I’m back!!! I apologize for not blogging during the weekend but my husband and I decided to do some remodeling in the house. It has helped me take my mind off the prototypes that I’m anxiously waiting for. Do you remember I said that they would be ready by Monday, meaning yesterday well they weren’t but this is yet another reminder that I have to be extremely patient. Anyway, since I have not had exciting news or big milestones these couple of days I decided to talk about a very important step in this start-up journey and that is, “Social Media”.

What is social media? I’ve heard that term over and over and although I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it was, I decided to do some research. First of all I recommend, “The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media” by moz.com. In this website they define social media as a way for people to communicate and interact online. Simple enough right, well once you become a master maybe, but as you are starting out it may be challenging and it will require a lot of work and dedication. Did you know that Facebook has an average of  about 890 million daily users, this information and many more can be found on Facebook newsroom. This is just one of the many different social media outlets that are available for us and free of charge. Social media is not just a way to communicate and interact online, it’s a relationship that you develop over time. In Chapter 1 of The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media they mention that if you do not cultivate those relationships with customers through your business, there will be others that will. The way I look at it is that just as you answer your friends and family’s text and emails, you should be answering to followers, subscribers, customers, etc… In Chapter 9 of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book “Crush It” he talks about the key to developing this relationships, he summarizes it into one word, CARE. And I get it, CARE for your product, business, customers, employees, readers, and so on is what represents and reflects your business and who you really are. Well this is what I think he was trying to say anyway, I hope I’m close. As I listened to this Chapter I began to remember how my grandfather would always tell me to have integrity in everything I do, regardless if people are watching me or not. And I try to live my life following his advice, sometimes it’s hard but at the end of the day it pretty much sums up the kind of person that I want to be. I guess that I made a connection between those two words, “integrity” and “care” and that is exactly what I want my business to represent.

The Importance of Feedback

In the article, “10 Companies That Totally Rock Customer Service on Social Media” they talk about the importance of how you interact with your customers. They discuss how these 10 companies strive on positive feedback from customers, making them awesome companies and very profitable. You can access the complete list of these companies along with detail information of each in the article.  I want to focus on “Nike” which is number 4 in this list. Nike has over 4 million followers on twitter, and because of this they opened a twitter account exclusively for answering customer questions or inquiries and by doing so it allows them to answer very promptly. This shows that although Nike is a huge business they still care for their customer’s needs. After all, isn’t this what is all about, feeling appreciated and being heard.

In a Forbes article, “Douglas Stone, The Importance Of Feedback In Business Communications”, Stone talks about the various aspects of feedback and how important it is that businesses learn to receive it. By the way, Douglas Stone is not only a writer, a lecturer at Harvard Law but he also consults many organizations including Honda, Fidelity and Shell according to Dan Schawbel a contributor to Forbes.com.  In this article Stone expresses the importance of recognizing the goals that the company sets in relation to their feedback. He also mentions how important it is to  understand this feedback and how to act on it.

Stone gives three career advice tips:

1. Get good not only at receiving feedback, but at soliciting it.

2. Don’t frame your request for feedback around how it helps you. Frame it around how your improvement can help the organization.

3. Ask people about their life stories. Feedback and coaching don’t have to be about you in order for it to be helpful.

Tomorrow I will continue on Integration.

Thanks for reading.