• overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general
• a place in public esteem or regard : good name

It’s a word that’s been around since the 14th century.  It’s almost synonymous now with a word we hear a great deal about.

Reputation = Brand

The word, brand, usually makes us think of all those products that try to grab our attention with those often-jarring advertisements in the middle of our favourite TV show.  However the word is applied more generally now, even to our own individual personalities.  It’s a useful notion since it reminds us that we only influence others and can interact with them if they have a fairly clear impression of what we represent.  If you accept that notion of a personal brand, then it suggests ways you can be more effective in getting your message across to others.

Reputations Are Always Fragile

What quickly comes to mind is how easy our brand or reputation can be harmed by what we or others do.  There’s a rather provocative list in 247wallstreet of  America’s Nine Most Damaged Brands.

Highly recognizable brands can be invaluable, but they require constant attention. Their value can rise or fall because of management decisions, changes in the competitive environment, and the beliefs that a brand has aged beyond its useful lifetime. Often, though, the true causes of drops in brand value are folly and arrogance. 24/7 Wall St’s review of nine brands that were badly damaged recently shows that even the most powerful brand cannot survive horrible decisions.

You may be surprised at the entries in the list but you can read the full article to understand the logic here.

1. American Airlines
2. Nokia
3. Netflix
4. Airbus 380
5. Rush Limbaugh
6. Greece
7. New Orleans Saints
8. Chevy Volt
9. Keith Olbermann

The Internet Makes Reputations Even More Fragile

While it may have been possible in the past to keep your head down for a time until the noise abated on some gaffe you may have committed, the Internet has changed the rules.  Do something incredibly stupid and it’s likely to go viral on Twitter or Facebook. 

If you are going to do the best you can to counter such attacks on your reputation, then it’s essential to keep an active radar screen on what is going on out there.  That’s where a service such as reputationdefender (one of the business services of reputation.com) can be a major assist in giving you an early warning signal.  If someone spreads malicious rumours, then you can make sure the truth gets out there rapidly.

You Are The Biggest Threat To Your Reputation

It is probably still the case that most instances of negative impacts on reputation are caused by actions of the individuals concerned.  One of the biggest has appeared in the last few days.  The Reuters headline was JPMorgan has $2 billion trading loss, reputation hit.

JPMorgan Chase & Co said on Thursday that it suffered a $2 billion trading loss from a failed hedging strategy, a disclosure that hit financial stocks and the reputation of the bank and its prominent CEO, Jamie Dimon.

The dollar loss, though, could be less significant than the hit to Dimon and the bank’s reputation.  “This puts egg on our face,” Dimon admitted.

The strategy “morphed over time” and it was “ineffective, poorly monitored, poorly constructed and all of that,” Dimon said.  “This violated our principles. This trading violates the Dimon principle.”

It may well have violated the Dimon principle but your reputation is determined by your practices not necessarily by your principles.

Technorati Tags: brand, chase, jpmorgan, reputation

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Type 1 and Type 2 Errors may be something you vaguely remember from statistics courses but few people really know what the terms mean.  If you turn to Wikipedia hoping for some clarification on Type 1 and Type 2 Errors, then you are in for a disappointment.  It starts off with a clear warning:

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.

The terms may be somewhat scary, but behind them are some basic and important ideas.  A Type I error (or, an error of the first kind) and a Type II error (or, an error of the second kind) are precise technical terms used in statistics to describe particular flaws in a testing process The terms are also used in a more general way by social scientists and others to refer to flaws in reasoning.

A type I error is similar to a false positive in other test situations, while a type II error is similar to a false negative.

Separating Sheep And Goats

A simple game example will illustrate what we’re talking about here.  Suppose you were given a pile of 60 photographs, some of sheep and some of goats.  The game is to take each photograph and after looking at it for 1 second you put the photograph in the sheep pile or the goat pile.  At the end you may find that in the sheep pile you may mistakenly have included some goats, which should have been rejected.  That could be considered a Type 1 error.  On the other hand, in your goat pile you may  have added some sheep photographs.  These could be considered Type 2 errors.

Whenever someone is involved in dividing a queue of people into two groups then you have the possibility that people will be assigned to the wrong group and one or other type of error is made.  A triage nurse in a hospital Emergency Room tries to decide on the basis of limited information whether visitors should be fast-tracked given their condition or added to the general line-up.  Mistakes will occur for a variety of reasons and some who should have been fast-tracked are left in the general line-up.  Others who should not have been fast-tracked are mistakenly accepted for the fast-track. 

Such decisions separating the ‘sheep’ from the ‘goats’ are more common than you might think.  In every case since decisions are rarely perfect, type 1 and type 2 errors will occur.  Some sheep will be left with the goats and some goats will find they’ve been given the sheep treatment. Some of these decisions can have very important consequences and one of these is Google’s assessment of the quality of websites and whether they should be included in their index or not.  Since Google can bring large volumes of traffic to websites if they are included in the index, it is very important whether Google treats your website as a sheep or a goat.

Google’s Type 1 and Type 2 errors – Separating Sheep and Goats

Here we are using a shorthand in defining a sheep in Google’s eyes as a website which is in conformance with their Webmaster Guidelines. Their explanation of the Guidelines is that these are Best practices to help Google find, crawl, and index your site.  For simplicity we are describing your website as a goat if Google chooses not to index it.

The guidelines include three sections:

• Design and content guidelines
• Technical guidelines
• Quality guidelines

Google gives a clear indication of what may turn your website into a goat.

Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines,” which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise impacted by an algorithmic or manual spam action. If a site has been affected by a spam action, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google’s partner sites.

These guidelines are complex and matters are not black and white.  Undoubtedly there are shades of grey.  That’s just the kind of situation where a decision process to separate sheep from goats may end up with mis-assignments and errors of both types.

Webmasters may insist that their website is of high quality and should be clearly accepted as a sheep.  Google is the final arbiter and makes the decision.  If they say it’s a goat, then it’s a goat.  However Google may well make an erroneous judgment either way.  Google makes the sheep/goat assessment principally by a series of algorithms, which they are seeking to improve all the time.  The fact that these algorithmic improvements are ongoing shows that Google itself feels their sheep/goat assessment is not yet 100% correct.

Google Panda Updates – Spotting Sheep Clones

In 2012, a good example of this ongoing improvement process is the series of Panda Updates since February.  The first of these was described by Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable who wrote that

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-content-farm-13013.html

Google’s Farmer Update Is Live: 12% Of Google’s Results Are Forever Changed.  The Farmer name was used by some before the Panda name came into wide usage.  These Panda updates aim to downgrade web pages that are almost direct copies of others.  Even if the original version was a sheep, producing clones of this in their thousands clearly in now way is creating web pages of quality.  So Google aimed to group these sheep clones with the goats.  Most webmasters were entirely in support of this Google initiative.  Clearly a better assessment of sheep and goats was in the making.

Google’s Over Optimization Update Named Penguin

Search Engine Roundtable now has information on the latest update called Penguin.  This identifies over-optimized web pages that are stuffed with keywords as goats.  Most realistic webmasters will find this update too is an improvement in separating the true sheep from the goats.  Congratulations, Google: it is likely that if this update works correctly then the type 1 and Type 2 errors will be further reduced.  Initial reactions on Internet marketing forums seems to show a positive reaction.

The Unnatural Link Update

A recent update that attempted to better separate out the sheep and the goats is proving to be much less satisfactory.  This is the Unnatural Link Update, which is well described by Patrick Altoft of Branded3 in his article on The New Google Link Algorithm

The Unnatural Link update works in direct contrast to previous updates because it penalises websites purely based on the link strategy they have chosen to adopt and it has caused huge problems for the sites that are affected.

Since we blogged about the unnatural link notices that Google has sent to almost 1 million websites in the past few months the we’ve had loads of people getting in touch with Branded3 to ask for our advice on dealing with the issue and as a result we have analysed over 50 reputable websites who have received the message and/or a direct penalty causing a reduction in rankings.

One of the unexpected and tragic consequences of this update has been covered by Aaron Wall in an article on GoogleBowling, Negative SEO & Outing

With all of Google’s warning messages about abnormal links they have built the negative SEO industry in a big way. In some instances those who are not good enough to compete try to harm competitors.

How could Google’s attempt to improve their ability to separate out sheep and goats (and thus reduce their type 1 and type 2 errors) turn out so bad.  That Wikipedia article we started off with may give a clue.

Google’s Type 3 Error

The Wikipedia article gives the following explanation of the Type 3 error.

In 1957, Allyn W. Kimball, a statistician with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, proposed a different kind of error to stand beside “the first and second types of error in the theory of testing hypotheses”. Kimball defined this new “error of the third kind” as being “the error committed by giving the right answer to the wrong problem.”

This is really what we are dealing with here.  It was Google who suggested in the first place with their PageRank theory that links to a web page could be an indicator of the web page’s authority or relevance.  There was no suggestion at that time that too many low value links could have an adverse effect on web page quality and thus whether a web page was a sheep or a goat.  Indeed everyone picked up the notion that more links would be better and this seemed to be reflected in the way Google did the maths around the PageRank concept.

More Links Are Better

That has certainly been the common understanding up till now.  As it happens, while writing this, I received the following e-mail message (as most of us frequently do):

Dear webmaster,

We have a large crew of Professionals who are experts in Quality Link Building, SMM, Search Engine Marketing and Online Business Optimization, which are time consuming duties for you and half of your in-house resource cost. 

Our core focus is following industry verticals for:

• Quality Link Building
• Rate Effective Link Building – Google Page rank oriented
• Link Wheeling
• Google Panda Friendly Content Writing

We always adopt the Google friendly ETHICAL LINK building process/White hat technique; also follow the guidelines of Google and major search Engine.
We are looking forward starting a long and healthy business relationship with you. I will really appreciate you please let me know your requirement.
Kind Regards,
Sonu

Everyone has been thinking that this was correct and indeed this seems to have created a new industry in India. 

More Links Can No Longer Turn Goats Into Sheep

The view that links could be a measure of a web page’s authority or relevance may have been correct when first proposed.  However when a dominant search engine company such as Google proclaims the value of links then this causes everyone to create links wherever they can and the whole Internet link graph becomes distorted.  The Google PageRank search approach can no longer work in such an online world, even though it is Google who caused this to happen.  Google tried to change the world by insisting that links to a web page are part of its quality rating but no one listened.

Google could attempt to clean up this Augean stable of links but the better approach is to acknowledge that there is now very little value in this whole mess mass of links.  By now Google is trying to give the right answer to the wrong problem.  By anyone’s definition that is a major Type 3 error on Google’s part.

Credit: image of sheep and goats from 24oranges.nl via Flickr

Technorati Tags: goats, keywords, links, sheep, type 1, type 2, type 3

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Whether you love Kim Kardashian or you can’t stand her, you must acknowledge her ability to leverage media in order to create constant publicity. Whether it’s appearing on the cover of a book or simply attending church on Easter Sunday, Kardashian never fails to generate headlines.

…

Granted, most of us are pursuing publicity and exposure on a smaller scale, but the objective is still to create consistent exposure in order to build credibility and visibility.

However personal branding will very quickly bring you face-to-face with certain dilemmas.  One of them is described in a Forbes article on The Paradox of Personal Branding

How do you stand out and fit in at the same time?  What’s not to like about a smart, realistic focus on how to manage your reputation in the workplace? Hopefully, it can enable you to home in on your strengths, compensate for weaknesses, and make you a better (and better-respected) professional.

The author of the book on the Paradox of Personal Branding, Amy Edmondson, believes that personal branding can be good “if it leads people to be thoughtful about how visible and transparent everything really is.”

That leads in to the other dilemma.  If you market your personal brand, this may trigger a critical reaction whereby others seek to find the weaknesses and negative points and publicize these.  Covering both aspects of marketing the personal brand and keeping a watchful eye on negative publicity can take a great deal of effort and that is where the services provided by a company such as Reputation.com can be extremely valuable.

Credit: Image courtesy of Stefano Principato via Flickr

Technorati Tags: brand, branding, privacy, visibility

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• May 12, 2012 -- Reputations Are Easily Damaged (0)

Once you have built a search engine optimized (SEO) website, your focus should turn to link building. By building links into your website from other sites you will increase your site’s visibility, PageRank, and SEO. Every link you build has the potential to feed new traffic to your site while increasing your credibility with the search engines.

Link Building Increases Site Visibility

Each link into your site is another opportunity for someone to discover your website for the first time, and so it stands to reason that each link increases your site’s visibility. Each inbound link is also another route a search engine spider might travel to happen upon one of your pages when crawling the web, making your site more visible to the search engines.

One great way you can increase your site’s visibility with a target audience is by placing guest posts on authority blogs in your industry. Most guest posts allow you at least one link back to your website in the biography or resource box of your post. Some will even permit you to place more links within your article if the links are relevant and add value. Guest posts allow you to piggyback on the popularity of industry-leading blogs and place your links where a lot of targeted readers will see them.

Link Building Drives Traffic to Your Site

Of course, some of those people seeing your links on other blogs, websites, and forums are going to follow those links to see what you have to offer on your web pages. The more inbound links you have, the more traffic those links will be able to send to your blog or website.

When your links start sending considerable traffic, you will have visitors you can track to learn more about the way your audience responds to your web pages. More traffic means you can gather statistically relevant data from your split tests sooner, allowing you to update your copy and web design for more efficient conversions. And more traffic will lead to more conversions if you are able to attract your target audience and create landing pages that convert.

Link Building Improves Your Site’s PageRank

Search engine bots do not comprehend the text on web pages. They have to rely on human behavior to assess the value of the words on your pages for human readers. Google has developed PageRank as a measure of the confidence it has in a website’s value based on the number of inbound links a website has and the quality of those links.

Google assigns the most weight to inbound links from websites on domains that end in .edu and .gov. Major media sites and Wikipedia also rank well with Google’s PageRank algorithm. However, even when you cannot build links from those sites, you can building a network across related blogs in your industry and developing your PageRank over time.

Link Building Boosts Your Site’s SEO

In the end, every benefit you get from building links into your site–increased PageRank, traffic, and visibility–contributes to boosting your site’s search engine optimization and improving the chance that your pages will rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs). Smart link building is simply the best way to establish your site as an authority in your industry.

In 2012, Google has become much stricter about link farms and spammy inbound link relationships. Some websites have found their pages suppressed in the SERPs or even completely banned from the search engine entirely. This is a response to low-quality, repetitive nonsense websites that managed to trick the search engines into promoting pages that have no value for human readers and make searchers and competitors angry with Google.

Link building requires a professional strategy that begins with an understanding of your ideal customer’s needs and desires and then proceeds to create content that resonates with your audience. Disseminating that content through your site and your link building network will increase site visibility, drive more traffic, and boost your PageRank, all leading to improved site SEO and more online sales and conversions.

Author Bio: Ruben Corbo is a writer for the website The Search Labs a global provider of link building, on-site SEO, and competitor link analysis services.

Technorati Tags: backlink, edu, gov, link, PageRank, traffic

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This balancing act between stability and change demands some special ways of working.  Paul J. H. Schoemaker has set this out in an article entitled 6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers.  As he says, “Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well.”  His article expands on this theme but here are the 6 habits:

Anticipate

1. Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
2. Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
3. Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically

1. Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
2. Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own
3. Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret

1. Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
2. Encourage others to do the same
3. Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide

1. Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
2. Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
3. Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align

1. Understand what drives other people’s agendas, including what remains hidden
2. Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it’s uncomfortable
3. Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn

1. Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
2. Shift course quickly if you realize you’re off track
3. Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

Many will find some real challenges in these suggested behaviors.  However long term survival, growth and success will only come to those who master these.

Technorati Tags: adaptive, change, direction, inc

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If you’re here to buy a SMM blog, they are on auction at flippa.com. Click on either of the two panels to the right to go directly to the relevant auction page. Alternatively contact Barry Welford on any questions you may have.

If you go to the flippa.com website and are interested in this auction, remember you can keep a watch alert on it by clicking on the link towards the top left as shown in the image on the right. By doing this, you will be informed by e-mail of all developments in the auction. This could include a shortening of the auction period or a reduction in the Buy It Now (BIN) price, both of which the seller has the right to do. You would also be informed of any comments on the auction page that could include new information. You do need to register with the flippa.com website to do this.

If you would like to know about strategic pruning and why SMM is selling two of its blogs, then please read on.

Strategy, a word that first came up in a military context, is all about determining how available resources should be best used to achieve desired outcomes.  It’s an essential first step in deciding to start up a business or an organization.  Michael Porter, the doyen of living management gurus, is the acknowledged master of competitive strategy.  However he has less to say on what you should do about strategy on an ongoing basis as the business grows and evolves.

Holding on to the same strategy until it fails is certainly not the best approach. A regular review is better and a very sound approach can well be what works for gardens.  That is what is suggested in a CharityInfo.ca article on Pruning, harvesting and strategy and it makes a lot of sense.  Pruning achieves two purposes: it allows the stronger shoots or branches to have more space and to receive more energy and nutrients.  At the same time it may be possible to use what is harvested for other purposes.

With a neat play on words, Speer and Associates offers similar words of advice to banks with Branching Out or Pruning:  Developing Rational Branch Strategies.

This nicely complements Peter Drucker’s key piece of advice, Focus, Focus, Focus.  It’s a mantra I’ve suggested to many others in the past.  However they might quite rightly have said, Physician – heal thyself. I keep running with my enthusiasms if they’re doing well.  The result can be that you spread yourself too thin.

Focusing or pruning: they’re very similar concepts.  Just as with a garden it should be something you do on a planned and regular basis.  Possibly 10% of what your company is doing should be pruned every year after a careful review of strengths and weaknesses.

The SMM blogs to an extent have grown like Topsy.  They all are successful in their own niches. However in deciding where efforts should be concentrated at least two had to go.  Balancing all the factors and considering how best the values of the blogs could be ‘harvested’, the clear choices for selling were StayGoLinks and Senior Money Memos.

As mentioned at the start, if you are interested then you can find more details at the following links:

• StayGoLinks, all about the Mobile Web, and
• Senior Money Memos, personal financial advice for seniors

Technorati Tags: blog, sale, senior money, staygolinks

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When a prospect contacts your company, it is important that they are not left hanging without some acknowledgement.  At the least it is a  mark of common courtesy and of course they could represent a sizable purchase.  Surprisingly, companies often do not put enough effort into making that response.  Given the changes on the Internet, this is an even more critical function than before.

Social Media empower customers

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are the factors that are changing the status of individuals relative to companies.  It is now very easy for someone to share with their friends their satisfaction or their disgust with the way they have been treated by a company.  People assume that a company will be trying to make sure that their customer experience is satisfactory.

Customers Have A One-To-Many Relationship with Suppliers

Part of the challenge here is that the contact is more important to the prospect or customer since they would like an immediate response.  On the other hand, the company may have a large number of people contacting them at the same time.  If they lose a small proportion, they may not care.  However this is foolish since it is costly to get prospects calling you and this might just be the big one.  The prospect’s perception of the time to respond may be much longer than what it actually takes.  Nevertheless most people are reasonable and understand that an immediate response is not always possible.

How responsive are suppliers

Unfortunately many companies determine what resources they will provide for responding to prospects by considering what it will cost.  That explains why so often you will run into one of the following telephonic responses:

• a busy signal on the telephone
• all our agents are dealing with other customers, please call back
• all our agents are dealing with other customers, the expected wait is 12 minutes.

The ‘Your call is important to us’ that often precedes such messages is almost guaranteed to make you feel even more frustrated.

They would be much better advised to consider alternatives by looking at these from the point-of-view of the prospect.  In other words, they should adopt a customer-centric approach.  The most important factor here is probably to allow the prospect to be in control of what happens.  Offering choices is particularly useful here.  Here are some possibilities:

• Contact via a form on the website
• E-mail
• Leaving a telephone number for a call-back
• Chat line

A really customer-savvy company will probably offer all of these.

Timely Responses as part of your USP

The way most company handle their responses is often less than satisfying.  If that is true in your market place, then you have a way of standing out from your competitors if you respond to customers as they deserve.

Of course if your competitors all do this well, then it is almost a condition of survival that you should match their performance.  Either way it should be a priority function for you to consider.

Timely Resolution or Timely Response

Jay Baer sings from the same hymn-sheet in a recent blog post:

Ultimately, speed wins. The companies that engage customers on Twitter and Facebook within minutes are making a none-too-subtle statement about their embrace of the social telephone and the primacy of the customer. In comparison, slow response or no response produces a decided “meh” vibe.

Danny Brown took issue with this in stating that:

It’s speed of resolution that will really define how successful a company is in social media (or any other business medium).

However if you check through his article, you will find the following:

If you’re a brand, make it clear on every single customer touch-point what your practice is for issues and queries:

• Standard customer service issues will have a response within 24 hours.
• Identified escalated issues will have a response within 12 hours.
• Emergency issues or concerns that have health implications will have a response within the hour.

Make it clear too, that a response is not the same as a resolution. Offer timescales for internal procedures to let customers know that, to get the answer they need to really resolve the issue, the process involves X departments and Y amount of days, to get to Z resolution options.

So even though he is emphasizing the speed of resolution as the ultimate decider, he is still requiring that the customer should receive a timely reply indicating that action is being taken.

That is exactly what we are suggesting here.  Unfortunately many companies may reply in a very tardy fashion or not at all.  This is the fastest way to show the lack of competence of your company. Instead make sure that customers sing the praises of your timely responses.  It’s the best promotion you can have.

Related: Rapid Response – When is it needed?

Technorati Tags: call centre, rapid, response, telephone, timely

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Write Each Day

Robert “Reb” Rebele feels that it will be a real benefit to you to Write Something Every Day.   The daily discipline of setting down something in writing can bring you multiple benefits.  Here are some that Robert  Rebele noted and he has the research to prove it.

Writing to learn – “Writing across the Curriculum” is an educational practice that extracts writing from the strangle-hold of English classes and puts writing exercises in every class, including math and science.

Writing to heal – Expressive writing can be a therapeutic process. When trauma victims write about these intense emotional experiences, they are often able to improve not just their subjective well-being, but also their physical health.

Writing to grow – “Write down three good things that happened to you today and why.” “Write a gratitude letter.” “Write about your best possible self.”

Writer’s block

Writing every day is easier than writing a few times per week. You don’t have to write much – just open that notebook at least once per day.  Develop strategies to make it effortless to start.

Some people feel that having to write something is a stress.  What should I write?  However it is easy to have a mountain of ideas if you just look around you and make a note of remarkable things.  It is a little bit like smelling the coffee or the roses. Remember you are writing for you, so no one else will see it unless you decide.

If you do want to share your writing with others, there is always something going on that would be of interest to them.  So the first step in preparing to write is to have a way of capturing all of these potential sparks that could trigger a written sentence, paragraph or article, whether short or long.  Keep a notepad or keep notes on your tablet or smartphone.

Doing the writing

Check out
Dragon Naturally Speaking,
the voice technology software
used on all the SMM blogs

Once you have the ideas, the writing comes easy. Make sure it is something you enjoy writing about.  If it includes humor, that’s even better.  Just as this blog post is being constructed, you can use voice technology such as
Dragon NaturallySpeaking and talk about your topic as if you were talking to a friend.  With a little practice, the software becomes used to your voice and a reasonable text version of your thoughts is easily produced.

Once written, what do you do with the text you have used.  That is entirely up to you since you have already received the key benefit that came from doing the writing.  You can keep your own private journal or your own blog or you can submit it to another blogger and ask her to publish your writings.

The important thing is to get started.  You can then get all the benefits that Robert  Rebele described.  All it takes is a roving eye, an alert spirit and an ability to tell others about the things you see. 

Technorati Tags: growth, healing, learning, write, writing

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The book is intended as a working process and workbook to help you achieve a successful business.  I found it fairly complete and some of the ideas are presented in a very effective manner.  Anyone who uses this book to guide them in their business decision-making will not go far wrong.

Before zigging and zagging, you should be figuring out what is this business you intend to grow and check that it will achieve the goals that you have set yourself at this time of your life.  The book gives some useful checklists and tables to help in doing this.  Once this is established, then it’s time to zig and zag.

The three main zigs or zags that Christiansen presents are the following:

• A first zig of getting to profitability is important to every business, because being broke and always fighting for funding can cause a lot of pain. More importantly, profitability can drive you to find hidden assets, zag to interim revenue sources, and force you to pace yourself in getting to that final destination. You must know you can survive and get the new business on its feet financially without resorting to injections of capital from others.
• The second zag is then to define processes and add resources. It is now time to formalize and document the processes that have worked up to this point. Only then can you expand those things that led to your initial success. It also means that it’s time to stop micro-managing, hire some of the right people, and start giving up some control.
• Once you have your team of right people, the third zig is then to Scale or expand the business. This is implementing a model that you can replicate many times over, to get your product or service out across the country, and around the world. Scaling models charge by the transaction, or subscriptions, or have digital assets with no cost to reproduce. Switch to a mindset of working “on” your business, rather than “in” your business.

There are several other evocative ways of describing important considerations in the book.  Beacon in the fog was one (where your dream will take you) and staying within the guardrails was another (knowing the boundaries on what you will accept).  These are not new concepts but it was good to see them discussed at some length in this approach.

This is a fairly slim book and an easy read and on the whole I would recommend it to business readers, not least because it is provocative.  However at the end of the day I am not convinced that zigging and zagging is the most effective way of describing how to grow your business.  I think the steps that Christiansen described are fundamental and should be followed.  However they are taking you in the same direction and calling them zigs and zags I believe is potentially confusing.  The book might have been instead called Ready, Aim, Fire for the three main zigs/zags.  It then would have better represented how I believe businesses should grow while keeping in mind that essential Peter Drucker Focus.

Technorati Tags: focus, Peter Drucker, zig zag

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Note that this is an updated version of a white paper that first appeared in December 2001. Over the years it has been the most read white paper of all. Although it reflects policies that one hopes most companies would now be applying, this still seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

In his book, Harvey Thompson suggests that an organization like Amazon.com is one of the best examples of a customer-centered company. At the other end of the scale, he puts Microsoft as an example of a product-driven company. I am sure we can all relate to what Thompson is saying. The book has some excellent advice on how being customer-centered in your marketing and your selling can produce much better business results than the product-driven approach.

In some ways, Thompson did not go far enough. The real key is to try to relate to how the customer sees our company. How will our typical customer feel when he or she contacts our company? We should try to stand in the shoes of our customers. Doing that, how does our company rate?

The following 7 habits distinguish the truly customer-centric organization from a business that merely thinks a lot about its customers.

Why not score your own company and see how you rate.

1. We Have A Promise For Our Customers,
Not Just A Mission For Ourselves

We have a Mission statement for the company, which is like this:

2. We Bundle Services In With Our Products

3. Our Website Is A Welcoming Door,
Not A Magnificent Edifice

Our website is like this:

4. The Customer Finds It Easy To Contact Us,
By Whatever Method Is Convenient

There are four usual ways of contacting any company – telephone, fax, email message, website form. How many of these can the customer easily find from your website?

5. Our Telephone System Is “Customer-Friendly”
And Not Just Cost-Effective

6. Our Customer Has One Main Contact
Who Makes Everything Happen

7. Our Customer Service Gives The Service
The Customer Really Wants

So add up your scores for the 7 habits and see how your organization rates in its marketing and its selling.

Total score

0 – 14 You probably turn off a large proportion of potential customers

15 – 20 You probably irritate some of your potential customers

21 – 25 You’re doing pretty well but the competition may do better

26 – 28 Now you’re a company I would like to buy from.

So how did your organization do? Perhaps you feel the rating is too critical. However with the Internet, the customer is now in the driving seat. Some companies are really giving incredible service and that is what is setting the standard for what customers expect. This is not rocket science. All it takes is a little more thinking and a little more attention to detail. So why not join the winners. Look at each of the questions where you scored less than 4 and see whether you should be doing more to make your customer feel valued.

If you would like your organization more customer-centric, then SMM will be happy to help you figure out your best approach. Our help can be configured to meet exactly the needs you have. Our strengths, experience and creativity can complement those of your company. So Contact Us today on what you’re looking for without obligation.

If you are interested in checking other articles in the series in their original format, follow these links:

• Previous: Windows – 3 for Outstanding Performance
• Next: Faster Is Better

Technorati Tags: Amazon, customer service, customer-centric, Harvey Thompson, IBM, microsoft

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