Getting Greener

With this unseasonably warm winter and possibility of an early spring, we take a look at sustainability and making your business greener in this month’s newsletter. Of course, greener can mean environmentally conscious or more profitable so for now let’s think about more profitable.

Here are some things you can do right now to find a few extra dollars:

1.       Have a professional do your taxes. Small businesses often cut back on services they can make do without, but a tax professional will have the expertise to take advantage of every opportunity to save you money. It’s well worth the cost to have the security of knowing it was done well and will probably net you at least a few hundred dollars in the process.

2.       Outsource. If you try to do everything yourself, you take the focus off what you do best and hold up your own success. You don’t have to hire someone full-time to get administrative work done. Look for a freelancer who can fill in as needed. Consider the services of a disabled veteran, a college student or a retiree – people who can benefit from occasional work as much as you benefit from the help.

3.       Barter.  Online services like U-Exchange http://www.u-exchange.com/howitworks offer the ability to trade goods and services back and forth. Not only does this give you the opportunity to meet a need without a large impact to your bottom line, it also opens up your client base and provides additional word-of-mouth exposure. In times like these, who couldn’t use a few more friends?

4.       Offer value. Rather than slashing prices to draw in customers who may or may not return, offer greater value to enhance the experience and make your product or service more appealing. Often this costs less than campaigns that appeal strictly to the lowest bottom line. Rather than position yourself as a bargain and possibly a desperate one, position yourself as a treasure and set your sites on living up to your clients’ expectations.

5.       And finally, get outside and enjoy the green. You are less likely to be sick and miss work if you make a habit of regular exercise, even if it is just a 15 minute walk each day. So take some time for yourself and you will help your business too.

The Power of the People

In case you were in bed with a cold last week, SOPA and PIPA were House bills designed to fight online piracy. As you probably know, many sites protested the legislation and on Friday, Congress decided to table the bills.

And there was much rejoicing…online.

But was this actually a good thing? Isn’t fighting pirates a good thing?

The issue at hand was that the legislation was written too broadly. I don’t think anyone would suggest that people who make their living from intellectual property should live with the expectation of it being stolen. The problem is that, in the case of SOPA, it would only take a few anonymous complaints to take down an entire site. Hypothetically, the US government would have the authority to block YouTube because one contributor used copyrighted material and the owner of the material complained. Given the millions of contributors and material on the site, SOPA methods would be like using a jackhammer when a surgical scalpel was more appropriate.

The most interesting thing about the proposed legislation last week and the media circus surrounding it, was that the protestors won. Eight million people followed the links from the blacked-out Wikipedia site to contact their Congressional representative.

There is no doubt that this debate is far from over. Although we do have laws on the books that protect intellectual property, we don’t have laws that adequately keep pace with the speed and types of use that happen now electronically.  Still, the online community stated loudly that these laws need more refinement and our legislators listened. At least, for now. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next year. As an Internet content provider, I hope that we will find the wisdom and governance this issue deserves. Restored faith in our leaders would be a nice side effect as well.

Moving Forward

In our newsletter this month, we step back to get some perspective before plunging into the year ahead. If I had to sum up in a word what to expect from 2012, I think that word would be clarity. 

Economic uncertainty may have plagued the country for the last few years, but I think the clouds of uncertainty will drift away soon. At the Consumer Electronics Show this week, the media has been buzzing about the level of innovation and expectation that has returned. For the last few years, the show has been somewhat flat, but interest this year has surged.

We elect a president this year. Even with the political theatre we can surely expect this summer, whom we elect will say a great deal about the direction this country will take strategically and financially.

And, as we discuss in the newsletter, we are going to see leaner, tighter, more strategic social media companies.  Designers have had a few years to tinker with mobile apps and test their abilities. New designs are certain to have the user more in mind now and provide a needed service.

It’s not that there won’t be uncertainty along the way, but approaching this year with optimism seems authentic in a way it may not have this time last year. If each year is a journey, here’s hoping this one is a grand adventure.

What's Coming?

2011 has been a year full of technological innovation in every direction especially with regard to social media. The big concept for next year looks to be focus. Unlike this year, where innovation for its own sake meant numerous social start-ups with unclear purpose, next year we should start to see more purpose-driven design.

The economy seems to be slowly chugging to a brighter outlook, but consumer behavior has already made a shift to seeking value over status. We are going to expect the same from emerging technology.

Check-Ins

Smart phone deals are going to gain traction and start to focus consumer behavior this year. Initially panned as a fad, check-in services that survived this year will surge ahead with stronger rewards and more compelling deals. As more and more consumers discover these “hidden” deals, we will see them become an ingrained part of our culture.

Aggregators

Another big trend in the coming year will be services that organize the oceans of information that wash over us each day. Pinterest was the first independent service to capture bits of information, save them and organize them for the user. 2012 is likely to see more players in this field. Subjot similarly takes topics that interest you and sifts for just those topics. In other words, it serves you what your friends have to say only on topics that matter to you.

Attention Deficit

Remember the Facebook game that allowed you to decorate a personal Christmas tree? Social networking has evolved quickly over the last couple of years. Consumers are much more savvy and selective about content they want to see. I predict that this year will see marketers striving to excel within the various social channel algorithms so they can rise above the “feed clutter” to reach their audiences. Companies that benefit from this migration most will be the ones that offer content relevant to their audience in the most forthright and interesting way.

In Defense of Consequences

Last week bloggers across America were shocked when a judge in Oregon ruled that a blogger must pay $2.5 million for comments she made about an investment firm because she’s not a journalist. According to the ruling, she wasn’t a journalist because she wasn’t affiliated with any organized news service. Bloggers were outraged.

I get where they are coming from, but I felt vindicated.

I understand their frustration because journalism has changed so much since I was in college. “Organized” media has been consolidated and, in many cases, the rules we learned in school were thrown out the window in favor of packaging whatever information would provide the best ratings. In a lot of cases, the people who are really going out in the world to uncover truth are independent bloggers. The problem is, most of them don’t have the education or experience to attribute sources or verify facts.

Subsequently, you have a very mixed bag of skill and integrity. What’s missing here – what the judge was trying to get across – is credentials. I have no doubt that media is forever changed by the immediacy of electronic communication and I have no doubt that some individual bloggers are great reporters. Some are even highly-credentialed journalists. But without standards, some bloggers are able to pose as journalists even if they are just lunatics with axes to grind. We saw this happen numerous times throughout the BP oil spill crisis. Anyone with a conspiracy theory could be taken seriously whether they had real evidence or not. Once the story was out there, it was shared and re-posted until it was so ubiquitous it must be true.

It will be interesting to see how standards emerge with this new media. I’m sure this will be only the first of many lawsuits that over time will produce concrete standards by which a blogger can also be called a journalist. Serious bloggers would be wise to band together to create those standards on their own.  Serious journalism schools would be wise to fold blogging in to their standards as well.  In the meantime, I’m glad to see that there are now possible consequences for making cavalier statements. Bloggers who are concerned this might happen to them would do well to choose their words more carefully – and get insurance.

Just Checking In

Some ideas hit the ball clear out of the park, but others make a good solid grounder past the short stop. So it is with location-based services. Despite industry analyst predictions, Foursquare tripled its audience this year. One of Foursquare’s biggest competitors, Gowalla, was just purchased by Facebook and will disappear in January. So it would seem that 2012 will see a few strong players in this field which is what it really needs to be enormously popular. After all, no one wants to check-in to the same place 6 or 7 times.

If you still haven’t explored check-in games yet, it looks like now is the best time to step up to the plate. Most services offer special holiday rewards and discounts so test the services while you elbow your way past the crowds at the mall.

Here are the services in order of number of users:
Foursquare – 15 million users worldwide, 7.5 million American users
Loopt – 5 million worldwide
MyTown – 4.5 million worldwide
SCVNGR – 2 million worldwide

Of course there’s also Facebook. This year they released Facebook Places as a separate check-in service and then shut it down and integrated it into status functionality.  With the purchase of Gowalla will they plan to make another go of it? Speaking as a marketing professional, I certainly hope so. With over 800 million users, nothing can touch the potential reach and scale available to Facebook.  So, if you refuse to participate in a check-in game, you might at least want to get accustomed to posting your location on Facebook while you are out. Driving the trend in that direction can be enormously beneficial if you want the general public to start checking in to your business.

Good News Bad News

The good news is that holiday sales are up, consumer confidence appears to be on the rise and we can expect a nice economic boost this December. The bad news is that we have completely lost our manners in the process. Apparently pepper spray is the new normal.

God bless Cyber Monday. If all holiday shopping looked like Black Friday, we would have martial law by now. Instead, plenty of people stayed home and took care of Christmas shopping not only online but on their cell phones. Mobile sales were up 6.6 percent this year to 10.8 percent of Cyber Monday sales. People completed one out of 10 transactions from their phones. Wow.

Is it just me or have we as a country been moving in divergent directions? How long will rational, efficient behavior live side-by-side with frantic, imaginary crisis? I miss the days when it was fun to go holiday shopping amid elaborate decorations at shopping centers and malls. I look forward to a time when we can stroll with families, dazzled by lights and displays. When the pendulum finds its way to the middle, as it invariably does, it will be interesting to see how these divergent mindsets come back together. I wonder what role social media will play. Online meet-ups are already very popular. We’ve all seen YouTube videos of flash-mobs. Will tweet-ups replace casual strolls? I hope so. Somehow those of us who are excited by Foursquare scores need to help the pepper-sprayers of the world to find a more constructive focus for their energy.