Dots: Connected – Thanks Chris
I’ve always felt I’m a good “connect the dots” kind of person, whether those dots are people, concepts, initiatives, strategies, etc. In a sense a big part of my job now is helping entrepreneurs connect dots: their business concept to markets, their markets to market pain, market pain to opportunity and opportunity to investment. Â
I’ve written before about some Social Networking basics. In this post on leveraging social networks, I talk a bit at the end about the power of social networks, that “viral” nature that you hear so much about and how a well run campaign has the power to add exponential, potentially explosive results to your company.Â
File that away as Dot A.
Obviously, it doesn’t a blog post to know that we are in the midst of a huge economic crisis. We can debate the roots of the crisis ad nauseum, but the results are that companies are going out of business, people are getting laid off, and sales are down. Pretty much across the board.
File that away as Dot B.
Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect Dot A (potentially explosive lead-generating technology) to Dot B (we really need some new business). Maybe you’ve tried some new media campaigns in you company, maybe you’re just considering it. But I think (I would like to think, at least) that most smart companies are thinking through how to take advantage of these new channels.
There are different levels of genius when it comes to connecting dots, and the Chris I refer to in the title is Chris Brogan, blogger and consultant specializing in helping companies use social networks to build relationships and add value. Chris’ takes the connection between our two dots above to a whole ‘nother level in his post Target Marketing. It is a quick read and if you have any involvement in your company’s value chain involved in retaining customers I highly suggest it to you.
Chris does a fantastic job of not only painting a bleak picture for us of why our current attraction and retention methods aren’t working, but more importantly I think helping us see through the fog of hype and point out a concrete way social networking and new media strategies can help us through these difficult times. My paraphrase of Chris’ argument would go something like this:
- The Internet (and following it’s lead most print and TV news outlets) have turned us into “snackers”. We don’t read anymore, we skim.
- Even if we take the time to read some things, we don’t care. The overload of spam, mailers, E-Mail newsletters, website banners, etc. etc. has numbed us to traditional “target marketing”.
- Chris solution? Not as you might imagine. Sure he thinks the answer lies in Social Networking, but the solution to your dilemma is to Build. Relationships. Now.
The message is to cut back on the traditional approach (target marketing). It isn’t working. Save the money and redeploy some of it on well crafted social networking campaigns designed to build relationships.Â
Normally, I’m naturally suspicious of people touting solutions that just happen to match their soapbox. This is one case where I think the message is spot on. Something to think about.
BTW – if you have the time to read the comments on Chris’ post, there are some good ones in there. In particular, I liked a couple comments comparing social networking’s focus on building authentic relationships with good customer service of “days gone past”. I’ve been remarking to many business associates of late that I think the dearth of quality customer service is a huge market opportunity for companies that can take advantage of it.
There’s another great comment about 2/3 of the way down that reminds us of a great tool we all used to use every day to build relationships. You almost certainly have one on your desk. It’s probably square, made out of plastic, and has twelve keys on it with letters and numbers. It’s your phone and nothing beats an old-fashioned, voice to voice phone call for reinvigorating a relationship.
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