Business musings

It might sound somewhat geeky but I love software! By software I mean the programmes that sit on our computers, mobile devices and in the cloud that have been designed to make our devices useful and our lives easier. We live in an age in which there is unprecedented access to high quality software, both at home and in business. Software is a growing, thriving market, with low barriers to entry, and the fact that investors are willing to back software is only increasing the availability of great solutions.

For me, I love comparing and choosing software, using it, getting to know it and learning about the efforts and ideas that developers have put into their baby. I love the power that software has to transform an action, a process or even an entire organisation.

The trouble is that choosing and using software can be a bit of a Marmite process—especially in a business environment. You’ll either love it or hate it. Software inevitably transforms your life one way or another—for good or for bad! Generally, the more core a software solution is to key business processes, the more this is true. Choose and commit to the wrong software solution and you can bring a business to its knees very quickly. I’ve seen this happen a number of times to unsuspecting organisations and it’s not pretty!

Think of selecting software as a little like marriage—it’s easy to commit but hard to get out of. When you achieve the perfect match, life couldn’t be better. But get it wrong and separation tends to be a painful, messy process.

So what are the rules of software commitment that minimise the risk of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure?

1. Understand yourself and what you are looking for

If you don’t understand yourself, your organisation, and how you work, you won’t be able to decide what you’re really looking for and whether there is a good fit or not. Most people have some sort of list for ‘My ideal partner is…’, based on their own understanding of themselves and what they feel would work in a relationship. Choosing software is not much different. Although ideal partner lists aren’t always 100% correct and you may later discover that certain assumptions were wrong, developing an ideal software list is a great start to the selection process. Before you begin to select any software, it’s vital that you first understand your business, the core processes that make your business tick, and what success looks like for you. What features can you really not live without? What are you happy to compromise on? What are the end objectives that you want to achieve? These are the criteria that will help you to find your ideal partner.

2. Work through stuff together

Looks aren’t everything, right? While aesthetics are obviously important in the attraction process, there is a strong case for the ‘It’s what’s inside that counts’ perspective to gauge how well you will get on as a couple over the long term. And the only way to really find out what’s inside is to work through important stuff together. You need to find out whether your individual approaches to life are remotely on the same page. Committing to software is much the same. It’s vital to work through real business scenarios with the software yourself and you should always insist on both a demo and trial that uses your own case studies, data, processes and tasks. Don’t just rely on standard demos and don’t let a salesperson do it all for you—they are practiced at making their software look brilliant and easy to use, even when it’s not! By working through practical scenarios and day-to-day processes, you’ll soon begin to see whether you have an attraction that goes beyond the first few clicks!

3. Dig deeper

With software, as with people, sometimes not everything is as it appears on the surface. That’s to be expected—we don’t always like sharing our weaknesses, especially when they make us vulnerable. A software sales person is even less likely to be completely open and honest with you as it’s in their best interests to make a sale. The website of a software product is also unlikely to list everything that the software can’t do. That’s why it’s up to you to ask the right questions and dig deep. Software sales can be a case of ‘truth by omission’ so it’s your responsibility to find out what they haven’t told you. Unfortunately, this courtship tends to be a bit more one-sided than is ideal but, with software selection, I’m afraid that’s the way it tends to be. Caveat emptor—let the buyer beware!

4. There is no such thing as the perfect partner

As Debbie may occasionally tell you on a bad day, there is no such thing as the perfect husband—I know, shocking right?! And likewise, there is no such thing as the perfect software. Unless you buy a bespoke solution, no software will have been designed for you personally but rather for someone a bit like you. This means that it’s highly unlikely you’ll find software with a perfect fit. You therefore need to look for best fit solutions—software that most appropriately fits your processes and that you can live with on a daily basis. Of course, each solution will have its own strengths and weaknesses but inevitably you’ll be able to live with some, whilst others are going to drive you insane! The secret is choosing the former and avoiding the latter.

5. Know where to draw the lines

Different relationships work in different ways—it may be that you’re responsible for the admin and your partner looks after the garden. Maybe you co-parent your kids. Wherever the responsibilities lie in a relationship, it’s always an idea to play to your strengths. If both of you suck at housework or DIY, you might hire a cleaner or a handyman. Knowing where to draw the lines between software works in a similar fashion. It isn’t often that one piece of software can be all things to all people. Indeed, software that claims to do everything is, in reality, often unwieldy and mediocre at most things, whilst being excellent at few. You will therefore need to decide which software solutions will best look after which processes. You’ll also need to consider how the solutions will effectively integrate with one another without things dropping through the cracks. Making these decisions often requires a bit of juggling as you work out what fits where and the boundaries will, on occasion, require reworking and renegotiation. But, as with any successful relationship, that’s all part of the fun!

6. Don’t think you can change them

Starting any relationship with the aim of changing your partner into something they are not is a dangerous plan and one that’s doomed to failure. The fact is, people don’t change easily. Evolve? Yes. Change? No. Established software is similar in its inability to accommodate significant changes. The sales people or developers may promise change but in reality it’s not that simple. Software tends to be built around a fundamental concept, philosophy and envisaged use scenario, so promising change is the equivalent of an architect promising to create a mansion out of a bungalow. Yes, it’s technically possible but only if you knock it down and start again. In most cases, you might as well have bought a mansion in the first place! As a rule of thumb, tweaks are fine but you should be very sceptical of promises for deep changes to core functionality. Such changes are usually risky, expensive, create more problems than they solve, and are often no more effective than putting lipstick on a pig! Software as a service (SAAS) solutions tend to be even more inflexible. By its very nature, SAAS offers a one size fits all solution—the entire business model hinges on solutions for the masses. Whether software as a service or boxed software, whatever you do, don’t commit to it based on a vague promise of added functionality sometime in the future.

7. Ask the children

I’m not for one moment suggesting that your staff are your children or that you should treat them as such! However, much like parental decisions not only affect the adults but also influence the children, you need to realise that a software partnership isn’t just between you and the software provider—others within your organisation are going to have to live with your decision day in, day out. Get your colleagues involved at an early stage. Involve them in developing the statement of requirements, invite them to meetings, and ask them to test the software themselves. Be conscious of those people who will be most impacted by your decision—they will usually be the ones who get shouted at if they can’t do their job properly due to poor software and they won’t thank you for a poor choice! Where possible, make a business-wide decision as to which solution to commit to. Remember, unlike children, your colleagues can walk out if you get it really wrong. Businesses have lost good staff through poor software selection and implementation because dealing with bad software on a daily basis made their jobs nigh impossible.

8. It’s not just about the wedding

Long-term marital success is as much about life after the wedding as it is about your partner selection and promises of commitment. You need to give each other time to settle in and adjust. Make time for one another, continue to talk, resolve differences, and put one another first. In a successful software partnership, continued commitment following the initial selection process is vital. Surprisingly, choosing your software is actually the easy bit of the process. Without a full and proper implementation, you could in fact create a failed project even if you have selected the right partner. In rolling out the software you should be aware that staff will need training; an effective transition from the old way of working to the new will need to be made; and there are likely to be teething issues that will need to be resolved. Longer term, adjustments will need to be made to ensure that the software continues to evolve with you. Of course, you can’t do this on your own. Both you and the software provider need to remain completely committed for the long haul, even—or should I say, especially?!—after the initial honeymoon period is over.

9. Trust is important

Trust is important for any relationship and especially for one in which there is a long-term commitment. Without trust, a relationship can be at best difficult and at worst impossible. Likewise with software, the concept of trust is critical. You need to trust the software’s security, its resilience, your backup of the data, the service level agreement (SLA), and the fact that the future road map of the software is going where you need it to. After all, you are entrusting your business to this software. Not only that but you need to remember that you are not just choosing the software itself but also the people and the organisation behind it. You will be reliant upon the competence of the team who develop and build it; the responsiveness and helpfulness of those people who answer your urgent support requests; and the wisdom of the owners and managers who determine the long-term direction and success of the business. Can you trust them to do good by your organisation? Do they really understand your needs? Are they consistent and congruent in their relationships? Are they people you’ll enjoy working with well into the future? By doing your due diligence upfront, you’ll reduce the risk of being disappointed and heartbroken later on.

10. Money matters

Research suggests that money is one of the topics most argued over in a committed relationship. Differing expectations and differing priorities have to be worked through, compromises made, and a shared understanding developed if money isn’t going to become an issue that gets in the way of a relationship. If this kind of understanding can’t be reached it begins to suggest the partners might indeed be incompatible. Likewise with a software partnership, financial priorities and budgeting can be an issue. Knowing how much to spend on software is not always obvious, especially when price is not directly correlated to quality or even value. In reality, you can only ever really make a comparative decision between differing software options, balancing the complex mix of functionality, best fit, price, licensing model, consultancy and training fees, ease of implementation and upgradability. In the end, you’ll need to choose the solution that you feel provides the best return on investment. It may be that you have a natural tendency to spend very little or to spend a lot. At the end of the day, it’s not about your personal spending preferences but about the business case, the range of software options available to you and, ultimately, what will be best for your business—even if it takes you out of your comfort zone.

Enjoy the process

Hopefully I haven’t scared you off either marriage or software selection after all that! As I said at the beginning, I love software and, as Debbie will testify, I get particularly absorbed during a software selection project largely due to the fact that I’m having so much fun! I’m also an advocate of healthy and happy marriages—after all, I found not only my wife but also my business partner too.

Whilst some businesses are happy to approach software selection with little more thought than a drunken and impromptu wedding to a stranger in Vagas, only to wake up the next day regretting the fact that they didn’t put a bit more thought into choosing a more suitable partner, there are some who are wiser and heed the call to approach software selection as you would a serious courtship. Hopefully, you, dear reader, fall into the latter category!

Also, do remember that, much like marriage, you need to go into software selection knowing that you’ll always have a lot to learn. So be willing and able to get stuck in. Grow. Make mistakes. And, most of all, enjoy the process! Sometimes, even if you follow all the rules and do absolutely everything right, it won’t always work out, but at least you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, “I gave it my best shot.” And, after that, you will pick yourself up and start over again.

Hello again – sorry for the rather long pause in blogging! I do have a number of excuses including a heavy work load, working on an updated website (almost ready to launch in the not too distant future) and the arrival of a rather high maintenance police sniffer puppy in training called Herbie. He has now moved to live with his new handler for his next stage of training and we have a new sniffer dog in training called Jess who’s a lot lower maintenance!  Anyway, excuses over, back to the blog!

I was musing the other day about the fact that I use rather a lot of web 2.o style applications for my business. As I find these applications so useful and have made my selections based upon fairly extensive research and comparisons between products, I thought I’d put a list together to give you a headstart if you’re looking for similar tools.

Project management with Basecamp

Basecamp is an online project management tool created by 37signals. I had looked at other project management tools but in the end, and once 37signals had introduced dates for tasks, I felt Basecamp was a good fit for various client projects. Basecamp really comes into its own when all parties use it to collaborate and use it to make notes and upload shared files. It has been well developed and remains intentionally unbloated from complex features, instead providing useful to-do list style actions and milestones – just enough to organise a collaborative project.

Awesome presentations with Prezi

Here at Matt Stocker Ltd, we’ve just finished putting together a presentation for a client in Prezi. The client’s brief was to ‘out present’ for an opportunity they had been offered and Prezi offers the wow factor that other conventional presentation tools such as PowerPoint just do not deliver.

Prezi is a fairly new tool as it was only launched in April 2009 but it is already capturing the imagination of many. Rather than using the conventional slide format, Prezi provides you with a virtual blank canvas upon which to lay out your ideas and design your presentation. Having added text and images to your canvas, you then create a storyline by adding a path that zooms in and out, focuses on key ideas and conveys the message that you want to present.

Not only that but Prezi makes collaboration and sharing particularly easy as you can invite others in your team to edit prezis with you and, to share them, you simply need to email a link to the online version of your prezi or download a version that can be played offline. Simple!

Online questionnaires with Wufoo

As I run workshops to explore, develop and define vision, values, purpose and mission, I need to obtain input from everyone prior to a workshop to get an idea of the existing level of consensus. I chose Wufoo mostly due to the formatting options it provides – many other options seem to forget that questionnaires need to look nice at the end! The interface is very easy to use and you can quickly build a good looking form with ease. Wufoo also allows you to easily review the data you’ve collected and notifies you when someone has filled out your form. Sharing a survey with somebody ready for completion is as simple as emailing them a link to the online form.

Not only that but Wufoo provides fairly extensive functionality – whilst this isn’t something that I have yet had cause to use, Wufoo can be used for a whole host of tasks including the collection of payments, donations and simple online orders.

Web copy wireframing with Jumpchart

A recent discovery of mine, Jumpchart is an interesting program that helps to wireframe web copy. Here at Matt Stocker Ltd, as part of our work in marketing we are regularly involved in helping clients to develop their websites. Copy is a key part of this and using Jumpchart really helps by taking the focus off the design and placing it onto the copy itself along with the all-important menu structure. Jumpchart is the only tool I’ve found that is effective in allowing you to simply plan a website with ease.

Email and more with Google Apps

A basic business requirement but one that I’m very happy with. Google Apps has been rock solid in terms of reliability and it has all the syncing and connectivity I need (with the small exception of calendar syncing between computers for which I use Spanning Sync). I can easily sync my email over IMAP and Exchange across all devices so I can always see what I’ve read and deleted whether I’m using my iPhone, laptop or desktop.

Whilst Google Apps obviously consists of far more than just email, I personally tend to make most use of the email, Calendar and Reader. I tried out Google Docs for a while but found issues with formatting, so for collaborative copy I’ll tend to use Basecamp’s Writeboard function instead. That said Google Apps is expanding and improving all the time and, on the whole, I’d highly recommend it – it is by far the best solution I’ve found for email.

Time tracking with Tick

I looked at a lot of options for time tracking, some of which were great products. However, the thing that swung it for Tick was their multi-platform time tracking applications for iPhone, Mac, PC and so on. Many of the other solutions relied on widgets or web pages and I was bound to forget that I’d left a timer running with these! Tick makes it easy to see how much time you have spent on a project and how your time has been spread over the past week or month, which is vital for producing invoices at the end of a month. The one thing that Tick doesn’t really offer is in depth analysis on exactly how and when your time has been spent; at present, this isn’t really something I need but if I wanted greater visibility, I would be tempted to look at an alternative product such as Freckle.

Accounting with FreeAgent Central

I love FreeAgent Central! Whilst not the cheapest solution available, it is a pleasure to use and makes my life so much easier as it tracks and calculates everything I need for running my business – invoices (pending and overdue), PAYE, dividend vouchers, tax owed and much more. I can upload my bank statements with auto-recognition and create formatted invoices. The customer support FreeAgent provide is also second to none.

As an added bonus, FreeAgent also run a great referral scheme so if you are interested in signing up with them and would like a 10% discount on your subscription, simply click on any of the links I’ve provided here or feel free to use my referral code 314yalfc.

One last word and a couple of desktop solutions to wrap up!

So, I think that’s it for online apps! Whilst using apps can work out more expensive than the traditional software purchase model, all upgrades are included and working online means that collaboration is easy, whether you’re working with clients, accountants or partners. That said, I do still use a number of desktop software programs such as Things (task management for Mac) and Daylite (contact and lead management) which also sync with my iPhone and tend to work very well.

The ‘app’ concept continues to gain ground not just within IT but also in industries such as automotive industry.

LSN Global featured the new Trexa ‘car development platform’ – a fully electric vehicle-development platform that provides designers and manufacturers with the capability to design and develop unique designs without incurring the expense of developing new platforms. The resulting ‘app’ designs dock onto the platform and are fully interchangeable (i.e car to van to flatbed).

Key challenge

Whilst this looks like a great idea, I think that the key challenge with this technology will be pricing. It is likely that vehicle ‘apps’ will be produced in fairly low volumes and as a result it may be difficult to achieve the economies of scale needed to bring the price down. This could well mean that the resulting vehicles on sale are actually quite expensive compared to traditional vehicles from the volume vehicle manufacturers, rendering the ‘app’ proposition uncompetitive.

It has often been the case in the past that for ‘interchangeable’ products the resulting ‘options’ are actually just as expensive as buying another, brand new, fully functional product, thus rendering interchangablity as pointless.

So the key to this product’s success?

For those manufacturers already competing effectively in the niche electric vehicle market, this platform could be very good news indeed, resulting in significant R&D savings, access to the latest upgradable technology and a faster, more flexible, product development cycle.

In terms of the ‘interchangeable’ aspect of the vehicles, the keys to success are likely to be innovative, high-quality products, produced using low volume, low cost manufacturing, thereby ensuring that the designers of vehicle ‘apps’ really do have a significant price advantage against main stream solutions.

Would I buy one?

Well, if I could design my own vehicle online that I could fully specify from modular components and that was delivered direct to my door, that would be very cool indeed. However, for me, an Audi R8 or Tessla might be slightly higher up my wishlist!

Chances are, if you are anything like most businesses, you have a lot of paper to deal with in your office and in your job. The fact is, we rely to a large extent on paper: to communicate, to record, to remind, to sell. The promise of a paper free office remains a technological fantasy for many.

However, it is important to recognise the scalability issues of paper as a technology: paper can only be in one place at one time so it doesn’t work well across multiple sites; revision control is tricky; and it can be hard to back up – do you have duplicate copies of everything if worst came to the worst?

Even if we cannot remove paper entirely, there are things we can do to consign it to a supporting role rather than the main deal within a business.

Steps to creating a paperless office

1. Analysing your processes

The first idea to grasp is the fact that paper usually relates to a process or processes within your organisation. Understanding this will provide a solid foundation for beginning to deal with the paper as the processes themselves provide the structural foundation for creating a paperless office. By analysing the papers for clues about the activities the paper itself represents and following this paper through the system, you can outline your processes, giving you an accurate view of ‘now’.

2. Revising your processes

The next step is to revise your processes in order to maximise efficiency. This includes:

• Eliminating bottle necks and their resulting backlogs
• Removing unecessary steps within the process(es)
• Assessing crossover and interdependency of processes within the wider organisation to ensure integration
• And, overall, designing as lean a process as possible.

Value stream mapping may be a good tool to use at this stage. The people involved in each process within your organisation will also be a vital source of information and feedback as they are the people on the ground who are involved in the processes day-in, day-out.

3. Integrating paper and technology

Having created a coherent set of lean processes, the next challenge is to reduce the use of paper where possible. This can be done by assessing the processes to find out which parts of them can be automated and then developing an IT and technology solution that has your best practice processes inherently embedded into its system. In other words, the IT and technology solution reflects and is built around your processes, rather than the processes being built around the technology.

4. Sustainable continuous improvement

Once you have found a solution that works for your organisation as a whole and that maximises your efficiency and effectiveness, it is important to maintain the momentum of improvement. Ongoing assessment and revision will ensure that as your organisation grows and develops your processes continue to support the delivery of your organisation’s objectives. New technology is also continually emerging that may provide a solution to paper based systems where a solution did not previously exist. Staying abreast of these developments allows you to continually improve organisational performance and efficiency.

5. Reducing risk

Although it is not always possible to eliminate the use of paper completely, you should not be relying on paper for mission critical functions. However, neither should you be relying on technology without a business continuity plan in place. Whatever system and solution you are using, you should always make sure that fail-safes and redundancies are built into the process(es).

If you would like any advice or support in creating a paperless office for your organisation, please contact me or call me on 02476 100 193 – I would love to help!

Many people in the UK struggle with sub-standard broadband connections and when trying to resolve issues with their internet service provider (ISP),  the ISP can sometimes be guilty of fobbing its customers off and starting a blame game with BT. However, help may be at hand.

I was reading an article today by Chris Dannen of Fast Company about a sophisticated broadband diagnosis website launched by Google and two non-profit organisations. The new website is called Measurement Lab. Apparently it still needs some work but check it out anyway – it may give you a slightly stronger hand when dealing with difficult ISPs.

Today is a very exciting day as it is Matt Stocker Ltd’s first birthday!

However, it is also a very special day for another reason: the Apple iSlate (or iPad, Magic Slate, iTablet, or whatever it will be called) is due to be announced!

Trawling the web for the Apple iSlate reveals much rumour and speculation as to the expected design form, price, positioning, connectivity and interface. The key area of agreement seems to settle around the idea of a 10-inch touchscreen based device with 3G connectivity. iSlate.org has catalogued many of the rumours and expectations from the marketplace, as have many other technology sites such as engadget.com, pocket-lint.com, gizmodo.com and macrumors.com.

From a product design and development perspective, the speculative design mock-ups and graphics are hugely interesting. People seem to have taken three different starting points from Apple’s existing product portfolio – the Macbook Pro, the iPhone and the iMac.

• The Macbook Pro angle suggests a dual screen design with touchscreen keyboard running OS X (very unlikely).
• The iPhone angle suggests what amounts to an iPhone on steroids, with enough room to display many more app icons on screen and potentially resolution independent apps (likely).
• The iMac angle suggests a miniaturised iMac design also running a touchscreen version of OS X with either a slide out keyboard, touchscreen keyboard or an additional plugin keyboard and stand (touchscreen keyboard – very likely, additional keyboard – likely, slide out keyboard – very, very unlikely).

Whilst the speculative designs are good, the actual Apple product is likely to innovate across the whole gamut of product purpose, design, interface, application delivery and implementation.

Whatever the iSlate/iPad/Magic Slate/iTablet turns out to be, I expect it to be a product that takes elements of the above and mixes these with entirely new concepts to create a new genre/niche in the same way that the iPhone has. I for one am waiting with baited breath to find out!

Have you ever had that frustrating experience with your mobile phone?  You’re in the middle of a call to somebody and the next thing you know, without warning, you’ve lost the connection.  Well, I came across this little piece of technology from Vodafone the other day: the Sure Signal box. If you struggle with getting phone signal in your home or office, take a look. It creates your own mini Vodafone network and connects to their network via broadband; so no more taking calls in the corner of one particular room or sounding like you’re on the train, when in fact you are in your office!

The main disadvantage is that it only works for Vodafone; however, it looks likely that other operators will join in by providing their own ‘Femtocells‘ in due course.

In the meantime, alternative solutions are available if you are really ‘signal-less’. Mobile signal boosters, otherwise known as cell repeaters, use an ariel (possibly external to your office/house), boost the signal and create an upgraded signal within a certain radius of the transmitter. Signal boosters are also available for vehicles, so if you travel a lot and/or regularly travel to remote locations with poor signals, it could provide you with the extra range you need.

As cool things go, a flying car is certainly one of them! If you’ve got the cash to splash, then this should certainly be on your list…

Being able to fly and drive certainly opens up your options for commuting! Think of the time saving – that’s got to be worth something!

Church of the Customer picked up the flying car a while back and suggested it was prime material for word-of-mouth marketing: it’s a great idea and if people know about it, they’re likely to talk about it.  People want to talk about cool stuff to their friends, family, colleagues, anyone who will listen. However, people can’t talk about your idea if they don’t know about it and if the channels for communication aren’t easily available, and that’s what Church of the Customer picked up as the problem with the flying car. The company who had the idea (Terrafugia) weren’t making it easy for people to connect and share their excitement about this great product. Ben McConnell (who wrote the original blog) also suggested videos, social media, Twitter etc. to increase participation and help generate word of mouth.

The flying car company now at least have some videos.

In Ben’s most recent post, ‘The flying car flies’ (which includes the first video above) he suggested a multi-media fest, including videos on the front page, to help get people excited and to create a buzz; along with the code to embed the videos to help us bloggers!

However, I’d go one step further.

To create a real buzz you need a real sense of participation. At $194,000 anticipated retail price (when it goes on the market) that’s going to be out of reach for most of us and therefore limit the sense of being involved.

If however Terrafugia were to offer 5 lucky winners the chance to go for a drive/flight in the flying car by entering a special competition, then I’d be excited (especially if they flew me over to America for the prize – I’m based in the UK!).

Then, if they then offered me an extra chance to win for every one of my friends who also entered the competition, I’d happily suggest they entered – for my sake as well as theirs!

At very little cost to them, they could generate huge marketing and PR opportunities.

Within a short space of time you would have generated a buzz and a sense of participation far beyond what could be generated by YouTube and social media assistance alone. Combine the social media, YouTube and an exciting competition and you’d get something that was greater than the sum of its parts!

ps. If  you’re a member of Terrafugia and you’re reading this, you can sign me (and all my friends) up for the competition!

The Google AdWords concept is very simple: connect a customer who is looking for something with a company that is selling something. The better the match, the happier both parties are.

But for people who are less familiar with Adwords and the technology behind them, this concept can sometimes be quite hard to visualise and understand.

Last week, I was attending an initial meeting with a client to explore whether they would like me to update their Google Adwords campaign and drew a brief sketch to take with me explaining how Google Adwords works as a marketing concept. They loved the sketch and we found that it really unlocked the concept in a way that just wouldn’t have happened with words. So, I thought I’d share the pictures with you here…

(To view the full size image, just click on the picture. Depending on your browser settings, you might need to click on the picture a second time to get it full screen width.)

I’ve had a number of conversations with businesses regarding the ‘social media phenomenon’; the general feeling is that they should be on Facebook and the like because it’s the ‘in thing to do’ but really, they’re not sure why!

It’s still all about customers

At the end of the day, it was and always has been about customers. A business can’t survive without them. It needs ways of engaging and connecting with both existing and potential business.

Social media doesn’t change this basic business principle. Social media provides a new communication channel for customer-to-customer and business-to-customer.

Therefore, the same rules still apply…

1. Go where your customers go
All social media sites have ‘contexts’. They generally have a defined purpose; function; knowledge focus; or social context. Understand this and you’ll have your answer to whether you should be involved in any particular social media site for your business.

For example, if a social media site has a primarily American social context but you are in the UK selling to the UK market, then it won’t help you much!

Similarly, if it is a car support site and you sell gardening equipment, then that’s not a good start.

Just do a bit of research and then use your common sense.

Here is a list of over 400 social media sites to get you started. It has some categorisation but you’ll need to do a bit more work to identify those that are appropriate for your company or charity.

2. Appropriate communication
Appropriate communication will depend on many factors. It will depend on your business type; on whether it is business-to-consumer or business-to-business; and on how it is appropriate for you to relate to, and communicate with, your customers.

For example, if you tend to have a more formal business-to-business relationship with your customers, Facebook may be the wrong context; you could come across overly familiar and customers may not wish to share at that personal level with you.

However, if you sell to consumers, Facebook may be just the right communication channel. People represent themselves on Facebook (not their employer as they would in B2B) so if they care about your product or service they may well sign up to be associated with you or any groups you create.

It’s a whole new world

Social media may seem daunting at first, but the first step is to give it a go. Sign up for something and start learning. The more you do this the more natural it will become. Before you know it you’ll feel right at home!