When Google switched off the social sharing features in its Reader in an effort to draw together content and sharing recently, I asked: Is Google looking for greater market penetration and willingly trading the brand experience of Google Reader for greater flows?
It's a business question.
I do wonder especially in light of the recent launch of business and brand pages on Google+. And yes, I created a page for my practice to start testing some of the upcoming features slated for roll out. I'm linking my business site to that page.
In light of the G+ pages rollout, it seems to make trade sense to phase out other Google product features that are non core to its strategy. Among them, the sharing functionality.
Whenver a new service or tool rolls out, I invest a little time to experiment with it.
Instead of making that experimentation part of my sales strategy, where plenty of others are operating even while in perpetual beta, I make it part of my buy strategy.
A buy strategy
Helps you define where you can do better trade. And since your customers also have a buy strategy, a better matching of product and service promises to expectations will determine how close the asset is to value for buyers.
Higher trust brands can close that gap more quickly, no matter the platform. And more profitably. Scale is a buying strategy as much, if not more, than a sell strategy, for instance.
While your product or service may need to be based on uniform specs to keep production and delivery costs down, when you take control of your promises, you're able to keep better promises. You do that closing the loop on all promises.
Business model
Is what you use to trade promises.
When you think about Apple, for example, the company is still top of mind because it defies all "best" practices. Instead, they have the most practice at decreasing the brand dissonance and taking control of the brand's promises.
+
We're used to looking at the world through the sales lens -- nothing happens until a sale is made. That may be true. The other side of the sale coin is a buy strategy.
Selecting a social network over another where to sharecrop your content, for example, is a buy strategy. Are you deliberate about your buy strategy? Do you have one?
[looking for a Malbec to try? My favorite is Luigi Bosca]