Business tactics

Ben Rudolph is what tech companies like to call an “evangelist”. Personally, I think a more realistic term is “paid fanboy”, but there you go. He works for Microsoft, specifically focusing on the Windows Phone 7 brand. But why’s he appearing in the news this week?

Well, it’s because he’s giving Windows 7 handsets to those who tweet their Android issues at him, and use the hashtag #droidrage. Yes, that’s correct. Tell him why your Android phone sucks, and he’ll send you a Windows 7 phone. Doesn’t sound like a bad deal. Unless you’re Google.

This is essentially the equivalent of being at school and offering anyone who calls Jimmy “fat legs” a chocolate bar. Few people are actually doing it because Jimmy has fat legs; they’re doing it for the free chocolate. But regardless of what their motivation is, Jimmy gets a load of bad press.

#droidrage could potentially become a trending topic in the United States today, and that’s going to cause Google a fair few PR problems. But what’s the right response? Offering Android handsets to those who tweet using the hashtag #wp7hasnoapps? Or being a little more mature and weathering the storm of bad-press anecdotes, some of them potentially fabricated?

It might be a new approach Microsoft are testing to see whether they can shake things up a little bit. Given that as I write this, news is going out that the head of Windows Phone 7 has been replaced, a new direction might actually be on the cards.

The legality of the issue is a little hazy, because neither the fans or Rudolph are saying anything libellous. But I think anyone who’s not waiting for Google’s reaction with bated breath clearly doesn’t have much interest in the future of the smartphone market. Android has a whopping market share (51%) simply because it’s not tied to one brand, as iOS is, and that’s its primary advantage. But if it starts to appear flawed in any way, all it will take is the average user becoming aware of the flaws, and Android’s grip on the market may begin to slip.

It’s a dangerous approach to marketing Windows 7 phones, but who knows? It just might work, provided Microsoft can get away with it. Thoughts?

Are you bored of carrying around credit cards and money? Well it looks like you are in luck as Near Field Communication, or NFC, could be set to revolutionise the world of retail. NFC works by allowing two devices to communicate with each other via wireless connections, at short distances of only a few centimetres. This principle is already a big part of the lives of all Londoners who use contactless technology found in the Oyster card, electronic ticketing system used in the metro (or Tube). Commuters just touch-and-go, making travelling a seamless process, at least where ticketing is concerned. This is even more advanced in Japan, where mobile phones are used in the place of Oyster cards and tickets.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this technology. It makes things run a lot smoother, and is threatening to make paper tickets obsolete. This is not the only thing that the technology will threaten, as credit cards and even physical money are likely to come under threat. The main area for development of NFC is in retail. This technology is being increasingly developed for use by shops, allowing their customers to use their smartphones in a similar way that Londoners use Oyster cards.

Customers will their credit card information stored on their smartphone with an embedded NFC chip, then they simply tap on the NFC Reader at the cash register to pay wirelessly and quickly. The advantage of this is clear, it eliminates the need to carry around credit cards and even money, and makes the payment process really simple and fast.

However, storing all of your information in one place can have its drawbacks. NFC technology gives us a gigantic reason not to lose our smartphones, and another reason to panic if you do. If this does happen however, the NFC-enabled phone can be cancelled and if found, the services can be re-enabled. So it looks like it will come down to whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

One of the big pluses for retailers, including small businesses as well as large, is that they will be able to tie into existing loyalty programs for NFC smartphones and gather useful customer data. This will enable businesses to study store trends and product preferences, as well as performing demographic analysis and other analytical tasks. But what about the application that allows shoppers to scan barcodes and automatically search for better deals elsewhere? Surely this will not be advantageous for businesses, especially if they are small and cannot afford to slash their prices.

However we feel about Near Field Communication, it is on the rise. While at the moment  only about ten percent of shoppers use NFC in the United Kingdom, this figure is higher in other countries, especially Turkey and the United States and it is surely only a matter of time before everyone follows suit. Will this mean the sad end to the Royal Mint in the United Kingdom that has been making money since the 9th Century? Or will it mark the beginning of a technological revolution that makes our lives much more simple and fast-paced? We will have to wait a few years to find out.

So, if you toddle off down Soho’s fashionable Dean Street in central London in the next several days, you’ll pass a shop that you probably never thought you’d see in real life. An eBay shop. No, really. It has second-hand stuff in it, and you pay using your smartphone. There are weird ideas, and then there’s this. And I think it’s pretty original.

“But I don’t have a smartphone!” you cry. No problem – HTC have provided the shop with tablet computers for you to use.

“But I don’t have an eBay/Paypal account!” Why? What century are you living in? I’ll admit there’s always going to be people who feel a little unsure about Paypal, but realistically one could argue they’re a damn sight more open to helping you than your bank is.

“But I don’t want second hand stuff!” Then don’t worry. There are plenty of shops with new things in. But if you’re looking for a great deal on something you might not be able to find new, then this is a good idea.

It’s not often I go all voluntarily gung-ho on promoting an idea that’s not mine, especially a corporate one, but I really like this – I walk in, use my phone, pick up my item, and walk out. There’s no messing around, I operate my own till, and I can finally see the eBay auction in person, which, if you buy expensive stuff from the online auction house, is pretty important.

But it proves that a great business on the internet is fully capable of actually making the 2011 transition in reverse – moving from the digital to the physical space. It’ll be interesting to see how this would work on a larger scale – if professional eBay sellers would “rent space” within the shop, or whether or not they’d remain on the high-street or aim for an IKEA-sized warehouse.

But is it worth it? One of the main reasons people like eBay is because of the sheer range of rare and cut-price goods to be found there, and all without leaving your house, or worse, actually visiting a flea market. Or even a shop. The horror.

It’s an idea that’s going to have to be test-run several times – this is by no means the first eBay shop in the UK, and this one only runs till the sixth of December (future people, it’s 2011 at the time of writing, so don’t send me hate mail if it’s not there just before the Mayan-predicted apocalypse next year). But if it goes well, we may just see a whole lot more of them. I’m totally up for it – what are your thoughts?

A lot of online businesses are run by a small team of people – and in some cases, just one person. That’s a lot of responsibility, but with hired help for coding and building the site, creating something that practically runs itself is going to prove to be an advantage in the long run. But sites will break, and not having the right skill-set to fix anything can really let you down in 2011.

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free,” states the Joker, in The Dark Knight. Odd place to source your advice, but I couldn’t agree more. If you’re doing something for free – i.e. fixing someone’s broken HTML – then you better be getting something great in return, or you’re costing yourself time you could be a) sleeping, b) making money, or c) not doing endless amounts of people favours with no rewards. But sadly that also means that those who are computer illiterate and trying to run a site will often run into difficulties – specifically, ones they can’t fix without forking out for a second salary.

Learning basic skills doesn’t take long at all – HTML and CSS are not impervious to the almost beginner – and even learning how to set up and manage a WordPress blog is going to help when it comes to making sure the small business you’re trying to get off the ground doesn’t falter in the early stages. After all, you don’t want to have to run to an IT-knowledgeable friend or relative (or worse, expensive freelancer) when you could be Googling and problem-solving.

The Google aversion is probably the source of 90% of the tech problems I hear. It’s so simple to Google your answer, and people are vocal and knowledgeable enough to have written about it years before you’re wanting questions answered and problems solved. Sometimes I ask questions on Twitter despite knowing I should be Googling, but it’s this knowledge – that the info I need is out there, waiting to be read, that means all is not lost if those I know personally can’t help me out.

Being a self-starter is all about being driven and committed, and making sure you can accomplish what you need to in a self-reliant manner is part of that. Starting a business means saying goodbye to the nine-to-five, and if you think any different then you’re kidding yourself. In the beginning, everything is down to you, from the accounting to getting the office internet connection set up. You don’t turn up for eight hours a day and claim a salary each month.

Sound daunting? It’s not – learning how to craft sites, deal with Paypal and forgo paid themes in favour of your own CSS artistry can actually be an enjoyable and empowering experience. It certainly has been for me – I know that after learning, Googling, asking questions and making mistakes, I can take a great site idea and actually build it into a working prototype. For every person who’ll call you a “noob” or claim you’ve no business, well, running a business, there’s someone who’s willing to walk you through the basics. Don’t get left behind – be one of the people leading the way.

This article has been emailed to us from the future. No, we don’t know how. We’re posting it anyway.

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[November 15th, 2021.]

Once upon a time, there were magical places in the centre of cities, called offices. These tall, sturdy buildings were marvels – people sat at “desks” to perform tasks centred around their day jobs, after travelling from home on a journey once known as a “commute”, during which they would read the paper and stare angrily at people who lacked noise-cancelling headphones.

Weirdly, people had the internet back then, and yet they all chose to work in the same room! Even with Skype, and IM, and even Twitter (that 140-character microblog post thing that was popular back then, before FaGoogleBook bought the internet), they were sat there at desks, talking to each other out loud! In person!

The reason I want to talk about this is because back then, running a small business was harder. Back then, you had to rent an office, which made things very expensive, and also really limited your staff choices because of the singular geographical constraint you placed on the roles you offered to potential future employees.

Now, you can start the business from your couch, and win awards – from your couch. All you need is a computer, and you can get started. Doesn’t matter if the trains are delayed, or if the City suffers a blackout, or even if the Olympics are in town (during which all businesses based in the city known as London gave up and went on holiday for a fortnight, causing countless riots across the capital). You’re comfy, you’re working hard, and you can work with a programmer in the States, and a PR whiz in China.

What’s odd is this was doable in 2011, and although some companies find it easier, or prefer to work in offices, for small businesses it’s the best route possible. The risk is low – no moving house, no office investment, no office temperature debates – just the work and the proof of concept. If it doesn’t work, moving on doesn’t take months – it takes a week, if that.

The best part is the fact that everything from education to business deals can be done via the web, but of course, it does tend to turn us into sociopathic recluses feeding off Ocado deliveries and the odd gift-to-self from Amazon. But it’s all in the name of business, right? Right?

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[November 15th, 2011.]

It’s something I fully support, for small businesses – once you’re a team of over a hundred people, sticking to your living room isn’t really going to work, as you’ll need the speed and the ability to speak to people quickly in custom groups and give presentations without having to stream it to them over the web. It also means that servers and other technological concerns are, while centralised (if your net is down, everyones is), a little more accessible.

Small businesses have a lot to learn. You don’t need an office. Some of the best websites and companies I know of started in someone’s house, or in the houses of individual staff scattered across the planet. So sprawl out on your couch, get alone, and go people hunting. See it this way: during the Olympics, you’ll be the only companies around, if you’re in London!

On Monday, socialmediatoday’s Debra Ellis posted an article that argued that social media metrics are useless, for a wide variety of reasons. It’s reassuring to know that there are those working and/or writing in the field who think the same as I do. These statistics, as a concept, will always be flawed, and rarely useful for making assumptions that rely on precise data. Social media metrics are essentially statistics based around attention-seeking and numerical fetishes. Let’s take a closer look at Ellis’ points.

She states that “the only real numbers that matter to your company are the ones generated from your marketing activities.” This is true, but a little unclear. What Ellis may mean is that the real number, at the end of the day, that matters more than all the others comes under the title of ‘sales’. The end product of a marketing campaign is either more, less, or equal sales to the figure that came before it, and everything else, from numbers of followers to your Klout rating, is somewhat irrelevant.

Mack Collier, social media strategist, reinforces this when he explains that having 22,000 Twitter followers doesn’t mean that 22,000 people are going to click a link you post – in most cases. There are exceptions, and author Neil Gaiman has an ability to – in his own words – “Neil web fail” any site by bringing the attention of his huge follower crowd onto a small site that isn’t prepared. But Collier states that there needs to be a better way to explain the shortcomings of these statistics to clients.

This makes sense – a client is going to see 22k followers, and only 200 clicks, and ask what the problem with your campaign is. The realistic answer is that there isn’t a problem with your campaign – 200 clicks is a great number considering that most people are not following less than a hundred people, and reading every tweet becomes difficult, let alone clicking every link. To quote a protester shown during Bowling for Columbine: “does everyone who watches a Lexus ad go out and buy a Lexus? No, but a few do.”

Discussing things with Jon (as one is wont to do quite often at MoreDigital – the man has a Wikipedia cache installed in his brain), we agreed that looking at follower numbers and Twitter graphs serves little purpose when it comes to measuring your social media reach, and this is true – an advert during the Superbowl could reach tens of millions of people, but it doesn’t mean anyone is actually watching with interest, given that it’s not the scheduled entertainment causing them to look toward the screen in the first place.

“The numbers that matter from social media participation are sales, costs, and satisfaction,” says Ellis. “If sales don’t increase, costs decrease, and/or satisfaction improves, your online activity is a waste of time.” It’s a tough pill to swallow if you’ve been working on a campaign non-stop only to realise that 75% of your followers are spam bots. At the same time, you can’t ditch the spam bots, because if they’ve given you a 300% increase in follower numbers, you’ll know that having 20k followers over 5k increases a user’s chance of following you.

Social media metrics have a long way to go, and there’s nothing wrong with keeping an eye on how you’re doing. But assuming that you can judge company performance using this sort of data is ludicrous, because it’s not actually relevant to company performance. Shouting about fresh fruit and vegetables while working at the market sells you four oranges. It doesn’t matter how many people heard you hawking your wares – those four oranges are your clue to whether or not you should be in the vitamin C game at all.

It’s arguable that due to the standard of today’s technology, we no longer need to work within an office environment in order to finish a profit and loss sheet. But are we really producing work of the same quality when tapping away at a netbook at thirty thousand feet, or are we sacrificing doing our jobs properly in order to complete a higher number of tasks and reduce downtime?

I find airplane travel to be an interesting experience. I love airports, for one; strolling around the duty free area, getting something to eat and drink for the plane, buying a magazine and enjoying the atmosphere (easy when everything is around 20 % cheaper). But I don’t feel compelled to work on the plane whether it’s a short trip or a long one, because it’s not a productive environment.

The seats usually aren’t comfortable – unless you’re in Business Class, a category whose name makes no sense whatsoever given that a business shouldn’t be forking out more for a flight than it has to. The noise is somewhat disruptive. Most of all, travelling is exhausting, and anyone with the desire to stay awake at a meeting after an eight-hour flight is going to use those eight hours to get an entire night’s worth of sleep.

I will sometimes work on the Tube – as a Londoner, our transport network is reliable, and you can work in relative peace as everyone is so fearfully antisocial when placed in a public environment. I’ve even written a MoreDigital blog post while sailing down the Piccadilly Line, but I find that it’s slightly more difficult when you can’t access the web to double-check your facts, or edit header images. So you can get your rough work done, and clean it up later.

Anyone expecting a neat finished product produced in such a stressful, disruptive atmosphere is kidding themselves. But you’ve got to do something with the time, and occasionally you’ll find that doing two hours of work while travelling (The Evening Standard indicates that a fifth of London commutes are over an hour long) means that you’ll be leaving at half five, instead of half seven.

Geekpreneur offers a few tips for working on the plane, most notably that you can’t work on any confidential projects, or that you probably shouldn’t be working, because no one would expect you to do so – not your boss, not your clients, not your staff. It’s simply unfair. If you want to do it, then go for it! Pass the time with a spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation. But don’t start in on that quarterly report because you feel that to snooze or read a novel would be to waste people’s time.

Do any of you work on the commute? I’d love to hear about people’s various attitudes to getting their projects closer to completion whilst being jostled around on the bus or making a major medical breakthrough while on the 5:29 to Bristol. So chip in, and share your thoughts.

Today is the first day of E3, for for those outside the spectrum of games industry knowledge, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. This three-day conference (five, for the press) centres on new games and technology produced by the big three – Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It also saturates games news sites with lots of smaller (or sometimes equally important) announcements and news bits from individual games or gaming tech developers.

One of the biggest topics will be Microsoft’s Kinect Sensor, something I’ve written about here recently, as their conference starts at 5:30pm today. Also today, BusinessWeek published Lee Yi’s three-item list by which someone could confirm whether or not an app or piece of technology would benefit a business well enough to justify keeping it in play. Given that, outside of the hacking community, Kinect is struggling somewhat, it’s an interesting time to think about these criteria.

The first is thus: Is the app or tool a fad, or does its provider have long-term potential?

This is a major issue for me when considering purchasing new technology, one that was recently relevant to my shopping list as I braved the negativity surrounding Sony’s Playstation Network data security issues and bought a PS3. For items designed by small businesses, it’s especially relevant – there are countless companies producing new apps, and some will end up like Rovio (creators of Angry Birds, and now one of the richest apps-only developers around, as of 2011 at least), while some will fade. However, how can we judge whether it’ll stick around? The second qualifier for a long-lasting product helps with this.

The cost of education and transition.

This is crucial – for example, I’m considering switching from Microsoft Word to Scrivener for the purpose of writing and researching. I am considering this because Scrivener allows me to put my notes, research, images, plans and outlines all into the one program, as a single project file, whereas Word requires me to open multiple document windows and a browser – possibly more programs, if I need them. However, if it takes too long for me to learn Scrivener’s intricacies, I will abandon my attempt because my time is worth money, and I can’t waste too much time trying to shift between programs. It’s pick-up-and-play, or cut-and-run.

The third sign of how your product will perform in the long-term? Current employee behaviour.

Now, for a business, the individuals using the app or technology matter, because if your office is full of people who have a hard time adjusting to new ways of doing their jobs, this could make using a new concept extremely difficult and potentially far more costly than you could justify to investors or shareholders. “The key to productivity is user adoption,” states Yi, “so finding out what your employees like to use or are currently using should be a factor in your strategy.”

I couldn’t agree more. Now here’s the final test, tonight – will people finally see the merits of adopting Kinect, or Scrivener, when simpler alternatives, like conventional controllers or the old favourite, Word, are right there and ready to go? I’ll follow up on the Scrivener experience from a writer’s perspective, but for now I’d love to hear your thoughts. What software packages or bits of tech made your business better, and how worth your time and investment was the transition from the old to the new?

For some time, it’s been argued that the social network every business should be tapping into is Facebook, but is this really the case?

Social Media Examiner states that “with 500 million people on Facebook, chances are more of your customers are active on Facebook than any other network.” Aliza Sherman of GigaOM claims that in terms of advertising, “there’s no question that Facebook wins.”

It all appears so clean-cut, and it’s interesting reading when you get into the reasoning behind their championing of Zuckerberg’s platform. The ease of viral promotion, the size of the existing community, and the way in which Facebook constantly pulls users in towards it because it’s so central to modern social communication.

However, a recent study by Three_D, the social media arm of PR company Threepipe Communications, has revealed that 65 companies on the FTSE 100 use Twitter instead of Facebook. While they may only represent sixty-five companies out of countless millions across the globe, a majority vote for the small blue bird from a hundred of the most successful companies in the UK is a significant statistic.

Twitter is no longer the novel concept it was in 2006. It now has over 300 million accounts – a growth of 60 million a year. This stands in comparison to Facebook’s 500 million accounts, accumulated since 2004, a growth of 71 million. The difference isn’t all that great, relatively speaking, and the immediate accessibility of the Twitter platform means it takes minutes to set up a company account, rather than the longer period required to adequately establish a Facebook fan page.

Sherman concedes similar points within her article, and her differentiation between the two platforms is key to understanding what some businesses prioritising their Facebook presence are missing: the reasons consumers connect to your company. “The way you accumulate page fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is different,” states Sherman. “You might gain a fan on Facebook just because someone sees someone they know becoming your fan. You gain followers on Twitter — genuine and engaged followers — because they actually want to hear what you have to say.”

Twitter is a feed of information that the user selects themselves, rather than another group affiliation or sign of consumer appreciation to be hung on the Wall of a Facebook user. Businesses are no longer seeking those who are willing to give them no more than a nod of approval; they want people to connect with the company out of personal interest.

It’s also not surprising to learn that potential customers are leaving Facebook along with the companies now devoting themselves to the 140-character marketing effort. The New York Times suggests that there are several factors at work driving people away from the social networking site, amongst them the overlapping of personal and business relationships, and the “inevitable” Orwellian undertones of Facebook’s aspirations to usurp Google as the central hub of today’s online society.

Twitter certainly seems like the better option, at least from my own perspective. There’s a sole purpose to a Twitter account – to tweet i.e. to communicate. There’s little else to do, nothing in fact, if you discard personalising your display picture, your small bio or your website link. It’s a streamlined experience that separates itself from the Facebook morass of Mafia Wars, Wall comments, privacy paranoia, and the endless struggle for the consumer’s “like” click. Perhaps the pro-Twitter trend will extend beyond the FTSE 100 in future. If the New York Times’ exodus analysis is anything to go by, it’s almost certain.

Every so often, it becomes clear that small businesses are taking increasing steps to widen their knowledge of search engine optimisation. The SEO discipline is, when put to good use, a veritable goldmine of consumer attention, increased website traffic, and a boost in the industry’s awareness of your business.

BusinessWeek‘s Karen E. Klein states that SEO is especially important for “small businesses with limited brand recognition.” Promoting the brand should be any small business’s number one goal – without brand awareness, there is no foundation upon which to build a successful company. Encouraging not only awareness, but loyalty can ensure that your business meets its long-term goals in addition to boosting sales of its current product and service range.

Unfortunately, as Klein states, the SEO tutorial network is rife with “bad information.” There are countless so-called “SEO experts” who are nothing more than self-proclaimed industry figureheads whose Twitter follower numbers are unfortunately often only an indication of a large void in which to cast their ideas. SEO agencies, however, are a far more reliable source of guidance and assistance, and will allow you to take advantage of the countless benefits of good SEO whilst negating the risks of bad advice.

SEO is, by and large, a method of turning a search-engine’s algorithms to your advantage. If you find that you rarely appear in the first page or two of results for keywords that describe your what your business offers to the letter, than perhaps an enquiry to an agency may be a wise choice.

Klein recommends SEOMoz and other sites containing beginner’s guides, but it is imperative that you consider the sources of such information. Like the wave of traditional marketing “experts” before them, many SEO magicians can offer little more than parlour tricks, preferring to rely on vague allusions to “community branding” and “generating a positive consumer experience,” minus the useful examples required to put these positive-sounding first steps into practice.

As with any new discipline within marketing, however, SEO has often been branded hogwash by those who prefer a more traditional approach, but it is easy to highlight the ignorance of such remarks. Figures from Search Engine Land indicate that as many as eighty-eight billion searches per month were made via Google alone in 2010. Statistics like this are hard to ignore – with the potential to reach as little as 0.1% of these individuals, the traffic drawn to your site would be enough to fund every single aspect of your business model, provided you are capable of generating revenue through advertising.

If your intention is to school yourself in SEO, and there are sound resources that make this possible, consider that it is not a monetary investment, but one of time and effort outside the day-to-day running of your business. Consider if you can justify this against the cost of hiring an SEO agency – after all, if you are capable of spending ten hours a week working on your SEO skills, it is equally justifiable that those hours could have funded a day-long SEO briefing at any number of competent agency offices. The financial benefit of the latter, you will find, more than pays for the cost of a DIY approach.

Soon, the digital age will reach its pinnacle and traditional businesses will have to re-shape their approach to marketing their brand. But until then, those small businesses who choose to take swift advantage of the benefits of search-engine optimisation will find themselves rewarded, and ahead of the game when their competitors finally join the online sphere.