Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

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Twenty-One Ways to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business

Friday, February 19th, 2010

As Twitter, blogs and the many forms of social media continue to dominate all conversations about sales and marketing, Robroy still hears from doubting CEOs.

“Who cares if I’m hauling out the trash or playing with my kids on a snowy day?” they scoff.  “Give me one good reason to take my company in this direction.”

Will you take twenty-one?  Because that’s at least the number of fundamental changes in the way the marketplace communicates today.  Here are some of the ways you can benefit from joining social media:

  1. Let people know who you are
  2. Reach people quickly
  3. Build company culture
  4. Give voice to the company’s personality
  5. Release new features and ideas
  6. Get the truth from the community, like a focus group
  7. Interact with users and fans with questions and comments
  8. Recruit talent
  9. Share company content
  10. Share customers’ content
  11. Generate Web traffic
  12. Get answers quickly
  13. Correct mistakes / improve products
  14. Stay informed on industry trends
  15. Get feedback on what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and what you should do next
  16. Make the company feel smaller and more cohesive
  17. Use as a sounding board
  18. Establish expertise
  19. Attract the media
  20. Humanize the company
  21. Build your brand

In the old days, no one expected to befriend a CEO, or know what he did with his personal time.  Social media changes that.  It makes everyone more accessible.  And if everyone is accessible, including your competition, my friend, do you need another reason?

(How are you using it?  Please comment below.)

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Posted in Business, Marketing, Sales | 12 Comments »

Dumb question

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Whoever said, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question,” didn’t know Robroy.

In a cavernous lecture hall for Biology 101 — the first class of my freshman year at University of Illinois — I sat with Mike Hoffman from high school and around 400 strangers.  The professor, a widely acclaimed scientist, according to Mike, was wrapping up his opening remarks by encouraging our participation because, as he said, “there’s no such thing as a dumb question.”

Always one to test this theory, Robroy raised his hand.  The prof nodded.  Mike cringed as I called out, “Do frogs have bones?”

It was supposed to be funny.  I always thought I could catch a teacher on that one.  I envisioned him rubbing his chin and saying, “You know what?  I’ll be damned.  In all my years, that’s the dumbest question I’ve ever heard.”  He could get a laugh, improving the lecture, and I could spread my mayhem.  Win-win.

Unfortunately, the professor took me seriously.  “Oh, yes.  Frogs have many bones,” he said.  “Now, please turn to the syllabus.”

I sat there with the smile drying off my face while everyone turned to the syllabus.

At first, I felt foolish.  Then a wave of embarrassment, deepening to shame.  Ug, my ego, my horrible ego!  It was costing me an education.  Had I accepted his authority, and my own anonymity, had I insisted on the natural order of things, and not my own agenda, I could have asked so many better questions: Will I ever be loved?  Do I even belong here?  What am I supposed to do with my life?

So that’s what I learned.  Any questions?

(please comment below)

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Posted in Love | 6 Comments »

Robroy says goodbye

Friday, January 29th, 2010

The worst part of moving away at age 8 was saying goodbye to Patricia Wood.

It was a Saturday morning in Englishtown, New Jersey, about one hour before we left forever for Illinois.  Patricia was hugging me goodbye.  Her mom had errands to run; we would be gone by the time they got back.

My bike had not yet been packed.  I grabbed it as they got into their car.  Riding behind them, I could see Patricia’s round face in the back window.  I had the unbelievably painful urge to impress her one last time, so much that she’d never forget me.

Now, in our neighborhood, in the 70s, the curbs were not cut for wheelchair access.  To get from the street onto the sidewalk on your bike, you had to stop, lift your front wheel, roll forward, lift your back wheel, roll forward, and get on.  Unless you were excellent.  In that case you simply jumped the curb, and kept on going.  As for Robroy, earlier that very morning, for the very first time, I had become excellent.  Patricia did not know that yet.

Her face was getting smaller.  It was now or never.  Do or die.  At top speed, I hit the curb.

“Yah!”

The last she ever saw of me was flying head-first over the handlebars and onto the sidewalk.  I smacked the ground and rolled over with the bike crashing down on top of me.

By the time I looked up, she was gone.

The memory comes back to me now.  Robroy is moving again.  No big deal this time.  It’s just the blog that’s moving.  We’re saying goodbye to WordPress and saying hello to our own domain, robroysblog.com.  That’s all.

But deep down, I’m nervous.  I worry.  What if I leave my readers behind?  What if I try too hard to impress them, and end up making a gigantic fool of myself?  What if they get home and find no Robroy, only a ghost town, a wasteland of words?

I’ll be honest.  I don’t want to lose another friend.  Too painful on the knees.

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Posted in Love, Love and Business | 10 Comments »

Madman, craftsman, critic

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

With more and more businesses participating in social media, the pressure to be creative is getting intense.  Now every tweet needs to be interesting.  Every blog post, a ‘wow’.  And so everybody wants to know: Does Robroy have a process for that?

Hold on, let me check.  Why, yes, here’s something.  I call it the Madman, Craftsman, Critic process.  Catchy name, I know.  You can use Madman, Craftsman, Critic (or Madwoman, Craftswoman, Critic) to develop everything from business growth strategies to sales presentations to marketing content, tweets, blogs and more.  It also works for paintings and poems and love songs.  And Robroy posts.  Anything creative.  But only if you are willing to concede that you have three strong-willed personalities within you who all want to dominate the creative process, and it’s your job to keep them in line.  They are:

1. The Madman

His cheeks are tight and bright from holding back gales of laughter while dashing around the room goosing people.  The Madman is you at your irrepressible best.  Your passion, your spark, your zest for life.  He loves what he does and is inspired by finding original ways to express it, regardless of what anybody else is doing.

2. The Craftsman

After the wild hilarity has blown over, enter the Craftsman.  This is your technical side.  Fastidious, skillful and proud, the Craftsman makes logical sense of what the Madman has left behind, which he measures, cuts, joins and assembles into something structurally sound and useful.

3. The Critic

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” says the Critic, peering over his glasses.  “Your masterpiece is stirring, indeed, but riddled with errors.  A detail is missing here and here.  And the surface must be rubbed, sealed and smoothly coated.  Really, gentlemen.   In the future, I insist we bring me in sooner.”

This is you and your high standards.  Ultimately accountable for whether the thing works or not, the Critic controls quality in matters large and small.  It would be a disaster to involve the Critic too soon in the creative process, as he would scold and nit-pick and criticize his brothers until they broke his glasses and made him cry.  Another common mistake is letting the Madman hang around so long that he burns it all down with his hair.  Finally, try not to allow the Craftsman to start or finish the project, as it will end up technically perfect, but emotionally stiff as a board.

Madman, Craftsman and Critic, in that order.

But, hey, you’re creative.  How does it happen for you?  Have your Madman/Madwoman leave a comment below.

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Posted in Business, Marketing, Writing | 33 Comments »

Generosity on a budget

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

You know you’re cheap when, year after year, you put off buying holiday gifts or cards for your most important clients until it’s all over and everyone’s forgotten, including you.

Robroy had his frugal Scottish heritage to blame for this stingy procrastination.  I never could stand to “invest” in cups and hats and shirts with our logo splattered all over them.  With so many unique individuals on my list, I wanted to give thoughtful gifts but didn’t know how.  The holidays made me feel terrible, until …

… I heard about LinkedIn recommendations.

A LinkedIn recommendation is your personal endorsement of someone you know, posted where all of your social network and theirs can read it. Recommendations on LinkedIn are personal and yet professional.  They are brief and yet long-lasting.  The tool lets you make your contacts look great in front of their peers.  And did I mention it’s free?

The only catch is, you have to take a minute to really think about the other person.  Really ask yourself, What impresses me most about them?  What’s their strong suit?  Be generous.  A few words from the heart can be very powerful.

So what do you think?  This is a pretty big gift.  Can we afford it?

(read more posts below)

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Posted in Love and Business | 4 Comments »

Dangerous marketing

Friday, November 20th, 2009

So-called marketing professionals!  Will you cool it already with the clean, slick, well mannered marketing campaigns?  You’re making a dangerous mistake.

Think about it.  When you were a kid, what did you do for fun?  If your best friends were anything like John Bertaux, Mike McCarthy and Bill Diehl, you set up plywood ramps for your bike.  You rode standing up, pumping your legs to build up speed.  When you hit the ramp, you launched yourself high into the sky … arms locked, knees shaking … and landed on the driveway, skidding to a stop.  The crowd went wild.  You were the man.

Now in our 40s, our generation is “the man” and “the woman” in a different way.  Many of us are responsible decision-makers in our companies.  We put out RFPs.  We hire vendors and sign purchasing orders.  Yet we’re still daredevils at heart, and we need to push ourselves to the limit from time to time, or life’s no fun.  If your marketing can’t spark our imagination, if your salespeople can’t rev the throttle and really get us fired up, you will fall short of your goal every time.  You’ll hit the front of the ramp and flip over your handlebars and break every bone in your body.

But at least it will be cool!

(Read more posts below.)

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Posted in Business, Marketing, Sales | 5 Comments »

Almost perfect

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

Even in the worst economic times, everything can go right for a business. You can have a great Web site that generates a great lead, which becomes a great initial contact on the phone. You can have a great responsive salesperson who follows up on the lead, listens well, creates a great solution and cranks out a great proposal. You can get a great price, have a great roll-out and follow-up. But if your accounting department is obnoxious when collecting that first payment … Or if the tech treats them poorly when they first call for service … Or if they leave messages that go unreturned … Any one of these could kill the relationship. Hours and hours of hard work, not to mention the $50K you spent on the Web re-design, wasted. It all goes up in smoke.

There’s no such thing as perfect.  In business, that’s no excuse.

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Posted in Business | 1 Comment »

What would hip-huggers do?

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Hot marketing experts have come out as one in their hip-huggers, shaggy cuts and t-shirts to tell corporate America to get into social networking or die.  So corporate America signed their people up for Facebook, paid trainers to show them how it works … and watched productivity take a plunge.

So it’s no wonder if corporate America is leery of the hip huggers’ new message: Get on Twitter or die.

This time, though, they might have a point.

Twitter is like Facebook – a real-time bulletin board that reaches audiences across the globe instantly.  But Twitter is different, or can be.

You can follow celebrities (Robroy doesn’t).  You can follow colleagues in business (Robroy does).  You can follow childhood friends (Robroy doesn’t).  You can use it to improve your craft (Robroy does).  The way I improve my craft as a business consultant and writer is by utilizing Twitter’s research and knowledge sharing aspect.  I approach Twitter like an informal lecture series on the sidewalk in front of the Student Union.  You can stop by for a few minutes between appointments and make your verse heard.  Or you can hang back and learn something.

Whether Twitter spells life or death for corporate America, we’ll find out.  Meanwhile, the hip-huggers are enjoying being “followed” in their tight jeans as they blog about it.

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Posted in Business | 1 Comment »

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