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A first time meeting for old friends – Blogger Social ’08

June 1, 2007

Here’s how it seems to work. I’m talking with one of my smart blogging buddies and they say "we could or we should…." And I reply, "great idea…let’s do it!"

And then the trouble begins!

That’s how Gavin Heaton and I created the Age of Conversation. And that, on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend is how CK and I began to create Blogger Social ’08.

I’ve got to learn to shut up. ;}

Over lunch, we were talking about how there is no substitute for face time. And when old friends finally meet for the first time it’s remarkable how quickly you ease into a natural and easy rhythm of conversation. Both of us agree – every blogger we’ve met has been just what we expected. You can’t fake it when you hang it all out there every day.

That quickly led to "wouldn’t it be great if we could all just get together for a weekend?" And uh oh…you can feel it. Suddenly I found my hand waving in the air and heard myself saying, "let’s do it."

So we are.

Calling all bloggers across the world. You are hereby invited to the Blogger Social ’08. (We want to give everyone time to save their pennies!)

Here’s what we know:

It will be a Friday evening to Sunday event in the continental US. (Next year – Europe?)

There’ll be Friday night cocktail party – casual but cool. Saturday will be an afternoon event of some kind (big BBQ or some sort of group outing) and Saturday night it’s time to put on the Ritz, get glammed up and party until the wee hours of the morning.

Everyone foots the bill for their own hotel, airfare and incidentals. There will be a per person fee that covers the 3 parties/events and other group expenses. This isn’t about making money; this is about connecting with friends. So this is a net/net deal for CK and me.

This is all about being social. In between the three scheduled events, there will be plenty of down time for talking, tanning (depending on where we go) and tapping into those hugs and grins that just aren’t the same when you have to type them out.

Here’s what we don’t know:

Where. Exactly when. And who.

We need your help with that part. We’ve put together a short survey that we really want you to take. We want to know if you like the idea, if you want to come and where the collective wisdom wants to go. All entries are due by July 1 so we can give you the full scoop by August 1. No exceptions so go today. Why get caught in that last minute rush?

After you answer the survey – please share this with other bloggers. Talk it up, point it out and hold it up high enough that everyone can see it.

What do you say…want to get social? Come on, get that hand in the air!

P.S. If we determine that there’s enough interest – we’re going to be coming back and asking for committee volunteers. This is a community event, so we’re going to pull together to pull it off.

P.P.S. Special thanks to Cam Beck for preparing the survey and Luc Debaisieux (Mindblob) for creating our event’s official graphic. And of course…kudos and hugs to my co-hostess with the absolute mostest — CK.

Is being long-winded hurting your communications

June 1, 2007

We seem to live in what I call a USA Today society. "Give it to me short, sweet and if possible, in a colorful graph. Otherwise, I’m going to ignore you."

Do you get that same sense? Dr. Taly Weiss did some research on her blog TrendsSpotting that shows that of the top 100 blogs — most of them routinely have posts of less than 500 words.

As communicators, we often have complex issues to discuss or complicated products/services to explain. How do we accurately and adequately get the message across in this short and sweet world?

Here are a few ideas I had but I’d love to hear yours.

Chunk it. Break up your content into bite-sized pieces. If the reader is willing to invest in the first paragraph…and it’s relevant, they’ll keep reading.

Visually trick the reader’s eye. Use lots of white space and color to break up copy and to create the illusion that the copy is shorter than it is.

Divert them. Use your initial pieces (direct mail, blog post etc.) to give your potential customer the highlights and then provide them with repositories of information. Point them to your website, blog archives, more detailed collateral, etc.

So….how do you combat the USA Today mentality?

Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick 2.

May 31, 2007

Here’s the reality of working with clients, no matter what your business does.

Your client wants it good, fast and cheap.

Guess what — long term, there is no such thing. Can you pull an all-nighter or scramble your entire team into overtime? Sure. Once in awhile. But in general, our clients get to pick two of the three.

Michael Libbie, an Iowa advertising guy, tells a similar story over at his blog. And sadly, the option clients most often want to scrimp on — good.

Fortunately, in the end, most good clients get it. A microwaved dinner now and then is okay. But after awhile, you realize you’re not really being nourished. You want real food. Food with substance. And you’re willing to let it cook in the oven for 30 minutes and pay a little extra for the good cut of meat.

But how do you as a business person combat this challenge?

Respect your value. This is the toughest one of all. Your work , product and service is worth what you charge. Don’t apologize for it. Don’t be bashful about asking for it. And don’t be guilted into compromising it.

Have options for your clients. Be reasonable. Maybe they don’t need to Lexus version. Suggest ways they can still accomplish their goals but perhaps in a different way.

Be okay with walking away. I know it’s hard to walk away from business. And scruples don’t feed the kids. But, if you and a client (or prospect) can’t come to an agreement on the money, I assure you — it is not going to be the only thing you disagree on. You are not the right fit for every client. Say it with me….you are not the right fit for every client.

This isn’t about gouging your clients or over-charging. Try that a few times and watch it bite you in the rear end! This is about being fairly compensated for your work. This is about doing good work that yields results for the client and this is also about being nimble enough to turn things around quickly when your client is really in a jam.

Ultimately, it is about balance. For you and the client.

Analogies = sales

May 30, 2007

If you’ve read this blog for awhile, you know I believe in the power of storytelling, especially analogies.

If you want to talk about the importance of your employees understanding/believing in your company’s brand, why of course you’d talk about little red wagons.

If you need to convince someone of the importance of repetition and consistency, wouldn’t you naturally talk about toothbrushing?

The importance of planning? Why getting to Cleveland silly. How marketing should feel? Hello…campfire. You get the idea.

Analogies work because:

They break down the complex and make it simple
They turn the unfamiliar into something relevant
They are very memorable
They’re viral — you can tell the story and watch it spread
They take the abstract and make it tangible

But don’t just take my word for it. Check out this article at RainToday.com. What Jill’s selling is no fish story!

Think of the most complex aspect of what you sell. If you could make it tangible, relevant and easy to understand — do you think you’d sell more? What analogy could you use to vividly describe it?

Best Practice: Branding

May 30, 2007

This appeared in the Des Moines Register’s Best Practices series on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007.

DREW MCLELLAN, TOP DOG, MCLELLAN MARKETING GROUP, DES MOINES

A brand is not your logo or your tagline.

Those are important tools you use to express your brand. But not the brand itself.

A brand is a unified, singular understanding of what an organization is about and how it is unique from the key audiences’ points of view. In English – it’s why a potential client or employee would choose you over your competitor. What makes you stand out from the rest? What’s it like to do business with you?

It is you standing up, hand on heart and making a promise. And then keeping that promise.

A brand is like a three-legged stool. The three legs are:

1. The company’s vision of the brand
2. The consumers’ vision of the brand
3. Where your brand sits in the marketplace

How you view your brand:

This is your take. What do you believe the brand values are? What promise are you making to the consumer? How does that promise also weave through your dealings with employees and vendors? What are you willing or not willing to compromise on?

How your consumers view your brand:

This is their experience. Do you promise one thing and then do another? Do your employees consistently deliver the same brand promise? Do your marketing communications pieces (ads, website, direct mail etc.) paint a different picture than an actual buying experience?

How you fit into the marketplace:

This is the 30,000-foot view. When you look over the competitive landscape, where does your brand sit? If you are a local coffee shop, how do you compare to Starbucks? If you’re a phone/internet provider how are your materials and sales people different from the last three I talked to? What does your brand promise say that makes you different from your competitors? Or are you like most companies and it doesn’t?

As a business owner, you need to make sure that you understand all three legs of the branding stool. You also need to make sure they square up together.

Why does branding matter?

Every business exists in a complicated, crowded marketplace. No matter what you do, someone else does it too. So, how do you stand out in the marketplace? How do you differentiate yourself? Every business has a simple choice. You can create/identify a brand to differentiate yourself or you can just be the cheapest option.

Which would you choose?

Or you can view it as it appeared in the paper: Download 052907DesMoinesRegister.pdf

Flickr photo courtesy of mleak.

Do you inspire joy?

May 28, 2007

We spent the weekend in New York City. While we were there, we saw the new play, Curtains. It’s a whodunit musical and well worth the ticket price. The performances, singing, dancing and choreography were really something to behold.

As I stood watching people spill out of the theatre, a young girl about five years old literally came dancing up the aisle. Her face was one of pure joy. At that moment, she *was* on that stage, dancing to the roaring crowd. You could see it all in her eyes.

My first thought was, "I wish the cast could see her. They’d be reminded why they chose this profession. Because they inspire joy."

My second thought was for you. (And me.) Do we inspire joy in our work? Does our product or service make our customers want to dance?

It’s really easy to dismiss that question with a "We don’t sing or dance, we build websites. Or we sell checking accounts …or we insure their families." But that’s a cop-out.

Every one of us has the capacity to create a joyful experience. Haven’t you ever hung up the phone with a big smile on your face because someone exceeded your expectations? Haven’t you ever finished a meeting with a business partner and felt so good about the work you’re doing together that you wanted to do a little jig? How about that little song of relief that wants to burst out when you realize that someone really and truly "gets" you and your work?

If not…you need to find new business partners. And if we’re not inspiring our clients, so do they.

What could you do that would inspire joy in your clients this week?

And now, for your viewing pleasure…some shots (off their official website) of Curtains. The lead in the play is David Hyde Pierce (Frasier’s brother Niles).

How do you want to be remembered?

May 27, 2007

A trip to NYC feels incomplete without making time to visit Ground Zero. It seemed particularly important to go on Memorial Day weekend.

The 9-11 tragedy and the images that now surround the site should give us all pause. The people who died that day started off their morning thinking it was just another day. Just like we do, every day.

I found myself wondering what they would have done or said differently. All the things that at the moment mattered — really didn’t.

What if it had been you?

Would you have shouted at the driver who cut you off?
Would you be at the office and miss saying good night to your son or daughter?
Would you worry about those five extra pounds?
Would you panic at this quarter’s sales numbers?
Would you cling to that grudge?
Would you worry about your blog’s ranking?

Who would you think about? What would you do? What would you say? Why don’t you say it today?

Here’s my question for myself this Memorial Day. And for you.

How do you want your life to be measured? What if today was the day?

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
Measure a year?

In daylights – in sunsets
In midnights – in cups of coffee
In inches – in miles
In laughter – in strife

In – five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?

How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Seasons of love
Seasons of love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Journeys to plan

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life
Of a woman or a man?

In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died

It’s time now – to sing out
Tho’ the story never ends
Let’s celebrate
Remember a year
In the life of friends

Remember the love
Remember the love
Remember the love
Measure in love

Measure
Measure your life in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love

Note: I took all of these photos on 5/26/07. The 5th, 6th & 8th photos are of pictures that hang in the memorial area. (So they are my photos of someone else’s photos) The rest are of artifacts in the area. One of the most striking realizations as you walk around the site is the deep hunger people have to leave notes or messages. They’ve written on signage, walls and anywhere they think their voice might be able to linger.

It’s not graffiti, it’s grief.

The photos are mine, the lyrics belong to Jonathan Larson from the musical RENT.

Why I blog

May 27, 2007

There are so many important business reasons why I blog. It’s good for McLellan Marketing Group, it’s good for my career and its good for our clients.

But most of all, it is good for my soul. This weekend, I spent a day with my good friends (from left to right) Lewis Green, Luc Debaisieux (Mindblob), me, David Reich and the two lovely ladies in the front row, CK and Valeria Maltoni.

We laughed, we talked and we shared. Interestingly, there was very little talk about blogging.

We came together to honor the life and spirit of Sandra Kerley but in the end, we honored her and so much more.

We honored each other, we honored genuine affection and we honored friendships borne in distance and with words that have since outgrown that boundary and now are simply deep friendships with no other explanation or description required.

Seeing the other side

May 26, 2007

Think about it for a minute. There’s the work you. The family you. The buddies at the pub you. The girls at poker night you. The I’m so tired I could cry you. The blogger you. The marketer you. The consumer you. The son you. The trying not to laugh during church you.

So many faces. All of them you. Each honest, real and unique. But each one slightly different because of the circumstances, surroundings, or people involved.

That’s a very important thing to remember as marketing professionals. No one is just a 35 year old Caucasian man, with a wife and 2.3 children. Many faces. Many passions. Your marketing needs to push beyond assuming you know what the aggregate whole wants. You need to let your audience help you define why they need you. Because each 35 year old Caucasian man may want something slightly different.

See their many faces.

That’s what intrigued me about David Airey’s Face Behind the Blog post. Basically, he is reminding all of us that we’re more than the face we hold out as we author our blogs. He’s suggesting it would be interesting and insightful to share a photo of ourselves that puts us in a different light. That shows another face.

So far, several others have jumped on board.

Gayla at Mom Gadget
Char at Essential Keystrokes
Paul at Reflections
Rob at 2Dolphins
Zep at The In-Sect
Ingo at Stixster
Stevie at Lost In Cyberspace
The Paper Bull at (oddly enough) The Paper Bull
Lisa Sabin-Wilson at Just A Girl In The World
Dawud Miracle at dmiracle.com
Wendy Piersall at eMoms at Home
Dennis Bjørn Petersen at Petersen Inc.
Randa Clay at Randa Clay Design

I first read about it at Dawud Miracle’s blog and decided to join in.

So….step aside Blogger/Brander/Marketer Drew and make room for…

Table for One Drew?

I love this picture of my daughter and me. We’re at (wait for it….) Disney World and we’re waiting for a show to begin in front of Cinderella’s castle. This is us at our most comfortable, compatible best. And apparently my head is indeed flat enough to rest a popcorn bucket on!

So what do you say? Will you show us one of your other sides?

Update: Here’s who has jumped in since my initial. Is your name there?

Drew McLellan at The Marketing Minute
Becky McCray at Small Biz Survival
Phil Gerbyshak at Make it Great!
Steve Woodruff at StickyFigure
Dave Olson at Live the GREAT life that you desire
Greg at Become a Remote Control SEO
Ariane Benefit at Neat Living Blog

Do you go where everyone else goes?

May 26, 2007

When you’re planning on marketing to a specific audience — do you go where everyone else goes? In other words, if all your competitors advertise in a specific trade pub or in Times Square, do you go there too? Or do you think it’s smarter to find a quieter street corner?

If you decide to go where all the noise is — how do you make sure you get heard?

If you decide to go to the quieter street corner, how do you make sure the audience knows you’re even there?

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