Last
modified June
25, 2010
Are
you a Bootstrapper?
“Bootstrapping” or “booting” refers
to a group of metaphors that share a common meaning: a self-sustaining
process that proceeds without external help. The term is often
attributed to Rudolf Erich Raspe's story The Surprising Adventures
of Baron Munchausen, in which the main character pulls himself
out of a swamp, by his bootstraps.
There
is a lot being said about sustainability, and who wouldn’t
want that for their business? It’s the process of selling
your product or service in a way that requires little effort
on the part of the seller. Sustainability is the capacity to
endure against all odds. You often hear about the word being
used in ecological terms describing how biological systems remain
diverse and productive over time. For companies and for individuals,
it is the potential for long term well being.
In any
case, it all depends on the well being of the natural world
and the responsible use of it. Sustainability
has become a wide-ranging
term that can be applied to almost every facet of life.
Long-lasting
organizations, healthy wetlands and thriving forests are
the types of sustainability we hear about.
Growing a healthy organization
with the possibility of sustained life for hundreds of
years is a dream come true. Finding a way to
make your company
healthy enough to not just survive, but blossom,
is the moving target
we are all facing. So have you gotten to the root of where
your clients or customers are? Have you made
an attempt to reach them
on their turf, or are you waiting around hoping the phone
will ring or people will walk through your
door?
There is abundant scientific
evidence that humanity is living unsustainably,
and returning human use of natural resources to within
sustainable limits will require a major collective
effort. Ways of living,
improving, and growing more sustainably can take many
forms:
From reorganizing conditions, developing new technologies,
reappraising
economics and work functions, to adjustments in individual
lifestyles or finding ways to help others
conserve natural resources—all
will be avenues for the future.
The
saying "to pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was
in use during the 1800’s as an example of figuring it out
by developing a solution and fixing whatever was wrong…I
know I heard my grandmother say this over and over as a child.
Bootstrap as a metaphor, meaning to better yourself using your
own efforts, has been around for a long time, so take a good
look, because there is always a good way of reaching customers
if you have a great product or a wonderful service. It’s
all about how to get the job done!
The
New Metrics
Business
Directory defines metrics as, “standards of measurement
by which efficiency, performance, progress, or quality of a plan,
process, or product can be assessed.”
Metrics
have been used in business to measure ROI for…well, practically
forever. Social media has now necessitated a new framework for
measuring efficacy and success in online social interactions.
Basic categories include activities, such as “hits” or
visits, contributions and re-posts or referrals; sales metrics,
including qualified and unqualified leads, lead conversions
and revenue per customer; even product development and HR functions
can be measured through social media metrics.
The
following is a pretty comprehensive list of some social media
metrics for business, put together by “The Social Organization”*:
Activity
Metrics
Pageviews
Unique visitors
Members
Posts (ideas/threads)
Number of groups (networks/forums)
Comments & Trackbacks
Tags/Ratings/Rankings
Time spent on site
Contributors
Active contributors
Word count
Referrals
Completed profiles
Connections (between members)
Ratios: Member to contributor; Posts to comments; Completed profiles to posts
Periods: By day, week, month, year
Frequency: of visits, posts, comments
Survey
Metrics
Satisfaction
Affinity
Quality and speed of issue resolution
Referral likelihood
Relevance of content, connections
ROI
Measurements
Marketing/Sales
Cost per number of engaged prospects (community vs. other initiatives)
Number of leads/period
Number of qualified leads/period
Ratio of qualified to non-qualified leads
Cost of lead
Time to qualified lead
Lead conversion
Number of pre-sales reference calls (to other customers)
Average new revenue per customer
Lifetime value of customers
Customer Support
Customer satisfaction
Number of initiated support tickets per customer per period
Support cost per customer in community
Keep
in mind that it doesn’t make sense to try to measure everything.
Goals and objectives must always come first and must always be
clear and top of mind. Metrics are useful as measurement, but
they must reflect your goals and objectives. A select few metrics
that tell your social media story are most cost effective and
ultimately useful.
*http://www.thesocialorganization.com/social-media-metrics.html
Budgets
have Flipped
Budgets
have flipped; Branding – smart, effectual branding that
inventively distinguishes you from the crowd - has never been
of more value. Branding, or brand-building, has become the main
focus of corporate marketing departments, advertising agencies,
public relations firms and others. Branding for business should
exemplify soundness, not just making sound.
Everyone
loves a story; public relations endeavors are about telling
the story. Advertising has its place but it’s mostly about
garnering attention not message. Advertising is unquestioningly
necessary—necessary because like Burger King or Paris Hilton
(make no mistake, Paris Hilton, for better or worse, is a brand
unto herself), the general public must be consistently reminded
that you are there—that you exist. Our attention spans
for advertising are rapidly shrinking, while ad costs are
rapidly growing.
Remember
the dot.com advertising? It was inventive, creative and
prolific. So much money was spent on ads that to many these companies
probably
seemed invincible. Unfortunately, advertising doesn’t build
a brand. It projects an image, but it doesn’t adequately
tell a story about a company. And a story will be told
about every company, whether from rumors or facts, depending
on the
teller. This is the function of PR. The worst thing a brand
can do is leave the storytelling to others.
Who
is telling your story?!
Clarity
of Message
In
difficult and confusing economies it’s easy to toss about marketing
strategies like throwing candy to kids at a parade…should
we have a sale? Should we make coupons and direct mail? Should
we host an event or jump into social media? Some of these strategies
might be excellent opportunities for some businesses while some
of them could be devastating. It’s true you may need to
update your message, because things aren’t the same as
they were even one year ago and your customers will find you
outdated if your messages don’t reflect this. The opportunities
you choose must be in line with your brand and they must fit
your circumstances—from your offering to your customers’ reactions.
Developing
a simple but moving marketing communications message, from
your ads to your public relations, is vital to convey clear thoughts
to your audiences. Successful marketing materials of all types
must include clarity, consistency, continuity and creativity,
but without a lucid thought, you have nothing.
Clarity
of message means reaching through the massive communication
exchanges
to reach your desired impact by stating a clear, straightforward
message. The questions to ask yourself:
"What
will move a prospective customer to work with me or buy
my product?”
What
do they need to hear in order to be convinced?
As
a business, what makes me different?
What
makes me stand out above the rest?
Once
you’ve determined these answers, a clear, concise
message must be developed. You can make this complicated,
(so many
companies do!) but why would you do that?
Now,
in your clear message, think about how you want the customer
to respond.
How
do you ask for their business?
Make
it easy to understand and remember to tell them what
to do!
Integrity
With
the Goldman Sacks hearings, the BP spill in the gulf, Tiger Woods’ personal
missteps and other bad decisions and blame games, it seems this will be
the “Year of the Scandal.
”There is perhaps more that the usual
amount of discussion about public relations swirling about because there
is perhaps more than the usual amount of public relations going on. But
what is the real purpose of public relations? It seems some don’t
have a very positive impression of the function of PR. Sometimes assumptions
seem to be that a PR professional will spin, twist, even lie for the image
of a client. I’m here to tell you it isn’t true. Not that obfuscation,
distortion and outright fabrication don’t happen; unfortunately
they do. However, short term, dishonest fixes do long term, perhaps irreparable
damage to a brand.
A good public relations professional or agency
will make a choice of integrity and most in the industry are
honest in how they represent
their clients.
PR presents an image, a picture. It’s not meant to
present a false picture. It is to present the best picture possible under
whatever circumstances a brand or client finds themselves, especially during
crises. Further, there are protocols and avenues to navigate that fall
under the expertise of PR professionals. We’ve all seen the
train wrecks that occur with an ill-prepared interview or statement,
often in
the wrong place at the wrong time.
A good public relations firm will first
and foremost prepare clients for a crisis. Even the best of companies
can be blindsided by an unfortunate and unforeseen event, and
the time to prepare
your plan is before, not during, a crisis. Every company’s
public relations plan should have in place detail crisis management,
including
all of the following:
Online pressroom
Media packet
Targeted media lists
Company, principal or stakeholder profiles
Social media consultation and facilitation
Investor relations
Internal/employee relations
Video library
B-roll for TV news stories
Informational video
Community relations
Crisis management process
Company spokesperson/contact for media
Media training
Crisis simulation
Live web casts
Email blasts
Podcasts
Blogs
If this is the “Year of the Scandal,” it might rightly
also be called the “Year of Transparency.” Transparency
is a newer standard of expectation. Anything less will potentially
cause harm.
