XERAFY Company Blog

Am I really learning how to castrate a bull?

June 15, 2010

One of the coolest things I like about social media is the power and influence of the internet and the fact that it is personable, super fast and practically free.  Social media has shortened the distance of communication between XERAFY and our customers. It is no longer about command and control as much as it is about connecting and collaborating.

The challenge I face early on is trying to understand this space from halfway across the world here in China where I spend half my time. Major social networking sites like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook have been blocked and micro-blogging are carefully watched and intervened, for example, should I dare speak about a certain archipelago in the Pacific as an independent country.  

Of course there are also the cultural aspects of it as well since the users here communicate and behave differently. But that would probably be a whole different blog subject altogether.

In general, businesses in Asia aren’t so quick to jump onto the social media bandwagon as in the US. Most would still prefer to rely on the traditional media to market their products, fearful that they cannot control the direction the content takes and the risks. There’s much at stake since the market could go either way. However, I see this as an opportunity for our young organization to engage and interact with our customers easily, and in an interconnected web world, it enables us to quickly develop our own authentic voice and identity.

So, we have entered into the age of data. How is this related to castrating a bull you may ask. Well, like the memoir in the book by Dave Hitz, castrating a bull is a metaphor for learning to take appropriate risks. The inside story to that is if you are building a company, you have to deal with people as a whole even as we are laser focused on developing  products to slash barriers and create compelling reasons to adopt RFID. Social media has become increasingly important in the way people communicate with each other. Good content and technology is important, but it’s only a tool, feelings and actions are the goal.

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WRITER’S BIOGRAPHY

Kelly Stark

Marketing

Xerafy

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BLOG DESCRIPTION

Xerafy TM is a global provider of the world's smallest and most durable passive UHF RFID Read-On-Metal (ROM) tags. Our products have been qualified, verified and certified to endure extreme conditions over the lifetime of the asset. XERAFY TM has overcome technical obstacles that have plagued RFID implementations in the past tracking metal assets in harsh environments.