This wonderful book is on my re-read list. With the amount of time I spend in a car each year, The Go Giver has been listened to many times. The book by Bob Burg and John David Mann is a story of a young man’s journey over a few days with different mentors. It boils down to 5 laws which could have a real impact on any aspect of life.  Today I am going to focus on social media. Two points, I use social a lot and I am not a fan of the media bit, it’s all about being social. So on with the 5 laws of stratospheric success.

#1 The Law of Value

“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.”

When do you take the most notice of someone on Twitter or Facebook? Probably when they have given something useful to you like a link, a photo, a video. People who give great content are more influential?

#2 The Law of Compensation

“Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.”

The more people following you or liking what you do is going to build your network. If your content or message is consistent and popular with this network, it will keep growing. You are serving those people who follow what you put out there. The audience is growing because they are tuning into you.

#3 The Law of Influence

“Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”

How more true is this on the internet. When was the last time you followed someone on Twitter or Facebook and then got a wash of sales messages. Your message has to be about what your audience wants. If you own a restaurant, people want to hear mostly about food, recipes and that kind of thing. A place that just talks about themselves is going to get tuned out.

#4 The Law of Authenticity

“The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”

Showing up on the internet is like having too many drinks. Who is really inside of you gets amplified. If your message is real or fake, people will know. Nearly every action leaves a permanent wave on the web. Being yourself is one of the kindest gifts you can give yourself.

#5 The Law of Receptivity

“The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.”

I was never quite sure what this part meant, but persisted with listening again and again. Finally it dropped. Someone, somewhere will actually notice what you do and reward you for it. This is not some cynical plan to garner trade, praise or profits but more about what goes round … If you have been genuinely helpful to a number of people, it does come back round. What does this mean in social media? One way to open to receiving is to make it easy for people to get hold of you?

Finally

If you have noticed it’s been a little quiet around here, you’re right. Hopefully I am going to work through a list of posts I have wanted to write for a long time. The conversation is always regular on Twitter though (@ross_boardman).

See you soon,

Ross

What does a film about the supernatural and marketing have in common? It’s nothing to do the occult, so don’t worry. If you can remember the scenes when they used the proton packs, the rule was simple. Don’t cross the streams!

In marketing there are 3 rough categories of activity that we could call streams.

1 Advertising. Telling an audience about you and your product in your words…

2 Public relations. Someone else telling an audience about you and your product in their words.

3 Social media. Chatting with people with as little mention of you or your product as possible.

When we mix the messages up, mistakes get made. If you use communities like Twitter or Facebook, then the golden rule is to keep it chatty and not overly push your business. Advertising loses you potential customers if you make high claims and false promises. Customers have very fine tuned BS detectors and they can spot a vaguely veiled pitch a mile off.

Could you take  the loyalty club to a new level?

I may be a little old fashioned here, but I have to admit to enjoying personal service rather than blanket vouchers to lure me back somewhere.  Many places whether they are hotels, shops, airlines or casinos give you something back in the way of money off. Sometimes this gets pushed a little further and they upgrade you so that you get to sit in the VIP lounge or get a suite.  On other occasions they have spent a bit of time and thought working out what you like to buy and then send you offers specific to that.

How about they spent some time working out what you liked to do or any preferences which don’t involve buying. Could the next generation of loyalty help you out a little more when you go somewhere? My vision is of a loyalty app / card that goes a bit further than giving you coupons. Shops and casinos gather data about you when you spend or play. Some places could also work out a bit more about your life style.

You are now staying at a hotel where you have a loyalty membership. You check in and your room is set at your usual temperature, the bath or shower the same. There is a few minutes to kill while you unpack and you turn the TV on, which comes up with your most watched channel set at your usual volume. None of this is difficult to as many of these devices are now becoming centrally linked and managed.

How about another step? The mini bar is already stocked with what you would buy in the bar downstairs. On the desk is a letter telling you about menu changes at the restaurant you frequent and a few tips related to previous concierge services you may have used in the past, for example a new show in town. If you are in a hotel casino, wouldn’t it be nice if they also handed out some playing strategies or instructions for new table games or machines similiar to ones you have tried before?

Much of this can also be floated as possible itinery content for an in-house loyalty app or website. If you want to set up the room temperature for that season and city, then the changes activate as soon as they have you checked in at the front desk.

If you are tech and service savvy, please take some of these ideas, but I must insist you let me try them out for you

The above is a QR, quick response, code. Originally they were designed as a 2 dimensional easy to scan bar code. This technology started life supporting components and assemblies moving down production lines. Nowadays you are just as likely to see them on press adverts or posters. Your mobile device will pick up the code by use of a camera and an app to take you straight to a place on the web. The one above leads you to a page on Wikipedia that explains all about QR codes.

A real innovative use is on product packaging. I was in a food shop and saw a code on a bag of potatoes. The code got scanned on my iPhone and then I was looking at a mobile friendly webpage that told me all about the variety and provided cooking tips. The potatoes were now 100% sold to me.

On the other side of this are the uses that have not had much thought. A general full screen website is not a good idea for a link on a QR code. You don’t carry laptops around with scanners on them, this is likely to be a hand held device only.

The one application that really holds the lesson for lack of thought is a poster campaign for road safety in the UK. All this sounds very admirable until you consider location. Each poster is an individual advert above … gent’s urinals in a busy service station. Call me old fashioned but a very unlikely place to pull out a camera phone?

In the US there is very little user intervention in playing general slot machines. You probably have the choice of how many lines to play, how much to bet and the button that spins the reels. That’s it, there are no holds, nudges or special features. Yet with so little choice, slots take up the vast majority of most gaming floors. One exception to this is video poker, the player feels more in control and the game even gets installed into bar tops. One variant works on playing 100 hands at a time. You take get a draw of five cards and you choose which to hold. Then the 100 hands get played with the same cards held. Most pay out from pairs of Jacks and above. This is no brainer if you have a winning hand in front of you, the results are pretty much a minimum of what the payout tables say and then a bonus for any gaps that get filled in. If you held 2 jacks, the 100 cards could give you anything from just those 2 jacks through, 2 pairs, 3s full house and 4 of a kind.

Below a natural win there are a few decisions that can be played to maximize the players winnings. After some brief research, a top 10 has been developed, but obviously a fuller thrashing of volumes of play would be ideal to finalise the results. The ideal way to evaluate this table is to think about anything not on the list as being zero-options, eg 3 cards of a flush or 3 cards as a straight. There are a few options that seem profitable but the time spent so far show them to rank lower than holding none of them, eg the zero at No 10.

Key:

Hi = Hi cards not of the same value (eg J or above)

Open ended straights can be added to at either end (eg 4,5,6,7)

Close ended straights need the missing card inside the set (eg 4,5,6,8)

Where there is a number, that is the number of cards (eg 3 Hi is 3 none-matched Hi cards)

The next step is to evaluate the long term of 4 Straight Flush to see if this, on average, rates any higher than anything on the payout table, potentially beating a pair or above). If that is the case, the new card will show the pairs and anything not on the card is a complete re-spin.

Never since the business world got stiffed by the overbearing Sairbaines Oxley Act has a new piece of legislation been about to make such a big impact. The Bribery Act creates a number of offences related to business corruption. Very few business laws really branch the gap between ethics and legislation. Many organisations have accepted for years that a) certain countries require “local facilitation fees” to get the contracts rolling and b) also rely on Government contracts.

The new Act makes it an offence for any UK based organisation to offer, make or appoint an agent anywhere in the world to do such things. Overseas bribes can lead to heavy fines for bodies corporate and individuals and also upto ten years in prison for the individual. If convicted of an offence under the Act, it may also debar the guilty party from being awarded government contracts in the European Union.

A couple of basic steps to get going:
1 Define what your organisation classes as a bribe
2 Draft and implement a bribery policy

Here’s one I wrote a few years ago, but never went anywhere. If you want to use it, feel free but credit us if you can.

Basically a card game of high or low. Take a regular deck of cards with 1 to 3 jokers in the pack. The players put a bet on their card(s) being higher or lower than 7 or a side bet on 7. All 7s are a push with the bets riding for the next round.

High or low bets pay even, this could be extended to black or red bets. For the 7 side bet 12:1.

House edge depends on the number of jokers in the deck

1 = 1.92%
2 = 3.85%
3 = 5.77%

If you want a quick, easy to learn game with no fancy equipment, this could be the thing. All you really need is one deck of cards and a simple table design to get going.

Plays like roulette but without the expense of setup.

The world has become very focused on quality of recent times. Local produce is available everywhere and there is a real push on recycling and giving back to the community. How come that the success of these initiatives does not translate into better customer service? During the last couple of years, many businesses and individuals have suffered reversals of fortune and a number of large organisations have decided that they don’t need to treat people with respect anymore. Now is the era of the snotty debt collector, the power crazed bureaucrat at the finance company and the shirking of responsibility for your own service.

If any of these seem harsh judgement, then look around, it’s everywhere. Banks would rather bankrupt someone than wait round for full payment, just to get their deposit ratios back up. Large organisations have offshored so much of their back office that the law of the land does not seem to apply to them anymore.

My own experience of this was a real shocker. An ex neighbour had accrued a significant utility usage. Over a year after his departure, the mega-corp in question discovered that they had a large meter reading and no name to match the debt against, so they chose mine. My personal data was handed over to a debt collection company who started to telephone, email and send letters. They were asked for proof of the debt and couldn’t find any. Rather the supplier trying to work out who did owe their bill, they passed it onto another company, then another and so on. The outcome was that the last debt chaser is now under notice of criminal and civil proceedings, the phone has been quiet since.

Come the upturn when we decide which deals to take and who to contract with, do you think any of this will be relevant? Certainly, I know who I WON’T be shopping with and that is down to short termism and pure laziness of some of the biggest corporate bodies. If you cannot learn anything about customer service, don’t expect to see any customers.

That may sound like a completely pointless job advertisement, but is pretty typical of some of the unfocused rubbish that gets sent to most consultants. Most of the people sending these are supposed to be specialist recruiters who already have a copy of your CV.

Today I got a typical cracker from one of these lazy gimps:

Permanent role, salary a fraction of my self employed rate, other side of country, not in my specialty.

The point is not necessarily about them shooting themselves in the foot, but about aiming at them in the first place. How hard can it be to get a rough idea of what people you have on your database and then writing a more targeted email at those that match.