Tag Archives: Manipulate

How Do You Increase the Value of Social Network Interactions? Five Thoughts

Situation: People participate in social networking sites for several reasons – to network, to promote their businesses, products or services, and to gain insight through crowd sourcing. For these audiences, how do you increase the value of social network interactions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Encourage participants to move from a short-term to a medium-term focus. Short term focus is about lead generation, immediate results and buy right now. Think of the man in the flashy sports coat selling his products on late night television. This may generate a sale but with low engagement and commitment. Alternatively, if you focus on engagement you start to build growth which is more sustainable. Growth which will persist with more momentum.
  • Clarify your objectives. Are you interested in sales or influence today or this quarter? How much effort do you want to put into it and what payback do you seek?
  • Be patient. Take the time to develop quality content. This time is an investment which pays back both in the medium and long-term.
  • Don’t treat people as though they can be manipulated into buying from you. There is a karmic cost to this approach. Look instead at the potential benefit that you can provide that will attract people to your content. Think in terms of reciprocity – give first and let others decide how they will respond.
  • Try an experiment. Propose a simple question: “What do you want?” Ask the question three times, each time with a different thought in mind – first annoyance, then confusion, and finally empathy. Rather than speak the questions, send them via instant message one after the other. The words of the message were exactly the same each time, “What do you want?” Without tone of voice, expression or body language, the receivers could instantly tell me what I was thinking in each case. The same works in social networking. People can read where you are coming from based on how you position your content. If you want to increase the value of what you have to say or offer, offer it openly and invite your audience to respond.

Thanks to Kenneth Vogt for his contribution to this discussion.

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How Do You Launch an Internet Portal? Four Considerations

Situation: A finance company wants to revise its web portal. The objective is to provide up-to-date specialized financial information to clients for a subscription fee. Currently information is provided directly to clients. The portal will allow clients to manipulate the data provided to gain greater insight into their own strategies and operations. How do you launch an Internet portal?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This presents an opportunity to bring several niche services together under one umbrella.
  • The plan is to make money by selling subscriptions. A challenge will be determining how much clients are willing to pay for this service.
    • Perform an analysis to determine how much clients can either make or save by utilizing the new service.
    • Try a menu approach with varying fees depending upon the number and frequency of services accessed.
  • To more quickly gain recognition and credibility, consider partnering with an existing well-established entity such as Bloomberg. Design your portal to integrate your data into their existing traffic flow.
    • This reduces the development effort because the partner already has the shell and a well-established market presence.
  • As an alternative to partnering, it may be best for the company to develop the portal on its own.
    • In this case, if there is a tightly defined target audience and the company already possesses all the equipment and programming required to launch its own portal, it may be best to carefully select initial clients and for the company to do everything itself.
    • If the company has the necessary access to key target clients, this will save the need to split revenue with a partner.

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