Blog Archives
Sense of location will no longer be important in business
It’s a concept that is of no surprise to consumers. Buying goods from eBAY or Amazon is commonplace and unless the purchase is bulky enough to be collection only then the location of the seller is of no concern.
In business, there are some forerunners who eulogise on the benefits of teleworking and have a network of customer service representatives using leading edge technology to answer queries; and in the respond and repair sector every customer-facing representative is, quite literally, out on their own.
The quote in the title comes from a paper written by O’Brien et al in 1992 and shows that nearly 20 years ago, someone writing an academic paper had already recognised that where you conducted your business was going to be the least of your worries. Not having read all of the paper, it’s difficult to know exactly what aspect of business the authors were talking about. You would hazard a guess, given the timing, that maybe outsourcing was involved, or even the beginnings of the teleworking revolution since the Internet didn’t really start to take off until 1996/97.
But their words now look very prescient. A business in Delhi may have the same issues as one in Dallas, a clinician in Sydney will share issues with one in Stockholm. Until now, unless they happen to have met one another at an international conference, exhibition, training course or something similar, they would be unable to connect, compare notes and find solutions that transcend national boundaries.
Social media networks have already shown that business people like to connect with other business people. Why do they do it? Because there is safety in numbers. Just as we talked about yesterday in the post on Consensus of Subjectivity. What businesses need to do is to understand how to harness the power of this desire for connectivity and sharing, while embracing an individual’s need, or desire, to work somewhere else other than Head Office, and that by building a relationship with someone on the other side of the world may just be the answer they need to deliver impeccable results locally.
A Consensus of Subjectivity…
…which is another way of saying Birds of a feather flock together and goes some way to explaining why social networking is such a success, although only for some.
Jeremy Bullmore used the term in 1998 in the context of shared perception of brand personality; the premise being that each and every one of many millions of people gathers a set of feelings that are to some extent autonomous but which further research shows to be closely related, i.e. we like to think we are taking unique decisions for ourselves, but in actual fact we often make them in the context of wanting to be part of a group. It isn’t much fun being out there on your own.
Back in the dark ages of videotape, why did VHS succeed when BetaMax did not when the latter was universally acknowledged to be the better platform? When faced with a decision, the consumer went with the crowd. Similarly, why has LinkedIn grown exponentially while other similar business networks haven’t been able to tap into the same groundswell? And Facebook wasn’t the first social networking site, so how come it is now almost the biggest community on the planet?
There is, perhaps, a single defining factor. The consensus on the examples above is that the winners took time to listen to their users and potential users. They created entry points which were attractive, laid out their wares, watched to see how their consumers behaved and tweaked their offering accordingly, and keep on tweaking it (although in VHS’s case a seismic shift in technology eventually put paid to their dominance) to make it less and less attractive to go elsewhere.
Businesses of all shapes and sizes should take note. There isn’t a marketing text book, essay or lecture today that isn’t trying to hammer home the message of listening:
Listening+action=success
How you and your organisation do this is up to you. But do it you must. And the first step has to be that you engage your clients, customers, partners and potential audience in a conversation where you can hear what they are saying about you, your products, your competitors, your competitors products etc. etc. You need to find where they are having these conversations and join in, you need to be part of the People-Driven Economy which exists in social networks because if you aren’t someone else who does what you do is.
The choice is no longer whether or not you and your organisation embrace social media, the choice is how successfully you do it.
How much time must I spend on social media…?
As part of the social media for events course I run on behalf of The Media House, we spend a whole session quantifying the amount of time it will take to build and manage a social media campaign.
Generally there are two responses to this part of the course: horror and relief.
I use a diagram originally created by Beth Kantor, adapted by others, which lists social media activities and how long it takes to monitor, contribute, create and promote a single brand within a range of social media environments. The reveal of each sector is often greeted by a sharp intake of breath and a visible lightbulb moment.
For some delegates, it is the realisation that, at long last, they have a piece of tangible evidence that they can present to members of their senior management team about the scale of the task they are being asked to undertake. For a marketing manager looking after ten or more event brands, who is under pressure to develop a Twitter feed, a LinkedIn group and/or a Blog for each of them, having a clear idea of the time commitment this would take is fundamental to writing a strategy. While initially horrified that even the basic monitoring phase could take them anywhere between seven and ten hours a week, they are relieved that at least now they can create a case for more resource and/or being more strategic across a whole bundle of brands to deliver a social media strategy that has real Klout…
What is most interesting though is that this time-commitment comes as a surprise at all to marketing managers who have long experience of working with traditional media. Given the amount of time and iterations it takes to write good advertising and marketing copy, why would it take any less to write a good blog post or e-newsletter? And, since the latter have to be done with greater frequency to deliver a regular audience or following, why is it so difficult to scale this up until the realisation occurs that it could well be a full(ish) time job for someone.
But you already have a full-time job…
hellen @missioncontrol
More cake for the communications tea party?
In a question posed by Greg Hackett on a LinkedIn group that we follow he asked ”Can we have our cake and eat it” in the context of whether ambience or content should be the key driver in creating a successful event or if indeed it was important to have both.
There are some examples of venues that are so magnificent or exclusive it isn’t hard to pursuade delegates to attend, even at strange times of the day: for example a breakfast briefing at the House of Lords, London will draw in even the most hardened of industry hacks; and a conference on a hot-topic specialist scientific topic with an industry leading speaker could be held in a dusty lecture theatre with curly sandwiches and still attract a huge number of delegates. So this doesn’t really answer the question either.
However, one thing the group has been able to agree upon is that it is important not to flog the delegates with so much content that it becomes impossible to absorb all, or indeed any, of the information being imparted from the lecturn. This is one area where professional conference organisers and marketers can struggle. In an effort to create an event that is so compelling, so packed full of benefits and so worth having one or more days out of the office to attend it is possible to end up with such a multi-streamed, PowerPoint-packed programme that it becomes a nightmare to navigate and almost impossible to promote.
Erin Handel from Bankerstuff reinforces the point. She cites an example where promoting a five-session live-streaming event in a single mailing failed to deliver any results, but by breaking this down into five single streams, each of which could be marketed with their own specific messaging resulted in a significant number of bookings.
What this illustrates most clearly is a need to get back to straight-forward marketing techniques. In our eagerness (desperation?) to get individuals through the door we have got into the habit of bombarding potential delegates with as many benefits and features as possible. This only serves to hide the real message and make our job harder rather than easier. And to be honest sometimes we just sound desperate.
Greg asked the original question in the context of virtual events, where the debate continues about the complexity (or not) of the technology used to deliver the digital content. The very fact that the responses strayed so quickly back to comparisons with live conferences and the difficulties in marketing them only serves to illustrate that the disciplines driving both are very closely linked. Could it be that digital platforms enable organisers to add all of that extra-value content, for longer giving them (and the delegates) the breathing space to engage more thoroughly in the content and face-to-face networking opportunities provided by a live event?
Most important of all is to ensure that in embracing a new virtual medium we learn from, rather than replicate our existing experience. After all, who wants to go to an event where they are always serving the same cake?
Measuring ROI in a brave new (social media) world
In his book Socialnomics, Erik Qualman asserts that the only ROI on investment in social media you can count on is that your business will still be around in a year’s time. It’s a tough concept to grasp for organisations used to measuring their marketing efforts by the 400% rule.
Social media has turned much of traditional marketing thinking on its head, particularly in organisations used to single rather than multi-stage marketing. It can leave marketing and management teams, particularly those operating in the events sector, scratching their heads on how to measure success vs effort.
The difficulty lies in our ability to measure internet marketing efforts in a consistent and meaningful way. Although this is now easier than it once was, it still relies on other people’s algorithms and an understanding of the errors that will inevitably be part of a process that is generalistic and mechanised.
One of the most frustrating aspects of this measurement process is that it is often impossible to see the results of efforts as they are happening – other than on a live twitter feed or by constantly running a report or refreshing a browser. And, despite appearances, social media is constrained by the same mechanism that has been a restrictive factor for traditional media: the fact that someone else owns the environment in which you are publishing. Once again brands and individuals find themselves limited to measuring those actions which the technology providers have decided are important rather than those which are meaningful to a particular organisation.
An essential tactic is to decide which metrics are the ones which are going to give you the best feedback and a springboard to move your brand messaging forwards enabling you to continually tweak and refine your messaging and your products. The key is in creating a positive feedback loop that delivers information which you can action quickly and visibly. While facts and figures are reassuring, real ROI can only be delivered if there is also a plan in place for drawing visitors, fans and other participants further into your community once you have initially caught their attention.
Finally, remember that since your audience can change direction many times in one campaign, let alone a 12 month-period, your measurement processes must now be measured in days and hours rather than weeks and months.
