A case study of how wrong social media can go is when a Guardian reporter recently set up a Twitter account in the name of Shippam’s Paste. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/04/shippams-paste-ben-twitter-shippamspaste Purporting to be a new marketing intern, “Ben’s” naïve tweets displayed his company master’s voice telling him what to do rather than listening to and engaging with his audience. Whilst this has, and will continue to become, an iconic case study, it is true of so many brands and companies up and down the country who “do” social media because they’ve been told to (by someone looking to sell a ‘how to’ course), because they perceive it as free (whoever said ‘time is money’) and/or because they (or their kids) want them to be seen as ‘cool’!

Social media in business is no different to any other marketing communication channel in that it has to be used as part of an overall strategy. You wouldn’t put up a 48 sheet poster on the A4 on a whim or take out a double page spread in the Daily Mail so why on earth do you put you and your company’s message out into the world via social media without first going through the marketing fundamentals:

• Who am I?
• What do I / my brand stand for?
• Who do I want to talk to?
• Where can I find them?

If the answer is that the right place for your brand to engage with its audience is via social media (and defining which branch of social media as they do NOT all do the same job) then fine. Set a strategy, walk your walk and talk your talk and you should win through. But if you sell technical products or services to multinational conglomerates across the other side of the world, posting a status update on Facebook might not do it for you!

Engaging in social media takes resource commitment. There’s nothing worse than a brand that puts itself out there and says it wants to engage with people… and then doesn’t. If people don’t like what you do, don’t take the comment down or cover it up (unless it’s defamatory), admit your mistake and show how you resolved the problem. A customer who has a complaint properly dealt with is still likely to continue to be a customer and others will be impressed by your honesty. If someone poses a question it must be answered quickly – within an hour, not a week. When suggestions are offered, don’t just dismiss them out of hand, engage with the person as to what you can and can’t do with the idea, always giving reasons. Remember, whatever you say id there for all to see and will remain accessible for a long time so it needs to always be in keeping with your brand strategy and what you stand for.

I looked up an online dictionary definition of ‘social media’ and it said, “forms of electronic communication (as web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).” NO IT ISN’T! They are using “sharing” in much the same way as traditional media is about “broadcasting”. The clue is in the name. Social media is …social! You don’t meet a friend and talk at them for five minutes and then walk away not letting them get a word in edgeways (OK, you might all know someone who does – but how does that make you feel on the receiving end?) Most social interaction is about engagement and that is not token engagement but real, genuine, two-way communication.

Social media may well be the right answer for you – but make sure you ask the right questions first. If you need help setting a strategy, give the Marketing Mentor a call.

Are you on the side of journalists needing to have their sources or are the latest allegations involving tapping the phones of murdered children, rather than just people in the public eye like politicians, mean the line has well and truly been crossed?

Brands such as Halifax, Ford, Saiinsburys, Mumsnet, Co-op and Virgin Holidays have all decided to go with the public mood and pull advertising from the News of the World. But what should the Press Association do? Or the government given that so far Rupert Murdoch’s News International has chosen to do nothing?

This is a classic case of crisis PR. In my view Murdoch has to make a public apology and sack Rebekah Brooks and anyone else tainted with this fiasco. The company must also spill the beans on its relationships with private investigators and wash its dirty linen in public. Then perhaps, and only perhaps, the News of the World can survive this.

So, given marketing’s importance to overall business achievement, when did you last give your marketing a health check with these top 10 questions to keep your brand in shape.

1. What market are you in?

No, it’s not a rhetorical question. You’d be amazed at how many brand owners, even large corporates, that can’t succinctly (or consistently) answer this question. That’s because it’s often not the most obvious answer. And the answer does change with time and market conditions. One of the first things to learn in marketing is it’s not all about you; it’s about your customers – UCB (Unique Customer Benefit) rather than USP (Unique Selling Point). What do customers want and how can you meet that need? The more precise your market definition is, the more focussed your targeting and the more cost effective you can make your communications.

2. Where do you think you sit in your market?

Have you identified the key differentiators in your market and plotted where you believe you sit versus your competitors? For example, are you taking a value or a premium position? Are you a niche specialist provider or a generalist? (Generalists may feel that they have spread their risk and widened their potential market but, in many cases, they can suffer at the hands of specialists in each area in which they operate.) Are you a market leader or a market follower? Are you an innovator or a me-too brand? (Innovators in markets may get the glory but it is often the second to market brands that benefit from that innovation and are the more financially successful.)

3. How does that compare with other people’s perceptions of you?

It’s all very well you thinking you’re one thing, but do those around you agree? There’s no point honing your communications to reflect your view of what you offer if the marketplace sees you as something completely different. Not only will your communication be a mismatch with their expectations; it could also possibly have negative repercussions on their image of you for the future. So it’s important to check that your perceptions of yourself (image, values, essence) match the market’s perception of you. If they don’t, one of you needs to change – and that may well have to be you!

4. What’s your true brand essence?

What makes your brand or business special? What are those intangible aspects of your brand that connect with customers and form a true dialogue? Now you know what market you’re in, where you sit (perceptually and actually) in that market and who your target audience are, you can really hone down your true brand essence. Start by writing it down in a couple of paragraphs. Then reduce it to a couple of sentences. And then reduce it to no more than half a dozen words. Think of it as The Sun headline for your business. Keep challenging it with the “so what?” question (a powerful tool in many areas of marketing) until you have it polished. And then, challenge everything you do against it.

5. How much do you know about your consumers?

No, I’m not talking socio-economic or acorn groupings. The days of putting groups of consumers into neat “market segmentation” boxes is over. The questions for brand owners now are about: Where do your consumers go? What do they do? How do they buy? Who do they talk to? Who do they listen to? Yes, it is more difficult to learn about them individually but, done properly, you can engage with your current and prospective customers in a way that builds the brand experience… for both of you.

6. How do you engage with your customers?

Brand marketing used to be about influencing consumer behaviour through persuasive brand messages. But is anyone listening any more? Today’s consumers are more powerful than ever before and information hungry. They are influenced by their peer group, over which the brand owner has little or no power. Don’t look to try and control all messaging. Modern consumers will comment on their experience with your brand or business; respond to negative, as well as positive, criticism. Brand owners need to engage with their consumers and treat them all as individuals. Being seen to be human and honest is a strong start to being seen as a brand for the 21^st century.

7. How does your brand make people feel?

But today’s marketing challenge is not only about what your brand stands for; it’s also about how you want to leave people feeling as a result of coming into contact with your brand. It’s all about meaningful contact – known technically as “emotive branding”. It means knowing – and living – your brand’s reason for being, it’s true essence. By having a meaningful dialogue with its customers, a brand can encourage a more emotional bond with them. In turn, you will create brand advocates who will care more, think more, talk more and do more for your brand.

8. Does your marketing strategy include all aspects of communication?

One thing that I find amazing is how all brands, large and small, old and new, are jumping on the social media bandwagon with gay abandon. Yes, social media offers brands a wonderful opportunity to engage with consumers but, like any other form of marketing communication, it needs to be managed as part of an overall marketing strategy. Being on Twitter or Facebook is not an end in itself; it is just another option in the marketing mix.

The same applies to websites. Before rushing down the SEO or Google Ads route, you need to decide whether your customers are even looking for you, or your type of business, online and, if so, what will make you stand out?

9. When did you last challenge your marketing agencies?

In the same way that you know it makes sense to have professionals like an accountant or HR professional to bring their specialist skills to your business, a marketing professional can add value too. But with the plethora of PR, experiential, design and brand agencies out there, how do you know who to use? And, if you already have marketing agencies on board, when did you last check that they are still as keen for your business as they should be, have a clear strategy to meet your objectives and are measurable and accountable for that? If not recently, then perhaps you should!

10. Is your marketing strategy aligned with company financial objectives?

And, at the end of the day, all of the above is only relevant in as much as it feeds into your overall company financial objectives. Your marketing strategy needs to be an intrinsic part of your business strategy and should be measured accordingly. There is no such thing as “nice to do” in marketing; everything has to have a stated purpose and the outcome needs to be measurable, both qualitatively and quantitatively (in terms of ROI). If you’ve been on sales training courses, you’ll have heard of SMART goals – well, your marketing needs to be smart too!

All tips are ©Barbara Stopher, The Marketing Mentor. This is just the tip of a full marketing health check. If you are interested and need help to take an objective view of your business, please visit my website and get in touch

I’m in no way a SEO expert but I do take the time to fill in the boxes on my database website so that I list all the relevant key words based on the manufacturer, a description of the item, the official title and catalogue number if it has one, the condition etc. Yes it’s a chore, given the number of items on my site, but it works. Lilliput World is found on the first page of Google for many of the relevant searches like vintage lead, Britains lead farm and Timpo lead.

For those of you who think I’m talking another language, these are all vintage miniature (mainly 1:32 scale) lead figures that were children’s toys in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s – until the use of lead for children’s toys was banned as they realised it was a unhealthy if children sucked their toys! But that means that they are now desirable collectables for adults who want to remember childhood past.

Anyway, having sent out my monthly newsletter (you can sign up here if I’ve made you interested) and had an article published in GiddyLimits this month about “Barbara Stopher’s big strides in a small world”, I thought I’d do a detailed key word check amongst my competitors and see if I was missing any SEO tricks.

And that’s when I found all the totally non-relevant words that some people add to their listings to try to get them up the rankings; for example, since when have Rolex watches, Christmas presents and holidays had anything to do with a small lead figure? I know Goggle is trying to expose and penalize these abusers; it is a very shoddy practice.

Given marketing is all about putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and answering their needs and wants, how do they expect a customer to feel who is looking to buy a quality watch and ends up on a page of little lead people? Disappointed, annoyed, frustrated; so that makes two of us! Describe your items properly and then the right people will find them. In the words of a famous meerkat, “simples”.

Fortunately, unlike many of my clients, who jump in at the communcation end and don’t know / forget about all the strategy that should come up front, I was guilty of the crime the other way around. My strategy is, and always was, sound but my communication, i.e. my website, was talking about a type of service I offered a while ago and it hadn’t caught up with the new Barbara Stopher offering. But now it has and you can check it out for yourself.

I guess the two main areas that weren’t on the old version are my marketing health check where I can review your strategy, making sure that it is in line with business objectives and that the results are measurable. I can also take that one stage further. So that, if you use marketing agencies for PR or design for example, I can review their performance and make sure that they are still “fit for purpose”. If not, I can manage a pitch process for you so that you DO have an agency working on your business that will deliver not only great creative work that is on strategy but also sound ROI.

As a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and ex Chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Marketing Communications Group, I care about this industry. So I want to make sure that people who offer services under the “Marketing and PR” banner do so with the right amount of strategic background, insightful thought and commercial knowledge so that you, as their client, get the best possible results.

So, if any of this reflects your situation, get in touch and let’s start talking.

If you were going to sell a car, would you expect to get the best price if the MOT had run out, you had lost the service book, the tyres were worn and the whole thing needed a good clean? No. In the same way that you wouldn’t entertain buying something in that state for yourself. So why do so many people think that, just because the engine of their business is running OK, it will be a great buy for someone else?

There’s nothing different about selling a business than selling any other valuable asset, such as a car, a house or a racehorse, except that, unless you’re a serial entrepreneur or a billionaire, most people will probably only ever sell one business in their lifetime. It’s your life’s work, your baby, your pride and joy; so don’t you owe it to yourself and your business to present it in the best possible light to prospective new owners?

The first thing to think about is timing. If you want to exit your business next year, but haven’t yet taken any action towards it, you’re already a couple of years too late. You will never realise the true potential of your business if you rush into it. Selling a business needs to be a planned process with all your actions as a business owner, in the time before and during when your business is marketed, being focussed on showing your business in its best light.

That means reviewing the root and branch of what you do and how you do it; looking at it from as objective a viewpoint as you can. Your organisational structure needs to be robust and to prove that every decision does not begin and end with you. If your aim is to exit the business but you currently do everything, change it. Make your most trusted employees become more involved in decision making. No one is going to buy your business and have it fall apart as soon as you exit the building!

Your policies and procedures need to stand up to scrutiny with any outside accreditation, such as ISO9001 or Investors in People, being a real help here. You need to have all your accounts up to date and in a format that can be easily followed by a serious prospective buyer when you get further down the line. But you also need all those other things you filed away years ago: your certificate of incorporation, your company register, your share certificates and your company seal. They are like your car logbook; if they’re not available, it makes people question if everything is as it should be.

Finally, you need to be able to present what you do, how you do it and why you stand out from your competitors in a clear, concise and compelling way. If that is not your area of expertise, don’t be afraid to ask an expert for help. It will pay off in the end if you can make the absolutely best case possible for your business. Want to know more? Send me a message or email help@barbarastopher.co.uk

Murray and Djokovic are supposedly friends who often practice together and therefore Murray said that each of their games would have no surprises for the other at the final. Wrong! Djokovic used his knowledge to predict exactly what Murray would do and had him on the run from the first game as his intention was to win the trophy. Murray just let himself be dictated to by his opponent with none of his usual grit and determination. He did not use his knowledge of Djokovic’s play to turn it to his advantage. One fault being commonly attributed to Andy Murray is that he is too cautious and does not take enough risks. Back to my point; none of his support team can show him how to push the boundaries.

What Any Murray needs on his team is a winner. Someone who has been there and got the T-shirt and so can confidently explore with him how to take calculated risks for higher reward. This is exactly the same role that a good business mentor undertakes with their client; helping them to explore options, break boundaries and move forward. But choose your mentor wisely. Look for a recognised qualification and someone who has run a business themselves rather than become a professional consultant out of university and never achieved anything in their own right. You don’t want to be another Murray…

Update 15 Feb 2011: Andy Murray looking for brand sponsor – any ideas? Murray Mints? Talisman? Scottish Gas? http://tinyurl.com/6hymybu

The process starts with engagement between the coach and the coachee, which is informal and can be face to face or over the telephone. This is really a checking-in process to define and understand what the coachee expects from the coaching relationship and can also involve other stakeholders such as the line manager and Human Resources department. It is our responsibility as coach to explain what coaching is and describe the process so that all parties can discuss what is involved and buy-in can be achieved.

Part of the engagement process is to ensure that the differences between coaching and mentoring, along with other possible interventions, are explained. Some of the key differences are summarised below:

The coachee has to take responsibility to recognise their own coaching need, accept the responsibility for change, agree that they are ready to move forward and exhibit the will to do so.

The next stage is to formalise the coaching relationship via a written contract, honouring the agreement between all stakeholders and agreeing clear goals and objectives. The contract will also detail such terms and conditions as the number of coaching sessions, the length of each session, the content and structure of the sessions, provision of safety and security, the level of confidentiality involved, any reporting structure, the fees and coach access details so that each party understand their role and responsibilities. Should the coaching role develop, for example into mentoring and include the provision of advice and guidance, the contract would need to be rewritten.

Alongside the contract, as coach we need to inform and provide the client / stakeholders with a copy of our code of ethics that sets out the safe environment where coaching can take place and gives manageable boundaries of the coaching relationship. These include what can and what cannot be discussed, ensures that we conduct ourselves in an appropriate and agreed manner and practice within a consistent and ethical framework. We need to ensure that the coachee feels safe in the professional relationship and that signposting arrangements are agreed to support the coachee if their needs fall outside of that relationship.

It is important that the coachee does not develop a reliance on the coach; this is different for mentors where reliance can develop. If the coach is external and recognises that this is happening, they have a responsibility to bring this to the attention of the coachee and, if it cannot be resolved, end the contract. If the coach is internal, they must be sure not to abuse their position of authority.

As coach, it is important to recognise our own value system and beliefs and to understand how these may impact on our coachee. Best coaching / mentoring practice shows that it is crucial to ensure that our own values and beliefs do not adversely affect the relationship; we need to approach the coaching relationship with an open mind and in neutral observer mode. We must also have a good awareness and understanding of the values and beliefs of the coachee and be conscious that they may have a different moral code from us. We should be supportive at all times and not judgmental of our coachee’s views, lifestyle or aspirations. Both parties must feel safe to challenge inappropriate language or behaviour.

It is crucial for coaches to develop and continually improve our communication skills as well as our skills to understand and interpret the communications we receive from others. A good coaching session should be a structured, focused conversation, not an interview or training session. It is the coachee that drives the content of the discussion and so, as coach, we need to be open minded and concentrate on listening to and questioning our coachee. The GROW (Goals – Reality – Options – Will) model works well as a basis for structuring coaching conversations.

By being present in the moment to carefully listen to and recognise the language used by the coachee, the coach should be able to interpret these and extract the true meaning of what is being said. We can then reflect that understanding by using a style of language back in our facilitative style of questioning to increase the relevance to the coachee and elicit a truer response, objectively challenging as necessary.

As coach, we need to ask for clarification of any areas of the discussion that could be ambiguous and avoid using words that are jargon to the coachee. We also need to regularly check where we are in the coaching moment by paraphrasing or summarising the discussion to improve clarity and ensure understanding.

By tracking the response to the questions we ask, we can improve our future questioning and increase our rapport with and level of trust from the coachee. ‘Push’ questioning is designed for problem solving whereas ‘pull’ questioning allows for careful listening and reflection.

Body language is key to judging how comfortable the coachee is discussing a topic and when they may need coaxing to open up more and develop their thoughts for greater clarity and understanding. This means that a coach should be confident in level three, or global, listening skills.

Those of you who viewed The Apprentice will be familiar with the cringe-worthy descriptions that the candidates gave of themselves in interview. Stuart Baggs The Brand (‘you’re NOT a brand’ said outraged Alan Sugar advisor Claude Littner) referred to himself as a ‘big fish in a small pond’. ‘You’re not even a fish’ said Littner. Then there was Jamie Lester who used the metaphor of being a ‘key cog in the wheel’ to a scary-eyed Margaret Mountford. Once challenged by Mountford who said it didn’t make sense and challenged ‘what wheel?’ he wasn’t sure how to go on.

It’s strange how we all seem to think these pompous adjectives and metaphors are what it takes to impress others when, in truth, the exact opposite is probably true. LinkedIn have conducted a review of these clichés and buzzwords as used by people on their site, taking into account all the ‘results-oriented team players with a proven track record’ and the ‘fast-paced problem solvers with extensive experience’ and come up with their own top 10 over-used words from their 85 million profiles worldwide. The most over-used word in the UK? It’s ‘motivated’

So when you review your profile, write your next elevator pitch, try saying something a bit more meaningful and individual and avoid the clichés and buzzwords – you know it makes sense.

Read more at http://preview.tinyurl.com/3yhcaa6

Read more at:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletin/brandrepublicnewsbulletin/article/1042666/location-location-location-new-wave-social-networking/