You’ve probably heard of Netflix, the online DVD rental-by-mail service.  If you’re one of their ten million subscribers, you’ve probably enjoyed a couple of the two billion videos they’ve mailed out in the past 10 years. It’s a brilliant business concept that has almost single-handedly wiped out video stores in the U.S. (You remember video stores, don’t you? Those were the businesses you supported with all the late fees you accumulated when you forgot to return “Big Bird Goes to China” on time.) Netflix’s genius idea was to let subscribers keep a rented movie as long as they desired, with only a limit on the number of movies that each subscriber can have on loan simultaneously. Continue reading →

In the final installment of our series on using social media for business, let’s look at LinkedIn, which is the most powerful professional networking tool available today. LinkedIn allows you to connect with business contacts and share information in a highly focused way. This is because it features a “gated-access” approach to connections, where contact requires either a preexisting relationship or the intervention of a contact. On LinkedIn, you can only connect to someone you already know or to someone who is “introduced” to you on the site by another connection. This feature serves to build trust among the service’s users and results in contact lists that can be used extensively for business purposes. Continue reading →

To round out our discussion of social networking, let’s take a look this week at Facebook and Twitter. The fact that these sites are being used for business purposes by major corporations is a recent phenomenon, and many companies today are still lagging far behind in putting this type of social media to work for them. But Facebook and Twitter have rapidly become legitimate, competitive and effective tools for even the most grown-up companies—this isn’t your teenager’s toy anymore! Continue reading →

Did you ever imagine that businesses could be launched, fortunes built and careers made or lost as a result of something called the blogosphere? The word blog didn’t even exist ten years ago.  A college student named Justin Hall is credited with being one of the world’s first bloggers, thanks to the online personal diary he began to keep in 1994. Today, there are too many blogs to even count. The last attempt by Technocrati.com in 2007 found 133 million blogs but this clearly didn’t take into account the 73 million blogs estimated to be in existence in China alone. With the number of blogs growing exponentially, many businesses are now waking up to the realization that their marketing and communications programs should include a corporate blog. Continue reading →

Because of the recent spike in social networking activity, many companies are now considering whether to develop a social media platform for their company and products. But one of the questions often raised when it comes to using social media for business purposes is how to measure the ROI, or Return on Investment, on these programs. Obviously, it takes time and money to build an active presence online, and so the question of ROI is critical. Do these investments pay off in measurable returns or is social networking more like branding — you can’t quantify the results but maybe you can “feel” its impact on your business? Continue reading →

Over the last few years, social networking has become an important business tool in communicating with customers and the public at large. While the technology is still developing, social networking allows people to share various types of content online and to form relationships for personal, political and business use.  It transforms the traditional media relationship from monologue (one to many) to dialogue (many to many). Also known as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM), social media has already taken over many of the roles that advertising, publicity and public relations have traditionally played. Why is this happening? Well, take a look at some numbers: Continue reading →

Selling is one of the oldest human activities, essential to every civilization from the dawn of time. It is also one of the most pervasive of activities, since virtually every member of society offers something for sale, whether it’s their labor, knowledge, goods or talent. Although selling skills are essential if you want to teach children, win votes, or dazzle an audience, true salespeople are a breed apart. Vital in any economic climate, their skills are especially crucial today if we’re ever to emerge from the current recession. We need cars and homes and business ideas to once again be bought and sold, and that’s the work of salespeople. And yet many are reluctant to admit that they are in sales, hence the proliferation of such fancy titles as “Senior Account Executive” or “Business Development Officer” or “Business Procurement Specialist.” Continue reading →

The butterfly effect is a graceful phrase that relates to an important concept in the science of chaos theory: “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” (But doesn’t the butterfly effect sound a lot more appealing?)  The concept has been around since the late 1890s, when scientists began studying the predictability of weather.  But, in 1972, meteorologist Edward Lorenz gave an important speech entitled “Does the flap of a butterfly in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Continue reading →

Last week, we looked at how companies track and organize customer contacts using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software systems. These systems allow employees across departments to enter, store and access information regarding interactions with current and prospective customers. Now let’s take a look at how you can choose and implement the right CRM system for your company. Continue reading →

From the dawn of civilization, smart sellers have engaged in customer relationship management. In ancient times, if you wanted to succeed at selling produce, you would want to know who came to your local marketplace; what vegetables were most in demand; and which member of the sales team — perhaps your son, wife or nephew — was the most effective salesperson. Today, customer relationship management, or CRM, is just as important but it’s a bit more complicated. Continue reading →