The folks at Nikon let me try out a D300s camera. It’s a lot more pro-feeling than my Nikon D-60. Honestly, I’m not yet that clever with it. I’m trying it out, and shooting stuff, and they’re giving me little tips so I can try to do better stuff with it.

I’m part of their outreach project, which they’re doing for the South by Southwest event in partnership with YFrog. So, if you check out http://yfrog.com/nikon, you’ll see what me and a few others are shooting.

Why let an idiot like me use such a powerful camera instead of someone who’s a really great shooter? There are a few reasons. One’s obvious: I have a big audience, so Nikon is hoping that I’ll somehow coax you into buying one. I’m not sure how well that kind of option works. It’s not an inexpensive camera, so it’s not like you do an impulse buy.

However, the OTHER reason they let me use it instead of some pro is that I can be more like an “everyman” user. (I’ve written about the everyman before.) This is why Scott Monty of Ford is perfect for Ford. He’s their everyman.

So, the post? I’ve got a mixed reason. First, I’m telling you, “Hey, look! Nikon wants you to see me making their camera take fuzzy shots because I’m not a good photographer, but darn it – they like me!” Second, I’m saying, “as marketers, take a look at this kind of outreach and ask yourself what’s the yield. Believe me, if I somehow magically convince you that “even I can use this camera,” which is possible maybe, then how many will I be selling?

What’s your take?

He has a @toysoldiergames Twitter account that he’s working on using for other promotions and to educate his customer base. I think it will do super well.

This isn’t rocket surgery kids (as my Boston friends say). This is marketing. It’s deadly sniper-level good marketing, because Mick makes it about MY comics, and about Ray’s Warhammer 40K miniatures, and about other people’s specific stuff.

And Mick runs a small store with just a few employees. If he can find the time to sell this way, you have to really think about it.

Think he sells more than people who don’t do this? I’m guessing yes. You?

Simon is marketing director for Bar B-Ria, an upscale barber shop experience for gentlemen in Bogota, Colombia. They offer everything from massages to haircuts to manicures and pedicures, and a bar full of top shelf liquor, including a new favorite rum, Zacapa from Guatemala. I’ll tell you what advice I had for the place upon appreciating their services and their commitment to guest experience. This is mostly tactical. There’s still something to learn from it.

Turn The Revenue Measure From “Dollars Per Day” into ” Dollars Per Guest”

Because the entire plan of Bar B-Ria is hinged around delivering excellent guest experiences, it dawned on me that measuring revenue by day instead of dollars-per-guest means that opportunities get lost. For instance, I love Zacapa rum. When I walk in the door, it should be one goal of the Bar B’Ria team to pour me a glass (and add to my bill). This is how places like Disney think. They work on delivering maximum guest experience, but they calculate on dollar-per-guest, as do cruise ships, as do many other hospitality experiences.

Build Relationship Databases

I recommended that Simon have each guest in a database that tells them my preferences all the way through. Do I like gel in my hair after the haircut? Do I want my massage hard or soft? Why shouldn’t everyone in the place know that upon my arrival? It’s going to benefit my experience, and it’s going to improve my perception of the service. You can do this easily with Google Docs, better with BatchBook.

Partner With Hotels

Simon needs my dollars. I’m a US guy in Colombia and the service he offers is premium-but-inexpensive by American standards. If I hadn’t had friends from Colombia, I’d have never heard of Bar B’Ria. The people of Colombia in general don’t know much about it yet, and the men here aren’t yet convinced that a $30 haircut is somehow better than a $4 haircut.

Hotels that cater to people from other countries or vacationers would be a great place to build a relationship with concierges, maybe even to sponsor/advertise. Simon could earn much more by building bridges between the places where people who can afford the experience are and into his establishment.

Until more folks come and see the value for themselves and use it to treat themselves.

Word of Mouth Referral Program

Simon would do well to give me a card upon leaving that offers someone a free drink or a scalp massage or something else. He should give me 3-5 per visit. Imagine the experience: I’m done with my massage and my haircut and my delicious rum, and I am about to leave the venue. Aren’t I going to go forth and spread the word? It’s the perfect opportunity. Should 3 of those people come in with my referral, I’d maybe get a small benefit back: my own free scalp massage, perhaps.

Little Things Add Up

Over all the various ideas I gave Simon, they weren’t immediate millions-makers. They are all experience-enhancing and tactical. They all relate to giving guest value that results in improved revenue and guest acquisition. None of what I talked about had to do with the web. That’s almost the easy part, right?

Your Ideas

What would you add to this, oh social media friends. Give a few ideas in the comments on what you’d do to amp up the social elements, and tell me how they’d help Simon. (I’ll share my ideas in the comments a day or so later.)

Good?

(Oh, and I found this video in Spanish about the venue, if you want more inspiration.

VERY special thanks to Carlos Pardo for help finding the link to the place, and for the hospitality he (and his amazing parents) showed me at their family home for dinner while in Bogota. (And ladies of Colombia: he’s single.)

You’re New Here

In business, we are all new again. All the major car companies can’t assume anything about their customers. Banks aren’t guaranteed to be there forever. Cornerstone institutions are rolling up, sailing away, moving into new modes that don’t benefit us any more. We can’t count on anything. Oh, and on the business side, your customers are losing jobs, merging, consolidating, changing the rules.

Accept that you’re new here. What do you need? You need eyes, ears, intuition, intent, and anthropology.

Your Eyes And Ears

Listening tools abound. You can now see people’s intentions writ large on these various social networks. No, not everyone is out there voicing their opinions, but you can start with the people who are. Use the searching tools to see what people are saying on blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook. Listen around in forums. Google yourself blue. And then process this.

Listening is deafness if you do nothing with it.

Intuition

Want to change the world? Ask thousands of questions. Ask the same handful of questions thousands of times. Ask yourself, “How can I help my customers during these tough times?” Toyota is giving free maintenance for two years as a way to win back sales and customers. It’s a solution that will benefit both sides of the equation. How is your bank treating you during these economic woes? What have you said about it? What will you do?

Intuition about what others need is a powerful tool in this world without maps.

Intent

Do you really care about your customers/prospects? If not, it will show. Do you value them? Show it. Demonstrate it with intent. Make decisions that don’t always benefit you as much as they do the customer. You don’t have to sink the business, but just by showing more intentions to the positive of your customers, you’ll win more opportunity.

What do your actions say about your intent?

Anthropology

You’re looking to better understand the social and cultural development of humans. It’s all we have left, because all the history we had attached to us before has shaken itself off, or it’s clinging to our backs like a prison.

Why are we sending kids to schools that train them to be industrial cogs? What are we doing to help them rebel? How are we reshaping the world, now that the unit of measure is knowledge/information? In a world where we don’t all have to work side by side in a factory, why are we building so many offices?

If you dig into this area, if you start looking for new trends, whispers of what curves are coming next, you see the big stuff. You see the boomer generation growing huge. You see India taking over the creative side of the stick to go along with their dominance of engineering and process management. You see shifts in who’s spending, where we’re paying attention, and more.

This one’s the biggest to consider in that world without maps. Because we need to understand the people more than we need to understand the systems. If you’re trying to re-rig your marketing tech to account for these new territories, you’re wasting time by not starting with understanding the shifts in what humans want/need/are moving towards.

Is This Crazy Talk?

Anyone who just nodded yes, I’ll see you a few years from now and we can talk more. Those of you who get a glimpse of this, who see that we’ve got a new opportunity to really take meaningful action, let’s work in that direction.

What’s your first move? What have you already been doing? What will you do next?

Without maps, where will the lay of the land take you?

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

• Some of you said, “Well, of course you did. That’s where people go for food reviews.”
• Some of you said, “What’s yelp?” and maybe clicked the link.
• Some of you said, “Oh yeahhhhhh, Yelp. I haven’t used that in a while.”

This post isn’t specifically about Yelp. It’s about the side streets of the Internet. Yelp is my example of this. It could be any site that you’ve not visited in a while.

But my point is this: there are tons of hidden communities all over the Internet. When I talk to marketers about finding new potential buyers, this is what’s on my mind. Because we’re learning to grow bigger ears, and we understand how to follow along with a Twitter search, but there are still plump, ripe, juicy hidden communities that are of value to you and your interests.

Though this is more easily explained for business-to-consumer, this actually points out an opportunity to business-to-business sellers: if there’s not a hidden community, maybe you could make them one.

A Checklist for The Side Streets

• Ask yourself weekly how you’re growing your community base, or your prospect base, or both.
• Ask yourself right afterwards where you haven’t thought of as a good place to explore that’s not the normal places?
• Take 30-40 minutes investigating a few places that you’ve forgotten about (Yahoogroups? eBay? Craigslist?)
• Learn and understand their norms (how they interact in this space, so that you don’t step on any sand castles)
• See if there isn’t some non-spammy crossover way to interact with that community and introduce yourself.
• Do something to bring value to this community that could potentially lead to new business.
• Repeat

Opportunity Is Everywhere

On days when I’m feeling pessimistic, a line like that would make me crazy/angry. On most days, I feel surprised by how many people waste calories complaining or blogging negatively or griping on Twitter when they could be building opportunity for their projects or businesses.

Know who taught me that in spades? The moms I met at the Disney Social Media Moms event in Orlando. People like Molly Gold, and Sarah Pinnix, and sisters Susan and Janice from 5 Minutes for Mom. They look for opportunity and work on ways to improve their business. There are tons more like these.

We can all find opportunity in these side streets. I hear about new ones every few days in Third Tribe Marketing, the private marketing community I started with Brian and Darren and Sonia.

Where are the side streets taking you?

Note: the picture above isn’t where I ate. It’s just a creative commons photo of a cafe.
Photo credit vmiramontes

One of the areas where social media will excel is in the opportunity to make things our own, to give them our own look and feel. Remember when you got your first personal computer? Remember changing the background picture? Remember when you could change the theme? The world is pushing further and further into a desire for customization, and I think social media gives us a chance at custom communication/interaction.

The photo above are Disney’s Vinylmation toys (note: Hanes brought me to Walt Disney World for an event, but I wasn’t paid by Hanes or Disney for any of my thoughts on their workings or properties). I thought the toys were really clever, but then I found the do-it-yourself ones. Those really caught my eye. Because once you see what others had created, your next thought (or mine, at least) was, “well, what could I do to make it look different?”

Social media allows us to customize our communication. I can talk directly to Jon Swanson, and not to preachers. I can have conversations with Glenda Watson Hyatt and not just people interested in accessibility. That means, if interested, I can talk specifically about things that matter to them, and not to crowds.

Custom is everything.

Look at these flowers. The Disney Imagineers made them for the Hanes event:

They’re made out of socks. First, it’s cool because they look like flowers. Second, it looks like a fun craft you could do with kids. Third, it’s something that didn’t have to be there. And yet, because it was, the dinner looked custom to the rest of the Hanes Comfort Crew and me. Disney SAW us. They knew we were there.

Custom is everything. Do you agree?

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

What Third Tribe is About

It all started because of something Seth Godin said to Brian Clark (copyblogger) about marketing. Brian had written about an internet marketer type (the yellow highlighter kind) and Seth had asked which side of that kind of marketing Brian was on, as if there were two tribes: touchy feely on one side and harsh yellow highlighter on the other. Brian’s response was that he was in neither camp, and that’s where the basic seed of “third tribe” came from.

We chatted about it on the phone, and then Brian checked in with Darren Rowse (problogger), and then we all conferred with Sonia Simone (remarkable communications), and the idea came about to offer a private membership forum and information/education place to share openly about internet marketing strategies, tactics, and ideas.

That’s basically what we talk about inside the third tribe site.

(Oh, for those of you who just want to know how much, we’re doing an introductory rate of $27 USD a month for charter members, which will be your price if you buy it before Friday, February 5th [around 6PM CT]. After that, it goes up to $47 USD a month.) Want some?

Not For Everyone

What we’re covering in there is basically the “how you can do better internet marketing” stuff. It’s not about affiliate marketing per se. It’s not about “make money online” stuff per se, though some of the third tribers talk about that. But it’s definitely a place to learn and talk about what we’ve figured out works in the internet marketing place.

Because of who’s there, there are all kinds of perspectives. Darren makes his money one way. Brian does it a totally different way. Me? I’m even more different than both of them, and so we’re also learning from each other through this sharing process.

It might not be for you, and that’s just fine.

Who Else is There?

We’ve already got some great folks you might know like John Jantsch, Leo Babauta, Pam Slim, Naomi Dunford, Johnny Truant, Chris Garrett, Dave Navarro, Jonathan Fields, Hugh MacLeod, Laura Roeder, Mark McGuinness, Chris Pearson, Aaron Wall, and there are more that I’m probably missing.

Again, this stuff’s about marketing and what’s worked for us and what hasn’t. It’s been fun hearing from people in the forums sections, and I’m learning every bit as much as I’m sharing. That’s what I’m enjoying the most so far: the interactions. Yeah, there’s all this educational content that’s hopefully useful, including audio programs, worksheets, things like that. But me personally? I’m really digging the interactions in the forums.

If This Sound Good to You

I’m pretty happy about this project. I like working with Brian and Darren and Sonia, and I’m loving what I’m learning from the other folks who’ve already started in on the forums. If you want to talk privately about internet marketing and what we’re finding that works and what doesn’t, then consider joining the Third Tribe. If not, don’t worry. I’m still doing my thing here at [chrisbrogan.com].

How This Fits With Everything Else I Do

I’m still happily the president of New Marketing Labs. I’m still writing here at [chrisbrogan.com]. I’m still doing the stuff I’m doing. This was just a way to offer some ideas, insights, and interaction with people who wanted to get deep into online marketing. And no, this isn’t the education project I talked about in my newsletter. That’s still forthcoming.

For the Naysayers

Any time I talk about money, I get a bunch of emails telling me that I’ve jumped the shark or that I’m a sellout. I did when we published Trust Agents. I did when I took my first affiliate ad for Thesis. I’ll just say my part about this up front, and you can blog whatever about it elsewhere.

The reason for building a membership forum site is that we can share information that we use for our businesses. It’s not what we want to post on our blogs. It’s something people are paying to learn and hopefully use for their own business efforts, and because of that, we think it’s of value. Don’t want it? Don’t buy it. I do plenty for free, and that’s still useful, too.

It’s not for everyone. It’s for those who want to step up their online marketing game.

Get On Board

The Third Tribe Marketing site is a paid membership site. If you sign up before February 5th at 6PM (Central Time – GMT -6), the cost is $27 USD a month. If you sign up next week, the cost jumps to $47 a month. The early bird and all that.

I hope you join. I’m really excited about what’s going on there. Frankly, I haven’t been active on any kind of message board/forum in a long while, and it was kind of fun to revisit the feeling of threaded forum conversations where everyone’s voice matters.

Check out Third Tribe Marketing.

Can’t see the video? Click here.

We tend to follow a lot. It’s easier. There’s drafting that happens, where we can get behind the work someone else did and let that take us to our destination. We do what came before. We shift it to the new thing with very few changes. The problem? We fall into the “looks like everything else” category, and/or the “doesn’t work the same way, but we’ll force it” category.

Why is there a late night TV crisis in American television? Why are we worried who sits at what desk with which band interviewing who from behind what desk? It’s all the damned same, only some folks do it better than others.

And then?

Marketing. Old marketing would be: find buyers for my product. Hunt them down and relentlessly hit them with messages until they buy. The bigger the number of prospects, the better the yield.

New marketing. New marketing is more like: find people who make more sense. Start relationships with them before selling them. Learn more about them. Make the offer if it makes sense. The social in social marketing would suggest that you care a bit about humanity, not that you’re using new pipes for old shit.

And that’s just one way to think about it.

Ask yourself: are you following the same old conventions?