The New Gymnastics of Business: Part 2, the Vault

Let's jump right in, shall we? Last week we talked about balance. This week we tackle scale.

To recap:

The new gymnastics of business requires you to make your activities even more of a balancing act. Promote or not promote your stuff? This is the question. If you ask yourself the question, you're already working on balancing.

These tools are amplifiers - they will highlight what you do and magnify it. You could be small and act big, you could be big and act nimble. Increasingly, you can go all the way to niches that were unthinkable with traditional media. It's the beauty of the Web and some say, its risks - it makes your trace permanent.

Pass the test on the balance beam and you're now facing the vault - scale. How do you grow the number of your relationships and still stay personal and intimate?

Less Volume, more Connections

As marketers you're used to thinking in terms of volume - cast as wide a net as possible to capture as large a slice of the sample percentage. This kind of thinking is deceptive, as it assumes that individuals among that mass will self-identify. They might not. They do not.

If the message doesn't speak directly to someone on their own time, when they need to know about something, then it is a beautiful waste of time. So much time goes into orchestrating that piece and that list, yet the process stops too soon, when information is still very general or generic.

That's why blogs and social networks have become so important in the mix - it's the customization, the adaptation of that information to specific needs that is attractive. Information gets customized in the comments - activated through participation, pulled by those who are interested.

Scale with Social means Team

In social media individuals can self-select - vote themselves into a conversation - usually on the basis of their relationship with someone. While the more successful you become, the more that intimate relationship with individuals is hard to maintain, scale is easier to achieve using this bottom up approach. Because as you do that, others will step in to become nodes in the conversation.

Is team one of the new customer relationship management tools on social? I like the idea of team. It's still a group small enough to stay in the game together, yet bigger than just you - scale. You can still be the quarterback, the orchestrator of your business social media symphony.

Focus on the Right things

The majority of our time is still spent on the preparation of the message. While that's important,  testing it over and over in real time is what makes it better and more relevant to the individuals you are hoping to attract. When it comes to connecting, what scales?

• value
• investment
• simplicity
• trust
• professional conduct
• stewardship
• commitment
• values
• character
• meetings of the minds
• diversity of ideas
• open entryways
• game changing moves

Just like vaulting, proficiency involves both difficulty and form. The judges in this competition for attention also look at how many interactions (or somersaults and twists) you have over time - with them.

In part three, we will talk about both balancing and scaling so that the pendulum doesn't swing wildly in either direction.

What have I not covered? How do you scale? How do you spend your time on social networks? Can you be everywhere you need to be and still manage to be responsive on each?

[image by Raphael Goetter]

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Related posts:

The New Gymnastics of Business: Part 1, the Balance Beam

Comments

[Nicola Stevens]

Thanks for 'The New Gymnastics of Business: Part 2, the Vault' easy to read and thought provoking..... & good reminder that marketing is not just about getting the most - select can be good too.

Nicola

Twitter: Xlead
www.proactivecoaching

[Ryan Stephens]

The conversations surrounding scale are getting increasingly better/more significant and I'm glad you cover it here.

To your point about less volume, more connections - this is something that took me a long time to learn, but the evidence is overwhelming. Investing the time to connect with 8 people ensures I have 8 solid friends that will speak well of me (most days), re-tweet my information, be candid and share criticism with me, etc.

These 8 people help me learn, grow and scale much better than spending all that time trying to connect on the surface with countless.

I had the fortunate pleasure of watching David Armano of Dachis Corp speak yesterday (and read Peter's post on scale today), and I like their approach thus far.

I also appreciate what Keith Burtis said as well -- that you have to scale one at a time. Scaling to one person well ensures that person spreads your message/intent/et al to their stream of friends (ex: Ford's Alan Mulally calling one influential customer to sell a vehicle.)

Oh, and thanks for acquainting with me Olivier's work via your blog. Also had the opportunity to hear him speak and he's a great guy full of useful information not just about ROI, but this entire sandbox.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Nicola - thank you for stopping by and liking the post.

@Ryan - I started very, very small. With the community for Fast Company, we had 4 people the first few meetings. They were great discussions, very intimate face to face opportunities to get to know and understand what we were looking for and even celebrate each other (there were a couple of birthdays). There was a standing joke that I was more the "company" than the "friends" part of the Company of Friends (name of the network) because of my structured approach to growing the group and using content to invite the right people to the conversation. I learned so much about my own limits and asking for help from those years! Today I would do it all differently. Not necessarily better, just different. Glad you mentioned Ford, now I like them thanks to Scott. Amazing how one person can change a whole conversation, isn't it?

[Sasha]

Valeria, I've always preferred quality to quantity. In social media this is of utmost importance. You can sure jump onto all social networks and try to connect to as much people as possible and then promote your message. What will be the attention ratio? Close to zero.

Indeed, thoughtful scaling will bring better results - and, yes, it requires much more investments (time, actions, etc).

Answering your questions "Can you be everywhere you need to be and still manage to be responsive on each?" With smart monitoring tools you sure can :)