Anybody Can Sell Lipstick. Few People Can Sell Hope.

If Charles Revson were alive today, I'm not convinced that the current state of cosmetic content marketing would impress him. Almost everyone in the industry is trying to sell makeup with it.

He might even find it ironic. Before he revolutionized the cosmetics industry starting in 1932, everyone counted the same measurements that social media experts count today — impressions, shares, leads, and sales. He never did. Rather, he was among the first to say he didn't sell makeup.

"In our factory, we make lipstick," Revson once clarified. "In our advertising, we sell hope."

Never mind that during his tenure Revlon went on to dominate market share, he never sold makeup. What he did instead was win over women by opening their minds to the idea that they could look as good as anyone. He helped turn makeup into a means of self-expression rather than conformity.

Somewhere along the way, after Revson was no longer part of the picture, the once major player in makeup began to lose steam. A few years ago, the company only made $1.4 billion in sales (half of that outside the United States). While that might seem respectable, it's 1/20th of what L'Oreal did.

So what happened? Revlon started selling makeup in such a mass produced fashion that it fell out of favor as the provocative brand it once was. Instead of women feeling like they could be as attractive as Revlon celebrities, they felt forced to conform to the standard set by those celebrities.

It's bad business, but it happens to brands all the time. Brands lose their way in the pursuit of sales over vision. And once they lose their way, it's hard to get it back (no matter how hard they try).

How to make the Revson vision relevant today in content marketing.

I once knew an advertising principal that prided himself on "not being in the advertising business but rather being in the check cashing business." He liked to cash checks. The quip sometimes lured sales-minded businesses in for the short term, but only the short term. It's hard to relate to people when they are always looking at your wallet much the same way it is hard to read sales-driven content.

What people want out of advertising agencies isn't a tax write off. Most of them want to grow their business by opening new markets, increasing market share, expanding distribution, etc. But what happens all too often is they get sidetracked because someone sells them on the ideal of making themselves (and their shareholders) rich in the short term by lowering costs and increasing sales.

Sure, the method works for some companies but not all them. When people want to look and feel their best, they don't necessarily think to search for "cheap lipstick" and then sort through reams of marketing content and purchased reviews. They search and look for something different. And once they find whatever that something might be, they might decide lipstick is part of the equation.

In other words, to be successful in content marketing today, you have to think beyond a dozen celebrity endorsements, a thousand posts about cosmetics, or a hundred different white papers on lipstick. What you need to ask yourself is how your organization can make a psychological connection to the right person (as opposed to as many people as possible) at the right time.

If Revson were alive today, he might support content marketing designed to add value to the lives of his customers but I doubt he would sell lipstick. It's very likely he would still sell hope but on a different canvas. Maybe your organization would be better off taking a page from this playbook too.

Instead of trying to move the sales needle, recognize that the best form of persuasion isn't built upon what you have to sell but what people perceive they need. And if you really listen to them, you likely discover that they only need lipstick some of the time while they need hope (or whatever might correlate to your product) almost all of the time.

Content Marketing Isn't Always About Content Creation

Given the number of public relations firms with their feet in social media and digital marketing, one would think more organizations could demonstrate content creation restraint. They don't.

Content creation continues to be the focus of most digital marketing and public relations campaigns and it's starting to backfire. There is so much being produced nowadays that some people are rightly asking how much is too much?

A few seem to think we've already crossed that threshold. Maybe so. The deluge is so huge that the quality of the content doesn't seem to matter as much anymore. The mantra of most programs can be summed up as: Create as much low value content as possible with tightly written link-bait headlines that can be distributed via incessant automation systems in order to inflate website traffic as evidence of causation for unspecified and erroneously labeled key performance indicators.

Sound familiar? It ought too. The vast majority of organizations approach content marking on measurable clicks (a.k.a. actions and conversions) that are overtly and painfully rewarded by online measurement systems. Entire books have been written about it. Frequency breeds familiarly, they say.

Too much frequency also breeds contempt. 

The real problem with more and more marketing programs is that content has become akin to being a house guest in someone else's online experience. Worse, this house guest has become so narcessistic that they act like they own the place just because they invested in a shiny new suit.

Sure, an organization might own the space where it publishes, but it doesn't own the stream most people subscribe to. They turned to digital mediums to escape interruption rather than be pummeled by them.

Unless more organizations wake up, it's very likely that the remedy for bad journalism and content shock is more and more of it until it becomes too expensive and ultimately people tune it out. It is an inevitable outcome, which is the same one that once caused direct mail houses to surrender 20 percent conversion rates for less than 2 percent between the 1970s and 2000s. They just sent more mail.

The alternative is to modify the content mix.

While some organizations are better suited to it than others, modifying content creation with content participation remains one of the most viable solutions. Rather than organizations expressing themselves with content creation, they can invite consumers or small business owners to contribute some of it.

The National Park Foundation, along with several partner agencies, is currently managing one such campaign. Outdoorsmen and amateur photographers provide photos and the foundation supplies the community and distribution.

Last year, nearly 20,000 photos were submitted between May and December. Winning images received cash prizes, outdoor gear, hotel packages, and an annual Federal Recreation Lands Pass.

Sure, Share The Experience is packaged as an annual contest that invites people to explore the nation’s federal lands and share their experiences with photography but it's more than that. While the prizes provide a gratitude-based incentive, they seem secondary to the primary participatory engagement.

At the same time, the photographs submitted by real people demonstrate the benefits of a federal parks program much more effectively than if these partner agencies produced and promoted 54 photographs every day. It's also more cost-effective than attempting to cover some 500 million acres of federal lands with professional photographers and park professionals alone.

Content participation is more structured than a crowdsourced contest.

A few years ago, we conceived a similar approach to developing content for early cause marketing campaigns, independent film releases, and startup social media programs. In essence, as long as the program structure guides participants (as opposed to runaway hashtag efforts, content participation efforts can have a dramatic and positive impact on exciting professional content creation programs.

Just keep in mind that running a "contest" on its own isn't enough. Effective campaigns are designed to place participants and stakeholders on equal footing. And any resulting exposure of a well-executed campaign will likely be a by-product of achieving larger objectives. In this case, it enriches the parks program, safeguards our national heritage, and inspires the next generation of parks enthusiasts.

What about your organization? What can you do to transform the "us and them" vernacular into a more collaborative "we" program? And if it isn't considering participatory efforts online and off, then maybe it's time to see how many counted clicks are destined to become disenfranchised customers or adversaries.

The kayaking photo above was submitted to Share The Experience by Courtney Kotewa. She was in northern Michigan near Essexville when she took the winning shot.

Will The Next America Express A Culture Shift?

There are two interesting demographic anomalies being played out in the United States right now. And the reason they are interesting is that they aren't anomalies. They could be called corrections.

The first demographic transformation is that the Baby Boomer bubble will be largely played out by 2060. In its place will be a rectangle, with each age demographic being almost equally represented.

The second transformation is racial. Of the two transformations, this is the one that some people make a big deal about. "White" will become a minority by 2060, making the country a plurality.

Marketers are testing the waters of the Next America. 

There were three commercials that expressed the demographic changes taking place in America during the Super Bowl. They includes Coke, Chevy, and Cheerios. Of the three, Cheerios won with its portrayal of a blended family because the expression didn't draw attention to itself.

Conversely, Chevy flashed a brief image of a family with same-sex partners, which demonstrated acceptance more than the demographic changes ahead. Coke did something else. In attempting to celebrate the cultural diversity of the nation, it conveyed it by singing the nation anthem in seven languages.

Because of the political rhetoric that followed the advertisement, most marketers missed the lesson that tempers what Pew Research calls The Next America. The Cheerios advertisement makes the demographic nod to blended families, which is estimated to reach as much as 20 percent by 2060.

Coke was much more blatant because it expressed multiculturalism over assimilation, an ideal that doesn't always sit well with all Americans (regardless of ethnicity and political viewpoints) because it breaks down the melting pot concept of America. While most families retain some identity from their ancestral heritage, they also assimilate to some degree. It has pretty much always been this way.

History suggests demographic changes eventually even out. 

When most people consider American demographics, they tend to think of the United States as English dominant. They mostly do so because the founding fathers were English subjects.

Those demographics changed a long time ago. English hasn't been a dominant ancestry in the United States for almost a century. Dominant ancestral lines today are German (15 percent), followed by Irish (11 percent) and African (9 percent). Assimilation creates the illusion of an English country.

Sure, there is no doubt that mass German immigration (and mass Irish immigration before that) led to some cultural shifts in the country. But, by in large, mass emigrations were absorbed and people eventually self- identified with being American first. Ergo, German didn't supplant English as the official language. Other than adopting Octoberfest as a national celebration, not that much changed.

While some people will be quick to claim that mass German immigration (or any other mass immigration) doesn't resemble the same tensions we face a century later, history suggests otherwise. If anything, the alarmist anti-German sentiment was much more pronounced than any anti-anything sentiment we see today. Even President Woodrow Wilson condemned "hyphenated Americans."

The point is that the so-called demographic makeover that America is seeing today neglects that America has seen several demographic makeovers before, with most immigrant families becoming something much different within the short span of three generations or less. Everyone changes.

The ethnic and racial flames of today are too easily fanned. 

Americans tend to politicize everything these days, ethnic and racial tensions included. While some researchers, including Pew, seem to expect a showdown of sorts, it seems more likely any sweeping changes will be a whimper. The truth is that most ethnic and racial tensions are sadly superficial.

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that racism doesn't exist in America. It does. All I mean is by in large, ethnic and racial lines in this country are based on self-identification and skin color.

Case in point, the last presidential election featured two candidates who come from blended families, yet many people insist as seeing Barack Obama as black and Mitt Romney as white. Why? The only explanation is skin color and self-identification.

They aren't alone either. One of the best panels provided by Pew Research's The Next America features eight celebrities who come from blended families. They include Derek Jeter, Cameron Diaz, Halle Berry, Bruno Mars,  Apolo Ohno, Norah Jones, Selena Gomez and Tiger Woods. Self- identification and skin color tend to be the rule there too. So we might considered getting over it.

The big challenges ahead will be as big as we think. 

If anything has changed in the last forty years or so, it is that some people have become very adept at convincing Americans to create artificial divisions, especially among ethnic and racial lines. Marketers have to resist the urge to fall for it and see how it plays out. It won't be what is imagined.

Most of the changes taking place in the United States will be largely regional and not comprehensive. And even in those areas where "white" becomes a minority it won't necessarily mean much. California, New Mexico, and Texas all have pluralities today (with non-Hispanic whites at less than 50 percent) and it's still difficult to find three states with so little in common from a socio-political perspective.

And to that point, marketers are supposed to be sensitive to cultural values and beliefs by engaging in fair and balanced communication activities that foster and encourage mutual understanding. In other words, smart marketers create messages for existing markets as opposed to predictive ones.

While some people believe that companies, political parties, churches, and police forces need to prepare for what they call sweeping demographic changes, the truth is that nobody knows what exactly those changes will be unless they build assumptions based on pre-existing stereotypes. I cannot think of a worse idea.

There is no question that the nation is changing (as it has for decades), but these changes aren't going to adhere to whatever limited schism we can think up today. On the contrary, there are an increasing number of regions in the United States that have abandoned ethnic and racial identification all together, making one of the fastest-growing segments of the population unwilling to subscribe to hyphens.

When you ask them, they say they are Americans. Nothing more. Nothing less. And it's probably refreshing to the rest of the world because most places don't see hyphens either. They see nations.

The Future Of The Everywherenet, Part 1

When people consider the convergence of social media and technology, they often make the assumption that formats and devices drive the future of the Internet. It's an easy mistake to make, given the abundance of evidence that can be snapped up with a few careless search terms.

It takes almost no time to find out how social media has become increasingly visual and video-reliant and wearable technology that quantifies the self. But then there is the problem with search engines. Google leads the world in self-affirming research. You will only ever find what you look for.

What you might not find is that we are at the end of the device era as we know it and moving toward one where the Internet becomes a system ordinary as electricity. Just like few people will think about the power grid when they plug in to get an electrical fix, no one will think about accessing the Internet.

The Internet will be everywhere. Just state your command. 

The Internet will operate much like that, but voice won't be the only option and wearable gadgets will give way to function-specific augmented reality tools and rooms or surfaces prewired to be an interface. Gestures, keyboards (virtual or physical), and other function-specific interfaces will all be options, making some of the wearable marvels today look like the digital watches of the last century.

In other words, it seems relatively unlikely that smart watches will be accessories to smart phones in the future and much more likely that portable processors that might look like watches will become the hard drive to any surface when you're away from a hard drive optional environment. The result will provide augmented reality, like the Skully Helmet, as the real driver of almost anything.


While the helmet makes sense for motorcyclists, windshields will be the next interface for cars and trucks. Desks, tables, walls, closet doors and windows all have the potential to become whatever interface we want when we want it. But even those kinds of surfaces stop short of potential.

Can you imagine ski goggles that provide topographical detail of the terrain? How about surf goggles that not only help you size up a wave, but also let you know which wave to catch? Or maybe they don't have to be glasses at all. Perhaps a hammer can assist in hitting a nail straight or a duster can pinpoint which areas of your house were missed the week before.

The point is that anything becomes possible when you leap ahead even one notch. And for as much time and thought is being given to the tools we have now, most of it will feel obsolete within the next three or five years, a drop in the bucket when you consider how quickly everything has evolved.


Even more striking than predictions delivered by Walter Cronkite in 1967 as cutting edge is how technology has leapt ahead ten times further than he could have even imagined — with entire industries being built and collapsing along the way. In that same amount of time, we said hello and goodbye to tapes, compact discs, and Walkmen, to name a few. And we'll absolutely do the same going forward.

The point ought to be pretty clear for strategic communicators and public relations professionals alike. Communication and marketing plans need to simultaneously be grounded in the present while preparing for the future. And if you are interested in being ahead of the curve in the next decade, then you might have to consider what this future will look like — a mixed medium accessible without limitations or limited to whatever function-speficic parameters we choose.

All the social media and marketing tactics you know today will change.

How will companies communicate in such a self-selected environment? Chances are that the companies who will win will be those that move away from the self-affirmation models of the present and more toward an open environment of comparisons and contrasts that help people understand the consequences of their decisions. Ergo, instead of quantifying ourselves with devices, we'll quantify the grocery store to help us balance whatever diet our doctor has prescribed and we accepted.

But then again, this assumes we're moving toward a Star Trek-like utopia and not a brave new dystopia. So perhaps it might be prudent to peer into a few shadows too in part two. But in the interim, I would love to know what you think. What do you see as inevitable change in the decade ahead?

Why Is Marketing Still Wrong About Social Sharing?

Talk to most people in social media, content marketing, or public relations and almost all of them agree that sharing is what makes social media tick. How often something is shared speaks to the relevance of the topic, quality of the content, and influence of the person creating or curating it.

For evidence, look no further than search engines and social networks themselves. They have made this measurement mission critical. Search engines look at shareability, authorship, and freshness. Social networks validate influencer rank and reach to quantify importance. Some news outlets now pay journalists bonuses if they bring in more impressions per article than their colleagues.

Even Facebook recently announced that trending will become an all-important means of measurement. Brands will get more exposure if their content is featured as a top story. To do it, all they have to do is create or curate popular content that gets more shares, clicks, and comments.

Why?

By placing an overemphasis on sharing as a measurement, search and social platforms create competition among content creators and curators that can only be won by investing in more time, better connections, more content, paid content, and potentially popular content. At the same time, search engines and social networks thrive because this draws attention and people to the platform, which makes it more valuable to content creators and curators. If you sense a vicious cycle, it is.

And yet, people who participate on social networks use a completely different set of criteria than marketers and content creators. There is a different psychology to sharing among consumers.

Five primary drivers behind the psychology of sharing.

The majority of shares can be attributed to five primary motivations. People share content to be valuable or entertaining to others (self-esteem), define themselves as human beings (identity), grow and nurture relationships (reciprocity), to get the word out about content and brands (persuasiveness), and to complete there own sense of self-fulfillment (affirmation). Let's take a closer look.

1. Self-Esteem. There are dozens of studies that link volunteerism and self-esteem primarily because helping others makes people happy. One special report put out by Harvard Health Publications even revealed that the more people volunteer, the happier they become.

While some advocates might argue that social sharing and volunteering are vastly different (and they are right in terms of tangible outcomes), our brains disagree. Knowing that an article we share helped someone or the joke we tell gives someone else a laugh produces the same positive mental impact as donating hard time and dollars (sometimes more).

2. Identity. Marketers aren't the only ones who want to establish their identity online or online identity. It's human nature to project oneself into written and visual communication (hopefully with authenticity). And most social platforms are designed with tools and categories to help people do it.

To do it, we tend to highlight aspects of who we are by sharing likes and interests (and commenting on the likes and interests of others) that reinforce whatever identity we want to project. Interestingly enough, this was especially important among early adopters in social media because it gave them an opportunity to establish their identity based on their passion and ideas over experience and expertise.

3. Reciprocity. The concept of reciprocity goes hand in hand with the connectivity social platforms provide. Just as people develop friendships based on proximity (location) and intellectually/emotionally (shared interests), they create similar connections online and then share content to reaffirm their connections.

As long as the desire to demonstrate reciprocity doesn't conflict with an established identity, sharing not only demonstrates an interest in what we share, but also supports the ideas, beliefs, and interests of  friends, groups, or networks. It demonstrates that we belong based upon similar reactions to the same content. And sometimes, people share just to support to the content creator or curator.

4. Persuasiveness. Although most people self-select their connections online, it is still very unlikely (and perhaps impossible) that all friends and associates will unconditionally agree with and support every idea, interest, and position. And yet, people are all hardwired to find more similarities.

When it doesn't occur naturally, people turn to persuasion. Even when we don't recognize it, people have a tendency to share things not because it helps others but because they know it will help others — content from self-selected sources (or other connections who already agree). Ergo, persuasion not only demonstrates our affinity to something, but also solicits others within our network to agree.

5. Affirmation. One of the most interesting aspects about social networks is the degree to which different networks satisfy ego needs through self-affirmation. In other words, people are not only content with trying to help others, establishing identity, making connections, and occasionally persuading people to their way of thinking, but they also need affirmation that whatever they did, said, or shared was worthy.

This is why almost all social networks provide self-affirmation actions supplied as likes, favorites, comments, shares, retweets, and other indicators that marketers covet. But unlike marketers, people aren't necessarily counting conversions. They're content in knowing someone will affirm their share.

How does this reconcile with with your organization's marketing efforts?

When marketers, content creators, and social media professionals develop a content strategy, they often obsess over organizational messages and some sort of conversion metric. But when you compare their strategies to the psychology of sharing, they come up short. Why?

If you want people to share content, you need to develop content that allows them to help or entertain others, reinforce their identity, or provide a persuasive argument (assuming they agree with you) to reinforce what they already believe or reaffirm their belongingness to a group that believes it. And then? Be prepared to provide reciprocal support and affirmation in return.

If this doesn't sound like a sound strategy for your organization, you are probably right. The model that social networks have devised for marketers to compete in is different than the model consumers participate in on a daily basis. You see, consumers aren't just looking for content that is worth sharing. They share content that contributes to their self-worth. How does that change your strategy?

Do Do Do On The Internet Works Until It's Done.

It's no secret that actions rule marketing. It was the marketing answer for online measurement, one underscored by any number of antecdotes — click it to win it and jab, jab, jab, right hook among them.

There is nothing wrong with actions, but sometimes it can short sell the impact of social media just like it used to short sell the impact of good advertising. In the wrong hands, it can undermine the customer by giving them less credit than a doorknob. They're not stupid or sales marks.

Did anybody read what Graham Hill noted in his column? A one percent response rate is now acceptable in some marketing channels. One percent? A few years ago, the only thing a one percent return in direct mail meant was that you were going to be fired. Industry standard was four percent.

Four percent was remarkably low too. Double-digit returns was one of the reasons direct mail became part of my portfolio. My response rates were higher because I didn't believe the customer was stupid.

In essence, the most brilliant move among modern marketers wasn't in developing great campaigns. It was making themselves superstars by lowering the bar to its most banal point in history, and then convincing their clients that the only way to make more revenue was more frequency and reach.

David Ogilvy said it: Consumers aren't morons. She is your wife. Or friend. Or neighbor. 

The idea was introduced to me by Borne Morris, who joined Ogilvy & Mather in 1960 as a writer. She worked there until eventually becoming head of Ogilvy & Mather in Los Angeles. Some agency accounts included Mattel, Columbia Pictures, General Foods, and Baskin-Robbins. 

Among all of the bits and pieces of knowledge I've collected, the Ogilvy quote remains one of my favorites. In fact, that is why I elected to paraphrase it in the subhead. The concept behind what he said has outgrown its original intent. It isn't about protecting consumers from being maligned as dunces. It's about something much bigger.

When you remember that the consumer is your wife or friend or neighbor, you are also advocating that they aren't looked at as "them" but rather someone close to you. It makes you one of them.

You can research, plan, and think but social will be what it wants to be.

The real benefit of being one with the consumer as opposed to the person trying to reel them in for a quick fix is that it addresses what ought to be the golden rule of social media. That rule is simple.

"Any social campaign is going to be what it wants to be. You have to be ready to go with it, follow it where it goes, and deal with whatever it becomes. If you do, brilliant. If not, you're a blowhard."

I was reminded of this over the weekend while managing the realtime social for the Vegas Valley Book Festival. I had some hard plans for what needed to be done on the day of the event. I spent several weeks considering how to best cover it live. All that was tossed out when I caught a cold.

There are more than 100 panels and lectures and presentations (many occurring simultaneously), live social coverage had been bandied about for a month, and now you're too sick to attend. What do you do? Since sending someone else to cover the event wasn't an option, I was straight up with them.

I told them that I was too sick to attend and needed an assist, making my base camp about a half-hour away at my home office. Without any hesitation, one of the young adult authors and a local reporter jumped in to help direct the stream of participant-generated content, using a designated hashtag.

By 10 a.m., the social stream across Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, and other networks became too big to retweet and recapture with the hashtag. There was even one hour when the Vegas Valley Book Festival account was tossed in Twitter jail. It made attendees even more excited to share their experiences at the event. Insights suggest the event's online reach outpaced last year tenfold.

Every experience has three parts. Most marketers only worry about the first.

The event might be over, but the social work needs to continue. Many attendees already know that the event will be followed up with ongoing exhibits through November, permanent author lists on Twitter, event photo boards on Pinterest, and other post-event offerings. All of it is a great way to prolong the good feeling that so many of them experienced during the event.

Not many marketers consider channeling additional effort into post-event occurrences, especially when there is no "sale" incentive. But since my firm has been working on social as a community service and extension of my position with AIGA Las Vegas, no one had to approve anything. I think post-event communication it is a critical component of any outreach.

This runs contrary to most marketing plans, which tend to put all the emphasis on pre-event activities in an attempt to build actions and concern themselves very little with the purchase experience or customer retention. In other words, marketing is overly concerned with pushing people to the cash register and not concerned enough with the experience or joy of ownership (tangible purchases or intangible memories) that eventually pays bigger dividends in brand equity.

If they did realize it, then these marketers would stop worrying about trying to make people do, do, do until it's done. Why? Real marketing realizes that we don't want people to complete a transaction. We want to leave the ticket open so our customers have a longer lifecycle than direct response action.

For the Vegas Valley Book Festival, this means prolonging the great experience people had at the event and having a better opportunity to outline next year's event as new authors are lined up. It doesn't mean trying to make them like, share, promote, or otherwise participate in empty engagement on a social network. Make sense? I hope so. Nobody needs to learn the hard way.

What do you think? Are there any companies out there proving themselves to be effective at creating a viable customer lifecycle? I know about a few, but would love to read some other thoughts too.

Thinking Still Beats Searching When You Need Four Gallons.

My wife had a question the other day, but it wasn't her question. The question belonged to my son and he didn't want to ask me. He thought he knew what I would say. He was wrong, but close enough.

The question was a puzzler of sorts. It was a problem from his math teacher. And any student who turns in the answer Tuesday (today) will receive extra credit. The reason my wife asked me wasn't a puzzler. She wanted him to receive the extra credit. (What parent wouldn't? Besides me, I mean.)

Maybe I should clarify that point. I don't want him to receive extra credit. I want him to learn it. And given that he had the whole weekend to figure it out and it was only the Friday before the long Labor Day weekend, there was no rush on my part. 

How can you make four gallons if you only have a three gallon bucket and a five gallon bucket?

I told him to wait until I had finished my part of the shopping list, groceries for the meals I would cook for the week ahead. Even then, I said, expect some help but not the answer. He didn't want that. 

A few minutes later, I looked over at him. He had moved on to another problem. Specifically, he was trying to figure out which route to take as he transported his stolen loot from a bank to an escape vehicle.  Right. He was playing PayDay 2 on the Xbox. 

"Why aren't you working on the problem?" I asked.

"I already spent 20 minutes working on it in class," he said.

"Well, obviously that isn't enough," I suggested. 

"It's all right," he said. "I already looked it up." 

"You did what?"

"I did what you were probably going to tell me to do," he said.

"You did what?" 

"I looked it up. Done."

"You looked it up, where?" 

"Google."

Ah, Google. If there has ever been a company of smart people responsible for the dumbing down of America, it has to be Google. All students have to do is drop in a few key words from their math problems and poof — they can find an answer while unceremoniously learning nothing in the process.

"I didn't tell you to look it up," I said. "I was going to give you a hint."

The reason I wanted to give him a hint was because the puzzler is not the real problem. Although the question suggests you need to measure four gallons of water using a three gallon bucket and a five gallon bucket, the real problem is something else. It's what stops most people after 20 minutes of class.

In order to solve the problem, you really need to establish what X might be. And in this case, X is really whatever it takes to make gallon of water. I wouldn't have told him that, but intended to point him in that direction by asking what stopped him from answering the question. Except, I couldn't anymore. 

Google beat me to it. And today, all across the country, Google is going to beat other teachers and parents too. It's not the company's fault, but it is creating a problem. Sometimes it pays to look something up. Other times, it is much more rewarding to figure it out. Figuring teaches you to think and rethink. 

The most creative (and possibly efficient solutions) aren't online. 

One of my favorite authors of all time never wrote any fiction. His name is Richard Feynman. He was a scientist and winner of a Nobel Prize in physics. The reason he won it is punctuated by his affliction for figuring things out as opposed to looking them up. By thinking, he often debunked popular theories. 

It had been that way all his life. Even when he was 11, Feynman started to think his way around radios. Eventually, he moved on to fixing burglar alarms, amplifiers and other gadgets too. It was in his nature. He seldom looked anything up. Reinventing the wheel, for him, often made the wheel better. 

There are dozens of stories that underscore his point in his books and books about him. He said it over and over and over again. Even when the New York Times wrote an article about his legacy in 1992, it recounted how Murray Gell-Mann described The Feynman Algorithm to solve everything. 

What is the algorithm? It's simple enough. You write down the problem. You think very hard. And then you write down an answer. For many years, this phenomenon called thinking is what set American students apart from students in the rest of the world despite those international tests that suggested otherwise.

Most students, he observed when teaching abroad, are taught to memorize the answers. But he preferred to teach students to think through problems rather than always assuming the experts were right. Not only did that inspire new ways to think about things, but it also gave students the ability to apply what they've learned to a completely new set of paradigms and problems. Right. They get good at it.

There are some days that I'm not sure Feynman would feel American students are set apart anymore. Many of our students have been taught to resist the urge to think nowadays. And they are not alone. 

People ask questions online all the time or turn to key word searches to ask things like "how do I get more traffic to my site?" or "how do I get more Twitter followers?" or "who are the influencers in this field and that field?" as if those people can think better than they. There is nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if any of them know that one set of solutions doesn't fit a different set of problems.

Sure, seeing how other people solve their problems can be useful at times. But almost every communication problem is patently unique. You have to think very hard. Besides, just as I told my son, you have to try thinking in order to become a great thinker. It requires practice, just like anything. 

How about you? What do you think? And by that, I mean about anything? The comments are yours. Let's talk.

Will Automation Steal The Soul From Social?

There have been several interesting side discussions sparked by my Bob Fass post about his largely unrecognized precursor contributions to social media. Some of them are still simmering, with the most common thread related to where marketing and public relations intend to take social.

Right. If you work in the field, they are talking about you.

And what they have to say might not be taken kindly. There are a growing number of people who are weary of social networks not because they don't like to connect but because conversations are being recorded, even jacked. Some marketers feel they must. Numbers are the measure counted.

"Why spend time counting tweets and retweets when I could actually, you know, connect with other people?" asked David Flores, reflecting on the internal struggle he and other marketers and communicators feel.

Why count indeed? For all the talk about social freeing people from the trappings of unearned authority, some of the liberators have worked diligently to erect new ones. Never mind that the scoring is stacked.

As the New York Times recently cited, some researchers think that only 35 percent of Twitter followers are real people. The balance is made up of bots and semi-automated accounts. That means an account boasting 10,000 might only reach 3,500. But if you ask me, I think it is generous in some cases. Bots attract bots, giving accounts the aura of popularity while never reaching a real human being.

Geoff Livingston recently touched on this too, writing Pop Created The Twitter Link Farm. He focused in on the increasing number of links, with one of the most interesting comments chalking it up to a platform shift. While that might make sense because Twitter never considered itself a social network, the platform shift from conversation to broadcast is a symptom of what marketers measure.

They measure actions (tweets, retweets, link clicks), which discourages dialogue. It discourages it because conversations are not valued on the action scale. It discourages it because the more organic conversations take place, the more marketers have to drown them out with frequency. And it discourages it because scalable actions require automation, which means the marketer isn't participating.

The crux of it reminds me of an Internet infancy story. 

Once upon a time there was a company called America Online (now Aol). No, it wasn't the oddly popular but not so relevant multinational mass media giant we know today. It was a pay-based online service that was the precursor to some of the services people rave about today.

It was also, for many people, the only real option to access the Internet. Sure, there were other choices like the defunct Prodigy or eWorld but not really. Much like they do now, people (and companies) tended to gravitate to where the most people were and that was America Online.

In more ways than one, Twitter is almost akin to the America Online chat room, except it hosts unlimited people as opposed to 23 people at a time. And, in more ways than one, Facebook is akin to America Online communities (with the advent of streaming over threading), right down to its aspiration to be your total and complete online experience. Sure, other networks have borrowed ideas too. Most aren't so new.

For the era, this service worked remarkably well. Most people couldn't even conceive of an Internet without it. It felt like America Online was relatively immortal. And perhaps that is why in addition to charging people $2.95 per hour for usage, the company decided to allow marketers to post links and program bots to run some conversations.

That generated some extra revenue for the company until something unexpected happened. Since marketers knew that the only way to increase their exposure was to increase their frequency, they literally drowned out all human conversations until no one was left except chat rooms of bots, churning away at their pre-programmed content.

How long before marketers reach critical mass again? It's anybody's guess. 

There are only two outcomes for abused message delivery systems. En masse, marketers will either push messages to the point where they become irrelevant (direct mail and pitch lists) or the platform will eventually elevate the rates until it is inaccessible (television) to anyone except those with deep pockets (television and radio). When that happens, people will migrate away to other networks instead.

From my perspective, longevity will favor those marketers that avoid the temptation of the short-term gain because people drive networks, not numbers. After all, as soon as you start thinking about people in terms of numbers, whether how many followers they have or some secret sauce social score, there is a good chance you have already lost them (unless you gamed social to get them in the first place).

At least, that is what I think. What does Brian Solis or Guy Kawasaki or Scott Stratten think? What do you think? Will automation steal the soul from social? Is there something on the horizon that might replace it? Or maybe you would like to strike up some other conversation? The choice belongs to you. The comments are yours. I'll read them too.

Five Monkey Wrenches For The Future Of Public Relations

Public relations is in crisis and it is too drunk on marginal successes to see it. This isn't a criticism. It's a fact, part of an objective analysis conducted every few months to determine what students need to glean from my class, Writing For Public Relations, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

More than any other year, this year has marked the most profound transformation and most of it isn't necessarily for the better. The entire industry seems distracted, attempting to decipher the same challenges that almost everyone in communication has to reconcile — with social media damaging a good chunk of marketing and advertising, stock photography damaging photographers, templates damaging graphic designers, and crowd-sourced content damaging commercial writers. It's the same all over.

The creative and commercial arts are continually being crushed under the weight of becoming cut rate commodities. Maybe Keen was partly right. The argument that social media belongs to the young is the same argument that makes social media a non-profession. And knowing that alone makes it all the more perplexing why public relations professionals continue to fight for ownership of everything.

The five hot topics for public relations that are monkey wrenches in disguise. 

Social Media. Public relations professionals keep making the case they deserve to own social media and maybe they already do in some circles. There aren't many firms left that shy away from listing it as a viable service. Some firms even secretly loathe it, but list it and assign the task to interns at cut rates.

The reason some practitioners said they deserve social is based on claims that they knew more about a peculiar combination of writing content, pop culture, and crisis management (which really means the most benign five-step crisis communication process). But what many of them deliver is paramount to publicity, with the measurement being publicity. That's not public relations. It's marketing.

And where that creates a quandary for public relations professionals in the future is that their field is being demoted from strategic thinking into commoditized task work that pays a lower rate. Ergo, public relations might "win" social media, but the cost won't be worth the expense as practitioners become online customer service representatives over the long term.

Content Management. Although not much different from social media, content marketing is the new buzz moniker for social media. It places more weight on writing and/or producing content (while avoiding old-school terminology like "blogs"), e.g., distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined target audience with the objective of driving (ideally profitable action) customer action.

Public relations wants to own content marketing for the same reasons they want to own social media. They believe that content marketing plays to the strengths of public relations because brand content produced by public relations firms understands "the news agenda as opposed to a direct sales hook."

But all too often, what is happening in the hands of public relations is that exposure becomes the only measurement and it causes companies to burn up money "marketing content" as opposed to the products they make or the services they offer. Expect it to get worse as everyone demands eyeballs.

Journalism Devolution. One of the primary drivers of public relations to become more like corporate-sponsored media outlets is the influx of journalists into public relations. Many of them make the move for two reasons: they want to make more money than they can as journalists or they were laid off by newspapers. 

At the same time, the remaining news outlets continue to struggle too. In order to capture eyeballs, they are increasingly interested in reporting what's short and popular as opposed to the old school objective "news agenda." The value of a reporter isn't reporting relevance anymore; it's more about online eyeballs too.

Fewer reporters means that public relations' previous ownership of "media relations" has taken a hit as more and more companies would rather have a viral video on YouTube than a story in the New York Times. And now the challenge public relations is trying to take on is that the same people who gave us the dry-as-toast or marketing-fluff-and-puff press releases want us to believe they write better.

Search Engine Optimization. When Forbes broke the article that called public relations the new search engine optimization, the same story appeared in an alternative universe but with a different headline all together. It declared that public relations had committed online suicide.

Instead of forging relationships with various publics to meet mutual goals and establish an unparalleled level of trust, the new public relations professional tool box contains an arsenal of tidbits like "how to come up with better link bait" and "how to crowdsource for content when all your ideas suck."

While there is nothing wrong with knowing the tactics, it's still hard to believe that a profession so fearful of being marginalized would jump on the bandwagon and marginalize themselves. Ergo, the last person invited to sit at the executive table is the one who will drone on and on about "keywords."

Measurement Forever. Public relations is closing on a 100-year history since adopting a new name for a professional that grew out of propaganda and public relations measurement is still all over the map. Years ago, I made the case that measurement was simply a matter of measuring the outcome to the intent but too many returned to the ever popular (and easily gamed) measurement of exposure.

Some will put a price tag on it. Some will count on klout. And some will make up their own formula, with various degrees of including outcomes as a viable measurement. In more cases, public relations is now adopting the cheapest direct marketing measurements as there own while claiming they are light years ahead of marketing.

Look, most of us know that measurement will never be an exact science unless everybody agrees to assign values to intangible measures. Nobody readily agrees on the monetary value of things like positive public sentiment, brand loyalty, or varied degrees of trust and reputation, etc. And they never will because those valuations are dependent on the individual organization. It's about that simple.

What is public relations anymore, anyway?

When you take a long, hard look at what are top-of-mind issues for pubic relations today, most of it doesn't resemble public relations at all. Instead, a good amount of it smacks of the worst elements of digital marketing, direct response, and social media.

To punctuate the point, consider the definition of public relations as adopted during the First World Assembly of Public Relations Associations and the First World Forum of Public Relations in 1978.

Public relations is the art and science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organization leaders, and implementing planned programs of action which will serve both the organization’s and the public interest.

Compare it to a new unwritten definition that seems to be permeating the field today. When attempting to infuse those five monkey wrenches into the industry, we're left with something that feels lacking.

Public relations is the art and science of tracking pop culture and capitalizing on that data by writing marginalized link bait that will be seen by as many eyes as possible to boost site traffic where organizations can capture email addresses in order to spam the shit of those people while nurturing an individual reputation as a professional in order to boost klout scores and get perks until the day you write a business card book bought by colleagues who owe you for buying their business card books.

While there is nothing wrong with this, I suppose, one might wonder if the current changes sweeping the field are more akin to regression as opposed to evolution. How about you? Do you feel comfortable with the direction of public relations? Or maybe someone can come up with a more exact definition.

Big Data Will Be The Blind Spot For Marketers

It's almost frightful how big big data will get. It's valuation is expected to reach $47 billion by 2017. It seems to me that estimate is too soft. Big data is like a boom town. I don't mean that figuratively.

The $4 billion Utah Data Center will eventually turn Bluffdale, Utah, and surrounding communities into boom towns. It's not the only place it will happen either. Government isn't the only player in big data.

Everybody wants an inside scoop on how individuals, groups, and mass populations operate for predictive and manipulative reasons. They want to uncover the non-existent philosopher's stone of human behavior so they can tell when someone who scratches their nose has malicious intent. They want to guess the direction of the public like they might plot the expected path of migrating geese. And they, marketers in particular, want to know which 140-character combination will not only get attention but also drive sales or, at least, pick up a follower that might buy a product within the next 100 tweets.

Some people will read that paragraph and feel spooked out. Some people will read it and salivate. It seems to me either might be an overreaction, but sometimes it's hard to tell. What is easy to tell is that big data will eventually lead to more blind spots than spoilers.

Analysts are too busy tracking online activity without concrete outcomes. 

Part of the problem, especially for marketers, is that they measure the wrong information. Forrester, ISTMA, and VisionEdge Marketing recently conducted a study that demonstrated precisely that.

What they found was that marketing performance management is operationally proficient but strategically stalled. The problem is exactly what you might think it is. Marketers are measuring marketing activity and not business outcomes, message effectiveness or predictive insights.

What does that mean? Marketers are too busy trying to prove performance to justify their efforts. They point to CRM and marketing automation to create dashboard reports that show how many people visited, shared and traveled down the sales funnel. They make decisions based on those measures too, and most of them revolve around the numbers they think matter, tying it to things like platform popularity.

It's not enough and I'm not the only one saying it. According to the analysts, only nine percent of CEOs and six percent of CFOs rely on marketing data to make decisions. In other words, most marketers have online clout and not the real stuff.

Big data will be rendered useless unless marketers measure on multiple levels. 

Less face facts. Although online sentiment can be useful, it's doesn't tell the whole story no matter how much money you throw at it. If it did, BP would not have survived the Gulf oil spill. If it did, JC Penney wouldn't be desperate after being right. In both cases, big data was off the mark.

Data needs to happen across every public, not just the public. Data needs to be discovered with multiple methods, not just one method. Even some of the most visible social media crisis events have been largely forgotten. Others were online loud, but many people never heard they happened.

You might find something different when you talk with people as opposed to react with them.

• Interviews. With the right interviewer, nothing beats a series of interviews. It's how some of our major clients have tapped my firm to write white papers. They work in other ways too. Once I interviewed 40 employees at a company that believed nobody saw the company like they did. I found out that they all saw the company the same way despite that belief.

• Focus Groups. Brainstorming sessions and focus groups made up of trusted stakeholders or select demographics can transform reaction captures into think tanks. For example, when I conduct core and strategic sessions, the first 50 responses are often the least important. Once a group hits closer to 100, they start thinking about vision instead of what's expected.

• Vetted Surveys. Instead of self-selected surveys, sometimes slanted with leading questions, try objective surveys (and control groups) with people who are solicited based upon belonging to a specific public or stakeholder group. Find out what they think of an organization, industry, and what's missing from the equation — not only what they expect but what they never thought to expect.

• Big Data. As I mentioned before, big data has a place. Just remember that sometimes you have to distinguish between the public and customers. One example that comes to mind was the initial launch of the iPhone without physical buttons. The quieter majority of customers didn't care. They didn't seem to care that the USB port was left off their iPads either. Never-customers cared much more.

After you're done, don't forget that inside out is just as important as what's being said outside.

• Employees. No matter how great you think your organizational brand might be, it isn't all that if your employees don't believe it and protect it. Most social media crisis events happen because one employee forgets just how important every branded piece of communication can be.

• Stakeholders. When working with the National Emergency Number Association (9-1-1), I was privy to some very intelligent ideas on improving emergency communication because the association's stakeholders included several dozen thought-leadership companies that had glimpses of future tech. Do you need another reason to talk to vendors, partners, shareholders, etc.?

• Customers. There is plenty that can be tracked when it comes to customers and there is much more to consider than a single click. The value of the lifetime customer is more. It's one of the reasons most major companies jumped at affiliate programs. Their marketing jumps in after one buy.

• The Public. Looking at the public makes sense, but with obvious limitations. Listening to the public en masse can sometimes be a good thing because it often serves as a commonsense barometer. Other times, it isn't nearly as good because it can be manipulated by catfish or implied wrongdoing.

Doing all this work takes more time, which means you can't turn on a dime with every decision. But then again, if an organization could turn on a dime then its brand relationship must be pretty thin. Or maybe the better way to say it is: isn't it commonsense to talk to people if you want to understand them?

Put People Ahead Of Platforms If You Want To Succeed

Modern online marketers fascinate me. They always say they want to connect with people online, but most of them are ultimately obsessed with platforms. They want to know which social network is popular, which platform is the most active, which network will deliver more referral traffic, how to make headlines buzz, and when to post content so the most eyeballs see it. So on and so forth.

I think you get the idea. They talk a good game about relationships, but funnel most of their energy into gaming the relationship, everything from search engine optimization (including competitor names and misspellings) to misleading headlines that don't deliver on the content they promise. It's all silly stuff.

There are no silver bullets. People are social nomads. 

It really is silly stuff, but don't dismiss it all outright. Those tips and tactics can be useful, provided you don't become too comfortable with last year's data or this year's predictions. Social media is the never ending story taking place in an always changing environment. The only certainty so far is nothing.

Examples abound. If you believe Facebook will always be the most popular place to connect, that Google+ is where tech savvy guys hang out, or that sales only happen after site visits, then you might be making the same mistake that people made when they thought Tumblr was a waste of time, Quora would be the next big social network (or down for the count), or that any service is too big or popular to shutter. Betting the farm on any one of those statements is akin to picking a single series for a media buy and assuming that it will never be shuttered.

Just as every television series on the planet will eventually vanish, networks will eventually vanish too. One of my favorite examples is par for the course as the case was made: Bumpzee will be the next Digg. The prediction was almost right, but in the opposite direction. Neither really exist (and many new social media experts haven't even heard of them). Nobody wants to save Delicious anymore either.

In fact, all this is why I've always found the tribes concept misleading. It wasn't because Seth Godin was wrong. He was mostly right, but without an emphasis on the idea that tribes are as temporal as communication. Modern humans do fall into them. But they fall out of them just as fast.

The ones you belonged to in high school aren't the the ones you belong to today. The ones you belong to today aren't the ones that you'll belong to in the future. They are tied to platforms, technologies, jobs, and marriages, and all sorts of other things that feel permanent in our lives but are not nearly so permanent.

Five areas of focus that will make you more people centric instead of platform reliant over the long term. 

Sure, people make up social networks and social networks can help you reach those people who have already pitched a tent. But that doesn't make the platforms more important than the people. Even inside most networks, any given community, page, or group can be completely different from another. The company needs to create it.

• Know what you are talking about. It doesn't matter what industry you work in or for. You need to know as much about it as you do marketing, advertising or social media. Even if you will never know more about it than the industry leaders (a few analysts come close), you need to know enough to have an intelligent conversation with anyone who asks.

Most people writing content don't know nearly as much as they need to, which is probably why only 37 percent of marketers would call their Facebook efforts successful when surveyed (they all say they're successful in person). You see, anyone can drop a discount, network quip or announce an event. But it takes someone who knows something to engage and keep them interested.

• Know the people you want to reach. If you have never spent time with customers and prospects (and make note of any differences between them), then you might not reach them anyway. Industry leaders and executives struggle with this as much as social media and marketing managers. They can tell you the demographics of their target audience, but few take the time to really get to know them.

Big data is great, but old school copywriters know that the secret ingredient inside all content has to do with understanding the customers as people and often visualizing a real person when they write to them. You have to get to know them. Shake their hands. Put yourself in their shoes. And then ask yourself how your social network messages look from their perspective.

• Make adjustments for platform constraints. With the exception of understanding the constraints that come with every platform, there isn't much more you need to know about them. It's more important to tie messages to the mission, vision and values more than the best practices of a social network. After all, best practices are almost never invented by anyone who follows them.

The better way to think about it is to craft a message and then see how it fits within a platform, much in the same way campaigns were made across radio, print and television. As long as it is strong and doesn't break any constraints, customers and prospects will not only find it but give it resonance. One step better than someone liking or sharing, resonance means they will remember it a week from now.

• Be interesting and enthusiastic about the topic. When I speak to students, I can never stress it enough. If you think the topic is boring, it will show up in the writing. There is nothing you can do about it. All the superlatives and exclamation points in the world won't save you. Those make it worse.

The most common excuse they offer up is that their clients, employers or bosses dictate the content thread. But I don't completely buy it. Putting in a little extra effort to show someone why something else might be superior can make all the difference.

• Know how much to say and when to shut up. I said something similar for marketers two weeks ago, but this advice is specific to social networks. The difference between a consumer seeing content value or spam is only one post, share or email too many.

Remind yourself and your employers that no one needs to be the center of attention all the time, unless the public wants to make something the center of attention. Give your messages, ideas and concepts some room to live before blasting away with the next. Instead of making conversations read like a group of people taking turns at a single microphone, nurture something that looks like community conversations.

While those five tips aren't even close to everything you need to know about social networks, they do represent a different direction than what has become the standard fare. Stop worrying about which social networks and start thinking about what will make people seek you out no matter the network.

Success Always Starts With Permission To Act On Big Dreams

Although Michael Port will be among the first to tell you that a client's urgent needs almost always overshadow long-term goals, Book Yourself Solid Illustrated is an exercise in the opposite direction. He asks people who want to succeed to put aside their immediate needs and focus in on big dreams.

He's smart to do it too. For the better part of 20 years, I've seen a relatively consistent and reoccurring life cycle among successful startups. Many take a year or two to establish themselves, make huge gains during the next few, and then slowly wind down until they eventually die.

It's painful to watch, especially because companies that can succeed during the first year or so experience something that those who don't try can only wonder about. Much like their success, their original mission and vision were tied to big dreams.

It makes sense that they would be. A startup is nothing less than someone taking a shot to shine. It doesn't even matter what kind of business it might be. Most cite big dreams as a common ground.

The bulk of them were started by people who wanted to do one of two things. Either they wanted to launch a new product, service or outlet that they are passionate about or they want to launch a business as an extension of their career by being their own boss. And contrary to popular myth, the majority of them will succeed (for a while).

The U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that seven out of ten business will succeed in the first two years before something unexpected happens. Only half them will survive a full five years.

Why do businesses that succeed in the first two years fail in the following three years? 

While there are many reasons that successful startups fail, almost all include a change in mindset. As business owners succeed, they are more likely to give up on big dreams and focus on urgent needs.

In other words, they give up on the very dreams that make them successful and start focusing on what they think they need with the operative word being "more": more revenue, more profits, more clients, more customers, more high profile accounts, more website visitors, more followers, more whatever.

As soon as "more" becomes the objective, these businesses start to shrink or sink as they take on the wrong kinds of customers or clients: those that take advantage of them (e.g., empty promises and slow payments), drain the life out of them (create frustration and negative relationships), or demand products and services that have little to do with the vision (diminish resources and reduce quality).

As the pressure mounts to maintain sales, problems materialize. Some owners might borrow to meet payroll while floating account debts. Others might waste time working for customers who will never be happy or refer any business. Some will substitute quality materials to push prices lower. Others will expand their offerings to appease an ever-increasing audience while watering down their uniqueness.

Worse, many successful startups won't see the root problem as they struggle to preserve these short-term gains. The fact is that they are much more likely to compound the problems as they trade in their permission to dream for protectionism — the fear of losing any revenue is so strong that they will defend their most detrimental clients rather then lose them.

Book Yourself Solid is a handbook for disciplined dreamers.

Although originally intended for advisers, consultants and speakers, Port's Book Yourself Solid works well enough for other kinds of startups too. And while some of the tools he and I use are different, the advice reads the same. It takes discipline to succeed. You have to commit yourself to looking for the "right" clients instead of "more," even if that means giving up some short-term gains.

He even goes one step further, starting with something many business owners will find startling. You have to dump "dud" clients, those who wear you down and take you further away from your dreams. As soon as you do, you can use the newly found time to pursue the clients you've always dreamed of working with or do more for the stars who are already part of your roster.

At the same time, Port dares business owners to stop giving others permission to punish them and start giving themselves permission to act on their dreams. Stick to the dreams that made your business work for you. Avoid the objectives that make you work for your business.

Any number of examples illustrate the point. An art gallery doesn't have to sell cheap prints just because some people complain about the price of the originals. A respected restaurateur won't serve out-of-season fish on the whim of a customer who doesn't know better. A reputable consultant won't rely on email spam or purchase back links to inflate junk traffic.

Instead, Port says it's much more important to be true to what you do than try to be true to what everybody wants you to you do. There are other people who might try to be all things to all people, but you don't have to follow their lead. If you really are a leader in the field, then not everyone is your customer. You know it. Your customers know it. And Port knows it too.

This may have even been one of the reasons that Port decided to make his system a little more manageable on his recently refreshed release. He teamed with Jocelyn Wallace to illustrate Book Yourself Solid. Although it is still hyped as the fastest, easiest and most reliable system for getting more clients than you can handle (even if you hate marketing and selling), there is something in this re-engineered book that will work for more businesses and independent consultants.

Whether you are starting a business, need to revisit and retrofit your vision or have recently noticed that you don't love your business anymore, Port provides enough tools to put you back on track. Perhaps more than anything else, he provides a series of exercises that are designed to remind business owners to stop chasing the daily chaff and start giving themselves permission to act on big dreams again.

So how do you know if you might need this kind of help? While I believe every business can benefit from an organization-defining communication plan, most people can start with two simple questions.

Has your happiness or employee morale faltered from the day you first started? And if so, are the challenges you face related to what you wanted to do, what you actually do, how you have to do it, or who you do it for? You might be surprised by the answers. And I'd love to know what you find.