One of my Guilty Pleasures is the film Field of Dreams, a fantasy-drama in which Kevin Costner contrives to meet up with his father in a baseball field that he has constructed in the cornfields of Iowa.  Only his father is the same age as Costner’s character, and only re-appears as ghostly group of former members of the disgraced 1919 Chicago White Sox. It’s a feel-good movie that contains the memorable lines “If you build it, he will come” which at the end transposes to “If you build it, they will come” as the cars steam across the plains to the remote baseball field.

What’s the link to selling tractors and mowers, you ask? It’s the constant challenge to ensure that a steady stream of customers come through your door, visit your premises. Just to ‘build it’ is never enough.

And then in my recent unearthing of so many old archive magazines, I came across a special issue of Lawn & Garden Equipment (the forerunner of Service Dealer) called Blueprint ‘98. It was a business issue published in January 1998 with content such as “What does the future hold for the specialist dealer?”, “Which computer system?” “What is the Millenium Bug?” (remember that?) and a particularly fascinating article “How can I promote my business?”

This last article was fascinating was the complete absence of the way businesses can promote today. Written just 15 years ago, there is no mention of websites, no mention of internet trading, no Google, no e-mail marketing, no Facebook, No Twitter, no IPads, no QR codes . .

Emphasis then was on Yellow Pages (print), local press, co-operative advertising, local radio, leaflet drops and so on.  All worthy initiatives to drive business - but compared with today . . .?

Business, particularly small business, has had to grasp and embrace new communication technology in recent years that it is wonderous that so many have had the skills and the open-minded approach to make it work for them.  By enlarge, we are not a sophisticated industry. We can be cautious, we can be followers rather rather than leaders. But there is no harm in that.

The fact is that social media in particular needs to be moulded and shaped to the business we are in. They are merely tools to unlock customer communication and customer loyalty.  There is no doubt that Blueprint ‘13 would reflect the same objectives for Promoting Business - but my, how the content would differ!