Community Guy – Jake McKee

Word of Mouth and Small Business

Having successfully made it to Seattle, I’ve been caught up in the haze of work, two year old, and unpacking. What better time to point out a guest post I wrote a while back over at the GasPedal blog. Since it’s summer, it’s time to talk smoothies.

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The medical community might tell you that blended fruit and ice don’t actually contain any addictive qualities, but I’m not convinced. I’m physically unable to pass a new smoothie shop without stopping to sample the wares. I can’t see “smoothie” on a menu without feeling a longing.

Last week I downloaded the Yelp.com iPhone application and tested it by… you guessed it… looking for local smoothie shops. To my extreme pleasure, I discovered Icey (http://www.yelp.com/biz/icey-garland), a new shop that had just opened down the street. Within hours, I was inside ordering my first smoothie. (It was far and away the best I’d ever had)

As I walked out of the store, tasty smoothie in hand, I found myself wanting to do whatever I could to ensure their ongoing existence. Horror stories abound about the failure rate of small businesses, and this simply can’t happen to Icey. Where would I get my fix if they close the doors??

If they ask (I’ve already volunteered), here are 6 points I’d share with them about how they can build Word of Mouth for their incredible business.

Tell a story

Icey isn’t just a “smoothie shop”. They’ve created a menu that includes Bubble Teas, Sweet Ices, and a range of non-traditional items. Why this menu? What makes it unique? Give me something I can learn, then in turn share with others to show how smart I am. For instance: “Sure Icey doesn’t have the boost powders like Jamba Juice, but that’s because they offer such fresh ingredients, they don’t need to”. (I’m making that up, but you get the point.

Help me decide

When I see a new menu item that I don’t understand, I’m more inclined to revert to my old standby than I am to try something new. With pictures, descriptions, samples, and encouragement, help me branch out. When I have a teacher, the shop is my classroom. And a classroom inherently encourages frequency.

Drive repeat visits through awards

A friend of mine has been on a quest to achieve the coveted “Gold Plate” status at a local pub, the Flying Saucer (http://www.beerknurd.com/). You see, the pub has hundreds of beers available, and when you’ve tried all of them, you are immortalized by having your name put on a gold plate, hung on the wall. Not only has this program given my buddy a reason to come back regularly, it’s also given him an incredible knowledge of beer. The more Icey introduces their customers to the full menu, the more likely they are to come back. And the more knowledge these customers have, the more likely they are to bring a friend with them that they can show off their in-depth knowledge to.

Do something to stand out

When the Icey staff hands over your hand crafted drink, it comes in a plastic cup with a sealed sheet of plastic on top. So sealed, in fact, you can turn the cup upside down without the slightest risk of spilling. The way you actually consume this drink is to punch a hole in the top with an oversized straw. If the drink really is “unspillable”, why not hand over the drink upside down?

Brand everything

While I was walking around the shopping center, tasty drink in hand, I noticed that the cups didn’t have any sort of logo on them. How were people to know that this delicious looking concoction was created by Icey and not Starbucks?

Have a web site

This may be a bit obvious, but build a basic Web presence with your location info, a bit of your story, and an overview of what you serve. This doesn’t need to a complex, data heavy site, but it should look great. The primary goal is creating a destination that can be emailed, blogged, and generally shared. (You’ll notice I had to use the Yelp.com link to get you to them in the beginning of this post) The incredible cupcake bakery, Sprinkles (http://www.sprinklescupcakes.com/) launched with an incredibly lightweight site, which even helped them create an ambience of exclusivity.

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UPDATE: One more point I’ll make that wasn’t part of the of the original post…

Listen to experienced professionals

Seriously, this seems basic but when you’re getting freebie consulting from high paid, highly experienced professionals you might want to considering following their advice. I’ve been talking to a number of small business owners locally since the original post went up about their marketing efforts. The one piece of advice I’ve consistently give each and every one of these small business owners is simple: Buy Word of Mouth Marketing , read it, and then we’ll sit down and talk about how to implement the principles of the book.

You know how many have both bought and read the book? None.

As a small business owner, I know how difficult it can be. I understand how many hours go into running the business. But if you’re not always, and I mean ALWAYS thinking about how to drive your business to the next level, you’re failing. There’s are plenty of reasons a vast majority of small businesses fail, and lack of forward planning is big one.

Delivering on Brand Promises

Last week I shut down my laptop at the office, drove 20 minutes to my presentation at the BMA Dallas, and turned on my laptop when I got there to prepare for my talk.

Nothing.

No video, minor hard drive spinning, nothing. After winging it during the talk, I headed to the Apple store. The next Genius Bar appointment was nearly 5 hours away. After mentioning that I was going to be getting on a plane to Copenhagen in a matter of hours, the Apple employee took pity and ran my laptop to the back for a quick assessment of what needed to be done.

Apparently the logic board had gone bad and would take 5-7 days minimum to be fixed at a minimum cost of $310. Since I can’t be off my computer for that long, especially for an overseas trip, I ended up escalating my upgrade plans. (I have been planning on replacing my very, very well worn MacBook Pro, just not so quickly)

When I arrived back in my office, I plugged my Time Machine drive into the new MacBook Pro and left it to copy files to the new computer.

When I returned two hours later, I had a new computer that was setup exactly as I’d left my old one. Preferences, settings, applications, documents, and everything else exactly where it should be.

Apple’s “brand promise” has been “It just works”, and this experience certainly proves that to be true.

What’s your company’s brand promise? How well are you delivering on it?

Success by 1000 Paper Cuts

As many of you know, I do quite a bit of public speaking. Most of my engagements focus on social engagement and customer experience, specifically helping business people figure out how to better connect with their customers, fans, and clients.

There are a few questions I can always count on getting during or after the session:

“But what if nobody in the organization is empowered to make the changes you mention? Who’s job is this change you refer to?”

Out of all the frequently asked questions in my sessions, this is that one that gets me the most amped up, ready to pounce. My reaction is normally summed up by a quote overheard in the hallways of SXSW 2009 a few weeks ago:

“If you know something’s wrong…fucking fix it!”

We’ve come to see that fear dictates many of our external facing business decisions, giving rise to massive Terms of Service agreements, NDAs, massive Legal team power, and other protectionist tactics. But it continues to surprise me how afraid we are of our bosses, colleagues, and management teams.

Whose job is it to fix things we recognize as problematic? Ours! It is every employee’s obligation to stand up for their customers, to be on the look out for ways to improve the company.

When I started at LEGO, I was a Senior Web Producer who saw instantly that the Adult Enthusiast community was being completely overlooked. I took on a few extra hours a week to help them. Those few hours turn into an official part of my job, and then my entire job. I didn’t ask for permission, I just started fixing it.

Surprisingly, especially for me, nobody told me to mind my own business or focus on my “real job”. They started seeing results I was producing and asked me to take on more and more and more of those duties.

The trick to making this process work is to use a tactic I call Success by 1000 Paper Cuts. The idea is simple: start with the biggest element of activity that you can do without having to get full blown approvals, budget sign offs, or legal approvals. A single paper cut barely gets notice, but enough of them and you can cut off a limb.

Start small, create success, share results.

The repeat over and over again until you have a collection of successes that represent a landmark. Bundle that landmark up and show it off. Use the landmark to get permission to bigger and radical and perhaps more expensive projects, but only by the new increment.

Start just a bit bigger, create success, share results.

So what are the small things you’re going to do today to impact change and improve your customer experience?

Monetizing Twitter

The question often comes up, “How can I monetize [our presence on] Twitter?” (or blogs, or any sort of social media tool, really)

Let’s step aside from the issue that this is usually a dumb, or at least short-sighted question. The real question is first “What’s our business objective for being on Twitter?” If the answer has something to do with finding direct revenue, you clearly don’t understand Twitter.

“Making Money” isn’t a simply conducting more core focused transactions. Saving money, making better products, improving customer experience and satisfaction, and yes, selling more products are just a few things that go into making money. If you’re on Twitter for no other reason than to push products, you’re doing it wrong.

As one example of what you can do with Twitter, look at what Gary says:

“If you don’t realise that search.twitter.com is the most important website on the internet right now, then you’re a clown.”

How social media will change in 2009

On a recent trip to Seattle, I was invited to sit down with Blake from Visible Technologies for a short interview. The video below is part of that interview, where I attempt to answer the question “How will social media change in 2009?”

My easy took thousands of hours of work

As you probably noticed, I’ve updated the look and feel here at CommunityGuy.com. In a matter of minutes, I found a great (and free) theme to customize, used MAMP (open source) to be able to modify and test locally, and then updated my WordPress (open source) platform with the new theme design.

Although it took me about an hour to do an impressive update, there were thousands of hours that went into making that ease possible. People from around the world have been working on these three projects. When that dawned on me, I couldn’t help but feel humbled and appreciative.

Nerds from around the world, I salute you.

As far as the new design goes, please let me know what you think and if you see any problems. I never really liked the last theme I had in place, but I’m digging this one! I’d love to hear your thoughts.