Read. Think. Act.

Catherine Read

Archives for 2009

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We’re in the People Business

One of the most memorable quotes attributed to Howard Schultz, Founder and CEO of Starbucks: “We are not in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business serving coffee.” I use this quote in a presentation I give on “The Consumer Experience” as a way of distilling for employees the very essence of what all businesses should recognize.  Replace “coffee” with your product or service and the same would be true.

I will generalize here and say that the vast majority of us prefer to do business with those we like and we trust.  Beyond the basics of a quality product and good customer service, we are bound by our relationships with people.  Another favorite quote of mine is one I recall being in Jack Welch’s book Winning.  When asked about which restaurant was his favorite, he replied: “The one where they know my name.”Read More

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Blogging Comes of Age in the Movies

(Jul 22, 2009) Nora Ephron’s new movie Julie & Julia (opening Aug. 7th) does for blogging what her 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail did for email.  The movie is based on the true stories of two very different women: Julia Child, the first celebrity cooking show host and author of the iconic Mastering the Art of French Cooking (in its 49th printing); and Julie Powell, a would-be writer who decides to spend a year cooking every recipe in that cookbook and blogging about it.  Powell’s blog, “The Julie/Julia Project” debuted in 2002 and her resulting book Julie & Julia was published in 2005.

It is a wonderful story on many levels.  Julie discovers that blogging allows her to be a “writer” without benefit of publisher and she builds a community of readers along the way.  It is the forerunner of what we accept today as the community created by social media platforms.  Those various platforms reach well beyond blogging and into social networking sites such as Facebook and micro-blogging sites like Twitter.Read More

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Ripped from the Headlines – Twitter

(Jul 6, 2009) For anyone who spends time online, the mention of certain social media tools has become ubiquitous no matter where you go.  Facebooking has become a verb like Googling.  Digg is both a website and something you do to promote what you like on the web.

Twitter has enjoyed a meteoric rise up the charts of web awareness over the last eight months, starting with it’s use around the inauguration events in November 2008 and really coming into focus around the events in Mumbai a few weeks later.Read More

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Applying Tools to Purpose

(July 2, 2009) A social media strategy has to be built on the foundation of applying tools to purpose.  There are numerous tools available on the web to reach existing customers and potential customers, but how do you select which tools to use? Start by identifying what the purpose of reaching out through that platform will be.

Comcast made a name for themselves by using Twitter for customer service.  Recently Dell announced they generated $2 million in revenue directly from Twitter.  Facebook announced they sold triple the number of ads this year as they did last year.  Linked-In was featured in the current issue of BusinessWeek as being a new and more effective way of recruiting that challenges the “big board” online job services.

At this stage, many businesses and business professionals have not invested a great deal of time in learning about the many social media tools or in using them to meet a specific goal.  Many platforms can compliment existing marketing efforts “offline” and a good marketing strategy will include ways in which all marketing tools are tied together to pull people toward the information you want them to see no matter which “doorway” they come through.Read More