{"id":119,"date":"2012-04-17T13:42:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=119"},"modified":"2012-04-17T13:42:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:42:23","slug":"does-your-company-play-by-small-town-rules-maybe-its-time-it-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/does-your-company-play-by-small-town-rules-maybe-its-time-it-did\/","title":{"rendered":"Does your company play by small town rules? Maybe it\u2019s time it did."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An iconic image comes to my mind when I think about U.S. small towns; possibly you conjure up the same one. The image is of several people sitting in front of the local general store talking the day away, maybe even rocking in their chairs. The point is that small towns are about people being connected to each other.<\/p>\n<p>The return to a small town sense of community is just what we may be achieving through our new social media channels, say the authors of a new book \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Small-Town-Rules-Businesses-Connected\/dp\/0789749203\">Small Town Rules: How Big Brands and Small Businesses Can Prosper in a Connected Community.<\/a>\u201d I haven\u2019t read the book by Barry Moltz and Becky McCray, both small business writers, but I read a recent article about it in\u00a0 \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.openforum.com\/articles\/7-small-town-rules-for-doing-business-on-a-human-scale?extlink=em-openf-SBdaily\">7 Small Town&#8221; Rules for Doing Business on a Human Scale,\u201d<\/a> on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.openforum.com\/?intlink=us-openf-nav-topnav\">American Express Open Forum<\/a> for small businesses.<\/p>\n<p>The point of the article and the book is that because of social media networking, today\u2019s consumers interact like they live in a small town, talking and sharing lots of information with each other and coming together into groups. Also social media is fueling the new push to buy local as evidenced by the overwhelming response to <a href=\"http:\/\/smallbusinesssaturday.com\/\">Small Business Saturday<\/a>, the American Express campaign, and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/21\/small-businesses-cash-in-on-cash-mobs\/\">Cash Mobs<\/a>. As a result companies, no matter what size, must play by a new set of rules to survive that\u2019s in line with small town values.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Main-Street.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-120\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Main-Street-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a>Moltz and McCray outline seven small town rules for business in the article. \u00a0Here are a few:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Work anywhere, anywhen through technology: I\u2019ve talked about this<a href=\"http:\/\/www.plantronics.com\/us\/solutions\/small-medium-business\/communication-tools\/\"> changing dynamic<\/a> in many of my previous posts and Moltz and McCray reinforce it. They say, \u201cWith the loss of geographic advantage, businesses can look outside the usual limits and boundaries. Technology allows more types of companies to reach customers anywhere and \u201canywhen.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Treat customers like community: Moltz and McCray encourage businesses to treat customers like community. which includes responding to their needs, even if the need is an entire underserved small town market, or for something\u00a0<em>less<\/em>\u00a0than you&#8217;re giving that market right now. For example, all the online support and documentation for a software product may not be as helpful as a phone call to walk a customer through the basics.<\/li>\n<li>Be proud of being small:\u00a0 Volkswagen said it &#8212; Think Small. Being big is no longer the advantage it used to be to win customers. Moltz and McCray point to the food industry where the preference for small businesses is growing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Just how to change your business and your mindset takes four things, the two authors emphasize: improve, innovate, expand and change the game!<\/p>\n<p>That advice makes a lot of sense to me whatever the size of your company.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An iconic image comes to my mind when I think [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[510],"tags":[581,580,582,583,584],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}