Alex Kaminski's Blog

Sometimes meetings are great, but they can also be a waste of time. Here are a few tips for having productive meetings:

1. Make sure the meeting has an agenda (and each person knows what is on the agenda).
2. Set a time limit, most meetings should be under 30 minutes.
3. Make sure you are talking to the decision maker; if not don’t waste your time.
4. Have a leader. If you’re meeting with a client or partner, make sure you decide who will lead the talking from your team.

Here’s a quick tip. When you are scheduling a meeting and deciding on what time works for both sides, send a simple message that says: “So, what’s on the agenda for this meeting?”

If the answer is “nothing, just wanted to talk” or some variation of that, the meeting is most likely a waste of time. Of course, sometimes you need to have a friendly meeting just to develop the relationship. In that case, just make sure you’re aware of the opportunity cost.

Social media is a profound change to businesses that many still don’t understand. Branding power that has traditionally lay with brands is being slowly transitioning to the hands of consumers and the public at large. Globalization, the internet, and sites like facebook and twitter are making this not only easy but fun, rewarding, and a way to connect with your friends.

Most companies today understand and are beginning to include social media in their marketing campaigns. And it’s not only the big companies, small mom and pop stores are also beginning to utilize social media in their marketing efforts. But, the marketing power of social media is just the tip of the iceberg. The real point and the reason that social media marketing works is because information is so easily spread. Information used to be controlled by various sources, be it government, companies, or even groups of people. With social media it is so easy to spread information that information cannot be controlled anymore, it spreads virally and seems to have a mind of its own.

Companies in particular need to be aware of this on many fronts. 10 years ago a simple action like a company sending a “cease and desist” letter was only known by the sending and receiving company (+ law firms), and maybe a few friends of each party. Today that letter can republished on hundreds of blogs, tweeted by hundreds of users, and read by thousands of consumers.

Case in point, HardOCP just announced the finding of counterfeit intel processors in shipments from newegg, which received them from the supplier D&H Distributing. D&H responded by sending HardOCP a nasty cease and desist letter to take down HardOCP’s post that named D&H as the supplier of the counterfeit processors (among other ridiculous demands, like a public apology). Before social media this act would have gone unnoticed, but instead this has been picked up on twitter, various news aggregators, and several popular blogs. What started off as a bit of bad PR for D&H became a pretty big PR nightmare for them, simply because of the cease and desist letter. Without that letter the story isn’t as interesting (though it was still getting a good amount of attention, again thanks to social media), but blogs and individuals love any story with the theme “big, wealthy company threatens the little guy”.

In this case, D&H is doing what they know and are used to: controlling media and information flow by threat of legal action. And this backfired on them. Instead of having HardOCP take down their post, the post is getting more attention. In essence D&H is losing control to a mass of angry individuals. That is only possible because of social media. And companies should be aware and be very careful to realize that any move they make is being closely scrutinized by their consumers – and the unhappy ones can get pretty vocal with the help of social media.

Pinch Media has a great presentation about iPhone apps and what they’ve learned from the stats they have gathered.

The presentation is shown below. It can be downloaded here.

Pinch Media – Free Legal Forms