Return on Intention

Imagine a time way back before the internet. Before television. Before indoor plumbing. The year is 1805, and you’re a baker.

In the middle of the town is a common. If you are not familiar with commons its pretty much what it sounds like, common area used by all the towns folk to keep their livestock, plant gardens, etc. The commons is where the town gathered, worked and talked about the news of the day.  To be a successful business, it made sense to put your business on the land facing the commons. Location, Location, Location, right? The age old philosophy of “go where your customers are” was very important before yellow pages and search engines. So there you are, in your bakery on the edge of the commons, accessible to anyone in town who may want a loaf of wheat bread.

Relationships were the driver of business in this time. The people who chose to buy from a particular baker most likey did so because they  built a relationship with them day after day of talking in the commons or at the bakers shop. People liked to buy from people they know. To increase bread sales, the baker could go out into the commons after the morning rush and offer discounts to try his bread, or he could start an affinity program. The baker could also hire some local kids to sell his goods for a percentage of the profit, starting an early affiliate program. No matter what the plans where to keep the business going strong, it relied on personal relationships (at least personal as in “in person”).

It would be entirely possible for the baker to bake his goods at home, and then build a stand to sell out of in the commons. By doing this he wouldn’t actually need a storefront of his own, and he could just make his money from the stand he built. This works until the customers either leave the commons to go a new area, or the commons get purchased and his stand is longer allowed to be there. In either case, the work that he put into creating his stand, and making it accessible and comfortable to customers is all lost.

Fast forward a few hundred years to today. The commons are back. There called social networks. In much the same way as our earlier ancestors, businesses are realizing that building relationships with people can pay off. All the advantages ( and disadvantage) from back then are all back, and community is the new topic to pay attention to. With all the ways you can now reach out to your customers base, the question has been raised as to whether or not a company really needs a website anymore. There are so many new services out there like Facebook and Twitter that customers spend time on that it can seem like a companies website isn’t where the people are; however, what was true in 1805 is still true today.

The point of a company having a website is to control its online domain – the space that is theirs. Thats why they are called Domain Names. Companies could spend all day on Facebook just like our baker could have spent all day in the commons, but if the commons ever became unavailable, he was out of luck. Today, the online equivalent is actually even worse. Facebook wasn’t the first social network, and may not be the last. At some point someone will create a new social network that people think is better and they will jump ship and move to that one. Facebook did it to MySpace, and MySpace did it to Friendster before that. When that day comes, then all the hard work that was poored into Facebook will be gone. I don’t mean to pick on Facebook, pick any social networking platform you want, its the same deal. 200,000 Twitter followers won’t do you much good when Twitter shuts down.

The point here is to go ahead and go out into the social media world and explore. Experiment and learn. Leverage its technology to build community and its power to build your business. Do as much as you can, but always maintain your home turf. Maintain your website. Use it to give your customers an experience that Facebook doesn’t provide them. Make it the center of your universe, just like the bread store on the edge of the commons.

Every Thursday in the Albuquerque Journal the Business Outlook section is neatly tucked into the papers fold. Unlike most people, I usually read this part of the paper after work instead of in the morning. On December 11, 2008, before I had the chance to get home and read the paper, my mother called me. 

“Have your read the Outlook today?”, she said.

“No, not yet. Why?”, I replied.

“There is an article in there that sounds like you wrote it, right down to the quote by Peter Drucker.” my mother exclaimed ecstatically. Well, not really, she just plainly said it.

I immediately called my wife at home to read the article. When she got done she agreed it sounded a lot like some of the articles I have written or presentations I have given. Needless to say at this point I couldn’t wait to get home and read this article. 

Finally, closing time came around and I came home to read the article. It was a really good article. Of course, I guess if many people thought it sounded like me then I guess I would like it, wouldn’t I? 

The title of the article is “The right website can help a business succeed” and was written by George Kenefic and Mary Schmidt. The gist of the articles is basically, that a website is an extension of your business, and you should treat it just like any other part of your business. The articles talks about the importance of knowing your customers, not being afraid of the technical stuff, the importance of your content and the FACT that all good websites have reached success by changing over time, in response to testing and metrics. 

I am really happy to see this article appear in the Journal for several reasons.

1. The more people that read information like this, the more we can spread the word on how to get real results out of a website instead of treating it like a brochure.
2. The authors of this article are not running a web development shop.  George Kenefic is director of Enterprise Empowerment and Mary Schmidt is Marketing Advisor with the Loan Fund. 

It’s nice to know that there are people out there who get it that are not in the development side of the equation. This is a great sign for us all.

–NOTE–

I do not believe that George Kenefic or Mary Schmidt have plagiarized my work, or we’re influenced by me in any way. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have never heard of me. These concepts are out there already and I have no special claim to them. Don’t misunderstand this post to believe that I am suggesting any influence from me on the article in question. The point is that I didn’t influence it…. at all, and thats what makes it so great.