The nonprofit Prevention International: No Cervical Cancer does amazing work, traveling to developing countries to set medical clinics up with the training and equipment they need to conduct screenings for and treatment of cervical cancer. The organization works throughout Africa, Central America and Latin America and has recently begun working in India as well to provide screenings that would otherwise not be possible.

The problem? Their work absolutely requires being on the ground and working with people directly, and it can be expensive to do that. When Taylor found out about British Airways’ Face-to-Face program, she decided that applying was worth a shot, and the effort paid off. Here she tells us more about the work PINCC does and how the Face-to-Face grant was able to further that work.

Why is travel such a big part of what you do?

What we do is train medical people to do cervical cancer screening and treatment for prevention, which is just not done in the countries we’re working in. They just don’t have the capacity. We’re establishing these centers in rural areas so people don’t have to travel days to get to a capital to even do a screening much less receive treatment. It’s 100% required that we be there, on the ground, to do that work.

What made you apply for the Face-to-Face grant?

We do a lot of travel and British Airways has always been a favorite for trips to Africa and India, so when I saw this campaign I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, that would be perfect.’ At first I thought they were looking for big companies, but when I found out we’d be eligible, I thought, ‘Well, we won’t get it if we don’t even apply.’

How have you been able to use the grant?

It has been so helpful for us. The first trip we took was to Africa, and we brought not only the two staff people we need to do training, but then also two of our member donors.  They loved flying business class with British Airways, and being able to see our work in person – it made them big supporters and we got a big donation out of that. So that was really wonderful. The four of us all flew business class, and, of course, we don’t fly business class normally .Not only that but they gave us a very nice printer/scanner piece and that has become the center of the office – everyone uses it, and we can use it remotely, which is really great.

What are some of the additional benefits that have come as a result of being able to travel more this year?

It allowed us to open up a whole new section of Kenya so that we could go to these new sites that we had been trying to get to. We were able to supply them with the equipment they needed. We had also just started our India campaign and were able to go and train a large part of the rural province of Andrapradesh  in south central India, near Bangalore. We trained a mobile service that goes out to rural villages. Now that entire region has that screening capacity and the equipment to do it.

Companies need to be careful when they support a cause. If the endorsement looks like little more than a marketing gimmick, the public will recognize this and respond accordingly, as happened to Bing recently when it attempted to raise money for Japan.

But if a company is sincere in its efforts to help a good cause, there’s a real opportunity to do important social work and to also place your brand in a positive light. Take the CustomInk example. CustomInk is a $70 million T-shirt shop that prints custom T-shirts for family reunions and group and business events. Because actual people at CustomInk personally review every single order, they know what events their products are being printed for. The company saw so many shirts being created for charities that they decided to become personally invested in these causes. So whenever a T-shirt gets printed by CustomInk for a charity event, they send a donation to the cause in question.  “We try to donate to every charity event that our customers hold close to their hearts,” says, Lori Mayfield, a CustomInk order analyst who started the practice, 

Perhaps most important of all, CustomInk did not start giving to these charities as a marketing effort. It began as a personal expression by an order analyst who wanted to give back to companies who trusted CustomInk. In the end, like many other noble decisions, it returns to the sender. CustomInk’s genuine gesture to contribute to what their customers care about separates them from other T-shirt suppliers. It draws customers back to do business with a company that thinks this way.

CustomInk has delivered over 15 million shirts, with 98.9 percent of their customers saying that they will purchase from them again. Though their donation to charity customers is small in amount (as little as $30), their charitable givings connect the company personally with what their customers care about. And it shows customers that their service is not just about getting and filling orders. “I definitely was not expecting an email asking if CustomInk could give a donation to our organization,” one customer noted. “This makes me proud to have picked this company to do our printing for us.”

- How do you connect in that personal manner with your customers?
- What selfless acts tell your customers and employees about what matters to you on a personal level?
Want to learn about other tools to help you earn customers who drive the success and growth of your business? Pick up a copy of: “I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.”

Social media is a great way to make new connections, to solidify existing ones, and to listen to your customers. But there’s another group you should probably follow closely on social media: your competitors.

Because most social networks are public forums, they are goldmines of information about how your competitors are positioning themselves, whom they are reaching out to, and what they are offering. By monitoring them, you’ve got a front row seat as your competitors interact with their own customers, both current and potential. Once you’ve created all your search criteria, save the links in a browser folder so that you can check them easily and efficiently.

Here are some first steps you can take to make sure that you’re using social media to collect real time data about your competitors:

Twitter
You’ve probably already set up Twitter searches for your own name, your own product or offering, and perhaps your favorite sports team, but remember to create searches for your competitors as well. If you’re not sure if a competitor is on Twitter, visit their website and look for a Twitter icon, or do an old-fashioned Google search for “Twitter” plus their name. Take a look at what they’re tweeting, whom they are interacting with, and whom they are retweeting. Are they using Twitter for contests, promotions, or discounts? Whom are they following and who’s following them? By studying their account activity you’ll get valuable information about their strategy, their tactics, and whether or not it’s working for them.

Facebook
Become a fan of your competitors’ Facebook pages (don’t worry, one extra fan isn’t going to make a difference!)  Have they created a Facebook landing page and, if so, what are they featuring on it? What applications are they using? Check out their wall and their “fans’” comments and feedback. Are fans participating, “liking,” and sharing?  Is your competitor cross-posting to other Facebook pages for greater exposure and, if so, where? Seeing what’s working for your competitors will help you adjust your own strategy and tactics!

Search
Set Google Alerts for your competitors to monitor their news and presence on the Web and set alerts with tools like SocialMention to see what’s being said about them in the social media sphere. I like to set Google Alerts for Twitter mentions as well. It’s a great way to gauge sentiment, not only about your competitors but also about the marketplace in general.

LinkedIn
If your competitors have a company profile on LinkedIn, follow it to monitor their new hires, their press mentions, and their new blog posts.

Blogs
It may feel counter-intuitive, but consider commenting on your competitors’ blog posts. If you post a friendly, informative comment with valuable information that you share generously, you position yourself as a valuable resource, and you capture the attention of your competitors’ network. But make sure that your comments are gracious and add value; being competitive or sales-y will backfire!

Niche Sites
Look for niche sites and communities that are appropriate to your industry or business. Are your competitors participating and how? Should you be?

IRL
Social Media offers you an opportunity to actually “friend” your competitors both online and “In Real Life.” Consider being generous to your competitors on Twitter and Facebook, complimenting them, when appropriate, for their successes, their public appearances, or their new acquisitions or products. It positions you — and your company — as confident, secure, and generous and could eventually lead to referrals or collaborations.

Social media is not only a treasure trove of free research and focus groups about your own business, it’s also a treasure trove of free research and data about what the competition is up to. Use it smartly (and courteously) to continually refine your positioning, strategy, and tactics.

Having walked through some of the challenges of a growing start-up, including the recruitment and retention of a top team, it’s time to pivot our focus once again. In this post, we will be exploring some of the core capabilities that any organization needs to have, and how the nature of those capabilities can vary in a start-up situation.

First up, we will start with competition. The topic of competitors in early-stage businesses is complex. Many new businesses operate in stealth, especially prior to launch. This means that without knowing it, you could have a powerful competitor clipping at your heels in the space of 24 hours. Early stage businesses often pivot, or change strategic direction – I can guarantee that if you are working on a business in a hot industry, this will happen at some point or other (look at all the iPad clones that have recently come to market). Perhaps of greater concern, larger scale businesses can announce at short notice that they are entering your space, bringing unlimited resources and expansive user bases with them. (Just look at what Google and Amazon have done to now dominate numerous verticals.)

But despite these paranoia-inducing dynamics, competition can be an extremely positive thing. Institutional investors can be a risk-averse bunch, and often times will look for an industry to ‘hot up’ before they make an investment in the space. No one wanted to invest in Groupon three years ago – now every VC in the country is trying to get a piece of them, or one of their competitors. The fact is that one player does not make an industry, and people are more comfortable backing industries than maverick companies. Call it wisdom of the crowds, or just copycat behavior, but it’s a reality.

So how can you cope with this challenging set of variables? Well, the best way is to really have a great story to tell about how you are differentiated (and try to make sure that it’s true). Start by building a truly defensible core asset. At Gilt, other than scale, we have little that is defensible about our business, and we see imitators spring up on an almost weekly basis. At first that demonstrated that there really was a business here, now it creates distraction (and the investors have piled into the space). At outside.in, where I worked before moving to Gilt, we built proprietary technology that could scan and organize digital content in a way that no one else could. It was the core of the service we offered, and it was the main reason that AOL acquired the company earlier this year.
When you have your defensible asset, reiterate the difference in every communication you make. Customers will come to really understand the difference, investors will start to take you very seriously, and if you have done it right, there will not be much the competition can do about it.

Customers like to be treated well. This is obvious, but not every company understands how critical it is for the customer to always feel respected. Those companies that do understand the importance of respecting every customer tend to thrive.

At Headsets.com, 52 phone reps work with customers, guiding them through the maze of selecting the products that are right for them. “At the core of that call is respect” says founder and CEO Mike Faith. “The customer deserves our respect. Sometimes they could be wrong. But they always deserve our respect.” And that’s why if any one of those reps rolls his or her eyes, acts exasperated, or does not give customers the respect they deserve, that is likely the end of that rep’s job at Headsets.com.

To ensure that disrespect is a rarity, Headsets.com is extremely rigorous in how they screen and hire candidates. Before they are hired, candidates go through what Mike Faith calls a day of customer service tryouts. This includes up to eight interviews. They talk to a voice coach (to check for warmth, tone, and empathy) and also to a business psychologist, to understand how they react to pressure and how they might, for example, keep their exasperation in check when customer calls get unwieldy. They are tested for memory and English usage and grammar. They sit in on calls. After these initial screens, multiple interviews inside the company determine if they are a “fit” for the Headsets.com customer commitment. The company is a success because of their ability to sustain service passion.

Only one in 30 applicants who go through their customer service tryouts make it into the company as a Headsets.com rep. Rigorous? Absolutely. But effective? Something must be working. The company has turned a $40,000 investment in 1998 to $30 million in revenue in recent years.

There’s a reason Headsets.com reps are screened so carefully. All of their training notwithstanding, the reps are encouraged to trust their gut in how they interact with customers. And respect is paramount to these improvised responses. Customers might often have similar complaints, but you can never entirely predict customer behavior. One customer might be furious about something that is entirely outside of the company’s control. The ability to stay calm and respectful in the face of real anger — and often offensive language — is a skill that not everyone can achieve.

So, ask yourself this: How do you hire the people who will deliver your special blend of service, support, and personal connection to your customers? Is your interview process as unique as your business? Should you give applicants a “customer service tryout” like Headsets.com does? A long, careful hiring process can be daunting — and sometimes expensive. But, as the Headsets.com experience shows, it usually pays off many times over.

You and your business have made the commitment to the social web. You’ve created Twitter accounts, you’ve got a LinkedIn profile, you’re blogging and commenting on other relevant blogs, you’ve created a Facebook Page for your business, you might even be testing the geo-location waters with Foursquare and Gowalla. 
 
Feeling overwhelmed yet? You’re not the only one. Between keeping up with social media sites and running an actual business, many people feel there just aren’t enough hours in the day.  Either you never find time to get to your social media accounts (and your last Tweet was three months ago) or you get lured in and spend way too much time online (“Google drifting” from one cool site to another.)

So, how do you strike a balance, giving your online presence the time it needs and deserves, but not getting so “addicted” that it becomes more important than the work you’re using it to promote? The most important step in creating a working – and workable – plan is knowing what’s important to you and to your business. Here are some ideas to help keep you on track:

Positioning:
Know who you are, what your unique offering is, and what value you bring to the market. 
Clearly defining who you are is the first step in focusing in on what social media platforms are important to you, what you should be bringing to the table when you participate, and how frequently you should be posting. If you’re positioned as a top source of breaking hedge fund trend news, for instance, you will want to be updating while the market is open and much more frequently than if you are positioned as a retirement management resource. If your business is positioned as  a premier local entertainment venue, you might discover that evening is the best time for your posts to reach the audience you want to connect with.

Purpose:
Identify your goals and the strategies you’ve chosen to help you achieve them. If your goal is to connect with potential customers by providing content that positions you as a trusted resource about vineyards, you may not need to spend a lot of time participating in a Twitter thread about the New York Jets (unless, of course, you’re a Long Island vineyard, in which case you might!)

Priorities:
Know which social media platforms are the most tactically important for your business and prioritize participation. If you’ve positioned yourself as a luxury brand, niche communities and sites like A Small World, Generation Benz or ArtSlant, may be more valuable uses of your time than MySpace, for instance. If YouTube content is driving more people to your video production website than Facebook, prioritizing frequent YouTube updates is a smart move. If FourSquare isn’t adding much value to your local business (and you are consistently your own Mayor) sit geo-location out for a while and concentrate on the platforms that are creating a local community for you. You can’t be everywhere at once, so don’t waste time with platforms that aren’t working for you.

Planning
Make time in your calendar for social media updates and treat it like a meeting: arrive on time, give it your full attention, and wrap it up before it drags on too long.  Creating a routine can go a long way to keeping you focused. If your business benefits from updating LinkedIn and LinkedIn groups twice a week, put it on your calendar. Combine checking in with Facebook, Twitter, and key blogs with checking your email first thing in the morning (more time for that bagel!) Once you find a schedule that works for you, stick with it. That way you are less likely to feel the pressure to check your social media accounts when you should be doing other work.

Rely on Tools:
Take some time to experiment with social media tools and find the ones that work for you. Oneforty.com, which calls itself a “social business software hub,” is a great site for discovering new tools and shortcuts. 
· Create a “listening suite,” with tools like Twitter Search, Google Alerts, Social Mention, and Blogpulse, schedule a time to monitor mentions, and stick to that schedule. 
· Use browser “favorites” and “bookmark” functions to create an easy-to access list of the blogs and Twitter accounts you are monitoring.
· Use a posting tool, like Tweetdeck or HootSuite, that makes it possible to update and monitor Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn from one location.
· Create a “measuring suite,” with tools like Google Analytics, Bit.ly, TweetStats, Technorati, PostRank,  and Facebook Ad analytics, to let you know how you’re doing.

Once you’ve clearly defined your positioning, goals, and strategy, you can prioritize your social media tools, create a schedule, and stick to it. When you’ve clearly identified what you are trying to achieve, you can trim what’s not working and spend quality time on what’s truly important for you and your business.

One of the many reasons that people choose to work in start-ups — and ignore the trappings of the corporate world — is to experience the somewhat unique culture that often exists in small, newly formed organizations. If you think about most of the small companies that you know, I suspect you could identity a few key attributes that make them a little special: the quirky hours they keep, the Friday afternoon beer ritual, and so on.

Go ask your team what they like most about their jobs, and chances are that some manifestation of your working culture will be in their top three criteria. At the early stages of your company’s life, that culture is very much defined but you, and the co-leaders you work with. Subversively, or consciously, you will come to define (and embody) the hours that the team spends in the office, when breaks happen and the style of work – whether it be group problem solving or individuals ‘wired in.’

At some point or other while your team is still small, take the time to actively think about what your culture should be, and how you want your team to work together. The office environment can be a great place to start, and I encourage you to get your team involved in the way the office looks, feels and operates. At my second company, we gave each employee $250 and challenged them to create their own workstation – desk, chair, and any other embellishments they wanted. Forced to meet a budget, team members salvaged old chairs from craigslist, went crazy in Ikea and even gave up desks to work on deluxe beanbags. The whole team came in one weekend to decorate the rest of our new office from top to bottom. Both exercises brought the team closer together, saved substantial costs and resulted in an attractive, distinctive and collaborative work environment.

The way that the team works (and socializes) together can also be a key determinant of the culture of your organization. A typical source of conflict in many companies is the allocation of time spent in meetings versus actually working on projects (this is a particular bone of contention for engineers). As the size of your team increases, and the number of simultaneous projects grows, a surge in meetings is likely and can cause big productivity losses. My current business recently implemented a rule banning any meetings after 2pm on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, to give people plenty of time to actually get some work done.

Thinking actively about your culture is a great practice – get it right, and it can keep your team engaged during even the hardest times. It’s the special sauce that makes people really care about turning up each day. It shouldn’t be over-managed, but do ensure that you stop to take the pulse of your organization and its culture every once in a while. The benefits can be untold.

And finally, don’t underestimate the power of meeting your online connections Face-to-Face.
 
Meetups: 
Meetup.com is a site that allows users with specific interests to find other people who want to get together and share that interest. While it started as more of a recreational and social site, it quickly became a business tool as well. Search meetup.com for events in your area that are relevant to your sector or industry and attend. Check Twitter for a variation called “Tweetups,” where users who know each other through Twitter organize a local get-together.
 
Our world may be shrinking, but paradoxically our neighborhoods are growing. And, as with any social media strategy, you want to be where your customers are congregating. Using local and hyperlocal social media resources is an exciting, targeted, and efficient way to connect when your customers are your neighbors.

You’ve been in the social media sphere for a while now. What are your thoughts on how that technology has changed how people communicate?
Broadly speaking, I think we’re communicating with more people today than we ever have and we can now target people to more specific contexts. It’s a technology that can help you stay in touch with people in between in-person interactions.

On that note, how do you think these new communication tools work alongside face-to-face interactions? Is face-to-face interaction absolutely crucial to a business deal or are online connections sufficient?
I think face-to-face interaction is irreplaceable. It can be complemented but not replaced. A really common example I like to use is to tell people to think about the difference between being on a conference call versus being in a conference room meeting with someone. When you’re on a call, you may be paying attention, but not 100 percent. When you’re with someone face-to-face, you’re really engaged. You’re making eye contact and speaking, seeing facial expressions and so on, and it really helps to connect with someone. It all goes back to authenticity again: People are people and it helps to meet people in person and get to know them. Then all of the technology out there just helps to complement and enable that further. You have to think about communication technology as leveraging the power of in-person interactions. 

Do you have any tips or advice for successful communications strategies?
It’s sort of the same advice your family gives you as a kid: Be yourself and do what makes you happy. It’s obvious but hard to follow, and I really think it’s the key to success in both personal and business relationships. If you are yourself and you care about the other person you’re interacting with, and you make an effort to get to know them and understand how you could work together, it enables someone to trust you, and you to trust them. That’s where the beginning of any relationship comes from. If people do that, then they’re probably going to be in good shape. I’ve certainly found that to be true in a business context: Whether talking to startups or big companies, it’s always best to just be yourself.

You’ve talked about authenticity a lot, but do you think that social media in some ways helps people to feign that authenticity, to create a sort of false closeness that you just don’t have with in-person interactions?
What people need to be aware of is that everything you communicate—whether in person or via private emails or social media updates — is a reflection of who you are. These are all small data points, of course. One Facebook update doesn’t define you as a person but it does represent you to some degree.

Does your habit of treating everyone the same work in different cultural contexts as well?
I’m certainly not an expert in international diplomacy, but, generally speaking, the stuff I’m talking about is pretty broadly applicable. Caring about others, being yourself and so on, those are benefits in most societies. Every society has their own customs, and, of course, you want to be respectful of that. But, in general, I think it applies across the board.