Personally, I’m thinking the answer is yes, even at this early stage of development. Well, okay, perhaps with the exception of LinkedIn. First, this is truly a beta release and is also being released in viral fashion. Presently, one can only join G+ (shorthand for Google Plus or Google+) by invitation. For awhile, the invitations were shut off due to the flood of people wanting to join. Having said all that, here are some more thoughts on why this might be the next big thing for a useful Social Network site.

1. Google seems to have learned from Facebook missteps. You have simple, easy to understand control over who sees what. You get honest “warnings” when you change sharing on a post. They allow you to export all your data – it is after all, your data. Use the “data liberation” link to download your data.

2. Circles. Thank Googleness for circles. Finally, this asymmetric approach to the site makes me really appreciate the “do no evil” approach. Unlike other sites, you are able to limit who sees your posts if you want to do so. You create circles of people just like you do in your “real life.” There is your circle of friends at work, or those at your place of worship, or your professional SIG, or your neighborhood. You get to choose who goes into what circle and they only know they’ve been added to a circle (not which one or what you call it). You can put a person in more than one circle, and you can post to more than one circle, to individuals or to “public” where all the millions of people on G+ can see what you’ve posted if they want to do so.

Your posts can be short (like a tweet), long like your blog and can contain photo, video or links. I hope that Google continues to improve the “blog” capabilities of G+ and if they do, I may well simply close down my existing blog in favor of having everything in one place.

3. Filtering. Circles can be used to filter the stream of posts you see on the home page of your G+ account. So if you’re in a hurry and want to see what your circle called “Colleagues” or “Mates” has to say, you can simply “click on that circle” and that will filter the stream to only posts from folks in that circle.

4. Hangouts. This is really cool and I can see myriad uses in business and family life. Simply put, this is a video conferencing application that allows up to ten folks to be “in one hangout.” Several colleagues have already started collaboration hangouts with their co-workers “upstairs,” in the “next building” and “up North.” Amazing. And I can see how we might use this to plan our next vacation plans that require coordination with my sister in TN and my brother in FL. Awesome!

5. Sparks. This is very interesting. I use Google Reader to aggregate my blogs and Google News to filter my news. Sparks may be an interesting filter for articles on specific topics that “feed my insatiable curiosity” and “spark ideas” for blogs and other articles I write. I’ll have to work with this some more to see how the algorithm works before I pass on the usefulness for my work. But it sure looks interesting at the moment.

6. Photos. I was surprised and pleased when I installed the G+ application on my Droid X. I stopped during a run (yes, I use my Droid as my mp3 player too, and I carry it running for that as well as emergencies) to take a compelling picture and when I went to G+ for other reasons saw a notification that new photos had been uploaded to my “private” folder. I had done nothing except take the picture! From my private folder, I could chose a whole bunch of options including sharing the photo. Such fun! No fuss, no muss, it just works.

7. Chat. Nothing much “new” here except the integration of chat with the hangout. It makes things easy for direct messaging even in the hangout.

So what needs to happen? G+ is in beta and still limited. Once it’s established and Google is satisfied that it has “shaken out” they will open it up to the public – speculation is “soon,” whatever that means.

1. Establish a culture or etiquette for the G+ world. That will evolve and it looks as though it will be more “serious” than other Social Media

2. Make room for businesses to participate in a serious, non-selling fashion.

3. Put more “Blog” functionality in the posting capabilities (things like “save as draft,” additional links, photos and “schedule post”, etc.)

All in all, I’m very impressed with this last attempt by Google to get into the fray on Social Media platforms. I find G+ WAY more “sticky” for me than either Facebook or Twitter (which I hardly ever read, I only schedule posts that are helpful to others). And to be fair, I only usually read Facebook and Twitter stuff on Hootsuite.

For now, G+ is not going to ease any of my Social Media work. In fact, it will likely cause more work for me since I now want to spend time there! However, as things progress, and if they go the way I believe they will, I will likely drop Twitter and Facebook for business, pare Facebook down to only family and a few friends and extended family.

I’ve read on several posts that “pundits” are claiming that businesses can safely ignore Google + for a year or so. I do not agree. As soon as businesses are allowed to participate, you had better be paying attention and evaluating what’s going on. Businesses were very late to the Facebook and Twitter game and have been “poorer” for their hesitation and skepticism. Don’t repeat that mistake. Get involved much sooner rather than later.

Starting a business is one thing. Trying to turn the ship of state around and head it in a new direction is something else. Here are some thoughts that you can pick apart to apply them, hopefully, to your situation.

Have a great idea for a “new” product or service, or maybe a really neat innovation on an already existing product or service? That’s fantastic! That’s what our country is built on – innovation, improvement, change, moving forward. First, you might want to take that idea and “flesh it out a bit” to make sure it’s practical. Can it be built or delivered in a manner that will make it profitable.

Next, do exhaustive market studies. You can get some help on this and it isn’t always that expensive. I work with several of the universities in my area providing mentoring for the MBA and Entrepreneurship students. Most of the universities have programs where for a nominal fee, a business can hire a group of students to put together a marketing plan or even a full up business plan. The hidden superb value in these efforts is the research that gets done to produce them.

This part of due diligence is where many entrepreneurs fail. They love their idea and they cannot conceive of why the whole world wouldn’t also love it. “Build it and they will come,” is their mantra. WRONG! And while we know that intellectually, our emotional side wants to continue on down the path, convinced that everyone will love our idea. Tell me again why so many start-ups fail in the first five years? Could it be that their product or service wasn’t really needed/wanted? Hummmm.

Next on the list after REAL DATA tell us that the product is viable, is to think about the way in which you will assemble the organization. If you are planning on being a sole-provider (consultant, professional service provider) then you can very likely get started. You may still not want to skip this step, because in the dark hours when you are wondering why you aren’t still in that cushy W2 job, you will want to look back at what the Fundamental Organizing Principles (FOPs) for your venture were back when you were so enthusiastic.

This is hard work, especially if you intend to build a reasonably big organization, say more than 40 people eventually. The bigger you envision your organization, the more critical it is for you to do the hard work of deciding what the FOPs (core values, company values, etc.). The reason this is hard is because you are laying down the “talk” that you will have to “walk.” Suppose your thought process takes you down the road that you believe the only reason for a business to exist is to serve customers – to solve their problem/need/want in an elegant and cost effective way. Of course, you also want to earn a living and make sure that those who you employ also enjoy a decent living.  Starting with the customer then, you would perhaps say that one of the FOPs is that “Customers First.” Without customers you don’t have any business. To take care of those customers, you must have employees that understand the balance between putting customers first and also making sure that the company survives too. Having the customer’s best interest at heart doesn’t mean that you neglect your own best interest – it simply means you’re focused on the customer first. So a second FOP might be that “associates” will hold each other accountable for providing great customer experiences while treating each other with dignity and respect in a safe environment focused on continuous improvement.

You get the point. This FOP establishment must be done honestly, from the heart and from the intellect both. If you truly believe that the only reason to be in business is to make yourself rich, then you will definitely build that kind of organization regardless of the other nice (manipulative!) words you use. Further, you will hire people who will not act the way you want unless you are brutally honest that the whole purpose is to make yourself rich, and maybe them along the way. On the other hand, if you honestly believe in building a company that is based on providing a valuable product or service while at the same time making a decent living for everyone involved, then you will attract that kind of person. That is you will, IF you can authentically state what your company’s FOPs are and the prospective employee/associate believes that in fact you are being authentic.

Once you have established the FOPs for your organization, know how to authentically present them to the world, you will be amazed at how the values, beliefs, actions and results will follow. You will also be amazed at how those FOPs will help you through the inevitable hard times. All of this may sound pretty “soft” to you. Yet, I would offer the challenge of doing the research to see how companies “make it” these days. Edwards Life Sciences, Google, Facebook, IBM, Keurig, you name your favorite company. They undoubtedly have an intentional culture based on whatever they call FOPs. And then think about the company you like to “hate.” You have at least one, I’m sure. That company “doesn’t get it.” And the “it” they don’t get is what? Likely it is that they don’t understand (your view of) customer service. They are inwardly focused. It’s all about them and they only care about YOU if it’s in their best interest to care about you. Otherwise . . . .

In this economy, which I believe is going to be with us for quite a while, many business leaders are asking a fundamental question, “If I weren’t in this business now, would I start it? What would it look like? And then they start the hard process of turning the company around. To me, that is very much like starting the company over in a lot of ways. Many of the same steps apply. That “turnaround” will likely include changing the culture and that is really going to be a challenge! Don’t miss any of the steps, make sure you go back to the basic FOPs that got you started in the first place.

It seems to me that we are heading down some rocky roads when it comes to advertising and how to “reach” the consumer.

• Google is giving its own sites priority in their search results (evil!)
• Facebook “inadvertently” (right) sent individual identities to advertisers
• Advertising companies are “screaming” at Microsoft for putting in “do not track” function in Internet Explorer 9 – which tells everyone they should have it
• The government is looking at regulating who can track what – that aught to be useful (NOT)
• Print companies are scrambling to figure out how to “monetize going digital”
• Advertising clients are moving budget dollars from traditional to digital advertising including e-books

My theory on this is that consumers are quite tired of having advertisements “pushed” on them. They know where to get what they are looking for and an Ad is not to be trusted any way. While I speak only for myself, I’m not convinced that I’m all that different than other consumers when I say that I don’t trust ads (I almost never click on the paid ads of a search), I’d rather find the information I want when I want it, and I don’t want it in my books, papers or articles. I will ignore most of what even looks like an ad and may even decide that the ad was intrusive and avoid the seller even if I am looking to purchase something.

I’ve concluded that most people (certainly not all people) do not like and will avoid information that is pushed on them. If that’s true, then all the frantic action by the retailers, marketers and advertisers to find new ways to generate ad dollars or sell products are going down the wrong path; it may well backfire. Instead, they might want to expend energy to make sure that the consumer of your product or service can find you quickly and easily.

Here’s the evidence I see for consumers “fighting back.”

• The success of the “do not call list” to stop the intrusions
• The liberal use of “fast forward” to get rid of the ads in recorded media
• The increased use of smart phones to scan product bar codes and download competitive pricing for your product
• Consumer pressure on Microsoft to go ahead with “Do Not Track” despite the crying advertisers who are predicting the usual doom and gloom. Do you trust them?
• Reliance on colleague testimonials rather than ads – and anger over employees acting like they are consumers providing testimonials

Slowly, I am moving away from the printed word. I no longer take a newspaper, instead I have my own digital news source that gives me what I want and ONLY what  want. I have started listening to the “Word for Word Audio Edition of the Economist”  instead of reading the paper version. My books are now on Kindle or Google e-readers more often than not (except for the occasional gift and the occasional publisher sending a new book for review). I even read books and news on my smart phone now (never thought I would).

So I get why those who pay for advertising and those who do the advertising are in a panic. I understand why they are feeling desperate. And, I think their responses are off the mark. What would life be without the advertising? Can’t imagine it? Nor can I. It won’t happen. What will happen is you won’t have to push the ad on me. You will have to instead work hard to make sure that I can find you and the solid, accurate and useful information you provide will be ad enough. You just have to make sure that your bar code is readily available so I can scan it and get the information I want about your product – otherwise I’ll purchase someone else’s product.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “No one likes to be sold. Most people do like to buy.” So the question is, how do you make it incredibly easy and rewarding for me to buy? Can I find you? Do you have good solid information or just a bunch of fluff? I don’t think things are all that much different between B2B and B2C these days. So what are you doing to make sure you’re staying out in front on this? There is no “new normal.” There never really has been a “normal.” Everything is changing, including the way we get our messages out to the folks who want to buy our products and services.

Here’s what I think has happened and it turns out that Scott Fox (e-Riches 2.0) seems to agree. First, the internet has gotten very crowded with web sites and blogs. Second, we have an exponential increase in users who are searching. Third, the “big boys” have staked out their claim to the first page of organic results and will spend lots of money to stay there. Together, this means it is getting incredibly difficult to optimize sites and pages for common search words and/or phrases. Therefore, it is more expensive and more time consuming to try and optimize for organic search position. If you want marketing on the web to be free or cheap, you will be disappointed. It will at the very least, take significant time (which is money, of course) and done well, will likely have a direct financial cost as well. If you want real SEO, you will need to step up to the cost. You will also need to consider pay per view and pay per click options if you have a robust e-commerce site.

To make matter worse on the SEO front, today’s internet user is very impatient and will not likely look beyond page two of the search results. So to pay for SEO and not make at least the second page of the organic returns will be a waste of money. Lucky for us, we no longer have such an overriding need to have customers find us through search. Instead, we can build relationships with the customers through social media. That’s not to say we don’t need to pay attention to the basics of SEO and make sure our sites are configured properly for landing pages, key words and strong links back to the site. It’s just that for many small businesses, time and budget may well be better spent on establishing a brand presence on the social media sites, gathering e-mail addresses for e-mail newsletters and focusing on e-marketing campaigns. In other words, we will go to the customers instead of trying to drive the customers to our sites.

According to Mr. Fox, “the future of marketing is more about e-mail than it is about SEO.” He goes on to say that “In fact, now is the time to be focusing on developing your publishing skills because SEO may be out of your reach.” When I did a quick study of what it takes for initial and ongoing optimization, the cost is already well beyond my own marketing budget. So I have determined to keep the basics of SEO up (meta tags, fresh content – read that blogs, strong links back to the site, careful key word selection for landing pages, etc.) while focusing most of my time on building a robust social media marketing brand. So far, it seems to be working.

This is good news for those who have started new businesses or perhaps had to cut back on the existing marketing budget. We can get in on the very effective growth of niche customer marketing through social media and let the “big guys” blow wads of money on SEO. This is not going to be free though. It will require someone to spend a significant amount of time on blogging, keeping Facebook current, commenting on other blogs that are “on topic” for you and watching the internet for how others are speaking about you and/or your company.

Here are the questions: are you finding that SEO is “out of reach” budget wise? How are you incorporating social media into your branding effort? Are you employing e-mail marketing for your products or services? How good is your website at gathering e-mail addresses from those who find your site and visit you?

I’m not one of those who believes that the customer is “ALWAYS RIGHT,” meaning that the customer knows what’s best for YOUR business. I do believe that the customer is always right when it comes to what they want and you had better be listening. You also need to know what’s going on with how they perceive you as a vendor. A valuable vendor communicates with the customer, provides information about innovative solutions to challenges, stands behind their products and services, does what they can to help conserve their customer’s cash and isn’t always looking to make the maximum profit at the expense of the customer.

Before you get the impression that this post is going to be a “business bashing” tirade, I hasten to add that I feel the same way about employees and especially labor unions. Look at the recent discussion created by states cutting back on education expenses and using tenure or FIFO to layoff teachers. Parents and Administrators are now raising significant objections to losing promising young teachers simply because they were last into the workforce. We all know the concern about how to measure effectiveness of our educators, they are tired arguments and I believe them to be mostly discredited. Get over it. There is no compelling reason to keep a person in a particular paid position just because they’ve been there a long time (nor should they be let go because of that reason either). Labor unions would do well to listen to the paying public and figure out how to help the excellent teachers thrive, regardless of age or longevity in the workplace. That would make unions worthwhile.

For the individual employee, learn to find out how you are doing and be ruthless about it. Embrace 360 reviews and if you’re company isn’t doing them, find another way to determine how you’re viewed by supervisors, colleagues, subordinates and customers. Don’t kid yourself on this. Your career depends on it. Are you flexible in assignments (not your values and ethics, but simply learning new things and taking on new assignments)?

The same is true, perhaps even more important, for those of us who are consultants, mentors and/or self-employed service providers. We had better genuinely have our client’s best interest at heart and demonstrate that so there is no doubt. Find a way to help your customer reach their goals, and one will undoubtedly be saving cash (and it always has been a goal, just exaggerated in this economy). I recently heard on a WSJ podcast that one enterprising HR consultant is teaching her clients how to do what she does so that they can carry the ball in the future. She said, “Why fight the market? The market is to help my clients save money. So I help them learn how to do these things for themselves in the future.” Ecology of information – the hallmark of a good consultant.

The way I see it, we are all in this together. Whether we are small business owners, leaders in large organizations, individual contributors, government employees, union members, in transition, or service providers we had better stop focusing on ourselves and start looking to add value. That isn’t to say we should not be willing to consider our own interests, it just that our interests can’t come first or be foremost.

If the folks at Enron, WorldCom, AIG, Citi Group and all the other dysfunctional organizations had paid attention to their reputation and had goals other than their own enrichment in mind, they would not have become dysfunctional. If we as investors insisted on long term value instead of quarterly stock gains, we would not have pushed the companies into being so short sighted. If the folks in Congress really had the best interests of their constituents at heart instead of their own selfish gains and focus on keeping their jobs, then perhaps their ratings and esteem with the public wouldn’t be lower than whale dung on the ocean floor.

I know, and “if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t keep bumping his butt on the ground.” It seems as though this is all unachievable. Yet, I don’t know of any other way to fix the mess we’re in. I’m convinced that even though it’s a big simplification, “taking care of number 1,” and “wining at all costs” is what got us into this mess. Collectively changing that focus would seem the only way to get out of it. It starts with “the man in the mirror.” Are you willing to change your focus? What is your company doing to “get back to basics” and focus on the customer? Are you looking for ways to change your business model, like the HR Consultant mentioned above?

I’m going to switch gears here a little bit. In Part 1 of this post, we were focused mostly on who’s on social media and spoke a bit about how employees and customers are using social media. The implication was a “larger” organization where there are a fair number of employees about which we might have some concern over the aggregate time spent on the internet and social media. In that kind of organization, there may well be a person or small team of people who are assigned the task to develop your social media presence and who can manage the content for you. The switch here is that I now want to address the smaller firms, like my own, where I will have to either do the work our outsource it to another company. In my case, I choose to outsource some of the design work, and then to do most of the ongoing work myself, partly to reduce the expenditures, but mostly because I like doing the work. For me it’s a challenge and it’s fun!

As I listen to all the “experts” (have you noticed there are Social Media experts everywhere now?), the start to all this is no different than any other marketing or advertising campaign – you begin by defining your goals and strategies. For me that meant deciding what I wanted for a look and feel (brand) for what I put in public. Then start with a website. Get some help if you’re not good at design and communication. Remember this – it’s not about you on a business site, it’s about the customer. So if you don’t like a particular layout or way of doing something, and the professional designer has discovered that your target market does like that kind of layout – guess who wins! If, like me, you’re doing this on your own, then you will have to learn as you go. Now if you need or want a robust e-commerce site, you will want to have it designed by a professional in a separate package like Dreamweaver, Joomla, Net Objects Fusion, Expression Web or some other highly flexible package. If this is a simple site and you are doing it on your own, you may want to consider one of the packages above to author the site or you may even want to consider using a Blogging software such as WordPress. Most Blogging software will allow you to put up “pages” that are static and simple – home, about, etc. So a simple site can take advantage of that and the Blog itself becomes your website. Either way, think through your goals and strategies and get your website up and to your liking.

The next step is to get a Blog up and running. Here is where the fun, and danger, begin. I have not done extensive work reviewing all the various blog software packages. I use WordPress and like it very much. I’m told that it is by far the most popular of the packages out there and I can see why. Whatever package you choose and use, the fun of blogging is that you get to write about things that interest you and about which (hopefully) you’re passionate. That’s also the danger. You can find yourself spending lots of time if you’re not aware and watching. For some folks, this is just like a gaming or gambling is for other folks. That could definitely be the problem for me. That’s why the “black hole analogy.”

I won’t go into an elaborate discussion about what you should blog about. In a business context, I believe the blog should have useful content. Something that people will find interesting and useful in their own business. In my case, I try to share what I’ve learned about business leadership, management, personal growth, etc. Your business may be based on products and so you can share about the industry around that product, perhaps some unique ways the products are being used. Remember though, this is useful information not an advertisement. Stay away from tauting your own features and benefits. The best way to get a feel for this is to read a bunch of blogs hosted by your competitors or folks in similar industries that are already up there on the internet.

If you have the bandwidth, consider doing a simple, useful monthly e-mail newsletter. Again, there are many ways to do this. Constant Contact seems to be very popular. I use a free package that requires some technical savvy to install, but once installed I can send e-mail newsletters without the monthly fees. I don’t recommend my way of doing things to most people though. Instead, choose a package that is simple to use and doesn’t require too much technical expertise. What goes in the newsletter? I find I can expand on topics from the blog or invite colleagues to guest write an article. I read a great deal, so I do book reviews on business and leadership topics. It’s fun, creative and I hope at least somewhat useful to those who bother to read it.

Okay, so now you have your web site designed, perhaps a newsletter and a blog hosted on the internet. An aside: a true business entity (in my opinion) has it’s own domain. An AOL e-mail address, or ISP address (like @cox.net, or @sbcglobal.net) do not cut it. You must have your own domain – me@mycompany.com. In WordPress, I can work on a post, get it the way I want it and then schedule it to post sometime in the future. I have chosen, for entirely arbitrary reasons, to post twice a week – Tuesday and Thursday. So as mentioned, I try not to take time out of the productive work day to do this. Instead I work on weekends or other “off hours” at my convenience. Yes, it’s still my time regardless of when. And yes, it’s still costing me because of that. However, like most small businesses, employees (including the owner!) wear multiple hats. I choose to look at my time as investment in branding/marketing, and I choose to do it myself rather than outsource it. You can choose to outsource it if you like, but you (or an employee) will still need to invest the time to provide content, edit, etc.

What’s next? Your site is up and your blog is up. Most professionals will need to be on LinkedIn. Think about the public image you want to present. Most social media sites request/require a profile. So far, everyone I speak to who has some sense of what’s going on in this space suggest that you have a common, consistent profile on all the sites. Especially for those persons in transition, you don’t want to have a different image presented from Facebook to LinkedIn. As mentioned, many if not most of the professional recruiters and retained search firms will look up candidates on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites to see what they can find out about them beyond the resume submitted. You will want to be there and be found. As a business, you will want to be there and be found. And remember that the internet never forgets. So be thoughtful about the image you create for yourself on this very public medium.

Twitter. What the heck is that? Well, many folks describe it as a “mini-blog.” A person is limited to entering 140 characters, so you can’t say much. People choose to follow you and you follow others. You will want to pick a “serious group of people to follow” if you’re doing this for business. That will in turn generate “serious followers.” What do I tweet? How often? The answers to those questions will be up to you. For me, I stick to sharing links to useful information I find when I’m reading news on the internet (I no longer read printed news on a regular basis). I try not to point people only to my own material – this is not selling! You will find what suits you, but you will have to spend some time reading and “lurking” on the various sites to get a feel for what you might want to contribute.

Personally, I have limited myself to web site, blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a once per month e-mail newsletter. I have tried to be as consistent as possible with the profiles. You can choose more sites if you have the interest and bandwidth. For “branding purposes,” I was also able to match the look (background) of WordPress, e-mail newsletter and Twitter to that of my website. Unfortunately, it seems to not be possible to alter the look of Facebook and LinkedIn.

Whew. Enough for now. Next post will be about some tools I’ve found to help me minimize the time and work keeping all these things current with new content.

A trusted colleague recently published a Knol about how we need to strategically rethink our business model to be sure it’s appropriate for the new economic realities. He’s absolutely correct. And, as readers of this blog know, one of my mantras is that we have to totally re-think sales. I’ve been writing about this for some time now, and published my own Knol on the subject back in June of 2009. So, if we need to strategically change our business model, and specifically, change the way we market and sell, then we cannot get by without at least seriously looking into Social Media and what it means to us at work, and for our sales process.

If you want to get an understanding of what all this hoopla is about, you can spend some time with webinars posted on the internet and reading some of the material available such as the book Friends With Benefits or the latest Economist Special Report in the 1/30/2010 issue. This blog post (and follow on posts) should provide the reasons to encourage you to dive in if you haven’t already. For those that have, perhaps you will find some new ideas and resources.

Consider these ideas:

• Your employees all have smart phones, so even if you lock down your networks, they can and will access the social media while at work.
• Your competitors and perhaps disgruntled customers are posting their complaints on-line. Are you reading them?
• I find few people reading any direct mail, catalogs or magazine ads even if they still get printed material.
• I find fewer people reading printed papers, some are subscribing through their e-Readers.
• Most folks I know look up things, services, people, and companies on-line rather than yellow pages.
• Total unique visitors on Facebook in October 2009 was in excess of 430 million.
• Your employees, especially the younger crowd, are all use to collaborating on-line and expect to be able to do so at work for work projects.
• Your competitors are using the Social Networks to build focus groups and to allow “open source design” of products.
• Through Social Networks, your employee may know more about strangers they’ve never met in person than they do about their other employees.
• Privacy will be the big issue rather than should Social Networks be in the workplace.

Okay, so who is on the Social Networking sites? Where are my clients and customers? According to BNet, the demographics break down as follows:

Source: BNet.com

Facebook is by far the largest of the Social Media Networks. But contrary to popular opinion, it isn’t just about personal family and friends trivial discussions. Of course, that does in fact take place, but more and more Facebook is about business. There are so called “Fan Pages” which are more often than not business advertisements in one form or another.

Then we have the most “professional” Social Network in Linked In. It has been around for a very long time and is

Source: BNet.com

now one of the premiere sites for recruiters, head hunters and job seekers.

Many of the retained search and placement firms now openly advise their clients that they use LinkedIn and other social media to find out more about prospective employees. Yet another reason to be very careful what you put in your profiles. Company HR departments are also turning to LinkedIn for job placement. They use other Social Media including Craig’s List, Facebook and MySpace.

MySpace has been seen to be falling behind the other Social Media. Especially competition from Facebook and Twitter have been fierce. Still, they have a respectable

Source: BNet.com

market. This tends to be a younger demographic and focuses on sharing music and photos. Still Facebook has become the second largest photo sharing site on the internet. So MySpace is playing catch up there too.

The newest kid on the block is Twitter. And if you are like me, then you figure it’s just a bunch of teens sending out mundane updates on what they had for lunch, why they hate their math teacher and who’s the “hottest” on campus these days. WRONG!

Source: BNet.com

Twitter has become a huge marketing tool for sharing information that is useful. Sure, there are still the personal updates from time-to-time, but the folks I follow (and those who follow me) seem more interested in sharing information. This Blog will be “Tweeted,” shared on Facebook and Linked in when it posts. All automatically.

Which brings me to another couple of points. For those of us who have limited time only and do not want to get sucked into that “black hole,” there are tools that let us time-shift our work. I usually take a few hours out of my weekend to work on the Social Media and Blog stuff, schedule it for the following week, and then go about my business during the normal work week. I may throw in ten or fifteen minutes early in the morning to “Tweet” some interesting article that an e-mail pointed out. But for the most part, I do this kind of creative work on the weekends or evenings after the normal workday ends.

Another point is that for those of us who are selling services or whose products are not sold over the internet, we often make the mistake of saying, “Yeah, but did it generate any business.” I think the answer needs to be perhaps it did, but really what I’m doing on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and my Blog is branding, not advertising. I think this is a very key point. By openly posting information, sharing knowledge with peers and generally giving back to the community, we are becoming known and building credibility. And remember, these days, “sell” is a four letter word. Nobody wants to be sold anything. So adjust your attitude, intention and messages to be one of openly sharing rather than pitching.

More on tools and how we can manage this brave new world in the next installment.

We can all think about instances, perhaps very close to home, where we had a better product or service and we still didn’t get people beating a path to our door. Sometimes, we might have a superior product and terrible service, but people overcome their reluctance an purchase anyway for the convenience. An example, much in the news these days, is the situation with the iPhone. Just about everyone I speak with who has an iPhone simply loves it. I have to admit, the iPhone is the first Apple product that I wanted, I mean, really wanted – until I found out it was exclusive with AT&T. I passed because of that (everyone has a favorite telecom to “hate”). Apparently, that was the right decision in some respects, because those same people who gush enthusiastically about their iPhone will, more often than not, tell you in the same breath that they “hate” AT&T. Dropped calls, poor bandwidth and the legendary “terrible” customer service takes its toll eventually.

Enter Google with it’s new offering, the Nexus One. I have no idea, personally, whether this phone is a technological iPhone killer or not. Some say it is. What intrigues me isn’t so much that there is a new phone out there that may be as good or better than the iPhone, it’s the business model that Google is trying to put in place. The phone is not tethered to any one carrier. You can purchase it on-line from Google and take it in to your favorite carrier and have it activated on their system. There’s also the “problem” that now Google is competing in hardware with some of the other handset manufacturers using the Android software. Interesting. I’m not sure how this will shake out.

Here’s what I am interested in, and that’s the innovative business model changes. I’m thinking along the lines that while it is of course a good thing to have great innovative products, I think the real business leverage comes from having an innovative business model. The internet provided a lot of innovation in that respect. We now do much of our shopping on-line and even the “bricks and mortar” guys have been forced to allow us to shop that way. Being able to do so may have saved the retail season since many folks were not able to get to the stores due to inclement weather in much of our country.

I’m seeing lots of innovation around business models even for some of the “mundane” businesses. Consulting for example, is being changed by a shift in pricing models to one where “customer satisfaction is being guaranteed” or “your money back.” There has always been a few consultants where were brave and confident enough to do this, but it is moving into the mainstream now. How we sell (a big topic on this blog) is quickly evolving to a model of “not selling” and “not pitching” but rather one of being at least consultative selling (relationships and a source of information) and at best trust based relationships selling (the vendor authentically has your best interests at heart). We no longer need much in the way of product or solutions based selling – they are too manipulative and I can get product/solution information free over the internet.

Another area of our business models that demand changes is in the area of marketing and branding. Seemingly out of the blue, if you aren’t watching the social media sites, you may not only be missing out on the positive aspects of building an image and brand, you may be missing out on what could be your own obituary as people trash your image because they are unhappy for one reason or another.

This all adds up to trying to figure out how to build a new and innovative business model as a solid foundation for launching a new killer product. Imagine if the iPhone was available to you on your favorite carrier. You could avoid you favorite one to hate and still have a great phone. Speaking for myself, if the iPhone had been available on my carrier, I’d have one on my hip today. Google may be doing this for us. Even if the new Nexus isn’t quite as good as or better than the iPhone (and most reviewers say it’s “at least as good” at this point) those who have iPhone envy will likely make it successful.

Then there is the Google foray into the energy business. They are a huge consumer of electricity and want to now be able to help others with the conservation techniques they have learned as well as resell power since they purchase so much anyway. Interesting. Talk about a change in product mix! I’m not sure how they will innovate the way in which power is purchased and resold, but I’m confident they will make changes somehow.

So the question is are you looking at how to change the way you do business – that is, changing your “business model”? Will you build a new foundation on which to provide the same services or products in a new an innovative way and thus take market share? Are you still trying to “go to market” the same way even though things have changed and hoping for a new an innovative product to carry you through? What’s your game plan?

The premise of the article is that things have changed. We should no longer be hiring and elevating “Product Managers.” Instead, the authors (Roland T. Rust, Christine Moorman, and Gaurav Bhalla) suggest that we have Chief Customer Officers (CCOs). It is critical, however, that this person not be under the impression that they simply have to try and raise customer awareness in the organization. Instead, this person must be empowered to make organizational changes to actually create focus on the customer’s needs – not the products we have to sell so go and make a market. The CCO, it follows, must report directly to the CEO and be able to influence organizational structure, resource allocation and especially R&D efforts. One of the major changes in the large institution will be to have R&D report to the CCO – think you can get that one through the mill?

The authors point out that many of the big B2B companies and some of the larger B2C companies are pretty good at creating customer focus. And they have been VERY successful. And while I have grown weary of all the “C-Suite” positions we seem to be creating (Chief Technology Officer, Chief Learning Officer, Chief Creative Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Customer Officer, etc.), I do agree with the authors’ push to get us back to focusing on what customers want and need versus development of nifty new products and services that have no real market or simply confuse the clients.

But what does all this mean to smaller companies? We don’t have the resources – and we certainly don’t have all the “Chiefs of Everything,” – we only have very few executives and hopefully a bunch of really good high performing employees to get the work done. I don’t think this is very hard. I think crying about a lack of resources, time, size, or any one of a number of other excuses are just that – excuses. The small business entity has a culture just like any other organization. If that culture, usually instilled by the owner/founder and in bigger organizations by the management team, is solidly focused on the customer then we will not have to worry about a product manager “not getting it.” The trick is,of course, to shape the corporate culture in such a way as to make that happen.

What will you do in the coming year to make sure you are not pushing products, features and services that have to be sold instead of finding out what your customers are dying to buy? How will you shape the culture to make sure ALL employees are focused on satisfying the customer? Will you continue to be product /service oriented and expect that things will just get better and “back to business as usual?” How do you spell “denial?”

Well, today I think that my mind has been changed – at least as far as Twitter is concerned. A most delightful young woman who specializes in Social Networking for marketing gave a presentation sponsored by the Professional Coaches and Mentors Association (PCMA). It was very compelling and now I have a Twitter account and am anxious to begin using the tools that Rachel Pradhan, President of Indra Successful Coach Marketing, gave us. She made it clear that my view of Twitter was out of date and that Twitter has indeed evolved to be quite an interesting marketing tool.

What Social Networks are you using? How do you make sure it’s effective use of your time?