My first takeaway concerns the nature of positive and negative feedback that occurs on the web in various places throughout the lifetime of one's business. In my experience over the years I have treated this as simply part of the business cycle, where I had little input or overall control of it. Sernovitz teaches us that this is simply not the case, this kind of feedback is something that we can not only control, but one that we should be making very definitive steps to control. We are in the driver's seat and need to be taking every measure possible to not only give the customers something great to talk about or remark to a friend about, but also help direct them to the places we want this information shared. It is a change of mindset that is begun in me and I look forward to seeing what positive benefits I can bring to my own small retail business by way of it.
The second takeaway is the nature of the content we as business's are supposed to be bringing to the table - to start the conversation and give our customers interesting things to discuss/comment on. Before now I was under the impression that is was just fine to post out things like "Magic Tournament at 5pm" or "Warmachine Event 6pm" - but this, now that I look at it, is only just regurtitating my Calendar of Events through Facebook and really has no interesting/fresh info at all - giving people little reason to actively read/support my facebook/twitter etc, and most importantly, giving my customers little reason to talk about my store in general, digital or not. We do have great information/content/stories that can be shared at the store and I am going to be binging that into the conversation, and creating the infrastructure to bring more pure content into the various digital communication mediums.
The last major takeaway I got from his message was in that there are definitely those who are your talkers, those who enjoy being "in the know" and who will gladly help and support the communication process that goes on inside and outside the store and on the web. These people are a fantastic resource, and one that I personally have done a very mediocre job of involving in this overall aspect of the store. I have them running tourments and such, involved on the events within the store, but there is no reason I can't take that a step further and get them involved online. There are aspects of what we do in store, event winners, painting competitions, league standings, that people take real pride in and would seem to me a great place to start with, and I need to start with the leaders of the store - a resource I should not be under utilizing.
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