I seem to have a thing for doing courses. I also love building communities, not just because I enjoy interacting but because they convert incredibly well when you play your cards right. Communities don’t have to be huge, I’ve steadily built this blog into a community and the discussions happen over here, Hacker News, Twitter, Facebook and more.

It seems every time I interact with a customer we talk about creating a community so I’ve decided to do a weekly blog series and create a blueprint for a small business owner to create a community. Where possible I’ll leverage my network and give you some real life examples too. It’s going to take a few posts but the end result will be worth it. A final word; I want this to be collaborative. Email, tweet and comment feedback on what I’ve missed, what you liked, didn’t like and what you would like to see more of. I do respond actively to feedback & criticism.

Week One: Introduction

Before we dive into the nitty gritty I thought it prudent to do a quick introduction on the three key areas and concepts that will make up the substance (and I take any excuse to make a pretty graph). No doubt the graph will expand and more will be introduced as we continue creating a blueprint. It was difficult to drill things down to only 3 steps but I feel everything else is easily encapsulated in these three.

Form a Community

You need something to identify leads and interact with people. Be it Search, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other digital concotion a community is an important first step. Within this step it is clearly important to identify Who you want to talk to, Why you want to talk to them, What you will say and How you will close them.

Some of the important stages in this step:

• Define target market, message and channels
• Begin design of Sales funnel
• Competitive Analysis: What is everybody else doing?
• What is my differentiator?
• Creating a content schedule
• Cultivating communities

Generate Leads

Now we have a community with some solid content. People are visiting, tweeting, liking, commenting, emailing or hitting us by search. What do we do next? Use our sales funnel to convert them. Not everybody who visits your page buys. Your competitors will be dropping by (whether they admit it or not is another thing), interested passers-by will say hello as well as those who  may not buy in 12 months. The beauty of communities is once you create content there is a minute marginal cost of reaching new individuals.

Some of the things we will cover in this step are:

• Filling a sales funnel with real data
• Tactics to convert community members to leads
• Tactics to convert leads to sales
• What works and what doesn’t
• Creating a non-intrusive promotions schedule

Increase Conversions

Believe it or not, here is where most of my work as a Consultant comes from. Individuals have already created a Facebook Page, a Twitter or an Adwords campaign but do not feel they are seeing performance. Once you have real data it is important to sit down and look at what worked, what didn’t and what can be improved for next time. Perhaps our ‘buy it now’ box was not big enough or we lost 80% of our leads at one step. The data doesn’t lie and can potentially increase your sales by multiple percentage points next time around.

Some of the things we will cover:

• How to read analytics and identify important data
• How to act upon important data
• A/B Testing
• Re-starting campaigns

What did you think? Do you agree with my 3 key areas? Anything specific you would like to be covered? Drop me a comment below.

Note: This is part of my new Follow Friday system where I get a little more in depth with one follow friday each week. To learn more about what I am doing  please click here.

Ian Redden

@iredden

(Ian does not use Twitter much but is job hunting. Let’s force him into the Twitterverse and help him out)

Ian came to me as a referral from Shanta Nathwani (@TantienHime) who was my blogs first Follow Friday. He does really technical, high level computer security that I could never understand, has founded an ISP (internet company) and was kind of to buy me drinks on my birthday! As always, here is Ian’s speel:

I have been a self proclaimed ‘Computer Geek’ for as long as I can remember starting with my Grade 3 Science Fair project on programming my Commodore Amiga 1000 computer to speak.  Eventually I received my Amateur Radio license (VA3IAN) with a strong fascination into electronics and communications. I would use my Father’s computer and connect to either FreeNet (at the University of Ottawa/Carleton), Internet Wormholes in Winnipeg/UK/Germany or have full conversations over the airwaves with countries I didn’t even knew existed yet.

At 18, I started my own Internet Service Provider business with my High School History teacher being my first customer.  After Graduating High School, I worked in the Internet Business for several years supplying Internet Services via Dialup, Cable and eventually Wireless.  Since the company was very small, using open source software such as Linux was a necessity and I have become extremely fluent.

Even though I have been tinkering with computers for most of my life, my first involvement in Information Security was much later. The Internet business that I was working in was constantly being attacked by nefarious individuals and not having any prior experience in security, I started to read about firewalls, intrusion prevention software as well as secure coding practices — I was hooked on network security. After several late nights of restoring servers from backups, I decided to learn everything I possibly could about Internet Security and eventually led me back to school.

After selling the Internet Business, I attended Sir Sandford Fleming College.  Having graduated the Computer Security Investigations program at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough, I have been instructed in Digital Profiling, Digital Forensics, Criminology, Risk Management, and Systems Analyst and Design. My Internship (at the end of my schooling) was spent at Scotiabank where I was later hired full time as a Senior Security Analyst in Technical Security & Forensic Services department. Even though most of the projects I worked on at the bank are confidential — I can say that my work is still being used to ensure that your money is safe from electronic attacks and attackers.

This is hardly a comprehensive list but shows a pivot can be a big or small change in your business. All that matters is that the pivot results in a new direction for your business.

When do I Pivot?

Pivoting is a risk. You should never change things for the sake of change. However, if your business is failing and the traditional marketing won’t bring people in the door and you continue to fail with retention it is likely time.

The easiest way to tell is that your customers will make it clear when you need to Pivot. If you intended on serving only coffee but everybody orders food, you pivot to a restaurant.  Starbucks was once a wholesaler but pivoted to retail. Tynt, a technology attribution startup, will likely pivot into search prediction.  When users use your product / service / establishment in ways you did not intend or you see customers for an ulterior use embrace them and consider a pivot.

Is Pivoting Bad?

NO!! If your business is successful, growing and profitable there is no need to Pivot. Yet if things are not the best and success seems unattainable pivoting makes natural sense. It does not make you inconsistent or a failure. It shows that your original business model may not have been as successful as predicted but that you are resilient enough to deploy existing resources for a new use.

Conclusion

Pivoting is a change in your business model. While the term applies to technology startups any business can and should consider the implications of pivoting.

Over the past month I’ve had some terrible customer service experiences. I hate bloggers who rant and penalize any company daring to cross them. The reality is I was hoping to contrast what I write to companies who have provided me solid service lately but unfortunately, there were none. We hear about the legendary service of Zappos.com but rarely some simple, easy steps you can apply. Jason Cohen of A Smart Bear points out that Technical Support is Sales. For a non-technical company customer service is part of sales and marketing. Stop slashing, start spending and differentiate yourself. Being friendly is not enough, if there is no substance or real support you are simply treading water.

Rule 1: Answer the damned phone

It seems simple but don’t keep people waiting on hold for 30+ minutes (as I recently encountered with Fido). Yes, there are temporary delays sometimes but long waiting periods every time is a sign of inefficiency. If everybody calls at 1pm cross-train workers to answer phones at 1pm. Why is it that we always forget that customers are busy people too? Answer the damned phone quickly. You will be surprised at surprised and happy customers are.

Rule 2: Customer service is understanding

I’ve had a 6 week debacle with DHL Canada recently. After pre-paying tax on a package the delivery agent refused to acknowledge the receipt and charged taxes twice. The same day I am told it would take ‘at least 6 weeks for a refund. You may hate refunding but a refund is not always a lost customer, it is your last impression in a single transaction. Circumstances change, customers come back but if your process is inefficient they may not.

6 weeks, 5 telephone calls and 15 e-mails later (all of them auto generated and unhelpful) I am finally speaking to somebody of power at DHL; I was trying to be nice and not issue a charge back. I explained my position to the operator, provided evidence, stated the refund was not yet received. I was advised to fax in credit card statements and wait a further 2 weeks for processing. Only after advising the operator of my intention to file a disputed transaction if the issue was not resolved today did I get anywhere which leads me to:

Rule 3: Being proactive (and look company wide)

If you see a customer has been struggling for some time solve the issue for them. Why delay? If you can see future issues help solve them now. Help the customer when you can. Be proactive about solving their problems and they will be happy.

When delivering a package at FedEx my pre-paid label was not recognized so a replacement was printed which had the same issue. Without a cell phone I was instructed to go home and call the FedEx hotline while standing inside a FedEx store. As a customer my understanding only goes so far, ‘not my department’ is not helpful when I am standing in a FedEx location.

Rule 4: Have substance (and don’t lie)

HTC was going to be my example of great customer service. The reps are proactive. They are friendly and my call is always answered within minutes yet the broke the carnal rule; if you promise something, deliver it.

After two weeks of having my phone being gone for a 7 day repair I got sick of calling the hotline and receiving notices of escalation with no call back. I’d always been told my phone was in the Texas facility and in queue yet on my escalation the manager admitted the phone was lost and, more importantly, they were not yet sure it was in Texas.

I understand phones get lost, be honest about it. I understand sometimes a delay takes longer than expected, be honest about it. If you promise a call back deliver it. In other words, stick to your word.

Why is this so hard?

Any self-respecting person is nodding their head in agreement. We all understand this. We all hate it. Even the workers / managers understand this. Why do we keep dealing with it? Make a statement and make calling your hotline a pleasure, not a chore, and watch your customer satisfaction and referrals skyrocket.

If you are an intelligent person you hate Associated Press. I’m all for referencing content and paying for fair use but their rules for bloggers are just a little extreme. That’s why I feel in love with Woot all over again when they called out Associated Press for using Woot content and calculated money owing using AP’s own rules. I could rant forever on AP but felt it an opportune time to cover something else.

Marketing with Conflict

A simple concept, the beauty lies in execution. Yet when done right it works perfectly. I doubt anybody honestly thinks Woot is trying to collect their $17.50 yet the media coverage is invaluable. They even got on TechCrunch and I’m certain their daily sales skyrocketed.

Marketing with conflict (I’m sure there is a far more academic name for it) is simply where you not only call out a competitor for inferior service, misleading information, lying or a change of course. For consumer it’s not only great fun to watch giants go at it but a good conflict represents problems customers have likely been dealing with for some time. You are championing your target markets attitudes, feelings & grievances and supporting their ongoing conflict with other foes.

This is not a new concept. Michael O’Leary of RyanAir, one of the largest airlines in the world, is frequently constructing stunts to get his name covered. Air Lufthansa offered Gray Powell free flights to Germany to enjoy that famous German Beer after losing the iPhone 4 prototype in a bar. In the case of Woot, calling AP out made the tech press go gaga.

I only wish more companies would do this. When used properly conflict can mobilize audiences for you, get major press coverage and boost your sales. The risk is you look nasty, petty or unprofessional.

How do you balance this? Some rules:

1. Decide what you want (press coverage, sales)
2. Align with their position (i.e. TechCrunch are known to hate Associated Press)
3. Don’t pick on anybody personally unless they are known to exploit your audience
4. Tie to current events
5. Don’t get too consistent or you will appear over-aggressive
6. Keep it fun (notice how every example I provided was not downright nasty yet still a call out?)

Off topic: If you are interested in more info on the Woot call out, both TechCrunch and Woot received not so nice e-mails from the Director of Media Relations who somehow tied their payment policies to the Gulf Oil spill. Hmph.

Wednesday night I got to meet Richard Branson, not just for a brief handshake. We originally met downstairs where the quick photo shtick happened and later I found myself in the heavily restricted VIP area. I’ve also received free return tickets on Virgin America which I will blog about soon. The event was part of a larger #VXToronto campaign which aimed to create online buzz by offering ‘digital influencer’s’ free flights and potentially tickets to the launch party based on their Klout score. The problem is most of the bloggers were pissed off and none of this was the fault of Virgin. April Dunford of Rocket Watcher beat me to summing this up so instead I wanted to look at why this happened (and how you can prevent it).

Know who you are targeting

Influencers are networkers. I have been in Toronto about 6 weeks and already know the core group at every technology event. Issues are far more likely to go viral, this group has an audience, regularly see eachother and are not afraid to speak their mind.

Bloggers have egos. We may not admit it but it is inevitable. When you get invited to an exclusive launch party because of your influence it is certainly a humbling experience. Sadly, when you consistently put your life online you do require a slight ego to survive (and I don’t see that as a bad thing).

So, we have a group with ego’, perhaps too easily bruised, that have a busy platform and talk amongst themselves. Best be careful to not make mistakes, eh? (that makes me sound too Canadian).

Be specific on what can be expected

There were few cues on where the event was, what was to be expected or the group that was to be expected. The general consensus was that it was going to be a medium-sized event where everybody was able to mingle, interview, find things to promote and enjoy the evening. Imagine our surprise when we arrived to a venue of at least 100 people, half of us invited were nowhere to be seen on the guest-list and were not allowed to access a VIP area where the promoted guests were. On it’s own, this is no problem but sparse details led to false expectations and inevitable disappointment.

Beware of the Build-up

The Virgin event was good. Had any blogger waltzed straight into the Virgin event they would have been happy, I had a fantastic evening. A great atmosphere, great crowd, free alcohol and Branson was talking to everybody. Sadly, most of the influencer’s I met were annoyed at the Klout pre-party from the previous evening. Admittedly, I left the same party 30 minutes later but the general consensus was that the community was insular, the goal of Klouter’s was to hand their business card and leave and engagement was severely lacking. Several examples were provided of Klout staff leaving attendees mid conversation.

The overall Klout campaign was convoluted, directions were not entirely clear and as April points out, people were never entirely sure why they did / did not get flights or invites. Each e-mail about the event had to be re-sent due to errors (sometimes the date) and the day prior we were all instructed to come friendless. I get it, exclusive event, tight guest list, but there are ways to tell me I can’t bring a significant other.

Remember what I said earlier? Influencers are pack rats. A small issue becomes a huge issue once everybody is done complaining. Know your audience, know this happens and try to prevent it (or if you don’t want to deal with it target somebody else). Each issue on it’s own would have likely been nothing. When things begin to accumulate, you have a problem. The buildup left everybody in a bad mood.

Pick your partners carefully

A Klout score is a natural fit to pick social media  influencer’s for the Virgin party. The issue was not the tool but in the execution. When people are annoyed at Company A it will inevitably transfer to public partners when there is a symbiotic relationship. Picking a partner for their offering is one thing but be sure to look at their track record in successful execution too. In this case, most of the bloggers I spoke to were frustrated at the points above and began transferring this to Virgin.

Summary

There is no doubt that I was happy with the Virgin launch party. I had a great night, met some new people and ticked everything off on my check-list. The event and Virgin campaign hit every mark and every blogger I know was praising the agency. Sadly, the Virgin event as a stand-alone event had to win us all over. We entered in very negative mindsets and, had the event not been so incredibly, probably would have left unhappy. Props to whoever organized the event as a whole, it was fantastic.

I feel obliged here to also point out that this is not a case of blogger or influencers being crybabies (as has been insinuated on Twitter). As you can see it was an unfortunate chain of events that left many in an (understandably) negative mindset. If you spend 20 minutes with customer service and get incorrect information, you complain. If you feel you were neglected, mis-informed or bounced around, you complain. ‘Influencer’s’ (I use the term loosely) are no different. Social Media is built upon open communication and if you don’t like that it may be time to leave online entrepreneurship.

Note: This is part of my new Follow Friday system where I get a little more in depth with one follow friday each week. To learn more about what I am doing  please click here.

Tina Brooks

@pepperfire

I’ve known Tina for years, since way back when I was running my first company and the hot business networking site was Ryze (oh how I cringe). I’ve been working with Tina lately to get her companies social media plan updated and thought it was a fantastic time to feature her. Her company produces premium, organic hot sauces that damn near kill me every time I touch them. I don’t know why people enjoy this form of pain but if you do, read on. As always, here is Tina’s speel:

Although my business card says VP Marketing for Brooks Pepperfire Foods Inc., I am also the co-owner. Our company produces brilliant premium fresh pepper sauces, infusions and mashes. Our flagship lines include http://www.peppermaster.com, http://www.sexysalsa.ca and http://www.haitianFire.com. We also do small-batch specialty co-packing for food companies.

What makes us really special is our commitment to quality and our social conscience. We put our heart and our soul into our work and we even invented a word to describe our food production style: Slow Fair Trade: we purchase our ingredients directly from local suppliers and when we can’t we employ fair trade certified methods to secure them. The farmers and producers do all they work, they should earn the lion’s share of the profits. To us, it seems only fair. No pesticides, herbicides, chemically created flavours or colours, just good clean healthy food.

I’d love to get into the details about our company and how we are changing the lives of people in the most impoverished places but Alex asked me to keep this short! (Alex’s Note: At this point I have edited out over 300 words. Short my #$$#). Suffice it to say that we’ve got a very different way of living and doing business that translates into a world of help and love that is far too rare.

On a personal level, I am a Unitarian, tarot reading swamp witch. If you ask me what that means, I’ll gladly tell you. I don’t fly around on a broom or wear pointy hats, but the broom thing… if I could do that, I would, in a heartbeat. That’d be fun! I have a Loa, which in the Voodoo culture is most rightly described as a sub-deity, and she hangs out inside my head and my heart talking to me, and others, through my tarot cards. I like to call her my “imaginary friend”. She’s pretty cool, and gives a scary accuracy to my tarot readings. If you catch me on a Swamp Day, which lately have been too few and far between, I will be offering #TarotTwreadings on http://www.twitter.com/Pepperfire. I usually take such days to make up for the fact that I seem to work 24/7 and being myself as a swamp witch, allows me to recharge my spiritual batteries and do some spiritual good for others at the same time.

Being asked to be Alex Blom’s Follow Friday subject is a huge honour for me. Especially since I have been friends with him, via social media for many years now and he’s one of the few people I know who really get the idea of social media and this before the word “social media” existed as a concept. That he thinks just as highly of me, is a huge blessing.

I take my Twitter account very seriously. I have just over 3000 tweeters I follow, and I have had at least a brief introductory conversation with every single one of them and that personal contact is very important to me.  I don’t blindly follow everyone just because they follow me, I want to follow people who say things that are of value to me. I want to converse with people who will either ground me, uplift me or just make me laugh. Because really there are only two reasons for living in this world, as I see it. The first is to live every second of life as if it’s the only second you’ve got and the second is to really just have fun.

Life is truly an adventure and my sole purpose is to enjoy it. Won’t you join me?

I had another blog scheduled today (which has been pushed off tomorrow) detailing Wednesdays Virgin launch party, the hot & cold lead-up and meeting Richard Branson. If you want some re-caps in the mean time check out the fantastic post by April Dunford of Rocket Watcher . Erin Bury has also posted a great recap. In the mean time here is my picture with Richard Branson.

But, on my coffee Break I saw that Groupon are now about to give exclusive deals through local newspapers. This is fantastic news for Groupon. Even if there is a revenue share paper media have shot themselves in the foot once again.

For all of the engage, converse and form relationships talk we hear through social media there is still a fundamental need to control relationships. Facebook make it difficult to export your data, forcing developers to work with them. Twitter have moved from a mostly open ecosystem to something far more closed, plugging the holes as they go. These companies are not evil; they realize that a direct relationship with customers is not everything. A direct relationship with suppliers (in this case, developers) is just as important to continue creating and delivering a quality product.

There is no question that most newspapers are not as profitable as they once were and are losing circulation. The internet allowed new companies to come in and form relationships with consumers far cheaper. Instead of leverage their relationships with suppliers (advertisers) newspapers continued to fight on a front they could not win (yet all along, quality, accessible content will still get readers).

When I read that Local Newspapers are now publishing Groupon deals all I can think is: “Newspapers need advertisers. They are struggling to find advertisers, typically small businesses. Now they are letting Groupon control and maintain those relationships too. Whoops”

This relationship may have started symbiotic but I wonder how it will end.

I’ve noticed lately that my buying behavior has been switching to brands who are on social media and, more importantly, brands who would engage with me (more on that soon). I wanted to see if I was an oddity or a norm here.

So, like anybody else would on a Sunday I created a 30 second survey on Google Docs and Tweeted. This is by no means a comprehensive survey but a quick and dirty fact finding mission. As many of the respondents (around 65%) located the survey on Twitter you can say that the pool is somewhat biased when comparing channels. For those wanting real specifics, n=40 (with two disqualified for incomplete information, not bad for an hour on Sunday afternoon). Read into the results as you wish, my followers helped me collect the data so it is only fair I share it.

70% of respondents indicated that a companies social media account influences their purchase decisions. All users who responded to this survey are clearly social media savvy (and thus the results are only applicable to a similar crowd) but it does demonstrate that people on these channels expect representation from businesses.

60% of all respondents indicated social media as part of their purchase criteria (the difference here being that a company must be on social media to make a purchase) and that they have purchased from a company because they were active on social media where competitors were not. Again, this applies only to a social media crowd but shows that non-savvy small businesses are likely losing sales for not being present.

Respondents were then asked to specify the most important social media channel when investigating purchase options / companies. Twitter was considered the most important channel, perhaps due to ease of access and simplicity. Company blogs came in last; my best guess on this one is that company blogs are rarely conversations whereas Facebook Pages and Twitter profiles are often very conversation heavy.

Respondents were then asked to rank important factors when evaluating a channel; specifically, when two products / companies maintain social media channels and the user is making decisions. The rate of activity and level of interaction came in at number 1 which, as mentioned earlier, may be why Twitter and Facebook were considered more important than blogs.

Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, 30% of respondents indicated they regularly pay a higher price for products active on social media over competitors who are not. We already knew social media was an important evaluation tool but this number was somewhat surprising to me.

Read into the facts as you will. As always I love the e-mail, Twitter and comment feedback.