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Profits Through Technology

15 January 2017

Dear old Twitter has now been around since March 2006 and since then has revolutionised the world of blogging. Before then we had to write lengthy blogs and then suddenly we could share our thoughts, meet friends and discuss the world in 140 characters or less. In the early days of Twitter the code of conduct was simply to chat and not to sell, which was seen as passé and not something friends did to friends.

Roll on to 2017 and Twitter is a hive of adverts, photos, video shorts and all manner of organisations telling us what they do and connecting with their customers. Of course other sites are available and Twitter is but one route to market; witness the rise of the Instagram heroines and the Vloggers who make a living from YouTube postings.

We don’t have to like social media, we don’t have to agree with it and yet we can understand it. We can acknowledge that technology is there to enable our business, by giving us a platform to reach our customers in ways that we could not even dream of 10 years ago.

Technology doesn’t make for good business, but good business can make use of technology. When Twitter grew up and selling was seen as Ok I used to tweet about my current book, Job Hunting 3.0, and I noticed that after every few tweets the Amazon ranking would improve. Tweet – sell. Tweet – sell. The book made it into the top 5,000 books on Amazon UK and has sold 3 copies a week ever since. Not huge sales, but steady sales, and mostly thanks to the power of social media.

Oh and a Twitter friend turned out to be a senior manager of a large organisation, who are now one of my biggest clients. My friend liked my tweets, checked out my website and blogs and realised that I was just the person his colleagues needed to help improve their organisational dynamics. This client was unknown to me at the time and there is a good chance I would never have met them at all, if it hadn’t been for social media.

I have also used Skype to coach people all over the world, including Australia, Norway, Switzerland and the USA. Some of my colleagues have scoffed at my use of Skype, insisting that face-to-face is always best. It isn’t. A good Skype connection and a quiet space to work in makes for just as effective coaching and means that my market is global and not limited to a three-hour drive radius.

We can fall into the trap of thinking that simply by buying a glitzy new smartphone and super-fast laptop our business profits will increase. They wont, unless we do the leg work to tell the world we are here and keep on making new friends and forging new business connections.

I predict that in 10 years time we will all travel less and will use technology to reach people and deliver key services in ways that are unknown to us today. Maybe I will be delivering my workshop hand-outs by drone, or attending lectures via giant screens – already I have been linked to distant campuses and individuals on laptops, so the people in the room represent only 70% of the total audience.

We can make a choice to embrace technology, or we can continue to assume that it’s not relevant for our business, because somehow we are ‘special’ or ‘different.’ The truth is that only a tiny minority of businesses are really that special and we are probably not one of them, so why take the risk?

Technology can be harnessed to increase our profits. We can all use it wisely! What do you need to embrace this year?

Next week: Circadian Rhythm Selling