The Wax Blog

Companies are using social media tools to build brands for their products and services, capture new knowledge and best practices for company processes, collaborate across the organization, increase innovation, recruit new workers, and train employees, but they are also using them to recruit top talent and onboard new employees. By reframing the use of social networking technology, companies can increase communication, collaboration, problem solving, and competitive advantage with little cost. – From The Changing Learning Landscape, by Paula Ketter, American Society for Training and Development (read the entire post here)

Social media is not just changing how companies are marketing to their customers – it’s changing how they train their workers as well. Today’s demand for real-time information has changed the training landscape nearly as much as the Internet did. New buzzwords are emerging on the training landscape that is actually driving more business for training companies, while making the training experience for workers much more engaging. Nano learning, for example, means short stints of learning that last from 90 seconds to 3 minutes. Often it’s delivered via a mobile device to an salesperson in the field, or a remote worker at home.

Companies that deliver a wide variety of training services like Carlton Training may benefit the most from this kind of training deployment. Instead of developing day to week-long programs, many training companies will be developing modules that could be as short as five minutes. As information changes, the ability to change one module without having to rehaul the entire program will be a huge cost savings. (more…)

“Kaizen” is Japanese for improvement – a common definition according to Wikipedia is “the philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management”.   Kaizen became very important to me after experiencing utter failure in my first job as a manager – granted, I was making a very hard transition from being a top salesperson (where it’s all about me) to management (where it’s all about them) but still, I was awful.  Instead of trying to get from Point A (bad manager) to Point B (great manager) my wonderful business coach taught me that it was all about continuous improvement. I may not be where I want to be right now, but I’m better than I was yesterday and I should still be better tomorrow…if I work on improving my skills on a continuous basis.

Training has changed as our learning styles have changed as well. I don’t think anyone goes by the old rule  they need only get “one great thing” from a training class, the whole experience needs to be worth. These days, training companies like Phoenix Training do an excellent job of combining pre-training consulting, one-on-one coaching and classroom training to provide a holistic experience that addresses needs for management coaching, team building and skills training. (Read some of their case studies to see how companies around the world are implementing training these days)

In a way, I’m really glad that I struggled so much because it instilled in me a love of training, and of gaining new knowledge. I see so many companies find a recipe for marketing or PR that works at that time, and they act as though they never have to address it again.  In our world today of social media, blogging and digital influence, this can be a brand killer.  Our customers are moving quickly from the hottest app to to the next big thing, and we have to continually find them…and continually improve how we engage with them.

In a challenging economy, it’s sometimes hard to justify spending money on training. I would argue that those people and companies who spend money on it now, are the ones who will survive into the next round of economic growth. What’s your attitude toward training right now? Where has continuous improvement served you well?

I was emailing with a virtual colleague of mine about a young media consultant who is known for having thousands upon thousands of Twitter followers. In fact, that’s her primary presence online. We were wondering whether this person’s Twitter stardom would turn into lucrative consulting deals. After all, how much of you intellectual capital can you display in 140 characters? (Those of you who follow me on Twitter during American Idol season might think it actually does the opposite.)

It’s a question that demonstrates how great success in one social media network may not translate to more business for you. And that’s why it’s so important to find the right social media tools to work your campaign, not necessarily the most popular ones.  (If you’d like to know how I feel about many company Facebook pages, you can read my post on that subject here.)

So for the fourth post in this series on writing an actionable social media plan,  instead of thinking about “should we do twitter and facebook” ask yourself, where are my customers engaged in social media? If you’re B2B, it’s probably not on Facebook. If you’re launching a book, what better place to be than Facebook, where you can set up a fan page and tell all your friends about it? Think about your customers, or readers, or whomever you are trying to reach. What are they using right now? Restaurants, bars and other social types of places better get have a presence on  geo-based social media like Yelp and Foursquare. Consultants, I’d suggest having an informative blog that really demonstrates your knowledge of your industry. Whatever you choose, don’t try to be everywhere. Pick a couple of networks that you think you can easily manage and go from there. Just as a quick primer, here is the social media that seems to work well for my clients in different industries: (more…)

This is the second post on Building an Actionable Social Media plan. Refer to the first one if you need a refresher on why we’re doing this.

When people or businesses start engaging in social media they often focus on goals or ROI. But in order to direct your content, you must first identify the business drivers behind your social media activities. If you think of your plan in terms of the 5W’s (who, what, where, when, why) then business drivers are the WHY. I like InvestorWords definition of a business driver which is “A factor that contributes to the growth of a particular business.”

Maybe you haven’t thought of this perspective…I know for me it’s an abstract concept. After all, in small business we’re much more real time and it’s usually more about cash flow than strategy, at least for me. I like to put drivers in three categories when I do plans: Primary, Relevant and Secondary.  You’ll find that unexpected benefits of social media may arise as the campaign continues. Also, there may be lack of impact in defined business drivers. The business drivers should be reviewed and revised based on ongoing activity and results and you may be surprised where social media makes the most impact. It’s different for every business I work with!

So to give you some ideas, first here’s a list of some business drivers for specific industries. Then I’ve got a list of some possible business drivers that are common for social media. Please add yours in the comment section, so we can get a good list going! (more…)

by Susan Long

More than two thirds of businesses have never even considered whether or not they own their market position,  and plenty of those are doing just fine.  So when it is essential to really grab your slice of the market, declare it yours and defend it? Here are a few reasons when considering your market position may be crucial to your success. (more…)

I get a lot of requests from people wanting to write posts on time management. But I included this one because of Vinil’s first tip – doing on task at a time, or ‘unitasking’. When I had my concussion last year, the doctors told me to do one thing at a time. Working that way was hard but guess what – you get more done! Don’t want to steal Vinil’s thunder…read on and enjoy. B.

For many working people especially self-employed entrepreneurs, their entire day is chaos. The kids, clients, emails, phone calls, deadlines, bills to pay, meetings to attend and family obligations all this can get really overwhelming. There are people who seem to manage all this and seem like they have all the time in the world. All of us only have 24 hours a day. Some of us manage this time well, many of us don’t.  Here are a few tips to help make your time last longer.

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By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

In last week’s post, I gave you a little bit of insight to help you use your intuition and determine how to respond you comments on your business blog, based on what you think each commenter wants to hear. This week, we’re delving a bit deeper into the really juicy stuff; writing blog posts that are sure to get people commenting and I’ll reveal one of my big secrets about handling comments. (more…)

Most social media plans have the same problem  as  most marketing plans – they aren’t “actionable”.  They often do a great job of describing the current state of affairs, customer psychographics, company “brand” …and then the client says “now what?” So I’ve decided to begin a series of posts that will help you create a social media  plan that can become a living document for your personal or business social media activities. In this post, I’ll describe the main components. In the following posts, I’ll explain how to create each component. I’m by no means an expert in social media, but I DO know the components small businesses and entrepreneurs need to create a road map for any promotional activity, online, in traditional media or on the ground.

To being with, let’s start with the basic pieces of the plan – PLEASE pipe in with ideas or areas that you think I may have missed. (more…)

Almost half the clients I have worked with over the years believe that their strongest selling point is their great customer service. When you are deciding what your market position is going to be, when you are seeking out that all important unique selling point (point of difference), look beyond customer service – here’s why: (more…)

After such strong comments on my post about corporate digital footprints, I got a REAL expert to weigh in on monitoring your online reputation. Here are Kevin Kaiser’s thoughts – Kevin is the founder of Startup Biz Blog an up and coming small business blog with some really smart advice. Stay tuned as I kick off my new series on writing an actionable social media plan next Monday.

After all of the energy you’ve put into creating your company, don’t let it get lost in the giant tangle of the world wide web. Managing your online reputation so that people get the correct picture of your company right off the bat is more important now than ever. (more…)