Back some 20 years ago, I was returning from college for Thanksgiving weekend. Took a plane, and we left Syracuse bound for Cleveland, then Northern Indiana. The first half of the flight was fine. It’s that second half that was rocky – something about the weather conditions, flying over Lake Erie, and a choppy, choppy ride.
Then: a bolt of light and a nice, loud, explosion on the right side of the plane.
It wasn’t until maybe 10 minutes later when the pilot came on and said “this plane was hit by static discharge, but all planes can handle static discharge, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
It wasn’t until I landed about an hour later that I was finally able to get the real story:
The plane had been struck by lighting.
Lightning is scary stuff, it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature, and all that…but this has stuck with me for years – a not-so-pleasant experience for us, but the pilot in charge had everything under control. And the system in place – the plane and its engineering marvels – handled the lightning strike as if it was another day at the office.
So, are you prepared?
Is your Marketing Plan capable of withstanding Static Discharge?
We’ve pointed back, again and again, to the value of the SWOT Analysis in any business planning. Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities.
THREATS.
Your business might not get struck by actual lightning tomorrow – but you could run into a bump in the road, positive, negative or just plain goofy.
We do this semi-religiously – not just for our own site, to augment the Google Analytics stats we get, but for others as well, to see who’s blowing smoke and who is worth looking at.
As of this morning, the stats for October are up. Area 224 has seen a nice spike in traffic – for which we want to thank you.
“Thank you.”
Compete happens to be one of the Underground Tricks we like to share with folks on our webinars (and you can still sign up for BOOM Camp 2010, starting Tuesday, at this link: http://boomcamp.eventbrite.com/?discount=BOOMTIME.) Compete is pretty darn cool, in our opinion.
They work on a Freemium model, so you can get much more than what’s available for free if you sign up for a premium plan.
BTW, if you’d like to see our stats for October, here’s a snapshot.
The book is a standout – for a variety of reasons, but mostly because, with all of the “Social Media For Goofballs” books you can buy, here’s a book that doesn’t ram social down your throat.
Timely find, too: we had a Saturday morning chat with a client, and there we were, talking about things beyond social. Things addressed in the book, and things addressed in the “Canvas” the book helps you build.
There’s an exchange of value, even when “FREE E-BOOK” is what you’re giving me. Are you, as a business person, valuing that exchange?
Frustrated here at Area 224 HQ. This one is our own doing – we signed up for a “Free E-book” and had some serious questions about how good it would be.
It was average, at best. Outdated, filled with clip art graphics, wasn’t written in an engaging style at all. Looked like it was borrowed liberally from elsewhere – which is fine, as long as they tell us where it was borrowed liberally from.
The E-book and its signup-download process had us questioning the value exchange. We invite you to do the same, using a 3-step process. Here goes:
Step 1: What Is Your Time Worth? Easier said than done, right? I mean, if you’re working an hourly wage for The Man, it may be $6 an hour. 10 cents a minute. If you’re one of those hi-falutin’ billable types, you could be billing out at hundreds per hour. (3 bucks a minute, perhaps.)
You have to have even a rough idea of this figure. It could vary by task, by department, by person. But you have to know it.
Step 2: Is Your Time “leverageable?” We’re gonna lose half of you here. Can you take whatever you learned and apply it for maximum effect? Can you turn the knowledge into power? Leverage – more than a technical term with pulleys and fulcrums and stuff.
Let’s say this E-Book was about Social Media Marketing. (It was, but it used an outdated term to explain what it was about, thus tipping the firm’s hand as to whether this would be a burr in the Area 224 saddle or not.)
If there was an item in there that gave you pause, in a good way, and caused you to figure out how to apply it to client situations – you may have found something leverageable.
If not, might be valueless. See Step 3.
Step 3. Can You Put a Dollar Value on the E-Book? $0 Leverageable information on one side of the equation, 10 Minutes of my time on the other. It’s either zero or infinitely bad. Not sure which.
If you can put a dollar value on what’s in the book, good. Even if it’s one little resource in the book that saves you fifteen minutes of Googling, you might have a valuable free E-book.
It might be more of a soft science here, too. Maybe it’s a really clever idea that you picked up, but you can’t quite quantify the value. Maybe you’ve now made a connection through this Free E-Book that will help you down the road.
Remember: FREE might be worth the price. Or, even worse, might cost you more than you’d expect.
We’re excited about a webinar we’re having in another week…
The “strategy” thing can be tricky – and it’s not as easy as just saying “let’s get onto social media because everyone else is.”
SO that’s why we’re doing a webinar next week, on the 28th to be exact. More info at this link – http://socialstrategy.eventbrite.com – and you can sign up by clicking this nifty button. See you there!
