David Harkins' Blog

Beware of Golden Anchors

Golden Handcuffs eventually create what I call, “Golden Anchors”; employees who are too vested to leave, too secure in their current position and responsibilities, and too comfortable with their personal lifestyle. Beware of these Golden Anchors, for they are the quiet saboteurs of any change initiative within your organization.

READ: How Angels Value Entrepreneurial Investment

How to measure social media

There is much talk in marketing circles about how to measure the impact of social media. Some measurements are hard, such as actual campaign response and conversion rate measures. Others are a bit softer, such as measuring campaign reaction frequency and tone (e.g., positive, neutral, negative). While both are valid measures, I do think we have been missing a broader, yet critical component of our measures—the overall financial impact of word-of-mouth (WOM) spread.

READ: How Angels Value Entrepreneurial Investment

Why we need social media

We need social media tools to help us maintain our ability to be human in the face of the demands made on us by our culture, our peers, and ourselves. These tools are now such an essential part of how we function as individuals and who we are together as a community, that living without social media and supporting technologies is unthinkable.

READ: How Angels Value Entrepreneurial Investment

Social Media: This, too, will change.

I am certain of two things, though. One: Everything about technology and social media interaction will continue to evolve. For those of us who are early adopters, we gain great insights into how that evolution may occur. Two: My friends, who don’t understand Twitter today, won’t understand the next step in the evolution either. Unfortunately, they will find themselves farther and farther behind; not just with technology, but also in their social interactions with others as many of their friends more readily adopt the changing way we communicate as a culture.

READ: How Angels Value Entrepreneurial Investment

Are your customers loyal or lazy?

From an organization’s perspective, a customer relationship is all too often built only on revenue generated. Specifically, the value of that relationship is measured on the number of purchases made and the size of those purchases. When a customer recognizes that their loyalty is measured only by these factors, such as with supermarket loyalty programs, they become fickle about the relationship. Laziness creeps in and whoever has the best sale prices or is closest to home gains the customer’s favor. When this happens, the relationship becomes a commodity for the customer, as it is already for the organization.

READ: How Angels Value Entrepreneurial Investment

Millennials: The rise of a new “Hero”

As the Millennials move into adulthood, they are merging their needs, values, and expectations into every detail of their lives. They need to feel that they are making a difference. They value consensus, relationships, and family. They hold the government, institutions, corporations, their peers, society, and themselves to higher standards than any other generation. Along the way, their idealism is resetting the expectations not just for their own generation, but also for all.

READ: How Angels Value Entrepreneurial Investment
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