IPO Filing Reveals Facebook’s Achilles Heels

In it’s latest IPO filing quite a bit of information was revealed about Facebook. Some of which was a listing of risks that could potentially be their demise. I found the list very interesting.

Here are a few:

• We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising. The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with facebook, could seriously harm our business.
• Our business is highly competitive, and competition presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business.
• We may not be successful in our efforts to grow and further monetize the facebook Platform.

Netflix – Focus on Quality and Content – You’ll Do Fine!

Just recent an announcement was made that Verizon and Coinstar (parent company to Redbox) announced that they will bring a service that is very similar to Netflix’s streaming service. That will give them both a physical and streaming service that will also be available online and through mobile, which is really going to put Netflix on their toes.

I am remembering back to a time when Netflix pretty much had the market and then raised their prices by 60%! As a Netflix consumer myself I was pretty pissed. Greed is always a bad move!

The world is getting smaller and smaller, you should always operate your business as though you have very tough competitors, even if you don’t!

Always focus on giving your customers the best of what it is the seek in you for! Give great service and value, stand out in your industry. No matter what comes  your way, you will always stand on your feet.

Check out a great video on the Netflix story at Web Pro News.

The World Doesn’t Need Another Social Media Hero

I was looking through the member list of a LinkedIn group I had just joined and it seemed that a third of the thousands of members were social media experts of some sort.

How many do we need? What are half of these people going to do for work when the world integrates social media as a given?

I am constantly getting pegged for this category myself, by people that I guess don’t look past the name of my business to learn about what it is I actually do.

I advocate for using social media as tool to brand and grow your business. However, it is just one tool of many that need to be used. I am a small business branding expert. I teach businesses how to brand themselves and be profitable on the Internet. That incorporates social media, but also includes, dynamic and strategic web development, search engine optimization, email marketing, and many other things.

Social media is just one tiny piece of the pie, a big one mind you, but just one piece. Understand where it fits into your business and integrate it strategically. Don’t forget growing your business is still about making connections and growing your pipeline, there are many ways to accomplish that. I am a huge advocate for just picking up the phone and calling them! Yes I do that! Can you imagine???!!! LOL

Advice – How To Have a Successful Business in 2012 From Tammy Hawk-Bridges of SocialHeavy

I have had many valuable experiences this year. I have had the opportunity to learn through the experience of other businesses, not to mention my own. I have seen many mistakes made, some were my own. I have learned that some key fundamentals in our businesses get overlooked. I urge you in 2012 to go back to the fundamentals, no matter what the current marketing trends are, they always work and are always relevant.

Here are 11 of my best tips on how to have a successful business:

1. Your current customers are always your best assets, take very good care of them. Take care of them and they will be your marketers. Reputation marketing is stronger than ever with social media on the rise. You want people saying good things about you – the opposite is very damaging and hard to repair.
2. 2 out of 3 small business owners that I talk to do not exercise data base management. Having a CRM in place is crucial to the growth and success of your business. You need to know who your clients and your best prospects are at all times. You need to have a tracking system in place that helps you identify potential opportunities and reminds you to follow up. You should be growing this list constantly.
3. Email marketing – once again a crucial part of growing a business that 2 out of 3 business owners don’t do. Email marketing is a way to not only create instant sales with people you are engaged with but it is a great tool for measurement on so many levels. Use it to see who is most engaged with you, use it to see how people respond to certain products or topics (this is called market research), use it as tool to see who your best followers are and offer great deals to them when you are in a sales bind!
4. Educate yourself on current marketing trends – don’t reject them. However, only use the things that make sense for your business. Don’t feel pressured to use something because everyone else or a competitor is doing it. This will only waste time and wasting time costs money.
5. Be aware of  your direct competitors, understand what they are doing, know their position in the market place and what that means to you. Google them, do they come up before you? Always be what makes you unique but always have your eye on the other guy. Always!
6. Lead, do not follow. Yes, keep your eye on your competitors, but you want to be the one that is being followed….not the person who is always following. Have your own ideas and unique positioning in your arena.
7. Target Target Target! You will be more successful in sales when you figure out WHO your customer is and spend 90% of your time selling to them. You cannot be all things to everyone and you cannot sell to everyone.
8. Know who your customer isn’t! (This sort of goes with #7 but is a separate thought.) Don’t waste time trying to sell to people who are not interested or capable of buying your product. Do not modify your prices to sell to people who are not your customer! This act decreases your value and damages your brand.
9. Pricing. Do not sell on price. You will always struggle if you do. Decide where you are in the market place and don’t be afraid to hold your position. If you have a low cost product it is a no-brainer that you will need to sell on volume. If you are selling a higher priced product but provide a high level of service and expertise then you are a boutique business and will have less clients but need to target well. There is no shame in either, just know which one YOU are and market yourself accordingly.
10. Branding. (This goes with #9 somewhat.) Understand what it means to build a brand. If  you are a business of one and make 3oK a year in sales, you still need to build a brand. Branding is not something reserved for the Zappos and Starbuck’s of the world. Building a brand and awareness about who you are, your special position in the market place, and the value you add will help you not only charge a higher price for your product, but can give you immunity in price battles.
11. Goals. You have to decide how much money your business is to earn in a year and from that set a monthly goal for sales. This helps you decide how much networking, new business development or whatever it is you do that brings in revenue that you need to do to make that number happen.  How do you know if your business is profitable if you are not measuring?! You must keep track of this by using an excel spreadsheet or some other instrument. My advice is to have a way that this goal is in front of you at ALL TIMES. I have a dry erase board in my office and the number is always there in front of me. It is a known fact that over 70% of women-owned businesses do not hit the 50K mark in sales. This is unacceptable! I really feel that this exercise is the missing link for many!

With Facebook Feed Changes a More Diversified Social Media Approach is Imperative

Facebook has made some major changes lately, some good, some not-so-much. They have made it very obvious that they are more focused on the leisure user and not the business one. In the past most businesses just operated their social media efforts with no real strategy, which will no longer be an option going forward.

As it is now, your updates are weighed and scaled by popularity and that determines if it shows up in the top news feed or just gets blowed away like dust. We are all going to have to learn to “engage” more and create content that is interesting and relevant to our followers. You need to ask your followers to LIKE your comments if they do…..without the LIKES, your update will likely not be seen – but buried in the feed.

Now it is important to not only have a strategy and learn to engage more, but you need to branch out and start using other platforms to compliment Facebook. For example, you need to start marketing your Facebook more in Twitter using that url in your tweets. Use Facebook Notes (which is great for SEO by the way) to create brief blog type entries and tweet those url’s, you can connect directly to a specific post by simply copying the url and shortening it in Hootsuite. In addition, it’s now a good idea to start using Google + as a crossover as well, to drive traffic to your social media platforms and get your content seen.

Facebook – Is it worth it?

As a strategic marketing person I enjoy observing business owners in their social media marketing habitat. The good thing is I see a lot of people spending a large amount of time marketing themselves on Facebook and other social media platforms. That’s good because anyone that knows anything knows that it takes the investment of time to see the benefit of it.

My question is this…..is the amount of time you are spending a wise investment? Did Facebook pay off in any way for your business this year? Did you spend a lot of time but not really sure if it amounted to anything? If this is a true statement I urge you to stop right now in your tracks and do a couple of things. Evaluate it, could the time be better spent someplace else maybe using more traditional marketing efforts? Do you need to have some sort of strategy?

If you used Facebook for marketing all year in 2011 and can’t see that you actually gained sales from it – then something is wrong. You need to re-evaluate.

Your time costs money – and money it should bring – if it doesn’t, you are doing something wrong. Just food for thought.

SocialHeavy Makes Businesses Profitable on the Internet

Professional Speakers – Be Relevant in 2012

I have gotten the pleasure of working with quite a few speakers this year and it has been such a joy! As a result, I made the decision that I want to work with speakers exclusively. I have learned a lot about your business and I have discovered that I have some talents to offer you that can help you in your business so we are a great fit. One place where I have found out you need help in?

Sales.

Now if you have more sales than you can handle and so much money that you just throw it in your bed and roll around in it at night until you smell like it…then by all means please hit the delete button now. I don’t want to waste anymore of your time.

There is one thing that you need to know right now and sales is not just about picking up the phone and asking people to look at your press kit or if you can speak at a certain function. It’s about marketing yourself, and there are very smart and very stupid ways to do this.

I wanted to send you this email because the New Year is coming and I want this topic to have some real estate in your mindset.

First of all you need to have a very good (current) list of your top prospects and you need to have your name out in front of them in as many ways as possible. You need to have an organized database that breaks down your prospects by industry or some other classification. You also need to be able to pull up your client list in its entirety at ALL times. This is your best asset ALWAYS. You need to be able to identify who your top and moderate prospects are.

The other thing you need to be doing in order to get the attention of your target market is content publishing (i.e. social media). Now this is where the relevance comes in…..

To be relevant you need to be in the NOW. You need to think NOW. You need to know what is going on right NOW and how do you fit into that.

For example if your thing is customer service then you need to bridge that topic to the current economic climate and current events. (THIS is how you get attention of the media by the way.) So you may want to consider that companies have down-sized since 2008 and they have less employees now, so how do they keep up the same level of customer service. Secondly how do they keep those employees motivated so that they provide great customer service to their clients? This is writing content that is timely, relevant, and necessary.

One of my biggest concerns for speakers is when they are very busy they become complacent and stop marketing themselves. This is very dangerous. You are making the assumption that you will always be busy without much effort.

You have to continue to market yourself even when you are busy. 

You have to still do business development even when you are busy. 

Trust me when I say at some point, you will peak, then what? Your book will become yesterdays news, then what?

This is why is it is also important to build that brand that I am always talking to you about…..it’s very easy for “popularity of moment” to go away but it’s hard to keep a strong brand down. (This is a whole other topic in itself.)

One of my other big pet peeves is a press kit whereas the speakers accomplishments and write ups are all 5 years ago. There are too many speakers out there that are going to be current, you have to be able to compete. This all goes back to marketing yourself when you are busy and popular so you stay relevant.

I really hope you will consider some of these things as you go forward into the next year.

Do you run your business like an ant travels in an art farm?

I went to toy store once and saw one of those plastic ant farms – I found watching it so entertaining. Then I had a thought…

The ants are just scurrying around in there aimlessly it seems….I am sure they have some sort of objective….but clearly it didn’t look that way from my point of view.

Then it occurred to me that was how I felt at times – like an ant in a maze…scurrying around aimlessly.

It is so easy to do that in our business. Things are tough…we are overwhelmed…..we don’t know what to do really….and we just run around in circles.

I have a friend who had a client she confided in me about. She was hired to consult with this person as her business was in shambles and in danger of going down in flames. So she worked with her to come up with a strategy and some packaging ideas of her services in an effort to make some quick sales to hopefully buy them some time to figure out how to save the business. Well she needed her final approval on some things so they could launch….something that would have taken her about 15 minutes maybe (Again let me remind you this business is in danger). Her client’s response was “I just don’t have time for that, can we chat tomorrow?”

Next thing you know she is updating her Facebook status and mentioning she is getting a pedicure. Now I may not the sharpest tool in the shed but that is messed up! You don’t have 15 minutes to make a decision that will launch a program that could potentially save your business but you have a hour to allow someone to play with your feet. Now I am advocate for relaxing, we all need that, but where are your priorities?

I am telling this story because I think that a lot of really bad decisions are made in our business that are completely unnecessary.

1. If you get overwhelmed in your business, which we all do, it’s okay! Evaluate the situation, come up with a plan, and execute it immediately. Don’t run around in circles and make excuses.
2. Make better choices with your time! If you are in trouble – you need to be smart about how you spend your time.

Google Smoogle

So Google announced it’s business branding page launch and starts to get a little attention once again. I have to say it’s attempt looked rushed and poor. Look at your competitor….Facebook for Christ sake! Come on!

I have the ability to brand my business and emulate the entire functionality of a website within my Facebook page – yet that is all Google brings? The ability to hit a share button.

Of course then you have the million blog posts, which is best Google or Facebook. Well of course it’s Facebook! Duh.

Okay so Google can give me some Internet SEO juice. I give you that.

Will I recommend my clients go strolling over to Google immediately to claim their stake? Absolutely not. If you are going to start up a Google page and create more work for yourself here are the questions to answer BEFORE you to do that.

• Are you already giving the appropriate attention to the other more important marketing areas of your business? You need to decide that before you go and start adding one more thing to keep up with.
• Do you understand how it works?
• Do you have a strategy for using it?
• Are you going to be disciplined and learn everything you can about using it effectively and THEN follow through?

If the answer is no to these questions – then don’t do it just to be doing it.

Hey Google stick to what you do best….search engines and advertising.

I guarantee you this….you will never pick up a bag a potato chips and see “join us on Google”, or you will never see a billboard that says “join us on Google”.

Just my humble opinion for what it’s worth!

Cheers!

Is Your Business Invisible To Your Market?

Take a look at the tangible presence of your business and answer these questions.

1. Does your business have an authentic and well defined presence in the market place?
2. Is your business uniquely positioned? How are you uniquely differentiating yourself?
3. Are you invisible?

I have been doing some thinking and it occurred to me that businesses are actually spending time and money to become invisible.

• Banks act like other banks.
• Plumbers act like other plumbers.
• Lawyers act like other lawyers.
• Professional speakers act like other professional speakers.

If you will look around in whatever your industry is, there is always going to be just a handful that really stands out. But heres the thing, the more similar we are the harder it is for someone to choose us over someone else. But if you stand out??

The remedy is let’s make ourselves desirable to choose – we do that by creating a brand identity. The brand identity is the outward expression of our business that makes us attractive to a potential customer. The tools to use are your website, your social media platforms and your marketing style (email newsletters etc.).

So take a look around, are you invisible? What are you doing that is like everyone else? How can you be different? How can you stand out?