Adam and I went along to another great Verne Harnish Rockefeller Habits event put on by The Growth Faculty on Tuesday and sat next to Derek Hodge, a TEC (The Executive Connection) Group Chair.

With a full day of Verne under our belts and sharing ideas, Derek invited me to join him the next day for a TEC presentation by Marcus Child (@digitalmarcus) titled “Leading an Engaged Culture”.

What a cracking few hours! Marcus was incredibly energetic as a presenter with great practical ideas around leadership and staff engagement, not to mention some incredible results to report. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you go to see him.

I videoed Marcus afterwards and asked him the question: “How can we use the web to build an engaged culture?” . The video is below.

The quick take home for me: The web can be used to really bring leadership messages to life through visual and audio, and enable them to be shared so much more easily!

Thanks again Marcus!

The video

It’s 2.03mins (transcript below):

Interview Transcript:

Hello my name is Marcus Child.

I’ve been speaking to the leaders of TEC today and that’s my work! Speaking to people all over the place, describing to people how they can get an engaged culture. And think about how we might use the web for that.

My own story, a year ago, somebody said to me: “Marcus, you do these talks, people really enjoy them” (really nice things) “but afterwards a few months after, they say: how do you keep it alive? How do you keep the messages because I’ve forgotten what you said?”

So I made a series of Digital Marcus. Made a website, and made a series of downloads, all audio downloads – mp3s – which people can listen to on their mobile phones, listen to on mp3 players, download onto their laptops, listen on the tube, when they’re driving.

And do you know it’s made a massive difference. For my business it’s been marvellous, but also for people to keep the message alive. I sold 25,000 of these things in the first 6 months! Ever so strong! And that’s been really good for me. I’ve decided to blog, and give people videos and footage of me working – just to keep the thing alive.

With some of my clients we do the same thing. Literally MDs and other people in their organisations, are finding ways of not only blogging, but sharing what they’re saying, what the latest newscast is in a podcast, in a really quick mp3, which gets shared around the business for everyone to get the latest message.It’s a much more modern, powerful way to get to see, feel and hear your leader in action.

And I think there’s a lot there. I think there’s something about replay it, build it into an accessible device, and it can be ever so colourful. And way better than the black and white of a page.

Here’s Guy to explain the concept for you and how it might apply to your business:

How might it apply to your web strategy?

So the key message: your effort might be better spent reducing waste rather than adding value.

To find the waste (especially time – both your and your customers’/prospects’) in your web strategy, start asking some of these questions:

1. Data – Where in your business do you double handle data?
2. Customer service – Who answers the same questions day in day out? What are those questions? Can they be put online for your customers to self serve in a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list?
3. Qualifying leads – How long are the forms on your website? Do you need/use all of the information? Are the mandatory fields wasting your prospects’ time? (Guilty. We had feedback from a prospect on this particular issue last week and we’re in the process of resolving it now)
4. Website content – What is your most popular content? What is not visited at all? How much of your copy is adding value? Are the key words bolded or made easier to read?
5. Ecommerce – How simple is your shopping process? Are there steps that could be removed? Do you make it easy for people to come back and purchase again?
6. Email marketing – Do you know what information your audience enjoys? Which articles are most frequently read and clicked through? Which ones are of no interest at all?

The key principle of LEAN is that you’ll get more return for your time and effort by focussing on reducing the 99% of your time that is wasted, rather than trying to increase the 1% of value add.

With this philosophy in mind, go back to your web strategy and start looking at the areas of waste to reduce as much as you look at the areas to multiply.

Managed web strategy: If you think you’re not wasting any effort in your web strategy, then please call us and let us know what you’re doing! If you think there might be ways we can help to streamline what you’re doing though, then try us on 1300 258 394.

 
How to save $US148 on an iPod Touch

via Gizmodo Australia.

Radiohead are widely regarded as one of the most successful rock bands in the world both critically and in terms of popularity.

Coming into their most recent album InRainbows, they had completed their contract with the record company. Their contract had pre-dated iTunes so the band had received no royalties from iTunes downloads for their previous albums at all… It was time to do something different.

Rather than going down the old path of printing CDs and distributing them, they opted to release the album on their website. This isn’t entirely unusual. What was truly different was that they let their users pay what they thought the album was worth. No limits – you could pay nothing if you wanted.

Wow.

While the exact figures aren’t available, some websites have estimated over a million albums were downloaded and that the band made millions with this strategy. Thom Yorke, the lead singer, in an interview with Wired magazine said: “In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together…”

Why did this work so well for Radiohead?

In my mind, the lesson here is the importance of mutual trust online.

Radiohead had an extraordinary track record for delivering outstanding albums, so the fans were prepared to take a punt – without listening to the music – to pay for it. Equally, Radiohead trusted the fans to respect their music and so handed over the control for payment to the user.

One of the goals of good web strategy is to build that long term trust that was so important to Radiohead’s success.

So ask yourself:

1. How are you building trust with your fan base and the online community?
2. Are you thinking about what your customer would like?
3. Are you prepared to hand over control to your user and empower them to make choices?

Regardless of what you think of the band, the web strategy worked for them because it:

• Was interesting (no one had done the “pay what you think it’s worth” approach before in music and hence generated a huge amount of publicity)
• Was relevant (it was the first album they’d released in 4 years)
• Made it very easy for the customers to go and buy (allowing them to control the price)

If you manage your web strategy with these principles in mind, then you’ll be on the right track.

Managed web strategy Sydney, Brisbane – To find out more about our managed web strategy services, please call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

 
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