Chances are that you are not a blogger.  But chances are relatively high that you like the idea of being one. 

During my last 100 or so presentations, I asked the audiences if they blog: only a sprinkling of  hands typically go up. When asked if they like the idea of blogging, most people put up their hands immediately.  The reasons for this aren’t surprising – doing a blog is tough:

• Takes too much time during the day
• Not skilled at writing
• Not able to commit to regular posts
• Not sure what to say
• Not interested in debate or being ridiculed
• Other higher priorities
• Questionable ROI
• and so on…

Yet, the benefits can be huge: personal or corporate profile, business-building, connection, improved search engine ranking, etc.  Inevitably, clients ask the question about balancing these competing pressures, and if there is a way to improve the “return”, while reducing the downsides.  The answer is yes.

This week’s action plan:  Whether you decide to blog or not, now is the time to explore the possibility in greater detail.  Even if you never write a word, understanding how to do it means that you can ask great questions of those in your organization who do.

For our clients and friends:  We’ve put together a six-segment series on Strategic Blogging, designed for senior executives, professionals, and marketing pros. Check it out  (There is no cost.)

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

For those reading, or watching) the news, you may have seen me recently. I’ve been quoted, or have appeared) in the following newspapers, magazines, or TV shows:

• Globe and Mail, Feb 14, 2012
• IT Business, Feb 1, 2012
• CBC National News, Jan 31, 2012
• Huffington Post, Jan 24, 2012
• CHCH TV News, Jan 2, 2012
• Globe and Mail, Dec 30, 2011
• CFRB Radio Toronto, Dec 28, 2011
• KKZZ Radio, Ventura California, Dec 8, 2011
• CTV News Channel, Dec 5, 2011
• Globe and Mail, Dec 2, 2011
• Global TV, Dec 1, 2011
• IP Marketing Advisor, Nov 2011
• CTV News, Oct 15, 2011
• Education Today Magazine, Fall 2011
• The Charlatan, Sept 19, 2011
• The Motts Syndicated Radio, Aug 10, 2011
• Procurement Insights, July 25, 2011

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Wake up, wash, dress, and eat breakfast. Scan the headlines, scan LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Blog comments. Read and respond to comments in your communities. Then start the day. Check voice mail. Check email, and respond to emails from LinkedIn groups, Facebook, and Twitter direct messages. Then see if there are any comments on YouTube. And write your daily blog post. Then Tweet.

In this day of social connection, it doesn’t take long for your Social Media “obligations” to quickly expand to fill any and all available time. As we layer more and more complexity, we become enamored by the exciting advances in Social Media functionality, and shiny new Social Media sites.

Here’s the fundamental question: Is it time for you to wipe the slate clean and start again from first principles?

• Who are you hoping to engage with?
• What business or profit (or personal) goal are you hoping to achieve on Social Media?
• How will you measure success?
• How much time each day/week/month will you devote to the endeavor?
• Can you afford the time to do so? And if not, what is plan B?

This week’s action plan: Where has your momentum taken you? If you’re like most, you have either done far too little, or far too much in Social Media. This week, go back to the basics, and make sure that the time you spend is getting you where you want to be.

PS:  Go behind the scenes each week as I interview another of the nation’s thought-leaders.  I send out a quick note each month with links to each interview.  Subscribe on the PSTV home page.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Have you labored over your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter for years, only to suddenly find a huge drop in your traffic? 

As managers begin to probe the Return on Social Media Investment, an unexpected reversal is frustrating – and can have  direct impact on the organization’s brand… and those responsible for it.

Determining the reasons for an abrupt change requires some detective work. For a blog, here are just a few of the possible reasons for a drop:

• Another site that linked to yours no longer does. 
• You may have been dropped from a blogroll.
• Because your content is duplicated on several pages throughout the internet, Google may be penalizing your search engine ranking.
• Google is now increasing the weighting for the searcher’s location – if your content is hosted “far away”, this may be hurting you for a segment of your audience.
• You’ve changed the domain of the blog, or you’ve changed the way the URL paths are coded.
• The writing style on your blog has changed, and your readers don’t like it.
• You’ve changed topics slightly, and your blog no longer appeals to certain readers… or to certain web sites: you may have lost both readers and links.
• The blog design has changed, and people don’t like it.
• You are now using too many (or too few) pictures.
• The physical server your blog is hosted on is overloaded, resulting in a too-slow page load.
• You’ve added more plug-ins, which have slowed your site even further.
• The growing segment of mobile users don’t like your mobile interface. 
• A new smartphone or tablet was released, and your blog doesn’t take advantage of the platform.
• A new version of a browser has been released, and your blog looks terrible on it.
• The online advertising strategy (or spend) has changed, and fewer users are drawn to the blog.
• The blog’s URL is no longer featured in off-web advertising, collateral, or communications.
• A highly marketed competitive blog has started.

Key to determining the source of the change is a review of the analytics. For blogs, the key tool is Google Analytics; Facebook, YouTube, and other social platforms provide their own analytic tools as well.  Some questions to ask:  has the drop occurred because one particular source no longer providers users?  Or one particular browser is no longer supported?  (Or screen size?)  Is there less click-through to secondary pages?  And most importantly, did the drop happen all at once, or gradually over several months.  Pinpointing the precise time that the change manifested itself – the inflection point – is key to diagnosing the source of the problem.  And when the source is found, a prescriptive fix can be applied.

There are a number of situations when a drop in traffic may be expected.  For example, if the Social Media strategy calls for a change in the blog’s focus, then it is perfectly natural – and even desirable – for non-target readers to quit.

This week’s action plan:  If you are not reviewing your analytics on a regular basis, this is the week to start: 10 minutes is all it takes to quickly scan the numbers and charts.  Not only does this provide an early warning of potential problems, but it also is the first step in measuring ROI. 

My recent trip to India has once again sensitized me to an assumption that writers and speakers too often make:  that everyone understands what you mean to say.

Test yourself – what do the following three words mean?  Flyover, Subway, and Removalist.

If you are in India, a Flyover is a local bridge that “flies over local traffic”; elsewhere, it has something to do with airplanes.  In much of the world, a Subway is a road or pedestrian path that goes underneath another road; in Toronto a Subway refers to the Metro.  In Australia, a Removalist is someone who transports your possessions when you move houses; elsewhere this person is called a house mover.

When the mother tongue of the audience isn’t English, the problem intensifies further.

Avoid making bad assumptions: before delivering a critical presentation or posting a widely read blog or Twitter post, answer the following questions about your audience:

• What is their English comprehension level?  Do you need to do part of your presentation in their language?  Or at least open with a local phrase?  I give a number of suggestions to address the issue in this Tipsheet.
• Which English do they know? (American, British, Canadian, Indian, Australian, Hong Kong, etc) Does it make sense to test your content with a smaller group first?
• Can you use local examples to help the listener or reader better relate?  Or is it better to keep with universal principles – lowest common denominator – to avoid making an embarrassing mistake.

One of the most important reasons for a Social Media strategy is that it helps define your target audiences, and  lets you focus the version of your language squarely on this target.  Without a strategy, it will become increasingly difficult to use the “right” language to have an impact.

This week’s action plan: Whether you have a strategy or not, spend a few minutes defining who the primary audience is for your Social Media initiative – then review your last few status updates, blog posts, or videos to see if they are using the “right” language to make an impact.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

One Billion.  You may think I’m referring to the number of Facebook and LinkedIn users, but I’m not.  I’m referring to the approximate population of India.

Note the wide variety of merchandise: from cigarettes to life insurance

While on a trip there, I decided to take pictures of local businesses, then compare the “real” with their Social Media presence.  Sadly, I was unable to find more than a handful on the web, let alone on the Social web; the notable exception being a few of the global brands.

Instead, I found a thriving entrepreneurial culture, where everyone – from the richest to the (almost) poorest – is connected in two ways: by cellphone, and in the real world.  The majority of the billion (95% to be exact) are busy living, rather than voyeuristically watching others live via Facebook – they don’t even have internet access.

The 5% have their favorite Social Networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Ibibo and Bharatstudent.  But for those of us who spend significant time with our own Social Media favorites, 95% is an important reminder:  most of the world is connected with real world relationships – not virtual ones.

This week’s action plan:  Is it possible that you have been neglecting the part of your network that isn’t regularly online?  Or isn’t online in your chosen social network?  This week, look through your electronic black book for those who are missing, and reach out to them in a way that is comfortable for them.

PS:  This is another example of how sprinkling more Social Media “juice” over an opportunity will not magically create more opportunity.  Organizations need to crack the relationship nut, and Social Media is but one vector that can help.

PPS:  While in Mumbai, I recently spent some time with fellow professional speaker Lea Brovedani for dinner.  While we did coordinate our plans using LinkedIn, we actually met in person at the restaurant.  Real-world networking in action!

After spending a few days in India, I have a new-found appreciation for the horn. Unlike in North America (or Europe), Indian drivers have developed an entire language with this instrument. In a land where lane markings are ignored at best, as each vehicle (autorickshaw, car, motorcycle or truck) approaches from the side or rear, they honk their horns as if to say, “I’m here”. The response is a quick honk back, “I heard you”, to which the passing vehicle will sometimes honk back, “Thanks”. All very civilized.

But to someone new, the cacaphony is jarring, rude, noisy, and an illustration of anything-but-civilized dangerous driving.

Here’s the question: are you aware of the signals in the world of Social Media? Or are you oblivious to them? Each Social Media community has developed it’s own signals, sometimes quite distinct. Linking, Retweeting, Thanks for the RT, Following, Following back, Unfollowing: they all mean something to the “locals”.

Like my Indian journey, the only way to discover the signals is to spend time “traveling” in each Social Media venue, learning to feel comfortable – and becoming more sensitive to – the signals around you.  Yes, learning from others is important – this Tipsheet, my books, my presentations – but there is no substitute for getting on the plane and experiencing the signals first-hand.

This week’s action plan:  Are you (and your organization) sending the right signals when you’re using Social Media?  Perhaps blowing your own horn a bit too loudly?  Or perhaps you may not be aware of the nuances of each site? This week, spend enough time in your most important Social Media community to become aware of – and comfortable with – the local signals.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

If you are reading this and profess to have some expertise in Social Media, then you may be offended by my next comment: it soon won’t matter, and your “expertise” is fast becoming irrelevant. Your long term career is in jeopardy, and your short term prospects are also questionable.

Note that I didn’t say that Social Media is becoming irrelevant; exactly the opposite is true. If you value your Social Media expertise, consider the impact of these two converging trends:

1. The general population – and certainly the business world – is fast approaching your level of knowledge. No one will be willing to listen to (or pay) for common knowledge.
2. There is a dramatic shift from learning about Social Media, to learning about how Social Media can support real business goals. Core expertise (Strategy, Marketing, Finance, Sales, HR, Operations, etc.) has enduring value much more so than expertise on using a tool. While it is true that some people make their living as driving instructors (tool: car) and call center trainers (tool: telephone), at best these are niche professions.

This Week’s Action Plan: Unless you see your long-term career as a Social Media expert, it’s time to focus on the basics of your expertise, and not just a single tool of your trade, Social Media. This week, consider where you’re spending your time: If you’re spending too much time on the tools and not enough getting better in your core, then flip your priorities… or eventually become irrelevant.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

1) Resolve to become more proactive:
Social media is a great resource for connecting with people, but it is the most powerful when it is used to “amplify” real-world relationships proactively.  This year, get in the habit of checking a connection’s profile before a meeting.  Get in the habit of recognizing others online for work done offline.  And get in the habit of asking a common connection to make a real-world introduction.  Social Media is no longer just a passive add-on:  it’s a key tool for both communications and engagement.

2) Resolve to separate the personal from the professional
Instead of thinking that Facebook is for personal and LinkedIn is for professional, consider what you actually use these (and other) tools for.  Too often, people mistakenly think that spending entertainment time is Social Media professional time.  It isn’t.

3) Resolve to diversify your approach to Social Media
Social Media should be used for support and growth, not just job search.  In the olden days, this could only come from in-person attendance at industry events and conventions.  Today, Social Media has incredibly robust discussion groups, question and answer areas, blogs, and the like.  Growing within these communities – gaining support and providing leadership – is a long-term investment in your career.  You get the benefit along the way, and a network that will help propel your career far beyond your current job.

4) Resolve to not neglect the real world
While Social Media provides an incredible depth of opportunity – relationships, support, information – it doesn’t replace the strength of real world relationships.  Think what can be accomplished pending time, one-on-one, with a key connection at a local coffee shop.  Or think of the nuance that can only be seen when you’re face-to-face with your manager (or staff, or prospective client).  As you spend more time using Social Media, you can easily squeeze away these real-world interactions – when in fact, these interactions might be the key reason for your success.

5) Resolve to update your profiles
Just like you probably do with your old-style resume, look through all of the Social Media profiles that you have, and do a quick update.  Even those profiles that you rarely use (MySpace, anyone?) are indexed by Google and thus available.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Are you one of those people who have given up on New Year’s resolutions?  If you are active on the Social Web, an annual review – and a few resolutions – can make a significant difference to your effectiveness.  Here’s my take on a few you should consider:

This Week’s (Year’s) Action Plan:

1. Review and update all of your profiles. Once a year isn’t so often to update your profiles.
2. Remove out-of-brand comments and photos from profiles.  They creep in from others, but impact your brand directly.
3. Disconnect and ‘Defriend’ connections who use the tools to fill your page with irrelevant and time-wasting comments.
4. Isolate your personal from your professional Social Media time: nothing wrong with playing Farmville – but this isn’t work, it is  entertainment, no different than sitting in front of the TV.
5. Figure out Twitter if you haven’t already. Hint: it’s about the relationship, not the broadcasts.
6. Think about doing a blog. If you’re not sure how to start, click here for a few ideas.
7. Link your profiles together to improve your personal productivity and spread your perspective further. For example, you can embed a blog within your LinkedIn profile, and wire in your Twitter feed at the same time.
8. Begin monitoring your social footprint. Use Google Alerts, and sign-up for the free version of Hootsuite.
9. Set some goals: If you’re going to spend time on this activity, it pays to think about what you will get for your efforts before you start.
10. Use Social Media to connect to people in the real world. A computer won’t buy from you or give a job – a real person will.
11. Participate in one relevant discussion group or online forum. Not only will it expand your network, it will provide context and connection to what is happening in your field.
12. Take advantage with what your organization is already doing in the Social Media world: Connect, comment, vote, blog, tweet and retweet.
13. Finally, stop doing what isn’t working and focus on what is.  (What might be working:  not getting traction, it’s taking too long, not enjoyable, not enough ROI)

Today’s Action Plan: Unlike most New Year’s Resolutions, this list isn’t actually that hard.  Why wait for a special invitation: choose one of these and take care of it today.

And here’s a question for you:  do you have any Social Media resolutions of your own?

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

…and all the men and women merely players.  Shakespeare may have said this in the 1600′s, but it is more true than ever today.

Politicians, celebrities and others have always known that an audience was watching and judging. Today, different paparazzi watch and judge us – we call them followers, friends, and connections. We narcissistically seek them out, and using words like engagement, networking, and relationship-building, retreat into a comforting shell where we are “liked” by people we don’t even know. 

The name of the stage may have changed – Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google +, and so on – but if you are on these stages, you are still merely a player, whether you realize it or not.

This week’s action plan: Actors, musicians, and politicians are often most successful because they know how to use their stage. They are intentional, they practice, and they seek to connect at an emotional level with their audiences. This week, take a page from their script; be less narcissistic and more strategic with how you use your time on stage, and remember that everyone – and Google – is watching, all the time.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Ever wonder about the impact you made with those you’ve touched? Whether you would be remembered or not? And for what?

Every so often, we get a stark reminder of this: someone doesn’t remember you – but you think they should. Or someone comes up to you and reminds you about a special conversation – but you have no idea who they are.

Recently, I had an experience that reminded me about the importance of connection – the real world sort. I was invited to a reception for the most senior, respected, veterans of the speaking world. (I was just elected to a board and the invitation was a courtesy.) This was something I was quite looking forward to, so it might seem surprising that the first 15 minutes of the reception were not spent with the honorees. They were spent with Mahamood – one of the waiters.

Seven years earlier, I ran a series of public seminars – about 45 of them – at the Marriott Eaton Centre in Toronto, Canada. Every Tuesday night I would show up to the hotel with video projector, screen, and supplies, and begin preparing for the evening’s workshop. And every Tuesday night, Mahamood did the room set-up.

Fast forward: when I showed up at the reception, Mahamood was one of the waiters. He recognized me instantly and thus began our conversation. It was wonderful reconnecting after so many years.  This reconnection is what made the event so special.

This week’s action plan: It’s not just the number of connections you have, but the impact you make. This week, answer the question: Are there any Mahamoods in your midst?

Postscript: I’ve written to the Marriott Eaton Centre, and shared this story with their management. The hospitality industry is filled with many Mahamoods, but this one is special… and has a great memory.

Have you ever considered how many ways there are to express one of your ideas? Here’s a short list:

• A book
• A whitepaper
• A case study
• A brochure
• A blog post
• A newspaper op-ed
• A voice message or phone call
• A tweet
• A magazine article
• A TV series
• A documentary
• A sitcom
• A news commentary
• A TV (or radio) commercial
• A comment in a web forum
• A video or audio podcast
• A real-world conversation
• A meeting
• A workshop
• A course
• and so on.

Have you ever considered why this list is so long? There are three primary reasons:

1. Supply: we each may feel most comfortable using one method over another.  Not everyone can write (or wants to write) a book or deliver a speech, but writing an email is relatively easy for everyone.
2. Demand: The audience for our ideas also have preferences. For example, some prefer to ‘consume’ in depth, others prefer a short presentation, while others want it boiled down to a quick paragraph.
3. Channel: The proliferation and innovation in social media means that new modes of communication are always being invented. Beyond the printing press, telephone and TV, we can now add Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Blogging to society’s grand inventions.

In contrast to the olden days of television, where the dreaded “repeat” meant that nothing was on, savvy communicators use the concept of “re-purposing” to reach different audiences through different channels in different formats.

This week’s action plan: What were your best ideas during the last month or so? This week, choose a way to re-purpose them in a different format through a different channel.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

In 1997 there was no Google. In 2002 there was no Facebook. There was no Twitter in 2004, and the iPad only made it’s debut in 2009. There is no indication that the pace of innovation will slow, so how can you plan for the future when the target is moving , and moving quickly?

At a corporate level, three-and-five-year strategic plans are being shredded by external market shifts that change the very assumptions on which the plans are based.

At the personal level, many are finding it tough to keep up, and are “opting out”: either purposefully avoiding science and technology, or lashing out at society and joining – or sympathizing with – the Occupy movements. (We don’t see, interestingly, any Occupy Facebook movements, despite the fact that the Facebook ownership group are amongst the richest on the planet.)

There may not be a simple answer to the question of how to plan when change is constant, but here is some perspective that might help:

1. Be the change: If there will be change, it is far better to be setting the agenda, than reacting to it. This suggests that organizations that are flexible, entrepreneurial and invest in “the new” will be more successful than those who are set-up only for the status quo.
2. People are key: Dofasco, a large steel mill, used to advertise “Our product is steel – our strength is people.” While the name may have changed slightly (they were acquired), the slogan stands: A thinking workforce that can track the market and reinvent itself as conditions change is critical. Furthermore, within each organization there is an internal social network, teams, processes, and infrastructure — that functions because of the people. To do list: recruit the best, invest in them, and let them reinvent themselves – and the organization.
3. Partnerships: No longer can one entity hope to have 100% of the skills internally for any eventuality – or to take advantage of any immediate opportunity. Partnerships can be set up for the long or short term, for all or some of the value chain, to provide a non-core capability, or to provide peak production capacity. Planning for an uncertain future requires an understanding that anything might actually be possible, when looking beyond your internal capability.
4. Intellectual Property: We’re only now seeing the beginning of the patent wars between Microsoft, Google, Apple, Samsung, and others. These organizations have realized that a sustainable competitive advantage is only sustainable if they have something unique that differentiates them in the market. IP does this, and so does Brand. Not surprisingly there is a direct connection between the quality of the people, and the quality of the IP. In an uncertain future, IP is critical: can be exploited, licensed, and sold.
5. Competitive Intelligence and Market Research: Especially amongst larger organizations, it’s too easy to focus on the internal, instead of the external. A sensitive antenna – market research and competitive intelligence – provides an early warning of potential paradigm shifts. And this early warning allows the organization to react accordingly.
6. Directional Planning: While three-year strategic plans will always be done, a slight shift in approach can increase the organization’s resilience. Instead of choosing an endpoint, and then choosing tactics to achieve that goal, consider the opposite approach: Set the direction first and then forecast the year one-two-three endpoints. If there are any major market changes, then a mid-course correction can easily be made, and new end-points can be established.

Planning for an uncertain future is difficult, but it can be made far easier when the organization itself is built to thrive in a changing world.

This week’s action plan:  What are you doing as an individual to make sure that you survive and thrive in a world where change is constant?  Look through this list again through a personal filter:  Are you setting the agenda or reacting to others?  Are you investing in yourself?  Do you seek support from others?  Are you generating your own IP?  Are you aware of what’s happening in your field? Do you have a plan for your career (and your life)?

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Have you ever been “captured” by an activity, finding it almost impossible to let go? Marathon runners call it the runner’s high. Smokers call it an addiction. But what is it called when you can’t tear yourself from Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or other social networks?

If it is part of your job, then some would call it your passion: when your work isn’t work, then it isn’t work (it’s fun). But what if you can’t tear yourself away from it in the evenings? On the weekends? Or if you find yourself “checking in” when you’re out with friends, or eating a meal with your family. This too may be an addiction.

Do you control Social Media, or does it control you – test yourself:

1. Don’t check your smart phone at meals or whenever you are with someone. If you feel the urge to check, or feel guilty you haven’t, then you may be addicted. (Your family, friends, and colleagues will appreciate your full attention.)
2. Don’t use Social Media for 24 hours each week – at all. In the olden days, this was called the sabbath, where people… rested. If you feel disconnected when you take this day – you may be addicted. (Hint: it’s not a bad thing to use this time to reconnect with those closest to you.)
3. When you completely disconnect from the world on your vacation, are you still tethered to the social web? Most addicts will find a way to get their fix, either by finding an internet cafe, bringing a laptop, or even worse, bringing a smart phone and accessing Social Media continuously on demand. (Is this you?)

This week’s action plan: ‘Addict’ isn’t a particularly positive word, but sadly, too many of us slip into this mode of dependency, one step at a time. This week, assess your dependency by going cold-turkey whenever you’re with someone else. Or if you’re truly courageous, do it for a 24-hour period.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Every organization – and every individual – can find themselves somewhere on the three-tier Social Media Engagement Index.  Where are you?

Passive:  At best, passive users have a profile on a few sites, but do very little within Social Media except for responding to the occasional connection request.  Benefit: passive users will be found when someone is doing a search.  And they have more time for “real-world” activities.

Broadcast:  Broadcasters are not particularly interested in interaction, preferring to spend their time sharing their ideas with (and sometimes shouting to) the Social Media World.  Benefit:  This is an inexpensive way to repurpose content from newsletters; for individuals, this is a quieter, quicker, less formal way  to update status than email.

Engagement:  If you are here, the Social Networks are an important two-way communication medium, where you are engaging on others’ platforms, as much as they are doing so on yours.  Benefit:  A relationship can only be improved when there is dialogue – and this only happens when there is a genuine desire to engage.

An interesting metaphor for these tiers can be found with the telephone.  Passive users have a phone, and their names are in the phone book, but they are sitting on the sidelines waiting for a call.  Broadcasters mistakenly think that the telephone is really a radio broadcast, and not of the call-in variety: they don’t want (or expect) any feedback.  Engagement is very much like a telephone conversation; the call continues because it has value to all parties.

This week’s action plan:  No person – or organization – magically has traction in the Social Media world immediately – it happens one step at a time.  If your strategy is Passive, make sure that you are using appropriate keywords to improve the probability that you will be found.  Or, move to a Broadcast strategy.  If you are a Broadcaster, then invite feedback by ending your Social Media posts with a question or feedback request.  Or, move to an Engagement strategy.  And if you are Engaged, step back, and make sure that you are engaging with the right group, for the right reasons.  Developing relationships (and a reputation) in an area that doesn’t pay off is a waste of time.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

How long does it take to make a sale?  And is it faster using traditional marketing and sales techniques, or Social Media-based ones?

In traditional marketing and sales, advertising informs prospective customers about a product or service. Those who have a need show up and make their purchase. In the more sophisticated business-to-business sales process, it’s pretty much the same: find prospects and tell them about your products and services.  Those who are ready to buy will buy, while others won’t. The whole paradigm is based on identifying prospects, informing them, and selling them.

Social Media marketing is based on engagement – the conversation – and developing the relationship. Only when the relationship is strong enough – when there is trust – will there be a possibility of a sale.

Some implications:

• Trust takes time. As they are getting to know you, they will identify your capabilities. Contrast this with traditional marketing, where expertise leads, and then relationship follows.
• Social Media “sales” are more pull than push. It’s more likely that they will initiate the sales process when they are ready – after all, they know their needs better than you ever will.
• You still need to ask for the sale (sort of). Asking for the sale prematurely may do more harm than good. But exposing your expertise over time within the context of a two-way, non-broadcast relationship, is a far more powerful implicit ask.  (This is precisely why I have written these posts for the last half decade.  Many of my prospects and clients reach out after reading a concept I describe here.)

This week’s action plan: Do any of your Social Media activities shout Buy Me? Or do they seek to improve your credibility and grow your relationship? This week, make sure everything you do falls into the second category – not the first. How long does it take to make a sale?  It depends on how quickly you earn it.  Trust takes Time.

Additional note re Professionally Speaking TV:  Many of my readers also follow my weekly WebTV show.  I recently interviewed Tonya Surman of the Centre for Social Innovation – fascinating!  Check it out at www.professionallyspeakingtv.com/tonya-surman.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Picture this scenario: An employee gets charged with a serious offense and the company’s name gets mentioned repeatedly in the news reports.  The reporters found the connection to your organization by scanning through Social Media.

Or this scenario: A subcontractor tweets (or posts pictures) celebrating the conclusion of a major, confidential project. This alerts competitors, customers, and suppliers, resulting in millions of dollars of lost sales.

Or this one: Someone looks at your Facebook (or LinkedIn) profile, peruses your “friends” to determine your mother’s maiden name, then grabs your birth date and other freely available personal details. Then they call your bank and gain access to your account by “verifying” your identity.

Too often, we (or rather “people”) rarely think about Social Media Risks, let alone how to protect against them. As individuals it is caveat surfer, but at an organizational level, the responsibility for protecting corporate assets, including customer information, trade secrets, and ultimately the brand, falls to IT security professionals. They sometimes even have the job of protecting us from ourselves.

Sadly, they are inadequately equipped to do this job, for many reasons:

1. IT departments are stretched, and often don’t have the resources to stay ahead of every possible new security threat.
2. More technology comes through the door each day via smart phone, and these devices are completely beyond the control of the IT department.
3. Many managers assume that 100% of the responsibility for information security sits with IT staff, particularly in the area of employee productivity. (Technology can help, but productivity is a management issue; risk reduction is really the responsibility of everyone.)
4. Innovation in Social Media is happening so quickly that many (both marketers and IT) have outdated assumptions about what appropriate Social Media usage looks like. Poor assumptions cause poor decision-making.
5. Many organizations don’t even have a comprehensive Social Media policy. With no standards, everyone makes their own rules about what is right and what is wrong. It is impossible to police, let along protect.
6. Rarely are staff trained in how to use Social Media, and particularly, how to use it responsibly so both the organization – and themselves – are protected.

Clearly, for an organization to manage Social Media risk effectively it needs to delegate information security responsibility well beyond the IT group. Yet this is a challenge when many managers cannot even identify more than a small handful of potential problem areas.  (Test yourself: without reading onward, how many can you name?)

Here is a basic Social Media risk list; note that some are marketing risks, some are HR risks, some are technology risks, etc:

• Identity theft
• Mistaken identity
• Brand hijacking
• Bandwidth contention
• Social Media venue consolidation / data loss
• Privacy / confidentiality breaches
• Legal and regulatory breaches
• Intellectual Property theft
• Productivity loss
• Human rights violations
• Libel / slander
• Contest fraud
• Trojans and malicious code
• Unwanted publicity
• Inappropriate recruiting practices
• Social engineering

With such a broad range, how might one embed a Social Media security mindset within an organization?

Consider the following five step process:

1. Executive Briefing: Senior management must be educated both on Social Media strategy, but with an embedded risk management context.  It is no longer acceptable to propose a strategy without acknowledging – and protecting against – the risks.  Senior managers ask great questions; an executive briefing gives them the data points to do so.
2. Develop a Social Media policy to reduce risk. Going through the discussions and knowledge transfer that occur as the policy is being formulated is far more powerful than merely adopting a generic off-the-shelf policy.
3. Develop a Social Media strategy: Usually done concurrently with the policy work, the strategy binds the organizations goals to specific activities at an individual or departmental level.
4. Communication and Training: This is the mechanism to connect the policy to the people. It’s not possible to manage (or measure) without first letting people know what’s expected of them, or how to actually use the tools.
5. Monitoring: Monitoring fulfills the dual objectives of evaluating the effectiveness of strategy, while at the same time surfacing risks.

This week’s action plan: Where are you in this process as an organization? This week, assess where you are and commit to doing one thing to reduce your organization’s Social Media risk level. And while you’re at it, check your own Social Media profiles and remove any information that might be used by a fraudster to impersonate you at the bank.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

While Build It and They Will Come might work in the movies (remember Field of Dreams?), it doesn’t quite work that way in the world of Social Media. Yes, you can put up a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, or YouTube channel, but how can you truly attract followers?  And how can you truly drive engagement?  If you are going to the effort and expense of creating a presence, presumably some effort should also be spent marketing it.  

Here are 15 ideas that will help; some basic, some more advanced, but all in one place:

1. Create great content that people will actually want to read.  If it is compelling, they will pass it along.  Quality content is central to everything.
2. Create Action Hooks:  A call to action that invites engagement and activity.  This can be as simple as asking the reader for their opinion, or asking them to share it with their network.
3. Write for your reader, but keep Google in mind.  Embed keywords within the post title and body, so that people can find your post over a wider number of searches.
4. Syndicate and integrate:  particularly, if you have a number of websites (but even if you don’t), connect them together through RSS syndication so that you content – not just the links – appear embedded within multiple sites.
5. Take advantage of Widgets:  Most Social Media sites have widgets – snippets of HTML code that you can embed in your website – which brings your live content to other sites.  Offer a widget with your content to customers, suppliers, employees, and any other person or organization that might be interested.
6. Create great content, take two:  Focussed, on-task, aimed at a specific target audience.  It demonstrates your depth of expertise, and will generate reader loyalty.
7. Reference other web pages, and solicit cross-links in return.  The more inbound links you earn, the greater your natural readership… and the better your search engine ranking.
8. Consider pay-per-click advertising.  Both Google and Facebook allow incredibly precise targeting, and can find your target user in places where you can’t.  Even if only a small number of people click through to your Social Media site, everyone will still see your ad, improving their awareness of you – at zero cost.
9. Think offline, not just online:  Business cards, Marketing collateral, Trade show booths, Public presentations, Promo items, PR, and everything that you do in the real world should drive people to a purpose-built Social Media landing page.  This will drive engagement and action right from the start; it’s no longer enough just to put your website address everywhere.
10. Use QR codes to direct mobile users to specific blog posts and socially-enabled pages.
11. Use contests, surveys, and other interactive mechanisms to increase engagement… and learn more about your readers.
12. Use your email list to introduce readers to your blog; just remember that there has to be an actual reason why they should go there, otherwise they won’t go.  Sometimes all you need is a link at the bottom of each newsletter item that says “join the conversation” or “share your experience”, linking to a corresponding blog post.  (You should also use your blog post to grow the number of mailing list subscribers.)
13. Send a Tweet (and update your Facebook and LinkedIn status) pointing to your new blog post.  Multiply the impact by asking those close to you to Retweet (or comment) on your post… which will amplify your message even further.
14. Again, write great content, and do it frequently (and consistently) enough that people add you into their schedule.  Your audience forgets infrequent posts… and so does Google.
15. Add your perspective on other’s blogs, either through guest-blogging, or through insightful comments; in both cases, you can link back to your blog, or even better, to a specific blog post or other Social Media page.

This week’s action plan:  Re-evaluate how you get the word out, then adopt at least one of these new ideas.  Build it – and promote it – and then they will come.

Two more requests:
1) Do you have anything that has worked particularly well for you, that isn’t on the list?  Add your experience by commenting on my blog, or sending me an email with your thoughts.
2) Please forward this post to the person responsible in your organization for Social Media – it might make the difference between success or failure.

Postscript:  I didn’t just add those two Action Hooks to demonstrate how to phrase requests – I actually would appreciate your ideas, and I actually would appreciate you forwarding this on.  But look at the wording:  it clearly points out why it is in the reader’s interest to act.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

How often have you struggled to show up on time for a meeting, only to be kept waiting as others stumbled in 5-10-15 minutes later? Or have you ever tuned in to your favorite TV show, only to find that it was “rescheduled” for some other time? Or travelled to a faraway store, but finding it had closed an hour early and you couldn’t get in.

Research (Berry & Parasuraman) shows that by far, the two most important determinants of service quality are responsiveness and reliability. If you are not reliable nor responsive, your “brand” quickly reflects this. And you agitate those around you.

While most of us understand this implicitly in the real world, our behavior in the Social Media world is often completely different. Several ways to be more reliable and responsive when being “Social” online:

• Choose a consistent date and time to post your blog and status updates. If people come to expect a weekly post from you, skipping a week hurts your credibility. As does posting at a variable date and time. If they expect an update by 9am, then you need to deliver it at 9am, consistently.  Don’t show up late.
• Set your topic focus. People will come to expect your posts… to be what you post. If you’re always posting on random topics, then those who are looking for your deep expertise (or unique perspective), will become disinterested and leave. If they expect certain content, then you need to deliver it, consistently.  Your favorite TV show is your favorite because all of the characters are consistent from episode to episode.
• Set expectations for how often you respond. Do you respond or comment on all posts, some, or none? Whatever your frequency, you also need to deliver it consistently.

This week’s action plan:  Your reputation is defined more by what you actually do – your behavior – than anything else.  If you are using any Social tools (status updates on Facebook, Twitter updates, Blog posts, etc), calendarize your interaction.  Not only will you become more productive, but you’ll also directly affect your reputation.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Steve Jobs was a visionary:  incredible focus, a market disruptor, a tech genius, a serial entrepreneur, and so on.  All true, but there is also something else – a thread that underlies and connects everything that Apple does: their focus on the empowered customer. 

From day one, this was reflected in the user experience. It was reflected in the industrial design.  It was reflected in the customer service experience.  Whenever there was a gap – whenever the consumer’s needs weren’t being addressed, Apple innovated to satisfy the need.  Genius bars in Apple Stores solved the problem of where to get hands-on Apple support.  The Apple stores themselves solved the problem of where to actually purchase the products.  The iTunes store solved the problem of how to easily (and legally) download digital music.  The iPod solved the problem of taking your music with you, much like the Walkman did a generation before.  And most of all, the Mac user interface made computing accessible to the general public – not just tech enthusiasts. 

There are dozens of other examples of innovation (their ad campaigns, from the 1984 superbowl ad to the recent “I’m a Mac” campaign, the iPhone, the iPad, etc), but each one was designed starting with the customer in mind.  This allowed Apple to break the conventional wisdom:  While their competitor IBM had the word “Think” as a corporate motto -  Apple used “Think Differently”.  (As an aside, I have an analog “Think Differently” watch from Apple where the hands move counter-clockwise.  Very Cool.) 

Of course, Apple had it’s missteps: the Newton (I still have mine, packed safely in a box, in a place of honor).  The decision to license clones (quickly abandoned when Steve Jobs came back), and their inability to penetrate the corporate market to name a few.  Interestingly, if Apple didn’t take these risks, perhaps they wouldn’t have taken the risks that resulted in all of their great products.

During the summer of 1985, which was the school term just before I graduated, I had an internship in the marketing department at IBM.   While it was a great opportunity, I was frustrated because of their total ignorance of what I now know as user-centered design and user-centered marketing.  I decided to fix this, with the grudging permission of my manager.  I brought my Mac into the office each day, both to educate my colleagues, and also to be more productive.  I still recall putting together hand-outs for customer workshops, printed (desktop-published) beautifully on my home printer.  I learned about marketing IBM-style, while my colleagues learned quite a bit about the Mac; my manager learned enough to not give me a full-time job offer.  (In retrospect, very bad call on their part.)

That Macintosh cost me $3200, or at 16 pounds, $200/pound.  It had 128K of RAM, and a very noisy 400K floppy.  Today, my Macbook Air cost $1600, weighs 3 pounds, has 4,000,000K of RAM, and a silent 256,000,000K solid state drive.  Progress indeed, but this is just the “output” of Steve Jobs’ genius.  The real progress is how many other organizations – inside the tech world and out – have begun to truly focus on the needs of their clients.  And surprisingly, how many still don’t. 

This week’s action plan:  Is your product or service (or you) truly different than your competitor’s?  Is everything that you do completely focused on empowering your customer – both today’s and tomorrow’s?  Being more like Steve means bringing an exceptional focus on the customer to whatever you do.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Picture this scenario: you get an email from your manager, letting you know that a complaint (or a picture, or a video) about your organization has gone “viral”.  You check it out, and indeed it is embarrassing… and it is everywhere.  What do you do?

In a previous post, I suggested several things to consider before posting a complaint, but in this situation the shoe is on the other foot and the damage is spiralling out of control.

Here are ten Social Media Damage Control tips:

1) Acknowledge the issue publicly and openly: it is critical to ensure that the story doesn’t morph from a specific complaint to how you are handling the issue.  If it does, the impact of your behavior will linger well after the issue is resolved.

2) Tell your side of the story: sometimes the twitterverse/blogosphere/general public is upset because the facts that are presented are incomplete, or are framed to show you in the worst possible light.  While respecting rules of confidentiality and privacy, adding the facts as you see them to the discussion adds important data points… and empowers those who might advocate on your behalf.

3) Mobilize your allies:  Employees, families, customers, and suppliers all have a stake in your success.  If asked, most would be happy to either chime in on your behalf, or strongly advocate for you.  Mobilizing can be done in two ways:  through the informal posts of individual people, and through a formal “ask” of a few key friends of your organization.  No longer is it exclusively the job of a corporate spokesperson to get the message out.

4) Engage in the conversation:  Use official channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Discussion groups, Blog, etc) to address individual queries, and to actively participate in the conversations that are occuring.

5) Ignore:  There is always a risk that your reaction – however small – will instead actually inflame the issue further. One possible counter-strategy is to ask one or two allies if they can comment on the offending post, instead of you doing it directly.

6) Redirect:  Issues have a shorter life when other items become more newsworthy.  Creating positive news redirects the general public’s attention to something that contradicts the underlying assertions made by the complainer.  A great example of this (although executed quite clumsily) was Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to redirect attention away from the movie The Social Network, where he was portrayed in a less than flattering light.  Zuckerberg made a donation of $100 million to the Newark NJ public education system, at precisely the same time the movie was released.  Was the strategy successful?  As one part of a larger overall strategy, it played it’s part. But expensive!

7) Enforce terms of service:  Some online behaviors may be contrary to the terms of service of the particular Social Media venue.  A complaint  to the venue may spur them into action, removing the offending item – and thereby removing some of the issue’s viral “fuel”.

8) Legal action:  When the issue crosses the line into the area of slander, libel, trademark infringement, or some other cause, legal action – or threatening it – can provide some relief.  On the other hand, people may harbor even greater suspicions about you, as you were unable or unwilling to debate or address the issue in the open.

9) Solve the problem beforehand:  Many crises go viral because of a service gap, product malfunction, or the insensitivity of an employee to a customer’s feelings.  Avoid viral crises by preventing them from happening in the first place: improve your service quality, improve your product quality, and improve the customer experience.

10) Monitor:  Use tools to monitor the social web for relevant posts and user sentiment, so that you can quickly address issues as they appear.  Without monitoring, you may think the problem is solved, but the “virus” merely moved to another social media venue.

This week’s action plan:  What would you do if you got that phone call today:  a major Social Media crisis has just sprung up, and you had to deal with it and fast.  This week, put together a Social Media crisis plan: based on several disaster scenarios, how would you react?  What would you (or others) do first?

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Have you ever been disappointed, frustrated, or annoyed with an experience with a person or organization? In today’s Social Media world, suffering in silence need not be your only option. You can Tweet, Blog, post to Facebook, create a YouTube video, write on a review site or even create your own complaint site. You can galvanize your network by sharing publicly – perhaps for the first time – the nature of your grievance. Especially when you’re in the right, you can wield your social network powerfully.

But should you?

Once your complaint is public, it can never be retracted: What if you were wrong? Or you didn’t have all the facts?

It’s true that many organizations have staff monitoring Social Media, and that many are empowered to head off crises, but still: once your complaint is out, it’s out. Before you hit the “submit” button, here are six questions that you should ask yourself first:

1. What is the point of your post: is it to accomplish something specific, or merely get some emotional satisfaction?
2. Are you sure of your facts?
3. Imagine that your manager reads your post – what would they think? And if it were your parents reading the post – what would they think?
4. Imagine your post appearing in the newspaper, or on a billboard next to your home. Are you comfortable with it?
5. Would your post provoke a legal response against you? Sometimes posts can cross the line: does yours?
6. Ten years from now, how might your post be interpreted by others? You don’t want the “tomorrow you” to appear small-minded and petty. (Thank you Google.)

This week’s action plan:  This week, test these questions whenever you have an important message to send. These questions are just as important for any communication transmitted across the social web.

Special note: As you may have guessed, I was recently disappointed by someone who did not keep their commitment. It was tempting to send a blistering note about them into the blogosphere, but cooler heads – and these six questions – prevailed.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

Have you ever thought about how to become more creative?  One way is to expose yourself to ideas just beyond “the usual”: ideas that challenge you to think differently, or expose you to experiences that are well beyond your immediate knowledge.  With so much available on the web, it is easy to forget that books were first designed for this purpose.  Here are ten books that are worth a look:

Who Moved my Cheese? (Dr. Spencer Johnson):  All about change management; A fable where four characters take a different approach to change.  It’s a great way to recognize unhelpful behaviors from your colleagues… and yourself.  A quick read.

Designing Web Usability (Jakob Nielsen):  This was probably the very first book on web usability.  While I’m not in total agreement with all his points, I agree completely with the concept of purpose-built, user-focused design.  Most of the fundamentals in this book are timeless.

The Tipping Point (Malcom Gladwell):  The theory of critical mass, and why it happens.  You can’t go wrong reading anything from him.

The Wealthy Barber (David Chilton): This was one of the first “fable” books.  It’s all about lessons in financial planning taught through a story of conversations with the local barber, who shares matter-of-fact common sense.   There is an up-to-date, 30-years-later book  (“The Wealthy Barber Returns”) also now available.

The Goal (Eliyahu Goldrat): Continuous improvement told in a story format, as he repairs both a factory… and his personal life.  This book gives you a behind-the-scenes look into manufacturing operations  – something most people don’t ever experience first hand.

The Code Book (Simon Singh): A talented science writer, Singh talks about codes and ciphers throughout the ages and the sophistication of societies uses of these codes.  Starting back in Roman times, he brings us through WWII, to the present, and beyond.  Fascinating.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni): Business fable where a high school principal is asked to ‘fix’ a Silicon Valley team – the reader goes along for the ride.  The book is quite entertaining, until you realize the dysfunctional characters are just describing  your own behaviors.

Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality (Leonard Berry & A. Parasuraman): These academics are the “creators” of so much in the area of measuring service quality: the “gap framework”, the five determinants of service quality, and more.  This book is a must-read for anyone involved in the service world.  Hint:  Responsiveness and Reliability are key.  And great service quality is when there is no gap between expected and actual service delivery.

Online PR and Social Media series and Social Media for Business: 101 Ways to Grow Your Business Without Wasting Your Time: Of course, I couldn’t NOT put my own books in the list.  Instead of a thick reference manual covering everything, these books focus on models that you can use to implement social media strategies, reduce risk, monitor/measure ROI, etc.

This week’s action plan:  With more – and different – input, you will get more – and more creative – output. This week, choose one of these books, read it, then pass it on to a friend or colleague who you think might also appreciate it.  Not only will you both be stretched, but you’ll have one more thing in common.   (Want a few more choices?  Here’s my earlier post of ten other mind-stretching books.)

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

How long ago did you (or your organization) start your Social Media “work”? 

Likely, a few years ago.  First came LinkedIn: you filled out your profile, asked for (and responded to) connection requests.  Then you asked for (and responded to) recommendation requests, asked (and responded to) questions, and joined a number of groups.  Then you added more onto your profile, including reading lists, blogs, Slideshare files, and all manner of other functionality.  You breathed a sigh of relief, until the next day, when you had to check what your connections were doing (and respond), check out group conversations (and respond), then check out who viewed your profile (and check out theirs).

You then repeated a similar process with  Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other Social Networks.  It seems that each year (month?) we layer on more and more Social Media activity, all for a dubious return on investment.

Some people  – and organizations – are fighting back by exempting themselves completely from this race.  They lock up Social Media access during the working hours, have a “no Social Media” blanket policy, and pretend that the 750M Facebook users and 100M LinkedIn users (amongst others) don’t include prospective clients, job candidates, and other interested parties.  Silly.

Other people – and organizations – buy into Social Media so strongly that the Social Media tail begins wagging the corporate strategy dog.  Dangerous.

This Week’s Action Plan:  A more effective approach is to cut one Social Media activity whenever a new one is added.  This forces an evaluation of all of your activities to determine which ones are no longer pulling their weight.  At the end of the day you may decide not to cut anything, but at least you’re asking the question.  This week, identify the Social Media activity that is no longer yielding you a return.  Even if it is your favorite activity, you know what to do.  (Or rather, stop doing.)

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

If you read the business or technology press, you’ve probably heard about “the cloud”.  And if you believe the ad copy, just about any problem can be solved merely by “putting it on the cloud”.  Can this really be true?  Is the hype even close to reality?  And what is this cloud, really?

The cloud is actually quite simple: it is variously the on-demand storage, and on-demand processing power of applications that “live” on the internet, instead of in corporate server rooms.  

Why all of the sudden interest?  Consider the benefits:

• The infrastructure is “rented”, so no capital expenditures or maintenance costs for running corporate server rooms.
• Storage space and processing capacity can easily scale, so both peaks and organic growth can be accommodated.
• Third parties have developed many cloud-based apps, which means that organizations don’t need to build functionality themselves.  
• The cloud is accessible from any device: computer, smartphone, tablet, and devices not yet invented.  In most cases, without special software (or ongoing maintenance).
• Many cloud apps have “social” features built in, improving collaboration amongst users.  This can easily be done with internet technology, but is just about impossible on legacy corporate server-based software.  As an aside, the fast pace of innovation in Social Media is possible because most are cloud-based.

Cloud computing isn’t just for large enterprises.  Google Apps for Business provides incredible functionality for pennies per day per user.  Ringcentral moves an entire phone system online.  Salesforce.com and Infusionsoft provide complete turnkey CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems.  And if you want to write custom applications yourself, Amazon AWS will provide on-demand storage space and processing power.

Despite the great promise of the cloud, much of the advertising about the cloud is ridiculous, and should be a red flag for anyone considering a new technology or business initiative. Before moving anything to the cloud, here are some important questions that should be addressed:

• What is the “problem” that needs to be solved?  In the olden days, the decision was usually buy vs build.  Today, it’s buy vs build vs rent – and the analysis to determine which route to go is still just as important as it used to be.
• Will a move to the cloud give a competitive advantage to the organization?  One one hand, it might provide better functionality faster; on the other, if your infrastructure is identical to everyone else’s, how can technology give you a competitive advantage?
• How is security being addressed… in detail?  There isn’t a week that goes by without a report on security and privacy breaches.  What would happen if your systems were breached?
• What changes might be necessary to staffing? Where are the cost savings?
• What process changes can (or should  or must) be made to accommodate the new system?
• What is the exit plan if you wish to move from one cloud provider to another.  Or from the cloud, back in-house?   
• What is the financial stability of the cloud provider?  If you are outsourcing key business systems to them, you don’t want to wake up to find them  – and your business systems – no longer around.

Will the cloud solve the world’s problems?  Of course not – but the cloud is an important new tool that is changing the landscape of the web.  Becoming aware of the opportunity it represents, and how it might be used is prudent.  Mindlessly jumping on the bandwagon is not.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

[Special Announcement:  Since 2009, I have hosted a webTV show where I interviewed the nation's thought-leaders each week.  I am inviting you to a special "sneak peak" at the show's new beta website.  We're still filling in the gaps, but with over 115 episodes, guest blogs, and other features, there is quite a bit there.  We will be launching it formally in September, but thought that you'd appreciate seeing it early:  www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com.]

What do Google, Apple, HP, Facebook, and General Motors have in common?  Those with a financial background might suggest that each of these companies has a market capitalization in the billions.  The patriotic would suggest that each is an example of American ingenuity – and that each represented the best in their day.  But on a recent trip through Silicon Valley in California, I noticed something else:  each has made a substantial investment in the area:  yes, and that includes General Motors.  The question, is why.

What each of these high tech companies know is that magical things happen when there is critical mass.  Many educational institutions graduate highly skilled staff.  A strong venture capital community provides financing.  Many companies provide employment opportunities, attracting more skilled workers, financial resources, and entrepreneurial high-tech energy.  GM doesn’t have a factory in Silicon Valley making cars, it has a brain trust working on GM’s most advanced automotive software.  GM is there so it can take advantage of this critical mass, and achieve a competitive advantage through innovation.  And it realizes that recruiting the best software engineers means recruiting in Silicon Valley.  (It also means recognizing that a silicon valley is far more appealing than… Detroit.)

While Critical Mass as a concept is important on an industry or geographical level, it is also useful at the corporate level, albeit with a different name: Focus.  The more focused an organization is, the greater the “internal” critical mass:  people work towards tighter common goals, less effort is spent on extraneous activities, and external branding becomes tighter.

This week’s Action Plan: The concepts of Focus and Critical Mass work at the personal level as well.  Think about it: do all of your activities mesh together into a critical mass?  Or are they so disjointed and unrelated  that developing a synergy benefit from your efforts is just about impossible?

Social Media Perspective: Critical Mass is a Social Media key success factor too.  If you are doing so little that nobody notices, then your efforts are pretty much wasted.  (Of course, if you do so much that it overwhelms, your audience will become disengaged, also an unproductive outcome.)  Developing Social Media Critical Mass isn’t merely a focus on quantity, but a focus on the quality of your efforts: carve out a niche that helps define who you are, aimed at a defined target market.  Then execute the plan across the Social Media venues that this target market frequents.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Should social media be regulated and controlled? Should hardware and network providers be forced to open a one-way window for authorities to monitor the flow of conversation? These questions are once again being asked, as supposedly “civilized” societies erupt into violence, riots, vandalism, and hooliganism. (Vancouver Canada and London England both come come to mind.)

In these cases, rioters changed the marketing concept of a flash-mob – a seemingly spontaneous song and dance event – into a crash mob – something more sinister.  Social media was used by the rioters to pinpoint where and when a new area was to be targeted – and sadly, people responded.

Beyond the argument for public order, proponents of regulation point out that governments already scan all phone and email conversations for issues of public safety and security. And in the private sector, emails are routinely scanned as well. Scanning encrypted messages sent from a  Blackberry is merely putting this platform at parity with the others.

Notwithstanding these points, there are a number of arguments that suggest regulation and control are inappropriate, and ultimately unnecessary:

1. Social Media for the good argument:  The Arab Spring took root through social media, and was so effective at organizing the grassroots that the despotic governments shut it down. Providing a back door that governments can monitor, takes away a primary way for ordinary citizens to assert their right to free speech.  Social media empowers for good as well as for bad, but it doesn’t do anything unless a person actually uses it. Sadly, the gun lobby’s argument rings true here as well: guns don’t kill people, people kill people. It’s how a tool is used that determines if it is good or bad.
2. Essential freedoms argument: Most jurisdictions recognize people’s rights of free speech and privacy. By regulating this one channel of communication, we begin a slippery slope to a society that doesn’t value – or protect – any freedoms.
3. Accountability argument: People should be held accountable for their specific actions using evidence that is lawfully obtained, without trampling the rights of the majority. In London there are 1000′s of video cameras that can be used to identify suspects. By questioning the suspects and examining their smart phones, police can work backwards to identify the organizers.
4. Crowd-sourced justice argument:  At the same time that the bad guys were using their BlackBerry’s to organize, many bystanders were using their Smartphones to post pictures and videos online.  In the UK, the London police force have set up a web site of pictures and videos (www.met.police.uk/disordersuspects), asking the public for help. And on Facebook, Vancouver citizens “outed” rioters as well (www.Facebook.com/vancouverriot2011photos). More than anything else, these countervailing activities will reduce – or eliminate – the effectiveness of using social media for bad.  No longer is it possible to hide when Google, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube see all.  (As an aside, the issue of trial-by-crowd vs trial-by-court is a big one: what happens if the wrong person is “identified” as a perpetrator from a grainy Facebook photo?  The traditional justice system may catch this, but trial-by-crowd can forever destroy a reputation.)

I am not advocating the use of Social Media for unlawful activity, and believe fundamentally that anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the full extent of that law.  And those who use questionable business practices should be exposed and suffer commercial loss.  But restricting  – and losing – freedom of expression  exclusively in one communication channel is inappropriate, and because of crowd-sourced justice, unnecessary.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

It’s not celebrated widely, but in August 2011 (August 6th actually) the world wide web turned twenty. From humble beginnings, this “child” has revolutionized the world in no less a transformational way than the industrial revolution a century earlier.

Think about what didn’t exist in 1991:

eCommerce, eBay, ezines, online newspapers, Wikipedia, iphones, ipads, itunes, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, web banking, Instant Messenger, Hotmail and Monster.com.  Hard as it it is to believe, Google also didn’t exist back then…even as an idea.

And during this same time, think of what has fundamentally changed or disappeared:

Telex, fax machines, catalogs, newspapers, record stores, paper encyclopedias, long distance phone rates, record players, want ads and phone books.

This week’s action plan: It’s impossible to know what the next disruptive force in the market will be, but it is highly likely we won’t have to wait a century to see it. The most important skills in our fast-paced world? Intellectual flexibility, coupled with curiosity and a willingness to embrace change – not merely accept it. This week, let go of the old, and leave space for the new.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

There is no shortage of  “experts” living in the dank underworld of the business called “SEO”, or Search Engine Optimization.  This is the black art of finding ways to make your web site, Social Media profile, blog, and other web properties appear at the top of the Google organic search results.

While there may be many who are ethical, and many others who believe that they are providing an important service to their (ignorant and stupid) clients, SEO is something that should be built-in and happen naturally.  With just a very few basics, it is amazingly easy to make a difference to your search engine ranking.  Here are five tips:

1) Keywords:  Make sure that you know what keywords your target audience will use when searching for you.  This is available through Google Analytics (if installed in your site), by using traditional market research… or by guessing.  Ensure that these keywords are embedded throughout the regular text of your site or profile – but don’t overdo it: stuffing keywords will only penalize you.  Here’s a simple rule of thumb:  write for people, not for search engines, otherwise Google will penalize you – and you will alienate anyone who eventually gets to your site.

2) Graphics:  Name each graphic (or video) a relevant name, and use ALT tags to provide additional data for Google to index.

3) Page Title: Instead of an identical page title on every page, name each page uniquely, based on its content.  This can be automated in your blog and web site, but is usually pre-programmed within Social Media sites.

4) Meta tags:  These are invisible tags within the web page that gives the search engine additional clues to the page’s relevance.  The most common tags are Keywords and Description; both can be filled out within most blog software and web sites.

5) Relevant inbound links:  The more inbound links from credible sites, the more likely Google will see your site as being… credible.

This week’s action plan:  Surprisingly, these tips are equally important when it comes to being relevant to people in the real world.   Whenever you are writing, presenting, or just talking to your colleagues, use relevant-to-them keywords and graphics that are well-labelled.  Organize your thinking – and label it – using chapter names/titles/subtitles.  Summarize it (meta data), and make sure that it is referenced by other important sources.  It is surprisingly easy to be smarter than Google in the real-world, using the same common sense that Google uses online.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

There is no question that people think differently from each other.  Proof points abound:  people wear different clothes, choose different hairstyles, hold different jobs, and prefer different foods.  Yet, whenever we write a report, make a presentation, or write a blog post, we often feel challenged by people who voice different opinions.  Some companies are so concerned about this, that they turn off the ability for others to post comments, “vote” on the post quality, or interact in any way.

Typically, this (relatively cowardly) attitude is a result of past momentum, where a command-and-control authority would proclaim, and all others would scurry to comply.  Or it is a result of stiff corporate communication policies that seek to foster “group think” under the guise of standard corporate messaging.  Allowing different thinking opens the possibility for respectful, constructive, and open debate.  And this results in a more refined – and creative – end result.  More importantly, it results in engagement.

This week’s action plan:  Choose an engagement that is most important to you:  employee engagement, customer engagement, volunteer engagement, or donor engagement.  Then find a way to open up the debate on something that matters to them.  Not only will you learn something through the exchange, but you’ll eventually prove that engagement delivers results.

Post Script:  While Social Media is an obvious candidate as a venue for exploration and debate, opportunities to engage are often most effective in the real world:  team meetings, one-on-ones, lunch-and-learns, etc. 

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

If you’re like most people, you get three types of email: the kind you want, the kind you don’t want (spam), and invitations to “connect” on the latest social media website. It’s this third category that poses  a problem: responding yes is time consuming (and sometimes inappropriate), but responding no might be taken as insulting. And the incessant nagging from these sites to respond means that a decision to ignore means you’re playing a losing game of whack-a-mole.

What is one to do? Here are two ideas that might help;

• Set a strategy for how social media fits into your overall marketing, HR, and stakeholder engagement plans. Each of your social media initiatives should have a goal, monitoring, and (hopefully) some real-world integration. If a new site doesn’t fit into your plan, then ignore it until the next planning cycle.
• Set a policy for responding to requests from each of the key social media sites that you are interested in. For example, for LinkedIn you may choose to only connect with those where you have a real-world relationship. Other sites, such as Facebook, may have a completely different policy, such as “yes” to everyone.

This week’s action plan: The number of social media oriented e-mails that clog your inbox can be overwhelming. This week, reduce your social media fatigue by logging into each social media site and changing your email notification settings so that fewer get sent.  In Social Media, often less is more.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Chances are that you know how to drive, but cannot fix the engine. Eighty-five years ago, however, the answer would have been different.

Motoring enthusiasts back in the 1930′s and 1940′s had to know the basics of automotive repair and troubleshooting, as the “newfangled” cars often broke down, needed constant tune-ups, and were not quite as reliable as cars today. At a certain point, however, cars became more reliable; they became more technically sophisticated, and car repair became more specialized knowledge.  You were either a Driver, or an Auto Mechanic.

Today, social media has reached a similar tipping point. The knowledge of how Social Media is wired behind the scenes, how to integrate them, and how they should be properly bound to a corporate strategy is fast becoming specialist knowledge.  Yet, at the same time, there is also an expectation of a minimal communal literacy:  “people” know how to drive the car, use the phone… and use YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 

Despite the incredible number of users, it is dangerous to assume they are comfortable with these new tools, let alone engaged with them.  Communal literacy assumes everyone – and every group – is at the same level.  The reality is that different groups may have vastly different levels of understanding:  older users might not have knowledge of LinkedIn; newcomers may be familiar with sites more prevalent back home; smaller communities might use the same tools but in different ways.  To “Drive” your message home – and engage your audience – requires an approach that recognizes that communal literacy doesn’t mean complete literacy.  Every group – and every individual – is different.

This week’s action plan:

You probably have an area of specialty that has taken a career to learn.  The next time you present  your ideas to a group, consider whether the audience needs to be auto mechanics, or merely drivers to understand what you say.  In other words, what is the communal literacy of the group?  You’ll generate buy-in when you’re neither patronizing nor overly complex.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Van Gogh self-portrait

Have you ever spent time looking at the European Masters – Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and the many others?  During their era, there were no newspapers, telephones, let alone an internet.  When a subject sat down to be painted, it was often for hours, not minutes.  And the resulting painting was designed to last well into the future, if not forever.

Today, we go to the world’s museums and galleries to admire the Masters.  We see how each brush stroke creates the picture, but often so much more: a window into the emotions of the painter.   And we marvel how indeed, their work has stood the test of time.

Unfortunately, we are not so careful with what we write today.  In our day of information overload and focus on the quick, our writing often misses nuance, is easily misinterpreted, and is not expected to stand the test of time.  What will people think about us when they read what we have written, several hundred years into the future?

Rembrandt self portrait

This week’s action plan: Before you hit “send”, before you post that blog, or send that tweet.  Before you write that memo, make that presentation, or speak to your colleagues, first make sure that what you write or say has some staying power.  If it isn’t important, then don’t say it.  But if it is, write like a Master paints.

Postscript: Spending the day at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this is what I was thinking when I saw the paintings on display there.  I found the contrast between the Van Gogh and Rembrandt self-portraits particularly striking.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

How would you describe a typical New Yorker?  More likely than not, you wouldn’t use the same words to describe someone from Los Angeles, or from a small mid-western town.

People are a product of their environment, and often will take on the mindset, attitudes, and perspectives of where they are from.  (They also take on attributes based on their culture, upbringing, and many other factors.)

There are two ways we can use this information:

1) When we write or present a topic, we can focus our content and style for the specific audience, tying into their collective experience. A reference to the Yankees means something very different to New Yorkers than Parisians.

2) If we don’t know who our audience is precisely, we can pretend that we do:  How would someone from New York react?  Someone from San Francisco?  Or from Geneva, Switzerland?  Predicting their reactions helps us finesse our communications – and possibly avoid embarrassment.

One caveat: every reader (or audience member)  is an individual; be careful not to stereotype, or you’ll lose all of the credibility you hoped to build.

This week’s action plan: When you need to create the new (or solve the old), select several cities – or cultures – and consider the challenge from their perspective.  Having a New York state of mind is a powerful way to improve your creative output.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

How often do you crack open the instruction manual for the new TV, car, or piece of software? If you’re like most, the answer is never. Reading through an endless list of functions is both irrelevant, and incredibly dull. In other words, a colossal waste of time.

Why then, when it comes to social media “strategic plans”, the focus is too often on what each social media venue offers, instead of how social media fits into the processes and plans that currently exist?  In too many cases, social media is a solution in search of a problem.

Instead, a social media strategy should flip this equation around and think “backwards”: social media needs to make real world processes more efficient, more engaging, and less costly.  How can social media help the recruiting process? How can it be used for better lead generation and prospecting? How can it be used for more focused (and faster) product development? And so on.

This Week’s Action Plan: Consider the processes that you participate in. Instead of first thinking of the social media venue, can you use “backwards thinking” to improve the process itself using social media concepts?  When we take the emphasis off the tool, and emphasize the business, Backwards Thinking is really Fast Forward.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

There is nothing as humorous – or sad – as outdated laws. Every jurisdiction has them:

• No cow or sheep grazing in public gardens
• All businesses must provide rails to tie up horses
• No walking backward while eating chestnuts

Unfortunately, many organizations face a similar problem: rules and regulations that have far outlived their useful lives. Innovation requires flexibility – yet rules and regulations breed inflexibility.

Inflexibility causes a permanent competitive disadvantage, as other more agile organizations jump into the fray, “disrupting” the market with their new thinking. Of course, they aren’t disrupting the market – they are disrupting their competitors, using the tools of innovation to connect more directly to their stakeholders.

In fact, under cover of terms like security, privacy, technology architecture, and “policy”, many organizations are stifling not just innovation, but also customer service, employee motivation, and ultimately profitability.

These rules and regulations are felt no more keenly than in the areas of social media, marketing, and technology. While the preventers of innovation are doing their jobs, the smart and the quick organizations are reaping the benefits of social CRM, cloud computing/Software as a Service, community building, and collaboration. They are embracing the Facebook Generation, and the Facebook generation is embracing them.

This week’s action plan: Is the inertia of the past stifling innovation in your organization? Look carefully, and identify the rules and regulations that directly impact your goals – and then advocate for openness, innovation, and connection.

Security Addendum: We aren’t advocating a disregard for security, privacy, and similar policies, but rather a recognition that in most organizations these concerns should be addressed in a way that encourages – not prevents – innovation.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Malcolm Gladwell asserts that one cannot be an expert without first earning 10,000 hours of experience.

So how do you become recognized for your expertise if you don’t have enough experience to be recognized…?  This isn’t a problem just for those entering the workforce (or for entrepreneurs), but also for those considering a career change, and those newly promoted into a different role.

Here are a  few ideas:

1. Borrow the experience: Add people to your team to complement the skills you lack – then learn from them.
2. Purchase the experience: Hire a coach or management consultant to quickly get you up to speed. Of course, make sure that their 10,000 hours are real and directly relevant to your requirements.
3. Change your focus: Sometimes a slight shift in your priorities will allow more of your past experience to become relevant.
4. Assume the risk: Yes, you might not have those 10,000 hours, but the cost of failure may not be so high. Nevertheless, reduce this risk by reading, attending presentations, and networking to learn as much as possible.

This week’s action plan: What kind of hours are you collecting? This week, add up the hours that you have “earned” throughout your career across various competencies. Are you earning hours in the areas that are important to you?

A bonus idea: Many people like the idea of writing a blog, but are unsure what the best topic should be. Here’s a clue: blog on either the topic you have the most hours in, or blog on the topic you are hoping to build.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Think about what you do everyday: if you are in the majority, there is some period of time when you are “doing” social media. You may be checking your Facebook Wall to see what is up with your friends. You may contribute to a conversation in a LinkedIn group. Or you may be clicking through links from people you follow on Twitter.

Note that of these activities (and others like it) nowhere do we see activities such as stalking your favorite accountant’s LinkedIn profile, Liking your vet’s Facebook Page, or clicking on advertisements. Nor do we see millions of users “engaging” with corporate videos (Superbowl ads excepted), or signing up to receive Tweets from their local car-rental agency. Individuals engage in their own selfish self-interests. Organizations who forget this simple truth are fooling themselves or wasting their time.

This week’s action plan: As an individual, verify this yourself: which corporate social media sites do you regularly spend time on? You probably don’t.  If you are in charge of your organization’s social media activities, think twice about investing unless you are completely aligned with your target audience’s interests and aspirations.  If your initiative is focused on “you” instead of your clients or prospects, there will be no engagement.  You want more connections, but real connection is far more valuable.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

At one time, were you riding high with a ton of “Friends”?   Then you realized that many of your Friends were there in name, but had zero engagement?  Or you maintain a presence on one platform (MySpace?), and realize that it no longer meets your needs?  Or, you started a Facebook Group and now have many Group members, but you realized that you really should have started a Facebook Page?  In all of these cases, you realize you really should migrate your connections from one Social Media venue to another, but don’t relish the unpleasant task of actually doing it.

It is unpleasant because when the move is made, many people will choose not to move with you.  They simply don’t care.  Or they have abandoned you.  Their name is truly like a fossil – it’s there for you to see, but the once-relationship is long dead. As a result, we worry unnecessarily about “losing” people we don’t currently have – and therefore postpone making the decision to move.

So if you do have to make a move, here are some ideas:

1) Do it as soon as you can, both to minimize user attrition and so that new fans/members can be spared the hassle of transition.

2) There are three groups to consider.  Those who will never move (because they have already “checked out”), the true followers who will do exactly as you say, and the muddy middle.  Don’t plan for the first group, as they will never move.  Don’t plan for the true followers, as they will move immediately when asked.  Instead, concentrate on that middle group who just needs a nudge – a reason and an incentive – to re-engage and to move.

3) Find a way to make the grass greener at the destination venue.  Let them know why you are moving, and what’s in it for them.  If you are moving only for self-serving reasons, that’s not good enough.

4) Consider giving everyone who joins the new venue before a certain date (14 days?), something of value: a whitepaper, teleconference, etc.

Making a change from one venue to another is time-consuming, and because the number of followers/fans/friends always ends up going down, it is a humbling experience too.  Before you head down the moving path, spend a few moments making sure that you are sending them to the right place.

This week’s action plan: This week, answer a few questions about Social Media Geography.  Where are your relationships housed?  Do they need to be moved?  What are the options?  And are you happy with the “return on relationships” that you have earned?

Bonus concept: The concept of Social CRM – the tight interconnection between Social Media and CRM – is the connection between community and sales.  Too often, organizations engage in Social Media Marketing that has no further goal than… Social Media Marketing.  Without the CRM dimension, the creation of community is merely… community.If you are going to change the venue, move them into your CRM system at the same time.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Remember Y2K? There were no major computer crashes, but there was, just a few months later, a technology crash of a different sort when many Dot Com’s lost most of their market value. The market learned painfully that eyeballs didn’t pay the rent – revenue did.

Today we seem to be in a similar “Social Media” heyday. The markets – public and private – are putting super-high valuations on the new social media darlings. These valuations aren’t driven by revenue (or “eyeballs”), but driven by friends, followers, and connections.

Investors should be wary, as history typically repeats itself. While some social media venues will be commercially successful, most will not. And of the 500+ social sites out there, expect a significant number of closures, consolidations, and abrupt strategy shifts. Only revenue can pay the rent.

As individuals, marketing leaders, and corporate managers, consider these four key insurance policies:

1. Don’t put all of your social media eggs in one basket.   Remember MySpace?  It’s quickly becoming a ghost town.
2. Do some contingency planning: What would happen if your venue(s) of choice suddenly shut down? With “your” data?
3. Look for ways to diversify your relationships with your connections across several channels: email, Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc.
4. Monitor the social media space for winners and losers. This allows you to catch the trends early …and provides an early warning mechanism just in case.

The Week’s Action Plan:

Will we really have a Social Media crash?  It’s hard to say exactly, but the parallels with the pre-Dot Com era are striking.  This week, ask the question “what if”.  A few minutes of contingency planning can make the world of difference.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Have you ever listened to a presentation and thought it sounded fake?  Or met someone for the first time, and thought they were different in person when compared to their emails?

Too often, we think that we need to be different people to different audiences:  the stern parent, the loving spouse, the “professional” businessperson, or the potty-mouthed armchair athlete.  As there is only one of us, when we take on different personas, we are actually making life difficult for ourselves – and confusing for others.  They think we are hiding something from them – which is correct: we are trying to be something we are not.  (No more so is this true than on the social web, where for years, people could hide behind the veil of anonymity, and “be” whomever they wanted to be.)

Writers have long worked hard at developing what they call their authentic voice. They realized that to be an effective communicator, they had to be consistent, and that their style of writing – and their content – had to be a personal reflection of who they were.  There was only one of them.

Of course, not everyone reading this is a professional writer.  But still, everything that we do write – from a Facebook comment, to a LinkedIn status update, to a blog post – is archived forever.  Not only are the words archived, but so is the personality who wrote them.  Speakers sound fake if they are not the same on and off the stage.  Writers write poorly if they are not the same in person as they are on the page.  Being the authentic you means being the same no matter the situation, or mode of communication.

This week’s action plan: Are you the same person at work, at home, and when posting in the Social Media?  Odds are that you aren’t; this week strive to become more authentically you – you’ll make a far  better impression, and it’s far easier.

Bonus observation: Too often, the gap between the resume/cover letter and the candidate who shows up for the interview, is huge.  Being authentic applies everywhere, but during the job search process it is especially important.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Chances are you are working (or have worked) in an organization that gave you a PC that was completely locked down. You were not allowed to add your own software, let alone customize the software that was pre-installed. If you did want to go to the web, you could do it on a company installed browser, but only to company approved sites. And of course, while you did this, your every word would be scrutinized by sniffer programs designed to verify that you were being “productive.”  Sound familiar?

This repressive state of affairs is highlighted further by the growing consumerist attitude of most employees. There is a growing gap between a public that shares, collaborates, consumes and engages away from the office, but has none of these “freedoms” when it comes to working with colleagues (or clients) during the day.

As a result, organizations are discovering that their staff simply avoid the repression by using their own technology during the day: they surf on their iPhones, and even use the personal Hotspot feature to gain direct access to the web from their computers.  Corporate Security Specialists see this as a massive risk, and will often respond with more rules, enforcement, and penalties.  Unfortunately, the Facebook Generation knows how to use technology, and doesn’t suffer fools… or what they see as foolish policies. Instead, what is needed is common sense, guidelines, and accountability. And underlying this is good ol’ “management”.

This week’s action plan: Does your organization lock everything down or does it hold people (and their managers) accountable? This week, spend a few minutes considering whether your constraints impact your responsibilities; if so, then advocate for a change – but be prepared to be accountable.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Too often it is the marketers, advertisers, PR folks, and others involved in the sales process who “own” social media within an organization. This isn’t surprising, but it is unfortunate. The development of relationships is critically important in just about every organizational department, and each person’s individual success.

Not convinced? Here are a few suggestions on who can use social media, and how:

HR: To source candidates, to tweet about job postings, to check references

Supply Chain: Supplier due diligence and reviews; To tweet about upcoming RFP’s and current inventory levels.

Investor Relations: To send notifications about upcoming financial reporting; to solicit questions for investor calls and meetings.

Legal: To monitor and identify inappropriate use of trademarks and copyrights.

This week’s action plan: Is every group within your organization using social media? And is it doing so effectively? Or is social media stuck exclusively in the clutches of marketing and IT? This week, find one way to embed more social media and collaboration within your organization.  Your relationships will be stronger – as will the business.

Bonus concept: On the personal level, social media is useful well beyond entertainment and job searches. This week, identify where in the social media world you can find professional support, and get involved (It might be in a LinkedIn group, an industry association’s discussion group or a Twitter List…)

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

With millions of pages written on the subject, presumably there is an answer for every Social Media question that comes up.  Unfortunately, this is not the case – and it’s not Google’s fault.  When the web first started, the challenge was that with so few sites, there was very little that could be indexed.  Today, the opposite is true:  there is too much.  And with so much shifting simultaneously, any answer you find is probably not a perfect match.  And if it is close, it soon becomes stale-dated.

Consider where this complexity comes from, and why the problem will only continue to grow:

1) The business environment is shifting. Yesterday’s answers won’t necessarily work today, and certainly won’t work tomorrow.

2) Technology is changing. Consider that a mere few years ago, there was no YouTube, Groupon, or iPads.  And the underlying technologies (all with strange names like Ajax, Cloud, VOIP, etc) are completely new.

3) Marketing is no longer the same. From the old school of the four P’s (price/product/place/promotion), to the new school of crowdsourcing, viral marketing, and Social Media marketing, businesses have a dramatic increase in the number of tools available.

4) Business Strategy is changing. Each business has a unique history, and (hopefully) a unique strategy moving forward: the “right” answer that you find (which was written for one purpose) is not necessarily correct for yours.  And of course, since strategies change every few years, an answer that might have sufficed back then may be wholly inadequate now.

And with this complexity, Google and other search engines need to prioritize an ever-growing index of content, making finding the relevant – and the right – answers even doubly hard.

This week’s action plan: Over the years I have tackled a number of management and social media topics, but now, I would like to turn the question back to you:  What would you like to see addressed in upcoming Tipsheets?  What is the one question that you’ve always wanted answered… or at least a new perspective on?  This week, help me help you by either commenting on my blog, or sending an email to me at editor (at) ptadvisors (dot) com.  Finding the right answer may be tough, but your feedback means these Tipsheets can help.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

In your professional field, who is the best at what they do? Chances are, you didn’t name yourself. This is not surprising – between personal modesty, and our competitive instinct to look over our shoulders, we will usually make the comparison to others.

Management experts will tell you this is wrong; that the correct approach is to focus on the customer:  if you meet your customer’s needs, then all will be well.  They are correct, but there is a powerful benefit to comparing yourself to your competitors: you gain insights into the market from a completely different perspective. You can examine their service approach – and possibly glean some insights that will make you even better.

In fact, the quest to be the best can only happen when you incorporate the best ideas – no matter the source.  This practice is called Benchmarking. It is useful in strategy, in marketing, in Social Media, and even on a personal level.  Disregarding (or ignoring) great ideas just because they come from competitors, junior members of the team, or from the web is silly.

This week’s action plan: Whatever task you are doing this week, take a minute to do some benchmarking: First, choose your comparators. Then find out what they’re doing. Finally, extract what is applicable, and make it your own.

Additional Insight: A common problem occurs when you choose the wrong comparators. Merely comparing yourself against the usual (and often average) suspects means a usual and average result.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Many people are interested in writing a blog, particularly if they have special expertise.  Yet, the precise subject of the blog usually eludes them.  Choose the wrong subject, and you’re stuck with it, and because of Google, it sticks to you… forever.

The overall blogging rule is simple: write for your reader.  Imagine who that reader is, what interests them, and choose your topic that way. Simple.

But if you stop there, however, you’ve only done half of the work.  The reader might benefit, but how do you know that YOU will?

To truly benefit, you need to add two additional criteria:

Is it Strategic? How does writing on your topic help you personally?  Your team?  Your organization?  Does writing help position you (or your organization) in a different light?  Is there a way to slightly change the topic so the benefit improves?  How does your topic tie in to your organization’s mission, vision, and values?  If you are writing for yourself, how does your topic tie in to your personal career plan?

Is it Synergistic?  How does the topic complement other things that you are doing?  Does it help you explore an area of professional interest?  Can you repurpose the blog content in another format, such as a white paper, video, or presentation?  Can blog post ideas naturally be derived from your day-to-day work?

Choosing strategically ensures that the blog effort points you in the right direction.  Choosing synergistically helps you be more productive with your insight.

This week’s action plan: Synergy and Strategy apply to just about every activity that you do – and not just in the world of Social Media.  This week, before you say “yes” to someone else’s request of you, ensure that the activity is both strategic and synergistic.  If not, then work with the person who made the request, to see if a minor change might make it so.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

When the economy is tight, most organizations face a financial call-to-action: tighten your belts, manage costs, and cut-cut-cut. This seems reasonable – financial management will rationalize that revenues no longer support a “higher” level of expenditure, so either sales must increase, or expenses must cut.

But how are these cuts determined?  Too often, it is a question of expediency (easiest to cut), recency (latest programs), or politics (weakest sponsors’ programs get cut.)  A far better approach is to cut based on efficiency and effectiveness.

Instead of merely looking at the cost of a particular initiative, why not consider whether it was worth the time and money to do it in the first place? And whether, after X months (or years), it is pulling its weight? Cutting lazy investments frees resources for higher-value activities.

The best way to do this is to build evaluation in from the outset. What are the goals of the program? How will they be measured? What are the expected results: financial, marketing, operational, and otherwise? What are the downstream benefits? Understanding these upfront means mid-course corrections can be made along the way.  And it also means that when the call to cut happens, objective measurements can be introduced as criteria. In short, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

This concept is even more important in the area of social media. For whatever reason, the concepts of managing and measuring seem forgotten in the excitement of the latest tweet or blog posting.  They shouldn’t be.

This weeks action plan: Review your social media initiatives, and set the goals, measures, and expected results. Don’t get caught when the call to cut occurs.

Bonus idea: This same concept works on a personal level. Can you quantify the impact of each of your activities?  If not, spend the time setting goals, measures and expected results.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

How does your organization decide to invest in Social Media? With all of the fluff being written on the topic, it isn’t surprising that finding a list to help executives make better decisions is tough.  Based on our experience advising clients, here is my contribution, with questions in no particular order:

1.      What are the competitors doing?

2.      What evidence do you have that the competitors are actually successful?

3.      Have they already taken advantage of a first mover advantage?

4.      How have they organized the implementation – internal/external mix?

5.      Who has organized the implementation – consulting firm, ad agency, third world workers, etc. – and why this way?

6.      What profile has their executive team chosen to have?

7.      How has their strategy leveraged their unique advantages?

8.      How will the proposed Social Media plan take advantage of our unique advantage?  How?

9.      How might the competition respond?

10.  What are the technical risks, and how might they be mitigated?

11.  How do we know we’re not too late?

12.  Over 500+ Social Media sites; justify why you’ve chosen the ones you have

13.  What statistics/proof do we have that our prospects/customers/recruits actually are on the sites you propose to be on?

14.  The plan assumes that different groups will work together in a new way for the first time – how will this work “on the ground”?

15.  Who is accountable for the success of the initiative?

16.  How will that success be measured?

17.  Has anyone – a competitor, consulting firm, or academia – done a study to compare or establish benchmarks or best practices?

18.  How long have you personally used Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube)?

19.  What is the investment required? Payback? ROI? (Initial and ongoing)

20.  If the investment were increased/decreased by 50% what would change in your proposal?

21.  Who specifically came up with the plan – a 20 year old?

22.  Most organizations do PR centrally – yet the blog/twitter is decentralized – how will we control “the message”?

23.  What are the top 5 risks and how do you propose to address them?

24.  What are our clients doing?

25.  Explain the rationale for building the program on third party sites versus our own (or the other way around).

26.  How will this plan address privacy issues?

27.  What additional law or government regulation must be followed (privacy, Do Not Call, under 18 laws, etc)?

28.  How will spam be addressed?

29.  How much of a person-resource will be spent on this?

30.  Is the plan integrated with our Marketing/Sales/HR/R&D/etc, or is it tack-on?  How is it integrated?

31.  Does the plan have clear objectives?

32.  We have finite resources; what activity will be stopped if this one starts?

33.  How much of the initiative is defensive (vs. aggressive/offensive)?

34.  Can the proposal be phased in?

35.  When do the milestones occur to review progress?  And what should we look for on the first milestone.

36.  Does the Social Media strategy take advantage of Mobile? How so?

37.  Who else has reviewed this proposal, and what reservations did they have?

38.  How does this initiative change our…

- Marketing strategy?

- R&D strategy?

- HR/recruiting strategy?

- etc.?

39.  What internal policies will need to change if we implement? (Acceptable Use Policies, Confidentiality, etc)

40.  Where does this plan lead? What does Phase Three look like?

41.  Who within the organization will you need to work hard to get buy-in from?

42.  Are there any external stakeholders who will be affected negatively or whose relationships will be altered in one way or another?

43.  Who are the bloggers, tweeple, etc. who are most influential in our market?

44.  How will the initiative be launched?

45.  What books have you read/What blogs/Tweeple do you follow? What do they say about this type of plan?

46.  How has this plan worked in other industries?

47.  Do any of our suppliers or customers have Social Media strategies that we can “camp on” to?

It’s unlikely that you’ll use all 47 every time there is a question of investment, but scanning through the list isn’t a bad idea.  Sometimes the best answers come when you ask the best questions.

This week’s action plan: Before asking for anything this week, put your feet in the shoes of the person you are asking.  What would their top five questions be?  Answer clearly, and it’s more likely you’ll get a yes.

Note: My Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

You may not know it, but the game playing, ad-serving, stalker-friendly site called Facebook is poised to bust out of it’s walled garden and move into the “real world” in a very big way. And when it does, it will have profound implications for government, other businesses, and each of us as individuals.

Unless you were living in a cave for the last few years, you probably know all about Facebook. It’s an ad-supported social network that allows individuals to connect with friends, share photos, status, games, and support groups and organizations by “liking” them.

The first step in Facebook’s evolution occurred over the last year or so: they developed some clever code that allowed webmasters to put “Like” buttons throughout their site. By clicking on the embedded button, we each became complicit in a process that helped Facebook not just reach out to these other sites, but to actually embed this external content within Facebook itself. This isn’t a particularly bad thing – in fact, it is a win-win-win proposition, but it accomplishes a strategic goal for Facebook that isn’t apparent to most. More on this later.

The second step, also introduced over the last year or so, has been to offer site owners (and their users) another clever nugget of functionality: the ability for users to logon/register on third party sites with their Facebook ID’s. Again, a win-win-win proposition, and one that accomplishes a strategic goal: to develop a network of external sites who are comfortably dependent on Facebook, and whose developers feel very comfortable using Facebook-embedded code.

The final brick in the wall are Facebook “credits”. These have been virtual rewards in Facebook games, that when “spent”, can give the user extra capabilities or access. What we are starting to see, and will continue to see, is the migration of Facebook credits  from a virtual currency to a real one. The actual credits take on value within Facebook, as games and apps “give” credits to winners, or “give” credits for even more valuable personal information. The credits themselves are funded from game or app developers’ ad revenues. As an aside, Facebook credits are now even sold in Radio Shack stores. They have value.

But a currency is worthless unless it can be spent. This is where Facebook is clearly going. Consider this scenario: You go to your favorite web site to purchase some merchandise. Signing on with your Facebook ID, you pay for your purchase with Facebook credits. The merchant prefers this because Facebook charges less than the credit card companies to process the transaction. Think of it: hundreds of thousands of online merchants accepting credits instead of credit cards. Not only does Facebook make money on every transaction, but because credits are a “stored value” instrument, Facebook earns investment income from the value of credits held.

Is this scenario likely?  Consider these factors:

1. Website owners “trust” Facebook – a trust earned through the “like” button and the Login with Facebook functionality
2. Web developers are comfortable implementing Facebook code
3. Users trust Facebook, and because they will want to spend the credits they have earned.

More than these three factors, however, is a fourth: It’s in everyone’s commercial interest to have this happen as quickly as possible. For web merchants, it makes it easier and faster to transact, resulting in higher sales at a lower cost. Users will want to spend their credits they have earned, and Facebook opens a new channel of revenue: transaction fees.

What is even more exciting, at least from Facebook’s perspective, is that the web is just the beginning. Why be content with hundreds of thousands of web merchants, when there are millions of bricks and mortar businesses who would jump to lower transaction fees in a second. As Visa and MasterCard processing fees have risen substantially, there is a window of opportunity for an organization that’s big enough to offer an alternative. Facebook is. And of course, if these merchants are already accepting Facebook credits on their websites, it’s just a simple step to accept them in the real world.

But how might these payments be delivered? This is but a detail, but there are some obvious possibilities, such as a new “credit card”. What is more likely is that the payment will be delivered through the next generation of cellphones, with built-in Near Field Communications. Picture this: log into your Facebook Mobile App on your Smartphone; then “tap tap” the phone on a pad at the retailers, and the Facebook credits are transferred immediately to the retailer. Of course, the retailer can just “bank” the credits (less the transaction fee)… or they can recycle the credits within the Facebook ecosystem to pay for more advertising. Facebook might even cut them a deal.

The big question is what about the other social media sites? Which – if any – might have a vision this big? Unfortunately for the 525+ other sites, only Google might be up for the challenge…and even they might be found wanting. To survive, every other site will become a niche player, at best.

Will Facebook take over the world? Not in a traditional sense. But if this analysis is right, they will come close.

This week’s action item: How you can take advantage of some of Facebook’s technologies today, either as an individual, or for your organization?

An uncomfortable question: Do you have such a far-sighted strategy, either personally, or in your business?  Most don’t.   (What can you do about it?)

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com