Tuesday, July 13

Considering Influence: Honest Conversations


Most people agree. There won't be anything worthwhile to come out of Fast Company's Influence Project. Except, perhaps, one thing.

‎"It is not the facts which guide conduct, but opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion." — Sir Norman Angell

It might have been the wrong execution, but the topic seems prime for discussion. What is influence anyway? I've written about influence plenty. Most people in social media have. And, I expect they will continue to do so.

Three Observations About Online Influence.

1. More Followers. More Influence. The general concept borrows from the old world of media measurement. Some people believe more followers equals more influence much like circulation implied more readers. It's the easiest illusion to maintain. There are even marketing and public relations companies that actively look for people who will "Like" anything or follow anyone who will follow them.

When that doesn't work, they'll buy them up in an attempt to create the illusion of popularity. Anyone looking closely can tell which accounts are which (dead accounts on autofollow, automated feed promoters, etc.), but the reality is, at a glance, most people don't know the difference. People have trained themselves to believe someone with 10,000 is better than 100.

2. More Clicks. More Influence. The second most popular prevailing thought leads right up to the Fast Company flop. More clicks, shares, retweets, etc. somehow provide a better measure of influence. Ironically, it's the second most easiest illusion to create and the cornerstone of most "influence" algorithms.

Again, some marketing firms and social media experts have taken to having a staff of 20 retweet client events, giving them an automatic boast in perception. Not surprisingly, you can buy clicks and retweets too, spreading it out among an infinite supply of unmanned accounts.

Reciprocity isn't much better. At its worst, it is a collection of people who retweet each other ad nauseum or do so because it gives them a sense of belonging to a "tribe" centered around someone else who has more reach.

3. Real Ideas. Real Influence. And then, of course, there is the least popular but most honest construct of the bunch. Ideas have more influence than people. It explains so much.

It explains Danny Brown's and my discussion after it seems I was unintentionally rough on him regarding his initial Fast Company buy in (seems he was misled, like most people). As I mentioned then, had I only read his or Amber Nusland's post, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. It was reading two posts with conflicting ideas that piqued my interest.

And so that is how it goes with influence. If one friend, even a trusted friend, suggests you read a specific book, you may or may not. But if 20 trusted friends tell you the same thing, you'll be much more inclined to read it. Unless, of course, it's a romance book and you don't read them. Why?

The ratio is pretty simple. Take any idea, plus the collective exposure and recommendations, and you might take action if you are already predisposed toward it. It's why Obama was elected president, but people are now dissatisfied. It's why people rallied behind Bush after 9-11 despite how many people didn't like him. It's why people turned out to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak in Washington D.C. or why JFK was such a revered figure in American history.

How Great Leaders Inspire Action.

One of my friends, Krystal Hosmer, shared a Simon Sinek video from TED after reading my Differentiate Or Die post. I think Sinek's video fits even better with this conversation. After all, what is "influence" if not "inspired action?"


What really struck me from Sinek's presentation is that it demonstrates that my unpopular position (ideas, not people, have influence) isn't exclusive to social media. It has always been that way. People tend to gravitate toward ideas. Sure, they can't gravitate to an idea unless it crosses their path.

But then again, that's the easy part of social media, assuming you have the patience to build a community without pretending to look popular or pretending to share personal interests or pimping other people's ideas in exchange for them pimping yours. Sure, all that stuff works a little bit today. But personally, I'd rather keep my subscribers smaller and streams more manageable and search for the truth in communication uninfluenced by opinions that might be wrong.

Is there a downside to this? Yes. It means there are many companies from Edelman down that cannot "influence" the game nearly as much as they think. It also means we aren't trust agents, but merely messengers of trust. At least, I like to think so. Need a little more on this subject? Read Ike Piggot's post on A Cupful of Wisdom.

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Monday, July 12

Cutting Budgets: Reinvest It Instead


After what seemed like several steps toward economic recovery, the second quarter has shaken the confidence of some U.K. companies. Almost 20 percent cut marketing budgets. Business confidence is tuned to consumer confidence, according to the IPA/BDO Bellwether survey.

To some degree, it is expected. Last week, Diane Swonk, chief economist of Mesirow Financial, said it is likely that Europe will stay in a recession through 2011. (Report.) The United States is anticipated to recover quicker, but its recovery hinges on how many new regulations and increased taxes are passed in 2010.

The real bellwether for economic recovery, of course, isn't businesses or financial advisors. U.S. consumer confidence remains low, with a recent USA Today poll revealing as many as 54 percent of Americans surveyed believe their standard of living has not improved, when compared to that of 5 years prior. Fifty-five percent believe that things will not improve for their children.

In a different poll, just over 20 percent are satisfied with the direction of the country. The problem is private sector job creation. Even companies that are succeeding have been slow to hire new employees because there is no certainty.

The Alternative To Cutting Budgets Is Recreating Culture.

Conventional wisdom suggests that companies ought not to cut their marketing budgets. But as companies face a diminishing return on their marketing, they often feel compelled to make marketing cuts to forestall another round of layoffs.

What could they do instead? Almost every recession success story seems to have a common thread. The companies that win have successfully identified a company "culture" inside and out. They recognize that they cannot win with being faceless commodities no matter how deeply they slash prices. Instead, they rely on a culture with which consumers can identify.

• Wal-Mart. Say what you will about Wal-Mart, the company is still succeeding with what it calls servant leadership. The concept is so deeply rooted in the company that it has become part of its culture.

• Ikea. A growing global company, Ikea places its emphasis on leadership that reinforces its core values and culture. Even without knowing what is on sale, there is an immediate emotional connection with the name.

• Apple. Even as critics continually knock the company, it remains steadfast on success. The reason is simple. It focuses less on reputation and more on character or, specifically, a "culture."

• Zappos. Make no mistake, Zappos did it right. Ask anyone who worked at the company then and they will tell you. The most critical component to the longevity and success of Zappos is its culture.

So maybe cutting the marketing budget is less important than funneling some that money into defining the culture of the company inside and out. The challenge for those who recognize the need is easy to see. They don't know how.

The First Step Toward Recreating Culture.

Great communication happens from the inside out so never mind external crowd sourcing at the moment. As good as customers are at telling companies what is wrong, the people inside have to believe that they can deliver on the promises that their leaders make.

In order to recreate a new culture, it requires bringing internal stakeholders to the table and the deeper down the better. Not only do employees hear from customers day in and day out, but they are keenly aware of what can or cannot be done. Accept their input, pick from the clear differentials, and let them make that commitment before you take the message to the marketplace.

Reputation is the by-product of action, not communication. Communication and marketing merely make the promise.

For Apple it's innovation. For Ikea, it's affordable designs. For Wal-Mart, it's everyday savings. For Zappos, it's friendly online customer service. And sure, some people don't like those messages or those companies. But that is okay. Monopolies and market dominance make most companies lazy anyway.

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Sunday, July 11

Keeping It Real: Fresh Content Project


The buzz phrase most commonly associated with keeping it real online is to "not drink the Kool-Aid." In fact, it's used and misused so often that some people aren't always sure what it means. (Sometimes the people who are advising you not to drink the Kool-Aid serve up the same.)

The five posts below are nowhere near Kool-Aid. While the topics are broad, ranging from a simple Blogger update to how fishermen are being impacted in the Gulf, they still share a common connection. Sometimes it is not enough to listen to what people have to say about social media, you might have to take a look for yourself. After all, this is a space where yesterday's intelligence is tomorrow's ignorance. Keep it real.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of June 28

Matrix: Brand Monitoring, Social Analytics, Social Insights.
Since social media is a noisy place and brand monitoring isn't sufficient (it tends to make a brand reactive as opposed to active), Jeremiah Owyang suggests that many brand monitoring companies risk becoming little more than trilobites. He rightly says that the evolution of monitoring will be to help companies derive intelligence from excessive data. That makes sense. Given that the best run companies don't give customers what they want as much as what those customers never even knew to ask for, tapping into the mindset of consumers or customers will take a bit more than simply hearing what they have to say.

The Plight of the Louisiana Fishing Family.
Geoff Livingston brings the plight of Louisiana fishermen to life. These brave souls have been rebuilding since Katrina, many of them had finally found their footing. That is, they had, until the BP oil spill. Many of the fishing families think about how they are going to get through the crisis day to day, with most of them volunteering or accepting modest pay just to keep the oil off the shores and hope for the best next year. But next year is a frightfully long time away and at least one organization estimates that more than 47,500 fishing homes may eventually require food assistance into next year.

Three Essential Small Business Search Marketing Trends
What are they? First, integrating online and offline marketing. Second, tapping mobile and local searches. And third, social media advertising. Those are some heavy hitting tips from Lee Odden that don't resemble many of the social media plans that have ben implemented today. On the contrary, the entire space is moving toward integration. If this is the first you heard of these ideas, you might as well mark today on your calendar. This is when many social media-only companies could start to slide.

Are You Gambling With Your Freelance Future?
Dean Rieck went to Las Vegas and came back with some nifty tips that any freelance writer could benefit from: play your best game, know the rules, hedge your bets, play to win, and stick with it. After all, unlike the odds on the casino floor, your chances to win have much more to do with persistence than any other measure (assuming you have talent). It's good advice, and not all that different than some I shared earlier this week. You can be as creative as you want, but run your freelancing business like a business. If you do, one day it will be a business and you can pack the freelance moniker away.

Blogger Rolls Out Real-Time Stats For All Users.
Anybody following the Fresh Content Project might find this post almost feels out of place. It's a simple update from Louis Gray that shares real time stats from Blogger, which tends to be the most beat-up platform of the bunch when anybody talks about blogging. In reality, real-time stats is just the beginning of what has been happening at Blogger. There are much more intuitive design features that give your blog a custom look (without a template), an increasing number of useful tools, and share buttons embedded into the posts (although I haven't added them here).

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Friday, July 9

Marketing Pain: Should And Consequence


"Thinking about marketing causes me pressure, and the joy goes away." — Susan, Artist

The quote comes from an article I stumbled across in the Steveport Times. The cause is traceable. Too many marketing professionals (and other people too) overload their sales pitches and advice with "should or consequence."

Take the recent advice from an Internet marketing and management consultant. He provides people a choice: The Pain of Discipline or the Pain of Regret.

He says if you don't invest 10-20 percent of your annual revenue into marketing, you'll regret it when the paychecks aren't pouring in the door. Interestingly enough, this conversation comes from the same industry he is targeting with his advice.

The principle is based upon psychology. If you don't get an education, you'll regret it later. If you don't control your drinking, you'll regret being addicted. If you don't eat your meat, you'll regret not having any pudding.

Of course, the post missed one or two things in the writing. First, the nine steps to "immediate results in addiction marketing" aren't likely to cost 10-20 percent of an annual revenue. And second, if we are writing an analogy that likens marketing avoidance to addiction, we ought to consider that abrupt change carries with it a certain element of risk.

There is no should and consequence in marketing. Period.

There are dozens of questions businesses ought to ask before setting a marketing budget. Here are a few...

What business are you in? How location based is the business? What is the size of your potential audience (immediately and realistically)? What are you investing now and what can you afford? What does future growth really look like? What are your competitors doing? And what are your needs to keep the doors open?

If we use the addictive analogy, let's consider someone with a weight problem. I can tell someone with a weight problem that they "should" exercise. The consequences are a whole long list of health problems. Who knows? It might even resonate.

Based on averages, they'll be good for eight weeks before they crash and give up. The same thing can happen with "should and consequence" marketing.

Small businesses, many of them desperate in a tightening economy, ramp up their marketing budgets from 5 to 20 percent based on the advice of someone who's best interest is based on them doing so. The budget is then planned, executed, and spent, sometimes without any allotment for contingency. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But that's not marketing, it's gambling.

When it doesn't work out, the small business is in a position worse than when they started. And, chances are, they have less revenue (which impacts the marketing budget) and a greater disdain for marketing. We see it here from time to time. Prospects who decided to spend an inflated budget based on the advice of a big firm, only to come back without anything left and a greater need for help. Sometimes we help them anyway. Sometimes we don't.

Generally speaking, marketing is much like exercise. Sure, it's always more fun helping companies that are already fit and running circles around the competition. However, most companies aren't like that. They tend to be somewhere between a little flabby to on life support. And so, they need a fitness program that considers their goals, needs, and current situation.

For marketing firms, specifically, try to refrain from "should or consequence" pitches, especially since there is an alternative. Outline what they "could" do, measure the progress, and then adjust as necessary. Not only will it earn their trust, chances are you'll earn an ever-increasing marketing budget too.

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Thursday, July 8

Pimping URLs: The Fast Company Influence Flop


Shirley Polykoff, the first woman copywriter for Foote Cone & Belding, increased hair color sales by 413 percent in six years and expanded the market from 7 percent to 50 percent of all women. No one really knew her name, but her headlines can still be attributed to a Clairol campaign that some people remember despite not even being born yet. That is influence.

Fast Company: The Influence Project measures idiocy.

It was first brought to my attention by Amber Nusland on Brass Tack Thinking. She's one of several hundred blogs I subscribe too, many of which are in my reader as part of the Fresh Content Project. She said Fast Company confused ego with influence. (Close.)

Then, scrolling down the Fresh Content reader list, Danny Brown plugged the project as potentially valid, complete with an embedded link to add influence though he added a "non" add influence link too. He said it might reveal whether community trumps popularity. (Upsidedown.)

Those two post "influenced" me, I suppose, to find out more. This is the kind of thing that some of my clients ask about and I write about, so I don't have much choice. I joined, I pushed the links, and then something caught my eye: How We Measure.

So how do they measure?

1. The number of people who directly click on your unique link. This is the primary measure of your influence pure and simple.

2. You will receive partial "credit" for subsequent clicks generated by those who register as the result of your URL. In other words, anyone who comes to the site through your link and registers for their own account will be spreading influence while they spread theirs. That way, you get some benefit from influencing people who are influential themselves. We will give a diminishing fractional credit (1/2, 1/4, 1/8 etc.) for clicks generated up to six degrees away from your original link.


Seriously? Fast Company convinced some folks to fluff up a URL pimping contest with the structure of a pyramid scheme? There is nothing worthwhile that can be gleaned from the project other than what we already know.

• Most people will never read the rules of this game.
• Many people will pimp their URLs to create the illusion of "influence."
• Some people will be disgusted, delete any links, and look for the opt out. There is none.
• Fast Company has less credibility today than it did before it rolled out its pimping contest.
• Emails from Fast Company land in my spam box. Oh, right, you probably didn't know that.

So no, Mark Borden, this is not a good weird. It's a bad weird. And with the exception of a November punchline for a joke that has already been told before, nothing remotely like research will come out of this "experiment" except perhaps a new social media superstar. And that poor soul may likely be embarrassed.

Real influence is a function of authority, credibility, and ideas. And real influence cannot be measured exclusively online.

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.” — J.D. Salinger

Of course, you can discount that and accept the new explanation. It isn't an influence project. It's an editorial investigation. Ironically, all the lead up to the explanation is supposedly tied to an experiment I ran months ago.

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Wednesday, July 7

Flipping Terms: Freedom In Retrospect


"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must undergo the fatigue of supporting it." — Thomas Paine

In relation to population, Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine, had the largest circulation of any book in American history. It set the tone for the United States Declaration of Independence, arguing that all men are created equal six months before the principal author, Thomas Jefferson, wrote in the explanation of the colonies' decision to separate. It was adopted on July 4, 1776.

The above quote, which I shared across my social networks during the long weekend, elicited an interesting response from my friend Chris Stadler, who asked if the concept of freedom I was referencing had changed over the last 234 years. Many people today, even those who are uncertain of which country the United States declared its independence from, believe it to mean freedom from responsibilities. Specifically, the right not to worry.

Flipping The Definition Of Freedom.

Flipping the definitions of freedom and security is relatively easy to do. And to escape the trappings of politics, let's consider the zoo, which is a park or institution where animals are kept, bred, and exhibited.

By the definition of some, these animals must be the most free on earth. All of their meals are provided, fairly distributed based upon the energy they require. All of their health care is free, with regular preventative care. All of their decisions are made for them, ranging from what to eat to when they sleep to what they play with for the enjoyment of passersby.

They want for nothing, these animals. No predators can harm them. And nowadays, most live longer.

However, most zoologists admit that while they can provide a good and caring quality of life for the animals, one can only guess whether or not any particular animal would be happier in the wild or not. By most measures, it depends on the animal.

And with that in mind, for the purposes of this thought experiment, imagine if some of the animals could let us know. And let's say, a certain percentage of these animals told us that they would, indeed, prefer a harsher risk for the thrill of the hunt or the run. The zookeeper might be faced with a curious choice.

If specific animals are responsible for the revenue generated by the zoo, should they be let go and all the remaining animals forced to get by with less? Or, do they have an obligation to stay for the good of the community they were born into or adopted by? And since whatever rare attributes they possess are vital to the collective good, are theyrequired to accept the quality of life chosen for them, which by a different sort of parameters offers them more freedom, not less, despite the burden of captivity?

Indeed, under the flipped freedom thinking, the obligatory model holds. It did in 1776 too.

Leading Up To Independence.

Americans tend to learn about the American Revolution from the perspective of Americans. It makes sense, but there is a succession of steps that lead up to disenfranchisement of the people, with most of those problems related to policy.

Great Britain wasn't necessarily trying to be cruel to the Americas, at first. It had borrowed heavily to finance the Seven Years War (called the French and Indian War in the Americas), and doubled its national debt.

Since all countries must eventually address liabilities, Great Britain began levying more taxes to pay for the debt. To collect these taxes, the government had to create and expand bureaucracies, which required additional taxes to support it.

The new bureaucracies, afforded more power by Parliament, did what they do best. They increased regulations, which inflamed the increasing tax and debt problems. And, as justification, viewed the increasing taxes and regulations as just, given the obligation of its citizens to share in the costs associated with its decisions, perhaps bad ones.

The end result, from the perspective of the various colonies, was a central government encroaching on the prosperity and autonomy of the various colonial charters and the citizens who resided there. However, that did not matter to the central government, which felt it had sufficient power and authority to bind the colonial states to its will.

Many of us know what happened next. It led to the writing of the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, a document written two years prior to the Declaration of Independence but much lesser known in that it was an attempt to reconcile increasing taxation and central authority.

The similarities of our current course are startling, with one exception. A greater percentage of people elect to live in a zoo. And there seems to be an increasing number of people inclined to round up the rest who prefer to run loose. It's for their own good, naturally.

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Tuesday, July 6

Understanding Competition: Differentiate Or Die


In the midst of the last recession, I returned to Las Vegas after spending a few years in Los Angeles and Reno, Nev., rounding out my portfolio as a wide-eyed copywriter with some experience as a creative director and communication consultant. No one was hiring.

At the time, online marketing was only imagined. Public relations firms weren't taken seriously. And advertising agencies were laying off professionals with much more experience and, frankly, better books. The freelance market was extremely competitive, especially with an influx of Los Angeles creatives keen to the idea that Las Vegas was weathering the economy better.

The challenge was simple enough. If I wanted to break away from the part-time job I picked up to pay the bills, I had to find a way to compete. Book-to-book, I couldn't win.

It wasn't that their samples were better, per se, they simply had more of them. And, in many cases, their account experience was much sexier. When you place a Porsche advertisement next to a power company, most marketers would pick the Porsche, never mind any campaign results. So, I had to make a choice: differentiate myself or watch my early career wither on the vine.

Five Steps To Differentiate Your Business.

1. Listen To Prospects. As an upstart freelancer, I couldn't afford a market research firm. So, I did the next best thing. I called every agency but never pitched them. Instead, I asked for input. I asked them what they hated about freelance writers.

2. Identify The Difference. They told me precisely what bothered them. Freelancers in this market, they said, were unreliable (here today, employed tomorrow); adjusted their rates based on the client (small shops paid less, big shops more); didn't always meet deadlines (the feast-famine nature of the business); were too specialized (agencies need generalists); and attempted to nickel and dime clients on revisions (two-hour jobs became ten-hour jobs).

3. Embrace The Difference. Got it. Don't do all that stuff. More importantly, make it a proactive message. I opened one of the first generalized writing services firms (permanence) with consistent pricing (transparency); guaranteed deadlines (authenticity); and built revisions into the estimates, charging less if the job took less time (meet expectations they didn't even know they had).

There were a dozens other reinforcements, but the point is made. These differentials set the stage for one thing — the first assignment. The rest has to be earned.

4. Deliver On The Promise. Messages are not enough. You have to deliver on the promise and exceed expectations on the core competency, in this case, writing services and creative. If you could win the first assignment and then deliver award-winning, results-driven copy and creative, there would be less reason to look anyplace else until the market changed.

5. Solidify And Evolve. Branding is a function of the actions you take, which underpins the relationship between the client and product or service. But like all relationships, personal or professional, they change over time. You always have to look for ways to keep the spark in the relationship alive with innovation. Our expansion focused on strategic communication and, later, social media.

Strategic Thinking Doesn't Consider Size.

The story might be tied to a small firm, but the principles apply to any size company. AT&T has more coverage area; Verizon is more reliable in key markets. Apple owns innovation; Microsoft, the industry standard. Google mostly owns search; Facebook took social. FedEx targeted corporate; UPS captured retail. Amazon owns a platform for buying; Ebay, a platform for selling.

Differentiation is everywhere. It even came up as a topic raised by Jay Ehret, host the online radio show Power To The Small Business, during taping last week. Ehret proposed that if your company is trying to be better, it often becomes the same.

And if it becomes the same, I might add, your product or service will likely die. Sometimes it will die quickly, the result of the competition crushing it with more visibility or a broken brand promise. Or, sometimes it will die slowly, with the only differential being price until the price becomes so unprofitable that someone goes bankrupt or is bought outright.

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Monday, July 5

Creating A Social World: Networking 2020


Ask 900 Internet experts about the future of social networks, and its not so surprising that most are bullish on the future. Eighty-five percent say the Internet has mostly been a positive force on their social world in developing personal friendships, marriage and other relationships.

Positive outcomes far outweigh the negative outcomes, according to the new Pew Research Center study: The Future of Online Socializing. The short-term outlook is especially bright, much brighter than the June study that asked the public what they expect to see by the year 2050.

Highlights Show Social Connectivity Makes The World A Better Place.

• The Internet provides a global reach to find people with similar interests.
• Social media has boosted communication, creation, and the cultivation of friendships.
• Many cited personal examples, including meeting their spouses online.
• The continuing press to invent human interfaces, including holographic displays.
• Rapidly expanding bandwidth and security inventions to handle information.
• Trusted storehouses of information that allow for better decision making.

Some of their glimpses into the future are already coming to fruition. Scientists are already to expand their reach through the use of social media. Some nonprofit organizations have increased their ability to raise funds for a fraction of the investment. And in a relatively short time, television will unlikely ever be the same.

Shadows Show Social Connectivity Has An Eventual Dark Side.

Of course, every invention has a darker side, including shallower relationships, time famine, privacy issues, and the self-induced silo effect. On the individual level, they noted a change in how reputations are made, perceived, and remade. On the organizational level, they mean adjusting to the pulse of visible public opinion.

For many experts, privacy tends to be the biggest concern despite their own exhilaration of being able to track public sentiment. Some, not part of the study, freely suggest that paranoia isn't paranoia when someone is attempting to track your every move. Even spookier, perhaps, is the idea that many people willfully give up privacy for the smallest of favors like the moniker of being a virtual mayor.

The Future For The Online Communicator.

We generally lean toward the most optimistic viewpoint, with social media eventually fueling productivity — places that are much more attuned to making mutual progress over mutual popularity. And therein lies the path most firms will be faced with crossing in as little as two years as opposed to ten years.

There are three primary paths currently being employed in social media. One leads toward integrated communication where mass communication is augmented by organic relationships built from mutual respect and validity of ideas.

The second path panders to mutual popularity, which can best be described as a furious back-scratching session of those who hope to propel themselves upward by creating an abundance of shallow relationships based on nothing more than the ownership of cowboy boots.

And the third, of course, is to create the illusion of popularity, buying up friends, followers, and retweets for pennies on the plug.

I don't know about you, but we're stuck on the first one. It takes a little longer to create a following, but the people are real.

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Sunday, July 4

Considering Density: Fresh Content Project


When you look up at the night sky hundreds of miles away from ambient city lights, you might be amazed to find that not all look the same. Some are large with welcoming red hues and others would be much smaller, burning with bright whites and blues. But much like most of the universe, looks can be misleading.

Gravity is dictated by density more than mass. Or, simply put, all those red giants that command our attention at a glance tend to have much less power than their hotly burning counterparts. Marketing and communication blogs operate much like that. Content density cannot be measured in popularity or reach. Smaller stars tend to have the more powerful posts. Here are five...

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of June 21

Four Common Blogger Outreach Mistakes.
Arik Hanson touches on several myths associated with blogger outreach. While one of them holds true for journalists too (make it relevant), the other three tips remind public relations professionals that bloggers are not journalists and many have no desire to be journalists. They approach their content like people as opposed to professionals. And like people, they appreciate a personal connection. To expand the idea further: if you consider yourself a public relations professional and bloggers as an opportunity, your outreach is already headed in the wrong direction.

Social Content.
After setting up an analogy using the World Cup, Valeria Maltoni shares a content grid that underscores how content format tends to interact on the Internet. She sums that you can catalog content by degrees of social, type of opportunity for the business, and depth of data you get back. The same can be said for content itself. Not many people want to read about a company ad nauseum (centralized), but they may be interested in the greater context of an industry or environment.

Ignore The Influencers: The Dangers Of A Social Media World
Ian Lurie tackles one of our favorite subjects: warning people away from hanging on every word spread by "influencers." He's right. Social networks, for all their merits in expanding reach, have dramatically changed the Web in ways we would have never imagined five years ago. When such networks were limited, we tended to consider every point in a post before sharing it in a post of our own. Today, some "influencers" have grown omnipresent in networks, with their work being shared by dozens of people who never read the post or, even if they did, assumed it was accurate because of who wrote it without any other consideration. Spooky, but true.

• How Hospitals Can Battle Comment Trolls — And Win
Writing within the medical communication niche has become a speciality for Jenn Riggle, but much of what she writes about can be applied anywhere. In fact, one of the solutions being imposed by some publications is to disallow anonymous comments, given how often they spiral out of control, with one person leaving as many as 20 comments under 20 different names. I have mixed feelings over the loss of anonymous comments, believing journalists could have curbed them by engaging their comment sections. And, in fact, Riggle outlines five steps that can turn a "troll" into a win for the organization.

Five iPad Trends To Watch.
Jeff Bullas sees the future much like we do. It's increasingly mobile and the iPad, despite some strong naysayers on the front end, has already reshaped what it used to be. The iPad, which combines laptop-like functions and mobile app addictions to the early e-readers, has already caused a drop in netbook sales, caught on as a gaming device, and allowed for some robust app creations that magazine publishers love because people are reading more than a single post on this new platform. The numbers alone suggest the truth. The iPad and future tablet competitors are something to track.

Friday, July 2

Developing Leadership: Performance Beats Persuasion


As consumer confidence cratered in June, the question that seems to be resurfacing over and over again is "where is the leadership?" The easiest answer?

We don't have enough leaders. According to one new study, only one-third of companies offer formal HR leadership development programs. And of those that do, there are no guarantees that what these companies are lacking are adequate leadership skills. Even at a company like Time Warner, the advice seems much more like employee manipulation than motivation.

Have We Forgotten Leadership Requires More Than The Art of Persuasion?

Persuasive figures play games with their followings. They push subjective ideas, obscure facts, and promote their own interests. They also make demands while denying anyone's attempt to hold them responsible or accountable.

If their ideas work, they leap for the spotlight. But when their ideas don't work, they immediately suggest the failings must belong to someone else. In the public sector, it comes across as claiming to be ready to move forward but assigning the responsibility of moving forward to those who aren't in a position of leadership. In the private sector, the same holds true.

Persuasive figures tend to be more obsessed with the "failings" of their employees or other departments than any other factor. If only the other guys, they say, would have done their job...

Effective leaders operate from a different vantage point, without ever making the story about them. Instead, they look for objectivity and truth, taking responsibility for their actions and winning the hearts of any following. As their plans succeed, more employees or people become motivated by the success of the group. And even if the plans don't succeed, they immediately begin to look for other solutions. They don't have time to find fault. They are too busy focused on the goal.

Consumer Confidence Is Shaken For Lack Of Leadership.

While the tone of the nation might be set by the public sector, many private sector companies have not been quick to lead either. Their excuse might be the regulatory uncertainty, but true leadership doesn't pin the success or failure of an organization on the economic climate.

It seems clear enough to me that any economic growth will be fueled by a handful of private sector companies focused on solutions regardless of the current climate. To do it, companies need to find or nurture leaders who are less focused on being persuasive and more focused on performance.

Related Posts On Leadership.

• Owning Communication: Be Your Own Voice
Creating Success: The Psychology Of Winners And Losers
Changing A Down Economy: It's Psychology

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Thursday, July 1

Spooking Business: Maybe Social Media Set The Wrong Bar


How often do entrepreneurs post about their business on a blog? The answer might surprise you.

SmartBrief polled its entrepreneurial readers only to find that almost 75 percent of respondents say they never blog for their business. Of those that do, only 12 percent pen a post once a week. Only 3 percent post daily.

On its own, the poll is not surprising. However, SmartBrief had run a poll in May to discover that of all social media formats, entrepreneurs are most interested in blogging, with 55 percent choosing a blog over other online platforms. Facebook finished second with 31 percent; Twitter with 12 percent; and Foursquare with 1 percent.

So why don't entrepreneurs embrace social media?

While prevailing thought suggests that small business owners aren't interested in social media, the SmartBrief polls suggest otherwise. So we asked some business people we know who haven't actively engaged in social media for their businesses. This is what they told us.

1. Time. Entrepreneurs, small business owners especially, barely have enough time to get everything else done. The thought of adding an hour or four to their everyday schedule is just too much to ask. Some say they might hire someone to maintain the blog for them, but they've read enough to know most social media experts says ghosting is out of the question.

2. Fear. Most entrepreneurs don't know what to write about. Part of the problem is time, because they realize they have to study up on industry trends beyond their business. But importantly, they've read enough marketing blogs to know that there are plenty of people waiting to pounce on them for writing about what they do know about: their product or service. Worst, any mistake made online is permanent, they say.

3. Skill. What appears easy for communicators is not so easy for all entrepreneurs. They aren't proficient writers. What some social media experts, public relations professionals, and copywriters can bang out in an hour, it takes them ten hours and there is still no guarantee it will be error free or anything anybody would read. That doesn't count hundreds of apps and platforms that many communicators have grown up with over the last ten years.

4. Networks. Some of them have attended enough workshops to know that a blog is not enough nowadays. The best read blogs have networks of hundreds or thousands that hang on their every word. It's hard to attract attention when you don't have 50 people who will promote your post, whether it's good or not. It's hard to justify, they say, reaching ten people.

5. Competitors. While social media experts frequently tell small businesses they should share their secrets to success, most small business owners believe doing so will only attract competitors (not customers) who will steal their ideas. They see it all the time on marketing blogs, they say. The people at the top cherry pick the people in the middle, without so much as attribution.

While I'll slate a post to address some of these concerns, there is one overriding theme that resonated with me. The same people promoting social media adoption in the field may also be the reason why more small businesses and entrepreneurs are hesitant to start. It seems to me that somewhere along the way, the rules of how to blog have gotten in the way of why to blog.

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Wednesday, June 30

Bankrupting Credibility: Nobody Believes BP Anymore


When Facebook disabled the profile of Boycott BP, the reaction from 750,000 members was almost immediate. Within minutes, most people, including Public Citizen, believed a BP complaint prompted the action.

Facebook, which reinstated the content, later issued a statement that said its automated systems made the mistake. The page was reinstated after the error was discovered. Public Citizen says the statement was insufficient.

Regardless of the why, it raises interesting questions for communicators, suggesting a need for new rules governing how crisis communication is managed. And, it also serves as an indicator of how damaged the BP brand really is. Even when BP isn't responsible for attempting to censor communication, blame is automatically assigned to the company.

It's anticipated and expected, because the public expects no less from a company that has broken trust. BP has made several mistakes in attempting to control communication as opposed to managing information. It doesn't even matter if almost half of all censor incidents were created by the government. It's BP's fault.

The Rise Of The Anti-Brand, Fake Public Relations, and Instant Journalism.

Andrew Fowler suggested several steps worth considering. But any solutions have to be situational.

In the case of BP, company communicators might as well consider the site an asset. BP boycotters and BPGlobalPR actually help corral all communication about the company, providing insights into where the communication is crumbling and what miscommunication or inaccurate information might exist.

The goal isn't to control communication. There isn't much use in sharing an opinion about them. The goal needs to be focused on managing information, with an emphasis not on trying to preserve the brand (BP is well beyond that) but by clarifying factual information (and not necessarily directly).

BP does some of this well. Some of it, not so well. Some of it well. Some of it, not so well...

You may reproduce the images on the understanding that (i) any reproduction of these images will include the following acknowledgement adjacent to the image(s) used - '© BP p.l.c.' and (ii) these images will not be used in connection with any purpose that is prejudicial to BP, its officers or employees or any other third party. The images may not be sold.

From a classic crisis communication standpoint, some communicators are giving BP a "B" for hitting all the main points. Personally, I would give it an "F" and that seems pretty generous.

The reason for my low mark is simple enough. Classic crisis communication bullet points do not address several key challenges that arise when communication isn't handled properly.

The Anti-Brand. Whether spontaneous or organized by advocates with agendas, anti-brands already know the tenets of crisis communication and are well-prepared to discount every step. Any apology will be labeled insincere. Any accounting will be inadequate. Any acceptance of responsibility will not be believed.

Fake PR. Whether you borrow Fowler's term or call them Mock Brands, the general disposition is the same. These people aim to mock you and your company. Sometimes the efforts are a form of flattery; sometimes they are not. Obviously, the various fake accounts related to BP have very little to do with admiration.

Instant Journalism. While there are mainstream reporters and established citizen journalists, a crisis of this magnitude draws out people who have never been reporters before to suddenly feel compelled to cover it. En masse, handling every request just doesn't scale.

What's the remedy? As I wrote early on in the crisis, actions speak louder than words. And in this case, there were only three words tied to actions that could have helped preserve BP (and the Obama administration for that matter). What were those words?

We need help.

Imagine how different the communication might have been had this action been the cornerstone of the crisis from day one.

Skimmers would have dispatched. Booms would have been deployed. Media would have had front row seats. People would have known exactly what to do to help. Environmentalists would have been standing by. Localized emergency response crews would have been ready for multiple crises if and when they occurred. Nonprofit organizations would have coordinated economic impact. And so on and so forth.

Had this occurred, BP wouldn't even be the story and neither would the Obama administration. The story would have been the generosity of the Dutch and other countries sending skimmers. The story would have been local citizens preparing for the worst. The story would have been about a country uniting against a common problem. In sum, the story would have been about everything and everybody else except BP and except the government.

By not being the story, the damage to both could have minimized and, as a result, the respective brands preserved. Instead of a Boycott BP Facebook group, there might have been a "Help BP" Facebook group. Instead of "BPGlobalPR," there might have been an "DailyGulfHero" Twitter account. Instead of writing and reporting on all the problems, citizen volunteers documenting their own volunteer efforts, uncensored, would have quelled the need.

Neither BP nor the Obama administration seem to understand this simple truth. Action or inaction dictates brand value. Instead, they continue to make themselves the story and inexplicably tell people to sit back and rate their performance. The sheer magnitude of ego to "own this crisis" cannot be underscored enough.

They got what they asked for. You don't have to ask for it.

The first step toward a remedy for anti-brands, fake PR, and investigative journalists is to recognize that they are outcomes, symptoms that prove your actions are not aligned with your message. And knowing this, there are only four possible actions.

• Acknowledge them and let them live, unhindered. (Apple)
• Selectively interact, correcting facts but not opinions. (AT&T)
• Engage them by opening up a direct communication channel. (CBS)
• Change your actions until they no longer seem relevant or needed. (Dominos)

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Tuesday, June 29

Counting Crowds: Circulation Only Matters Sometimes


According to Brandweek, print is still losing its place as a viable business. National magazine spending fell 19.3 percent. Newspaper advertising fell 13.7 percent. But marketers who made those cuts didn't stop spending. Marketers migrated to digital media.

Still, the industry-wide advertisers only tell part of the story. Re/Max cut its print spending by 53 percent. Hertz Car Rental slashed 58 percent. State Farm dumped 55 percent of its print budget. Add to that Unilever's recent decision to double spending on digital marketing this year.

"I think you need to fish where the fish are," said Keith Weed, CMO for Unilever during a question-and-answer session with WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell. "So I've made it fairly clear that I'm driving Unilever to be at the leading edge of digital marketing."

According to an article by AdvertisingAge, Unilever is hardly alone. P&G doubled its measured U.S. Internet spending last year to $100 million.

The Case Against Migration.

Of course, not everyone is bullish on digital. Audrey Siegel, president at media agency TargetCast, who was quoted in the aforementioned Brandweek article, says dollar cuts aren't necessarily a shift from print to digital. She says print still commands the same amount of market share.

“In regard to digital spending, there’s no reliable source in tracking it, so when we talk about print dollars migrating, it’s anecdotal,” she said. “Digital will continue to grow but not necessarily just at the expense of print. It can just as easily be a case of broadcast dollars shifting into digital.”

Siegel seems to be be right and wrong. On one hand, print's hold over the same percentage of advertising spending is true. But on the other hand, it's not true for the reasons cited. Digital adverting has yet to make up ground as a viably priced medium. Specifically, digital media is still the cheaper buy while print, despite seeing publishing budgets shrink, are hanging on to higher ad rates.

The group trying to change all that isn't necessarily on the print publishing side. On the contrary, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is attempting to set some sort of standard that will place digital on equal footing. According to MediaWeek, the same problem remains. Everyone wants to plant "eyeball measurement" into the equation.

"Newspapers and magazines are particularly frustrated in their attempts to make up for steep print revenue losses with Web dollars and feel their high-quality content should command higher CPMs online," writes Lucia Moses. "Local newspapers have it tough because panel-based measurement isn’t well suited to local sites, resulting in erratic results."

One example Moses cites comes from Scripps. Scripps generates $500 annually per print reader but only $75 per online visitor. So the problem for many print publishers, to follow the marketing dollars online, is that "circulation" is up but the "value" of that circulation is down.

Solutions, solutions everywhere, and not even one to measure.

We see it every day. Many clients, even a few of our clients, are sometimes conflicted between the number of eyeballs versus engagement. It's a well-reasoned disconnect. Everything they have known until about five years ago suggests playing the numbers beats consumer concern. Every media salesperson on the planet has spoon fed them viewers, listeners, and readers as the fundamental measure of success. Public relations practitioners are guilty too, using the promise of reaching high circulation print pubs as their bread and butter has been the message they've carried forth for years.

The reality they are coming to terms with now is that "eyeball" rates do not necessarily equal conversation rates because two-way communication is a much different affair. Consider yesterday's research finding from Omni Hotels & Resorts as an example.

Seventy percent of those who do connect via Twitter and Facebook said that they share positive hotel experiences and incentives such as room upgrades. Sixty-two percent said they are more likely share positive experiences over negative ones.

So, in terms of "eyeballs," counting "followers" isn't the only answer. In some cases, ten followers might provide an expanded reach of 150,000 more people, assuming they share the content, page, incentive or offering. Add in their followers, and the potential reach could outpace some very respectable publications. However, not all of those potential eyeballs will ever equal conversions.

Case in point. One of our colleagues emailed us yesterday, excited by a traffic spike. When we asked them to attribute their spike, they said it became a controversial hot topic on a social network, meaning people disagreed whether the advice was wise or whether it was an advertisement.

"So, of all those people who flocked to the site to offer up their opinion," I queried. "How many will ever become customers?"

Hardly any. Contrary, the one follower who shared his post with ten friends within proximity to his business — those people, especially if they make plans together — are very likely to become customers. The irony, however, is that marketers have been trained to devalue the qualitative for the quantitative for their entire careers and it's just not true.

That's right. That video with one million views might be worthless. The one with ten views, depending on the value of the customer, might be worth $1 million. And the only way to approach media buys right now is to know the difference and find the middle. But since each middle might be different, there is no "formula" as much as there is an equation that leaves many publishers out of the loop.

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Monday, June 28

Targeting Business Travelers: How Social Is Mobile?


A new survey from Omni Hotels & Resorts found that business travelers ranked adjusting travel plans, making dinner reservations, and hotel check-ins among the applications they use most often during trips. Other activities, such as checking the latest sports scores and looking for the nearest coffee spot, also rated very high.

But what about social? While younger business travelers, ages 25 to 34, update Facebook to keep up with and connect with friends and family (65 percent), the greater demographic tends to be more private, tapping mobile applications for conveniences rather than connections while traveling.

Traveling With Conveniences

• 61 percent say that they surf the Web during travel.
• 49 percent of business travelers would like to pay hotel bills online.
• 48 percent said they they would like to order hotel and outside services.
• 34 percent said they use Skype or other chat services to connect with family.

Traveling With Connections

• 40 percent of business travelers check social networks using hotel WiFi.
• 45 percent of business travelers said they use Twitter during business trips.
• 34 percent of business travelers said they "boast" about trips on Facebook.
• Only 11 percent update frequently during their the entire trip.

Interestingly enough, 70 percent of those who do connect via Twitter and Facebook said that they share positive hotel experiences and incentives such as room upgrades. Sixty-two percent said they are more likely share positive experiences over negative ones.

One specific service mobile users are hoping hotels add is the ability to request hotel car service from the airport. But business travelers are trending toward wanting to make travel easier by accessing every service — ranging from room service to booking lunch — via their mobile phones. In general, mobile tends to be used more for such personal conveniences than personal connections. The survey skewed toward business travelers who stayed in hotels with rates at least $150 per night.

Omni Hotels & Resorts does employ social media incentives designed to encourage consumer promotions. Currently, the hotel chain is offering a 30 percent discount on cocktails to those who tweet about their stay at the hotel. Other incentives include a variety of early adoptive ideas, including 25 percent off a Snapfish photobook.

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Sunday, June 27

Asking Questions: Fresh Content Project


It's no surprise to me that the best solutions often come from the people who ask the right questions, whether or not they are prepared to answer them. This week's fresh picks in review ask some killer questions, and some of them provide answers.

Even if your content can be translated, will your audience understand you? Can you really manage communication or are you better off managing the information (assuming you're not going to lie about it)? Does dissent strengthen understanding of a topic or simply undermine relationships? Can someone really be expected to do it all in social media (unless all they do is social media)? And how has the Internet changed our profession for the better, especially among those who never really knew any other way?

All of them are amazing for consideration, some worth much more depth than I afford them here. See for yourself.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of June 14

Lost In Translation.
Tom Fishburne shares his first hand account of feeling lost in translation. It's a marvelous story that serves up a healthy reminder that many terms do not translate, even those that are somehow exempt from being classified as jargon or industry speak. As one of his examples, Fishburne retells how disruptive innovation might mean something to you or me. But to the audience he was speaking to, he might as well have told them to kill their existing businesses. Yes, sometimes presenters are charged with covering introductions into subjects they never intended to cover.

A Pool Approach to Coverage.
"Should we believe that BP's decision to limit media access or withhold vital information was made for fear of running afoul of those who govern the New York or London Stock Exchanges?" asked Peter Himler before providing five bullet points on how BP could have effectively used social media to manage the information related to the spill as opposed to attempting to manage the communication related to the spill. You can't get much clearer than his five ideas, all of which would prove better than what they are attempting to do.

Social Media Examiner Defends Their Own Inaccurate Content.
Sometimes private discourse is only a foreshadow to public discourse. The most common kind occurs when one blogger might casually mention to another blogger that they disagree. But when they disagree in private, there are no benefactors. Adam Singer knows this, and benefits us all in recapping the discussion between himself and the folks at Social Media Examiner. Interestingly enough, I know something about the subject. Singer is right, based in part on the same confusion caused by this study.

If Your Content Is Your Concerto ...
While it's always distracting to see images spill into the side bar, Peter Winick's visual misstep is par for the post. There are dozens of people who are proponents that social media is a one-man show, with the executive taking center stage and somehow managing the company. Not so fast. Maybe there is a balance to be struck because even great composers lead orchestras as opposed to playing every instrument. The solution is as simple as knowing what you are good at and sticking with it. Sure, the composer can dazzle everyone with the surprise solo set now and again, but daily it doesn't make sense.

The Internet Wasn't Around Then.
Frequent fresh pick Valeria Maltoni shares some insights about how she experiments with her own blog, but places an emphasis on the people who read it. But where the fresh pick content really kicks in is in the contrast of how things once were and how they are today. Real time communication provides immediate feedback, for better or worse, from a much larger pool of professionals with practical skill sets. The benefits are only tempered at times when it becomes impossible to know everyone who is paying attention.

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Friday, June 25

Touching Consumers: The Space Bringing Us Closer Might Keep Us Apart


Researchers at MIT Sloan School of Management seem to have found evidence related to something that used to be second nature to advertisers. Touch matters, right down to the details of a business card.

The paper choice, cut, weight: they all matter. Flimsy cards tend to be taken with a little less enthusiasm. The same holds true with most collateral. I once kept a Cirque du Soleil press kit around for several years, simply because the stock felt much more like silk than paper. My firm's first brochure (when we had brochures) considered touch too. Spot varnish across the cover gave life to near invisible words with a tilt and a texture contrast meant to be felt.

Sure, many advertising professionals still know all this, especially those who work with packaging. But there are an increasing number of creatives who don't consider touch. Why would they? For the most part, collateral is falling out of favor for computers. Maybe there is an unseen impact associated with the shift.

What MIT Discovered About Touch.

Through a series of experiments, Joshua Ackerman, an assistant professor of marketing at MIT Sloan (along with John Bargh, a professor of psychology at Yale University; and Christopher Nocera, a PhD candidate at Harvard University), tested how weight, texture and hardness can unconsciously influence judgments. They suggest that their results have implications for anyone and everyone, ranging from job seekers to marketers.

“What we touch unconsciously influences how we think,” says Ackerman. “In situations where evaluations and decisions really matter, we need to pay attention to our physical surroundings and, in particular, how we engage these surroundings through our sense of touch.”

According to their statement, the researchers suggest that interactions involving touch, from handshakes to cheek kisses, may have critical influences on social interactions. First impressions are especially liable, with control over the entire environment becoming important.

• Heavier clipboards influenced evaluators in choosing job candidates. Judged candidates whose resumes were seen on a heavy clipboard were rated as qualified and more serious about the position.
• Rough puzzle pieces tended to describe a story about social interaction as harsh, when compared to participants handling smooth puzzle pieces.
• Participants holding a hard block while hearing a story about a workplace interaction tended to judge the employee as more rigid when compared those who held a soft blanket.
• Subjects seated in hard chairs while haggling over the price of a car tended to be less willing to negotiate than those who sat in softer and more comfortable chairs.

Electronics May Play A Role In How We Process Information.

While it wasn't part of the study, the clipboard experiment seems particularly applicable to an increasingly tech reliant world. After all, there is a growing reliance on communication where marketers have no control over the environment, which could be influencing online interactions.

Does it make a difference whether the computer is set up in a cubicle, noisy living room, or open office with a window view? Does an expanded keyboard change the perspective of what's being written? Does a mouse feel better than a touch pad? And does ergonomics, which we seldom hear about anymore, change the pace of the interaction?

Who knows? Harsher critics may indeed be sitting at home on uncomfortable chairs in front of old computers. And there may be subtle differences between the communication and correspondence on a Droid vs. an iPhone. For all we know, there might even be an unseen element that will change the way people feel about the iPhone 4 vs. the original titanium-backed models.

The point to consider here might be futile or especially important as we increasingly rely on electronic communication, sacrificing our ability to communicate with touch, texture, and weight. At minimum, thinking about the impact might also be important, at the very least, to gain an understanding of the people sitting at an opposing screen.

Social media, after all, isn't necessarily one-to-many communication. It's often one-to-one communication, played over several hundred times a day. Except, as noted, we have virtually no perspective of where any of us are at any given moment or what unseen influences might be contributing to how we communicate, with the advantage going to those who know how to make the environment disappear and fade away in to the background.

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Thursday, June 24

Cleaning Lenses: How To Wipe Away Marketing Woes


“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is — infinite.” — William Blake

Many marketing and advertising professionals learn the lesson too late. Most campaign strategies are less than optimal. Sometimes the problem is blamed on outside help when the problem might be internal. Sometimes it is the outside help. And sometimes, even when sales are setting records, dominant brands have to start all over.

Why does it happen? It happens because perception plays a powerful role in the decision making process. And perception, despite its emphasis, is usually muddled.

The lesson, not to rely on perception, recently came up in a new client meeting. When one of the agencies we work with asked where the majority of the client's marketing dollars went, the client said "the Yellow Pages" without blinking. Discussion followed.

"The Yellow Pages."

"What are the Yellow Pages? Do people still use phone books?"

"Well, we get all of our non-referred business from the Yellow Pages. It works."

"Where else do you advertise?"

"Nowhere else. The Yellow Pages works so well, we invest almost all our marketing dollars there."

"Did you ever consider that most of your non-referred business comes from the Yellow Pages because that is the only place anybody can find you?"

Exactly. Even measurement doesn't mean much unless you're willing to clean the lenses every now and again. Truth be told, I only know of one Yellow Pages success story. There is a local restaurant that published its entire menu inside the archaic directory. It was the least expensive way to get inside every hotel room in Las Vegas, where they deliver. Pretty smart.

"The new limitations are the human ones of perception." — Milton Babbitt

I know a few social media pros who are probably laughing at the very idea of the Yellow Pages. They're like me. I toss the bulky book in favor of drawer space. And all those advertising dollars right along with it.

However, some social media pros nodding in delight might stop chuckling about now because they do the same thing (you know who you are). They declare advertising dead based on the case studies of companies that succeeded on social media alone. But did they really? I can only imagine a mix might have increased sales or helped them reach those sales records faster.

Similarly, reading all those posts that suggest Facebook is better than Twitter (or Twitter is better than Facebook) and Reddit is better than Digg (or Digg is better than Reddit) seem pretty stale to me. It has nothing to with the platforms as much as it has to do with the interests of the online community, the type of information being shared, the type of business establishing a presence, and the proficiency of the person managing the account. Right. They all work. And none of them work.

I recently advised one of the clients we work with direct to include their social media hub address on all of their in-establishment collateral. He blinked.

"I thought we wanted to move away from traditional advertising."

"No, we want to engage your customers," I said. "There they are, right in front of you. Now all we have to do is engage them when they aren't here too."

"Advertising, public relations, and social media is all about perception. But perception has nothing to do with planning it." — Richard Becker.

Did you ever read "Lamb" by Christopher Moore? One of my favorite passages from the book occurs when a Buddhist monk sets two small cups on the table and then proceeds to pour tea until they begin to overflow.

"Hey, doofus!" the protagonist yells. "You're spilling the f**king tea!"

The monk smiled and set the bowl on the table.

"How can I give you tea if your cup is already full?"

Marketing, advertising, public relations, social media, and communication are much like that. It doesn't matter how good you are. If your cup or your client's cup is already full of opinions, then there is nothing I could ever do for you. And no one else either.

Case in point. If you never read Lamb and the tea story still sounds familiar, you might have seen it in the movie 2012. Maybe they robbed Moore outright. Or maybe that's only my perception. For all I know, Moore could have robbed the story too.

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Wednesday, June 23

Going Somewhere: Why Bhakdi's Web 3.0 Feels Like Web 2.1


Johannes Bhakdi, chef knowledge architect of sophotec.com, published an interesting little book earlier this year that has gone largely unnoticed. There many be some good reasons for that.

The book comes across as a fleshed out PowerPoint. The price point is high. And for all his experience working with companies like McDonald's, MasterCard, Microsoft, Siemens, and Unilever for BBDO and J. Walter Thompson, Bhakdi isn't necessarily established in the social media mix where this book might be appreciated (despite the price point).

Like many creative strategists, he tends to be less visible despite his contributions. And with the exception of Slideshare and perhaps a slow loading Klatcher site, his social media presence doesn't seem especially established. There may even be an irony in that Bhakdi wanted to implement his book using a model in the book, which suggests success provided the marketing is right. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced the marketing is right.

Web 3.0 User-Generated Business • and why everyone becomes a media entrepreneur

But where Bhakdi is at the moment hardly matters within the context of the book. The real question is whether or not there is any real value inside the pages of Web 3.0 - User-Generated Business. There is some.

The Historic Context. The opening chapters present a quick history of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. They are interesting enough for any newcomers to the Web, with an underlying emphasis on why Web 2.0 was a disaster. Specifically, the average online author earns about 25 cents per hour. Yep. That's a disaster for anyone except hobbyists.

The Theoretical Sidebar. One of my favorite portions of Web 3.0 has little to do with the Internet. What Bhakdi does very clearly is define the two faces of capitalism against socialism. The latter, he says, tends to organize people in working for the common good but falls short because then people are less inclined to contribute anything useful.

As for capitalism, he discusses how one facet can be destructive and exploitive, driven by ruthless people looking to earn quick profits for as little value as possible. And he stresses that it doesn't have to be that way. Most business people have a more transformative view of capitalism and add positive value on their terms and then change the world with a win-win construct. It's eloquently explained, certainly worth a follow-up post here someday.

The Visionary Construct. Personally, I was never very fond of the assumption that everybody would become a media entrepreneur, but I've always been comfortable that "anybody" could be. This one word makes a big difference.

Otherwise, I've never understood this ever-present assumption that people want to be media entrepreneurs. From everybody I've spoken with online and off for the last ten years, most people can't be bothered. Sure, some like to create and share content, but most just want to connect with friends, play games, and read the news.

Still, even for that small percentage of people who do want to create content, Bhakdi raises one good point. The current Web 2.0 structure allows platform providers to generate income from content creators who work for free. Ergo, Twitter would be nothing without the flurry of moderately visible pros who put up content and contribute daily.

However, Bhakdi's solution to fix this doesn't necessarily add up as much as he would like. Eventually, he sees Web 3.0 as a place where content is assigned value. In other words, quality content would receive higher compensation over the shareable silliness that tends to drive Web 2.0.

As much as I agree with the idea, I'm not sure it's pragmatic. Intellectual property has variable values that are largely based on perception.

The Blueprint. Bhakdi does a solid job at outlining a social media content business model in the last chapter. For me, I wish it came much earlier. Reading 150 pages of anecdotal conversation when the real content starts on page 151 is troublesome. It's the primary reason I read so few social media books.

By the time you arrive at the last chapter, Bhakdi outlines Web 3.0 into three parts: outreach (social networks), core media assets (a site or blog), and opportunities for monetization (Zazzle, Ad Sense, Lulu.) There is nothing wrong with that except that it's what exists now. So unless I missed something, the blueprint is not so unprecedented.

Final Thoughts About Web 3.0 User-Generated Business

Web 3.0 User-Generated Business has some high points, but it's difficult to consider it a book. It's a PowerPoint conversion with added conversation. There are a few high points and novices might find it worthwhile. But anybody beyond the entry level of monetization concepts will find it anti-climactic.

Simply put, if you are among the relatively small audience who is already dabbling in becoming a media entrepreneur, you aren't likely to find a breakthrough in this book. However, if you are a blogger who is just considering monetization, then Bhakdi's book may help you get up to speed, assuming you haven't connected with people who write about this stuff daily.

Otherwise, Web 3.0 User-Generated Business comes across as what I call a "business card book," which is indicative of most books being introduced in the field. I don't get it. Most social media books are long on attempting to demonstrate thought leadership by sharing what a healthy percentage already know with the shrinking pool of people who don't know anything.

Further, in using his own social media assets as examples, the book seems to miss out on a viable purpose. If the book, using its own blueprint, aims at being the revenue generator, then more care might have been taken to ensure it didn't pitch platforms owned by the author. That said, the book seems less interesting than the impossibly slow-loading Klatcher (the first time anyway) or Bhakdi's posts and presentations. Get to know him in those places first.
 

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