What a great response we have been getting to our new Ahead of Social newsletter! Did we mention you can WIN a year subscription to Ahead of Social for FREE?  We’ve been getting entries, but as it turns out a lot of you just want the newsletter for $4.99 a month and don’t want to wait around to see if you’ve won!  Keep in mind that once the contest is over the price doubles to $9.99 – still an amazing price for 8 highly detailed social media tricks a month that get results.

Here is a sneak peek of what goes on inside just one of our Ahead of Social newsletters.  The tips aren’t quick & dirty bullet point items but highly detailed, step-by-step information and instructions on how to utilize a very specific technique to get results in social media for you or your company.

Ahead of Social Newsletter

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the most popular business networking social platform available today, but did you know that by creatively filling out your profile you can gain higher search results within LinkedIn AND Google? By making sure the things you want to get found for are listed in the *right* sections of LinkedIn, you have a much higher chance of getting found – both on LinkedIn and on Google. We are going to show you how you can change your LinkedIn profile RIGHT NOW to get results.

First, a bit about LinkedIn and Google together. LinkedIn is a very highly ‘trusted’ site in the eyes of Google. What that means is that (based on a lot of proprietary calculations and some behind-the-curtain-voodoo) Google has determined that information on LinkedIn – including your 100% complete profile – is relevant, important, and valuable and will display LinkedIn information ‘above the fold’ on the first search engine results page (SERP) in Google. LinkedIn’s high trust value combined with location-aware search results (Google can determine approximately where you are located by your IP address & customizes your search results to display results that may be physically close to your location) packs a powerful punch in getting your information SEEN by those that are most likely to want to connect with you or do business with you.

How can you take advantage of this?

The key is to know what fields and information Google looks at within LinkedIn and make sure it matches the types of search terms your prospective connections would be typing in.  Now of course by increasing your ‘searchability’ helps inside of LinkedIn as well.  Below are the main areas that LinkedIn (and Google) value the most in finding information:

Subscribe to Ahead of Social to find out!!

How would you like the best of the best in social media tips, tricks, strategy suggestions AND the “latest & greatest” in social media and technology news delivered to your inbox?  To celebrate Purple Stripe Productions brand new professional education and information service we are GIVING AWAY 5 free subscriptions to Ahead of Social!  Our introductory price is $4.99 a month (it’s a steal… we know!) but you can enter for a chance to win a year subscription for FREE!

The social networking space moves fast – Ahead of Social is your ‘drip feed’ to getting ahead in the social space!  Ahead of Social is a email newsletter filled with tips and tricks for finding, using and excelling with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and more – tips you can use right away to see results! Whether you are an individual looking to make the most of social networking or work at (or own!) a large company looking to get to the next THREE steps in social networking, Ahead of Social is for you!

To Enter

To enter the Purple Stripe Productions Ahead of Social Contest we want to know your social media story!  How did you get started using social media?  Do you use it for work or personally?  Have you always wanted to get started but think it’s too difficult?  What are you excited about trying in 2011?  Do you have a success story that sets you apart?  Come on and be social – we want to know!

To enter, you can choose one of the following methods:

• Write your story on your own blog and link back HERE
• Leave a comment HERE with your story
• Tweet it! Just be sure to use #AheadofSocial in the tweet
• LIKE us on Facebook & leave your story on our Wall!

Contest Rules

Each blog post, comment, or Facebook Like you write and link back to this post will count as a submission.  Winners must have a valid email address to receive newsletter content.  Entries will be discovered via trackbacks to this post, comments on this post, and by searching #AheadofSocial on Twitter.  Contest closes Sunday January 16, 2011 at 12pm Eastern Standard Time.  Winners chosen by Purple Stripe Productions staff based on quality of submission.  If you are an existing paid subscriber of Ahead of Social your free 12 months will start at the beginning of the next billing cycle.  Good luck!

PS…

When the contest closes, our subscription price DOUBLES (still a cool $9.99 a month) so you may want to consider taking advantage of the offer now!  If you do win the contest, we will halt your payments and subscribe you for FREE.  If you don’t win – you still get Ahead of Social for HALF PRICE for as long as you keep your subscription active!

The Purple Stripe team is actively working on a suite of professional education and informational products that you will not want to miss!  Since it is still under wraps, we’ve decided to at least kick off the new year with a bit of a ‘teaser’ product – Ahead of Social.  Enjoy!

(Comments closed – stay tuned for the winner announcement!)

Winners : AngiePedersen, FtballCoachDoug, writingtosanity, mercerchamber & cecilyk

Is your small business website ready for the new year?  It’s often difficult for a small businesses to keep up on the latest web design trends because it has not traditionally been considered a high priority to keep ‘in the know’. If your small business website hasn’t been updated in 2-3 years, or you don’t have a website at all, the time to update (or start) is 2011.  In general, if your website contains any of the horrible aesthetics rampant during the ’90s such as animated images (including an “under construction” / “electronic mail” graphics), glitter text from MySpace, auto-play MIDI music, blinking text, scrolling marquees, a hit counter, a “best viewed in Netscape Navigator” disclaimer, or your brother-in-law designed it for free using FrontPage, the time to pay attention to the public image and brand you give to your customers is NOW.

If updating your website isn’t in your immediate future, take the time over the winter break slowdown to make sure the existing content is up to date and relevant.  We have been to many websites that have incorrect phone numbers, hours, addresses or pricing that has caused us to turn to a competitor.  Have you followed all the links in your website to see that they are still working?  Is your contact information up to date? Are testimonials from clients or employees still relevant to your current products or services?

There are great web design ideas that small businesses should consider incorporating into their sites that are both inexpensive to implement and easy for small business staff to maintain.  Some of the major points you should consider when shopping for a new small business website and company to develop it are:

Future Proof Your Website

While any technology is only good until the next technology comes along, think about using a flexible platform to build your small business website on that will grow with you in the future.  Many older websites are written in such a way that you need to understand coding to change content or update the design.  That is not a practical option for a small business that may not have the expertise – or money – to hire a developer every time they need content updated on their website.  Software platforms called Content Management Systems (CMS) are a low cost and viable solution for most small business needs.  The content and the design structure of a CMS are separate, allowing you to easily update the look and feel of a website while keeping your content in tact.  At the same time, a CMS system allows you to easily input or modify your content in an editor similar to composing an email message or Word document.  Now you can keep your customers up to date without having to hire a programmer every time you need to update your website.

Lights Out For Flash

In the early 2000′s Flash websites were all the rage.  They were visual, interactive, and well, flashy.  Today’s heavy reliance on mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, and Android devices have left many small businesses in the dust when it comes to accessing information on the go.  If your website is written in Flash, you are essentially invisible to most mobile device users.  Even the mobile devices that do support Flash don’t support it reliably.  Newer websites incorporate technology like HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 and AJAX to to provide rich user experiences while being about to be navigated from a mobile device.  With that said, Flash is still a great technology to use when developing sites that can capture audio or video, do complex animations or run web games.

Being Social Is No Longer A Luxury

The time has passed for companies both big and small to dismiss the influence of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.  Even if you aren’t ready to jump in (that is an entirely different article to write for 2011), you need to recognize that your customers *are* actively involved.  Yes, even B2B customers.  When redesigning your small business website, be sure to integrate features such as a Facebook “Like” button, a Twitter “Tweet This” button, or a “Share This” widget so that customers have one-click ability to share your information with their networks.  There is a greater chance of your content getting seen on a social networking platform with 500+ million users than anyplace else on the Internet, so make it as easy as possible to get your content there.

Content Makes Cents

How many times do you go back and look at old marketing brochures or advertisements?  Once you ‘get the message’ you really don’t have a reason to keep going back and re-reading the same piece of content over and over.  There is nothing new to be learned.  Why would your never-updated small business website be any different?  One of the most difficult tasks for small businesses is to keep a steady stream of updated content on their websites.  Developing a solid content strategy is crucial for determining what you should be publishing to your customers on your small business website and social channels.  Fresh content means more repeat visits from customers and that means you position yourself as the expert in your field – and everyone wants to do business with ‘the best’.  Shameless plug, our friend C.C. Chapman co-wrote the book Content Rules with Ann Handley and we highly recommend purchasing it.  Content Rules will help you get you started on developing and identifying the best ways to develop content for your small business website, get involved with your customers and keep them coming back for more.

Pick A Partner Don’t Hire A Vendor

When choosing a company to design and implement your new small business website, think long term.  While it may seem beneficial to go for the dirt-cheap or free option (or worse yet – do it yourself), realize that over the next few years you will likely need updates to your small business website that will require you to work with a website development company again.  The company you decide to work with is developing your brand and image to the outside world – so think about what your reputation and image means to your business, and choose accordingly.  A well run website development company will work with you to design a site that is easy for your company to maintain, easy for customers to find what they are looking for, and is functional and relevant for the next few years.  It should be their job to understand your business not just pick colors and graphics.  They should be as vested in in the process and product of your small business website as you are.

Be Human

There really isn’t any other way to put it.  Be human.  Make sure your small business website is designed for humans.  Not search engines.  Yes, it is undeniable that search engine optimization is a vital tool and tactic to use in helping people find your website, but what happens once they land there? Does your website look and read like it was written by a slick marketing company?  Try this, take a look at your “About Us” page and read it aloud.  Does it feel natural to speak the content and feel like a conversation?  Or is it full of buzz words and jargon not understood or spoken outside your industry?  While proper spelling and grammar rules still apply, the days of uptight written copy are over.  People want to do business with people – not ad copy.  How about the layout and secondary content on your small business website?  It it crammed full of keywords and tags to make search engines love you but turn people off?  Remember this, Google does not buy your products, people do.

Whether you are an independent businessperson, small company, or a small company quickly growing into a large company, it is in your best interest – and your customers best interest – to update your website and put your best image forward for 2011.  Of course Purple Stripe Productions can help you with your website, content, and social strategy and implementation.  We would love to partner with you to help your business – big or small – to get you to the next level right now.

LinkedIn is widely considered a powerhouse professional business networking tool.  The community on LinkedIn has its own ecosystem and set of ‘unwritten’ rules on use and etiquette.  One hotly debated topic is how to incorporate Twitter messages into LinkedIn – tactfully.  What you decide to publish and on what platform is up to you – but there is technology available that makes it easy.  The simplest way to bring in updates from Twitter is to use the #in hashtag when sending a Tweet to let LinkedIn know that you want to cross-post just that message.  Now your professional network connections on LinkedIn don’t have to read every Tweet you send, only the ones you feel they would be interested in!

What type of information do you find works best to cross-post between your social networks?

Connecting LinkedIn & Twitter

1. Log into your LinkedIn account
2. Click on your name in the upper right corner – choose Settings
3. In the “Profile Settings” section, choose “Twitter Settings”

Here you can make changes to how LinkedIn handles your Twitter messages and accounts:

Account

This is where you can add or remove Twitter accounts that you would like associated with your LinkedIn account.

Display your Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile

This option allows you to display all of your Twitter messages on the right side bar of your Profile Page (“Add an Application” at bottom of right side bar). This is not the same as having your messages show up within your LinkedIn ‘wall’. By showing the side bar with your Tweets, you will not flood your connections timeline with your Twitter messages.

Share your tweets in your LinkedIn status

This option allows you to gate what Twitter messages actually show up as a status update in LinkedIn. Selecting “Yes, share all tweets” will publish EVERY Twitter message as a status update in LinkedIN. Selecting “Share only tweets that contain #in” will ignore all Twitter updates unless they are specifically tagged with #in and then only publish those as status updates to LinkedIn.  (Note: #li also works but is not as frequently used.)

Tweet display

Your only option here is to display rich text links (or not). It is generally accepted as ‘user friendly’ to display rich links so that readers have more information to help determine if the content is worth a ‘click’.  Checking/unchecking the option will show you a live example of each display option.

Part of what the Purple Stripe training team teaches in our Small Business seminars is finding the right tool for the job. In this case, finding the right social media platform for your company’s marketing needs. For now, everyone has their eye on The Big Three (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) but we are quick to show that there are hundreds more tools available (and hundreds that have gone away…) Each tool has it’s own way of working, both technically and culturally, and each requires a unique approach to get the most benefit.

Twitter has evolved as a great place for news, entertainment, updates, and general chit-chat. Facebook is great for forming (or rekindling) relationships, social gaming, and socializing. LinkedIn is all business networking and job fulfillment. What goes on in one platform is generally ill-received on others. For example, Farmville would not be tolerated at all in LinkedIn and similar games have failed in Twitter.  Connecting with coworkers, past or present, may be frowned upon in Facebook where things stay fairly personal, but on LinkedIn not only is it expected, the platform actually helps you locate, connect and recommend each other.

Outside of the people you connect with on a social platform, the content you share should be unique across the networks.  Twitter excels at sending text messages and links because of the text-only media and character limitations.  Facebook is amazing at sharing multimedia content such as pictures or video – in addition to text and links.  LinkedIn is wonderful for sharing text and links in a professional business networking capacity.  The problem with these tools is that sometimes they are used to promote exactly the same message to very different user populations.

Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

It is very easy to post the same message to all three platforms.  But should you?  Are you really serving each community to the best of their needs?

Updates from Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can all cross-pollinate, sometimes resulting in messages infinitely looping between the three.  Messages from Twitter about what movie you just streamed from Netflix is automatically posted to your LinkedIn profile.  Foursquare checkins go to Twitter and Facebook, and then by association LinkedIn.  How is that helping anyone besides YOU?  Do the professionals on LinkedIn care what movie you are watching? Probably not.

There are ways to cross-post without becoming annoying.  For example, LinkedIn allows you to only bring in Twitter messages with #in.  Hootsuite allows you to enter in a status message and choose exactly what platform you would like to publish it on.  Our advice is be selective in where and what you post on each social network platform.  Not sure how to divide and conquer?  Create a unique strategy for each platform that accommodates your business goals and master social marketing plan.  Take a step back and determine who follows you (or that you want to follow you) on each platform, zero in on their top three needs from you, and deliver.

Done right, the interaction and value you get from each space will increase by having the right conversation on the right platform with the right people for the right reasons.

Lynette is scheduled to sit on a panel discussion about LinkedIN regarding business and job hunting.  The “Linked-N Bergen County NJ” group with over 1600 members and has meetups attracting upwards of 100 attendees each.  Register for the LinkedIN Social Media Discussion Panel Bergen County Networking Event.

Crowne Plaza Hotel
601 From Road, Paramus , NJ 07652
Tuesday, May 18th. 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Cost: $12 / advance, $15 / door

Registration will be from 6:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m with networking until about 8:15 p.m. Catering by Bone Fish Grill (cash bar).  For questions, please contact the LinkedIn group organizer David Katz.

Scheduled panelists for the discussion are:

• Karen Levine – @KarenLevine
• Lynette Young – @LynetteRadio
• Judy Moriarty – @realestatechick
• Chris Kieff – @ckieff (moderator)

It’s been said time and time again for a business to succeed in social media, they need to understand their customers.  Designing and incorporating a strategy for social media isn’t a checklist, it’s an evolution.  Jumping in and talking is fine if  you are a person, but as a company, there are some things to consider first.

1. It’s important to understand the culture of  the platforms you are interested in engaging on.  Fark or Digg has an entirely different persona than LinkedIn.  If you are interested in talking to college-humored males with a penchant for Photoshopping funny pictures – Fark and Digg are the place for you (hey, they spend a lot of money…)  Looking for sales professionals?  LinkedIn is where you need to be.  Know your audience, know your platform.
2. Don’t start with the technology – start with the goals.  Just this week a project came across our desk from a company looking to enter social media. They had already determined what technology and social media sites they wanted to be on, without having the slightest idea who they wanted to talk to, what they wanted to talk about, and who actually hangs out on these sites.  Backwards.  Goals first, tactics second.
3. Don’t just talk about your business.  Be a person first and have fun.  While it seems counter productive to chit-chat about personal items on company time, the fact that you present yourself as a human being goes a long way to building trust.  No one is saying tell everyone what you eat for lunch every day, but sharing some volunteer efforts your company engages in or publicly thanking co-workers for decorating your office (and sharing a quick picture) for your birthday shows you aren’t just about the end sale.
4. You have to be a listener, not just a broadcaster.  Ever take part in a conversation where the other person talks about themselves for 20 minutes, and when you finally get a word in, they are gazing over your shoulder looking for the next person to pitch to?  Try practicing ‘active listening‘ on the social channels before starting to start your own agenda.
5. Does it blend?  How does social media fit with your entire PR & Marketing plan?  Social media marketing is a subset of a larger comprehensive plan to launch your company into a new era of customer communication. Abandoning everything that’s worked in favor of something you know little about is a guaranteed failure.  Stick with what works, and add to it.

This article is part of a series on social media success.

What’s the ROI of your telephone?

Your phone is a critical tool to communicate and listen, just like social media is a tool.  Who ever said that social media is a direct pipeline of prime leads for your sales team?  Twitter isn’t a fat database of people sitting around waiting for you to pitch to them.  Facebook is not an e-commerce site.  Yes, you can make money from social channels (Dell claims $3 million in sales from Twitter alone).  When planning your entry into social media, items like ROI need to be addressed early and revisited often.  On the other hand, we are not saying that efforts in social media shouldn’t earn money.  How you earn (or save) money for your company should always be taken into account, but sometimes items like brand awareness, employee retention, idea generation, or customer satisfaction don’t have hard numbers or formulas to follow.

So how do you make money from social media?  It depends on why you use social media.  If you are using it as a customer service outreach (Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us is an amazing book on the topic) then not only can you save hard money on the cost of an employee’s time picking up the phone, but the frustration and negative word of mouth so rampant with bad customer experiences.  How much money does it take to win back (assuming you even can) a customer that you’ve lost due to poor service?  How many customers do you loose even before the sale due to weak brand awareness or negative word of mouth?

Utilizing social media for sales generation?  Be there *before* the sale.  Offer help even if it means suggesting a competitor’s product.  Ask questions.  Listen.  Do more than sell – do anything but ‘sell’.  Be human.  Be well-rounded and showcase other facets of your company.  Talk about philanthropic efforts.  Provided your product or service is top-notch, all this is building trust between you and “people that may-or-may-not someday purchase your product or refer someone to you that might.”  Funny thing is, social media being structured the way it is, everyone gets to witness your efforts online and draw their own opinions on your company based on interactions they see you have with others.  In the past, the sales transaction took place ‘behind closed doors’ and not many people outside of the people involved saw the process.  That means a very limited amount of people could form their own opinions on your company outside of their own experiences.  Now the entire world can see how you treat customers, before, during, and after the sale.  The idea is scary to a good number of companies that aren’t used to operating in the new social economy.  Those companies that ‘get it’ realize that you could never put a price on (let alone actually pay to have done) the amount of positive exposure you get on social platforms.

How about using social media for talent acquisition? Product research and development?  Competitive analysis? Each group has very unique goals and should have very different strategies to using social media.

Sometimes the goal isn’t even to make money, but to save it.  Pepsi saved $20 million dollars on the 2010 Superbowl and put it towards the year-long Pepsi Refresh Project.  PepsiCo is getting much more than $20 million dollars in media coverage from the move.  Pepsi can afford to take chances like this, but can your company?  Social media is supposed to be a supplement to already successful outreach programs.  Dropping newspaper ads (if they work) to launch a Facebook Fan Page is not a smart business move.  Dumping your email campaigns (if they work) in favor of Twitter is a setup for failure.  Incorporating social media means having to take a good hard look at what you are involved with right now and cutting every single item that operates in the red.  For example, car dealerships may cringe at the thought of abandoning newspaper ads.  Just because your company (or your industry) has always done it a certain way – doesn’t mean you need to keep doing it that way.

End result, if you don’t know what your goals are, you will never reach them, social media endeavor or otherwise.

This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.

To put it bluntly, numbers matter.

Collecting numbers just for the sake of having numbers isn’t the goal.  Often times the quality of “the numbers” is overlooked.  Easy question – would you rather have 10,000 ‘fans’ that don’t really care what you are about and ignore you, or 500 ‘fans’ that are actively seeking information on your products or services?  Of course even with 500 ‘fans’ you can get impatient and wonder why your widget isn’t flying off the shelf or customers aren’t lined up out the door.  Christopher Penn has always said if you are selling Gulfstream G5 jets, and only need to sell one every two years to live like a king – you only need two followers, one of which is ready to buy a jet, and one that knows someone that wants to buy a jet.  You need to find the right numbers.

Just as you most likely didn’t have people banging down your door the day you opened for business, social media channels take time (and trust) to cultivate.  Today’s companies have no patience for waiting for growth.  Some remember the good ol’ days of double-digit growth and customers lined up outside their door with bags of money.  Some think that offline success translates directly into online success.  Some see social media is an instant ticket to success.  More yet assume old tactics and campaigns can be flipped to social platforms and work (even if they didn’t work before).  You not only have to think outside the box, you need to take a match, set the box on fire, roast marshmallows, then build a new one.  Hard work? Yes. Difficult? No.

If you’ve listened to what people have to say, you will know how to treat your numbers and how to grow them.  The key to all of this is to be sure you NEVER treat your ‘fans’ as numbers.  It’s important never to assume just because someone ‘fans’ or follows you, you have permission to spew as much marketing copy at them as you please.  Having someone follow you in social media circles merely means they are receptive in watching you and seeing if you can provide value or solutions to their life.  If you can’t produce, they ignore you, un-follow/friend, or worse yet, tell *their* friends how invaluable you are to them.

All this listening is boring. We want ACTION!  We want followers!  When do we get to talk about how awesome we are!?  We want sales driven directly from Twitter and our Facebook page.  We don’t have time to actually listen and try to provide value to people so they will fan & follow us.  We have *real* work to do during the day.  Do you expect me to hang out on Twitter all day?  My boss will think we are goofing off.

If you are not listening, and not contributing, why would people want to follow you?  What’s in it for them?  Every single time you post an update or tweet, ask yourself that question.  Telling people what you have on sale, what your product offering is, what award your firm just won – this isn’t providing value to them.  Your ‘peacocking’ (our team’s term for trying to brag online and think people will be impressed, think your important, and want to follow you).  Where’s the value?  Having 20% off of all toddler shoes this week is fine, but if you offer 20% off all toddler shoes this week when you come in and have your child professionally fitted benefits them.  See the difference?

So how do you find the right numbers?  You listen. You help. You promote others. You offer value, information, and assistance.  You LISTEN (it’s worth repeating).  By listening and responding, without asking for or expecting a sale in return, is how you grow your numbers.   Of course there is much more to gaining quality ‘fans’ and followers (depending on your goals and industry – to name just two of two dozen variables) but listening is always a rock solid start.  By showing that you are a good listener and can provide value (“what’s in it for me?”) and interesting content – THEN you may have earned a ‘fan’ or follower.  The minute you start being noise instead of information – you’re history.

Start by searching within the platforms you are looking to build a presence on.  What to search for?  People that are having conversations about your company, your products, lateral industries, key phrases related to your industry, you competitors, your geographical area, or anything loosely linked to your interests.  Think of it like this, what phrases or ideas would you be listening for during a conversation at a (in-person) networking event to help identify someone as a prospect to talk to?

Search.Twitter.com and Facebook.com/search are the first places to go to start seeing what conversations are taking place. Need something more comprehensive?  Google Alerts is the best (free) option for searching the billions of pieces of information that show up every day on the web.  Once you outgrow the basic free tools, platforms such as Radian 6 help you not only search out information, but help manage your brand online and streamline your team’s outreach efforts.

The more people that are genuinely interested in you, the more sucessful you will be in social media.  Success doesn’t always equal money, success means meeting the goals you’ve laid out for your company during the strategy process.  You did think about why you need to be active in social marketing and what you want to accomplish?  Right?

This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.

Taking a step back, listening, and learning are all nice in theory, but ‘lazy’ in the business world.  Action produces results.  Listening is inaction.  We define success in how quickly we rack up the number of fans, friends, status updates, ‘likes,’ and re-Tweets.  Numbers we can count and reproduce on a chart.  How can you be considered successful if you gained less fans this week than last?  How can you justify to your management that your efforts are successful if you LOST a few followers?

The listening precursor is a real sticking point in a good number of companies.  You can see the results of not listening in multiple facets of a company.  Customer Service is reactive to problems and always on the defense.  The Sales team struggles to keep up with unique product offerings until the demand of customers hits the tipping point.  Research & Development work in silos far removed from end users.  Marketing follows a safe and predictable path that fits nicely within the niche and genre of their industry.  Human Resources is seen as the ‘heavy’ in the company.  Information technology departments treat employees like teens that cannot be trusted with the Internet for fear of rampant porn viewing and personal online socializing resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue due to unproductive worker bees.

The bottom line – handing in a status report with slow-gaining numbers is perceived as a failure in Corporate America.  Fast. Quick. Instant.  NOW.  Because the technology (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) produce instant content, the perception is that success should be instant as well.  Trust takes time.

Solutions are easy to identify, but hard to implement.  Change is hard. It’s disruptive.  It’s unproven.

What if Customer Service spoke up and talked to R&D and Sales about making changes to products that they see need work?  Would customers get better products and services faster?  Would the company save money in research and marketing by producing products that the public is already asking for?  How many customers could you keep from moving to a competitor?

What if Sales took ideas from customers and (even if it wasn’t a viable avenue to pursue) acknowledged customers as part of the product cycle and a valued member of idea generation.  My Starbucks Idea is actively soliciting and implementing ideas directly from their customers.  Imagine that! Loyal customers giving free advice geared specifically towards your product and company and giving them even better reasons to spend money with you.

What if R&D could poll customers and find out what works, what doesn’t, and maybe even find an entirely new and unique market for a product?  Fiskars & Brains on Fire comes to mind (you really need to go read the case study).  Can you imagine a company that has been making a product since 1649 and has *no idea* who uses it or for what purpose?!  There isn’t a scrapbooker alive that doesn’t own a pair of orange-handled Fiskars scissors.  Crafters are fiercely brand loyal, in this case to a product and company that didn’t even know they existed.  By taking the deep dive into the culture of the customer, not only did they gain an almost limitless idea pool for new products, but built a loyal fan base second to none in their fiercely competitive industry.  All by listening and acting on what they heard.

What if Marketing focused on developing amazing content to share with customers instead of canned broadcast messages?  What if they stopped doing what the rest of their industry does and actually did something creative and interesting?  Frenzied Waters is a perfect example of a ground-breaking concept (like most things that come out of Campfire).

How about Human Resources working with employees to find what they need, how they work and learn best, and act more like mentors and less like police?  Saying there is ‘open communication’ between departments is one thing, but when people speak up and never see results, the conversation stops.

Why talk when nothing changes?  This is why it’s important to listen first.  Your customers (or potential customers) will let you know the direction they need you to go in.  And, yes, you need to listen – and adapt.  Running head-first into social media platforms without having any clue what already exists, what people want, and how to best position yourself as a helpful resource in your field are paramount to any endeavor.

So what do you gain by listening?  The most obvious benefit is learning what your customers are talking about, what they need, what they hate, how they live, and how they need *you* to help *them* solve problems. Fiskars listened and gained product insight and an army of crafters.  Discovery Channel provided a new form of personalized, interactive entertainment with Frenzied Waters.  Where conversations used to take place between co-workers around a water cooler, or drinking coffee around a kitchen table – today’s chit-chat also takes place ONLINE.  Drug companies do not create medicine to alleviate (or cure) illness that doesn’t exist – and friends don’t recommend a product they haven’t tried and had success with.  Restaurants don’t put food on menus people won’t eat – and people don’t bring friends to dine at restaurants they haven’t been to before and loved.  Businesses exist to provide a product or service required by the consumer.  No consumer need, no product, no trust, no business.

Secondly, keeping tabs on competitors isn’t such a bad idea.  The danger here is that you get caught up in every move they make and may get drawn into mimicking their efforts online.  If it worked for them it must work for you, right?  Problem here is you don’t know what their goals are, what goes on behind the scenes, failures they have had in the past.  Sometimes it is hard to be different, stand out in a positive light, or provide a truly unique product or experience.  Regardless if you reach that goal or not – you have to try.  If you copy your competition, then you are really no different than they are, and that just made the decision for the customer more neutral.  “Them or Us” – makes no difference.  You need to make a difference.

Keeping your ear to the ground for the ‘next big thing’ gives you a competitive edge and a brain-trust of consumers that are already telling you what your next product or service should be.  If fifty people a day, every day, called your company asking for the same set of products – would you provide it?  Social media channels work the same way, only you need to “pick up the phone,” BE QUIET, and listen to the conversation.  Take notes.  Implement innovation.  Be proactive.

Moving forward requires you to be on solid foundation to start with.  If you are offering shoddy, broken, or inferior products or services no amount of good will or social outreach will save you.  There is a fear that by listening to what customers are saying about you online you open yourself up to negative feedback.  Guess what? Customers (and employees) are saying it regardless if you want to hear it or not.  Trust us, it’s better to hear it, take your lumps, fix it, and move forward.  If you don’t listen to existing and former customers, you will never know what it will take to move you from good to great in their eyes.  You know the saying – it’s easier (and less expensive) to keep a customer than gain a new one.  Listen to the customers you have and make them a true part of your product cycle, it’s one of the only ways to figure out how to gain new ones.