It seems technology and the way it affects how we do business is changing on an almost daily basis. Every Internet search, eNewsletter or blog post seems to turn up new ways to connect with customers, to take your products to market, to market your products, to develop your business, etc… There's a lot of change taking place. Some of the revelations are truly the "next big thing" and others will turn out to be the latest passing fad that came and went (remember the rush to get product and store space in the virtual world of Second Life?).
So, how do you know what to do, what can wait and what is going to turn out to be completely irrelevant? In some ways, you can't. But we put together this list of 5 things we think you should do right now to make sure your company is relevant today and will continue to be so tomorrow.
1. Register Your Company Name Everywhere. Make sure you stake your claim to your brand before someone else does. Much like grabbing your name in a URL for your website (we're assuming your company has a website, if not, your company's name in a URL is absolutely the first thing you need to register for), you need to start staking you claim everywhere else. Even if you're not ready to start a blog or dive into social media, register your name in all the main areas. You don't want to go to open a Facebook Fan page or Twitter account a year from now and find that someone else has your company's name locked down for themselves. You can make it private so no one goes there or if they do, that they see nothing's available yet.
2. Start Collecting Customer Information. All our research and experience shows that money spent marketing to your own customers, especially your best customers, has a far greater return than marketing to the general public. Create an internal process designed to get their name, address and email address. Email is a fairly inexpensive way to send customers special offers and communications. But, you need to have their email addresses to do so. So, come up with a way to start collecting them now. So, by the time you are ready to do something with them, you have a database to work with. Added bonus if you get their cell phone numbers, too.
3. Find Your Strategic Advantage. We believe an advantage exists at the intersection of strategy, culture and communications. If you can figure out what your strategic advantage is and it is one that fits your corporate culture, you can then start communicating it to the world and start taking advantage of it. All good companies have at least one strategic advantage over their competition. The sooner you figure out what that is, the sooner you can start leveraging it to tip business in your favor. Don't know what your strategic advantage is? There are plenty of good companies, like ours, who will help you discover it.
4. Have Executives Create LinkedIn Profiles. It's become a big research tool for anyone checking out your company and the top people in it. Whether it's someone researching you for a job or a potential client evaluating the people they'll be working with, everyone searches LinkedIn for info on key personnel. Even if they don't ever do anything more with their LinkedIn account, you should make sure all your top people have a profile that is carefully crafted to make them and your company look good.
5. Empower Your Employees. Make sure everyone in your company knows what the corporate vision is and then empower them all to become brand evangelists for your brand. There are things in every good brand's corporate culture that should and will get employees jazzed about working there. Make sure those strengths are clear and encourage employees to spreed the word – in deeds, in their own circles of friends, in their online communications and social networks, any place they interact with people outside the organization. You don't have to have a wildly employee-centriccorporate culture like Zappos for this to work. Just makd sure your company culture has a good story that rings true and your employees feel good about.
There are a lot of new choices and technologies for advancing your business today. But, these five things should give you a good place to get started. Do them and see where it takes you. Chances are, the next steps will become self-evident.
Note: even though these were written years ago, they are still true today!
Mike McClure, Yaffe Employee Brand Evangelist
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I just linked this article on my facebook account. it’s an interesting read for everyone.