Category Archives: Business

Who Owns Your Friends?

Here's an interesting tidbit from JimRomenesko.com about a reporter who had built a following on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, and what happened when the new owner of her station put in place a social media policy:

At this juncture, I am retaining ownership of my existingFacebook and Twitter pages. Therefore, the company has started new social media accounts in my name for me to use during work hours when I am covering stories. The company has administrative control over these accounts.

It would be easy to think this kind of thing only applies to businesses with "talents" like news organizations, theaters, etc., but that would be wrong. As social media in its varying forms becomes  ingrained in the way we do business, the question of who "owns" friends/followers will be as fundamental as who "owns" a salesperson's contact list.  Many companies avoid this problem by having only one official company Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn page, etc. so there's no question about who "owns" those followers, but for those companies that decide to allow their employees to develop distinct social media presences as company representatives this is a vital consideration.

 You might wonder why any company would allow an employee to develop a distinct social media presence. After all, you'd think that would distract from the company's core social media property. That's a valid concern, but when you stop to consider what you pay people to do in the "real world" – attend industry conferences, develop sales channels, develop relationships with the trade media, etc. – why wouldn't you want them to do the same things via social media? If you're willing to embrace the messiness and chaos that this brings to your social media portfolio then you're likely to generate plenty of business through these efforts, but you also better be ready to protect your business by making it clear who "owns" those channels and the related followers/fans/friends.

a/perture in The Street

Winston-Salem's a/perture cinema was recently profiled for a story in The Street about alternative forms of raising funds for small businesses:

The art-house movie theater in Winston-Salem, N.C., needs $50,000 to snag a lease to rent the lower level of the building that will open up space for an additional screening room and larger lobby.

But the owners are tapped out. The business' long-term debt includes a recent bank loan that is funding an expensive film-to-digital conversion.

So a/perture cinema is trying something new to find financing. The art-house is asking its customers, fans, friends and family, and other independent cinema enthusiasts to contribute to a crowdfunding campaign onIndiegogo.

"It's kind of now or never, so we need to get the community behind us and those who just want to keep art-house theaters open around the country on board," curator Lawren Desai says.

Last I heard Lawren and her crew were about half-way to their goal. They're a great asset to the Camel City so hopefully they'll get there.

Organized Chaos

Amazon's operation is the epitome of organized chaos:

Chaotic storage is like organized confusion. It’s an organic shelving system without permanent areas or sections. That means there is no area just for books, or a place just for televisions (like you might expect in a retail store layout). The product’s characteristics and attributes are irrelevant. What’s important is the unique barcode associated with every product that enters the warehouse…

In this storage system a wide variety of products can be found located next to each other. A necklace could be located beside a DVD and underneath a set of power tools. This arbitrary placement can even help with accuracy as it makes mix-ups less likely when picking orders for shipment.

Overall it’s a fascinating system that at its core is powered by a complex database yet run by a simple philosophy. It’s Chaotic Storage. There’s no better way to put it 🙂

 

Much More Important Than Some Silly Election

While everyone else is distracted with the not-really-that-important presidential election of 2012, here at the JonLowder.com media center we're concentrating on far more consequential news — the return of 7-Eleven to Forsyth County, and Lewisville in particular. From a somewhat reliable source (the Winston-Salem Journal):

7-Eleven Inc. has returned to Forsyth County and surrounding areas, bringing its Slurpee drinks and Big Bite hot dogs.

The re-entry into the local market after more than 20 years is part of the convenience-store chain’s recent purchase of 13 stores previously operated by Fast Track. Terms of the deal were not disclosed…

Locations of local stores switching to 7-Elevens include 2375 Lewisville Clemmons Road in Clemmons, 1005 S. Main St. in Kernersville, 5076 Styers Ferry Road in Lewisville and 5916 University Parkway in Winston-Salem.

Rebranding of the stores will occur from December through early February.

People, this is far more exciting than the opening of Trader Joe's at Thruway. After all, does TJ have Slurpees? Case closed.

Here's the Lewisville location – I'm sure I'll meet you in line at the grand opening.

 

Everybody Rides!

Last week I was honored to be able to speak at the 2012 ConvergeSouth conference, and one of the real highlights was meeting Tracy Myers. If you live in the Piedmont Triad and have a functioning TV set you've probably seen one of Tracy's commercials, but you may be surprised to learn that he's probably the most aggressive social marketers in the local small business community. At ConvergeSouth he gave a very good keynote presentation about his marketing approach and it would behoove any small business person interested in using social media to build his brand to check out how Tracy is approaching it. 

Here's a fun fact: Meyers is a fellow resident of Lewisville.

Will Obamacare Lead to a Part Time Nation?

Darden Restaurants, parent company of restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster, is experimenting with limiting the hours worked by some of its employees to see if it can avoid provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – a.k.a. Obamacare – that go into effect in 2014:

Analysts say many other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are considering employing fewer full-timers because of key features of the Affordable Care Act scheduled to go into effect in 2014. Under that law, large companies must provide affordable health insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours per week.

If they do not, the companies can face fines of up to $3,000 for each employee who then turns to an exchange — an online marketplace — for insurance.

"I think a lot of those employers, especially restaurants, are just going to ensure nobody gets scheduled more than 30 hours a week," said Matthew Snook, partner with human-resources consulting company Mercer.

Darden said its goal at the test restaurants is to keep employees at 28 hours a week.

Analysts said limiting hours could pose new challenges, including higher turnover and less-qualified workers.

It would seem logical that employers would limit employees to part time status whenever possible in order to avoid fines for not providing health insurance, but on the other hand employers already spend much more than $3,000 per full time employee on health insurance – $10,522, of which the employees paid $2,204, according to the Society of Human Resource Management – so it would seem even more logical for them to stop providing health insurance altogether and lower their expenses by over 50% overnight. 

Here are some other questions:

  • How many companies, in industries that have not historically had high levels of part time employees, will start turning jobs that had been done by one full time employee into multiple positions filled by part timers? 
  • Are there provisions in the ACA that would prevent that?

 

Is Goodly Grammar Really Necessary?

There, their, they're,  do we really need to lose sleep over bad spelling? According to this article that appeared in Wired earlier this year, absolutely not:

So who shud tell us how to spel? Ourselves. Language is not static—or constantly degenerating, as many claim. It is ever evolving, and spelling evolves, too, as we create new words, styles, and guidelines (rules governing use of the semicolon date to the 18th century, meaning they’re a more recent innovation than the steam engine). The most widely used American word in the world, OK, was invented during the age of the telegraph because it was concise. No one considers it, or abbreviations like ASAP and IOU, a sign of corruption. More recent textisms signal a similarly creative, bottom-up play with language: “won” becomes “1,” “later” becomes “l8r.” After all, new technology creates new inertia for change: The apostrophe requires an additional step on an iPhone, so we send text messages using “your” (or “UR”) instead of “you’re.” And it doesn’t matter—the messagee will still understand our message.

Standardized spelling enables readers to understand writing, to aid communication and ensure clarity. Period. There is no additional reason, other than snobbery, for spelling rules. Computers, smartphones, and tablets are speeding the adoption of more casual forms of communication—texting is closer to speech than letter writing. But the distinction between the oral and the written is only going to become more blurry, and the future isn’t autocorrect, it’s Siri. We need a new set of tools that recognize more variations instead of rigidly enforcing outdated dogma. Let’s make our own rules. It’s not like the English language has many good ones anyway.

This dude begs to differ:

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss's more cuddly phraseology: I am a grammar "stickler." And, like Truss — author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves — I have a "zero tolerance approach" to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid…

But grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn't make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're.

Good points, but for how long? For those of us who entered the working world pre-fax machine we can remember how many edits a simple letter went through before it was ever printed and dispersed. People were hired specifically to write all manner of correspondence on behalf of the rest of the company so that the egregious spelling and grammatical construction of the average worker would never see the desk of a customer or prospect.   Then email happened and after a short period of hand wringing over the advisability of poor grammarians being allowed to communicate in writing, with anyone, the floodgates opened and all manner of crappy language started flying back and forth. 'Lo and behold we all discovered we'd rather hear sooner and directly from the source, even if they think there is their, rather than wait for an expertly written reply from an intermediary. Then instant messaging happened and we realized we weren't even particular about vowels as long as we could discern the meaning of what was being written.

Of course this is all situational. If you're selling me copywriting services then you damn well better know when to use "whom," but if you're installing my high end surround sound I really couldn't give a tinker's damn if you're illiterate as long as my ear drums are blown out when I watch Glee. Or whatever.

Ogilvy on Copywriting

It's easy to make fun of advertising folks because, well, far too many of them produce some truly crappy work. On the other hand there are some tremendously talented ad professionals who produce truly inspiring work. In other words advertising is like every other industry out there, populated by the good, the bad and the ugly.

One of the paragons of advertising was David Ogily and this letter he wrote about his process for copywriting shows that his process was anything but painless:

1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home. 

2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years. 

3. I am helpless without research material—and the more "motivational" the better. 

4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client. 

5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform. 

6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines. 

7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)

8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts. 

9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy. 

10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.

11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)

12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.