Social Media Marketing: Is Your Business Built for the Present or the Past?
One of my all-time favorite movies is the original 1960 version of The Time Machine 1960 starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux, directed by George Pal. The film is based on an H.G. Wells novel that mirrored the author’s own socialist political views and contempt for what he considered to be an undisciplined industrialization of his world. Well’s writing was also influenced by Ray Lankester’s theories about social degeneration, which becomes very evident in the plot.
I enjoy the written works of authors like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Both men were well ahead of their times; often predicting the future with a high degree of accuracy. In fact, some of their unsettling predictions may come a little too close for comfort these days.
There is a very important scene in “The Time Machine” in which “The Time Traveler,” portrayed by Rod Taylor, tries to make some sense about how and why a futuristic society (A.D. 802,701) of timid and childlike people (the Eloi) seemingly stopped developing both socially and intellectually. It is very apparent that the Eloi had no government, no laws and no interest in advanced learning or self-discovery. Curious, The Time Traveler asks to see their books, but when he finds them all covered in dust and rotted by mold, he becomes outraged.
H.G. Wells wrote “The Time Machine” at the turn of the last century; more than one hundred years ago. Flash forward to August 19, 2010 and this rather sobering Wall Street Journal business headline – “Clearance Sale: Barnes & Noble Didn’t Evolve Enough.” The sad news for all book lovers reads as follows; “The giant bookstore chain, whose superstores once struck fear into the hearts of independent booksellers everywhere, put itself up for sale this month, rendering it the corporate equivalent of the remaindered books it sells at a discount.” The WSJ business obituary reflects on what may be the beginning of the end for this once proud bookselling giant by offering to its readers that “the simple explanation for Barnes & Noble’s decline is the Internet, which spawned Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN – News), e-readers and digital books. But that didn’t have to be the end for B&N, which had a dominant market position and should have out-Amazoned Amazon, leveraging its brand and innovating when it began marketing and selling books online.” In short, Barnes and Noble did much too little and far too late. They now find themselves a victim of missed opportunities.
Thankfully, George Orwell’s “1984″ social predictions weren’t on the mark. Let us all hope that H.G. Wells’s visions of A.D. 802,701 have not already begun to take shape more than 800,000 years earlier than he surmised, with the death of physical books.
Unfortunately, The Eloi didn’t have Kindles, nooks or iPads to replace their books. Fortunately, we do. They didn’t have Amazon.com to sell and ship them books, online, cheaper and faster than traditional booksellers.This is something that Borders and Barnes and Noble have both had to encounter as their chief competitor’s strengths and both have failed miserably at countering them. Sadly, those two mega-chains apparently couldn’t see the future as well as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells once did. This is why they have allowed themselves to become modern day dinosaurs in the early twenty-first century.
Enter the Class of 2014, just starting college next month. All business people need to begin studying their cultural mindset very carefully, because it makes up the new consumer persona – and perhaps – a reason why the once mighty Barnes and Noble is crashing and burning after 93 years in business.
According to the just released Benoit College (Wis.) Mindset List, most of the incoming freshman class was born in 1992. According to the list authors; “for these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.” There is even more unsettling (for many of us) facts to digest:
1. “Few in the class know how to write in cursive.”
2. “Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.”
3. “Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.”
4. “They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel.”
5. “Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.”
Our world is rapidly changing and the way we all remember it will only be reflected in the stories we tell our grandchildren. AOL may someday be our grandparent’s horse and buggy. The question that remains for us is will we adapt to the changes or will we continue to live in the past and fall behind? There is even a greater sense of urgency. Will our established, brick and mortar businesses meet the needs of the new consumer or will they resist change, wither and die?
For me, this week was the perfect storm for business news, on all possible fronts. Edmund S. Phelps, of the New York Times, wrote that the faltering US “(The) Economy Needs a Bit of Ingenuity.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Barnes and Noble, is a soon to be fallen giant. The Washington Post released the findings of Beloit College’s annual freshman mindset survey. And, my local newspaper, the Asbury Park Press (NJ), reported on the death of Silvert’s Furniture and Design Center, a legendary mainstay in my town’s business community (Freehold Borough, NJ) after 81 years in business.
“We’ve always changed with the times,” said current owner Larry Iserson, grandson-in-law of (Silvert’s Furniture) the original founder, Isadore Silvert. “But there was never a rougher time for us than right now.”
Iserson went on to explain how his business weathered earlier storms in its long and storied history. “As Freehold changed, so did Silvert’s.”There was an influx of people from outside moving to Freehold, and it changed the business, so we changed the looks with the times,” he said.
Influx of people from the outside? Hmmm. Isn’t that equivalent to what Beloit College is considering to be a new generational culture with different backgrounds, values, ideas, needs wants and methods? I think so.
These four matrixed news stories need to serve as a wakeup call for all business people, who are resisting change and desperately trying to hold on to the old ways of doing business. Obviously, they are running against the winds of change.
Larry Iserson reflects on Silvert’s Furniture’s past and laments that “people come in all the time and say, ‘We still have a sofa we bought from you 25 years ago.’ Who keeps a sofa for 25 years, anymore? At least one that hasn’t already fallen apart? We live in a disposable world, these days. That much has changed and significantly altered Silvert’s long standing business strategy – to sell moderately-priced, quality furniture. This is difficult to do in the “ready, set, throw (away)” furniture world IKEA, Walmart and Big Lots.
The Class of 2014 was just 6 years old when Spencer Johnson released his business best seller, “Who Moved the Cheese?” In his 1998 book, Johnson made the following business and lifestyle recommendations, which still hold true in the age of Social Media and online marketing:
Change Happens
They Keep Moving The Cheese
Anticipate Change
Get Ready For The Cheese To Move
Monitor Change
Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old
Adapt To Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese
Change
Move With The Cheese
Enjoy Change!
Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!
Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again & Again
They Keep Moving The Cheese.
In 1998, I was personally enjoying my twentieth year as a human resources recruiter, seeking great candidates through telephone cold calling. Today’s recruiters conduct Boolean searches on the Web to find those same people, quicker and easier. I saw what was coming and I learned how to Boolean search. I also learned how to “mine” the best employment candidates on Monster, Hot Jobs and CareerBuilder. I had no choice, but to change with the times.
And, when the great recession of 2007 hit and hiring began to lag, I began to reinvent myself. No one ever said that I would have to die a recruiter. So, at almost 54 years old I am reinvented and happily employed. I work in a brand new career field that wasn’t even thought of back in 1998. Today, I am Director of Social Media for RiaEnjolie, Inc, the world’s 6th ranked quick website solutions company. Quick website solutions didn’t exist in 1998, either. Now they do and many more people are buying them from us rather than from traditional web design and development companies, which often require a volume of cash and offer longer waiting times of up to several months for wensite launch. RiaEnjolie is an example of a company built for today’s consumers.
If you are a business of any size and are not anticipating and monitoring change, particularly with regard to technology and the Internet, you could be at risk. Do you have a state-of-the-art website? Are you engaging in social media marketing, routinely using platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, FourSquare, LinkedIn and Twitter? Are you blogging to show potential customers that you are a subject matter expert they need to be doing business with? Can local people seeking your products and services easily find you in online directories? These are just a few of the things that you should be considering well before the Class of 2014 graduates. After all, they are your new customers and only vaguely remember a time when less people shopped and bought things online.
Marc LeVine is Social Media Director for RiaEnjolie, Inc, (www.RiaEnjolie.com) a webpage design company specializing in websites for small and medium businesses.
Connect with Marc on Twitter: ICANEWFRIEND
About the Author
Marc LeVine is Social Media Director for RiaEnjolie, Inc, (www.RiaEnjolie.com) a webpage design company specializing in websites for small and medium businesses.
Connect with Marc on Twitter: ICANEWFRIEND
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