Love my message!
On January 24th, 2011 Henriette Weber wrote:
This is a blogpost Henriette did for the danish commerce magazine "erhvervsbladet.dk" where she writes a blog on a weekly basis. It has received close to standing ovations - so we thought we would get her to put it up here as well, in english of course.
I have a firm belief that if you can get people to love the things you do, and the things you're passionate about as a business, then you can
really get social media to accelerate your messages out to the big wide world. But this is easier said than done, because - How do you get
people to love your message? Here's a little list of things you need to consider in that area:
1. Not everybody will love it.
It's utopia to believe that everybody on the planet will love what you do. They won't. There's always someone who will think it's naive to relate directly to your clients, and that running a business just can't be as simple as that. I know we are getting more and more connected, getting less and less time, and that we, in bigger and bigger numbers ignore the normal, commercial messages we get the shoveled down our throat in
tv-advertisements.
It's important that you don't try to sell your product too broad, but instead try to sell it to a narrow group of clients. That way you get a natural way of sorting your clients, so that
those who the message (or your business or your values) aren't relevant for, don't receive it.
2. Preferences because of the personal relationship.
You have to get the people who purchase your product to you love enough to choose you over your competitors. The relationship to the clients gets vital here, and it's important that they know that it's me, Henriette, that they have contact to, and not a company without a personality or a face, because that isn't particularly very relationship-creating.
There are so many companies out there on the internet that have a contact formular as a face towards the outer world. In my opinion, this is a gigantic wasted chance to get the people who are approaching you to get to know you better and get a feel of what it is that you have to offer them in your business. Normally, all people are pretty cool and have a
lot of stuff to offer, so why is it that we are putting up large
barriers for interaction on the internet, instead of breaking them
down?
3. You have to be very clear and focused in your communication.
If anyone asks you what it is you really want for your business, you have to be able to answer it without hesitation. Your employees need to be able to do the same thing. The strongest memory for me at the Le Web conference in Paris (at the beginning of December) was when the CEO of Better Place said
that their mission as a business "was to end oil". Think about it; a
business that has made it their own mission to end the worlds
consumption of oil. If that's not a strong mission, I don't know what is. Do you have a mission that's as strong and good and lovable? Do your employees know what it is, and do they work towards it?
4. Become a company that gets highlighted because of the good things they do.
I often use companies such as Howies and Innocent drinks in my speaking gigs about the social web. The reason I do that is that – yep, they are THAT good, and they do a very cool piece of work. They make a lot of initiatives that support who they are as a brand, and one of the things I really like is that they don't have an advertising agency to tell them how they feel and what they should look like to the rest of the world;
they know that very well themselves already!
One of the fun parts about highlighting companies as Howies and Innocent Drinks, is that this isn't a social media thing, and it isn't make believe. If you go to design conferences and read design blogs or go to logistic conferences, it's the exact same companies that are being highlighted as cases. Apparently they stand out very clearly from their competitors, simply because they dare to be different.
Things like making a corporate policy that the company isn't allowed to calculate airline traffic in their logistical planning (because airline traffic is too pollutive for your company) changes peoples preferences, and supports what kind of company you are. Getting your employees to do a Glee Club and posting their own interpreted version of Lady Gaga’s "bad romance" on the internet, isn't far out - it's cool, and it's something that makes me feel that if I had to get a daytime job, Innocent Drinks would be the first place I would apply.
Because it might be that it doesn't appeal to ALL of the mases, but it does appeal to me
. 5. It's cool to do good stuff.
Because good stuff creates goodwill, and goodwill makes people support your company.
It's 50 times easier to get people to relate to what you're doing if you communicate it in a right way, if you're personal and if you have some causes which you support.
Business isn't just about business anymore. It has another layer, and that layer is the the effect of branding by doing good.
I'm doing a Social Business Media Master Class together with danish CSR queen Tania Ellis (and author of the completely kickass english book "the new pioneers") at the end of January. It's especially for social businesses and businesses that are into CSR, with focus on how they can use social media to accelerate their causes (because they have a lot of them), and how they get more people to join forces with them. I have a theory, that social businesses that already have causes, that already know their mission (for example to end oil) have an easier time getting attention on the social web because people can relate to what they are saying and what they are trying to achieve. Maybe more lovable messages and more causes could be something that your company should look into?
[social business, social media, social business media master class, workshop, tania ellis, message, love] [13 comments]