Social media and the Internet are powerful tools for small businesses. That’s because their customers increasingly begin their shopping on the Internet, and they use social media such as online reviews when considering which products to buy and which businesses to support.

For that reason, the Internet is a double-edged sword. Used well, the Internet and social media can help small businesses. Online marketing techniques and tools, for example, can help small businesses reach prospective customers who otherwise would have no way of knowing about them. Online marketing can help small businesses sell goods and services anywhere around the world, 24×7. And online marketing can help small businesses compete with giant corporations.

However, if ignored by small companies, the Internet can hurt business. Witness the following case in point.

Customer Service Sucked!

A while back I met the owner of Foy’s Bike Shop in Woodland, Calif., when I went into the store to buy an inner tube. When I got back home, I looked him up online to see what Foy’s is doing in the way of online marketing. Turns out, the bike shop didn’t have a website (and still doesn’t). Instead, my search on Bing turned up the following results.

The very first result listed a customer who had not had a positive experience: “I recently bought a bike from Foy’s. It took 4 months to get it. Customer service sucked!”

To be fair, there were also a number of positive reviews in the results page. And, as I mentioned, I had met the owner myself, and I thought he was quite helpful and pleasant.

Still, as this example shows, small businesses ignore online marketing at their own peril. If they are not proactive, if they don’t invest time and effort creating and managing an online presence, it will be managed for them. And not necessarily in ways they prefer.

In 1966, Alfred Peet opened his first coffee shop at the corner of Vine & Walnut in Berkeley, Calif. It’s still there, 46 years later. A lovely store with dark wood, a distinctly neighborhood feel, and an unpretentious atmosphere, the original Peet’s Coffee has arguably had the single most important impact in coffee drinking in the US in the last 50 years, and possibly around the world.

Why? Because it inspired Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker (all friends of Alfred Peet) to open a small coffee shop of their own up in Seattle. You may have heard of it.

Founded in 1971, Starbucks is “the largest coffeehouse company in the world,” says Wikipedia. Though it’s grown much faster than Peet’s, Starbucks was modeled on that original café in Berkeley, especially its style of dark-roasted drip coffee. Currently there are more than 17,000 Starbucks stores around the world, according to the company’s website. So although it’s true that people have been drinking coffee for 500 years, I think it’s fair to say that the way we think about coffee today is how Starbucks taught us to think about it.

But that may start to change. Continue reading →

Buried in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal was an interesting point about the insight of two women who served in leadership roles at the Fed prior to the financial crisis. The point was a subtle one, and it appeared only at the end of the article. You could easily gloss over it.

What the article seems to suggest is that, in contrast to a group of men who may have been clouded by miscalculations (and hubris), women at the Fed demonstrated better foresight and greater caution with regard to the US economy.

And it got me thinking: Would the US economy have fallen less – or rebounded sooner – if the Federal Reserve were run by a woman? Continue reading →

I think we can now sound a note of cautious optimism in the wake of Apple’s announcement that it had asked the Fair Labor Association to inspect its factories in China. (Read Apple’s press release.) Apple’s actions come in the wake of substantial press coverage and public outcry over the working conditions of factory employees.

I also think we can assume that it was this public and media pressure and the FLA’s inspections that were responsible for even more important and potentially far-reaching changes. Continue reading →

Advertising veteran Martin Lindstrom, who authored Buyology and has written extensively on branding, recently published something of a manifesto on branding and ethics for Fast Company. It’s a good piece: short, provocative, and worth reading.

In it, Lindstrom refers to himself as a “brand futurist” whose job in part is “to predict the future.” And indeed, if his word is to be trusted, he’s made some accurate predictions in the past – for example, envisioning a Facebook-like experience before Facebook came into being. (This was, notably, right around the time that MySpace appeared.)

Looking forward into the rest of 2012 and beyond, Lindstrom makes this bold statement:

“My prediction for 2012 is a rise in the importance of ethics. I foresee a kind of WikiLeaks emerging to tackle the maneuvrings of less-ethical brands. The move will come from an independent organization with the sole mission of disclosing what those companies are up to. Most companies will be vulnerable to being targeted, despite having some sort of written standards.”

I agree with Lindstrom on the growing importance of ethics in business, but I suggest that his “prediction” has in fact already come true. Continue reading →

Companies go public to raise capital, usually for expansion. Manufacturers build factories. Retailers fund new stores. That’s good for them and good for the economy. These businesses use capital investment for production, innovation, sales, and hiring.

But expansion doesn’t appear to be Facebook’s motivation.

If you read the letter from Mark Zuckerberg that was included in the SEC filing, you may notice that there is a lot of talk about Facebook’s mission, but very little about why an IPO is necessary or beneficial for the company. Is that by design? Continue reading →

Apple recently released a report listing its major suppliers and detailing labor conditions among those suppliers in China. Conditions at Chinese factories, which have led to numerous suicides, had already been documented by others, from the New York Times to performance artist Mike Daisy. Apple, the second-largest company in the world by market cap, appears finally to be acknowledging problems:

• 62% of suppliers weren’t compliant with working-hours limits.
• 32% weren’t compliant with hazardous-substance management practices.
• 35% failed to meet Apple’s standards to prevent worker injuries. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

It’s good to see Apple making an effort to monitor and improve working conditions at its factories. But the company needs to do more. Those of us who own Apple products must insist that they do. As a result, we need to expect – no, we need to volunteer – to pay higher prices. Why? Continue reading →

Everyone has a gift to give. I truly believe that. When my grandfather, LeRoy Oesch, died last week in St. Louis at the age of 96, it seemed fitting to think about the gifts he gave to those of us who knew him. To me he offered two: the gift of hard work and the gift of generosity.

When he was a young man growing up in the Great Depression, there were times when he was the only one in his family who brought in a paycheck. Paid work was hard to come by in the 1930s, and what he earned had to help put food on the table for a family with 11 children. Continue reading →

It’s surprising to me how few companies know how to apologize. The problem isn’t limited to the executives of corporate America, of course. I believe it’s endemic to our society, and perhaps no more clearly than among those who should be our role models. From Barry Bonds to Brett Favre, from Bill Clinton to Anthony Weiner, our public figures seem to prefer denial (some might call it lying) to acceptance of responsibility (at least initially). And when they do apologize, as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings did – sort of – that admission of responsibility so often comes across as insincere.

But criticizing corporate executives (and celebrities) is not the focus of this blog post. Instead, I want to use this space to highlight and celebrate one company that in my opinion got it right: FedEx.

This video achieves what I believe are the 7 essential steps of a true apology Continue reading →

We did it! I set a goal of raising $5,000 for charity: water, and together we raised $7,160! To everyone who contributed – and you know who you are – I just want to say, “You rock!”