Guideas : Innovative Business Ideas - Tim Andren

3 easy steps to maximize your time online

The once cavernous line between work and recreation on the computer has been narrowed significantly over the past few years. How you manage it can maximize your productivity.

You have a wealth of business tools on the computer you are using to read this message. However, there's a universe of distraction just a click away from that Excel spreadsheet you're supposed to be slogging through or research that needs to be done.

Digital mobility has spawned an army of corporate work-from-homers, independent consultants, or small business entrepeneurs - all powered with the tools and flexibility needed to perform. The distractions of the internet combined without the 'fear of Mr. Bossman' certainly cut into everyone's productivity and we know the social media salad bar is open 24 hours a day for anyone who wants it, so how do you stay focused?

1. Stay on Task

How do you avoid the siren's call of YouTube or Farmville when you're out in the field (hopefully not a meeting) or your awesome Nintendo Wii waiting for you in the next room?

It's safe to say that some discipline is required to maintain the business that needs to be done. I use GTD tools and a basic calendar to keep me on task no matter where I work.

I use Things (Mac) to keep me tasked with scheduled reminders for project based daily work. Here are some other good GTD applications.

2. Social Calendar

Put the 'messaging'* portion of your social media time on a calendar, decide on a short-term strategy and clock the time that you're using it. 

I have found that this easy-to-use approach works well for me. I have developed a bit of a routine for the time I'm using social media for messaging which looks like this:

-What is the strategy? (what do you want to say? how?)

-Develop the message

-Find the audience (who are you trying to reach? what time of day?)

-Send message 

-Answer feedback immediately (this is the golden rule, quick follow-through is a must)

-Get out (and do it quickly!)

This type of approach usually takes 10-15 minutes and may happen several different times throughout the day. It helps you maintain the focus and get back to business. 

*NOTE: This is for messaging only and requires an already established brand reputation and quality relationships with friends/followers. Tell them about your blog post and get back to work. Regular social media time works much differently from this, see below.

3. The Fun Stuff

If you have a plan and practice your discipline regularly, you'll find that you will develop the ability to stay on task and you may even discover an extra hour or two in your work day. 

While some might like the extra hour in the day to end work early and get on the Wii, I gather that most people would want to use that bonus hour efficiently, right? 

Here's where you get to have fun by using the time to research new topics, share valuable content that you didn't create from scratch and simply participate in discussion with the people you care about. The non-messaging time here is essential to the relationship. Both the messaging and relationship time are essential an interdependent with each other.

ROI? Social media is a business dinner

Jason Falls wrote a powerful piece about the 'bottom line' approach that a client obviously wants to have using social media or any other marketing effort.

In a nutshell, he argues that:

"In the world of business, all that talk will get you exactly nowhere. Conversations do not ring the cash register. Engagement does not sell more product."

While his statements are absolutely valid we need to be sure that we don't throw out what drives social media in our pursuit of the almighty revenue. Can you make a sale without communicating to someone? It's not easy. Humans haven't changed much despite our ubercool techno tools. We want our creature comforts and most of those involve other people.

Why do the masses participate in social media? The large majority are Twittering and Facebook status freaks as a means of participating in discussion and interacting with their fellow beast. A statement I sometimes use in my presentations: 'humans doing what they do best.'

The reality is that social media business efforts must snap-in to the engine that makes the platform run in order to work with the human touchy-feely side of communication. The alternative smells like 'banner advertising' and thats certainly not going to work.

Let's do dinner!
Its possible to find a happy medium that allows for both relevant and valuable contributions mixed in with an agreement that 'we are gonna try to sell you too.' I accept that type of relationship because it's no different than going to dinner or drinks with a salesperson.

If I am interested in a person's lifestream or brand's communications and they continue to give me reason to trust them, they have every right in my mind to mix in some business. 

We watch TV or videos online and accept the commericals. We read newspapers and magazines and accept and even sometimes enjoy the ads. We accept advertising in many arenas of our lives from baseball stadiums to highways, even in areas we really probably don't want to have them...why should social media be any different?

Social media is a business dinner. The sales can be direct and accounted for, it just takes a carefully crafted pitch woven into a valid interaction to get you there.

The Great Left-brained ROI Mistake

If you think the word 'branding' is a bad word, especially with respect to ROI for social media, then it might be time to do some more research. 

I've had several conversations with marketing managers in the last few months who only focus on one specific thing, that being the bottom line of a marketing 'campaign.' Many won't allow the notion of branding into their strategy mainly due to "the economy" and "who can measure a brand anyway?"

This type of thinking is archaic, especially with respect to the fundamental reasons why people make buying decisions to begin with. We have all the data in the world at our fingertips and yet far too often we allow analytical people and their tunnel vision processes to manage the lifeblood of our businesses. 

Marketing works
Marketing works. It does. No matter how many people tell you it doesn't affect them, the fact of the matter is any trip to the mall will give you all the evidence you need. Guys wearing Nike or Hurley logos from head to toe or women adorning rhinestone Bebe tees and luxury brand purses are a dime a dozen whereever I go. Heck, the economic free-for-all we witnessed just a few years ago was powered by a cocktail of consumption that all began with marketing efforts to the 'buy things you don't need' crowd.

Marketing is necessary for all businesses to thrive and provide the jobs we all need. There is a longtail of products and services out there because companies have actually responded to people's preferences for 250 different types of cereal. Give them what they need is a fair approach, but if it's delivered with an industrial business mindset in this day and age it has a poor chance of working effectively. 

Since the marketplace has changed so drastically due to technology and social platforms are a product of that change why would any business not seriously restructure how they communicate to those people??

Change now
America's corporate ingenuity is at an all-time low due in part to the fat and happy crowd who have made their money with these calculative methods. It works for a select few and credit should be given where it is due, but what we've all witnessed in the continuing slow death of media conglomerates is just one example of where many business markets will be if they don't change - and change soon.

Contrary to popular opinion ROI metrics do exist and are getting better every day. Of course, its important, but don't buy into the notion that it will drive this crowd-powered movement.

Can you weave ROI friendly messaging with brand strategy to satisfy the two? It can be done.    

From the eConsultancy blog, some impactful data via Performics Marketing.

"About 30% admitted to learning about a product, service or brand on a social network site. About a third (27%) are receptive to receiving invitations for events, special offers or promotions from advertisers through the sites, and 25% said they have gone directly to an online retailer or ecommerce site after learning about a product or service on Facebook, Twitter or another social site."

The Zhu Zhu flu pandemic

A new pandemic
I've caught Zhu Zhu fever! Yes, in the era of swine flu I have found myself stricken with another malady named after a beast. This time it's a supercute hamster and it's got me all in a twist.

I originally heard about this pet toy a few months back and thought nothing of it, but lately I just can't seem to go anywhere without someone talking about how much they want a Zhu Zhu. From Tickle Me Elmo to department store trampling deaths I'd say this one's gonna be white hot come Christmas time. All the stars are aligning, especially when you consider the low-supply/high-demand commentary online and attractive recession-era price point.

Get prepared, because if you haven't already been overwhelmed with requests from your kids you'll probably begin to feel a primal urge throwing you into a frenzy and next thing you know you'll be burning the midnight oil just to get your hands on one of these creatures. I know I did.

As we've observed from many of our consumer trend cycles, this one's gonna be quick and dirty and before you know it you might see them going for $50 bucks a piece on eBay. Let's hope so. I just want to be a fly on the wall for the whole thing.

Social shopping?
This holiday season will see us continue to break new ground in the social internet. This article explains the phenomenon far better than I could.

One area it doesn't explore is the idea of group purchasing. The concept essentially involves a connected, coordinated crowd all with the same buying intentions. They get together and make a bulk purchase of, say, a refrigerator, and realize the (efficiency of scale) savings from doing so. That's an idea that could catch fire with the technology we have at our fingertips and the as the saying goes 'a recession is the mother of invention'... well, close enough.

Social media explained for career education

I've been doing some speaking presentations lately directed towards the career education market. I gave this presentation with my partner Sally Mikhail-Bemis at the CAPPS conference in Los Angeles and the MAPCS conference in Worcester, Massachusetts.

There's a good overview of social media for the beginner, a bit of history and social fundamentals and some specific examples about how it can be applied to the career education industry - or any other industry for that matter.

Tim Andren Social Media 102309

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A debate with Ted Koppel about Iran and Twitter

It's undeniable how riveting the coverage has been about the Iranian election fallout over the past week. Images of violent unrest from Tehran are available just about everywhere we go in our connected world.

Where did you first hear about it? I'm willing to bet most of you didn't get the story eating your toast over the morning paper.

Social networks have begun to take on a whole new purpose in the past year as the big media channels are beginning to pay attention to the speed and efficiency of the crowd when it comes to news distribution.

Can social media channels like Twitter be an instrument of journalism?

I had an opportunity to discuss the role social media plays with news icon Ted Koppel to look for the answer.

Ted Koppel
I was out in Orlando at the CCA conference all of last week. I had the good fortune to attend the Awards Brunch where Ted Koppel gave the conference keynote address.

Mr. Koppel lit up the room with a very powerful speech regarding the state of the nation and the recent changes we've seen in media in the past several years. Fortunately, I began recording the speech from my iPhone (using the Recorder application) so you can hear some of his thoughts regarding social media, especially Twitter.

Safely put, Mr. Koppel is not a fan of Twitter. My sense is that he is not fully informed about what's beneath the surface of "totally useless, irrelevant information" as he put it. He also spoke about the older method of news distribution he favors which allows for a three day process of script to final release.

My question for discussion to Mr. Koppel was about the opportunities of crowd-powered media and how it could continue to develop into a resource for journalism. I knew that my disagreement with him regarding Twitter wasn't going to be very popular, which made for a bit of laughter.

Give it to me raw
Mr. Koppel responding by questioning the source of the information that flows on Twitter. For all of us, trust is always an issue whether you get your news from your neighbor or CNN. I agree that careful consideration must be taken when it comes to journalism and it's sources, but I'm not willing to throw out the role of the common person at the scene of the story. I know that I'm not alone in feeling that big media grew too big, and in some cases, became too connected to government and/or corporations' interests to play a completely independent role.

The grainy images that come through a cellphone video capture tell a sober story with no dilution or news slant. The messages are not always slickly produced or delivered from a good-looking anchor, but who decided that's how news should be provided anyway?

On the other hand, news shouldn't be a free-for-all either, there must be a balance between delivering a timely, relevant story or happening and not overproducing it. Most importantly, we don't want to end up with is a situation where a reporter's bias can effect the viewer or listener as in the case of Peter Jennings.

In 1986 Brian Mullen, a professor at Syracuse University conducted a study that concluded that Jennings, then ABC anchor, "exhibited a facial expression bias in favor of [Ronald] Reagan" and the Republican party upon review of videotapes leading up to both the 1984 and 1988 Presidential Elections. It wasn't the story that showed the bias, it was Jennings' facial expressions. These subconscious signals of communication often do more to influence the viewer or listener than the story itself.

We are the world
In the case of the Iranian election, government has begun to crack down on journalists. Without an informer providing updates on what's happening between both sides, where does that leave us? If it weren't for the people on the ground sending images, videos and opinions about the violence and unrest the world would be none the wiser - and that is scary.

At some point all big media channels will have to take a serious look at how social media channels can plug into their news model. Many stations such as CNN already have a connection to the crowd and anyone who is aware of the story in Iran must admit, in this case the common man or woman in Tehran, cellphone in hand, is their beat reporter.

Today's internet has graduated beyond mere static web pages complete with RSS news feeds, media sharing and social network platforms that allow us to not only participate in discussion but to contribute to the flow of media and the daily happenings we call 'news.' Businesses large and small are now media creators. Anyone with a laptop or iPhone can become as important as the largest corporate or political news interest story. Google has been called the 'great equalizer,' but the true owner to the title is the connected crowd.

Our role in the distribution process happens while we're often not conscious of it. In the past we would go to, for instance, CNN, Yahoo or Google News to get the latest news from around the globe. Those platforms are alive and well today, but they must make room for the major player called the connected web. Our distribution channel lacks the polish of a shiny logo or brand, but we pack a punch when it comes to what news really should be - the unbiased transfer of current events from one source to another.

Microblogging platforms such as Twitter get a bad reputation for people's tendency to share vapid, meaningless information, but there is just as much of that 'useless, irrelevant information' floating out of the glimmering news sets of all of the big media channels. The discussion of topics as useful as Paris Hilton's dog or OctoMom's shopping trip litter the airwaves, so it's an even split from that angle.

The distribution cycle of video-enabled smartphones and lightning-quick laptops connecting users to each other begins with a polished ad usually depicting a stress-free, utopian business world or family at the park. In Tehran, these tools are being used to display the violence and chaos in a world far from the dreamscape images used to sell them.

A massive crowd of people, empowered with these same tools, is spread out all over the globe as you read this. These people are more nimble than any journalist team could ever be because they can mobilize at a given moment, without corporate motives, no matter what the situation. We're still in the ugly duckling stage of social media as a news entity. There must be a system in place to check the facts and validate the source and/or their story. This will be a reality sooner than you think.

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Does your business have strong contact points?

I've got news for you...

• Your receptionist is more important than a manager.
• Your customer service contacts are actually sales people.
• Your contact points are the most often the weakest links in your company.

Oh, and if you're feeling smug because you don't have a front desk person or offer any customer support, well the news is your FAQ page will probably have to be a mile long and still doesn't answer your customers' concerns. Understand this...questions are really concerns.

Does your business have strong contact points?

Any of the above are job titles that are what I call 'contact points.' A contact point is any person or resource that allows the customer to be in touch with your company.

Your business contact points are the lifeline to your company. When an astronaut tethers themself to the space shuttle, don't you think they quadruple-check that line to ensure that it's safe and secure? As your business floats in space it's critical to have a strong, reliable line out towards your customer who is the only source to get you where you need to go.

Perception is reality
Businesses spend billions of dollars every year on their image. Branding and advertising are enormous industries for a reason - businesses understand the importance of how they're perceived.

Given that, why do so many businesses have terrible contact points outside of sales? This matter makes no sense to me. When I'm asked to help a business develop their brand, one of the first steps I take is to look at their contact points. I'll conduct a series of tests to see how a customer is treated before and after a sale. Remember, a return sale is a thousand times easier to make than a new one!

Deep roots
Brands are deeply rooted in people's brains much like memories are. Brand associations are made considering many different variables in the customer's mind, almost all of them emotional in nature.

Which is more important, a logo or a person-to-person interaction? The answer is they're both important, but like I said earlier, businesses are spending an incredible amount of money on branding and advertising and paying their customer service workers relative pennies. Low paying jobs attract poor-performing workers who usually don't take the position seriously and/or aren't educated in the life skills required to keep your clients as happy as when they first encountered your polished brand.

Points of pain
Each business has a number of contact points that are available to their customer. Each contact point is uniquely important to the brand and if one is overlooked, it can a huge detriment to the company.

How does a rude receptionist change your feelings about the meeting you're about to have? It sours your grapes right away doesn't it? When you can't get through to your company or you receive poor 'call center scripted' service after a 78-minute hold time, how quickly is it before you consider going another route? A matter of seconds.

Your business-customer relationship is only as strong as your weakest link - your contact points.

What contact points does your company have? What are some good/bad examples you've experienced as a customer?

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Visualizing your business strategy

I love going to my office not only because I enjoy working in marketing, but my favorite toy lives there - my whiteboard.

My whiteboard and I go way back. We've buzzed with enthusiasm over the creation of hundreds of new ideas, and powered through strategic development for many hours together. The core of our relationship represents a crucial element to any marketing or business decision - visualization.

It all starts here
When you visualize something you've already begun the creation of it. Whether you want to acquire something or create it, it all begins in the mind. That dinner you might have cooked the other night began it's life in the beautiful engine behind your eyes. You could probably already taste that delicious, spicy pasta or honey-glazed chicken before you walked into the kitchen by visualizing it first. My salivary glands are kicking in as I type. Funny isn't it?

Our minds allow us to see an idea fully assembled before it's been created in real life. The inventor, Olympic athlete, or the kid who wants to grow up to be a fireman all have the first step complete in the idea process when they decide what their goal is.

Begin with the end in mind
My first rule for all of my business and marketing projects is to 'begin with the end in mind.' This is where the whiteboard comes in. When I moved into my office I did so with a clear goal of having maximum whiteboard space to outline projects for my clients. My board becomes a daily Jackson Pollock painting of business strategy, website development and marketing processes.

Idea creation requires visualization for many reasons, the most essential of which comes in the form of a roadmap or strategic board which serves to simplify the many complex facets of business today. When your project or business model is drawn out it's easier to see it's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats [S.W.O.T.]

Visualization techniques allow for big picture clarity that otherwise couldn't be reached by the mind or interchange of conversation and basic note-taking alone. There are many stories from business folk of great ideas worked out on cocktail napkins, because the idea popped up out of nowhere and needed to be worked through.

Can't you see it?
Finally, many in the marketing or creative industries are often gifted and/or well-practiced in their mind's eye and make the assumption that their clients are too. It's easy for a creative to see how the project would look, but not the client - they spend the majority of their time being experts at their chosen craft instead.

Visualization in a client meeting is a great way to bridge this gap and will make the entire project process much easier. I often draw out an idea as I'm explaining it because it helps both parties see what's vivid to me in my head.

I just recently discovered MindNode - a great mindmapping tool, which I've been using to great effect as a supplement to the whiteboard and great for branching the idea tree during business travel.

What tools do you use for visualization?

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Shiny new toys

Client requests for social media marketing and branding are coming strong and steady these days. These shiny new toys are exciting if they are applied with a solid understanding of how and why marketing works.

It really feels as if the ripple of change in big media is storming through every corner of business right now, especially due to recent economic challenges. One project I'm working on (I'll eventually blog about) involves a multi-faceted approach to marketing. We have developed print, web, e-mail, text/SMS and social media solutions for a time-sensitive branded approach.

It's important to put social media tools into the right context and often snap them into the broadcast portion of the messaging. When this is presented to a relevant audience who are already engaged (due to the value you provide to their community), the results have great potential.

It helps to have a client that is open-minded to new creative approaches and understands the importance of the big picture of branding and marketing. The major hurdles are cleared with this knowledge and help facilitate the application of these tools to deliver time-tested, innate triggers for the end customer.

Wishing you a great Friday. What's exciting in your world?

Business is NOT war

 

The term 'business is war' is well known. Many entrepeneurs and executives love the idea of strategic battle and the eventual domination of their opponent, but at what cost? Everyone is a customer and has felt the negative effects of this mentality and the culture it creates.

Thankfully, the 'win at all costs' business approach is failing and a replacement approach is available due to the shift into the era of the informed, interconnected consumer.

Win at all costs?
War mentality in business conjures up images of evil strategists planning their attacks by pushing their pawns around on a map. This may seem extreme, but it's not far from the way many businesses have approached commerce.

Executives and marketers have been sold on the idea of beating their competitors senseless and their customers become casualties of this process. Money and power are all that matter to business warmongers, and the rabid pursuit of both creates a sense of detachment between 'vendor' and 'customer.'

Why else would so many people be attracted to the process of buying online? This type of war leaves a customer feeling like a number, stripped of their humanity. The worst part is that many businesses act like a friend to the customer initially, yet they don't follow through in the customer's eyes. We know that the transaction itself is not just about price, because it's proven that so many pay a premium for a service or brand they could easily find cheaper somewhere else. Why? What do they place their value on?

Businesses ought to be careful if they get into a price battle with their competitor. Sometimes the outcome leaves all competitors with blood on their hands. Customers see this and often go somewhere else, happy to pay a little bit more for an offer that hasn't been stripped down to it's bones or for a modicum of customer service. Have you ever heard anyone excited about having their phonecall rerouted to a customer service department overseas?

Fighting for peace?
At some point as you're reading this, you're probably thinking that I'm talking about the Enron's and Bernie Madoff's of the world - and you're wrong. Small businesses are just as likely, if not more, to fall prey to this approach.

War cannot be a good style for any size of business, when you know that trust is greater than gold. Business is personal, I don't care what you've heard or read elsewhere. You know how it feels to be a customer. Reaching into your purse or wallet is personal. What you buy is personal. Every buying decision you make has an effect on your life, career, or the lives of those you love and interact with. Trust is fueled by everything war is not. Think about it.

Many people wonder how war strategists would make their decisions if it were their own sons and daughters going in to battle. This raises a parallel towards business culture. Would you cut costs, break promises or be rude to your mother or daughter? So why would you do the same to your beloved customer?

Business is not war. Companies must take the fight out of their equation. This may be difficult for the passionate business folk, but they have an even better outlet. All of the energy that was used for competition can now be focused on the offering. This is what customers care about anyways, don't try to kid yourself. Build your product or service with a genuine approach towards what your customer needs and stop the fighting. You'll notice the difference.

How has this affected you?

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Stand for your brand. Endorse your business.

Can you imagine what it'd be like to have an agent call you up and offer you millions of dollars to simply push their product? ...wear their shoes? ...eat some fries?

What would it be like to be Tiger Woods or Beyonce for a day and have Nike or Pepsi on your caller ID? Picture someone asking you to smile for them - for a nice little check with a whole lot of zeroes on it.

Wake up! Your alarm is ringing! Don't hit the snooze button though. You're not going to fall back into your celebrity dream, but you can do something just as important and build major brand equity for your business by endorsing it.

Take the stand
When you commit to endorsing your business, you automatically become the face of your company. In essence, you're making a stand to personally vouch for whatever it is you're offering. Your endorsement is a powerful testimonial because you're putting your life on the line, or at least your reputation, which is just as important in business.

Testimonials are very potent marketing tools, because they help to reduce the amount of friction in the buying process. Testimonials fill the void that consumers feel when they are prompted to spend money and act as a bridge in humanizing a two-dimensional print ad or website. They put the soul back into your product or service that cannot be touched, felt or sensed otherwise.

Walk the walk. Talk the talk.
Brand endorsement means you must be walk and talk the attributes associated to your product or service. You begin to represent a guide that beckons your customer to 'Jump in! The water's great!' Your body language, words and actions shine a light on the safety and quality of their buying decision.

Be sure to proudly tell your audience just how great your service is while maintaining a sense of humility. Eat your product. Live it. Breathe it. Show your customer that your service is free of pain and you'll begin to embrace a relationship with them that your competitors are desperate for. Think about how difficult parting with your own money can be and acknowledge to them that your reputation is important. This will soften the process.

Earn their trust
The human mind naturally uses mimicry to learn and assimilate from others behavior and mirror neurons to empathize with their emotions. When you smile and stand for your brand, it resonates at a subconscious level to your audience.

A strong, valid testimonial is an endorsement that bridges many gaps for your customer. Step up and become the face for your company, you have the opportunity to earn brand equity gold - your customer's trust.

What can an endorsement do for your company brand?

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Put down the shotgun and build a bridge

Business owners should spend more time looking at what's on the horizon, instead of wondering who moved their cheese. The new media builders are coming and they know where the gold is.

•Your news, tomorrow.
Many old media business models are still alive today but are continuing to die a slow death. Lately we've begun to see some major cracks in their foundations due to the advent of the information age.

In case you haven't noticed, big media channels such as radio, television, print media, music and the film industry have all taken a major hit in the past decade from you and I - the mouseclickers.

Why would anybody be surprised that newspapers are dying when we have an easier, more efficient (not to mention more eco-friendly) alternative at our fingertips?

For example, if your brand is known for delivering the latest, relevant news and fails to embrace the internet, clinging to the hope that people will eventually go back to wanting their news tomorrow, is foolish. It's like the local bakery trying to sell solid loaves of bread, while the community is embracing the invention of the sandwich.

Each media industry is comprised of major money-making corporations, but they also used to be the distribution channels for virtually the entire advertising industry and their clients too.

The shift away from this model has been dramatic and swift -  we shouldn't be surprised to see it have a ripple effect on the economy overall. We are at a crossroads where the businesses who understand this change can harness an opportunity that can propel them into the new era, but it won't come from passive selection.

•Build a better gun?
Our new culture of open source business and shared information demands a lot more from the media channels that we choose. All of this came from a boom in consumer choice.

The shotgun approach used to be effective when crowds of customers congregated on specific media channels. Back when everyone had a few television channels or a handful of media streams at their disposal - business and marketing was a lot easier.

Our options were narrower, so we were limited to what each media channel could provide. Location mattered much more than it does today. The music or television industry and their advertisers would simply need to shotgun blast their marketing to the user base on a particular channel and business happened. Choices were easily trackable and measured to provide the necessary feedback.

As marketers found more efficiency, they realized that customers were becoming harder to track because they had more channels (and thus more choices) and so the 'targeted' approach ushered in. Marketers celebrated because they had built a better gun. This worked for a few little while, but it quickly became impossible to continue to improve the targeting relative to the increase in selection for the customer.

For once, technology favored the consumer because it gave them more control and left the advertisers scrambling. Agencies today have an unbelievable about of information about consumers, but their conversion rates are dropping. We can easily conclude that it's not about knowing every detail about your customer anymore. Why is this happening? The answer is that the laptop crowd is faster-moving and their interests too broad.

•Bridge the gap
Today we have an iPod generation of choice, people don't congregate in the same way because we have a smorgasbord on their laptop. Therefore, it stands to reason that a shotgun isn't gonna get you many ducks when they're spread out all over the horizon. Marketers are lucky to even find an audience, let alone one that will convert.

The new era is less about shotguns and more about tollbridges. The cloud computing and software-as-a-service model is all the rage because the open source, shared culture is growing out of the new Long Tail consumer.

Toll bridges are great snap-ons for social networks and the shared internet. All of these factors will effect how information and money is transferred...so yes, it will effect your business. It's now more important not to hit a specific target, so much as it is to build a platform as a utility that takes them where they want to go.

Put down the shotgun and build a bridge.

How has this change effected your business? Are you prepared for more change?

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