|
On the occasion of Peter Drucker's death last week, I re-read an interview that was
published by Wired, titled The Contrarian, and Drucker made a point
that now, finally, hit home and made great sense. Talking about the new level
playing field between large business and medium size business he said:
It used to be that nobody had any information. But as you go
more international, as the economy becomes global, the access to good
information becomes crucial. If you are a medium-sized company, then the CEO
still knows every customer and still knows the industry. You can't know that in
the US$10 billion company; you get reports. Reports tell you what your
subordinates want you to know.
I've witnessed this before myself, really large companies where the CEO, in
fact the whole C Level, was cloistered on the top floor where they
constantly hankered for reports, reports and more reports. Obviously some
reports are necessary, but management by report becomes a gameable system very
quickly, as Drucker pointed out. Interaction with your marketplace, meaning your
customers, your employees, your partners, your prospects and vendors is not
gameable. Real customers are going to tell you the real story. There is no
substitute for customer interaction in business.
We can think about the current state of the internet in the same way.
Everyone has a website, mostly brochure-ware, as it has come to be known. Now
the movement is afoot to optimize the website for search engines. There are of
course firms dedicated to this idea. It is known by various names, but
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, appears to be the most popular. Some
SEO might be called for, it certainly can't hurt. But to make a regular habit
out of it is more like gaming the search engine system than not. As Andy Seidl
of MyST Technology Partners, or here, puts it, "you're in an
arms race and you can't win." The search engines are determined to find the most
relevant content for each search and the website trick and massaging that you
might attempt will be found out and the algorithm changed.
Again, the answer is interaction. You can no longer take a static approach to
marketing and the marketplace. No matter how often you spiff up the website, no
matter how many print advertisements you place, no matter in what publications
they appear, it is all still static marketing. You need to be able to open
up your company and its knowledge resources to prospects and customers and make
it dynamic. People want to hear your story, so tell it. Your own corporate
weblog is an outstanding way to do this. It's the antithesis of the static
website and the one shot print ad. It's a compelling forum that puts a face and
a creative imagination on your company. It differentiates you.
Downside? Well, like I said it's not static. It does take effort and time.
But you don't have to write your doctoral thesis. Just some interesting snippets
of life in your company's fast lane. Above all, do not attempt to game the
system by using the weblog as a bald faced marketing spin machine. It's ok to
talk about what you do, but you have to make that interesting to the average
reader as well. In a world of one trillion in your face advertisements a day, a
conversation about your business seems human, above all. |
