But there are lots of ways to use it. Do you need to find more case studies? Here’s a simple search for case studies: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”case+study”+filter:links

Do you want to know who’s talking about burgers near San Francisco? http://search.twitter.com/search?q=burger+near:SF+filter:links”

Want some negative proof? I sniffed around for “site sucks” – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”site+sucks” – to see who’s saying what about bad websites (note: don’t forget to speak the way your tweeters would speak).

Maybe you’re in pharma? I checked out “allergies plus meds OR medication – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=allergies+medication+OR+meds”

There are lots more opportunities to consider. One of my favorites? http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”looking+for”. It’s like permission to sell. Right there. (If you’re not a jerk.)

Oh that Twitter. Such a silly tool. Why even bother? (Keep telling yourself that.)

Bonus Round

Save your searches. Cook them up and put them in your Google Reader or your Seesmic Desktop or your Tweetdeck. Build STATIONS around these kinds of searches. Build response protocols for them. (I’ve barely scratched the surface, but wanted to start somewhere).

And you? Success stories?

I just went to a few blogs in a row to get a sense of it. Here are some of the ratios I saw, with self-referential in the left, and about others in the right:

* 9:1 (not saying who)
* 1:9 (my blog)
* 0:10 (Christopher S. Penn wins most selfless).
* 0:10 (Julien Smith is the same.)
* 1:9 (Brian Clark).

Those were just a few I checked out. Most were heavily weighted towards talking about others (though often citing examples from our own perspective). But when I go look at corporate blogs, and/or less focused blogs, the ratio changed a great deal.

How does your blog stack up? How do your tweets stack up? How much are you promoting others?

Photo credit visualpanic

Your Blog as PART of a System

In the drawing above, I list your blog as part of your content ecosystem. Here’s why I recommend you start thinking this way: because your blog is only one destination and it’s only reaching one channel of a much larger opportunity and demographic. The minute you see your blog as only “a” channel, that’s when you start thinking of other outreach opportunities.

This, by the way, is the logic behind Steve Jobs’s iPad. He didn’t make it for us. He made it for your mom, for the photographers, for people who want a big shiny viewing device for downloaded movies. It’s another way to build a channel for people to buy stuff off the iTunes store.

Now, with that in mind, the easy first step is to strongly highlight the opportunity to get your blog sent to people via email (more people use email than read blogs). That’s the easy opportunity. From there, start asking yourself how else you can build out your content delivery, both offline (print, perhaps, or publish a book) and into new channels online. Then, think about products.

Your Content as Products

Think about the various ways your content can fit into different shapes as a product. For instance, is your content suitable for audio? Have you considered recording and giving away (or selling) an audio version? I’m working up some audio projects for the commuters in our lives, not to mention the fact that Trust Agents and Social Media 101 are both available via audio download.

Can you take some of your projects and turn them into slide decks and make them available to the public? Or look at Brian Solis’s Conversation Prism. That’s a project that’s gotten Brian tens of thousands of placements in presentations over the last few years. Every time I see that wheel come up, it’s a chance for us to go back and check out Brian’s blog.

What other projects can you think up based on your products?

Education: The Power of Events

Online or off, some of what you’ve created would be good for educational opportunities. What could you turn from a few blog posts into a helpful class? You might have to give more thought than what went into the original posts. There’s a gap between “informative” and “educational” sometimes (unless you’re Whitney Hoffman, who writes very thorough posts), and you have to tighten that up.

This might be turned into a live event, like a teaching opportunity. It might turn into online courses. It might turn into a private membership site like Third Tribe. But education is a really good opportunity to spread your content into a new ecosystem. And, if you get really clever, you start wondering if your content might make a good part to someone else’s parts and that it might together form a larger opportunity.

Partnerships

My friend, Matthew Ebel is a professional musician. He creates music, tours, and does all that, but he also offers his services to conference and event producers. Imagine the difference between attending an event, versus attending an event with engaging live music. Matthew can add this to a conference experience. However, as a guy who runs conferences for a living, I’m very unlikely to call up a musician to perform. I would, however, call my event planner and see if she knew someone for the event.

Thus, it benefits Matthew to partner with event planners, so that he can book more gigs at conferences. Make sense?

Partnerships with your content work the same way. There may be part of the story you’re great at and parts that others are better at explaining/providing. For instance, if you’re yet another social media blogger, how much more powerful would your site and content become if you partnered with an SEO professional, a digital marketing professional, and a graphic/interface design specialist. You’d have a killer teaching/educating/selling opportunity for people looking for the larger picture.

See how killer this one step could become?

Ecosystem Thinking

This, to me, is where things get powerful. Once you see your platform as an ecosystem and not the parts, your possibilities to grow and develop more business value. Can you see it? Look beyond your blog as being the core of things. Think of it as an outlet. From there, things get exciting.

What say you?

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?

The Method Is What We’re Taught to Pursue

We learn our times tables. We learn the 50 states (in the US, at least). We are taught all these rules, these patterns, these systems, these methods. Musicians learn their scales. Painters copy the Masters. Copy. Learn. Make patterns.

Repetition. Finding grooves. Fitting into our assembly lines. Aligning to the way we understand how to measure.

Method. The process by which we get somewhere. Kempo karate is a method of fighting. Kicking the other guy’s ass is the goal.

You see this, right?

“New” is Rarely a Byproduct of Repetition

Except when it is. iPod was a whole new way of framing the music story: 1000 songs (not megabytes and gigabytes). iTunes store not just an orphaned player. Wheel and single button, not a slew of buttons.

And the Nano is the baby of the original, but the iPhone is nothing like the original, except they removed the wheel and left only one button. New. Again.

Now, repetition isn’t the only facet of method, and method isn’t bad. I need to be clear about that. But focusing on perfecting one’s method isn’t as useful as focusing on solving for the goal.

Pursue the Goal, Not the Method

I addressed the International Association of Business Communicators at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City, a painted lady teetering between demolition and emotional buttressing. The room was, as it always is, filled with that mix of the converted, the confused, the naysayers, the proof (that it all works), and me. Me, the street preacher, the jester, the irreverent, the addle-brained and yet target-minded sayer of what everyone swears they already know and blogs that they’ve seen it all before. Common sense. Be human. Be real.

I imagine some of them at their desk today, looking at their monitor, digging into their email, looking at their stats, settling back into the warm cottony folds of what they know how to do, what they were taught to do, what they practiced and repeated and did again and again. Trenchwork, some of it. And some of them are damned pleased and okay to be pleased by performing it.

But some of my people, some of those who saw something, felt the sparkle, caught a whiff of what I’m cooking, they got what I was saying. Old roads have precious little to do with new paths. What came before doesn’t have to explain what should be done next. We don’t have to repeat repeat repeat repeat.

I read once that every cell in our body completely recycles every four days. Perhaps I have it wrong, but when I think of that, I’m caught. I wonder why my scar from cutting my left ring finger while pulling a fern out of the ground during a Boy Scout survival weekend still persists. I wonder why I still have cowlicks in my hair. If every cell is new again, why can’t I be someone else every four days? But this is a side thought. This is a distraction for you to ponder. Scientists need not apply: I’m a disciple of accepting mystery instead of seeking truth. (Delusional, maybe, but pleasantly surprised? Yes.)

Methods change. It’s not that you shouldn’t learn methods, but rather that you should be ready to switch methods by facing the goals.

And Here At the End, The Goal

You will do so much more with your pursuits should you become a pursuer of the goal, and not a student of the method. Okay, SOME of you will. Others, you need the repetition, the ritual, the comfort. That is so very okay. Religion is all that. Okay, most religion is all that. Most religion is the method.

Seek the goal. The goal is equipping people. The goal is satisfying need. The goal is seeking to better others. The goal is to provide. The goal is to make everything work better.

See how that works? Think about your goals. Think about your company’s goals. What if you threw out EVERY method you were using before this very moment? The goals would still be there.

What if you left email behind and used ONLY voice? Could you still reach your goal? What if I stopped blogging and only sent you emails? What if we all shut our computers off? (Not sure we could ever get that genie back into the bottle.) What if we switched to mobile-centric design?

Goals. Not. Methods.

And you said…

Photo credit Dru Bloomfield

Is your negative commentary helping them make a buying decision? I’ve rarely seen the tactic work in traditional advertising. You can graze them a little bit. For instance, I’m a bit fond of the GM commercials where they point out that they have better mileage than other cars that seem to get credit for good mileage. That’s a kind of gentle sleight.

But if you’re spending your time crapping on others in your space, I’m curious how you think that will translate to a win for you.

You read a lot of blogs. What do you think?

Photo credit Josh Liba

Having an email address is great. Publishing a phone number is great. Being able to reach me on Twitter or Facebook is wonderful.

But I’m finding such value in the use of our contact forms. We are getting work from them, and it’s paying off.

Note: the forms are SIMPLE. If you look at my contact form, you’ll see how simple:

I don’t want every little detail from you. I don’t need you to prequalify yourself as a paying lead. I’m just asking for basics. Heck, we only ask for 3 things total at the New Marketing Labs form.

Are you making it easy for people to connect?

photo hosted on flickr

Instead, I prefer to compete with myself.

When I win business that other digital media groups were also trying for, I never think of it as winning from them. Instead, I just feel like I finally got a proposal to sound even a third as enthusiastic as I sound in person. When someone else gets a great big feature in a magazine, instead of feeling angry or sad or like I lost, I think to myself about how I can achieve more and deliver more results, so that it’s obvious next time that I be called for a story.

Competing with one’s self is far more fulfilling. You control more of the variables. If you want to find more success, throw yourself into your work, into doing big things that matter, into helping your clients succeed. That’s so much easier to conceptualize than thinking about racing against some other person or group.

If you’re trying to catch up to my numbers (and ask yourself why, because the numbers aren’t what matter as much as how you leverage them), you can’t control what I’m doing. So, every little variable I add messes up your effort to catch up or pass. Meanwhile, you’re not paying as much attention to you as you are to me, and are thus not focused on the part you can change the most.

No one ever won a race looking sideways.

Remind yourself of this often. Competition was given to us by our overlords. It was put in place because in situations where someone fabricates a competition, invariably, a third party benefits from BOTH parties’ efforts more than you. Most times, when you’re feeling competitive, you’re being played.

So instead, work within yourself. Work your variables. Work on those things you can change. Work to improve your skills, your thinking, your ability to serve, and your capacity to complete more than you could before. Execute. There are so many talkers that by just doing, you get the chance to win.

It’s much more fun this way. Believe me.

Photo credit peregrine blue

In planning my work for 2010, I asked myself similar questions. For New Marketing Labs, we’ve built the business to help larger companies use social media and other online marketing methods to build awareness, improve channels, and deliver more connected business relationships. In my other company (not yet launched), we’re going to empower passionate business, one human at a time through adult education. In thinking about what I’m going to do for [chrisbrogan.com], the soul of this site is where I have to reconsider what I’ve been offering and push forward for what I can do to be helpful in 2010.

Does Your Business Have a Soul?

Does your business seek to be helpful? Do you wake up thinking, “How can I do something that will improve the experience of others?” Will people say they’re better off with your business around than not?

Business doesn’t have to have a soul. It truly doesn’t. But should you want to be passionate about what you do, either as an employee or as the owner, you might consider this question more closely. The purpose of any business, at some level, is revenue. If not, then it’s not really a business. It’s a pursuit, a hobby, a passion, a charity, or something other than a business. But seeking revenue doesn’t preclude having a soul, so let’s banish that thought.

But if you are seeking to work passionately, and you’re seeking to build a business that will sustain you (and/or others), a soul helps. And by soul, because maybe I’ve not been clear, let’s say that a soul is “the moral and intentional guidance and ‘life’ of your company.”

(I bet I just lost a few of you left-brainers.)

What Does Your Business Soul Need to Consider?

In Trust Agents, Julien and I worked to explain that there’s a new way to conduct one’s self on the web. At the end of the book, we revealed that it didn’t really apply only to the web. Our point was simple: we think that the way people do business could stand to evolve into something more human and relationship-based. We feel that this has been lost a bit over the years, and that part of what’s contributed to the economic problems of the western world at least is that companies started seeing people as numbers only.

Putting your intentions and morals and good people skills back into the way you do business, we feel, might be part of a cure. That’s why we talked about the importance of being a human artist, someone who understands the so-called “soft skills.” Treating people like you want to empower them to succeed instead of wanting them simply to buy is a path towards sustained business. Working out how your business fits into an ecosystem and understanding what else your customers are dealing with helps with this as well.

Putting Your Soul To Work

If nothing else, your business soul is a set of questions. Ask yourself whether you would want your mother or spouse to be marketed to the way you are marketing. Ask whether the products you sell are something you’d give to your family. Ask whether there are better/easier/more helpful ways of doing what you’re doing. Ask whether you’re approaching your business relationships in a balanced way, or if you’re just sitting there champing at the bit to sell (people can tell the difference). Ask what kind of price your products and services are worth? Determine whether you’re giving real value or if you’re just selling.

The answers to these questions should help guide you. They can form the core of your vision of your business’s soul. Again, I’m not thinking that every business seeks to have a soul. I’m thinking that you, should you want to be passionate about your work, might think about the soul of your business.

The core of my success over these last years has come from this: be helpful. I got to that by thinking of how a sustainable business can be run with a human warmth. My personal rewards for this kind of thinking are great, and not just in monetary ways. Remember, the reason behind writing Trust Agents was because Julien and I discovered that there are more currencies out there than money and time, and the biggest one we found untapped was trust.

So, does your business have or want a soul? Where do you go with this? And what are your answers to the questions posed above?

It’s the perfect time to have that in mind, and it will drive success, if executed with passion.

Photo credit dbking

I’m guilty. I’ve used the word “rockstar” often to express my passion that social media makes everyone equal on the “potential to be awesome” spectrum. I’m every bit as much to blame for the “cultification of social media” as anyone. But no more.

It’s great to be flashy. It’s whatever to be famous. But if you really want to make it and keep making it, you’ve gotta make being a construction worker sexy.

Hard work. That’s what’s pushing this forward. You know what Brian Solis is sexy? Because he works hard. Know why iJustine got where she got? Hint: it’s not her looks. She worked hard.

Call me Puritan, and I am a boy from New England, but I think hard work is the badge for 2010. We’re not getting a free pass to flit around the country shooting Flip videos this coming year. It’s about the work we put into it. The SMART work, not just hard work.

Get your hard hat. Get your blue prints. Find your crew. Let’s make construction sexy. You with me?

Photo credit Saad Akhtar