Managed Word of Mouth-Still Thinking
I just re-read Dave Balter’s Word of Mouth Manual. You might recall that I wrote about it here a few weeks ago. There’s a link to a free download on that last link, and/or a pointer to the physical book on Amazon, in case you want to pick up a copy. I’m still thinking about word of mouth, as Dave lays it out.
Between this book and Andy Sernowitz’s book, I’ve come to realize that I was thinking the whole word of mouth thing was planted people talking about products, street teams, etc. Dave’s book says that’s traditional marketing. Instead, managed word of mouth is just an effort to put products and services in the hands of those who would likely appreciate knowing about them, such that they might choose to evangelize under their own steam. (There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist).
I think it makes much more sense that giving someone a product they might actually like, and might talk with others about, is a reasonable strategy for driving interest and adoption. If you give Corvida a sneak peak at a software application, and she likes it, she’s going to evangelize it. If you share Guy Kawasaki’s Famous Teriyaki Sauce recipe with someone like Grace Piper, she’ll probably tell folks about it, if she digs it.
I just cant see that it’s wrong. And further, with blogs and podcasts and the like, there’s the ability to spread such word of mouth even further. And the only major important element, just like I mentioned the other day, is transparency. If you’re given something to evaluate, call it out. Don’t make it a big fat issue, but explain that you’ve been given an evaluation copy or the like.
I’m thinking it makes sense, and makes even more sense on the web. What’s your take on this?
Photo credit, suneko
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On My Summer Bookshelf So Far
Between books people send me, books I buy, and books I get from my local library system, I’m usually chock full of good reading material. Here’s a selection of books that I’ve either skimmed through once but want to read again fully, or that I intend to do more work with over the coming weeks. Have you read any of these? What did you think? What’s on YOUR summer bookshelf?
Groundswell
Grammar Girl
Secrets of Great Rainmakers
Trump 101
Marketing Champions
ProBlogger
Word of Mouth Manual
Tuned In
Word of Mouth Marketing
CrazyBusy
The Pirate’s Dilemma
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
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Why Pirates are Necessary
Superstar pirate chronicler Matt Mason has released a video bit to go with his nifty book. Check it out here.
If you’ve yet to read it, I strongly recommend picking up The Pirate’s Dilemma. Thank goodness for Whitney Hoffman, else I wouldn’t have read this book. She’s a great book recommender.
The Real Power of Personal Branding
Here’s the secret to personal branding in a nutshell: be consistent. Try your damnedest to be true to the things that make you who you are, and try your best to improve upon those gifts you have, and compensate for the ones you lack. If you learn nothing else from this post, snip everything off below these words and focus on the first part, because that’s really the nugget, and that’s really what needs your focus and attention. The rest is just support.
In Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online part 1, I showed you a small version of the answer to the question, “WHY have a personal brand?” In personal branding part 2, I shared a few tools you can use. In Connie Bensen’s personal branding bonus round, she shared with you a story about building community. Now, let’s finish it off by talking about what gets done with branding.
Brands Can Be Stories, and Thus, You are A Living Story
By saying this, I’m invoking a powerful promise, the the storyteller’s promise. Simply, tell the story you told your audience you’re going to tell. Think for a moment on this as it applies to you. I tell people daily that I’m here to help you understand how these tools develop community, improve your communications, and do a host of other things better than previous tools were doing them. I promise through my stories that you, too, can figure out how to build influence, develop relationships, and be more useful to your organization (be that a business, a nonprofit, or a circle of friends).
If I let you down, I’m not keeping the promise of my story. It’s pretty simple, really. And not so much touchy feely. I could say the same thing a different way, and a manager would write it on an annual review. Integrity is another word for this.
Improve On What You Have, Not Lament What You Lack
I sat in a woman’s office the other day, and she had a copy of StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath on her desk. I’d read the book as well. It’s a follow on to the popular Now, Discover Your Strengths. These books resonated with me because they gave a different set of advice than what we’re accustomed to learning. They taught me about moving forward with what I’m really good at, and finding ways to work around my weaknesses.
We’ve been taught since childhood that we have to be well-rounded, that we have to improve on our weaknesses, that we should strive to fix what’s broken. Not me. I’m done. I’m focusing on what I do best, and you know what? It’s impressive how that changes not only my perspective and abilities, but also the perspective of my colleagues. It turns out that they’re just as willing to accept the parts of my job that I’m not very good at accomplishing, and they either encourage me to get it done some other way, or when they can, they pitch in.
Why work hard to be what you’re not? Build and deliver power through those parts of you that are already your best gifts. I’ve heard this echoed through several other works. In fact, I could give a bibliography of about 30 books without breaking a sweat that will give you the same advice. Don’t ignore what you might need to do but aren’t so great at accomplishing. Instead, find the way that you’re going to handle those parts of your life, deal with it, and focus even harder on the parts you do well.
The Last and Biggest Secret
Confidence. One word. That’s it. If you can learn to nurture your confidence, you will accomplish FAR more than with any piece of software, nifty logo, or perfect slogan. You will do more through empowering your belief in yourself than through ANY other possible tool or method or strategy.
I believe that everyone can recover from a waning self-confidence. It’s not easy by any stretch, but if you learn (or get help to learn), you can uncover ways to strengthen your confidence, and that power will give you energy and ability and an ability to persist, even when things are not in your favor.
Confidence (not arrogance) is the secret sauce to everything you do with regards to personal branding.
Did You Think It Would Be Tricks and Strategies and Repeatable Methodologies?
There are plenty of ways you could approach this. You could develop the strategy of ubiquitous presence: “I’ll be everywhere, and thus people will get to know me.” You could build a strategy to provide “just in time service,” maybe through using the best listening tools, and having resources enough to provide answers and assistance.
But would any of that work without the parts I mentioned above?
What Would You Add to the Branding Story We’ve Told Together?
Do you have more to say? Would you share your personal branding experiences with us? How might you recommend someone take the four parts (including the bonus) of this series and apply them to their online presence efforts to build up a personal brand of value? What are the benefits of all this work? Have you thought of that one, yet?
Your conversation, as always, is greatly appreciated.
The Social Media 100 is a series of posts written about social media and social networking tools by Chris Brogan. If you’d like to receive every post, please subscribe for free to my blog. There’s also a free newsletter with completely different content, if you’d like to receive that as well. Thank you for your attention.
The Target is Not the Weapon
Donald Trump. Who’d have thought I’d be in a bookstore last night and see a book by Donald Trump, and that I’d pick it up, and at random flip to a chapter with that title? The Target Is Not The Weapon. It’s a simple lesson, and yet profound in how it changes one’s focus.
In social media, the tools aren’t the same thing as reaching a goal. If you’re a marketer looking to use these tools, then make the first goal to learn how the community moves, listen to its ebbs and flows, and then make the next goal to try starting conversations. But don’t stop there. What’s the real goal? What’s your real target? Growing sales? Building leads? Engaging more people in your nonprofit cause?
I have been doing this exercise for days in different forms, but not with this language in mind. Think about this in Trump’s words. If you’re seeking to hit a target, is the goal to use a dart or an arrow or a bullet, or is it to improve your accuracy, or is it simply to hit the bullseye? The answer is C, even though A and B are part of the equation. Make sense?
I’m thinking long and hard on which social media tools do what for my own business goals, and how this will impact what I advise people to do next. Do the tools have impact? Definitely. See the Financial Aid Podcast and Wine Library TV for two small business examples. See Direct2Dell for another example. See tons more examples in between.
But the chatter, the conversation for conversation’s sake? It’s fine and I don’t begrudge people using the tools for social conversation (enhanced beyond standard email). And yet, I’m assessing which parts do the most for me. What about you?
Here’s an Amazon link to the book:
Photo credit by uuuhyeah
The Pirates Dilemma
When punk music and the social scene around it came around, music was deeply entrenched in the record industry’s current offering: disco. Punk showed up with far more attitude than aptitude and proceeded to take a big fat gouge out of the profits and expectations of the larger record/music industry, and people responded. People suddenly realized a music and an ethos where they could participate. Instead of fancy clothes or impossible musical setups, people could do punk with a very limited toolset, and they could make it their own. Very do-it-yourself.
Pirate radio had some similar beginnings (more prevalent in the UK, but remember, my friend Jeff Pulver occasionally admits to knowing about a “really great” radio station in New York), insofar as that it became music programmed by the people for the people.
This book by Matt Mason, The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, is a great exploration of how people like the guys behind FUBU and Marc Ecko turned hip hop culture and street graffiti into a business while maintaining an ethical focus. There are tons of other examples of this kind of information in the book, and many cases where the upstarts and the do-it-yourselfers came along and made a new culture right alongside the status quo.
I’m grateful for Whitney Hoffman for recommending the book, and for getting Matt Mason himself to come to Brooklyn to attend PodCamp NYC2, where I could then meet Matt, bug him about his book, and learn more about him.
It’s a great book and worth a read:
The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
Books to Buy- Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky
I was fortunate to catch a little bit of Clay Shirky’s talk at the Harvard Berkman Center a few weeks back, but it took me a few more weeks to grab a copy of his book, Here Comes Everybody, and read it. I’m really glad that I did. It turns out that it’s PACKED with all kinds of interesting points about how organizations can use community tools like social media software to build stronger communities of practice, interest, and more.
Essentially, the book talks about how the tools of the web (and even something as simple as Walkie Talkies) enable people to organize without formality. If that sounds hot to you, don’t listen to me, pick up your own copy of the book. Because that idea, actually, relates to the point. You are empowered. You are enabled. This new web is about giving YOU the tools, so that you can decide what to do.
The book is refreshingly NOT all cumbaya and “this will all work out fine.” Shirky does a great job of pointing out what our newfound freedoms cost us. He talks candidly about failures in the idea, such as “cooperation as infrastructure.” But even this should prove useful to your thoughts and plans and schemes.
I recommend Shirky’s book, and if he’s speaking near you, check him out. I promise that it will be informative, and that he’s a friendly enough guy.
Check it out here: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Books to Check Out- Bounce by Barry Moltz
Barry Moltz starts off his book by explaining right up front that he is a rare breed of entrepreneur. He talks very candidly about failure (which should thrill my personal expert on blogging about failure, Becky McCray). Often. In fact, Barry’s made a profession out of it. So, right off the bat, Bounce takes a strange bounce and gets you thinking, “It’s easy to read about good times, but what will life be like if (when?) I suffer a failure in my business or my personal life?”
Countless stories and anecdotes are collected in this book, and the research is probably the best selling point of Bounce. Barry threads his own stories through it, but he backs everything he says up by three or four or five examples from other people’s lives.
In one way, this made the storytelling aspect of the book a little diffuse. Barry leads off the book with his story, goes into more of his story, and then uses his story as part of the backbone of the book, but there’s SO MUCH of other people’s experiences in the book, that I found myself a bit distracted by it all.
This isn’t really a knock, because this book is LOADED with things to think about, and his research assistant, who is thanked in the acknowledgments, deserves whatever he paid her and more. This book is chock full of stories on failure.
I recommend Bounce to budding entrepreneurs, especially those who maybe have their heads in the clouds and aren’t considering how to prepare for the dips in the road. It will certainly get your mind racing. In fact, maybe don’t read this just before bed. It might deliver a healthy dose of insomnia.
Check it out here: Bounce!: Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success
