I know after 2 days of geek speak and tech talk your brains are probably numb or in pieces left in the hall ways here. My goal is to help you see why you should hang on to all those notes you took and how you can begin building a strategy to use these tools to build BIGGER biz in this new tech world.
BEFORE WE BEGIN– I want to make sure you know you can Keep phones out Tweet everything Hashtag Take pics Yell out Qs All about YOU
Some of you may see all of this as scary-not important, a passing fad. I mean how can anything named TWITTER be taken seriously? And even if you completely embrace all these new tools and you left the curmudgeons back at the office, it’s important to understand that we have 2 kinds of people in our work places today
The digital Native –those under the age of 30. These folks, and I see a few of you out there –still fresh faced and enthusiastic! Digital natives have always known technology and the internet. Cell phones are a necessary tool to communicate. They are typically used to using these tools to connect with others—not that they always love it. My 21 year college –granola eating daughter has a love hate relationship with all of this technology and this week deactivated her Facebook account for the 3 rd time!
The 2 nd kind of person is the Digital Immigrant. (I said Digital Immigrant…not Ignorant. That is the 3 rd type of person, but we are not talking about them!) Digital immigrants are those of us over the age of 30. This is new to us—the WORLD WIDE WEB….MY FACE and, TWEETER. We are now working on devices so small that we need reading glasses to do anything. I love this guys phone with three buttons!! Digital immigrants are coming into this new digital landscape and some love it and dive in with a sense of adventure while others are still kicking and screaming…..
WHY CANT THINGS JUST STAY THE SAME!! At least for a couple weeks…. But let me give you a quiz here…….
What are these?
EXTINCT! They are companies that didn’t see the changes happening. They are companies that refused to adapt to a world that was moving at the speed of change.
It’s time…. You can no longer sit in the sidelines waiting to see if things will go back to “normal” Normal is just a setting on the dryer! It’s time to UPGRADE to BIZ 2.0
Business 2.0 There is a revolution that is happening– we had the WEBolution in the early 90s with everyone hearing that their businesses needed a website on this WORLD WIDE WEB. Any of you still waiting for that fad to pass?
Skeptics will now be recognized as laggards as they now officially stand in the way of progress! Now we are in the middle of the SOCIAL revolution—soon it will just be as common as having a website, BUT take a look at some of these numbers and statistics……
What does this mean for your business? Part of your strategy has to be to ask HOW DOES OUR BUSINESS FIT INTO THIS new way of connecting, conversing, sharing? Because one thing is for sure….whether your business has changed much over the past 5 years or not
Your customers have changed! They don’t look in the yellow pages for the best Heating and Air conditioning company…
They Google it! They type “Heating repair Littleton Colorado” into that magical box and up pops the companies that have packed their sites with meta tags that include Heating, Air Conditioning, Littleton, Colorado, Repair. I always throw questions out on Twitter as well—Anyone know of a great HVAC company in Colorado?? I found a good roofer that way a few weeks ago.
Is that YOU? Do you have a community of people connecting with you on Facebook—reading your getting your offers? WOMEN and those 18-34 are most active on Social sites. Who is your primary decision maker today? WOMEN make most of the household buying decisions—if the woman connected with you on a social networking site and built that relationship with you – SHE will decide to use your service. FOOTBALL AND SPORTS SITES are OLD SCHOOL!
One of the biggest shifts that I see is that people want to PARTICIPATE. Consumers expect YOU to participate. They are not satisfied with you just sending out postcards or running ads –that they skip over while watching their recorded shows. They want to get to know you…then they will like you and trust you…and only THEN will they buy from you. So lets look at how you can use these tools to participate~ Where are your customer’s participating? ~Service Magic ~Angies List
Participating by educating – answering questions and reaching out