Society and business in the 21st Century
The next ABC shows will be the Nightlife nationally at 10pm on February 6 and the 702 Sydney Weekend at 10am on March 8.
The topic for Nightlife is using social media to find a job, but we’ll probably add some business orientated ideas to that as well.
Hope you can join us.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
