The Pony Express Is Dead

Rather suddenly, the world of communication has changed. How is your business adapting to the latest ways of getting messages out to your prospects?

The Internet and cyberspace aren’t new, but they are suddenly catching hold, as never before, as ways to communicate. If you’ve watched your kids, you know this: They don’t make phone calls – they text or IM (instant message). They don’t hang out at the youth center – they commune on Facebook.

It’s odd for me to be making these observations. Yes, writing and publishing went electronic years ago, but for a long time I was trying to be the last person on earth not to have a cell phone. When I finally gave in a few months ago I went the distance, getting a BlackBerry on which I can check e-mail, get directions, read maps, watch TV, listen to the radio, surf the Internet, shoot pictures and videos, and, yes, send text messages.

Far beyond my little world, something is definitely happening. Newspapers are folding up print editions and going online. Devices like the Kindle from Amazon.com are changing the way people buy and read books. Growing numbers of consumers shop online for all manner of goods and services.

Ways of connecting

On top of that, there are all sorts of social networking web sites and tools. A few years ago, who dreamed we would have something like Twitter? Or that people in businesses would find ways to use it to help them sell?

There’s a sandwich service in, I believe, Los Angeles, that sells solely out of trucks that drive around town. They use Twitter to send messages (“tweets”) that tell where the trucks are at a given time. Customers who “follow” the company on Twitter then can go to where a truck is instead of waiting for it to come to them.

Then for business networking, there is something called LinkedIn. It’s sort of a Facebook for business: You invite trusted professionals to join your network, and you have an instant and pretty powerful way of making new connections and sustaining old ones. (In case it matters, I am LinkedIn, but I do not “tweet.”)

As you might imagine from my late arrival to the wireless world, I am not an expert on these new-age tools – but I am learning. The world of communication is changing faster than ever; to ignore or resist the change is to risk going the way of Brachiosaurus. Or as Bob Dylan said in one of his classic songs:

You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone,

For the times, they are a-changin’

How wired are you?

My purpose here is not to preach to you about the new tools you should be using. It’s to ask you: How are you adapting to the Internet age? Do you have a web site? Do you post demonstration videos of your technologies on YouTube? (A lot of companies do, you know.) Do you use Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Do you write a blog?

Not that you have to do all these things to be successful. But if you’re still fully committed to phone directory advertising and the occasional radio spot, and if your networking is still limited to phone calls and Chamber of Commerce meetings, then at best you may be missing opportunities to grow, and at worst you may be falling behind competitors who are more cyber-savvy.

We would like to publish examples of how people in the cleaning industry are putting Internet technology and social networking to work. If you have a success story to share, drop me a note at editor@cleaner.com. We’ll publish interesting ideas in a future issue of Cleaner.

If you’re worried about giving away your secrets to your competitors, don’t be. We won’t ask you to reveal exactly what you’re doing and how. Just describe the basic approach you’re taking and tell us about some interesting results.

Time to take a look?

If you’re not using these new tools, maybe now is the time to find out about them and how they can help you – or about how not using them might hurt you.

I more or less got dragged, kicking and screaming, out of pure necessity, into the world of wireless communication. The first text message I got on my BlackBerry came from my 27-year-old daughter. She said: “Dad – hope you like it here in the future.” As it turns out, I do. Maybe you will, too.



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