business

In business: If you talk the talk, you better walk the walk, too!

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Many years ago, I worked in a school in Taipei. It was very much a wonderful learning experience because I saw all the mistakes that our school’s owners made over the years. I still remember most of my students fondly, and just occasionally I will run into one or two of them on the street. But one of the biggest mistakes we made, and it was years later that I realized it as such, was our motto. We enjoyed our work, we liked the students, and we thought we were good, so we stupidly created the motto: “The best of the best”.

Best of the Worst: Best of the Words

Unfortunately, the motto was quite hollow. It was supposed to invigorate us and inspire our students, but it didn’t ring true in our hearts. Our flyers were printed on green A4 paper, and distributed community wide.What they really shouted was how pathetic we were. And our school was. Small classrooms, poor resources, lack of leadership, … to name but a few. When I realized the enormity of our mistake, I was determined not to repeat it. Why?

What was wrong?

If you really are the best, everyone knows it. There’s no need to tell it. It’s in plain sight. And if you’re not the best, it’s a lie. And again, everyone and their dog can see it. It’s that simple. It was the case with us. We were obviously not in the first category at all. So clients were left to draw only the latter conclusion. We really set ourselves up to fail by creating such high expectations. How could we really succeed?

Choose something tangible

We have been building our marketing campaign for our own business for some three years. But one of the decisions I made at the outset was to avoid making unverifiable claims. Instead, we would tell people exactly what we did, and leave it up to them to decide if we were good or not. Now our motto is exactly what we do: “Teach our students to use English and make it a part of their lives.”- It reads better in Chinese!

And that’s exactly what we do: students are greeted in English, classroom activities take place in English, even break-time activities require some English. We do use Chinese at times to make students feel comfortable in stressful situations, but for the most part, we encourage students to use English as much as they can.

Say it loud, say it clear!

It doesn’t have to be a complex message, it doesn’t have to use superlatives. But any motto or slogan you choose for your products should at least encapsulate the benefits of your product in ways that are tangible and identifiable. Make sure your performance matches your claims and be prepared to verify the claims. Parents hear our students using English when they arrive or leave, they call up and use English, too, when they have problems with homework. Classroom work is verified with all skills quizzes. And yet, sometimes we still fail to get our message across!

It ain’t lip-service

Many companies promise great service, but when you call up to find out about the ‘great’ service, you find out the truth. I recently was asked to telephone a local hospital in Taiwan that claimed it had an English answering service. Although it was just a survey, I was horrified to find out that if I had been depending on this service as a tourist, I might have ended up dead! I called the hospital’s ‘English’ hot line, was transferred in a bilingual telephone message to a center that picked up the phone for an answering machine! An English hotline had a Chinese answering machine! Wow!

Manage Expectations: Be realistic!

By managing expectations, the hospital could have avoided the complications, negative reports, and immense loss of face this caused some official when it went in the report that the hospital failed the assessment. By simply saying the line was only staffed from 10-4pm each day, the hospital would have got a lot of kudos for providing a needed service.

Unfortunately, the mistake this hospital made is one that many international companies make, too.

When you’re a service oriented company, it’s vital that service is as good as you can make it. In other words, you have to walk the walk if you talk the talk.

What’s your experience marketing your business or selling products or even dealing with ‘big’ companies and their promises? How does it fit in with what I’m saying here?

Would you like to create a blog for your company or existing site?

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This was written as a proposal for a project last year. I thought I would share the outlines for readers interested in blogging part- or full-time or looking to develop a portfolio for an existing static site.

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Are you considering having a blog to complement your existing website? Do you need help to get started with the whole blogging thing? If so, then this paper outlines the basic idea in section 1; the steps to implementing the program in section 2; and Developing your Properties in section 3.

1. A BLOG: A natural traffic magnet

I think the best way to attract traffic to your website would be to use a blog as a blog has a natural advantage over a static site. In fact, a blog can attract traffic with quality posting as long as you have something to say of interest to people. Additionally, having a blog allows you to build traffic through RSS Feeds, comments, trackbacks and a whole host of online aggregators and web 2.0 media.

This would be the fastest approach to gaining traffic, though when I say fast it would be some months to build up a following. The blog would need an identifiable persona that can play off the notion of credit cards and build some fun into the whole process of searching, applying for and using credit cards. It is also a way to bring people BACK to the website… otherwise you may see traffic apply for cards and NEVER come back because they can’t find or don’t remember the website.

2. Steps to Implementation

  1. First, Setting Up A Blog. Establish a blog (WordPress 2.7) with a bunch of themes, and a selection of plugins in a subdirectory of your main website. Set up a blog as integral part of your site, linked from an obvious place in the top of the bar and in a very similar ‘theme’ to the website. The blog of course would have links to the rest of the site as well.
  2. Second, Metrics. Establish some metrics as a base from which to start. The metrics would help establish tracking and even help target customers to the offers in the other part of the site.
  3. Third, Regular Posting. Start a regular posting schedule. With some initial content, say 20 posts that are quality and not too long, begin the next step. Do make sure your content is unique, well written. It doesn’t have to be long, but it has to be pertinent.
  4. Fourth, Publicity. Have the blog join all sorts of Web2.0 communities to gain friends/traffic, such as Technorati, and several other blog services. This would certainly help but it would require some weeks or even months of work. There are a number of other tips and tricks that can help to establish a blog that can drive traffic to your website.
  5. Fifth, Capitalize on the Traffic. This is where your efforts on the website would pay off by capitalizing on the resultant traffic. Slowly add advertising in whatever form you think is appropriate for your audience. Don’t go overboard.

3. Developing your Property

There are tons of new ways of getting traffic these days: Twitter, Flickr, Squidoo, Hubpages, Technorati,… while it’s not important to stay on top of them all. There are just too many to start with. You may want to pick a few of the services, and learn how to use them. Each one you learn paves the way for a future project, traffic or opportunities.

Much is made of Web 2.0, and much is hot air. But you may find that there are valuable tie-ins to your proposed blog from communities of like-minded people. Then you’ll find that Web 2.0 really works.

Conclusion

Obviously you have to decide if this is a route you want to take, whether it is worth spending so much money on your website, and what metrics you will need to use to evaluate success or failure. I do believe that adding a blog can really add a whole new dynamic to your existing site. But it isn’t an instant success. It needs application, focus, and time.

Credit Card Post: September 2008 – Was it a big disaster or not?

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After the modest spending of the last few months, I was greeted by a mighty thwack with September’s Bill. The damage was nearly NT$80,000! So what happened? How could it be so high?

Actually, most credit card statements tell a story: this was no exception. It’s a story of three parts.

Part 1: The business

We’ve been on an energy economy drive for the past four or five months, and the benefits are slowly beginning to pay off in lower electricity bills and lower carbon emissions. It’s staggering how little changes in behavior can have such significant effects: lighting choices, replacing older equipment, changing usage patterns, etc.. I don’t have complete stats for 2008, but I was surprised at how we’ve saved nearly 10% of our annual electricity bill, and there is still one major bill to go. Stay tuned!

Replacing A/Cs is perhaps the most notable way to cut energy use. Our oldest A/Cs are nearly 8 years old, and due for replacement, if nothing else because more modern A/Cs are comparatively more efficient. So after replacing one, we bit the bullet and replaced the one in the office (likely the single heaviest use appliance in the entire school). This month we replaced one that had been malfunctioning in the classroom ever since there was a power outage. It had just been blowing warm air, and wasting our money.

  • Damage: NT$48,800 plus installation NT$1450.

Was it worth it? Certainly. Will we save money in the long run? Likely enough to pay for the entire machine! Are our customers/staff happier? For sure.

Part 2: UK Trip

The second part of the story: my unexpected trip to the UK. It was late September when I decided to visit the UK to see my family and friends (an entirely social trip!) but long needed. Maintaining long distance relationships is at best very challenging, at worst almost impossible.

Though, this is the complete list of credit card expenses until September 19th, it was NOT the entire trip expenditure. Woops!

  • Phone Bill: NT$1154 – including national and roaming charges;
  • Nolita Restaurants: NT$6630 – a meal for my friends, Jane and Philip in Hatfield, which was surprisingly reasonable given the restaurant, but didn’t include much alcohol – one was exhausted and one was driving!
  • Boots and Asda: NT$1244 – daily expenses (esp. when I couldn’t cash my traveler’s checks);

Part 3: Online Related Expenses

I finally bought a ‘puter that I could put in my bag. One of the ironies though was that I bought a machine that was made by a Taiwanese company in Shanghai shipped to England and sold cheaper than you could buy in Taiwan at the time.

aspireone blue and white

Mine’s the blue one! Of course, not running Linpus. Sorry!

Enter the Acer AspireOne – Net Book. It’s proved very useful, and I’m seriously glad that I got it. I was able to make calls through SKYPE, surf the Net, listen to music and even do more than just rudimentary blogging on that little 8.9″ screen.

  • Damage: NT$17,310. Of course, being an overseas customer, I may be able to reclaim part of my tax (approx. NT$1800) making the deal even better value for me!

I also paid a writer who is helping me co-author a series of posts on the Dow Jones Indexed Companies. I also paid Google an AdWords activation fee.

  • Total cost for this: NT$1319.

And, finally, after earning points on the airconditioner purchases at Carrefour, bonus points on our credit card bonus points, we also earned a little cash back on some of my purchases: NT$-213.

  • I’m still not exactly sure what purchases triggered this, but still every little helps to reduce the total damage: NT$79,694.

There were no interest or penalties added to this month’s credit cards, and my secondary card had no outstanding purchases at all. oh, and I nearly forgot the NT$2000 life insurance premium that was paid.

It’s funny how credit card expenses can highlight the unfolding stories that compromise our lives. Have a look through your credit card statement? Can you see a story developing there?

  • Oh, and by the way: most frivolous expense trip – Hong Kong Airport Starbucks Americano and water bought with a credit card HK$39.00. Just silly.

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