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Sep 22

The Mark That Your Company Culture is Broken

September 22, 2009 • View Comments • Other Social Networks

I get LinkedIn invites from time to time. Although I’m not a huge user of LinkedIn, I see its merits in its ability to basically get straight to the nitty gritty of someone’s work experience. After all, I like recommending friends for jobs, but not as much as I like recommending people who are actually competent at what they do.

I notice often that employed people often do not put their company affiliations on their profiles. I can see why you might do this in Twitter or in Facebook. Those can be used for business use, but can also be used for very personable exchanges. But LinkedIn is very business oriented. If a person doesn’t list their company on their profile, there’s a good chance they are looking for another job.

If you are an executive and you think your company culture is good, do yourself a favor. Search for your employees’ LinkedIn profiles and see what they list. Look to see what they are looking for on LinkedIn. Are they looking for business development or sales opportunities, or are they looking for jobs? If your company is either a small part or no part of their profile, that person isn’t happy with you and wants to leave. That’s not the attitude you want in an employee.

HUGE CAVEAT:
That doesn’t mean you should fire that person. Why? Because simply dismissing an unhappy employee is a great way to miss an opportunity for how you can make your company better. That seems very wasteful. An honest and open dialog can fix the problem and can make both your employee and you very happy.

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Sep 20

Easy to Implement Tip: Be an Interesting Commenter

September 20, 2009 • View Comments • Blogs

It didn’t hit me until Chris Brogan’s talk on Thursday that I’ve actually been doing this whole social media thing for a while now, and I can really help people who are struggling with it.

I was a Community Manager for a software company before that was even a title. One role I had at my job was leaving comments on blogs that our potential audience would read so as to attract bloggers to talk about our software.

One blog liked my comments so much, they ended up interviewing me for the publication. Since I commented on so many blogs in the industry, I established an authority and it become a lot easier for me to get my stories published in their blogs.

A lot of comments on blogs simply say “Right on. Good job on this one.” Some people use social media “strategies” like favoriting pictures influencers take or retweeting something just to garner favor. While this won’t really hurt you, it won’t help you too much either, unless you are sincerely favoriting a photo you like or are retweeting something your followers would want to hear. Why? Because bloggers are always looking for more stories to tell. They aren’t looking to be pandered to (at least the good ones aren’t). By adding to the conversation, you are 1.) establishing your authority and 2.) making the blog post better in general. I love it when the comments on my blog are actually more interesting than the post itself. It means I have interesting and potentially influential readers, which means I have more power than a silly blogger just looking for attention.

If you can’t really add value to the conversation, it’s okay to just read because eventually you’ll read enough of blogs or books in your subject to be knowledgeable. If you don’t feel compelled to do this, you aren’t interested in your subject matter and you should do something else in your career. Jes’ sayin’.

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Sep 14

The Air Jordan Effect–It’s Not Just for Shoes Anymore

September 14, 2009 • View Comments • Marketing and Labor

Product Development as MarketingPeople often focus on getting huge numbers of followers behind a product. They pour all of their efforts into getting more, often before a product is ready for release. This inevitably amounts to more confusion because your crowd will have different needs, values, and dedication to what you are doing. What does it take to create a great product?

One key person.

The example I frequently use for this is Air Jordan shoes. Michael Jordan is the tour de force that took Nike from being a running shoe company into the biggest athletic shoe company in the world. When he first graduated from North Carolina, Jordan actually had no interest in Nike and instead wanted to pursue Converse or Adidas. Neither company had any interest in Jordan, and it was actually Jordan’s agent David Falk who saw the opportunity in a potential Air Jordan shoe. Jordan was paid $2.5 million over five years, a ridiculous sum for the time.

Jordan’s shoe was black and flashy instead of the standard white. It was different, so different that the NBA actually fined Jordan for wearing them. Oh well, it added to the appeal. Air Jordans have consistently been one of the top selling basketball shoes in the world since their inception. You can find all sorts of generations of Air Jordans still available online.

Nike went after someone they considered the next superstar. It was a risky, irrational move that made them billions of dollars and secured their spot as the dominant shoe company in the world.

By targeting influencers and building products around them versus focusing on building sheer numbers, you’ll know that your product will be able to hold its own versus the competition. Why? You are focusing on the user of the product–not the product itself. Just don’t drop the ball when it comes to taking care of those who end up buying it.

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Sep 06

Evangelism as Marketing? Pish. Just Take Care of Me

September 6, 2009 • View Comments • Online Marketing

I used to work for BMW. As a company, BMW is obsessed with getting your feedback. They don’t send you a survey in the mail or via email–they have someone call you who asks you five questions about your buying experience. This isn’t the passive survey email you ignore in your inbox–this is BMW actually hiring someone just so they can call you to make sure everything went okay. Here’s the other kicker: your salesperson’s income depends not only on how much money they bring into the company. It also depends on the scores of this very survey, which is why you can count that your buying experience should be very positive. BMW puts its money where its mouth is.

Call a BMW 750 a Nazi sled–I don’t care. From the moment a concept for a car is created to the moment you drive it off the lot, each employee cares that you love your car. You can claim that’s what they have to do because they cost so much, but I know for a fact that there really isn’t a lot of profit margin in BMWS. They just see it as their means for being a sustainable company.

BMW is publicly traded, but is primarily owned by one family. An American corporation might say, “Oh, we can cut costs here in the suspension and the leather. We can fire this guy, or we can have a recall just so we can find other problems with the cars we can charge them to fix (which, sadly enough, happens). That means one extra point of margin in each car, which earns us X more dollars a year.”

I don’t care if Scott Monty is on Twitter. It’s hard for me to have a love affair with American car companies based of empirical knowledge. I’ve driven a Mustang GT and watched the back end squirrel about when I wasn’t even flooring it because Ford can’t build a suspension that transfers power to the ground. My sister’s Chrysler minivan needed a transmission after 38,000 miles. I saw the paint flake off a Suburban’s inner console when it only had 200 miles on it. I just can’t recommend American cars because I’ve worked at a dealership and have seen them come in on trade and am never impressed. They flood the market with fleet sales too, which means your American car is worth less because it is less rare.

Here’s the saddest part: I want to be able to recommend American cars. I want Ford to beat Ferrari at Le Mans like they did back in the 60′s. Engineering wise, they really don’t compete with their Japanese and German counterparts. Service-wise, I’ve heard of some really shady practices at American dealerships.

So I don’t care if you have a company evangelist. I care that you have customer evangelists. Just take care of us. We’ll take care of the evangelism for you.

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