MFA Not MBA

"If you are looking for real fans don’t take advantage of their trust in your brand by delivering..."

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:57:00 -0400

“If you are looking for real fans don’t take advantage of their trust in your brand by delivering them an experience that isn’t genuine. If you deliver fake authenticity be transparent about what it is, why you are doing it, and how it is a benefit for them and for you.”

- My latest piece on Social Media Today

Avoiding Fauxthenticity in Social Media | Social Media Today

"Persuading lost customers to return to the fold is a bit like trying to win back a girlfriend:..."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:37:00 -0400

“Persuading lost customers to return to the fold is a bit like trying to win back a girlfriend: Occasionally it works, more often it ends in heartbreak.”

- I don’t believe they gave Ron Johnson enough time at JC Penney. He made some sharp turns, some too quick but overall he had a sound vision. Jerking the ship back to its original course seems foolhardy. The best you will get is to be back where you were, still losing value each year. Is it better to be a stable also-ran or to gut a company, deal with a couple of dismal years of collapsed stock prices and bet on the wisdom of your plan for reinvention? My impulse is the latter but its not so easy with billions at stake. I understand why the board pulled the plug on Johnson but I am not sure that move will save the company either. Sometimes a brand can be reinvented, sometimes it can’t.

If you were in charge what would you do? I would sell off as much real estate as I could, source only from companies that do their manufacturing in the United States and reinvent as “America’s true department store.”

J.C. Penney Rehires Myron Ullman to Clean Up Ron Johnson’s Mess - Businessweek

Image Isn't Everything But It's Something

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 17:08:38 -0400

It’s always dangerous to center a business around a charismatic leader/founder. Once a business gets to a certain size it needs to distance itself from its creator in order to thrive. This is currently going on with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. I believe that part of the strategy of bringing the indomitable Sheryl Sandberg in was to make Facebook less Zuck and more empire.

What happens when this doesn’t work, when a company and its founder are inextricably tied? You get Apple. Yes, Jobs left the company he founded but he returned and the company’s best innovations are seen as his visions. Now in the wake of Jobs the question of just how much of his wisdom and innovation is in the coffers seems to continue to haunt the company.

I’m an Apple loyalist, it was the first computer I used and I’ve been an advocate of the brand for decades, back when we were the few, the derided, the often software-less. And yet I believe in order to survive in the post-Jobs era, Apple has to prove it’s more than it’s founder. That’s why I find it very bizarre that Tim Cook and the Apple leadership are going through with plans for the new circular Apple office planned for Cupertino.The massive four-story doughnut designed by Norman Foster is beautiful certainly and very Jobs but does it make sense for today’s Apple? I’m not sure.

Does it matter to the Apple consumer if the Jobs vision of a circular office space is realized? Is the building essential for the employees to have faith in the vision of the company? Image has its value but if you were to put a price on it would that price be the same price as Apple is about it spend on the new building? I don’t think so.

Instead, I think it sends a message that they are continuing to walk in fading footsteps. Apple should build new headquarters that reflect a new vision. Steve was one of a kind and should be honored by Apple always but not with a multi-billion dollar mausoleum. It feels like Xanadu, like Hearst Castle, a beautiful folly, the sort I’d like to write a book about but not the sort I’d like my investment in a company to finance.

The Shadow Economy

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:51:26 -0400

The shadow economy, I knew of the black market of course but I first heard the term 5 years ago at the Milken Institute conference in a presentation by economist Alvin Toffler. It stuck in my head as economic models rarely do because it made perfect sense for how the future would evolve. The shadow economy is a similar concept to the much-vaunted “dark social” which is that not every transaction is trackable and appears in public space. Socially sharing can be private, through email, IM, etc. and not all people participate in public exchanges, duly tracked and taxed. People work “under the table”, they barter, they find other ways to exchange value. Now with devices like Square it’s even easier to do person-to-person transactions without even needing ready cash. Of course that leaves its own trail but still it’s increasingly possible to exist in this world without a job, on side gigs and piecework alone, the way it used to be.

The shadow has its downsides. Illegality lurks in the shadows, without accountability there are fewer protections. It’s not always a choice, it’s often sprung of desperation.

As the jobs numbers continue to shift, more and more people slip into the shadows. They disappear off the lists but they aren’t gone. They are in the shadows, they trade work and goods for whatever they can get.

I used to believe that the world would evolve into one economy, one currency, one government. The problems of the euro are disabusing me of that notion reminding me that all efforts to eradicate duality are doomed to failure.

Love And Commerce

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:34:00 -0400

For the past year or so I’ve been think about customer centricity. It is a marketing term but I think it has applications for writers as well because it’s all about shifting from audience on a vague level to honing in on those who like whatt you have done already and want more. Focus on your most passionate fans rather then always trying to get new customers. That’s part of the thinking in Think Like A Rock Star: How To Create Social Media And Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans by Mack Collier. Collier’s premise is that companies can learn a lot from rock stars and how they interact with fans.

What does it mean to think like a rock star? It’s about being with your fans and sharing your world with them. It’s not a top down conversation, it’s an equal one. Don’t just speak to your fans, be with them. Share their enthusiasm. Give them backstage access. Empower them by offering them direct access to a person at the company. People who are proud to be identified as fans need a name by which to identify themselves, a place to gather, and buy in from the company.

How do you create value for your customers? Don’t just talk about the product, see the bigger picture, sell the dream and then deliver on the promise.Teaching creates value and deepens engagement. Rewarding existing behavior rather than trying to compel new behavior helps create a stronger attachment. Love and commerce are intertwined, we support businesses we feel a connection with.

Brands have internal conversations all the time, exposing those conversations and making them part of the public narrative can increase fan engagement. Brand ambassadors are essentially super fans, willing to work on behalf of the brand and spread the word. Give them special access, empower them to advocate for the brand in public, and let them help grow your brand. Treat them with love and they will love you back. This should be basic for most brands but sometimes we are so busy focusing on customer acquisition that we forget that the most important customer is the one you already have.

Why Corporate Culture Isn't A Luxury, It's An Essential

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 23:36:00 -0500

What do employees want most? In The Culture Secret: How To Empower People And Companies No Matter What You Sell, Dr. David Vik says they are looking for purpose, autonomy, and compensation. Your company vision needs to take these factors into account, making it clear to employees what they need to do and why it matters. Having a vision is more important than a mission statement because it is the guiding force of the company that lets every employee know why it is so important that they work hard. Vision leads to purpose and why your company exists. This is where corporate philanthropy and a shared mission can come into play. It’s not just enough to have a vision and a purpose, these values have to be reinforced to employees on a regular basis.

There are two parts to successful office culture, the structure and the living organism. Culture is not about stuff. It’s not about ping pong tables, nap pods, and free snacks although those things can be part of a successful corporate culture. People, both customers and employees, want to feel like they matter. One of the most important lessons in this book is that poorly treated employees pass that treatment on to customers. If you want happy customers you need happy employees and that makes corporate culture vitally important to all successful companies.

Businesses and people also have to have something that distinguishes them from the rest. Treat your employees as individuals, each different, each special, and they will help you uncover what is special about your organization.

It takes time, purpose, and direction to create and live your values and they need to be the backbone of your organization. Be open about your culture so employees know upfront what they are signing on to. Even once you create the ideal culture there is no guarantee it will stick. Culture is not static, it is an organism that grows and changes over time.

One of the best lessons in this book for larger companies is to value your HR department, ditch the stigma, change it to a human empowerment department. Offer fun and educational experiences. Give your employees great experiences and they will provide them for others. Help them set personal goals first, professional goals second. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that workers are valuable. This wretched job market has made people seem expendable. They never are and strong corporate culture doesn’t just give you happy employees, it leads to a better business.

What's Your Motivation?

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:35:00 -0500

When I teach fiction or critique work one thing I always ask is what is the character’s motivation? Without motivation, nothing makes sense. Why we do what we do is nearly as important as the acts themselves. In the workplace however, things can often be quite different, often the only motivation is the paycheck at the end of the week. Frankly, that’s not enough. An employee who is working only for the money and not out of any pride in workmanship or joy in the work will never do any more than the basics of what is required and at any hint of more work, or even a change in the work, that employee will dig in their heels.

Motivating people through business change isn’t easily done but it helps if there is a good reason for what is taking place. What happen when what is in it for me also benefits the greater good? That’s a win-win for all. Successful change requires an acknowledgment of PROI, personal return on investment. Selfish Altruism by Moe Glenner looks at how to create change by focusing on potential benefits and how to make those benefits clear to all stakeholders.

Why do you do what you do at work? Is it because the boss told you to? As you might imagine, that’s not exactly the most compelling argument for doing great work. But if you feel like what you are doing is important, that you are the best one to do this work, and that it will benefit you in the long run, that’s a much better motivator.

How do you incentivize people to do what will benefit them anyway? Part of the battle is clear communication. When people don’t know why they are doing something, they are less likely to be deeply motivated. Feeling important, valued, and inspired can be a major incentive. The myth is that people work for money first but the reality is that we also work to feel both productive and valued. When we issue a directive without explaining what is behind it, people are only offered two choices, blind obedience or rebellion. It’s the same thing I say to people about both fiction and non-fiction writing: don’t just tell me what, tell me why. It’s a simple idea but a powerful one. Motivation makes the world go round.

The Three Masons, The Holiday Ham, And Other Tired Business Tales

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:19:18 -0500

I love business books and I read a lot of them. But I’ve noticed a trend that I find distracting, the same stories repeat over and over. I can’t count the times I have seen the story of the grandmother’s recipe which calls for cutting the ends off the roast. The daughter follows the recipe not knowing that the reason for cutting the roast (or the ham, or even in a weird variant reported by a friend, the potato) in order to fit in the pan. This story is repeated in book after book Some authors are even cheeky enough to claim it as a family story, similar to what happens with urban legends.

The other one I have seen a lot is the story of the three masons building the cathedral where one mason is breaking rocks and doesn’t know why and hates his job, the second mason is building a wall and is more engaged in his job, the third is the happiest of all because he knows his rock-breaking efforts are leading to the creation of a cathedral.

There’s nothing wrong with using these stories. The first illustrates why we need to question established routines. The second shows the value of making sure employees know what they are working toward and are engaged. They are good and powerful stories but when I see them in every single book they lose more and more of their ability to delight and engage. I can’t be the only person who has seen these stories in multiple places. Also these stories aren’t yours or connected to someone you know. They are allegories, they are universal, and ultimately they are generic.

We all fall into clichés, well-worn examples, and much-used case studies. I’m as guilty as anyone and I’m writing this post as a wakeup call for myself as well. If you are storytelling for business, get personal, get real, and get specific. The world needs original thought: yours.

Real Influence: Better Results Through Paying Attention

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 23:00:00 -0500

Influence isn’t just about getting what you want, it’s about understanding what others want. In Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing And Gain Without Giving In, Mark Goulston and John Ullmen go beyond what we often perceive as influence, being persuading to do something in the short term, and into the deeper levels of really being able to connect with people. True influence as defined in the book is about leading others toward better results.

The book contains many examples of the type of misunderstandings that occur in the workplace all the time. When we try to push our agendas we often fail to get the desired outcome simply because we are coming from our point of view rather than theirs. We fail to see what others see. Being right has its own dangers and shortcomings. Don’t assume that others know what you know.

The people who are best at persuading aren’t forceful persuaders. People who are inspirational are the most influential to us. Relationships can’t be purely transactional or they will go nowhere. Real influence is about the long tail, creating real relationships without an eye toward making them transactional.

It begins with being able to truly listen and understand what others are saying. Can you get out of your own head and focus on the other person? Real listening is not just about what is being said but how it is being said. It is about being able to exist in what the authors term their there instead of remaining trapped in your own space.

Although this is a book about influence, it is also a book about using your power for the greater good. What is influence worth acquiring if not to use it do powerful things, even if it is just about making others feel better? This book is more than just a book about influence, it is about true and lasting connection.

We all like toll think we are good listeners. I’ve conducted interviews so I like to think I am a good listener but I watched myself this week. I do listen until, and this is a big until, until the person says something that sparks my brain then I jump in. I pop right out of listening mode and into my own headspace. The trick is to maintain active listening and stay focused on the other person.

Do You Need Multiple Careers To Survive In Today's World?

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:40:00 -0500

If you’ve ever felt like the world kept asking you to choose who you wanted to be when you grew up but you never chose because you could never quite decide on just one thing: here is your book. Mash Up!: How To Use Your Multiple Skills To Give You An Edge, Earn More Money, And Be Happier by Ian Sanders and David Sloly celebrates the idea that there is no longer one linear career path.

Today’s careers tend to be made up of more places of employment and many different types of jobs. It’s a life that many creative types, artists, writers, actors, etc., have embraced for years but it is increasingly becoming more mainstream. I often say that Los Angeles is the land of the side gig but really these days more and more people are wearing multiple hats.

The authors refers to this transition as “going plural” and the book includes many profiles of those who have made the leap, from musician Dave Stewart to Gary Vaynerchuk. There are also full interviews with many mash-up artists, writers, film makers, even a zookeeper.

A career composed of many skills and gigs still has a common unifier. You are probably not your job title. A job title doesn’t convey much. It’s very easy to just keep going, doing what you are doing, without really thinking about what your overall niftier is. Take a look at your LinkedIn profile or job history, what links all your work? When I tried this I went into it with the idea that in my profile all signs would point to writer. But what my career really is about is information distribution and display from my early days in marketing and the advertising side of magazines through my career as a writer and as a member of a social marketing team. For me it’s not just the message but how it conveyed. So in my career, I am a writer, a researcher, and a teacher with a central focus on social media and communication. It’s not where I would have imagined myself but it is firmly where I am.

How do you carve out time for a plural career? It takes a lot of time management and a certain commitment to working a lot of the time. If you aren’t comfortable juggling multiple tasks this is not for you. It also involves self promotion. Essentially the hustle never ends and so you have to be up to the challenge. In today’s world things can change quickly having multiple paths means you are better protected if one of your jobs ends. I have found that agility and flexibility are the most important job skills of all because we can’t control what happens, we can only control how we responded.

We hear a lot about personal branding these days but in Fresh...

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 23:16:00 -0500

We hear a lot about personal branding these days but in Fresh Passion, Michael D. Brown takes the sometimes vague concept and breaks it into a series of easily digestible action items. The subtitle of the book is “get a brand or die a generic” and Brown believes that having a brand is important to executives as well as entrepreneurs.

Before you can perfect your brand you need to be certain about who you are, what you want, and what you can achieve. Do you have the necessary skills and determination? Are your goals aspirational and yet obtainable? What is your perfect day at work like? Brown walks his readers through a series of questions designed to bring focus and clarity.

When it comes to developing your brand, the instructions are similar to those a new company might take. Brown recommends getting a board of “brand” advisors that can advise you in specific areas. He also uses checklists with assignments and check-ins for accountability and recommends scheduling conference calls with yourself. He is a fan of elaborate plans and checklists, all designed to get the reader to better run corporation you. He sees a job interview is a form of customer service.

Brown has served his time in the corporate trenches and seems to have delighted in doing so and many of his stories are of the challenges and triumphs of his career in large organizations. His advice on elevator pitches and articulated value make sense to anyone who hears the phrase ROI on a regular basis.

The techniques in the book are perhaps best suited for those in sales, customer service, and marketing but the techniques are applicable to all disciplines. After all, most of us could use a little less negativity and a little more passion when it comes to facing another day at the office. Thinking of yourself as a package or product feels a bit cynical or cold but being able to see the yourself clearly as a valuable commodity has its advantages when considering your role in the marketplace. This is the world we live in now, a world where, if you can’t articulate your worth, clearly and with enthusiasm, you will be at a disadvantage.

Fresh PASSION - Get A Brand Or Die A Generic

The Money Code: Using Storytelling To Probe Your Financial Mindset

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:47:00 -0500

I don’t always enjoy reading books about money but part of my “embrace the numbers” resolution for 2013 includes not shrinking away from the financial side of life and yes, I, like many writers, am not always as smart as I could be with money. The Money Code by Joe John Duran is a new self-help book that uses the familiar storytelling trope of using a fictional character to experience the book’s life lessons. We follow a character named Jack as he meets with “the Alchemist,” a mysterious figure who promises to breaks Jack’s financial fugue.

Financial decisions are driven by fear of losing money and fear of missing opportunities. Often we are unclear on what our true priorities are at any given moment. People have three minds when it comes to money: they either want to avoid pain, feel good, or honor a commitment to someone else. Just about everything we spend money on fits into these buckets and most of us are strongly biased in one direction. When sharing money discussions with a spouse or partner it’s important to know your dominant mindset as well as the dominant mindset of your partner. Often it seems that fear-based savers and pleasure-centered spenders tend to pair up which can make for some difficult conversations.

Duran advises using a checklist to make big decisions. This helps manage the emotions that are part of the decision and also creates room to discuss possible alternatives and compromises. I’ve found this to be true as well. For the past year I’ve used Mint to track my spending and it makes a big difference to see my net results in black and white (or in my case mostly red).

While the book doesn’t appear to be as all out transformative as the Jack character in the book makes it out to be, it does provide a good framework for considering spending decisions. One of my issues with the use of storytelling in these types of self help books is that it the transformation of the character is often so dramatic het it can obscure the journey of education that the reader takes. Duran provides a good framework for thinking about money and psychology but the plot line of the mysterious Alchemist is more distracting than inspiring.

You can download some of the tools mentioned in the book at http://www.mymoneycode.com/.

Preston Bailey On How Creative Types Can Succeed In Business

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 15:20:36 -0500

Floral designer to the stars, Preston Bailey makes it all look easy. He’s got the glamorous life with travel, a high-profile partner, great clients, and in his 60s, he looks great doing it all. But behind the grace and style is a lot of hard work. Bailey believes in three guiding principles: generosity, empathy, and trust. He believes everyone is capable of succeeding at a creative services business if they are willing to put heart and soul into a passion. In “Dear Preston: Doing Business With Our Hearts,” Bailey advises aspiring creatives on how to start, grow, and maintain a business. The book is structured around letters he has received and covers issues of publicity, branding, pricing, and more. He never loses sight of the fact that he is speaking to creatives and the fact that his business is by nature a glamorous and exciting one makes for pleasant reading. In addition to doling out business advice he drops more than a few names along the way including Oprah and Donald Trump.

Overall the book highlights an important fact—business and the creative life don’t inhabit separate spheres. Often we tend to shield our creative selves from numbers, from sales, from the realities of promotion. We regard the business or scientific mind as distinctly different from the creative mindset when the truth is that the two are often inextricably intertwined. Bailey gives solid advice on how to work with clients and yield to their vision, not always an easy task for the creative professional. He combines the creative life with the customer service angle easily such as his story of how he uses his “morning pages” (a tip from “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron) to deal with frustrations over a job that did not work out as he would have liked.

Bailey gets into the financial details of creating contracts, pricing appropriately, and making sure clients honor them and pay on time. This is the part of the business no creative likes to deal with so Bailey suggests hiring help including a lawyer. To his credit, Bailey is painfully honest about the mistakes that led to him bring $1.5 million in debt. Many of the mistakes he made are common ones made by creative types who don’t always know how to best take care of themselves and pay attention to the bottom line.

Creatives in business simply can’t live in a world of pure artistic bliss. This is true for writers, designers, cake decorators, anyone who sells their creative output. Embracing the numbers isn’t always fun but it is essential for success. We need to nurture the artist within but we also have to protect our creative hearts with a firm financial foundation. This book is good inspiration for doing both.

Chris Anderson Predicts Our High Tech DIY Future In Makers

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 15:21:00 -0500

When Chris Anderson says the next iteration of the web is the real world he isn’t just being cute. The editor of Wired magazine isn’t just making a prediction about the next big thing, he’s talking about a full scale cultural revolution detailed in his new book, Makers. The last ten years brought about a world in which we have become our own publishers. The next ten may well turn us into our own manufacturers, able to custom craft much of what we need in a wholly new way. Anderson sees the Maker Movement as a transformation of the old way of doing things. He sees it as having three core components: it uses digital design tools, designs are shared in online communities, and designs are able to be easily replicated in small or large quantities. In the past decade we’ve increasingly become a nation that gets its goods from far away. The Maker Movement shows a pathway back toward local production, not in factories, but with a new leaner model.

What does it mean if we are all designers now? Anderson, who brought “the long tail” into modern parlance with his book of the same name, says we are in the long tail of things. Today’s relatively primitive 3-D printers are just the beginning of a world where we will be able to design ad print much of what we need in minutes. And perhaps most importantly it is personalized to your specifications. We live in a world where we expect personalization at every turn. With social search, we now see a customized version of the web based in what we have looked for in the past. Online stores offer tailored recommendations and anything you search for in that store may chase you around the web in the form of cookie-enabled advertising. It all comes down to algorithms. We can also use algorithms to design some pretty amazing products.

Anderson isn’t just a writer, he’s a tinkerer of the highest order. Naturally he’s a participant in the new Maker economy and has created a whole social community around his efforts. He also sees the Maker economy working on a grander scale designing cars and durable goods.

We already know the new face of business is global, interconnected, and immediate but it is also lean and outsourced. Today not every brand needs a factory but there might be a future in which even fewer brands need to rely on massive manufacturing to scale into a large business. As Anderson points out, the advantage gap between “make it here” and “make it there” is steadily shrinking. How businesses get funded has also shifted. Sites like Kickstarter can provide crowd funding, forever changing the traditional business loan process. It all points to a pretty bright future, one in which less control rests in the hands of major corporations. While being a true Maker may not appeal to many of us, taking an active role in deciding what products are made should be something that can be adopted by anyone.

There Are No Blueprints For Magic--Finding The Click Moment

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:22:00 -0500

There are plenty of books that try to play Monday morning quarterback and trace how the huge successes happen. We all want to know, hoping maybe we can learn some magic to transform our own lives. So many of the great moments however, seem completely random, a gift of serendipity and luck. Is it possible to catch lightning in a bottle, to plan for the bolt from the blue? In The Click Moment, Frans Johansson seeks to find ways to make what seems random become more likely.

Much of success is comprised of training, hard work, and persistence. But then there are those sudden successes that captivate the general public simply because we want to believe that if it happened for them it can happen for us. How much of luck is just being open to opportunity? It turns out that while we can’t directly engineer for success, we can make it more likely for magic to happen by inviting randomness into our lives; surrounding ourselves with interesting people; and pursuing passions wherever they may take us. Of course these are the same things that can also invite chaos and disruption into our lives. To open the door to possibility is also to open it to risk. As is often said, it can take a lot of failure to create a success which is why it makes sense to diversify and not risk it all on one thing.

Part of harnessing the “click moment” is about knowing when to seize an opportunity. It’s also about a certain instinct for the amazing. It’s the marriage of the right opportunity with the right person that leads to greatness. Work hard, stay open, and when something starts to go your way, double down and hang on.

Not So Much A Resolution As A Goal

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:10:45 -0500

My 2013 Resolution—Embrace Numbers

Writers and data analysts rarely inhabit the same department let alone the same body. There just seems to be something antithecal about numbers and words. But the truth is that writers and most especially journalists need to give up their childhood math fears and embrace numbers. That’s my goal for 2013. Because yes, big data is upon us, and journalists who don’t have comfort and ease with numbers are working at a serious disadvantage.

It won’t be easy. I have a strong math bias. I remember being in middle school and tasking my first early career aptitude test. Weather and science was one of my loves and so I put down meteorologist as one of my potential careers. The results were clear, I could be a lawyer but not a scientist based purely on my math results. It was true, math never came easy, but I also was never pushed to discover its magic. My first advisor in college was a math professor, she took one look at my high school aptitude scores and prescribed a rich curriculum of history and humanities. I remained a space nerd and did muddle my way through basic astronomy but mostly numbers remained a requirement to be borne rather than a field of exploration.

This is the year I flip the script. My future depends on understanding numbers, on diving deep into stats and on learning to storytell with numbers. I will not skip over them. I will think about what they are teaching me and how I can share that story with others. I will read white papers and studies, I will get better at synthesizing data. I will take classes on statistics and analysis as needed.

It’s a resolution that has me fired up because its’s about my favorite thing, learning new stuff. May we all learn great things in 2013!

The Tao Of Twitter: Float Or Swim?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:17:00 -0500

This week I was reading a book about Twitter which is a little like reading cookbooks—it’s a prelude to action. The whole time I was reading it, I felt a little silly. I’ve been on Twitter since 2007. Do I need a book about how to tweet? Maybe I do, maybe we all do. The tragedy in Connecticut has me thinking about how we communicate and how we use Twitter to do it. The good is that when tragedy strikes people use Twitter to get information out fast, to communicate important details, share concerns etc.

The bad is that it can be citizen journalism gone haywire. Virtual mobs swarmed people with names similar to those of the believed suspect. Reporters, desperate for sources, turned to virtual stalking in order to find parents of children in the classrooms to talk to . Wrong profiles and photos were made public on national media channels, and people going through almost unimaginable pain and fear were pestered online by the media just for making it known that they had a personal connection to the event.

When tragedies happen, we all panic, we rush to judgement, we are frantic to find solutions. And we also flood the system with our own feelings. But I noticed that Facebook and Twitter were used differently during the tragedy. Facebook users were slower to respond, they generally shared news stories or exclamations of sorrow and prayers for the families. Twitter, on the other hand, was immediate and worked almost like a bucket brigade with information being passed from handle to handle, growing in reach with each retweet.

My personal social tendency when something like this happens is to go silent. I don’t say anything. Not because I’m not on social media but because unless my words will add something vital, I’d prefer to hang back. Sometimes you float in the river of the tao, sometimes you swim. Something there is nothing to do but listen.

Review of The Tao of Twitter by Mark Schaefer

Twitter isn’t for everyone. Unlike Facebook, universally used and frequently reviled, Twitter has less adoption but more passion shared by those who truly engage. Studies show that around 60% of people give up on Twitter within a few weeks. Mark Schaefer was nearly one of those people but a random bored evening led him to seek entertainment on Twitter and the magic caught hold, so much so that he penned a book called The Tao of Twitter in 2011.

The Tao of Twitter isn’t about monetizing Twitter, it’s about letting relationships evolve and grow. It’s about using Twitter for listening, crowd sourcing, and yes, a bit of self expression and self promotion. The book includes tips for finding people to follow, creating an appealing profile, and using Twitter to have meaningful conversations. Many people who hear about Twitter and want to jump in now often feel like they ave to catch up quickly. This can lead to the temptation to buy followers or take an even bigger short cut and just buy a whole account. These followers, however, aren’t the people you want to have conversations with and amassing massive amounts of followers isn’t really the point of Twitter, it’s just a flashy metric.

What makes Twitter most appealing, and also most confusing, is that everyone has a voice. Schaefer offers tips on honing your style. The tips are similar to some that I also saw in “Renegades Write The Rules” including the idea that your tweets should fall into several clear categories that offer a good balance of both personal and professional related content. It may seem overwhelming at first and another potential short cut option presents itself, hiring someone to tweet for you. This is rarely a good idea. People can sense authenticity and genuine voice even if they aren’t aware of it. And as is true with followers, quality is far more important than quantity when it comes to making Twitter work for you. Using a shortener like bit.ly that tracks clicks can help you evaluate the success of your links and fine tune your approach. Tweets don’t have a long lifespan of activity, it generally lasts from 1 to 23 days. Facebook has groups, Twitter has lists. Lists serve as quick guides of who to follow, so be sure to include yourself on any list you create.

The Tao of Twitter is at the core, the belief that your Twitter experience is what you make it. It can be customer service, brand evangelism, shameless self-promotion, real connection—whatever you put into it is what you get back. The most important thing is to jump in to the river. Take part in Twitter chats, retweet strangers, crowdsource—engage.

What Is The Role Of Brand Journalism?

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 13:54:00 -0500

I’ve never considered myself a true journalist. I never earned my stripes in the newsroom. Even in high school, I was the movie reviewer, not the young Brenda Starr uncovering lunchroom drama. Later doing traffic management for lifestyle magazines, I was always running interference between editorial and advertising factions. This was before the rise of advertorial and sponsored content both of which I dealt with in the web world at AOL. The web has evolved with its own rules and PR firms have adapted. In the last ten years, press trips, generous gifts, and special favors have spread from outside the walls of the larger magazines and institutions and been democratized into the hands of any blogger with a laptop and a modest fan base. It’s created a bit of a gray area in terms of who is a journalist and who is a blogger and has led to a certain homogenization of content but it has also created careers and opportunities for many.

Now it seems we find ourselves in the next iteration. The brands no longer need to seed their content into other magazines and outlets, they can create their own multimedia content that may be richer than anything than a news outlet can provide. And depending on the thing or person being promoted, they may have more of a following than the outlet they are pitching to, as Tom Forenski pointed out in an article on “pageview journalism” this week.

This changing landscape goes by a lot of names including content curation, content marketing, and the troubling oxymoron brand journalism. Can a product brand really create journalism? Brands can and should create thought leadership and craft engaging content that attracts readers to both stay on site and socially share. A recent round-up of quotes from brand executives on Digiday hits on a few of the issues that brands face in focusing on content including allocating budget and both promoting the brand and delighting readers.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the wake of the folding of The Daily. One of the founders of Weblogs Inc. (one of my former bosses) Brian Alvey, created the publishing platform that The Daily ran on. Alvey has recently pivoted his model to focus primarily on creating platforms for brands to publish content easily. Alvey and his team aren’t giving up on journalism, it’s just that brands offer an excellent proving ground with more money, more resources, and often more security than editorial atmospheres can mostly provide. One example that keeps coming up is Red Bull, which is a drink brand but also not just creates content but creates stories that content can be built around such as Felix Baumgartner’s absolutely riveting leap from space. I became invested in Baumgartner’s story not through news outlets covering but months before because I got a free Red Bulletin subscription from Klout. Has it made me buy more Red Bull? Not in mass quantities, but I am more favorably positioned toward the brand.

There are some awesome journalism startups out there, some are doing content curation, some doing original content creation. Journalism isn’t dead. Brand journalism, uncomfortable moniker though it is with its intimations of the melding of two opposing objectives, may serve a role in helping to keep good content out there. And it provides lots of jobs for writers, designers, and others who are coping with a diminished job market.

The worry remains that we are losing something, we can’t rely on the New York Times to do all the investigative journalism in the world. There needs to be money allocated and that money needs to come with no strings attached. Still, there is a lot of really great content coming from brands these days created through a collaboration of both journalists/editors and marketers, and I believe it’s still a net positive for readers.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. It’s all we heard about in the elections...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 01:45:00 -0500

Jobs, jobs, jobs. It’s all we heard about in the elections and it continues to be a topic of conversation. People who have jobs are terrified of losing them and often stay in jobs they don’t like. Those without jobs find the situation so demoralizing that they sometimes just quit looking. Concern about the bleak state of employment has created a culture of pervasive fear and worry. Many people are unsure about what they need to do in order to be able to compete. We hear a lot these days about the skills gap but what does this really mean for today’s workforce? Peter Cappelli takes an extended look at this issue in “Why Can’t Good People Get Jobs.”

These days a college degree is no sure path to success and even a plum internship may not help a candidate gain traction. Employers only want candidates with the specific experience necessary for the job. They bemoan a crop of applicants with improper education and lackluster attitudes. Cappelli says these complaints are fundamentally mythical: today’s jobseekers are educated and prepared to work. So if the workforce is, as Cappelli asserts, competent and able, where does the fault lie?

Part of the trouble may be the ease of applying. These days many applications can be submitted with just a few clicks, a situation which has led to a flood of applicants for each job at a time when human resources departments are getting smaller. In order to stem the tide employers often add a list of qualifications that might help narrow the stream. Because so much of the process is automated, the applicant may have to make it through several rounds of culling before getting face to face with a potential employer and could easily get cut along the way simply for not having the correct keywords in a resume. These days it seems that an applicant has to craft a resume both for human and machine readers—it’s similar to trying to write both to attract an audience and to satisfy SEO requirements.

Another issue is not the skills gap but the training gap. Employers are unwilling to invest in employee training because they don’t believe employees will stick around long enough to make the training a good investment. Employees don’t stay with a company for long these days partly because they don’t feel like employers are invested in their success and career development. Distrust prevails and nobody wins on either side. Cappelli asserts that internal job training programs are essential to solving the jobs crisis and that teaching these skills outside the workplace is counterproductive. Will companies collectively decide to create training programs? It doesn’t seem likely. The infrastructure alone required to develop these programs is larger than most companies are able to support with existing HR departments.

The bottom line is that employees are what make a company great. When we treat people like equipment, like components plugged into a greater machine, we lose the potential for magic. The right employee may not have the perfect resume that will meet the computer requirements. The intangibles can’t be taught, the skills can.

(Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It | Wharton Digital Press)

Can you pin your way to marketing success? Pinterest has quickly...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 01:08:00 -0500

Can you pin your way to marketing success?

Pinterest has quickly become one of the dominant social platforms. Its simple interface and visual focus give it a broad appeal. But is it a business tool? Jason Mikes and Karen Lacey argue the case in Pinterest Power, a new book that discuses how to get the most out of your pinning habit.

What makes Pinterest so exciting for marketers and business owners is that it drives referrals like crazy, more than many other social sites. Much of the activity on Pinterest is devoted to repinning images rather than submitting new ones in fact, approximately 80% of images shared are repins. And unlike Twitter, Facebook, and other more vertical sharing platforms, your curated content won’t immediately be buried. In fact, your pins can populate through the Pinterest system long after you originally pinned the content. Because it plays so well with other platforms, Pinterest also works very well as a complement to your existing social media outreach.

The authors show many ways to use Pinterest to drive business whether you are selling products or services. Sales, contests, and other promotions are mentioned as well as a whole host of ancillary services for measuring traffic, crafting better images, and turning words into graphics. One great tool is www.shareasimage.com which lets you turn a quote into a shareable image—this is perfect for getting certain statistics out into the larger ecosystem.

What is particularly intriguing is that the authors recognize that no new social platform has yet to replace good old email, which is still a huge driver. Getting someone to follow you is good, getting their email address is much better. Funny how all these new platforms bring us back to the same place. My father worked in direct mail advertising for much of his life, I think he’d be pleased to know that many of the same principles of connection in play then still apply. The technology changes, people don’t.

Pinterest Best Practices:
—Have a Pin It button on all your website pages. Also have a button that lets people follow you on Pinterest along with your other social daring buttons.
—Make certain that all images you upload also have a link to your blog or website. Each image and board also should be placed in a category so it can easily be discovered by others.
—Consider using a third-party analytics service that deals specifically with the visual web.
—Arrange your pinboards and cover images for maximum impact so that anyone who visits your profile page will be encouraged to follow you.
—Respect copyright and always credit your sources.
—Be social: repin, like, comment, and follow. You can also share your Pinterest boards with your Facebook fans.
—Don’t image dump, trickle out your images slowly for maximum impact.
—Add your logo and/or URL to your images.