A website’s goal is all about the end user: buy this, download that, sign up here, register there, watch this, read that… That goal needs two separate but overlapping strategies for human and robotic eyes. A blog certainly takes care of the former (and if used shrewdly can assist the latter).
On the human side, a blog helps demonstrate prove empathy with the user, your customer. You get a chance to show you know about wine from South Africa, or that you’re a clued-up tech geek, or that you’re into bicycles. You gain an opportunity to engage with (NOT sell to) your customer. You’re not a teenager in his bedroom scraping credit card details (surely people’s No.1 fear online) and you’re not just a suit who’s got the money to build a site and take orders – you’re a fan of the same things your customers are.
How valuable is that?
‘Mr Gekko, I’m there for you 110%,’ said the resolute Bud Fox. How many times has a colleague, supplier or partner said that to you? I heard Lewis Hamilton utter something similar at a recent Grand Prix weekend. They’re all lying.
A Buddhist monk devotes himself 100% to worship. He gave up all personal freedoms to live in an environment akin to a brutal prison. That’s not 110%, 120%, or 200% effort. It’s simply his ALL. Everything else is less than that, regardless of how sorry we might be feeling for ourselves with our current exertions.
Mr Hamilton is extremely talented and hugely dedicated but he’s dating girls who need a lot more entertaining than a comedy rental from Blockbusters, and he’s rubbing shoulders with the likes of P Diddy. (I’d like to know what Ron Dennis really thinks about that.) Don’t get me wrong, ‘our Lewis’ has the greatest job in the world and his skill set deserves all the trappings of success (Reebok value his limited input at £10 million) but 100+% effort is a massively overused, and under qualified, statement.
Perhaps you should ask your team to grade their effort instead? It could go along the lines of:
A = I’ll give my all until the job is done but I still need some R&R time;
B = you’ll get my excellent work for the hours you pay me but very little more (no ideas garnered over the weekend, no late night research etc);
C = I’m not too fussed on the project but I’ll do my bit to contribute, just don’t ask me to drive it along;
D = be all over me and I might get something achieved;
E = honestly, you’d be better off without me.
Lewis would be an A+, how about you and your team?
My economics’ lecturer once told me that if I ever got the chance of a job with strategy in the title to open my arms wide and grab it. We’ve all read and agreed with Michael Porter’s assessment that there are just two generic strategies to choose in business, (a) be cheaper than your competitor, or (b) be different from them. As true as that remains, it’s obviously over-simplistic.
I recently suggested the sportsman’s strategy to someone looking to improve his online ecommerce business. I heard Egg’s founder, Mike Harris, talk about this and its obvious truth still strikes me today. You start at the end. Create your goal and work backwards from there. Sir Clive Woodward’s goal was simple: fly to the 2003 Rugby World Cup seeded #1 and take victory after 80 minutes in the final.
Let’s imagine for a minute that you’re a 100m sprinter who wants to win in the 2012 Olympics. What do you need to be doing, thinking and feeling as the gun goes off in the final? Think about that answer for a second. Now, what about 10 minutes before the start? What about a day before? A week, a month, and six months before? Now that you know that, what do you need to be doing this week, next month and in December? It’s all about gradual improvement toward a peak in performance for that final.
What’s your company’s three, five or 10 year goal and what needs to be happening in August 2011 for that to be achieved? Are you on a path of continual improvement right now?
Suddenly strategy doesn’t strike me as being so easy any longer.
