“How can we use social media to differentiate our company from our competition?”

Whatever their size and nature may be, all organizations need to differentiate themselves from their competition and this is a question their leaders are asking…or should be asking — as another New Year begins.

Here are brief descriptions of three of the best ways I know of to gain a competitive advantage with differentiation, using appropriate social media.

If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact me by clicking here.

First, determine which social media are most appropriate. These are the “Top Ten” in terms of number of accounts:

1. Facebook (750,000,000)
2. Twitter (250,000,000)
3. LinkedIn (110,000,000)
4. MySpace (70,500,000)
5. Google Plus+ (65,000,000)
6. DeviantArt (25,500,000)
7. LiveJournal (20,500,000)
8. Tagged (19,500,000)
9. Orkut (17,500,000)
10. Pinterest (15,500,000)

Now here are the three initiatives I recommend.

Profiles of VIP Client Companies

Determine the criteria by which to identify your most important customers and rank them accordingly. Post one profile every-other week or monthly, one that cites the key circumstances of company’s founding, its major product(s) and/or service(s), and defining characteristics. If possible, include an archival photo.

Benefit: All organizations welcome and cherish positive attention. What you post will almost certainly be re-posted by the company.

Interview of  Their CEO
(or perhaps someone else below the C-level who is highly-valued, a peak performer, “always goes the extra mile,” etc.)

Select 5-10 questions in a Q&A format. Post responses. Include head shot and brief (2-3 sentence) bio.

My suggestions re schedule: If the profile is posted every other week, post the interview the week following; if the profile is posted monthly, post the interview two weeks later.

Benefit: All organizations welcome and appreciate opportunities to recognize and celebrate their people.

The “60-Second Business Bookshelf”

Many busy executives have an attention span that resembles a Strobe blink. Weekly bi-weekly, or monthly, add five (5) mini-reviews of business bestsellers. Each mini-review takes about a minute to read.

Benefit: Over time, this will be an indispensable destination source for brief but essential information about current bestsellers and/or classics.

Some of the organizations I work with post a weekly email alert via social media that directs people to a dedicated website. There is no shortage of options. These are only three possibilities.

If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact me by clicking here.

 

Josh Linkner on “Swiss Army Knife Innovation”

Here’s a recent post by Josh Linkner at his website. To check out the wealth of resources that he provides, please click here.

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That ubiquitous red contraption contains just about every feature you can imagine.  A nail clipper, ice pick, and Philips screwdriver.  None of the individual tools are especially remarkable – you could buy a corkscrew that is higher quality and more beautifully designed – but all of these mediocre features are crammed into one product. Is that what your company does? Spending nearly every waking moment with entrepreneurs, a common mistake is to try to drive progress by adding product features.  Website isn’t attracting enough users?  Throw in an extra function to the site.  Mobile app missing revenue targets?  Must need some new bell or whistle.

I call this the Swiss Army Knife trap.  It’s the erroneous conclusion that adding more will create more, while the truth is that the best companies focus their energy on simplicity.

Apple is legendary for removing buttons and features to offer customers beautiful, simple, clean design.  A key reason Facebook crushed MySpace was their ability to offer an elegant, uncluttered user experience.  The best companies focus on having fewer product features, but having the ones that remain deliver something truly special.

Instead of adding yet another function or service to your mix, try the opposite approach.  Great sculptors throughout history believe that their work of art already exists within that giant block of granite. Their job is to remove the unnecessary rock to reveal their masterpiece.  Think about your own product or service.  What can you remove, streamline, or simplify to reveal an uncluttered work of beauty?  Create an offering that’s easy to understand and solves real customer problems in a remarkable way.
You’re far better off doing one thing really, really well than trying to toss in every feature imaginable.  Direct your creative energy toward being the best at something and making it so compelling that it can’t be ignored.  Too many ingredients in the soup makes it taste horrible… the same applies to your business.

It’s time to resist the diabolical temptation to add a toothpick, leather punch, or tweezers.  Stop worrying about adding new menu items and make sure you are delivering incredible value with your core offering. Your customers, investors, team members, and accountant will all thank you.

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Josh Linkner is the New York Times bestselling author of Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, named one of the top 10 business books of 2011. Josh is the CEO and Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners. Together with business partners Earvin “Magic” Johnson and NBA team owner Dan Gilbert, Josh is actively rebuilding urban areas through technology and entrepreneurship. Josh is also Adjunct Professor of Applied Creativity at the University of Michigan. For more information on creativity, visit his website by clicking here.

“In addition to my blog, you’ll find free videos, quizzes, articles, eBooks and more to help fuel your creative fire!”

Kristi Hedges: An interview by Bob Morris

Kristi Hedges is a leadership coach, speaker and author. In her 20-year career working with leaders to help them communicate more effectively she’s encountered every personality type imaginable, yet remains more than a little passionate that anyone can learn presence. Her workshops and leadership coaching programs have been utilized by CEOs and teams of all sizes in companies spanning the Fortune 500, government, non-profit and privately held businesses. She runs her own coaching practice, The Hedges Company, and is a founding partner in the leadership development firm, Element North.

Kristi blogs on leadership for Forbes.com, created and penned “The Leadership Factor” column for Entrepreneur.com. She’s been featured in publications such as Washington Post, Reuters, MSNBC.com, and CNBC.com. She’s been honored as one of the “50 Women Who Mean Business in Washington, D.C.” and as an owner of a top 25 Largest Women-Owned Businesses by the Washington Business Journal.

Prior to becoming a leadership coach, Kristi co-founded and ran one of the first technology communications firms in the Washington, D.C. area for a decade before successfully selling her interest. Her career highlights also include working for a national news outlet, and as a political consultant for dozens of electoral campaigns from U.S. President to statewide offices.

Here is an excerpt from an interview of her. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) years ago that set you on the career course that you continue to follow? Please explain.

Hedges: I’m not sure there was one point, but rather many that directed me in my career. As an entrepreneur, leadership was my constant puzzle that was always studied, toyed with, improved, and yet unsolved. It became my passion, and that led me to become a leadership coach after I sold my interest in my last company.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education proven invaluable to what you have accomplished thus far?

Hedges: I have two degrees in communications, and my masters is in political communication and persuasion. They’ve both influenced my career, but as I wrote The Power of Presence, I realized that my graduate research provided a framework for many of the ideas I had about interpersonal communication and influence. In a way they were so embedded in my strategies, I had forgotten they were there.

Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you completed your formal education and first went to work full-time?

Hedges: I wish I’d had a better sense of when to push and when to let things play out. I was very ambitious, impatient and worked my tail off — but I lacked perspective. I often underestimated how much time it takes to get the big picture. I knew the power of relationships, but I wish I would have developed deeper ones and asked for mentorship.

Morris: Opinions are divided (sometimes sharply divided) on the importance of charisma to effective leadership. What do you think?

Hedges: I actually hate the topic of charisma in leadership! I just don’t find it helpful. It makes those who don’t consider themselves charismatic (and frankly, few do) feel powerless to become stronger leaders. If you need to have this innate quality, why bother trying?

Jim Collins introduced the “hedgehog” style of leadership in Good to Great, as the most successful one. I agree with him. Great leaders can be charismatic, but it’s not a requirement.

Morris: However different the greatest leaders throughout history may be in most respects, what do all of them share in common in terms of their presence?

Hedges: Great leaders care deeply about the larger cause, whether it’s saving the environment or launching a company. They are passionate and know how to communicate their commitment to others. In my opinion, there is no substitute for a fire in the belly.

Morris: I don’t know about you but most (if not all) of the most valuable life lessons I have learned were from failure, not success. You have observed a countless number of people who do or don’t possess highly-developed personal presence. Here’s a two-part question. First, what are the most valuable lessons to be learned from those who do?

Hedges: People with great presence have an ability to relate to others. There’s an openness there, an authentic connection, and trustworthiness. They make others feel “more than” rather than diminished, even from a short conversation.

Morris: From those who do not possess a highly-developed personal presence?

Hedges: Many times a weak presence comes from being overly guarded or perfectionistic. If we don’t know someone or they’re intimidating, we can’t relate. To have presence, you need to blend your competency with your humanity. You can be powerful and still be a real person.

Morris: I have never been physically present in an audience to which Steve Jobs spoke but I have probably seen most (if not all) of the films of him in action. In your opinion, why was he an “insanely great” public speaker?

Hedges: Steve Jobs staged every speech down to the smallest detail. He was meticulous about how he communicated. Anyone who takes their communication that seriously is going to be good. However, Jobs’ greatness came from his authentic passion for Apple products. He knew how to use his own excitement to tap into the energy of others. He also knew that speeches should be about an experience, not words on a screen. He make the audience part of the conversation, not merely observers.

Morris: Through your association with The Hedges Company and Element North, you have helped numerous companies to improve their leadership development programs. Presumably you begin each new relationship with a situation analysis. What are you most eager to learn that you did not already know? Why?

Hedges: I always start with gathering the impression of leadership from the broader company. Leaders set the tone and cement the culture. If they are seen as uncaring or incompetent, that has to be addressed first. No leadership program will work if there’s a fundamental problem at the top. It’s always interesting to juxtapose those findings against what a company’s leadership believes their impression to be. If there’s a disconnect, that’s a red flag.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Kristi Hedges cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

http://www.thehedgescompany.com

http://www.elementnorth.com/index.html

The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others

You can also follow her on Twitter @kristihedges.

Why Facebook Beat Myspace… Focus On Innovation And Product Development

News item — Murdoch’s News Corp ponders MySpace sale:  Loss-making social networking site has found it tough competing with rivals Facebook and Twitter.

Who wins? This guy...

I have asked my students this question:  “How many of you have a Myspace page?  How about a Facebook page?  My experience is this – Myspace came and went in the blink of an eye, and Facebook has come, and stayed, and all of my students not only have  a Facebook page, but use it constantly.  (In fact, my own son, who – how do I say this delicately?…, is not too interested in reading my blog posts…, actually reposted my recent blog post on obesity from my Facebook link to his Facebook link).

Facebook has clearly and soundly defeated Myspace, and at the moment no rival seems to be rising to make much of a dent in its dominance.  Why?

Here’s one reason – Mark Zuckerberg is one of those rare business geniuses.  Of course it takes a team:  the right people with the right skills and the right chemistry working together throughout the entire enterprise…   But it takes a singular vision from a key/the key player.  Consider Steve Jobs.  Consider Mark Zuckerberg.

or this guy?

But at the heart of this competition stands the focus of this modern day business genius – a  constant, unyielding focus on innovation.

Here is a brief excerpt from a story about the decline of Myspace that captures this (from the Huffington Post, How News Corp Got Lost In Myspace by Yinka Adegoke, Reuters):

Zuckerberg’s great strength, say his one-time rivals from Myspace, was that he and his team were focused on product development and innovation while Myspace had become too concerned with revenue and meeting traffic targets of its Google deal.

“The technology fell behind and it just shows that even when you have a massive user base you still need to offer something new to keep people engaged,” said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.

A focus on innovation and product development produces the possibility of dominance.  A focus on revenue produces vulnerability.

Lesson over.

By the way, what’s your business focus?

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By the way, take a look at the bottom of this blog post.  With a click of your mouse, you can post this to your Facebook page.  (Please do so!)  Do you see the Myspace button?  I didn’t think so…

Keep Looking Over Your Shoulder, (and Keep Getting Better) – Reed Hastings, Netflix, Business Person of the Year

The life span of success seems to be getting shorter and shorter.  This week’s news is that MySpace is now basically folding Facebook into its pages.  (MySpace has capitulated to Facebook’s advances, launching ‘Mashup With Facebook’).

So – how to be successful in this age?  Remember this simple truth:  someone’s gaining on you, so keep looking over your shoulder!

That’s the headline about Reed Hastings, Fortune’s Business Person of the Year:  Reed Hastings: Leader of the pack:  Executives from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street admires his savvy persistence – and his company’s cool culture. The secret to the Netflix CEO’s success? He never stops looking over his shoulder.

Reed Hastings

 

The secret to the Netflix CEO’s success? He never stops looking over his shoulder.
“The turnover in the S&P 500 is terrifying,” (says Hastings). “Most of the time change in the world overtakes you.”
That restless, slightly paranoid attitude, combined with a Steve Jobs-like perfectionist streak, is what sets Hastings apart, says Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr.

So, how to stay successful?  Consider these:

1.  Keep getting better –all the time, over and over and over again.

2.  Keep figuring out what is next. Call this creativity, and then innovation, but it means that you can never, never, never count on tomorrow’s success if you simply keep repeating that you have been doing in the same way.

3.  Keep looking over your shoulder. The competition, some of which does not yet exit, is out to get you.  Keep looking.  “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle,” said Sun Tzu.

Congratulations to Mr. Hastings. (and, yes, I’m a subscriber).

Privacy – What Could Be More Fundamental Than This?

Sam Seaborn:
It’s not about abortion. It’s about the next 20 years. Twenties and thirties, it was the role of government. Fifties and sixties, it was civil rights. The next two decades, it’s gonna be privacy. I’m talking about the Internet. I’m talking about cellphones. I’m talking about health records, and who’s gay and who’s not. And moreover, in a country born on a will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?
The West Wing — “The Short List”
Story By: Aaron Sorkin & Dee Dee Myers (script here).

———-

I keep thinking about business decisions, and how much impact they have on others.

And I keep thinking about personal decisions, and how much impact they have on others.

And I keep thinking about when to make what public.  But, it may not be up to the company, or the individual, to say…  Not anymore.

Technology keeps moving forward.  What we can do, we seem to do.  And, so, if I can put a message on Facebook, everybody has a chance of seeing it.  And, if someone else has a message about me, a photo of me, a video of me, and if I am famous enough, or important enough, or silly enough, there is a pretty good chance it will spread far and wide.

In the first season of The West Wing, there is a “shoo-in” supreme court appointee who is rejected by President Bartlet because of his understanding of privacy.

The episode first aired in November, 1999, pretty much before any of us had high-speed for the internet, long before Twitter and MySpace were born, quite a few years before Facebook became so omnipresent. The script was written by Dee Dee Myers, and Aaron Sorkin, who recently wrote the screen-play for the movie The Social Network, about Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In the news this week, Facebook’s security was breached, and a whole lot of information about actual people went tumbling out for many to see.

It’s being claimed that some of the most popular applications on Facebook have been transmitting information identifying users.
The company said that it would introduce new technology to limit the security breach.
Facebook developer Mike Vernal blogged: ” We take user privacy seriously. We are dedicated to protecting private user data.”
(Read the story here).

I do realize that I can choose what to post in my Facebook page, and in/on my Tweets.

But in a world where people secretly (and publicly) take pictures, and videos, and put them up for the world to see, it seems that this discussion of privacy from the first season of The West Wing is eerily prescient, and a still unsettled issue of our day.

“What could be more fundamental than this?” asked Sam Seaborn.  It’s a good question.

First is good – Better is better (Facebook won!)

Facebook owns its market, maybe the whole world!  But it wasn’t first – it was just simpler to use, (and very, very, very, very competitive).

Here’s the key quote:

Campus Network figured it out first. Facebook just executed it better.

Read about this here: The Other Social Network: It launched first. It had cooler features. Why did Columbia’s Campus Network lose out to Harvard’s Facebook? by Christopher Beam.

Brian Libby on “How to Conduct a Job Interview”

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Brian Libby for BNET, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and/or obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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Got a key position to fill? Hiring good employees is the foundation of any successful business. But selecting the right ones is hard work, and the interview process is often the most important step in the process. Here’s how to figure out if the candidate sitting across from you is likely to become your next Employee of the Month.

A clean, well-lighted place: Windowless conference rooms don’t foster honest dialogue. Consider meeting in your own office or at an off-site coffee shop.

Multiple interviewers: Several members of your team should meet key hires. The more perspective you get on the candidate, the smarter your decision will be.

Note-taking materials: It could be a pen and paper or a laptop and digital recorder, but don’t rely on memory alone to track responses.

A plan: Know the order in which you’ll proceed with questions and how they’ll be divided up among team members.

Do Your Homework Beforehand

Goal: Minimize the back-story and maximize the time you spend with the candidate.

Going into an interview, each interviewer should have already studied a dossier on the person they’re about to meet face to face. At the very least, become familiar enough with his or her resume, cover letter, or other submitted materials so you don’t waste the first half of the interview re-learning basic biographical information.

Make sure you have the information you need to get a sense of what each candidate is all about—and what they might bring to the position—before you conduct the actual interview. Google, a company that prides itself on its creative approach to the hiring process, uses tailored questionnaires that candidates answer online. Given that it’s a tech company, many of the questions are, well, technical. One candidate was asked to design a system that would produce a report of the top 1 million Google search requests—using only custom-written applications and free open-source software. Other Google questions seek out extracurricular experience: answers have included accounts of climbing mountains and writing novels. “If we find individuals who have done interesting things, they seem to make a better connection with the community here,” says Google staffing director Arnnon Geshuri.

Increasingly, blogs and websites like MySpace and Facebook are making it easy to learn a wealth of personal information about people, even though those sites were not posted with you in mind—and may have no bearing whatsoever on a candidate’s job fitness. “We regard that as a personal thing, and we don’t seek it out,” says General Electric recruitment manager Steve Canale. “But I tell my children, ‘Don’t put anything out there you don’t want everybody to be able to see.’” Candidates who learn that their personal websites have been weighed along with their resume may be angered by the invasion of privacy and the irrelevance to the job. An honorable rule of thumb is to ask in advance if the candidate has any online presence they’d like you to check out.

Danger! Danger! Danger!

Keeping It Legal

The interview process is subject to numerous employment laws designed to protect applicants’ privacy and ensure them a fair shot in the selection process. Employers cannot ask questions about religion, national origin, age, height, weight, marital status, disability, or gender unless they represent genuine qualifications essential to the operation of the business. (For example: a church can ask potential ministers about their religious background; a contracting firm can ask if candidates are physically able to perform certain tasks.)

No one should be required to provide personal information, and some in the employment field recommend keeping the interview process tied strictly to job relevance. If asking about off-hours pursuits, say so in an open-ended way, such as, “We’re seeking well-rounded, passionate people. Is that how you’d characterize yourself?”

Beware the Three-minute Judgment

Goal: Choose the best person for the job—not your new best friend.

It’s human nature to base your opinion about a candidate on the gut feeling you develop during the first few minutes of the interview. To some extent, that tendency can be harnessed as a kind of intrinsic sixth sense. But have faith in the process as a whole. Many of the best employees might not make a great first impression, but their talent reveals itself more and more over time.

“When I’ve done training for interviewing, I’ve noticed that people fantasize about the concept of having a buzzer under the desk that you could push to say, ‘No thank you,’” says industrial psychologist Charles Handler of Rocket-Hire.com, a firm that advises companies on their hiring processes. “But you need to think, before you hit that imaginary buzzer, why do you want to hit it? You have to suspend judgment and think about collecting data that will help you make a good decision in the end.”
Handler adds that for the most part, people want to hire people like themselves. “The key is reducing subjectivity and making the process more job related,” he says. Remember: you want to create a team with a true diversity of personalities, perspectives, and talents. That’s crucial to keep in mind when biographical details related to hobbies, cultural tastes, and other outside pursuits come up. If you’re too easily swayed by your shared passion for Harry Potter books or old David Bowie albums, you’re not going to focus properly on concrete, practical information about aptitude and suitability. For a more detailed discussion of how not to conduct a job interview, read about the “10 Mistakes Managers Make During Job Interviews.” [Click here.]

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To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and/or obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

Facebook – An Environment to Turbocharge Creativity

I just wrote about ways we might have to lower expectations regarding what to expect from a job in this difficult economic climate.  But, there is an alternative.  We could just all go to work for Facebook.

Mark Zuckerburg -- mandating creativity

Last night, on ABC’s World News, Diane Sawyer interviewed/profiled Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook.  Here is an excerpt of her piece (you can watch it here).

“People who work here can come at their own schedule, they can eat all their meals here, play an occasional Guitar Hero, they can even send out their laundry from work.  All because the 26 year old founder wants no distractions from creativity.  By the way, he lives within walking distance.

This is the key quote:
All because the 26 year old founder wants no distractions from creativity.

How well is it working?  Just remember this – in a metaphorical blink of an eye, Facebook has left MySpace in the dust, and basically taken over the world.  But here is the key business lesson:

no distractions from creativity!!!

Li’s New Book May Not Be What You Think – Are All Systems Go?

 

Charlene Li’s new business best-seller, Open Leadership (San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass), is all about social technologies.  The major premise from her book is that leaders need to let go.  They must take the risk to expose their organizations to customers, suppliers, vendors, and competitors, or they will be left behind in the rapidly evolving marketplace.

Be warned that this is not a guide to using Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or any other tool.   The focus of this book is on developing and creating systems that work for individuals and organizations. 

I was particularly fascinated with the “sandbox covenants.”  These are the rules, procedures, and disciplines that it takes to structure openness.   If that sounds contradictory to you – “structuring openness” – realize that without walls to keep the sand in, you do not have a system, and you have chaos.  Every executive, employee, vendor, or customer who interfaces with a social technology system offered by an organization must play by some rules, or the system collapses.

You may not be surprised that not everyone is cut out for this task.  One of the interesting features of the book is a self-assessment to determine where an individual stands concerning the mind-set, traits, and behaviors that it takes to succeed with social technologies.  The good news is that “where you are” is not necessarily ”where you can be,” and practically every behavior and skill to succeed is trainable and learnable.

Li emphasizes patience with these systems.  She is correct.  Rome was not built in a day, and neither are any of these tools.  The key is to make them work for you – not you working for them.

I really believe that this book deserves a careful read by anyone who holds an interest in greater returns from social technologies.

What do you think?  Let’s talk about it!