Building Something Great Requires Vision, Guts and Insight
It’s No Longer 1993
When I first arrived to America in 1993, the country was prosperous. The economy was growing and there were no worries of terrorism.
On Forth of July, friends took me to Idaho Falls, Idaho to watch fireworks, and I can still recall the smell of smoke from the fireworks (and of BBQ) today.
At the same time, I wondered why so many American people were “critical” of their government despite the prosperity. Indeed, the division was so intense that it didn’t matter which news stations I watched, people seemed never completely satisfied of their local and national leaders.
Fast forward to 2009, there are Wikipedia, Social Media, blogs, RSS, Twitter that allow citizen reporters to publicize their voices and stories heard. We’re even seeing the opposite effect, civic leaders are turning to Social Media to connect directly with people without the media filter.
The new challenge in our day is figuring out which of all these voices are important? They’re probably all important, but we only listen to something that matter to us.
So the question I raise for you today is why do you matter? Why should your organizations, businesses and profiles exist?
Mesa Is Changing… Faster Than You Realize
It used to be a lot easier to do business in Mesa (or everywhere else for that matter). As long as you provided good location, services and products, people still bought from you.
But in 2009, people are bombarded with too many choices everyday, and they’re not catching up with all the information available to them. So what people have accustomed to do instead is to ignore your message. Ignoring the noise had become the only way for people to keep their lives sane.
Doing Business in Digital Age
So how do we continue to do business in this digital age? Both good and bad reviews of your business can easily be posted on yelp.com, blasted out in Twitter, and bookmarked on Digg.
The first question we must ask ourselves of is, “Is your business model threatened by technology?” Because if it is, we have to take immediate action.
Second question is, “How are you reaching out to your market?” If you’re still saying “word of mouth”, or “foot traffic”, your competition will come after you before you know it. Your competition is more tech savvy, aggressive, willing to adopt the new digital age. If you’re not taking any action against these threats, you will be in trouble. And, the scary part is, it’s not the technology that should be blamed, but it will be you. Because by marketing the same product, same service, same price, and same market, some people will always do better than others.
De-cluttering All the Noise
Here is the good news. You can still improve your ROI, productivity and efficiency without getting a certificate in online advertising. By taking the physical inventory of all the existing activities you’re doing right now. You can first figure out where all your customers are coming from and see if you can capitalize on these assets. It’s easier to sell your products and services to existing customer base than evangelizing it to people don’t know (and don’t care) anything about your organization.
What if you could find better, efficient, innovative, greater ways to serve your existing customers so that they will become your agents and tell others about you through blogs, twitter, and digg?
Social Media connects you with people you don’t know. That’s true, and in fact, I have met so many people online to whom I would have never known otherwise. What people overlook about Social Media is it connects you with people you already know. Your customers (who already know more about Social Media than you do) can tell their friends about you, start talking about your business on yelp, starting blogging about you, and tweet about you.
To do this, there are no other ways than to start making your products and services so great that your customers can’t help but to start telling others about you. Your customer service, idea, invention, location, convenience, food, drink, secretary, delivery time, whatever it is… if you can just make something so great, people will start talking about you.
The Opposite of Great
If your organization is great, sure, it gets people start talking about it. But what people do not understand is if your product is merely “good”, your story will just be an “average” story. Today, people don’t listen to an average message. The average message only reaches so far and people are good at ignoring it. Such message cannot penetrate through the clutter of noise that exists today.
So in order to de-clutter that noise, you’d have to be so remarkably great. If not, with enough training and technology, anyone can replace your organization (or you) because everything else good today is only a click away.
So Mesa, what can we do to start making your organizations remarkable? What can we do to start changing your organization to greatness so others will start talking about you?
Building something great requires vision, but more certainly, guts and insight. The difficult part is not necessarily coming up with idea, but to have your organization embrace your vision.
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