My guest today is Melissa Galt, recently featured in FORBES Top 20 Women of Influence on Twitter. Melissa is a champion of entrepreneurs and creative professionals with marketing, mindset, and motivation. She speaks worldwide on these M Factors, mentors business success, and provides innovative solutions in relationship and social media marketing that turn her client’s potential into profit with passion. I’m so blessed to have Melissa in my life as a friend and business associate!
There are five key ingredients to getting noticed in today’s crowded virtual networking. Once you have these soundly in place, simply continue to mix with consistence and persistence for results that will have you leading the way and soaring above the din of those unable to defy gravity. When you ignore any one ingredient you will find yourself subject to undesirable turbulence and a potential crash landing, stay balanced and you’ll find the flight to success much smoother.
Certainly you can innovate your way into a successful flight plan but beware that excessive innovation leads to chasing bright shiny flying objects and dilutes your focus and your potential for bringing real change to your market. Innovation works when it is strategic. Know the necessary ingredients before you change the mix and alter your flight to success.
The Face of Your Company
When you are big enough (think Apple, IBM, Nike and the like) you can use a logo, but until then, let’s face it you aren’t going to be widely recognized and would be far better served with a human avatar. Sure you can make it a team shot, but the point is to make it recognizable and easy to connect to. People connect to people, not logos, not cars, not signs, not even pets. And being consistent and persistent with the same avatar on every network is critically important for rapid recognition and visual brand development. Take a look at Sprint and how the President of that company has leveraged himself in their recent ad campaigns. He is far more personable than Verizon’s “can you hear me now guy.” (Yes, Verizon’s guy is recognizable but is he personal?) Adding your face or selecting a face from your company to stand for you online makes a more social statement than the traditional logo. This is a new world with new media and new rules of engagement, being innovative means being recognizable easily and known for the change you bring and difference you make.
The Voice of Your Company
While the industry giants typically have a well established voice, there is congruency in their messaging, this can be tricky when you are either starting out or well on the flight plan but not as well known as you’d like to be. Develop the voice of your company and your brand with care. Is your communication consistent and persistent? Is it positive and relevant? Is it repeatable and memorable? Being innovative is essential, but it doesn’t mean being schizophrenic in your identity and your voice. This is where having a clear strategy and system for communication with your market becomes all important.
The Ears of Your Company
Relationship marketing and social media today isn’t just about talking, it is about listening. Remember we are now in a consumer driven age whether your consumer is a business or the general public. In order to engage your market you must listen and respond in a consistent and persistent manner. We live in an age of high distrust and high tech and business succeeds when you develop high trust and high touch. This is, and always has been, about creating the KLT factor (know, like and trust.) What are you doing to develop dialogue, create conversation, and educate your market into your benefits and your value. How can you innovate your listening and engagement processes?
The Scent of Your Company
How your company smells is about your reputation and how you manage it. Whether you land on the Forbes Top 10 Best to do business with or the Worst to do business with is all about the perception you have created with your company’s face, voice, and ears and how you have managed that. This is also about carefully monitoring the buzz about your company, and correcting any challenges that arise to avoid a crash landing. It takes only one David to bring down a Goliath, every company has David’s in the marketplace whether they are obvious or not. Know your company’s David’s and be alert to them. Focusing too much on innovation and not enough on management of current assets and image will allow more David’s to obscure your view.
The Taste of Your Company
Plain and simple this is what you leave behind in every transaction, whether it is a good taste or bad taste is up to you. This goes beyond reputation as it is about the real time interactions and transactions you have with your market. Making it consistently good is about harnessing the power of persistent systems for success. Systems that establish the rules of engagement and deliver specific outcomes will keep you flying high whereas winging will only ensure strategic chaos and unpredictable outcomes. Do not confuse innovation with chaos, it is easy to do. Innovation is about a better system; it is about going beyond better and stretching the definition of best.
