Tim Miles, Wizard of Ads | The Daily Blur » Social Media

Practical Applications of Social Media in Small Business (in 20 seconds)

Tim — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:37:34 +0000

Hi. So, what have you been doing?

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media. I think they (whoever they are) gave it the wrong name.

A Weekly Blur

Tim — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:01:08 +0000

Phew. What a week. How about you?

We spent most of the last week in Illinois visiting mom and dad and celebrating perfect weather for planting corn.

We’re very big on seed time and harvest around these parts.

Want to learn how patience is the greater expression of commitment? Spend a little time with a farmer. Those crops which yield the most bountiful harvests take the longest.

Since the week whirred by, I wanted to give you a quick glimpse into some things you may have missed that are worth a couple minutes of your valuable weekend time.

My buddy Tom Wanek’s 7-year-old daughter, Olivia, wrote a poem I think you’ll like.

My buddy Michele Miller wrote a fantastic little piece about the importance of opening gestures in work and life.

Seth Godin wrote a great bit this morning about being addicted to stuff that’s incoming versus focusing your time on doing fun, interesting, and important work.

I gave a new talk on Practical Applications of Social Media for Small Business that went over very well.

I’m no expert – be wary of 99.9% of people who tell you they are experts in social media (and run for the hills if anyone proclaims himself a guru) - but I’ve been fortunate to have some success with clients in a few different categories. We’re illustrating those case studies and the audience this week ate it up.

While there, I met a tremendous young staff writer from the local paper who really understands the future of newspapers if they’re to survive.

She’ll be an important voice in Champaign County for years to come … if she doesn’t get frustrated and move onto a different industry. She wrote a small recap of the talk here, but you might get distracted by the lede of the story about some cats that’ll teach you to play bagpipes.

We’re going to be expanding the Practically Social talk in a couple fun and interesting and important ways. Stay tuned.

After the presentation, I got to lead a meeting at United Way of Champaign County with a group of impressively committed volunteers and staff. They’re trying to re-write and improve their mission statement. We had a great session that started with Dan Heath’s video from Fast Company to understand why most mission statements suck. It’s worth a look.

I’ll try to expand on our session and the methods we used. We were striving for clarity. It worked, and it was a lot of fun.

And my wife had a birthday, and my son and I played catch for the first time, and he said “I love you” for the second time, and my daughter’s about to crawl and start doing trigonometry (I think).

That’s been our weekly blur. And while I’m sure some of them social media experts would tell you I shouldn’t blog or send out emails on Saturdays, this is going to be a regular thing.

On Saturdays, I’ll start emailing out The Weekly Blur.

It’ll be different content than the blog, though it may have some links to something from the week, but it’ll also give you something to hopefully enjoy over coffee. You can sign up for the one email per week here if you’re interested.

Today, the boy’s going to help grandpa plant corn. Hope grandpa can teach him a little patience. And Baby Sarah might just crack cold fusion.

Here’s to a weekend full of fun and interesting and important new beginnings.

Small Business Social Media Can Be A Lot Like This

Tim — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:50:32 +0000

You want to jump into every social media platform you can get your username penciled into … but some are better fits than others and, frankly, you just don’t have the time. No one does. Not even Greg.

Be careful. It could all blow up in your face like Peter’s volcano.

Start small. Start slowly. Breathe and enjoy. Stick with ceramics if that makes you happy and you can make a living.

(Okay, maybe Greg can do it all. The elder ManPerm Greg anyway …)

6 Basic Small Business Social Media Tips

Tim — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:25:27 +0000

In the conclusion to our three-part interview, my friend and partner (and best selling author) Bryan Eisenberg – who consults the Dells and the Universal Studios and the Volvo Internationals of the world on conversion and persuasion – offers up six basic small business tips to start harnessing the power of social media.

In part 1, we discussed what triggers social media, Wal-Mart, and gurus, experts, and wizards.

In part 2, we continued talking about some trouble I had with a presentation I sat through last week and its interpretation of users of social media as customers of small business.

Here’s the conclusion – overflowing with stuff you can do today to help your business.

Bryan: I gave them all six basic tips, and let me share that with you and then we’ll probably be in perfect shape.

Number one, you have to stake your claim because at the end of the day, a few years ago it was Myspace that was hot, now it’s Facebook, now it’s this one, social media networks are coming out left and right and we don’t know what the next one that’s going to hit is going to be strong. Right now, Four Squares looking pretty good, not positive but it’s worth at least owning your brands on each of these.

So I recommended a site called Knowem.com, you can go there and it will give you little links and check the availability for your name. Don’t do it, it will take you forever. I think for like 20 or 30 bucks they’ll actually go and register all the available ones for you.

So just stake your claim, own the position. The thing about it is early real estate, the same way I bought each of my kids when they were born a domain name, it’s like real estate because you don’t know what neighborhood is going to get hot later.

Make sure that you stake your claim on Google Local Business Center for their local advertising because that’s going to have a major play with mobile phones and everyone is moving to Smartphones, iPhones, the Android device and stuff like that. What they’re doing on local advertising is going to be mind blowing so you want to be sure that you have the ability to do everything you can there. So Google Local Business Center, do a search for that. And then of course, same thing with things like Yelp, make sure you claim your business there, it’s really important to do that. Okay?

Tim: Great.

Bryan: Step number two, become a good listener. I have somewhat of a religious background, I’m not a very religious person but one of the early lessons I learned from a very intelligent Rabbi is he said, “Look, you have one mouth but two ears, use them in those proportions.” So listen twice as much as you speak and that really is what social media is very good at doing. So go to something like search.Twitter.com or you use tools like TweetDeck or HootSuite to set up some of these searches and do the searches for your brand, do the searches for your category.

So you can type in like hotel near a particular zip code within 100 miles. For example I showed an example of I was in Stanford, Connecticut, hotels near that zip code in Stanford, Connecticut within 100 miles and one of the first tweets was someone asking hey, I wonder if the Ace Hotel has a quiet public spot. Now if I were the Ace Hotel and I saw that, I’d be the first one to respond to this person saying hey, my name is June, when you come into the hotel look for me, I’ll make sure you have a quiet spot to do whatever you need for that hour.

Great listening to drive your brand, that’s what makes you remarkable.

Number three, use social media to show off your expertise. What social media allows you to do is not think of yourself as a retailer or a publisher or a a manufacturer, today people need to think of themselves as publishers because everybody is a publisher. If you have a camera phone, if you can go on Twitter everybody can publish to that, you can publish a review, everybody is a publisher. You need to start thinking of yourself and your business as a publisher so use it to show off your expertise, why you develop products a certain way, why you choose the inventory you choose, why your buyers are so spectacular, how to take great care of your lawns, how to make sure your pipes don’t freeze this winter, how to easily take care of yourself, show off your expertise.

Number four, use the platforms to show off your value as well, leverage what other people talk about, share it with others. One of my favorites is I don’t know if you know Paul Stoltzfus from Wise Grass?

Tim: Yes, I do. Good businessman.

Bryan: I love Paul, I remember the first time he was in our class and we actually worked together and came up with the name Wise Grass. One of my favorites things about his website and I blogged about it beforehand is you go and you click on Visit A Show Lawn Today, he does landscaping in the Lancaster area, and he took it together a Google Map and he created what’s called a mash-up, this is part of this Web 2.0 social media technology, he has his own little database and you can actually see little pins and you can visit with the Google satellite view the locations of where he’s done his work. So you don’t need to take his word for it, he can show off his great work by leveraging the technology that social media is available out there. Incredibly, incredibly powerful.

Number five, develop a following – tell people where you are. One of my favorite examples is the Kogi BBQ on Twitter. Kobe BBQ is a van, they own a van where they sell Korean Barbeque in Los Angeles. How many followers do you think a typical food van might have?

Tim: A food van?.

Bryan: Think about your local restaurant, how many followers might they have?

Tim: 800?

Bryan: Okay. When I took the screenshot a couple of weeks ago they had 52,660 followers. Their food is obviously pretty remarkable and what’s remarkable about it is that they Tweet where they van is going to be. What about if you’re the local restaurant and you Tweet “hey, special only today for my Twitters followers, it will not be on the menu is X, come in and order it. ” Or here are the soups of the day, call us for your delivery. So many ways to do this and let people know where they can follow you, give them your Twitter address, put it on a card, have a screen right there where they can just click a button and follow you. Whatever you can do, make it easy to do so or to fan you on Facebook, whatever it is.

Number six, and I think this is the most important one is use what people are already doing and leverage their activities. One of the examples I mentioned this one to you earlier is something like Four Square. Four Square is one of these location-based services. What that means is you’re on your cell phone and the GPS on the cell phone says hey, I’m at Gold’s Gym on King’s Highway, great, so what it does is you have to check in when you’re in that location.

It’s a great example I show of this one little café that says okay, if you’re the mayor which means you’ve checked in a certain number of times your drinks are free today. So imagine doing that and say you know what, if I’m the Gold Gym’s owner I get to say if you’re the mayor free smoothie today, free spin class or if I’m the jewelry shop, free something, whatever it is you have a opportunity to leverage it.

One of the other great examples I share with people is something that IKEA did but that everybody can do. You come out with new merchandise, ask people to come in and size it for you and take the pictures so you can put it up on Facebook. Take all your new fashions, because what IKEA did is they took pictures of their showrooms and let people tag their favorite products and they used the photo tagging feature readily built into Facebook to promote the items in the store because they wanted those items so much and they got a chance to win those items. Leverage what people are doing, watch other people’s activity and do it. And then, most importantly the way you’re going to become successful, be remarkable.

Tim: And that really hasn’t changed in 400 years.

Bryan: That’s the number one secret, yeah, can’t do it any easier, today it’s easier for the customers to tell people how remarkable you are, you don’t have to wait at the slow pace of word of mouth that used to happen beforehand.

Tim: Bryan, thank you so much.

Bryan: You’re absolutely welcome.

Tim: That’s incredibly valuable and hype-free information, that’s what I enjoy so much about it. It’s scary there are so many people out there who do call themselves wizards and gurus of this sort of things and I don’t know, it seems like it could be very expensive very fast to buy a bag of magic beans for a guy who has no idea of what they’re doing or where to start.

Bryan: It really could be frightening; it’s overwhelming the number of social media platforms are in the tens of thousands today. But there are a few places I would focus on, and again where most of the traffic is, you want to go where your customers are. It may be a local community center that has a whole area, you want to be involved there, you want to be a member of your community. If your community is on Twitter, be there. If your community is on Facebook, be there. I’m pretty sure you can do better on Facebook because Facebook has more members than the whole United States has population today. If Facebook was a country it would be the 3rd largest country in the world. 100 million people log into Facebook daily, everybody is there so you have to be there. If everybody starts moving toward Four Square then be there, if everybody starts going to Joe Schmo’s Together Place, be there. But most importantly, just be remarkable.

Tim: Thank you, Bryan. Any parting shot?

Bryan: I just want people to get this and not be scared of what’s going on. Technology can be daunting but the fundamental root of all this: it’s all fundamentals of business and communication, it just evolves a little bit, that’s it.

My sincere thanks to Bryan for enlightening me and hopefully you a little bit, too. Maybe you now have a glimpse into why companies like Google, Forbes and HP, call him to speak to their audiences.

For more than 10 years, Bryan has been showing them many things about the online world with one net result: how to get more people to do more things. Why do people buy? What makes them click? What takes an online company from good to great? This is what Bryan knows. This is what Bryan shares.

Bryan Eisenberg, marketing speaker, is a former teacher with a great passion for sharing his rich knowledge. He’s delivered keynote addresses for many corporate events and industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies, Shop.org, Direct Marketing Association, MarketingSherpa, E-consultancy, Webcom and the Canadian Marketing Association.

Small Business Social Media Pt. 2: "Mission. Not Measurement Alone."

Tim — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:50:53 +0000

My friend and partner (and best selling author) Bryan Eisenberg consults the Dells and the Universal Studios and the Volvo Internationals of the world. Recently, he delivered a keynote to a small business expo in Connecticut to talk about harnessing the power of social media.

Yesterday, in part 1, we discussed what triggers social media, Wal-Mart, and gurus, experts, and wizards … today, we continue talking about some trouble I had with a presentation I sat through last week and its interpretation of users of social media as customers of small business.

Are you familiar with the ideas of relational and transactional customers? It might be helpful to review them before we start.

Bryan Eisenberg Making Google Shadow Puppets

Tim: I go back to this presentation I saw last week here in Small Market Middle West USA and they were talking about…

Bryan: …you mean the Real World?

Tim: Ha! Sure. Others might call it flyover country, but thank you. The guy at the front of the room was talking about using Twitter and using Facebook for coupons and contesting and, in the terms we use, what I hear you say is that social media can very much be a relational media. The guy who I saw last week was purely talking about using it for discounting, using it for couponing so people want transactional ideas….

Bryan: Let me stop you there for one second. I’m in the middle of putting together all my details on a post after a good friend of mine, Andrew Goodman published something last night that was very flattering to me and I even forgot about, which was funny and I knew this morning I need to go respond to this and he wrote something that said, “Social media, it’s about mission, not measurement alone”, and it’s kind of what I had also written on my blog a couple of weeks ago about how you can’t fake social media. And so what am I talking about? It talks about the history of radio advertising.

Now, a lot of people don’t know this, but there are basically two main ways that people can advertise on radio.

Number one, I can yell “SALE, SALE, SALE, SALE, SALE”, and get addicted to crack cocaine and every time they yell sale it takes harder and harder to get a good hit or they can use radio to build relationships with their customers.

However, radio advertising first started out, actually the first radio advertisement, I was just thinking up the actual history, the first actual radio commercial was broadcasted in 1922. It hit its Hayday in the beginning of the ‘30’s and ‘40’s and it wasn’t until 1942 that Nielsen decided to launch their first ever rating service. You know even back then it wasn’t really done to rate the media per say and the audience but it was kind of to give people a sense of scale of are they reaching people.

Here’s the problem with social media, and this is part of what my friend Andrew was talking about.

He says first of all everybody wants to use this media because they’re people there, it’s digital and I can measure it, so let me do things that I can measure, give coupons and all of that so I can track it and make sure oh yeah, this is working. And we all know how that worked out in radio.

So yes, can you use the media for that, absolutely you can use online media for that. Will it work for you? It might a little bit, it might for a short time, but I’m actually going to share with you a very interesting study that just came out, and it’s a survey so we’ll take it with a grain of salt.

The reasons for friending or following companies through social media according to US Consumers December 2009 –

Number one, they want to learn about specials or sales, and again we just have to keep on what the words are about.

The second one is they want to learn about new products, features, and services.

The other respondents were entertainment, funnier, insightful, and company culture environmental responsibility, worker policies, etc..,

So, what this is telling me is:

“Hey, if I friend you it’s because I want to have a closer relationship with you. I want to know that you want to treat me a little bit differently.”

It’s not just giving me a coupon but like a friend asked me, I was in Montreal just a couple of weeks beforehand with a client and he says I have a friend of mines who has a small bakery here in Montreal and he says, “How would you use Twitter?”, and I said, “Well, very simple way.” I said, “Look, I ask my customers if they want to sign on my Twitter list and I would do nothing else but every night beforehand I’d figure out one special recipe that I’d make the following morning, something I just want to make a small batch. And that night before I would send a Tweet out to everybody that says ‘hey, tomorrow morning you’re going to see it on the shelves, but if you come in and ask for X, we’ll give you some.’” Now, let me ask you a question, if you got that kind of a message from the bakery that you love so much at night and you knew they were baking chocolate croissants the next morning, what’s the possibilities you might stop in there and maybe buy a coffee or maybe buy something else for lunch? Pretty high.

Tim: Of course, but it goes back to what you’re saying Bryan which is that you have an expectation that croissant is going to be remarkable.

Bryan: Well that’s exactly, it’s remarkable because it’s not the standard fare either, right? I’m giving you something special because we have a relationship.

Think about it this way, and I like to tell people this all the time that social media is a lot like a cocktail party, the goal of social media isn’t to sleep with everybody, you’re not looking to score on every conversation. For some people that strategy works, for Dell outlets that part of social media works. Hey, I’m trying to liquidate something, you want it, go for it, very transactional, it’s okay, people know they’re the computer sluts, okay, I can do this, I’m sure our friends at Dell are not going to appreciate me telling it that way but again that’s what this is known for and that will work.

But the point is let me go around, let me get to know people and as I get to know people and develop deeper relationships I can develop special things I can share with them.

You don’t share everything of your life with everybody in your life and it’s the same thing here: hold something back to give people something extra, that Lagniappe, the Cajun term that means delight factor, that really makes the difference in a relationship.

It’s this whole concept of self disclosure, it’s as we get to know people we get to share more intimate details of each other and it’s the same thing about developing strong social media prescence, build a business that’s remarkable, share with them things that you don’t share with everybody else and that’s how you use this medium to really drive revenue, it’s brand building, it’s relationship building, it’s not direct response even though it’s a direct response vehicle that’s delivering it.

Tim: Right, and that’s great, you actually answered my last question. So what would be the things you would focus on first and we can just close with that.

Bryan: I gave them all six basic tips, and let me share that with you and then we’ll probably be in perfect shape.

And in Part 3 tomorrow, Bryan and I discuss all six tips. It’s incredibly valuable information. I was surprised he gave it away for free. But he’s freakishly generous as well as smart. Bryan and I discuss the real power of social media. I hope you’ll join in the discussion by leaving a comment or question.

Why do companies like Google, Forbes and HP, call Bryan Eisenberg to speak to their audiences?

Small Business Social Media: "There Is No Wizard!"

Tim — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:17:47 +0000

Last week, I sat through a presentation on social media put on by a local community magazine – many towns have them – that feature articles about, coincidentally, sponsors and do “Best of” polls and have a few pages in the back of beautiful photos of beautiful people attending beautiful events.

The presentation left me troubled that social media was just too vast to grasp for a 50-something small business owner.

So, I went to my own Wizard. My friend and partner (and best selling author) Bryan Eisenberg consults the Dells and the Universal Studios and the Volvo Internationals of the world. Recently, he delivered a keynote to a small business expo in Connecticut.

He talked about social media and how to harness its power. I asked for 10 minutes of his time. He gave me thirty. What follows is the first of a three-part interview we did. Today, we discuss what triggers social media, Wal-Mart, and gurus, experts, and wizards … and by “we” I mean Bryan articulates incredibly useful information, and I try to stay out of his way …

Tim: What I want to talk to you about this morning is it piqued my interest when you did the keynote earlier this month at a Small Business Expo in Connecticut and you’re so well known for working with larger companies, working with the Dells of the world and Universal Studios. What was the topic of your presentation at the Small Business Convention?

Bryan: Well, you know I decided to name it “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark” also because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to say when I first got the gig. So I figured you can’t go wrong naming it after a book. As I started thinking about what I really wanted to say I was going back and forth between thinking should I cover some of the stuff behind the pendulum of society because obviously that’s a very big fact of what’s going here, should I cover more of the technology issues and how things are being transformed. And I was like probably some of the other people will cover some of those more tactical issues. And so I’ve been saying this for awhile and I think this will help put it in perspective for you. We all know Roy Williams likes to say advertising only accelerates the inevitable, right; have a good business, great product, advertise it, more people will love it. Provide lousy service, give lousy products and eventually your business will just come crashing down. Right?

Tim: Sure.

Bryan: And I came to be thinking about you know what, social media also accelerates the inevitable, advertising you can turn on and turn off, social media is not in your control. Right? And that was pretty much the premise of what “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark” was all about, right, that you’re no longer in control of the marketing message, you can’t ring the bell of advertising and have customers respond like Pavlov’s dogs, right, we’re really dealing in relationships with customers who are a lot more like felines where they want to be in control of the relationship.

And what I did was I ran them through the super duper concise history of marketing, commerce and connectivity that showed this progression of reduction of friction in the history of commerce for customers, making them have more control and seating the control of the vendor or business that wants to do their business. And I just showed them how this evolution has happened and how we’ve gotten into control, essentially in the last decade and why social media is really so critical. I do think though that people are really struggling with a lot of the social media concepts though and that’s something I touched on and I wished I had more time to go into with them.

Tim: It’s interesting, Bryan because just like the concept of social media, it’s so vast and I sat through, just last week, at the request of a client I went and sat through a hour long presentation of social media put on by the local community magazine, you know the pretty pictures in the back of the important people in town and a feature on the people and businesses who – coincidentally – advertisemet in the magazine. It really is a … what’s the word? … pretty magazine magazine but they were doing a thing on social media and in the span of a hour they attempted to cover what Twitter is, how to use it well, what Facebook is, how to use it well, LinkedIn, how to use it well, and then that was it and they were out of time, and oh – by the way – buy some space in our old-fashioned print magazine. And even their concepts were so broad and again, a 60 year old heating and air conditioning guy at the end of this presentation looks up and says, “Well I don’t understand much of what you said, should I just hire some 20 year old kid to do all this for me?”, because is that really where the people in your audience in Connecticut, the people who read my blog who are small business owners and unable to wrap their arms in the scale and scope of social media, is that really where they should start, just go hire some 20 year old out of college and have them figure it out?

Bryan: Absolutely, not. I ended the presentation with a picture that will be very familiar to you and anybody that’s been at Wizard Academy of the yellow brick road from the Wizard of Oz.

Tim: Sure.

Bryan: And I explain to them that the power of social media has nothing to do with the wizard, right, I don’t have to reveal any wizards to you, there is no wizard in social media, it’s not the guru’s or the consultants or the 20 years old kids, they’re not going to help you do it. It is not in the ruby slippers, which are just the tools or the platforms that are out there, they don’t make a difference. The power of social media has everything to do with you and the power inside you to be remarkable. Either you’re going to make your business have the factors that are remarkable, that want to get people talking out it, it’s your choice, positive or negative and mind you, there are business that use the negative very very well for positive points. We all know those restaurants that total dives, you throw the peanuts on the floor and stuff like that, but that’s part of who they are. So I’m not saying that necessarily that’s bad, but you have to have something that people want to remark about, they want to comment about and you just can’t be average, you can’t just say, “Oh well, I run a business like anybody else, if I’m in the middle of the pack and just deliver,” no, that’s what’s going to kill you in social media.

What’s going to end up happening is that advertising is become less and less effective, we know that; people are trusting less and less what they hear in advertising and more and more what they hear fromother people. As more people go around with their mobile phones and they start putting comments on and ratings and reviews and put things up on Yelp, and they put things up on Google Maps and on Facebook and Twitter, and just all over the place, they’re going to get comments about where they should shop, who they should buy from, who gives the best deal, who has the cleanest bathrooms, all the little details that matters in the customer experience that gets people to talk about your business and not one of your competitors. That’s the power of social media, it has nothing to do about the platforms.

Tim: That’s fantastic because all of the things you just described, Bryan, are fairly inexpensive to evaluate and fix.

Bryan: Oh, absolutely, unless you’re selling a lousy product. If you’re manufacturing and you have a lousy product you’re definitely going to have to retool it. One of the great examples of this, and I’ll go big business to kind of point this out to you but I can break it down to small business. I knew that the world of consumer packaged goods and products were changing the day Wal-Mart decided that they needed reviews on their website. It was one thing Amazon did it and obviously it was one of the things I took down in the presentations, Amazon was the first one to leverage what I call Tom Sawyer effects. They knew that they were going to have millions of product descriptions they had to create but they couldn’t do it so let’s get other people to review the books and that will leverage their business. It was one of the reasons that they grew so well. Think about it, Amazon accounts for 25% of all e-commerce transactions on the web today because we all know we can go there and find reviews about the products before we purchase them.

What happened with someone like Wal-Mart is they go ahead and they get product descriptions and reviews from their customers. And it was funny, this story, I was listening to the CEO of Walmart.com talking about how his wife was shopping for non stick cookware and she kept coming across this one product that kept having these reviews about how bad they would scratch and he had to go to this team and say, “Why is this product still on our shelves?”, and that fundamentally I knew that the world has changed because the power went from the buyer in Wal-Mart back to the customer.

In part 2 of our talk, Bryan and I discuss the real power of social media. Are you familiar with the ideas of relational and transactional customers? It might be helpful before we come back with Bryan. Then, in part 3 on Friday, Bryan will provide you with six powerful steps to start a strong social media effort with your business.

UPDATE: Here’s part 2 of our talk.

Why do companies like, Google, Forbes and HP, call Bryan Eisenberg to speak to their audiences?

For more than 10 years, Bryan has been showing them many things about the online world with one net result: how to get more people to do more things. Why do people buy? What makes them click? What takes an online company from good to great? This is what Bryan knows. This is what Bryan shares.

Bryan Eisenberg, marketing speaker, is a former teacher with a great passion for sharing his rich knowledge. He’s delivered keynote addresses for many corporate events and industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies, Shop.org, Direct Marketing Association, MarketingSherpa, E-consultancy, Webcom and the Canadian Marketing Association.

A Local Business Wake-Up Call

Tim — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:18:39 +0000

Do you like the idea of supporting local businesses?

Is that like asking a politician if he’s for more jobs and against crime?

But … and it’s an awfully big but … your locally-owned business has got to meet me MORE than halfway. Sorry if that seems unfair. Heck, it is unfair.

Get over it.

One local restaurant urges folks to get on board to help them beat the chains. “Chains are bad. We are good.” That sorta thing.

To wit:

Twice before the holidays, I called for delivery and was greeted with ‘hello?’
Both times, it sounded kind of like I was bothering them by trying to offer them money.
I asked if I was, indeed, calling the restaurant. Both times, I was greeted with a self-righteous, “yeah.”
The second time, I was abruptly cut off twice when asking simple questions.
Neither time did the phone person say ‘thank you’ or ‘good bye.’ Each time, they simply hung up.

Help you beat the chains? Help yourself.

Meanwhile …

One of those nasty chains – Target – answered the phone over the holidays at not one, but two different stores in two different towns by nicely saying,

“Hello, this is Target. What can I help you find today?”

That’s right. A real, live, human being person answered. No automated phone tree. Also no hangups or entitled, snippy, self-righteousness.

Target obviously had a system in place. How exactly was that evil? That’s like calling kittens evil.

Your locally-owned business has got to meet me more than halfway.

Or you’ll lose.

It’s not a temporary inconvenience. It’s the new reality of your business, and you best embrace it and – more importantly – develop chain-like, repeatable systems to do it better.

Remember, in this age and day, whether you deliver an exceptionally good or bad experience, social media will only accelerate the inevitable.

I want to celebrate our independents. I really do. I’m sure you feel the same way to one degree or another. Help me, please.

‘Thank you.’

Speaking of …

Tim — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:10:04 +0000

Miscellaneous recent thoughts and conversations involving a happy-but-road-weary holiday traveler:

Gifts v. Presents: There’s a difference. But sometimes the separate circles intersect. I’m not sure the specifics, but in the intersection of the two, you find grace.

Speaking of grace, babies make grandparents downright daffy. Maybe a baby’s abundant gas contains some sort of special pheramone that inhibits the rational thinking receptors in grandma and grandpa’s brains. I’m reasonably certain they didn’t hear a word Dee or I said from the moment we arrived and Sarah smiled her first clock-stopping smile in their general direction.

Speaking of focus, come first of the year Dee’s going to start training for another half marathon in May. She needs to formally schedule the workouts. If they’re not written down, they’re too easy to put off. Next thing she knows, it’ll be middle of April, and she’ll be in no shape to run, and it’ll be too late to do anything about it. I started thinking all development’s exactly the same way. I purchased several online training courses last year, and they still sit waiting in their folders. Sure, we had a baby, but there will always be reasons to not work on something important (vs. merely urgent). I’m going to be scheduling equal time to work on my own skills.

Speaking of development, my brother-in-law recently earned his Doctorate. Dr. Butler’s going to help change the way schoolteachers shape the lives of exceptional children. I’m in awe of his discipline to endure and sacrifice and accomplish.

Speaking of accomplished, Michael Hyatt commented on one of my posts. You can read it down at the bottom of the post. I’ve never met Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, but he’s been a big influence in my so-called worklife. It would probably be akin to Kristofferson commenting on someone’s songwriting blog.

Speaking of songwriting, have you seen the Jeff Bridges movie yet? I can’t wait. I love his work, and it’s great to see him getting his due for a role like this.

Speaking, again, of songwriting: Oh Holy Night – What a song … the words, I mean. I’ve made a to-do to research its origins. I heard a new song on a PBS Christmas special the other night, A Baby Changes Everything, that’s really, really good. Craig Wiseman wrote it with Tim Nichols. Is it bad to say I wish it wasn’t Faith Hill singing it? I was really trying to hear her friend, Lori McKenna, singing it. Or Patty Griffin.

Speaking of music, I’ve been using some Stereo Bluetooth Headphones – I’ve got these bluetooth headphones from Motorola (S9-HD) that sound great. I adore the absence of wires and cables in my life. That said, the little rubber ear thingies keep falling off. And it has syncing problems with my computer. Bittersweet. Do you have a pair you love?

Speaking of thingies, this is as good a time as any to admit I like simplifying my life, but I’m certainly not a minimalist. I like stuff – at least stuff that makes my life more efficient or adds delight. David Pierce has a really great blog where he, too, thinks about and writes about such stuff. He reposted a bunch of great content for the holiday season.

Speaking of blogs, Google Reader tells me I’ve got more than 900 articles to catch up on. You know what’s fun sometimes? Pressing the [Mark All As Read] button. It’s okay. You’re allowed. No one’s going to come and eat your pets.

Speaking of not eating pets, same holds true for tweeting and facebooking and socialing and networking. I haven’t put anything on twitter and only a couple pics of my kids on facebook. I haven’t missed it at all. Godin just focuses on his blog. I may just do the same in 2010.

Speaking of 2010, both sets of grandparents now have wireless internet in their homes … … … … listen closely … … … that’s the clock ticking on dial-up’s demise. Last person with a modem be sure to turn off the lights, okay?

What have you been speaking of this holiday season?

What? Would you prefer I’d written: Of what have you been speaking this holiday season? That’s just dumb. Speaking of which … sorry for going all Larry King on you.

What Matters Now? More Than 70 Leaders Contribute …

Tim — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:40:36 +0000

Here he goes again. To help promote the January release of his new book, Seth Godin arranged for more than seventy of today’s big thinkers to contribute to a free e-book on what matters now.

It’s thought-provoking. It’s free. It’s traveling the web at high speeds.

Download it here.

Well done, Seth. Promotional mission: accomplished. Here are a few of his thoughts on it:

Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.

Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth it the effort.

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

What about you? What’s your idea for us to think about as we head into the new year?

Customers: Relational, Transactional, Social

Tim — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:27:55 +0000

As we peer out over the edge of the holiday season, in addition to readying ourselves for turkey and football and games, we’re thinking an awful lot about how our business, clients and customers will fare financially.

We’re also thinking about social media, or more correctly, practical applications of social media. Here in my midwestern college town of Columbia, Missouri, the emerging professionals group from the Chamber of Commerce hosted a panel discussion on social media last week.

While I did not attend, several of my clients did.

This seemed to be the consensus of the panel: In social media, there appear to be two kinds of customers: the first set of customers looks strictly for deals and coupon codes and cheap prices and do their best to spread the call of and for the cheapest prices like some kind of virus. The second set of customers appear to act as advocates for businesses who deliver a great experience. They look for – and celebrate and share when they receive – genuine, honest feedback from a company.

Both groups appear to cheer the conversation. It’s the message within that divides the groups.

As I heard this recounting of the panel discussion, I smiled, then laughed.

At Wizard of Ads, my partners and I have been teaching the differences between transactional (the first group) and relational (the second) since 2003. Would you like to see what I mean by relational and transactional? In just 2:27, I think you’ll recognize the characteristics.

2 Types of Customers: Relational v. Transactional from Tim Miles on Vimeo.

That’s an excerpt from a retail presentation we’ve been giving for seven years. It provides some shocking revelations that are just as relevant today – if not more so – when access to most goods (and even many services) is just a few points-and-clicks away.

If you’re looking for something to do over the holidays in quiet moments of tryptophan-induced reflection, I’ll hook you up with some resources to better prepare yourself and your company to quickly get in step with the new conversation. Here’s the first if you’d like a little more today: my partner, Roy Williams, wrote a memo about social media just a few weeks back that worth reading or – for the slightly more daring – giving a listen.

Rest easy. Your family likely taught you almost everything you need to know years ago – when you were a small child.

Yes, the tools have changed. The rules, too. But it’s still a game you can play.

Let me know if you’d like to know more about the presentation.

And, more importantly, let me know what do you think. Do you see the similarities? Can you think of companies who embrace these relational conversations across the social media landscape? Southwest Air – @SouthwestAir on twitter – seems to embrace it as well as anyone.