5 Things Never Heard at the Most Innovative Companies

Kathy Gersch explains that while it may be difficult for your company to generate innovative ideas, high-tech start-ups and other companies we consider to have innovation built into their DNA have just as much difficulty maintaining their innovative edge.

The most interesting thing about the Fast Company Most Innovative Companies 2013 list isn’t who is on it. It’s who isn’t.

Writing about the companies who had fallen off the list (and were obviously upset about it), Robert Safian, Editor of Fast Company magazine said, “It’s not that these businesses suddenly lost their mojo. But in a climate where the velocity of change is accelerating, these companies didn’t have a compelling-enough breakthrough for us to highlight.”

Safian’s remark perfectly illustrates the essential element required for survival in today’s economic environment. If you aren’t constantly innovating, your organization is most likely losing its edge. If your innovations are incremental – not big enough to move the needle – you’re still losing.

What do the companies on Fast Company’s list like Nike, Uber, and Pinterest have that others like Facebook and Twitter don’t? Better new products – which came from innovative ideas, that’s obvious. The mystery is where these ideas come from, how they rise to get noticed, and then how they are brought to market faster than anyone else. This list is a reminder that some of the companies we’ve historically associated with innovation because of their brand name (3M, Facebook, and Twitter) aren’t immune to losing their edge.

While people have spilled much ink on how to create innovation, I’d like to offer an easier way to get there – by process of elimination. Let’s start with five things you will NOT hear at the most innovative organizations. Be on alert for them; These are clear indicators that your company is losing its innovation “mojo.”

1. “Can we do that?” Permission seekers are the mark of unclear company vision. If your company’s vision is clear enough, and has been communicated constantly and consistently, people do not come to you for permission, they come to show you what they’ve already done.
2. “We can’t do that.” On the flip side of the previous comment, you find the limitations or barriers people have set up in reaction to the punishment they’ve experienced for prior failures. If your people see others try, fail, then get punished, you can guarantee that people will remain in the safe spot. No one is going to try to innovate, much less try anything remotely outside the box ever again.
3. “We have to go through proper channels.” A mark of truly innovative companies is that the employees are well-networked, and they are constantly crossing silo walls to engage other departments, gather knowledge, or just get an outside opinion. Though one person may come up with the idea, nobody creates a great innovation solely on their own.
4. “That’s good enough.” In many companies, once significant progress is made, momentum slows and eventually the project fails. This is one of the key reasons 70% of change efforts fail. Yes, it’s important to celebrate incremental wins, but in innovative companies, people don’t let up – they continue to focus on the final prize. This only comes from a relentless focus on winning.
5. “That’s not my job.” This final phrase is the clearest indicator that people aren’t focused on the future of the company. If employees have a clear understanding of the vision set by leadership, no one will be talking in terms of their box on the org-chart. If you hear “us” and “them” language referring to internal teams, beware. Employees at innovative companies know it is always “our” job – we win together.

Stay on the alert to these dangerous phrases that might sneak into conversations in your organization. A great brand name no longer protects you from losing your edge. Remember Kodak?

Kathy Gersch is an Executive Vice President at Kotter International, a firm that helps leaders accelerate strategy implementation in their organizations. John Kotter is the chief innovation officer at Kotter International, and is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School.

9 Habits of People Who Build Extraordinary Relationships

The most extraordinary professional relationships are built by ordinary actions like these.

 

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Professional success is important to everyone, but still, success in business and in life means different things to different people--as well it should.

But one fact is universal: Real success, the kind that exists on multiple levels, is impossible without building great relationships. Real success is impossible unless you treat other people with kindness, regard, and respect.

After all, you can be a rich jerk... but you will also be a lonely jerk.

That's why people who build extraordinary business relationships:


1. Take the hit.
A customer gets mad. A vendor complains about poor service. A mutual friend feels slighted.

Sometimes, whatever the issue and regardless of who is actually at fault, some people step in and take the hit. They're willing to accept the criticism or abuse because they know they can handle it--and they know that maybe, just maybe, the other person can't.

Few acts are more selfless than taking the undeserved hit. And few acts better cement a relationship.

2. Step in without being asked.
It's easy to help when you're asked. Most people will.

Very few people offer help before they have been asked, even though most of the time that is when a little help will make the greatest impact.

People who build extraordinary relationships pay close attention so they can tell when others are struggling. Then they offer to help, but not in a general, "Is there something I can do to help you?" way.

Instead they come up with specific ways they can help. That way they can push past the reflexive, "No, I'm okay..." objections. And they can roll up their sleeves and make a difference in another person's life.


Not because they want to build a better relationship, although that is certainly the result, but simply because they care.

3. Answer the question that is not asked.
Where relationships are concerned, face value is usually without value. Often people will ask a different question than the one they really want answered.

A colleague might ask you whether he should teach a class at a local college; what he really wants to talk about is how to take his life in a different direction.

A partner might ask how you felt about the idea he presented during the last board meeting; what he really wants to talk about is his diminished role in the running of the company.

An employee might ask how you built a successful business; instead of kissing up he might be looking for some advice--and encouragement--to help him follow his own dreams.

Behind many simple questions is often a larger question that goes unasked. People who build great relationships think about what lies underneath so they can answer that question, too.

4. Know when to dial it back.
Outgoing and charismatic people are usually a lot of fun... until they aren't. When a major challenge pops up or a situation gets stressful, still, some people can't stop "expressing their individuality." (Admit it: You know at least one person so in love with his personality he can never dial it back.)

People who build great relationships know when to have fun and when to be serious, when to be over the top and when to be invisible, and when to take charge and when to follow.

Great relationships are multifaceted and therefore require multifaceted people willing to adapt to the situation--and to the people in that situation.

5. Prove they think of others.
People who build great relationships don't just think about other people. They act on those thoughts.

One easy way is to give unexpected praise. Everyone loves unexpected praise--it's like getting flowers not because it's Valentine's Day, but "just because." Praise helps others feel better about themselves and lets them know you're thinking about them (which, if you think about it, is flattering in itself.)

Take a little time every day to do something nice for someone you know, not because you're expected to but simply because you can. When you do, your relationships improve dramatically.

6. Realize when they have acted poorly.
Most people apologize when their actions or words are called into question.

Very few people apologize before they are asked to--or even before anyone notices they should.

Responsibility is a key building block of a great relationship. People who take the blame, who say they are sorry and explain why they are sorry, who don't try to push any of the blame back on the other person--those are people everyone wants in their lives, because they instantly turn a mistake into a bump in the road rather than a permanent roadblock.

7. Give consistently, receive occasionally.
A great relationship is mutually beneficial. In business terms that means connecting with people who can be mentors, who can share information, who can help create other connections; in short, that means going into a relationship wanting something.

The person who builds great relationships doesn't think about what she wants; she starts by thinking about what she can give. She sees giving as the best way to establish a real relationship and a lasting connection. She approaches building relationships as if it's all about the other person and not about her, and in the process builds relationships with people who follow the same approach.

In time they make real connections.

And in time they make real friends.

8. Value the message by always valuing the messenger.
When someone speaks from a position of position of power or authority or fame it's tempting to place greater emphasis on their input, advice, and ideas.

We listen to Tony Hsieh. We listen to Norm Brodsky. We listen to Seth Godin.

The guy who mows our lawn? Maybe we don't listen to him so much.

That's unfortunate. Smart people strip away the framing that comes with the source--whether positive or negative--and consider the information, advice, or idea based solely on its merits.

People who build great relationships never automatically discount the message simply because they discount the messenger. They know good advice is good advice, regardless of where it comes from.

And they know good people are good people, regardless of their perceived "status."

9. Start small... and are happy to stay small.
I sometimes wear a Reading Football Club sweatshirt. The checkout clerk at the grocery store noticed it one day and said, "Oh, you're a Reading supporter? My team is Manchester United."

Normally, since I'm pretty shy, I would have just nodded and said something innocuous, but for some reason I said, "You think Man U can beat Real Madrid next week?"

He gave me a huge smile and said, "Oh yeah. We'll crush them!" (Too bad he was wrong.)

Now whenever I see him he waves, often from across the store. I almost always walk over, say hi, and talk briefly about soccer.

That's as far as our relationship is likely to go and that's okay. For a couple of minutes we transcend the customer/employee relationship and become two people brightening each other's day.

And that's enough, because every relationship, however minor and possibly fleeting, has value.

People who build great relationships treat every one of their relationships that way. (That's a lesson I need to take to heart more often.)

Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business. @jeff_haden

7 Simple Social Media Moves That Work

 
Before he started to dole out social media advice for entrepreneurs like you at Inc.'s recent GrowCo conference in New Orleans, Dave Kerpen, chairman of Likeable Media and now founder of offshoot Likeable Local, had a few things he wanted to get out of the way.

First, he said, social media is not free. Second, it won't bring you immediate results. And, third, it can't make up for a bad product or service.

If you can cope with all that, you're ready to learn how--and why--Kerpen still recommends you get involved:

1. Listen, Then Talk 
A couple of years ago, when Kerpen went to Vegas, the check-in line at the Aria hotel where he was staying "took forever," he said.

So Kerpen did what he does best--took to Twitter, and quickly posted: Waiting on line for 45 minutes at the Aria. Not worth it. #fail

Did he hear anything from the Aria? No. But he did hear from the Rio, a hotel down the street. Within two minutes, the Rio Tweeted back to Kerpen: Sorry you're having a bad experience, Dave. Hope the rest of your time in Vegas goes well.

Kerpen didn't switch hotels on that trip, but where do you think he stayed the next time he went to Vegas? The Rio. And he "liked" the Rio on Facebook. And sometime later, a friend going to Vegas saw that Kerpen had "liked" the Rio, so asked if Kerpen would recommend the hotel. His response? "I don't think it's the fanciest, but I know that they listen," Kerpen recalls telling that Facebook friend.

Kerpen pointed out that all the Rio did was pay attention to Twitter, and respond with empathy.
Kerpen recommends you do the same thing, regardless of the business you're in. "If you're an accountant, go to Twitter and search 'need an accountant'," he said. "Your customers are asking for you." 

 

2. Respond (to Everyone!)
Kerpen said 60 percent of brands--mostly big ones--currently do not answer customers or prospects on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. As a result "you have a huge competitive advantage if you respond to your customers--and theirs," he said. (Case in point: the Rio hotel in Vegas.) 

If a customer complains, don't delete. Instead, you have an opportunity to respond publicly that you're working to solve the problem, and will send a private message to the individual so it can be fixed.

"We all know that companies are going to make mistakes," said Kerpen. "The problem isn't when companies make mistakes, it's when companies don't say, 'I'm sorry.'"

Instead, if you delete a complaint, you're sending a message that the person who wrote it doesn't matter, and you're, in essence, "inviting him to go tell someone else, to start a petition," warned Kerpen.

The only types of posts you should consider deleting? Those that are obscene, or bigoted.
When you respond, do it in your brand voice, whatever that is: serious, funny, full of puns, scientific, whatever. As long as it's true to the brand.

3. Tell, Don't Sell
Social media is most powerful when you use it to tell personal stories, not to sell your products, Kerpen said. 

Kerpen likes to tell the story of how, when he and his then fiancé couldn't afford a lavish wedding, they raised $100,000 from sponsors and got married at Brooklyn Cyclones park. That personal story, he says, helped propel Likeable into a $7 million business.

Didn't get married at Shea? Consider your humble beginnings, your personal leadership characteristics, customers who have overcome obstacles, employee challenges, community or charity partnerships. Look at your employees, products, or customers, and identify a story people will want to talk about, and disseminate it across social media.

If yours is a business-to-business company, tell a story on social media using webinars, e-books, and white papers. 

"The only thing better than telling your story on social media is to inspire your customers to tell your story," said Kerpen.

 

4. Just Be You

On this, Kerpen quoted Oprah Winfrey, who said: "I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I've become. If I had I'd have done it a lot earlier."

As Kerpen puts it: "When I am authentic, when I am vulnerable, when I am me, customers want to do business with me." 

Who does a lot of this on Twitter, according to Kerpen? Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, who has even posted about where he lives.

 
5. Advertise (Better)
Social media is not just touchy-feely, said Kerpen. It can drive leads, and sales. 

On Facebook, rather than just get your ad in front of huge a swath of people, you can target the right people--based on job title, interest, age, location. "Every single piece of data that Facebook's got on people you can target based on that," Kerpen said. "What's cooler than reaching a billion people on Facebook? Reaching the right 1,000, the right 100, the right 10, or the right one."

Another perk of advertising on Facebook? Word-of-mouth endorsements. You can target ads against just the friends of people who have "liked" your brand on Facebook, and when those people see your ad, they will see listed the names of their friends who like your brand, too. 

6. Give Stuff Away
If you take 10 percent off, you're marketing, 50 percent off, you're giving away value, 100 percent off, you have loyal customers for life, Kerpen quipped.

Give away good content, webinars, articles, and white papers. "I've had two people come up to me and say, 'Thank you for all that valuable information you gave away, I'm starting my own social media agency,' but I also got dozens and dozens of inbound leads because of all the value we put out there," said Kerpen.

Recently, a new client told Kerpen she had $250,000 to spend on social media marketing she'd move to Likeable because of all the free, yet useful information the company has made available.

 
7. Be Grateful
In your social media posts, regularly thank your customers, and partners.

According to the non-profit organization DonorsChoose.org, Kerpen said, of those people who received a thank you note, 38 percent were more likely to donate again.

He writes three thank you notes every day. 
"It puts me in a great mood every single time," he said.

Allison Fass is deputy editor of Inc.com. A longtime business journalist at Forbes and The New York Times, Fass has also held roles in venture capital and innovation at Hearst Interactive Media and digital strategy at a start-up consultancy. @alliefass

6 Ways To Conquer Leadership Pressure

 

How a leader deals with pressure will tell you much about who they are as a person. Their reaction to pressure will reveal the strength of their character and conviction, what and whom they value, and whether or not they can be trusted. The reality is most people buckle under pressure. Only a few handle pressure well, and even fewer possess the qualities to be able to thrive on pressure.

There’s no escaping pressure. And just in case you’re wondering, denying its presence doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and won’t make it go away. It’s not a matter of if you’ll encounter pressure as a leader, but when. Regrettably, we live in a world where too many people have risen to a position of leadership without ever having been placed under pressure. When the inevitable occurs, and pressure hits with a vengeance, many leaders simply find themselves overwhelmed.

As scientifically defined, pressure is the ratio of force to the area over which said force is distributed or applied. But pressure has an impact that reaches well beyond the scientific realm. Pressure can also represent the effect of a force applied against a person’s values, positions, philosophies, and even their will to survive. Too much pressure applied to an unwilling, unprepared, ill-equipped, or incapable leader results in flawed thinking, bad decisions, and wrong actions.

In and of itself, pressure is neither good nor bad. Dealing with pressure is little more than a state of mind.  Some see leadership as a privilege and others see it as a burden – I tend to view leadership as a burden of privilege. Nevertheless, nobody is immune to pressure; some just handle it better than others. But here’s the thing – how leaders deal with pressure is often the difference between catapulting an organization towards success, and contributing to its demise. The right perspective on pressure can create a very positive new normal.

It’s been my experience good leaders place such high levels of pressure on themselves that external pressures seem almost trivial by comparison. I consistently place pressure on myself to be a better leader and a better person – this focuses my efforts and provides a source of intrinsic motivation far beyond any extrinsic pressure others could ever exert upon me.

Following are 6 things smart leaders do that transform pressure from a liability to an asset:

1. Know Thyself: Leaders must know themselves, their strengths and weaknesses, and where they will and won’t compromise. When a leader is comfortable in their own skin they won’t fear dissenting opinion and diversity of thought, they’ll encourage it. Knowing who you are frees you to become a better thinker and a better leader.
2. Lead: A leaders job is to acquire and develop talent. The larger the organization you lead, the more your performance is dependent upon the talent of your team. The better the talent, and the better you utilize talent, the less pressure you’ll feel. The key to capacity, throughput, and scale is not found by doing – but by developing others to do. Leaders who feel the least amount of pressure are those who spend the most time acquiring and developing talent. Conversely, leaders who feel the most pressure are those who feel they must do everything themselves.
3. Keep It Simple: Complexity creates pressure. The best leaders look to simplify everything they can. Simplicity rarely equates to a lack of sophistication – it actually demonstrates remarkable elegance. Simplicity drives understanding, which leads to a certainty of execution. One truism you can count on is performance relives pressure.
4. Get Alignment: Great leaders strive for the following: one vision – one team – one agenda. Organizations that have a shared purpose, common values, and aligned interests are simply more productive than organizations that don’t. Alignment of values and vision take the complexity out of decision-making, and removes the ambiguity from the process of prioritization. Leaders who have organizational alignment feel less pressure than those who don’t.
5. Focus: Focused leaders rarely feel external pressure. Unfocused leaders feel as if pressure is coming at them from all directions. Focus affords leaders clarity of thought that a cluttered mind will never realize. It’s not possible to lead an organization toward a better future when a leaders mind can’t see through the fog. An organization is never under greater pressure, or at greater risk, than when leaders lose their focus.
6. Create Whitespace: The best way to maintain focus is to make sure you’ve baked-in some whitespace into EVERY day. Any rubber band stretched too tightly will eventually snap – there are no exceptions to this rule. Leaders who don’t create time for quality thought and planning end-up taking unnecessary short cuts and risks. They let pressure force them into making bad decisions that a little whitespace could have prevented.

 

Mike Myatt, Contributor

The Rise of Pre-Commerce

Written by: Lisa Gansky

The sharing economy and crowdfunding have fundamentally altered the way we develop products.

 

Business is social. At its core is a seemingly endless series of social interactions--not just internal relationships, but external ones as well, involving investors, suppliers, resellers, customers, government agencies, even competitors. Over time, these ongoing conversations and exchanges fundamentally shape the products, partnerships, and value footprint of every successful brand.

While the social nature of business is nothing new, the recent rise of globally networked social media and the growth of the sharing economy has changed the rules of the game. Old business models are coming apart at the seams. Outsourcing, crowd funding, viral marketing and access or subscription-based services are challenging historically favored strategies in many areas--including, perhaps most surprisingly, product development. The fantasy that the customer waits for products to be developed and distributed suddenly appears to be so last century.

Welcome to pre-commerce, a powerful product development engine fueled by social networks and propagated by designers publicly honing their voice and story. In some industries, community voices just became more powerful than executive off-sites and PowerPoint. 

Company As Driver: Top Down
 

At the height of the Industrial Age, product development followed a more or less linear road map from manufacturer to customer, with established corporations unilaterally defining new offerings, design specifications, production volume, timing, pricing, positioning, shape, color and distribution channels. In this model, data from surveys, focus groups and customer feedback provide a certain amount of advance intelligence, but there’s always a good deal of guesswork involved in forecasting market demand. Guess wrong and you end up with a warehouse full of unwanted widgets, a tarnished brand and a boardroom full of angry investors.

Top-down product development worked well enough for the big guns of 20th-century commerce--wealthy corporations that excel at refining consumer products through multiple iterations and cultivating brands across multiple generations. But this approach tends to favor large organizations that can afford to invest heavily in R&D, and also absorb the cost of swinging and missing a few times before knocking one into the bleachers. For smaller players, it’s one strike and you’re out.

 

Community Takes The Wheel: An Outside-In Approach
 
The social media platforms that link millions of people in radically horizontal relationships have enabled a new twist in the product development cycle.

The process goes something like this: A company or individual comes up with a product concept and puts together a low-cost web-based presentation to pitch the idea directly to potential micro-investors and/or customers. In many cases, the essence of the pitch is fully contained in a short video featuring a prototype demo and a personal appeal from the product designer or company founder. Almost always, a palpably human story is what sells these products and programs. The pitch is published online, typically on a crowd funding site such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Catarse, Ulule or Quirky, and promoted via social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

These products and services typically exist only as ideas or prototypes. The proposition is that the product will only make it into your hands if the developer reaches a defined threshold of support from a community of fans (and future customers). In other cases, developers can test the market by selling early-stage products at very low volume through incubation-oriented ecommerce marketplaces like Etsy or Threadless. Either way, the developer has the luxury of refining a product based on real customer feedback before deciding whether or not to ramp up production.

Accelerating Innovation And Ditching Waste
 
When people first began to contemplate the impact of social media on business, much of the attention was pulled in the natural direction of customer support and public relations. Now that we all have the ability to connect, collaborate and act together in numbers, social media has emerged as a powerful thread that connects business innovators to customers. Since 2009, nearly $2.8 billion has been raised on crowd- and community funding services, a substantial portion of which funded new products or businesses. This means that products are being bought (or not) before they are made and distributed.

This model is scrappy and sensible. It reduces waste, encourages innovation, gives smaller players a shot at the marketplace, and ensures a built-in community of customers who will support entrepreneurs from the start. If proposed projects or products do not secure a minimal level of support, that insight alone is highly valuable--both financially and for brand equity.

I call this model pre-commerce (riffing on the term "pretail" coined by trendwatching). It may soon become an essential pre-launch step for any product road map.

Risks And Rewards: The Path Ahead
 

 

There are new challenges that go along with the presale of a product from a nascent or nonexistent company. One of the principal problems has been a lack of due diligence regarding the feasibility of the product proposed and presold. With no third party evaluating the project developer’s competence, presumer backers incur the risk of late or no delivery.

For players big and small, here’s something else to consider: Pre-commerce gives competitors early access to strategic information that would otherwise be considered company confidential. However in the increasingly open, connected and transparent world of social media, access to new ideas, product prototypes and community interest is readily available. Additionally, many product ideas come from outside our organizations. The visibility within and between companies makes the pulse of innovation accelerate and easily cross borders.

We are early. To date, this method has been used almost exclusively by upstarts. Going forward it’s not hard to imagine that well established brands like GE, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever and Bupa will source and test new product ideas beyond their organizational walls. As product cycle times decrease and the cost of waste (unused inventories, patents and talent) increases, the scope and frequency of experiments will grow. All the incentives and much of the infrastructure are already in place.

Now is the time. What separates your brand and company from a world of innovative independent designers is only a semi-permeable membrane. Invite, explore, learn and refine your company’s reach and capacity to provoke innovation through pre-commerce.

Lisa Gansky

Lisa Gansky is an instigator, entrepreneur, angel, and author of the bestselling book The Mesh: Why the Future o

Commanding your business' social media

As social media has grown in importance, some businesses have committed substantial resources to create their own listening centre to give them a wide and detailed view of the social media landscape.

A new infographic from BeingYourBrand will make interesting reading if your corporation is planning its own social media centre at the moment.

Picking several businesses that have well-established social media centres the infographic makes it clear that one size doesn’t fit all. It’s vital that your business clearly assess what insight your command centre will be required to give about the social media landscape your company is part of. Only then will you be able to build the tools that are needed to track the vast quantities of data available, and of course make commercial sense out of these touchpoints.

A social media obsession

If your business has an inkling that its customers are social media obsessives, your hunch is correct. New research from Experian has revealed that UK consumers spend nearly a quarter of each hour on their social networks. In the US this figure is slightly higher at 16 minutes, but UK social media users are more likely to buy goods and services during these sessions.

James Murray, Digital Marketing Manager at Experian Marketing Services commented: “The online landscape is constantly changing and we’ve seen some pretty dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour across different geographic regions and in the various vertical markets. Consumers are changing the way they interact online and the rise of 3G and now 4G mobile internet access means more visits are being made on the move, particularly in social and email.

“As brands become increasingly global entities it’s more important than ever to understand the differences between regional online behaviours so that marketing campaigns can be tailored for better and more effective brand engagement.”

Is Pinterest the new Facebook for marketers?

A new infographic from BloomReach puts a shot across the bows of Facebook by claiming that for marketers looking for good ROI, Pinterest is clearly the platform to be exploiting now. This certainly seems to be the case with corporations stating that they intend to increase their marketing spending over the next five years from their current 8% to a whopping 21%.

What is interesting is that the research that BloomReach have carried out shows that more Pinterest users are ready to buy when perusing the site. Also, when a brand moves from simply building its number of followers – which Facebook is clearly the leader at here – moving to more targeted marketing on networks like Pinterest pays dividends as 22% more traffic on Pinterest converts than on Facebook.

Wal-Mart Vs. Amazon: World's Biggest E-Commerce Battle Could Boil Down To Vegetables

Source: Challenges In Agri-Food And Supply Chain
    
Wal-Mart Stores WMT -1.34% and Amazon.com AMZN -0.02% are both such enormous companies that there isn’t even a fitting cliché to clumsily describe their battle for e-commerce supremacy. There isn’t a David in this fight. If Wal-Mart’s Goliath, Amazon is Godzilla.

Wal-Mart's gunning for Amazon's customers away from the cash register, online.

Both chains dominate their historic areas of expertise. Once just a bookseller, Amazon is now the biggest online store on the planet. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer of any kind, its $469 billion 2012 revenues dwarfing Amazon’s $61 billion.On the web, though, Wal-Mart lags. The Bentonville, Ark. chain doesn’t break out its U.S. online sales in its financials, but e-commerce chief Neil Ashe recently said the company aims to do $9 billion of its 2013 revenues on the internet. That’s 2% of its overall sales.

Right now, with Wal-Mart’s brick and mortar business booming, it might not matter much, but it will in five years, say experts at market research firm Nielsen.

According to Nielsen, e-commerce will gain more ground than any other segment of the retail industry by 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 11% each year. Supercenters of the kind pioneered by Wal-Mart come in second, with their growth rate projected at only about half that of web shopping.

Wal-Mart is doing all it can to catch up with Amazon online, copycatting some of the Seattle retailer’s most successful tactics.

They’re trying out lockers, one of Amazon’s hallmarks, allowing shoppers to order items online and pick them up in stores — crucial for the Wal-Mart demographic, a quarter of whom reportedly do not use debit or credit cards or even have a bank account.

They’re dabbling in same-day delivery and even going a step further than Amazon by attempting to crowdsource package drop-off among customers. They’re investing in web technology to improve both their site’s appearance and ease of navigation.

What else can Wal-Mart possibly do to win the web? Nielsen’s Todd Hale has one answer. “E-commerce is growing at 11% a year, but sales for consumer packaged goods online — food, groceries, everyday items — are more like high double digits, almost 20%,” said Hale, SVP of consumer and shopping insights. “This is the space Wal-Mart has to go after: perishable items. That’s where they need the infrastructure.”

Today’s Wal-Mart isn’t ready to sell fruit and vegetables online. Same-day delivery is still only available in a handful of states. Its grocery hub on the web, Walmart To Go Delivery, remains in beta.

Hale believes Wal-Mart should look to smaller regional businesses like FreshDirect and PeaPod as a blueprint as it rolls out its consumer goods delivery service. And he sees the big box giant’s site as a shoo-in future destination for non-perishables like diapers as long as its infrastructure allows shoppers to set up regularly scheduled deliveries, a service popular on Diapers.com.

Amazon is already a step ahead with its Amazon Fresh same-day delivery, currently available in the Seattle area but soon headed for California. “Amazon is already building an infrastructure for perishables,” said Hale. “Groceries will be the battleground coming to the forefront.”

Kantar Research vice president of retail insights Anne Zybowski agrees to an extent, but warns that Wal-Mart must make sure its web offerings extend outside the grocery aisles.

“It’s not one item at a time, it’s who wins the entire basket or shopping cart of consumables,” she said. “A big piece of the basket is groceries, but there’s also healthy and beauty care, for example.”

Zybowski added that Wal-Mart has made significant strides online in recent months, not just in prettying up its site but making shopping easier for customers who might not want to actually pay via the internet.

“They’ve improved inventory visibility — a customer can make sure an item is in stock by checking Wal-Mart’s site, then they can go to their nearest store to buy it,” she said. “The challenge now is to get people thinking of them as a low-price leader online and off.”

Morningstar MORN -0.65% director of consumer equity research R.J. Hottovy isn’t sure Wal-Mart’s infrastructure is what’s holding up its web growth but its enormous and growing network of brick and mortar outlets — 4,000 in the U.S. and counting.

“Wal-Mart’s done an okay job online, but Amazon’s done a great job,” Hottovy said. “They can undermine the price of a lot of their competition. Without a physical storefront presence and overhead, they can pass that savings directly to consumers.”

Hottovy added that Wal-Mart will have to do more than invest in infrastructure to win the battle of the web behemoths. They’ll have to woo customers who are loyal to Amazon for good reason. “Amazon has tied up price, convenience, sales, and good customer service,” he said. “That’s a powerful combination.”

Five Social Media Tricks Every Entrepreneur Should Know

“It’s 2012, and people don’t buy what you do but why you do it. Social media helps companies of all sizes expose the individuals behind the brand, humanize it and build influence,” says Amy Jo Martin, founder and chief of social media consultancy Digital Royalty and author of social media book Renegades Write The Rules, released this week.

Martin, who has 1.2 million Twitter followers herself, works with celebrities like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal and corporate brands like Hilton Worldwide and FOX Sports to get the most out of their social media networks. She believes entrepreneurs are especially poised to gain from social media because it provides easy access to potential customers and partners, facilitating free marketing and market research and efficient customer service.

  

How can entrepreneurs leverage platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn? According to Martin, these are the top five social media tricks every entrepreneur should know.



Humanize Your Brand
Across platforms, social media allows a brand to connect with customers in a more personal way. “The key is not to just advertise the business,” says Martin, who believes the best way to grow your following is by sharing valuable content. Her formula for a good content balance is to share education, information, inspiration, exclusives and entertainment. It’s also a good medium for storytelling. For example, rather than tweeting a photo of an ad, share a YouTube video of a real customer using the product to show how it works. Furthermore, Martin recommends being very responsive to others and contributing to the conversation in your communities.

Conduct Budget-Friendly Research
If you’ve built up a decent following and relationships with people, you’re then able to ask questions and get feedback. “Instead of allocating a large part of your budget to formal research studies, you get data in high volume quickly,” says Martin. You can tap into your consumer base in real time, asking a question about their product preferences or which holiday offer they’d prefer. The trick to getting feedback is offering it, she says. “If you are often replying, then others are more likely to reciprocate.”

Provide Efficient Customer Service
Companies in retail, service and hospitality industries were among the first adopters of social media for efficient customer service. Southwest Airlines often tweets if there is a flight delay, and shoe retailer Zappos has a separate customer service Twitter account that is manned around the clock to respond to comments. “You need to be present and acknowledge mentions,” say Martin. “Then customers know the brand is listening.” She recommends setting up alerts for the brand name and product names, and responding to both positive and negative comments.

Build Relationships With Reporters
“Social media provides an avenue to build relationships with media outlets and have an ongoing relationship with reporters,” says Martin. The simplest way is to follow individual journalists and pay attention to their interests and their requests. For example, if a business reporter frequently posts about the Yankees, engaging with them about baseball is a non-threatening, more personal way of connecting. Additionally, reporters often take to social media to find sources. Martin once noticed a reporter’s tweet, asking if anyone knew how best to adapt to the new Facebook timeline format. She responded, and the reporter and camera crew were at her office interviewing her within three hours.

Crowdsource Product Development Ideas
Having your audience play a role in developing a product or service does a few things: it engages them with your brand, instills a feeling of ownership over the final product and taps into their collective wisdom to create a better result. Martin says it’s as simple as asking questions on your platforms and using the community as a sounding board. Some screenwriters, for example, have used Facebook to ask what background music they should use in a scene they’re working on. Martin worked on a crowdsourcing campaign for DoubleTree by Hilton that asked, “What are the little things that enhance your travel experience? #LittleThings” It got a ton of response, so paid off as a publicity tool. They also analyzed the trends and implemented many of the suggestions, so it ultimately helped create a better service.

Jenna Goudreau,