5 Ways Your Company Culture is Stifling Innovation

Climate is the tenor of the workplace ecosystem. An openly innovative climate cultivates engagement and enthusiasm, challenges people to take risks, fosters learning, and encourages independent thinking. Open innovation is a term promoted byHenry Chesbrough, which simply put means “innovating with partners by sharing risk and sharing reward.” If your company isn’t providing that climate for innovation, then itis stifling innovation.

You might be thinking, “Who cares about innovation in my company? — I’ve got work to do!”  I was once like you; let someone else handle the innovation, because I needed to worry about me. Then I realized that if I didn’t take part in the collaboration, and offer up ideas, my once-successful company would look a lot like so many others (Blackberry comes to mind) that are either no longer with us, or on their way out.

Here are 5 cultural innovation killers that need to be recognized and overcome.

1.  Assumption-Based Decisions

Remember the saying, ‘Don’t assume, if you assume…’? Well, you know the rest.

Assuming is something we do all the time, though not always to our detriment. For example, if you leave your car in the garage, it’s safe to assume that it will be there in the morning. Your assumption saves you lots of time searching for it down the street, or in someone else’s garage. Other assumptions, however, don’t work out so simply, despite the evidence for their veracity.

The solution:  Question widely-held assumptions and remove these assumptions — begin with a clean slate, and listen to each new innovative idea.

“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.” ~ Alan Alda

2. A ‘No-Fail’ Zone in Effect

Edward Deming is well known for his fourteen points for improving management. One important point concerns his focus on driving out fear. Fear is unfounded.

When management reacts negatively to a new idea or a failed attempt it creates a fear of failure that limits open innovation. A failure to fail results in completely predictable, in-the-box thinking, and continued ‘more of same’ rationale. Imagine what could happen if you suddenly made it safer for people to accept the possibility of failure — a workplace where there’s no penalty or death sentence for getting it wrong now and then.

The solution: Tolerate risk and failure. People are more creative and innovative when they can be themselves and are free to share their honest ideas. Leadership must encourage innovation, including accepting risk, and viewing failure as a learning opportunity. Allow enough time for innovative ideas to develop, and encourage champions. 

3. Innovation is Out of Reach

Innovation doesn’t require us to understand the future — it requires us to understand our customers’ needs. Though Steve Jobs was famous for disregarding customer needs in favor of creating new products that ultimately created unrealized customer demand, we can’t all be Steve Jobs. For most of us, defining more effective or more efficient ways of meeting known or clearly emerging customer demands lies at the heart of sustained, always-on innovation. If you can conceive of a better way to do even just one small aspect of your job or improve your business, and have the drive to do something about it, you are playing a crucial role in business innovation.

The solution: Put systems, and software in place to make innovation easily accessible for everyone. Make innovation a part of every aspect of your business to create lasting, repeatable business results.

4. Innovation Is Optional

Your employees must believe that innovation is a must-have, not just nice to have. Not a flavor of the month. This particularly disruptive cultural trait causes companies to fall behind, fall out of favor, and fall apart in the face of increasing competition.

The solution: Allocate personal time for individuals to spend on innovation; require all employees to access the ‘collective brain’, and reward those that do.

5. You Believe Innovation Can’t Be Measured

Wrong. Innovation management software can measure results, helping to drive new business value. Enabling technology helps companies improve agility, productivity, and time-to-market by improving decision-making, visibility, and efficiency across the company.

The solution: Put systems and software in place to provide transparency and efficiency for your path to innovation. 

The success of innovation can be captured at three levels: external, enterprise and personal. In particular, external recognition shows how well a company is regarded as being innovative by its customers and competitors, and whether innovation has paid off financially. In broader terms, success will reinforce the enterprise’s values, behaviors, and culture, which in turn drive many subsequent actions and decisions: who will be rewarded, and which projects get a green light.

There has never been a better time to overcome corporate culture roadblocks to innovation and foster change internally and externally. The fact is, you either innovate, or you stagnate — which will you chose?

Please connect with me on Twitter too: @RikWalters

Why Mobile Marketing should be your priority - NOW!

A few years ago, mobile marketing was considered text messaging, or SMS marketing, but that has changed dramatically over the past few years. While there continues to be a marketing for SMS marketing,  there is continuous access to consumers because of their obsessions with their mobile devices and use of social media. If you have been waiting, or doubt the power and future of mobile, take a look at the latest stats from hubspot.

Based on a Business Insider article, There Will Soon Be One Smartphone For Every Five People In The World :

"Mobile web use will continue to surge over the next five years, and at an astonishing rate of 66 percent each year! As the world gets its hands on more mobile devices and more are connected to each other and the Web, according to a report from Cisco. In fact, connected devices will outnumber humans this year. The surge in mobile Internet traffic will come from a global population doing more throughout the day over wireless gadgets. By 2017, the average mobile user will watch 10 hours of video, listen to 15 hours of music, make five video calls and download 15 apps each month. In all, global mobile traffic will increase to 134 exabytes in 2017."

Customers want the same experience, on a mobile device

Mobile-only users aren’t some strange new breed of customer, signaling their desire for different messages, content, and services through their choice of screen size and form factor. They’re just your customer. You can and should speak to them in same way you address all your other customers. They just want to engage with you on the device that’s most useful and convenient for them.

Here is an overview of mobile facts:

1. There's 6.8 Billion People on the planet, 4 billion using mobile devices, and 1.5 billion on smartphones

1. 91% of adults have their mobile phones at their fingertips 24/7 and within 6 feet at all time. We have access to people more often on mobile.

1. 55% of Americans said that they ONLY use mobile devices to access the web. Are you missing this key demographic by not offering a mobile friendly experiences to your audience?

1. There are 5 times as many cell phones in the world as there are PC's!

1. 82% of U.S. Adults own a cell phone.

1. 90% of mobile searches lead to an action; over 50% lead to a purchase!

1. 70% of mobile searches lead to action within 1 hour!

1. 74% of smartphone users use their phone to help with shopping and 79% of them ultimately end up buying.

1. Mobile coupons receive 10 times higher redemption rates than print coupons. If you're not allowing people to redeem offers by showing a screen or coupon code on their device, you better start now! (groupon, foursquare are examples)

Smartphones are consumers’ close companion in their daily tasks. Research shows the top five places where these smartphones are used in the US are 

• 96% at home 
• 83% on the go
• 76% in retail stores 
• 70% in restaurants 
• 68% at work

For many, using their smartphones is the only option for web access.

Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project, shared that “Some 88% of U.S. adults own a cell phone of some kind as of April 2012, and more than half of these cell owners (55%) use their phone to go online."

Smith calls these individuals “cell Internet users” in his report and said, “This represents a notable increase from the 31% of cell owners who said that they used their phone to go online as recently as April 2009.”

The same Pew study found that 45% of those who use the web on their smartphones prefer Web browsing on mobile devices.

Mobile device visit share and conversion rates for Ecommerce sites

The Monetate Q4 2013 Ecommerce Quarterly published February 2014 gives insight on smartphone vs tablet vs desktop share of audience for large Ecommerce brands.

This graphic shows the tremendous growth of mobile web visitors. Tablet and smartphone use nearly doubled in from 2012 to 2013, based on over 500 million visits for retail clients, with mobile share now  27% on average.  Look for the next report to show even more percentage growth as people are ditching their PC and Laptop for mobile devices.

Mobile technology is transforming the business’ marketing efforts, giving them the opportunity to engage with their customers at a more personal level.

Is your business presenting a mobile friendly environment for your mobile users? If not, you are potentially missing out on more than 27% of your business.  

What keeps your marketing team up at night?

What keeps your marketing team up at night?  

If you answered content,...or a lack of content, read on!

Not just words, but stories behind those words.  Truth, with great and compelling monologues that turn into dialogue to let people know you are as a human company, and that you care.  It becomes a complex thought-process, stuck behind processes and meetings, without getting to the heart of the matter.  Bringing out the old acronym KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!


Content Marketing is more than a tidy buzz phrase - Content Marketing is the most important marketing innovation since “branding”, and the most under served piece of the marketing puzzle in most organizations.


The truth:

• Customers are smart, interesting and fair.• Companies are smart, interesting and (sometimes) fair.• Content is the smart, interesting and fair way to connect customers with a company’s mission.

Content marketing forces you to express a well-formulated, well-supported, well-told story. Content marketing must compel you as a marketer to sit down with company founder and ask “Why in the hell did you start this place and why should customers care that we exist?”

Many small businesses are kicking their larger competitor's butts by telling enchanting narratives about their culture, the products, and the role customers play - Think Zappos - They never stopped telling that story, even when became larger.

First question: “Do you have a story that is worth telling?” 

Second question: Now how can you turn this story into a sustained, multi-platform experience for people who resonate with how you do business?  

You want to improve our messaging and content, right?  Then start with and answer the two questions above, individually or as a team.  

Then, social media becomes an afterthought - It even becomes easy.
Facebook and Twitter are inadequate and one-dimensional on their own without compelling content.  

When we get the story right, the medium really doesn’t matter.  Are you ready to get your story right and conquer content in your organization?  

Look forward to your comments and how YOU defeated the content wall!

Social Media's Unwritten Rules

Social media seems easy because the barrier to entry is low. You can be up and running on any number of social media platforms in minutes and usually at no cost. In reality, social media is hard for exactly the same reason. When the barrier to entry is low, the barrier to attention is high.

The fundamental path to succeeding with social media is to consistently contribute meaningful content.  The path to engaging with you you or your brand should make the lives of those engaging with you, more meaningful.

As you think through your social media strategy, here are some unwritten rules of social media that I have found under the layer of best practices.

More does not equal better

Just because you did something great in the past whether it was hit content or a campaign, do not forget that everything in social media has a life cycle of it’s own.  That viral video that worked yesterday, may mean nothing today.  You must adapt to the ecosystem that is social media.

Activity does not equal productivity

The barrier to create content on a social network is virtually non-existent. So, you can write whatever you want irrespective of whether that content applies to your business or not. Unfortunately, you can then get extremely busy with social media while trying to post anything and everything.  In your enthusiasm to share, be careful not to drop the quality of content.  Otherwise, people will silently begin to ignore you.

The art of reciprocity

Don’t have the false expectation that someone will reciprocate back because you followed, re-tweeted, liked or anything else. Equal actions don’t create equal impact on social media. Say you have a 15,000 followers and you share something from another person who has 150,000 followers. Expecting that person or company to share something from you would mean you are expecting someone to give back ten times of what you gave them.  Have realistic expectations for better results.

Amplification without accomplishment is futility

We can agree that social media is known to be a wonderful amplifier.  You must show relevant accomplishments as the foundation for your efforts and social media can help amplify those efforts. Unless your business is to make money with social media, you have to get out of social media and spend time on building some meaningful accomplishments. Once you have them, you can then use amplification to influence and engage on social media.

Engagement without enrichment cannot be effective

Engagement for the sake of engagement will only make you get tired and waste your time. Engage with an intention to enrich and you’ll not only win in social media but you will also make the world a better place. You can only be rich through the enrichment you bring to the world around you. Social media provides a wonderful opportunity to bring value to you business and enrich people’s lives.

Access does not grant entitlement

When you connect with someone on a social network and engage with them, you have access to them, as well as their engaged followers and friends. Don’t assume that they owe you something because you are now engaging them on social media.  Create and give your connections great content, something of value and watch the access grow.

Connection does not grant permission

Many social networks make it easy for you to connect with anyone. You can follow someone on any number of the top 5 social media platforms, without requesting their permission to do it. A small percentage of those you follow might follow you back. If they do, you have a two-way connection. Don’t confuse the two-way connection as permission to interrupt them, spam them or blast them with unnecessary content. You must build a relationship through engagement and there is no shortcut for that endeavor.

Do you have any thoughts or additions on these unwritten rules?  I would love to hear them! 


@RikWalters

Trends And ROI In B2B Social Media – Is There Still Room For Improvement?

The future has never been brighter for social media marketing.  New research shows that the biggest opportunities for marketers are in the B2B vertical.  Although, a  rather amazing statistic is that 75% of B2B marketers, who conduct social marketing, say that they do NOT measure the ROI of social initiatives.  As marketers, we must provide ROI statistics not only to substantiate budgetary spends, but also to prove what we all believe to be true - Social media is the future of marketing.

Some trends surprised me, while others are aligned with what I thought back to early 2010.

Despite anticipated increases in budges for digital and social marketing, only 30% of marketers say they have a strong understanding of social media conversations happening around their brands, according to a survey from Alterian.

What about marketing in the Age of The Customer? Few (11%) marketers say they tailor website experiences to individual visitors. Some 55% say they concentrate on campaigns to drive website activity, and 34% say they use their company website as a corporate brochure.  I hear that often in talking with company CFO’s and Marketing Directors. 

Email personalization is more advanced than other channels: 43% of marketers say they use some type of segmentation strategy to deliver specific email messages to each audience, although only a small portion (13%) deliver emails based on preferences at the individual customer level, monitored in real-time.

There Is Still Room For Improvement

Nearly one-third of surveyed marketers (31.4%) say they have little or no understanding about social media conversations around their brands, and 38.6% say they use a few ad-hock tools to track and measure social media conversations.

More than 93% of B2B marketers conduct social media marketing according to marketingprofs.com.  The use of social media is: 26% cite LinkedIn the single most important tool, 20% utilize Facebook, 19% use blogging, 14% leverage customer communities, 13% like Twitter and 7% prefer YouTube.   A glaring lack of leverage of YouTube.  I must believe that marketers know they must utilize more video and YouTube as an SEO tool in B2B marketing.

More than 66% of B2B marketers already use social media marketing and the main focus cited was brand building.  Though customer acquisition was the top goal from B2B marketers last year, less than 50% use social media as a lead generation tool.

More than 75% of B2B marketers plan to increase their budgets for online marketing efforts.  Social media is a more integral part of B2B company marketing, with most marketers planning to increase social media spending by more than 60% next year.

Most B2B marketers are focused on LinkedIn and video, while most B2C are more focused on Facebook.  Notably, B2B companies are using more blogs.  This is in-line with my perceptions in 2009, while there is still a wide gap between the companies that are using social media well and those that are even using digital marketing at all, the gap is narrowing! 

As expected, B2B mobile marketing spend will increase dramatically in the next 3 years, from an estimated $26 million in 2009 to $106 million in 2014.  Frankly, I believe that number to be a low estimate, based on internal trends and my own experience working with top global brands.  In my research and discussions with fellow marketers, B2C companies are more interested in ‘learning’ about Facebook (at least 70%), blogging (about 70%) vs. only about 65% for B2B companies. 

The latest research also shows that 100% of Fortune 500 Company’s have executives using LinkedIn.  Importantly, 50% of LinkedIn’s users are key decision makers in their company.  Also, more than 40% of individuals using LinkedIn for marketing have generated business with it.

The top obstacles for B2B marketers adopting social media marketing are:

-        Poorly defined success benchmarks, metrics and Key Performance Indicators: 57%

-        Lack of knowledge of social media: 44%

-        Management resistance: 22%

Social media is at the fore-front of marketers plans going forward, now, more than ever.  It is also clear that social media is still not where it needs to be.  The digital universe of social media continues to grow and expand in all directions. What do you think the social media landscape look like in 1, 2, or 5 years?  It is an exciting time to be a digital marketer, and better yet to be thinking about the road ahead.

Please comment, add your thoughts and insight.  Also, connect with me on Twitter - @RikWalters 

The 5 W's of Business Social Intelligence

The five W’s are fundamentally a part of how companies and their brands must comprehensively look at social network information.  Companies must analyze, gaining weighted insight into what is happening within the social media eco-system for their brand.  Social media has dramatically changed how companies communicate, market and sell their products and service. It has also changed the dynamic relationship between companies and their customers.   


Now, customers can play a major role in what's being said publicly about your products and brand.  This is a great challenge, however I believe it is the best opportunity to engage with customers in new and different ways, building stronger, longer-lasting relationships and enhancing loyalty and great sales.

Who is doing the talking and what's their influence?

Quickly identify the key influencers and get detailed information about their gender, age industry, Klout rating and interests.  Key influencers can work with you for a win-win situation.  Remember, the influencers are talking about others at a 15-to-1 ratio over talking about themselves.  Are you?

What are people talking about and what are the key conversations?

Monitor (listen) to buzz and key conversations to see what is being said about your brand, service and products.  Then identify the major themes and issues that are raised about you within the social media landscape.  Engage in those conversations as needed to show you are involved in an authentic way.

Why are conversations happening and are they positive or negative?

Discover why those conversations are happening. See whether what's talked about is positive, negative or neutral and determine the impact on your brand and business.  Don’t wait until it escalates; listen often for the best results.

Where did these conversations occur?

Access geo-demographic information to see where and when around the world conversations are taking place - drill-down to the country or city, as well as the age demographic to gain relational insights.  

When did these conversations happen?

Analyze the activity to learn more about when these conversations happened - both historically and in real-time.  Then, compare and contrast buzz generated over time vs. efforts and time-lines associated with related buzz and awareness.

Using this intelligence, it is then important to take next steps utilizing Social Media Best Practices:

Listen:  The social media eco-system has a lot of white noise.  Utilize tools to overcome this challenge.  Identify and monitor the conversations on social networks, blogs, forums & communities, news sites, etc.  There are millions of conversations about your company, your brand and your products.  Listen in real-time for effective engagement.

Engage:  Now that you have heard those voices about your brand, identify key people, drilling into those conversations and understand who they are, what interests them and how their authority or relevance applies to your brand.  Engage key influencers and thought-leaders to build, nurture and manage those important relationships.  Using tools to automatically secure authority measurement and Klout scores, you can work with these influencers based on inbound links, social bookmarks and mentions, comments and other important activities.

Measure:  This is where you need the right tools.  Using real-time analytics, you can track and measure your campaigns, products, as well as brand reputation and sentiment.  Analyzing this data over time garnishes your metrics with context, benchmarking and comparisons with competitors.

Understand:  By listening, engaging and measuring, you gain valuable understanding into the intelligence (IQ and EQ) of where the conversations are taking place.  You can then determine the impact on your company’s brand and products, and if needed, make adjustments to align your communications, PR, marketing or sales plans.


Look forward to your comments and thoughts.




Twitter: @RikWalters

Top Content Tips for Facebook Marketing - Lead Generation and SEO

Facebook Content Marketing Basics

 
If you are writing a Status Update or creating a post in Facebook Groups then remember to include the keywords you want to gain rank.

Have a blog?  Using Twitter?  Make sure you tie them together.  Use backlinks and let twitter know about your Facebook page and vice-versa.

Use FBML (facebook markup language) to design a landing page.  Research shows that is a far more effective way of gaining ‘likes’ than the wall which just looks like a mass of words.  You will need some basic skills.  If you lack those, there are vendors that can do this for you for a reasonable cost.  Well worth the effort.

It is important to back-link with your website, landing pages and micro-sites.  Search Engines use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the most important factors for determining that website's search engine ranking, popularity and importance. Google's description of their PageRank system, for instance, notes that - Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.  Got that?  This not only helps your overall SEO efforts, both for your social media and more importantly for businesses, for your website traffic and lead-gen efforts.

Vanity URL.  Simply get to 25 page ‘fans’ and then go to Facebook.com/username to change the URL of your page to make your page not only easier to find, but stand out in search results. 

 
Top Ten Facebook Content Tips

Use the 80/20 rule.  80% of status updates should give value to the fans first, 20% of status updates can be promotional, or brand first.

Use every status update category.  Text, links, images and video. Variety increases reach and user engagement.

Reply to fans.  When they comment on status updates. This encourages fans to comment more and increases the total interactions count for an update.
  
Recursive linking.  Include links with videos and links: When uploading videos and call-to-action links, include links to in the description to drive viewers back to your website, micro-site or landing page.  Double up and add the link back to Facebook within your SEO structure on your website, micro-site or landing page.

Contests.  Ask fans to title interesting photos and announce a winner, have a “Fan of the week/month” for mentions, etc., every 100 likes and more.  When promoting contests, email sign ups, sales landing pages or other calls to action, send fans to a Facebook tab for these actions whenever possible. Research shows conversion rates increase when Facebook users do not have to leave Facebook.

Create a consistent offer or specials.  Fans to look forward to on a regular basis. For instance, post a new product specific 20% off coupon the first of each month.

Top Ten Lists.  Spread out top 10 lists over the course of 10 status updates, once every day or week as a countdown.

Celebrate awareness months (engaging in community).  Find creative ways to celebrate commemorative months like Black History Month (February), Autism Awareness Month (March), Clean Up Your Computer Month (January), and more.

Post simple facts or stats.  Fans love numbers and stats, but include a question to actually get a response. Otherwise, you will get mainly likes.

Ask fans questions (quizzes, contests, facts).  Ask fans to upload simple photos to the wall “What is the view like from your desk?” or “What does your computer desktop look like?”  When fans post content to your wall independent of likes or comments on your status updates, it increases the chance that they will see your status updates in their news feed in the future. And it makes the activity on your Facebook wall look more fan friendly.

The key here is to keep it fun and make the most out of your page with great and engaging content.  You must use call-to-action and offers to get people excited about being a 'fan'!  Whether you are a small business, large corporation and whether you are a B2C or B2B facing company.  Leave the formal relationship to your website.  Facebook is where you can show people the human side to your business, engage customers and potential customers, talk about them and let them ASK about you and your brand.

@RikWalters