The more noise social media creates the more clarity print provides.

Received a “Thank You” card in the mail last week that excited me. Please check out the brief video I made in regards to it.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

My excitement spilled over into adding it as a discussion point I had with varies print industry people. Many of them also agreed it had some potential. As Social Media (SM) grows it becomes harder and harder to keep up with and filter out the noise that it generates. In fact at this point the noise of SM is at a roar level. That simple Thank You card coupled with SM had a very profound impact and most importantly, it made me LOOK at the website and possibly become a buyer on that site.

Sitting in Dallas last week with Joe Polanco from PIA-MidAmerica helped further expand on this SM noise. By the time we finished 2 beers and a nice conversation the tag line “The more noise social media creates the more clarity print provides” had been formed.

Dont get me wrong I am a huge fan of SM and think it is an extremely valuable tool in many ways. It is the combining of the two that I find interesting. It is similar to how I look at things like Google AdWords. The first few results in a search doesnt mean legitimacy in my mind, it can also mean someone that is good at getting top rankings for key words, but otherwise not having much value. Thus as many people do, I look at the paid for advertising as a solid option.

The coupling of the two mediums is a strong fit. What better way to filter out the noise than to receive a card in response to something connected with on SM. In fact it is a barrier of entry as the printed piece costs a small amount of money to send and thus acts a good filter from spammers and others that just use free communication tools aggressively, but have a product that has no value or limited value.

Better filters will certainly come soon for SM and like all things the adaptation of the new tools will need to be assessed and relooking at the value proposition of print will need to happen.

Brian

Thoughts on in-plants gaining more business

This was just posted on the What They Think Printing Office blog. Seems like adding new functions and offerings are a way to increase your value. In my opinion it seems like gaining a larger % of the parent companies business is where additional opportunities lay. How much business is going to Kinko’s and other like companies when it could be coming to the in-plant? What % of the parent companies print/mailing/print buying goes through the in-plant?

How do people in the parent company buy print services? Is there an internal intranet that routes all needs to the in-plant? If not, can an ordering option be added that directs all orderings to the in-plant?

Please feel free to share your thoughts.

The case for “Why using flexible staffing makes sense”.

Read an interesting article on one of What They Think’s blog sites about a new NAPL report. In the report, NAPL states that the decline of the print industry productivity in the first quarter of 2009 is 14.2%. What is strange to me is that payroll hours are only down 4%. I think this illustrates how important Flexible Staffing, like that which Semper offers, is a critical component to any printer’s strategy. With productive declining more rapidly than payroll, printers have still not right sized their head count the appropriate levels. Having a solid relationship with a staffing firm that can provide highly skilled printing personnel to your organization can offer areas of cost saving most companies need today. Firms like Semper not only provide highly skill people that can be relied upon, but offer key things like benefits to its flexible workers.

I recently spoke with management of a large global print focused firm and confirmed that they are still operating under a 70% internal staff, 30% flexible staff model. That this ratio has had a very significant role in helping them stay profitable during this unexpectedly long recession. Mind you, this type of strategy is not just used by large organizations, many sized firms use Semper for very similar reasons.

Please find a link to the What They Think posting I have referred to in this email message: http://blogs.whattheythink.com/printing-office