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When is it good to inconvenience the customer?
When is it OK to make customers jump through hoops? When they are still a prospect? After they have become a customer?
Ecommerce sites are all about making buying easy. In fact I’d say that was a pretty good mantra for any online communication where there is a desired outcome. Make buying/responding/taking part/commenting/ unsubscribing/ whatever it is you want someone to be able to do … easy.
Of course there are exceptions. Marketers come up with various strategies to create demand, or urgency, or brand cachet by (for example) limiting availability, delaying a launch, hiking up a price, requiring a complex sign-up.
Half day workshops on Twitter and LinkedIn this month
Coming up very soon, just to let you know about a couple of open workshops I’m running for The Hive in Lewes:Twitter for Business
Wednesday 21st March 2012, 10:00am – 1:00pm
Come and learn:
● what makes a great Twitter profile
● how to integrate Twitter into your business
● how to monitor trends and competitors on Twitter
● how to avoid the most common mistakes
● how businesses are successfully using Twitter
● tools, tricks and shortcuts
Useful for:
● Novice or soon-to-be business Tweeters
● Experienced business Tweeters unsure if they’re getting the most from it
Format:
A mixture of presentation, hands-on (bring a lap-top or tablet) and discussion.
Computers crunch data, humans do the thinking
Recently I met with two lovely people embarking on a new business, who wanted to pick my brain a little about social media. We talked about how journalism had changed (one was a former jourmalist) and about the core ideas of social media – transparency, generosity, listening, conversation. It reminded me once more of what I used to always say on my Twitter profile – ‘it’s all about peeps.’ So often, when people think about social media or social networking they think of the tools, the technology.
What do you think of ‘motivational’ type business books? (Plus review of ‘The Start-up of You’)
I was recently sent a copy of The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, to take a look at (thanks @najmafinlay). It certainly seems timely, with so many people competing for a smaller pool of good jobs, redundancies looming and for many of us the idea of 'retirement' becoming increasingly theoretical.
Reid Hoffman, we're told on the cover, is a co-founder of LinkedIn, so that probably tells you where the book's coming from. Having said that, I liked the format, with practical, actionable steps at the end of each chapter under the heading "Invest in Yourself" and plenty of sound advice about the value of building your network and a generous reading list at the end.
