to write or voice their opinion on what your work.
The value of a contribution is in the time and attention someone gave you. That time is valuable. It’s one step closer to building a relationship. It’s one step closer to having a sense of belonging. Even a small action takes a commitment to move out of an observer to a higher level of interaction. Your business will grow to the extent that people in your market commit to you.
This is something that I’ve seen work directly. One of the fundamental principles of marketing is building credibility not from yourself but from others. A contribution is someone publicly saying something about your company, product or service that you can take and put into your marketing campaigns as a credibility booster. A conversation doesn’t turn into a sale automatically but each contribution can increase the likelihood of others to believe in you.
A great visual explanation of the difference is from Marty Neumeier, author of Zag.
Let your market take ownership of part of your message, let them contribute. Its a long term growth strategy for your business not a new shiny technology that will help your business.
Embrace your customers.
Turn negative customer experiences around.
If you have negative comments out there, find a good will advocate or find people to answer on your behalf that align with your company.
If people are complaining about your product and service, ask them directly how they could do to improve it.
Take the influencers of your market inside your company and give them a sense of belonging.
If your market is ignoring your messages. Give up control and let the market make its own meaning. GoDaddy did this by just giving talking points then free reign on the creative aspect and their company stood behind the finished work. They are now getting better results than their lagging ads.
Thanks to Simon Stapleton for the find!
I recently watched Jason Fried’s Business of Software talk and was struck by his thoughts on what a small business can do to stand out in their market.
Jason called it “Follow the Chefs”. The celebrity chefs have done something extremely well. And no, its not being a great chef. There are many, many great chefs out there. The difference between the famous chefs like Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse and their unknown and equally great counterparts is that the famous ones out-share, out-teach and out-contribute.
That’s right, they are giving away more valuable information and content than any of their competitors in a crowded industry. Famous chefs have cookbooks, cooking shows on local networks, cable channels or youtube clips. Famous chefs teach regular people at home how to use the same recipes and make the same foods that they serve at their restaurants and in their homes. They passionately want their audience to follow along and create the same dishes because they are lifting the curtain on how to cook delicious foods and giving away their secrets and styles on cooking.
A famous chef puts their name or brand on a product, and as a consumer you’ll carry that association over of what that famous chef has given you before. You have more faith that their product will be better that the next generic cookware set because of what you’ve experienced with them before.
If a small business can take the same model that has successfully worked for a crowded industry full of greatness and use the same principles. The next question is…
What are you going to tell people that you do that can work for them about that will get them excited about what you’re doing? This cookbook idea doesn’t have to lead to a purchase right away. It can be a primer in your sales funnel, it can get your name out there along the lines of your biggest competitor. Having your eagerly sought for market pay attention to your business and receive the value you’re giving away puts you a powerful advantage over your competitors, regardless of how crowded your industry is.
You can out-spend or out-teach your competition. –Kathy Sierra.
If you’re a small business without a lot of money, don’t try and compete with your better funded competitors on their turf. Make your own playing field by giving away value to your market. Out teach them. You’ll be on the same level as they are and you’ll have a first mover advantage and build momentum that they’ll be trying to catch up to.
Share your knowledge. Let your market of future clients know what makes your company, products and services so special, and why you are so passionate about it. The means to share is available to you right now using blogs, youtube, social networks, and more. Your market is hungry for this kind of value.
If you’d like to see Jason’s talk the Follow The Chefs portion is from 20:05 to 22:12