A Small Business Blog on the Hottest Technologies and How to Use Them

Five Reasons Corporations Are Failing at Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:22:00 +0000

I have just read a blog from a young woman, Amy Mengel, whose musings on social networking are very much akin with mine. I share with you extracts from her most recent article bearing the above title.

Social media isn’t complicated. When you boil it down it’s about listening to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you.

So why is it so difficult for so many companies to successfully integrate social media?

1. They can’t talk about anything broader than their own products

Citrix Online created the Workshifting community to address the rise of telecommuting and remote work. Sure, it ties in with Citrix’s GoToMeeting/Webinar/PC product line, but the blog isn’t a commercial for its products. The same holds true for Kodak’s photography blog. It’s about photography and creativity in general, not about Kodak cameras. Humana developed Freewheelin bicycle sharing communities with plenty of online and “real life” components to the program. Bicycles don’t have much to do with health insurance specifically, but they are about being healthy. If a company is only talking online about its specific products and not looking for ways to connect to the bigger picture, it’s pretty difficult for people to be engaged.

2. They listen to customers but don’t take any action

If you’re going to listen to your customers, you’d better be ready to do something about what you hear. If a company creates an online presence that’s open and allows customer feedback, it creates the expectation that the company is going to do something with that feedback. Worse than not being heard is being heard and then ignored. Southwest Airlines shared how a simple blog post stating the airline was considering assigned seating amassed tons of customer comments showing a lack of support for the idea. This feedback changed the direction of their internal debate and led to a new boarding procedure that maintained the open seating arrangement.

3. They aren’t calibrated internally with the technology

Many corporate Web sites are little more than online brochures. Customers expect interaction. Content creation is key to social media success, and every company should have a Web site with a content management system that allows for quick, easy content creation without the IT department needing to recode a Web site. Anyone in the organization should be able to publish via a CMS. And companies can’t expect to have a strong social media presence when social sites are blocked internally to employees.

4. They’re not framing risk accurately

A corporate blog has never been fatal to an organization. Often a company’s entry into social media is a clumsy, shotgun blast and that there’s an equal chance of looking foolish by having a ham-fisted marketing department launch a social media presence as there is if a rogue employee “goes off” on Twitter. The risk of social media is not abated by not participating. And really, while there have certainly been some hiccups and miscues along the way, social media has yet to be the undoing of any company.

5. Their internal culture isn’t aligned for social media success

The customer should be at the core of the brand. When policies, procedures, products and processes become more important than the customer, there’s no way social media efforts can be effective. When your employees are more concerned with what’s in or out of their job description than doing the right thing to help the customer, that’s not a culture that’s likely to build trust and advocacy for your brand. Zappos is cited time and again as a case study, but largely because it has a culture that makes social media work. All of its employees are focused on customer service at the core. The same holds true for Southwest Airlines.

These are great examples of simple, effective social media strategies that have humanized organizations and allowed them to build better relationships with customers. But time and again companies are either rejecting social media or participating in a way that defeats the purpose.

I encourage you to read more from Amy Mengel by visiting her blog or following her on Twitter.

Social Marketing: Tying Social Networking to Personal and Business Goals

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:54:00 +0000

Public social networks are by their nature very poor marketing venues in the traditional sense. Click through rates on advertisements on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are very low. So many small businesses see public social networks as too difficult and too time consuming to master. They are partially right in their conclusions.

Figuring out the "business angles" in social networking takes considerable time and practice. That's because public social networks are primarily "social." The business that works best on them is "social." The younger audiences that use them find traditional advertising hype to be intrusive and inappropriate. To them it's not cool to be on a social site and be thinking business.

Social marketing is not a new concept. According to Phil Kotler, who along with Gerald Zaltman, coined the expression in the 1970s, social marketing is defined as marketing that seeks to influence social behaviour, not for the benefit of the marketer, but to benefit a target audience or society in general. Since social networks are virtual societies it would seem that social marketing would be a good strategic approach for small business and individuals to engage these online communities.

There is nothing like a good cause or social purpose to find a community of common ground. How to do this effectively is a skill set worth acquiring. Nedra Weinreich, of Weinreich Communications, offers courses including webinars on the subject of social marketing. Although Nedra's focus is on using social marketing to advance such health and social causes the principles and strategies she describes in her book, Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide and blog articles are applicable to any organization and any cause.

Here are some ideas to consider when addressing the social marketing potential of social networks:

1. If you currently have a social cause that you are drawn to and that you want to share with others in your business community, then make it part of your web presence and feature it on your business website. For example, I have a link to Kiva on my blog site and you will find it on my Facebook page as well. I don't do in-your-face promotion of Kiva on either site but I can come up with strategies that can make Kiva a shared conversation with prospective clients and existing customers.

2. Create an event around your cause. That event can be an activity that invites prospects and customers to an actual physical location with the purpose of raising awareness, and money, in support of the cause. If your cause is "cancer awareness," or another high-profile medical issue, plan to include other interested parties that can give your efforts further legitimacy. For example, you can consider affiliating your event with a larger campaign.

3. Build a cause site on your social network and link it to your website and your social network profile account. Make it graphic. If you are committed to raising money in your social cause put a graph on your site to show how well you are doing.

Large organizations have been doing this sort of community service for years. Having just called on Accenture, the management consulting firm in the last week, while waiting for my meeting, I picked up a glossy, four-colour 50 plus page publication focused on the company's social marketing.

And don't forget Guy Laliberte's recent International Space Station trip where he created a show from space involving actors and performers from all over the planet to promote his cause, clean water for all. Although that gambit cost him $35 million, one should recognize the essential strategy that Mr. Laliberte deployed, social marketing with a very specific social goal.

On a more modest level and as a method for getting exposure for you and your business, social marketing is the right strategy to engage the social networking community.

What is Appropriate Social Network Behaviour

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:00:00 +0000

In this latest article posted on Kiwi Commons I talk about the lure of posting information about you on social networking sites. What is appropriate? What is inappropriate?

If the axiom, "social media is all about communication with low expectation," then it is important for you to understand the audience that connects to you and your social networking profiles. Although your connections are referred to as "friends" on places like Facebook and MySpace, these are not friends in the conventional sense. In fact, if you invited them to a night out on the town, most would never show up even if they accepted your invitation. So that is one meaning of low expectation....l0w results.

But low expectation can mean something entirely different. It could reflect the fact that when you post you have low expectations about readership. Is anyone really looking at what you write? Does anyone look at the pictures you post?

Another meaning of low expectation.....is what you say about yourself evoking low expectation on the part of your readers? When they read your profile are they drawing a negative conclusion? If you are applying for an important job, or trying to make a good impression on someone important in your life, then what you say in about you on your profile may evoke much higher expectation in those who view it.

So please connect to the Kiwi Commons link and let me know your thoughts about appropriate social network behaviour.

Internet Addiction: There are Cures and there are Cures!

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:22:00 +0000

In my latest KiwiCommons article I talk about a treatment program for Internet and gaming addiction. Getting young people to adopt good online habits is an important parenting and teaching responsibility. Like any activity that becomes an obsession, being online can become addictive.

Although this review deals with a program that has the feel of a de-programming experience, in this article I also talk about things that parents can do to inculcate appropriate Internet usage in children.

My Latest Kiwi Commons Article Talks About Cookie Monsters

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:53:00 +0000

Cookies are ubiquitous in the world of the Internet. They connect computers together, making information more accessible. But they can have a dark side as well. See my article in Kiwi Commons.

My Latest CMS Wire Article Compares Public and Private Social Networking

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:31:00 +0000

The social networking world is starting to mature as more and more business organizations see the value proposition that is social networking. In my latest CMSWire posting I position public and private social networks and talk about how they can be used.

Check out my latest article on CMS Wire About Google's New Foray into Operating Systems and What it Means

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:00:00 +0000

We have all become victims of a microcomputer paradigm these days, bloated operating systems that make our computing commute each morning an exercise in patience. For a minute think about a device you use each day whose operating system doesn't make you wait and wait until you can get started. I'm talking about the telephone and dial tone. If computers were as accessible to applications as the telephone is to dial tone, then that would be a major improvement.

With Google announcing its new Chrome Operating System aimed at cloud computing application users, we may be seeing the evolution of a much simpler and faster computer interface. Let's hope so.

In any event, check out my article on CMSWire and tell me what you think.

Making the Social Media Investment: the Future of Marketing and Advertising - Check out my latest article on CMSWire

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:08:00 +0000

I'm now writing for CMSWire on social media and other interesting subjects. If you want to understand how social media is perceived by different age groups and how your marketing and advertising has to adjust to this phenomenon of the Internet then read my latest article posted on CMSWire.

Why Each Generation from Young to Old Uses Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:23:00 +0000

Whether old or young, social networks are predominantly used for socializing. In this timely article from EMarketer, the author of the study not only breaks down which generations use popular sites but also how they use these sites.

One thing for sure, business is not paramount on social network users' minds.

To learn more click on the link, Internet, Business & Ecommerce Statistics: Email Marketing & Online Market Research.

Is Twitter Safe? - Go to Kiwi Commons to Read My Latest Posting

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:58:00 +0000

The latest Twitter hack teaches us lessons about password security. Please go to Kiwi Commons to learn more.

Guest Submission: Social Networking's Place in Lead Generation

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:02:00 +0000

Jeremy Miller is a Partner with LEAPJob, a sales and marketing recruiting firm here in Toronto. His recent post is one I want to share with my readers.

Twitter is all the rage, but can you actually use it to drive sales? What about Facebook, LinkedIn or blogging? Social networking seems like the right place to build a lead generation program right now. These sites offer up huge audiences of engaged users, and make it relatively easy to setup targeted groups and encourage participation. It seems like a no brainer, but it's not. Many business-to-business lead gen campaigns based on social networking are failing.

Here's the secret, age matters. Your audience just might not be ready to be marketed to via social networking. They could simply be too old.

Take a moment and profile your customers. On a piece of paper identify the key decision makers you target in the sales cycle. This could be CEO, President, CFO or VP of HR. Beside each of the titles, write down their average age of the people in these positions. Next, profile the users of your products and services by writing down their titles and average age.

Depending on what you sell, I suspect you will see a gap. For example in the software industry the decision makers, the senior people inside organizations, tend to be 35 to 50. While the users, which could be administrative staff or mid-level managers, are typically 22 to 35. These groups are at least a generation apart, which has a direct impact on the types of technology they use in their day-to-day lives.

The Age Gap: Digital Immigrants versus Digital Natives

The plus 35 crowd, people born before 1974, are Digital Immigrants. They didn't grow up interacting with friends and family through the internet. Rather, they connected on the phone, in person or maybe by letter. If they wanted to plan a Friday night out, everyone called each other to coordinate plans.

As technology exploded in the late 90's and 2000's, the Digital Immigrants embraced the new tools. Email replaced the fax. Blackberries gave access to email and the internet anywhere, anytime. Google made it easy to find information in a matter of seconds. With each breakthrough, Digital Immigrants figured out how they could use the technology to make their lives more efficient.

The under 35 crowd, Digital Natives, have approached technology from a totally different perspective. Digital Immigrants may look at Facebook, Google and email like tools, but not Digital Natives. I asked my associate Fawzia, who is 26 and definitely a Digital Native, how she would describe her use of social media. She said, "It's a necessity. It's what you do. You might use the phone, but we text and social network. That's how we talk to each other. It's like breathing!" The Digital Natives can't imagine communicating without these tools. They are completely ingrained into their social connections, their community and how they learn.

When to use social networking for lead generation

The differing approach to technology between the Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives has a direct impact on your lead generation strategy. It is crucial to profile the demographics of your users and decision makers so that you know which media platforms to use in marketing.

When targeting the Digital Immigrants, social media is not the best approach for lead generation. Sure you may get a few leads from social networking, but not nearly as much as you could through traditional media. Digital Immigrants use technology as a tool to support their buying decisions. As a result, they use Google to find vendors, websites to evaluate companies and human interaction to make buying decisions. Social networking is not used in the buying decision, because it is not a tool for evaluating products or services.

As you understand the habits of the Digital Immigrants, you can tune your marketing programs to fit their needs. Some of the obvious programs are search engine optimization, because they use Google to discover their options. Public relations are effective, because they use newspapers and magazines as a primary source of information. Public events are also powerful, because Digital Immigrants truly value being able to see the white's of their vendor's eyes.

If your audience is Digital Natives, you have a lot more marketing options. In a business-to-business environment there are not many Digital Natives in the decision making roles, they tend to be users. Users are still important to the overall marketing strategy, because having access to them provides an influential group for up-selling and cross-selling.

For example Salesforce.com created IdeaExchange to engage the Digital Natives, and capture their input for product innovation. The IdeaExchange is an interactive, social networking site where users can post ideas and comments to help Salesforce.com get better. The platform builds on the habits of the Digital Natives, and offers incredible market intelligence for Salesforce.com to plan future versions and products.

Beyond product development, building an engaged user community offers tangible benefits for sales. The ongoing interactions the users have in the online community help to build a relationship with the company, and reinforce its brand. More importantly, the interactions keep the users in the know. They have a better understanding of the company, its products and its upcoming products and innovations. This knowledge helps them to advocate on behalf of the product inside the company, and even drive additional purchases. Essentially, the users start the sales process from the inside out.

Driving Leads Today

By profiling your customers, and understanding their technology habits, you can tune your marketing programs. Social media is definitely the way of the future, but it still may be too early for your customers. If you find your decision makers and users are Digital Immigrants, then focus your marketing on traditional media. Social networking may generate some traffic, but not as much as you could through public relations, search engine optimization and email marketing.

Social media is definitely the way of the future. The Digital Natives may not be sitting in the key decision making roles yet, but they will be in the next five years. As they move up the ladder they will pull their technology habits with them, and the use of social media in business decisions will become far more prevalent.

Check out the articles I am writing at Kiwi Commons

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:23:00 +0000

The latest one looks at what is happening with browsers. We now have many more choices.

Just When You Have Finally Mastered Google Search, Along Comes New Search Tools to Wow You or Not: Part 2 of 2

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:43:00 +0000

If you are a Googler like I am, and that probably means almost all of you, then you have to try Microsoft's latest attempt to grab market share away from the preeminent search tool on the web. Microsoft Bing was launched just a few weeks ago and I have been playing with of late as have so many others.

I am a huge fan of so many of the applications that Google has created. So in approaching Bing I almost wanted to experience something negative, another chance to put Microsoft down. But I can't. From the moment you start using Bing you notice how clean the interface is (those mountains sure look appealing) and how many interesting features it provides.

Like Google, Bing lets you enter a word or phrase, group words together in quotes and use '+' signs and other mathematical symbols to construct your search query.

The search results pages are clean, uncluttered and look familiar to Google users but at the same time include some pretty neat features. One is the highlight feature. Drag a mouse over a search result and a box appears to the right with the first few sentences and information from the referenced page.

In addition, your accumulated search history appears on the left-hand side of the page. You can click on any item in the list to see the results of these previous searches.

If you click to see all of your searches to date Bing opens a search history screen that gives you a time and date stamp view of the search queries you have made and the sites you visited during each search. This is pretty cool stuff.

The image search appears similar to Google with two notable exceptions. The anecdotal clutter that accompanies each image is not on display. Instead use your mouse to scroll over an image and the image enlarges along with more information about the image and a link to similar images.

The image search results are all contained on one scrollable page as opposed to Google image results which require you to go from page to page.

Check your video search results without having to preview the entire video. Playback video image segments in Bing just by placing your mouse pointer on the image. No extra clicks required. Another neat video feature allows you to display video results in standard or wide screen formats, sort search results by video length to eliminate undesired results, and even search by source and image resolution.

The map search results are clean and easy to understand because they emulate what Google has already perfected in its search engine.

Bing includes settings for safe search but lacks the sophistication of Google's advanced search capabilities. All in all, Bing is a very satisfying search engine. Only time will tell whether it has the legs to take on Google and make a dent in its search engine dominance.

Check out my postings on Kiwi Commons

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:50:00 +0000

If reading my thoughts on this site aren't enough, you can also check out other articles I write. The latest can be found on Kiwi Commons.

In this article I write about the importance that President Obama places in the Internet as a communication medium and his appointment of a cyber czar to oversee policy related to securing and enhancing the web.

Look for more postings on Kiwi Commons in coming weeks.

Social Media Marketing Playbook is Worth a Read if You Want to Facebook and Twitter with the Best

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:46:00 +0000

In testing the theory that participating in public social networks can assist you in business I am amazed to find pearls that get dropped on my plate. I am a member of Xing, a social network that on a scale of 1-10, where Facebook is a 10, Xing is a 0.5. But Xing attracts a business audience from all over the world whereas Facebook attracts everybody. One of the groups I belong to on Xing focuses on entrepreneurship. This contribution was sent to me by Dean Hua, a member of that group.

The Social Marketing Playbook is 56 pages long and packed with interesting ideas on how to use social media to help you differentiate your brand and sell to customers. I couldn't agree more with the author's opening comments, "Social marketing eliminates the middlemen, providing brands with the unique opportunity to have a direct relationship with their customers."

Enough said. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Just When You Have Finally Mastered Google Search, Along Comes New Search Tools to Wow You or Not: Part 1 of 2

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:55:00 +0000

Google Search has changed the way most of us do research. We put in a word or phrase and instantaneously receive a response that can contain 100s to millions of references with those words. What a challenge this has proven to be for the traditional search technologies of the past, the library, encyclopedias, and newspaper and newswire services. Even the online search subscription services from West Publishing and Lexis-Nexis have felt the impact of Google's ubiquitous research application. Other search engines like Yahoo and Ask Jeeves have found themselves playing second fiddle to Google.

As powerful a tool as Google Search is, it is also a source of great confusion and an eater of time. Unless you use the Advanced Search capability, simple search results may require you to wade through hundreds of documents of little value to your query. There is also no way to know whether the quality of the information you find represents facts or fancy. Hence the evolution of new search utilities is inevitable.

This article is part one of a two part discussion on the most recent newcomers to the Internet search scene. In this article we take a quick look at Wolfram|Alpha. In part two we will explore Microsoft Bing.

Stephen Wolfram is the mind behind Wolfram|Alpha. A scientist and mathematician, Wolfram has made the long-term goal of this venture to make knowledge accessible to anyone using state-of-the-art and science, computing models, methods and algorithms. With Wolfram|Alpha you enter a question in natural language and receive an answer.

You can try it out to see the results. I give you some examples of queries I have made:

I asked Wolfram|Alpha to "compare Canada and Australia population." It came back with results in report format that compared total population, history, value comparisons and demographics.

You can ask Wolfram|Alpha to give you information about a historical event. I asked "fall of Constantinople," (If you want to know why I picked that subject, I studied Medieval History, Islamic and Byzantine Studies in university). Here was the result:

It was nice to see that it knew what I knew and even gave me other phrases or words to look up to obtain even more background information.

This is pretty powerful stuff. But what Wolfram|Alpha appears to be very good at is solving mathematical equations and problems. Its algorithms and computing methods lend themselves to that type of query.

Here is another example. I asked Wolfram|Alpha to give answer the following problem "1283 times 56." It came back with the following:

Wolfram|Alpha describes itself as a work in progress. On its site it claims to contain 10+ trillion pieces of data, 50,000+ algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for over 1,000 domains.

As Wolfram|Alpha develops it is attempting to systematically cover the content available from the world's reference libraries. Future plans involve expanding coverage in science, technology, economics and popular culture.

Wolfram|Alpha has attempted to create a way to enter questions in a more natural language than Google Search or other search engines. I found, however, that it was easy to confuse Wolfram|Alpha when stating a query in natural language and often had it come back with an answer that required me to rethink the way I posed the question. This left me a bit frustrated. But the more I play with this tool the more impressed I am by its potential to provide a new means of doing meaningful online research.

There's lots of online help at the Wolfram|Alpha site and I encourage you to see how you can utilize this new research tool in your businness and lives. If anything it should help your children with their math homework.

"In These Tough Economic Times" - Words that are starting to grind on my nerves

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:06:00 +0000

I don't know about you but it seems almost every advertisement has picked up on the tag line in the title of this article. Yes the economy has been hit by the collapse of a financial bubble built on worthless paper. Yes our governments in Canada and the United States have selectively decided to bail out some car manufacturers to save jobs while allowing jobs at dealers to disappear with little thought of a bail out for them. We have seen a contraction in trade, a drop in the value of homes, foreclosure crises for thousands of families, and many other business failures. All of this is a reflection of our capitalist system where risk is rewarded and failure is not.

So having described the "tough economic times" for the last time in this article, I would like to talk about new business models that can push us in a different direction. North America is going through a revolution. Manufacturing used to account for a large number of jobs on this continent. Not so much anymore. I remember a very wise boss of mine, Dave Ungerer, back in the late 1970s who told me that the information economy is North America's future. He was right, just a little prescient. At the time the Internet didn't exist. Computer networks were mainframe and midrange computer systems costing millions of dollars. The home computer was an Apple II, a Sinclair, or a TRS-80. If you had 64 kilobytes of RAM you were state of the art.

Today we look back at these technologies from a Mount Everest of technical advances, atop a worldwide, ubiquitous network we call the web, tying together billions of computers together with collective computing power that would have boggled the minds of those of us in the 1970s. Our way of doing business has been altered dramatically. We rely on email, probably the killer computing application of all time. We Google rather than go to the library. We more and more watch TV online. Wireline phone calls have been replaced by wireless cell technology. We chat. We twitter.

Has our collective business mindset altered with the onset of a worldwide communication network? Have we changed our business behaviours to match the collaborative power of all of this technology? The tools are in place for collective solutions, mining individuality, sharing expertise, and building the new economy. This is the silver lining of these times.

Collective Solutions

By collective don't think communism, collective farms and that ilk. Collective solutions are best represented today by natural collaboration in the form of wikis and other web tools. Collective solutions refers to collective wisdom. Google Search is a collective solution. Wolfram Alpha is the latest new knowledge answering tool to arrive on the web.

Collective wisdom can be captured in a social network designed with that purpose. Public social network sites like LinkedIn, Xing, BizNik and Partnerpedia are designed to foster networking and collaboration. Behind the firewall private social networks such as those created by Enable Consultants, a client of mine, are ideal collective knowledge gathering and sharing tools. For example, Recess, an academic social network encourages students to interact on homework assignments, teachers to meet in virtual lounges to blog, comment and discuss best practices, and mentors to share their knowledge and provide coaching to students.

Mining Individuality

What CEOs and Presidents of corporations don't know about the people they have hired to make their businesses successful is legion. People are more than their job titles. They bring hidden skills to work each day, skills that can be used to improve the business, foster camaraderie among employees, and extend the business into new areas that can lead to revenue growth. But if CEOs cannot mine the skills of their workers then their will be no gold to share.

Some companies are using public social networks to foster better understanding of their staff. Others are building private social networks with employee pages that let them share their interests outside of work including hobbies, photos, music they like and so on. I remember when I got out of school, the first company I worked for had annual meetings in Florida. In the first few years, there was always a talent show night where employees did skits, standup comedy, played instruments, jammed together and shared a bit of who they were beyond their workselves. After a few years the company stopped sponsoring these evenings. What a loss that was.

Deploying private social networks can do much more than those singular talent show nights that I experienced back then. Individual skills and interests can become valuable corporate assets.

Sharing Expertise

In the past few weeks I have been approached by an entrepreneur who has been a consultant for many years, just like me. His skills are complimentary. His skills combined with my skills creates a higher value proposition when I go calling on a prospective client. I am sure these types of meetings are happening everywhere these days. In marketing we always talk about the importance of networking. We network with former business associates over lunch. We go to association talks and meetings a few times a year. We join organizations and clubs.

The web, however, is the ultimate virtual network and sharing expertise is as simple as creating collaborative social networks where consultants can share their knowledge, both free and fee for service, and individuals and businesses seeking answers can find the experts they seek. Such collaborative social networks represent a new paradigm, a guerilla marketing challenge for traditional management consulting firms, and the coming wave.

I state this with absolute certainty because a lot of very bright people in the last few months have watched their gold-watch careers vanish as businesses have layed off them by the thousands. Many of these individuals are turning to self employment because they are finding job prospects to be slim. These individuals have thousands of years of collective expertise to share. The web medium is there for them to seize the opportunity and create a new expertise sharing model that generates revenue individually and collectively.

Twittering and Change: Harnessing New Online Technologies

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:46:00 +0000

I was having an interesting discussion around the Passover Seder table a few weeks ago. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are both retired teachers. They were espousing their views on the future of newspapers, Twitter, FaceBook, short messaging, and chat and trying to get their heads around today's youth. My daughter who is 24 was at the table. She is an inveterate user of the Internet, FaceBook, short messaging and chat through Windows Messenger. But to her Twitter was something she didn't get.

It is interesting how the fast pace of Internet evolution with its many communication widgets and gadgets is altering how people seek, share and express information. The future of the traditional print newspaper is being challenged. I still read two every day but I also read newspapers online and subscribe to The Huffington Post. I'm on Twitter now to see what it is all about. I have embraced social networks in the last two years after being a skeptic about their worth.

We are in a whirlwind of constant change today and keeping up with that change is not easy but understanding how young people embrace change and make it part of their lives is an important thing to realize. Youth has embraced social networking, chat, instant messaging, wikis, blogs, online information, search engines. This is how they learn and communicate. Harnessing the tools they use is a key element in any strategy to engage them. That's why I believe in the use of social networking and other Internet widgets and gadgets to reach the virtual online audience.

If you do not embrace these new applications and understand them then all you can do is express mystification when suddenly they become disruptive. I'm a great advocate of turning over rocks to see what's under them. So use your curiosity when online because the Internet world is evolving rapidly.

Today if you are not "facebooking" or "googling" or "twittering" then you are missing potential marketing opportunities.

Knowledge Sharing: How Social Networking is Changing the Face of Business

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:06:00 +0000

Here's an interesting quote. Author Paul Gillin states in an article that appeared in the April 6, 2009 edition of eWeek,

"Formerly, people were forced to give up their knowledge, but with social networks, people willingly give up their knowledge. the great business opportunity is behind the firewall because simple tools can be used to replace more complicated collaboration tools."

Wow! The implications in these two sentences are enormous. It represents a paradigm shift for business people. Instead of an individual employee keeping information and knowledge close to the vest, for purposes of leaping over fellow employees in the race to the top, that employee is now rewarded for spreading the knowledge wealth.

What's causing the shift? Social networking has moved from being a public forum to a private business forum, a behind the firewall phenomenon that encourages new business behaviours among employees, between employees and customers, and between employees and suppliers. Behind the firewall social networking is seen as an effective way of improving overall performance. Gartner sees the growth of this market reaching over $1 billion by 2012. Forrester predicts $1.5 billion in the same time period compared to $384 million in 2008. I think they are underestimating the market growth because Microsoft and IBM, with their SharePoint and QuickR platforms are not only building internal social networks to link their employees, they are also selling these solutions to customers around the world. And when these two giants of the industry are involved it is a pretty good indicator of where the market is going.

They are not the only ones playing in this new space. Google has created Open Social, a set of programming standards that lets any developer create applications to run on a wide range of social networking platforms.

Sabre (the travel reservation system that came out of American Airlines) has developed Cubeless, a private business network that connects its telecommuting employees around the world. Pose a question on this site and a relevance engine makes a decision on who should see it within the social network. The right answer usually comes back within an hour. That's knowledge sharing at its best.

Enable Consultants, a small Ontario company, has created 3 flavors of private social networks, a school centred application, called Recess, a not-for-profit application called Communitirooms, and a private business network called Workingrooms. Recess has been deployed in primary and middle schools as a safe social networking site for young people to use as an extension of their "bricks & mortar" classrooms.

Some vendors like Worklight are creating applications that overlay public social networks such as Facebook. WorkBook is the application and it allows an employee to pull other Facebook members behind the firewall for collaboration. Authentication is handled by the existing business security setup.

Think about the impact on sales teams as knowledge sharing and problem solving become paradigms for measuring performance success. Will companies start providing bonuses and compensation to reflect this new behaviour? I remember when I was working for a large software developer some years ago that as part of a widely distributed sales team focused on a telecommunications client, I decided to publish a newsletter. That monthly newsletter shared knowledge internally within my company and also went out to thousands of employees of my client. The knowledge sharing led to sales group collaboration, joint strategies in penetrating the account, and finally to the biggest one time sale in the history of the company. That was before behind the firewall social networking.

Imagine what we can do today. Imagine what we will be able to do tomorrow. In 2009, the year of "Yes we can," expect social networks to be instruments of change in the way business operates.

The Utility of Private Social Networks – Building Better Organizations and Saving Money Too

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:32:00 +0000

At a company I worked with last year I was asked to look at the documenting of all of its processes. The exercise was about creating collective awareness of best practices throughout the organization. Through documentation, we would discover redundancies, modify processes and create new efficiencies.

Everyone was invited to contribute their part of the process in a collective blogging exercise. What quickly became apparent was there was “tech speak” that often caused one part of the company not to understand what the other part was talking about. I was referee while at the same time I had to cut through the jargon and create something that everyone could understand.

As bloggers made their contributions and jargon got sorted out it became apparent that a common knowledge repository was needed and an internal Wiki that had lain dormant for some time was revived and populated. Employees were encouraged to contribute to the company Wiki. The beginnings of a enterprise social network were underway.

Blogs, wikis, chat and document sharing are just a few of the tools available within the category of web software applications that we call social networking today. In an article written by Andrew Conry-Murray, entitled “Can Enterprise Social Networking Pay Off?,” he describes a number of high technology company projects where enterprise social networking is in play.

Companies like Dell have yet to try to measure the dollars and cents impact of their investments in enterprise social networking. Says Bob Pearson, a Dell VP, “It’s not like you’re creating revenue.” But Pearson is convinced that social networking will alter the way Dell works.

Another article penned by Chris Murphy describes quotes John Parkinson, CTO of TransUnion, a credit rating company, who estimates that the company has saved $2.5 million in the first five months while spending $50,000 on a social networking platform called Socialtext.
Parkinson derived the dollar savings by counting things that the company deferred from buying. He observed that brainstorming ideas across departments and groups had significantly reduced demand for new technology and outside consulting services. The need for new software tools, processing capacity and hardware dropped dramatically.

Parkinson made the decision to introduce an enterprise social network because of internal demand. TransUnion employees were requesting a Facebook site for the company. His surveys showed that more than 2/3s of TransUnion’s 2,700 employees were already on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Parkinson was concerned that sensitive data such as highly confidential credit reports might end up on these sites where it could easily be compromised. An inside-the-firewall solution seemed like the best way to go. He launched Socialtext, a platform with personal profiles, a wiki, instant messaging, a forum for posting questions and answers with ratings and polling by employees on which answers were the best.

As employees started using the network, Parkinson studied usage and soon discovered who among the employees were best at problem solving. The result - the company is experimenting by creating new roles for forum experts. “It was never very clear to us, looking in, who the authoritative sources were, who was good at solving problems,” Parkinson states. Now it is. The benefits are incalculable and Parkinson forecasts that the investment in enterprise social networking will yield between $5 and $8 million in savings in 2009.
TransUnion has just started down the path of enterprise social networking and they are realizing a significant ROI. Other companies like Dell are also just getting started. More and more businesses, not-for-profit organizations, educators and charities are realizing that private social networking brings the potential of so many benefits. Here are just a few.

1. Private social networks give organizations a ROI in all their people. Every organization has people that do not talk in meetings. They may feel intimidated or defer to more forceful personalities within the company. These are people who never put up their hand in school. But these people can be hidden gems, and although they lack the “chutzpa” to talk aloud, they have ideas and expertise. In a private social network that encourages and rewards online contributions these people can feel liberated and make contributions. Once out they can begin to be appreciated on a whole new level as they contribute their “two cents,” helping the organization to achieve its goals.

2. Many large organizations develop silos, departments that are self contained. Organizations that suffer from silos lose so much. Connections across the organziation don't happen. With private social networks organizations can break down silos. They can let interaction, knowledge sharing, and collective problem solving become the normal communication pattern throughout the organization.

3. Sales is such a competitive occupation. Traditionally compensation plans reward individual sales achievement. Cross fertilization of successful strategies through the deployment of CRM tools runs counter to this “all-for-one” sales reality. A private social network that encourages mentorship and rewards such behaviour can create winning sales teams where sales strategies are shared, and top salespeople are compensated for helping the “newbies.” This represents a significant cultural shift for the normal sales organization. It means new compensation plans that reward both individual sales achievement and collective knowledge sharing contributions to develop overall team success.

4. It is clear that with the advent of Web 2.0 applications, the relationship between customers and suppliers is changing. One can describe the new model as being “customer web-centered.” It has always been true that it is easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to recruit a new one. Hence the relationship with existing customers is something that private social networking can address. Through a private social network, customers can be invited into online communities. These communities may include other customers with similar challenges. Communities can become great listening posts for organizations to learn about common customer problems. They can be great places to do collective sales pitches.

5. Private social networks begin with individuals creating profiles. Profiles are great ways to discover hidden talents. We tend to pigeonhole people by job title but most of us are much more than our jobs. For example I write music and do orchestration when I am not working with clients. People in the accounting department or in shipping may also enjoy music or play instruments. This type of discovery can pay huge dividends in improving morale within an organization. It can even impact the bottom line when you find out that someone is experimenting with open source software application development at home and has come up with a new widget or gadget that can be shared with others in the organization with similar interests, leading to who knows what.

Collaboration, discovery, knowledge sharing, collective success, communication, fun and individual recognition are what social networking is all about. Whether for profit or not, private social networks can give an organization a distinct competitive advantage in both bad and good economic times.

A pilot project is an inexpensive way to test the waters. As John Parkinson noted in his implementation at TransUnion, $50,000 spent on a social networking platform, yielded a $2.5 million saving in less than 5 months and an estimated $5 to $8 million in total savings just in the first year. That’s a lot of savings for such a small investment.

Email Tools that Make You Want to Pull Out Your Hair – Seen My Picture?

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Recently one of my clients faced a challenge with his email application. He saves everything in Microsoft Outlook folders. This is a potential source of problems and a very common practice. Do you do this as well?

My client further compounded this practice by using two different versions of Outlook at his two work locations. At one he was using Outlook 2002 and at the other Outlook 2003.

In Microsoft Outlook 2002 and earlier versions the file folder size limit is 2 Gigabytes. These files use a format called PST. When you reach the 2 Gigabyte limit Outlook stops allowing you to send and receive email. If you use the Outlook archive feature to offload older email files and attachments, 2002 limits the size of each archive folder to 2 Gigabytes. What many users of Outlook 2002 and earlier versions going back to Outlook 97 do not know is that they can create multiple archive folders, each under 2 Gigabytes.

That solves the problem but doesn’t address the common practice of using Outlook as a primary filing system on your computer. This is not a practice I recommend. There are better ways to structure and secure your file folders and the data inside them.

When my client first encountered the 2 Gigabyte folder size limit he was able to create multiple archives. He then did a backup and took the archived materials with him to his other office location where his Outlook 2003 system resided. The geography that separates these two offices requires a 3-hour plane ride and my client did not realize he was using two different versions of Outlook.

Outlook 2003 uses PST file formats that support a standard that can represent most printed language alphabets. This standard is called Unicode. There is no theoretical limit to the size of a file folder in Outlook 2003 although the practical limit is 20 Gigabytes, 10 times the size of Outlook 2002 and earlier versions. Outlook 2003 had no problem reading the archived files from Outlook 2002. Everything worked as required. Then my client did his back up and got on a plane to fly back to his other office. When he tried to open his Outlook archives using 2002, his computer would not display the file folders.

Talk about a painful lesson. There is no workaround for this problem. What my client had to do was buy Outlook 2003 for his other office and install it. Only then would he be able to view his archival record.

I like to experiment with email systems. I use Outlook 2002. I use Gmail online. My service provider offers an online Outlook utility. I use the mail system in Windows Live Messenger. I route all my email through Gmail to take advantage of its superb spam filtering capability.

I had Office 2007 with Outlook 2007 running on my computer last year but I had to remove it from my laptop running Windows XP Service Pack 2 because it made my system grind. So I went back to my Office XP/2002 running Outlook 2002.
Mozilla Thunderbird Has A Lot of Similarities to Outlook Interface

But I have also looked at other desktop email applications. One of these is Thunderbird, the open source Mozilla product. Thunderbird is easy to download and during the installation it can extract archives and current email records from Outlook. I was able to make it my default email receiver without doing any account setup although later I went back in to create a signature for my emails. This doesn’t work as well as it does in Outlook but it was adequate.

Like all of the Mozilla products the best thing about Thunderbird is it’s free. You get functionality that is similar enough to Outlook with the ability to create and view email threads similar to Gmail.

Viewing Mail and Sending Replies Can Be Counter Intuitive When Using Gmail

The interface is far less busy than Gmail as well which makes it more intuitive to new users. So take a look at how you manage your email and recognize that email products are not meant to be robust file folder management systems for all of your documents. If you are challenged by developing a logical filing system then install Google Desktop on your system and use its search capability when you need to find information on your system.

SEO: How Your Small Business Can Attract Potential Customers On The Web

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:21:00 +0000

There has been a lot written about search engine optimization (SEO), that process of improving your website’s visibility when someone enters a search engine query on Google or Yahoo or MSN. SEO ensures that your website pages produce higher search result listings, getting you onto the first page ideally, if not within the first few pages. To optimize your website for queries it is important to know how search engines work and how people use them.

Crawling the Web

Have you ever used Google Alerts? This free application from Google allows you to create a web crawler based on you entering a phrase or descriptor on a subject of interest to you. Based on the search frequency you choose your Google Alert goes out and finds suitable information and reports back to you in your email.

The crawlers that web search engines use are very similar. They are robot collectors that examine websites, finding information and storing it. Crawlers look at HTML pages. They look at PDFs. They look at file names and the names of URL links. They have more trouble with images, video, Flash and Javascripts.

When a crawler looks at a page it extracts word information from the page header. it looks a key word tags. When it is finished it creates a data index which the search engine stores in a database. Every search engine query accesses that information database.

Searching Results

A query in Google or another search engine creates an online report listing relevant pages. Every search engine has different criteria for determining what results should appear. Google, for example, uses over 200 criteria in its search engine. Search engines rank results based on what is considered most relevant first and less relevant last. The positioning of search results is what SEO is designed to assist.

Some Tips for Improving Search Ranking Results There is so much written about SEO on the web and so many companies providing SEO services that for small businesses the whole subject can become very confusing. What to do? What to do? Well here are some very simple rules for you to follow to improve rankings.

1. Create clear and accurately named page titles. This helps web crawlers immensely and makes it easy to display relevant search query results. Make sure that your homepage contains the name of your business in the title. Make sure that you put the name of your products and services on relevant pages in the title position.

2. Use URLs that describe page content. Here are two URL names: http://rosen.len.googlepages.com/services and http://rosen.len.googlepages.com/page112 A crawler can do very little with the latter. There is no relevant word in the URL to indicate the nature of the page content.

3. Create headers that reflect what's on the web page. If you do tradeshows like I do then you may understand this analogy. Unstructured content is like the booth you walk by that has lots of information but you cannot tell what the exhibitor does. Structured content is the booth that features clear, intuitive messages. When you construct a website you have to make sure that each page has a clear message that starts with the header and goes on from there.

4. Use relevant words and phrases when creating page links. Take a look at the following example:

(Click on image to enlarge)

The links specifically describe the content of the pages they link to. If at all possible avoid ambiguous expressions for links such as "click here."

5. Give image files names that describe image content. As we stated before search engines have trouble indexing image content. A description of the image in the file name, however, is easy to index. So instead of calling an image file "image1," give it a descriptor "NewJerseyshorefall08."

Remember that this blog is dedicated to finding you resources that are free or very reasonably priced so that your small business can succeed. For free SEO tools and resources I recommend you visit SEO Tool Land.

As always please feel free to send me your comments and questions.

Innovation is Key to Success in Recessionary Times

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:17:00 +0000

I didn't write what you are about to read. It is an article by Jeremy Miller of LEAPJob, a Toronto, Canada, based sales and marketing recruiting firm. Jeremy has been kind enough to allow me to reprint his thoughts. As I read the article it struck me that the advice provided did not just apply to bad economic times but to almost any time. Companies often divest themselves of marketing and sales when facing tough times. It seems to be the easy way to cut costs but it often further reinforces the downward revenue cycle. There is no doubt that controlling costs is an important part of managing a business successfully, but examining where to manage those costs strategically so that revenue is not impacted is a critical skill.

Please enjoy this article and let me know what you think by your comments.

Turtles & Innovators

It's hard to stay positive in the midst of a recession. Every time you turn on the news you're barraged with negativity: plant closures, layoffs, bankruptcies and more. It's enough to make the most optimistic entrepreneur turtle up and hope for better days. Resist that urge. Turtling up is the last thing you should do. This recession will ravage the Turtles, and reward the Innovators. So rise up, and innovate, innovate, innovate.

Slow Down, Listen and Learn

Purchasing behavior changes dramatically in a recession. Companies become far more cautious with their investments, and many defer any major decision as long as they can. You see it in their behavior. Companies increasingly opt for trimmed-down options or do-it-yourself projects to maximize cash flow. Each spending decision is agonized over, and even small purchases require executive sign-off. The organization becomes hyper aware of their spending habits.

Frugal spending is an opportunity for Innovators, because companies are more receptive to new ideas. They still have needs, but they don't have the same budgets. Can you offer a better way? If so, this is a golden opportunity. While executives are scrutinizing their budgets, you can gain their attention. These buyers are fantastic to work with, because they see the big picture and know where the company can take risks.

Now is the time to be listening. Tune your organization to be hyper alert. Train your sales force to start asking probing questions, and teach them how to look for new opportunities. Sales people are focused on winning business in the here and now, but they can also be leveraged for reconnaissance. Their customer interactions are invaluable.

As you gather information, management needs a way to capture and disseminate that knowledge inside the organization. Are the customer service reps hearing the same things? What is marketing finding? Can marketing tweak the messaging to speak to these customer challenges? What about operations? Can they develop new products or services to solve these challenges, or adapt current solutions to be more effective for the economic times? The whole organization can accomplish a lot with the right information and a can-do attitude.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

Muhammad Ali had an uncanny ability to spot weaknesses, move quickly, and strike. This is exactly the same skills we need for innovation.

The first thing a Turtle cuts is marketing. They view it as discretionary spending, and something that can be cut for short term gain. Bad idea. Rhodes and Stettler write in the February 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, "Companies that injudiciously slash marketing spending often find that they later must spend far more than they saved in order to recover."

As the Turtles cut their marketing, the Innovators should strike. Companies want to work with vendors that are secure and stable. They don't want to invest money in a risky vendor; they will seek out the companies that offer sure-bets. Actively marketing your firm is a sign of strength. When customers see you on the Web, in the media and at the tradeshows they will take notice. It shows that you are upbeat and optimistic for the future, and that you are here to stay.

Share Your Point of View

Market visibility is not enough. What makes you remarkable?

Customers are looking for your X factor. They want to see how you are different, and what your company is doing to innovate and stay ahead in this market. So tell them. Show them. Educate them.

The neatest ally you have in this recession is the Internet. At any given time only 3% of your market is buying. This means 97% soon will be. If you are only focused on sales, then the non-buyers will tune you out. To engage the non-buying audience share information and advice that companies can use right now.

You have so many options to contribute value to your market. You can post how-to videos on YouTube, write articles or blog, comment in social networking sites, or simply put great content on your website. All of these activities count. By sharing your videos and value-add content you can build relationships with your customers even when they aren't buying. These relationships will offer you powerful opportunities, because as these customers enter a buying state you will be their first call. They will know you, have experienced your value proposition, and will be ready to do business with you when the time is right.

The Innovators Advantage

No matter how you cut it, Innovators will always beat the Turtles. Look at the giant companies today. Many of them, like Apple and Microsoft, were founded in recessionary times. They achieved their stature by being innovative, aggressive and committed to success. You too have this opportunity in this recession. Grab hold of it, and enjoy the ride.

Taking 21st Century Steps: How to Make the Internet a Two-Way Street

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:48:00 +0000

Recently I was challenged to respond to a news item that had some profound social implications and I went to a well known religious site to make a comment. What amazed me when I toured the site, was how much the information was top down: rulings, opinions, news, commentary – it all flowed in one direction. There was no invitation to provide feedback. I could give them money or buy religious items through their ecommerce secured shopping application. That was the sum extent of the interaction.

I compared that to the recent experience I have had in engaging Barack Obama's websites where, despite being Canadian, I joined and even responded to survey requests. The Obama sites invited dialogue, asked for feedback, asked me to get involved, sponsor neighbourhood events, make my opinions and concerns known. It also asked me for money but wouldn't accept a donation because I was from outside the U.S.

I began to wonder how many other websites were like the one I described in the first paragraph. I tried Google searching for statistics to see if anyone was tracking this kind of data. My search results came up empty. Maybe nobody writes or comments on these types of websites because they certainly appear to be dead end web marketing strategies.

With over 1 billion of us on the Internet these days, a little interaction can go a very long way. A lot of interaction can make your web presence stand out from the crowd.

The tools of interaction are many and the key to being successful through interactivity lies in the underlying data that you can collect on members or visitors to your website. The illustration below, courtesy of Enable Consultants, lists the many functional features that can be added to make a website interactive. When site visitors comment on web content, participate in a poll, enlist in your loyalty program, request a document or view a video clip, these transactions can be captured in user profiles.

If you ever bought with any frequency as I have on Amazon.com, you know how transactions are turned into focused marketing opportunities. I regularly buy books at that site. Many are about history. So when I bought the complete “West Wing,” my favorite political drama on TV, two weeks later I received an e-mail suggesting that I might find “Band of Brothers” or “From Earth to the Moon” to be of interest. And they were. Amazon knew my buying preferences and specifically targeted their selling messages to me.

You would think that loyalty programs such as those run by airlines would pick up on Amazon’s cue. But so far I have yet to experience any e-mail marketing campaigns from them that remotely suggests that they know what I buy, where I go, and what types of reward merchandise interests me.

If your business has already invested in Internet presence then make that presence give something back to you in return. Static pages and one-way communication are just like throw away ad flyers. Today your web presence needs to be totally interactive.

Interactivity can start with simple tools such as giving something away of value in return for capturing the demographics of those who request that item. It could be information. It could be a promotional item with your brand. It could be a free service you offer that leads to a face-to-face meeting.

In the interest of getting your feedback, let me know how you have made your websites interactive. Post your comments and let's begin a dialogue.

What is TV today and what does it mean to your small business future?

noreply@blogger.com (Len Rosen) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:54:00 +0000

I have been watching the announcements coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show this January in Las Vegas and many have been about the changing face of TV technology. If you have been watching the news about TV recently the announcements about “going digital” have pervaded the airwaves. At the same time companies like LG, Samsung, Sony, Comcast, Cox, and Time-Warner have all been making product and service announcements. Meanwhile the major networks like CBS and NBC have reported write downs or losses in the billions of dollars. Advertising revenues are flat or down. Even the Super Bowl advertising slots have not sold out. So lots of changes are happening to TV and the impact is profound.

The TV of "Christmas" Past

To put a little Dickens into this blog let's explore where TV was, where it is today and where it will be in the future. When I was a youth in the 1950s, TV was a standalone cabinet with a picture tube that received black and white signals from broadcasters over the air. These signals were captured by an antenna on the roof or by rabbit ears on top of the set. We settled in front of the set to watch the Ed Sullivan show or the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger. Broadcasters included the big three in the US. In Canada we had the CBC and a few independent stations providing local programming content. That TV of the past, like other media, was a one way communicator. The TV signals were free, the infrastructure to deliver them was not, and advertisers paid through the nose to reach the viewing audience. For the next 50 years nothing much changed about the business model while the technology evolved.

Colour television arrived on mass in the 1960s. By 1967 most TV broadcasters’ signals were in colour. The first communication satellite was Telstar launched in 1962. By the 1970s the evolution of communication satellites created a new way of delivering TV signals. The cable TV industry was born. Cable TV providers took satellite signals and broadcast them over copper wire directly into homes. The first satellite dish manufacturers and service providers started making satellite-to-home TV accessible to the few. For the first time the TV over-the-air broadcasters had competition for audiences.

The TV of "Christmas" Present

Cable evolved from copper to fibre optics, delivering 65,000 times more information to TV viewers producing better quality pictures, more opportunity for programming and more competition for viewers. Satellite dishes got smaller and satellite service got cheaper making it more affordable for the average home viewer. Satellite meant even more competition for the broadcasters and the burgeoning cable TV providers. At the same time TV went from low-definition to high-definition (HDTV). TV sets went from small tubes to huge flat screens.

By 2007 the US consumer could choose to receive TV content many ways: through over 1,200 cable and satellite operators as well as the old way over the airways to an antenna or rabbit ears. By 2007 more than 50% of US consumers were receiving their TV signals in digital format. TV viewers could choose what they watched and how they watched it using the latest Digital Video Recorders (DVR). A few channels became thousands of channels. By the end of 2007 video-on-demand (VoD) had reached volumes of 3.3 billion program downloads, competing with movie theatres and video rental stores.

With the arrival of ever faster and more powerful personal computers TV came to the desktop with the arrival of Internet Protocol TV (IPTV). Users could access services like YouTube or Joost or one of many other online TV viewing sites to get a personalized viewing experience. The Internet brought another dimension to TV watching – interactivity, the ability to point and click and alter the viewing experience.

When compared to the traditional TV viewing experience, the Internet provided for personal preference even though the screen was smaller. The best you could do for interactivity with a TV was use a DVR, do a video download, or use the remote to surf the hundreds of channels that were now available. As an alternative the viewer could experience interactivity by hooking up a Nintendo Wii, Playstation or Xbox 360 and playing games.

The TV of "Christmas" Future

This is where we are going and very, very soon. The announced move from analog to digital TV beginning February 17, 2009 in the US (in Canada, August 31, 2011) will make it possible for TV to become fully interactive rather than the one-way passive medium that it has largely been. What this means is TV will open the door to a personalized experience for viewers.

Interactive TV means a 2-way street. New standards for creating content such as OCAP (now called Tru2way), and ACAP will allow software developers to build Internet-like applications for TV. These applications will run on new technology already being delivered to set-top boxes and TVs today. This new technology supports 2-way interaction, allows for viewer personalization, and provides secure e-commerce.

What does this TV revolution mean for small businesses trying to reach potential consumers?

Traditionally TV has been a very expensive way to reach an audience. We always read about the cost of 30-second advertisement at the Super Bowl with the number in the millions of dollars. Big dollar advertising has been the lifeblood of TV broadcasters, but that is about to change too.

With thousands of channels to view, and interactive TV becoming ubiquitous in the US and elsewhere, TV service providers and broadcasters can no longer demand advertising fees for 30-second slots in the millions or even the thousands of dollars. In fact, TV advertising can no longer be built around the 30-second slot. Instead it must become more Internet-like with “select” on the remote becoming just like a mouse click. This represents an entirely different advertising business model for TV, much more like the click-through, banner and sideboard advertising that we have become familiar with on computers. Suddenly TV can be an accessible medium on which to advertise even for a small business serving a local market.

Recently I started working with a company that is delivering on the promise of much lower costs for companies to advertise and market themselves on TV. The company is OrderTV and they have created 3 products for the new emerging interactive TV market:

a comprehensive information guide called iCityGuide, where a company can get a directory listing and small ad just like the Yellow Pages, and at Yellow Pages pricing
an interactive online shopping information channel, iShoppingTV, that lets the viewer watch MPEG videos and click through menus to learn about products and services and even connect to sellers
a dedicated fully interactive shopping channel called OrderTV featuring the ability for a business to interact live with a viewing audience

What is even more exciting about this interactive capability is the data gathering that can occur giving advertisers an accurate profile of the viewer. And because the interactive experience on the TV is Internet-like, it is no surprise that companies such as OrderTV plan to combine their TV presence with Internet websites that have a similar look and feel, adding social networking capability as part of the total interactive experience. TV viewers can go on the Internet to enhance their experience staying connected with a local distributor or the company itself, sharing information with other viewers, reviewing past purchases or checking on the status of new orders.

For small businesses this represents a new way of doing marketing and selling. They can reach TV audiences at a fraction of what it would have cost in the past. And they can learn more about those who view their ads than ever before, creating stickier viewers that can become sticky customers, an exciting future for small business advertisers on TV.