Musings on Marketing and Other Morsels

and now I leave my cozy blogger home

2010-08-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

I've finally given in.

I've imported my blog to WordPress. You can find me there at reallifemadman.wordpress.com.

Looking forward to seeing you over there!

Beware of the Buckeyes: An interview with Stanford Smith (PushingSocial.com)

2010-08-30T14:28:00.000-07:00

One of the weirdest things happened about a month ago. I was on Twitter chatting with my good buddy Stanford Smith (@pushingsocial). Somehow, we got to talking about his hometown. As it happens, we grew up probably no more than 10 minutes apart. Even though Mr. Smith no longer resides in our forlorn Buckeye state, I still count him as ahometown hero. In addition to being native Akronites, we share a lot of the same views when it comes to Social Media (except, as you will see, when it comes to blogrolls). So, I asked the always gracious Mr. Pushing (as I like to call him) if I could interview him. Here are the results.

The Mad Man: At PushingSocial.com, you write a lot about authenticity. There seems to be a lot of buzz these days that authenticity in Social Media is at a premium. Do you agree? How do you define when someone is being inauthentic?

SS: I believe someone is being inauthentic when they are not speaking from a place of passion and experience. For me, blogging is about introducing yourself to the world. I think that many of the problems we grapple with spring from poor communication. Social Media excites me because we can finally create and respond TO EACH OTHER in ways that make a real difference.

The Mad Man: You've already made a lot of waves with people listing you as an important resource and a blog to keep an eye on. What are you hoping to accomplish in 2011?

SS: I'm really focusing on creating deeper experiences for my readers. I feel in my gut that reading a blog should be an ACTIVE experience where you get inspired, get equipped, and get whipped into action. So I'm working on an ebook that will be ready in the next month or so and actively helping people to get their passions and blogs noticed. I'm also taking a serious look at how we can revolutionize cause related social marketing. Cool stuff.

The Mad Man: As a fellow Akronite, it must pain you, like it pains me, that the major hubs for Social Media activity are Boston, Chicago, and then the whole West Coast. Do you think we can make the Midwest a respectable player?

SS: Absolutely, I'm proud of the growing SM community we have in Southeast Michigan. I would love for you to organize and get Akron/Cleveland pushing the boundaries...Although Social isn't confined by geography you definitely can see its impact locally when people take what they learn and apply it to their businesses and organizations.

The Mad Man: What do you think is the biggest mistake people are making in their Social Media marketing right now?

SS: Following so-called Social Media Rules. I can't stand hearing people parrot the latest "formula." As you know, I feel strongly that your rules are set by your audience. I'm 110% dedicated to my readers. If they only need to hear from me once a month then I'll put my heart and soul into it. If my audience hates Facebook - I won't be there. Simple.

The Mad Man: Just for the record, tell me what think about blogrolls again... :)

SS: I swear...blogrolls represent everything that is wrong with the world.

You can learn a lot from Mr. Smith. I'd direct you to link to him from my blogroll, but out of respect, I don't have his blog listed there :)

Thanks, Stanford, for the time!

How can my company use Social Media?

2010-08-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

A lot of people agree now that Social Media has become an integral part of marketing. A lot of people know what Facebook is. Fewer people might know about Foursquare or Gowalla right now, but it's all catching on. In perusing what's out there in Social Media, it's easy to find a lot of information about Social Media. Whether you believe there are "experts" or not, there is a lot of content that tells you how to succeed using Social Media. There is even some content that tells you how to fail.

If you are new to this world of Social Media, or if you are new to marketing in general, what you are probably not seeing a lot of is how all of this information can be adapted by you and/or your company. There isn't a post or an e-book that speaks directly to you. I can't promise that this blog will be all that different. After all, without talking to you I can't really give you customized information. But what I can tell you is how to go about answering some of the questions that can help you get started.

Go where the customers are.

One thing you can learn a lot about is the importance of relationship building in Social Media. You see a lot of sites that help you learn how to nuance your blog posts away from language that sells. You read a lot about how important it is to be yourself. But there's one really important thing you need to do first. You need to go where your existing and potential customers are. There's nothing wrong with networking with people who are interested in fishing when you manufacture CNC machines, but it's probably not going to generate the levels of success that you've been hearing about.

How do you know where your customers are? Well, you need to do some research, something that Clayman Advertising can help you with. And what do we help you research? There are two things you need to find out right away. First, are your customers actually out there using Social Media? Second, if they are out there, how are they conversing about your industry? A close third, of course, is, "are they talking about you."

One thing that concerns me about the current marketing environment is that the whole feel is like a college party, and Social Media is the drink of choice that everyone thinks you should have. You should, in fact, totally go bonkers for that drink, and if you don't, you're a bit of a party pooper.

The thing is, sometimes we conduct research and we find out that Facebook is not fertile ground in which a garden of great results can be planted. That's not to say that Facebook is bad or that it will never come in handy. It just means that existing and potential customers aren't there now. Sometimes there is only relevant activity on YouTube. Sometimes there just isn't much buzz at all (I talk about this conundrum in more detail in an earlier blogpost called "The Social Media Case Study You'll Never Hear About").

If you find that Social Media is not heavily populated by customers or potential customers, the next step is to find out if your competitors are out there.

Go where your competitors are.

There are two things you want to look at when researching the Social Media activity of your competitors. Again, this is something we can help you with, but generally, you want to a) see if your competitors are using Social Media and b) You want to see how they're doing. What do I mean by that? It means you want to look at that competitor's Facebook page. You can look at how many fans (I guess we should call them "likers" now) the page has. But more importantly, you want to look at the activity. It's relatively easy to get fans or followers, especially if you're a big company. If everyone at the company likes the page, you could end up with a commendable 500 fans right off the bat. What you really want to look for is the nature of the posts that are being made and what kind of reactions those posts are receiving. If the same person is posting a news release every Wednesday to a room of crickets, you can assume that the page is not successful. If people other than the page's host are posting to the page, if there is a lot of conversation, if there is a lot of liking going on, then that is something you want to make note of.

Same rules apply for YouTube and Twitter. A company could end up with 1,00 followers almost by accident. Are they conversing with those followers? Are they using the tool appropriately? Are they getting responses?

If you find that your competitors are having a fair amount of success even despite your research showing that the conversation rate is low, it adds more weight to your consideration. If your competitors are mostly talking to themselves, it's safe to assume that the time is not right for you to join the lonely crowd.

Go where you can shine.

The final consideration in the first round of identifying where in the Social Media world you should go is where you and your company can shine. Where can you provide the most value to your customers so that you can start to build that online following? What kind of content do you have already that could easily be used for other purposes? If you have a lot of white papers, for example, maybe a blog is a good place for you to start. If you have a vast video library that's getting dusty on your website, enter into YouTube and start letting people find your company that way. Play to your strengths. That is what ultimately will win you business and help you maintain business.

Go carefully.

These are all important things to consider, and they are just the beginning. Once you figure out where you want to be, you need to figure out what you're going to do there. Avoid the temptation of falling victim to the excitement or the peer pressure. Your customers will be there tomorrow if they're there today. Determine how you can integrate your new Social Media efforts with other existing marketing initiatives. Determine your corporate policy. All of those are part of the nitty gritty on how you and/or your company can actually set forth on the path to Social Media success.

Did this help? Do you have any questions? I'd be happy to answer them! Just leave a comment below.

1st image by ostillac callisto. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ostillac
2nd Image by Gabriella Fabbri. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa

Do you follow through or do you ask for feedback?

2010-08-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my status as a life-long Cleveland Indians fan, I've seen my share of announcers trying to explain why pitchers are so incredibly bad. I've seen pitchers literally dribble the ball towards homeplate. I've seen pitchers walk 6-7 people in a row. Inevitably, when the game gets too painful, the announcers start talking about the pitcher's delivery. Most often, they talk about the fact that his follow-through seems poor. His arm is in the wrong position. His foot is 5 inches off the mound instead of 3.

For a pitcher, "feedback" is what happens to his pitch once it's thrown. If it's a good pitch, the pitcher attains his goal. In the case of most Cleveland Indians pitchers, the feedback is bad.

In business, we have often been framing things like a pitcher would. We make a pitch, we look for feedback. Hopefully in your case you are hoping for a homerun rather than a strike-out, but otherwise, it's the same general concept. If your feedback is bad, or begins to decrease in quality, you look everywhere, trying to find the core of the problem. Well, much like a pitcher, your problem may be your follow-through.

A symptom of the old days

One sign that companies, for the most part, still haven't adjusted to the Age of the Customer is that we are still asking for feedback. What do you think of this website? What do you think of our product? Did you like our pitch? Did you like me? Did you like my speech?

"What's wrong with that?" You may ask.

Well, in asking for feedback, we are putting the burden on our customers, or on our audience. We're saying, "We appreciate you buying our product, now tell us if you like it." Moreover, asking for feedback is still making the whole issue about us. It's kind of like the insecure person who always asks you how they look, even after you compliment them 2-3 times. After awhile, you start to wonder if you're missing something.

The art of follow-through

Instead of making it about you the company, the interest should really be in your customer. You should follow up with your customers. I'm not talking about automated surveys, either, although those are at least going in the right direction. We should emphasize to our customers and potential customers that we are sincerely interested in how they perceived their experience with us. Did your product or service meet their needs? Did it solve their problem? Are they satisfied? Do they need anything else? Imagine a real live person contacting you the way you said you wanted to be contacted, with the communique just saying, "Hey, saw that you bought xyz product or xyz service. Wanted to make sure everything is okay and that you don't need anything else."

What a wonder.

The thing is, it's not just customers that we should follow through with. In these days where integrated marketing is growing in importance, you should also follow through with other departments in your company, or if you work on your own, follow through yourself to make sure different initiatives are supporting each other. Instead of just asking for feedback on a marketing initiative, marketing should follow through with sales to make sure the ad or email campaign is indeed effective. Instead of asking for feedback on a PR campaign, PR people should talk to customer support to make sure that customers feel better about the company and the product.

Poor follow-through can yield poor feedback

Just like a pitcher who has a kink in his follow-through, your company will start to notice that your feedback will decline in positivity if you have poor follow-through. If you don't follow through with your customers, you might not get any feedback at all. If you don't follow through with other departments to make sure that everything is working as it should, things might not work, and no one would be the wiser.

On the other side of the coin, of course, is that really good follow-through can set the stage for extremely positive feedback which you won't have to ask for. Making sure that a customer is "good to go" can make a huge impression. They will rave about you and spread the word. Just like a surprise present for no apparent reason, positive feedback that is received without being requested is all the sweeter.

Are you following through or are you still asking for feedback? There are extremely positive and fun ways to follow through with customers, regardless of what you have offered them (product, service, webinar, trade show experience). Maybe Clayman Advertising could step in as pitching coach and help you with that follow-through mechanism.

Extend beyond your comfort zone

2010-08-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Every morning, I wake up and do the same things in the same order, pretty much without fail. I do this for a few reasons. First, my IQ is basically not present when I first wake up, so without a set plan I would very likely end up trying to walk to work with shoes that wouldn't match and with my PJ shirt on. You might think I'm exaggerating, but yesterday I woke up at 6:30 and couldn't figure out if I was late for work. We open at 8. I also do the same things in the same order because it's comfortable. I know that I will get everything done that I need to get done. I know how long each step takes me. I can do it with my eyes closed. Sometimes I *do* do it all with my eyes closed. Makes the drive to work exciting sometimes.

Comfort, I fear, has become both dangerous and an endangered species. If you become comfortable, it's easy to get in ruts. It's easy to think that the comfortable way is the only way. Our fear of changing things, of becoming uncomfortable, gets a hold of us. On the other hand, who among us feels comfortable these days? How many people do just 1 job and focus on that alone? How many people feel that their profession is going to survive this mad ride that the economy has us on (still)? Comfort is something we crave and avoid these days. No wonder we are all going crazy.

That's Marketing, Too

I've been writing a lot in this blog about the newly defined integrated marketing. The first step in adjusting your company's philosophy to one of accepting this revolution is stepping out of the comfort zone. I understand that this is complex. Talking about change in a blog is easy. Doing change is hard. Leaving your comfort zone means you are doing and trying new things. It means you are leaving yourself open to failure as well as success. It means things you used to be able to count on are now gambles.

When we talk about employees being asked to work in new ways, we are talking about real people. We are talking about your head of marketing who just adopted a child from China. We are talking about Suzie, who is very worried about her father. If you're in a company where you are being told that all of this new integrated marketing "stuff" is coming your way, everyone is going to have to leave their comfort zone to some extent, because all of this is new, or is being seen in new ways.

A little story

Let me tell you a little story about how leaving your comfort zone, while scary as all get out, can be worth the transition.

A few years ago, a lady went to Google to find out some more information about a television show she liked. In doing so, she found a bunch of results on a website, so she naturally went to check it out. What it turned out to be was a message board run and populated by fans of the show. The lady started posting to the board. She started talking to people.

After a few months, the lady became pretty involved in the board because she found a few kindred souls that she ended up talking to every day. But the lady always used a pseudonym, and she was so paranoid about putting her information out there on the web that she created a "real life" pseudonym, an email account tied to that pseudonym, and she made private every post that she had made to her blog. Even as it became clear that some of these people were becoming real-life friends, even after talking to some of them on the phone, giving information out over the internet did not become any easier. It was uncomfortable.

If you guessed that this story is about me, you are correct. There is still a lot about this online world that I find uncomfortable. Businesses go through similar palpitations. "What if I reveal too much?" "What if my competitors use information against me?" "What if a customer bad-mouths our company or our product?" Maybe you are having these doubts right now.

What have I received as the result of leaving my comfort zone online? Invaluable friendships. Growing networks. Vast amounts of knowledge that only increase every day. Potential for growth. Potential for new connections. Has it been worth it to leave my comfort zone? So far -- yes.

Marketing as it exists today is full of ways to leave your comfort zone. Take a look at new publications. Take a look at how to tie your advertising campaign to a direct mail campaign. Examine how sales and marketing could work better together at your company. It's true that there are risks. But what could you gain? A stronger brand. Happier customers. A better ROI. A winning story. A happy company. An evolved and happier you. Is that worth the risk?

Maybe it's time to get a little comfortable with being uncomfortable. What do you think?

Image by Andrea De Stefani. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/deste

Sure, Godin, Brogan, Kawasaki, Scott, and Hsieh liked it, but...

2010-08-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

What did I think of The Referral Engine? That's what you really want to know.

Right?

Departmentalization and the Death of Discussion

2010-08-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

When I say the word department to myself, after worrying about the fact that I am talking to myself, two things come to mind. First, of course, I think about departments in a company. Next, I think about department stores. The general definition of "department store" is a retail organization that offers customers a wide range of products. A department, however, generally brings to mind a piece of a greater whole that probably just specializes in one thing or a handful of things. Department stores have departments just like companies do. If you work in the women's clothing department, you are not also responsible for selling lamps. In the marketing world, at least up to this point, if you work in the PR department, you are responsible solely for PR. If you work in a marketing department, you are responsible for "just" marketing.

Departments in companies that are responsible for marketing are experiencing something that department store departments are not, and that is revolutionary change. One would never expect women's clothing to turn into bags of candy, but in the world of marketing, that's sort of what is happening. PR is finding that a lot of their shelves are getting filled with stuff they think of as "branding." And those marketing folks? They are finding that their little island is being invaded by everyone.

If you were told that you were responsible for a department in a store and someone suddenly started putting their inventory in your section to take care of, how would you respond? Most likely, you would resist this change. "How can I sell lamps? I sell dresses. I've sold dresses for 15 years. I know nothing about lamps, and more to the point, I don't want to know about lamps. Women's fashion is my "thing." And I want to stick to it."

Well, similar conversations are happening in the marketing world. The more things change, the more people want to grasp their specific department, their departmental titles, and their departmental ways of doing things. Eyes are shut. Ears are plugged.

Hello, good to meet you, please buy this hat.

The problem is that Social Media serves as a company's mirror as well as its magnifying glass. These little blemishes of departmental prima donas become much more noticeable in the Social Media world, and there's one simple explanation for that. When you only can speak from one point of view, your ability to fully engage with people, the key to success in Social Media, diminishes. Moreover, your desire and/or ability to engage as part of an integrated team on behalf of your company also falls by the wayside.

Let's say, for example, that you work for a manufacturer of chicken coops. You've only ever worked in customer support. You feel pretty competent and you feel comfortable with how you've been doing things. Now, all of a sudden, your boss tells you that you, like everyone else in the company, need to start building the company's presence in the world of Social Media. You go to Twitter, start your account, and one day someone tweets you about an offer they saw in one of your ads. You have no idea about that. Advertising is a different department. You tell them to go to that person. A month later, someone tweets you about a new product announcement they saw. You saw the announcement too, but can't offer any more information. That's PR's job. You direct them to that person.

As time goes on, the number of tweets you receive continues to decrease. Now why would that be? Isn't it good to direct people to the person at your company would know the answer? Well, the problem is that in this new world of marketing, if you are out there representing your company, you lose credibility, you lose trust, and you look incompetent if you can't answer questions about what your company does or doesn't do. Customers no longer care about departments. They care about the fact that you list in your profile that you work for Smith Chicken Coops. They care about the fact that they need a new coop or that their coop needs to be repaired.

It's often easy to tell in the world of Social Media who is still operating from a departmental point of view. If you are a sales person who has failed to integrate with other departments, you may simply go out into the brave new world and tweet your wares. If you're a PR person who refused to learn the ways of other marketing channels, you may feel inclined to simply upload all of your press releases to your blog. Individuals who are failing to integrate are afraid to converse because they can't be sure what the company line is. Are you allowed to talk about your personal life? Are you allowed to mention the competitor? It seems safer to squawk at people rather than talk with people.

Signpost, Engagement, Discussion

Mitch Joel recently wrote a post he titled "The end of conversation in Social Media." I ended up conversing about it with two of my Twitter friends, Paul Konrardy (@PaulKonrardy) and Andrea Townsend (@AndreeaC_T). In particular, we discussed the fact that we were conversing (yay), but also that we were not conversing in the comment section of the blog that had inspired us to talk. The author was not involved in the discussion. We were also not engaging with the numerous other people who had commented on the blog.

This raises a lot of questions in my mind. I'd be interested in your input.

First, as Mitch Joel asks, has there ever really been conversation in Social Media? Is a trading of tweets a conversation or is it swapping semi-related sound bytes? For people who do not know how to integrate and engage, the folks whom I refer to as signposts, conversation is not what they use Social Media for. Are they winning the game?

Second, even if we are succeeding in dissolving our company departments, are we now departmentalizing our Social Media presence at our own peril? We are outputting. We are sharing. We are building bigger and bigger networks. As Eddie Izzard asks when he talks about reading food labels, "Is that good?"

Third, who is the more successful Social Media user, the person who receives a ton of comments on a blog post, resulting in a great conversation, or the person who receives a few comments on Twitter, a few on the blog, a few here, a few there, creating lots of molecular (departmentalized) discussions?

Departmentalization Versus Integrated Marketing

That's right. These are two diametrically opposed concepts. If you work in a company where departments are about territories, competition, ownership, and resistance to change, there is no point in learning any more about integrated marketing. You will not be able to do it. The Social Media example above, hypothetical though it may be, is just the beginning of why such a company will not come to a happy integrated ending. Integrated marketing is about integrated thinking, integrated planning, integrated systems, and integrated actions. All of the millions of parts in a car work together to get you where you need to go, but a key is required. If you are fortunate, all of the millions of body parts you have work together, but the key is a brain that orchestrates everything.

In a company, integrated marketing means that everyone must work together, and there must be some over-arching force that ensures that the cooperation lasts and grows. A philosophy of departmentalization is removing the key from the ignition. It is paralysis. It is a loss of functionality in the new world in which we live.

The existence of departments is not inherently evil. The philosophy of departments, however, will be one of the obstacles that separates companies who succeed and companies who fail.

1st Image by Jyn Meyer. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/jynmeyer
2nd Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/frumoaznic
3rd Image by ilker . http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ilco
4th Image by Gabriella Fabbri. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa

Consider Your First Impression

2010-08-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression." It is such an important concept. I would like to say that I learned about this idea via some sage guru or expert, but in fact, the fact that this saying resides in my head is nothing more than the result of me watching lots of television when I was a kid. I learned it in the context of a Head & Shoulders commercial.

Regardless of how I learned it, the saying has stuck with me throughout my life, never more so than during these days of business. It's hard to believe that your company, whether it's 2,000 people or just you, could be completely unknown to tons of people. Your company consumes more time than your family and friends. If you are passionate about your company, it encompasses a great deal of your thought capacity, your energy, and your passion. And yet...there are people who have no idea that your company exists.

Now that we have gone through the stages of grief, it is time to take a pragmatic approach to this sad truth. So, there are people who have never heard of you. That also means there are people who are going to, at some point, hear of you, see something from you, or interact with you for the first time. How can you make the most of that first chance at a first impression? If you think that integrating your marketing campaign has nothing to do with the answer to this question, let me try to change your mind.

The Family Reunion

Summer is ending, and as it does, many of you may be reflecting on family reunions you got to go to. Now, let's say that I have no idea who you are, but via a friend of a friend of a friend, I end up at this big family reunion. I meet 7 of your aunts, 8 of your uncles, your grandpa, and your little cousin. I don't get to meet you, however. Do you think that by meeting all of those very different people I'd have a pretty good fix on who you are and what you are all about?

If your marketing campaign is put together piece-meal, or if it is not backed by an extremely solid strategy that integrates everything together, people will learn about your company the way I would have learned about you through that hypothetical family reunion. They might kind of get an idea of what you do, but the messages might be a little blurred or contradictory, and there might not be anything that stands out enough to make that first impression really outstanding.

The Army

Thanks to Trust Agents (Brogan/Smith), the word "army" is becoming a common buzz word in Social Media. I like to expand the concept to include all of your marketing initiatives.

In Social Media, your army is your entire network. Your Facebook friends, your blog readers, your Twitter followers, your LinkedIn connections -- all of these people with whom you interact have been drafted. Some of these people may work themselves up the ranks to become one of your "brand evangelists," which would be like a general. The great thing about formulating this army is that even if you yourself are not in a specific location, your army knows you, they know your message, and they can represent you to people outside of your army (or network). This would be like going to a kind of freaky family reunion where everyone would say exactly what you want them to say about you, and it would all be for a purpose. Your purpose.

How can this concept of the army expand beyond the Social Media world? Your website helps to bridge the gap. It's your fortress, if you will. Anything you do, whether it's a print ad or a Facebook page, should drive traffic to your website, and everything should reiterate the key messages that you have breathed into your hub. From there, consider everything you do a solider, just like people can be soldiers online. Your ads, your email campaigns, your direct mail pieces, your booth graphics -- they should do exactly what your Social Media army does. They should represent you exactly the way you want to be represented. They should be able to stand in for you when you can't be there. They should be your handshake, your introduction. They should be your first impression.

I like you. Now what?

Considering what your first impression will be across all of your marketing channels is not the end of the story. All of your soldiers should allow people who are meeting you to get to know you better. In marketing terms, this means that a person new to your company who likes your first impression should find it easy to learn more about you. A prospect should find it easy to reach your sales force. A lead should be nurtured and get to know on a more personal level. Even though this extends beyond a consideration of the first impression, it does not extend beyond what you need to account for when planning your first impression. Why? Because just as you only get one chance to make a first impression, it only takes one mistake to ruin a good first impression.

Take, for example, the scenario I talked about a few months ago (I'm sure you remember but I'll remind you anyway). I received an email from a trusted source that promoted a white paper from a second source. Since the trusted source had made such a good impression on me, I opted to download the other source's white paper. I read it. I liked it. I promoted it via Twitter. The first impression had been very good. But then I started getting 1-2 emails every day from the second source, and the emails were very "sell-oriented" rather than educational. This left a very bad taste in my mouth. I felt that I had opted in to spam and that both sources had misled me to an extent. I have since not downloaded anything from either source. First impression was ruined.

The nurturing of a good first impression is a delicate balance that needs to be planned carefully. Your ultimate goal, of course, is to make a sale, and your prospects and customers should find that transparently obvious. Even so, you do not want to move too swiftly from an educational approach to a BUY NOW!!" approach. Not only can you ruin your good first impression, but you could also find that a potential soldier in your army has also been turned away.

Are you wearing a black shirt yet?

In that old shampoo commercial, it seemed like part of making a good first impression was wearing a black shirt, preferably without snowy dandruff decorating each shoulder.

In marketing, appearance is important, but it isn't everything. Are you analyzing every step in your marketing campaign from the perspective of an existing customer as well as someone who might be seeing you for the first time? What do you need to change so that your marketing makes sense to your entire army and everyone they may encounter?

1st Image by Bo Hansen. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/filax
2nd Image by Billy Alexander. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ba1969
3rd Image by conna lee. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/connalee

Blending is more than integrating Facebook with Twitter

2010-08-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Do you ever stop to think about how much blending we do? We wear clothes so that we can blend in with others in our profession (I wonder how many business people have begun wearing hoodies thanks to Zuckerberg). We blend make up into our faces so that it looks like we're not wearing make up. We blend different kinds of alcohol to make drinks (or so I hear). Indeed, we are all blending machines. So why is it that we are not successfully blending our marketing efforts?

Blending requires more than one ingredient

A lot of people have begun talking about blending different marketing solutions, but the questions that I am seeing reflect a lack of understanding about what blending means, exactly. I see questions like, "How can I blend Social Media with email?" "How can I blend efforts on different Social Media sites?" "How can I blend Social Media with SEO?"

Notice a problem? The questions aren't really asking how to blend. The questions are about how to make Social Media 100% successful as a stand-alone tactic or how other "subservient" channels can be used to support Social Media efforts. This is comparable to saying that you want to learn how to make cookies, then asking if it's possible to make cookies with just chocolate chips and maybe a little bit of flour. Some people do indeed believe that Social Media is now the most important part of any marketing campaign, but the whole cookie is what the experience should really about.

Update Twitter and do other stuff? I'm overwhelmed.

For some, the idea of trying to mix anything with Social Media is terrifying. Indeed, some find this concept so intimidating that they wait to jump into the Social Media pool. The way that Social Media experts can get around this, in part, is to point out a lot of automation techniques. That's not auto-posting or auto-direct messages, mind you, but there are ways to kill multiple birds with one post. FriendFeed, Tumblr, Networked Blogs -- all of these things sell the idea of posting once, and then, just like when you blow on the fuzzy white petals of a dandelion, your ideas will float everywhere.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately since I love my job) there is no easy way to integrate an entire marketing campaign, not to mention an entire company. There is no "IMCFeed." There is no magic button (Sorry Staples). This is not a reason to despair, however, or to limit yourself or your company to one channel and one channel only. There are ways to save time. There are ways to make it all happen. You just need to make sure you have your eyes and your ears open, right along with your mind.

I've talked a lot about ways to maximize concepts and creative input. To get your engines going, take a gander at this post outlining 30 ways to use a single paragraph of copy.

Blending Thoughts and Philosophy

Equally troubling is that there seems to be more, not less, of a tendency to separate people, positions, or departments that should really be blended together. In part, I think this is because all of us have so much more access to information tied specifically, in a niche kind of way, to what we do. Customer Service specialists can immerse themselves in books about customer service. Social Media managers have a treasure trove of books they can read about any number of facets to the Social Media story. We are building each facet of marketing as its own fortress where no one else may enter, and that fortress is built upon beliefs regarding how we should do things.

This is something we must put a stop to immediately as marketers, as business people.

There are lots of ways to begin this process. Have a marketing person (yes, even an agency person could do this) shadow sales for a day or customer service for a day. If your PR department is separate from your advertising department, have a couple of people shift positions for a week. One of the easiest ways to build barriers is failing to grow understanding. If marketing has no idea what the sales department is facing, and if the opposite is true as well, how are they ever going to be able to meet and move forward as a single unit? Answer: Can't be done. Sales needs to understand why some marketing concepts may be more about branding and less about lead driving. Marketing needs to understand that ROI is what makes the world go round. On and on it goes.

As we experience each others' problems and obstacles, as we familiarize ourselves with what our peers experience on a day-to-day basis, we will be able to offer a fresh perspective. From that point, where thoughts are geared towards productivity and efficiency, blending, leading to integration, can begin.

Time to blow someone's mind

The next time someone asks you how to integrate Facebook with Twitter, Social Media with SEO, or Social Media with email, consider answering the question in an unexpected way. You could say, for example, "I have no idea, but I'm integrating my print campaign with email, my trade show presence with Social Media, and my product development department with customer service." They'll never see it coming.

Image by kasey albano. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/superfloss

Always Focus on the Customer

2010-08-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

A little after I joined my family's advertising agency, I came upon a diagram that illustrated integrated marketing. There were two charts, actually, one more simplistic than the other. The simple chart showed how online advertising, email campaigns, direct mail, print advertising, and literature (along with a few other things) should all work together to create a brand. The other chart added more to the soup, including employee training sessions. In neither chart was there much mention of the customer. Oh how times have changed. In fact, Beth Harte, Integrated Marketing expert, details this change in her blog post titled Failed Icon.

To put it simply, the charts that I learned from way back when (five years ago) are no longer relevant. Brand is not at the center of the chart. Your customer is.

Problem Number One: We don't have step one down yet

Have you ever heard the story about the plumber whose sink is always leaking? The electrician who barely has workable light in her house? The teacher whose children do poorly in school? This kind of problem is a perpetual plague to business of all types. We get bogged down in our day-to-day routines, whatever those may be. We prioritize problems, and our customers' problems must come first. That's how we stay in business. This is not the same thing, by the way, as focusing your marketing campaign on the customer, but I'll get to that in a moment. In all of this rushing around, we tend to overlook ideas, strategies, or helpful tips for ourselves. Marketing firms seldom do a good job of promoting themselves. A manufacturer may promote the sales force, forgetting that the company itself needs to be promoted.

Because of this pattern of behavior in the business world, a lot of companies are still struggling to get the basic definition of integrated marketing, as defined in those charts of mine. I am seeing a preponderance of questions like these:

- Which is more important, Social Media or print advertising?
- Who should be the dominant force in Social Media, sales, PR, marketing, or customer service?
- Is going to a trade show more or less important than creating a new brochure?

This tells me that companies are still approaching marketing the way people build tacos. You put some onions on, then maybe some tomato, olives, 5 pounds of cheese, 3 pounds of lettuce. You don't really keep track of what you're doing. You're just grabbing stuff that looks good and you are trying to make it work as a meal. But what do we know about overstuffed tacos? They fall apart. They create a big mess.

Now, approaching marketing piece-meal might work some of the time. The temptation will be to not do anything to the max so as not to to tip the delicate balance between "full" and "mess." But it can work. However, do you want your marketing campaign to be something that "could work" or do you want it to be delicious?

Problem Number Two: Step two is a revolution

One of the results that occurs when companies (or people) approach marketing in a truly integrated way is that divisions, departments, barriers to cooperation, and lots of other annoyances fall by the wayside. This is why we really need to master step one before we can move on to what the new integrated marketing is all about.

Why is that so? Consider the question that people are bantering about quite a bit these days: "Who owns Social Media?" Now, if a company is engaged in a fully integrated marketing campaign, this question would not even register as sensible. "We all own Social Media just like we all own all facets of our marketing campaign and corporate identity." But if a company is not strung together that way, debates erupt. "Well, I think PR owns Social Media." "Oh no no no, customer service does."

Now extrapolate those kinds of arguments to customer care. If your company is not used to approaching things as a single cooperative force, who is going to answer the call when a customer needs support or when a prospect needs to be nurtured into a lead? You run the risk of bickering over exactly what kind of call it is, whose fault it is that the customer needs support, or who should get the credit for bringing that lead in. It's entirely possible, in fact, that your multiple identity syndrome may chase your lead or customer away entirely. It is not possible to create a customer-centric integrated marketing campaign when everything is a struggle.

What a customer-centric integrated marketing campaign might look like

So what kind of revolution are we talking about here? Well, it would be kind of like the French Revolution in that the entire society of the company would have to change from the top down (hopefully no beheadings, however). It would be kind of like the American Revolution in that the company would need to collaborate, declare independence from departments and silos, and create new ways of doing things that had not been tried before. It would be like the revolution that resulted in the Berlin Wall crumbling to pieces because barriers would be torn down in a like fashion.

A customer-centric integrated marketing campaign would begin with PR, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, the C-suite, creative, and other relevant parties sitting down together and asking one question in unison: "What do our customers need?" Sales would learn how marketing and PR would be delivering leads to the company. Customer Service would learn the branding and messaging that customers would be receiving. The C-Suite would learn how the entire company was going to present itself to the industry and to customers and would sign off on the plan from the foundation up. The campaign would incorporate behind the scenes communication that would be ongoing between all of the facets of the company and between the company and its customers. Did that lead turn into a sale? Where did the lead come from? Tell marketing to hit that place harder. Did one of your CSRs receive a raving review or a raving mad string of obscene complaints? Sales, marketing, PR, and the c-suite should know.

Keep the car but drive it in a different direction

The one thing that remains the same in this new era of customer-focused integrated marketing is that all of your marketing tactics and indeed, all of your corporate functions, must work together to achieve the same goals and to present the same message. This extends beyond but also includes the aesthetic. You should have a company-wide tagline, but it should be a message that the customer would value and appreciate. You should have a common look to your marketing materials, but perhaps it is a look you decided on after receiving reader study results or feedback from a customer think tank. Everything you send out should make it easy for customers to understand why and when they might need your products or services. They should not have to struggle to find you. You should be at the trade shows your customers go to. You should be in the print publications they read (and yes, people do still read print publications tied to their profession). When they want to refer you, you should line their path with rose petals. When they have a concern, you should be available 24/7.

Where are you?

Are you working on step one, which is to approach marketing with an integrated mindset? Are you viewing Social Media and trade shows as 2 peas in a pod or as two entirely different plants? Are you mindful of your customers? Do you know where your customers are coming from, why they are staying, or (hopefully not) why they are leaving?

Regardless of your answer, which may take some to think about, your customers are on the move, and make no mistake, they have their drivers' licenses and they have power steering. If you do not begin to market in the way that your customers demand and need, you will not be applauded for standing your ground or staying true to the old ways. You'll just find yourself short on the customer end of your business, which means you could end up with no business at all.

1st Image by Gabriella Fabbri. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa
2nd Image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001
3rd image by Lize Rixt. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/lizerixt
4th Image by SsJ Toma. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ssjtoma

Integrated Marketing: Easy as Your ABCs

2010-08-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of talk regarding integrated marketing floating around. Maybe more specifically integraTING marketing. I feel like we are drifting further and further away from what integrated marketing is all about as we try to incorporate more and more technologies, sites, and methodologies into our marketing efforts. Really, this should not be. Integrated Marketing is as easy as your ABCs.

To conduct a successful Integrated Marketing campaign, just remember...

Always focus on the customer.
Blend traditional media, new media, departments, and people.
Consider how someone new to your company or brand would view any facet of your campaign.
Departments are obstacles. A campaign cannot be integrated until the people are.
Extend beyond the same aesthetic. What is your unique message?
Follow through on everything with everyone, most especially your customers.
Go where your customers and competition are. Meet them where they are comfortable.
Have a plan based on research and strategy.
Include everyone in the plan, from customers to sales to your C-Suite.
Jousting over who generated new business is the best way to kill a company.
Kick the "this or that" mentality. Almost always, "both" is the right answer.
Lead nurturing is the only path to make your marketing efforts matter.
Making leads is marketing's responsibility. Managing leads belongs to everyone.
Never assume that someone has heard of you or cares about what you do.
Overselling through any channel is the best way to kill your campaign.
People want to learn. Everything in your campaign should assist them.
Quit wondering who owns Social Media. Everybody does.
Random acts of kindness should be integrated with everything else.
Strategy should incorporate everyone. Also, silos are signs of disease.
Tactics should support each other, not work against each other or overpower each other.
Understand what your customers need, even if they don't. Then educate.
Very few companies are maximizing integration of Social Media with other channels. Pounce.
Whatever you do, be real, authentic, genuine, and human.
Xenophobia when faced with new technologies, trends, or opportunities no longer cuts the mustard.
You have to know your corporate soul before you can integrate your marketing successfully.
Zappos didn't find success accidentally. They are integrating customer service into their marketing.

See? Easy as your ABCs.

Image by Josh Klute. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Onatos

Content is not king

2010-08-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

For the last at least couple of years, there have been two sayings that I've heard ad nauseam. The first is that one about Wall Street and Main Street -- that's a topic for an entirely different post. But the one that is relevant for this blog is "Content is King." In a time when the internet is making everything seem kind of fluffy and "of the ether," content has been our anchor. How do you make a blog really good? Good content. How do you become a thought leader? You provide good content. Content is to Social Media users like blanket was to Linus. So I am going to lay this news on you gently.

I don't think content is king anymore. Ideas are King.

What's the Difference?

Let me define my terms. To me, content is the meat on the bones of a blog, a white paper, a Twitter update, or a talk. It is something you can point to and say, "Here is my content." An idea may be verbalized via content, but sometimes an idea is something more mushy like a concept or the beginning of a concept or idea that isn't fully formed yet. An idea is a thought that has some direction and knows what it wants to be when it grows up.

What's with the Coup d'etat?

As I was signing out of Twitter last night, I saw a post from Ray W. Johnson. For those of you who don't know (because I didn't), Ray W. Johnson has made a name for himself over the last year via twice-weekly YouTube shows that review viral YouTube videos. He's funny. He's authentic. He provides a lot of content. He's become a success, in fact. Would connecting with this fellow do any good for me or other marketers or companies? Probably not.

Now look at some of the thought leaders that I have mentioned here a million trillion times (or even some of the ones I have only mentioned 999,999 times). They also generate a ton of content. They also have done well for themselves. But what do I gain by associating with them and learning from them? Ideas, my friend.

Content is important. It's how you verbalize what's going on with you or your company. But now, with technology and social networking the way it is, anyone, truthfully, can generate "content." If you don't think you are a good writer or blogger or vlogger or Twitterer, you can find people who will do those things for you for a small fee. Content is no longer the mysterious wonder that it used to be. In fact, even if you want to just wing it as a writer, you can do alright for yourself if you know a little about keywords and if you know how to play the game.

But what makes content really visible and unique? The idea behind it. Ray's content may not be stellar or useful, but his idea -- his concept -- that's what makes him really stand out. What makes certain blogs and websites common resources for people in the marketing biz? Ideas. New ideas, ideas about how to do things, sharing ideas.

Ideas in the wind

I had a very interesting exchange this morning with Cindy Bagwell Chrysler and Glenn Le Santo, 2 Facebookers who also hang on Chris Brogan's FB page. Essentially, we talked about how to share ideas. Both Cindy and Glenn feel that if you are a person who has tons of ideas, some of which you are not using, you should voluntarily give unto others the ideas that are kind of waxing and waning in your brain. As Glenn said, ideas do have a time stamp on them. Is it better to let the idea just die, or is it better to give it to someone who can run with it right now?

I entered the conversation from a bit of a different point of view. I am all for sharing ideas. I wouldn't know a lot of what I know if people more experienced and smarter than me hadn't been willing to share ideas. I've also given a lot of ideas to other people and I think the ideas have served them well.

However, I have also seen numerous scenarios where ideas are simply not valued. A lot of the thought leaders are experiencing this and I have witnessed it at times. They share tons of ideas. Then someone comes and says something like, "Can you give me an idea for..." or "Can I have your book for free?" At that point, if the thought leader says no, people seem to get kind of ... itchy. A lot of people seem to have a sense of entitlement when it comes to ideas. That's a big problem.

Farnsworth vs. RCA

What I worry about is scenarios like that which resulted in us all receiving the invention of television. Philo Farnsworth filed the patent for what eventually became television technology. Immediately, RCA said, "Wait, that was our idea!" RCA then made improvements to Farnsworth's invention, claiming it as yet another patent. Farnsworth said, "Wait, that was my idea!" The debate still rages on.

Because we are not being reminded that ideas rather than content are king, we are not valuing our ideas enough. When David Meerman Scott talks about losing control, he is not necessarily talking about letting your creativity or your genius or your ideas run wild. He is talking about your content getting out there, finding a job, and starting a family. Your ideas are what make you and your company who you are. They are what will define the paths you take or don't take. They will be behind your new service, your new product.

If we are careless with our ideas in this day and age, there's no telling who could take ownership of them. Proving that you had the idea first and did not intend on "giving" it to other people will be extremely difficult if you are giving your ideas away, essentially, on Facebook, Twitter, and your blog. On the other side of the coin, if we solely depend on "idea people" for our ideas, we will be doomed once that faucet gets turned off.

That's why Ideas are king

The thing that a lot of people will never be able to fake is ideas. A lot of musicians say, "Ugh, the Beatles...all of their songs are so simplistic. Rarely do they stray from a single chord progression." People say, "Ugh, these Social Media experts. They say completely obvious things in different ways and get applauded for it." The thing that makes these kinds of folks different is that they have ideas on how to use things in different ways. Just like many musicians can play a C chord, many of us can understand right from wrong, sharing, and other basic principles. But not all of us can create music like the Beatles did. Not all of us can apply basic principles from other facets of life and make them work for business. Ideas are what separate us. Ideas are pieces of our soul that go off and plant themselves into something new.

Do you really want to part from that just because you can't get to everything NOW NOW NOW? I don't know. I enjoy helping people. I enjoy sharing. But to give all of my ideas away now rather than saving them for a rainy day? That makes *me* kind of itchy.

What do you think? Tell me what your belief is. Do you agree with Glenn and Cindy or do you see things more like me, or are you in a totally different park?

1st Image by Fabrizio Ginesi. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/fabridea
2nd Image by Milan Jurek. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/milan6
3rd Image by Julia Freeman-Woolpert. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/juliaf

Oh boy...Vlogging

2010-08-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

So, I have been hearing about all of this Vlogging now. My blogging wasn't enough for you, Social Media World!! (I am raising my fist right now).

Anyway, it's not exactly a Spielberg or a Lucas, but it's a first! The quality is not very good, which I don't really understand. Ready to learn!

Why Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places keep me up nights

2010-08-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

I went to the mall today (I took a day off) and was generally horrified by the experience on many levels. There were so many overly fragrant smells that my allergies clicked into full gear. The whole experience was made more strange by the fact that the mall's general sound system was playing some sort of ambient music that made me feel like I was an extra walking around in a movie. But what really bothered me...what really stuck with me...is that I saw two little boys playing on one of those little toy car rides. Neither could have been much over 8. And they were completely unattended. Now I am not a parent. I do understand that 2 young boys can be quite a handful when you are trying to shop. But I can't really think of a good reason to find this acceptable.

Paranoid Android

I had always been really sensitive to the "stranger danger" approach. My parents trained me very well. Even so, in fifth grade, I was left unattended on a field trip to a nursing home (we had to "adopt" grandparents for class) and the son of my "grandmother" took me to see the nursing home chapel. No harm came to me, but when I related the story to my mom, you can imagine her response. It ended okay for me. It easily could have been otherwise. I wasn't a dumb kid. I just felt secure and didn't give it a second's thought.

Then, in 2004, I saw something that drew even more attention about the dangers for children out there. I was watching the news and saw a video of a young girl named Carlie Brucia actually being led off by the man who would eventually kill her. Conversations sprang up everywhere. Did she know the man from a chatroom? Look at all of the other kids who were being kidnapped by people whom they thought they knew through the online world. Spotlight on.

Fast Forward to Now

About a year ago, I guess, I started seeing Foursquare updates. As I learned more about it through my job in marketing, I had red alarms flashing on and off in my head. Then I saw foursquare updates showing up in my Twitter stream. And now, this week, there is the news about Facebook Places.

Now, as a friend of mine would say, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer here. I am all in favor of continuing to advance new technologies, and the marketer in me sometimes drools at the thought of what geo-location technology could mean for companies. But...

I have an 8-year-old cousin who knows how to text. Kids younger than that are getting on the web to play Webkins. Kids are growing up immersed with this stuff, and it's all part of the fabric of their lives. Who is making sure that they know about the dangers of the online world?

Not even ten years ago, the big danger was awful people who would go to chatrooms, befriend kids, lure the kids to a meeting place, and often the story would not end well. What I am finding so troublesome right now is that if a person wants to cause harm, all they have to do is go on Twitter and search for terms that would help them out. They don't have to have an account. They don't have to sign in. Even Facebook is searchable if accounts aren't locked down, and guess what? When I went into my account yesterday, all of the permissions were turned OFF for Facebook places. Are we making sure our kids and teens know about this stuff?

Maybe we could consider this before the first big tragedy happens.

You could say this all seems pretty obvious. Of course parents are going to monitor their kids' accounts. And I'm sure YOU would. But I saw two kids unattended at the mall today. Do you think those 2 boys are going to be educated about the dangers of things like Foursquare?

Think about it?

Image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001

I never thought it would happen to me: Lessons on community

2010-08-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

This morning, my Dad/boss and I attended the annual "Shelter from the Storm" fundraising breakfast for ACCESS Women's Shelter. ACCESS is kind of like the little engine that could. Founded in 1984 exclusively to help single homeless women and their children (2 groups often neglected by other shelters), ACCESS has had to deal with continuing cuts in federal support and increasing demands on their time and facilities. At the breakfast this morning a video was shown that was simple yet powerful. The concept was based on a sight many of us are all too familiar with -- a homeless person holding up a tattered cardboard sign. In this video, current and former residents of the ACCESS shelter held up a cardboard sign showing the challenges they were or are coping with, and then, the cardboard sign was flipped, and they proudly showed the progress they have made. Needless to say, there was hardly a dry eye in the room.

A couple of years ago, Josh Gippin (who happens to be a cousin of mine) developed a short documentary on ACCESS for the same event. In the documentary, and in general when you talk to current and former residents of ACCESS, you hear 2 things a lot. "I never thought it would happen to me" and the word community. Many of these women lost their jobs and their homes because they became extremely ill, didn't have adequate health coverage, and just couldn't cope. When they call ACCESS, they are feeling a range of emotions from shame to guilt to ineptitude to who knows what else. When they arrive at ACCESS, though, they feel welcome. They feel like they have been invited into a community. They are residents, not numbers.

Sometimes, "I never thought it would happen to me" can be good news

This talk of community wound its way through my brain and crashed into something that happened yesterday. Chris Brogan wrote a beautiful piece about my friend Suzanne Vara. He talked about Suzanne's capacity for community-building. He talked about how smart she is, and even mentioned her love of the Mets and Jets. For once, Chris wasn't telling me something new. However, the really amazing and mind-blowing thing is that Chris noted that he and Suzanne had mentioned me, of all people, as a friend and as a professional with potential. Suzanne wrote today that she considers me a part of her community. I never thought it would happen to me. Indeed, when I think about the people who populate my various communities -- my Social Media community, my family community, my community of long-time friends, I ponder how it is I got so lucky.

Flip over that cardboard

I think that a lot of people associate building friendships and communities with sharing sad news, supporting each other during hard times, and always being ready to serve as the shoulder to cry on. These are all important functions, but it is only the sad part of the tale. The women of ACCESS have been able to build a community based on a shared will to survive and thrive. I have been invited into communities where respect, admiration, adoration, fun, and dedication march by perpetually in a ticker tape parade. Why don't we try to build communities on the new side of the cardboard? Why look for the company that misery loves when we could look instead for the lifeline that leaves misery behind?

Since this is a marketing blog...

So what does this have to do with you? What does this have to do with marketing or business? Well, quite a lot, actually. You see, people are talking a lot about how business in the 21st century is about being human and developing one-on-one connections. But now, after thinking about this for a couple of days, I'm not sure that's quite right. I think that businesses that will thrive in this new era will do so because they have built communities. Those communities won't be built upon shared cynicism or shared angst. Those communities will be built on some central positive core that the business builds. I can't tell you what the little nugget will be. It'll be different for everyone. But people will latch on to that positivity. They'll start talking to each other about how welcoming the house is that you have built. They'll start talking about how nice it is that you provide whatever special thing you provide. You'll listen when they talk, they'll listen and talk to each other, much like people gather around a campfire.

Creating this community could begin with a simple change of wording. Many of us marketers write ad copy (and some experts in Social Media advise blog posts to be like this too) that is focused on a problem. What if we alter our focus to the solution? Everyone knows what problems there are. Our houses are always getting dusty. Roofs are always leaking. Kitties and puppies are always having accidents on new, freshly installed carpeting. We all know that stuff. It's all part of the shared human experience. Can the message be changed? Can the creation of good feeling build a community as much as complaining about a problem?

"You know I love you" is not enough

The real glue in a community like this is showing appreciation. Verbalizing appreciation. Do your favorite customers know that they are your favorite customers? Do your top sales reps know that they are your top sales reps? Does that person you talk about at the dinner table know that you are really amazed at how they are kicking butt?

The amazing thing about so many people I have met in the Social Media world, people like Suzanne and Chris and Maya Paveza and Stanford Smith and Lisa Alexander and Danny Garcia and so many others too numerous to name is that they aren't shy about saying a kind word. It doesn't have to be your birthday or a holiday. It doesn't have to be a reaction to a tragic tweet or a funny Facebook update. They just lift you up because that's what they do. That's why they are great community builders, in the end. You know where they stand with you, and if you stand well, it's an honor.

Translate that to all facets of your life. Lift your family up. Lift your friends up. Lift up your customers and your co-workers. Build community. Create in people around you that wonderful version of an oft-heard phrase. "I never thought it would happen to me." What do you think? Can we do it?

2nd Image Credit: Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/leovdworp
3rd Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/spekulator

Social Media Success Depends on T&A

2010-08-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

There are tons and tons of books out there on Social Media, and I get the feeling more are being created as we speak, but the whole secret to finding success in Social Media can really be summed up by two words. Talking and Answers.

What? What were you thinking of?

What does Social Media success look like?

Before I explain myself, I feel it's important to clarify that "success" is a three-tiered monster when it comes to social networking sites.

In no particular order (with 1 being the most important in my book), those three tiers are:

1. Meeting brilliant, amazing, wonderful people

2. Creating professional networks that can serve your business in the future

3. Creating money-making scenarios for you and/or your business

Now that we're on the same page, let's get back to T&A (talking and answers)

Talking

Last night during the inaugural #techchat on Twitter, some ideas were thrown around regarding how to interact (or react) on Twitter. As I've mentioned before, when I first started tweeting, I was generally a link posting machine. It was boring for me, and I'm pretty certain it was boring for any folks who were following me at the time. So I decided, "Well, maybe I'll just start talking to people. Like how we used to do in real life." That decision, I am convinced, is what made Twitter become a resource for me rather than just something to post to.

There's a lot of pressure on people to post nothing but meaningful and interesting things when using Social Media for business. We are constantly told that we need to make ourselves stand out, we need to prove we are thought leaders, etc. I'm sure a lot of that is true to at least some extent. However, it's okay, and sometimes extremely rewarding, to talk about things that are perhaps not as valuable to your general cadre of followers. Sometimes you will see me talking about baseball. Sometimes you will see me talking about Monty Python. Yesterday I lamented my failing reading skills as I kept reading news about China Unicom as China Unicorn.

My rule of thumb? No one wants to talk to an encyclopedia, and no one wants to talk to that annoying relative who talks about colonoscopies and doggy doodoo all the time. Stray away from those ends of the spectrum and you'll have the talking part of the formula down.

Answers

That being said, talking about things, whether ethereal or boring, won't necessarily help you meet people who are in your profession or who are interested in the same things you are. That's why answers are also key.

Answers can be kind of tricky on sites like Facebook and Twitter. It's very easy to come across as a know-it-all sometimes, especially when people don't know how to read your tonality. If you think about it though, most of what thought leaders and other successful Social Media folk post consists of answers to questions you may or may not realize you have. Why are people like Denise Wakeman, Mari Smith, DM Scott, Ann Handley, Beth Harte, and Chris Brogan successful? Because they are providing you information you didn't really think about needing. The information is provided before you even know what to ask.

Answers are the engines of success behind sites like PushingSocial, CopyBlogger, and ProBlogger. People go to these sites, retweet posts, and comment because there is always a feeling that the information being provided is important. It's a constant stream of important answers.

On LinkedIn, giving answers is something that is requested. The "answers" section is a treasure trove for building this part of your Social Media portfolio. What I have come to enjoy is not just offering my opinions or solutions, but also seeing how other people answer and interacting with them. A combination of talking and answers can reveal many of your strengths simultaneous and can also be a great way to make strong connections.

You may be saying to yourself that there must be something beyond these two words that could lead to any type of Social Media success. I have thought about this and find that most of my responses pretty easily fall into either or both of these categories. I'm open to being proven wrong, however. Go ahead, make my day :)

1st Image by Michaela Kobyakov. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/michaelaw
2nd Image by Nate Brelsford. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/runrunrun
3rd Image by Julia Freeman-Woolpert. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/juliaf

The Social Media Case Study You'll Never Hear About

2010-08-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Every morning for the last couple of months, the first thing that I reach for is my Blackberry, which sleeps comfortably on my night stand. I don't reach for my alarm because, annoyingly, I tend to wake up 10 minutes before it's set to go off. I reach for my Blackberry, and inevitably there is a little flashing red light signifying that I have email messages. Then I check Facebook and Twitter in a skimming kind of way, and then I begin my day.

Does your day start in a similar fashion?

Social Media seems to be everywhere these days, and its power and potential seem palpable. Every day there are case studies explaining how social media helped a start-up become a corporate giant. There are stories about how individuals went from a computer and phone to an industry leader. There is a different kind of success story available. It's not as sexy. It may not sound as exciting. But it's just as valuable.

The Zen of Standing Still

Late last year, we launched a Social Media services program we call ClayComm 2.0. There are two parts to it. The first part is research and the second part consists of various ways to implement an agreed upon Social Media strategy. We always recommend that our clients start with the research part before we begin any kind of implementation.

There is one story in particular that I want to tell you about.

One of our clients asked us to research what Social Media tactics should be pursued for their company. We ended up with research that suggested there just isn't a lot going on in this client's particular industry except for on YouTube, where there was a fair amount of relevant videos. We suggested keeping ears and eyes open on other channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but we said that YouTube seemed to be the best place to start. Instead of investing a great deal of time in a Facebook strategy that would have taken an extremely long time to bear any benefits, we targeted our client's focus to something that would jump start their presence in social media. In the long haul, videos highlighting their particular strengths will be ideal building blocks for any type of Social Media campaign that follows.

The Difference Between Making Money and Saving Money

A lot of case studies point to a specific metric of improvement. We increased sales by x%. We grew by x%. There's of course nothing wrong with such measurements of success. You've probably noticed, though, that there is not a lot out there about companies who jumped on to Facebook or Twitter and then abandoned the accounts. It doesn't take much searching to find examples of these orphaned efforts. How much time and energy was invested in those accounts before the realization hit that it was not the right time or the right environment? What if a company hires a social media manager only to find that, as is the case sometimes, social media is just not as integral to that industry yet?

We advocate researching on the front end. Sometimes, the result will be that social media is just something we need to monitor. That's not to say that it will never happen. That's not to say that you can never be a pioneer. But we measure the risks on the front end, before the time (which we all know equates to money) is invested.

It's not the kind of success that is easy to point to. It's noticing what's not there -- a Facebook page with a few product promos, a company Twitter page with 3 tweets. It's using time, energy, and money wisely. It's the kind of success that can alter a company's path for the better, even if the hows and whys are not known from the start. There may not be an acronym for money saved through researched strategies, but perhaps there should be.

Have you experienced a similar kind of success? Feel free to share it here.

Image by Bethany Carlson. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bewinca

The danger of "Online Marketing Tools"

2010-08-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

I was wading through Twitter this morning, coffee cup in hand, when I saw a post from Ann Handley. She had been quoted in the Wall Street Journal! Being a fan, I decided to see what she had to say. Although I'm still happy that Ann got quoted by such an important source, the article itself left me deeply troubled. Titled "A Guide to Online Marketing Tools," the article essentially is a "cheat sheet" for people who are starting their own companies and want to "easily design fliers, stationery, and business cards," etc. Some might see the article as an invaluable resource, and others might see it as a sign of the times. My own perspective, as an agency person and as a believer in the highest quality work and the most integrated, cohesive marketing campaigns possible, is that the article represents numerous potential pitfalls that today's companies, start-up or otherwise, could easily avoid with some guidance.

In order to explain my point of view a bit, let me review some of the points that the author, Shara Tibken, details.

"Get It On Paper"

Ms. Tibken begins by explaining how companies can use online templates to create stationery, fliers, and business cards. These websites are certainly no secret. Companies like Office Max, Staples, and FedEx have been touting these services for awhile. I won't lie either - most of the time, you'll get a serviceable product. Serviceable. How does this differ from what a marketing firm or agency can do for you, however?

Fliers: I'm not sure if the reference here is to sell sheets or something else, but let's assume we're talking about a single-sided sell sheet. Can you plug an image and some copy into a template? Sure, of course. Here is my concern for companies that take this route, however.
     • Are you integrating important keywords and phrases into your copy?
   • Is someone proofreading your copy?
     • Are you making sure that the images used will translate well in print as well as online?
     • Are you using a stock of paper that speaks to high quality, or is the stock kind of thin?
     • How are you going to use the flier? Are you going to post it to your website for download?

Stationery and Business Cards: It's really easy to take things like stationery and business cards for granted. However, when we work on these projects, we refer to the entire project as "corporate identity." This tends to lend a little more gravity to the situation. The article notes that creating stationery and business cards is as easy as point and click, but there are other considerations that are not as intuitive. For example, if you are a start-up, what is your logo? What is your corporate tagline? Do you want or need one? What is the most important information to include on your business cards? These are all things that marketing and agency folks think about. If done correctly, creating a corporate identity for yourself (which could also include an email signature convention, packaging, and more) is much more than simply plugging in your contact information.

"Making Pictures Perfect"

Next, the article talks about photography. Ms. Tibken begins this section with an indisputable truth. A good photo can be a real key to success for any kind of campaign, or even for just getting a company off the ground.

The first thing that is a bit misleading about this section is that Ms. Tibken mentions all of the various sources a person can use to "clean up" a photo if it's not ready to go from the start. You can remove red eye, you can add a background. Again, these things are not secrets. I knew about photoshop before I joined the business. The thing is, the kind of touch-ups that really show quality are things the article does not mention. How do you strip out an image, for example? Why do you need to do that? What is a hi-res versus a low-res image, and when do you need to use one or the other? What is the difference between a .jpg file and a .tif file? Which one, for example, would you upload to create your flier?

Next, the article discusses professional websites where you can purchase images. Again, nothing mind boggling here. These sites have been around for quite some time. Again, though, the issue is more complex than simply carrying with you a willingness to purchase a professional picture. One important thing the article does not mention is that because everyone has access to these sites, the chances for two companies in the same line of business to end up using the same stock photo are extremely high. Without the guidance of a marketing firm or agency, the burden will be on you to research what your competitors and peers are doing with their marketing materials. They may gravitate towards the same images you do. Do you want your ad or website to meld with your competitors in peoples' minds?

Less philosophical is the problem of usage. Many photo stock sites offer low resolution, high resolution, and different sizes. Different sizes have different prices. How do you know, without professional knowledge, which you will need? If you guess incorrectly, that is more money out of your pocket.

"Don't Go It Alone"

Interestingly, I thought this section was going to encourage readers to at least seek out consultation from marketing experts. Instead, however, this section details sites like crowdSpring LLC, which Bob Garfield talks about in The Chaos Scenario. The jist is that you don't have to create all of your work yourself.

Well, you can probably guess what I'm going to say.

Yes, it's true that all kinds of work can be generated by all kinds of people. Let's use this hypothetical situation. You are launching a new product that you think is going to put your start-up company on the map. You know that you want a website, a sell sheet or brochure, a product-specific logo, and some ads. It is 100% possible to go to a crowdsourcing site for each of those products. However, without the proper guidance behind each project brief, you are very likely to end up with projects that bear no relation to each other. This is problematic for several reasons. It's difficult to build a brand without recognizable features. It's hard to stand out in a crowd without a cohesive campaign. It's hard to translate your corporate and product mission to 20 different people, most especially if you don't have that information at hand yourself.

Can crowdsourcing sites work? Oh, absolutely. But if you are trying to create an entire campaign, it is quite dangerous to think that using this methodology will save you time and money with a positive ROI in the end.

The ending of the article, which is where Ann Handley's quote appears, does mention some good points. Make sure you have a call to action. Don't just create content to do it. My concern is that if you begin to rely on these open source solutions for the execution of your work, you may miss some of the background thought, research and strategy that will make all of those separate pieces come together as one giant, successful jigsaw puzzle.

Will working with an agency represent more of an investment than some of these "online tools"? The answer may not be as black-and-white as you may think. Although some of these online tools look cheap or free, the costs can add up if there are mistakes, constant changes, or updates made necessary by a lack of planning. Something to consider.

1st Image by Hector Landaeta. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/coloniera2
2nd Image by ilker. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ilco

State of the Blog, 8/15/10

2010-08-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday, which also means that today is Blogchat day over on Twitter. It's not just any ordinary chat either. The one, the only Chris Brogan is going to be hosting. Naturally, one of the five parties I go to in a year is occurring tonight, so I might miss the whole thing.

Inspired by my grief, and also, in a completely different way, inspired by John Jantsch's The Referral Engine, where I am reading about his views on blogging, I decided to take a little time today to talk about where my blog is, how I am doing what I am doing, and why I am doing those things.

What I'm doing now

When I first started blogging professionally, I realized something terrifying. People won't read your blog if they don't know it's there. Simultaneously, I learned that people won't follow you on Twitter if all you do is retweet other posts and alternate that with links to "interesting" articles. I decided to try to tweet links to my new blog posts. It showed that I was capable of generating my own thoughts, and it addressed both traffic problems at the same time. I would say I am rather pleased with my levels of success in doing things this way. The nice thing about promoting through Twitter is not just that you are potentially reaching huge amounts of people, but you can also let people know you are blogging about them or something they might be interested in. Harder to do that on other social networking sites.

Although I preach and appreciate the value of a blog "editorial calendar," I do not have one for this blog (as uh, you might have noticed). I am very fortunate in that it doesn't take much to get me thinking about writing something. Since I follow so many great people on Twitter (which has also directed me to their blogs), there is always a wealth of ideas to borrow from. Sometimes I'll just make a comment, but other times I'll respond with a post of my own. I might talk about something that comes up during one of the chats I'm involved in, or I might write about a current event.

I also do not have a schedule of when I blog. Again, I am very fortunate in that I seldom get brain cramped for too long. I generally like to blog once a day (I feel more than one is too much), but I don't freak out if I miss a day or two. If I miss three, I start to get itchy.

I am not getting as many comments as other blogs that I visit, but that really doesn't bother me, as I've discussed before. The comments I do get are thought-provoking and sometimes inspire another blog post through their brilliance. Besides, I would probably be the kind of "last person on Earth" people who would still write even though there was no one to read it. I like the sound of my typing that much.

Why do I blog?

The part of The Referral Engine I am reading now lists reasons why you *should* blog. I think a lot of folks are familiar with those reasons by now. SEO, networking, content, etc. But in addition to the shoulds, why do I blog?

Every blogger has an ego: This is hard to admit. I think that if I was a dessert I'd be humble pie with maybe a touch of ice cream. But if you are writing content in a very public place, there has to be some part of you that thinks you have worthwhile things to say. Ego is ego, a rose is a rose.

Hopefully Helpful: I have certainly not attained expert status yet, and I may never get there by various peoples' perspectives. Even so, I think that on occasion I have ideas that could help someone in some way, whether it's solving a problem or thinking of a sticky issue in a new way. Maybe I'm a showcase for what you don't want to do in your blog. Hey, that's cool too!

Captain's Log, Stardate...If you're a Trekkie, that line will sound very familiar. But did you ever notice that despite all of that very careful logging, there was seldom a time when Captain Kirk went back to reference what he had said on stardate whatever? I like blogging in part because it's easy to mark progress. I make a point of looking back on older posts, even though I haven't been blogging for all that long. Sometimes I think, "Yeah, I'm still happy with that." Other times, well...every space ship has a hatch out to space, and sometimes you want to use it.

Gathering my thoughts: Sometimes there is an issue that is rolling around in my head and I can't seem to get my arms around it. Blogging helps me with those situations. In trying to write about the topic, I get my brain to take each part of the buggy issue separately. Hopefully, I don't confuse too many readers in the process.

A timeless time capsule: Remember burying or unburying time capsules when you were a kid? To me, a blog is kind of like a time capsule, only you never bury it, and hopefully you never stop adding to it. I enjoy taking moments here and there to write about what the times are like right now. There is a lot going on that has never gone on before. People are worried about the future, worried about how they are relating to people, hopeful about what technologies might come next, and more. Why not try to capture some of that for later?

It's really fun: The most important reason why I blog is that it's enjoyable. I love writing. I have always loved writing, from the time I wrote a ten-page book of poetry when I was about 10 (very naturalistic poems on clouds and trees, btw). What makes this kind of writing even more fun is the sharing of ideas. At any given moment, I can be in the same virtual room as thought leaders I respect, people whom I enjoy talking to, and people I don't know. Like a pinball, ideas bounce off all of those people, and blogs are the flippers that keep them going.

What is your state of the blog? Why are you blogging right now? I'd love to hear about it!

To quote AT&T: Reach out and touch someone

2010-08-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

There have been two conversations occurring all week simultaneously. The first is a conversation about "influence" in the world of social media. What are fans and followers really about? What is the tipping point where you actually have too many people in your network? What happens then?

The other conversation is a very different kind of lamentation. I've heard people talking about when art used to be presented on a series of layered boards, a process that seemed like magic. I had a conversation yesterday about how hard it is these days to present a complicated folding piece because now, more often than not, projects are presented via PDF, long distance.

What do these two conversations mean?

The Great Relationship Crash of the 21st Century

Chris Brogan posted earlier this week, as I did, to Julien's post about influence. Chris asked if we were coming to a social media crash. My greater concern is that we are heading for a relationship crash. With 24/7 access to friends and family and acquaintances, in-person get-togethers are getting, paradoxically, harder to put together. Have you noticed lately that if a friend is in town but you can't make it to see him or her, you figure, "Well, that's okay, I can still catch them on Facebook later." Have you noticed that when you do meet up with a friend with whom you are connected on Facebook, it's kind of hard to know what to talk about? We already know not only the big things, but things we would not have even thought to talk about 5-6 years ago. We know how our friend's dog is doing. We know, on the day of our meeting, that our friend is going to be cranky because kid #2 is teething. We know that our friend's mom is going in for a colonoscopy. I mean, really. Once you get to THAT point, what is there to talk about?

Is this a real relationship? People are very excited about Skype, and a lot of people get teary-eyed at the new iPhone commercials touting the video capabilities. But to me, these ads signify that we no longer understand what real connectivity is. Even if I had an iPhone with video connections, I wouldn't tell my husband I was pregnant via that impersonal medium. I wouldn't want to tell a hunk of plastic in my hands. I'd want to be there, to see the real facial expression, the real reaction. Is a grandfather seeing his grandchild via phone the same as seeing the grandchild in real life? I can't believe that the answer is yes, but it seems like society is pushing us that way. I don't like it.

The Personal Touch

I find all of this very difficult to interweave with my job in marketing. There is an increasing emphasis on "getting to know your customer." "Be human," the experts say. I have actually heard a story of a person refusing to do an in-person meeting because most of their clientele is spread out across the country, and they didn't want to show favoritism to a local by meeting in "real life." Huh?

Now, I know, I know. You can learn about your customers through studies of demographics. You can learn about them by looking at your Google Analytics report. But it seems to me like old fashioned things like hand shakes still could mean a lot. Learning the intonation of someone's voice to tell when they are being sarcastic would be key. How many times have you misread an e-mail or a tweet? Can you do all of this via programs like Skype or GoToMeeting? Sure, I suppose. But there's something about working with a real life person -- in person -- that adds depth to the experience. We are losing that today. And that's just in the world of marketing and business. What about friends and family?

The Ramifications

We don't know what the ramifications would be of a social media crash. Maybe you just quit using Twitter. It wears itself out. Maybe you create a half-dozen accounts to siphon your followers. But what happens if we hit a relationship crash? Do you think that increasing numbers of children are being told they are socially awkward by accident? Do you think that social anxiety is becoming more prominent as a condition just by chance? Do you think that great grey mass called "customers" is suspicious of companies and politicians for no apparent reason?

We're all becoming shadows to each other, flickering names, an avatar swinging by in the never ending twitter stream. We think we are being fed, socially, because we are in contact with people all of the time. But it is not the nurturing kind of contact that people need. We are digesting our friends and family in bite-sized bits of wonder. We are missing chances to relate in the offline world. What will the final ramifications of that kind of world be? I have no idea, but it worries me.

How about you?

1st image by Michal Zacharzewski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha
2nd image by Mateusz Stachowski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Mattox

What does integrated marketing mean?

2010-08-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

When I was a junior in high school, I got a job as a cashier. After the training period, which seemed to go on forever, I finally got my real name tag. Under my name, it said "Sales Associate." I was euphoric. "I'm not a cashier, I'm a sales associate!!" I said it to myself, I said it to my parents. I had never been an "associate." It sounded so grand, so important! As I dug more into the job, as I went to work during Summer months for the first time, as I dealt with people who were rude and sometimes even cruel, I realized that really I was a cashier. My grand title did not really describe the reality of what I was paid to do.

So what do I do now?

If you're in marketing, maybe you've experienced this exchange before. You meet up with a long-time friend. They ask what you do and you say something like, "I'm in marketing," or "I work at a marketing firm," or "I work in Public Relations." Your friend gives you a kind of blank look. "So, you advertise or promote things?" Your gut instinct is to laugh and say, "No darling, it's SO much more than that." But if you're like me, you stop short. Is it more than that? It seems so, but I have no real way of describing exactly what my job entails.

This is a problem I did not expect. In one of my favorite movies, City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays a guy who buys radio ad space. That's his job. "I buy air," as he says. In Mad Men, the characters are ini "advertising." Their job is to use ads to create sales for their clients. These things are pretty clear cut. But I can't really define myself as being in "advertising." This blog is not really advertising in the traditional word. Is it PR? Not really. Consultation definitely isn't advertising. Or is it? Is that more marketing?

I'm downright confused.

What exactly are we integrating when we integrate marketing?

This has been on my mind ever since I started participating in two chats on Twitter, one called #custserv (you can guess what that focuses on) and one called IMCChat, which focuses on Integrated Marketing and Communications. Repeatedly, while participating in both chats, I am faced with questions that make no sense to me based on my understanding of various terms. Sometimes advertising is differentiated from marketing. Sometimes PR is differentiated from advertising and marketing. Sales is differentiated from all of the above and customer service. And social media? Well, sometimes conversations have erupted just regarding who "owns" a company's social media presence.

I believe in integrated marketing with all my heart. If you show me a diagram with arrows going around in a circle showing how everything is interrelated, I'll probably accept it with a little drool from excitement. I could preach integration until the cows AND the horses come home. There's just one little problem. I don't think we know what we're integrating anymore. We take words of the profession like "Public Relations" or "advertising" for granted, but have you thought lately about what these words actually mean?

Well, over the next few weeks, every Thursday, I'm going to take a different phrase and explore different ways we could define it. What I think we may find is that the words we have always used may simply be too outdated now. People were talking about PR before email. People were talking about advertising before mobile. Even marketing may be a dying word. Is there a market to market to, or is just a bunch of individuals with whom we connect?

How do you define your job? How do you explain what you do? Let me know in the comments below.

A friend by any other name could be a spam bot

2010-08-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get better lately about commenting on other peoples' blogs. It's a bit of a challenge for me, not because I'm an egotistical maniac (hi there peanut gallery) but because most of the posts I read are so thought-provoking that I feel like I need to write a book afterwards. Books tend not to be appreciated in comment sections. I don't know if they're appreciated in blogs either, but at least this is my space to soil as I might!

I mention this because yesterday I read a post by Julien Smith (co-author of Trust Agents and an amazing mind in general) about follower hyper-inflation. I was inspired not just to write a book. I was ready to write a series.

I can't really do any justice to Julien's post by trying to review it. What I can do is tell you what his post made me think about. So, here we go.

I just passed you on the sidewalk. Are we friends?

I have been pretty suspicious of the "fan/follower/friend" thing for a couple of years now, and I can tell you exactly why. When I first joined Facebook, it was really fun. I got to catch up with old friends, including some folks I went to nursery school with (!!). But then I started noticing some things. For example, people who had never given me the time of day in high school were asking to "connect" with me. Adding to my suspicion was the fact that none of these "friend requests" came with any message. You know, like, "I know I didn't talk to you much during the ten years we were in school together, but I realize now that you were the missing piece in my puzzle, the balm to my soul's wounds, and all I can ask is that you accept this request so that I may gaze upon your visage."

No, nothing like that. Just a friend request. I gave people the benefit of the doubt. I would comment on some of their stuff, but they'd never comment back. THEN, all of my doubts were validated. People who had been in completely different social circles were now "friends"on Facebook. Now, I know it's rude to assume that people don't grow up, but to think that everyone suddenly had adopted John and Yoko's Bagism philosophy was a little too much. I realized that a lot of these folks were just collecting people. I cut a ton of these mysterious people from my past (some of them allegedly from my past). I realized that the online definition of "friend" was kind of misleading.

Twitter is something different altogether. You're not making friends, you're collecting followers (talk about ego). As Julien points out, in order to be relevant in the world of Social Media, you need to be "popular." Otherwise you just kind of fade into the ether. This drives competition, pressure, and guess what else? It drives authenticity away.

The power of Kevin Bacon

I've noticed something kind of interesting on Twitter (I seem to learn something new every week). Getting your first 100 followers can take forever if you try to do it the "high road" way, aka follow only people you're really interested in and try to build connections/relationships. Once you get to a certain point though, your followers keep increasing at increasing rates of speed. I am now averaging about 100 new followers a week. Yippee, right?

Well...

If I had all the time in the world (thank goodness I don't) I would examine my "follow" versus my "follower" list to see how many people I follow are following me back. I would further dissect my follower list to see how many of my devoted fans are offering me "free iPads," "great blog posts," "1,000s of followers," and more. The numbers that you see for my followers category are, I can assure you, inflated.

The problem with this is two-fold. First, as you get more followers, some cool and interesting people feel more secure in following you. You might look more legit. This increases the number of people you wish to interact with. Have you ever tried to have 27 meaningful conversations at once? It doesn't work. As many Social Media "influencers" have discovered, you end up with a better chance of ticking people off because there simply isn't time to respond to everyone.

The other problem is that you become a target for more malicious spam bots. I had a message a couple of days ago that said, "For really good blog posts, just RT these people." My Twitter handle was included. "That's really sweet!" I thought. "I wonder if it's real."

Ah, cynicism. Saves me every time.

Turns out the link that was also included was malicious, meaning my name is now associated with a link that could cause people problems. This makes me very, very unhappy. There's also nothing I can do about it.

Numbers are meaningless. Friends are priceless.

The general jist of Julien's post is that the people you want to really nurture and connect with are your real-life friends. Sadly, we are now in an ecosystem where meaningless big numbers create an environment where you can't actually do what you want. I hope to goodness that I don't end up having to sacrifice the nice chats and asides that I enjoy with several people right now. But if influence = numbers, that's the path that we are all on. Kind of depressing, isn't it?

I just passed you on the sidewalk. Can we be friends? Well, sure. You're lucky number 1,572.

First image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001

When the going gets tough, what do you do?

2010-08-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, if someone, sorry, when someone made a disparaging remark about Akron, Ohio, my hometown, I could say, "Oh yeah, well, this is the hometown of LeBron James! The Black Keys! Take that!" It was nice to be able to say something nice about my hometown. When I was a kid, I had a shirt that said "Rubber Capital of the World." That's not true anymore. The PBA Championships were at a bowling alley ten minutes from my house. Even the bowlers left us. It was easy to joke about Akron, but it was really enjoyable to have a comeback. Now, a few years have passed, and I don't really have a good response for when someone jokes about my hometown. You see, all of the people that had the potential to lift this town up have left.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Hey, where are you going?

I think what's happening in Akron and in Northeast Ohio in general is symptomatic of a serious problem in our society. When things get tough or frustrating or depressing or painful, people immediately look for brighter pastures rather than trying to figure out what went wrong or how to fix it. One of the members of the Black Keys apparently left, in part, because the nearest Whole Foods is a 45-minute drive from Akron. Well, why not try to bring Whole Foods TO Akron? Boost the local economy. Help people live better. But that kind of thinking seems to be on the endangered species list.

With the economy the way it has been, I wonder how many people apply this kind of thinking to their job search or their company's well-being. How many people are settling for jobs because waiting for the right one is just too painful? How many people are languishing in depression because their company or their job isn't going the way they want?

I'm not saying that if you try really hard, everything will turn out okay in the end. Sometimes you will get defeated, and that stinks. That's also life. But why just lay down and die?

You don't see case studies about successful companies who just keep getting more successful, or at least not very often. You see case studies about companies that turn it around. Companies that start from ground zero and reach the stars. There's a challenge there. Something to really chew on. When you're starting low, any improvement is exciting and wonderful. Hard times are where innovations come from. Hard times are where great ideas come from.

"This is our time. This is our time down here."

Remember the 80s movie The Goonies? A bunch of silly kids face the impossible mission of saving their homes. They go on a treasure hunt and despite numerous obstacles, they end up winning the day. For all of us non-millionaire types, this is our time. It's a time to find success and then pay it forward. It's a time to take a little ball of clay and make a designer bowl. It's time to take a struggling hometown and try to lift it up.

If I were ever to get famous...if I were ever to find the fame and fortune of a LeBron James or The Black Keys, I would not move an inch from my hometown. I would say, "Hey, I'm from Akron, and now that I have this success, what can we do to liven this place up?"

What would you do?

Can we talk about not talking about religion and politics?

2010-08-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

When I got my very first Social Media account, which happened when Social Media was just web 2.0, I was really excited about the opportunity to exchange all types of ideas with my friends. My account was a Livejournal blog, and I figured, "Hey, I'll post about things I'm interested in and like discussing, people will discuss with me, and all of my far-flung friends will be sitting in the same room."

Two topics that I find endlessly intriguing are religion and politics. This might be a bit of a shock as I have discussed neither here and have only hinted at them via my various other public accounts. When I first started posting to Livejournal, I had no restraints, so I posted all kinds of opinions, questions, frustrations, etc. And my friends didn't participate much. I was shocked. I was frustrated. What was going on?

Some people said that they didn't like voicing their opinions because they felt people thought their opinions were dumb. Others said that discussing such things always leads to nasty fights or "LJ Drama" as we called it back then.

Since most of my Social Media activity now is for business, I have taken that hesitation of my friends to heart. As I see some folks pumping out their political opinions, I can see the wisdom in refraining from delving into these areas. Sometimes people say things that rub me the wrong way, but I don't feel comfortable debating the issue.

My question for you is: Is this a healthy environment? People are making a big deal out of how networked our world is. We can do business with people across and around the globe now. Don't different religious or political backgrounds come with that as a packaged deal? Don't we have an opportunity here to share and learn and educate in ways we never could before? The word "yes" echoes in my head, and yet the sad truth echoes as well. If you don't like my political leanings, you might be completely turned off to the concept of doing business with me. If you don't like my thoughts on religion, the same result could occur. All we have as introduction are words on a flashing screen. Words are powerful. Words verbalizing religious or political views are like nuclear weapons.

What are your thoughts on this issue? I know that the ladies at Outspoken Media would say that this is the exact kind of cowardice they are preaching against. Do you censor yourself? Why or why not? I'd love to hear your opinions.

Image by Aaron Murphy. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/a51media

What to expect when you're expecting Twitter fame

2010-08-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie books. I had all of them, and I must have read each one 10 times. There's a little story in one of the books that came to my mind this morning. I can't remember which book it was, but the general jist was that Pa had gone to town and was expected back that night. He didn't come, he didn't come. The family went to bed, waiting to hear the door open. Finally, the next morning, he showed up, perfectly fine and unscathed. But he had a story to tell. He had been heading home in the increasing darkness of evening when a tall black shape caught his attention. He ducked behind a tall rock and assumed that what he had seen was a giant bear. He waited all night for the bear to go away, scared out of his mind. Finally, when the sun started peeking out, Pa saw that he had been held at bay by a giant pile of rocks. He had believed he would encounter danger, and that's what his mind's eye created for him.

This story came to mind, I think, because I have been thinking about the whole Twitter phenomenon. Weird segue, right? Here's the thing. If you sign up for a Twitter account, you'll encounter tons of people who have 50,000 followers or more. You'll notice that when they say "The sky is blue," it gets retweeted by at least 50 of those 50,000 people. If one of these people posts a picture of French Toast, everyone comments on how well the essence of the toast was captured. You start thinking to yourself, "Man, I can do that." Instead of seeing a bear in place of some rocks, you see your own fame reflected in others' success. As most great motivators will tell you, if you can visualize success, you'll find it.

Someone's telling you you're right

Pa didn't have anyone with him to say, "No no, that's not a bear." He also didn't have someone with him saying, "Holy smokes, that's a BEAR!" But when you sign up for Twitter, you can be bombarded, if you want to be, about how to achieve that very level of success you see. There's advice on how to tweet, there's advice about retweeting, there's advice about promotion and self-promotion. All of the knowledge you could ever want about how to become a major influence on Twitter seems to be at your very finger tips. There are blogs and webinars and podcasts telling you point blank that you can do this.

That's just a bunch of pebbles in your hand

In fact, the sad news is that most of us are simply not going to achieve that kind of success on Twitter. Even though it seems so easy on the surface, and even though so many people go out of their way to give us information on how to do it, it's not going to happen for us. The sad masses of us are not going to get any compliments on our photos of French Toast. Why? First of all, we weren't here first. If you started your Twitter account in a serious way, as I did, three months ago or so, you're so late to the game it's not even funny. Those influencers have been on Twitter for probably four years in some cases, when most of us were saying, "What a dumb idea THAT is." Because we haven't been here, we are behind in accumulating knowledge. We are behind in learning. We are behind in experimenting. Unless you have real-world fame already, you are probably not going to become a major influence in the world of Twitterville.

So what is Twitter like if you aren't a pied piper of followers?

I've learned a lot about how to use Twitter during the short time I've been working with it. So even though this advice will probably not get you to a Fast Company "most influential" list, it might get you to a place where you are content with your Twitter reality, which is still pretty good.

Holy cow, the time! This has been the biggest shock to me. You think about Twitter and the descriptions are always "micro" this and "tiny" that. If you are serious about trying to be a successful Twit (?), your time investment is neither of those things. It takes time to get to know people and for them to get to know you. It takes time to determine who you want to follow. It takes time to find questions or issues that you can comment on. This is not like Facebook where you can post a status and then leave it alone for a day or two. Facebook is to Twitter like a cat is to a puppy.

Holy cow, the pressure! Twitter also comes with a fair amount of pressure when you're a noob. You want to respond to "mentions" or retweets or direct messages as soon as you can. You want to be there when a sudden big conversation blooms. You want to build relationships. You want to show you're smart. You want to do all of it in a day.

You're gonna talk to yourself for awhile. When I first started with Twitter, I often got really frustrated. I'd post something funny (or so I thought anyway), nothing but crickets. I'd post a link to a good article. Nothing but crickets. The really cruel thing is sometimes you see a mention of you and it's just a spam bot telling you that you can win a free iPad. It can be frustrating to see all of the interaction around you and yet not be able to spark anything. Hang in there. Try to buddy up with somebody just person to person.

Those big influencers are probably not going to respond for awhile. On Twitter, it seems like everyone is on equal footing. This is really not true. Everyone has their own particular patterns of behavior when it comes to Twitter. People look for certain folks or certain subjects. It takes a long time to work yourself into either. In the meantime, you are competing with 49,999 other people who want a little attention just as much as you. Don't get moody about it. Attention comes to those who merit it (usually). If you call out a person with a lot of influence, at most they will complain about you without mentioning you (they're too smart to give you attention that way). Meanwhile, you're alienating people who are actually following you and trying to engage.

If this doesn't sound like all fun and games, what can I tell you. I have reached a point where all of this time and effort has gotten me to a place of contentment. There were definitely deep valleys and some high peaks along the way, and I'm sure that will continue. Make no mistake, though. I still see the rocks. I still see the pebbles. Though I see influential people all around me, I honor them rather than imagine myself as one of them. I don't expect Twitter fame, and no offense, but most likely, neither should you.

Image 1: Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Massicotte
Image 2: Image by eila haj-hassan. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/leilahh
Image 3: Image by Hans Thoursie. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Thoursie

20 rules for being a great 21st century marketer

2010-08-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

Marketing in the 21st century can seem really overwhelming at times. Every day there's a new technology, a new way to talk about that technology, a new acronym, and a new expert. This is true. I've looked into it. On top of that, there are now all of these marketing junkies (like me) who like to really dig into the marrow of marketing. Fortunately, I figured out a way to filter all of this information into 20 extremely easy steps. If you can follow all of these rules, you are well on your way to becoming a marketing guru. By the way, purely by statistical happenstance, all of these rules are Twitterable. Tweeterable. Can be tweeted.

1. Be nice. You never know when you're going to need that person.
2. Be authentic. Nobody falls for fake niceness.
3. Don't let people think you are using them.
4. Connect to people with more influence than you.
5. Be right on top of the newest thing.
6. Be an expert in everything that has come before.
7. Hope you get complaints. Complaints are the new handshake greeting.
8. Strive for the best quality possible.
9. Be unique, just like everyone else.
10. Talk with freedom and from the heart.
11. Remember, anything you say in Social Media can and will be used against you.
12. Never say print is dead. That makes people think you don't know about the Kindle or iPad.
13. Share as much information as you can.
14. Position yourself as a thought leader.
15. Be 100% honest at all times.
16. Compliment people and share their work as often as possible.
17. Listen to what all of the experts say.
18. Create your own way of doing things.
19. Prove that your efforts are working.
20. Never, ever try to sell anything!

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/arte_ram

Google as Real Estate, Blog as Room

2010-08-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Chris Brogan posted a blog that suggested one consider a blog personal real estate. It's a good analogy and very effective in terms of describing the "care and feeding" of your blog, but I view things in a slightly different way. I like to think of placement on a Google or Bing search results page as the real estate. Your presence on the internet is your house, and each individual account is a room in your house. A blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page - these all need to be cared for or your house can crumble. But even if your house is in brilliant condition, it won't do you much good if no one can see it.

Think Outside In

With all of the excitement about Social Media, it's easy to concentrate hardest on your individual rooms. Some companies are beginning to push hard on integrated marketing, which would be a holistic or "house" approach. I still see a lot of questions, though, that reflect a seeming lack of focus on the search results real estate that can be gained through Social Media and other efforts. Here are a couple of examples.

Should I have a personal blog and a business blog? If your personal blog is very niche to a hobby or completely separate from your business blog, I think it's fine. However, if you talk a lot about your business in your personal blog, you could run into a situation where you are using a lot of the same keywords, a lot of the same links, and a lot of the same reference points. What could happen? Both blogs, as separate entities, could end up fighting against each other for position on the first page of Google. People searching for you and/or your company will have to make a choice about which blog to visit. Do you want that to be out of your control?

Should a large corporation have individual accounts for each division? This question came up last night during the #custserv chat on Twitter. If a corporation has separate divisions spread across a large region, should each division use Social Media autonomously? Again, the corporation as a whole could end up in a situation where each division is fighting for first page real estate. If a company has five or more divisions, it will be difficult for each division to receive equal treatment in terms of Google real estate. Where possible, it's beneficial to incorporate divisions into an all-encompassing account. Links to each division's website from this master Social Media account will optimize SEO for that website, but individual Social Media accounts won't be knocking each other out.

D-Fence, D-Fence

Social Media can also be used as a defensive measure when it comes to search results pages. A LinkedIn account, a blog, an optimized website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account could fill out most of the first page for your company. As far as real estate goes, you could be the Donald Trump of that search term. Not only is this excellent news for your company, but this also means that wherever you show up, your competitors aren't showing up. They say that the best offense is a good defense, and in this case that can certainly be true.

Who is in charge of your house?

Another question that comes up a lot is "who should handle my company's Social Media account?" An argument for grabbing "real estate" is an argument for integrating as many people as possible into your efforts. Everyone should be cognizant of important keywords, powerful links that will help optimize your accounts, and what kinds of search terms your competitors seem to be focusing on. This is information that everyone can use, from customer service to PR to marketing to sales. It should become part of the lifeblood of your company. Think of it like the staff of a huge manor house. Everyone has their job, but they all work together to make sure things run smoothly.

Are you keeping an eye on your real estate as well as your rooms? If you aren't, I can guarantee that someone else is. It's time to think big picture.

1st image: Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ayeshasood

2nd image: Image by Miguel Saavedra. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/saavem

The power of saying no

2010-08-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

I like to call myself an idea person. I am one of those people who will wake up at 3 AM with a fully formed idea stuck behind my eyeballs. Often, I share these ideas with friends and family to see which ones stick like cooked spaghetti or, alternately, which ones bounce like a big rubber ball. I keep presenting ideas to these people because I know two things. First, they will be absolutely honest. Second, they will not be swayed by my own personal excitement or emotional investment. These are signs of a truly good consultant.

A Growing Field

It seems like there are new consultants every day, doesn't it? There are a lot of Social Media consultants. There are business consultants, new business consultants, marketing consultants. Lots of expertise, lots of specialties. These people, in order to grow their consulting business, have to be very positive, energized, upbeat, and they have to always demonstrate that they are expanding their knowledge base. They are after the case studies, the testimonials. They are after big risks that pay off. Such is the stuff dreams are made of.

How can you tell a flower from a weed?

Lately, there have been a lot of questions circulating about who exactly should be using this or that new tool, whether it's technology or Social Media or something else. New tools and new technology are extremely exciting. Trying new things is like an adventure. It's like embarking on a journey on the Oregon Trail. We are in an era of "go forth, person!" You should be trying things, you should be inventing new things.

I agree with all of this to a point, but there's an often overlooked caveat.

Sometimes, trying a new tool or a new technology doesn't make a wit of sense for you or your company. Sometimes the adventure can have serious, dangerous ramifications.

To me, the difference maker today among consultants would be the person who thoughtfully analyzes your unique situation and says, as my friends often say to me, "You are out of your mind for even thinking about trying this."

Saying no can be a real buzz kill. It can mean delaying a business opportunity. It can trample someone's excitement. It can be disappointing. But it can also be wise, analytical, and customized to a particular situation. It also creates a relationship where a "yes," especially an emphatic yes, is not taken for granted. It builds trust.

It's okay to say no or "maybe later"

There are a few things right now that seem to necessitate an affirmation. "Should I join Facebook?" Of course!! "Should my business invest in mobile apps?" Yeah, yesterday!! I think sometimes these positive responses are given because we are being told that those are the correct responses. But there are actually situations where a company Facebook page might not make sense. There might be an individual who would not benefit from a Twitter account even though Twitter is the hottest thing ever. If you are a consultant, it's okay to say no to your clients. If you are running things yourself, it's okay to say no to the big trends and out-of-control buzzwords. In fact, I just might advise that you say yes to saying no.

Have you said no to something lately? It may not be as exciting as saying yes, but it could be more meaningful.

Image by Colin Brough. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ColinBroug

What if $12 could save the world?

2010-08-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

This may not be the most business-related, on topic post ever for me, but I think it's important.

There's been a lot of buzz about Fast Company's Influence Project. I'd like to try a slightly different experiment. I'd like to see how much influence, for good, Twitter can have on the world.

Here is the idea, which I'm calling Dollar for the World (#$4theworld on Twitter).

At the beginning of the month, I announce a charity and post a link to their donation page. The charity has to be legit, non-religious affiliations preferred, but the recommendations can come from you. As many people as possible send a single dollar via PayPal (or another means). When you do so, tweet that you did with the hashtag.

At the end of the month, I'll tally how many posts we have in the hash tag, equate that to dollars donated, and announce an estimate of how much that charity received.

It's all based on the honor system. For a dollar, not that much harm can be done (I think).

If this were to work, my August charity would be Tutus for Tanner just because Scott Stratten (aka UnMarketing) has been promoting it for so long already, and it's a story that makes you want to do something.

The best kind of influence is a positive one. Can kindness be a trending topic? Can you save the world for $12 a year? Do you want to find out? Meet me over on Twitter at #$4theworld and we'll see what happens.

No, I really mean it

2010-08-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid, I was a complete tattle tale goody goody. I admit it. When kids would try to pull a prank on a teacher, I'd take the teacher aside after class and say, "I just wanted to let you know that so and so is planning on putting jello on your chair. Just thought you should know." I never did this because I was trying to kiss up to anybody, nor did I have it out for any of the nitwits who thought it was fun to be mean. I just felt that making a teacher sit in a pile of jello was wrong, and I saw a way to prevent the wrong from happening.

I doubt the other kids saw my big mouth in a similarly pragmatic way.

This phase of my life is on my mind because of quandary I have in my Social Media world. No, I'm not tattling on people, but I sometimes wonder if my intentions are misunderstood. I wonder sometimes if people think I mention certain people or promote certain people just to be a kiss-up. I know I don't, but is that enough?

The tricky thing about authenticity

You hear all of the time that the best approach to Social Media, be it a Blog or Facebook or Twitter, is to be yourself. Be human. Be authentic. In real life, I am generally a nice person (unless you keep driving across a pedestrian cross-walk when I'm trying to walk there) and I also am generally sociable. For me to be authentic and myself in the world of Social Media, this means that I chip into conversations regardless of who might be participating (if I think I have something to contribute). I'll retweet you whether you have 500,000 followers or 50. I'll comment on your blog whether you're a New York Times best seller or whether you just started writing consistently.

Last week, Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media posted a blog about "the 8 new kinds of links." Basically, she was talking about different ways people try to grab attention or self-promote on Twitter. I started to wonder if that's how people perceive of me. Do I reply to or mention Chris Brogan or MarketingProfs or other thought leaders at various times? Yeah. Do I retweet posts from Denise Wakeman and Seth Godin? Uh, yeah. Do I sometimes say nice things to or about Jason Baer and Mari Smith? Guilty as charged. This is not all I do. I talk to everyone equally. I try to promote equally. But still, I wonder if my being authentic actually makes me look like an attention grabber. Does this last paragraph seem like an attention-grabbing list or just a set of examples?

So maybe being authentic is...bad?

I'm not really sure what my alternative is. I suppose that in the end, if people perceive me as being the opposite of authentic, there's not much I can do about it. I suppose I could consciously opt not to reply to or mention certain people. I suppose I could also refrain from offering what are hopefully helpful tips when someone asks a question. And I could probably just lurk during chats. These don't really seem like reasonable solutions, however.

Do you have genuine facets of your personality that you think others in the world of Social Media might translate as game playing? How do you deal with that potential perspective problem? Do you just keep plugging away? Do you qualify all of your statements with an explanation?

I'm open to advice and suggestions...from anyone!

Social Media, ROI, and Stinky Cheese

2010-07-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

I'm going to throw Blogging best practice on its head here and ask a question at the start of my post. Do you think ROI can be measured for a Social Media initiative?

I believe it can, but I think it's going to be a completely different equation. It'll be kind of like the difference between the US Gross Domestic Product and Bhutan's Gross National Happiness. Most of all, I think that measuring the ROI of Social Media will have to depart from a numbers-based system. The "investment" is going to have to be refigured as the investment in Social Media is a) often not financial and b) does not remain the same for any duration. That'll be kind of tricky. But the really tricky part will be measuring the new "return." Let me use myself as an example to illustrate that point.

What is that SMELL?

When I reformatted my personal blog into a professional blog, I decided to add Google Analytics so I could monitor my progress. I won't say this is a user-friendly process. It's doable, but there may have been a bit of swearing involved. Anyway, when I first started blogging, I would check Analytics every day. Since I was starting from, well, nothing, anything that happened showed as progress on that mesmerizing blue graph. And if you want to talk about influence, you don't need to go to Fast Company. I was very lucky at the beginning of my blogging days to have some very gracious heroes of mine retweet links to my blog, and boy did my Google Analytics love those days!

As I got more involved in conversing and sharing and less involved in pure stats, I stopped checking Analytics as often. In fact, quite a bit of time elapsed between my check-ins to my Analytics page. So, two weeks ago I decided to see how I was doing. Two letters describe what I saw. P. U.

These stinky results were quite a surprise to me. My blog seemed to be getting more comments, I was receiving a lot of really nice and gracious compliments, and people were generally telling me that I had a good thing going here. But this was Google Analytics. I mean, GOOGLE! They can't be wrong!!

What Means More To You?

I decided, especially after receiving some very good thoughts from the lovely Ann Handley (aka marketingprofs), that there were a couple of things to consider.

First of all, Analytics systems are not perfect. They are really really good, and they give you building blocks on how you can improve things, but they are not perfect. I can say this with 100% confidence because my Analytics once told me that I had zero visitors two days in a row, two days that I actually received a handful of comments. How could people comment if they weren't there? This made me a little suspicious.

The other thing, though, is that my Google Analytics numbers don't really matter to me a whole lot anymore. I mean, if I see that the average time spent on my blog dives to negative 7 seconds or something like that, I'll take it seriously. I still like to monitor what kinds of posts people seem to find the most interesting. But even if I didn't have access to these Analytics, I would feel that my blog has become successful because I am getting out of it what I want. I am having good conversations with people, I am sharing ideas, and again, thanks to very gracious people with more pull than I, I'm even getting seen by people who are not directly tied to me, which is pretty cool.

Fans and Followers and Connections, Oh My!

This logic carries across all of the big Social Media sites. Are you unhappy with the number of followers you have on Twitter? Are you lusting after 29,999 more contacts on LinkedIn? If so, have you asked yourself why you're unhappy with those numbers? If you had 150,000 followers on Twitter instead of 50, how would your life be different?

It's easy to think, from a business perspective, that the more followers you have, the "better" you are doing, or the more likely you are to increase sales. I must humbly disagree. There are currently about 500 people following me on Twitter. I follow around 370 of them. What is that margin of difference about? Not everyone who follows you is really going to further your business success or provide for you the kind of experience you want. You might have someone following you because they follow anyone who says the word "dog." You might have a few spam-bots following you. Those sure aren't going to help you. And then you have people who follow you solely because they want you to follow THEM. That's why numbers don't equal influence. Numbers do not lead to Social Media success.

What is the Social Media ROI equation?

Back to my original question. Can you measure ROI in Social Media? I can tell you that so far, the return on my investment, which has been lots of time, has been a massive amount of education, meeting and getting to communicate with truly brilliant and inspiring people, sharing really enjoyable conversations, being able to benefit from graciousness shown to me by others, and building connections that might lead to friendships, partnerships, collaborations, or all of the above. If you are a business, you might be building a team of brand evangelizers. You might be spreading the buzz.

Compared to solid things like "clicks" and reader response cards and actual in the pocket sales, these things can seem pretty darned fluffy. But I think this is the new currency when it comes to Social Media. Social Media moves fast for a long time. It takes awhile for a flower to bloom, even when time lapse photography is used to speed things up. It takes awhile to build new relationships and new networks, too.

Do your Social Media stats stink by your standards? It really only matters if this is preventing you from accomplishing what you want to accomplish. How do you measure that? Well, that's the real question, isn't it?

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Halifaxsxc

Are you a meat and potatoes person?

2010-07-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

It seems like these days, everyone wants to be Oprah or Dr. Phil. Every day on Twitter, I see literally hundreds of people sending out inspirational or motivational quotes out to the world. The preference is for people to tweet out happy and brave things. Sound byte sort of things. This is an odd juxtaposition to commercials that are on the television every day (you remember commercials, right? Those things you fast forward through on your DVR?). Perhaps you have seen or heard about this one:

If everyone is so inspired and motivated, why are there so many commercials for anti-depressants? Why is there a commercial about a woman who is so depressed she has to talk about herself as if she is a wind-up doll?

Maybe a lot of these quotes and inspiring words are genuine, but sometimes I wonder. Look at Oprah. Look at Dr. Phil. If you say the same kinds of things they do, then you are on your way to becoming a star. You'll get retweeted. You'll build a fan club. Right? It doesn't matter if your area of expertise is marketing, business, fitness, or something people can't really quite put their fingers on.

Meat and Potatoes versus Filet Mignon and Asparagus

Personally, and it is a personal preference, I don't really try to emulate these superstars of motivation and chipperness. That's not to say that I go around like Eeyore trying to drag people down. However, when I talk to people, when I am conversing with someone or trying to help someone, I don't try to wow them. I don't try to create a retweet or a few moments of "Wow, she just said that!" There's nothing WRONG with that approach. It's not bad. I view it like one of those super fancy meals at a really high brow restaurant. The kind of restaurant that might serve a "deconstructed something or other." The kind of restaurant where you get a giant plate with a nickel-sized piece of meat that has a sprig of mint on top of it. It tastes great, divine even, but you're going to be wanting a hamburger and fries on your way home.

Yes, this is the part where I say that I want to be a burger and fries. I want to converse with people in ways that are genuine, authentic, and really truly meaningful. If I happen to help someone with something, I want it to be noticeable if not tangible. I want it to last. I want to be the person who teaches the poor man how to fish rather than just throwing him some truffles now and then.

Back to Basics

You've heard it a million times. In today's world, authenticity, being human, being yourself, counts. MarketingProfs announced a study today that stated that personal voice, not brands, rule the roost on Twitter. What does that mean?

To me, it means being a meat and potatoes kind of person. When I talk to someone about business, when I talk to someone online, when I'm participating in a chat or posting here to my little world of writing, I would much rather get my point across and start a conversation in lieu of being quoted a few dozen times because of a nuanced little turn of phrase. If I meet you in person, I'm probably not going to introduce myself via a quotation from Nietzsche. Similarly, I don't try to introduce myself that way in other scenarios. I don't like trying to talk in sound bytes. I like just talking. I like a "stick to your ribs" conversation that leaves you feeling a little more full than you were before. And that's how I like to be talked to as well, just for the record.

How Do You Relate?

How do you communicate with people online or in person? Are you maybe a filet person online but a meat 'n taters person in real life? Maybe it's the other way around. I used to look at the retweets on Twitter or the shared Facebook status updates and I think, "Man, if I could just come up with something so clever and refined, I could get retweeted 20 million times." But my own personal experience is that trying to do so feels like trying to walk down the street in a tutu. It just doesn't feel right because it just isn't me. As I've gotten more used to Twitter, getting retweeted is about the last priority on my mind. I'm conversing, passing on other peoples' thoughts, and listening. Meat and potatoes kind of stuff. It's not the right way. It's not the wrong way. It's most certainly not the most exciting way. But it is my way. What's yours?

First Image by Hanka Lehmannova. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/hankaleh
Second Image by Jean Scheijen. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/vierdrie

Is a failure to integrate inhibiting your success?

2010-07-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, the results from the 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study were released. The major take-away from the study was that companies that show high alignment between sales and marketing tend to experience greater success. These companies, for example, are more likely to see increases in qualified leads, retention percentages, and customer billings.

Finding this study was a bit serendipitous, at least from my perspective. For the last couple of weeks, I have been encountering what I consider to be a false dichotomy. "Sales or Marketing." Who is responsible for Social Media? Who is responsible for lead management? Who is responsible for guiding product managers? Sales or marketing echoes at the tale end of all of these questions. I keep feeling like I am missing something when these dichotomies are presented. Shouldn't it be sales AND marketing?

The Miller Heiman Study makes me wonder how much success companies of all sorts are missing because of a failure to integrate employees and their efforts. Marketers have been talking about integrating marketing initiatives for a long time now, but somehow, the fact has gotten lost that a company's success rests upon the ability of its people to work together, support each other, and strengthen each other.

Why does integration lead to success?

It doesn't take long to realize the advantages of integrating the efforts of everyone under a company's roof. Why, for example, would companies experience more success if their marketing and sales people were aligned?

• The marketing team could target the audience that the sales team feels has a high potential
• The sales team could report to marketing when sales or leads spike-marketing could take note of what initiatives correspond with the success
• The marketing team can deliver leads. The sales team can run with them
• The sales team can ask marketing for marketing pieces that would assist in nurturing leads and retaining customers

What if the PR department was integrated into this mix? What about the company's leadership? What happens when these bridges of communication and shared knowledge don't exist?

The Corporate Culture of Competition

I understand that in some companies, people or departments are pitted against each other. Some executives may believe that this kind of culture breeds stronger individuals or more efficient workers. In these kinds of environments, it is easy for people to equate knowledge with power. The more you share, the less power you have.

We are no longer in an era when this mode of operation is remotely beneficial.

Customers are needing service and support 24/7. Social Media is live and connected 24/7. The world is perpetually changing. Technology is perpetually changing. Is a silo culture really the best way to interact with that environment? Is it not better to come together, merging talents and experience so that changes can wash over the company like waves rather than tsunami?

It's not a black-and-white world

People seem to be really excited about dichotomies these days. In Social Media, oppositional concepts are great ways to start conversations or to get replies. The reality, however, is that the perpetual "this or that" antagonistic perspective is unhealthy and very likely detrimental for a company. If you must envelope yourself in dichotomies, how about this one:

Silos or sales?

Social Media is not the only place where information should be shared. The process needs to start within company walls and conference rooms. You might not know exactly what benefits you'll see from this new approach. Do you know what you are losing by passing it up?

Image by Miles Pfefferle. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/TheUsher

What is your heart made of?

2010-07-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

Let me take you to a hopefully entirely hypothetical place.

Some giant computer virus has managed to do the unthinkable. It has wiped out Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, all of the sites that have been the darlings of marketers for the last few years.

You go in to work. The show must go on.

What do you do?

Where is your compass?

If the essence of your company has remained unchanged in the face of perpetual change, the answer to this question should not be difficult. In fact, the presence or destruction of the entire Social Media world should not inexorably alter how you interact with your clients or customers. It should not alter your company's mission statement or philosophy.

Think about Zappos (it's hard not to these days). Granted, they are getting a lot of buzz via Social Media, but do you think the entire heart of the company would crumble if they couldn't tweet anymore? Social Media is not the way to happiness there. Taking care of customers is.

Are you resting the entire future of your company on this new networked revolution? Have you taken key words like "Listenomics" to heart to the point where little else is left?

Take a company EKG

Here's an idea to try. Sit everyone down (or just sit down yourself) and tell them that you need a short write-up that will be your profile description on your company's Facebook page. If you have a solid company mission and soul, the descriptions should be pretty close. There should be similar verbiage there. Here is what we do. Here is why we do it.

If you have your corporate heart intact, Social Media can certainly accentuate your positives. You know what keywords are important to you, so you'll be able to optimize for them in sites like Facebook and Twitter. People will be able to find you easier. You'll use the same language across all of your Social Media accounts, so your brand will become more familiar to people regardless of what site they are using. There won't be a disconnect between reaching your company online or reaching your company by phone.

On the other hand, if this exercise explodes in your face, my recommendation would be to back away from Social Media until you get sorted out. You see, Social Media is kind of like a mirror. If you are together and on message, it will reflect positivity back to you. However, if your message is muddled, Social Media can not only fail to benefit you, but it can also become a corporate nightmare. Questions that are key to using Social Media, like "what is the voice of our company?" will be a mystery to you. Branding your company in Social Media will be well-nigh impossible if you don't know what your brand is or means.

Social Media is like a Siren. Beware!

Social Media and all that goes with it can certainly seem very compelling. "Everyone's doing it!" "You must do this now or your company will fry!" To some extent, these whispers could be true. If a competitor is on a Social Media site where you are not, they have free range. But is this really anything new?

If a competitor advertises in a magazine that you aren't advertising in, they have free range over that audience.

If a competitor has a radio spot and you do not, they are the only voice that audience will hear.

It's really not that revolutionary. In the past, you would look at a publication or a radio station or a newspaper and analyze it. "Is this for me? Is this worth my money and time?" You had your company goals in mind, most likely. Your mission statement. Your brand.

Social Media can suck you in with promises of treasures untold, but like a siren, it can also be very dangerous, especially if you aren't prepared. A single careless exchange can spell doom. Are you prepared for that kind of instant karma?

Like the heroes of old, before you venture forth into the wild frontier, you need to know who you are. You need to know what you stand for, what you are trying to accomplish, what the perils are, and what you are hoping to achieve. You need to have a compass. You need to know what your heart is made of.

I'm not saying don't do Social Media. I'm just saying that if you know what your company's heart is made of, you can survive when the new hot thing goes down. If you don't know what your company's heart is made of, you will crumble with whatever you tie yourself to. Beware. Be careful.

Image by Cecile Graat. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Cieleke

Where will you be 50 years from now?

2010-07-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a man who had been working at a shoe store went back and told his bosses that he had good news and bad news. The bad news was that he was leaving the shoe store. The good news was that he was starting an advertising agency, and he wanted the shoe store to be his first client.

The year was 1954. The man was my grandfather.

Fifty-six years later, my grandfather's bet is still alive and well. However, we are functioning in ways that no one could have imagined in the 50s. All work done on computers, including illustrations, for the most part? Email? Getting emails on these amazing smart phones? Who could have predicted any of what has become our day-to-day reality?

The elephant in the room

Right now, society is in a mode of instant gratification, and this really shows through when you start networking with people in the Social Media realm. I'm not just talking about the fact that people want answers immediately (which they do). But what is everyone talking about? The latest thing. How can you beat the Twitter game? How can you market with Facebook? A few months ago Foursquare was the hot topic, but already, Foursquare is starting to be overshadowed by Gowalla.

How fast are things moving? In the first Iron Man movie, at the beginning, there's a shout-out for Myspace, not for Facebook.

There are a lot of experts who are telling companies how they can succeed right here and now. Social Media is the revolution and you have to decide how you're going to participate. There are Facebook experts, Blogging experts, Twitter experts, and I'm sure Foursquare experts will be surfacing soon.

But what is not being talked about? How can you make these things work for you for 10 years? 20? Not to mention 50. There has to be something more to the game.

Fifty years hence

How does a company survive through an era of great change? How did factories survive the transition to automation? How did agencies like us survive the transition from markers to Macs? The secret is not just staying up on the hottest trend. The secret isn't even how to master the hottest trend. The secret is to understand the business well enough that no matter what comes your way, you'll be able to stay true to your company's mission. You'll stay true to the kind of service you've always given your clients. I don't see a lot of "buzz" about this issue, and it worries me.

Where will you or your company be 50 years from now, when your kids or grandkids are laughing at you about how you used to use that old fashioned Twitter? What will you have to offer when your expertise on the "latest thing" doesn't matter anymore because that latest thing is now old?

It may sound dire, but it doesn't have to be. But if we only focus on the here and now and mastering what is right in front of us, we're going to be in big trouble. It takes a different kind of fuel to create a long, steady burn. Do you have that fuel right now?

Image by Markus Huth. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/huthmark

SEO and Social Media Search: Two Different Animals

2010-07-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

"So now if you have a book called "How To Take Care Of Your Pet" and it includes information about cats and dogs, are you going to catalog it as a cat book, a dog book, or a pet book?"

It's about 9 years ago and I am sitting in a cataloging class, part of my journey towards pursuing my Masters in Library Science. The professor has posed the question above. As one might expect, a heated debate followed.

In the world of Library and Information Science, catalogers are like a hybrid mix of website developers and SEO experts. Their job is to enter data about books, documents, videos, and the like so that people who would want those items can actually find them. The trick is that you have to guess what kinds of people would want those things and more to the point, how they would go about looking. In the case above, the issue was complicated because the choices were so similar, yet a wrong categorization could mean that one group of searchers would not be able to find the information they needed. For example, if the book was categorized as a "pet care" book, a person interested in just cats or just dogs might think it's too general. Naturally, categorizing it as a cat book would leave out the dog people.

Back then, the stakes weren't very high. It was a hypothetical situation, after all, and no money was on the table. But in the marketing world, these kinds of questions prevail, and there is a lot on the line. That's why I find the recent trend of grouping SEO and Social Media search functions together very disconcerting.

Search Engine Optimization

There are two games at play when optimizing a website. First, you have the fun task of trying to win at the game of algorithms, especially with Google. That feat must be balanced with the equally important task of making sure you are in a place where your customers and prospects would expect to see you. There are lots of ways to reach both goals simultaneously, but it takes some careful crafting and a lot of research, not to mention a fair amount of due diligence and a willingness to update copy as needed.

When people search using Google, Yahoo, or Bing, they tend to want information or answers. You need to figure out what answers your company can provide. If you manufacture pet food, what questions would your existing or potential customers ask? "Which food is more nutritious?" "Is this food safe?" By carefully analyzing how words that drive traffic to your website intersect with words that show high prevalence in the search engine, you can usually get a pretty good read on how to position your company.

Social Media: Aka, the conversational crapshoot

In the ever-growing world of Social Media, the main thing that can be predicted is that things will be unpredictable. This is because rather than being based on just algorithms or link quality, Social Media search functions are contingent on what people are actually conversing about. On Facebook, you aren't likely to see a status update that reads, "I have pain and pressure in the occipital region of my cranium. How can I relieve these symptoms?" You're going to see updates that say, "Man, my head is killing me." Going back to our hypothetical pet food manufacturer, it's possible that someone might ask questions about nutrition or safety. However, it's also possible that someone might just say, "I need to remember to go to the store to get Pickles more food." Is your website optimized for the word "food?" Probably. How about "Pickles?" Probably not.

Is it impossible to place well in Social Media search functions if you're a company? No. But it's a very different process from optimizing a company's website for search engines. People think and research one way. They talk and share in another way. A company must be ready for both.

Getting Found in Social Media

In order to get found in the world of Social Media, you need to become a bit less scientific and a bit more, well, yourself. What words do you use when you describe your job or your company to a friend who isn't in the business but seems interested? What kinds of questions does your customer service department or sales team get on the phone? What words do people use in conversation when they are talking to you in real time?

The best way to get found in Social Media is to go out there and join the conversation wherever it is happening. Look for groups, forums, people, chats, or blogs that talk about things related to what you do. Become a part of those communities. Learn to talk to your existing and potential customers in the ways that they define. And don't depend on sites like technorati or Google Alerts to do all of the hard work for you. These sites are based on single words or phrases. Often the context is lost and the use of a word that happens to be important to you is completely irrelevant. Talk to people. Listen. It isn't called Social Media for the fun of it.

Research Before Search

Whether you are engaging in Social Media, SEO, or both, research is the key and mantra. Google might tell you that a certain word is off the charts in traffic, but if it doesn't have anything to do with your company, does it matter? You might be first on the Search Results page based on the keywords you used in your site, but if no one is using those words on Facebook or Twitter, you won't get very far in those search results.

For SEO, make sure that the words you are using to optimize your website reflect how you want to be found. For Social Media search, make sure that you are using words that will help you find your customers.

It's a subtle difference, perhaps. But then scientists say there is only a subtle difference between human and chicken DNA. Two different animals indeed.

A Suggestion Box

2010-07-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

During blogchat last night, someone mentioned that she uses a "suggestion box" widget so that people could offer their feedback.

Well, I don't have such a widget, so I thought I would just make a post here and say, "Hey folks, do you have any suggestions on how I can improve this blog?"

In particular, I'd like your thoughts on the following.

1. While I like my background aesthetically, do you think that it works with the content of my blog?

2. What kinds of subject matter would like me to cover if you pop by here on occasion?

3. How can I improve? Any recommendations desired and appreciated!

If you are of a mind, I'd be happy to return the favor and pop over to your blog if you are looking for suggestions or feedback.

Thanks in advance for your help and time!

Image by Ivan Prole. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/iprole

Thoughts on Brogan's Painter & the Window Post

2010-07-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

One of the awesome yet frightening things about my professional social network right now is that I am following people who are far more brilliant, far more successful, and far more experienced than me. The blog posts that these folks make are always deep, always causing me to think and roll their ideas around in my head. Having recently begun to follow my 300th person on Twitter, you might imagine that my brain has a full-time job just trying to digest what all of these folks are saying.

It is with that preamble that I mention Chris Brogan's recent post called The Painter and his Window. Now, on one level, I can't really relate to this post at all. Sadly, and for reasons that I certainly don't understand, I don't have a ton of admirers who wait to talk to me and get my insights (I know, I know, I'm working on it!!). On the other hand, however, the post gets at an issue that I'm sure tons of people experience even beyond the realm of marketing and business. That issue is that passion doesn't pay the bills.

The fine line between helping and sacrificing

When I was in college and graduate school, my great passion was learning. I wanted to learn everything in the universe. I wanted to be challenged. One of the great first experiences I had my freshman year in college was walking down the street and hearing a couple of guys jousting about existentialism. I thought, "Wow! This is amazing!" All through my academic career, I read every page of every book about 95% of the time. I took notes on every book. This seemed odd to a lot my peers. You can get a jist of an argument by reading the first and last sentence of every paragraph, so the legend goes. But I didn't care about getting things done quickly. I was soaking up that knowledge because I loved it.

Part of the academic environment is peers helping each other, just like part of today's marketing environment is peers sharing knowledge. I wasn't the valedictorian or anything, but I was smart enough that people would sometimes ask me for advice on their papers, or I'd be asked about a book we were reading. Little things. I always obliged. I'm a nice person, plus it gave me a chance to talk about things I liked. Win-win proposition, right?

Of course, the problem with these scenarios is that they can get out of control. Sometimes people will say, "Hey can you help me?" when really they mean, "Can you do this for me?" The other problem that can arise is that you can end up getting behind on your own work because you are spending so much time helping other people. "Oh, I can whip up my paper in no time," I used to say to myself. And most of the time it would work out, but sometimes it became a pinch.

When I translate this to a professional situation rather than an academic one, I see the problems inherent in being passionate about your job in this newly networked world in which we live. It's not just folks like Brogan that have people looking in the window. If you have a friend who's a doctor or nurse, it's hard to avoid talking to them when someone in your family is sick. You want just one little piece of advice, and you're friends, so they shouldn't mind. We expect our teachers to stay after school or to work at all hours because our kids need to learn, and after all, teachers love what they do. A lot of people have good hearts and they want to help as many people as they can in whatever way they can. But when you have to start choosing between self-preservation and helping people, it can put you in a real pickle.

Passion is Priceless. Knowledge is Free.

We're at a really interesting crossroads in our society, and I think Chris's post illustrates this in a unique way. Everybody is all about passion right now, right? Lots of people love Ty Pennington because he is so passionate about helping people on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. People love "foodies" like Emeril because they so love their work. People love Jillian Michaels because of her passion for helping people.

Admiration, though, is starting to have a "chaser." If you admire someone these days, the next step is to find out how they do what they do. If you admire Emeril, you want to learn how you can cook like him. If you admire Jillian, you want to learn how to motivate and look like her. If you admire folks in business or marketing, you feel like you should be able to learn how your role models did what they did.

The really interesting twist is that most of these folks today are sharing exactly that information. Advice, tips, step-by-step guides, videos, television shows, are all full of ways that we can become the people we admire. What worries me is that there is a growing sense that if someone is successful, they are OBLIGATED to bring other people up with them. And that's just not the way it works.

My window

Brogan ends his post by asking people what their window looks like.

Well, my window looks into a classroom. I've got a pad of paper in front of me, hundreds of professors talking to me, and I'm surrounded by people who are trying to learn the same stuff. Sometimes I'll ask questions, not just for me but so all of those other students can learn too. Sometimes a student will ask me questions, and I try to answer. But I am not making my living answering those questions right now, whereas my "professors" are.

I am in a mode of learning, building, and trying to apply what I learn. I do this so that I can be the best possible representative for and of my company's clients. Ultimately, my success will only be measured against how successful our clients are. I wouldn't have it any other way.

These "professors" are helping me achieve that success by teaching me things they have discovered or learned through experience. They offer an awful lot of this information for free. An incredible amount. So if they have a book out, I'm likely to buy it, not just because I know it'll be great but because I know that that's how they make their living in the world, at least in part. And I am willing to support that. If my fellow students find success, I will support them.

I think some people, though, stand outside that "painter's window" and fully expect the painter to talk to them whenever they demand it. Not only that, but if they want to know how to do that brush stroke, or how that shading effect works, they feel that the painter should pass along that information.

To the experts out there, whatever your field may be, I say, only give that from which you are okay to part. And to all you crowds outside the experts' windows, remember that if we are all experts, than no one is.

Image by Fred Kuipers. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/fredjk

Be More Than A Borg. Be Human!

2010-07-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

I ventured out into 94 degree heat today to hit a store because I needed to look for some little baskets (I'm trying to organize my possessions). This store is the kind where you can leave having spent $100 on items that don't cost more than $2, or you can leave having spent $100 on something that you know is ridiculously overpriced but "it's just so darned cute." As it happened, I found exactly what I was dreaming about, so I grabbed 6 $3 square, colorful baskets off the shelf and then I commenced with my excursion. Suddenly, an employee of the store, who was walking by, asked me if I wanted a basket to carry my, well, baskets. And then she helped me put the baskets into the store basket.

Now, I would have been okay carrying my baskets around. It was a bit of an awkward load but I wasn't walking around like a sad puppy dog. And contrary to all signals that may point otherwise, I would have been quite capable of placing my baskets into the store basket. Despite these hopefully assumed truths, the store employee was helpful and even nice. For no real reason. It was clear I was going to buy things. She had nothing to gain from the encounter.

We are the Social Media Users. Resistance is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated.

Lately I've had these vivid images of humanity actually becoming the Borg, especially us business type folk. Isn't the Open Graph kind of like the Borg Collective? You share all of your thoughts, you receive everyone else's...you are wired 24/7 so that their thoughts are always your thoughts? I mean, it's kind of creepy. So often, we concentrate on sharing online and we forget that being nice in real life actually can have longer legs and make a bigger impression because...it's so darned rare!

This is not to say that being nice online is worth a grain of salt. Even that kind of humanity seems hard to come by sometimes. The online assistance we may get is something we can link to, something that's easy to promote, and let's face it...help is often helpful. Help in real life, however, is so much more tangible. It can literally take a load off your shoulders. It can help you feel connected. It can help you carry an awkward load of items. And while you might not be able to retweet it, you still can tell your friends, family, and your Social Network all about it.

Bring a little mushy to your work

Think about your clients or your customers. When was the last time you did something totally kind, totally unnecessary, and totally without expectation or motivation to increase business? If someone is pregnant, have you asked how they're feeling? Have you picked up a tab, sent a reference for someone's kid? I'm not saying that you should spend a week wining and dining. But as opportunities arise, make sure you are being a human, not just a business person and not just a Borg. A little humanity -- a little kindness -- can carry much more weight, much more differentiation, and much more loyalty than any other thing you might do.

Just look at how happy that one little gesture made me!

How do you know I'm not Milli (or Vanilli)?

2010-07-23T19:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I read a really fantabulous post by Stanford Smith (aka @pushingsocial on Twitter). Go ahead and read his post about why smart people like dumb bloggers. Then come back!

See, I told you it was an extremely thought-provoking article. That's why I'm a little surprised that a day later, what came to my mind in response to this amazing post was...Milli Vanilli.

I Need A Bridge

Okay, so let me explain how I got there. A lot of Stanford's post is about the fact that smart people tend to be a little...didactic. Maybe sardonic. In short, smart people have the capacity, nay the tendency, to do kind of stuffy posts. And everyone, smart people and dumb people (so called), find those posts to be pretty boring. My question is this, though. Given the wacky world of Social Media, how do we really know that the person we are reading is really that way? How do we even know if the person we are reading really wrote that post? How do we know who our readers really are?

We don't.

And that brings me to Milli Vanilli. For longer than 15 minutes, a lot of people thought Milli Vanilli was the best thing next to maybe MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. You know that if you were able, you danced a little to "Blame it on the rain." It was amazing that non-native English speakers could speak English so well. It was amazing that 2 guys could look that good and also sound that good. It was almost too good to be true. And then it turned out it WAS too good to be true. Nobody remembers the name Frank Farian today, but he was the actual mastermind behind those pretty faces.

A similar thing happened with that dance-a-licious C&C Music Factory video, "Gonna Make You Sweat" (Everybody Dance Now). Zelma Davis, a gorgeous, thin woman, appeared instead of the actual singer, Martha Wash. Blues Traveler ended up parodying this in their video for "Run Around."

Who is singing for me, Argentina?

So I was thinking about Stanford's comments about smart bloggers and then the mysterious regions beyond our computer screen where all of these contacts of ours live out their day-to-day lives, something we probably have no idea about. And I realized that ultimately, we really have no way of knowing if blogs are emanating from a person's regular way of talking or if people slave over these things for months at a time, plucking words and phrases from various sources. We have no way of knowing if blog posts are being plagiarized, in fact. We have no way of knowing if we are looking at the writings of a Frank Farian or a Fab Morvan.

As you read this, you really don't know much about who I am as a person. You know the things I have posted to this blog. Maybe you follow me on Twitter, so you might know that I have at least a couple of interests that expand beyond the world of marketing. You have no way of knowing if I am really smart or not. Maybe someone else takes a pool of thoughts I verbalize and they make it sound good. Or maybe I am a ghost writer for someone else. And who are you, my readers? The only way I know is if you leave comments, and even then, that is just a snippet of who you really are.

If all you can judge a person by is his or her writing on blogs and other social networking sites, you are also at a great disadvantage. Some of the brightest people I have met in my life are terrible spellers. Some of the best ideas I have seen have come from people who, despite their best efforts, mix up there, their, and they're. Some of the seemingly least intelligent people I know actually are rivers that flow deep. They might not be able to string two words together in person, but in writing they reveal a brain full of knowledge that is beyond most people.

I agree, but everyone has a big but

In short, I agree with the crux of Stanford's post, as I'm sure most people would. If you are smart, it's easy to get preachy or "high and mighty." If you choose not to write with a particularly intellectual bent, it's easy to get disregarded by some and adored by others for your accessibility. But I just want to throw a word of caution out there.

It's possible that some of your "smart" readers are also "dumb" bloggers. It's possible that some of those "dumb' or easily accessible bloggers are some of the most critical and well-read commenters out there. All we have at our disposal, for the purposes of judging, is some written words on a flashing screen, written in a particular style, with particular choices of words that may or may not reveal the real person behind them. We can't even depend on definite identification since may people have many different usernames at their disposal. Social Media is a thick curtain, and all of us could be Wizards of Oz. On the other hand, we could all just be Toto too. Don't be too eager to assign people to one category or the other. It's not a smart thing to do.

Are you an offender? My Top Ten Twitter Pet Peeves

2010-07-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

Granted, Social Media is something that in the end each individual must own his or herself. A Twitter account, a Facebook account, or anything else can be or do whatever the person wants, and it is really not appropriate to tell someone how they should or should not do something.

However, there are some things that people do that drive me personally batty. Rather than leaving a snarky message or just complaining about these things, I thought I would give a brief word about why some of these practices might be detrimental to the health of your account - especially if you are tweeting for business. These are just my opinions, and I'd be happy to hear arguments to the contrary!

1. Post the same 2-3 links 2-3 times a day every day: There are a lot of people just in my little corner of Twitter who engage in this practice. Usually it's 2-3 blog posts or Facebook notes. The links are described with the same teaser every single time. This goes on for weeks and weeks at a time. There are two major problems with this. First, it ends up becoming white noise. You stop looking for that person to post anything new. Second, this practice, at least to me, makes the person look like they don't have any new ideas. That makes them seem less engaging and less interesting. Especially if you are tweeting for business, that's a chunk of bad news.

2. Flashing, pulsating avatars: It's possible that you are the most brilliant business person ever. Unfortunately for me, if you use a flashing avatar, I am going to assume you are spam. They get my attention, but in a bad way.

3. Nothin' but Retweets: This is pretty similar to #1. I think a lot of people take to heart the idea that you should promote others 10x more than you promote yourself. However, retweeting is not the only way this can be done. Making responses to people is also a way to get a person's name in front of your followers, and it makes you seem more "human" and accessible. It also shows that you aren't just regurgitating other peoples' ideas. Express yourself!

4. Nothin' but Complaints: Everybody has that moment when they use Social Media as a cry for help. However, even in cases where the person might be our best friend in the world, this can get tiresome. If you are tweeting for business, a surge of negativity can make you like a sourpuss, and people generally don't want to start new relationships with downer types. Up up up is the way to go. A complaint now and again is okay (that human thing again), but make sure you pepper in some humor or wit or happy thoughts!

5. Trying to be a jerk on purpose: I've encountered a few people who I can tell are really bright, but they adopt this persona of being mean on purpose. At times, I've seen it work for people. A snarky comment will sometimes get a lot of "ha ha" responses and retweets. But again, if you are tweeting for business, I think this is a dangerous road to hoe. You can be snarky at times, but if you are nothing but snarky, what kind of message does that send to potential customers?

6. Talking at, not with: This really holds true for any Social Media site. There are some people who do a lot of posting, but it's not really intended to be conversational. These folks might send out 5 quotations a day, or statements that have that "I'm really deep" aura about them. Again, these things are fine, but if that is all you do on Twitter, you run the risk of becoming white noise again. People like to converse, generally. It's Social Media, after all. If you like posting quotes, try to find a way to ask a question afterwards. "Do you know any quotes of a similar jist?"

7. Foursquare: I know that I have an inherent bias against Foursquare because I see possible dangerous ramifications for our youth, so maybe this isn't fair. However, ever since foursquare became integrated with Twitter, my Twitter stream has become filled with check-in notifications. On a personal level, I just find these similar to clutter. However, if you are tweeting for business, these can also be dangerous. Did you call in sick but you're now checking in to a spa? Were you late for a meeting because you had "checked in" to a restaurant? Project pending but you're checking in to your fitness center? These things can send a very bad message to potential and existing customers, not to mention employers.

8. Promoting the same person(s) over and over: It's always nice to promote individuals, especially if they are friends are co-workers. Much like tweeting the same link over and over, however, this methodology gets very old. I have seen some situations where co-workers will tweet praise of each other and then retweet each others' posts. My gut response to this kind of activity is "get a room." Not what you want to get across when tweeting for business. Probably.

9. Sending someone a direct message whom you don't follow: I have been on the wrong end of this several times. Someone would send me a direct message, and I, being the obliging type, would go to respond. Only I wouldn't be able to respond because said person was not following me. Speaking for myself, I found this kind of irritating, plus it certainly put a decisive end to any conversation or interaction.

10. Today is Friday. Are you retweeting your #ff mentions?: Every Friday on Twitter there is a trending topic called "follow Friday." It's a nice sort of idea at heart. You recommend to your followers people whom you think are worth following. A lot of people mishandle this idea. They'll #ff well nigh all of their followers, for example. Some people don't even give any commentary. Just #ff name name name name. That is not my worst pet peeve, however. My big Friday pet peeve is retweeting mentions for #ff. I have only done this once, and I did it because someone handled their mentions in blog form, so I figured I could drive traffic to their blog. But there are many people on twitter who just automatically retweet any mention of them tied to follow Friday. Again, little commentary added, if any. Why is this annoying? Well first of all, if I follow the person who did the original post, then I get to see that follow Friday post 2-3 times instead of just once. But also, it just does not accomplish anything meaningful, at least from my perspective. My preferred method is to say thank you to the person and maybe add the #ff tag to tell them what I am thanking them for. It's human, it's not automated, and it's genuine. Their name still gets in front of my followers, too.

So there you have it. Do you disagree with any of my pet peeves? Are there major advantages to these methods that I am just plain missing? I'm happy to hear about it!

Image by Iker. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ilco

Jerk or a Superstar?

2010-07-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

Justin Kownacki, a fellow blogchatter, posted a really interesting blog post today about Social Media Myths. Justin said something in a comment response to me that really got me thinking:

There's a whiff of entitlement and a delusion of equality in some
social media conversations that I find detrimental to a more coherent
(and, ultimately, more beneficial) understanding of how social media
(or any other system) works. If a person can't honestly evaluate his
or her own contributions, or tell the good (or relevant) apart from
the bad (or irrelevant), how can s/he expect to identify what needs to
be improved?

See? Thought provoking. Here's where my thinking took me.

On Libraries and 9/11

When I was pursuing my Masters in Library Science 10 years ago, the news seemed pretty darned bright. To listen to Library and Information Science professors was to hear that people would virtually beg for you to work for them once you got an MLS degree. Librarianship was generally speaking an aging profession. Tons of people were going to be retiring. There were going to be so many job openings it was actually going to become a serious problem.

Folks in the post 9/11 world met a very different reality. The money libraries used to get was now going to Homeland Security. People were still retiring, but those jobs were being merged with other existing jobs. Nobody was hiring new and inexperienced MLS grads. A lot of people who graduated around the same time I did felt deceived and betrayed. Some even accused their professors of lying.

A lot of the talk in the world of Social Media reminds me of my heady days in Library School (there's a phrase you might not have heard before). Everywhere you look, including here in this blog, there are posts, articles, tweets, status updates, and more telling you how to gain 5,000 followers, 2 million "friends," and a blog that will make sites like Mashable drool. All you have to do is 5 steps, or 3 steps, or 8 steps, or 2 steps. This information is out there because for somebody, those steps worked. Really well. But they won't and can't work for everyone. And that might cause some people to feel a little left out. Maybe even a little deceived.

Not everyone can be a superstar

One interesting thing about Justin's post is that he pointed out a sad truth that you don't hear a lot these days. Not everyone can attain the status of a Chris Brogan, a Seth Godin, a David Meerman Scott, a Mari Smith, a Denise Wakeman, or other marketing geniuses. This, indeed, might be difficult for some people to tolerate, and there are two reasons for it.

1) Marketing superstars like the aforementioned are accessible and willing to help, making one think that you might just be at that person's level, or that that level is easily attainable

2) You might be doing all of the same things. You're twittering, Blogging, answering questions on LinkedIn, promoting yourself but not too much. As Bill Murray says in What About Bob, "I'm doing the steps! I'm Baby Stepping!" In walking the same path as these superstars, it's natural and easy to think that you will end up at the same superstar destination.

If you consider the millions of people who use Twitter, for example, and then count the number of superstars that come to mind who use Twitter, you will see that statistically, your chances of attaining the same status are rather small.

Being a superstar does not mean you're a jerk

A lot of people have been kind of snipping at these leaders of the marketing world because they don't follow many people, they don't always comment back, or they seem to only reply to a select few. "They say they want to help but I can't get nary a one to guest post on my blog."

Ok, now it's entirely possible that some people who have become successful actually are jerks, or pretend to be nice when really they are quite mean at heart. However, in my own personal experience, this is not the case. When I see Social Media or marketing superstars, I see the following:

1) They are being demanded not only in the places we see (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs) but also in places and in ways that we don't see, like telephone calls, their full time jobs outside of connecting with everyone, speaking engagements, preparing for speaking engagements, etc.

2) They didn't attain their status because they were easy to like. They all worked their butts off. We know them and of them because they are trying to teach everyone else how they did what they did. That, in and of itself, seems to tip the scale away from "mean," but I could be wrong.

3) With such limited time, for every comment or reply that is made, there are likely dozens if not hundreds of others that get passed by. I worry about problems like that and my follower list on Twitter is like a pebble compared to Jupiter.

4) Superstars are, generally speaking, human beings. If you come at them with criticisms (or tons of buttkissing that is inauthentic) you will probably not succeed in communicating. All humans, no matter how successful, need a little give and take.

5) Sometimes superstars want to banter with friends and family online, and they might do that instead of bantering with someone they don't know. Maybe that makes them a jerk. I generally think not.

What do you want to get out of Social Media?

If you're engaged in Social Media because you are shooting to be the next superstar, you're probably going to have a bad experience. If you're looking to get famous or position yourself to write a New York Times best seller, you're probably going to find yourself dumbfounded at your lack of success.

I am engaged in Social Media for 3 reasons. I want to learn. I want to share knowledge as I get it. I want to help people market their products, and I believe that I, with the company I work for, can help make that happen. I am not shooting for a specific number of followers or fans. I don't need 27 comments per blog post. I don't need to be a superstar, but I know I don't want to be a jerk.

My realistic expectations, I hope, are that I can help someone work a problem, tell someone something they didn't know that might help them out, and learn the same way from other people. To that end, based on my goals, I'm already quite content with where I am. And I have to say that I have never had a moment where I thought these geniuses we all talk about were jerky. In fact, I have found their kindness to be authentic, their knowledge to be rock solid, and their friendliness to be genuine.

I know that I will not be the next superstar, and I am quite fine with that. Are your expectations on a level with where you are in life? Are you shooting too high? Are you expecting too much? It's difficult to become a superstar. It's easy to become a jerk. We should all make sure we stay far away from the latter.

A quick note about ambition and time

2010-07-18T09:36:00.000-07:00

Eight years ago, I was a graduate student, pursuing my Masters in History. I was 24, looking at 25. I was convinced, for some reason, that 25 was the age at which someone officially becomes "grown up." Thirty, of course, is the marker for when you have to have everything figured out. Added to that self-inflicted pressure (and needless pressure) was the fact that I was working on my thesis.

Let me pause here and say that I have always been an ambitious person. When I was a little kid watching Live Aid, I decided that I would try to save all of those starving children. My plan was to make those woven loop potholders and sell them. Lots of them. When I was in seventh grade, I decided that getting straight As in school every semester would be the only thing I would find acceptable. In high school, I wanted to make the top ten at graduation.

For some people, the wackiness that results from gratuitous ambition and immaturity results in mad amounts of success. You've seen those stories. And there are more and more of those stories, it seems. Accidental mammoth success like JK Rowling experienced. Stories of people who sit down at the piano, decide they are going to compose a masterpiece, and then do so, as if everyone can do that.

Needless to say, my pot holder plan did not pan out.

When I started work on my thesis, I was passionate, excited, and of course, ambitious. I wanted to have the entire thing outlined before my fourth semester of graduate work commenced. I'd have it done early. And it would achieve every academic goal I had set out.

I thumbed through my thesis for the first time in a couple of years today. I revisit it every now and again. And I laughed at the me of 7-8 years ago. Each chapter in the thesis would have been a good thesis in and of itself. Each chapter, therefore, needed a lot more detail, a lot more research. As it was, my thesis ended up being 169 pages. If I had really done every chapter the way it should have been done, well, I might have had the first multi-volume Master's Thesis ever. Not surprisingly, I burned myself out. Between the pace I was trying to set for myself, the sheer girth of what I was trying to do, and the fact that I also had many other things on the burner, this was not a surprising conclusion. Finishing became the reward, but I was not, and am not, pleased with the final result.

A lot of motivational speakers will tell you not to look back but only to look forward. I see what they mean, but I have to say that if approached in a healthy way, the past can teach you a lot. From thumbing through my work of a few months ago or a few years ago, I can benchmark where I am going and where I have been. I also can learn really important lessons. For example, unchecked ambition doesn't really get you anywhere unless you are completely lucky.

I think the successful ambitious person of today reaches success because they are slow and steady. They are willing to be patient. They are willing to hear the adage that success is preparation meeting opportunity, so they are always preparing. They don't put arbitrary, meaningless goals on their shoulders as an added burden. They also don't look around to see where other people are.

Nowadays, I think of ambition as if it were a campfire. If you try to build a huge, raging fire right away, you might succeed, but pretty soon all of your tinder and kindling will burn away, and you'll have a tough time getting that nice big fire to come back. However, if you feed the fire slowly, if you let it catch first on the firestarters, then on the kindling, and then finally on a nice dry log, your fire will burn intensely and for a long time. It might not reach the heights that you initially hoped for, but it will carry you through a lot of s'mores.

I see a lot of people around trying to skip to the end where their ambition meets a happy ending. I see people trying out on shows like American Idol or America's Got Talent. I see stories of book deals being made based on people posting books to blog sites. The Fast Company Influence Project is kind of a sign that this ambition is running wild. But I would caution people to meter that ambition. Time doesn't really matter when you are building something really good, but quality does matter. Getting to the finish line first is great, but getting to the finish line and being able to still stand up is awesome. Pace yourself.

And by the way, if someone looks at you crazy when you say that you have a great idea regarding how to take over the world in 30 seconds, don't chastise them for holding you down. Thank them for keeping you from burning out.

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/shho

Using Twitter for Business

2010-07-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

I started my Twitter account round about November of last year. I didn't do much with it because I wasn't getting much out of it, and I didn't understand why. Spam Bots had 20 times more followers than me and some of them even seemed to get retweeted. Meanwhile, I did 1-2 posts a day, posting my opinions about business stuff (it was that general) and posting links to some things that I thought were chock full of good information.

As far as how that plan worked, I seemed to get more followers during the phases when I wasn't posting at all.

As time has gone on, I've settled into Twitter. I would not say I am even remotely close to learning everything I need to learn, but I've learned a lot. For example:

It's okay to be informal sometimes: When I first started using Twitter as a professional tool, I thought, "Oh, well, I need to be button down all the time and only talk about business stuff. That's what I'm using it for, that's who I want to connect with, so there you go." Although talking about your business, whatever it may be, is the primary way that you network, Twitter is a lot like real life. If you talk only in links to articles, people are going to start to assume you're an automated link poster. I have discovered that it's okay to ask someone how they liked a movie you're thinking about seeing. It's okay to pick on someone when they tell a funny story about themselves. When you see all the talk about "being human" what it really means is "be yourself."

Find mentors: One advantage I had when I joined Twitter is that I knew a lot of my role models were already there. In looking at some of those role models' Twitter accounts, I also saw that my chance to see them build up their followers had come and gone a LONG time ago.

Most of the people whom I consider my mentors have hundreds of thousands of followers. However, the number of followers is not what made me consider them my mentors. Rather, it's how they treat their followers, including me. It would be easy to forgive someone for never responding to your mention or to your post since they have 299,000 other people posting things to them and at them.

The amazing thing about my "mentors" is that they actually find ways to share their love quite a bit, and I think that's pretty fantastic. No, they won't respond to every single thing every single person posts, but I have been impressed at how many times I've been able to communicate with these folks through Twitter. It makes them and what they are saying seem accessible. Finding folks like that is really, really important.

Find chats: So I had nary an idea about chats when I first joined Twitter. I was checking out the latest tweets when I saw something called #blogchat popping up from a lot of the new people I was following. I decided to check it out. Best thing I've done on Twitter. No matter what your business is, chats on Twitter can be beneficial, and there's one reason for that. Out of the millions and millions of people using Twitter, a chat divides out that people who are interested in chatting about something you all have in common. I'm aware of about 150 chats on Twitter as of now, and the topics range from parenthood to association news.

Even though a chat group can be a small piece of the Twitter pie, it can still move fast and it can be a little intimidating your first time. However, if you are legitimately interested in learning from other people and offering your insights as they come, I guarantee you will find it not only really rewarding but also really fun!

These are the first major things that come to mind when I think about what I've learned about using Twitter so far. There are tons of other little things. Being gracious is key, for example. Saying thank you is a really good idea. Posting to and about other folks more than yourself is better than just promoting yourself. Things like that.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing I've learned about Twitter is that sharing is the name of the game. When you learn something you share it. When you have some success, you pass it around. It's for that reason that I'm hoping to start a chat called #Twit4Biz this Thursday. It's not to say that I'm an expert and I'm now going to tell everyone how I figured everything out. What I'm hoping is that it will be an opportunity for people to talk about the delicate dance of using Twitter for professional reasons.

There are so many questions that I want to explore on a personal level. For example, if you're really passionate about politics, let's say, can you reveal that through your professional Twitter account? How personal is too personal for that kind of account? How do you balance responding to friends who might have found you, who will talk about things not related to business, with the folks you are connected with because of business? More than all of that, I would have truly found a resource like that beneficial when I first signed into Twitter. Maybe there are folks who are where I was 6 months ago, posting links and not getting any response. Maybe these chats will give them ideas and help them out.

Twitter is a weird animal. It seems so wide open, and there are so many people who have experienced success with it that when you embark on your journey you almost expect a "handicap" of 1,000 followers to drop in your lap. There are so many intricacies when using Twitter for business. It certainly is a game well beyond "that thing that teens use on their phones."

What has your experience been with using Twitter for business? What have you learned? Do you have mentors like I do? I'd love to hear your stories!

Analytics for Offline: The "Other" White Meat?

2010-07-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

Back in the day, there was a television campaign that has since been parodied to death. "Pork: The Other White Meat," the ads drilled into our heads.

These days, using analytics to measure online marketing efforts is something on everyone's minds. Even technophobes are starting to familiarize themselves with phrases like "exit rate" or "bounce rate." Using analytics to measure web campaigns might be today's marketing chicken.

Like the ads of yore, I am here to talk about something that is similar in a lot of ways to measuring online tactics. It's just the "other" thing you can measure with analytics. Today's marketing pork. That would be everything you do "offline."

This concept was brought to my attention about a month ago when I watched a presentation by the incomparable Avinash Kaushik. Kaushik, if you have not encountered him yet, is a master of Google Analytics. He can make reading the program seem like "reading" Amelia Bedelia, and he can inspire you to measure anything and everything you do. In this particular presentation, Kaushik was preaching about the value of using Analytics programs to measure marketing tactics that are not happening in the online world.

A novel concept, to be sure, but the fact is that even though a lot of people are not talking about this as a key to success, programs like Google Analytics can measure the effectiveness of campaigns that go nowhere near a computer. Here are some examples of how offline marketing efforts can be measured using Google Analytics.

Print Advertising Campaign: There are two ways Google Analytics can be used to measure the success of a print advertising campaign.

For a general, impressionistic idea, take a benchmark of your stats at the beginning of a month, then look again after your ad hits. Keep an eye on your stats for the next week or so. Does your traffic spike? If so, then you are probably effectively engaging your customers with a strong call to action.

The other way to measure a print ad campaign's success is to create specific landing pages on your site, knowing that any traffic to those pages will be from your ad campaign. In this latter scenario, you can not only track how much traffic comes to that page, but you can also find out if people are interested enough to visit other pages of your website or if they simply bounce out of your site entirely.

Trade Show: Google Analytics can be a really effective way to measure the impression a trade show has made on your prospects and customers. We recommend measuring at three different stages:

Leading up to the show. Are your promotion efforts working? Does your traffic spike after sending out a pre-show direct mail piece, for example?

During the show: Are people finding your booth and your sales materials, along with your message, interesting? Benchmark your statistics before you leave for the show, then take a look after the show. Did your efforts seem to pay off? Again, a landing page or a promotion can really put a fine point on your measuring in these cases.

Don't forget about those post-show follow-ups. Scanning a person's name tag does not a lead make. Send a nice folder stuffed with your finest literature pieces along with a link to your website. Does your traffic spike a few weeks after the show has ended?

News Release: In the case of a news release, take a look at your stats for specific pages that would be affected, namely anywhere the new product or feature is presented. Although you can look for a spike immediately after a news release is sent, that won't really tell the whole story. It can sometimes take months for a news release to get published in a leading publication. When you find out that your story has been picked up, keep an eye on you analytics for 2-3 days after that. Does it move?

Direct Mail: Much like an ad, a direct mail piece can be developed so that it entices recipients to visit your website. A call to action or a promotion of some type is especially effective in these cases. Again, take a benchmark of your overall site, but a specific landing page can be a big help in tracking a direct mail campaign in the same way it can help to track a print ad's success.

Google Analytics is not perfect, of course. A campaign should not be panned or made the one and only focus based on the rise and fall of the traffic graph. However, Google Analytics can give you a pretty good clue as to how offline and online campaigns are performing, and actionable items can follow.

Have you had experience measuring offline campaigns using Google Analytics? I'd love to hear about it!

Image by Anna Moderska. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/morderska

Checklist: Launching a Website

2010-07-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today's checklist: 25 Things to consider before launching that website!

1. Who will be hosting my website and why am I choosing that option?
2. What expectations have my competitors already established for websites in this industry?
3. What will my URL be, and should I purchase other domain names for protection?
4. What keywords do I need to incorporate into page titles, meta tags, and body copy?
5. Will the tone of my website be "you," "us," or "we"?
6. What are my calls to action going to be?
7. How will I drive traffic to this website once it launches?
8. What do I need to get across on the homepage?
9. How will I create internal links between pages?
10. How will I present my sales network?
11. How will I create an opportunity for interaction for visitors? Is that important to me?
12. What analytics system will I use to measure the success of my site?
13. What would I consider a successful launch of the website?
14. What functionality do I want visitors to notice when they visit the site?
15. What is my plan of attack if analytics shows a high bounce or exit range from certain pages?
16. Who will be responsible for maintenance, like adding news releases, trade shows, etc?
17. Whose contact information will be made available on the site? Is there corporate agreement about that?
18. Will the design of the site revolve around a corporate logo or a leading product?
19. Will there be e-commerce capabilities?
20. Will there be special programming needs like image galleries, forms, or videos?
21. How will the look and content of the new website be filtered through all channels of the organization?
22. How will the sales force be able to use the site as a selling tool?
23. Will there be a blog built into the site? Who will be the voice of that blog?
24. Is there room for the site to grow?
25. Should the site be translated into different languages for international visitors?

Believe it or not, this is just the beginning of what goes into the launch of a website, and these are the basics. If there are steps that are important that you do not see here, feel free to add them!

Check? Check 1, check 2...

2010-07-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

This week feels like a checklist kind of week, so I thought I would ride the wave. Every day this week, I will post a checklist of things to consider as you approach different marketing tactics or strategies. If I missed something, feel free to add to it!

Today's checklist: 25 Things To Consider Before Blogging

1. Am I blogging as an individual or will the blog be a team effort?
2. If a team, how will I choose my co-bloggers?
3. Is this blog going to be personal or work-related?
4. What am I hoping to accomplish with this blog?
5. Who is my audience?
6. If business related, does this blog fall within the parameters of my business/company/corporation?
7. What platform am I going to use, and why?
8. What voice am I going to use? Will I be professional and "button-down"? Casual?
9. How often do I want to post a blog?
10. Is my answer for #9 feasible?
11. What are keywords that I want to emphasize in my blog?
12. What will I say in my profile?
13. What will I use for my user picture?
14. What will the name of my blog be?
15. How will I promote my blog?
16. What would I define as a successful blog?
17. How will I measure the success of my blog?
18. Will I include a "blogroll" on my blog?
19. Will I include a "search" function on my blog?
20. Will my blog be monetized?
21. Will I import my blog into LinkedIn or Facebook (or both?)
22. What will I do if I get negative or little reaction to my blog or post?
23. If a team blog, how will the dynamics work? Will the posts attributed to individual writers?
24. Will you include video blogging or podcasting on your blog site?
25. How will you control and encourage comments and commenters?

Anything I missed? Let me know and I'll add to it!

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Fanginhoon

What is influence?

2010-07-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

As you may have heard, Fast Company has begun a little experiment on Twitter called The Influence Project. The concept is pretty simple on paper. You sign up on the Fast Company site and you see how many people you can motivate to click a link that you post. The more clicks you receive, the more influential you appear. The folks at Fast Company have promised that the most influential people will have their pictures shown on the cover of the November 2010 issue (Go ahead and check out Fast Company's definition if you're interested).

Not surprisingly, the reactions to this project have been all over the board. Experts like Alltop's Guy Kawasaki and Facebook Queen Mari Smith are for it. Lots of other folks are furious at Fast Company for creating a project that seems to give spam the green light. I don't know where you stand, but me? I can see both sides of the argument.

The question at hand: what is influence?

Whether or not it's the intended objective, all of the noise about this project has made me ponder what influence truly is. It also makes me wonder if influence can be made tangible by people clicking on some links. My gut instinct is to say that if influence is something that can be measured in clicks to a website from Twitter, there are going to be a lot of disappointed and confused people out there.

So what is influence, really? If you go to dictionary.com, you'll find this as definition one:

"The capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others."

I guess that's a serviceable definition. You can't really argue with it. And by this definition, The Influence Project is not a misnomer. You're compelling people to click on a link, and the number of people who do that are metrics for your influence. Fine. But doesn't that sound kind of hollow? Even in the world of Web 2.0, which is kind of seeming like the flower child when compared to advertising, making people just click a button does not an influential person make. And by the way, you could post till the cows come home that people should click a link, but if you post a tweet and you have no followers, is there really a chance to be influential?

Satire or Science

There are some who say that The Influence Project is in part meant to be a sort of satire or parody of what the online world is like. It's meant to show how easy it is to get people to click things, how easy it is to game the system. The problem is that it's also kind of presented as a science project or a rational scientific experiment. In the case of the latter, there are a few flaws that I'd like to point out.

1. As already mentioned, you already have to have some influence in order to show how influential you are. If you have 500,000 followers and you post a link, statistically speaking you're going to have a better chance at being "influential" than a person who has 30 followers.

2. If you are already influential (if you measure influence in number of followers, which is a really bad idea), you have probably built up a lot of credibility (or you're really durned famous). In either case, you can afford to be 100% straightforward. "Hey guys, please click this link and vote for me to be influential. I've got a book coming out in October and the extra PR exposure would be GREAT! Love and kisses!" On the other hand, if you've got a kind of shaky base or not a lot of followers, this would be hinging on a breach of trust. That's a big no no.

3. In the Social Media world, it's easy enough to get people to click things. Heck, a person with minimal HTML knowledge can mask a link to the influence page under an H-Ref tag and no one would be the wiser. Real influence is what you do with those clicks. In the marketing world, influence would be how many people ask for a quote after clicking. In the Social Media world, maybe you see how many people donate to a charitable cause after clicking, or how many people download your e-book. Getting folks to click a link, openly or not, is not really the strongest measure of influence.

4. Pulling on someone else's influence: Let's imagine the following scenario. I sign up for The Influence Project and I post to Twitter saying, "Oh, such and such expert or celebrity just posted a great blog. Click here!" You click the link and end up at my Influence Project page. Now, did you click because I posted the link or did you click because you wanted to hear what that OTHER person had to say? I won't be offended. It's hypothetical :) But this is a problem. Is the Influence Project truly measuring everyone's influence? It's an easy way to cheat, right?

5. And speaking of cheating, it's really easy to load the game to win. Now Brogan and Smith might say that like any game, the rules are made to be adapted, but I worry that this is kind of setting a dangerous precedent. "Oh, I see, so getting people to click to MY website would REALLY show how influential I am. So how about if I mask my links with misleading information. "Here's a breaking news story." "Here's a quote from LeBron James saying that he has changed his mind." Click click click. Away goes your credibility. Is it worth it?

Who Wins?

In the end, Fast Company is the ultimate winner in the Influence Project, not the people whose pictures get into the November issue, not even Guy Kawasaki. The publication is being discussed all over the place, as is the project. I've driven traffic to their website, and everyone who is participating is doing the same thing. There is build-up for a November issue, which as we media types know can be a tough month for magazines.

As for the people who might be the most "influential" based on this project, will they really be winners? The assumption of a lot of people will be that they either spammed their friends or otherwise ruthlessly gamed the system. It will be a means for the rich to get richer in terms of followers and Twitter influence. And I'm not really sure a lot of people will look at these folks, once the whole project is explained, and say, "Oh Okay. I need to follow all of them right away."

In the end, those winners will just have proven that they got lots of people to click. I tend to unfollow those types of people pretty quickly myself.

What do you think of The Influence Project? Do you have pros for my cons? Are you participating? Let me know!

My open letter to LeBron: It's not just business. It's personal.

2010-07-09T05:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. James (Your Highness),

You said last night that when you awoke yesterday morning, you knew your decision. When I woke up this morning, the first thing that popped into my head was a scene from the movie You've Got Mail. Tom Hanks' character, who owns a huge book store meant to be something like Barnes & Noble, moves down the street from Meg Ryan's tiny little family-owned book store. She knows it will destroy her business, but he says, "It's just business. It's not personal." "It is personal," she says. "It's personal to me."

LeBron, the decision you made may have been business for you and your "team." It may be business to Miami. It may be business for LA and New York and Chicago.

It is not business to us here in Northeast Ohio. It is personal.

We know the areas where you used to roam as a kid. A poor kid who was lucky enough to get guidance from people around you. Akron people. We know the shelter that helped out your mom, a shelter, by the way, that is having a hard time providing service to women like your mom today because their funds have been slashed and burned. We drive by your school, LeBron, where your first chapter of dreams came true. We went to those games and we thought, "Could this really be happening here?" We watched one of our own get signed to our basketball team, our poor Cavs, who were best known for crinkling up like aluminum foil as Michael Jordan hit "the shot."

Our Cavs, by the way, are now known as the team that suffered most from "the decision."

Do you remember when you were a kid and the Goodyear blimp would fly overhead? It's something all of us Akron people get excited about. Back when you were a little kid, the blimp was called The Spirit of Akron. It would show up on television, soaring above games. It would fly over our houses and we would soar up there in the clouds in the Spirit of Akron's wake.

A few years ago, the name of the blimp changed. It was the Spirit of Goodyear. All of our ties to that little bubble of air were broken after years of gazing upward.

You were our new spirit of Akron, LeBron. You were our proof that good things can happen here. Good things can come from here. You made people familiar with a side of Akron that had nothing to do with all of the jokes and mockery. You were putting us on the map in a good way, LeBron. And in these really dark economic times, when businesses and stores are closing, when our libraries and schools are dying here, LeBron, you gave us something to look forward to, something to be really proud of.

When I was 25 I felt the big 3-0 pushing down on me. I had goals I wanted to reach by age 30, and I felt like I would be a failure if I didn't meet all of those objectives. Granted, I didn't have the spotlight on me like you do, but I'll tell you something that you come to appreciate after you get through your twenties. You appreciate your community. You appreciate being surrounded by places and people who have been there for you your whole life. That's not to say that people always come back to where they're from, but you start getting nostalgic. You will miss that in Miami. It will never be home to you. But because of the way you handled this, I'm not sure your emotional home here, your spiritual home, will be waiting for you.

You said last night that winning has always been the most important thing to you. It broke my heart that you couldn't say that winning in Miami would be less sweet than it would have been to win a championship for your hometown. You will learn, eventually, that winning a championship is not enough to fulfill you, LeBron. And winning can mean different things. To us, your hometown crowd, winning would have been taking less money, as you are willing to do, and saying that you would stay with us till you brought a championship home. That is the true definition of loyalty. Saying that you don't care how hurt the fans are, saying that you hope we treat you with respect, is like spitting in all of our faces, LeBron. How could you?

You always say that you are a big fan of the Yankees. So you probably know all about Lou Gehrig and the amazing speech he made when he had to retire. Lou Gehrig was from New York. He started out in tough circumstances but found that sports gave him a way out. He got to play for his home team, and he stayed there. You could say that it was easier for him to stay because the Yankees won. Maybe. But I think Lou Gehrig valued the reward of playing in front of his family, his friends, and all of the people that cheered him on from the very beginning. He wasn't the luckiest man in the world, at the beginning of a crippling disease, because he had won championships. He was the luckiest man in the world, LeBron, because he had forged a powerful bond with his fans, with his teammates, and with history. That is a winner.

Business is not always something that is without emotion. Decisions cannot always be made separate from the results. The way you handled this process, the way you announced this, the way you so rapidly "moved on" last night, away from Cleveland, away from your home, and towards a city that only knows you as "the king," may have all been good for your franchise. But when you retire, when your boys are ready to go to high school and college, when they want to see where your glory days were spent, where they were born, you will have to explain how and why that all ended. And that's why I'm not angry with you, LeBron. You might not see the ramifications of your actions now. You might win 15 championships. You might become the King of Miami. But eventually you will have to explain to yourself and your boys and your grandkids that you left the hometown that you claimed to love because of business reasons, because it's what the 25-year-old you thought would make you happy.

Good luck with that, LeBron.

It's not just integrated marketing. It's integrating marketing.

2010-07-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

There was a TREMENDOUS conversation in which I got to participate last evening on Twitter. Marsha Collier runs a weekly chat on customer service (#custserv for you Twitter users). Last night the topic was basically the relationship between marketing and customer service. The conversation, for me, solidified a thought that had just been ranging around my brain before. To wit: customer service and marketing need each other to succeed.

This also made me realize something new. "Integrated Marketing" may officially be an out-of-date term. It's not just about integrating your marketing channels anymore, is it? Now, on a corporate level, marketing must be integrated with customer service. The one can enhance the other, and if not planned carefully, one can easily detract from the other as well.

How can a company weave together strands of customer service with strands of marketing to make a fully functional tapestry? Here are some ideas.

1. Build on testimonials: The easiest relationship to identify between marketing and customer service is a positive reaction from a customer. A testimonial, essentially, is a customer singing a company's praises. Marketing can spread the word about this happiness, build credibility, and show that the company really does walk the walk rather than just talking the talk. It's tangible proof of strong customer service.

2. Make customer service a pillar of your marketing campaign: If the customer service folk have really been kicking it into gear, don't be afraid to capitalize on that strength. Market it, in other words. Talking about strong customer service is great for booth graphics at a show, a company profile, and more. Market your strengths.

3. From the fertilizer of a customer service mistake, make marketing flowers bloom: Everyone by now has probably heard the story of Comcast Cares. A company notorious for poor customer service used Social Media to become responsive, attentive, and the poster child of modern-day communication. If a mistake can be fixed, if an unhappy customer can become an "evangelizer" for your company or product, your marketing team can have a veritable field day. If that person is willing to be quoted in an ad, a press release, or serve as an ambassador for your company at a trade show or event, how credible will that person AND you seem? This company isn't perfect and I wasn't always happy, but look at how happy I am now!

4. Marketing should keep existing customers in mind: Research shows that people like to think that someone is listening. Even with all of these ways to share content, feedback is what people are really after. If customer service gets several similar complaints about a feature and that feature is changed or updated, make sure marketing knows about it. "We listened and our product is better thanks to you." Domino's Pizza recently carried this kind of campaign out using television commercials tied to a Social Media campaign. Keep everyone in the loop!

5. Customer Service should keep marketing in mind: One thing we always try to tell people we work with is that it is essential to find out how people find out about you. If someone calls or emails or visits your website and expresses an interest in your product, don't be shy about asking how they heard about you. Marketers don't get a whole lot of gold stickers, but a delivered lead is pure gold indeed. Keep track of what people say and let your marketing team know what's going on. The marketing plan can be shifted to emphasize what is performing well.

Are there other ways in which customer service and marketing are or could be intertwined? Let me know!

Image by Glenn Pebley. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/GlennPeb

What is this Blogging thing?

2010-07-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

Well hello there, trusty readers! Sorry for the lag in posting. Truthfully, I have been on vacation! Had a lovely time in Cape Cod & Boston. I know, I know. I should have let you all know, but true to my word, I don't believe in broadcasting to the world that I'm leaving my home abandoned. WHAT is wrong with me!?! :) Anyway, due to various factors such as the stress of travel and lack of sleep caused by watching the Boston fireworks extravaganza Sunday night, I was not able to stay awake for my favorite Twitter chat, Blog chat. It looks like I missed quite a doozie!

To get caught up, I read this excellent post by Ian M. Rountree. The main topic of the chat, and hence of Ian's post, is "voice" in blogging. But it seems like what happened is that a conversation about what Blogging is at heart blossomed. Is a blog something that should be written anonymously? If you have multiple people from your company blogging, should you broadcast that? Is Blogging writing? Is writing Blogging?

All of these questions are both important and thought-provoking. They inspired me to ask myself what I think Blogging is, or what I set out to do with my Blog(sssss). After some heavy mental lifting, here's where I am on the whole thing.

Blogging is a series of conversations aimed at one central goal

If you think about the Three Musketeers, what's the first thing that comes to mind? For me, it's "One for all, all for one." And oddly enough, that's what I think of when I think about a Blog. The "all" can be you and your readers, it can be you and your co-bloggers, or a combination. But the central core of the issue is that you are all generally interested in the same types of things, the same types of goals, and you want to share your opinions and anything you might have learned. That's a recipe for a conversation, right?

So while I was sleeping soundly (and I do mean soundly), folks on Twitter were debating how to approach a multi-person or team blog. Based on my perception of a Blog as a conversation, I would say the following:

1. Be transparent. Let people see different perspectives, different voices, and let them attribute those characteristics appropriately.

2. Before you put virtual pen to digital paper, have a plan. What is the "one" that you are all for? No matter who is writing and no matter what each individual's particular spin may be, a person visiting the Blog should not be confused at any point about what the conversation is about.

3. To show that there is an underlying sense of teamwork and cohesiveness, be interactive with your team members. Comment on each others' blogs, comment on comments for a post you haven't written, etc.

4. Don't try to out-do each other. Blogging is not about ego, I don't care who says otherwise! If one of your team members seems to get more comments than you, don't worry about it. Maybe people respond more to their posts but read your posts and think more deeply about them.

5. Make sure you make accessible a link where your individual voices really do become one. This could be a link to your website or even a link to a Facebook page. Conversations are great, but they might distract someone who is just looking for straightforward information.

A quick PS

I do NOT think that a multi-voice Twitter account is a good idea. On Twitter you have so little room to make big connections with people that leaving doubt as to who is talking can be deadly. I recommend the way Dell does it, for example - include some corporate prefix or suffix (or name) in your handle, then personalize so everyone has a separate but related account.

Greedy Marketing

2010-06-26T21:17:00.000-07:00

There is a scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy that describes the various flaws the different races of Middle Earth exhibit. Of the Dwarves, it is said that they delved too greedily and too deep. The Dwarves were miners, you see. They were good miners. They found riches galore, but it was never enough. Eventually, the Dwarves dug so deeply that they released horrible demons.

I've been thinking about this description a lot as I follow the tale of the BP oil spill. We dug too greedily and too deep. We didn't exactly release a Balgrog, but it's mighty close.

As a marketer, it is possible to dig too greedily and too deep, especially on the heels of a major project like a white paper or a webinar. An incident that happened to me last week illustrates this point.

Last week I received an e-mail from a source I trust indicating that there was a new white paper available. The white paper had been authored by a guest company, but since it came recommended by the source I knew, and since the title fascinated me anyway, I decided to take a look and I ended up downloading the document. After reading the document, I showed it to my boss and I also tweeted about it. Happy ending, right?

Wrong.

Every day since I downloaded this white paper, I have received an e-mail from the author of the document. The emails are bluntly "sell" oriented. They want me to sign up for a training that will expand upon the white paper I downloaded.

As a consumer, these emails seem well over the top to me. Getting an "open" AND a click on an e-blast is a win to begin with. For someone to download a paper and give you their personal info is even better.

As a marketer, I still feel that an email per day is overkill. By a long shot. Had the marketer handled the situation differently, I might well be blogging about their effectiveness right now instead of the point where they made me want to claw my computer's eyes out.

What to do

Okay, I know what you are thinking. As a marketer, I should have known that submitting my e-mail address was an opt-in. Well, I get that. But you have to be really REALLY careful when offering information-rich content like white papers. A lot of people who are inspired to download white papers are in a learning mode or a research mode, not a buying mode. How shocked would you be if a salesman jumped out of a book you're reading? Same kind of feel.

The conversion from content to conversion is a rough one, admittedly, but here's an idea that might have prevented me from wanting to put a hex on this person's email account.

1. Acknowledge that you appreciate the steps it took for someone to download your white paper. Whether they clicked from an eblast or from the web, they not only had to click, they had to fill out a form, then hit download, then wait for the massive document to load. That's valuable time. Send out an email thanking the person for spending that time. Make yourself available via email and Social Media to answer any questions.

2. Give people 3 days to read the white paper in peace. Assume that they spent their free time downloading the thing. Assume they are hanging on your every word. Don't drive them crazy.

3. After 3 days, send out a brief survey. IF you are trying to sell something, mention it briefly in your introduction. Ask if the person has passed on the article to a co-worker or boss. Ask if they have shared it via Social Media. Answers to these questions will establish a relationship (potentially) and inform you as to whether you have a budding "brand evangelizer" on your hand.

People responding is the gold

Never forget that someone clicking to and downloading your content is a major gift. It's the gift of time. It's the gift of interest. If your content is good, that person will look for more from you. They'll promote you. They'll quote you in blog posts. They'll look for you on Twitter. And eventually, if you decide to publish a book or host a paid webinar, that person will likely not only pay themselves but they'll also recommend that other people do so.

This person's content was extremely good, but I am not likely to promote them by name because I don't want other people to get bombarded with sell emails. If I really wanted to be ruthless, I could name the person and say, "Hey, don't download this person's stuff." That would be an epic problem.

Don't delve too greedily. Don't delve too deep. If you are just in it for the money, content is probably not your game. If you are in it to help educate people, you probably won't rake in the cash right away. Build your brand. Build your credibility. Build your network of supporters. Be patient. Don't release the demons.

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/QR9iudjz0

Antisocial Media?

2010-06-25T05:46:00.000-07:00

I was going through some Facebook messages last night and thinking about how a lot of my friends have 400 friends or more. I have about 150 friends. They are primarily people I have met and/or liked in real life, or ya know, family. I take as much time as the day allows to get caught up on everyone's news. I comment, I interact. And I really enjoy it.

On Twitter, I like reading posts a lot more than I like making them. It's hard to get conversations started on Twitter if you initiate them unless you've already got a lot of pull. This is because people are highly driven to gather their own followers. When we're on Twitter, we post hoping that someone will respond or even better, retweet. We're not really looking to engage. When you read, you're the one who is replying or engaging.

This led me to yet another thought. If you are focused primarily on attracting followers or friends on Social Media networks, and you're not really conversing with anyone, are you really engaging in Social Media? Methinks not.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy sharing my ideas. Boy do I. Anyone who has about 17 blogs going in various states of completeness clearly has too much to say! And when you post something that sparks a conversation, it's extremely rewarding. However, I encounter more people than I would have guessed who just post post post. People respond. People ask questions. People try to lure this person out of their "I post therefore I am" mentality. But it just doesn't work. What is the point of this?

I'm curious to know how you (yes YOU) approach Social Media from a business and/or a personal perspective. What do you look at first? If I have limited time, I look at the replies section to make sure I can respond to anyone that may be talking to me. Other people might check their number of followers, while others might go straight to the retweet section. Where do you go first on Facebook? Homepage to see updates or friend requests page to add followers? Why do you go where you go?

Let's talk. Your turn :)

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ilco

Twenty Time Management Tips

2010-06-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

A lot of people over the years have taken note of what I like to call my efficiency, my organization, my neatness, my punctuality, and other fine traits. They don't necessarily call these traits out by name. They might say things like, "Geeze, loosen up." Still, I feel like I have some pretty good insight on how to manage one's time effectively. Since it seems like this week is National Time Management Week, I thought I would take the time to list my ideas here for your reference.

1. Early is the new "on time." "On time" is late. I was at an appointment yesterday and the person helping me noted that the receptionist wasn't there. It was 8:15, or close to. "I like to get in early so I can see what I'm dealing with," said the woman who had helped me out. She is right. By the time you take off your coat, check the 20 blogs you read, get your coffee, go to the restroom, eat your granola bar, and check Twitter, you are officially starting your WORK day late.

2. As new things to do pop up, write them down on a list. It might seem like this takes time, and it does, but having a single place to find everything you need to do cuts down on time, increases efficiency, and makes you feel more productive as you cross things off.

3. Use your favorite website as a carrot. Everyone has a favorite website we like to visit, whether it's ESPN.com, a shopping site, or something...else. Part of the work day has been delegated specifically for checking out the site. Don't do it as soon as you sit down. Promise yourself you'll finish a project or send a certain amount of emails (work related only). Then reward yourself by scanning your favorite online destination.

4. Work ahead. We all have times, whether it's an hour or a whole day, where things lag a little. Use that time to write blogs. Just don't publish them yet. Do prep work that's hard to get done when you're crunched for time.

5. Do not post to Facebook about how busy you are. You know that we all have done this. Or have seen other people do this. Yes, that's better. I've heard rumors that sometimes a person will try to be funny about it. "I wish someone had told me to bring my shovel to work." "I didn't know I'd need a submarine to see my desk." If you are thinking of these little gems, you are either not really all that busy or you are really going to be stressed out when deadlines are coming down the pike.

6. Do not post to Twitter about how busy you are. See above.

7. Keep your work area clean and organized. How much time do you spend in a day looking for a job jacket or a stapler or a paper clip or a note your boss taped to your computer screen 2 days ago? Keep things organized. Take a little time to put things away. Save time in the long run.

8. Do not complain to a co-worker about how busy you are. You're not only taking up time complaining, but now you're also throwing off your kind-hearted peer.

9. Do not freak out. When I was in high school, I had a lot of homework to do every single night. Being a teen, I thought this was completely unfair. I wanted to watch Seinfeld. I didn't want to study Geometry. Had I not spent the half hour freaking out, I could have had my half hour of Seinfeld. There's a moral for ya!

10. Hide your phone. Sometimes it's hard to make people in your life understand that you have a job and tied to that job is stuff you must get done to keep that job. You love your friends, you love your family. But you don't need to talk to them every 10 minutes via phone or text. Give select people your work phone for emergencies. Let your iPhone or Blackberry or flip phone rest during the day. It's tired.

11. Prioritize. This comes back to a list. Despite what we believe at any given moment, everything does not need to be done NOW. There are projects tied to deadline, there are projects that are just pesky everyday things, and there are projects we're looking forward to doing. Get the deadline stuff out of the way, then switch off between other types of projects.

12. Get little stuff done, then focus on big stuff. This is a matter of personal preference, but I find this works really well for me. If I have a million little things to do, I can't seem to concentrate on the 2-3 huge things I need to work on. Set out a block of time and get as many little things done as you can. Then set up larger blocks of time for pure concentration.

13. If you know you're going to talk for 2 hours, hold off on calling. We all have work contacts that we love to talk to. These are the people we have long and winding conversations with that might begin with the family, travel to current events, and then at an hour and 45 minutes get to the reason for the call. If you know that you have that pattern of action with a person, email them or wait until you have time to talk a marathon.

14. Take care of your ducklings. If you work with other people, and if these people often need information or insight from you, call a meeting. Review projects, try to answer as much as possible, and then say, "Give me a couple of hours. I need to work on X project."

15. Set realistic goals. It would be great if we could all start our work day with one mammoth goal, like "create world peace," cross it off, and then be done. Sadly, this is not so. Set small, reasonable goals. We all know that there are going to be fires to put out, unexpected events, and who knows what else. Build in some fluff to absorb those distractions.

16. Stay away from Twitter and Facebook altogether. I don't know if some people know this, but you can actually log out of sites like Twitter and Facebook. Or you can navigate away from them. Try to go an hour without logging into your account. Compare this to an hour where you have 1 or both sites open. Publish your results.

17. Repurpose. If you are blogging or tweeting or facebooking for your company, repurpose. Tweet the same link that you post to your Facebook page. Use a blog post as an e-newsletter story or try the reverse.

18. Delegate. This is something a lot of us are terrible about. So many people now feel obligated to do everything tied to our jobs, from the mundane to the huge. Don't be afraid to delegate if you have that ability. Just make sure you don't get into a habit of delegating, then jumping on to a Social Media site to chat with friends. That's abuse of the system!

19. Multitask. Listen to an important podcast while answering emails. Cross things off your list while talking on the phone. We're getting trained to wire ourselves this way. Scary but true.

20. Refine the company process. If you work with and for others, you should all work together like a well-oiled machine. Everyone should know where everyone is and what everyone is doing. Avoiding the time it takes to track down people and projects is a HUGE time saver. Communicate now, save time for later.

These are some of my ideas. Do you have anything to add?

Image by Jonathan Natiuk. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/jnatiuk

30 ways to use a paragraph of copy

2010-06-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Time is of the essence these days. Everyone is busy. Time is an endangered species, it seems. We all want the most mileage out of cars, out of our jobs, out of our networks, and out of everything else we do, too.

I maintain that one of the biggest time savers is, paradoxically, a lot of planning on the front end. To illustrate this point, imagine this hypothetical situation (or maybe it'll hit close to home). You're the CEO of a manufacturing company, and you've just introduced a new and exciting benefit-oriented product. You write up a description of the product, how it works, and how it will benefit your prospects and customers. Still, the roll-out process seems undeniably daunting. How can you get the most bang for your creative buck?

With a lot of planning on the front end, that little paragraph can form the entire backbone of a campaign. With some additions here, some revisions there, and some rewording when needed, an entire product launch can be built around that first little cloud of a product thought. Here are 30 ways to use a single paragraph of copy to promote a new product across a multitude of channels. Just imagine where 2 paragraphs could take you!

1. Blurb of copy introducing the product on the company homepage
2. Press Release
3. Copy for a sell sheet
4. Copy for a YouTube "about" description
5. Break it up into a handful of Tweets
6. Facebook Status Update
7. Facebook Note
8. E-Blast
9. Ad copy
10. Copy for a landing page to track ad performance
11. Blog
12. Description for a Flickr " post
13. Answer to a LinkedIn question in the Q&A section
14. Answer to a question that pops up in a LinkedIn group
15. Copy for Booth Graphics
16. Copy for a direct mail piece
17. Webinar Abstract
18. Answer to a customer email
19. Pull a line of copy for a promo/promotional item
20. Blurb for "on hold" customer to listen to
21. Submission for a value-added write-up (could be on product, lit, other)
22. Introduction to a case study
23. Centerpiece of an article
24. Slide for a presentation at a company open house
25. Presentation to a board of directors
26. Narration for a video on the product
27. Core narration for a podcast
28. Submission for innovative manufacturer award
29. Baseline for interview
30. Description for an industry buyers guide or directory

Image by Chris Gilbert.http://www.sxc.hu/profile/iotdfi

Hey you, get on to my cloud

2010-06-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

I decided to do some exploration tonight of some Social Media sites that I am not as familiar with as I should be -- sites like tumblr, for example. An interesting thing about tumblr is that the site really promotes the fact that you can share everything you post super easily. You can email to your blog, you can blog to your tweets, you can tweet to your blogs, you can Facebook all of it...

I got a bit overwhelmed.

Then an idea came to me. Maybe it's because at heart I'll always be a reasonably old-fashioned minded marketing person. Maybe it's because I've been trying to untangle the skein of yarn that is Cloud Computing. Whatever the reason, the following question came to mind. "Why are we sharing everything out when we could be bringing people IN?"

Take Another Little Piece of My Content Now Baby

Currently, I am sending out content in the following ways, directly or indirectly:

Company Website/Company E-Newsletter/Professional Blog/Personal Blog/Facebook Account/Twitter Account/LinkedIn Account/BrainShark.com/3 Email Accounts

Compared to a lot of people, this list is short. Google Reader, Google Wave, Google Buzz, Tumblr, Digg, Delicious, multiple Twitter Accounts, YouTube, Podcasting -- the ways you can send information out are getting to seem almost infinite.

Then there's the sharing and cross-platform stuff that I haven't really engaged in much yet. My blog imports into LinkedIn. I had my Twitter account importing into LinkedIn for awhile till I realized it imported all of my @ responses. That was a bummer. There are people who can execute a single action, like "liking" a YouTube video, and have that action fed to 3-4 different accounts.

Let's Bring It In

So here is my dream. You log into your favorite browser, where a central hub is waiting for your input. This central hub has different groups that you can feed content to just by selecting them. If you are posting a professional blog that you want to send out to your LinkedIn network, your company database, and your Twitter account, you select those areas. If it's a personal photo of your kid riding an elephant at the zoo, you select your Facebook type friends.

On the other side of the dashboard, people could opt in to your communications, and you'd have to approve them for the different groups they'd want to be a part of. If they want to be part of your personal communications yet you don't know them, they get denied for that content, but maybe could still receive your professional stuff.

Maybe the control panel could also segment types of content. Professional photos go to this group and this group. Professional videos to the same groups. Personal photos just go here.

Web 4.0?

Instead of separate sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, I think the future of the web will be the technologies that those sites employ as available to everyone through a personal cloud. Much like we all pay for our internet connections (you do, don't you??) we would all pay for our content cloud. We'd build our network as we are now, through networking and content generation. But instead of having to click "share this", or instead of depending upon your network to share an e-newsletter story with other pros in your network, everything would be controlled by you, and all content would go to those who actually want it.

Do you think the web will go this way? What's your dream about Web 4.0?

Image by Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo, http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mmagallan

Talk like an Egyptian

2010-06-17T05:42:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking this morning that humanity might be headed backwards in the linguistic department. The evolution of language is endlessly fascinating to me. Our little cave man ancestors didn't have a whole lot going for them in the language department, though they drew some very pretty pictures on cave walls. Slowly but surely, languages developed, then huge language families. By the time of Charles Dickens, people were paid for their writing by the word!

This seems like a rather far cry from where we are now, I have to say. This was brought to my attention most acutely by the new "like a comment" feature on Facebook. Yes, now instead of responding to a comment, you can just click on a picture of a thumb pointed upwards. Just like you can now on YouTube or Flickr or news sites or anywhere else. But the like button on the web is not the only place where our words are disappearing.

Have you noticed that you no longer hear "You've Got Mail?" Now it's a sound or more likely, a flashing light and a sound that tells you to check your mail.

Have you noticed that we don't talk in words any more thanks to things like Twitter and texting? How many times do you use the @ symbol when setting up a meeting with someone?

We use :) to express happiness.

=/ Means kind of confused or bewildered or disappointed - it's open to translation.

In fact, maybe you have sent a text message that looked like this:

:o OMG! :)

What IS that?

I like language. Not just English, which happens to be my native tongue, but I love language in general. I love language in every day life and I love language as literature. But I'm a little concerned about language the way things are going. Not that writing in hieroglyphics is a bad thing...it'll just take some getting used to.

By the way, have you tried this reading test? All of the letters are jumbled, but I bet you can still understand the whole paragraph. Let me know :)

Image by Dariusz Rompa. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/dariuszman

From Black Hole Sun to MmmBop

2010-06-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

The next book on my self-assigned summer reading list is Bob Garfield's The Chaos Scenario. I've read the first two chapters so far (plus the intro) and the stage is set for some pretty hard-to-swallow realities. Garfield has illustrated two points so far in undeniable, vivid color. First, people are not consuming content in traditional ways. No more TV watching, no more newspaper reading, no more radio listening. Second, we are living in what Garfield calls a "post advertising age" that will depend upon "listenomics" much more than a display ad or a 30-second spot.

There are two reasons why these ideas cannot be debated. First, annoyingly, Garfield builds a really good case for both concepts. Second, we're living it. Here, let me show you. Answer the following questions in the comments section below:

1) When was the last time you listened to the radio, either public or commercial?

2) When was the last time you watched a television show live, when it was actually on, without fast forwarding through commercials?

3) When was the last time you learned about a news story from the newspaper or television BEFORE learning about it on the web?

Garfield presents all of this information with the passionate position that this is the new world order. This is a revolution in progress.

Where the title comes in

I don't argue with the fact that we're in a revolution now. But again I must come back to the fact that it is in human nature to counter things that are revolutionary eventually. Maybe right now nobody wants to pay for content. Everyone can be a resource. Nothing needs to go through pesky quality control. But maybe people will change over time. Maybe they'll say, "Man, I miss the days of the New York Times (before they were known for plagiarism) and Walter Cronkite. I wish we had content of a higher quality. Heck, I'd pay for it.

I was trying to think of a more recent counter-revolution, and what I came up with was the change in popular music from 1994-1997. Some of the hits of 1994 included "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden.

Or maybe Beck's "Loser" was more your style back then. Maybe "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails. Ya know, Trent Reznor:

In 1997, Hanson was one of the most popular groups of the year. That's right, these guys:

Mmmbop, that's a change. A quick change. A major change. I'm just saying, things are changing rapidly now. Who knows where we'll be three years from now. Maybe we'll be back to bunny ears and rotary phones.

Where Humanity Meets TMI

2010-06-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, before I knew better, a shake of the hand was enough to get me to start talking like I was at a Confessional. "Hi, my name is Margie, and here is my life story as of now. How about you?"

Thankfully, it was pointed out to me at a fairly early age that this wasn't the smartest approach to take. However, this conflicts with the evolution of the internet, which has become everyone's Confessional Booth at one time or another. We say things online that we probably wouldn't dream of saying in any other situation, and we do it because the internet allows us to be both personal and anonymous.

There are a couple of things in my life that I talk about online that are very personal, but I talk about them among my friends because it's important to do so. You will not find those things in my professional blog, however. I will not be tweeting traffic or offering a "share this" button. I like to keep track of who might know what about me. Call me old-fashioned.

This is on my mind because over the last couple of weeks, I have seen a flurry of posts from professional blogs (as in, tied to a business) that have discussed deeply personal topics. I found a couple of these blogs because people I follow on Twitter recommended them. A couple more were tweeted by people I follow directly.

Be human, but put your clothes on

I kind of wanted to avert my eyes after reading the first sentence or two of some of these blogs. I felt uncomfortable reading such personal information from a person I only know as a face and a Twitter handle. And what if I get to know that person better? Then this knowledge will already be in my pocket. There won't be a need for the "discovery phase" of friendship.

I understand the value of adding some personal details to a professional blog. Brogan & Smith talk about this in Trust Agents. A picture of your kids now and then, a mention of a birthday, these things make you seem real, more accessible. But that is very different from laying your most personal, intimate life details into the internet ether. It might be a fine line, but for me, it's a line nonetheless.

Remember where you are

David Meerman Scott talks about "losing control" of your PR and advertising. Let people share, let people evangelize for you. But losing control of your personal details can create uncomfortable and perhaps even dangerous situations. Do you want someone you don't know retweeting a post about a spat that you had with your spouse? Do you want someone you don't know sharing a post on Facebook about how you think your boss is dumb?

I view this blog as sitting at a table in the middle of a really busy, crowded party. I'm over here doing my thing, and if you come and sit with me for awhile, that's great. Then you'll get up and go to a different table. Maybe you'll recount our little conversation, maybe you won't. Under *those* circumstances, would you use that little blurp in time to reveal your most intimate secrets?

That square box holds real people

Computers are kind of creepy in a way, if you really think about them. They are static little wonders that enable us to connect to tons of people. We have no idea who, but they're in this little box. It's important to keep track of your own humanity, but it's also important to remember you're dealing with other humans as well.

People often say that if you wouldn't say something to or in front of your grandmother, you shouldn't say it online. I go one step further. If you wouldn't say something in front of anyone in "real life," you shouldn't say it online.

Just something to ponder.

Image by Hilde Vanstraelen. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/biewoef

What is a professional blogger?

2010-06-14T11:47:00.001-07:00

I had a very interesting exchange last evening during a Twitter "Blogchat." Basically a chat is just people getting together and talking (or tweeting) about the same thing (in this case Blogs). The comments are linked together because everyone uses a # before the name of the chat, and then you can follow the conversation by searching for that chat. Confusing if you're not on Twitter, but anyway...we were talking about Blogging :)

A fellow named Patrick Johnson asked me how I define a "pro" blogger. That question led us into a conversation that was unfortunately limited by the 140 character cage Twitter puts you in (as well as the fast-paced timing of the conversation). So, I thought I would revisit the conversation here (at least in sum) and get your thoughts!

Quality or Quantity

Do you consider a Blogger a "pro" because they have tons of comments and followers and links back to their blog, or do you consider a Blogger a "pro" because of the quality of the posts that are made? One might argue that if you base things on quantity, Al Gore's blog (http://blog.algore.com/) is professional. However, if I didn't know who Al Gore was, I wouldn't think the blog was all that professional. It doesn't have a particularly professional look to it (my opinion) and his posts generally are short and to the point, which doesn't seem to be the overriding style bloggers choose.

Is it possible to be a pro without clout?

Next question: can you be a successful or "professional" blogger if you aren't bringing some clout to the blog already? My answer to this question is yes. Blogging is attractive in part because it promises you that you can build a network. But not everyone's Blog achieves the status of say, Denise Wakeman's or Chris Brogan's. Are you more inclined to go to a Blog if it's someone you've heard of? Probably. Is it possible to get someone new into that cycle? Also probably, but that person might give up before that happens.

What is a "pro" and why do we need to define it?

I met a Native American artist once when I was in grad school. He was a Native American artist in that his ethnicity was Native American and his profession was "artist." However, he did not make traditional "Native American" art. He did what was in his head and heart. He said people kind of were confused by this, including his own family and friends. If you're a Native American you should want to present traditional themes so that your success can raise up those ideas into the mainstream. Similarly, he had trouble breaking through because when he billed himself as a Native American artist, people didn't see what they expected.

It's this kind of scenario that convinces me that categorizing people is dangerous. How would one define a professional blogger? In the end, it's probably a personal preference type of thing.

Does it matter if a person is a pro? I read blog posts if they're interesting. There are blogs that wander (for me) from really interesting to kind of blah. I don't think any less of that person...I just know that not every blog post is going to be a winner for everybody.

Then again, there are so many best practices for blogging that maybe it all does matter. Maybe I'm not taking the craft seriously enough.

What do you think?

Image by Faakhir Rizvi. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/fakhar

Any Job Can Be Your Dream Job

2010-06-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

As I've referenced before, my educational experience includes a Masters in Library & Information Science and a Masters in History. I often joke about the fact that those two degrees explain perfectly why I ended up working in and loving marketing. However, if I may be so bold, I would like to say that my experience is one that could be helpful to people right now. A lot of people, because of the financial realities of today, are being forced to take jobs that they might not like or that they might view as beneath them or not ideal. I thought about my journey of transitioning my head from academia to business, from History & Library Science to advertising and PR. I think it can broken down into three steps. And here they are.

1. Dedicate yourself to your job. Sure, you might not want to even consider the possibility that you could be in this thing for the long haul. But you are not going to feel good about your experience until you take the bull by the horns and say, "I'm going to do the best I can." Standing out and performing well is a challenge no matter what job you have. The less familiar you are with the job, the more interesting this path can be. But you will not be able to feel like you are living the dream until you take this first important step. As a sidenote, dedication also means learning. Learn everything you can about your job. Why were you trained the way you were? Why do people do things the way they do?

2. Look for things you love. No matter how unlikely it may seem, if you look, you will see traces of things you love in your new job. But you do have to look. I thought that I had wasted all of my time in school because I didn't see how there could be any remnant of Library Science or History in my marketing job. However, as I familiarized myself with my job and really dug into it, I realized that a key facet of marketing is understanding not only how to find things on the web but also to understand how people generally look for things on the web. Guess what a primary focus of the MLS degree is? I initially didn't see how my research skills could come in handy, but I found that I could enrich my experience as well as that of our clients if I brought my research skills, based on academia, into the business environment. You might be saying that that's all well and good. Maybe you're having to work retail or fast food or some other job that you just don't see how you can get any use out of. But look for things. Do you love dealing with people? Embrace that. Are you interested in business? Study how your managers delegate and do business. You never know what might pop up.

3. Strive to bring what you love to your job. Whether or not you find things already in place that you can love about your job, try to figure out ways to bring your own thumbprint to your work. Use your training and experience and make them relevant. You can't just do this to do this. It needs to make sense and it shouldn't end up creating any problems or more work for anyone else. But the possibilities are also endless. Bring your passions into your new job. Don't view them as mutually exclusive, but rather see how the jigsaw puzzle fits together.

If I hadn't actually pursued these three steps on my own and had some success with it, I might be sitting here saying what you might be saying. "All well and good, but..." Well, as Pee Wee Herman says, "Everyone has a big butt."

What do you wish you were doing right now? What elements of that job you had or really want are most appealing to you? How can those fit into what you are doing now?

We're all struggling to cope with this massively evolutionary environment we are in. We are all, in some way, either supporting someone who is having to settle in some way or having to settle ourselves. But this is not a dead-end path. It can be a fun path. A challenging path. A path of ambition and passion.

Try it out. Think about it. Let me know how it goes.

I'm a Bibliography Nut

2010-06-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

Even though I have been away from the Ivory Tower for six years now, there are still some parts of it that I just can't shake off. One thing that I would have shuddered about 6 years ago is that I seem to have developed a great love of bibliographies. When I read a book I really enjoy these days, I want to try to figure out how the author or authors came to that state of being. I want to know what molded them and what might have been on their minds as these ideas came into their heads.

I just finished Trust Agents. It is peppered with book references, and I thought it would be really interesting not just to look at the books that are mentioned by name but also to read many of them. I'll probably not read Polgar's Chess book, but otherwise...:)

I got permission to put out this list from the authors. Think I got everything. Hope it's useful!

Allen	David	Getting Things Done
Anderson	Chris	The Long Tail
Canterucci	Jim	Personal Brilliance
Collins	Jim	Good to Great
Covey	Stephen	The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
DeBono	Edward	Serious Creativity
DeBono	Edward	How To Be More Interesting
Edwards	Betty	Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Ferriss	Tim	4-hour Workweek
Friedman	Thomas	The World is Flat
Gladwell	Malcolm	The Tipping Point
Hill	Napoleon	Think and Grow Rich
Hunt	Tara	The Whuffie Factor
Hurst	Mark	Bit Literacy
Joel	Mitch	Six Pixels of Separation
Madson	Patricia Ryan	Improv Wisdom
Maister	David, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford	The Trusted Advisor
Mann	Merlin	Inbox Zero
McLuhan	Marshall	Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Polgar	Laszlo	5334 Problems, Combinations and Games
Putnam	Robert	Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Rheingold	Howard	The Virtual Community
Scoble	Robert and Shel Israel	Naked Conversations
Shirky	Clay	Here Comes Everybody
Surowiecki	James	Wisdom of Crowds
Taleb	Nassim Nicholas	The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Image by Dora Pete. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/porah

Why an army needs to build an army

2010-06-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

So, before I begin with the official post, I need to put something out there. I abhor people who always say, "Oh, I would have done that THIS way" when they really don't know what they're talking about. Non-parental types should probably not tell parents how to care for children. Unless you have dated the person previously, you should not tell someone how to deal with a significant other. Along these lines, a person who has yet to publish a book (like me, for example) probably should not tell New York Times Best Seller authors how she would have approached a chapter of said best selling book.
Now that we all agree on that, I thought there were 2 missing elements in the "Build Your Army" chapter of Trust Agents.

Some people are missing from the staff

The chapter, in essence, is about how to leverage a lot of people and technology to spread your word, which of course makes all the sense in the world. Brogan and Smith mention the General. They mention the army. But in my limited experience, you need some other staff members in there too. One could say that maybe you need a Lieutenant Commander who you can send out there. He or she can get your army riled up and maybe can ask them to spread a message or a link so that you aren't always having to go out there and ask for favors (Brogan and Smith talk about how to ask such favors of your army, but it's nice sometimes to have someone else ask for you).

I was thinking a Drill Sargent might be good too. The chapter talks about a sponsored blog post Brogan did that earned him a lot of consternation from his army and his army's friends. If you have a person who can go out there and say, "Listen, you weasels, this is what it is, this is the right story, now go and tell your friends," wouldn't that be kind of nice?

I'm kind of joking. I'm also horrible at remembering the proper martial order of titles so I'm not even going to try to carry this analogy further. But my point is that every general, if you want to be literal, needs a supporting staff. Even if a general has an army, it's still the general by him or herself, but now with a lot of people to guide. It seems to me like delegation would become increasingly important and helpful in this scenario. You don't want to end up like George McClellan from the American Civil War, who thought he really could do everything by himself and then realized he had been held hostage by "Quaker guns." Bad PR, that.

Sometimes it's an army creating an army

Another thing I was hoping to see in this chapter was how a company or corporation could or should use employees to help build the army.

One of the things we have been talking to our clients about is that when it comes to Social Media, research and preparation are utterly necessary. You should not even sign into Facebook until everyone in your company has marching orders. The more employees you have, the more complex this can be, but here's why it's important.

* Do you know if your company is going to be represented via one central page or account or whether every individual will have a company-related account?

* Can individuals use their existing personal accounts to drive traffic to your corporate account(s)?

* Do you want individual employees to even have individual accounts that can't be monitored?

* What kind of persona do you want your corporate social media identity to evoke? Everyone has to understand this. You don't want a CSR to answer a tweet with "Hey dude" if you are trying to be button-down professional

These are just a few of the questions to which there should be solid, understood answers. And it's important to make sure that everyone within your company or corporation (your real-life army) understands that each of them have the power to build an army, but it perhaps should be an army following your company as the general, not just one person. This becomes a very difficult dance, because social media is innately about person-to-person relationships, and too many mentions of a company can come off as being "selly."

Because of these complexities, I was hoping that the chapter would cover a company's role when the general of a growing army. There were corporate examples, like GM asking people to submit photos or videos of their favorite GM car. But to me, that falls more into a promotion kind of relationship. Who was commenting on those photos and videos? Who was spreading the word about the opportunity to submit those materials? Was it a corporate GM account? Was it "suzyatGM"?

Even though Brogan and Smith are right in that our current society is increasingly based on individuals rather than companies with lots of employees, the fact is that there are still a lot of companies and corporations out there, and they are all running big risks if they are jumping into the deep end of the Social Media pool without considering questions and answers to those questions first. I think the chapter could have been enriched by delving into this side of things a bit more.

What do you think?

Image by Stephen Davies. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/steved_np3

Is it possible to be a Human Artist on Twitter?

2010-06-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

I just finished "The Human Artist" chapter of Trust Agents. Really good chapter, really strong advice. As has happened, eerily, through my time reading this book, what I read seems to contrast starkly with some thought or experience from my own life. I was just thinking a few hours before reading the chapter that Twitter is an increasing challenge for me. I like being human. I also like networking. Can you do both?

What does being a Human Artist Mean?

A lot of the advice that Brogan and Smith give in this chapter revolves around how to be human on the web. They return to the fact that we can't see facial expressions, we can't hear a tonality, so we have to depend upon online cues. One of the ways we can leave a really good impression is to make sure we have digital "touches" with our contacts on a regular basis. Offer assistance. Wish happy birthday. On time. Answer emails. Follow people back. Comment back.

I am already overwhelmed

I have been actively trying to grow my Twitter network for a couple of months now, and things are finally starting to mesh for me. A little. I joined a blog chat Sunday night (thank you Mack Collier) and, get ready for it...jumped over the "100 followers" mark. As Twitter users go, I am not even a speck on the planet Jupiter.

Even so, there is a giant difference between having over 100 followers (I am following a fair fraction of them as I am happy to say the majority of my followers are super interesting) and what I had a month ago. I enjoy being able to have personal exchanges with people just because I am naturally a people person and it's great to be able to "talk the talk" with people in a similar profession or a similar mindset. To be the kind of human Twitterer I want to be, however, I am having to allot more and more time to scanning everyone's posts. The other day I found myself wanting to just look at replies to see if I was missing any comments or questions, and I thought, "Man...what am I going to do if I get 175 followers?"

Or try 11,750?

So then I look at people like Julien Smith, Chris Brogan, Ann Handley, and others. They have thousands of followers . Now, I am not particularly worried about reaching those kinds of numbers, but it does beg the question. If I am struggling to keep my humanity intact with a little over 100 followers, how can you do it when you have 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000?

I guess that's my only qualm with the "Human Artist" chapter. Sure, you can try to make sure, via a spreadsheet, that you leave a comment for everyone once every blue moon, but that is sort of placing a shroud of authentic conversation over what really is a mechanical reminder. What if your follower has been Bland Bonnie for days and then it comes time to leave a comment for that person? Normally, you wouldn't. On the other hand, you might be missing some real gems if it's not Bonnie's turn on your spreadsheet.

It's not just Twitter. I see a lot of people on Twitter talking about trying to respond to Blog comments or Facebook friend requests.

Diametrically opposed objectives

I see that the next chapter is called "Build an Army," and I can already surmise what that chapter is going to say. But I am really having a hard time understanding how these goals can co-exist. Get as many online relationships going as possible, but also remain human for all of those people. I just can't see how to accomplish that successfully. What am I missing?

Image by Stephen Eastop. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Eastop

Always find your way to dreaming

2010-06-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I sat down in front of my television to unwind a bit from a busy week. I happened upon a show that was about a woman who was really struggling in her life. Her boyfriend of 26 years had passed away suddenly and she just could not pull herself out of her despair. She was asked what she was hoping for in her future. She had no answer.

If you've ever gone through a life-altering experience you probably have felt the same sensation, and life-altering does not have to mean the end of someone else's life. I look around at the news I see every day and all I can imagine is the people who are being affected. Every person that HP let go recently - they may be in a state of despair. The fishermen in the gulf and their families are in a state of despair as their entire world changes. I saw a story yesterday that this Summer may have the lowest job availability since 1970. What does that mean for this year's high school graduates who are dreaming of going to college in the Fall? It is a poor season for dreaming, it seems.

Dreaming does not mean doing

A lot of people find themselves spiraling ever downwards because they feel like dreams are a to-do list. My friends and I are entering our 30s now, and we all had dreams of what that would mean. The pressure to see all of those dreams come true is palpable. That is the way dreams are killed, though. Dreaming comes from the heart and soul. Dreaming is imagination and wishing and hoping. If you can't make a dream happen right away, you can still hope that it will happen later. But if you stop dreaming, it can be very hard to rebuild that little light that looks ahead and paints pictures for you.

A company can dream

Just as dreaming may be coming hard to individuals, companies may also be struggling to get back to a place of dreaming and hope. These are hard times, and dreaming may seem like a luxury. Who has time to dream, anyway? But for a company, dreaming is where big ideas come from. Dreaming is how you "make your own game," to quote Trust Agents. Wishing for things makes you act in new ways, which in turn can lead to newly opened doors that you didn't even know were there.

Do not despair

It's hard to uncover good news these days. I read an article in Fortune Magazine this morning that said that our unemployment rates may never bounce back to normal. Our society is going to have to readjust itself. Readjustment is hard. Change is hard. Change alters what we dreamed before, which can cause us to despair. But rather than sink into a swampy marsh of disappointment, find the path back to dreaming. Maybe there are other dreams that you haven't even thought about that you could return to. Maybe the loss of one opportunity could pave the way for a brand new, better one. Dreaming is the drumbeat we follow to the best future we can create. Dreams are our building blocks. Dreams are our foundations. Keep them coming.

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/rosaria31

Chapter 5: Agent Zero, and why all agencies should read it

2010-06-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

Being on Twitter as an advertising agency person can be kind of strange sometimes. On the one hand, working at an agency these days means wanting to keep your clients as informed as they possibly can be about everything that's going on everywhere. On the other hand, staying informed also means realizing that we are increasingly in a "do it yourself" era. Thriving as an advertising agency while nurturing your clients can be a difficult balance act sometimes. Teach, but learn to let go. Educate, but point out your own skills.

This was on my mind as I set out to read chapter 5 of Trust Agents, which is called Agent Zero. Perhaps that is why it occurred to me, about halfway through the chapter, that "Agent Zero" is really a chapter for and about agencies today. Of course, it probably was not intended to be that way, but let me show you what I mean.

Awareness: The first part of the chapter talks about awareness and the many meanings of awareness. Awareness of your own surroundings. People being aware of you. You being aware of people being aware of you. This is all in relation, primarily, to the online world, but awareness is perhaps one of the most important traits an agency must have today. Indeed, it is essential. An agency must be aware of everything every client is facing. This means that events in the world that are totally outside of the scope of an agency's business might suddenly become the agency's business. An agency must strive to show clients that there is an awareness there. After all, an agency is in the service industry and is trying to sell a service. To prove to clients that you legitimately care, you must show that you are aware. Agencies must be aware of everything that is going on technologically and in the marketing world. And of course, agencies must be aware of what is going on with other agencies.

Attention: The second major topic in the chapter is attention. How to get it, how to pay it. This goes hand in hand with awareness, but is more deep. Reading the news isn't enough. Reading the news and thinking about all of your clients is paying attention. A lot of the chapter focuses on how an individual can gain attention through online social networks like Facebook or Twitter, but then there is a section about meetups and the importance of face-to-face meetings. For an agency, this is absolutely key. A really good agency will strive to be present at major trade shows. This signals to clients that you are paying attention not just to your pretty booth graphics but also to what is going on in the industry. Is the trade show dead or crowded? How is your client's booth traffic? For an agency, paying attention can earn you attention. Alerting a client that an ad was placed really well in a leading publication is good news for everybody. Alerting a client that a competitor is talking trash can stave off major problems and prove that you are an invaluable team member. Attentiveness, following on the coattails of awareness, can be a game-changer for agencies today.

Influence: This is where Brogan and Smith talk about being the priest and building the church. There are two ways that agencies can do this today.

1) Be prepared to offer insightful advice regarding all of the new "stuff" going on right now. If your client, who is in the field a lot, wants to know if he or she should get a Droid, the new iPhone 4, or a Blackberry, you should be able to answer contextually with his or her best interests in mind. If a client calls and says, "My competitor is on Twitter, I want to start an account now," be ready to show your expertise by saying, "Well, I don't think they're really using Twitter effectively. I think you should wait." If that's the right answer.

2) Agencies can also work as an "agent zero" because agencies have the networking capacity to incorporate the talent of many different people not just within the agency but also externally. An agency works to build relationships with programmers, printers, artists, computer repair shops, and much more. The successful agency can use this network to influence a client to work with them, or to sway a client to try a new kind of project that will be a giant step forward.

Reputation: In the chapter, reputation is again about the online world. Who are you linking to? Who are you recommending? One thing agencies can follow word-for-word from this chapter is to get on the LinkedIn ship. The questions and answers section, participation in groups, and other methodologies are excellent ways to build reputation while also showing you know how to do so online. Reputation can also be built and improved in the offline world, and for agencies, this is key. In a marketing world that is changing rapidly, agencies need to differentiate themselves, preferably in a good way. What will you build your reputation on?

Authority: It is hard for an agency to do what Brogan and Smith advise and "make your own game." Again, working in an agency is a service business. Making your own game can equate to not listening or not caring about what the client wants. When an agency wants to build authority, there is one really important step to take. Propose things, execute well, and achieve success. Agencies strive for perfection because nothing else is acceptable. The difference between a person who just loaded Photoshop at home and a professional designer is immeasurable. Yet it is not tangible. When that professionally designed ad wins a Reader Study award or increases web traffic - tangibility achieved. Agencies should also strive to walk the walk, not talk the talk. If an agency is preaching that websites need to be revamped, that agency should have a site they are proud of. If an agency is preaching that Social Media is the next best thing after buttered bread, they should be able to talk about it. Intelligently.

The lessons in this chapter, again, are geared more towards people looking to build an online reputation as a trust agent. However, to me, the lessons work perfectly as a "must do" list for today's agency.

What do you think?

Image by Marija Rajkovic. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/grim12

Twitter as Marketing 101. I'm your hero.

2010-06-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

So a couple of days ago I posted a hateful, spiteful Blog about Twitter. And though I'm not really apologizing, I have to admit that there is a bit more to the story. Factually, if you're a marketer, experienced or aspiring (or a little bit of both) you can get an MBA's worth of education every day if you follow the right people.

I don't know if you noticed, but a LOT of people use Twitter, so finding the right people to follow can be a bit tricky. Have no fear, however. I will be your superhero. Having just read "The Archimedes Effect" chapter in Trust Agents, I feel inspired to share some of what I have learned in my Twitter experience. To wit, here are some people that I follow right now that I feel are helping me a great deal (whether they realize it or not). I think they might help you out too.

Marketing in General

There are quite a few people I follow who can offer wisdom on pretty much any facet of marketing. Some of these folks are:

Ann Handley: @marketingprofs. She keeps you up-to-date on what's going on at, well, marketingprofs.com. Includes reminders about webinars that you will kick yourself for missing!

@BethHarte: Beth is another mastermind behind marketingprofs. She tends to moderate Tweet chats that are full of excellent information.

Fast Company Magazine @fastcompany Sometimes they post things that are just plain funny, but I find the majority of their tweets extremely informative. You almost forget that they're trying to sell a magazine.

Julien Smith @julien Co-author of Trust Agents, Julien tends to delve deep into the philosophy of and behind marketing.

@chrisbrogan: The other co-author of Trust Agents, Chris follows his own advice. There's a hint of self-promotion but also more than a dash of accessibility.

John Jantsch @ducttape I've seen Jantsch's name around for quite some time. He is a veritable fount of knowledge on all things marketing. It's great to be able to get his take on things every day!

@allenmireles Another woman who is unassuming yet brilliant. Don't ya just hate people like that?!? :)

Blogging

If you are here, you likely have some interest in Blogging. Blogging is a topic that just seems to rev up more and more, so it's great to be able to get tons of expert advice for FREE! Here's who I follow for that.

@DeniseWakeman: Queen of the Blog Squad, you'll get 3-5 excellent tidbits of advice every day.

@kikolani: Another great resource. Lots of expert advice if you follow this account!

@mackcollier: If you need just 1 reason to follow someone, may I submit for your approval BlogChat (with a hash tag). I just "attended" my first one last night. This gentleman is responsible for this genius.

Search Engines/Search/Analytics

If the more techy side of things is where you like to chill, you can totally geek out by following these folks:

@johnbattelle: Yep, the author of Search is on Twitter. Lots of insight plus blogging from all of the conferences you wish you could go to!

Rick Klau @rklau: I discovered Rick's expertise a couple of years ago kind of by accident. I happened upon a presentation he did for Google at a not-for-profit. He's a good guy to follow for all things Google related. I learned from following him about draft.blogger.com.

@stephanspencer: SEO expert!

@avinsahskaushik: If you've ever had the experience of watching a webinar by this guy, you can imagine how fun it is to follow him. Lots of useful information plus non-marketing posts that are just as interesting.

PR/Social Media

Jason Baer @jaybaer Jay is a great person to follow on Twitter. Another person who demonstrates knowledge without being snobby. Good stuff!

@MariSmith: Queen of Facebook. Mari has her finger on all of the latest happenings on that crazy site. Plus she has the coolest accent out of any of the other marketing peeps I follow :)

David Meerman Scott @dmscott: Scott's book (what is that?) really changed a lot of my thinking about marketing. Now you can follow him!

Webinars

If you're looking to add webinars to your mix, make sure you follow @shelleyryan. Formerly of marketingprofs, Shelley is working on a new webinar related project. She teaches and learns at the same time. Plus she's a foodie, so she'll make ya hungry!

These are (I hope) all of the people whose posts I really look for every day. They get me to think, they teach me stuff, and it just seems fair that I let you know that they are out there. All you have to do to drink from the fountain is step up :)

ETA: Fixed Rick Klau's Twitter Handle. D'oh.

Image by Julien Tromeur. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/julosstock

Yoga for Marketers

2010-06-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

Do you like to do Yoga? Have you ever done Yoga? I'm in quite a Yoga phase right now. All different kinds. Some Rodney Yee, some Suzanne Deason, even some Biggest Loser Yoga (ouch). One of the great things about Yoga is that the advice and steps you take during a work-out can carry through to the rest of your day. It is not so surprising, then, that I realized that marketers could also benefit from some Yoga wisdom. Don't worry -- you won't be doing any physical stretches here. It's all in your head :)

Find Your Center

At the beginning of a lot of Yoga work-outs, you are advised to find your center while standing evenly on your two feet. For a marketer, finding your center means squarely standing on your two feet, which are knowledge and experience. Do not be swayed too much by what others are saying or doing. Listen, but remain conscious of what you want to achieve and what you want to accomplish. Keep your eyes on your goals, and if your knowledge and experience plant you in a way that is unique, all the better.

Breathe

No matter what kind of Yoga you are doing, you will hear an emphasis on breathing. Breathe in deeply, exhale out tension and toxins. Even while you are asking your body to stretch its limits, your mind works on concentrating on how your breath goes in and out. For a marketer, breathing is actually important physically. The world is a stressful place, and at least for me, I only realize how shallow my breaths get when I sit down and actually try to take deep breaths. But a marketer can also concentrate on internal rhythms, goals, objectives, and desires while working on everyday tasks, while building a foundation, while going to meetings and/or conferences. This kind of approach -- concentrating on one thing in the foreground while in the background you are working on something else -- is behind many ideas that are floating out there today.

Stay balanced

There isn't a lot you can do in Yoga that doesn't require some amount of balance. Similarly, there isn't a lot a marketer can do that doesn't require some balance, and I don't mean just the bottom line. Are you balancing your online, offline, and Social Media campaigns appropriately? Are you balancing your time in promoting yourself versus promoting others? Are you balancing your time in completing tasks the regular way while learning all the time how to do things in new ways?

Turn things upside down

One of the more common poses in Yoga is called Downward Facing Dog. Your head is down, your legs are stretched back. The idea is that turning upside down will release toxins and stress. For a marketer, turning things upside down can shine the light on a new way to approach things. But upside down is also a good way to think about how a marketer can construct a campaign. We all know the ultimate goal: sell something. What is the last step before the sale? How do you get to that step? And the one before that?

Honor your body

Finally, a lot of Yoga instructors remind you to honor your body. Sometimes it makes you feel kind of bad. The instructor may be leaning backwards to reach his or her ankles and you are lucky to reach back even a little. But you are told to honor your body and its restrictions. The same holds true for marketers. Not everyone can do what the great gurus of marketing do, especially not at first. If you can't do the full pose in Yoga, you find an adaptation. The same holds true for marketers. If you don't think you have enough content for a weekly Blog, start with a monthly or quarterly e-newsletter, or start with comments. If you just can't seem to master a certain skill, accept that limitation. Not everyone can turn themselves into a human pretzel. Trying can result in serious pain. The same holds true for marketing. Do not extend beyond what you are comfortable doing. The result will not be favorable.

Do you have a hobby that feeds your soul and also carries you through your profession? I'd love to hear about it!

Image by Aaron Neifer. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/knife18

Being human and the French Revolution

2010-06-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

Just finished chapter 3 of Trust Agents. I liked this chapter a lot better than chapter 2, actually. The chapter is called One Of Us, and it's about how a trust agent must learn how to be one with the crowd and how that is a different game from brand evangelism.

A lot of people are talking about "talking human" these days. I already mentioned Harry Gottlieb's webinar about talking human. Avinash Kaushik talked about being human in his recent webinar. And Brogan and Smith also note that the authentic human is the one who will meet a lot of success on the web.

All great revolutions must face a counter-revolution

Turning marketing into a game of human relationships is a revolution of magnificent proportions. Selling by not selling may not be what Ogilvy ever could have envisioned. My love of History tells me one thing though. Any time there is a revolution, a counter-revolution follows. The French Revolution is a great example of this. While people were cutting each others' heads off for fun (and while women were knitting in the front row before the gallows to catch some blood), other counter-revolutionaries were already thinking that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Out of all of that chaos came Napoleon, who not only wanted to rule France, but he kind of wanted to be Emperor of the whole world. Mexico's history is a patchwork quilt of revolutions and then counter-revolutions. Here in the US, the rebellious sixties were forced to reconcile with the super conservative 80s.

If everyone talks human, is anyone talking human?

A dear friend of mine always says that the words "trust me" are an automatic turn-off for her. For Star Wars fans, "trust me" may call up Han Solo's sort of false confidence too. So here is my question. Let's say that more and more people start following the advice of Brogan and Smith and Kaushik and Gottlieb. Everyone is authentic, everyone is doing you favors, lifting up the noobs, and life on the internet has become a kind of 21st century Pollyanna.

Is anyone really being authentic at that point?

If every person who comments on your blog or starts following you on Twitter ultimately mentions a product or a consultation service, are you going to start to wonder if anyone REALLY is interested in you as a human? Moreover, are YOU doing anything because you are really interested in other peoples' humanity?

I think that the idea of marketing via personal relationships is a wonderful idea, and the way that it's explained in Trust Agents gets no complaint from me. But statistically speaking, this approach is bound to run into a counter-revolution at some point. Maybe people will WANT to know on the front end if you're trying to sell something. Then you can talk about the baseball game.

What do you think? Will the online environment eventually tighten up in reaction to too much touchy-feely? How will that happen? Maybe "that guy" that Brogan and Smith talk about, the one who hands out business cards at every possible moment, maybe "that guy" will become the new Napoleon. You just never know.

Image by Michal Zacharzewski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha

15 things to hate about Twitter

2010-06-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

I saw a post the other day by Julien Smith (I know, it's like I'm a one-track mind lately) about how hard it is to build a following on Twitter. For relative noobs like me this was great news. However, it released a Hulk-like amount of frustration that I've just been waiting to vent about Twitter. So here we go. My top 15 Twitter pet peeves.

1. Balance is not a rule on Twitter. If you look around, most of the people who have 500,000 followers are only following 1-2 people. Conan O'Brien is a great example of this - when the Twitter "follower" feed was hacked, it became noticeable when Conan seemed to actually be following people. So what is this about, Tweet prophets? I get why you can't follow everyone who follows you, but really? 1-2% of the people following you, if that, are worth you following?

2. I was under the impression that Twitter is a social network. I think this is slightly misleading. I have encountered people on Twitter that you could retweet, tweet, mention, or whatever else all day long and they still would not give a reply back. It is called SOCIAL media, right? Deodorant and teeth brushing aren't problems, so what gives?

3. People who #talk in #hashtags for no #good reason annoy the heck out of me. Talk English. I don't speak in pound symbols. And if your sentence doesn't really have to do with any of the 20 topics you just tagged, it's not going to help you either, right?

4. I find it both creepy and irritating when someone retweets your post because of a word you used rather than because of what you actually said. I retweeted an article about how Nancy Pelosi said that her policy is based on The Word. I got "mentioned" by JesusNews. Eh?

5. A person you are following can direct message you. When you go to reply, it won't work if they aren't following you. Do you know how frustrating it can be to try to send a direct message back only to find that you, well, can't, because you're not being followed? If you're going to send me a direct message, can't you follow me?

6. The self-promotion on Twitter is terrible. I'm guilty of this one to a degree because I drive traffic to this blog using my tweets. However, I never once have said, "Come see my brilliant post." I try to lure people in to this here sticky goo based on subject matter. I find it misleading when someone tweets, "Oh, a really interesting concept" and then it's their blog. I feel cheated!

7. 9 times out of 10, logging into Twitter does not work. 'Nuff said.

8. Twitter perpetually seems like a personal cocktail party that you are eavesdropping on. I do not want to be privy to what you and your friends are planning to do, or what you and your friends did, or what you and your friends thought about what you did. Even if you're famous. Well, maybe not that last part, but still...

9. Foursqure. Oh foursquare. You are the thorn in my side, the weight on my shoulders, the...well, you get the idea. People thought tweets were banal before. Now you can find out when your contacts are working out, when they're following that up by a trip to the bar, and when they have become mayor of a furniture store. Ay caramba.

10. Trending Topics. I read an article the other day about whether Twitter had the right to remove Justin Bieber from trending topics and whether trending topics are worthwhile anyway. Short answer: no, no they're not. Right now, at this minute, four of the trending topics have hearts in them. One of those also has the word Bieber. Another trending topic right now: Ghetto Spelling Bee. Really? I mean...really?

11. The quoters are just awful on Twitter. Now some people have done a good job with it. I know a lot of people who follow "Tiny Buddha," which is a good use of Twitter. But I followed a guy for awhile and ALL he did was alternate quotes by other people with links about ex-girlfriends. Creepy. And yet his handle indicated that he would be talking about useful info. I kept waiting...

12. If you are a grammarian, you should probably avoid Twitter. I can't tell you how many tweets I see that say, "Retweet if your single" or "Their the bad guys." Move away from the computer, drop the chalupa, and learn the difference between your and you're, their, they're, and their, and many other troublesome word sets. Duhrive. Me. Crazeh.

13. How does a person with 1 tweet get 100,000 followers? This would seem to argue against Smith's case that it's hard to get followers. I remain perplexed.

14. People pretending to be celebrities. This was a major problem with Myspace. For fun, once, I followed five accounts pretending to be one of my favorite actresses. I don't think any of them noticed. It was funny. But kind of creepy. People need to get lives.

15. People who post the same thought over and over again in different ways also annoy me. Yes, I notice. I'm not living in the movie Memento. Yet. Move on to your next winning thought, please.

So there you have it. My 15 least favorite things about Twitter. What are yours?

The downside of making your own game

2010-06-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

So I finished chapter two of Trust Agents. The chapter is about "making your own game." Brogan and Smith give a lot of examples how to do this, and they expertly use the analogy of "hacking" a game to improve your experience. They also reference, often, Gary Vaynerchuk, who created The Wine Library. I really liked this chapter for about 80% of the time I was reading it. I am all about trying to put a new spin on things. If I were an architect, I'd probably always want to put additions on to a perfectly fine house. Motivational stuff. I dig it.

But then...I got to the last few pages, which talk about "hacking" at work. And I have to raise my hand (because I can't raise my eyebrow) and say, to quote a cowboy, "Woah."

Is this realistic?

A few times at this point in the book, there have been references to the fact that both Smith and Brogan have been able to be game-changers within their various jobs. Brogan convinced his bosses that he could work outside the office and be more productive. Neither man has submitted a CV to get a job for a few years. I'm sure that all of this is true, but in the world that I live in, being a game changer is not so easy. And I think that it's important to emphasize, though it is touched upon in the book, that trying to create your own way of doing things can actually make other peoples' jobs really hard or can cause mistakes that companies previously did not have to deal with.

In my experience...

I have been on both sides of the game changing...game. Sometimes the endings are happy, but a lot of the time, a lot of bad feelings surface in the wake of the wild and crazy ship. Here are some examples.

I was training a person at a job once and going through a step-by-step process of how to accomplish a specific task. This methodology was something I had put together, which had been a bit of a game change in and of itself, but every step had a reason. The game-changer I was training kept asking if they could skip this step, or couldn't they do this and then this. I didn't want to squash the person's desire to improve a process, nor did I want to squash the person's desire to try to increase productivity, efficiency, or anything else. However, it was kind of like a toddler telling me that there was a much better way to walk now. It might be true, but till you're walking upright, I'm going to be cynical.

So it is for many scenarios within a company structure, no matter how big or small the company may be, no matter what kind of company it may be. Accounting is complicated. Production work is complicated. Media buying is complicated. Manufacturing is complicated. And it all needs to be perfect. All the time. Until you can prove that you understand all of the possible ramifications of your game-changing move, I think it's dangerous to think that rushing off to your own groundbreaking ceremony is a good idea.

I have been in the game-changer's increasingly restrictive shoes on numerous occasions as well. I have been involved in groups where I brought up ideas and was told that I was trying to fix things that weren't broken (a common retort to the game-changing attitude that Brogan & Smith don't mention). I have seen game-changers succeed but instead of earning respect, they receive snubs and stabs in the back. I have seen game-changers succeed, then leave, creating a situation where no one else can pick up where they left off. These are all risks that should be considered carefully before engaging in "job hacking."

To be fair...

Brogan and Smith do reiterate that you need to learn the rules first and that you need to be real with people. They do emphasize that anarchy, though the subject of many great songs, may not always be the best approach.

Given that, the ending of this chapter lost me a bit. As is the case with any reading experience, different things are going to resonate with different people for different reasons. However, with a fair amount of varied experiences under my belt, I would just put in a little footnote that before you try to hack your job, make sure you consider why the rules you're hacking were put in place. If you can't answer why the rules were there, you're not ready to break them.

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ryosugi

my Summer of reading. #1: Trust Agents

2010-06-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

The weather around where I live has been really strange lately. Mother Nature can't decide if she wants to go the sunny and humid as the Rainforest route or maybe the sunny and perfect weather route. Yesterday I actually saw lightning while the sun was shining! With that in mind, tonight I got home and thought, "Man, if only there was an activity that could one could engage in regardless of weather or location. If only there was SOMETHING I could do that wouldn't involve a computer or some electronic device. Wait! Wait! There IS! It's called...reading.

I've been making pretty good progress in watching television shows and movies that I "should really see." This Summer, I want to read as many books as possible that fall into the category of "books I should really read for my profession."

Top of the list is Trust Agents, Chris Brogan/Julien Smith, authors. I got Trust Agents, disgustingly enough, free of charge. I went to a Summit Up Conference in Dayton, Ohio last October and was lucky enough to see Mr. Brogan speak, and in my take-away bag was Trust Agents. Trust Agents was just a little baby book back then, but it has already exploded to "classic" status. I'd better get on this. As I read these "must" books, I plan on blogging whatever comes to my mind. Feel free to join in the conversation!

Blog #1: Trust Agents

I'm about halfway through chapter 2 right now, and I have to say, so far the book is reading smooth as silk (except for a typo on page 22). There is a lot one can talk about, but I want to riff ever so briefly on the topic of "voice."

Brogan & Smith talk about how amazing the first radio news broadcast must have been to people. Did they believe what they were hearing? If they did, it was probably because the voice they were hearing sounded authoritative and knowledgeable. Brogan & Smith then tie this "voice" to the game of being a trust agent.

If there's one thing I've learned from a great deal of drama from back in the day (not professional and VERY twenty-something), it's that voice in the online world is extraordinarily difficult to read correctly. As a person who tends to speak from the bottom of a tub filled with sarcasm juice, I am acutely aware of this fact. If someone doesn't know you but is reading your words, any sense of decorum you wish to bring to the exchange must reside in your words, which blink at the person from any number of machines. There is no intonation, and sometimes even emoticons don't solve all of the problems that can arise because of this "voice" issue.

The other difficult thing about voice in the online world is that we can all have multiple-personality disorder. To go back to the radio example, some of us would start out sounding like Walter Cronkite and then sort of meander over into sounding like a South Park character. This is because we converse in different ways depending on who we're talking to and where we're talking. I know a person who tweets like a moody adolescent and yet who spins pure gold in a blog. Which voice do you trust? Do you let the tweets turn you off, or does the blog lead you to look for hidden meanings in the tweeting style?

It kind of makes me wonder if we should begin to semi-formally introduce ourselves to people, even though it would never go down that way. But it would be nice to know, on the front end, whether a person's sense of humor is dry like the Sahara, potty-related, or absent. Do you get Monty Python references, or are you more a Miss Congeniality type? All of this frames out our voice, and how people read our online voice determines, I think, whether they will find us to be credible. Am I talking your language whether I mention Cartman or Friedman? Which reference makes you trust me more?

Food for thought. Can't wait to finish the rest of this second chapter!

There are times when (gasp) advertising is inappropriate

2010-06-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

When it comes to the news, I generally have become a "hide my head in the sand" kind of person. When Brian Williams or Jim Lehrer warns me that the following scenes may be graphic, I turn the channel. Most of the time.

I make a few exceptions when I think it is necessary. One of the most gut-wrenching things I have ever seen was the families looking for loved ones after 9/11. Then there was the documentary that Jules and Gedeon Naudet put together. I felt obligated to watch these things.

Ever since the rig explosion in the Gulf, I've not just buried my head, but I've been covering it with some kind of mixture of mental block, a touch of denial, and maybe some concrete. I really have no stomach for suffering, and when it's animals, who have no real voice, I just can't deal with it. When it's suffering caused by greed, stupidity, and ineptitude, it's all just a little too much. However, yesterday some pictures finally surfaced of suffering birds, and I felt that sense of obligation again. This is something I need to remember. This is something I'm going to need to tell people about 50 years from now. I need to remember.

It's not just the animals

Of course, I'm not ignorant of the fact that people are already being deeply affected by what's going on here. Fishermen, the seafood industry, tourism -- tons of jobs. Suffering people on the way. Then I think about the Pointe Aux Chenes, who have born witness to American cruelty before. They were pushed to the very edges of our country, to the marshlands of Louisiana, and now, guess whose land is being soaked in the slick of greed and stupidity? And I wonder about things we aren't even talking about yet. For example:

1. How many generations must we wait till fish & seafood affected by the spill is definitely safe to eat again?

2. If the oil does indeed reach all the way up to the Atlantic, how will we possibly be able to track the effects of all of the sludge and chemicals floating out there?

3. Who will monitor these things? We can't even keep cadmium out of Shrek glasses.

Isn't there all this talk about crisis PR?

So as a marketer, I'm looking at all of this, and then I see a full page ad for BP in the Wall Street Journal. As Jay Baer points out in his brilliant Blog on the subject, the ad does not apologize. It's basically going through the motions. Now, as a media buyer and as a person rather familiar with media pricing, I happen to know that an ad like that is worth some serious change.

Maybe if the ad DID include even the slightest sense of guilt or apology, I wouldn't be so steamed. However, it really doesn't. So steamed I am.

There are a lot of things that could have been done with the some $50 million that BP has spent on these kind of pointless ads. Maybe they could have used the ad to ask people to donate to a special clean-up fund. Maybe they could have shared the space with the National Wildlife Federation. Maybe they could have given it to me so I could have purchased $50 million worth of dish soap to help clean up the suffocating birds. Really. That's what I would use it for right now.

Why be mad at BP?

In response to a lot of the "Boycott BP" talk out there, people are saying that BP is really, sadly, no better or worse than any other oil & gas company. And besides, boycotting the corporation will only, per usual, hurt people who are not to blame, like your local BP franchise manager. I've been trying to turn my attention to the National Wildlife Fund, who is asking people to spread the word via Social Media. Social Media which is, by the way, generally free.

I'm not saying that advertising in a crisis is bad policy. But the lesson here is that if you are, say, destroying a national treasure and an entire ecosystem at the same time, you might want to hold out on the "we're working on it" ad campaign until that money has been used to clean up the mess. In this particular case, advertising made BP's situation worse, not better.

Image from MSNBC.