Oricane’s Josefine Åhl on Skype with Gina Jue

At the beginning of the Spring Semester, I published a blog post Chapman Social Media Aid asking companies if they wanted student teams helping them with their social media efforts. A company heeding the call was Swedish startup Oricane, a green technology company offering energy efficient software and big data solutions often reducing cost by 98% and power use by 99%.

Three young women at Chapman University (Megan Daugherty, Mollie Duner, and Gina Jue) making up a team in my undergradute Internet/Social Media Marketing class were absolutely up for the challenge. Working via Skype, email, Facebook and Twitter, the team stayed in regular contact with Oricane’s COO Josefine Åhl.

Megan Daugherty with Josefine Åhl

In fact, the team stayed in such close virtual contact with Oricane so that the distance between California and Luleå in Sweden’s northernmost province of Norrbotten almost seemed shorter than the distance between some other teams and their sometimes too busy Orange County-based companies. These students certainly helped improve their assigned company’s website, Facebook, and Twitter presence. Oricane COO Josefine Åhl also made me proud as she exclaimed “your students are doing a fantastic job for Oricane!”

Oricane has gained the attention of numerous industry awards and are currently nominated for the Ecosummit: Smart Green Business Network Award. The student team will continue to spread the news of the nomination for this well deserving company currently in second place. Please do vote (before May 19) for Oricane’s nomination in the Ecosummit Award!

Adam Grant at the Skeptics Society at Cal Tech

Glad I made it to Cal Tech where the Skeptics Society led by Michael Shermer hosted Adam Grant for a talk on his book “Give and Take.” In his presentation, Adam offered persuasive examples of how people who are indiscriminately helpful to basically anyone who asks can get ahead by accumulating a wider network over time and that what goes around comes around.

He claims that Mark Granovetter‘s theory of the strength of weak ties still holds true in that our strong ties often do not add significant news as they are exposed to the same sources and networks as we are ourselves whereas a weak tie moves in circles yet unfamiliar with us where new opportunities can emerge.

With Adam Grant at Cal Tech

Adam Grant argues that givers can even get significant value out of dormant ties, i.e., connections we haven’t been in touch with even for a number of years. This assumes, however, that the lasting impression we left with the individual in question or the reputation we have is a good one and that we are remembered more as givers than as takers. Grant went into an in-depth example Fortune Magazine’s Best Networker, Adam Rifkin and explained for example how he as a Cal Tech graduate first helped Green Day develop a huge community online already in 1993 and the positive ripple effects this had on his professional career in Silicon Valley five years later through a dormant tie. Apparently, Adam Rifkin sincerely believes that you will get good Karma from doing good.

Adam Grant further predicts that with the emergence of social media, our reputations will be more on the line. Research has shown that the more spotlight that is shone on people, the more they will behave as givers. The question, though, is to what degree such behaviors are sustainable and he suggests that if the giving comes primarily from a sense of guilt and pressure, the person in question is likely to revert back to a taking stance once the spotlight fades away.

Takers are people who are likely to be “kissing up, kicking down” by focusing on those they deem can be helpful to fulfill their objectives while ignoring the rest. Sometimes takers also look like givers at an initial look as this is what good fakers do, they create an aura of generosity so it is wise to not rush to judgments. Clearly, some givers burn out, says Grant, by not being able to detect takers who take advantage of them.

For those that want to become more of givers, he offers some advice. First, recognize that most people overestimate their giving nature and he provides a test that we can do on his website. Second, asking how one can become more giving is a good first step! Third, he suggests that people should start sharing something they are passionate about, something they enjoy doing, and get into a habit of giving. The more we have to analyze every action, the less natural the giving will come but over time we can learn.

Finally, it was interesting to hear him discuss the correlation between the giving nature of people and their degree of extrovertedness. There is none. Some believe that extroverts are more giving as they are more likely to talk about it but introverts help too. He left us by encouraging us to nominate givers and he will recognize these people on his website in spite of the fact that he expects most of the true givers to be embarrassed about the attention! As Adam Grant is a self-confessed introvert, I can only join the growing choire and nominate him as a true giver, thanks for the inspiration and now I have to go read the book!

With Melanie and Devin Duncan

I very much enjoy having my former students visit my classes and today was definitely no exception as my Internet/Social Media Marketing class was visited by Melanie and Devin Duncan. Melanie Duncan graduated in 2008 and met her future husband Devin Duncan while he was also studying at Chapman University. As true serial entrepreneurs, they have worked on, and successfully launched, a number of businesses together including CustomGreekThreads.com, LuxuryMonograms.com, Entrepreneuress Academy, PowerofPinning.com, as well as a business around the personal brand of MelanieDuncan.com.

As usual, Melanie and Devin were extremely generous with very specific advice on how students can become successful Internet entrepreneurs themselves and in the following, I will list but a few of their recommendations.

• 

  Devin and Melanie Duncan

  Avoid investors. Try to bootstrap your business and prove the concept before you or anyone else spends any significant sums of money in the business. The entry barriers are also lower than ever as the tools to get off the ground get cheaper by the day and many of them are even free.

• Work on your business, not in your business. Melanie and Devin systematically try to identify ways in which they can automate or delegate the operations of a business that they have gotten off the ground in order to free up time for themselves and to allow them to have the geographic flexibility of living on Manhattan even if their factory is located in Orange County, California. The time they free up they also use to look for ways to grow their existing businesses or start new ones.
• 

  Captivated audience

  Split test. Devin explained how they try to do split testing (or A/B testing) on many aspects of their offerings. For example, adding a countdown timer in the banner of CustomGreekThreads.com DOUBLES sales as it generates a sense of urgency.

• The amount of time they spend on their multi-million dollar business CustomGreekThreads.com is actually shockingly low. Devin says he spends about two hours a week online mainly monitoring stats on Google Analytics to ensure they have keep the traffic coming and the conversion rates high. He even stated that he rarely visits the actual factory in Orange County. Instead, he prefers to treat the management to a Lakers game once a year. Melanie and Devin admits, however, that the first two years of setting up this e-commerce business were not that easy. Even if they came out of it successfully, they learned the hard way that running an e-commerce business with physical goods also can get very complex, time-consuming, and costly to operate.
• 

  Info Product Tools by Devin Duncan

  This brings us into their enthusiastic suggestion that students should consider going into Information Product Marketing as opposed to selling physical goods online. Information products such as instructional videos on password-protected websites such as PowerofPinning.com have proven extremely profitable for them with a very small, upfront investment, mainly a few weeks of their time.

• Riches in niches. Instead of selling services about many things, be very specific in terms of what you offer as this makes the sell so much easier.
• 

  Melanie Duncan on Personal Branding

  Free webinars in which you share even your best ideas are extremely effective tools in terms of converting browsers into buyers. Webinars help build trust in the person behind the product much more than a text-based landing page can ever do.

• To establish a personal brand, use the frequently visited About page wisely to talk about how you can add value to the visitor. They don’t care so much about you, if you talk about yourself, do it further down on the page after that you first have explained how you can add value to them.

In conclusion, thanks for a long list of inspirational advice combined with an enthusiastic delivery, welcome back next year, Melanie and Devin!

With Poya Osgouei, Gabriella Manriquez, Yousuf Jamjoom, Melanie, Devin & Devin’s parents Laurie & Greg Duncan

For more info in Swedish, please check out this interview featured on Swedish national television in “Gomorron Sverige” on March 6, 2013.

Om någon söker mig så nås jag bäst via mail till contact@niklasmyhr.com eller via min och Åsa Stenströms boksida www.DetGodaTramset.se

Ironically, Brian states that “the formula for success in social media begins with first defining what success is and how it will be measured” which could be seen as the beginning of a formula in itself! Also, his post title and list type conclusion could at the surface be seen as just another set of recipes. However, in fairness to Brian, I think that he distinguishes himself by taking a step back and emphasizing the importance of a deeper understanding of the customer experience or “journey” in their interactions with a company before even considering jumping into tactical advice on how to engage with customers on social media and elsewhere.

This is a point not to be underestimated. To me it also provides a déjà vu moment as his post reminds me of one of the most influential Harvard Business Review articles of the 1990s, the classic “Staple Yourself to an Order“ (Shapiro, Rangan, and Sviokla 1992, republished 2004). This HBR article’s focus was on how companies could streamline order fulfillment processes by closely monitoring how a customer’s order would be managed by a company step by step. The article came out in the midst of the Business Process Reengineering movement and served as a precursor to the customer relationship management (CRM) era. The key point of the article is very similar to the standpoint of Brian Solis in that one needs to go the extra mile to truly put oneself in the shoes of the customer before one can clearly see how to best serve that customer. This approach could very well be used also for streamlining customer experiences with a company in the digital age whether those interactions take place on social media or not. So thanks Brian for your insight and I am looking forward both to the shipment of your “What’s the Future of Business” and to your Linked Orange County visit on May 1st!

One twist to this dilemma was introduced last week when I met a parent here in Orange County who said that their kid’s first car will get a manual transmission. Why? Well, then they would at least know that their kid would be so overwhelmed by getting the gear into the right gear, which means that they wouldn’t be sending text messages!

Anyway, over in the sports car segment, customers want a stick shift to allow for more control of the vehicle. Obviously, a Lamborghini driver is not going to settle for an automatic, right? Or? Like I often mention to my students, nothing is obvious in business, especially not ever since Taco Bell launched in Mexico. And, lo and behold, Lamborghini indeed did shock the world in 2011 when they announced that they were dropping manual transmission. One reason for this move was that most orders were already for automatic transmissions! Another that drivers are not as good as advanced automatic transmissions in determining when to shift gear. Little did I know.

Sometimes I wonder if social media is undergoing, or is about to undergo, a similar transformation away from manual to automatic. Could it be that soon there will be people who barely know how to work inside the respective networks at the same time as they are becoming masters of tools that manage multiple social media accounts? If so, will something be lost in the process? Or, is it like the Lamborghini example above, a customer, even an enthusiastic one, is not as good at shifting gears as an automatic gearbox. That is, are the tools getting smarter than us and learning not just how to post content on social media networks, but also when the best time for posting comes around.

“Content is King” is an oft-uttered “secret” to success in social media and while I don’t think content will become unimportant any time soon, it is also becoming increasingly clear that just offering content, even good quality content, will not be enough any longer if it ever was.

“Context is King” is an alternative statement which has grown in popularity. The focus on context reflects the need for not just the right content to be provided but that it also needs to be made available to the right people, on the right platform, in the right conversation, at the right time, with the right tone, in the right quantity, etc. Sounds like logistics, right?

Anyway, even when you have also taken care of the context, there could still be formidable barriers ahead of you to stop your content from being accessed and shared further. One of these spells trust. Simply put, people will not be as likely to cite, like, click, share, and engage with content from unknown or dubious authors that they don’t trust even if said content is provided at the right time in an appropriate format, etc. Search engines are also looking into ways to promote content from sources with high author rank.

How to achieve such trust is a topic for another post but for the time being, let’s roll with “Trust is Queen!”

(Photograph by Michael Gwyther-Jones on Flickr under CC license)

Why not? Simple, technology and globalization has enabled more and better competitors from around world to also market to the whole world both online and offline. In such a hypercompetitive environment, you are toast if you just meet customer needs. Selling yet another me-too product just like many others who conducted similar market research studies is not going to cut it.

So, what is the way out of this conundrum? Here’s my favorite marketing term comes into play. The word is differentiation and speaks to the potential for company offerings to not only meet customer needs but also to be perceived as better or different as compared to the offerings of competitors in some regard that the target market actually values and is willing to pay a premium for. Differentiation allows companies to escape the undesirable commoditization trap where you only compete on price with standardized products and services. Hence, the key is to identify in which dimensions you would like to achieve a desirable positioning via differentiation and in my book, without differentiation, we wouldn’t need marketers

Niklas Myhr at Stanford University

When setting out to build or refine your own personal reputation and personal brand, your online presence can simply no longer be ignored. “Nobody is going to look or find that information on me online.” No? Are you kidding me? If you today would be about to hire somebody yourself, wouldn’t you Google that individual’s name at least once? And then dig deeper if something catches your attention? I bet you would.

Still, your online first impression, however important that may be, is only the first gate you need to pass to go places. What is critical next is to have an entrepreneurial mindset about yourself and your whole career. In the book, The Start-up of You, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha argues for a radical move away from the notion that you will be a lifer at a major corporation being promoted every few years. Instead, we are entering a more foreign and uncertain territory in which we have to adapt and reinvent ourselves and our personal brands continuously to stay with the times and to take advantage of the best opportunities for our skills.

Not surprisingly, Hoffman and Casnocha suggest that it takes a good network to be successful in this regard and that you have to concern yourself with not only staying in touch with your closest allies, but also extending your reach and access to opportunities by also having many so-called weak ties in your network. The authors particularly stress the value of maintaining ones curiosity to “court serendipity and good randomness.” Clearly, social networks can help a curious person explore opportunities.

So, how are you reinventing yourelf this year?

Dean Reggie Gilyard introduces the Janes Financial Center

Had a very pleasant evening at the inauguration of the impressive Janes Financial Center at the Argyros School of Business and Economics. The Center is equipped with twelve Bloomberg terminals providing state-of-the-art, real-time, financial data and business research information to students. So now the score is that Chapman University has twelve Bloomberg terminals while USC has two, or was it one?

William “Bill” Thompson and Niklas Myhr

Bloomberg terminals don’t come cheaply and the center would not have been made possible without the contribution of the main donors, Donna and David Janes, long-time Chapman supporters. Many guests in attendance at the dinner and the keynote speaker was William “Bill” Thompson, ex-CEO of PIMCO, who shared some anecdotes from his long tenure at Salomon Brothers with a particular focus on his colleague Michael Bloomberg, a very timely topic for the night. Michael Bloomberg, Thompson said, was relegated to the “Systems Division” in the late 1970s, then a fate equal to being sent to the basement. Later, when Bloomberg emerged to propose an focus on information research and analysis, he was turned down and he soon thereafter parted ways with Salomon Brothers. Then, he started his success story Innovative Market Systems and the rest is history. The power of information Michael Bloomberg saw earlier than most and now Chapman University has twelve Bloomberg terminals, not bad!

Main Donor David Janes thanked by Dean Reggie Gilyard

Michelle Bleckley, Mark Simmons, Colin Kapp, Bob Waltos, Mary Miller, Niklas Myhr

William “Bill” Thompson, ex-CEO PIMCO

Dinner for the night!