The rocky path to success for businesses
Standing out from the crowd and being different may not be the only marker in the route to success, but it’s certainly not a typical indicator of impending doom., and there are other reasons you want your business to stand out. Maybe you’re in a competitive market and want to get noticed. Perhaps you’re hoping to get funding, and don’t want to be lumped in to the other countless groups that also need startup cash.
It could be as simple as wanting yours to be the email your time-pressed customer opens. In short, there are many ways being different can make a positive impact on the future of your company. In part one of this series, I shared with you that you can stand out by reducing your friend counts. Many people were pleasantly surprised with the method, so in that vein, let’s move to part two:
How to stand out from the crowd: bring people together
Leaders are in the minority. It’s a good thing too, because if everyone wanted to lead all the time, we’d spend more time arguing than actually moving towards a goal. In some circumstances, you may find that you’re best in a supportive role. But nearly everyone has an area they excel in, where they set the standard, even if others aren’t quite aware of it.
Of critical importance in 2013 is that you find this area for your business, and the person in your business best suited to leading, then get them on a project that will bring people together under their leadership. If you ask this person, they may already have something in mind.
Why? In the book Grouped, researcher and author Paul Adams presents the view that the web is reorienting around people, rather than information. We’re seeing it already – we used to come to the web to search, now we’re also there to connect.
With web marketing specifically, this is becoming more important as the web turns into a place where people congregate and interact, rather than observe and lurk.
Bring people together
Whether this means
- a forum on your site,
- a Facebook group,
- an in-person meetup of colleagues and peers,
- sponsorship of a local event your target market frequents,
- a Google+ community,
- a weekly teleconference,
- a monthly webinar,
…or some other online or offline activity that allows your like-minded prospects to gather, it’s better to be bringing people together than it is to be merely watching where they go.
You must be sure to do this with purpose
Creating a community that watches Shark Tank together may be great if you want to gather entrepreneurs, but not if you want to reach people who manage restaurants.
One step you can take right now is to ask people who come to your blog, read your newsletter, or are regulars in your store where else they like to go for information or to socialize. Just send them a survey with a few quick questions.
In part three of this series out next week, I will outline additional ways you can stand out from the crowd that may surprise you – stay tuned.
