A Media Company of One

I’m my own media company. I speak live at conferences. I produce videos. I author books. I produce ebooks. I write a daily blog. I keep a weekly newsletter. They all serve different purposes. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Live events let me connect and custom tailor my message, plus meet people before and after the event.
• Videos let me emote and show my humanity behind my content.
• Books are a way to reach people not queued up in the social web.
• eBooks deliver distilled value outside of a blog. They’re also an “object” to share.
• The blog gives you constant insight into my way of thinking.
• The newsletter is setting you up for my next move, and cultivating a new set of relationships.

That’s a platform. I fill that in with all kinds of social networking. I spend a few hours each day communicating and cultivating relationships. Mostly, I help other people. This gives me social capital. (That, by the way, is the most important detail that most people skip and miss. If you want to highlighter your laptop, the last two lines are the most important part.)

Why Feed The System?

Sometimes, I’m asked why I give away all of my ‘how I do it’ information. I’m asked whether this gives others the ability to compete directly with me. Frankly, I don’t worry about competition. I worry that there aren’t enough people executing effectively for companies. I’ve got plenty of work to do as it is. New Marketing Labs picks up plenty of clients and has even when I give away all my major points and ideas.

I feed the system because I believe you can take something I’ve started, run with it, and advance the whole space. I give you all that I can because I know that you’ve got your own ideas, and maybe components of mine will help you.

Oh, and the more I share, the more business comes my way. It’s a built in reciprocal loop.

Build and Feed Your System

You’ve got the same opportunity. In fact, you have a better opportunity. Find your niche, and dig in. If you’re Shashank Nigam, you mix social media with the aviation industry and create Simpliflying (disclosure: I’m on the advisory board of this company). If you’re Jay Baer, you focus on conversion tactics (instead of every little bit of marketing) and create Convince and Convert.

You don’t have to do every media type. You don’t have to blog daily. You have to build a system that you can feed, and you have to feed it, and you have to build it to deliver business value.

What do you think? Does this align with how you’re seeing things? What’s your niche? What parts of the system are you building?

Photo credit foxypar4

Know Your Goals

There’s not a lot to say here, except that if you’re not sure why you’re on the web, how do you know you’re doing it well? Your goals might be simply to participate in online conversations and to build digital relationships. If you’re coming here to promote something, to sell something, to try and claim some part of the market share of everyone’s mind (and most of you/us are), you’ve got to realize that your goal isn’t synonymous with the larger goals of the communities where these tools allow you access.

But that said, know that your goals must be in front of you, and should be measured (thanks, Lawrence Liu). Just being there isn’t necessarily going to change your business.

Listening Comes First

It’s always about listening. We talked about it yesterday. I talk about it always. If you don’t start by listening, you’re not there.

Be There Before the Sale

Long before you get onto the topic of the stuff you’re trying to push, just get to know some people. Who? If you listened well in the step above, you’ll have a start.

I recommend commenting about other people’s things much more than you write about yourself. On Twitter, I try to do a 15/1 rule, of talking about or to others versus talking about me. It’s a little different per place. For instance, on Facebook, your stream of information comes from many sources, so it’s harder to keep that rule.

Find other people’s good stuff and share. There’s a big benefit to sharing other people’s thing. If you retweet on Twitter and if you use the share feature on Facebook, people appreciate that.

Sharing using sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious don’t hurt, either.

Be clear and Simple

When you’re ready to make an ask, be very clear about it. Tweeting “This looks like a really cool site,” with a link to your site is not pleasant. It’s kind of jerky behavior. Instead, You might say, “I’ve launched a new site about design,” with a link, and that will be very clear and open.

I said it before, but if you want to spread your message, make it easy to get more retweet action.

Simple messages with a call to action work best on any social site. I find that asking questions really helps me get people to engage. Instead of, “New blog post: I’m smarter than you,” I would tweet, “Are you smarter than me?”

That one little change makes a big difference in response.

The Two-Way Street

Commenting is currency. Comment on other people’s blogs. Respond to other people’s tweets. Spend time in this space and it will repay you.

Be the #1 commenter on your own blog. If others have something to add, try and connect and pitch in. I can’t always respond individually to every comment, but I try to stay in there enough that people know that I respect a conversation and not just a push.

I can’t really stress that one enough.

The Time Question

The answer is lots. Does that spoil it for you? You must spend more time than you might like to participate on social channels. How much is more? It might take as much as an hour to two every day. I spend more, but then, this is my business. I know that you’ve got other things to do. Here are some thoughts on one way to spend time in your day. Note, this is a 2 hour breakdown. You can adjust as necessary:

• Read and listen. – 30 minutes. If you can spend the first 30 minutes of the day reading people’s blogs and checking in on their media, that’s a good start.
• Create. – 30 minutes Make a little new media every day. If I were to add time to any part of the equation, it would be this. Building media is a perfect way to build conversation starters. Blog more, make more video, do more things.
• Connect. – 1 hour. By connect, I mean talk with people on Twitter, on Facebook, on your blog and in forums. Spend an hour a day connecting with people, communicating with people, reaching out to them in whatever ways you can. This is obviously the reason to bother with social media. If you don’t want to do this step, rethink why you thought you should be on these services.

You’ll note that nothing above very clearly spells out doing business. It’s up to you to determine how you’d like to mix your business-doing into your online presence. Let’s show an example of that.

A Simple Online Presence “Push”

Let’s say you have to get the word out about a project of yours. You’ve done all the steps above. People know who you are. You’ve built up tons of great karma so people are really open to receiving your message. Here’s one way to consider populating the social web to build awareness for an event of yours.

• Create the post or page that lands your request. This might be a link to a URL for a conference. It could be a site where someone can buy your album. Whatever the “ask” is, make this page where they get all the details.
• Write a brief, simple tweet with a link to the page. “Ever wonder what happened to MC Hammer? ….” The tweet should be engaging enough that someone wants to connect and find out more, but never deceptive.
• Your posts should already show up naturally on Facebook and FriendFeed.com (if you’ve chosen these as outposts. You might even have your blog in LinkedIn). That’s just built in.
• I use tools like TweetMeme and ShareThis. I find that most of my inbound traffic comes from Twitter, StumbleUpon, other people’s blogs, and then Google. Social sharing tools work well for my presence.
• Thank people. As much as you can, when others share and retweet and post your information out there, be thankful to them. Make sure you give them praise and worship for being helpful.
• Get back to talking about things that aren’t related to you or your offer. Talk about other people. It restores the balance.

Wrapping Up

In writing this, I realized that I could go on and on and on. Maybe I’ll write a book about it, or at least a larger ebook. But hopefully this was a good start. Yes?

You’ll do it differently. That’s okay, too. Share those differences in the comments, as we all want to know.

Thanks for your time, and I hope this was helpful.

The Beautiful Feeling of Concierge Service

Let’s start with @AFinnie (or Ann Finnie to her fans). Ann is part of communications for HP, you know, the computer company. I met her at Gnomedex last year (one of my favorite conferences of the year). She was so personable and such a great brand ambassador for her products.

Just now, I asked Ann a question via Twitter. Truly, I could have googled it. (Have you seen Let Me Google That For You?) But I asked Ann. I wanted to know about the DV2 laptop, after @PatrickMoorhead from AMD mentioned that it was a sweet laptop.

Ann got me information, answered a few questions, and made me feel well-tended. So, what was that? Customer service? Sales? PR? Kind of all of them, right? It was concierge service, truth be told. Ann made me feel special, answered my questions, and left me with a positive experience. Concierge service. Think about that.

If your prospects (I’m considering a windows laptop, so I’m a prospect to HP) and existing customers feel well-treated with simple information requests, how do you think that warms them up for the rest of the experience?

Setting Out Into Dark Waters

But maybe this isn’t a good example, because I know Ann. I also know folks at Dell, Apple, and pretty much any other tech manufacturer I might want to know. What if you’re someone looking to build presence in social media, but are handling more “cold calling” opportunities, such as someone listening for opportunity? If you were going out to fish, you’d use some maps, some range finders, and other tools to determine where the fish are biting.

Listening helps. I covered this yesterday. Listening tools help you find them. But I could write every day about listening and it wouldn’t be enough. So, let’s say you’ve decided your people might be on Twitter. For instance, I was looking into something for a company who cares about the health of your lawn. I typed in the simplest term into Twitter Search and got these results for the search “lawn.” Not a bad start.

Should you jump in and start selling your stuff? HELL no. I cover that here when I explain Conn Fishburn’s phrase, “bring wine to the picnic.” Let’s ease into first steps.

Tending Nets

The sexiest kind of online presence is a relationship that feels like it’s there for me when I need it. I like that @JetBlue and @WholeFoods are here for the long term, and not just to promote a campaign. Further, companies like Whole Foods keep a blog. So does Ferg Devins at Molson.

John Andrews from WalMart isn’t on Twitter to sell me something. He’s there to show that WalMart has a face. I connected with John a lot during the Arkansas Ice Storm, which was another chance to see WalMart in its role as first responder to disasters.

Explaining this to the mother ship is tricky. It’s important that companies understand that these channels must be tended and not just used as sales pipelines, should they choose to have a Twitter or Facebook or blog or even just a commenting presence. Time spent talking with @AaronStrout about the Red Sox and barbecue isn’t time wasted because he’s not pushing Powered down my throat.

It’s the number one premise of my upcoming book with Julien Smith: Be there before the sale.

Fish or Cut Bait

Where’s the value in this? There are some ways of thinking about the return on investment with regards to this. You can look at things like “reducing acquisition cost” and “reduce cost per caller” for call centers. You can find metrics like “improved organic search” for blogging, and “higher percentage of warm leads handed off” for a sales cycle. It depends how you want to work it all out. (Don’t you hate “it depends” answers?)

How long should you engage in a presence effort? Here’s a tricky one to consider: if it’s successful, the answer is, “for as long as there’s something coming back from the conversations.” If the project isn’t successful at all, how do you exit gracefully? What if you build a Facebook group and no one comes or participates? Do you just leave it there like yet another cyber ghost town? I say no. But how do you extract gracefully?

You don’t. You send a quick “So long and thanks for all the fish” message to people who are part of that community, mention that you’re still available online in X,Y,Z places, and you move on. Board up the doors and windows. Get the property off the web, if you can. If not, 301 redirect (ask your web team) the pages, and call it a day. Think of it as a party foul, where you just politely get things back on the rails. There are other efforts to be had. Don’t see it as failure as much as an adjustment of strategy (wow, did that ever sound political!).

The Best Fish

The most beautiful “fish” in the world are those that thrive and sustain your village while you let them maintain their own ecosystem. In this case, I mean that your efforts in presence building and community management should be sustainable. Don’t over-fish. Don’t underfish and starve your village (company). Realize that this expedition is a privilege and that you have to come back with something or the boats won’t be able to pay for themselves.

How do you do this? Look more for gentle opportunities than forceful levers. Look for conversion points that bring your business objectives forward, and move those opportunities ahead while leaving the rest of the fish to thrive in your system. Oh, and don’t forget to feed the fish. If you’re responsible for their environment, give them “food” every day, in the form of helpful information, useful materials, or whatever is the most feasible fish food.

Parting Notes Before Sailing Home

You know the old saying, “Give a man a fish, and then he has smelly hands. Teach a man to fish, and he has good reason to learn how to lie.” (Or something like that.) I’m a big fan in teaching people how to fish. I don’t think this kind of work belongs in an external organization, at least not in the long term.

This means, if you’re thinking that this chore belongs in your agency, I say no. That’s like being invited to chat with Britney Spears, and finding out you’re talking with her assistant. Oh wait, that’s how Britney does it.

Presence chores belong at home. Should you have guidance? Yes. Should you get some hand-holding when dipping into the social media waters? I say yes again. Is this something that should be on-boarded back to your inhouse communicators (and by that, I mean the people your customers/audience want to hear from)? Yes. As soon as possible (measured in months, like 2 or 3 at most).

Is presence a required element of social media for all businesses? No. Not at all. Nothing is a required element for any business without consideration and alignment with your strategies. If your company is selling roofing, it might take forever to find people on Twitter and Facebook. It’d be a lot cheaper to buy ads in newspapers and buy better spots in the Yellow Pages. Like all things, there’s a strategy to it.

In all things, your mileage may vary. I may have left something out. Let me know what else I can help with. And thanks for your attention. This was a long post.

Photo credit tony the misfit