Alberta Business Marketing

What a crazy week that just finished?

Lots of interest from business in Calgary looking to understand more about the power of social media in business and what tools will serve them the best.  How can small businesses take advantage of what these almost mission critical online services?  What can they do combined with skilled and trained people for their overall success of  business?

All I know, there is more and more information to share with all of you over the next few days, weeks, months and maybe years.  Social Technologies are rapidly becoming part of our daily activities if they haven’t already.

First off, the following folks need to be publicly thanked:

• Frank at the Blackfoot Inn – Frank saved the day for us during our Calgary social media training course with a handy USB wireless adapter.
• The entire team at GoForth – Thank you for just being who you guys are and your support of Ulistic
• Mike Iem at Microsoft – Thank you Mike for the opportunity to serve the Microsoft Partner Community once again as part of the 5W25 training sessions.

Lots of discussion this week about how to we can employ Social Media in business and what all of our businesses can do right now to start to build a competitive advantage for themselves online.  Don’t take my messaging the wrong way, social media services are still just a spoke in your overall business development activities.  It is an awfully big one and gaining in importance.

One of these crucial online or social media services is the power of blogging.  How can a blog benefit your business?  Why should you blog?  I personally feel if you are a President of a corporation or small business and you do not have a blog you are doing a disservice to your staff, customers and those in the community who are looking for someone to learn from or follow.

Blogging for me is an essential part of your business recipe book.  It doesn’t take much to get started either.

There are a number of reasons why you and your must have a blog.  Some of these reason range from being a thought leader in your industry or community right through to having a mechanism for you to share information with your customers and staff.  Maybe you simply want to spread the word about the great things your non-profit is doing within the community as well.  Blogging in business or community is all about providing valuable content to those who find what you got to say interesting.  This can range from those who don’t know you to those who know you best.

What is your story?

We all have a story to tell and the best blogs come from those who take their natural ability to share stories and take these stories into the online world for all to read.  Some of the best blogs I follow are simply stories about what and who the reader is or who has influenced them.  How can you tell your story online and position yourself in front of the pack?  Who can you influence without knowing who they are?

A great blog can do this for you, sometimes all it takes is for you to simply start.  Get down in the ready position and fire your own starting pistol.  Over the years, working with many Calgary business folks and all the way up to my facilitation duties with Heartland Tech Groups, I have found simply starting to be one of the biggest challenges for a number of business owners.  Sometimes we just need to shelf our fear of looking stupid or failing aside and just get started.  I know that is easier said than done for many.

The nice thing with blogs is that you can always go back and tweak it later.  But you can’t tweak what you don’t do.

I love the fact in life sometimes we can take the re-test.

Tags: blog, Blog marketing, Blogger, Business/Finance, Calgary, Cityblog, Computing, heartland tech group, media services, online world, President, Social information processing, social media, technology, thought leader, Virtual world, World Wide Web
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Reboot Alberta 2.0 is underway! Granted so far all we’ve done is mingle and drink at the bar while watching Olympic highlights and the Canada/Slovakia hockey game.

As part of Reboot Alberta I will be live tweeting the event. As an added challenge, not only will I be tweeting for my followers and myself, but I will also be tweeting for Metro Calgary and their readers.

Last week I was approached by Metro Calgary Managing Editor Darren Krause (who you can follow on Twitter here) about my willingness to participate in a journalistic experiment for his publication. Coming out of the Manning Centre Conference  on the Alberta’s Future he was looking a way to potentially integrate information about events such as that and Reboot into a format that is interesting to his readers AND allows for ongoing, in the moment, updates from the conference.

There is something very different from writing a post event review. Theoretically this will allow readers to get the feel of what the event was like in the moment. So, the idea he had – the idea we are going to try to implement – is that I will live tweet the event and Metro will publish a selection of my tweets that provide the feel of the event in their Monday edition.

This obviously provides a bit of pause for me. Not only are my tweets going out to my 1,300 followers but they are also going out to Lord knows how many Metro readers. Will this change what I write? Maybe. I guess time will tell. At the very least it provides a more serious attention to Reboot Alberta’s Chatham House rules. These rules, which Reboot operates under, state that anything you hear can be repeated, but it can only be attributed with expressed permission.

So look out what you say around me! Who knows, it may end up in the paper. Just let me know if you want your brilliance attributed.

Finally, a big thanks the Darren Krause and Metro Calgary for trying something new and different. Hopefully this experiment works and is interesting. Either way, credit is due for MSM trying to integrate a new kind of journalism. I’m looking forward to it!

Tags: Darren Krause, Metro Calgary, Politics, Reboot Alberta
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This post is part 3 in an ongoing series trying to define “what is a ‘progressive’?” in advance of Reboot Alberta 2. You may view part 1 here and part 2 here.

The three ‘pillars’ of progressivism – interconnectedness, understanding and adaptability – are in that particular order for a very specific reason. Although it was not apparent until the very end of the brainstorming session.

When my group at the first Reboot Alberta sat down to have a lively discussion about “what is ‘progressive’” we very quickly determined the first thing an individual needed to progress wisely is understanding of the issue (more on this in my next post). We also relatively quickly came up with the concept of adaptability – i.e. what you do with your understanding – although we did not call it this at the time (more on adaptability two posts from now).

With these two pillars, we thought we had defined ‘progressive thinking’ very well: gain understanding and then be willing to be adaptable in your implementation. However, as time in the session began to draw to a close, we saw the big error in our thinking.

How does one create understanding in the first place?!

Certainly we all think that we have a good deal of understanding. But when you look at the issues in great detail you begin to realize the complexity of the information involved the decision making process. Multiply that complexity by the hundreds of decisions a politician must make during their turn and you begin to see how difficult it must be to actually have good understanding of each and every one of the issues. So, where does understanding come from? Obviously it’s not just a God given thing – we’re not born with it – otherwise politicians (and people in general) would not do dumb things. We would come out of the womb as baby geniuses if this were true.

This is where our group came up with the concept of ‘interconnectedness’.

It’s a simple concept really, the more interconnected you are, the more likely you are to have better information, which leads to better understanding.

When I speak of interconnectedness, I’m really talking about two different kinds of interconnectedness, both of which are part of the whole leading to developing understanding.

The first is your network. The more people you know, the more groups you are involved with, the more conversations you have with people, the more understanding you’ll gain. It’s basically osmosis. Hang around with smart opinionated people and you’re bound to think more like them. (This is a basic tenement of psychology and the political equivalent of your mom saying “if you keep making that face, it will stick like that”.) We go to school and take courses to learn. Without the interconnection between yourself and the teacher, your understanding can not grow as quickly or robustly.

There is another deeper reason for having a larger, smarter network however: to correct you when you’re wrong. The better (in terms of quantity and quality) the input you receive, the greater the likelihood is you will output something worthwhile. This is why it becomes imperative to familiarize yourself with sources of knowledge that differ from what you have traditionally sought. Cognitive dissonance can be a powerful enemy because we are so loathe to fight it; as winning that battle would mean proving we are wrong. Listening to as many voices as possible can lead to better understanding.

If there is one thing I have learned while trying to do this in my own personal life, it is this: even the most seemingly crazy person, has at the root of their rantings, a decent point. A point which should be considered and explored further. (Seriously. Try it. You may be surprised at what great ideas you’ve been dismissing because of the method they’re being delivered via.)

The second kind of interconnectedness comes from systems knowledge. Having the ability to see how a change in one area can affect change in another area and potentially cause a cascade of fallout (good or bad) is a vital skill to have. Especially when dealing with issues as complex as those the average politician encounters on a regular basis.

Thinking each decision we make operates independently of any other issue is simply not how life works. If you decide to stay at home tomorrow, you will encounter entirely different options that you would have if you walked out that door. The same is true in politics. And it goes beyond the basic: if you lower taxes you have to offer less services (although this is a good example). This form of interconnectedness extends to complex issues such as economy and it’s relationship with the environment. Where is the correct balance? We can’t make decisions regarding one, without considering the ramifications in the other. What tools are in place to allow us to examine this balance – if any? Even within the same sector – the economy for example – interconnectedness allows us to examine assumptions. Is GDP the best measure of our economy? What is it measuring? Is basing our entire financial well being on growth for growths sake wise? Being interconnected means being able to make these judgements without leaving any vital piece of information out of the equation.

This form of interconnectedness also applies to time, not just sectors. It forces us to consider both short term and long term outcomes, before ‘understanding’ attempts to strike the proper balance needed after taking into consideration all the various pieces of data available.

The other main reason my Reboot Alberta group added ‘interconnectedness’ to our list of traits of ‘progressiveness’ is because it helps answer what to do after you’ve gone through ‘understanding’ and ‘adaptability’. We struggled with this single line free flow model. Once a decision has been made is that the end of the process? What does one use to gauge the adaptive course forward?

Interconnectedness also allows for a feedback loop to be created. Without this loop adaptability simply could not exist. Instead the model would be problem > understanding > decision. Which, I think can be argued, is far too similar to what we currently most of the time. The feedback loop created by interconnectedness allows for error detection and course correction (adaptability).

Now, what you do with all that information you’ve gathered through your interconnectedness? That is ‘understanding’; and that is the next post in this series.

PS – Despite my best efforts, it does not look like I will complete the final three posts in this series (understanding, adaptability, openness and transparency) before Reboot Alberta 2 begins tonight. I will write these posts still, of course, but, sadly, it will not be before the beginning of the conference.

Tags: Politics, progress, progressive, Uncategorized
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Alberta Venture magazine recognized Alberta's Best Workplaces Thursday night at Hotel Arts in Calgary. Attached are photos from this event recognizing the best in human resources practices in Alberta.

Tags: Alberta's Best Workplaces, Awards reception, Web Exclusive
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A well-established principle of marketing says that a small group of early adopters can spur mass-market acceptance of a new product. But how do early adopters react when its brand is accepted by the mass market? And do mass markets react the same way that early adopters do to the same brand? Marketers assume that dominating the first market (early adopters) will also help them dominate the second market (mass market).

Wharton marketing professors David Reibstein and John Zhang have explored the topic and say that a company could experience a backlash as early adopters move on to other new products. An example is Porsche, a successful brand for sports car enthusiasts. The brand saw a decline in sports car sales after it entered the SUV mass market. The backlash was significant.

In fact, as The New York Times points out, teenagers would rather text their friends a message rather than post it on Twitter. Instead, Twitter has been embraced by an older demographic. Twitter’s success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations. The brand has proved that an offering can take off in a different demographic than you expect and become very popular. Twitter is defying the traditional model.

So why do marketers assume that success with early adopters will lead to quick adoption by the mass market? The "early adopter" concept is flawed because they aren’t always a good indicator of the growth potential of a brand nor do they have an extended Customer Lifetime Value. Most early adopters move on to the next big thing and may not be loyal to brands.

What is more important is to identify your most profitable potential customers. These profitable customers will eventually be the core of your growth strategy and profitability. The important indicator is the rate of adoption - the relative speed with which the most profitable consumers adopt an innovation. Success depends on an organization's ability to build and maintain loyal and valued customer relationships. Therefore, it is essential to build refined strategies for customers based on their value to the organization. The best marketing strategies pursue long-term relationships with profitable customers.

Two questions for you: (1) Who is your most profitable customer? (2) What is their lifetime value to your organization?

Please email me for our "View from the Top" series on best practices in customer satisfaction strategies.

Tags: Customer Experience, Research, social media, Strategy
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