The echo chamber

cave-mouthNobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman worries about the insularity of America’s economic leaders.

He’s right to worry.  The economic downturn is going to be longer and deeper than it otherwise would have been because our business, political and economic leaders steadfastly refused to acknowledge the levels of debt our societies were being burdened with and now they refuse to deal with the fact that debt is being unwound.

The challenge for business owners now is not to fall for the orthodoxies and slogans but to take a realistic view of what’s happening in the world and the effects on customers, staff and suppliers.

Just listening to your mates repeating your own beliefs is not good enough. The politicians have their pensions, the executives their golden parachutes and the economists tenured positions. You probably don’t.

Read widely, listen and be sceptical of those with special interests to protect. Most of all don’t act on the advice of those who think it will be business as usual next year.

Business as usual is going to be very different from today onwards to what it was two, ten or twenty years ago. It’s time to reinvent and look for the opportunities those too deep in the echo chamber are unable to see.

Every business is different

different

One of the things I’ve always believed is every business is unique.

Your character, your staff, your processes, your customers, your premises and every little thing your business does makes it totally different to every other business in the world.

That’s the beauty of business and it’s why any advice you recieve should be tempered by the knowledge that no-one knows your operation better than you.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t listen to advice. You should because a fresh pair of eyes or ears can alert you to something you’ve missed.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t experiment with new ways. Those businesses who don’t will probably not survive the next five years.

But what’s works for the guy up the road won’t necessarily work for you. His blog might be successful while yours may fail; she might be able to ditch the Yellow Pages while you cannot; they might be able to use social media while your contacts ignore it.

So understand your own businesses, its staff and the customers.

And most of all understand your own strengths and weaknesses.

Business cards are a business essential

business-cardsI attended a meeting last night where half the people didn’t have business cards, including one of the organisers and two of the sponsor’s representatives.

That’s a shame for those people. The humble business card is one of the most important marketing tools you have.

Your staff should all have business cards and carry a few with them all the time. When you’re hosting an event or meeting, then you simply can’t enough cards.

Business cards may be low tech, but they are a great cost effective way for getting your message out and for helping people remember who you are and what you do. Get some printed up today.

email because you can

Seth Godin studies two email marketing campaigns. One that obtained his permission before sending emails and another that didn’t. Guess which one works.

This is a subject close to my heart. A loophole in the Australian Spam Act allows spamming if the sender has “inferred consent” which can be anything from giving your business card out at a network function to having an email address on your website.

When I wrote about this on Smartcompany last year I was criticised by one reader and yesterday I started receiving emails from an office fit out company.  This goes to show some marketers and business owners don’t get it.

People are swamped with email, they don’t want more unless it provides value. It’s highly unlikely an email they didn’t ask for will have any value at all.

So don’t spam your client base. They don’t like it and it will hurt your business.

Using social media for finding a job

If the cricket finishes early tomorrow, I’ll be doing the Nightlife radio spot a week early. The topic is using social media to find a job.

It’s an excellent idea. If nothing else a LinkedIn profile makes an excellent CV and can demonstrate how wide your networks are while giving some fast testimonials and references.

Of course it’s still a good idea to keep your Facebook profile private.

Edit: The show didn’t go ahead and is now scheduled for February 6

The culture of mediocrity

Research In Motion’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie claims buggy software is the new reality.

It’s not. Rushing an incomplete or defective product to market simply meet some artificial management or stockmarket imposed deadline is the old thinking.

The IT industry got away with this while the market was immature and the credit boom meant embarrassing mistakes could be hidden under the rising tide.

In mobile phones the market is far too competitive. The poorly executed Storm sold 500,000 units is because Blackberry was using the better Verizon network rather than the patchy AT&T service the iPhone is tied to.

In Australia, the Storm sells at a substantial discount to the Bold or iPhone on the same networks simply because the market knows the Storm a substandard product.

This “nearly good enough” thinking from the tech sector is one of the reasons the world economy is in trouble now. It is really just contempt for the customer that has been common across many industries where fat, ever growning margins were assumed to go on forever.

If anything positive comes out of the Global Financial Crisis it will be the culture of mediocrity dies as big business becomes subject to the same pressures the rest of the economy has always lived with.

For the rest of us our products have to be 100%. We cannot afford to do anything less than delight our customers.

In a competitive market, if you are disappointing your customers with substandard products then your business won’t survive.

Does your business need a blog?

It’s fashionable to tell business owners they need to embrace every aspect of the web. But do you really need a blog in your small business?

There’s no doubt a blog is worthwhile for many. It can give another perspective to the business and enhances their story. It can help smaller businesses cut through the noise to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

A good example is Mark Fletcher’s Newsagency Blog which has publicised Mark’s software company and his associated newsagencies while establishing him as a leader in the industry.

Not all businesses have Mark’s energy or some simply don’t have the time. For others, their markets don’t really care about blogs.

Also a blog is not an end in itself. A newsagent with an interesting blog is still going to fail if they don’t  deliver service to their customers and the same applies for PR agencies, marketers and management consultants.

If blog is going to distract you from your core business, then maybe it isn’t a good idea.

Every business is unique and what works for one enterprise is not necessarily right for another. A blog is a business tool, just like every other aspect of the Internet, and you need to choose the right tools for your business.

Integrity – Your most valuable asset

Whether you’re a blogger, a journalist, a business owner or just a plain ordinary joe in the street, one asset stands above all others – your integrity.

A Sydney advertising agency faking a story about a woman looking for the owner of a jacket is a good example of how forgetting this can backfire. 

For Naked Communications this is particularly ironic given the headline Naked tells the Naked Truth at the time of their corporate takeover last year.

An even greater lesson is the damage done to the fantastic “Best Job in the World” campaign with another lame stunt. It’s fairly safe to say overdoing things with a fake tattoo has destroyed much of this story’s goodwill which is a crying shame.

There’s a temptation to dress this up as a new media versus old media story, but it’s not. Ethics have always been ethics and truth has always been the truth.

Regardless of who you are and what your business is, integrity is everything.

Being proud of your business

Too many businesses have bland “about us” pages featuring stock photos and generic corporate phrases

Too many businesses have bland “about us” pages featuring stock photos and generic corporate phrases, here’s two examples;

We have many years of practical experience as sales managers, directors and business leaders.

Our staff have a great deal of experience, having placed hundreds of candidates in positions at many different hospitals and clinics

Both of these businesses have owners with fantastic experience, great staff and a terrific story to tell, yet from their web site you would never know this.

For all the reader knows, they are just another anonymous branch of a multinational which is a terrible waste for these great teams.

The web is one of the few ways a small business owner can tell their story without restrictions. So there’s no excuse to be shy about why you are so good at your job. Tell people who you are, why you are doing what you do and how good you are at doing it.

And ditch the stock photos. Chisel jawed models in Italian suits playing with laptops are fooling no-one. Put your own photo up and be be proud of who you are.

Potential customers visit your web site to find about you, they want to hear your story and why your businesses will delight them and meet their needs.

So use that “about us” page properly, tell your story and introduce yourself. Don’t be shy, you should be proud of who you are and what you do.

Survey Reveals Almost 50% Of Aussies Use Mobile Phone In Bathroom

Is the title of this Microsoft press release not the dumbest one so far this year?

The release itself is full of pointless and silly factoids which I’m not going to even bother repeating.

What will be interesting is which media outlets will pick this up and run it as “news”.

The carbon cost of computing

power-station-1The London Times reports Harvard University researchers have found two Google searches have the same carbon footprint as boiling a kettle.

This should be no surprise as it’s easy to forget the energy consumed by every computing task we do. It’s not Google’s computers that are energy hungry, those sitting on our desks or laps are almost as greedy.

There is a redeeming feature to this. One of the experts quoted later in the article points out that if the computer use is saving you jumping in your car or carrying out some other carbon intensive activity then the computer use is better for the environment.

The article points to a useful websites for calculating your carbon emissions at Carbon Footprint. This is handy not just for reducing your effects on the environmental but also for identifying where you can reduce your energy costs.