How the power of reputation in a digital age encourages the corporate world to care.

“The currency of the new collaborative economy is trust”
Says Rachel Botsman author of “What’s  mine is yours: How collaborative Consumption is Changing the World we Live in”

Botsman describes the way that companies whose services are based around sharing such as Ebay and Craigslist and Airbnb are reliant on good reputation and what is often referred to as ‘Reputation Capital’  to succeed.  Collaborative consumption is a digital age generated model of doing business where shared access, community and reputation are replacing advertising, credit and individual ownership.  Where people commit to transactions and exchanges based on mutual trust and a good score, rating or reputation.



Trip Advisor has the leverage to have a real impact on a restaurant or hotel’s popularity, and hospitality management now take it pretty seriously. A couple of bad feedbacks on Ebay will put off a large number of potential buyers/bidders, and a lack of recommendations on Airbnb means prospective tourist skip onto the next place to stay.

Innovation and technology

The new technologies, social and digital networks, coupled with a growing culture of ‘conscious’ consumption and sustainable living is making reputation a powerful commodity for all business sectors.

Echoing the ideas of Botsman, Robert Moran describes how we live in a world of immediate ‘rating’ and ‘liking’ or disliking,  at the click of a mouse. This new, digital age could, in the long term dramatically shift power into the hands of the consumer, creating a real time evaluation process which will be democratic and transparent. Moran has coined the phrase ‘Rateocracy’ to describe this revolution:

“Rateocracy can be viewed as a tectonic power shift toward technology-empowered stakeholders, but it can just as easily be viewed as the construction of a digital village in which a business’s reputation returns to the immediacy of small-town life”

Shrinking world

Indeed, reputation capital is not a new phenomenon, it was the natural way of doing business for hundreds of years, where exchange of service, word of mouth and trust motored local economies.
Global trading made supply chains much more complex, more challenging to audit, and more opaque.  But new technologies have shrunk a global world.  The speed at which information now travels means that global corporations who may have become complacent, protected by a shroud of anonymity are now increasingly being brought to trial.  Previously hidden activity, or abuses on the other side of the world come easily to our attention and sully a company’s reputation long term.  A serious blow to reputation, can result in a direct financial hit.

Transparency and coming clean

In an attempt to claw back trust, Tesco have recently published full page adverts in the form of an apology in a number of national papers in response to the horsemeat scandal. This is testimony to how seriously companies take their reputation and how they might be perceived by consumers.  The way in which the text is set out on the page is revealing, like a poem or apologia to a loved one, alluding to genuine, deep sentiments and earnest concern, with a promise to be better in future.  If this public confession is in reality more about winning back consumer trust than heart felt concern, especially given Tesco’s track record for CSR, it’s certainly clever marketing. In this instance, an open declaration of culpability is best policy.

In a recent article on Guardian Sustainable Business sustainability expert Thomas Kolster argues that if a fashion for green is making businesses compete for branding positions in the sustainability stakes, this can only be a win win situation for the rest of us, and cites Coca Cola’s and Pepsi’s recent attempts to ‘out-green’ each other as an example:

“Sustainability communication is moving from green marketing varnish to the bank vault as investors value companies’ ability to deal with the biggest business challenge of the 21st century: sustainability”

The recent acknowledgement from Coca Cola that their high sugar drinks are adding to problems of obesity is radical, and smart, he says and suggests that;

“by finally facing its own demons Coca-Cola can focus on building real trust with consumers….It’s always better to stand up to the challenge and face your real enemies (especially those within) instead of sticking your head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. In the long run, people will respect you and ultimately support you for it. ..Then your worst enemies could just end up being your best friend”

Chicken or egg…and does it really matter?

This increasing necessity and pressure for transparency might herald a new ethically centred business model, and initiate stringent auditing processes where previously reluctant businesses are driven by fear of further damage to reputation.  In the end, if CSR improves and businesses move towards more sustainable and consumer centred ways of working, does it matter whether the motivation is born of ethical values or corporate ones?

By Tara Gould
Copy Chief at OurFuture Webdesign - www.ourfuturewebdesign.co.uk

Article 1st published at http://www.ethical-business.eu/how-the-power-of-reputation-in-a-digital-age-encourages-the-corporate-world-to-care/

Bad writing, bad habits, bad business. 10 tips to keep it Fresh!

We’re all guilty of bad habits. But when it comes to your copywriting, getting lazy will lose you money, motivation and readers.

In a recent post, Seth Godin discusses the concept that negative emotional responses are simply habitual:

“Angry is habit…Distrustful is a habit. Lonely is a habit. Generous is a habit. When that stranger doesn’t do what you expect, is your response to assume that she’s out to get you, trying to make an extra buck, looking for a shortcut? Or do you default to the habit of giving that new person a chance to explain herself?”

In a wider sense, this all comes back to ‘story’. Your habits are formed from the stories you tell yourself, as Godin illustrates. Your success depends on the stories you tell others, and these can become habitual too.

And it’s not just individuals whose past stories dictate their current responses. Groups, organisations and businesses can be at the mercy of these limitations too. In a recent article on Ethical Business I wrote about how engrained habits in businesses can stop the adoption of healthier ways of working

 

The Copywriter’s Burden

Those of us who business-write for a living can succumb to the temptation to keep churning out the same tired old stories. This is a trap that is all too easy to fall into.
If one important element of organic SEO and content writing is to create such dynamic and compelling copy that other people want to publish, read and promote it, then the writer needs to be as engaged with their work as the reader. Whether crude and explicit, or coolly understated, the writer’s enthusiasm is the beating heart of any piece of writing. Authenticity is only possible if the writer is genuinely engaged with their subject.

It’s not rocket science; you may not be penning a world-changing tome, but no bestselling novel was ever written by an author who found his plot and characters dull.

So how can you stay engaged with the stories of your product/clients, and keep generating new stories that excite you and keep your copy vibrant?

Here’s a few tips that might help:

1. Explore the human element of your subject, client, or product: people, customers, staff, who is involved and what are their stories?

2. Go into the heart of your client’s vision and see things from their point of view, they will be passionate about their product even if you’re not! That passion can be infectious.

3. Go off centre, challenge yourself to write about the product, client, subject from a unexpected, radical or eccentric point of view, this can be achieved if you:.

4. Try to produce new ideas and angles by bringing two unconnected ideas together, as Roger Horberry says in Brilliant Copywriting, “creating new combinations of old elements depends on your ability to see relationships between unconnected ideas”.

5. Have fun with titles, be clever, silly, play with words – headings are the initial bait and need to be juicy, enigmatic and alluring, once you’ve settled on one that ‘fries your onions’ it will have the positive effect of feeding your enthusiasm, and helping you structure your piece.

6. Keep using fresh metaphors and analogies, these are stories within stories, and even if it’s hard to create a story around your product, these micro stories will bring your copy to life.

7. Challenge yourself to find five exciting things about your subject/product

8. If you’re re-working an article, find and use a fresh new fact or metaphor with each re-write.

9. Is there any way in which this story affects you personally? If you bring some of yourself into the copy, this will engage both you and your reader, good copy is about caring, if you give a damn this will make your work much more attractive.

10. Avoid clichés, your favourite phrases may have to go, but, keep in mind a certain tried and tested old platitude: it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

By Tara Gould
Copy Chief at OurFuture Webdesign - www.ourfuturewebdesign.co.uk

Article originally published at http://www.weareallconnected.co.uk/bad-habits-bad-writing-bad-business/

 

How Surfings 11x World Champ Can Help You Grow Your Business

Surfing's Kelly Slater has more world titles than any athlete in the history of any sport. 

In four easy steps, I will explain how you can mirror his success in Business. Slater didn't obtain 11 World Titles by chance. It was a calculated journey with plenty of wise decision making.

Step one: Start relationship with Pamela Anderson.

In the same year that Slater won his first world title, he also dated Ms. Anderson, while co-staring in two dozen Baywatch episodes. This enabled him to inspire bitter jealousy in his rivals whilst climbing the pro ladder (remember this is 1992 we're talking about), which completely ruined their focus in competition and enabled Slater to win.  If they weren't thinking about their surfing pal's relationship with Pamela, they were thinking of the next wise-crack joke to make, either way, they weren't focusing on winning. Because that's what Slater did.

Business lesson: Boost your publicity any way you can. Write to local papers with an angle, make a Youtube video, start a partnership with a bigger firm, sponsor a farmers' market, come 1st at a pub quiz and during your prize acceptance speech publicize your company like the winner you are. Publicity causes a ripple that moves outwards - the bigger the wave the more opportunities it's going to hit. Ryanair's zero budget, publicity-avalanche-causing local paper ad's are a contentious example.

Step two: Better every aspect of your game.

Slater won the next 5 World Titles consecutively by bettering himself in every tangible and intangible way he could think of. While other surfers were partying too hard, he utilized strange super fitness inducing diets. He made the road his home and traveled on a specially commissioned boat to every wave worth surfing, clocking up the 10,000 hours. He meditated, practiced yoga on Tahitian mountains, read Sun Tzu's The Art Of War, started surfing 'goofy' (with the wrong foot forward: think backwards) just to make it harder, and generally went harder than anyone else. He also dated Giselle Bundchen and Camaron Diaz, but that's beside the point - he focused on bettering every aspect of his game, not just his core competences.

Business Lesson: Have a holistically competitive product. Unless your customer service, your branding, your after-sales care, your customer journey, your operations et cetera are all on point, you're not going to annihilate all your competitors like Kelly Slater does - even if you do have a competitive product.  Apple's success over the last 10 years isn't because no-one else makes mp3 players, its because overall they have cracked most aspects of their service, from design and aesthetics to after sales care. Even a new phone that sometimes bent in half couldn't stop their share price, because you know you can just pop into the nearest apple store, which will be near, and have it replaced.

Step three: Drink a beer while riding the barrel

Slater has huge brand appeal. His contract with Quiksilver broke all records, (an offer of $10m in 2010, which Slater turned down for equity) and his books and movies are more popular than anyone elses. This is because he stands out. A good example of this, although hard to believe, is when Slater got thrown a beer can by a fan from a boat while surfing in a championship heat. He caught it, then caught a huge barreling wave, disappeared inside the wave, and then got 'spat out' whilst drinking the beer, that he opened inside the barrel. To be fair, he did have something to celebrate, he had just scored two 10 point rides in one heat (when the maximum score is 10.00, and the system only counts two waves).  This all happened while competing at a wave called Teahupoo, which translates as 'broken skull' in French Polynesian, because it breaks in such shallow water - straight onto razor sharp coral reef.

Business Lesson: Have a reason for people to talk about you, whatever sector you're in. Facebook acquired its first user-base not by competing directly with Myspace's product, but by being accessible only to Ivy-League students. Tesla gained brand appeal not by making mundane saloons, but by creating some of the fastest sports cars available. Their next car for example, the 'P85D' will match a McLaren F1's acceleration of 0-60 in about three seconds flat. Point-in-fact, the McLaren F1, when it entered the market, also had a talking point - its engine bay was made out of gold. In the original press release, McLaren proposed this was for its heat conducting properties, but as we all know, it was so that the car had a talking point.

Step four: Beat the kids at their own game.

Over the last 23 years Kelly Slater has slammed 3 generations of surfers, until they begrudgingly fall off tour, and the next generation of young hopefuls come to the slaughter. He recently beat surfing's newest prodigy, who is half Slater's age, at the kids own local break, on the final stop of the pro tour, by surfing younger than him. He learns each generation's school of moves, applies his own experience and determination, then does them better than the people that invented them. For example, the newest generation of surfers have taken pro surfing to the air, with new aerial maneuvers that now earn some of the highest scores. Slater posted a video the other week doing the largest and most rotated 'aerial' ever. No one even knew what to call it. He won 'best maneuver 2014' for it.

Business lesson: Adapt your competencies to beat the kids. Royal Mail's stock has taken a major dip recently because it isn't doing anything to keep up with competition. In an industry where leaders track your parcel to the nearest meter and send you texts when its about to arrive, Royal Mail's technology is ancient and mostly made out of paper. The lesson here is that you can use your experience and competencies to adapt. It will probably only be as hard as the first time you learnt how to do what you already do. Make an app, link a social media campaign to your website (if you haven't already), put a half pipe in your office to attract people that can, it doesn't matter, as long as you smash any young buck at their own game that tries to usurp the thrown. Like Slater.

End note: After tiring of winning at surfing, Slater is also attempting to succeed from utilising his sporting experiences within the world of business, by starting his own surfing apparel brand, called Outerknown. So far I must say, it looks well positioned. Wearing current Surf brands have the habit of making you look like a 13-year old journeying to the local swim-pool. Outerknown takes it's surf-lifestyle brand but mixes high quality materials, eco-friendly construction and classic/timeless understated styles  = probably on to another winner.

So, get radical and have the best of luck implementing Kelly Slater's business lessons, I hope you will soon paddle into a giant wave, of profit. Cowabunga!

The opinions & conclusions expressed above are purely for the entertainment value of readers that are entertained. Despite being a surfer and studying an International Business Bsc, the author has no claim to being an authority on either surfing or business. The authors skills remain in web-design.

By Noah Robertson, 
Works for OurFuture Webdesign - www.ourfuturewebdesign.co.uk