Facebook: Not Just for Dorm Rooms Anymore.

When I recently published my first book (and I’ll resist the urge to plug it here), Facebook provided a great avenue for low-cost viral marketing. As a marketing professional, I wanted to learn what else this platform could offer me and my clients beyond the simple b2c. What I found might shock you.

For high-tech b2b companies, Facebook is not exactly the first venue that comes to mind when considering how to engage in community marketing. In fact, I was skeptical myself, until I did some research. I found nearly a dozen different AutoCAD user groups that had formed on Facebook. Over 2500 professional ASME members have created an active and vibrant group on Facebook. There is even a small network of SME members that are attempting the same thing.

It’s obvious that the famed “social utility” is moving beyond the dorm room. Professionals (including myself) can be found on Facebook throughout the day from their work computers. So, for those who are bold enough to try something new, where do we even begin to monetize this opportunity?

Currently, I’ve dabbled in Facebook groups. However, the community at large is as averse to “spammers” as the Wikipedians. Soon, I plan to create my first application to be shared through the Facebook API. Whatever the method, I believe there are tremendous opportunities for business development and brand building in the Facebook community, so try to shake off the stereotype and dig in.

Help Them Understand You

There’s a clever slogan on my home page, but honestly how many of you can say you’ve contemplated the weight of this statement? You’ve got a solution that could change your customers’ lives and businesses… if only they would just GET it. Over time you realize that the prospect’s excitement in what you offer just doesn’t compare to your own. Why not? They simply don’t understand.

So, as my oh-so-clever website states: “They may see you. They may hear you. Help them understand you.” And therein lays the secret. Help them. Marketing, just like sales, is a matter of helping prospects to GET it so that they can better themselves with what you have to offer.

Try, whenever possible, to define your concept in an all-encompassing term. This can be taken to a ridiculous extreme, but in general, it’s very helpful. Autodesk’s recent campaign on “digital prototyping” is a great example of using succinct terminology to describe your technology’s ability. Other companies have succeeded with similar concepts, such as 3D Systems’ V-Flash™ “Desktop Modeler.”

Another great method for helping clients to understand you is to publish more case studies than promotional material. A feature/benefit document is not bad, but people learn through stories. This is also a reality check for most companies. If they can’t find one good example of their product doing what they say it does, there’s a shortfall somewhere that needs addressed.

I’m always interested in hearing other ways that you have tried and succeeded with helping people understand you. Feel free to post replies.

The Business of Innovation

My wife and I have traveled numerous times over the past few years to visit her family in Wisconsin. Now, you would think that there is one, or possibly a few, viable routes for making the trip by car. Indeed, I have been instructed as to the fastest route according to my father-in-law's decades of experience with the same trek. So, should it come as any surprise that on nearly every trip, our course deviates slightly each time, and rarely do I accept the instructions that have been handed down?

With very few exceptions, any time someone instructs me on how to do a particular task, I will try to deviate. Why? No, I am not just a hyper-rebellious post modernist bent on questioning everything. I am simply eager to improve on anything—even the most tried and true realities. On more than one occasion, this has resulted in the frustrated passengers rolling their eyes again as we venture onto yet another god-forsaken rural highway. But over Christmas we had a break-through. An insider tip from a native Chicagoan led to a shortcut straight up Lakeshore Drive. You can imagine my excitement over the triumph.

So, two paragraphs into this anecdotal example that you were hoping would bring an inspirational truth about how to be innovative, I must confess something. That trip was not innovative. A ten-minute savings after years of trial and error is hardly the qualification of an innovator.

An innovator would be investigating personal aircrafts, train routes, or try to acquire a Heisenberg compensator with which to build a Mark VII transporter they used in Deep Space 9 (for the treky in us all). Innovation is planning years of strategy in order redefine the conventions of supply chain management and finally produce a car for $2,500 (curious? learn more).

The business of innovation begins with questioning not the path, but the origin. Are we asking the right question in "what's the best way to drive to Wisconsin," or is there a different question altogether? Suddenly, the question "what's the best way to get to Wisconsin," has all new meaning.

Is there a different question you could be asking yourself about the best way to solve your customer's problems?