Frank was a barista at a coffee shop.
And his lady customers kept asking for used coffee grounds.
He thought it was for their potted plants but it turned out the secret was a face cream scrub.
Apparently the caffeine had a glowing effect on skin texture.
Intrigued and enthused, he went on to create an entire product line
Signed up models to demonstrate a new skin care range
And instead of merely gathering followers, he converted them to customers
On a social media platform growing exponentially - Instagram
With no conventional promotions, the company touched revenues of $30-$40 million a year.
Influencer marketing or Direct to Consumer had barely been conceived, let alone leveraged.
And this company was one of the early movers.
People were largely using Instagram to post pictures and build a social following.
A few entrepreneurs were perceptive and raced into pole position for ecommerce.
As Instagram grew, they accelerated the push provided by the platform's early organic reach - and focused on ramping audience growth.
Instagram became a billion strong platform.
And companies like FrankBody were the ones who surfed the wave.
Before the whole world moved in and claimed to be influencers.
Is there a solution to the 'Likes' problem?
Facebook and LinkedIn likes. Twitter and Instagram love. YouTube likes
What is their true worth?
The rise of vanity metrics shapes public discourse.
Converging around celebrity status and controversy.
It defines trends and spotlights, personalities or subjects.
There's an offline equivalent of likes. Applause.
Spirited applause. Polite applause. Standing ovation.
Even this simple nuance is lost online. It's bunched into binary expressions of love or hate.
And that hits at the heart of what true dialogue is about.
Finding the meeting points. Not traveling along parallel lines.
The problem begins with the way platforms build interaction.
They found quickly enough that asking for anything more than a click dropped exchanges significantly.
So they made it simple. Click to love. Click to like. Click to dislike.
Don't expect the nuanced interaction that happens in the real world.
Lump it into two categories. Only like or dislike.
Sure, some emojis around celebration and inspiration are being experimented with.
But you can't differentiate between politeness and a standing ovation.
Something without meaning has become the most meaningful way to measure the world.
The sooner we realise this, the better
How do you compete with Tally?
Assume you sell small business accounting software.
You compete with the brand that has been around since 1986
Tally. Hard to find a business that does not use it.
So how did a small company, Profit Books, get new customers? It rode on the GST wave.
GST was the biggest change in indirect taxation introduced in India in 2018
The company understood there would be a significant information gap around specific provisions of the tax.
So it created several pieces of 'pillar content'
One of them was a deep examination of a provision called input tax credit.
Accounts and businesses struggled to understand the application of the law.
And that's where the page delivers prospects .
When GST launched, small businesses was overwhelmed with new tax terminology.
And input tax credit was one of the confusing nodes.
It's the site's single biggest traffic driver of businesses looking for clarifications.
Converging on the areas where questions and confusion around GST abounds.
The site built authority by going into the finer points of how input tax credit works and under what conditions it could be claimed.
Their customer base has expanded to over 75000.
What's the strategic node of your business?
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing it with with your friends. Or Tweeting the link. The more people we can get to tune in every week, the merrier. Thank you.
Share this post