Opportunity Analysis in Bad Times

Posted on February 23, 2009 by ellendnaylor

I had a most provocative breakfast with my dear friend, Cyndy Claussen on Saturday.  Like many around the world we’re trying to figure out how to make it in this wretched economy.  The doom and gloom of economic woes is omnipresent.  But with a little attitude adjustment, you can be opportunistic.

For personal investing, think about the businesses that people will still frequent in this bad economy such as Wal-Mart or Costco, the discount big stores.  How about mainstream grocery stores like Safeway and Kroger? They’ll probably gain at the expense of most restaurants, except McDonald’s. What about small, regional banks which were not caught up in this mortgage mess?  For all the talk about clean energy, I don’t think oil companies are going away any time soon.  I’m not going to pretend I can guess the right time to get back into the stock market, but I think if you’re willing to do the research and track companies every day, there are opportunities.  And there is plenty of free research on the Internet through Google Alerts, Yahoo Finance and The Street.

Now that the big banks are being bailed out, they have an opportunity to lend money to exciting new businesses.  The government also has this opportunity and I like the start in the Obama stimulus package where renewable energy business innovators can monetize their tax credits directly through the US Treasury for for projects that start between now and the end of 2010.

I enjoyed Tom Friedman’s perspective in yesterday’s NY Times column, “Start Up the Risk-Takers.” He discusses how America is bailing out our major businesses, like the auto industry which might still not survive, or will be greatly slimmed down best case.  While we need to shore up our banking industry as it’s the foundation for business, we need to consider the entrepreneurial businesses, which have made America great such as Google, Intel and Microsoft.  Let’s be on the lookout for the next Google to invest in.  We still have great innovation in America.  Let’s not curb their enthusiasm. Look for the next generation of information technology, bio-tech, nanotech and clean-energy companies to be what pulls America out of this recession: not only with their great ideas, but with their sense of excitement and hunger to succeed.

As a small business, I am affected by this economy as well.  This time last year, I had solid paying training gigs around the world.  This year I am doing webinars.  Management consulting gigs are not rolling in either, so I have returned to my knitting: research projects and monitoring industry trends, key customer activity, competitors, products and brands.  There is always demand for research.  I have expanded my social networks in the past year and notice that really enhances the resources I can draw on to supplement primary and secondary research.

We all need to make adjustments in these tough times: as consumers, personal investors, corporate investors and small businesses.  Some of us have more choices than others.  Don’t just wallow in this media.  Stand back and be flexible: think opportunistically.

What opportunities are you digging up in these crazy times? I would love to hear from you.

Filed under: opportunity analysis, research, social networks | 1 Comment »

Enhance your Early Warning Process through Social Networks & Social Media

Posted on February 14, 2009 by ellendnaylor

In his post, “Beating Dunbar’s Number,” Chris Brogan challenges us to become a member of the magic Dunbar 150 in people’s networks when we want to have a closer relationship. He provokes us to organize the many connections we make through social networks into a database so we can find them easily without remembering their names and recall how/where we met, etc.

I translate this thinking as a competitive intelligence professional into setting up an early warning process using the power of social networks. One of the common pitfalls of many early warning initiatives is that we connect with the people we know and are comfortable with, and get surprised by disruptive technology or a competitor’s acquisition. We also rely too heavily on secondary research on the Internet, and don’t verify our sources. While the information might look good, it can be outdated or a competitor may purposefully mislead.

Social networks are another source to include in your early warning process since they lead to connections that you will never make through Web 1.0 Internet searching, paid databases, company connections and the same external suspects, such as industry experts, scientists and the investment community. Find your industry’s social networks and forums. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are my favorite general social networks for business connections. YouTube, VidePedia and Blinkx are great video sources.

LinkedIn contains over 30 million people. Grow your LinkedIn network: find the people that matter to you: for example, industry experts and competitor alumni and Link In with them. Connecting on LinkedIn is one way to warm up a phone call or email that you might direct to a person. Qualify those who should become part of your early warning process. Once you connect with them, see if any of their connections would be a good fit. Think: who do you want to keep as loose connections?  Which ones should you follow-up with?  How will you communicate with them? Do you call them, email them, find them on Twitter or perhaps comment through a blog post or industry forum? In a cooperative spirit, what will you share with them that they might value? Join relevant industry LinkedIn groups. Search the questions and answers section on LinkedIn. Set up alerts.

Twitter is another great social network since you can search for people by using keyword searching within Twitter. You can either use Twitter Search or twilert. For example, I want to connect with people who do or are interested in competitive intelligence. I set up a twilert which forwards me the Tweets from people who used the words competitive intelligence, just like I do with Google Alerts.

Another great way to find people is through the blogosphere. However, if you want to be more methodical, start with Technorati, Delicious and Digg to find blogs that are relevant to your industry, and identify the most popular ones. In Technorati, the most popular blogs have the most authority. In Delicious and Digg, these are the blog posts which people have tagged most often. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb  wrote an excellent blog, How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet, which provides a methodology to find the best and most relevant blogs to support any topic. I often find people synchronistically through blogs I find on Alltop or Stumbleupon. Sometimes the best blogs have no authority in Technorati since the author hasn’t marketed himself, but is a wealth of information.

The point is: social networks are fertile ground for locating people to include in your early warning process.  Find them, qualify them, organize them in your database, and decide how often you will connect with them or just tag them as loose connections to contact as needed.

How do you use social media to help with your early warning process?  Are there any tips which you have uncovered?

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, cooperative, LinkedIn, social networks, Twitter | Comments Off on Enhance your Early Warning Process through Social Networks & Social Media

Next Generation Competitive Intelligence Deliverables: SCIP Webinar

Posted on February 12, 2009 by ellendnaylor

This promises to be a great webinar which coincidentally illustrates cooperative intelligence practices, both cooperative communication and cooperative connection. The material Marty Palka covers will also be useful outside of the competitive intelligence profession. Anyone who provides a service will benefit from his ideas.

This Webinar is sponsored by SCIP.
“Next Generation Competitive Intelligence Deliverables ”
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. USA EST; Feb. 18, 2009
Fee: Member $95*  Non-member $195*
*A site is one computer used to view the Webinar
Register Here.   scip-webinar-archives

Next generation companies will be more collaborative with far more interactions among their customers, suppliers, employees and partners. This will mandate that competitive intelligence professionals incorporate next generation technology when creating competitive intelligence deliverables.

Through his experience at Cisco, Marty will tell you how to communicate more effectively by adding Web 2.0 technology to your communication arsenal.  He will talk about how to truly connect with people, and how to rate and assess the connection.  Through social networks, you connect with so many more people that you need to stand back and re-assess your connections periodically to concentrate on the most valuable, and to reach out to people in areas where you might be weak, such as innovation.  I like that Marty will share ideas on the other end of connection: how people assess you and your deliverables as a competitive intelligence professional.  It will be the best of both worlds: traditional and Web 2.0 connecting and communicating!

Here are key points that Marty will cover:

1) The Virtual Competitive Intelligence Professional: Locate, rank and rate experts within your organization.
2) Video: Change the process to take advantage of video’s unique attributes to deliver competitive intelligence.
3) Global: Go where the expertise is 24 hours a day.
4) Green: Right for the world and right for your business.
Metrics measure the success of Cisco’s competitive intelligence deliverables.
Quantitative: Number of hits, listeners, viewers, interactions, and actions taken. Qualitative: Recommendations, Revenue, Profitability, Setting the Industry Agenda.

Marty Palka is Chief Intelligence Analyst, (CIA), Investor Relations for Cisco Systems. He has contributed to Cisco Systems’ strategic and tactical intelligence initiatives since joining the company in 1995. Previously he was a Director and Principal Analyst at Dataquest. He has also worked at SGI, Prime Computer, and Data General. He earned his M.B.A and B.S. from Boston University.

Questions:
Contact Registration: memberservices@scip.org
Program content & logistics: Sandy Skipper at +1.703.739.0696 x110, sskipper@scip.org
Robyn Reals at +1.703.739.0696 X107, rreals@scip.org

Learn about more SCIP events.

Learn about SCIP’s annual conference here.scip-09-chicago

Take advantage of the special Early Bird Reduced rate until the close of registration, April 12th, 2009.  All that is required is that my name, Ellen Naylor, be mentioned on the attached form which should be faxed to 703-739-2524.

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, Cooperative Intelligence, creativity, social networks | Comments Off on Next Generation Competitive Intelligence Deliverables: SCIP Webinar

Netiquette on LinkedIn

Posted on February 2, 2009 by ellendnaylor

LinkedIn is primarily a business to business social network with over 30 million members as of Jan. 09.  Users have different objectives and come from different cultures on LinkedIn.  Some people use it to connect with people who they would never otherwise know.  These people benefit from the synchronicity of connecting that often happens in my field of competitive intelligence during the process of cold calling where one source tells the caller the names of additional sources. At the other end of the spectrum are those who will only connect with people they know. Remember there is an individual behind that electronic connection to avoid blunders that put you in WIFM-land. (what’s in it for me)

Here are 12 LinkedIn bad habits I find particularly annoying:

1. The writer tries to make the invitations look customized.  I see right through that, so does everyone else.  I prefer invitations that get right to the point and invite me to join a person’s LinkedIn network.  If it’s customized I like that even better and I can tell for example that s/he decided to connect with me based on something s/he read from my profile or perhaps we are in the same LinkedIn group.  If I don’t know the person that well, I appreciate knowing how we met.

2. I don’t like being solicited for non-relevant services by my direct LinkedIn connections.  That is the downside of being a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker).  Others assume that we want to receive emails that promote their business.

3. I am continually asked to LinkIn with people who I am already connected with.  Some of them send out big email blasts and ask everyone to connect with them and claim they’re out of invitations (many of them are not).

4. If you want someone to connect with you on LinkedIn, ask them.  Some people ask me to go to their profile and initiate the invitation.  They often claim to be out of invitations.  Most of them are not.  They want you to use up your invitations.

5. I don’t like being invited into LinkedIn groups that obviously are not a good match for me.  For example, many recruiters have invited me to join their recruiting group on LinkedIn.  I am not a recruiter and wish they would look more look at targeted profiles before they send out these massive email blasts.

6. I don’t like being asked to recommend someone unless I know him or her.  Some people ask me who barely know me.  It makes me feel like I’m part of their cattle drive to collect endorsements, and that they don’t care about the quality.  You can tell when an endorsement is shallow so I don’t know why anyone would want one.

7. I also get aggravated by those who thank me for connecting with them and proceed to write me a long sales pitch. If you want people to read your “thank-you for connecting note,” you need to make it personal or don’t bother!  “Thanks you for connecting: let me know how I can help you” is a “non-thank-you” note.

8. LinkedIn has a Question and Answer section.  Some people ask questions to direct people to their business and it’s really an obnoxious ploy.  You can tell by how they ask the question and look at the name of their business and title.

9. Many people’s questions are dumb.  They’re so broad that you could write a book to answer them or they’re so unclear and in such poor English that I don’t understand them.  Think! Proofread!  Remember, the quality of your answers is directly related to the quality of your questions.

10. When answering questions, answer the question in the spirit of sharing and giving.  We don’t want to read all about your business.  LinkedIn links readers back to your profile.  It’s just like people who overtly advertise their business while making a presentation.  It turns people off.  You’ll get plenty of business by giving a good presentation, just like you will if you give good answers and are declared an expert on LinkedIn.

11. I am aggravated by people on LinkedIn whose profiles tell me nothing about what they do.  They are as brief as they can be and just go back through a couple of jobs, and I know they’re older than that.  These are often the same ones who are not open to being contacted: why are they on LinkedIn?

12. At the bottom of a person’s profile, some people are only willing to be contacted if it benefits them.  Their profile reads something like this:

Contact Settings
Interested In

business deals                    job inquiries
career opportunities

Someone who is a giver will include all the Contact Settings which includes ways that person might help others:

Contact Settings
Interested In

career opportunities           consulting offers
new ventures                        job inquiries
expertise requests              business deals
reference requests             getting back in touch

So these are my Big 12 No No’s on LinkedIn.  Do you have others to add?

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, LinkedIn, social networks | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

Connect Cooperatively through your social & old fashioned networks

Posted on January 28, 2009 by ellendnaylor

When Bonnie Hohhof, SCIP’s editor of Competitive Intelligence Magazine asked me to write about social networking etiquette, I was totally overwhelmed since there is reams of information on this topic.  How could I make it meaningful to SCIP members?  I found my answer in Chris Brogan‘s blog entry of Jan. 27, 2009 entitled, “You’re All Doing It Wrong.”

I loved this post so much that I copied it below and invite you to check out all the comments that this short provocative post attracted, 111 as this post is published.

• “You follow too many people on Twitter.
• You don’t allow blog comments.
• You add people to LinkedIn that you don’t know very well.
• You have ads on your blog.
• You use partial RSS feeds.
• Your blog posts are too short (too long).
• You shoot really long videos and don’t edit.
• You don’t follow people back.
• You swear.
• You talk in LOLcat speak.
• You aren’t using FriendFeed.
• You are using FriendFeed.
• You push the same updates to every platform.
• You don’t use Creative Commons.

Guess what? We’re all doing it wrong. Because we’re all doing it our own way, and it’s not always going to match the way you think it works best.”

People’s objectives in using social networks are very individual and are influenced by our gender, background, culture and Internet savvy.

In my field of competitive intelligence I notice there are two camps: those who want to find data about their competitors and don’t want to be found– mostly corporate managers and consultants who collect competitive data; and those who want to be found– management and research consultants looking for their next gig.  I notice many of my colleagues – I’m one of those shameless consultants — will only connect with people they know personally on LinkedIn and other networks.  I feel they are missing the opportunity for synchronicity to connect with people they would never meet except through connecting via strangers.  As we conduct cold calling to collect competitive intelligence, we often experience a similar synchronicity as one contact leads to another and another…the same thing happens in social networking when you connect with “strangers” if you are open to it.  Since you talk with so many people at one time through social networking the synchronicity is multiplied.

The point is with social networking, as with in-person networking you have to decide what works best for you based on your objectives for social networking, your ethics and philosophy and recognize that everyone you connect with has their own standards which might be different from yours.  Remember there is a person behind that electronic connection who has feelings in the same way that person has when you shake their hand physically.  Thus it takes time to build a successful social networking presence just like it does using the old fashioned way through meetings and phone calls.  Relationships take time to develop, and the best way to nourish them is through a real communication, such as a customized communication when you first connect and by being a generous giver.

At the end of the day, you create and tweak your brand and your personality through the various forms of connecting in cyberspace which includes social networks, blogs, your website, videos, podcasts, e-mails and text messages.  Just remember you can’t retract what you have written, and each communication leaves a permanent record in cyberspace.

Don’t forget that old fashioned marketing over the telephone, in-person meetings and personal notes still work too.  In fact I find they work great since so many have jumped into the social networking bandwaggon and have forgotten the value of personal connections the old fashioned way.  What’s been your experience with connecting on social networks versus traditional marketing? What works for you?

Filed under: communication, Competitive Intelligence, connection, Cooperative Intelligence, LinkedIn, social networks | Comments Off on Connect Cooperatively through your social & old fashioned networks

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