Connecting Businesses One By One
For some time since the iPhone first made it’s appearance, I have been thinking about how I can keep up with the Jones’ and get into the smart phone arena. Those who also know me are the first to tell you I am not the guy that should be preaching the idea of technology or gadgets. I am the one that only uses the tool, not knowing how, why, or the what of the details. The phone rings I answer it, the email comes I type out a response. I don’t know, or for that matter don’t really care, about memory, megapixels or what flux capaciter comes with the “back end of the unit”. I have been in the market for a new desktop recently as well as a mobile phone and they sometimes offer too much information on what comes with the computer. I can get easily overwhelmed. I don’t think that in this instance I am too different than most of the real life users out there and that is why I looked to them for help.
I first started my initial testing of the waters by asking my real life friends how they came about purchasing their phone. Many of them had the same response. “I was given the phone by my employer”, or “I walked into the store and that one looked cool”, to the ever popular, “Scoble told me to buy this one.” Strangely enough that latter response was actually more of the popular one. I am of course picking on Robert, but this latter one is where I also paid a little more attention. The experts out there are the ones that are going to be using the best of the best. I turned my research to that area. I read blogs of the experts.
I read Engadget, Gizmodo, MobileCrunch and every other gadget blog available that had information about smart phones. I searched out their reviews and other information they had on the models available. There is a plethora of blogs you can read with information on everything and anything mobile. These are people not associated with the company or product and they truly give an independent review in my mind. Some are more specific product leaning, but for the most part they have some unbiased opinion.
I have to vent my frustration a little here because of the lack of choice we are offered as consumers based on our current service provider and the phones that are available to each service provider. I have been with Verizon since before they were Verizon and they were Airtouch Cellular and before that USWest Cellular. You might say we have established a relationship. My choices were very limited in the smart phone area so I went with a few choices, and it came down to only two that were available in my world, The Blackberry Storm and the Samsung Omnia. Yeah, I know overwhelmed with info about the phone and underwhelmed by my choices. Here endeth the frustration rant.
I then turned to another form of social media for my research. I asked my friends. Not those that I go to church with, or have dinner with, but the ones online. I reached out to my Twitter followers. When I asked more than 5000 people what they thought, I was given plenty of opinions. I loved it. Some had no opinion but a friend of a friend had good experience with this phone or that phone, or they had a bad experience but fixed it with this or that carrier. This was great “man on the street” information. I was well armed to make a decision at this point. The problem, as always, I was afraid to make a purchase of this magnitude. I couldn’t pull the trigger. I was afraid I would spend too much money and then later be angry for making the wrong choice. In spite of being completely advised, I still needed a shove. The shove came at an opportune time.
I was reading through my RSS feeds that I had subscribed to as a result of my research and found that one of the blogs had a breaking story. Verizon was offering the Blackberry Storm at a very good savings, and sure enough a check of there site showed not only a savings on that phone but on my other choice the Samsung Omnia. This was great news to me. I was armed with the information I need to make an informed decision, had seen real life experiences, saw unbiased reviews, and knew as much about the phone as anyone. I headed to the Verizon store.
A few more follow up questions later, having actually informed the sales person of some of the information I learned, and questions specific to the usage and data charges etc., and I decided on my choice of phones. I went with the Blackberry Storm. i went with the Storm because of the fact that Blackberry is well respected in the mobile community and Samsung is still lacking somewhat in my opinion. Samsung was a little too hooked into Microsoft’s software for my taste and that was another deciding factor.
I had reached out to my community to help me make a purchase. I spoke to the people I knew that had the phones. I researched blogs and the things l that the experts were touting, and I saw what my peers were also recommending. I then reached out to my community and asked for help which was more than ample to help me make a choice. Then as luck would have it because I had signed up and subscribed to some feeds I was tipped off to a sale that benefitted me in my purchase. I had used the tools available to help me. I hope that if you are reading this and you are a company you can take a look at how people are using the social media tools available to them to make informed decisions about your products and services. By looking at how I use the Internet to go from point A to point B you too might know how to get your information to the people that are searching for your products.
My next postings will be on the after purchase and use. How did the information I gathered help? How am I using social media to help me use my phone? Yes, I am now becoming addicted to my Crackberry and I can’t wait to help the next person with their decision to purchase a phone. I have become a social media evangelist of the company and they had to do nothing other than get into the social media world. Now about that choice of desktop. Is it going to be the iMac or the HP model. All these decisions are going to be helped by my use of the social media world.
UPDATE 2/10/09: Apparently, I am a real early adopter for the Storm deal that is all over the internet. Should I be worried now about what is in store for the Storm? Is another Blackerry Storm brewing?
I have been meaning to write this post for some time and continue to get sidetracked and have my ADD kick in which keeps me from writing (oh look something shiny). It wasn’t until Guy Kawasaki recently wrote a post on Twitter as a business tool or as he refers to it a Twool, that i decided I had to finally get words to a page.
I am referring to Guy’s post of a few days ago called “How To Use Twitter As A Twool.” I had to look twice to see if he spelled that correctly. Normally I do not disagree with Guy. He has about twice the brain power I have and it shows in his success and frankly his bank account. When he speaks people really do tune in and listen to his advice. He is one of the leaders in the world of tech and social media which is why I don’t often disagree with his blog posts. In this instance however, I have to say I think he misses the mark on a couple of things. Not because Twitter should not be used in business as part of your online social media arsenal, but because his advice comes from on high and not down in the trenches.
Guy has paid his dues early and has worked hard to garner the celebrity status he has today. He has launched a few online things that take off immediately just because it has his name attached to it. Some of his things are not too popular as in Truemors, but other things he has are quite cool and do well such as Alltop. I needed to preface my post with all of this because I have seen companies like Guy’s try to launch and get attention and hit below the mark. His companies get instant saturation because he is in the cool kids group. I struggle to help some companies not in the cool kids group get the traction they deserve and help with with the use of tools just like Twitter, which brings us full circle to my point (we had to get there sooner or later).
Guy provides 10 ways to use twitter as a business tool and I agree with nearly all of the points made but I wanted to clarify the point or flat out tell Guy he is wrong. The first of his 10 tips caught my attention immediately:
1. Forget the “influentials.†You must buy into the theory that products and services reach critical mass because mere mortals spread the word for you. This defies the common wisdom that a handful of “influentials†shape what the rest of us try and what we adopt. In the online world, these influentials include Mike “I can go a week without Twitter†Arrington, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, and to some extent me.
Guy is very much correct in his opinion that mere mortals will make your business a success. The problem with that statement however is the fact that mere mortals do not have the accessibility to the information as much as the influentials like Guy and Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington and Seth Godin. It is easy for Guy to say I can’t make or break your company you have to have a product that doesn’t suck. Agreed Guy, but you have to have the ability for a mass amount of the little people to actually hear of your product and then you can sit back and watch the buzz begin. Not everyone has that luxury. I watched at Blog World Expo when you mentioned a company you were looking at everyone madly making a note to go and see what company you mentioned. Yeah, it was a cool company, but because you mentioned it, I actually had a chance to check them out. My advice is don’t discount getting the info to the people through a megaphone such as those influencers mentioned. It is the somebodies that get the information to the nobodies. I myself would never hear about some of the cool stuff in the tech world had it not been for Robert Scoble having access to things where I cannot get past the door. Yes, Robert Scoble is the Richard Grieco to me being a Butabi brother. This is a blog post unto itself (more to come).
Remember the Motrin debacle? It took a few of the influencers in the Mommy blogdom to get the ball rolling, then the army of the nobodies were able to take the ball and run. Actually that is not true completely as a nobody mentioned it to a somebody and then, well you know the outcome. Getting the influencers to light the fuse is a part of the equation Guy discounts in his post. I think it is one of the more important parts of the puzzle. Guy has never not been invited to the party. He has not stood on the street hoping his name is on “the list”.
I also wanted to touch on the third point Guy makes in his tips:
3. Get as many followers as you can. I recently explained what I do to get more followers. Click here to read about my methods. Ignore people who tell you that it’s the quality of your followers not the quantity. They’re trying to make friends, not use Twitter as a tool. And, truth be told, there are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that lie. You can follow me here.
The reason you want more followers is the law of big numbers: the more followers, the more people talking about what you do, the more you can reach the tipping point. If you think you “know†exactly who can and will help you, you are deluding yourself.
I purposely ignore those people on Twitter that don’t use the tool as it is intended. This is a fine line you must learn to walk. Guy seems to imply that getting followers is important, and it is (follow me here) but how you get those followers is more of the point. I get many people that follow me on Twitter and when I go to their twitter page they have perhaps 10 updates in the last 6 months or even not at all and they have 3000 people they are following and have about 100
people that have reciprocated that action. This is in no way using Twitter. You have to put a little effort into it to get anything out of it. Yes, Guy is correct, the more followers the larger the reach, but make sure you are not shelved as a Twitter spammer. Your influence will be ignored.
At the end of the day however, pay attention to Guy and what he has to say about things. He had a hard time with twitter at first and I must admit I unfollowed him and ignored any Twitter stream he had. He has since turned that ship around and really uses Twitter as a tool for his own business. I have read a book or two and the man is a genius when it comes to doing things right. Guy’s latest book is Reality Check and I don’t yet have my copy. I’m hoping I can get one of those checks soon.
[tool photo via flattop341]
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