Category: business advice

Five rules to protect your online reputation

Stephanie Rice’s Twitter faux pas shows how fragile your reputation can be in an online world. Here’s five rules for avoiding problems.

Last week’s tearful apology by Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice for an inappropriate comment about a Rugby score on Twitter is reminder to all of us that nothing on the web is a private conversation.

Over the years we’ve learned email can be a dangerous medium as messages can be endlessly copied and forwarded. The infamous Claire Swire email where a group of young London lawyers trashed a girls, and their own, reputations was lesson we all learned from.

Today, we have far more opportunities than just email to make idiots of ourselves online and damage our own reputations, so here’s a few ideas on protecting yourself online;

Everything is in writing

Internet communication is largely written. If you wouldn’t an off colour joke or disparaging comment about a colleague in a letter, then you shouldn’t put it online.

The Internet is permanent

The little electronic bits and bytes might be transient, but what you write will be stored in numerous places. Even if you delete an inappropriate comment from your inbox or Facebook page, someone will be able to recover it.

Online privacy doesn’t exist

Given private conversations can be copied and forwarded, you need to assume that nothing online is private. If you’d have trouble explaining something to your mum, boss, minister or your investors then you shouldn’t write it.

The real world rules apply online

There’s a touching naivety about the online world with a belief that the Internet is immune from the rules of the “real” world. The truth is that the net is part of the real world and the rules and laws that govern our daily lives apply online as well — securities law, defamation and just plain good manners are as valid in cyberspace just as they are in the pub or boardroom.

Apologise quickly

We all make mistakes, and when we do it online news spreads fast. So a prompt admission and apologies to anyone concerned is the best way to defuse embarrassment.

The best thing though is to ask “would my mum be happy reading this” before pressing the send button. If you don’t think she would, then you might want to think about things before letting a comment off into the wide world of the web.

While the Internet is the most powerful tool available to businesses big and small, we need to always remember that powerful tools have to be used with care. Thinking before you post should be the first rule for online communication.

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What makes a market?

Does demand for a product mean there’s a market for it?

There’s a difference between there being a demand and a market — just because there’s a need for your service or product it doesn’t translate to there being a market for it.

A market exists when someone is prepared to pay for the product or service. Which is the challenge where the idea of giving away things for free has become the currency of the Internet.

So even if you have a good idea, if you’re looking a building a business around that idea you’ll need to ask who is prepared to pay for it?

Another question of course is how much they are prepared to pay but that’s a different thought for another time.

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the need for a digital footprint

every business person needs an online profile

The need for a digital footprint
Everyone needs a personal description on the Internet

Once upon a time business reputations were spread through local taverns, guilds and market squares.

There was only one thing worse for a local merchant than having a bad reputation and that was having no community profile at all, if the townsfolk didn’t know who a merchant or professional was, their business would simply have no customers.

In modern times, the Internet is the town square and our customers and colleagues expect they can find our backgrounds and profiles on the web. All business people — individual staff members, managers, owners or founders — need something on the web to establish their credibility.

So an online presence, a digital footprint if you will, ranging from a basic profile in your company’s website through to an elaborate personal website, is now essential for all business people.

A good online start for most people is LinkedIn, which at its most basic is like a ready made online CV listing your work history, achievements and qualifications.

Enhancing LinkedIn’s value is the recommendation function where you can publicly thank colleagues for their good work and they can do likewise to you. These become instant professional references on view to the world.

The most powerful part of LinkedIn though lies in the social networking aspect. When you look at someone’s profile the service lists everyone connected to them and, most importantly, what connections they have in common with you. This is a great way of establishing an individual’s bona fides in an industry.

Social networks tend to reward frequent updates, while most business people don’t have time to update them, it is worthwhile keeping recent appointments and qualifications up to date so people checking you out have the latest details.

There are downsides with our digital footprint, we have to be careful about what we say online as inappropriate comments do get noticed and we are held accountable.

Privacy issues are always an issue for what you post online so don’t post family details on the public Internet or add anything you wouldn’t want broadcast next to your photo on the six o’clock news.

Just as we’ve previously said that web pages are today’s shopfront, the net is also becoming our business card. Just as we need business cards, we also need that digital footprint.

Even if you don’t want to put your details on a service like LinkedIn, make sure you at least have an up to date personal profile on your company website.

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The good news difference

There’s a huge appetite for good news stories and no shortage of ways to tell some about your business

Last week, children from around New South Wales gathered at the Sydney Opera House for The Festival of Choral Music. Over the four days the event is run each year, over 2,000 kids perform in the choirs, bands and ensembles.

Sitting among the proud parents in the audience on one of the nights, I listened to the positive, enthusiastic and uplifting performances and wondered why we aren’t telling more good news stories.

We all have positive stories about our businesses and there’s a demand for them; it’s no coincidence two of the most popular Internet clips of the year have been the Old Spice Commercial and Air New Zealand “crazy about rugby” safety video. Both are fun, upbeat and quirky messages.

The Air New Zealand clip also shows how we can make what’s usually a collection of stern warnings into an entertaining topic. It’s also one of the few flight instruction clips that actually shows where the life jackets are, how the oxygen masks work and clearly explains how to share them with children.

An entertaining and humorous message is worth a thousand dour and negative lectures. Let’s get some light into what we’re telling the world about ourselves.

While we can’t afford to buy the NZ All Blacks or hire actors and former NFL players like Isaiah Mustafa, the star of the Old Spice commercial and follow clips taking messages through Twitter, we can be telling our stories through positive and entertaining messages.

With our websites, newsletters, social media feeds and the traditional marketing and communications channels we no shortage of ways to tell the world what we’re doing; let’s get out and do it.

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The new accountability

What business can learn from the Australian election

The distrust and disengagement of voters in last weekend’s election holds valuable lessons for business.

As the politicians have found, the days of empty slogans are over. If you say “people are your most important asset”, “service with a smile” or “no question refunds” then you have to be sure you value those smiling employees as they cheerfully refund money. Otherwise your disgruntled staff and customers will be letting the world know the truth quickly.

We’re in an era of accountability. The connected society means all of us — in our professional, political and personal lives are more accountable than we have been for several generations. This is even more true of our businesses.

A good example of this is restaurants; where twenty years ago few eating places were reviewed by newspapers or magazines while most scored a paragraph in an annual guide, which could have been up to two years out of date by the time it was in the bookstores.

Today dozens of rating sites give customers the opportunity to report their experiences and customers are reading those reviews before they choose where to dine.

The same process is happening in all industries, your business is being reviewed and discussed online in forums, blogs and various social media channels. You have to deliver on your promises and you will be caught out if you don’t.

For society, the Internet and the new communications tools that run on it are changing how we deal with our peers, customers, employers and staff. We have more power and we have more responsibility.

It’s interesting this point was missed by the political parties that ran campaigns that relied almost exclusively on TV, radio and print. Although it isn’t surprising seeing that both parties’ 2010 campaigns seem to operate in a 1960s time warp where cheap fuel, plentiful credit and unlimited mineral exports were the nation’s boundless future.

This sort of complacency is understandable when you have a duopoly. As we know in the business world, a comfortable duopoly breeds cosy, risk adverse managers who spend more time squabbling over who should have the keys to the executive toilets than worrying about minor things like staff, new products or customer satisfaction.

Which is what’s happened to our political parties; winning the privileges of power is all that matters to the factional warlords and their supporting ranks of scheming apparatchiks; just like second rate managers in a cosy, protected industry.

The underlying beliefs of the major parties — free enterprise, a strong regional Australia or a fair go for the Australian worker have all became empty slogans and their markets, the voters, are now holding them to account.

In many ways the three or four independents who will hold the balance of power are like upstart business that disrupt cosy markets, they are reminding the incumbents of the business they have chosen to be in.

That’s the biggest business lesson from last weekend’s election; that in the new global economy the barriers to entry have fallen and new businesses are waiting to grab the customers you’re neglecting. Markets are moving quicker than ever and you need the tools and the teams to take advantage of the opportunities.

Unlike the political world, today’s business environment has no place for the safe, comfortable incumbent. It’s a great time to be a genuinely smart company.

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Head in the clouds: ABC Nightlife

What does cloud computing mean to businesses and households

What is cloud computing and why does it matter to most homes and businesses?

Join Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank to discuss cloud computing and what it means to the ordinary business and household on ABC Local Radio across Australia from 10pm on August 19.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

If you’d like to join the conversation with your questions or comments phone 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702 or twitter @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag

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Failing Fast: Google Wave’s real business lesson

The fail fast philosophy is changing how businesses in all industries are operating.

A key philosophy underlying much of Silicon Valley’s successful companies is the “fail fast” concept where a business releases a rough version of a new idea and asks the world what it thinks. Should people like the idea, it gets developed and if they don’t, it gets dropped and everybody moves on to the next brainwave.

The “fail fast” philosophy was behind Google Wave’s dropping last week, as CEO Eric Schmidt said at the Techonomy Conference on the day it was announced; “….we release it and see what happens. It works, you announce product, you ship it…”

Until recently, “failing fast” was restricted to hot shot Internet businesses but as the cost of product development falls due to better collaboration tools, testing methods and global outsourcing, it’s become easier for all businesses to experiment without risking an organisation’s future.

This is very different from the old style of doing business, a good example of how things used to work was Boeing’s development of the 747 Jumbo Jet which was a $2 billion dollar bet, $14bn in 2010 dollars, on a big lumbering subsonic jet in the mid 1960s when the future of aviation seemed to be with sleek supersonic aircraft like the Concorde.

While Boeing’s bet paid off, it took 15 years and nearly sent the company broke.

Most of today’s businesses aren’t locked into 14 billion dollar and 15 year investment cycles as we can test products with simulation tools, computer aided design programs, fast prototyping and oursourcing services like o-desk for labour and alibaba.com for manufacturing without risking the farm.

For most businesses, it’s not even a matter of spending time and money actually developing ideas, usually it’s something as simple as testing a new idea by buying a domain name and setting up a low cost website on a cheap hosting service for under $200. If the idea flies then you start looking at spending real money on making the product ready for the broader market.

Failing fast presents a great challenge to the traditional organisation where the slightest failure is a stigma. In the new economy, a risk adverse culture is going to be punished by competitors who accept that not every idea is right for its time and learn lessons rather than punish those associated with the unsuccessful project.

While this is bad news for large organisations run by risk adverse managers it is one of the great opportunities for nimble and smart companies. If your business is prepared to take small risks, learn from the misses and celebrate the wins then your business could well be on the way to being the next Google.

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