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Tips from Britney Spears social media director

by Devin Day 1 Comment

Here is an interesting video filmed by Movable Type. It’s Lauren Kozak, Social Media Director for Britney Spears discussing some social media tips.

You can go directly to the post on the Movable Type blog by clicking here

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Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

How to persuade others through great usability!

by Devin Day Leave a Comment

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is in the office suite next to me. I was suggesting to her that to connect with her customers she should create a blog and start sharing valuable and relevant information with them about her business niche (she has a brilliant niche).

One of the ways I told her she could get the word out on her blog was by sharing it with all the folks that came to her booth at the many trade shows she does each year. Her immediate response – “how should I best do that?”

To me this is a perfect example of usability. If she can efficiently collect email addresses and give them a simple handout that effectively communicates the benefits of going to her blog she will build a loyal audience base that will greatly increase her annual revenue streams.

Most people would approach this suggestion by handing out a flier with tons of other info on and the URL to the blog buried somewhere in flier. Not an effective approach to usability.

Usability (to me) means persuading others. By implementing some key fundamentals, usability becomes highly effective and efficient.

Whether your implementing usability in web design, presentations, fund raising or anything requiring action you have to effectively lead someone from point A to point B, and land them at the place where they are eager to follow your call to action.

Without core fundamentals and a standardized framework (process) to implement usability, you will not be very persuasive.

Let’s look at the core fundamentals of usability that I work with.

  1. Keep it simple – people don’t like to think so keep it simple stupid (kiss).
  2. Keep it focused – if you want people to get from point A to point B, DO NOT distract them with anything else till they have finished your call to action.
  3. Create in your audience an eager want – how do you do this? Simple! See things from your audiences perspective and answer the question what is it THEY want? If you answer this and blend it with your proposition you will become very persuasive.
  4. Ask for it – you won’t get anyone to take action if you don’t ask. In addition to asking, make sure your call to action is clear and in no way ambiguous. (Let’s put this into practice right now – for more tips like this sign up here to automatically receive my future blog posts by email)

These four points will ensure that the person has only two options -  yes! or not at this time (to me a delayed yes).

Remember, great usability includes these core fundamentals. It does not matter what your doing -  If you need to persuade someone you must have great usability.

Let’s have a look at an article on web interface usability from a site that I love to read (smashing magazine). Keep an eye on their examples and how through good usability the user is lead from the proposition to the call to action. Click here for the article.

Now go and persuade the world through greater usability!

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Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

Does your company have a social traffic strategy?

by Devin Day 3 Comments

Having a social traffic strategy is key to building continual awareness in your target market. What is your strategy? If you don’t have one documented that is easily communicated to your staff I encourage you do so.

Let’s look at the social traffic framework we have been working on at JellyBarn can be seen in the flow screenshot below.

We had a few goals when creating this strategy framework:

  1. Provide a steady flow of traffic to our website and blog.
  2. Help us build our brand as market experts and leaders.
  3. Create a process framework that is simple and continually repeatable.
  4. Allow a process that can be delegated and operated by any employee.
  5. Create a foundation that can be continually quantified and improved.

Lets take a look below in a little more detail what the process looks like…

traffic-strategy-flow

traffic-strategy-flow

  1.  This is our website and blog where we create valuable content that is relevant to our target audience.
  2. We are working on a knowledge base that is designed for industry experts and leaders to discuss, share and innovate all ideas relating to social media marketing. (this could be done through a social network software or even a linkedin group. We are preparing to launch our knowledge group at SocialCampfire.com)
  3. We create original content specifically for guest posts on popular blogs that are related to our market focus.
  4. To simplify the process of distributing our content we utilize a syndication service like ping.fm. 
  5. The syndication flow is designed to keep traffic from our content flowing back to our website and blog.
  6. Our guest posting is to drive traffic back our website and blog as well as establish market credibility.

Having a strategy is key to building continual awareness in your target market. What is your strategy? If you don’t have one documented that is easily communicated to your staff I encourage you do so.

There are a lot of strategies out there. Don’t forget to comment and share your thoughts, ideas, and what your working on. Please also share your thoughts on how we might improve our strategy.

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Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

How to achieve your business plan

by Devin Day 5 Comments

Image of a man holding money

Have you ever wondered where you are with achieving your business plan?

Having a plan (desired outcomes with documented strategies, goals, and tasks) and working that plan is in my opinion the cornerstone of a building a good company. The problem is a “good” plan is often the most overlooked area in a new business. To many Entrepreneurs think a ton of words on a paper satisfies the task of creating a business plan. The plan usually ends up a lengthy (and boring) word document that no one wants to read and ends up lost and buried in a filing cabinet. 

Unless your raising money or communicating to your BOD (board of directors) you should not need to a huge document anyway. What you need is a clear internal strategy plan that covers the basic three elements of a business model.

  1. Value Proposition (Great idea that will help our clients more affordably and effectively do a job they are trying to get done.)
  2. Profit Formula (A formula that allows you to keep costs minimal and margins at a maximum)
  3. Business Systems (Standardization for the our habitual ways of getting things done)

The simplest way to get your business plan started is this:

  1. Summarize in a few paragraphs the overall concept and identify your desired outcome.
  2. Write a series of strategies for each basic category and keep it simple – a short overview paragraph followed by bullet points is perfect. Your general strategy categories are – Sales, Marketing, Operations, Business processes, Staffing, Funding, Target market, etc. (for more on business processes view my post here)
  3. For each strategy category write out the goals needed to achieve each strategy and then write out the tasks needed to achieve each goal.

Let’s recap – you have identified your desired outcome (where you want to be financially in a desired amount of time), and created strategies to achieve that desired outcome and you have your list of your goals and tasks to achieve your strategies. What your left with in it’s simplest form is a checklist of action items to achieve your business plan.

(NOTE: There will always be continual planning and prioritizing as you chew through your list. Be sure you stay on top of prioritization because not knowing where your at at any given moment will breed procrastination.)

A final recommendation is to find an SAAS (software as a service) platform to manage all your action items and strategies in your business plan. This will allow you to share/delegate tasks with other team members. Keep track of who’s where and doing what and it will keep everyone in sync. I use (and highly recommend) a service called PlanHQ

planHQ is structured for the very format that I have outlined above and is so easy to use. It’s quite powerful and has allowed our business plan to be a living breathing entity that again keeps the team in sync. Your plan for world domination will quickly take hold if you can document your plan, communicate your plan and execute your plan. Now go and achieve your business plan!

Photo of planhq.com dashboard

How to stop procrastinating and get all of your great ideas on paper

by Devin Day 7 Comments

If your a visual person like me who lives and breathes ideas and creativity, but often find if difficult to get great ideas down in a way that is organized, you may want to try mind-mapping. (for software I use Mindjet)

mindmap

Mind-mapping is an extremely fun exercise that I use when I have a really big (or small) idea that I want to get out of my head and on paper and don’t want to worry about organization yet. In fact, the beauty of this process is that it’s so freeing and the non-formal structure increases your creativity and the ideas will just flow. As you write down ideas you start to see patterns, and one idea leads to another. By the end of the process you suddenly have all your ideas for a topic loosely organized. 

Now you can take this idea-map and start to break it down into a more organized structure. It will allow you to create goals and tasks and see the relationships between all of the ideas. 

The reason I like this type of exercise is because it’s fun and most of all it does not cause idea paralysis. Have you ever tried to create a list of for a big idea and get frustrated because it seemed hard to organize your thoughts? Mind-mapping (I like idea-mapping better) avoids this type of paralysis and frustration by just letting you write down any idea without worry of formal structure. Once you are done the feeling you have is one of major relief and gratification because you have emptied the holding bin inside your head and allowed room for new thoughts and ideas. Keeping things locked in your head causes frustration and anxiety until you can empty those thoughts. 

Mind-mapping can be done with a number of softwares ( I use http://www.mindjet.com/ ) or even a big whiteboard (my favorite – my office is filled wall to wall with whiteboards) and when you fill up the whiteboard use a digital camera to take a picture and can then wipe the board clean for round 2. 

In the end you will be amazed at how many new ideas this exercise develops and how organized your ideas will actually become as you start mind/idea-mapping. Now go idea-map all those great ideas!!

mindmap1

here’s another good article by Thursday Bram on mind mapp to presentation

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Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

Capabilities-driven strategies: Thriving in a tough economy

by Devin Day 4 Comments

Last week my company held it’s kick-off meeting for the 2009 season and one of our big topics was innovating our capabilities. Processes, standardization, skills, tools, etc. are necessary if we are to outpace our competition. A few days after our meeting I came across an article from Strategy+Business that discussed the topic in depth (see article here or click here for PDF). To me there are so many reasons that focusing on your capabilities-driven strategy is far more important than focusing on better improving your product to the nth degree (most companies that are built and run by “technician minded” people tend to focus on continually improving the product vs. delivering the product, thus their companies tend to remain a “ma and pa” shop.)

Let me give you an example of capabilities-driven strategy from a great book (E-myth Revisited) that sums it up so well. “Most of us could build a better hamburger than McDonalds, but few (if any) of us could build a better system for delivering those hamburgers than McDonald’s.”

McDonald’s capabilities and skills in process, marketing, standardization and so forth are what makes it such an efficient company. A better capabilities strategy is also why so many companies thrive and others don’t. If a company can outpace its competition through greater understanding and clarity of their capabilities-driven strategies then they are likely to be able to thrive even in a tough economy!

Have a peak at the article, it’s a great resource for learning and improving your capabilities-driven strategies and getting a jump on outpacing your competition in 2009.