Small Businesses and Social Media

I have to admit, I go to my fair share of networking events, but not nearly enough. And here's why. A lot of small business owners go to them, too, and in a medium sized town, that can be a good thing because you'll get to know a lot of people who do business in town very quickly. BUT, they all want to figure out how social media can help their business. And by help I mean, generate sales.

So I get asked a lot for what is the equivalent of free advice. I don't mind, I really don't. I have a pretty standard answer I give, and that's to consult and pay someone who does it for a living. Much the same as my attorney or physician friends say to the random questions they get 'That sounds interesting, you should really make an appointment with a specialist in that field'.

So what is my stock answer? It's pretty basic, 'Wow, so you want to figure out which platforms will help you and how much time it will take? You should contact a couple of marketing firms and get a proposal to see what they think. I'd also be happy to create a proposal for you if you'd like to sit down for a meeting to discuss your goals'. The long answer is too long for a blog post, and at this point in the life of social media for business, too complicated for a one-size fits all answer.

The thing I find most interesting is many small business owners think, and truly believe, social media is the answer to slow sales. And if we sit down and discuss their goals and what their expectations of social media are, I also discuss some of the marketing fundamentals. If the business owner is selling a service, I will ask who their competitors are and if they know (or care) how much they are charging. If you're selling a service and you're over or under priced, that's something that could make for compelling content. You can tell the story of why. And sometimes products are easier. Have you priced it like everyone else has on the web. If not, is there something that differentiates your product in such a way as to make it worth the extra money. I very rarely encourage anyone to price up. It usually takes a very quick internet search for me to determine the small business owner has decided to ignore pricing fundamentals and have priced themselves out of the market.

These are the business owners who want to use social media as a sales pitch. We've all seen the ads pop up in our timeline or in the sidebar. The ones that say you can get this great discount on our product. And the person who sees it says, 'huh, that seems like a good idea. I wonder if I can get it for less somewhere else?' and then they use the interwebs and discover they can get the same product for much less. I've told a couple of small business owners recently to review their pricing strategy in light of the quick research I've done. The end result of social media is never useful for them and it never meets their expectations, so the ROI isn't there. Bottom line - if you price your product high, then pay for the ad either through Google or Facebook, what you make has to be more than you've spent. And the ad teams for Google and Facebook are good! They never promise any sales, they promise impressions or clicks and tell you what the average profit is. And it's all about advertising.

I encourage small business owners to view social media as a growth opportunity for their business, and to use it as an extension of their networking, but in a slightly more commercial way. When networking face-to-face, it's easy and natural to discuss what you are doing and celebrate your achievements. When networking online, it takes a little more thought. You don't want to be in your face with a buy this, it's the greatest thing ever mentality, but you also want to provide content in such a way that it illustrates your product or expertise. It should be good, compelling content that encourages conversation or delivers something useful (not just that you have a product offering or service).

But I do enjoy the conversations I have had. It's very enlightening to talk to people about their personal and professional opinions about Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+. I can't tell you how many people have told me they just don't get it or they don't use it, but are sure it will deliver something useful if they just found the time for it. Well, yes, time is the key. Own it, develop it and measure it. And remember that it won't happen overnight.

Entitlement and the New Job Search

So I have to admit, I've been a fan of Peter Shankman's for a long time. I first heard about him when he pulled a PR stunt to get a job (he stood on a NYC street corner with his resume on the billboard he was wearing). As memorable as that was, I didn't hear about him again until I joined a group called Young PR Pros, and he was an active contributor. I've been following his adventures ever since. Luckily for me, I met him, and that kind of sealed the deal. He's a great guy, and he shares a lot on his blog. So imagine my surprise when I was reading about entitled Millenials and came across his name.

Which led me down the rabbit hole, as it does every time. I really have to get control of that. I also have to stop letting the holidays slow down my reading. By the time I got to his blog post today, it was a month old. Shame on me. And, it was a response to someone else's post on the topic. To be fair to myself, it started with a news show, and I don't really watch the news. I choose to check the news on my laptop, which is just a particular laziness on my part.

So his blog post was responding to his non-stance on Millenials during a tv show addressing the conception that Millenials don't have the job skills for most of today's jobs. For the record, he wrote, and I believe, he doesn't really have a stance based on age or label. He does likely have a stance based on the ability to complete the work requested, which is where the job search comes in. It's all well and good to graduate from college. I'm a big fan, having done it myself. But why don't we inject a little reality into the situation?

I see entry level salaries for jobs purporting to be entry level jobs with mid-range level responsibilities. I've seen entry level jobs that pay $30-40K annually where the person hired for the job is responsible for the marketing and PR strategy. Not just executing the strategy, but creating it. I am sure there are recent graduates who can handle this type of responsibility, and do it well. I'm not even going to address my thoughts on why it is, exactly, that companies choose to take two entirely different disciplines like marketing and PR and blend them together. That's an insane expectation for your average college graduate. The best part? The new grads believe they can do it, if only they were given the chance. Better yet, they think they are entitled to the job because they've never failed, or they got good grades and graduated magna cum laude.

New grads are really looking for that $60-100K salary, though, which is really why they take jobs taht include responsibilities they have no idea how to accomplish, much less in an environment that frequently requires working with people who have a dotted line responsibility to you. But new grads don't want just a job. They want the job salary that was promised to them when they started college. Which is what a lot of more experienced job seekers are looking for, too. And they're struggling to find a job that will pay the mortgage and car payment and whatever else after having been down-sized. They're truly qualified for that entry level job that pays $30-40K, but they may not be able to afford to take that job. Or they feel like they shouldn't have to take a pay cut so they can be employed again.

It's pretty amazing to look at job descriptions, though. No longer is an intern or new grad asked to file and get coffee, maybe put together a PPT. Take a look at LinkedIn, and sort by entry level jobs. You might be amazed at the expectations, but those job descriptions reflect the opportunity companies are taking in a depressed job market to hire the best candidate for the least amount of money. If their HR professional can find and hire someone willing and mostly able to do the work, even if they've never done anything like it before outside of a paper for a class. But...if you hire someone who is a new grad and expects to work an 80 hour week to get the job done, then bully for you. It is amazing, though, to hear the kerfuffle over how Millenials aren't able to do the jobs they were hired to do. Of course they aren't. The job market is such that the job responsibilities went up and the salaries went down. I've looked at jobs that pay $30-40K and haven't applied. Not because of the money, but because there were responsibilities in the job description that I had never done before and they were asking for 3-5 years experience. It doesn't take long for employers to figure out you are on a learning curve, which is what an entry level position is for. Not to hire someone who hasn't ever converted a PPT to a Prezi for use at a trade show or conference call, but you expect them to be able to because you listed it in the job requirements.

The point here is, entitlement isn't just for Millenials. I've met a lot of entitled people, and read a lot of job descriptions that sound like the person or company writing them feels as though they are entitled to the best for less. I have found that entitlement is something everyone can fall victim to. If you listen carefully, entitled people tend to believe they deserve something and it comes through loud and clear in the way they speak and carry themselves. I'm not putting anyone down, here. It's just interesting to me that there's this disconnect between people who believe your actual experience and the way you present and carry yourself matters, and people who believe that because they want it, they should have it, for the simple reason that they exist and no matter what actual experience they have.

The Pitch

While on my unplanned and unannounced vacation (sorry!), I happened across a tv show I really found interesting. It's called 'The Pitch' and the premise is two different ad agencies in the final selection process for a client. I'd heard about it before, but thought it was more geared towards public relations. It's not.

So I managed to watch two episodes, and I found some strong similarities in the way ad agencies work. And then some other things, like the way the roles of communication impact teamwork. You could see which agencies felt the freedom to truly create, and which ones had locked down who could communicate and when. I noticed a funny thing, too. The ones that locked down who could communicate and when struggled more with their creative.

That may seem odd, but to me it didn't. If you have no real feel for what the potential client wants, and even if you do, but you have no freedom to explore an idea through to the end before having it shot down, I don't think you get the best creative. It just seems like a really bad idea to me. 

In the one episode, there was a young woman, moderately new to the agency, who came up with a great idea. It was the idea chosen to present, too, which was great. Then there was a long discussion about whether she should participate in the pitch to the client. What? One of the essential elements of persuasive communication, which is what an agency pitch to a potential client is, basically, is that the person who truly believes in the idea and owns the idea, is there to act as the idea's champion. Only that person can be so persuasive and so passionate because they know how they got from point A to point B, and the logic it took to get there. Someone who is just presenting the idea may well feel just as passionately about the idea, but if they didn't come up with it themselves, they may not understand some of the logic leaps.

The other episode I saw was fairly interesting from a communication stand point. The first agency brain stormed through the client's needs and came up with an idea they loved. It was great, but unfortunately already done for the same type of client. Instead of shutting down the creative, they went back to the drawing board as a team and came up with another idea. I was pretty impressed with the way they worked. It was clear they were accustomed to working with each other and had honed their interpersonal communication to optimize their results while reducing time on ideas they didn't want to pursue.

In that episode the other agency had a creative team come up with the idea and present it to the creative director and the rest of the decision making team. It seems like a difficult way to achieve the end result, but there were opportunities to explain the thought process. I'm sure large agencies don't have the time to work creative together, but going back to my earlier point, the most persuasive person to pitch the client is the person who owns it. Birthed the idea, if you will.  

You just have to let the creativity and communication shine through sometimes, and that makes persuasive communication the key to any great presentation or a winning pitch.

Aggressiveness in Business

I read recently a PR Daily article about whether you have to be ruthless to get ahead, and the article focused mostly on how it applies to women. It also found a recent trend for women who have been turned off by the behavior of contestants who believe that business is ruthless on tv shows.

I found it very interesting the image they chose to use was from the movie The Devil Wears Prada. I've worked for people who communicate in much the same ways as Meryl Streep's character, Miranda Priestly. You're lucky if you haven't. The one positive thing I can about that character is she expected perfection because she herself was a perfectionist. Unfortunately, she is one of those people who expect you to know everything and understand exactly what she's talking about without the benefit of all the years of experience.

That's just it, though, right? To Miranda, the communication was crystal clear. To everyone else around her, it was a puzzle. And most of the time they worked it out, so there was no reason Miranda would think her communication was at all unclear. It happens a lot in communication. How many times have you tried to tell someone something, only to find they don't have the same base of knowledge you have? It adjusts your perception of their abilities, underlined by your personal or professional bias, that same bias that allows you to say things like 'who doesn't know that'.

The benefit to working with someone like Miranda is that you pretty quickly discover you are on your own without any help from your boss, but the communication, to them, is crystal clear. If you can figure out the code consistently, you're probably going to be in good shape with your boss.So what happens when it's true ruthlessness at work?

By that I mean, when your boss needs to feel better than you, and will actively use passive/aggressive communication to make sure you don't succeed and feel defeated. I've always hated these types of communicators. It's really just awful. You think they're helping you out by explaining something, only to find in the meeting they have only explained half of what you needed to know and they make an excuse for you, in public, along the lines of 'We did discuss this something, and I was sure he/she understood, but clearly they we'll have to address this topic at a later date when we're more prepared'.

It sounds kind of nice, doesn't it? Your boss using the word we? Even though you look like an unprepared jackass to the others at the meeting. This is pretty aggressive behavior, and your boss is using your perceived lack of preparedness or knowledge to make themselves look better. Ruthless. but with a coat of sugar on it. So what can you do when you encounter someone who consistently says they are helping and providing necessary information for you to do your job, or live your life, well? Address it.

I was reading a post at Tiny Buddha about it, and while a handy overview about how to communicate clearly about what you need, don't expect to get it from a passive/aggressive boss. It's different when you are able to communicate as an equal, like you can with your parents, siblings, life partner or friends, than when you have to communicate with your boss, who can fire you. I did find an interesting tidbit in the article about anger and negativity. it makes sense. Anyone so angry at their life or their work, or so negative about the outcome of a particular project, is very likely to engage in passive/aggressive behavior to make them right. Which won't make them any happier, just so you know.

Your best bet here is to look to others on the project to clarify project deliverables and key project goals for you. By finding other, more trusted, routes of communication that help you rather than hurt you, you will likely succeed despite the lack of clear communication. Don't think that's going to make your boss any less ruthless, though, and the passive/aggressive communication isn't going to change. You'll just have to find workplace partners in crime who communicate clearly and are involved, even peripherally on projects you're working on.

Is Your Meaning Ever Lost in Translation?

I was watching the US Open last night and a Mercedes Benz commercial ran. Now, if I had recorded the US Open like a sane person, I could have just hit the fast forward button and skipped all the commercials, but I didn't. So I had to suffer through all the commercials.

As commercials go, this was a good one. It told the story of Mercedes Benz (true or not, up to you to believe) and was accompanied by shots of the theme in various car/racing endeavors featuring a Mercedes car. The story starts with the founder, who wrote his mantra down, and then followed it through the years to excellence. The mantra is 'The Best or Nothing'. 

That's fine as a mantra. Before fast fashion, I would have said everyone's mantra was to be the best. I guess fast fashion's mantra could be have the best cheap clothes, but I digress. In the voice over, there was a bit about making sure the meaning of the best or nothing was never lost. It got me thinking. How do you do that without stifling creativity? The reality for all product development, and the marketing that accompanies it, is that there are budgets. The flexibility of the budget is individual to the size of the company and the processes and procedures they follow, but you get the idea. At some point you have to decide it's the best or nothing, and that it represents the meaning of your brand.

Thinking about commercials, how many have you seen that are just plain awful? or a campy commercial addressing a serious topic? and my favorite, the 30 second mini drama? Do commercials you dislike or fast forward through really convey the best or nothing? I don't think so. In the brave new world of YouTube, Vine and other video upload sites, there are creative pieces for brands that leave a much more positive and lasting impression. How do you ensure that the meaning is not lost in translation? 

Taking it one step further, a commercial is a shorter version of communication with others. It's just on a larger scale than what people outside the advertising industry typically look for. I get that you can't make everyone happy with a commercial (think of the variety of Super Bowl commercials), and I think the same goes for conversational or business communication. Sometimes the meaning is lost in translation, and it depends very much on who the listener is and what their previous experiences and current prejudices lead them to believe. It goes to the fundamental heart of marketing, advertising and just plain basic communication skills - if you want to be the best or nothing, you have to know who your audience is so the meaning of your communication isn't lost.

Redefining Communication for a New Generation, or Freshening a Brand for the Old Generation

I do like Nike. Nike put Just Do It out there into the universe twenty some odd years ago, and clearly people bought into it without any additional definition from Nike. Of course there were the commercials, the merchandise and the celebrity endorsements. Everybody does it.

People embraced the concept, though. It didn't matter what they were doing, playing checkers or playing football, going to school or going to work, the Just Do it mantra was in their head. I'm pretty sure it gave rise to 'git 'er done'. This year they, meaning Nike and their ad agency, decided to freshen the brand.

What does that mean? Are they abandoning Just Do It? Well, not exactly. They seem to be expanding, but from a strong statement to a weaker one. Think about it. If someone tells you to Just Do It are you motivated? What about if someone tells you there are Possibilities? The new ad campaign is about possibilities. So is it the same thing?

I don't think so. Just Do It is a command, an exhortation to get out of your own way and succeed. Possibilities just says something is out there, and it could happen, but it also couldn't. It's just a possibility. In the same way it's a possibility I could be like Mike. The two phrases just don't mean the same thing, and one is much more inspirational to me than the other. The wording matters.

Marketing Yourself Effectively

I met Peter Shankman in probably 2000. Great guy - very funny and personable. So great, in fact, that I started keeping up with what he was doing using all the normal social media channels. One of those channels is his blog.

He recently wrote a blog post on networking, and it's one of the things I find solo shops and freelancers have a really hard time fitting in or making work for them. The first issue is time. Sometimes there really isn't enough time in the day, and I suspect the issue here is time management or over-commitment. Either way, if you don't network well, and don't take the opportunity to network no matter where you are, you should read his post. And then go out and buy the book You, Inc and take some of the advice there.

So what was so great about the post? It covers the fundamentals most of us learned in kindergarten or first grade and then progressively forgot. The first is that making friends is still as easy as 'Hi! My name is Jeannie. What's your name?'. It works great in networking situations and if you can stay away from business for a few minutes you just might make a great new, engaged contact for your network. A great opener is something along the lines of what Peter suggested, using items in your surroundings to engage in conversation, or you can ask what brought the person to the event you're at. You don't want to be the person there whose sole goal is to grab everyone's card after a cursory 'Hey, how are you? What do you do? I do this' approach. Pretty basic stuff, and something you've likely known for a long time.

The second is to remember to have fun. Peter just considers himself fortunate to be where he is in life, with everything he's accomplished. I know he works harder than most of the people I know, but it's kind of fun to read about how amazed he is at what he has achieved. Making new friends and attending networking events should be fun for you - whether it's a small dose, such as an hour, or the full course, like the whole event from open to close, go and have fun. Make new friends. And then for goodness sake, follow up!

That's the last thing that seems difficult for some. It's time consuming, I know. And throwing in the personal bits to make the follow up less about you and more about the relationship, well that just takes an honest interest in what other people are doing, but it also takes a minute. Sometimes more than the minute you have to keep up with your friends and family. Meeting people at networking events and handing them your card, making a connection...it's no good if you don't follow up and maintain the connection. You may as well have never gone to the event and spent the time with family and friends. Drop them a line, follow up with a call - see how you can help each other succeed. If you really had a good feeling about the person you met, it's nice to develop that kind of referral friendship. It pays dividends. Just look at what Peter has done over the years, just be being a great guy and knowing how to market himself effectively.