Turning Social Media Into Sales: It’s Just Like High School

Learning to master social media is a lot like learning to fit in during high school. The good news is that this time there will be a lot less acne.

I just love what Heidi Cohen has written via SmartBlog for Social Media – a short yet complete 10-point guide to getting along and thriving online in the social media world.  She calls it “10 Tips for Social Media Introverts.” It is definitely worth a few minutes to read.

She basically concludes that it’s important to learn the unspoken rules that govern online interactions, to be generous with your praise and recommendations, and to work your way into the in crowd by getting involved with the right activities and groups.

It will only take you a few minutes to read Heidi’s thorough explanation of all ten points but below is the outline just to whet you whistle:

1. Pick your playground.
2. Wear the uniform.
3. Realize that you’re not alone.
4. Mind your manners.
5. Learn the lingo. R
6. Join extracurricular activities.
7. Share your knowledge.
8. Pay it forward. .
9. Be the star of your social media story.
10. Make a date to get together.

How to Get Your Emails Opened

Step One for growing your company is getting a customer, prospect, or investor to actually open your emails.

Like most guys with tons of money and connections, famous VC Fred Wilson, gets lots of emails.  Here is a post where he discusses the topic of getting “me” to open your emails with some B-school students. We all can learn a few things about approaching busy and inundated people.  Here is a quick summary:

The subject line matters -  below are six examples:

“Had lunch with Alexander Ljung” – That works. Alex is the founder of our portfolio company Soundcloud (read: use a name Mr. Big will recognize and respect).

“Two things” – That doesn’t work. Two things are worse than one thing.  And not descriptive.

“Pleasure speaking with you” – That doesn’t work. Mr. Big speaks to so many people every day. And again, not descriptive.

“Twitter board date change” – That double works. Portfolio company name plus very descriptive.

“I know you are a busy man” – That doesn’t work. Not descriptive.

“ECB violation” – Sadly that works, but please don’t send me emails with that subject line.

The point is this: I scan all my mail many times a day and open and reply to all of it that I can. Senders matter. Subjects matter.

So there you have it: be short and descriptive, and reference something your reader knows and respects.

How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps

Business Rule #1: Learn How to Make Money

I recommend this article in Inc. Magazine, “How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps“.  Jason Fried, the founder of software maker 37Signals, wrote the article.  It is short and packed with entrepreneurial wisdom.

Warren Buffett, Your Reputation, and Creating a High Growth Business

According to Warren Buffett, reputation is by far the most important asset of any kind of business. Evidence shows that this is especially true for rapidly growing businesses.

Arguably the most successful businessman ever, Warren Buffett, writes a biennial memo to his managers; the side-quote below is from this year’s memo:

Over 80% of companies search the internet for information about vendors before deciding who to talk with. Notice Before. The same is true for consumers before making a purchase.

What does this mean? It means that information and opinions about your business are being widely read by potential customers. It means that to protect your precious reputation, you must monitor and manage your online presence.

We live in a world where everyone is a potential publisher who can anonymously post venomous libel and negative opinion. So we must be constantly attentive to whatever is being written online in blogs, Facebook, Twitter, message boards, review sites, etc.

What should a business do?

1. Monitor your internet presence. Your protection begins with investigating what’s already out there. We recommend SocialMention or Trackur as programs to monitor the internet.
2. Get Proactive: the best defense is an offense. You should encourage your customers and friends to rate your business online. You should have at least 50 ratings. Over 150 positive ratings is the best protection, as any negative comments get buried beneath the avalanche of positive ones.
3. Get Reactive: ask a poster to change negative ratings. You can usually figure out who is responsible for the disapproving post. If not, just send them a message through the review site. If they won’t budge, ask review sites to verify the information or remove the comments. In 99% of cases, negative comments get removed.

You can learn from the world’s most successful businessman: protect your most valuable asset before you do any other type of marketing.

Technology is the “How” Not the “What” – “What” Will Make Your Company “High Growth”

Don’t confuse How and What.

Clients ask us how to use technology to grow their companies quickly. They want to know how to leverage social media to get explosive sales growth. That is backwards thinking.

The key is to figure out what you can do to provide extraordinary value to a customer. When you have that model down, then ways to leverage technology in your marketing are relatively easy to uncover.

Diapers dot com was worth $450 million because of what problem the company solved. Groupon over $8 billion because of what it did for shoppers and small businesses. Facebook is revolutionary because of what it did to get people together.

To experience explosive high-growth, decide the What; then the How might be solved by technology.

Highly-Functioning Collaborative Teams Are The Fastest Way To Double Your Business

Cultivating a turned-on, highly-motivated team is the best way to quickly solve any business problem. But it takes mature people with high Emotional Quotients to be great team members.

David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote a rebuttal to the Amy Chua book about raising kids like a “tiger mother.” His basic premise is that kids need to learn social skills to be highly-functioning later in life. I only mention this because I found the MIT and Carnegie Mellon research he cites interesting:

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon have found that groups have a high collective intelligence when members of a group are good at reading each others’ emotions — when they take turns speaking, when the inputs from each member are managed fluidly, when they detect each others’ inclinations and strengths. Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

Here’s to “high collective intelligence.”

“Different” – What Every Rapidly Growing Business Does the Same

I think any entrepreneur will find this video interesting.

The key success factor for rapidly growing companies is selling something “different” so that prospects can make a choice — a real value proposition. But the things most business owners try to pass off as different are usually irrelevant sales-pitches falling on deaf ears.

This video, and maybe the book, may provoke an important internal conversation.

M & A Fundamentals from an Experienced VC

We discussed in a previous post why and how you need to do a business valuation to grow your business.

After you put together three years of running a business with the sales metrics, you may want to sell the business. Here is a great basic explanation of merger & acquisition by Fred Wilson, a VC that has done hundreds of deals.

This is very basic information every entrepreneur must know.

The 10 Biggest Marketing Blunders of 2010

Here is a list of marketing cautionary tales via the blog Collateral Damage. Entrepreneurs can learn how to better present their businesses from these unfortunate organizations. Enjoy!

Groupon: A Fast Way to Double Sales OR Go Out of Business



This news story from 13 Eyewitness Business is a cautionary tale – or maybe a very encouraging tale – about Groupon. Groupon is bigger and more powerful than most of us understand, and you must use it correctly.

Here is the short version of the story:

A small business used Groupon in order to get a couple hundred new customers. Unfortunately, they didn’t set limits on how many people could purchase their coupon; so 2,700 people came in the door for 50% off. Oooops.

I happen to know where this market is (I live in Indy) and it is a gourmet meat and fish market way off the beaten path. No way they imagined 2,700 people would find them.

Good News: Groupon is a powerful tool. Bad News: Powerful tools can also be powerfully damaging.

So, what should you do before you use Groupon?

1. Ensure your business can cover the discount you will offer. Will you have profit after you cover the cost of goods, knowing you have to offer at least 50% off?
2. Keep a customer database for coupon redemption. Keep track of how many new customers come in the door, how often they come back in a week and a month, and how much they spend. These numbers will tell you if you should ever run a Groupon promo again.
3. Know how Groupon works. Understand fully what percentage Groupon will take of your profit, how long your buyer has to redeem the coupon, etc.
4. Be prepared for unhappy customers after the Groupon deal expires.  Due to the Groupon guidelines, your customers cannot use their coupon after the expiration date, and you are bound to honor that.
5. Plan for the best and worst case scenarios. Can you accommodate 1,000 new customers? Do you have the staff in place to do so? If you can’t handle the ‘best/worst’ case scenario, Groupon might be more of a risk than a benefit.
6. Manage your cash flow. You’ll get your Groupon check shortly after the deal is completed, but that money has to stretch across the timeline for your coupon redemption.  Anticipate far less profit while serving customers with coupons in hand.
7. Consider a customer limit and discuss this with Groupon. Groupon should be able to conclude the deal when the limit is reached.

Doing A Business Valuation May Be The Quickest Way to Grow Your Business

Finding out your business’ current value will give you the metrics to you need to rapidly grow your business.

Business valuations usually happen in the event of a divorce, death, or partnership lawsuit. That is the first time most owner/operators find out the value of their businesses and how experts determine that value.

Every industry has different metrics they use as standards to determine the probable sale price of the business. But what every industry has in common is that wise business owners that get a valuation before a catastrophic event will gain immediate net worth and cash flow.

Wise business owners start investing in the right assets, copyrighting the intellectual property, and managing the key accounting numbers that make their business grow rapidly.

Valuations generally look at the previous three tax years. Valuation experts say that if owner/operators start managing operations and accounting to the metrics immediately, average appreciation is between 10 to 100 times more value in their business within the next three to five years.

That gives an owner many more options: to sell, or borrow, or ESOP, or whatever in new ways that would be impossible for them today.

What do you do next?

• Find our what your business is worth – call a certified valuation expert
• Set three year goals to get your numbers improved
• Start managing to the numbers

Can Mommy Help Rapidly Increase Your Sales? Yes, If She Is Using Social Media

At least 26 million moms regularly use social media. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts; forums and message board discussions; and online ratings and reviews all provide a limitless platform for “mommy bloggers” to spread information faster than any other media – including the traditional media you are paying to use now.

A post in BrandWeek detailing the power of these connected moms is worth checking out.

Here is the big point of the whole BrandWeek article:

“The biggest mistake a brand can make is to underestimate the power of moms. Their domination of social media has even encouraged companies to embrace social responsibility.”

Are you underestimating the potential of “their domination of social media?”

Even if your social media program is weak, you should court those media savvy moms who could communicate for you? Meaning, even if you don’t have a robust social media program, they do.  They are going to talk; you can give them something to talk about.

So what could be your next steps for leveraging the power of “mommy blogging?” The following suggestions don’t work for every business, but they do for the vast majority:

1. Start searching for the influential (read: active) bloggers in your town.
2. Look at your Facebook page: are their any active-on-Facebook moms that have already “liked” you?
3. Start following the active moms: via an RSS feed to Google Reader (or however else you want to follow feeds), on Facebook, forums or anywhere they are active online.
4. After a few weeks, chose one or two and pitch them an idea: a charity to promote with you, perhaps, or a community program, children’s program or anything that might interest them.
5. Let them sample your products and/or participate for free in any of your charitable programs.

These “moms” should now be a regular part of a publicity program. They can spread an idea much faster than traditional media.

Jim Lefevere: Build Your External Crisis Plan

Jim Lefevere is an award-winning marketing and technology leader for the healthcare, medical device, and consumer goods industries. His breadth of expertise spans traditional marketing and pioneering initiatives that have increased profits, engaged customers, and promoted cohesive brand awareness for start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Named one of the Top Forty business professionals under 40 by the Indianapolis Business Journal, he has led marketing efforts for Fortune 100 organizations and fast-growth start-ups. The thoughts expressed here do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of his employer or associations. You can read his blog on digital strategy, interactive marketing, and connected health care at: http://www.jlefevere.com.

Over time, Social Media watchers have seen a few instances where a crisis plan is required as a part of a digital strategy and social media plan. Sanofi-Aventis ran into issues with their Facebook page and Nestle has had some negative feedback on their page as well.

Jeremiah Oywang provides his steps to take in the event of a crisis.

If You Fail to Plan then You Plan to Fail

1. A risk assessment is standard issue for any strategy, but should develop a SOP as a component of any social media plan–especially for health care marketers. You’re being risk averse as it is, so please make sure you have an assessment of your weak points, where an attack could come in the event that there is some negative feedback. Be creative in order to scenario a plan as much as possible. Think pricing, side effects, Sr. Management, labor, business practices, marketing practices, etc.

2. Create a response plan. This could include members of the internal response team, contact info, etc. Who are your major internal and external (customer) stakeholders? What do you want to communicate? What is the issue that needs to be addressed? If you’re a health care marketer, you want to do this well ahead of time to ensure you can respond in a timely manner. Build multiple scenarios and write multiple response plans. Yes, this sounds like a lot of work (and it is) but the last thing you want is to get hung up in Legal/Regulatory review when your Facebook page is blowing up.

3. Identify the “Hit by a Train” contingencies. You should cross-train multiple people who could implement the plan. Remove all single points of failure that could prevent a fast response, i.e. “John Doe, our community manager, is on vacation this week and I don’t know how to respond.” Identify back-up resources in the event someone is on vacation.

4. Test and Train your plan. Please prepare your primary contacts, their back-ups, and Sr. Management to care for negative feedback. It is inevitable.

5. Develop an internal Social Media Oath and Plan. Build relationships with your communities, and don’t do anything that can’t pass an “authentic” test.

Social media is a marathon and not a sprint. Social Media and your community should be treated like a garden: it needs to be cared for, watered and nurtured.  If the sun shines just right you can be rewarded in the form of advocates, defenders and company loyalists, but only if you’ve done the work necessary to cultivate trust. Tending takes time and needs to happen as a core component of any plan.

Fortunately for the rest of us, there are situations like Motrin, Sanofi-Aventis and Nestle that serve as all too clear examples of how proper planning can help mitigate (but not entirely prevent) some of the risks of social media for health care companies.

Be prepared, folks

Stay tuned for the remainder of Jim’s series on social media.

Want to successfully own a business? You gotta make unpleasant choices.

“Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.” John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

————————————————

You gotta do what you gotta do… and it is going to hurt sometimes. But hard choices dot the path to professional and personal integrity.

You have to fire people that do not fit, which may seem cruel and cold, but firing a mismatched employee is the kindest choice in the long run. They might be great people. But even Mother Theresa herself would need to be fired if she wasn’t a great fit for the job she was hired to do. Or your family member. Or a close friend.

You have to structure your payables – assuming you have had an honest conversation with your vendors – to make your cash flow work.

Sometimes you have to collect your receivables – as diplomatically as possible – even when your customer really needs the money worse than you do.

Again, you sometimes have to lay people off – at Christmas, or when they are sick, or pregnant, or going through a personal crisis.

If you run a business, the most compassionate and gracious thing you can do is keep your business healthy and able to employ people for many years to come.

Sometimes your “compassions” will appear to all to be cruelties.

For the tree to grow strong and straight, some of the healthy branches have to be pruned along the way. This is true in nature and true in business.

Do what you gotta do. Not doing it does not make you a good person. It does make you an incompetent business person.