Blur

We have too much to do. We have too much to sort through. There are too many shiny objects, too many me-too experiences, too many situations where we’re doing something because we think that’s what we should be doing, and because that’s what other people seem to be doing.

In this context, I was talking about marketing, but of course, as with everything I do, I’m talking about life, about how we’re conducting ourselves, about what’s on the plate.

Essentially, I gave people permission to stop chasing after every recipe and instead just work on their restaurant. Do something. You don’t have to do everything. Just do something.

Eliminate blur. Stop multitasking. Stop allowing everything in, if that’s not helping.

Ultimately, no one needed me to say this. I just did it to remind them to look inside, to question everything, to consider the frame through which they were viewing the world, and to consider whether there was too much stuff blurring up their view.

I’m starting to think that we’ve got the opportunity to do some REALLY big things by just working on a few things, and by chalking up some little victories.

What say you?

One thing that’s different with my events than with other events: every sponsor and exhibitor and speaker is someone we think has something to offer you. We pick our sponsors with great intention. We endorse their products. We are users of most of their products. We appreciate their voice in our experiences. Thus, time spent with them is also time spent learning new marketing the way we see it.

So, it’s a 1 day event. There’s no fluff. It’s packed with info. We can hang out. AND I want to give you 50% off. If you use code = CHRIS50 when you REGISTER HERE.

I hope you’ll come for the day. I’m sure you’ll leave with something useful and actionable for your business.

To that end, we start with an understanding of our clients’ goals, and work from there into what kinds of measurements we might come up with to help them with their success. I don’t talk about specific clients (as that’s not part of our contract), but I’ll share the general way we’re going about working with clients in 2010, so that you can get a sense of how we’re doing what we do. (My goal is to open conversations about how social media can be used effectively as part of business communications, including marketing and channel development.)

Our 8 Questions

In working with clients, I have eight questions that I like to ask to get a sense of what we might be able to do to improve business:

1. How can we fill your sales funnel?
2. How can we improve engagement?
3. How can we improve exposure and coverage?
4. How are we empowering your community to interact?
5. How do we grow sales from your community?
6. How can we build a voice and a new stage for your ideas?
7. How do we bridge your offline experiences with your online presence?
8. How are we extending to the mobile environment?

These questions don’t always line up with what our clients are seeking for help, but they always get the conversation going in the direction of finding goals that will drive needles to move. Not all eight have to be answered, but you can see the measurements that would determine whether we’ve hit the mark on the above goals. Some are rooted in PR-type practice. Others are more marketing-minded. Still others are sales-focused. That’s intentional. I don’t purify when I work. I want the holistic approach. (Sometimes, this is an issue when dealing with clients, as they have one budget from which to pay us, and I often want to work on things that will improve other groups who aren’t paying.)

What We Seek for Each Engagement

Again, these aren’t hard, fast rules, but we try to build the following into every engagement:

• Measurement (dashboard)
• Methods (our approach)
• Materials (people and digital resources)
• Database (are we growing the client’s database/list?)
• Effort (what goes into the project)
• Education (we never give people fish)
• Interfaces (which parts of the business do/can we touch)
• Crisis (if something goes wrong, then what?)
• Deep Wiring (can we build beyond just “marketing?”)

When building our projects, we seek to work more like partners and channel developers than an agency. We’re not there to come up with ideas and let others do all the work. We want to work side-by-side with our clients, and become partners in success. Having the above all answered helps us out in this regard.

But what about measuring?

Measurements

I’m fond of saying that my favorite measurement is the one with a dollar sign attached. I like helping companies find revenue. Barring that, or around that, we look at different measures for different projects. It depends on what the goals were, and the strategy we used to get there. Here are some sample measurements we’ve used at New Marketing Labs in the past:

This is is by NO MEANS inclusive of all the things we track.

• % of online conversation (versus competitor).
• % of coverage improvement.
• # of new subscribers/attendees/buyers via tracking links.
• # of new threads, comments, conversations for engagements.
• # of actions taken (for instance, on email newsletters).
• increase in $ per visitor, monthly average.
• # of leads
• # of sales call conversions
• unique visitors (all those basic web metrics)
• more

It depends what we’re aiming for as to what we can work on delivering. To me, there are dozens and dozens of other ways to do metrics. (Resources are below.)

So Far, So Good

Our goal when we launched NML was to help companies figure out how to be human at a distance and what it means for business communications, including sales, marketing, PR, customer service, and internal collaboration. We work like a lab. We try things, we experiment, we do things differently than the traditional teams that are out there. So far, we’ve had mostly good response for our efforts (no one gets 100% success).

I’m proud of the work we’ve done, and looking forward to what we’ve got ahead of us in 2010. In writing this up, I just wanted to talk a bit about how I think metrics and measurements can be attained for social media efforts. It’s not rocket surgery (to quote the smart Boston folks who coined that at IMS Boston). We find goals for our clients, we find ways to measure our efforts, and we work to succeed. Repeat as necessary. Make sense?

How about you? What are you doing? What’s your approach?

Want to see how others do metrics? Here’s a huge list from Robin Broitman.

Photo credit aussiegall

Essentially, it’s this: someone in the middle tier of the organization comes to us and asks about a project, maybe something like content marketing or community management. We talk with them, discuss their goals, make sure there’s some kind of alignment, determine if we both see eye to eye on the loot it’ll take to get the job done, and then we initiate a project. Here’s what we see happen more often than not.

The middle-level person has a faint blessing from someone on high, but a vague one. They have enough power to convince the folks lower in the hierarchy to go along with this. We work to make that middle-level person successful, and to make the experience for the folks a bit further down the hierarchy feel like it’s a good project and that they’re participating.

Then what happens is that someone higher up almost always gets excited about what the person has accomplished, and gets into it, wants to champion it, and throws some more fuel on the fire.

The middle-down, middle-up approach. That seems to be how we’re getting it done.

You? Does this make sense for your organization? Have you seen similar (or different) experiences to getting new things implemented where you are?

Note at the bottom of every post on this site that there are two options. One is the Share This plug-in:

Note also that there’s a Retweet button for Twitter.

And that in the upper right hand corner of the blog, there are two ways to subscribe to the blog.

There are other ways to share. Facebook has a really powerful share feature built in.

Further, we talked about this with regards to Twitter when I showed you how to get more retweet action, too.

One of nine questions I came up with recently in thinking on how to help my clients with the team at New Marketing Labs, is simply this: “How does this share?” If I can answer that for my clients, I can bring them more results.

Have you built that into the projects you’re working on? How do you add more sharing to your projects?

Photo credit krooclub

Nothing unique yet, right? Well, our plan’s a bit different. Instead of just asking some bloggers, we picked some dads. Which ones?

C.C. Chapman
Jeffrey Sass (disclosure: I founded Dadomatic.com)
Max Kalehoff
Brad Powell and DadLabs
Michael Sheehan

And the projects? Well, we’re rolling those out in the next little while, but they’ll entail using these products as dads, with their families, and we came up with various content projects for each product. So, instead of just loaning out a camcorder, we thought of ways to use it to document a field trip, and/or a historical tour. We’ve got a great idea for Sony’s new dSLR camera, the Alpha, where we’ll encourage dads and their kids to snap 100 portraits.

What I hope will be different is that the thematic approach of showing how dads use tech as an integrated part of their relationships with their kids. We’ll see how it turns out. If you decide to follow along, Sony has a section of their community platform set up to track the projects and field conversations.

What do you think? More interesting than the typical ad? What do you like and/or don’t you like about these types of outreach projects?

We’re all ears.

The very best content is that which leaves us feeling like the hero.

Think about the movies you love. Think about the songs you replay over and over. Think about the books you read. When we participate in stories, the ones that move us the most are those where we see a bit of ourselves in the storyline, right?

It’s not always easy, especially when you’re creating media for a corporation, but there are some guidelines you might consider when you think about building your media, be it a podcast, a video, a blog post, an ebook, a book, or whatever.

How to Make Your Audience Feel Like a Superhero

• Let them feel smart and included. Stories where we are introduced as “part of the group” or “in the know” help us get over our initial discomfort.
• Give them a solid map. The only time readers shouldn’t know where they’re going is if they’re reading a mystery (or a Chuck Palahniuk novel). The rest of the time, start people off with a sense of where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and tips on how they’ll know they’re done.
• Reward them. If you’re producing material that’s longer in form, give your audience some kind of reward. This might be a checklist that lets them run off and do something with their partial knowledge. It might be some kind of acknowledgment that they’ve reached a next step. Whatever the case, if you’re challenging your readers, reward them. (Works in video games; works in other media.)
• Respect their time. Brevity, friends. I point it out all the time. If you can say something with fewer words, do it. Okay?
• Write about them, not you. Or, if you have to write about you (memoirs or biographies come to mind), give them something they can do to make meaning of what you’ve shared. One reason I loved WINNING by Jack Welch was that I felt I could use the stories as a better perspective of how corporations work. Make sure your media empowers your audience instead of toots your own horn. It’s how you make superheroes.

Storytelling has much more to it than this, but I’m going to respect your time and let you decide what you think of the above. Do you see how this might improve how your community will react to your stories?

What’s your take?

A Sign

We need a way for people to find us. Having a blog and/or other web presence touchpoints (or outposts) is a good start. It’s an easy way for people to find you. We can’t do business with you if we can’t find you, right? Signs are basic. Want the bonus round early? If I know what you’re selling (even if “selling” is the sale of an idea or belief).

A Friendly Place

If your online presence is friendly, like a really clean and well-designed site, or if it has a place for you to relax and get acquainted, won’t that help the process of getting to know you? Take a look around your website: is it a place people would want to visit and then stick around? Are you inviting? Do you actually greet your guests on your site or on places like Twitter?

Networking Connections

Building an online presence also gives you the chance to connect with people. Your site and your other outposts on the web should faciliate connection. In my case, I promote connecting with me via LinkedIn, on Facebook and Twitter, but I also give you an email address to reach me on ( blog at chrisbrogan dot com), and of course, you can comment on blog posts.

Connecting is part of the whole social experience. Make it easy for people to reach you. It will make it easier for potential business to flow.

A Storefront

This is optional, but if one goal of your blog and your online presence is to sell something (even if that’s just YOU), make that clear. If you go to my about page, you know what I do. Be clear about your ask. If you want to do business, put it out there. I find this one to be lacking in most people’s interpretation of their online presence.

A People-Centric Mindset

If you’re not building relationships, connecting with people, getting to know others on the web, and sharing, I’d say you’re doing it wrong, except I rarely believe that. MY take is that the way to get the most out of these online tools, and when you’re visiting these networks like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, and wherever else you choose to visit, if you’re not trying to connect like a human, if you’re not sharing often, then maybe you could revisit your perspective on using the tools.

Good happy people (like Jim and Adrienne in the picture above) should really be the ultimate goal of your online experience.

That All Said…

The tools change all the time. Ways to capture attention and share interesting information come and go daily. Our goals shift. Our needs realign. Your mileage WILL vary.

How do you think you stack up to the above? Did I miss any parts of the puzzle? Which parts are a bit confusing or nebulous to you?

Your thoughts are welcome.

5 Tasks in the Morning

I open the same four apps every morning: Firefox, Mail, Seesmic Desktop, and TextEdit. My tabs in Firefox are:

• Google Reader – for my news, my searches, my “ego feed” of who’s talking about my stuff.
• Google Calendar – how I live.
• Facebook – I’m not good at Facebook, but I try to stay connected.
• Facebook : Trust Agents Community – this is the online community for my book with Julien.
• Friendfeed – I’m no Scobleizer, but I do dip in and look.
• And then usually tabs of stories I want to think more about for later.

1. Email – I try to answer 50-100 mails right out of the gate. (I get about 490 a day right now).
2. Twitter – I respond to any questions from overnight, and any DMs.
3. Google Reader – I find good stories, promoting the best of them on Twitter, commenting on some.
4. LinkedIn – I review my connection requests, and/or any other tasks they’ve given me to do (like introduce people).
5. Communities – I drop into 2 or 3 communities where I participate, like the Trust Agents group, and some Ning communities, and the like. I leave a few comments, or post some ideas, to keep the sharing going.

I do this reasonably consistently every morning. Why? Because participation is part of the currency. If I’m not in the game, I can’t play.

Do you have five tasks you do quite frequently in the morning with regards to your online world? Do you have any questions about what’s above? What do you do differently?

On Monday, I complained about a crappy, impersonal pitch I received. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. Danny Brown chided me for it, and said I had just mentioned in my newsletter that it’s important not to point at the mess, but to point at the solution. For penance, here’s some ideas for yesterday’s pitcher, and maybe you.

How to Influence Me

I’m Human – As best as you can, use my name. Sometimes I have to send out mass messages, and if I can’t use software like Blue Sky Factory to put the first name in neatly for me, then I do this one thing: I put the person’s name at the start and/or a line or 3 that shows I’m personally sending the message to that one person. I receive at least a dozen emails a day like this, and I appreciate the personal touch.

Be Brief – Okay, you CAN put everything in one big email, but if you do that, could you make the first few paragraphs a very brief summary? Maybe a bullet or 3, or a numbered list or two. (Monday’s email was brief, for sure. In that case, he might have included a URL for me to learn more).

Target it Even a Little Bit – If you’re asking me to join your influencer group, maybe decide whether or not I’m the right fit. I’m going to say that the pitch from Monday was close enough. I’ve written about consumer beverages before, so that’s fine. I also got five other requests that were for things I’m not remotely related to, or have any influence over. If you’re looking for me to influence, that might be a point to think about.

Don’t Let the Numbers Fool You – Charles Best from DonorsChoose.org gave the best presentation at the 2009 New Comm Forum, wherein which he talked about the “Oprah Effect,” and how a woman with 1000 very passionate readers in her blog community outperformed a popular tech blog with two million daily readers in a simple request for help. Never ever ever look at my numbers first. Never. Never look at anyone’s numbers first. Decide whether the community responds and interacts (some ways to do this are technorati ranking, comments per post, overall traffic vs comments as %), and then determine if you’ve got an influencer. For instance, I think Dadomatic.com is influential to parents, even if there are only a few hundred daily readers.

Be There Before the Sale

There are many people I know and support in this space. I love talking with marketers and pr professionals and other people passionate about how these tools empower communications. If you and I have some kind of passing relationship before you pitch me, I promise you it’ll go much better than when you cold call me. Does this scale? No. (No no no no no no no.) Is it the better way to do it? Yes. You decide whether you want to eschew this advice, but there’s a price to cold calling.

Remember We all Have Megaphones

If you (or if I) do something you don’t like, we’re now the broadcaster. We have the tools to complain, and we use them. Sometimes, we do it to illustrate. Other times, we’re just being human and frustrated. But this isn’t a warning: it’s notice that your attempt has to be considered, because we might not just delete it.

I Could Be Wrong

You’re going to tell me that you have to get the word out, that you don’t have time to talk with everyone individually. You’re going to say that it’s a junior person, and that it’s not something worth giving a lot of attention to in the long run.

Bull.

Sam Lawrence is launching a company Wednesday. He reached out to me directly. He has LOTS of people to contact. This should be something easy to give to someone junior. Do you think Sam wants his message handed to me in a way that might set me off? Do you think Sam thinks this isn’t important to how I perceive him?

We vote with our actions, people. Maybe I was too negative in writing a griping post about this low end annoyance. And yet, to me? How we treat each other, as best as we can, is all we have right now. Attention and trust come from relationships.

How are you building yours?