Business Value of Social Media for B2B

In discussing social media with business-to-business (B2B) companies, I find one of the key challenges in developing the conversation is that a lot of the reference points – what people have absorbed about or experienced of social media – is in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space.

For example, a quite interesting report I read yesterday, about responsive or otherwise various brands are to questions on their chosen social platforms, was all about companies, many of which clearly sell to other businesses, but all of which, as far as I could tell, have a strongly or exclusively orientation to the individual consumer. Try showing that to an engineering consultancy, or a law firm specializing in corporate law, or a supplier of engine parts to a larger manufacturer.

There needs to be time and openness to get the parameters of the conversation aligned.

And those of us who are believers in social media for business, especially those of us who are selling various social media 0r social business services, have to recognize that not everyone sees the world the way we do.

These thoughts were prompted for me today by a discussion on a LinkedIn group devoted to social media in the B2B space, where one member asked what would the one key question be that you would ask a business owner about social media.

I thought coming up with one restricted my scope too much and I offered to provide five questions.

The offer was quickly accepted and I produced the following five, with added notes.

Five Questions about Social Media and B2B

1. Are you open to a conversation about how social media can help your business grow?

I decided a while ago that it was a decidedly unproductive use of time – and depressing – to try and have this sort of conversation with people who had closed minds on the subject and were more interested in banging on about all the harm social media brings than about the benefits.

2. In an ideal world, and from what you know now, if you can imagine getting into social media could help your business, what would you like that help to look like?

There’s a range of possible answers: more sales, more leads, brand positioning, attract quality staff, thought leadership….

3. Have you already tried to do something with social media and if so with what result?

I know with this one I have to be ready for tales of disillusionment because some slick character did them out of their money with a ‘get-leads-quick’ scam: I need to listen and see if they are open to an ethical approach.

4. Are your customers using social media and if so how? 

I find most have not researched this and are stuck with prejudices.

5. What are your competitors doing with social media? 

If they are active, you’d better get your skates on. If they are not active, might there be an opportunity here to get ahead of the game and seize a first or early mover advantage?

You don’t always have to ask all or most. Some people buy in at 1 or 2.

These days I find that most business owners I speak to are thinking about this but don’t know where to start. Many are scared of the risks, but that would be another question and another blog post!

Would you have other questions?

When I speak to various groups about social media and specifically about blogging, I am regularly asked, “How often should we blog?”.

I used to give a fairly standard, generic response along the lines of  “at least once a day for five days when you are starting out, then at least three times a week once you’re established”.

But  a few conversations with people in professional services firms led me to think that response was a bit too generic and not necessarily helpful for specific firms.

So I did some research to see what others had to say on the subject.

I found there is certainly no shortage of blog posts on the topic, going back years. And, on the basis of the research I’ve done, I would not be encouraging anyone to expect finding a conclusive answer  on the matter.

And as marketing expert Seth Godin comments, “This discussion is usually filled with superstitions, traditions and half-truths”.

A few more observations

Jim Connolly on his Ideas Blog writes about the search engine optimization (SEO) benefits of posting daily (or more frequently) and then immediately qualifies that with the comment that “This fresh, daily content needs to be of a standard that makes it worth reading and sharing!”

Jonathan Fields in a very interesting post, concludes that ”Post size and frequency don’t matter nearly as much as Post-Fungibility”. Yes, I had to look it up: The word ”fungibility” comes from Latin fungibilis from fungi, meaning “to perform”. So as I understand, it’s all about whether the posts actually perform the function you want them to perform,  which in the context of a professional services firm may well be about, for example, establishing thought leadership rather than about promoting specific products or services.

Meryl K. Evans in a very thoughtful post observes:

If your web site itself is the income generator, then you’ll need frequent fresh content. If the blog is for promoting you as an expert in your field, which in turns supports your consulting business, then you probably don’t need to blog daily.

Seth Godin’s post How often should you publish? offers a valuable insight from observing the book publishing model of the  “front list” and the “back list”. His “key assertion”: you don’t publish it unless it’s good.

So is there any reliable guideline available, specifically for professional services firms?

Not a clear-cut, one-size-fits-all guideline, but some indicators or criteria.

In that vein, my take on the question now is that a really helpful answer will take account of at least the following key factors:

• considering what your readers might expect, e.g. short, snappy posts or long, thoughtful ones
• whether you are promoting products or wanting to establish thought leadership or build community
• level of your commitment to quality over quantity or frequency

What works for you?

What sort of frequency have you found works for you? Or, if you haven’t really got underway yet, what sort of frequency do you believe would be appropriate for your business?

It’s normal to be annoyed but let’s not waste the gift

It’s perfectly normal, isn’t it, to react defensively or in a generally negative way when we feel a customer is being difficult?

By which we mean they are being unreasonable, insensitive, rude, or simply annoying.

And even the most zealous advocate of superior customer service will surely agree there is a limit to how far we should be expected to go with the old “customer is always right”, principle.

Because, objectively speaking, sometimes customers can be quite unreasonably demanding, or just plain rude.

But it’s not good business to allow our initial or even abiding sense of annoyance or indignation to waste what is paradoxically a gift to our business by passing up the learning opportunity.

The fact that a customer is behaving in such a way as to have been tagged by us as “difficult” may in fact be saying something we need to know about our business, our products or our service delivery. Even – or especially – if it’s something we don’t really want to know right now.

Turning the situation around

And sometimes, by handling the problem effectively we can see a “difficult” customer turn into a happy one and even an advocate for our services.

That can happen where someone feels that no one is listening to them, then a person in the company takes an interest and helps solve the problem.

Have you ever been the difficult customer?

I know I have, and more than once.

For example, just a couple of weeks ago we found, on a Friday night, that all our websites seemed to have been hacked and variously disfigured or made to disappear.

Our first attempts to get help from our web hosting service HostGator were frustrating:

• a long time delay for the online chat service
• pro forma response from Support when we raised a ticket there

And it was getting late into the night and I was tired.

So I went on Twitter and with a “not happy” tweet I quickly got the attention of the person or people handling the HostGator account there. They requested my details via direct message and promised some action. I went to bed and when I woke up and checked in I found a detailed report from HostGator support, most of the sites back up and running, with nasty code eliminated, and sufficient instruction for me to be able to fix items that I needed to do directly.

I had quickly switched from difficult customer to happy customer and once again an advocate for HostGator. And tweeted about my pleasure with that.

Six benefits of a ‘difficult customer experience

In a post on this subject elsewhere, on the MYOB Pulse blog, Why difficult customers are good for business I have written about six benefits that can be wrapped up in the “gift” of a customer being difficult:

1. Highlights a product flaw
2. Exposes a practical gap in staff knowledge
3. Shows the customer’s perspective
4. Pinpoints communication challenges
5. Exposes a “sales at all cost, forget about after-sales service” mentality in your business
6. Reveals a 3rd party supplier problem for which we are responsible to answer to our customers

You may think of more. If so, please share.

Image credit: Complaint Department – Please Take a Number by Niven, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

I’m planning to set up a new podcast and am having a challenge finding a good name for it.

From some work I’ve done over the past weekend, I found Brian Casel’s comments about the subject on the Mashable site, in his excellent post 7 Tips for Launching Your Podcast Site, rang true for me:

Pick something that is both memorable and speaks to your topic/audience. It’s my opinion that direct, descriptive names work better than abstract or overly creative names. Before you can hook your audience with your killer smile and groundbreaking content, you’ll need them to tune in. That’s why your podcast name needs to jump out and grab them. Remember that much of your audience will be discovering your podcast via iTunes or Google search. So it’s a good idea to include a keyword or two within your show’s name.

Yes, get them to tune in: that’s a thought to hang onto.

Criteria I’m using, not necessarily in order of priority, are:

• appropriate to the focus and scope of the podcast
• not duplicating an existing podcast title
• easy to remember and share
• web domain available (not necessarily as primary url but at least for “insurance”)
• includes keywords likely to bring more traffic
• lends itself to good graphic – esp iTunes badge

Focus of the podcast

I have not yet completely pinned down the focus of the podcast.

At first I thought it could be something quite personal, such as “Conversations with Des” or “Coffee with Des”. That would leave me fairly unlimited scope for topics.

But being realistic, that could or would create an audience-building challenge. Even those thousands of Twitter followers do not of themselves a podcast audience make.

I know it will be a business-focused podcast and I intend to focus on something I am passionate about, enough to have no anxiety about staying interested and enthusiastic for months or years ahead, and which is likely to be of sufficient interest to a sufficient number of people to give me hope about building a substantial audience.

And I don’t want it to be too niche and specifically not about LinkedIn (I already have a podcast about LinkedIn).

So it’s almost certainly going to be about one or more of these:

• social media
• social business
• coaching

Currently I’m thinking it is going to be on social business. That subsumes social media and in the way I approach social business it is also gives me some scope to talk about coaching – as illustrated by my tagline for this website, Advanced coaching for the new social business landscape.

Not duplicating an existing podcast title

Checking that will be a combination of:

• using the main search engines
• searching iTunes registered podcasts
• taking some comfort if I have secured the domain name+

I’ve done some of all of these already and plan to do a bit more.

Easy to remember and share

This should be easier than the exercise when I was choosing a name for my LinkingEdge podcast, given that I could not safely have used the word LinkedIn in the title. For the upcoming podcast I can use any of “social media”, “social business” or “coaching” in the podcast name.

It definitely won’t be a “cute” name, or something that has meaning only for an in-group.

Will it “jump out and grab” people skimming through iTunes or Google search (Brian Casel’s recommendation above)? That could be a challenge and I’m not going to sweat it.

Web domain

As a name comes to mind, I immediately search on it with one of our domain hosting services. It may be paranoid (but who says we aren’t being followed!) but I don’t do these searches on the open web and I don’t use one particular domain hosting service for this because I have a suspicion they jump on names that are searched frequently.

Sometimes if I see that a domain I was liking has been taken I will search for it on the open web, which is why I know that the domains for a lot of good names about social media and social business have been taken, but are not being used.

Squatters!

Keywords

I use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Market Samurai.

I know from previous searches on “social business” and from searches over this weekend past that if I’m going to use “social business” in the name, the keyword rankings may not be great. But I believe use of the term (used in relation to for-profit business) is growing and I may decide to take a “considered punt” on that.

Lends itself to a good graphic

I’ve picked up that having a good graphic on iTunes is valuable – essential even – for building audience. So I have spent quite a lot of time over the weekend studying the podcast badges on the iTunes “New and Noteworthy” section, under the Business category (see image above).

There is a wide variety of styles.

I’ve done some reading on how to optimize this item and may post on that separately, after I have gone through the process.

One thing that seems currently definite is that the graphic needs to be square and a minimum 1400px x 1400 px – which in the massed display on the iTunes site seems to be about 124px x 124px, but which from some experimenting I’ve done seems to provide more scope for detail than I had expected, and then about 220px x 220px on the display for the specific podcast, which allows for a bit more detail, but remember you only get to upload one image, the 1400px x 1400px, so you need to know what it is going to look like when it is scrunched down to 124px x 124px: see as an example the smaller and larger displays to your right here of the Leo Laporte podcast badge.

I’ve noticed several badges where too much detailed information has been crammed into the space, to the point where some of it is just a blur, on the grouped display (about 124px x 124 px), which kind of defeats the ideas of something jumping out and grabbing people, as Brian Casel recommends in the quote above. It’s certainly put me off trying to add in a sub title. 

Back in January I posted here about being found on LinkedIn for your ideal search terms and promised a follow up with a demonstration, using an example of something I had done in that regard. 

Here it is.

Demonstration: adding “social media marketing” keyword

To test the effect of adding a keyword phrase, I added the phrase “Social Media Marketing” to my profile, in a prominent position.

I chose that term because, with the relatively new LinkedIn feature of skill endorsements, the skill I have been endorsed most for – so far by 161 people – is Social Media Marketing.

Checking Skills and Expertise

I had been thinking of using the term “social media marketer” as the test term, as distinct from “social media marketing”.  So I thought it would be a good idea to check in at the Skills & Expertise feature on LinkedIn (under “More” tab in navigation bar). I have to admit a bit sheepishly that I’ve just discovered this feature, which is still in beta but I suspect could prove to be very helpful in terms of search optimization.

The Skills & Expertise feature provides a way to tap into the LinkedIn database and check the keywords/categories that come up there. I found that the term Social Media Marketing was listed there, whereas – surprisingly for me – the related term Social Media Marketer was not listed there.

Which is why I went with “social media marketing”.

Searches before adding the term

Before I added the term to my profile, I checked to see where I ranked for the term.

To do that, I searched (see box, top right on your LinkedIn page) on the term “Social Media Marketing” (without the quotation marks) on People, leaving the default filter at Relevance. Result for my profile worldwide on my three level network of (then at 17.5 million plus): half way down the 5th page at 55. Added the location parameter Australia in the Advanced Search (see left sidebar on your LinkedIn page): result #4 (first page).

After adding the term to my Professional Headline

I added the term Social Media Marketing to my professional headline then repeated the search process as above.

Search results: at 26 for network-wide search – up from 55 – and 1 with Australia parameter (up from 4).

Just to take the test a bit further, I added the term “social media marketing” into a few more places in the profile and saw a very modest improvement, from position 26 to 24 in the global search.

You can test very quickly

Because the changes in status in the search results happen very quickly, you can test different keywords and see the results straight away (or almost – a couple of times I’ve found the changes do not take place immediately).

I’ve done many of these tests and there is always some movement. 

But I don’t do keyword stuffing

I’ve seen some LinkedIn profiles where people seem to have gone completely overboard with keyword “stuffing”, cramming their profile with whatever keywords they want to be found for. Andy Foote on LinkedInsights explains why this is a bad idea. 

Conclusion

• Adding keywords works, and works very quickly
• Placing your keyword in the Professional Headline seems to provide the most dramatic improvement in ranking
• Adding the keyword in other parts of your profile can also help your ranking for that term
• Use common sense and don’t overload your profile with keywords

Do you have an example of how using keywords in your profile has helped you? 

Image credit: LinkedIn pen, from The Seafarer (Sheila Scarborough) via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Now that I see the event “up in lights” so to speak, on the Meetup site, I’m wondering how to structure my presentation. It’s not that I don’t know what to say about social media strategy generally – friends and family might say I have too much to say and wish I would find another interest! – but more about what is the most useful approach to the subject for this particular audience.

Most of my presentations in the past, on the subject of social media strategy, have been to more general audiences, with the majority of the people not greatly familiar with social media and some even quite uncomfortable about it al.

This audience will be quite different, being mostly or all (except me) technical people and generally young enough to be very comfortable with and quite engaged with social media on a daily basis, at least for their personal social connectivity, if not for their businesses or careers.

So where do I get the data that helps me give them a sense of the social media state of play for small business in the IT industry, if not locally or nationally, then globally?

My sense is that when I start delving into the various studies, reports and commentaries, the best I can hope for is to find statistics about social media and small business generally, such as the very illuminating, most recent Sensis report on social media usage by Australian people and businesses – the Yellow Social Media Report. IT industry specific data on the topic might be too much to expect at this stage (or ever?).

Then there is the perennial challenge of relating international (especially American) statistics to the local scene. For example, a study last year in the US indicated that some 53% of small businesses profess an engagement with social media and only 24% say they do that strategically, but the Sensis report cited above says only 27% of Australian small businesses have a social media presence. So if the percentage having a social media strategy (written or not) was proportionate to that US figure, my calculation puts that at only about 12% of Australian small businesses.

Then I’m thinking that I will have to do at least some mental adjustment about any such statistics, to take account of the greater breadth and depth of knowledge in this particular group. And then speculate about how much that more developed knowledge base translates into strategic action for social media engagement.

Or how little.

Because it might emerge that there is less, not more, strategic social media engagement in this group for their own businesses or careers, not for what they do for others, than for some other group of people in business locally who do not have a lot of technical knowledge?

Questions, questions. I’m planning to run a small questionnaire with the group before the event and then to elicit more information on the night of the presentation.

In the meantime, if any reader can point me to some statistics about relative social media engagement by small IT companies compared to other small businesses, I would be most grateful.

Does a Blog Have to be Confrontational to be Successful?

Over a lot of years of blogging, as well as reading and hearing the opinions of others about the subject, I have formed the view that there is a not insignificant number of people who believe that unless a blog is confrontational, argumentative, or otherwise aimed at provoking controversy, it is not “real” blogging.

A corollary is this would be that if you want to be successful as a blogger you will have to create controversial posts.

I don’t agree.

And in not agreeing, I am well aware that controversial posts often get huge numbers of comments and thus potentially enhance the blog’s ranking for search engines, which can in turn provide tangible and/or intangible benefit to the blogger.

But it is not essential.

I’m by no means saying we should never be provocative, never raise or comment on controversial matters. And sometimes having a good old rant might reassure your readers that you are human too!

I’m talking rather about a style which is deliberately, consistently pugnacious.

In short, coat dragging. 

Some bloggers seem to delight in it. Just as some people in the offline world seem to be unable to get through the day without picking a fight with someone.

But if that’s not you, and if you prefer a less confrontational existence, there is not only no need to try to be a confrontational blogger. There are actually very good reasons why you should not even try.

For one thing, confrontational bloggers have to be able to handle – and I would guess actually enjoy – dealing with the acerbic, even quite offensive comments their posts will no doubt attract. It is well known that commenters, especially if you allow them to be anonymous, can be incredibly nasty.

But can you be non-confrontational, non-provocative, and still be a successful blogger?

No question.

And if we are talking about blogging for business, especially in a business-to-business context, a confrontational, snarky style may actually be counter-productive.

Many excellent, well-regarded blogs are characterised not by their being provocative but by being consistently informative and/or entertaining.

Some examples of successful bloggers who are not in-your-face provocative: Darren Rowse at ProBlogger, Amy Porterfield, Brian Clark at Copyblogger, Shai Coggins,  Chris Brogan or Ricardo Bueno.

They are all great sharers of information, thoughtful, informative and easy to read. I never get the sense that any of them is trying to pick a fight or be controversial for the sake of the “ratings”.

And as Brad Shorr puts it in a very thoughtful post, Are Provocative Posts a Good Idea, “The worst thing you can do as a blogger is try to be something you’re not.  “

To conclude by taking a higher level view of blogging and where it can fit in our plans, so that the whole “blog provocatively” concept can be seen in a broader context, I love the advice about blogging offered by Amber Naslund in her very frank and sharing post From Successful Social Media Blog to…Failure?

Don’t make everyone else’s goals into your own unless they fit where you want to be. Remember why you’re doing it. Care about something bigger than the numbers. Don’t believe the hype.

Image credit: Amateur MMA Fight, picture by fightlaunch via Flickr CC BY 2.0

On LinkedIn, make it easier to be found for the services you offer

One of the most basic considerations for creating and editing our Professional Profile on LinkedIn is to ensure it is well stocked with the words and phrases we want to be found for – our ideal search terms.

By the way, for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t so far delved into this area much, the jargon term is “keywords”. I have to admit it took me quite a while to figure out that the term “key words and phrases” is more accurate and might be more quickly understood by people who are not search experts. “Coach” can be a keyword: so can “business coach” “sales and marketing coach”, “Chicago business coach”, and so on.

There are a couple of ways we can test for what we might call the “keyword effectiveness” of what we’ve done in setting up our LinkedIn profile.

One process I always recommend in my LinkedIn coaching is to set aside some time to do some searching on LinkedIn ourselves, using those search terms (keywords) we want to be found for, and seeing where our profiles come up in the results. The process is similar to what we might do with Google or other search engines – first page has top ten results etc – but with the difference that if we tweak the words in the profile the differences in ranking can come up pretty well immediately.

This can take some time and I find that it’s more efficient when you don’t have to stop in mid course to do something else. Which is why I suggest that it is something to do on the weekend if you can.

Turn off notifications

To save annoying our network with multiple notifications of changes we make while experimenting, it is a good idea to switch off those notifications before starting – Settings -> Privacy Controls – and then on again when we finish.

The testing process

The basic procedure I use for testing is as follows:

First set up a simple system for recording your changes and the results. I use a notepad like a legal pad, or (paper) notebook, and keep a running score, with times. You could use a spreadsheet if you prefer.

Before making any change, search for your preferred term under People (top right corner of your LinkedIn page), leaving the Relevance filter untouched. Search through the results and see where you come up in your network. As for Google, the ideal is to be in the top three, preferably number one, but the top ten is good too. Each page of results, as for Google, has ten results.

On your notepad or spreadsheet record where you come, which may be zero at this stage, and the time.

Then add in the search term you want to be found for. When you start to make changes, at first change one element at a time (later you can make a few changes at a time) and then test the result. I usually start with the Professional Headline (just under your name on your profile). 

For example, if you want to be found for the term “Business Strategist”, put that in your Professional Headline (without the quotation marks).

What I do then, having done a global search and recorded the result, is search with a location filter – Advanced Search, left hand sidebar – usually by country first, and sometimes then by a more specific location. (You can of course use other filters with, or besides, the location one.)

And then note those results.

Then make some more changes and test each of those. I usually go from the Professional Headline to the Summary, then to other elements of the profile.

What if you keep getting a zero result?

I hope that with some creative work on your profile you will start to rank much better. If that fails, then you might want to get help from me or another LinkedIn specialist.

If you don’t want to do that but would like some more insight, why not join one of the LinkedIn Groups that focus on LinkedIn and how to use it more effectively? The LinkedIn Bloggers group, which I co-manage and which has been going since 2005, is a good place to ask questions and get help. (Since this post was published, we have closed the LinkedIn Bloggers group – I am still looking for an alternative group I can confidently recommend – suggestions welcome.)

The LinkedIntelligence site, hosted by social media specialist Scott Allen, and for which I am about to start writing, is a rich – and freely available – source of information about LinkedIn and how to use it.

Next week I will share, as a demonstration, some results from my following the process as outlined above. I think you’ll be surprised at how it turned out: I was gobsmacked! Till then, stay safe and get linking. (Update: It took me much longer than a week to post about that demonstration, but here it is: Being Found on LinkedIn for Your Ideal Search Terms – Demonstration).

Image credit: LinkedIn pen, from The Seafarer (Sheila Scarborough) via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

It’s normal this time of the year to be thinking strategy.

Which usually includes addressing a host of questions, the answers to which are not always immediately forthcoming.

Such as:

• How can we improve on last year’s performance?
• Are we on the right track with our business? What is the competition doing?
• If we suddenly start to grow do we have the resources to manage the growth well?
• What changes are there in the business environment that could help us or maybe cramp our style?

Last week I wrote about choosing a word to highlight how we are approaching the year.

It also helps to have a strategic organising principle. And if we have chosen a word for the year, the organising principle will be in harmony with that.

As explained in that earlier post, the word I’ve chosen this year is Exceptional, as in, for example, seeking to attract exceptional clients and committing to providing exceptional service.

The strategic organising principle I’m using this year is that of the Blue Ocean Strategy. I’ve been kind of using the strategy in the past few years, since I read the book of the name, by W. Chan Kim and Reneé Mauborgne. But applying it, I have to admit, in a somewhat haphazard way.

This year I want to apply blue ocean thinking in a more focused way.

If you haven’t read the book, I commend it to you. The following two quotes are for me the “entry points” for a helpful reading of the book and understanding the strategic thinking framework the authors present:

“In red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted and the competitive rules of the game are known.” 

“Blue oceans…are defined by untapped market space, demand creation and the opportunity for highly profitable growth.” 

You can find a blue ocean. For example,  

Casella wines, not then a household name in their (and my) native Australia, saw a potential blue ocean in the US, where many people were not drinking wine, thought that was for other people (read “sophisticates”) and were basically being ignored by the US wine industry. Casella asked themselves how they could make “a fun and not traditional wine that’s easy to drink for everyone”. They provided wines with a yellow kangaroo plus a whole marketing campaign etc. They basically redefined how wine could be produced and marketed in the USA. And they broke with convention in a whole lot of ways. And succeeded.

Or you can create a blue ocean.

“Southwest Airlines created a blue ocean by breaking the trade-offs customers had to make between the speed of airplanes and the economy and flexibility of car transport. To achieve this, Southwest offered high-speed transport with frequent and flexible departures at prices attractive to the mass of buyers.” (p 38)

For me a key insight from the book was to see that traditional business strategies and analytic frameworks are about red oceans, not surprisingly really, when you think about it, given they reflect a military mindset, i.e. limited, contested market space, limited resources, limited time. Hence bloody, hence red ocean.

Blue ocean thinking is about value innovation – “Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean success.” (p 12)

“…instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space.” (p 12)

Our choice, red ocean or blue

As the Blue Ocean Strategy website (an excellent resource on the subject) says:

“Blue ocean strategy offers you a way to swim out of the red ocean filled with sharks. It presents a theory, tools, and frameworks to allow your company to break away from the competition and create a blue ocean of new market space.”

Is your business in a red ocean or a blue one? The Blue Ocean Strategy website provides a handy list of questions you can ask yourself: see How Blue is Your Ocean?.

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” 

If New Year’s resolutions work for you, that’s great. As for me, while I may not be as cynical about them as Mark Twain was, I’ve always found they are less than useful for me.

But I still think the beginning of a new year is as good a time as any to assess how we are travelling, in business and in life, and to give ourselves a bit of a gee-up.

There’s goal-setting, of course, and some people are very diligent about that at this time of the year. But for me the prospect of goal-setting over a time of festivities and in a holiday mood is always a bit of a challenge.

I’m always looking for a simpler way of doing things or at least a simpler way of organizing things to be done and achieved.

Which is why I’m glad I joined some friends just before Christmas, playing the Conversations® game, because out of that emerged my word for the year ahead. 

The word is Exceptional. 

I wasn’t sure at the time how that would play out in practice. I just knew it felt right.

Since then I have been able to tease out the basis of a strategy for 2013, around that word.

Elements of that emerging strategy are:

• attract exceptional people as clients
• provide exceptional service
• help my clients achieve exceptional results
• create exceptional products
• go beyond ok to being exceptional in business and life
• play a bigger, exceptional game

The word still feels right for what I want to achieve this year.

And as a regular reminder, I’ve written it on the back of a business card and propped it on my computer stand so I am seeing it constantly. (I know, very high tech, but it’s working).

So if you had one word to guide you and help you focus on what you want to achieve this year, what would that be?

And if you want to play, here are some suggestions to help you get started:

• Focus
• Discipline
• Service
• Determination
• Success
• Freedom
• Deliver
• Lead
• Complete
• Ship (vb)
• Convert (from connection to sale, etc)

I hope you will share your word. (Of course, you could have resolutions and/or goals as well.)

Whatever word you choose (or don’t) I wish you a healthy, happy and highly successful 2013!