Recently I was selected to receive a copy of The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social
Baer and Naslund have identified seven shifts that successful businesses will make to become more successful in our new connected social business world. After a brief introduction they dive right in, with each shift being its own chapter in the book. In the first chapter “Engineer a New Bedrock”, they look at basic culture shifts needed for social business success. These changes will be disruptive, but they’re necessary. I appreciate the fact that the authors are up front – I’ve seen more than a few new media folks talk about fitting social into old business practices and I appreciate the straightforwardness of their approach.
Throughout the book, Microsoft Tags are place amongst the text. They’re like QR tags, but in a special Microsoft flavor. When scanned with a smartphone, the user ends up at a webpage with additional resources. The idea of additional resources is nice but the Microsoft Tags fail in a few ways. In addition to the visual distraction while reading, I question using a barely-known Microsoft Tag as compared with a more widely-accepted QR code… was Microsoft a sponsor of this? The other issue was that a phone seems like an odd way to point users towards additional information – rather than simply sending someone to a resources page via their computer, it was a bit awkward at times to check out the information on the small screen of a smartphone. But enough about the tags – back to the content.
A lot of the material in the book is aimed at a corporate audience but the principles apply to businesses of all sizes including individuals. A discussion of trusting one’s employees is important; without trust and empowerment a business will be back to the old model of single spokespeople rather than the social model where every employee is a brand representative. How do you trust they’ll know what to do? It’s based on that new bedrock mentioned previously. Baer and Naslund provide insight as to how a larger organization might organize their social business efforts.
Shift number four is one of answering the social phone… listening. This is one area where I think many small businesses, including photographers, are missing opportunities. The ability to monitor online for mentions of one’s business, industry, or competitors can be a key method to develop new business and maintain a brand. The authors provide examples of both how to listen (the tools) as well as what to listen for.
The next topic is tools and specific strategies for making the most of social communications such as blogging, microblogging, social networking, and more. Plenty of actionable tips are included for businesses of all shapes and sizes. There’s quite a bit of space devoted to social media crisis management… Interesting reading but probably not overly-relevant for the average photographer. The final topic in the book is that of measurement and analytics – something that’s of importance for anyone using social media. Businesses and individuals should be looking at the results of business development and marketing efforts and make future decisions based on actual data rather than intuition or suspicion.
Overall the book was a great read full of useful information and calls to action about the changing rules of business. While parts definitely applied more to larger organizations, most of the concepts and examples are also applicable to small and single-person businesses and I think photographers can learn from this book.
Want a free copy of the book? The authors have provided a copy for me to give away to a Picture Pundit reader. Just leave a short comment below indicating something you’re curious about that I mentioned in my review. I’ll select one winner at random next Monday February 21st at noon (PST) – be sure to leave a valid email address.
