Leveraging Success- The Online Paradigm

I have been bombarded with this concept lately, and it isn’t a new one. It’s been popping up in books I’m reading, mentioned over and over in podcasts I listen to, and mentioned by business owners I work with. It’s an idea as old as the hills, yet it’s still the topic of conversation all across the business spectrum. The concept is leveraging other successes to create your own success, and it is everywhere online.

In Eric Qualman’s book, Socialnomics, he gives one example of a facebook app created by a travel company that allows users to track where they have been and share it with their friends. Along comes a programmer who sees how it can be improved, and he creates another facebook app, very similar to the other app, and his app outperforms the first app. Then along comes TripAdvisor. They see what this programmer has done (he has almost a million users) and they want in. They offer to buy in, but the programmer’s offer is more than TripAdvisor wants to pay (the offer was $3 mil). So, what does TripAdvisor do, they hire an application developer for around $15,000 and build an even better version. As of today, TripAdvisor’s travel app, Cities I’ve Visited boasts 4,869,881 monthly active users! Imagine how much it would cost to acquire those leads in a tradition method. I’d be willing to be you’d shell out more than $15,000. Now of course there is maintenance and upgrades to the app, and costs associated with that, but the figure for acquiring the leads is still super cheap. Even if it cost TripAdvisor $100,000, that’s still only $.02 per lead!!!

This type of action is happening everywhere, and it’s happening fast. Really fast. It’s so commonplace online, that we’ve become used to it. Think about Search Engines. There was Alta Vista, then Netscape, then AOL, then MSN, then Yahoo!, now Google is number one and MSN has create Bing to attempt to recapture market share. In the future, perhaps Social Media engines will even top Google as the number one way to search the web. Each business was able to leverage success on the back of an existing company. Search wasn’t a new idea when Google came along, but Google did it better, and cut down barriers between users and what they where looking for. The concept of leveraging success is in every corner of business, online and offline. I think of it as the birthplace of innovation; or maybe it’s innovation’s point of conception.

How can you and I, as business owners, leverage success? A great way to start is by studying the success of others. By analyzing what other business owners have done, we can begin to understand what happened to make the innovation a success. I think it requires an open mind and the ability to ask the right questions. The ability to see the opportunities surrounding your company, and the ability to act when the time is right. What are other companies in your market doing that could be improved upon? What are barriers between you and your clients/customers that can be lifted to shed resistance? What are other companies outside of your market doing that can be adapted to your business to improve your client/customer’s experience?

How will you leverage success?

Technology and Testimonials

I just watched a tech documentary made from the TED conference in 2006, which doesn’t sound that long ago until you realize how long 4 years is in tech time. The idea of touch screen technology was a huge deal and going green still wasn’t main stream. Considering that the telephone was invented in the late 1800′s, we’ve come a long and the gap between the creation of technology and it’s adaptation by the mass consumer (early and late majority folks) has decreased considerably. I still remember when the Motorola StarTAC dropped around 1996 and everyone thought that thing was AMAZING. My entire town had no cell phone signal back then. Now a cell phone is much more than a phone, it’s a device that allows people to connect in more ways and more rapidly than ever before.

I was reading a blog post earlier today by Dan Patterson (here’s a link to his post) and he said something that stuck out to me:

“Look, I’m a strong believer that people – human beings – are inherently curious, inherently social, and inherently lazy. By that I mean that people want the path of least resistance between people, other people, and information.”

There is a lot of truth to that, and this is what technology is allowing us to. By default, we are reverting to the ways in which we most prefer to do things, word of mouth communication and socialization with people we like, know, and trust. It has just taken technology a while to catch up.

Now that technology HAS caught up and, in doing so, given a voice back to the people, it’s more important than ever to have good word of mouth. Enter my good friend, testimonials. I’ve talked with hundreds of business owners over the last 4 years and they all have one thing in common: their most consistently rewarding marketing is word of mouth, referral based marketing. The funny thing is, most of them have no idea how they did it, so they can’t replicate it!

Here’s a quote from Dan Kennedy, a very sharp marketing mind:

“What others say about you, your company, your products and your services is infinitely more credible than anything you can say on your own behalf. When you make a statement, it’s a claim. When your satisfied customer makes the same statement about you, that’s a fact.”

The collection of testimonials is one of THE most important things you can do to market your business, period. It’s been that way and it’s not going to change.

Think about buying habits online. People read reviews before going to restaurants, watching a movie, buying a book, buying a new phone; the list goes on and on. And they may be looking for a review on your business. Testimonials are the way to pre-sell your products and services before you even open your mouth. Now, with technology, your testimonials and what other people say about you is more important than ever.

Here are 5 ways to tap into this technology:

1. Use a Google Local Page and encourage reviews

2. Use a Linkedin Page and encourage people to “endorse” you

3. Use your Twitter account, not to sell, but to establish a community and be part of the community

4. Use your smart phone to capture testimonials on the spot. Most have voice and/or video recorders, just be sure to ask permission first. You can always transcribe the testimonial later.

5. Post testimonials to your site and refresh testimonials as you get more.

Glyphs: The Latest in Offline to Online Interactivity

You may have noticed a lot of glyphs popping up lately. OOORRRR, you may not even know what a glyph is. Here’s an image of a glyph I took out of the latest copy of INC. magazine:

This particular glyph was created for an advertisement for hotels.com. I have no affiliation with hotels.com, nor do I particularly favor them over expedia, travelocity or any of the other sites (although I do like William Shatner for some unexplainable reason) so this is no plug for travel sites.

ANYWAY, glyphs are generally used with augmented reality apps, as a sort of key; taking a symbol of some sort in it’s analog form (offline) and converting it via webcam to a digital “key” which then allows the use to interact with the software online.

Here is a GE video showing you how augmented reality can work:

It’s still a bit early to tell now consumers will react to the glyph concept, but next time you see a cryptic black and white symbol, try taking a picture of it with your iPhone, Droid, or other smart phone if you have augmented reality capabilities. You could print out the image i took above and go to virtualvacay.com and follow the instructions there. I tried it out and it was pretty cheesy, but the idea of where it could go is definitely interesting. You can print out the glyph once you get to the site also.

There are other augmented reality sites which use the horizon, your position and some other factors to show you nearby restaurants, bars, shopping, even other people on Twitter and such. These augmented reality apps often do not require a glyph and are pretty sweet. The app Layar (which is available for both the iPhone and Droid) is an example of this technology which, if nothing else, can certainly be entertaining.

What do you think of augmented reality? You can always tweet me your thoughts to @rbrianforrester

Preconceived Notions

I’ve been thinking a lot about preconceived notions lately. I know they can be dangerous because a preconceived notion is essentially an assumption, and we all know what happens when you assume…

Yet, as much as I try to suppress preconceived notions, as much as I try not to pass judgment or assume I can predict what will happen, it’s always there, in the back of my mind. So, in realizing that I will never completely stop this behavior, I am going to make an effort to acknowledge it more and perhaps use it for the powers of good.

I’m, of course, thinking of preconceived notions developed around social interactions; especially meeting new people and prior to social engagements. My thoughts are that a misguided preconceived notion may actual detract from what I could be getting and giving in a relationship.

Lately, I’ve been pushing aside some of my preconceived ideas surrounding things I’m uncertain about, and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with the results.

Perhaps preconceived notions are intertwined with fear of the unknown, some sort of primordial defense mechanism which forces us to assume the worst in an effort of self-preservation.

So my social experiment continues.

Food for thought?

Next Steps

I guess, in looking back at past blog posts, I’ve haven’t been very forthcoming with personal info, partially because I’m not sure readers care and partially because I think there is a thin line between sharing too much and not sharing enough.  So I find myself asking, to share, or not to share?

ANYWAY…

I had a significant change occur this weekend:  I changed my Facebook status from “In a Relationship” to “Engaged”   On Friday, I asked Jaclyn to marry me and thankfully she agreed.  I appreciate all the encouragement from my Facebook friends, Twitter friends, my “real life” friends (who aren’t on social media platforms) and my family.

Marriage is such a serious decision, I needed a little levity:

“My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.” -Rodney Dangerfield

“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man’s habits and then complain that he’s not the man she married?” -Barbra Streisand

“It’s a funny thing that when a man hasn’t anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.” -Robert Frost

Next Page »