Tweets | Sherie Griffiths

November 22, 2011

Better the devil you know? – how do you feel about change?

Filed under: Business, Communication, Marketing, Tweets, Web Development, Websites — Tags: 'Fusion: the new way of marketing', Blog, Book, Business, Centre of Excellence for Women's Entrpeneurship, CEWE, Change In Business, Creatures Of Habit, David Miles, David Taylor, Devil, Facebok, Ford, Guide Dogs, Hell, Linkedin, Long Cane, Mad Keen, Manual Car, market, Marketing, Mercedes, Nisbett and George, rebrand, Road Users, Rupert Murdoch, Scary Prospect, Sherie Griffiths, social media, Speak For Yorself, Subspecies, Trend, Twenty Five Years, twitter, Weird, Wheel — sheriegriffiths.com @ 9:23 am

We humans are creatures of habit. Like it or not, as a rule, we aren’t mad keen on major change. In business, of course, we have to embrace it – because if we don’t evolve, we’re dead. Entrepreneurs are a weird subspecies of the human race – and I count myself as one of them. Among our number are those who buck the trend completely. They constantly change what they do or how they do it, just for the hell of it. Take Rupert Murdoch for instance (what was that…? ‘Yes, please – take him!’???! Yes, well, that’s another topic, for another blog…). I once heard from someone who used to work for him that he would implement an idea on Monday – and by Thursday it would have been replaced by something else – just because he could; but for most of us – even if we’re mad enough to go into business for ourselves –while we might see some kinds of change as opportunities, others aren’t so welcome.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently because I’ve made major changes, at work and outside. On the work front, there was the rebrand a few weeks ago – the best thing I ever did, incidentally, but quite a scary prospect beforehand.

Personally, I’ve just changed what I drive. No, I’m not talking about swapping a Ford for a Mercedes. I’ve just decided that after twenty-five years of driving Labradors (guide dogs), it’s time to switch to a long cane. What’s the difference? Well, it’s like driving an automatic for years, then suddenly moving to a manual gear box. When you drive an automatic, you still have to know where you’re going and pay attention to what you’re doing and to other road-users etc (as you do with a dog), but there are things you don’t have to worry about. Behind the wheel of a manual car – and behind a long cane – you’re responsible for absolutely everything! Right now I feel I should have L-plates – but this time, I’ll make it work. I’ve tried before and given up – because I didn’t have the motivation to make it work with a cane. This time, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I really want and need to make it happen – so I will.

Coming back to business, I’ve just started reading ‘Fusion: the new way of marketing’ by David Miles and David Taylor. The book is, in a very small nutshell, all about how, whether we like it or not (and those of us over a certain age may like it slightly less than our younger counterparts), our websites must now be at the heart of our marketing and social media has to be a main artery through the body of that marketing.

Last Thursday, at the CEWE conference, organized by the University of East London, I met members of the next generation of entrepreneurs, including two new graduates whose dissertations were business plans. We’re now following each other on Twitter. For them, the need to use Twitter, Facebook etc to promote their new business is as obvious as it was to my generation that we needed a website, or to the previous that they needed to produce leaflets.

Plenty of us who are a little older are getting into social media, of course – it hasn’t been the preserve of teens and techies for some time – but we need to get to grips with using it intelligently, strategically. Without giving too much away, if you’re around my age, you have at least twenty years of working life to go – so, like me, you’re way too young to get left behind.

On that note, I’m off to tweet about this post – and put it on Linkedin … and Facebook … and the website … and …….

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June 24, 2011

How’s your Twittiquette?

Filed under: Business, Communication, Marketing, Tweets — Tags: Business, Caroline Thomas, ettiquette, Followers, Imagination, Manners, Personal Observation, Personality, Sales Scene, Sherie Griffiths, social media, Time Line, Tweet, Tweets, twitter — sheriegriffiths.com @ 7:05 am

If you’re on Twitter, how are your manners? Yes, I’m serious.

I started tweeting nearly two years ago, after resisting the idea for months! I really couldn’t see the point of it. Who would I be talking to? – and what could I say in so few characters that could possibly help me or anyone else?

For the first year or so, I just put out sporadic tweets about what was happening with the business, with no real response. Even when I got responses, I often missed them because I was tweeting via the website and they got lost in my time line. So I felt I was talking to myself.

Then I discovered a desktop app that allowed me to see instantly when I’d been mentioned orsent a direct message – and everything began to change. Now I happily chat with people I know – and sometimes complete strangers. I’ve made some great contacts I would never otherwise have made.

More recently, though, I’ve encountered another problem. We can only ever get 7% of our message across in print and in this odd little forum, where we have a max of 140 characters to form a personality picture of someone, it’s a real challenge not to put a ffoot in it!

I’ll give you an example: A couple of weeks ago, someone I’m following and who is following me, but whom I don’t know, put a tweet up which caught my attention. It wasn’t business. It was just a little personal observation. It made the person who tweeted it look friendly – as though he was saying, ‘Hey, come and talk to me!’ – so I did. We swapped a couple of light-hearted tweets, which obviously caught the imagination of a few more of his followers and a group chat ensued. He dropped out, but the rest of us went on tagging him in our tweets. I thought that was the right thing to do, so that he could see what was being said about him; but later, he tweeted, ‘Thanks for the chat guys – but not on my time line please’. OOPS…! I’d been so sure that if you mention someone, you should always tag them, so that they can see it. Was I missing some subtle point of Twittiquette?

Then there’s the opposite problem – people who don’t reply when they should – GRRRRRR!!! To me, it’s very simple. When I log on, I always look after the people who have mentioned or DM’ed me first, because they’re the ones who have taken the time and trouble to acknowledge me. They’re the people who are interested enough in my tweets to give a little of their valuable time to respond, or to help promote me. The very least I can do in return is to say ‘thanks’. It takes a moment to type and costs nothing, but it means a lot – and my mention helps promote them a little. If we were in a face-to-face situation and they spoke to me, or promoted me to someone else (which is basically what most retweets are), I’d acknowledge them – of course I would! – so why wouldn’t I do it on Twitter?

Still, some people don’t. I have one friend who drives me up the wall on this point (names – and all other identifying information, withheld to protect the guilty!). In person, he wouldn’t dream of ignoring someone who spoke directly to him, or not thanking someone who did something to help him out in any way; but on Twitter, it’s a very different story. He does answer some people sometimes, but others (often those who do most to raise his Twitter profile) regularly drop under the radar. Now, I don’t know whether it’s a technical issue – whether, like me in my first year, he’s missing a lot of mentions etc – or if he just doesn’t pick up on when he needs to answer. What I do know is that it isn’t deliberate rudeness. Those of us who know him well laugh it off and make excuses – but for a stranger, it would create completely the wrong impression – which could cost him opportunities, apart from anything else.

There does seem to be a general feeling that it’s ok not to be polite online, because it’s all a bit anonymous, but that begs the question: why are we there? If it isn’t to enhance existing relationships and make new connections, why do we spend time on it – time which most of us could find several other uses for?

I’m spending a lot of time on it today – the whole day in fact – with Caroline Thomas at Sales Scene, learning to improve my own social media skills and strategies. Looking forward to it – maybe she’ll show me how to deal with awkward ‘Twits’!

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March 2, 2010

“On Sound Foundations” – The Story Of A Book

Filed under: Book, Podcasts, Tweets — Tags: 6th November, Anatomy, Christmas, Coffee Pot, Colleague, Core Skill, Cup Of Coffee, Focus, Jigsaw, Launch, Leap, People, Personal Challenges, Revelation, Six Months, Sixteen Months, Sleepless Night, Socks, Sound Foundations, Truth — sheriegriffiths.com @ 12:40 pm

Just before Christmas, a colleague said to me, “I bet you’ll be glad to see the back of this year, won’t you?” I knew what she meant – 2009 had been tough for most of us in business and I’d had some major personal challenges thrown in. Yet I hesitated over my answer. Yes, there were moments I’d rather not remember and definitely wouldn’t want to relive, but for all that, it had been an incredibly productive year for me. I’m not talking financially, but in terms of focus. In August, in the middle of a family issue which very nearly led me to throw in the towel in business, I finally broke down a personal barrier which had held me back in every area of my life – very liberating! Then in November, sixteen months on from opening and six months after the official launch, I finally worked out what my business was all about. “Wasn’t that a bit late?” I hear you ask – and you’ve got a point. Better late than never though!

At 5.00am on 6th November 2009, after yet another sleepless night, wondering why I seemed to be working my socks – and various bits of my anatomy – off just to stand still, I stood in my kitchen, coffee pot in hand and it hit me – no, not the coffee pot – the revelation! THE ANSWER! “EUREKA!” The lights went on and I saw it all – where I’d been going wrong, how to put it right – and more!

“So that’s my core skill! I thought, amazed – “I know how sound works!” Here I was, more than a year and a half after my decision to make the leap – and leap it certainly was – from law into business podcasting, finally realising that I know how sound works. Yes, I am a bit slow – especially at five in the morning!

The truth is, I knew how sound worked, how people used it and what it could do if they used it properly long before that moment – I just didn’t know that I knew. As I poured that much needed first cup of coffee, pieces of a jigsaw which had been floating around my head for nearly two years, never quite forming a picture, suddenly clicked into place and I saw the image clearly – the image of my business, how it came to be and where it could go. I spent the next several weeks redesigning services to fit that picture.

Before 6th November, the most positive response I had to my marketing efforts tended to be, “I’m really interested in what you do, but I don’t get it.” Now it’s, “I’m really interested in what you do – when can we talk?” Like most of the changes I made to our offering, it’s a small shift on the face of it – with a huge impact.

Nineteen years ago, someone said, “You should write a book” – but I was only twenty-three then and probably knew even less about life than I did about writing. So although I gave it a go, it didn’t happen. In November last year, I was planning a series of books about starting and running a business; but after that 5.00am “EUREKA!” moment, they were pushed aside by something else which insisted on being written “NOW!!!” From a pure business perspective, the timing was all wrong. I should have waited until we were truly out of recession, until the company was more established. In fact, I probably should have waited until I retired, but this book would brook no argument – the words fell out faster than I could type! The baby was coming, whether I or anyone around me liked it or not!

It started life as a practical guide to business podcasting, against a background of my experience as a lifelong media junky and obsessive communicator; but it evolved into the story of my forty-year apprenticeship in sound – the foundations on which my company and everything we now do is built. It also tells the very personal story of my development of the “womble” principle – of which, more later.

I finished the book last Thursday evening. Over the next couple of months, as I prepare for publication, I’m going to tell you a bit about how it came together and some of the things I learnt from writing it – because I did learn. Two people, both dear friends and close colleagues, have been slightly less than fulsome in their support for the project. I think that’s mainly because they’re applying cost/benefit analysis principles, looking at the amount of time this kind of undertaking demands, against the likely financial return. On that basis, I’ve just “wasted” three and a half months of evenings and weekends – but I know I haven’t. Even if no-one else ever reads the finished product, it was worth writing because it helped me work out what I’m about, how I got here and where I’m going.

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