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Web 2.0 meets Print 2.0

September 10, 2007

Eric Kintz, VP of all things fun at HP, is videoblogging from HP's NYC Print 2.0.

At this event, they unveiled some very cool printable mashup books featuring Gwen Stefani, Hannah Montana (from Disney) and others. Go on, print out a book that makes it look like you and Gwen were on the same tour! Or check out what designer Paula Scher has to contribute to your company's brand. Not your cup of tea? How about what snowboarding expert Jake Burton says about knowing your customer?

Take a peek at Eric's thoughts on how HP is shifting from printers to printing and how those of us who spend time in the digital world are about to discover some new and very cool ways to integrate traditional print with our speed of light digital world.

Eric also blogs over at The Digital Mindset.

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Who is in my conga line? Mike Sansone

September 10, 2007

As we dance our way to my first blogiversary (Saturday the 15th) I want to spend this week honoring some people who have been in front of the line, leading the dance and keeping us on beat. Because I sure didn’t get here alone!

Without a doubt, the man in the front of my conga line is Mike Sansone.

My blog wouldn’t exist let alone enjoy even a modicum of success without Mike teaching me the dance steps.

A year ago, I barely knew what a blog was. I had no idea about the technology, the culture or the heart of it all. I’m a decent writer…but I was not a blogger.

I devoured Mike’s wisdom at Converstations and soaked up his how to’s and beware of posts. But even that didn’t make me a good blogger.

Then, my blogging ~~coach~~ Buddha (aka Mike) very slowly and patiently introduced me to the power of the connections, of sharing what I know and of building a community.

When I had no readers…he was there, cheering. When I got giddy over my first few comments, he was there, cheering. And today, as I round the bases and head for home, I know he is there, cheering.

He may not wear a funny hat with bananas on it (more of a do-rag sort of guy) but I know I always want him in front of the line, showing me new dance steps, introducing me to good music and encouraging me to find ways to get all of you to join in the dance.

The only way I can thank him is to do as he teaches and hope that my efforts honor him along the way.

Who is in my conga line?

Mike Sansone
CK (Christina Kerley)
Gavin Heaton
The smiling faces
My other blog homes
YOU!

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BrandingWire: IT Services

September 10, 2007

As you no doubt remember by now, once a month I join some other branding experts to tackle a marketing/branding problem ala the BrandingWire collaboration.

This month's BrandingWire takes a slightly different twist. A Canadian IT company has asked for our help. So we wade into the B-to-B world.

Here's a quick peek at them:

Offerings (according to them):

They'll do just about anything from proactive maintenance to 24/7 trouble shooting to setting up new users, buying equipment or helping you with software decisions. They are also getting into Green IT – from managing energy costs to eliminating packaging waste.

They are (my words, not theirs) like an IT department who happens to office outside of your workspace.

The money part:

You can engage them in one of two ways. You can buy a maintenance contract or buy their hours ala carte. The contract gets you a discount on services rendered.

Target:

As you would guess, businesses who use IT but are too small to have their own internal department.

Conundrum (again, their words):

It's difficult to convince small businesses that our services are worth the amount we are charging – however, to draft a legal document, they're more than willing to a pay a top notch lawyer $500/hour. Customers view IT issues as a pain (i.e. my email is down again) instead of as a critical part of their business (ie. without IT, we can't function as a company).

Customers just don't always understand the value of IT services.

Drew's take:

Ahhh, there's the rub. We don't get to decide what our customers should value. It's annoying, but true. We have to figure out what they need/want. Once we serve up that…we provide value. We can provide it but we can't define it.

But there's a flip side to this truth as well. Our clients should provide value to us as well. For it to be a long-term relationship of value, both sides need to benefit and feel good about the value they both give and receive.

But let's look at the client's side of things first.

One of the most significant keys to smart branding is knowing the heart and mind of your customers. Once you really understand where they're coming from…you can talk to them from that place.

Without talking to them (which is dangerous at best) here's what I suspect the IT customers feel.

They're scared of IT. They know they can be crippled by a virus or something else they don't understand.
They hate being so dependent on someone outside of their walls.
They're embarrassed that they don't know more than they do.
They hate the down time when they do have a problem.
They don't understand it, so paying for it scares them. (Am I getting taken?)
They don't want to pay for something they don't need. That's why the contract scares them. Are they just spending money they shouldn't?
They're petrified that something catastrophic is going to happen and it's going to cost them an arm and a leg.
They've been taught that extended warranties and maintenance contracts are fool's gold and benefit the seller much more than the buyer.

So that's where they're at in terms of IT in general. But how are they feeling about the IT company?

One of the IT company's stated goals is (in their words) "help our clients understand why our services are worth the price tag."

That's a little worrisome to me. Again, we're doing this in an artificial vacuum. My guess is that they have a mixed clientele. Some who should be clients and some who should not. And it's the who should not's that are causing them trouble.

But, if we were sitting in the room with the client, I'd ask them to describe the clients who don't object to the price structure. I'm guessing they have some. Then, we'd profile those clients based on industry, size, type of work the IT company does for them, scope of the projects, clients that can make a fair and reasonable profit from, etc.

When we were done, we'd have built a profile of the types of businesses that are a good fit. Good from the IT company's perspective in terms of retention and fair profit. Good from the client's side…trusted advisor, a value, and someone who relieves their worries.

Then, we'd go through their client list and score each client against the profile. Anyone who got a C or worse should be weeded out. They're not a good fit.

Anyone who receives a B- or better should be cultivated and nurtured.

We'd do the same thing with their prospect list. There's no reason to waste time and money talking to prospects that are not a good fit.

Once you know who to talk to and how they're thinking and feeling, deciding what to say to them comes much easier.

I will leave those details to my BrandingWire compadres. Check out their posts and welcome our three guest bloggers as well!

Olivier Blanchard
Becky Carroll
Derrick Daye
Kevin Dugan
Lewis Green
Gavin Heaton
Martin Jelsema
Valeria Maltoni
Drew McLellan
Patrick Schaber
Steve Woodruff

Our guests for this month:

Matt Dickman

Chris Brown

Cam Beck

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Be the $10,000 buyer!

September 9, 2007

Less than 2 months ago, 103 hopeful authors and two neophyte publishers (yours truly and the always brilliant Gavin Heaton) launched Age of Conversation.

Our goals were pretty simple:

Get exposure for all the authors
Provide quality content
Explore what the "age of conversation" meant
Do something together that would eclipse what any of us would do alone

and the biggie — raise money for Variety, the Children's Charity. We set $10,000 as our first target for funds raised.

<60 days later….we have sold 1,274 books and raised $9,997.60. WHO will put us over the top? Can we get to our $10,000 goal before September 16th, the 2 month anniversary of the launch?

Whoever buys a book (e-mail me the receipt) between now and September 16th will be profiled on the Age of Conversation blog and no doubt, will get plenty of link love from the authors.

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A quick trip around the blogosphere (9/9/07)

September 9, 2007

Mike Sansone of Converstations introduces us to what he calls our blog’s baseball card, a new tool called Xinu that lets you check all your web stats at a glance.

Josh Spaulding put together an extensive list of on-line tools and resources. My favorite — GahooYoogle.com which allows you to search both google and yahoo at the same time and see the results in a split screen.

WebLiberation Army is holding a contest. You could win a free video to promote your business on the web. Hat tip to Freaking Marketing, where I first read about the contest.

Arun Rajagopal conducted a 10-hour social media tour. Wonder what social media actually means and what it might mean to your life or business? Let Arun take you on a guided tour.

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Do blogs make e-newsletters obsolete?

September 7, 2007

Here's the question. Now that we have blogs, should we still have e-newsletters?

My friend Dawud Miracle raised the question and paints a picture that suggests that e-newsletters are really thinly veiled tricks to capture e-mail addresses and sell products. Blogs on the other hand, according to his initial post, are less intrusive and give the reader more control. He's generated quite an interesting collection of responses.

Here's mine.

With all due respect, who died and made us King? That is so 1980’s. We are not in charge anymore. The consumer is.

My agency has had a e-newsletter since 1999 and we have thousands of subscribers. They seem to like it.

I have had a blog for less than a year. Have a good number of subscribers but certainly not the thousands that the e-newsletter has. The blog subscribers seem to like it.

Some of the e-newsletter subscribers have opted to also sign up for the blog and visa versa. (I try not to use the same content).

If we have learned anything in this era of citizen marketing — we don’t get to decide. We offer up value in a variety of media and let the consumer choose which option works for them.

And if we think that e-newsletters are more sales driven — we are crazy. I have seen blatant blog posts that practically begged for work. I’m not saying that is bad…but I saying we are deluding ourselves to think of one as a sales tool and the other as an educational vehicle. Both…can be both.

As long as we have subscribers to either vehicle, I will keep writing them.

So what do you think? Are they mutually exclusive tools? Does one replace the other? Is one medium more geared towards a sales pitch?

Do we or should we choose for our readers/prospects/customers?

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Don’t leave THIS out of your media releases!

September 7, 2007

In today's age of the digital media release, I find this statistic from BusinessWire amazing.

Less than 1% of press releases submitted contain hyperlinks.

Adding a hyperlink does several things for you:

It adds valuable links back to your website or blog
The links are SEO juice
You shift your media release to a useful, connective tool for consumers
It allows you to enhance the story with background or related information
It opens the opportunity to communicate with your audience

Make a rule for yourself right now. You will not send out a media release without at least 2 outbound links. But don't overdue. Anything more than 1 link per 100 words runs the risk of being labeled as link spam.

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Is this the future of everyone’s personal brand?

September 6, 2007

Dan Schawbel is 23. He has a full-time job. A blog. And a personal brand (Rob Cuesta's take).

(In comparison, when I was 23, I had a dog.)

Dan has embraced personal branding an d has expended a significant amount of energy to mastering it. His blog is all about it. He's created a magazine focused on it. By the way, Donald Trump graces the cover of the first issue and thinker/doer Guy Kawasaki penned an article.

Oh yeah…and he's built his digital personal brand site. A site dedicated to 360 degrees of Dan. His professional life, personal life, ambitions and creations. All in one spot.

What do you think? Will everyone have one of these? What would you put on your personal branding site? Where would you draw the line? Or isn't there one any more?

P.S. If you didn't think owning yourname.com was important — ask Dan what he thinks about it.

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Need a little marketing BS?

September 5, 2007

Next time you are looking for that million dollar phrase to really impress the pants off someone, turn to the handy-dandy Marketing Bull%$#* Generator.

Here are some of my favorites from the site:

aggregate interactive users

incentivize world-class niches

benchmark turn-key convergence

benchmark plug-and-play paradigms

The really scary part of this fun little toy is that we all know someone who actually talks this way!

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Write for real people

September 5, 2007

Whether you are writing a brochure, a radio spot or a blog post – you are writing to a specific audience. And in reality, in most cases, multiple audiences. The more clear you can be on who you're talking to, the more clear you can be in your language, examples and tone.

Here's one of my favorite "tricks of the trade" when it comes to writing. I create my audience from a composite from bits and pieces of the real people who engage with the product or service. From those seemingly random facts, I concoct a 3-D, multi-faceted person.

I literally can picture them in my head. I know enough about their job and their lives to be able to relate to them.

Think of this as the poor man's persona.

Here's how you do it. Let's take this blog as the example. When I sit down to write every day, who am I writing for?

I know that I have several sub audiences here and have detailed personas (too long for this post) for each. But, let me introduce you to them.

CMO/Director of Marketing at a medium sized company: Ian is either on his own or has a small staff. He's inside a B-to-B company and is pretty savvy in terms of basic marketing. But he needs help creating solid strategy, staying on course and executing the marketing plan.

Odds are, branding is less familiar territory for him. He gets it but has no idea how to create it in a meaningful way that has depth, meaning and sticking power with his internal and external audiences. He needs a partner here who can walk them through the process and execution.

He also needs to be inspired some days. He has to champion everything inside his company and sometimes the CFO can be a real prig. Because Ian is so immersed in the day-to-day world of his job, he also looks to me to keep him current on trends and fresh creative.

Blogging is a some day for Ian. He knows he needs to get his company there but he doesn't feel as though he can sell it yet. It's too fringe still. He checks out my feed a couple times a week and then reads what's of interest to him. His typical comment is a question or clarification, which I love.

Small Business Owner: Poor Erin has to do it all. Her business is successful but she views marketing and advertising as a necessary evil. She's pretty savvy but still gets "sold" by a slick media sales person now and then. Everything sounds like a good idea, so how does she choose the best ones? It's not that she resents investing the time or money, but she wants to do it wisely.

She's the one that branding could actually make the most difference to, if she got it. With her limited budget and knowledge, differentiating herself from her competitors in a real, user (both internal and external) experience sort of way would generate incredible word of mouth, which will not only stretch her budget but also deepen the love Erin's customers have for her entity.

She is stretched so thin she could scream. She doesn't have time to read all the magazines, business books and keep up on the trends. So she's looking for quick reads that will teach her all the nuances she doesn't know and remind her of the ones she does.

She also needs to be reminded now and then that despite the long hours and frustrations, she worked hard to be able to have this life and there's a lot right with it.

She isn't quite brave enough to comment yet. But she shows up almost every day.

Branding/marketing Pros: Blogging or not, Patrick either works in an agency, consultancy, or at a high-level client side job. He loves marketing and branding. Loves to talk about it, loves to create it, loves to read about it and loves to surround himself with other people who share his passion.

He comes to my blog not so much to learn something new but instead, to share common experiences, poke and pull on fresh ideas and to tell war stories. He views us as kindred spirits and nods his head a fair amount as he reads what I've written. He's a frequent commenter and always adds value to the conversation.

What he hopes to find when he shows up at the blog is a topic to discuss or share ideas around. Patrick likes to talk about the industry and where it's going. He finds the blogosphere a way he can keep very current, so he can guide his clients better.

So now that I know who I am writing for – how does that influence my prose?

Whenever I have an idea for a post, I think about Ian, Erin and Patrick. I wonder if it will interest them. And I keep a mental tally. If I've written a couple pieces that week that I know are more up Patrick's alley, then I go out of my way to make sure I offer up something that Ian and Erin will particularly value.

I try to position my questions to entice them all to comment, even though I know Erin's a long shot. I figure even if she doesn't answer me on the blog, hopefully she's answering the question in her own head and that's helping her clarify her thoughts around the topic. I use my experiences with MMG clients to explore what might really be a hot button for Ian.

When I want to write something but it doesn't seem to really be something any of them would care that much about, I re-think writing it.

Understanding my audience helps me keep this blog (or a brochure, website, ad etc.) on the straight and narrow. It forces me to justify any detour that I'm thinking about taking. And, I think in the end it means I deliver my message in a way that keeps Ian, Erin and Patrick coming back for more.

Which is sort of the point.

Related posts:

Ease into the conversation – be a drip

No one is a demographic

Effective or stupid?

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