Yesterday we were lazy, now we have to survive...

It was only a little over a year ago when being “fat and happy” was the way of life and people and their businesses were living the “good life”, like with Dany Mitchell, pictured with me, from Trattoria Mitchelli's. Today, those same people are trying to survive – my how the world has changed and changed all of us. But there is a silver lining to this…

The silver lining is called INNOVATION. When your back is against the wall you have two choices, flee or fight – been that way ever since the caveman. Those that flee disappear and go out of business – we’ve all seen that from small businesses to big banks and even bigger companies. They lived a life of “fat and happy” for so long they forgot about creativity and innovation. They are gone now. The world has been purging itself from these for the past 18 months.

Enter social media – the new (and inexpensive) way to add to creativity and boost innovation. How, you might ask, can social media boost innovation? Lots of ways. Let me give you one thought to get your juices flowing. Remember all those products you might have designed, built or even thought of but decided that to go into full production, put together a marketing campaign and materials and figure out a way to sell it was way too expensive and risky? What if you could “test the market” for your product before you ever had to do any of that stuff. You can today.

Today you can throw a product (or pre-launched) product into the internet airwaves through social media and get immediate reaction from people all over the world. Heck, you can even put it out there for people to order and if they order it, you can then go into production and build it. And with social media, you get to do that for little to no cost because the tools you use are FREE. Now you can do a test launch like a Proctor and Gamble and spend virtually nothing. How cool is that!

And if people start talking about it, you get the power of Word-of-Mouth to help you accelerate the conversation and the comments so you know exactly what people are thinking, wanting and looking for before you ever started production. You just created the ability to conduct “mini-focus groups” in real time to direct your development efforts to be in direct alignment with what your customers are willing to buy right now! The world has changed…