CNN Money offers small businesses innovation in Six Steps

Small businesses innovation
or productive creativity can be daunting when considered within the context of what adds to the business bottom line.

Managers and chief executives are wary enough of employees losing valuable work time to social media chats and water cooler gossip.

But consider this- if your business is not improving (read: growing) when you keep doing the same things, isn’t it worth enabling and supporting you staff in trying something new and different?

CNN Money’s post on Six steps to creative breakthroughs listens to industry leaders share how they effectively leveraged existing resources to produce innovative changes that improved their bottom line.

Here are some lessons learned from the “6 Steps”:

1) Look behind you.
Always look back to see what did and did not work.

2) Lose the routine.
Make time to read widely.
Move more quickly in your own life to find your creative impulse.
Attend a trade show or seminar about an unrelated industry.
Try spending a day in the life of a client.

3) Use the brains you hired.
“Give people the license to take risks and to fail often enough
to realize that they will not be punished for doing the right thing.”

4) Get cozy with customers.
“Your guests are going to tell you how to be successful.”

5) Share the load.
Get outside feedback and vett new concepts with partners.
Use student interns: they’re not afraid to tell you something is dumb.

6) Try to fail quickly.
Once you find a good idea, commit to it.

Read the full post here.

Lessons Tried?
What has worked for you in moving your business out of the box?

How Do You Listen in Social Media?

In a recent Ad Age article “Using Social Media to Listen to Consumers,”
Abbey Klassen carefully dissects the anatomy of perceived social media sphere crisis
to posit some good marketing advice.

Online criticism… can provide companies insight
into passionate bases they didn’t know they had.
–Abbey Kalssen, Ad Age

Klassen disrupts marketers looking to maximize their social media marketing initiatives asking, “If the social-media sphere attacks your brand, do ‘real people’ hear the screams?”

A key insight of the article touts that online criticism “…can provide companies insight into passionate bases they didn’t know they had.”

What are some other lessons I learned from the article?

1. Don’t panic: Engage.

Listen before you leap. Approach a social-media sphere “crisis” as an opportunity to listen deeply. Then engage and educate to persuade a vocally excited crowd.

2. Every picture tells a story.

Word of Mouth is a powerful memetic phenomenon in persuasion influence. A compelling story as told to an audience can create an powerful enough image in the receiving audience’s mind to motivate them to both share the story down their social media networks and to act upon it. The article recommends having a response mechanism in place to headoff crises.

3. “Where’s the fire?” Reporters reporting on reporters reporting.

Most emotional responses in the social-media sphere often come from commenters commenting on an other’s responses to an issue and not the item at issue.

Social-media sphere outcries will occur. However, marketers are better served approaching these viral disruptions as an opportunity to engage and educate vocal online users.