Twitter offers a way for businesses to connect with their customers online. Foursquare puts location in context and extends that connection to the offline world. The model of the location-based game is such that any venue willing to make an extra effort can get to know their socially active customers on a more personal level, and even encourage meetups in their space.
Much of my interest and excitement around social media centers around the deeper connections that can occur with the use of technology. Technology that tracks our activities and what we like can help make the world around us better.
We are beginning to see evolutionary shifts in business that are going to see organizations focusing on the human relationships. These relationships have always existed in the background it’s just that now the consumer has a much bigger voice. The businesses that get great at listening and nourishing their relationships will increase their opportunity to thrive in our fast changing world.
We can debate the countless intricate ways that companies can use to create a strategy of difference, but it all pretty much boils down to: 1) Better product 2) Better process 3) Better relationships
In my opinion focusing all of your strategic thinking, goal setting and actions on building a better process or better relationships is the surest and maybe simplest way to create a true competitive advantage that someone might care about. Would you rather lean on your 5% better product or price or on something so totally outrageous and innovative that people can’t stop talking about it?
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame offers up these words of wisdom in his post where he challenges businesses to stop trying to be better than the competition, the opportunity is in the ways you can be different.
Create a strategy of being outstandingly different in your processes and relationships and you create something remarkable and worth talking about. Consistently amazing customer service experiences get spread around. Innovative ways of improving your business can yield exponential results.
We we owned our salon and spa we made huge investments in people and culture with our training systems and team development. These investments kept our business way out in front and made us significantly different in our market and consistently successful.
What do you think about creating a strategy of outstanding uniqueness? Where is your opportunity to be different?
Taly Weiss has done a wonderful job collecting these social media trend predictions and putting them all together into this slide presentation. There are enough trend predictions in this one presentation deck to keep any trend watcher happy for a long time.
How can a small local hair salon spread the word about the great work they do and strengthen their relationships?
Being a small business owner and having to spend advertising $’s wisely, we used Mandala Life Media to build our Social Media. In less than 6 months, we began to see a huge shift in the connections we have with clients and how much stronger they are. It also has increased our presence within our community. I highly recommend it. Mandala Life Media encompasses a full circle approach with their business ethics and are full of information on how to take your business to the next level of sustainability.
Mandala Life Media has been empowering Tracey Drews and Grassroots A Salon to share their brilliance for a few months. We created an easily up-datable content management system ( We love Wordpress ) for Grassroots a Salon and Tracey to share great stories and images from the salon every week.
Grassroots likes to do good work in the community and now Tracey has a place where she can easily share those stories. We are helping Tracey feel comfortable with the tools of social media and we brainstorm story ideas with her to keep her site fresh and interesting.
Grassroots is using their website, Facebook and Twitter to extend their remarkable word of mouth and strengthen their connections.
Tracey is doing an excellent job of continuing to evolve her understanding of the use of social media tools and technology to spread the word about the great quality service they provide and the amazing ways they give back to the community.
Traffic is growing to their site and their social media connections are expanding.
Locally Focused Social Media
Hair salons are by nature locally based businesses. At most, a hair salon is going to draw customers from a 50 mile radius and most likely the vast majority of customers come from less than 25 miles away. Why would a business with a solely local market reach use online communication and social media?
Social media is all about stellar networking and building trusted relationships with people you know and people you can help with your services.
Quality service hair salons are definitely in the relationship business. The relationship between stylist and client is an important one. Great haircuts, hair colors and talented stylists stories have been getting shared face to face by word of mouth ever since people cared what their hair looked like.
With the social communication tools being used on the web those stories get shared online. Most social media communication happens between people that actually know each other and live in the same area. Tracey and Grassroots are participating in the online community conversation. Through their continued updating of their website, Facebook and Twitter they are making their stories easily sharable.
Wealthy Resource
Grassroot’s stories and information create a rich resource and history that helps build their quality reputation. Now potential new customers wanting to know more about Grassroots A Salon have an online resource to access from any internet connection 24/7.
Tracey Drews and Grassroots A Salon are creating a good example of what the tools of the web and social media can do to extend a small local businesses word of mouth. And we’ve been honored to help guide their way.
The internet is primarily a communication tool to keep people connected. Most of those connections happen in the communities where people live work and play. So it makes sense that most of the conversations happening on Facebook and through email are with people in your same geographic area.
According to the study by Hebrew University ( article below ) the main utility has been to increase communications hyper-locally.
These hyper-local connections are why local businesses can benefit from social media. You don’t have to be a business with a global reach to gain value from participating in social networking. By connecting where your customers are having conversations you can provide a resource to the local online social networks in your community. If you’re listening to the conversations in your community you can discover ways to be helpful. If you participate in the online community conversations you can become a trusted thought leader. While listening to your local markets online conversations you can learn value information about your community and industry that will help your business succeed.
Local social media conversations are happening daily. Do not underestimate the opportunity to connect with your local community on the web.
Ever use email to talk to the person sitting one office down? You’re not alone. Most people use the Web to talking to people within their own city, not far-flung contacts, according to a new study by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The study says that while the Web has developed a reputation as a tool for geo-commerce and penpalling, the main utility has been to increase communications hyper-locally. In fact, the abstract says, “the volume of electronic communications is inversely proportional to geographic distance.”
The finding puts a new spin on Stanley Milgram’s controversial 1963 hypothesis that every American is connected by roughly six mutual acquaintances. Apparently, our most-used connections–even aided by Facebook and all our other techno-tools–still have more to do with geographic distance than personality, work, politics or other uniting factors.
Experimenters studied data from 100,000 participants that were both Facebook users and email users. They found that most Facebook users’ friends are within several miles of their location–not too surprising (see graph above). But they also found that emailing followed the same pattern: 41% of the emails that participants sent were within their own city (see graph below). Click below to download the study.
When people are out there talking about your customer service on the web on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and various other interactive forums you now have the opportunity to listen, connect, engage and build more positive relationships.
“Our immediacy and personal interaction with customers is part of the work we’re doing to make positive change for relationships with customers, getting to the root causes of problems that arise and fixing them for the long term,” Eric Ketzer – Charter Communications
By listening to the conversations and monitoring your brand and your industry you have an opportunity to understand how you’re being perceived and fix challenges as they come up.
Twitter is one of the best tools available right now for monitoring and engaging in the public conversation around your brand. At least if you have a business that people can talk about.
Personal branding is necessary skill to develop to increase your opportunities for success in pretty much anything you choose to do in the world.
Developing your personal brand starts with taking a look at the story you’re telling yourself and the story you’re sharing with society. Make sure your story lines up and put yourself fully in the center of your story. Continually refine your story so every fiber of your being is flowing with the story you want to share. When you clearly align with your story and send out a consistent message success will come to you.
Michelangelo said that the greatest danger for most of us is not that we’ll aim too high and not make it, but that we will aim too low and we will make it. The soul doesn’t engage when the bar for life is too low. The soul yearns for growth, adventure, new learning, and giving back to the world. It thrives when you align your life with the greater universal evolutionary flow and respond to what wants to happen as a way of life. Start living on the fourth level of opportunity and watch your life transform.
You cannot expect your business to gain traction in social media by simply setting up a blog or a Facebook page. You have engage your audience by participating in the conversation, providing value, and reaching out to potential customers. On communities like Facebook, this is especially true – a good ongoing engagement commitment will go a long way to making your business successful with social media.
Engagement is all about interaction. Your involvement in stimulating conversation, listening and learning from your audience will help your business be more valuable. Keeping interaction flowing is the life blood of social media.
Ways to Be Engaging:
Ask Questions
Considering launching a new service? Ask your customers what they think about it. Be creative with the questions and really listen by acknowledging the responses and taking the questions into more specific aspects of your service.
Pay attention to the questions your customers are asking about your business / industry
Discovery questions uncover challenges and unmet needs that your business potentially can fill. By asking the right questions and being open to the wisdom within your audience new markets can be discovered.
Pay Attention and Respond Quickly
The speed of engagement in social media is moving more and more toward a real time experience. Your audience doesn’t want to wait around for you. If you want to engage you need to be listening, be present in the conversation and keep the engagement flowing. Attention is gained through building trust. Listening and thoughtful responding goes a lot way towards building trust.
Be Transparent
The relationship between your business and your customers needs to be open and real. Customers appreciate honesty. Tell the truth. Do not hide behind excuses. If you keep your audience informed and show that you trust them they will be more likely to continue giving you their attention.
Be a Real Person
People do business with people. Be a real person with a personality. In today’s world of social media is a good thing to blend you in with your business. Your audience is more likely to engage with a person than a faceless corporation. Let people know why you’re passionate about your business. Let your audience in on your great triumphs and on your challenges. You may find even more enthusiastic fans.
How do you use social media to keep your business engaging?
Mandala Life Media is a consulting service by nature; our core is rooted in helping others to connect with their unique voice, their human brilliance and share it via the multitude of social media tools available with the pure intention of embracing the integrity of social change and inter-connection. Learn more about our Services
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