Red Humpy

My daughter enjoys the "greatest game ever played" in the summer of 2010.

I spent the afternoon of Halloween watching the Disney movie “The Greatest Game Ever Played” with my daughter who is ill. The movie is based on the true story of a 20 year-old caddie who won the 1913 U.S. Open golf championship. He did so against the wishes of his father, and contrary to the wishes of many “gentlemen” in the game.  He played the game not for money, not for fame or honor, but simply because it was what he wanted to do and he knew he was good at it.

One of my current clients, the one that I spend the most hours with, is a corporation, rather than a small business which is what I’m used to. With a mom-and-pop business, the owner or manager makes the decisions. I present them with a few options, discuss the pros and cons of the choices, and tell them what I recommend. We make a decision based on the facts (most of the time), and the plan is implemented.

With a corporation, there are many decision-makers involved. Just because one department knows that something is a good idea doesn’t mean that other departments feel the same way. And in my experience so far, getting a good idea to come to fruition is nearly impossible.

Understand, motivate and grow.

Thankfully, the corporation I’m currently working with is in the process of an internal overhaul, and although the the attempt is in its infancy, I am optimistic that the core values employees are encouraged to embrace will also be reflected in upper-management who will lead by example. Management  has suggested that staff members read a book called Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright. Published in 2008, the book deals with the tribes that occur within organizations and relates them to findings from an eight-year study of 24,000 people in over two-dozen corporations.

The study results discussed in Tribal Leadership show that “leaders, managers and organizations that fail to understand, motivate, and grow their tribes will find it impossible to succeed in an increasingly fragmented world of business.”

My biggest take-home from the book the first time I read through it was being able to put labels on something I had been aware of, but never knew what it was. The authors describe five ‘tribal stages’ that each of us fall into, ranging from “life sucks”, through “my life sucks”, “I’m great”, “we’re great” and finally, “life is great”. Reading about the stages  put tangible descriptions on people that I perhaps liked, but who I didn’t always enjoy doing business with. It also helped me understand how a group of completely different individuals, such as in my Rotary community service organization, can come together for a single cause: to make our world a better place to be. It seems that as like attracts like, members of similar tribal stages can find each other and create power in numbers.

Don’t waste time living someone else’s life.

I flipped through theTribal Leadership book this afternoon when my daughter dozed off at the end of the golf movie. I ended up on page 180. Called “Core Values and a Noble Cause” the chapter covers identifying values and finding a noble cause to unite a tribe. Page 180 speaks of a conversation with Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic.  Adams references a Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 as something that inspired him and helped him understand the power people have to influence others.

I found a link to the Jobs speech on the Tribal Leadership website media page and although I am admittedly not an Apple computer fan, I do respect the way the company has created a product and marketing campaign that appeals to so many non-technical, creative people.  I don’t believe I had a view of Apple founder Steve Jobs that needed to be changed, but reading the article helped me see him in a new light, and allowed me to understand his motivations and goals. 

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs says during the third part of his speech about death. “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Reading those words, especially after having  just watched “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, reminded me to keep focused on my own dreams and not let myself get bogged down in the drama of corporate office politics that I have recently encountered. I made a note to myself that if I find myself getting frustrated this week due to office drama, I will remind myself about the work I love and have the courage to follow my own intuition.

Throughout my life, I have found that every challenge is a chance to learn something new, and every decision I make, whether at home or at work, brings a new opportunity for growth that can affect my path in life. That thought brings up my favorite quote in the Steve Jobs speech that tells how seemingly unrelated choices made now can be connected to other choices later in life.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards,” Jobs explains,  ”So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

After thoughts on connecting the dots, love and loss, and finally death, Jobs closes with words of advice to the Stanford graduating class of 2005, words that he borrowed from the back of the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog in the 1970′s: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Another sunset, another day; more lessons learned.

Tomorrow is another day to live and learn, and I intend to stay hungry and foolish in my happy life. I am fortunate to do work that I love and have a passion for. I find time in summer to enjoy the game of golf with rules, order, integrity and an end-goal in mind. Many individuals can play the same course, but end up with drastically different results. Each shot is taken one at a time, and each hole leads to the next. A round of golf with others can certainly bring out the best and worst in a person, blatantly identifying their tribal stage. Perhaps golf is a reflection of life, which truly is the greatest game ever played.

“I see the empty slate before me;
connect the dots and I know how.
Tomorrow brings the next adventure,
living in the now.”
-by Natalie Carpenter, April 2010

Carpe diem!

A few months back I was browsing social media sites from articles sent to me from Google Alerts. Following my own advice to REACH with social media, I was doing the ‘R’ – reading other content relevant to my field and joining in those networks.

One article led to another and I ended up on a social media forum in Australia. A guy named Michael had posted a request for someone who was willing to commit two hours a week on a new project idea he had. One of the first responses to his post from another reader was that it sounded like a work-from-home sales pitch. I began my interaction by responding to that line of thought and asking for more information. “But I wanted Tupperware,” was the subject line of the first email I sent him.

It turns out that like myself,  Michael Russell and his friend John Young were both working with clients on how to use social media in their businesses. Their idea was to create a Social Media Hit Squad who could offer three heads for the price of one when it came to talking about social media, and eventually, the three heads could charge a fee to a business for a custom evaluation and recommendations on what that business could do to create a social media presence.

That was in early June, and within one month, Michael, John and I have created 16 podcasts that cover a wide variety of social media topics. We have begun posting the finished podcasts on iTunes, as well as on the Social Media Hit Squad website along with relevant articles and information. Our goal is to hit specific industries to provide information to business owners that they can use to increase their online presence with social media. We also have an online form for a business to request a custom review of their website and learn what they can do to start their steps into online social media. It is great to work with John and Michael because we each have our own perspectives on social media, which allows us to brainstorm on what our clients can do specifically for their individual business.

From REACHing with social media to working with two like-minded people on the other side of the world, the power of social media tools never ceases to amaze me. Creating an online community starts with finding who else is out there, but you can’t be a part of it until you take the first step and begin interacting. It worked for me!

If you have a question about social media, please feel free to comment and ask here, or at Facebook.RedHumpy.com. I’d love to hear your successes or help you with your difficulties.
-natalie

My perspective on social media and how it shapes business relationships with customers was formed from how I was raised and the places I have lived.

The Bubble Girl

The Southeast Heights of Albuquerque in the 70’s was an eclectic mix of diversity. My family was the youngest on the block, just down the street from Bandelier Elementary School and one row of houses away from Hyder Park. My parents arrived there when I was three after leaving the beaches of southern California via Route 66 with their two daughters. Their truck broke down in Albuquerque, they found a place to rent, had two more kids, and 14 years later I was graduating from Highland High School, located just off of Central Ave., the old Route 66.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my parents were hippies. Bare feet or flip flops were the norm, my dad had several motorcycles and played loud music, my mom had a leather purse with tassles and long, brown hair. There were curtains of beads hanging in several of the doorways in the house, some wooden and some green and orange plastic. Burning incense was common. The bookcase that was made of bricks and pine boards offered interesting reading material, such as lyrics and artwork by the Beatles and various fiction and nonfiction paperbacks. I learned to roller skate, skateboard, hike, camp, box, change oil, spar and punch through half-inch pine boards. But overall, my dad was adept at sheltering his four daughters from the outside world, and I grew up under the auspice of believing that my dad’s views were all there was.

My hippie dad who was a plumber and into computers and high-end stereo systems kept the family close to the house. I felt like a bubble girl, with no knowledge of what was outside of my small realm of reality. Yes there was school, swim team and riding the bus, but growing up I didn’t have close friends that I hung out with, we didn’t go to social events, and only my older sister ever once had a birthday party that included other kids.  So picture this tall, skinny, awkward teenager with prefect attendance and straight A’s, a member of the National Honor Society who didn’t go to parties or watch early 80’s television that her peers were seeing, and having her cultural influence being reruns like the Monkeys, the Avengers, the Munsters, the Addams Family, and Leave It To Beaver. I knew very little about popular culture and society around me because I wasn’t involved in it.

Natalie with the 1988 Albuquerque cover band, Puppies With Guns

The day I graduated from High School a naïve, sheltered, un-worldly teenage girl, my parents moved with my two little sisters back to southern California. I was suddenly on my own for the summer, renting the house I had grown up in and sharing the place with my older sister who was back from her first year in college. My best friend Carol was a woman I worked with at Wendy’s fast food while she finished her degree in Computer Science and interned at Sandia National Laboratories. Carol dated a guy in his early 30’s who had big hair and was a drummer in a late 80’s band called Puppies With Guns. Oh, the memories…

Discovering the world

Rather than let my new found freedom go to my head, I became simply an observer in the new world that I discovered around me. I was free to do what I wanted, when I wanted without my dad’s domineering, everything-is-my-way mentality hanging over me, I had a fake ID to get into bars and see live music that I had never heard on the radio. Carol’s boyfriend had an album that made a big impression on me. It was Depeche Mode’s Strangelove, the extended LP, and it was definitely not like the Madonna, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Top 40 music that I was listening to. I had never heard people discussing what Martin Gore was singing about in 1988, but I liked it and it spoke to me. Follow that with a discovery of Agent Orange, the Smiths, Steel Pulse and the Cure and it was as if I had entered a whole new world that I didn’t know existed, kind of like the internet, but that wouldn’t become mainstream for another 15 years.

After spending much time at the coast learning how to snorkel, scuba dive, sail, surf, play beach volleyball, canoe, kayak and enjoy the sounds of the waves crashing at sunset, I took a trip to a little town in southern Colorado. In the fall of 1993, Pagosa Springs had one stoplight, no fast food, and an anti-Californian sentiment. There was a long metal fence uptown where someone had spray-painted the words, “GO HOME CALIFORNIANS.”

But 17 years, five stoplights, three kids, two divorces and several dogs and a cat later, I am still here in this magnificent mountain town, and it is because of my years in this small town environment where I feel so at home that I have a greater understanding of how social media works.

Small town niche = Online community

Just as sitting through hours and hours of local town and county political meetings as an observer can help one grasp the political dynamics on a much grander scale at the national and international level, watching local social interactions between individuals and businesses has helped me to notice how social media interactions work on the grand scale of the World Wide Web.

Communication, openness, referrals, helping others, being able to take criticism, sharing, excellent customer service – these are all things that are essential to business survival in a small town, and these same traits will be essential to businesses as they exist in an online environment that exposes them to a world population.

Having the unique niche of growing up with technology and computers, living my adult life as an observer and active participant in the world around me, and being in a time with an availability of knowledge and teaching at my fingertips due to the world wide web, this niche as given me a insight on the growing world community that is found online, where everyone can be connected if they want to be.

With social media tools, anyone can reach out to the world to share their story and connect with others who can relate to them. Perhaps only fifty people will find this article, read it, and respond in some way. But that means that there are fifty people in the world who I have connected to, and that means that as different as I feel, I know I am not alone.

Businesses who use online social media tools to share their own unique stories will find that they are the ones who will make it through the long term. Tools that allow customers and clients to feel connected to a business will generate the same result as a business who builds their personal connections through one-on-one interactions and referrals in a small town. The average business comes and goes, but those who find their niche in a little corner of the internet and offer something honest and unique will indeed find their audience.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.
-natalie

“The people that come up with stuff that’s remarkable more often than not figure out how to put design to work for them.”
-Seth Godin, speaking at a 2003 TED conference)

Stefan Sagmeister’s 2001  book “Made You Look” offers numerous examples of ways the German designer uses interesting art and creative techniques to make his clients’ work stand out from the crowd. The book itself is a unique piece of art. Slide the book out of the red plastic sleeve and the pleasant German Shephard pictured on the cover shows a fierce set of teeth. Fan the edge of the pages opposite the spine in one direction and the solid silver turns into MADE YOU LOOK. Fan the pages the other way and dog bones appear. The book makes for an interesting conversation piece and I bring it along to each of my social media presentations for my audience to browse through and hopefully be inspired by.

In the 2003 Seth Godin video, his message is to stand out from the crowd if you want to get noticed because people are good at tuning out the ordinary. Even with a great idea, if you can’t find a way to market it, you may have a hard time finding success. A field of cows is no big deal, but make one of the cows purple and you suddenly have something that people want to look at.

“What we are living in,” says Godin “is a century of idea diffusion. People that can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win.” Godin explains how the idea of sliced bread was around for 15 years before a brand named Wonder marketed it in a unique way and figured out how to get the idea to spread.

Godin goes on to say, “In a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is to just ignore stuff.” Sagmeister’s goal of using unique design to make his clients stand out and get looked at is aligned with Godin’s recommendation to be different and find unique ways to get your ideas noticed. To do that, find the people or groups that care about what it is you have to say, have conversations with them and make it easy for them to tell their friends.

Godin’s words were spoken well before social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were mainstays on millions of computers, and Sagmeister’s intention to make people look was not formulated for an online audience. But their ideas are relevant to social media marketing today, and finding your audience using online tools can make a huge difference in whether your business will get noticed, or get lost with the rest. “The riskiest thing you can do now is be safe,” concludes Godin.

Marketing to people in a niche who care, rather than a blanket marketing campaign to the average public that is good at ignoring the ordinary, is a smart strategy. Taking the time to search message boards, group postings, and blog articles to see where your audience is can help you pinpoint the people who will listen to what you have to say about your product or service.  The social media tools that are available today make online communication and interaction with your target audience an easy possibility.

Don’t be a part of the ordinary crowd that gets tuned out. Be original and unique in your online relationships, find your niche, and get creative at spreading your brilliant ideas. I’d love to hear your comments or ways you’ve used social media to stand out!

There is a woman in Pagosa Springs who has been trying to rent her house for over 6 months. She travels so often that she no longer needs a home base, which led to the decision to put her things in storage and make some income by renting it out.

For the last 6 months, she has renewed her Craig’s List ad every 30 days as it expires. This past weekend, she decided to post news of her rental to her 398 Facebook fans. Along with a photo of her house, the post read, “for rent , trade or sale my home in Pagosa Springs, it’s 3 bedroom and one and a half baths on a large treed lot at the end of a culdasac . there is also an oversized two garage with an apartment , office or artist retreat w a full bath and kitchenette .”

After spending 5 minutes posting on Facebook, she received more interest than she had after months of posting on Craig’s List. In addition, some of the people in her Facebook network are re-distributing the information to people in their own network, extending her reach even farther.

When I teach my social media educational workshop, I remind my audience that social media tools are not for selling, but rather for interaction and communication. Having a home to rent is part of that Pagosa Springs woman’s life, and as such, is relevant information to share with her online audience. If she was a realtor, on the other hand, then her sales pitches would belong on a business fan page and not on her personal page.

Social media tools allow you to communicate with a broad audience in a way that could not have been imagined just ten years ago. Just 5 minutes on Facebook and within hours, 5 good leads on a rental. Are you using your online network effectively?

As always, I would love to hear your comments!

With online social media tools changing the way companies are doing business, it was only a matter of time before someone created a universal tool that embraces all social networks, and geared it for two large consumer segments: hotels and restaurants. Flip.to may be the tool to fill accomplish that. According to the company website where you can take a tour of the service and sign up to get onboard early, Flip.to’s goal is to turn your customers into buzzing evangelists, and they appear to have a good plan in place to pull it off.

Created by New York City based Novologies, a business web tool developer, the Flip.to software began by integrating seamlessly into existing websites and networks to provide a way to spread the word about a company’s happenings. Brian Kent of Novologies says in a July 2009  company blog post  that the idea for the tool happened quite by accident.  ”In this economy in particular,” Kent explains, ”everyone is looking for more business and better ways to promote what they’re selling, while working in the confines of pretty meager marketing budgets.”

To address that issue, Novologies created an app that would generate a unique company webpage for each sector that a business wanted to reach. Instead of a sales pitch, the app generated a page that asked pertinent questions to started a dialogue with customers. When the Novologies customers saw the app in action, in addition to becoming engaged they requested the app to use for their own companies. The product that resulted was Flip.to.

Kent stresses the importance of “passed links,” a link that was shared by someone you trust such as a friend or colleague, and the role of these links in gaining trust with a target audience. “The power of spreading the word among your networks, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, an email or a blog post, lies in the link that points back to your company,” Kent says.

Same concept, fine-tuned.

Screen shot of integrating a Flip.to experience into a company web page or smartphone.

For 2010, Flip.to has evolved into a powerful tool for hotels, airlines and restaurants to use a customer’s social network in conjunction with an existing website. During the online process of booking a room, reserving an airline seat, or purchasing a meal, Flip.to uses the confirmation process of that transaction to allow users to share their comments, status, information or reviews with those in their social network.

Businesses can choose to offer incentives to customers who send tweets or status updates about their purchases. Flip.to harnesses the power of each individual transaction by attempting to create a trusted link to everyone in that one customer’s network. The power multiplies when network followers hear about the upcoming trip or dining experience and are invited to add their own reviews or recommendations, such as places to eat near a certain hotel, or area attractions in a new city.

Each Flip.to user who participates has a unique page that is branded by the business site where they first completed their transaction. The Flip.to page is tailored specifically to the individual user and compiles all of the business recommendations in one spot. 

“Passed links” in action

What does this mean for you? Imagine booking a room at a swanky hotel in a city you’ve never visited.  During the confirmation part of the process, you click on a Flip.to link that will announce the reservation to your social network, inviting your friends and followers to help you plan your trip with first-hand information that will help you make good choices.

On your personal Flip.to page, you will see the recommendations for places to eat or visit, travel tips, or whatever else the people in your network feel is helpful for you to know during your stay. You are getting valuable information from your trusted personal network, and the business using Flip.to has just reached your entire social network through one simple transaction.

Restaurants can utilize Flip.to to encourage their patrons to provide instant reviews after the meal with a simple smartphone interface. Diners can earn discounts or invitations to special events by using Flip.to and sharing their experience with their social network, and each individual business can customize their Flip.to page to match their own websites.

Sign up for the Flip.to beta program

According to a WebWire press release, Novologies has formed partnerships with the Tune Hotel chain in Malaysia, the James Chicago & New York Hotels and the Eureka Casino Resort in Nevada. The company is currently working with other hotels, airlines and restaurants and inviting interested business to sign up for their beta program. The Flip.to website offers more information, a tour, and a sign-up form to be contacted within two business days.

While Flip.to admits on their website that the company is in the beta stage and “still kicking the tires,” the concept of a simple interface to turn one transaction into a chance at reaching an entire social network seems worth pursuing. Novologies is open to suggestions and questions by sending an email to hello@flip.to. 

Based on the number of Tweets and Twitter followers for Novologies, as well as the lack of related articles on the software, the concept is still very new. I can think of several businesses in my hometown of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, who could benefit from this software that reaches exactly the people they are aiming for: friends of their customers. If social media is truly about communication and interaction, then this interactive way to communicate with customers and their entire social network should be big news to a company that may not even know that they needed this tool. 

I’d love to hear if Flip.to is something your business would consider using, or if it seems to be just another social media idea that will get lost in the online buzz. I would also like to find out what costs are involved for a business to use the Flip.to software. Would it be a percantage of each transaction, or a per transaction fee? Please feel free to comment and help me learn more!

I’ve been reading a lot of blog articles about Foursquare lately, and I even setup an account to see how it works.  My little town of Pagosa Springs wasn’t listed anywhere on the site so I created a few local tips that I could think of so I could get my town listed.

When I visited the site 4 days later, there was a new business listed: the local cellular phone retail store. I have many business clients in town, so I added one of them as a venue to see how easy it was to set up. I listed my favorite fly fishing shop and a tip on how great the flies are that the piscatorial proprietor ties.

Adding a venue was a piece of cake and now Pagosa Springs has two listings on Foursquare. It will be interesting to check back in another month to see what new businesses have been added, or if any have been added at all. Foursquare users with a profile photo and the most check-ins at a specific venue can become mayor of that location. But people can’t become the mayor until they have a Foursquare business to become mayor of. Until more business set up shop on Foursquare, or more customers add venues themselves, not a lot can happen.

**UPDATE: A day after I wrote this post, I went to the local Radio Shack store where the manager told me he was the mayor of that location, as well as several other locations in Pagosa Springs. When I use Foursquare on my smart phone, many locations show up, but on my home computer, I have found no way to browse the venues in my area. Is this feature missing, or am I just not finding it? The only way I can find a venue is to know the business name and type it in search, and it has to have been added as a venue to have it appear in search results.

It will be interesting to see if the home computer version of Foursquare will add more features to use before  I leave my house, rather than just offer tips and a list of locations on my smartphone. But as it stand now, it seems that Foursquare is mainly aimed as a tool for smartphone users who use it while they are out and about, doing check-ins and finding tips at each venue that can lead to discounts. I did find out that I can get a free video once a month when I check in at Radio Shack, so as a customer, using it has already paid off.

All hype, or the start of the next big thing?

A recent article by Caroline McCarthy discusses the hype surrounding Foursquare’s location-based social media tool. She reminds all of us about the  letdown that many users of  Second Life (a virtual world with virtual characters but real advertising and real money) encountered when it failed to meet expectations of hype. Her article also raises an issue about the niche that Foursquare has by being mainly aimed at urban residents who own smartphones and want to connect with other people in their area.

But since I just wrote a post about the importance of businesses finding a niche to be successful, this Foursquare phenomenon (or lack thereof) deserves a closer look. In a non-urban area, such as the town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, what can a business do with Foursquare?

Here are some ideas that I would encourage a business to try:

1. First, join Foursquare and add your business as a venue. It’s free!
2. Post a sign near the counter that lets customers know you are using Foursquare.
3. Offer specials to people who show you that they checked in with Foursquare on their phone. The specials could be discounts, free stuff, drawing entries, etc.
4. Advertise your Foursquare discounts in the store or on your print ads: “Free coffee for every 6 Foursquare check ins”
5. Provide a handout with your name on it that explains what Foursquare is and how your customers can get involved and win prizes.
6. For your venue Mayors, offer some kind of special service – like free coffee, buy one get one free specials, etc.
7. Arrange a check-in party or gathering to see how many Foursquare users you can get to check-in at one time. If you meet your goal, everyone involved gets prizes or coupons.

Okay, some of these ideas may be cheesy and have been done in many other ways, but Foursquare is free and if you spend a little time on promotion, your customers will be the ones doing a lot of promotion in return. According to Foursquare’s business site, the company “aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so.” The more people that your business can encourage to use Foursquare, the more your network is communicating and interacting, which is what social media is all about. Get creative and see who decides to try it.

More fun than hopscotch?

Whether the Foursquare idea of making a game out of location-based social media will end up catching on is yet to be determined. In a small rural town, maybe less than half of your customers even own a smart phone. But as with the other social media tools available, it is free except for your time. Try experimenting to see what works. If you own a business where your customers spend time waiting for a service, for an appointment, or for their food to arrive, you can encourage interaction by piquing their interest about Foursquare and having them check-in.

Don’t forget that sometimes getting in on the ground floor can help bring attention to your business. With all the internet buzz surrounding Foursquare, there are many people viewing the site to check it out. They can poke around a location, see your business listed and know that you are involved and promoting specials for Foursquare users. If there are a 20 restaurants in your area to choose from and only 5 are listed on Foursquare and sound exciting, chances are that one of them just gained another customer. 

Foursquare is free, easy to use, and leaves room for creative freedom. Have some fun and try a promotion for your business. I’d love to hear about the response you get.

 Niche businesses can survive longer

Bob Parson’s is the founder of GoDaddy inc., a domain registration company and so much more. He is also an entrepreneur who saw a niche that needed to be filled and made millions off of it. On one of his blog videos last year, Mr. Parsons spoke about finding the niche in your business and pursuing that, because your niche is what makes you stand out from all the other people in your business.

Gary Vaynerchuk, in his book ‘Crush It’, also speaks about how niche businesses are the ones that will succeed amongst the throngs of other startups, especially during economic downturns. “Yes, we’ve seen a lot of people close up shop in the past years,” Gary explains, “but if they had offered a relevant and differentiated product of service, had been adaptable, and most of all had known how to tell their story, they wouldn’t have had to close.”

I’m sure there are those that would disagree, but being in a small town where competition between businesses is somewhat fierce, I have witnessed success from the ones that are unique, different and who have found their niche. They are the ones that are still going strong.

Are you marketing to your niche?

After watching Bob Parsons’ video last year, I also spent some time reading the comments that followed. Many people asked how they could find their niche, and the answer was you have to listen, listen, listen. Listen to what your customers are saying, listen to what your online audience is asking for, and watch and listen to what your competitors are offering so you can find where you can offer something they don’t.

In Pagosa Springs, we are a tourist community with a lot of second homes. This has created a business for several property management companies. If I was one of those managers, I would create a niche by marketing homes that are single-story and great for 70 and over’s that can’t climb stairs. That is just one example of being creative and offering something that you see a need for.

Leslie McLellan uses social media to market her town of Lake Arrowhead, California. Through trial, tracking and experimentation, she has found a niche that works to set her town apart from other resort destinations. Leslie has a great post titled ‘Excuuuse me… What happened to your niche?’ that offers great thoughts on how a business can remember to stay focused on creating a niche to stand apart. The questions she asks are:

1. Are you meeting the needs of your niche? What can you provide to your niche that they can not get somewhere else?

2. Do you understand the main issues that affect your niche? If you don’t understand them, you’re not going to connect.

3. Do you know how to communicate with your niche? What time of day works for them, email, Twitter, Facebook – what is best for them?

Fans and followers are not the focus

In the same post, Leslie also mentions the need to “alienate those who are not in your niche.” While this may sound harsh, I also teach in my social media workshop that your goal in using social media is not to reach anyone and everyone. You want to reach, interact and communicate with an audience that is a part of the community you are building. Trying to attract fans and followers and forgetting to focus on your niche is not a good marketing strategy.

While your competitors are doing everything they can to show how their Facebook fans have grown and how many Twitter followers they have, you will be slowly but surely building your online community by appealing to your niche. This strategy may take longer, but will reap lasting relationships that will weather economic downturns and social media fads.

I would love to hear how your business has found a niche and is using social media to reach out to your community. Please feel free to share your comments.

Many of my clients (much like me at first) see Twitter as a silly way to tell people that you are headed for a cup of coffee or going on a date with so-and-so.

But the internet is full of case studies and resources that explain how Twitter can be successfully used to create a mode of communication for your business in a way that your blog or Facebook can’t offer.

Based on good advice from other Twitter  users, I started by creating an account and then researched others in my field who had many Twitter followers. I listened to what they were saying and how they were saying it.

When I decided that maybe Twitter was a good idea after all, it was a matter of learning how to tweet. This article by Michael Stelzner has a lot of information on how to use Twitter to help your business grow. Stelzner’s article has some great case studies on how power users are creating a dialogue using tweets.

Twitter is free, and creating a 140 character tweet that is helpful or thoughtful is how you use the resource to encourage interaction and be a part of the online community. If you are a business owner, you have something to say. You don’t have to sell on Twitter, you just have to be yourself in front of a much larger audience.

Social Media goals

There are a lot of social media resources, blogs and ideas floating around, and a common theme is that social media tools can be used to extend your reach beyond your website and out to people who will want to find you.

Social Media tools are exactly that – tools to create a social media presence. If you look at it that way, you can understand the idea of your website being the central command, and all of your social media resources branching off to extend the reach of your content.

As I was pondering this idea on May Day, 2010, I thought that the concept of social media reach needed an acronym. So…

REACH:

• Read
• Engage
• Attract
• Communicate
• Harness

(I was pretty proud of myself!)

By remembering to REACH, you can remember the social media strategies that will help you create an online presence.

• Read other content relevant to your field and join those networks
• Engage your network by offering comments and thoughtful questions
• Attract an audience by creating your own unique content
• Communicate with others who leave comments and link to you
• Harness the power of networking by having others re-broadcast your content for you!

Let’s see how far this post can REACH! I’d love to hear your comments.