Business Change Management

Is most of your success attributed to your great execution? Were you a master at getting things done? As a result of your "doing" orientation, did your company grow? 

Are you getting the sense that anthropologists are coming soon to a neighborhood near you? You might be right. Are you ready to be observed? 

Filming consumers in their natural habitats

According to Linda Tischler in an article in Fast Company not so long ago, “Ad agencies are hiring anthropologists and ethnographers to study and film consumers in their natural environments to see what they really eat, drink, and buy.”

Do you blog? If not, why not? Every time you post a blog, you add a page of relevant content to your site, which directly impacts your search ranking. And as I've written about here on Simon Associates (SAMC) (actually, blogged about), these days it's all about search.

Blogging is also how search engines will designate you as an authority in your business or industry. Here are some things you should know about why you should blog and how to share them.

I can’t tell you why but somehow I found myself on Fortune.com (December 28, 2015) and found an article entitled “The Best Way to Run a Startup With a Full-Time Job” by Belma McCaffrey, co-founder and CEO of Bould.

In recent workshops conducted by us, Simon Associates (SAMC), several questions repeatedly came up which reflected a common theme: CEOs are finally realizing that they need to build a culture of innovation into their company’s traditional operating systems.   

Typically, the core competency of a company is the antithesis of a creative, innovative organization. Their strength is and has been the effectiveness and efficiencies of their well-oiled machine—those processes, procedures and teams of employees (and their skill sets) who are very good at what they have always done. And more often than not, their board or senior executive team are very comfortable with those same traditions that brought them to where they are today. 

The feedback I’ve received from my last Hospital Impact post has been truly astounding. Clearly, on the topic of physician burnout, we’ve touched a nerve. Here’s just a sampling of the comments:

• "This is a critical, growing problem and one that should be given immediate attention." —Michael T

• "We need to look at physicians as being an overextended precious resource and focus not on just telling them what they need to do but to take a proactive role in engaging them around the values of best practice care." —Alan R

• "We are all trying to do more with shrinking resources and it reaches a point of overkill too easily. Nursing and medicine are noble professions, but not if they erode life's passion and job." —Dianne

So what to do about this growing, global problem? In my search for solutions, a follow-up FierceHealth blog emerged.

In a recent post, I was sharing with you some thoughts about Nintendo's Blue Ocean Strategy of targeting girls, which opened up a huge untapped market of nonusers for that company. Similarly, Disney created its new MagicBand wristbands in hopes of growing their base of frequent users and attracting nonusers by making it easier to enjoy its theme parks.

At Simon Associates, we do a lot of Inbound Marketing work with a number of clients across a variety of fields. So here I was this morning trying to get one of our clients to write blogs. Some get it…some don’t…but irrespective, it’s our responsibility to ensure that our clients get site visits and that they are viewed as authorities in their fields.

I always like to look at the blogs and discussions that struck me as most interesting over the past year. As a corporate anthropologist with a book coming out this spring (On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Raise Your Business to New Heights), I was particularly interested in how anthropological methods and tools were working in complex organizations.

Here are 5 blogs that I thought you might find of value.

Please enjoy them as I have!

What is the ROI of All That Social Media We Are Using?

At Simon Associates (SAMC), we have been speaking with a lot of customers and prospective clients about inbound marketing. Their first, last and frequent question is, “Where’s the beef?” or "What’s the ROI and how do I know it is working?"

The power and influence of social media today is truly astounding

What is so interesting about these questions is that the power and role of social media has changed over the past 5 years from a community building, networking tool to a real influencer on people’s buying decisions.

Having a robust social media presence is really a critical element in the development and execution of an inbound marketing strategy. But it is not always easy…particularly if you have limited resources and too many things to do.

How important is social media and why should you pay attention to it?

Let’s start with some data generated by HubSpot…our Inbound Marketing platform. And while the data is two years old, it is still very valid.

• 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form.
• 80% of US social network users prefer to connect to brands through Facebook…which means that it is a powerful tool to accompany organic search and pay per click.
• Research shows that compared to traditional outbound marketing, Inbound Marketing with a strong social media component delivers a 100% higher close rate on product sales.

As Blue Ocean Strategists, we are always working with our clients to find their Blue Ocean Strategies and then help them implement them. We also love reading blogs on what other BOS strategists are finding. Here are some of the most shared blog posts of 2015 for you to browse (along with a couple of ours). Enjoy the reading!

Ask yourself as you are reading these: Is it time to find my Blue Ocean Strategy?

Here are 10 of our favorite BOS blogs from 2015. Share some of yours with us and we will pass them along. Just send them in the comments form below.