A Post That Paints 1000 Words

Drops in the ocean can be bigger than you think

Everyday I see hundreds and hundreds of news stories, it really is incredible how so many incidents can take place in the space of one day. With constant scandals hitting the major headlines and a flooded database of online updates it can sometimes be hard to get the real value of the news and the detail it can offer. I was looking over an article this morning, a very simple breaking story which opened like this:


American Express launches social media site for business owners

American Express OPEN today unveiled the new OPEN Forum, an online resource and networking site for business owners.

The site is designed to forge meaningful business connections and provide practical, actionable information and insights from influential bloggers, industry leaders, and savvy entrepreneurs. In addition, the site will aggregate relevant online small business conversations from Twitter.

(see full article here)

At face value, this is a story about a company launching a product, that's it. But think about what information this could give to a competitor. Here are just some of the points that this article can raise for a rival company:

- American Express want to expand their service to businesses, how else are they doing it?

- How are we interacting with our business customers, Are we prepared to launch a competing product?

- Why have they chosen social media? How are we using social media?

- Why have they launched now? Are business owners currently struggling to network?

- Do we provide any networking services for business owners?

- Are other rival companies launching these initiatives?

- Will this affect our client list?

- Could we use the forum to our advantage to gain new customers?

- Should we increase our online spend?

These debates and planning measures can be taken from two paragraphs of an everyday news story that will most likely creep under the radar of most headline pages. Think how many departments and strategies it could involve. With this in mind imagine what could be taken from constantly tracking your sector. One paragraph can suddenly seem quite important.