Disney, where I am this week, has a concept called a Moment of Truth. A moment of truth is “any time a guest comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression.” Note that it’s “an impression.” It can be good; it can be bad.

Why “guest?” Because guest is much more hospitable than “customer.” What “experience?” Because experience covers so much more than “service.” Service is important, but there are many other parts of the experience than just that.

Can you see how that opens up the game? Can you see how this position, this mindset gives you so much more to work with? Let’s just walk through it a bit, using a few examples: a hotel and then a small publishing company.

Guest Experience for a Hotel

Let’s break out the different phases of a hotel experience:

• Prospecting – guest wants a place to stay.
• Research – guest compares information for selection.
• Purchase – guest pays for a room.
• Arrival – guest reaches the facility.
• Checkin – guest secures room.
• Entry – guest steps into the room.
• Inhabitation – guest’s stay at the facility.
• Error handling – anything that goes wrong.
• Checkout – guest leaves the facility.
• Aftermath – any contact with guest thereafter.

That’s pretty much all of it, right? Now, how many ways could you brainstorm to make this better, if I put you in charge of guest experience design?

You’d start at prospecting, of course, because this is where you’d find new ways to share with your guest why you’re the right choice. You’d use listening tools to find potential guests talking about traveling to the locale where you have a hotel. You’d think of ways to make that prospecting experience better.

Walking through it, you can just see it. How would you improve the guest’s experience at check-in? What could you do to improve the “inhabitation” stage? What else?

It feels obvious. But is that just me?

Guest Experience for a Publisher

Again, let’s break down the components of the experience.

• Prospecting – guest wants information/content.
• Research – guest investigates possible sources.
• Purchase – guest pays for products (services?)
• Consumption – guest absorbs the information.
• Aftermath – any contact with guest thereafter.

Now, with publishing, depending on what kind it is, might have more than one kind of “guest.” If it’s a magazine, advertising sales might be another kind of guest experience. Finding authors/creators is another type of guest experience. We’d have to add other components. But you can do that without me having to type it all.

What could you do to design a better “purchase” experience, for instance? We sell magazines as annual subscriptions, and we sell books as a single unit purchase. Why couldn’t someone subscribe to a book? What would that experience be like?

Slicing Your Social Media Pie.

When guys like Dan Schawbel define personal branding (and personal is somewhat -very?- different than product/service branding), they say this: “Personal branding is the process of how we market ourselves to others.” (Dan’s definition.) That’s part of the puzzle, I will agree, but it’s certainly just one part.

You see, the very best brands in the world do something not addressed in the above definition. They work on perfecting a product/service, and then owning distribution.

Distribution. A platform. The ability to move product by establishing a channel or creating a viable touchpoint to a channel. That’s what’s missing in these definitions. The focus of conversations about branding is quite often about telling people what your product is about, or making sure people know who/what you are/represent.

Distribution’s where it’s at, though. Who gives a crap if you pour all kinds of great intent and messaging into your product if no one knows who you are? Who cares if someone knows who you are, but they can’t reach you?

Distribution. McDonalds built as many burger joints as they could as soon as they got the formula down on making a great, repeatable experience. They built them everywhere. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about how ruthlessly they built, often times building new McDonalds across the street from the other one, in a kind of Darwinian battle for dominance.

It’s distribution. The mafia (all of the various iterations) existed as methods to bypass the “official” distribution channels. Distribution is that part of the puzzle.

Distribution and Its Value to Brand

Once you have distribution, you can experiment. You can add things to the mix. McDonalds is pushing hard on their McCafe brand. Why? Because they pretty much have hamburgers down. In fact, they have chicken down (sorry, KFC, but really…). So coffee it is. Why not take on Starbucks and Dunkins? They tried pizza and Mexican, but nothing much happened there.

Product stretch or diversification is something that can happen only after there’s enough distribution to make it work out.

Jack Welch ran GE back in the day. After, he wrote an amazing book, WINNING, about business. He leveraged that into a great career as a speaker and a media maker, among other things. Most recently, Welch is offering up a branded MBA (not new, for sure: others have done this less formally before). This is what one gets when one has both a great brand and distribution.

That’s the part that we have to think about, work towards, and build. That’s where the work has to go. That’s the hard part of the puzzle.

What’s your take?

Photo credit TonyTheMisfit

An aide to the Tennessee State Senate, Sherri Goforth, sent a racist email (the first post I found about it was here. If you click through, you’ll see the premise. It’s a picture of all the US Presidents with the space for President Obama taken up by a black square with two eyeballs.

They slapped her wrist. What. The. F#ck?

This is 2009. I don’t care that she has a 20 year work record. I don’t care about any of the details. We condone racism? So says the US Senate with that action.

That’s all I want to say. I’m floored.

Think About Goals

It’s easy if you’re a company. When I think about our client, Citrix Online, the folks who make GoToMeeting, I know that they’d like more customers. That’s a goal. You might not always have that cut and dry of a goal. You might want to inform. You might want to make money somehow. You might just want to talk about the city where you live.

If you don’t start at the goal, how will you know what kind of product to make? For instance, a few years back, I produced a podcast for moms called Career Mom Radio. My idea was simple: there are tons of mommy bloggers, but not all moms can sit still to read. I reasoned that I’d get a show together that a busy mom could listen to via an iPod. (Easier to have 1 earbud in while the kid watches Barney than it is to crack open the laptop and read through a post, was my logic).

The goal was: reach busy moms in a medium where the marketplace wasn’t over crowded. (For the record, there are still way more blogs for moms than podcasts, despite the fact that I still believe it’s easier or a mom to keep a Shuffle clipped to her shirt and an earbud in. (Anyone?)

After the Goal, some Research

Once you have the idea for your project, you might look into the space around it. For instance, if you’re thinking you want to start a tech blog today and hope to live off it, good luck. Ditto general opinion blogs. Ditto general review blogs. At this point, you’ve really got to figure out a unique angle for pretty much any product.

Some quick ideas for research:

1. Search for terms that you’d use to find this new project’s URL using Google Blogsearch. Do the same on Technorati.
2. Check out Alltop and see if there’s a category for your idea. If so, read a few example blogs in the space (even if you’re doing a podcast, a book, a whatever).
3. Now, depending on the goals of your project, you might also want to see whether there is a market for the information. For instance, if you’re hoping to monetize and sell ads, you might check out platforms like Commission Junction, or LinkShare or Share a Sale and see if there’s anyone selling affiliate opportunities in your project’s space. (Again, if you’re thinking of making money.)

Format, Function, and Your “Customer”

Here’s a thought: what if your project isn’t best suited to be a blog? Or, what if a blog is just one format, and there could be others? Take a site like Instructables. I could see them making a killing on selling little $1.99 downloads, either as a PDF or maybe to your iPhone for their various DIY projects.

What’s the best format for what you do? Is it text? Think about Gary Vaynerchuk. Would he come off as interesting if all you did was read him? Should J.C. Hutchins stop making books and podcasts? Hell no.

Think hard about the format you intend to use for your project, and then think about function.

By function, think about this: how will someone use this work? For instance, look at this very same blog post. I’m writing something that you will read, and then hopefully, you’ll take it to heart, and consider for your next projects. However, this post, as a reference piece, is very much poorly designed. It’s an informational piece.

Thus, if I went further with this, what would be the right function to build in, would be an attached PDF file with the ideas bulleted out, that you could refer to when starting a new project. Now that would add some functionality. Make sense?

Think of your readers/consumers/audience/participants as your customers in this case. This piece is getting long, and I’m not really done writing it. Should I go back and add pictures? Should I do something to break it up? Should it be in three parts? That’s what I think when I think of you as my customer, and consider this post. What do you believe your “customers” want from your media product?

Go back and answer that truthfully, not with what YOU wish they’d want.

Do What You Like

Technically, you can do whatever you want. Never let others tell you you’re doing it wrong. Not even me.

My dad, Steve Brogan, is writing Dad’s Poker Blog, about his experiences as a semi-professional poker player. I read him every day as a completely amateur (and bad at it) poker player. He and I didn’t do any research before making the site. We didn’t see if the world needed another poker blog. We did look at http://poker.alltop.com, but we didn’t think much about whether or not we should do it.

Sometimes, you might just want to blog about something or make a project of another kind just because that’s what you want to do. We’re doing the Media Hacks podcast in audio form on a phone dial in, which means it’s not top audio quality, nor is it the more popular video format. Who cares? We just want it out there, and this is the best no-fuss way to get us all together.

Useful Matters

Attention is the new distribution. I’ll talk about this more at some other point, but just know this: the choices you make to better equip your would be audience of participants, the more you’ll benefit from that (in whatever form you’re seeking via your goals and strategy). It’s not good enough any more to just put something up without thinking.

So, what does this all make you think about your media? And if you’re not in the mood to pick apart what you’re doing, feel free to pick apart mine? What should I do differently? How can I help you even more?

Let’s talk about useful media, shall we?

Special side note. A new issue of my newsletter launches in a few days. Are you already newslettersubscribed for free? Hint: it’s not the same content as my blog.

Photo credit indyplanets

If I say they’re secrets, you’ll treasure them more, but the thing is, I share this with you daily. I do it right in front of you. But just this once, I’ll slow it down, and walk through it all. Fair?

27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community

Starter Moves

1. An intriguing title goes a long way towards getting people to the blog. Failing that, posts with numbers seem to work. Especially weird or odd numbers. 27 is odd.

2. A picture per blog post has been my trick for a while. It draws your eye, whether or not you want it to. We’re wired for it. I use Flickr Creative Commons photos to do that. (Make sure you give them adequate credit. I show that in this post, too.)
3. Did you ever notice most of my posts open by asking a question? That’s a secret. When I do that, you stop and think about the question. But more importantly, it shifts your mind to the “what’s in it for me” sphere that you started reading from in the first place. Make sense?
4. Break things up visually. Notice that I have an H3 tag (html speak) title repeating the top title, and that I’m using a list to give your eye some natural “chunking.” Go back and read cafe-shaped conversations for an example.
5. Oh, maybe I should’ve started the post by saying that it helps if you write something useful for people. People want posts they can use to improve themselves or their business.
6. Brevity rules. I mention this a lot. People just don’t read long posts (usually). There are exceptions. I read every word Ann Handley writes, and often wish for more.
7. Write “unfinished” posts. Having ways that others can add to a post or improve on it invites participation. This might just mean asking for ideas or getting a sense of what others’ experiences are.
8. Mix up the length of your posts, so that people can read varied length articles, like magazines and newspapers do.
9. Consider an editorial calendar, where you write down which TYPE of blog posts you’ve written lately, and which you intend to write. This helps you from doing recurring posts, and gives some variety to what you’re writing.

Technical Stuff

10. A nice clean blogging theme goes a long way. I’m a huge fan of Thesis for WordPress (so much so that I became an affiliate for it).
11. Make it easy for people to subscribe to your post. Most people stop at putting a big orange RSS button up in the corner of their blog. Check out my sidebar. Check out the Financial Aid Podcast. Look how many ways we show people how to stay connected to the community. That’s not by accident.
12. I’ve said it before. Claim your blog in Technorati. You don’t have to like Technorati. You don’t have to think it works well. But it triggers mechanisms you need.
13. Consider changing your permalinks structure. (In WordPress, this is in Settings/Permalinks. Where is it in MT or Blogger?) I learned this from Chris Pearson. Change it to custom and put /%postname%/. If you click on any post including this one, you’ll see it all written out in plain English without extra info. (This is a preference).
14. If you worry that a post might get “lifted,” or if you encourage people to repost your work with attribution (which I encourage), include a few links in the original post that will politely show people where the content came from. I learned this from Christopher S. Penn.
15. Consider every plugin and widget. Do they improve your blog or slow it down? Do they help you blog smarter?
16. Learn a little more HTML, just a bit. Learn how to make links, how to add photos, how to bold and italicize things, and that. If you’re stuck, Google or “view source” on blogs that do what you want to accomplish. (For example, I had to learn how to stop and start a numbered list with ol start=”10″ to write this.)
17. Don’t force people to register for an account to comment on the blog. Lots of people won’t. (Your mileage may vary, but corporations try this all the time because they’re worried about someone leaving a “your company sucks” comment on the blog. It doesn’t fix that. It slows down real discourse.)
18. Technology should serve your community and your content, not just be there. Consider every technological change with that lens.

The Bonus Round

19. Share your posts politely via social platforms. In Twitter, I usually ask a question, and provide a link to the blog post to see what people think. I don’t “blurt” the blog posts automatically. Not every post is worth Twitter.
20. Facebook has tools like Simplaris Blogcast that integrate your blog into Facebook. So does LinkedIn. This falls into my outposts strategy.
21. Link out to other blogs often.
22. Comment on other blogs often. Thoughtfully. Adding thoughtful comments to other people’s posts builds friendships. I was a passionate commenter on Copyblogger back when I had 10 subscribers on my blog. Brian was still really nice to me.
23. Remember to comment in your own comments section. Conversations with your readers turn them from readers into a community.
24. Showcase your community. I do this with my Rockstars page (which needs updating) and by taking the occasional guest post.
25. Be consistent. You don’t have to blog daily, but if you blog once a week, get at least a post a week. Need blog topics?
26. Repoint to the old stuff occasionally. It’s often still useful to new community members.
27. Keep giving. When you can’t think of what else to give, give some more. Being helpful is the #1 thing you can do for your community. Share your secrets. You can’t execute them all anyhow.

Need more? I have a collection of my best advice about blogging.

Your Ideas

What would you add to the list? Which blogging secrets have helped you? Are there any questions my thoughts gave you that I didn’t adequately answer? Let’s talk about it more.

(Oh, and that’s a secret, too).

Photo credit, Trials and Errors

What Artists Can Teach Everyone About Social Media

People tend to look to leaders in the technology or business world to learn how to use Social Media. But from my experience, it is artists who are the best teachers of all. Some of the things we can all learn from them:

Find inspiration outside your domain. – Talk to an artist and they will often tell you they found inspiration in a book or political event or meaningful place. Artists take ideas from everywhere to foster collaboration and innovation in their own practice. If you are on Twitter, are you just following other people in your field or your region, or the so-called A-listers who everyone else is following?Try broadening your circle, to follow people like @ryantaylor who is using social media for his sustainable jewelry business and @brooklynmuseum who despite being one of the oldest museums in the U.S., have started a 1stFans program to bring art lovers together using social media. Apply what they are doing to your own area of interest.

Dye your hair pink.Okay, maybe not literally.What I really mean is don’t be afraid to be different. Artists are typically on the fringes of society so we are used to feeling a little out of place.How that helps us in the social media front is that by talking about things that may be unpopular or controversial or just plain weird, we stand out from the crowd.And that makes us memorable. What I love about Hugh Macleod’s cartoons is that he says things everyone is thinking but is afraid to say.Things like this and this.Don’t be afraid to be express yourself.

Make your own rules. John Unger is an artist who is using social media to finance the building of his new studio, in bits and pieces.MaryAnne Davis is a ceramic artist who created an online gift registry so people could register for her work for weddings.I decided to give the finger to the art establishment that fosters elitism & exclusion by creating a space that is both welcoming and well curated.Rules only exist until new rules are created, so make your own!

Choose your critics wisely. In the social media universe, everyone can be a vocal critic.Some are much louder than others due to their network or communication style.Good artists value criticism, but know how to assess their work through critiques from people that fit their sensibilities or ambitions.In your own social media initiatives, it is important to ask what you can do better, but don’t be quick to change your path based on your most vocal or visible critics.Find people whose opinions you respect, not because they are yes-men, but because they can give you valuable advice in an appropriate context and constructive manner.Many of the greatest artists in history were not appreciated in the prime of their lives.You may wade through many naysayers before you find your following.

Live an interesting life. What I love most about art is how it allows people to tell their own stories, whether it is through a painting or a photograph or a video installation.And the best stories come from people who live interesting lives. Look at your own life.Are you in a rut?Are you afraid to try new things?When was the last time you did something that took you outside your comfort zone?By being an interesting person, you will draw people to you through the stories you tell whether you are talking about software or changing the world.

Artists have taught me that social media, like life itself, is an art, not a science, and the most important thing of all is to just get out, experiment, & enjoy; the rest will follow. Do you agree or disagree or have a different take altogether? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

Image: Earthly Delights, Nasco Pelev. Courtesy of tinku gallery

Amrita Chandra is the founder of tinku gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Toronto and also
a freelance marketing professional with early stage ventures.

I’ve written Using the Social Web to Find Work as a free ebook for you to download and share with others. It includes ideas and information from [chrisbrogan.com], and takes you from the specifics of using LinkedIn to your benefit, into some ideas on how to grow and nurture your social networks ahead of a need for them.

It’s not much, but I wanted to help in one way that I know how – by providing ideas and actionable information.

Please share this liberally by pointing back to this original post.

Using the Social Web to Find Work (pdf)

Let’s consider a question that just won’t die, “How will Twitter make money?“. They’ve created a great product that’s been talked about on CNN and is starting to gain mainstream appeal. But with all the success there still exists a huge obstacle, “How do they turn a profit?”.

We’re finally hearing rumors of a place to monetize Twitter. CNET reported that Twitter CEO Evan Williams is considering a paid enterprise model.

There are a lot of possibilities for “commercial” accounts, as Williams put it. Twitter could give corporations access to analytics and data unavailable in free Twitter accounts…

If done correctly this could make Twitter even more important to businesses creating an online presence.

In light of this, I’ve put together a list of features that I’d be willing to pay for. I invite you to add your suggestions by commenting to this post, and maybe it’ll get included in Twitter’s enterprise version.
Anyway, here’s what I think Twitter needs to create a successful paid membership.

Statistics:

Trending Followers
A graph outlining how many followers I had yesterday and how have today would make reporting a lot easier. It’d help understand what my followers like and what they dislike, and allow to me watch the trend.

Who Unfollowed Me

Right now when someone unfollows me, I don’t even get a notice. Unless I’m being vigilant of how many followers I have daily, I wouldn’t even know that someone didn’t like what I’m saying. I’d love to know who unfollowed me so I could understand the type of people that don’t enjoy what I say.

Page Visitors

How many people visited my Twitter page? Where are they coming from? How many of them are following me? I’d really love to get the answer to these questions. In my mind the easiest way for Twitter to implement this would be to just allow us to embed our Google Analytics code onto our Twitter page and Tweet pages.

Tracking and Monitoring:

A lot of the stream tracking occurs in 3rd party applications right now. If I’m paying for Twitter, I’d expect Twitter itself to offer me the
features.

Reference Tracking

A separate tab to track keywords I choose. Also, I was disappointed when replies got changed to only tweets that start with @leftthebox. Enterprise users
should be able to track all tweets with their user-name.

Click Tracking

One of the greatest uses of Twitter is promoting links and services. Offering a way to track how many people clicked a link I shared would be useful. Knowing many other Twitter users re-posted the link would be a nice feature too.

Biography and Page Customization:

The current biography space is lacking, to say the least. There’s no place to share information like email, other social media profiles, and blog links. It would be nice to not be forced to put all that information on my background, but instead actually customize my page to look how I want it.

Desktop Client:

Since a lot of these features may be a bit much to put on the clean Twitter layout, a desktop client might be a good idea. However it shouldn’t be limited by the API rules in place now, especially in regards to real-time updates.

Twitter is being heralded as a necessity for many social media campaigns and businesses
are already adopting it. It’s up to Twitter to take advantage of this turn in events. Their main asset is information and by giving companies access to the information they need to make their Twitter campaigns more successful, you create a win win situation for everyone.

Samir Balwani is a Social Media Strategist working with companies to effectively use the Internet. You can get more of his thoughts at Left The Box and by following Samir on Twitter

You might look to other social media types to band together and pool resources or share leads. That’s great. But in that interaction, you might try bringing something to the table, too. It turns out that two social media types who know how to blog and tweet and navigate LinkedIn are just as broke as one, unless you work on finding and retaining customers.

Business partnerships usually work something like this: I have something you don’t have as much of. You, most likely, will offer me something I don’t have. Hint: it won’t be your incredible talent to blog or tweet or navigate LinkedIn. Because that’s something where I’ll come to you and I’ll ask you to fulfill on a project. But it’s not something I need unless I’ve got too much business to handle.

What To Do Instead

If you are a social media type and you’re looking to market, consider doing the following:

• Create a simple rate sheet that shows the kinds of projects you do, the deliverables those projects yield, and the rates you charge for those projects. (Hint: if you don’t have the “deliverable” figured out beyond “you’ll be smarter,” that’s not much of a project. Sure, education is great, but that should be adjunct to what you complete.)

• Ensure that your blog is ready for business, and that yourblog design backs that up.

• Tidy up your LinkedIn profile.

• Create a real, simple, clear call to action on your blog and make that the most obvious element on your website. It’s amazing how the basics of sales and marketing still work.

• Join several traditional marketing newsletters and groups on places like Yahoogroups, and participate. Give your perspective. Don’t spam them with your offer, but give them a sense of how you think.

If you’re thinking of making this a business, you have to own your store in 2009. If something’s not working, try something else. If that doesn’t work, try something else. Push and push some more. Get out there and scour for customers. Look for leads. Think of ways to develop more opportunities. Offer free trials or whatever else might close your new customers.

Did I miss anything? Have you any ideas to share that will equip the would-be social media business people among us? Marketers – what do you need from these folks. Speak up. I know you hang out here. Great day to decloak and say hi to us all.

Photo credit, Jeff Belmonte