Speaking in Manchester tonight, Al Mackin, Managing Director of SEO Consultancy – The E Word – launched their Manchester Twitter report. This is one of the first white papers which aims to highlight some of the key influencers on Twitter in the region using slightly more complicated methodology than number of followers. The aim of the report was to begin to identify best practice across key sectors, it makes for an interesting read.
Amongst some of the other content tonight, there was also an attempt to identify the social media capital of Europe. Surprisingly, this was highlighted as Madrid, in Spain, with London, Paris and Manchester following closely. Head of Social Media at Juice Digital, Steve Downes, looked at an index analysis which showed that Manchester has a higher penetration of its population using Twitter when compared to London, which was interesting, so the region is really taking off, which was good to hear.
The landscape is really beginning to change out there, not just in Europe, but further afield too. China has over 90 million people that have written a blog, a simply staggering thought when you combine it with the fact that they have more English speakers than we do population in the UK and a signal that global reach is stretching. 52% of Indian based businesses use social media activley, when compared to only 33% of UK businesses. With 65M Tweets being sent every day and a further 300,000 new users signing up daily too, it’s no surprise that business wants to join the conversation.
Legal beagles Pannone took the stage to ground the social mediaphoria by reminding attendees that social media is not excluded from the law, including libel. Their advice was to have a crisis management policy, a social media policy and make sure that if anyone really takes offence to something you posted, to remove it, unless you are absolutely sure it is true. All standard stuff, but something to beware and plan for. Three interesting facts that I took away were: -
1) Twitter (the entity) can potentially be jointly liable for any libellous Tweets if it is reported to them and they do not remove it.
2) Digital libel (unlike normal libel which normally has a one year window) re-sets every time someone view the post, which means that the window for action may remain open in perpetuity. I’m no lawyer, however, I’m sure that would be a nightmare if it happened. A good reason to have a robust policy.
3) Your staff contracts should be reviewed to include things such as digital bullying and defamatory statements made outside of work about you the employer.
Overall, it was a good event. Not the usual “jump on the bus” type of event, a little more educational and something for everyone.
It’s no surprise that we’re all taking in massive amounts of information nowadays, I recently noticed in a newspaper article that the brain processes about 16GB of new information a day. With all this going in, it’s becoming harder to cut through to people, that’s for sure. People are inundated with information and simply can’t absorb it all, therefore our brains just seem to skimming and cramming as much information as we can in order that we may need to recall some reference to something, at some point.
As a result, we’re all filtering much more in our lives. Relying on trusted sources or tools to give us the bits we don’t want to miss amongst the noise. Counting up my columns on Tweetdeck earlier today, I have thirty six, which are monitoring the fifteen hundred or so people on Twitter I follow and the 311 Linkedin connections I have. The columns are set up to monitor key words, key people, sectors and topics which I’m interested in, listening to or want to keep an eye on. By using filters in this way, I can keep a cockpit view on the things that really matter such as my most trusted business contacts, industry talk, new products or new connections being made by people I know. This means I only need to take a glance at it, two or three times a day to catch up on what really matters, in reality, it means that the top 10% of so of people I follow, make it into a column, like a modern day black book!
The more valuable content you distribute, the more your reputation can increase and the greater value you have as a syndicator of value to your network. The trick is to not do too much of it, otherwise you become a news information service and drift into obscurity. I’ve seen people on Twitter who rapid fire out news, who get unfollowed just as quickly as they crowd out users screens with information, thinking it is of value. Quality always trumps quantity when dealing with people want to filter. The more you do it yourself, the more you recognise it’s value to others.
I haven’t taken a pill which has made me think of 1970′s TV shows, I’m talking about how you create opportunity for yourself. So many people let opportunities pass them by, if only they could be a bit more attentive or a bit braver or ask more questions, wonderful things might happen.
It isn’t always obvious, nor can it be spotted on your first meeting with someone, however the more people you do connect with and make an effort with, the more doors can open for you. The trick to generating opportunities is to ask good questions, listen attentively to the answers and then ask more questions and listen again. Questions I like are: -
- What is the biggest issue or challenge facing your business and industry right now?
- What is the biggest problem on your desk right now?
- Tell me about the stepping stones you need to take to reach your goals?
As you can see, not clever or difficult. All open questions, all with an ability for you to quickly hear the pain points of the individual you’re talking with and all with an ability to ask further questions dependent on the responses. The quality of your further questions, depends on how hard you listen. It’s surprising how many people don’t “actively listen”, I did a short blog post on this which you can see here.
Ultimately, the brightness of your entrepreneurial fire will depend on how many embers you have glowing at any particular time (that one’s for you Moneeb). Opportunity comes if you are alert, out, meeting people, thinking and curious of others. If you are stuck in your office, don’t go anywhere, stand in a room with a half-empty glass or just collect business cards at events, then opportunity won’t knock as hard or as often for you, as some others. Be the COE (Chief Opportunity Engineer) of your business, not the CEO, change your mindset and turbo-charge your efforts.
It’s often said nowadays that “EQ is the new IQ”. That is, Emotional Intelligence is the new competency to get you on in business. Rocket Scientists and Chemists may not agree, outside of the sciences however, there’s a pretty good case for it.
Having worked with business psychologists for a number of years (initially with Steven Sylvester and most recently with Impact Consulting), I’ve seen the power in understanding “self” and others. Humans are complicated folk. In fact, I often recount the saying that “people are more complicated than rocket science” (that comment was made by an ex-rocket scientist that went into HR). Unravelling the complexity of how we act, what makes us us, how to mine top performance and teamworking is a big job. There are tools to help of course, books, courses, consultatncy, basic leadership skills like honesty, fairness and consistency, aswell as psychometric tests.
I’ve used them for a number of years. I find them useful to profile candidates for interviews and to identify how teams can best work together in the business. I see a lot of value in them. Like anything, they need to be used as an interpretation tool, to back up other data or evidence that you may have. When you get to this level of understanding of yourself and your team, it’s easy to spot why things can go wrong, why some relationships work better than others, why some people want meetings agendas weeks in advance and why some creativity workshops work better than others.
Much depends – like a good tea – on the blend. What mix of personalities you put in the room or into teams, to get the results you need. What is evident is that you need a blend. If you put too many similar types into a room, you risk losing a balanced view and ending up with a one-dimensional view of the world. However, I can recommend that you try it. Seeing the results from your first psychometric test can be a little unnerving, primarily as they can be quite pointed and point out those things that you would prefer not to be pointed out, in time, you will see that it can unlock you, your team and your understanding of those around you.
There’s lot of challenges to making your business lower carbon, particularly in the depths of a global credit crisis and recession recovery. You’re battling for Time, Attention and Trust, keeping your head above water and winning business. People are distracted with the here and now, their own problems in their personal bubble. Speaking to a roomful of businesses interested in the idea of a Greater Manchester Low Carbon economy this morning, I outlined some of the challenges with getting things going (see this link for some of the slides I used).
Civic leaders have had every report possible done. The opportunity is clear. The risks are clear. The next steps for business are not. Greater Manchester has lots of commissions and passionate people, however, I feel it is lacking “The Big Idea”. i.e., What one thing could we mobilise a whole city region behind, in order to improve the lives of the people within it? Whether that means cleaner air, better business, infrastructure or living environment. The newly established Greater Manchester Chamber Carbon Reduction Groups aims to tackle that.
I gave a couple of examples today of great things that I’d seen. One was about a City in France that has a huge balloon floating about the City Hall, connected to the power grid. It glows red when high demands are being made on the grid, allowing everyone in the City Region to instantly visualise and take action. That alone forced behaviour change, started people thinking about the things they could/should do. It’s not always about telling people what to do, but motivating them to do something.
I also spoke about a clever little piece of software called Powerman from a company called Ergo Computing (details here) which actively monitors energy consumption of IT on a network. A simple yet highly effective way to reduce carbon and costs. Straight to the bottom line and ticking everyone’s boxes.
For business, you have to balance the economics of carbon reduction with the economics of running your business. I gave the example of having a large external salesforce, who are very motivated by cars. We choose to offer a benchmark car with an industry leading CO2, yet still good enough to attract the right talent. We then offer further financial incentives for them to go even lower on their CO2. Around 25% of drivers choose this route, so it’s a way of still balancing our need for talent, with the need to be as efficient as we can be with our carbon. If we offered a fleet of electric cars, we wouldn’t get the right people, that’s hard to swallow sometimes, but a fact of life, so you need to accomodate it and save additional carbon in other ways.
It’s not all easy though. Going green can be an inconvenience to people because it requires changes in our behaviour, particularly when it comes to re-cycling. When you’ve been running a sustainable business as long as we have, you have to search for the continuing wins, like squeezing a sponge. That’s when it begins to hurt a little more as it becomes much more focussed on the individual doing different things rather than the organisation. Levels of kickback increase when you reach this points, however, you get over the humps in time.
Behind the landscape of all of this, you also still have the disconnect between green dollars (procurement) and green ideals (CSR). If it were a game of Top Trumps, the economic buyer always trumps the sustainability department. It would be great to see organisations resolving this and having a more holistic view to their overall footprint, some businesses achieve this brilliantly, others not atall. These are the simple steps that business could take to get on board.
Whatever happens, you have to do something as a business. Public sector procurement and large companies expect you to be able to demonstrate your credentials when tendering as a supplier, we want to deal with suppliers with the same ideals. If you don’t get on the (electric) bus it will leave without you! Notwithstanding the fact that in Manchester that there is a £4bn economy to go at, see that made you sit up!
I could write a lot on this issue, I’m passionate about it. However, taking my own medicine and wanting to keep my blogposts short(ish) so that they get read, I’m going to now hand back to you to go and do something amazing in your own business. Start small. Make it Easy. Make a difference.
Fame and celebrity. The whole world is becoming obsessed by it. Reality TV shows giving everyone their 5 minutes of fame, everyone believing that they can be a millionaire in a minute. Under the shadow of all of this, tens of thousands of brilliant businesses continue to trade. Happy to be in the shadows and out of the limelight, wanting to be famous in the eyes of their customers, not the general public.
Entrepreneuralism seems to be very focussed on the here and now nowadays. Businesses that are just starting or have recently started grab the headlines. Businesses that have gone through fast acceleration or received huge cash injections are the darlings of the media. That’s absolutely fine and I love to see new businesses start. I also love to hear the stories of how businesses that are well established – having been started a long time ago.
These are businesses started ten or fifteen years ago, by then, bedroom entrepreneurs, who didn’t have anywhere near the free resources that todays businesses have. They’ve seen off competitors and challengers who have subsequently disappeared, they’ve stayed relevant, grown organically and remain as passionate about their customers today as they did the day they started. Their businesses may not be sexy, like cloud computing, biotech or the low-carbon sector, however they do provide fantastic everyday products or services which differentiate themselves from the competition.
They’ve seen the world change and adjusted. Seen more than one recession. Seen the intense value in one to one relationships and understand value, more than price. There is so much to be learned by their past mistakes and successes. I am lucky to meet businesses of all ages in my job, new and old. Everyone has a story and there is always a nugget of transferable gold in their start-up story. So, today I salute the businesses who are over 10 years old, still competing, still doing new things, winning new business and staying relevant.
When did you last survey your key customers? Do a bit of research about how you’re doing? Couple of times a year? Annually Never?
A survey is different from – let’s say – a peer to peer relationship. We can maintain those, nurture them and pay attention to them. However, in larger businesses which often rely on a spiders web of contacts between two businesses, it’s amazing how opinion can differ. Leaders aren’t always connected with the detail. That’s where a survey can come in and give you a healthcheck, beyond the parameters of “do we like each other as people”.
The trick with surveys is to keep them short. Don’t expect too much of people, they are busy with their own stuff. If you keep it concise, targetted, simple and easy to complete you will get greater response. I regularly use Survey Monkey, a free cloud based application, which allows you to create a basic on-line survey for free. All you have to do is decide your questions, decide what format you want the answers in – multiple choice etc – and then publish the URL to your customers. Easy as that.
Well, it’s easy is you really focus your questions down and make them relevant. Surveys have to give the recipient a right of reply. Not everyone is comfortable with being “totally honest”. I like Survey Monkey as it is done anonymously, so you tend to get to the real truth.
Sometimes it can be difficult to read difficult things, sometimes people fill them in when “in the grip” of a difficult situation, so the timing triggers a negative response. Regardless, they should always be seen as an indicator for you to take action and investigate further if things aren’t going your way. It’s surprising what you can learn and in our world of “user generated content” the most important voice we should be listening to – is our customers.
It’s horrid when things go wrong. Ultimately it results in customer disattisfaction plus loss of reputation and sales, if not dealt with swiftly and fairly. There are also lot’s of other costs too. The time it takes to put things right, compensatory gestures, handling costs, increases in stock – all sorts. With the increase in user generated content and social media “right to reply”, businesses spend a lot of time sorting out the problem, but sometimes not getting to the root of why it happened and how to prevent it happening again. Or, in other words, “continuous improvement.”
We don’t plan to slip up, it’s just a by product of running a business sometimes, call it an unintended consequence. The resultant costs are known as the cost of poor quality. In my own business, we measure satisfaction and disattisfaction, complaints and compliments and look to improve wherever we can, by applying the learning. Reason being, we understand the cost of poor quality and – often – it can be a hidden cost such as lots of administration, which doesn’t always bubble to the surface (hence the graphic being an iceberg).
To run an efficient business, you do need to regularly examine your processes and give them a good healthcheck to see if they are standing up, particularly with the rate of change in the world. When things do go wrong, a good way to try and get to the root of the problem is to use the 5 xWhy’s technique. Basically, just keep asking why? Why did the shipment not not get completed? Because we were late. Why were we late? Because the shipment didn’t leave on time. Why didn’t the shipment leave on time? Because we missed the cut off for the warehouse. Why did we miss the cut off time? Because the EDI failed. Why did the EDI fail? Because the part codes were incorrect on the order. And so on and so on. Eventually you’ll get to the root cause, then you figure out how to fix it. Normally it takes around 5 x Why’s, I’ve extended this for the sake of an example.
When you get to really understand what contributes to the cost of poor quality in your organisation, you can start to deal with inefficiency, you can improve customer service and reputation and ultimately increase the size of your business. If you choose to ignore it and keep making the same mistakes. you’ll end up working very hard to keep your customers satisfied.
We all know lots of people. Your extended network can run to hundreds of people. However, with a world on turbo-charge, it’s easy to forget the people you’ve met, that’s why it’s important to keep track of who you know. Social media is one of the simplest ways to do this, particularly Linkedin.
If you do meet someone interesting, follow them up the next day on Linkedin. If they accept your request to link up, then a number of things happen. Firstly, you see who they know. Secondly, you get an automatic update of their status updates and new connections. It also means that if you keep your Linkedin up to date and also your status updates, you also get to keep front of mind with them. Linkedin, unlike Twitter, pushes status updates out via e-mail and a summary of their activity, so it adds another layer to the platforms you may already use. I blogged about this previously about how I use a Linkedin column in Tweetdeck (post here).
I’ev lost count of the number of people I know in the industry who I catch up with at indsutry dinners who always make a note to come and say hello. Why? Because, although we haven’t seen each other in person or even spoken on a phone, however, they do keep up to date with whats going on with me, and vice-versa via Linkedin updates. If you’re new to Linkedin, I’ve put my Ten top hints and tips up here.
I told a social media agency off the other day. They made an approach via e-mail to me enquiring whether I integrated Social Media into my PR deployment. The e-mail was personalised, written by someone, not an e-shot. I wont embarass them or the agency by naming names. As an agency pedalling Social Media, the very minimum that I would have expected is that, prior to any approach, they should have already checked my social media landscape. Pretty basic. Had they done so, they would have seen that I already use Twitter, Blogging, Youtube and Linkedin as part of my personal and business communications. Now, if they’d of said, “we’ve done a scan of your landscape” (because were a social media agency) and we think you could improve your digital footprint like this…., then fair enough. Approaches like this, are inexcusable to me nowadays. I’ve blogged many times about Time, Attention and Trust (T.A.T) and how it’s never been easier to investigate your potential prospects (see this post for further info). It goes to show, that the smart businesses, individuals and agencies are using Social Media in the right way. To research their prospects and tailor make their approach. The less savvy agencies out there aren’t practicing what their preaching, not the smartest advertisement for their business or for social media as a serious platform for business generation.
