“If you build it, he will come.”  This quote, from the movie Field of Dreams, captures the hopes of many marketers:  write great content on your blog, and an audience will be magically attracted to you.  Thanks to Google this is partially true, but are there things that you can do to help the process along?  The answer, of course is yes.  To start, consider the following ideas: 

• Blog Intentions
• Six steps to strategic blogging
• 16 Blog topic ideas
• 17 ways to great social engagement

This post, however, is an example of a completely different way to grow your readership: create content clusters of related blog posts, and then cross-link them.  It stands to reason that if a person lands on one particular blog post, they may have an interest in closely related posts.  Planning several blog posts around a particular theme -  planning the posts in clusters instead of simple individual posts – can make this happen.

The second benefit of this is that these clusters are ready-made raw material for a longer white-paper or other form factor.  (More on repurposing content.)

This week’s action plan:  Planning future blog post clusters is great, but what about everything you’ve written in the past?  This week, go through your archives, and identify the clusters where you can graft cross-links after the fact.

Bonus Blog Bit:  Beyond the in-line cluster strategy, there are a number of WordPress plug-ins that automatically identify related posts; while not perfect, these also can help generate more internal connections – and readership. 

Are you one of the millions who remain mystified about Twitter? While I’ve written about this before (Twitter Strategies), I thought it might be worthwhile to boil it down again, but from a different perspective.

Here are five key Twitter activities that might expose a previously hidden opportunity:

1. Monitor: Professional development, risk mitigation, or keeping tabs on prospective clients (or employers) are great ways to stay in the loop of what’s going on. How: Use a tool such as Hootsuite.com, and set up streams that track relevant keywords – one per column. Each morning, do a quick scan to review any relevant posts.
2. Discover: Identifying today’s trends – and seeing tomorrow’s news today – gives you a unique perspective on the world. How: Click on Discover within Twitter to discover trending topics. Many will be irrelevant, but a quick scan can separate the wheat from the chaff. Key question is so what?: Thinking through the relevance (and impact) of those topics for your business is the key to unlocking the value of discovery.
3. Interact: Discussions with others who have similar interests can have many benefits, including professional development, business development, and personal connection. How: LinkedIn has groups, Facebook has pages, and Twitter has … #hashtags. Here’s how they work: 
• Groups decide on unique hashtags as an identifier for open discussion on a specific  topic
• Individuals then include that hashtag when tweeting on that topic
• Individuals set Hootsuite to monitor that hashtag, which then displays the stream of relevant conversation
4. Share: Passing relevant information – Retweeting – to your followers sends two messages – the tweet itself, and that you are “connected” as an in-the-know source. How: Find a relevant tweet, and click the Retweet button.
5. Direct Message: This is a private one-to-one message to a specific person, exactly like a (very short) email. How: A DM conversation is possible only when both people follow each other.

The value of what you share on this platform – tweet, retweet, DM, and interact via hashtag – is a direct reflection of your brand online. In this way, Twitter is no different than any other interaction.

This week’s action plan: How are you currently using Twitter? This week, develop more comfort with the channel: choose one “new” activity, and see what happens. You may just make an important discovery: a better return on your time investment.

How do you determine the ROI on your marketing and sales investments?

The standard formula is simple: divide the return, less investment, by the investment. A marketing campaign costs $1000, and reaches out to 1000 prospects. Five per cent of these respond, generating $1000 profit, for an ROI of zero: (1000-1000)/1000.  If the profit is $1500, then ROI is 50 per cent, if profit is $500, then the ROI is negative.

Unfortunately, this calculation makes a fundamental error: what about the other 95 per cent that don’t respond? What can be done about them?

Traditional marketing suggests one solution: work to improve the conversion rate. An increase from five to six per cent flows directly to the bottom line. Yet making this change (which is important), only changes the question to what about the other 94 per cent? 

So what about this group? Why did they choose not to transact?  Three answers:

1. They didn’t have a strong enough relationship with you yet.
2. They didn’t know enough about your service or product.
3. They weren’t ready to purchase at the precise time that you were ready to sell.

The real marketing question is about the 95%: what investment is your organization making to resolve these three questions? (The answer for many, is not much.)  Yet a simple marketing automation concept – drip marketing – can  change the equation, and close the gap.

Here’s how it works:

1. Identify all of the “funnel” entry points. Examples include web lead generation forms, trade shows, networking meetings, or even telemarketing campaigns.  Any source where a prospective client identifies as having an interest.
2. For each source, identify 12 no-cost, high-value items that both educate and help solve critical problems. These can include white papers, infographics, videos, webinars, and books (real and electronic).
3. Every 60 days, send one of these items to the prospect. This helps educate them, improves their trust in your organization, and most importantly, keeps your name in front of them. When they are ready to buy, they’ll think of you first. (Of course, doing this assumes that you have permission to reach out – if you don’t, the unsolicited interruption may have the opposite effect.)

Social Media is here.  It’s everywhere.  In fact, the absence of it sends a signal that the sponsoring organization is completely disconnected, un-hip, and behind the times.

Unfortunately, this zeal to include Social Media is often taken to the extreme.  There are numerous cases where “doing” Social Media makes no sense at all.  Three examples:

1) When the target audience is not using the platform.  After all, what is the goal of the effort in the first place – for the organization to have a conversation… with itself?  Nursing home residents are not as likely a target, although their families may be.

2) When there is no call to action – or when there isn’t even a social address provided. In the picture below, taken at Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition, there are helpful Facebook and Twitter stickers on the doors to one of the major buildings – but zero indication about what the patron should do.

3) When it is physically impossible for users to act.  How often, for example have you noticed QR codes in places where there is no internet service – such as within an airline magazine.  Worse is the picture below – one of many examples of ads that appear in underground subways:

This week’s action plan:  While Social Media is indeed everywhere, it shouldn’t be.  This week, look for other examples of over-indulgence – starting with your own.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

No one cares about you – they care about how you can solve their problems. Write for your readers.

These two expressions epitomize the most important marketing (and social media) concept: relevance. How often have you seen a post, picture, tweet, or comment that adds zero value? Or where the signal-to-noise ratio is, well, noisy?

When it comes to using social media as a professional tool, there is a subtle shift that must happen. Instead of a self (or corporate) focus, the post must be designed to be user-relevant, and user-focused. It’s true that celebrities (and politicians) often break this rule, but they would do better if they were more relevant.

Social relevance isn’t rocket science – here are five tips that can help:

1. Define the primary and secondary audience for your Facebook and Twitter updates, tweets, videos, and blogs.
2. Define the overall goal and the high level messaging that you need each audience to adopt.
3. Brainstorm on the key information needs of the target audiences. And if you’re not sure, ask. The intersection of this and your goal/messaging should define your overall theme.
4. Brainstorm specific post topics within this theme.
5. Seek to engage, not just broadcast. A great barometer of relevance is the degree of engagement. If there are no shares, likes, or comments, your post may not have hit the mark.

This week’s action plan: What’s your signal-to-noise ratio? This week, review all of your social posts, using this five-point checklist as your criteria. (Are the posts really written for a targeted audience? Does it appear that there is an underlying goal? Are the topic choices important to the audience? And on a similar theme? Is there engagement?) If the posts are too wide-ranging and diffuse, then start writing for your reader: they will care about you once you begin solving their problems.

Competitive insight: Reviewing your competitor’s social posts can often give you insight to their marketing strategy: reverse engineering what they have been saying, provides visibility to their priorities and goals.

Postscript: Read the last 30 (or 300) posts of mine at www.RandallCraig.com: What is my signal-to-noise ratio?

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

Randall Craig

PS:  My firm now publishes a no-spam high-value monthly newsletter, the one-o-eight.  It’s filled with more content and news you can use.  To subscribe, fill in the form here.

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

What’s your reaction when you read a company newsletter, instruction manual, or other corporate communication?  You probably think it sounds plastic, anti-septic, and homogenized.  If so, you’re like most people – they see corporate-speak as fake, and they can sniff it a mile away.

The best communicators have always known that effective writing connects at an emotional level with the reader – no matter the topic.  And what is most effective in social media is precisely this, along with a one-on-one connection between two people.  This is true even if one person is a representative of a corporate brand or an organization.

Unfortunately, this point has been missed by many corporate communicators, who have blindly transplanted their impersonal corporate voice onto the social web.  Or worse, who have adopted a breezy hipster tone that is so far removed from the corporate brand, that it is laughable.

Here are four ways to get real in your social conversations, especially on Twitter:

1) Avoid the passive – it removes the writer from the equation.

• Wrong:  Mistakes were made.
• Right: We made a mistake.

2) Speak for yourself – “We” shunts responsibility somewhere else.

• Wrong:  We apologize for disappointing you.
• Right:  I am sorry that we disappointed you.

3) Avoid jargon and speak plainly – jargon hides and distances

• Wrong:  We strive to exceed expectations and provide a great service experience
• Right:  We goofed, and promise to do better.

4) Be engaging – remember that a conversation takes place when two people are engaged, not just one.

• Wrong:  “… and that is our approach.”
• Right:  “…and that is our approach – what has worked for you?”

This week’s action item:  Review your conversations on the social web to see if you can be more “real”, and less fake.  And while you’re at it, do a double-check on your print collateral and website: what would it take to make you be just a little bit more real?

Postscript:  How did I do?  When you read this post (or any of my posts, for that matter), do you get a sense that there is a real person who wrote it?  That the topic – and my style -  is more real than plastic?  Of course, there is always room to do better:  what would you suggest?

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

Randall Craig

PS:  My firm now publishes a no-spam high-value monthly newsletter, the one-o-eight.  It’s filled with more content and news you can use.  To subscribe, fill in the form here.

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

What do you do when you are disappointed with a product or service that you have purchased?  Most people turn to the web: a quick check on Google solves many problems.  And a few choice words on Twitter or Facebook can let everyone know about the experience.

From an organization’s perspective however, those “choice” words can be terribly damaging to the brand, if not addressed immediately.  One powerful response strategy is scenario planning.  It works like this:

1) The top ten likely scenarios are identified, and then responses scripted. These scenarios should cover 80-90% of the  likely queries that come in.

2) Customer service representatives are trained to identify the scenarios and the responses, but are empowered to personalize the scripted response.

3) Queries that are beyond the identified scenarios are addressed (sometimes by a more senior person), but then flagged for review and possibly added to the list of scripted scenarios.

Here are a few scenario examples:

Irate Customer

• Empathize:  “I’m sorry that this happened” (Goal is to defuse the emotion)
• Be transparent:  “This shouldn’t have happened – our standard is _______” (Goal is to acknowledge the issue – and set expectations)
• Take it direct:  “Please DM (Direct Message) me with your details” (Goal is to remove the issue from the public eye – and respect confidentiality)
• Be in the moment:  “…and I’ll look into it right away.” (Goal is to acknowledge urgency, and to demonstrate responsiveness)
• Empathize:  “Again, I’m sorry that we let you down” (Goal is to show personal responsibility, and leave the user with a better feeling about the organization)

Confused Customer

• Empathize:  “Sorry about the confusion.  I can help” (Goal is to defuse the emotion)
• Solve Problem:  “You just need to _______” (Goal is to quickly provide the conceptual key to solving the problem)
• Exceed expectations:  “Here is the complete how-to [link to document].  And a YouTube video [link to video]. (Goal is to provide multiple ways to solve the problem, so that there is no need for additional interactions.)
• Empathize and ask: “Hope this helps.  Could I also ask you to fill in our 3 question survey?”  (Goal is to collect testimonials and marketing feedback on neutral or positive interactions.)

This week’s action plan:  Whether you run a large customer service center, or just respond to social media questions on an ad hoc basis, the underlying genius of scenario planning is that the thinking is done beforehand.  This week, consider your top ten queries, but instead of developing after-the-fact response strategies, feed these back into the business: what can be changed within the product or service to prevent the queries from being made in the first place? (Some hints: change the sales process, marketing materials, service delivery process, training, product packaging, instruction manuals, etc.)

Marketing Insight:  Research (Berry, Zeimanthal, Parasuraman) indicates that the key determinants of service quality are Responsiveness, Reliability, Assurance, Empathy, and Tangibles, with Responsiveness and Reliability being paramount.  There is a critical connection between a successful online customer service strategy, and these five dimensions.  Developing scenarios and process allows you to ensure that these connections exist.

Back to the past:  The first scenario-based response strategy I developed was for accounting-consulting firm KPMG in the mid-1990′s.  Same concepts, but the challenge then was dealing with another “new” technology:  email and a web site.

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

Randall Craig

PS:  My firm now publishes a no-spam high-value monthly newsletter, the one-o-eight.  It’s filled with more content and news you can use.  To subscribe, fill in the form here.

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Does this sound familiar?  You have a website (or two), a marketing budget, and a more than likely, a desire to grow.  It doesn’t matter if growth is defined as more event registrations, newsletter sign-ups, leads, or transactions – the problem is that too often, a web initiative doesn’t always pull its weight.

There are four steps to turning this around:

Level 1, Attraction:  1000 people see a link to your site.

Level 2, Conversion to prospect:  100 people click on that link, and land on your website.  They are intrigued, and wish to explore more.  (On the other hand, 900 people think that the stimulus is irrelevant noise, and ignore it.)

Level 3, Conversion to customer:  10 people decide to sign up, register, transact, or click the call to action.  (Which means that 90 people thought that your landing page was not relevant.)

Level 4, Referral:  1 person is so pleased with the results, that they tell 10 people. (And perhaps one person is displeased, they tell 100 people.)

There are three relevant statistics:  How many people are attracted into Level 1? What percentage of people are “converted” from Level 1 to level 2 to level 3 to level 4?  And what is the net cost of making this happen?

Improving Level 1, Attraction:  A few ways to increase the number of site visitors:

• Improve Search Engine Ranking
• Advertise using Pay-per-click on Google, Facebook, Bing, etc.
• Buy a sponsorship slot in directories and websites where your prospects spend their time.
• Write articles for online and real-world trade magazines, linking back to your site.
• Blog and Tweet, with embedded links back to your site.
• Use QR codes on all of your marketing collateral and advertising
• Develop CRM and mailing-list based campaigns to drive users to a particular page.

Improving Level 2, Conversion to prospect:  To increase the number of click-throughs, the call to action must be targeted to the right people in the right venue.  For example, having an advertisement for cars on a website that sells cameras is less likely to generate interest than an ad for cars on an auto enthusiast site.  The second variable is the call to action copy and graphics.  It is sometimes difficult to know beforehand what headline, body text, and graphics will actually yield the best results, so using an a-b testing method is critical.  Here’s a simplified explanation how:

• Create a family of ads that differ only in their headline.
• Review the analytics to identify the one yielding the greatest click-through.
• Drop all of the others, and then create a family of ads that use that headline, but differ only in their body copy.
• Review the analytics to identify the one yielding the greatest click-through.
• Drop all of the others, and then create a family of ads that use the headline and body copy, but differ only in the graphic.
• Review the analytics to identify the one yielding the greatest click-through.
• Repeat.

This a-b testing process can be used for emails, traditional advertising, pay-per-click ads – anything.  It should also be used to test for different keywords, and effectiveness across venues.

Improving Level 3, Conversion to customer:  Too often, people will be intrigued by the call to action, click, then find themselves on a page that has little connection to the reason they clicked in the first place.  The only way to improve conversion once a person has landed on the page is to help them exclusively focus on the task at hand.  This means…

• Removing distracting navigation.
• Removing all extraneous content.
• Writing content that “continues the conversation” towards transaction or lead generation.
• Using video and testimonials.
• Writing content that removes objections: performance guarantees, privacy policy, etc.
• More ideas on great landing pages.

Just like Level 2 Conversion, a critically important tool is a-b testing.  Sometimes the smallest changes can make the biggest differences – and you’ll never know unless you test.

Separate from the landing page itself is the visual and emotional connection to the user.  An ugly, out-of-brand page reflects directly on the experience the user will have once they have committed: a poor user experience directly reduces conversion.

(Retail sidebar:  Using advertising, Social Media, and the web to drive customers into a physical store is no different.)

Improving Level 4, Referrals:  Endorsement of your products or services is far more powerful when it comes from a third party – your clients.  Here are several ways to help make this happen:

• Automatically send an email after the transaction, asking them to refer your business to a colleague or friend.  Providing them a coupon to distribute with a special code allows you to track the source of any future sale or lead.
• Ask for a written recommendation, either through LinkedIn, or on their letterhead.  Better yet, ask for a video endorsement.
• Underwrite a contest – or host a venue – where people can share videos (or how-to stories) on how they are using your product or service to solve a particular problem.
• Monitor and immediately address any product or service complaints surfaced through Social Media; all of your earned goodwill can evaporate in a moment if a harmful posting develops viral momentum.

The connection to cost and ROI

Consider this scenario: assume that the cost to get 1000 people to see your link is $100, which means that with a 10% clickthrough rate, the cost per click is $1.  Ten people sign up, which means that the cost per sign up is $10.  Three implications:

1. If the net profit per sign-up is more than $10, then it makes sense to invest more in internet marketing.
2. The ROI is highly connected to the conversion rate.  For example, if the conversion rate moves to 15% on clickthrough and 15% on conversion, that translates to 22 sign-ups, or a cost per sign-up of $4.55 – less than half of the original $10.
3. Increasing the number of clicks through non-paid venues (email, Social Media, organic SEO, etc) is also critical, as it directly reduces the cost-per-sign-up.  If there are an additional 100 people who get to the landing page (for a total of 200), then at a 10% conversion, that translates to 20 sign-ups, or a cost per sign-up of $5.

Finally, remember that for most businesses, a web conversion is usually only a lead: there is a yet another conversion that happens when the prospective client engages with a salesperson.  As this is the most costly conversion – it uses real people – generating high quality leads at the lowest possible cost becomes even more critical.

This week’s action plan:  Do you have an attraction strategy for your web site?  Is your website designed to “convert” – or merely inform? And do you have a strategy to change satisfied customers into active referrers?  If you think that you can do better, then now is the time to do something about it.

Professional insight:  For those who are looking to improve their own professional profile, these concepts apply just as powerfully:  What is your strategy to attract people to your LinkedIn profile?  What do you want them to do when they get there? How do you generate more professional references?

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

Randall Craig

PS:  My firm now publishes a no-spam high-value monthly newsletter, the one-o-eight.  It’s filled with more content and news you can use.  To subscribe, fill in the form here.

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

How do you organize your Social Media activities?  Most people have a system – whiteboards, excel documents, Google Calendar, or often, scraps of paper.  Unfortunately, none of these are particularly effective, nor are they efficient.  And they certainly don’t help you share your activities with your colleagues.

Our take on scheduling and planning:  Social Media activities can be planned either cyclically (every week, month, year), or keyed to a planned event.  Of course, great social media should also respond to external stimulus – client queries, news events, etc – but this is more reactive than pro-actively planned. 

Planning for Cycles:  The traditional way follows a monthly calendar, where specific activities are calendarized to occur on specific dates.  Blog on the 4th, 7th, 9th etc.  Tweet daily.  Change LinkedIn Status on the 1st, 6th, 15th,  etc.  Each specific day has an action plan.  

A slight variation is to calendarize by week, and then list any month-based activities.  For example, a new blog post every Monday and Thursday, LinkedIn is Wednesday, Tweeting is daily.  Then list month-based activities by date: New pictures loaded on Facebook on the 1st of the month, review LinkedIn connections on the 15th, add to Pinterest on the 30th, etc.  Doing it this way saves time: the one document can be reused each month with little or no change.

Planning for Events:  Social Media for events happen before, during, and after the event.  Responsibilities are sometimes delegated to committee members, and they have deadlines.  The event planning document must reflect this.

Finally, a planning calendar should help connect the initiative’s overall goals to the specific tasks, and then to the results.  

This week’s action plan:  Can you do better with your Social Media tactical scheduling and communications?  If you’re using the scraps-of-paper approach, you certainly can.  But if you have the problem under control, try a slightly different approach anyway: it often can yield better results.  If you don’t have a copy of our our planning calendars and worksheets already, download them (no cost), and give them a try.

Download Social Media Calendar three-pack.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Look at your LinkedIn profile: does it bear any resemblance to your CV?  For most people, a LinkedIn profile far surpasses paper:  Paper can’t compete with connections, recommendations, endorsements, , groups, status updates and more.  With the momentum clearly “social”, will your paper resume die?  Or is it already dead?

The answer is no, for several reasons.  A paper resume, whether printed or in PDF format, has three key functions:

1) It forces you to think (“what have I done, what is the impact”), to codify your experience, and document the question: “what am I built for.”  There isn’t a draft mode in Social Media, and you can’t pass around different versions of your LinkedIn profile for feedback.

2) The paper resume is the source for the content that you repurpose into online social venues; some document, somewhere, needs to be the master document and archive.  After all, what would happen if LinkedIn shut down, or started making more capability only available to paid users?

3) The paper resume will always be used in the “last mile” of the recruitment process.  It will be reviewed when choosing the short list, and it is integral in a face-to-face interview.

Nevertheless, social recruitment is becoming more important.  Consider these three trends:

• Social hires:  In the past, it was all about referring a friend or colleague; today this happens far easier on the social web.
• Social contribution: Comments made by a candidate within the industry’s LinkedIn group provides evidence of capability and connection.
• Social Media due diligence: The transparency of the social web means checking references and checking for cultural fit is easier than ever.

This week’s action item: It’s not just resumes that have been disrupted by the social web.  Consider your organization’s brochures and marketing collateral.  This week, look at your organization’s real-world material, and consider what needs to happen to make it relevant to the social web.  (Next post: a list of how to do this.)

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Before Social Media really took off, the number of tools for engaging stakeholders online was very, very small.  You could create a bulletin board on your site.  An interactive calculator. A “guestbook” (remember those?)  Or get people to sign up to a ListServ and participate in a discussion via email.  These all had one thing in common: the ownership of the venue was yours – and people had to come to your website in order to participate.

With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and all of the other public social networks, the center of gravity shifted dramatically, from the corporate site to an interconnected public cloud.  Except it wasn’t a shift to a “public” cloud – it was to a venue owned by someone else.  

First individuals flocked, lured by connection with others, entertainment, and perhaps a bit of narcissism.  Then companies (and causes, and governments) came, lured by the critical mass of prospects – and the stunningly low cost of entry.  As we all know, the Social Web is here to stay, primarily because this equation hasn’t changed.

But is this sustainable?  Has the equation changed?  Evidence suggests that it has.  By some reports, there are some 500+ Social media sites that exist.  Some, like Facebook, have been phenomenally successful, attracting a critical mass of users.  For them, the race to solvency has been won – at least for now.  The same can be said for YouTube, and perhaps also LinkedIn.  All of these businesses (for that’s what they are) actually have a business model that generates cash.  Others, such as Twitter, make very little from advertising, but exist by virtue of their deep pocket investors.

But what about the other 496+ other social venues?  Some will eek out a return for their investors.  Some will be gobbled up by eager investors, looking for synergies and strategic growth.  But a number of them – maybe a majority, will go down for the count.  Consider the following sites, all of which have closed during the last year or so:  Amplicate, Booktour, Cardscan, Gowalla, Hellotxt, Mixx, Retaggr, SpeakerSite, Skribit, Tagfoot, and Timely.is.  Too obscure?  How about LinkedIn Answers, Google Buzz, Google Wave, or most recently, Google Reader?  And if you don’t think that the great won’t fall, remember MySpace?  It doesn’t matter whether the market forces closure, or if investors pull the plug: in both cases, the venue no longer has a life.  

Which brings us back to the question of center of gravity: what happens when all of the interactions for your organization take place on the social web, and then the venue shuts down?  Some tough questions:

• What happens with the data?  Is the data deleted? Sold to a third party? And even if you do own it, can you actually extract it in a form that is usable?
• What happens with the relationships?  The conversations, connections, likes and shares all are evidence to your thinking in the real world, and have incredible value.  At the most basic level, the (closed) social venue might be the only way to reach a particular community – or a particular individual.  All lost.
• What happens when your organization’s plans rely on data from the now-closed venue, or the community within that venue?  And if there are technical connections at the systems level, what happens to these? (An example of this last point: some organizations allow users to sign in using Facebook or Twitter credentials: what would happen if the authorization system shut down – or changed it’s terms of use?)

These questions have legs in organizational strategy, marketing, sales, technology, compliance with privacy legislation, and more.  There are four key ways to mitigate the risks:

1.  Avoid investing time in Social Media sites that don’t have a critical mass of your stakeholders: stick to the bigger ones.
2.  Consider whether your user forums should take place within your own website, instead of on a “public” venue like a Facebook page or LinkedIn group.
3.  Use the social web to drive registration and data capture within your organization’s CRM (Client Relationship Management system). That way, your relationships can develop directly, without a middleman.
4.  Periodically export data – e.g. connection lists and conversations – from your social venues into your own systems, for archival purposes.

At the individual level, the same is true.  What would happen if you could no longer reach your far-away cousins on Facebook?  Or get professional support from your community in LinkedIn? (Or look for a job using that tool?)  Spend some time updating your connections’ non-social contact points: their phone number, mailing address, and email.  Then connect with them in the real world: over the phone, at professional association meetings, at family events, and at Starbucks. Not only will your relationships become stronger, but they will be on your turf – and with your “terms of use”.

This week’s action plan:  Assess your degree of exposure, and plan your risk mitigation strategy.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Have you ever slipped into the assumption that just about everything (and everyone) is fully connected over the social web?  That a connection is one click away on the latest iPhone or Android smartphone?

Sorting food at North York Harvest Food Bank

Last week I had a stark reminder, in the most unlikely of places, that this is absolutely not the case.  For several hours, I spent sorting food at the local food bank. Instead of going through the front, where patrons were able to pick up their food, I went through the back, where potential food bank users had to register for the privilege of being able to eat.  This group wasn’t sitting in chairs surfing on their smart phones (they didn’t seem to have them). They weren’t using the “surf station” (there wasn’t one), and they weren’t talking to each other about the latest innovation on Facebook or LinkedIn.  The only computer in the entire area seemed to be a 1990s-era machine used to record the volume and type of food collected.

While you and your business may not consider food bank users a target market, this experience was a great reminder that in our haste to adopt social media and mobile marketing, we may inadvertently ignore bona fide groups that either do not have access, or choose not to use, these channels.

This week’s action plan:  Has your excitement about social and mobile caused you to inadvertently de-emphasize or ignore an important, but unconnected group?  This week, look between the cracks of your existing outreach plan, and seek to identify parts of your market that you may have left behind.

Lessons from the food bank:  I had the opportunity a few years ago to interview Gail Nyberg, Executive Director of the Daily Bread Food Bank.  This organization distributes over 1 million pounds of food monthly, through 170 member agencies.  Here is the interview:

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Most people have a LinkedIn profile.  And most people understand the importance that relationships play in building a business, making a sale, or getting the job.  But most people are mystified when it comes to using Social Media (and LinkedIn in particular) pro-actively.

Of course, there are active strategies that are a play on content marketing: putting something “out there” in the hope that a person or organization will happen upon that content (or happen upon your profile), and then reach out to make contact.   Examples of this include creating a robust profile filled with keywords, periodically sending out new status updates, or contributing meaningfully within LinkedIn groups.

If you are doing these things, then you are fertilizing the soil, but not planting any seeds. To grow business, you need strategies that are even more pr0-active.  Here are six of them:

1) Before you meet anyone in the real world, search for them on LinkedIn. If you have very little time, doing this will expose at least some of their background.  And when you do meet, you can ask them about common connections.  If you have more time, call the common connections first; you’ll not only strengthen that relationship, but you’ll arm yourself with invaluable intelligence for your meeting.

2) Check on who is viewing your profile.  Reach out and say hello, asking them about their interest in you.  You can offer to send some more background, or perhaps schedule a short phone conversation. Hint:  See who you know in common, and reach out to them first.

3) Groups:  After developing a reputation in a LinkedIn group as a contributor, ask another contributor if they wish to get together for a short phone meeting or a  coffee.

4) Third party introduction:  Review the connections of one person that you know well at a “target” company, and ask if they could help set up a coffee meeting with a specific individual on their connections list.  After the coffee meeting, ask that individual if you can be connected within LinkedIn.

5) Improve your 1st degree relationships. Review all of your connections; compile a list of people that you don’t know that well, and reach out to each of them for either a phone call or in-person meeting.

6) Comments:  Instead of a generic comment on someone’s post, ask directly if you can “connect” in the real world. Sometimes a simple “can we connect over the phone?”  will work wonders.

What is the common thread between each of these pro-active prospecting strategies?  Each one aims to transform an online relationship to a real world one.  Whether you are looking to close a deal or get a new job, most people will not commit without spending real time together.

This Week’s Action Plan:  If you’ve already made the investment in a Social Media profile, and you’ve made the investment in learning how Social Media works, it’s now time to get a return on this investment.  This week, leave the passive world behind, and execute at least one of these active  prospecting strategies.

Marketing insight:  The Relationship Curve suggests that a sale is not made without first moving through awareness, preference, then trial.  These prospecting strategies are all designed to move people from one stage, into another.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Special Note:  Join me for a full-day Social Media Master Class on March 13th.  We’ll explore Social strategy and risk management, with a focus on practical, implement-immediately ideas. Limited to 10 attendees.

Are you one of “those” people who have thoroughly adopted Social Media, but have a nagging feeling that you just aren’t that productive with it?  Or are you tapped out, and have no interest in adding extra time to your day with low-value Social Media activities?  In either case, you’re not alone. 

Here are the top six productivity problems – and what you can do about them:

1) No focus on professional outcomes:  Social Media can be used for entertainment, connecting with your friends and family, and mindless surfing.  These aren’t problems if you are doing them on your own time, but they have nothing to do with your job.  Solution:  when it comes to your work, decide on why and what you are looking for, before spending time on the Social web.

2) Rangers and Scouts:  These are the people in your organization who have manufactured roles for themselves as Social Media experts, typically wheel-spinning as they “discover” new ways to fill their time with Social Media.  Nothing wrong with this five years ago, but their energies need to be diverted into two areas: doing their day-jobs, and working on Social Media activities that are consistent with the organization’s strategy.  (Hint: rangers and scouts do great R&D, and bring innovation to the organization – something that we should all aspire to.  The trick is to recognize when this devolves into unproductive activities, or displaces critical ones.)

3) Explosion of Venues:  With literally hundreds of Social Media venues, it is too easy to begin slicing time between many of them, with the erroneous belief that you are making headway.  Unfortunately, without a certain critical mass of users who are interested in what you have to say, your efforts on these outpost sites are wasted.  Instead, spend time on the main anchor sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google +.

4) Silo problem:  Many organizations have a marketing-driven Social Media strategy, but neglect to consider how Social Media can be used by HR, IT, Accounting, Operations, and all of the other silos.  As a result, each of these groups does their own thing, often quite inefficiently.  Solve this problem by including representatives from all key areas of your organization in the planning and governance.  And remember that if you only seek advice from your advertising or PR agency, you will only get advice that drives the marketing department.

5) Wrong tools:  You wouldn’t take a car if you hoped for a  “quick trip” down south – an airplane is faster  Choose the right Social tool for the job: for example, Hootsuite.com is far more effective at managing your Tweets, than directly using Twitter.com.

6) No management or accountability:  Are the people who are doing Social Media accountable for outcomes that are tied to the organization’s strategy?  Often not, because of a knowledge gap with senior management.  Sadly, without accountability, Social Media often becomes directionless – and unproductive.   Solution:  close the knowledge gap through senior-level training, then embed Social Media into the planning and reporting cycles.

This week’s action item:  You can increase your Social ROI by either getting more return, or making less (or better) investments.  This week, look more carefully at your own productivity, and commit to making at least one change.  Not only will your Social ROI increase, but you’ll have more time for other important tasks.  

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

One of the most important – and one of the newest – elements of a modern marketing strategy is Content Marketing.  The idea is that if your “content” is everywhere, then would-be clients would be easily attracted to you.

Unfortunately, many marketers miss a crucial aspect of this: that the content must be valuable in the eyes of the reader; it must be insightful, new, and demonstrate thought-leadership.  If it doesn’t do this, the reader won’t make the direct connection between the content, and your expertise.  And they certainly won’t be asking for help.

Thought-leadership is the fundamental underpinning of content marketing – but how does one develop it?
Some ideas:

• Read outside your professional area of knowledge: magazines, history, science, academic journals, daily newspapers, blogs, and more.
• Register for seminars and courses, take certifications, and learn from people who are experts in areas related to your own.  You can then connect the dots between this new knowledge and your area of expertise.
• Take greater responsibility on the job, thereby enriching your practical knowledge, outside of your usual day-to-day.
• Write.  Not only does this help synthesize your ideas, but it is the first step to gaining feedback from others.
• Join a group that puts your ideas to the test, both through discussion and debate.

More than any of these ideas, however, is the importance of actually spending time thinking.  Becoming a thought-leader without giving yourself ample time to think is impossible.

This week’s action plan: Whether you aspire to thought-leadership or not, thinking time often gets squeezed away by urgent deadlines and other priorities.  This week, schedule time to think – at least five hours.  One hour each day is a very small investment for thought leadership… and to make better decisions.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Special Note:  Not happy with your Social Media ROI?  Join me for a full-day Social Media Master Class on March 13th.

Do you have a well-defined morning routine, that includes Social Media?  Tweet, Post, Check Status, Share, and Comment.  Then see who has looked at your LinkedIn profile.  Later, repeat – sometimes several times.

There is nothing wrong with connection.  In fact, Social Media is built precisely on this foundation.

Unfortunately, every minute spent on Social Media means a minute less on other activities.  With so much attention now focused on Social Media, we sometimes neglect to consider what is being displaced:

• Critical thinking time.  Instead, we crave the interruption from numerous social alerts and messages.
• Creation time.  Instead we have become, at best, consumers.
• Writing time.  Instead, we hav bcum xperts @ shortform txting.  And our ability to write atrophies.

Most importantly, we displace the development of real-world in-person relationships with (often) shallower ones.  We spend more time by ourselves, “plugged in”.  And we accept that  Social Media lurking and stalking are becoming commonplace – and possibly even acceptable.

This Week’s Action Plan:  As Social Media becomes more commonplace, it’s worthwhile to periodically look more closely at the mix of your activities.  Ask this question:  what have your Social Media  activities displaced?  If you’re not happy with the answer, it may be time to put your Social Media activities on a diet. 

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Have you ever been disappointed with the engagement level of your blog?  Have you decided that this year something “better happen”, to make it all worthwhile?  If so, you’re not alone.  Here are 17 ways drive more users to your blog, and increase their engagement with it:

• Write great content.  If you write poorly, or have uninteresting, uninsightful posts, people will never return.
• Focus your topic.  You will attract a more loyal following if your topic is keyed to your target audience.
• Be consistent.  Write using the same style, length, posting frequency, and posting date/time.
• Be controversial. Very few people are interested in commenting on a dry (or vanilla) post.
• Move beyond words.  Embed pictures and video within the blog itself.  It looks more interesting, and research shows that people are more apt to read a post with picture(s).
• Team blogs.  Sharing a blog with a colleague is a great way to generate some variety. It also means that two people are promoting the blog.  A secondary benefit is that each team member can respond (like/share/comment), providing an “instant” base level of activity.
• Tweet a value-added Headline.  If there really is value in the Tweet, then it will be retweeted.  And it will draw people to your blog
• Use your email list.  Send an email talking about the post with an intriguing click-through link.  Send a direct message to your LinkedIn and Facebook contacts as well.
• User your groups.  Post a summary of the blog in relevant LinkedIn groups.  If you post in irrelevant ones, you’ll get instant disengagement – and worse.
• Auto-syndicate.  Connect your blog to LinkedIn and Facebook, so that your blog appears on your profiles.  Users will participate on those platforms directly, as well as on your blog.
• Empower others to syndicate.  At the bottom of every post, let people syndicate the content through to their favourite social sites.  (AddThis.com and ShareThis.com)
• Hold a contest.  Nothing like a little competition to drive activity.
• Share your stage:  Ask others to be a guest blogger, taking your spot from time to time.  They’ll pull their readers with them, exposing yourself to a completely new set of people.
• Share others’ stages.  Ask to be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog. You will pull these new readers back to your blog, if you are relevant enough.
• Connection/integration with overall marketing plan.  The blog – and all social initiatives – shouldn’t stand alone, but should be integrated with all of your other marketing activities to achieve a specific goal.
• Improve your Search Engine Ranking.  Ensure that people can find your blog when they search for it, by ensuring that each post contains the right mix of keywords.
• Ask for comments.  Don’t end your post with a conclusion – ask your readers what they think, what their experience has been, or whether they agree.

This week’s action item:  Beyond the obvious of improving the engagement level on your own blog, this week, respond to this post with one or two ideas of how to improve social engagement.

More on Blogging:

• Six steps to strategic blogging
• Blog Intentions
• 16 Blog topic ideas
• Blog Cluster Strategy

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Do you attribute your success to your focus?  Many people do – and in the spirit of “small focus – small success/strong focus – great success” many people are focused on… greater focus.  But is there a downside?

Consider the following:

• Ignoring everything except the goal means that many data points along the way are purposefully ignored.  These critical pieces of information provide the rationale for mid-course corrections.
• Creativity needs diverse input, exploration time, and experimentation.  The more focus, the less opportunity there is for creativity.
• Extreme focus is often task-oriented, not people-oriented.  Relationships sometimes suffer.

Of course, there are strong arguments for focus, but exploring the downside yields some interesting insights:

1) Focus is best with some wiggle room.  Building in time for exploration and experimentation means creativity need not be completely sacrificed.  Important mid-course corrections can be easily made.

2) Focus is better when there are team goals.  It’s far easier to remember your colleagues when you are mutually responsible for your success.

Sadly, Social Media provides one of the biggest workplace challenges: distraction. It is just too tempting to rationalize this time as discovery, competitive intelligence, or R&D, but often it is none of these.  Not sure of the value of your Social Media time? Answer these three questions:

• Is the Social Media activity aligned with a goal?
• Has the activity ever yielded data with substantive, quantifiable value?  (How often?)
• Has the time spent on the activity put pressure on any deadlines?  Or has it meant tother activities have been deferred or not done? 

This week’s action plan:  Choose one goal that could use more focus, and another that can use less.  If you do both, you won’t spend extra time – but you’ll certainly get more value.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

January 11, 2006 holds a special significance.  Over a decade before that date I had put the Toronto Star online, as well as completed substantive work with the Globe and Mail and several major book publishers.  I was at the vanguard of online publishing (blogging wasn’t invented then), yet I wasn’t publishing myself.  On January 11, 2006, this changed.  My next post is number 365 – and the beginning of my eighth year blogging.

Here’s the question: what is your 365?  What social media (or other professional activity) have you purposely decided to do over a multiyear time-frame, continuously? Perhaps attending monthly trade association meetings?  Completing an advanced degree of certification?  Or perhaps writing a thoughtful blog?

The concept of 365 is equally applicable at the organizational level: what is the stake in the ground – and the associated initiatives that support it – that your organization is known for?

Whatever the activity, 365 yields significant benefits:

• Develops expertise
• Establishes reputation
• Differentiates you from the competition
• Develops proprietary intellectual property (365 posts is a base for many white papers and two more books.)
• Shares the expertise/helps others find you (“content marketing”)

This last point is sometimes called “content marketing”, but the overall concept I had explored in two posts several years ago: The Long Game, and The Long Game: eBay vs Google.

This year’s action plan:  Choose one high-value activity that will begin to create differentiation, reputation, and expertise, then commit time in your calendar each week for it.  Next year at this time, your number will be 52.  The year after, 104, and so on.

Management insight:  Sometimes organizations (and individuals) become trapped in their habits.  They continue doing something only because it’s always been done.  Next year, re-evaluate your 52, and see if you need a mid-course correction.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

During the last year, I have written a number of opinion pieces on the issues and trends around Social Media, along with the (sometimes) ominous implications.  With the fullness of time, some of these are even more important today.  A few selections…

Does Free Always Mean Free?  Beyond the embarrassing photos, new found friends, professional connections, and social gaming, there lurks a conflict – and conflict of interest – that most people know nothing about.

Facebook:  Billions Served:   This year, Facebook announced that it now has one billion users – an astounding number. On the other hand, you (or your organization) may have but 1000 or 10,000 – hardly a dent, and at best, a rounding error.  Whether your number is on the lower side or hovering at a billion, this singular measure of “success” is of little value, and at best misleading. This Viewpoint article answers the question why, and suggests more meaningful ways of measuring Social ROI.

Email RIP:  From Telex to Fax to Email, how we communicate has changed dramatically over the years.  This Viewpoint article makes the case for why Email as we know it will be going away – and what you can do to prepare for when that day comes.

Risky Business: 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.  Learn why organizations are fundamentally not equipped to address this risk (and 16 others) – and what they need to be doing right now.

Social Censorship: Have you ever heard of the 3C’s of Social Media?  Sadly, there are two different versions:  communication, collaboration, and community building is one, and clamp down, control, and curtail is another.   No CEO wants to be known as a hypocrite, but choosing between these C’s often makes them so.  This Viewpoint article speaks to the challenges when an organization works beyond its borders.

47 Tough Social Media Questions:  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, we’ve put together 47 of them.

The Case Against Social Media Regulation:  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.

Planning for an Uncertain Future:  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?  This article speaks to six things that you  – and your organization – should be doing to get ahead of the curve.

Is the Cloud for the Birds?  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?  This Viewpoint article answers these questions, and poses it’s own: what should you ask if you are considering using the tool.

This week’s action plan:  Thinking through the what if and so what is highly valuable;  sharing this list with your colleagues is a great way to spark some conversation and debate.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Out of all of the thinking, blogging, tweeting, posting, and speaking on the subject, here are some of the most practical – and thought-provoking articles on the topic.

1) When users defect:  Understanding why users leave, and what to do about it.

2) Six Steps to Strategic Blogging:  How to build an effective, focused, and commercially successful blog:

3) Social Choice:  For the first time ever, we have a window into people’s thoughts.  How do you react when someone says something nasty (or nice)?

4/5/6) Social Media ROI:  These are several Tipsheets exploring measurement – and how to improve your performance:
Measurement, More measurement, and ROI.

7) How to Create a Viral Video:  The title says it all!

8) Three marketing models:  This Tipsheet explores three of our fundamental models, and how they can help grow your influence, online and off.

9) Bonus read on Social Media Crisis management:  More important than ever – a must read for any leader.

This week’s action plan:  Do any of these concepts resonate?  If so, share this list with your colleagues. Not only will it bring them up to speed, but it will put you both on the same page.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Have you ever been in a situation where despite your best efforts, you cannot make headway?  Or where you feel like a fish swimming upstream?  This inertia – resistance to the new – is a key reason why implementing change is so difficult.  It’s also why selling new products to clients or new ideas to colleagues is so hard.

While there are many ways to address the challenge, two fundamental concepts are baseline capability and campaigns.   (Baseline capability refers to the existing knowledge, capabilities, and momentum within an organization.  Campaign refers to activities that are tied to an event or objective.  Too often organizations (and individuals) confuse the two, particularly in the area of Social Media.  I explored this from a different perspective here, but it is important enough to look at again.

Baseline capability means embedding the social mindset and activities within each silo of your organization, so that it becomes part of everyone’s “day job”.  Too often, Social Media is driven exclusively through marketing and sales – yet connecting externally is everyone’s job.  Some examples:

• HR:  The use of Social Media for candidate sourcing, reference checking, new staff orientation, etc.
• Customer Service: Monitoring and action on service issues on the public social networks, product support forums, etc.
• Supply Chain:  e-Procurement, crowdsourced vendor ratings, online support forums, etc.

Of course, developing a baseline capability also means loosening firewall restrictions for social sites, employee and management training, and communications. 

By being socially strong on the inside, there will be stronger connections on the outside.  Driving the ongoing, day-to-day engagement level of the base is critical, as a particular campaign will use this base to reach outward. The two are multipliers.

This week’s action plan:  What is your personal Social Baseline Capability?  Specifically, what are the everyday things that you are doing to establish your professional network in the Social space?  Doing these on an ongoing basis will multiply the effectiveness  of any future “campaigns” (job search, professional support, business development, etc.) 

Management insight:  Choose a project or idea that you have not been making headway on, and decide if the problem is your approach to getting buy-in, or with the underlying environment that you are in.  If the latter, choose one thing that you can do to improve the general receptivity to your ideas, before doing your specific ask.  Build your real-world baseline capability.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Look around, and you are surrounded by advertisements: which ones catch your eye?  Likely, the ones that are the loudest.  Unfortunately, the race to the loudest is making it hard for anything to get through.

One of the key reasons for corporate interest in Social Media is that it is a completely new channel, one with a volume level far lower.  Unfortunately, as more organizations (and people) pile into it, the volume gets louder, and effectiveness drops.  Today’s question: is there a way to cut through the din and improve engagement?

The answer is a resounding yes: first develop a social infrastructure, and only then begin with social campaigns.  Here’s part of the infrastructure:

• Develop a baseline presence on all relevant key Social Media sites (LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+,…)
• Develop your organization’s main website on a socially-enabled platform, such as WordPress, to allow content syndication.
• Empower a community of interest, where there is low-level engagement, responses to comments, and a “business as usual” attitude.
• Implement a Customer Relationship Management system that captures each relationship, and translates the “community” to transaction, based on one-to-one relationship marketing.
• Embed Social Media activities into the responsibilities of every department of the organization, not just marketing: HR, Operations, Customer Service, Sales, IT, etc.
• Monitor and measure the effectiveness of the organization’s overall efforts: has developing the Social Infrastructure been worth it?
• Train staff on how to take the organization’s message forward, along with how to steward the organization’s brand.

Once the Social Infrastructure is built, it acts as an effectiveness multiplier for each campaign.  Rather than executing the campaign to a broad, unknown group, it can be built outward from those already in the CRM, plus friendlies on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+.  As this group already is close to you: no need to shout.  Another analogy – the fastest a car can go is dependent on many factors – but the driving surface is near the top of the list.  No matter how fancy the car is or how big the engine, the vehicle can only go so fast on a dirt road or an unpaved field.

This week’s action item:  What is the ratio of time that you spend on one-off campaigns, versus developing social infrastructure?  This week, build out at least one more part of the infrastructure.

Bonus insight:  Social Infrastructure works on an individual level as well.  What are the professional Social activities that are embedded in your day-to-day?  The more firmly this is established the more effective will be your “campaigns”: professional support, business development efforts, job search, etc…

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Have you ever considered how some words (and technologies) are so important, yet in the fullness of time completely disappear?  Buggy whips, Barrel makers (“coopers”), and Telex machines  are but a few examples.  Not fifteen years ago, the term “ebusiness” was popular, until people figured out that there was no such thing as ebusiness – just “business”.

Today, we may be at a very similar turning point.  Consider the terms Social Media and Social Networking:  what do they mean from a business perspective?   Communication, engagement, community-building, research source, advertising venue, sales channel, support mechanism are but a few examples.  These same terms are the basic marketing building blocks of any successful business; it’s reasonable to expect that the requirement for a completely separate “Social” strategy will seem silly.  From an IT perspective, it is very much the same: at one point there were Word processing strategies and Laptop strategies.  No longer.

The movement of a technology (or a marketing channel) from a special place to commonplace is not binary – it happens one step at a time.  And it happens as leaders begin to understand the importance of a complete social media integration with their organization: not a tack-on delegated to marketing or HR.

This week’s action plan:  Look for one way to integrate Social Media into your day-to-day responsibilities. Contrived tasks or generic surfing don’t count: using the social web to achieve your annual objectives does.

This week’s (flip-side) action plan:  On the flip side of complete social integration, is how quickly you retire some of the “old” processes and technologies.  Still have fax machines or fax numbers on business cards – or have you replaced these with Twitter handles and Skype addresses? This week, look for a few examples of “old” that you can replace with the new.

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

Randall “Barrel maker and fax sender no more” Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

If you are an American, you know precisely all about Black Friday: it is when herds of people get up early, head to the stores, and shop.  It occurs the shopping day on the Friday following Thanksgiving.  If you live anywhere else, you probably have noticed an interesting and recent local phenomenon: Black Friday sales in your city as well.

Black Friday is a great example of the leakage of culture (and marketing)  moves from one jurisdiction to another.  It illustrates how an event, lubricated by social media discussions, advertising, and media has little respect for national borders.  Sometimes called globalization, this has had an interesting impact on much of the trading world:

• The impossibility of fully containing a negative viral meme.  Brand damage in one market is now lethal in another.
• The ability to develop a critical mass of customer-based product support, with contributors located around the world – including in markets that couldn’t afford a support infrastructure of their own.
• The almost impossible challenge posed by gray marketers, who arbitrage pricing differences from one market or another.  The social web helps them spot both purchase opportunities and markets for sale.

The question for many businesses is whether it makes sense to “import” some of the innovations from other markets into the local one, as non-American retailers have begun to do with Black Friday.  Here are four criteria to consider:

1) Does importing the practice provide either a competitive strategic advantage, or at least a short-term leap ahead of the competition?

2) Is importing the practice important defensively?  Another key reason for Black Friday in Canada is to reduce the number of Canadians taking the day to shop in the United States.

3) Are the costs of implementing the practice in line with the expected return on investment?

4) Does importing the practice fundamentally change how the business operates?  (If it does change, is it for the better?)

This week’s action item:  Check out the competition in another country.  Are there any ideas – real or on Social Media – that meet these criteria?  If so, jump on them.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Are you befuddled whenever a new “feature” gets added to your favorite Social Media site?  Or are you excited about the possibility that the new feature may unlock for you?  The Endorsement feature of LinkedIn holds fascinating possibilities, but unlike every other part of your profile, it is the one that is completely beyond your control.

The Professional Headline (what appears closest to your name) is set by you.  The Summary section of your profile is set by you.  The remainder of your profile – also set by you – is designed to be the evidence that supports the Professional Headline and Summary.  The only exception (so far) is the Endorsements section, which is the crowdsourced reputation for your skills and expertise. How much longer will it be before LinkedIn begins to allow people to vote – thumbs-up or thumbs-down – on other aspects of your profile?  Or for people to flag parts of your resume with “please call me about this“?

If – or rather when – LinkedIn crowdsources your entire profile, LinkedIn will become the ultimate arbiter of your real-world professional reputation – something that sites such as Klout and Kred do crudely at best.

And if we are heading into a reputationally-transparent, crowd-sourced world, then what can you do now to prepare?  Consider three pre-emptive actions:

1) Slim your connections: The ability to endorse someone is limited to direct connections.  Disconnect from those you don’t know so well, to improve the accuracy of your current endorsements.  Removing these people will also remove their ability to “vote down” your profile in the future.

2) Strengthen real-world relationships with your LinkedIn connections: Instead of merely collecting names, engage your connections more proactively.  Demonstrating your expertise, willingness to help, and attitude now means more “up” votes later on. This also strengthens the tribe of people who will rush to your defense if someone comments negatively about you.

3) Remove wishful thinking: Don’t list “wanna be” expertise that people might question or call you on.  Remember the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

This week’s action plan:  Will LinkedIn ever crowdsource the rest of your profile?  Whether they do or not, even if LinkedIn never implements a 100% crowdsourced model, people are still voting up or down in their minds – and sharing their thoughts in real-world conversations with their colleagues.  Spend time this week getting stronger online by acting on these three pre-emptive actions now.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

How good are you, really?  While we all may have our own (sometimes inflated) opinions of our greatness, the reality of our expertise – and our personal brand – is always defined by others.  Social Media, for the first time ever, gives us the opportunity to find this out directly.

Here are some ideas on how your greatness can be exposed on the social web…

Numerical measures: Of course, one way to measure our influence is through the number of followers, friends, and connections.  The greater the number of followers the better.  And the number of retweets, likes, and shares also speak to what people think of you: activity equals respect and influence.

Comments: Beyond the numbers, the quality of the comments is also important.  For example, if people are not just commenting on your original post, but also commenting on the comments, this speaks to your ability to strike a chord – and develop a community.  The activity level of “your” community is a direct reflection on your greatness.

LinkedIn Recommendations:  These are the 2-3 sentence testimonials that some of your connections  give you.  Because others can see both the recommender and the context of their relationship, recommendations are an exceptionally powerful indicator.  There is also the benefit of selectivity: you need not have a LinkedIn recommendation appear on your profile – it’s totally up to you.

LinkedIn Endorsements:  These are relatively new, and one of LinkedIn’s most powerful features.  For the skills that you have listed, others can vote for (“endorse”) your strongest.  In essence, this is crowdsourcing your reputation. To get the most from this feature, only list those skills that you really want “on the menu”.  If you list too many, you may put yourself in the embarrassing position of thinking that you have a skill, but the market not agreeing.  One additional point: unlike LinkedIn Recommendations, ALL endorsements appear on your profile – the only choice you have is which skills to list.

This week’s action plan:   Take a closer look at how great you really are.  If there is a gap between your self-image and what is reflected on the Social Web, then close it.  Hint: start with LinkedIn Endorsements and Recommendations. (And check out whether I am following my own recommendations, at http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/RandallCraig)

Bonus Opportunity:  Last week I presented a session to the CSAE, entitled “Bums in Seats and Minds Engaged; Using Social Media to Drive Attendance and Engage your Audience”.  We’ve started a LinkedIn group to continue the conversation.  If you are interested, please join (and contribute your ideas.)  Here’s the URL: http://budurl.com/BumsInSeats.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

What can the world of manufacturing teach us about Social Media, Marketing, and Stakeholder Engagement?  On the face of it, not much, but look more closely, and there are two concepts that are surprisingly relevant: Continuous Improvement, and Just-in-Time.

Continuous Improvement:  In the manufacturing world, continuous improvement is all about making incremental improvements in product quality, product features, and production quality.  This movement recognizes that a small but consistent improvement each period quickly adds up and can deliver a competitive advantage.  In the world of Social Media (and marketing generally), continuous improvements mean incremental improvements in response rates, likes, shares, and transactions.  More important, however, is the underlying philosophy of monitoring and mid-course correction.

Just-in-Time: Manufacturers know that inventory is costly, and seek to reduce raw materials inventory, work-in-progress inventory, and finished goods inventory.  The JIT strategy is simple: have raw materials delivered to the factory just in time for processing – not before.  Then have finished goods  shipped immediately to the customer.  Social media and web marketers have a similar challenge: messages need to be delivered according to a tightly defined schedule – the audience’s.  Send a message too early (“Please help me…”) and it will be ignored.  Send it too often (“Me again…”) and it will annoy.  Send it too late (“Remember me?) and they won’t know who you are.  Messages are only effective when they are delivered just in time.

This week’s action plan:  What would it take to implement these concepts in your organization?  This week, choose one thing to improve, and then calendarize a task three months from now to improve that one thing further.

Postscript: These same concepts work powerfully at the individual level as well.  Choose one thing that you do repeatedly, and do it differently (and better).  And next time you want something from someone, ask yourself whether your request is too early, too late, or Just-in-Time.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

“We’ve got that covered” is a very satisfying thing to say when you are asked what your organization is doing in the area of Social Media.

Sadly, our research, covering 400 different organizations across the country, shows this isn’t true. This year’s research on the same topic also appears to indicate a yawning gap. The question is why?

 Too often, there isn’t an adequate distinction between Social Media strategy, and the daily Social Media to-do list. Hiring a young social-media-bopper who is ‘plugged in’ will take care of the day-to-day, but does this person have the experience and acumen to set strategy? Or develop Social Media risk mitigation policies?  Usually not.

This week’s action item: Do you really think your organization is covered? Test yourself: Here is my list of 47 tough Social Media questions to ask. Set up a meeting with your Social Media person, and see how they answer.

Bonus action item:  At the individual level, the same question applies: have you been so focused on the doing, that you haven’t properly (or recently) set your strategy?

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Have you ever felt that something was missing with your social media communications? That your Tweets, Posts, and Status Updates were being disregarded – almost as if you are speaking to an empty auditorium? That you may have lots of “friends”, but it seems that they are more absent than friendly.

Sadly, this is too common, and it’s not surprising: just because we can add our thoughts to the social network, doesn’t mean we’re relevant, or that anyone is listening.  We have to earn the right first. Here’s how:

1. Add value with your content: This value must be in the eyes of your audience. Look at your last three week’s contributions: what percentage are high value?
2. Keep your focus: If someone has found a home in the community you’ve curated, it is likely because the community matches their needs perfectly. Changing the focus (or losing it) mid-stream means one thing: user disengagement. How tightly focused are your social media efforts?
3. Ask, don’t tell: If it is going to be a conversation, then be the first to start it. What ways can you do this? (Hint: ask a question.)
4. Participate elsewhere: Spend time on others’ blogs and social media venues, adding value there as well. At the start, this may be as simple as Liking and Sharing others’ content, but it should also include responding to their thoughts with your own.
5. Respond: Users need acknowledgement, or they disengage. This means thanking them for their comments, and acknowledging their Retweets, Likes, Shares, and Follows.

Even in the old world of email, we ask for permission before sending things out. If we don’t, we label ourselves as spammers, and achieve the opposite effect.

When we post our blog and status updates into the marketplace of ideas, we must recognize that we don’t have a monopoly, and “the customer” can choose to shop anywhere. Yes, we must find ways to attract people to our social media (and web) sites, but it is more important to keep these people engaged once they arrive. We must first earn the right.

This week’s action plan: Another way to say Earning the Right is to say Earning the Trust. And earning trust happens slowly, day-by-day. This week, find one way to do this, through the content you post. When you do, you’ll find that your audience is no longer the “one missing piece” in your conversation.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

With so much focus on Social ROI and social performance, an important issue is often forgotten: social capability.

This concept refers to an organization’s ability to take advantage of the promise of social media. Too often, the limiting factor for social performance is not what is being done, but rather what cannot be done.

Removing the social media glass ceiling means looking at five key areas:

• Integrated blog and website, using a WordPress platform: The days of a separate blog no longer make sense. And the days of websites that no longer have integrated social features (commenting, liking, sharing, syndication) are also long gone.
• A mobile and tablet strategy: With more users interacting when they are away from their desk than sitting at it, a made-in-2007 mobile strategy makes no sense. The initiative should be both location-aware and socially-connected: most are not.
• Enlightened access attitudes: “Protecting” users within an organization from interacting with prospects, clients, and suppliers using the social web is as silly as removing telephone access. Yes, employees should be held to account for their responsibilities, but firewall restrictions for Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites is dysfunctional. Even more so when users can easily access these sites on their smart phones.
• Training for employees and other stakeholders: Developing capability means not just training on policy, but also demonstrating how to use Social Media to advance the organization’s strategic goals. Having everyone appropriately interacting externally is far more powerful than just having one person do it.
• Integration, not tack-on: Are Social Media principles embedded throughout the organization, or are they tacked on to a marketing department’s responsibilities as an add-on? Staff in HR, Operations, Procurement, IT, Legal, (and others) can often use Social Media within their jobs: segregating Social Media to one or two “experts” limits capability, not builds it.

This week’s action plan: There are many other ways to build social capability, beyond these five. Nevertheless, this week improve your social capability by choosing one and doing better at it.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Facebook just announced that it now has one billion users – an astounding number. On the other hand, you (or your organization) may have but 1000 or 10,000 – hardly a dent, and at best, a rounding error.

Whether your number is on the lower side or hovering at a billion, this singular measure of “success” is of little value, and at best misleading. Here are two reasons why.

• How many of those users are actually active? How often does each person actually sign in, let alone “engage”? Facebook uses statistics called Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users: but what does “Active” really mean?  “Activity level” is a useful statistic only if it is defined, and transparent.
• What are those who do log in actually doing? They are posting the inane details of their lives, reading the inane details of others’ lives, and playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. So-called “F-Commerce” has turned out to be a dud – no one seems to be setting up stores and when they do, no one is buying. Engagement level by activity is a far better statistic. Sales and profitability are also not bad numbers to track.

McDonald’s also once celebrated Billions Served. Eventually they also figured out that people cared more about taste, healthfulness, clean restaurants, and speed. They also determined that an emotional brand connection was more powerful than just numbers.

The most important statistic is whether the effort being spent is driving the results your organization requires.

• If your goal is greater awareness, then track the increase in number of likes, shares and friends.
• If your goal is increased number of leads, then track newsletter sign-ups and white paper downloads.
• If your goal is increased sales, then yes, track sales, and do it by source.

Is a billion users a significant milestone? Absolutely. Does it matter? Not in the least.

The week’s action plan: What numbers do you track in social media? More importantly, what numbers do you track in your business? This week, ask if they make sense; if they don’t, then choose measures that do.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

$37 Billion:  This is the amount that Google earned in 2011, 97% from advertising. Google’s keyword-savvy Pay-per-click selling machine allows any organization (or person) to specify keywords, construct an ad, and specify how much they would pay for a click.  Google then puts the ad on a web page that contains the keywords. When a user clicks, the advertiser pays, and Google benefits.

And so does the advertiser.  The user has made a commitment by clicking, and hopefully they will transact after they land on the target page.  Unfortunately, the conversion to a sale does not happen as often as it should, because many advertisers are completely unaware of a simple concept: the landing page.

A landing page is really just the other half of an advertisement.  The ad sets up the requirement and helps people with a particular problem self-identify and click through. The landing page provides the solution, and a next step.  It converts browsers into buyers.  Here are key attributes of it:

• It is paired with a very specific advertisement.
• The page should go through multiple rounds of A/B testing.  (Two identical ads point to two different versions of the landing page; the one that converts fewer buyers should discontinued, the other should be revised for a new test, etc.)
• Very little navigation to the main site; the goal is for them to read/consider/act – not to meander off.
• Simplified messaging, all designed to expose the problem and share the solution.
• Simplified design and graphics: because there is far less content (and links) than a traditional web page, the eye will naturally focus on the remaining important information.
• Multiple calls to action (eg Subscribe, Purchase, etc)
• Multiple content delivery modes – but identical message: Video, Descriptive Text, Testimonials, “Trial” subscriptions, etc.  Different people respond to different stimulus
• Consistent design beyond the landing page.  Since the site is designed to convert, a vastly different look-and-feel beyond the landing page (eg the next page in a sequence) can cause user uncertainty, and possibly abandonment.

This week’s action plan:  The concept of a landing page can be generalized: there is a metaphorical landing page after everything that we write.  What did you want people to do after they finished reading?  This week, think through the next step in any of the projects that you are working on, and start crafting the landing page.  (Hint: the landing page is merely a bridge to another decision.  Once you’ve mapped out your decisions, it is vastly easier.)

Follow-my-own-advice bonus:  The next step beyond this post is one that I wrote on attraction and conversion.  And after that, please call me.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

“I am great!  Really.  Truly great!  Really!”

How many people (or organizations) have marketing strategies that boil down to self-serving claims of greatness?  (Too many.)  How effective are these LinkedIn profiles, ads, websites, TV commercials, or billboards?  (Not effective at all.)

There is a trust hierarchy of marketing strategies: the higher the trust, the more likely they will transact.  From lowest to highest:

• Unsubstantiated claims of greatness.
• Benefit statements with proof points.
• History:  Education and past credentials
• Third party testimonials.
• Corroborated third party research
• Number (and brand strength) of current clients
• Number of Facebook and LinkedIn Social Likes/Shares
• Media endorsement of expertise
• Content marketing

While most of these should be familiar, the final one – content marketing – is one that is new to many marketers.  While a particular marketing strategy might move up or down based on how it is implemented or the strength of effort put into it, the order suggests a priority of investment.  Content marketing rests on four key assumptions:

1) that the content holds value in the eye of the reader.  If not, it can have the opposite effect.

2) that demonstrating expertise is more powerful than claiming it.

3) that making it available for free – and particularly by encouraging propagation on the social web – will reach more prospects.

4) that trust will increase as more content is consumed, eventually leading to a transaction or a referral.

The most obvious examples of content marketing include certain types of blog posts, white papers, how-to videos, and books.  An important benefit of content marketing is that each piece of content, once created, lasts forever.  The cumulative impact grows exponentially over time, and can become a strategic differentiator.

This week’s action plan: Where is the center of gravity in your marketing plan, and specifically where does content marketing fit in?  This week, explore one way to add it to your marketing mix.  If you want people to think that you (or your organization) are great, then show it.

Content Marketing Postscript:  Content marketing is an important plank of my firm’s marketing strategy.  Consider how the quantum of information that we have written demonstrates our expertise by example.  And how hard it might be for others to catch up:

• 350+ blog posts similar to this one (www.randallcraig.com/writing/weekly-tipsheet)
• 150+ one hour video interviews with the nation’s thought-leaders (www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com)
• 40+ one-hour audio programs for professionals and entrepreneurs (www.pinetreebraintrust.com/braintrust-library)
• 7 Books, Numerous Whitepapers, Tools, and Research (www.108ideaspace.com/thought-leadership)

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Over the last year (or three), how much time have you spent Linking In, Tweeting, Facebooking, Blogging, and using other social tools?  If you are like most, getting a return on your time investment probably has crossed your mind:  Is Social Media actually paying off?  Is it worth the effort?

To answer this question, many people rely on the argument of the phone: why should Social Media – a necessary tool – be held to a higher standard than the telephone?  Since the phone isn’t justified, why should Social Media be?

This is an argument of laziness: the telephone is absolutely justified by how people use it, and the results that accrue from that use.  In fact, there are many metrics for the phone:  Number of inbound calls, wait times, customer inquiries, sales volume, travel dollars saved, etc.  Social Media measurement is even more measurable.  Consider these possibilities:

• Volume: The number of fans/followers/subscribers/connections; the number of views/comments/trackbacks on any videos/blog posts, and Retweets on Twitter.
• Sentiment: Whether the discussion/comments about your organization, brands, and senior leaders are trending positive or trending negative.
• Topics/Issues: Tracking the context of the conversation: whether the topics where the organization is referred to matches the target topics.
• Source: Source refers to finding where the conversation is taking place.
• Authors (influencers): Determining who the thought leaders (or in some cases, the ringleaders) are will allow the organization to directly influence the conversation.
• Traffic: The use of Google Analytics to keep track of standard web metrics:  page views, time on site, click-through-rate, etc.
• Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube analytics:  To use the varied stats from within the Social Media sites to determine user interests.
• Media Mentions:  The number of real-world media comments based on Social Media postings.
• Number of job or volunteer candidates.

This week’s action plan:  The most important Social Media measure is simple:  does the strategy deliver the expected results?  This week, spend your Social Media time budget setting Social Media goals that are tightly tied to your organization’s business goals.  Then choose measures that allow you to track your progress.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

There is no shortage of call centers working hard to sell SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services. Some of them are small fly-by-night operators, while others work at the venerable Yellow Pages.  Sadly, many organizations (and people) succumb to these pitches, and spend significant dollars each month chasing a top ranking.  “Sadly”, because much of the SEO work could have been built in from the start, and because much of the ongoing work they could do by themselves at little or no cost.

How Google works: They have an algorithm that takes into account 100+ different factors.  These factors are not only secret, but they change as Google works to improve their results – and foil “professional” SEO fakesters.   So while nobody knows precisely what the algorithm is, the following recommendations are based on our experience (since 1994) helping our clients use the web to grow their organization.

There are four main areas that you are able to influence: Page factors, Site factors, External web factors, and User factors.  This Tipsheet will look at the first – Page factors.

Five ways to make or break your ranking:

1) HTML Construction:  The way your site is coded can have a dramatic impact on your site’s ranking.

• The Title tag contains the words that appear within the top Title bar of every browser window.  Every page should have a unique Title tag that contains relevant keywords for that page.  Most sites have irrelevant – and identical – Title tags.
• What is within each graphic is not indexed by Google, but the “Alternative” text that can be added alongside the graphic – the ALT tag – is.  ALT tags that contain words such as pic1, image, or picture, are useless, but surprisingly common.
• The H1 and H2 tags contain the formatting of the headlines and subheads.  They are powerful indicators to Google about content, but many sites ignore these tags completely.  Instead, they directly format text to be  a specific font, size, and style.

2) Linked Filenames:  Google will rank a page higher if the text that is on the link has a tighter match with the filename that the link is directed to.  For example, click here to read about Randall is less powerful than Learn more about Randall.  In the second example, both the hotlinked words AND the underlying link contains the words “about randall”.

3) META Description:  This is a 2-3 sentence (~155 characters) description of the content of the page.  It will often will be displayed on search engine results pages, and can improve click-through.  At one point this tag (and META Keywords) were exceptionally important to determine ranking, but it is no longer being used directly by Google to determine ranking.

4) META Keywords:  No longer used by Google at all.  It may be helpful to include this tag, but it is better to upgrade the content to be keyword-friendly.  “Experts” who counsel the use of META keywords are likely out-of-date with their other advice as well.  Using this tag also exposes your keywords to competitors, who cannot otherwise learn about your target keywords.  Advice here is to skip META keywords completely.

5) Keyword Density:  The better the matches between what the user is searching for, and what your page contains, the better your page ranking will be.  That being said, “stuffing” keywords to game the system can penalize your site – or have it removed completely.  Google’s general rule is to write for the reader first.  Spend time making sure that keywords are embedded naturally throughout your content.

This week’s action plan:  Check your own site: are there unique ALT tags on all graphics and unique TITLE tags on each page?  If not, add them.  And for yourself, make sure that your Social Media profiles also are keyword-rich.

Note: I recently recorded a detailed review of 43 specific techniques that marketers can use to improve their Search Engine Ranking.  It is available here: http://budurl.com/108SEO.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

How often are you disappointed by poor service?  For most people, the answer is too often.

The reasons for poor customer service range from poor hiring, ineffective (or invisible) training, poor attitude, and inadequate resourcing.  Most customers don’t really care why – they’ll vote with their feet and leave.  They will also share their experience with their friends online, damaging the brand even further.

Online customer service is even more problematic – consider the differences:

• Customer expectations are very high, especially for problem resolution.   Sometimes the customer’s expectations are unrealistic, and they need to be told so.
• Customer Service needs to be as connected online as they are over the phone.  Many companies now have Twitter customer service reps, but they are trained to empathize – and are powerless to resolve.
• The geography for sales may be far wider. Online business may need to cater to customers in several languages and several time zones. Using offshore support resources sounds good, but forcing the support agents to mindlessly follow a script is off-putting to many customers.
• It is possible to use databases to manage issues as they come up.  Sadly, this has resulted in machine-oriented auto-responses, when a real conversation with a real person – not an anonymous ‘agent’ – would have addressed the issue far more effectively.
• Social Media means that word travels fast – for the good or for the bad.  This speaks to the importance of monitoring – otherwise known as listening to the market.

In Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality, author Leonard Berry determined that there were five determinants of Service Quality:  Responsiveness, Reliability, Empathy, Assurance, and Tangibles.  Of these five, his research noted that the majority of service quality issues are connected to Responsiveness, then Reliability. Do well on these two, then you’re good to go.

Consider: using customer service agents with generic email addresses doesn’t engender assurance.  Form letter responses are hardly empathetic.  And long customer service wait times are the antithesis of responsiveness.  The push for efficiency and cost effectiveness cause many businesses to lose sight of the basics.  And there is no line item on the balance sheet that says Service Quality: it’s not surprising that customer service is so poorly funded and executed.

This week’s action item:  Try some mystery shopping in your own business:  if you complain, what is the response?  How quickly do they respond?  Is their response automated, templated, or customized?

Marketing insight:  Customer service works on the individual level too.  Who do you serve at work, at home, and amongst your friends?  How responsive are you when they reach out?  And how reliable are you when you make promises – do you always deliver?

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Have you ever wondered why companies choose to rebrand?  During the last week, there were two notable rebrandings: one you may have heard about, and one you likely haven’t.

Microsoft, after more than a decade, has changed it’s logo to one that evokes the new “Metro” look-and-feel of its latest Windows operating system.  Here’s the old:

And here’s the new:

And here’s the question of the day: why bother?  What’s wrong with the old?  Is the time and expense really worth it?

Reasons to rebrand:

1) There has been a growing difference between what your organization represents, and the visual representation of it. Rebranding forces the organization to re-evaluate each product, service, marketing initiative, collateral, advertisement, and whitepaper in a completely new light.  A herculean effort, but one that brings even stronger congruency. This re-evaluation is an even more important benefit of rebranding.

2) Your organization is looking to make a break from the past, and the “old” brand looks, well, old.

3) Particularly if there have been problems, a rebrand signals that the problems have been solved, and it is a “new” day.  (Of course, rebranding without fixing the problems can make things far worse.)

4) You are looking for a reason to reach out to your markets – rebranding gives you something to say.

5) When a groundbreaking, bet-the-company product is being launched, rebranding the company can amplify the impact of the launch.

6) A new brand is an internal signal to staff that the organization is maturing.  It can also be a strong motivator.

Which of these rationales are relevant to Microsoft?  Likely a bit of each, although 2, 3, and 5 probably are the underlying reasons for this investment.

Costs of rebranding:

1) An extraordinary amount of time and expense in evaluating, changing, and updating the logo and visual identity.  This usually means significant market research with existing and prospective customers, to better understand how they see the organization.

2) When it comes to people, branding equals corporate culture.  If the new brand is more aspirational than actual, then the change management required to shift a culture can be huge.

3) The communications planning and execution to each stakeholder group effort.

4) Some customers (and other stakeholders) may no longer identify with the new brand, costing the organization hard-won loyalty – and dollars.

Did Microsoft make the right call to rebrand?  Strategically yes: they need to establish themselves in mobile and in the tablet space, and their new operating system supposedly will do so.  But what about financially?  It has a large enough cash hoard that it can do just about whatever it wants; most other organizations may need to do the financial calculus themselves.

This week’s action plan:  Rebranding happens both at the organizational level, and the personal level.  Beyond the purchase of a new wardrobe, have you ever considered the benefits – and the costs – of changing your personal brand?  While you may not have a logo, you absolutely are “known for something” by your friends, family, and colleagues. And if you are in a leadership role, a personal brand can power your corporate brand – and vice-versa.  This week, consider whether even a slight shift in either your personal brand – or your corporate brand – makes sense.

Bonus rebranding bulletin:  My firm, after more than a decade, has made a major change – yes, we have rebranded: new logo and new name.  Here’s the old:

And here’s the new:

If you want a bit more about why we made the change, please check out the 108 ideaspace site, and read my blog post with the details.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

End-of-blog-post bonus: Logo history -  here are the other two of Microsoft’s old logos – times have changed indeed:

Are you an information thief?  Have you ever plagiarized, pilfered, or “borrowed” someone else’s knowledge or reputation?  And has someone ever done this to you?

With the social web in front of us, it is too easy to use others’ information without their knowledge or permission – even if it is free.  Depending on how (and what) you share, you’re either seen as in-the-know… or a thief.

What type of attribution should you give, when you are using someone else’s information?  It depends:

1) Clicking the “share” or “like” button when reading a blog.  In this case, Facebook (or LinkedIn) automatically notes the source, and the writer or publisher – by virtue of having the share buttons available – is giving you implicit permission.

2) Quoting a few sentences within your blog or article.  If you are quoting someone else’s material, put the  quote, the writer, and the source website name with a link to the original article.  Doing this drives traffic to the source, and will generally keep you in the good books of the author and publisher.  Quoting an article without a link is selfish and lazy. 

3) Quoting an entire article or most of an article, even with attribution, is also on the ethical border.  If you do this, there is no reason for the reader to go back to the original site. Effectively you are monetizing someone else’s work – and preventing them from doing so themselves. If you wish to use their article, connect with them first and ask for permission.

4) “Reporting on” an article by rephrasing most of it is also considered unethical for the same reason as the above.

These last two actions typically will make the author quite upset – enough sometimes to make a public example of you.  Or if they think that what you did is illegal, to write a nasty legal response to you and your employer.

This week’s action plan:  No one means to steal, but with everyone a publisher on the social web, it’s too easy to cross the line without recognizing it.  This week, give credit where it’s due whenever you speak or write.  Not only is it the right thing to do, but you will increase your credibility, both with your audience – and your sources.

Plagiarism alert:  There are services that will check for plagiarism.  One such service is www.Copyscape.com.  Try it out by testing one of your own pages: was the content copied from anywhere?

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

How long is your attention span?  How long is the attention span of your clients, colleagues, or kids?  The conventional wisdom is that it is very short – 30 seconds – the length of a typical TV commercial.  Supposedly, the attention span of a Gen-Xer is even shorter.

Thankfully, both of these urban legends are wrong – very wrong.  The attention span is highly variable, but is dependent on two key factors, both of which are under your control:

1) The number of competing distractions, and

2) Whether the content and delivery are relevant and interesting.

Consider the last time you went to a blockbuster movie: how many people were talking, texting, or doing anything except being completely engaged in the action on-screen?  Or the last time you sat down with a great book: did you snuggle down to read for more than 30 seconds? You probably couldn’t put it down.

If you want people’s attention, then don’t waste time with what’s important to you – give them what they need, in a format that they want.  Too often, when people market their services, they get louder and louder in order to be heard above the noise.  When they do this, they unwittingly become part of the problem.

How long do you keep people’s attention?  If it is shorter than you like, make your message more relevant to them, deliver it professionally, and do it in an environment that is conducive to a conversation.

This week’s action plan:  Look at the status updates you’ve received today on Facebook or LinkedIn: what percentage actually engage you?  Then look at your own: are you increasing the social attention span of your connections, or are you just adding to the noise?  Do better by being more relevant.

Marketing insight:  The most common marketing mistake is to focus on the product, instead of the prospect.  It’s no surprise that TV commercials are so short (and getting shorter): the vast majority of them are of zero value to the viewer.  It’s not that attention spans are short, its that consumers are getting smarter (and faster) at discerning relevancy.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Thank you for reading. In the competition for your time, the Randall Craig Tipsheet vs. Olympic Anything is not exactly a fair fight. So thank you for giving the Tipsheet a “Gold” – at least for the 60 seconds or so to read it.

Here is today’s question: how can your ideas compete against a much bigger, more relevant, and better funded competitor?  How can you fight against Goliath, and win?

The answer is surprisingly simple: you can’t. Yes, it may be true that by sheer chance, your idea captures the imagination of readers on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. But who wants to win by chance? Winning by choice is much more satisfying. To do this, you need to follow only one key strategy: Since you can’t beat them, join them.

Here are two ways how:

1. Concept-hooking: Can you change the angle of your message so it is relevant to the subject of the day? If so, it will be picked up, and more importantly, it will be read. A related idea is Link-baiting, where irrelevant keywords are added to a post to improve the chances of being ranked by Google.  Concept-hooking is good, Link-baiting not so much.
2. Hash Tag-along: There are millions of conversations happening on Twitter, many of which use a hashtag (#ProSpeakingTV is an example). If your topic is relevant, add to the conversation by “borrowing” the use of the hashtag and embedding it in your post. If people value what you say, they will respond. If they really value what you say, they will follow you.

This week’s action plan: The concept of flowing with the momentum instead of fighting against it is very similar to the Olympic sport of Judo. This week, try to use either Concept-hooking, or Hash Tag-along, to get your message out.

Bonus Tip: Concept-hooking works in the real world as well.  Growing someone else’s idea by adding your own is far more likely to generate buy-in, than competing against it.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Look around: who are the Social Media go-to people in your office?  Look around again, and identify the people with the strongest business acumen.  In almost all organizations, the first group is younger, with-it hipsters, while the second group is typically much older.  Getting these groups on the same Social Media strategy page  can be challenging at best: the knowledge gap is too wide.

Two questions:  Must this always be so? (no)  And is there something that can be done close the gap?  (yes)

For an organization to fully take advantage of the opportunity of the social web, the strength of both generations must be harnessed. Here are a few ways to intentionally close the gap:

• Start with a Social Media plan:  The act of putting one together results in significant knowledge transfer between the two groups.  Once complete, the plan can guide both the younger person’s priorities, and the older person’s expectations.
• Training:  A casualty of tough economic times has been the investment being made in people.  Investing in business training for younger employees means better decision-making.  Social Media training for more senior employees means better questions – and better management.
• Reverse Mentoring:  So often, mentoring relationships go in one direction:  from senior to junior.  For the first time in many years, younger employees can switch it up, adding value (through Social Media knowledge) back to their older colleagues.
• Connect with experience:  Sometimes an outsider can bring a new perspective – and a common vocabulary – to an organization.  Whether it be in an internal group setting, or listening to a speaker at an outside conference, learning together helps build shared organizational knowledge.

This week’s action plan:  The most successful people realize that everyone is a teacher, regardless of role or level of experience.  This week, consider your gaps, whether it be in Social Media or some other area, and find yourself a mentor.  Before you do this though, look for someone you can help first.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

How often have you run into a creative roadblock? Or you were stumped with a problem that you couldn’t figure out? When this happens, we are usually operating under a conventional wisdom that artificially closes the door to possibility.

To break the block, one need only ask for help from ever-widening circles: colleagues, community, and the crowd.

Crowdsourcing is the antithesis of conventional wisdom. For the first time, the Social web has given each of us the opportunity to chime in with our unique perspective, comment on others’ ideas, and receive refinements on ours. The question, though, is how to most effectively do this.  Crowdsourcing 101:

1. Define the question: Sometimes this means a thorough description of the underlying problem, so that the responses are laser-focused on the solution. Sometimes it means a shorter, intriguing, open-ended question to spur a creative discussion.
2. Target: The audience you ask must have a stake in the outcome – the higher the stake, the better the responses. Curating a community of interest around your products, services, or ideas is far easier with Social Media than any other channel. It is this community that is most likely to respond with thoughtful ideas. If you don’t have a community of your own – or if you want to range further afield, you can “borrow” a community by sending your request via Twitter using a specific hashtag, or posting your request within a specific LinkedIn group.
3. Carrot: While not always necessary, providing an incentive will change the response. Offering the incentive beforehand will mean more responses – including irrelevant ones. Offering the incentive afterwards as a thank-you will strengthen the relationship, and open the door to further conversation about their contribution.

There are downsides to crowd sourcing: You may tip your hand to a competitor. The request may open the floodgates for complaints. Or the ideas may unreasonably set expectations in the market. Yet, these potential problems each represent an opportunity: People are talking already – you may as well be part of the conversation, and influence it. High expectations are not a bad thing. And competitors are as likely to be mislead by your crowdsourcing questions, as led by them.

This week’s action plan: If you haven’t tried crowdsourcing, give it a try this week: it’s just about the best antidote to conventional wisdom there is.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Picture this scene from a few decades ago: you’re working in your office, and your assistant bursts in, with an important announcement:  You’ve received… a FAX!  The correspondence was critically important – and you were too.

Then a few years later, the FAX was replaced by AOL’s chirpy voice, announcing to all, “You’ve got mail!” 

Today, email is so ubiquitous that the novelty has completely worn off.  In fact, if you are like most people who are flooded with junk mail, email has completely overstayed its welcome.  If your organization uses email to market or provide customer service, you probably are beginning to question the effectiveness of the channel. And will it also go the way of the FAX, Telex machine, or the horse-and-buggy? 

Consider this the eulogy for traditional email: in five years it will no longer exist.  Consider:

• Internet Service Providers conservatively estimate that 77% of all email traffic is spam.  The cost of this filtering is huge, and not economically sustainable.  
• The high level of filtering – by ISPs, Companies, and users – means that many “good” emails never reach their destination. 
• Regular email is paid for by the receiver, which means there is no economic disincentive to send mammoth amounts of email.
• Regular email is easily spoofed: hackers can easily change the “from” details behind the scenes, causing the recipient to think that the mail was actually from someone else. 
• There is no way to prove that the sender actually sent the email (non-repudiation) or that the receiver actually received it (proof of delivery.)
• Regular mail is insecure: unless you resort to heroic measures, there is no guarantee that the email wasn’t copied or tampered with en route.  For this reason, email-based ecommerce by companies has been stunted, but millions of regular people unknowingly send their passwords and credit cards via email..
• The rise of the Social Networks means that some conversations now happen as posts and comments.
• Many of the Social Networks (Facebook and LinkedIn prime amongst them) have their own “walled garden” internal email systems, where authentication, non-repudiation, terms of service and security have weaned many emails away from the public email system.

What might email look like in a five years?  Or rather, what must happen for email to survive?

The cost of email must transfer from the receiver to the sender.  As it will be unlikely that this will happen everywhere, look for the move to a two-tier email system.  The first tier would be a trusted, authenticated, non-reputiable, sender-pay system, with practically no spam and an exceptionally high open rate; businesses would deliver invoices, account status, and other secure correspondence.  And users would be able to see their email with complete formatting, pictures, forms, and some built-in functionality.  The second tier would be a shadow of the current system, but relegated to an even lower priority for ISPs (and consumers), as the economic justification for email filtering (ISPs) or wading through the spam (consumers) would no longer would exist.

For traditional marketers, a forced march away from the mighty email list might seem scary, but all is not lost.

Remember that the goal of email is to improve your the relationship.  Begin looking for alternative modes of communication: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the many other social networks.  Ramp up the relevance of your blog, then encourage people to read (and comment on) it.  Finally, remember that developing relationships is best not done in bulk: a stronger personal connection is only possible on the phone and in person.  (And if this doesn’t work, you can always try sending a FAX… if you can find one.)

This week’s action plan:  What does it take for you to cut through the clutter and be heard?  And what are you doing to reach beyond traditional email, just in case?  Interestingly, the answer to these questions is the same: this week, develop your relationships across several channels, so that each channel reinforces the other – and protects you in case email truly becomes unusable.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.108ideaspace.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Maybe you also have seen this TV commercial. After a service encounter, an attractive business woman (an actress, no doubt) faces the camera, smiles and says, “It’s all about me.”

If someone said this type of comment to you, what would you think? If everyone had this type of attitude, we wouldn’t have volunteers, mentors, coaches, or charity. Networking would be all about taking, not give-to-get. Work teams would be unproductive and political, and families would fall apart. “It’s all about me.”

While this thinking may be somewhat extreme, one quick look at Social Media shows that we are fast moving in this direction. Consider:

• How many people do you know who seem to “live” on Facebook or some other Social Network, posting every lurid detail of their life. (Instead of actually living their life?)
• How often do you look at others’ status updates on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook and wonder why they posted what they did.  (Really, who cares about today’s trip to the dentist?)
• Consider yourself. What is the me-to-we ratio in your posts? What percent are all about you versus all about others?

This week’s action plan: The secret to successful networking, successful relationships, and successful selling is to remember that it is all about them, and not about you.  This week, remember “them” each time you post to the (social) web.

Marketing insight: It’s (not) about me is even more true when it comes to marketing. Prospects don’t care about you – they only care about how you can solve their problem. Next time you post about your organization, product, or service, keep this in mind: it’s all about them.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Are you one of those thousands (millions?) who build a social profile, only to find that you have very few friends? Maybe you are one of those millions (or billions?) of businesses that have built a website, but have found that no one is calling? Or no one is buying?

If this sounds familiar, there are two critical factors that are often missed: Getting more people – Attraction – and calling them to action – Conversion.  Improving your performance on these two factors will have a direct impact on your return on effort.

Top techniques to attract:

• Advertise online (and offline), targeting the right people with a relevant-to-them message.
• Build SEO (Search engine Optimization) directly into the site, so each page attracts an interested audience.
• Use social tools to build a community of interest around your expertise or solution.  Engagement and community are powerful attractors – and not easily duplicated.
• Provide an incentive to visit: a relevant report, an interactive activity, or perhaps a high-value video. If you can’t answer the question about why they should visit, chances are they can’t either.
• Put your social profile (or web address) on all of your off-web collateral and communications. QR codes maybe?

Quick Conversion Concepts:

• Make it easy for someone to contact you: your phone number and email address should be front-and-center.  Your contact details should be on every page – not hidden on an internal Contact Us page.
• Use landing pages: instead of linking to a generic home page, land them on a purpose-built page with a clear call-to-action.
• Offer to help…in real time.  Click-to-Talk technology proactively asks the user if they have a question that they would like answered. Retailers have known for a long time that helping customers in the real world results in sales. Research shows that it works online as well.
• Give them a reason to like you: Yes, some people will click “Like” to show support, but a little extra incentive doesn’t hurt. Find an extra value-add exclusively for those in your community.  (Personal example:  Get 20% off the price of the just-released Online PR and Social Media for Experts 5th edition when you “Like” my Facebook page.  Try it out, even if you don’t buy the book.)
• Limit their options. If the goal of the site is to encourage transactions, having dozens of links off-site (or deep within your site) will distract them and lead them astray. Limit their options to choices that move them closer to commitment, not the opposite.

This week’s action plan: Attraction and Conversion are important for any marketing or sales function, but critical for the web. This week, look at your website and profile pages critically: Are you doing all that you can to attract and convert? Some blunt words: If you’re not prepared to do all you can, then stop wasting your time on the social web.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Do you actively seek out different opinions than your own, or unwittingly reinforce your personal world-view by only consuming “agreeable” content? While we may think it is the former – who doesn’t have a self image of being open-minded – too often we live in a bubble.

The promise of the social web was connection and communication: it was the great equalizer that gave every voice an ear. Over the last few years, this has been badly eroded, much to our collective detriment. Consider why:

• Implicit filtering:  The flood of data means that social media sites filter the content that appears on our pages. Of all of your Facebook Friends, why is it that you see posts from some people and not others?
• There is a commercial imperative to “help” us make purchases by using technology that personalizes product recommendations. Did you ever notice that the only books you see on Amazon are those that are similar to those you’ve already looked at? Or that many web advertisements are also suspiciously similar – even across different sites?
• We are creatures of habit, and tend to do the same thing over and over. It is simple human nature to do what is comfortable. If you have the same type of coffee every morning, why be surprised that most people check the same sites every day?
• We seek social approval. Most people avoid conflict and prefer to read opinions that support their world-views, not undermine them. We feel good when others Retweet, Like, and Share what we say.  We feel significant as we attract Followers, Friends, and Connections (all who think as we do.)

In case there is a question about whether this is for the good or for the bad, consider these two points:

1. Exposure to different points of view can spark new ideas: diversity of thought is critical to creativity and innovation.
2. Exposure to different points of view helps you understand the concerns and objections of the opposition – or your prospective clients. It lets you walk in their shoes, and learn how to serve them better.

Finding your tribe on LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube might be exciting. Contributing and conversing with them even more so. But when we self-select ourselves into a social bubble, we miss an opportunity to grow ourselves – and the value of our network.

This week’s action plan: Shake it up: get your news from different sites. Comment on posts from different bloggers. And explore what your network is doing beyond what is presented/filtered for you on the social networks.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

How do you spend the first 20 minutes at the office each day?

If you were in the 1970′s, you would spend the time reading the newspaper, then organizing your inbox (the box on your desk), and finally looking at your calendar before “starting” your day.

In the 1980′s, you would be doing the same, but with less time on the newspaper, and more time on voicemail.

In the 1990′s, the newspaper went away, but email made it’s (un)welcome debut.

In the 2000′s, there’s no need to check email because you already did this before arriving on your BlackBerry.

So, in today’s post-BlackBerry “Social” world, how do you spend the first 20 minutes of your office day? And more particularly, how should Social Media fit into it? Here’s a sampler:

1. Check your network’s updates via email: Set up Nutshell Mail so all of your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter updates are emailed to you (www.nutshellmail.com). Then send a few congratulatory emails, tweets, or posts.
2. Read through your Google Alerts: Go to www.google.com/alerts to set up a “watch list” of key terms. Then each morning, review the email that Google sends you listing every web page that was added to Google containing those terms.
3. Scan your Twitter watch list: Set up a watch list of key terms using hootsuite.com. Then each morning, scan for tweets (and other status messages) that match.
4. Review your day’s meetings: For each person you are scheduled to meet, check out who you know in common…and then give them a call. Not only does this phone call strengthen your relationship, but it often yields valuable information about the person you will be meeting, which results in a better relationship with this person too.
5. Satisfy your curiosity: On LinkedIn, check out who has been checking you out by clicking the Who’s Viewed Your Profile link on your LinkedIn homepage. If you’re feeling a bit more extroverted, reach out to these people and introduce yourself more formally.

This week’s action plan: Reconsider how you spend those first 20 minutes each day. While you might not add all five of these items to your morning routine, each adds specific value by connecting you more tightly – and building relationships.

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

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

Model One: One of the most powerful real-world networking techniques is called “give-to-get”. You  meet someone, find out what they’re interested in, and then find a way to give it to them. If you do this periodically, eventually they will return the favor.

Model Two: To compete, an organization must do so on Price, Expertise, or Trust. Leaving price aside, a powerful way to showcase expertise is to either blog, or send an insightful email from time-to-time. The more people read your insights, the more trust you earn.

Model Three: The Relationship Curve, which defines how people (and organizations) make decisions, states that prospective clients go through several stages: Awareness, Preference, Trial, and Commitment. Marketing planning is all about moving prospects up the relationship curve. (Think about it:  it’s always easier to sell to your friends.)

What ties Give-to-Get, Price-Expertise-Trust, and the Relationship Curve together? In all three cases it is not about selling to a prospect, but rather earning the right to help them buy. The more you do this, and the faster you do this, the higher your sales. The more direct “selling” that you do the more they will see that your interests are your own – not theirs.

The most sophisticated marketers know that a website (and Social Media) only go so far. Whether you subscribe to Give-to-get, Price-Expertise-Trust, the Relationship Curve (or all three), there are three requirements to successfully “close” a sale:

1. There must be a process. Without this, success is more happenstance and luck. Without this, there is no monitoring and measurement. And without this, there cannot be knowledge management: a mechanism to capture improvements and thereby improve the probability of future sales.
2. There must be automation. Once a system is in place, automation both improves personal productivity, and dramatically increases the number of prospects that can be managed. An example of automation is my popular (free) blogging course. When you click this link and register, you are tagged in my system as a registrant, and then you receive six content-filled lessons on strategic blogging, one each week. Afterwards, you receive an email inviting you to a free webinar on how to monetize your blog. Because of automation, the course can be offered at no cost.
3. There must be a real relationship. While automation is helpful, many marketers get carried away.  They forget that it is the real-world relationship that will give you the knowledge to deliver on your promises post sale.

This week’s action plan: Objectively look at your marketing and ask yourself two questions:

1. Does Give-to-get, Price-Expertise-Trust, or the Relationship Curve resonate with you? If so, how do your current marketing activities fit with these models?
2. Do you have a system to automate the relationship-building (and tracking) process? If not, it’s time to start.  (Happy to share what we use – just ask.)

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

Randall Craig

Think back to when you last bought a book – did you check the reviews on Amazon? When you last booked a hotel – did you check the hotel rankings?  There is an incredible conversation happening on the social web, and for the first time in history, there is transparency: these conversations are available.  The benefits are obvious – but how should you react to this new openness, either as a consumer – or as an organization?

Here are four strategies:

1. Ignore the conversation: For some organizations it is an explicit decision not to listen.  For others it is more ignorance of the conversation: they don’t even know that it is possible to listen in to what the market is saying.
2. Listen and lurk: A brand can be defined by what people say about it – and organizations who listen to the social web are better able to estimate their brand strength, understand their market, and get an early warning when things begin to go wrong.
3. Join the party: One step up from lurking, organizations in this tier are actively engaging with their stakeholders. They triage complaints, answer questions – and ask them. They are the face of the organization in the public social web.
4. Be the host: At this level, the organization controls its own social destiny by providing the venue, setting the ground rules, and moderating the conversation. Hosting the conversation can happen in a public venue (a Facebook fan page, a LinkedIn group), or within a privately hosted (and sometimes invite-only) section of the organization’s website.

This week’s action plan: Whichever strategy you choose (Ignore, Listen, Join or Host) it need not be exclusive. You may ignore one, join another, and host a third. The key is to be both intentional and strategic. This week, play the what-if game: What would be the impact if you moved up the hierarchy?  (Try it and see.)

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

Randall Craig