Fast, Flat and Free: How the Internet Has Changed Your Business

By Gihan Perera

Three words describe how the Internet has changed the face of business: Fast, flat and free.

The world is faster: Customers, clients and audiences are more demanding. They expect a faster turnaround, faster responses to their requests, and faster resolution to problems.

At the same time, we’re flattening hierarchies, barriers and structures: Your products can be built by a competitor in China; your services duplicated by a competitor using people from India; your customers are smarter, savvier and more sophisticated than ever before.

Finally, what used to cost a lot is now free – or almost free: Google takes away your expertise; low-cost competitors drive down your prices; and passionate amateurs trump paid professionals every time.

The good news is that these changes are perfect for us as business owners – as long as we do something about it.

Unfortunately, most businesses don’t know the rules have changed. They think Internet marketing is about branding, hype, advertising, mass markets, needs, traffic, transactions, copywriting and better products and services.

It’s not. It’s about personality, value, reputation, niches, wants, communities, connections, buying frames and better experiences.

This book shows you what has changed, and helps you create a practical strategy to take advantage of the opportunities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gihan Perera
• Release date: Jun 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458131874

Gihan Perera

I'm an Internet coach for speakers, trainers, thought leaders and business professionals. Business owners often ask me what to do about the Internet. They know it's important, they know it's affecting their business, but they don't know how - and they don't know what to do about it. I'm an author, speaker, trainer and consultant. Since 1997, I've worked with leading thought leaders, change agents and entrepreneurs, helping them reach more people and leverage their expertise, on and off the Internet.

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Fast, Flat and Free: How the Internet has Changed Your Business – And What You Need to Do About It

Published by Gihan Perera at Smashwords

Copyright © 2011 Gihan Perera

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is dedicated to my six-year-old niece Abbey, who knows much more about computers than she realises.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Matt Church, Nigel Collin, Michael Hyatt, Shelley Kuipers and Kevin Kelly for generously allowing me to share their expertise with you; and to Max Hitchins, Kirsty Spraggon, Andrew and Sue O’Brien, and Franz and Ilse Moser, for allowing me to share their personal stories.

I also thank the members of my membership site, the eGurus Community, for keeping me at the top of my game. I’m in the fortunate position of working with people who constantly question, provoke, challenge and inspire me. It’s not only essential for my business; it’s good for my spirit as well.

This book is about a world that’s more connected and more collaborative. There are many, many people who have touched my life and influenced my thinking, without knowing it: The creators of the hundreds of blogs, podcasts, videos, e-books, slide shows, tweets and comments I consume regularly. These are the giants on whose shoulders I’m standing when I’m sharing the ideas in this book.

This book took just months to write, but the ideas in it were developed over fourteen years, in my work dealing with hundreds of clients who saw the potential of the Internet and were determined to do something about it. So my biggest thanks go to them, for their foresight in choosing that direction, their determination in remaining true to it, and their unrelenting commitment to creating the future. It has been – and continues to be – a privilege working with you.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Big Picture

Part One: Your Business

Show Your Face: Out of Sight, Out of Business

Lead With Value: Familiarity Breeds Content

Invest in Reputation: Talk Your Walk

Part Two: Your Market

Serve a Niche: Think Inside the Box

Give Them What They Want: Ask and Ye Shall Perceive

Build Your Tribe: It’s a Small World After All

Part Three: Your Marketing

Make Connections: The Buck Starts Here

Set Buying Frames: Come Buy With Me

Deliver Experiences: Good Things Come in All Packages

Conclusion

About Gihan Perera

Introduction

On a warm spring day in September 1988, I realised the Internet would change the world.

In 1988, very few people knew about the Internet; and even today, many people don’t realise there was an Internet in 1988. But it was a big part of my life at that time.

That year, I was one of 14 students studying for my Honours degree in Computer Science at the University of Western Australia. Because we were in the Computer Science department, we had access to advanced computing facilities, including the early Internet. This was before Facebook, Google and even the World Wide Web. We were past the time of punched cards, but we did have to make do with plain-text computer monitors – the kind with the glowing green lights you only see nowadays in the occasional Hollywood movie about an accident at a nuclear power plant or top-secret military facility.

Many of us at that time were interested in artificial intelligence, and I became fascinated with computer backgammon. This was not simply two people playing backgammon on a computer, but a human playing backgammon against an intelligent computer opponent.

At the time, computer chess was a more popular area of research, but I preferred backgammon for two reasons. First, it had dice, so it involved an element of chance, not just skill. And it was less complex than chess, so it was easier for me to program (It was not the topic of my Honours research, nor anything at all to do with what my supervisor Dr Robyn Owens expected me to study; but that – and the subsequent impact on my grades – is neither here nor there, and is a topic for a different book).

The world’s leading expert in computer backgammon was Dr Hans Berliner, a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and the programmer of the first computer program to beat a human world champion in any game.

As a university student, I had access to some of Dr. Berliner’s published papers; and one day, I realised I needed to know more about something he had written. There was no Twitter or LinkedIn in 1988, but there were many discussion groups available to those of us who had Internet access, including one about computer backgammon. I was an active contributor to that group, so I asked my question about Dr. Berliner’s paper. I remember the reply from one forum member, along the lines of:

I’m not sure of the answer, but why don’t you e-mail Hans Berliner himself? His e-mail address is berliner@...

As a lowly undergraduate student, I had never even thought of connecting directly with the great man – even if I had known his e-mail address! And now here was somebody – a complete stranger on the other side of the world – suggesting I do exactly that.

At that moment, sitting at a computer terminal in the Robotics Laboratory in the Computer Science department of a university in the most remote city in the world, my world changed. It changed because I realised the world had changed. For the first time, I appreciated the awesome power of this world-wide network of computers we call the Internet – and, more importantly, what it meant for connecting people.

It was 1988, in the days of green computer monitors and dial-up modems, but we still had the basic functions of the Internet – including e-mail, discussion groups and chat rooms. We didn’t have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Groupon or Google – but we were doing social media, although of course we didn’t call it that at the time.

A few years later, the world changed again. In the early 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist and computer scientist working at the CERN research facility in Geneva, proposed and built a system to connect pages of information in a web of links: the World Wide Web. Soon after, the first graphical Web browser, Mosaic, was created – and the rest of the world discovered the Internet. It soon turned commercial, with businesses realising its power for marketing, distribution and support. The burst of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century was a setback, but it turned out to be only a minor setback.

And so it continued until the mid-2000s, when it took another turn, with the growth of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was more a philosophy and attitude rather than any new technology. It was about people – ordinary people – putting their stuff on the Internet, a privilege previously accorded only to IT specialists, geeky teenagers and those who could afford to pay IT specialists or geeky teenagers. Suddenly, everybody and their cats were loading videos to YouTube, posting blogs about their dreary daily life, and connecting on MySpace (and later, Facebook).

With Web 2.0, the citizens took back the Internet from the geeks and the suits. In fact, we’ve come full circle – right back to the days when I first started using the Internet. The technology has changed (if you were looking for Hans Berliner today, you might ask your Facebook friends, one of whom might tweet his address in return, and you would then send a tweet to his iPhone), but the same principles apply.

It’s still about participating in on-line communities.

It’s still about using the Internet to learn, explore and discover.

It’s still about building an on-line reputation, one step at a time.

And it’s still about people connecting with people.

There’s just one problem …

Most businesses haven’t realised it.

They don’t know the revolution has happened. They don’t know the rules have changed. They don’t know the way things worked in the twentieth century are so … well, so twentieth-century!

That’s why they spend their entire marketing budget on search engine optimisation. That’s why they use Twitter for a week, and then give up because it seems like a waste of time (and don’t get them started on Facebook!). That’s why they hide their phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and still expect Web site visitors to do business with them.

That’s why they think Internet marketing is about branding, hype, advertising, mass markets, needs, traffic, transactions, copywriting and better products and services.

It’s not. It’s about personality, value, reputation, niches, wants, communities, connections, frames and better experiences.

And that’s why I wrote this book.

Who is this book for?

This book is for you if you’re the owner, leader, manager or Chief Influence Officer of a business; and you know the Internet has changed your business, but you don’t know exactly what has changed, and you don’t know what you need to change.

This book is for you if you’re already running a business, and you want to leverage the power of the Internet to enhance that business. It’s for you if you want the Internet to support your business, not to replace it. It’s not for you if you want to build a new on-line business or become purely an Internet marketer.

This book is also for small or medium-sized businesses, rather than large organisations. The Internet – especially today’s Internet – offers unprecedented opportunities for smaller operators, not only to compete on an equal basis with larger businesses, but sometimes to compete in better ways.

Although the Internet affects all businesses, it doesn’t affect them all equally. In particular, today’s Internet culture smiles very kindly on you if your business relies on you selling your expertise – for example, if you’re a professional speaker, trainer, coach, consultant, lawyer, accountant, mortgage broker, author or other form of information expert. That’s because, for you lucky people, the change to Web 2.0 has made your life so much easier – if you know how to tap into it. If you’re not in those categories, it just means you’ll have to work a little bit harder. You’ll see what I mean as we go through the book.

Although this book is written with businesses in mind, most of the principles apply for other organisations – such as clubs, associations, not-for-profit organisations and schools.

What I know about the Internet and your business

Since 1997, I’ve been working with business owners and entrepreneurs to help them build their on-line presence and leverage their expertise on-line.

Through all the changes the Internet has been through, one thing has remained the same: It’s always been about people connecting with people. When you’re using any Internet technology, remember it’s about people first and technology second. If you get those priorities right, it will be much easier for you to integrate and understand new technology, and make the most of the technology you have now.

There’s no doubt the technology is important, of course! However, I want to make the point that it’s people first. I will be describing various Internet technologies in this book – including newsletters, blogs, podcasts, video, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and much more. When I do, I’ll explain why this technology is useful, so you can understand how it fits into your business.

The world has become fast, flat and free

Let’s start by looking at the three key ways the Internet has changed the world – and what that means for you: Fast, flat and free.

If it’s not fast, we’re furious

The world is clearly faster than it has ever been before. We want instant downloads of e-books and music; we demand immediate responses to tweets and Facebook updates; and we expect (and get upset when we don’t get) live chat on Web sites, fast turnaround to e-mail queries, and humans on the end of a telephone line. We buy instant coffee, cook in microwave ovens, and heat up instant coffee in microwave ovens. In the early 1980s, FedEx built its business around the promise of Absolutely positively overnight; for today’s consumer that’s painfully slow.

Part of this is due to the amazing advances in Internet technology. When I searched Google a few minutes ago to find out when FedEx started using its slogan, Google proudly told me it had searched its massive database and found the answer in 0.08 seconds! Add to that the journey from my computer around the world to Google’s servers and back, and I still had my answer in less than a second (If it had taken longer, I would have started impatiently tapping my fingers). If that doesn’t astonish you, it should. But it doesn’t, because we now take it for granted.

The other major trend that’s caused this shift is the explosive growth of mobile technology. We can access the Internet from smaller and more portable devices, and this mobility makes us more impatient.

It’s no longer good enough to sit at home and send an e-mail to an on-line retailer instead of visiting a physical store – although that in itself was a significant breakthrough. Now we can scan a product’s bar code in a store to check its price in other stores; we can ask our Twitter followers for their opinion of a restaurant as we walk past it; we can upload party photographs to Facebook while we’re at the party itself; and our iPhone can identify a song by listening to it for a few seconds.

This incessant and ever-increasing need for speed affects us all, even (unfairly) those who shouldn’t have to deal with it. We now get impatient waiting for a travel agent to send us tickets in the mail. We want our mortgage broker to send us the loan papers right this minute. We can’t wait 24 hours for our graphic designer to send us a quote because 15 other designers in other time zones responded to our request overnight.

The world is flat

And that brings us to the second big issue: The world is flat. That’s the title of Thomas Friedman’s groundbreaking book about the way outsourcing has changed our lives (The title of his second book Hot, Flat and Crowded was the inspiration for this book’s title). More specifically, he writes of the burgeoning middle class – especially in fast-developing countries like China, India and Brazil – who are educated, motivated and upwardly-mobile. Now they not only have access to a vision of what life is like in rich Western nations, they can easily attain that lifestyle locally by offering their services to those same rich Western nations (For an interesting, if somewhat romanticised, insight into what this is like, I recommend watching the light romantic comedy Outsourced).

In 2004, the New York Times reported even the Catholic Church was getting into the act. Catholics in New York were paying their parish priest