Guest Posts Archives - Page 3 of 6 - McLellan Marketing Group

Knitting a brand in 3 steps (Peter Korchnak)

February 20, 2009

Drew's Note: As I try to do every Friday, I'm pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet another thought leader who shares his insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Peter Korchnak. Again. Enjoy!

How can small businesses build strong brands?

If brand is the sum of expectations and experiences, designing customer experiences is central to branding.

For three essential steps toward a successful and sustainable small business brand, consider Twisted, a yarn store in Portland, Oregon.

I toured the store with soon-to-be customer "Wonks R Us" Eva Schweber. Emily Williams, who co-owns Twisted with Shannon Squire, greeted us, offered to help, and eventually found a moment to chat.

Step One: Plan, plan, plan

In Emily's words, “We are both willing to work like the dickens and we share a common vision for the company. Although neither of us had business experience, careful, even obsessive, planning has served us well in avoiding many pitfalls. We're doing great.” Enough said.

Step Two: Understand your customers

“Our customers are people like us,” Emily said. “The new wave of knitters, people who are connected, blog, tweet, network online, download projects from Knitting Daily, and generally keep track of what's hot in yarns. We love serious knitters – people who call themselves knitters, rather than just people who knit.”

Step Three: Design a consistent individual and community experience

Brick-and-mortar Twisted

The front of the store hosts a living room space where customers sat in couches around a coffee table, knitting and chatting. Some sipped on one of the many teas, including custom blends like Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Horrible, available from the tea bar. Others took advantage of free wi-fi.

Yarn here is a means, not an end. Twisted communicates benefits, not features: while most yarn stores stock wares by color, fiber or weight, the organizing principle here is purpose: socks (The Great Wall of Sock Yarn), baby clothes, and scarves/sweaters/hats. Twisted prefers natural and local products, and carries a limited yarn assortment. Accessories, kits, supplies and literature have dedicated racks and shelves.

Around the store, fliers announce Twisted classes (“Basic hat class”, “Continental knitting”), and events (“Open Knitting”, “Queer Knitting Night”). As Emily confirmed, “We love to interact with our customers.”

Twisted online

According to Eva, “Twisted has an amazing online word-of-mouth.” A simple, clean, and informative website anchors Twisted's online presence, with add-ons like an e-newsletter and a blog. Twisted is also on Twitter. Most importantly, Twisted has its own lively 392-strong group on ravelry.com, a closed social networking site for knitters, where members share projects, exchange advice and photos, and discuss updates on products or patterns. The Twisted website proclaims, “[Ravelry] is the best thing ever!”

Twisted visual identity

Emily and Shannon decided early on that their company's look should reflect their brand, not define it. “People shouldn't notice the logo,” Emily said. “Our visuals should be organic to the entire experience with our brand.”

The store's interior exudes a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, feeling welcoming and warm on this January evening. As I was leaving, mere 94 minutes after I, a non-knitter, first arrived, Eva and Emily were still conversing about knitters and projects they both knew, and a couple pulled up chairs to join the knitting circle.

Peter Korchnak is the principal of Semiosis Communications, a sustainable marketing company based in Portland, Oregon. As the writer of Sustainable Marketing Blog, he champions branding through customer experiences and community building as a marketing strategy. He's one of the 100 co-authors of "Connect! Marketing in the social media era” out on Blurb.com on April 6, 2009.
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Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew's Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Image credit: “pretty socks that rock at twisted” by cafemama

3 keys to napkin innovation (Brett Duncan)

February 13, 2009

Why is it the best ideas always start on a napkin over dinner?

You know what I’m talking about. You hear inventor and innovators all the time thinking back to when they first had their amazing idea, drafting it out on a napkin. And the rest is history . . . .

It’s easy to pass the napkin off as mere coincidence, but is it really?

I think not. In fact, I think there’s really something to Napkin Innovation, something worth digging into. Here are three reasons why the napkin holds the key to better innovation:

The Setting
OK, when was the last time you had a great idea at your office? I’ve had more ideas in the shower in the past week than I’ve had in my office over the last year. Try as we may, our brains simply can’t accept switching off all the business ideas after 5 p.m. every day. In fact, the fresh air and freedom of a new setting is usually what gets your brain really cooking.

Furthermore, other people help the creative floodgates open. The conversation and different viewpoints get your brain juices boiling. So when you sit down for a meal in a more relaxed, pleasant setting like a restaurant with friends or family, you’re basically insisting that your mind expand. No wonder great ideas can come out of it.

Where you innovate and with whom is extremely important. Don’t wait for it to happen. Get outside of the office with others and give your mind a chance to surprise you.

The Spontaneity
Innovation isn’t on a schedule, and it doesn’t need a routine. But when it strikes, you’ve got to be ready to capture it. Scribbling down your ideas on a greasy napkin isn’t normal, and the dinner table isn’t a typical lab for innovation. It’s this kind of process that you need to get those synapses snappin’.

The whole point of being spontaneous is that it isn’t planned. It’s not something you create, but it is something you can react to, and prepare for. Whether it’s a napkin, scraps of paper or a digital voice recorder, get in the habit of having something to catch all these flashes of brilliance.

The Structure
As important as the setting and spontaneity are, the napkin’s real key to innovation is its smallness. A napkin requires you to be brief. To not get caught up in too many details. To capture the real essence of your idea, and nothing else.

Too many budding ideas are scrapped due to details. “We’ve never done it that way before.” “Our system won’t support that.” “We don’t have the manpower.”

Try this: take an idea that’s pretty complex and sum it up on the space of a small dinner napkin. Prune it until you’ve reached the idea’s core, and nothing more. Then run with it. Move forward with a sense of brevity, of succinctness. Embrace the borders, let them guide you and then go crazy within them.

The Point
Free yourself enough to harness the power of the napkin. Get out of the office, down some wings or something, capture the spontaneous and welcome any constraints upon you. That’s Napkin Innovation.

Brett Duncan is the sole writer of Marketing In Progress, a blog dedicated to making sense of the blur that is marketing communication for small business. He lives in Dallas with his amazing wife April and two-month old son Mason. Email him and learn more.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew's Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

How to go from book idea to the Today Show (Molly Rosen)

January 23, 2009

Drew's Note: As I try to do every Friday, I'm pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet another thought leader who shares her insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Molly Rosen. Again. Enjoy!

What’s it like to be a woman in her 40s? – How’s the sex? Do marriages and motherhood really work these days? What about career, community and faith? Are we still driven to make a difference?

I’m going on the Today Show on Friday morning, Jan. 23rd to talk about these questions, as described in our new anthology, Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex and Work in Our 40s. I never thought we’d end up on national TV when I started this book project 18 months ago. But then sometimes when we just follow our gut, do something that excites us, and good things happen.

When I turned 40 nineteen months ago, I looked for a book written by women about what I might expect during this new decade. When I didn’t find it, I reached out to my network (who then reached out to their networks, and so on) to find interesting women who had experiences about work, sex, love, etc. that could together paint an honest, funny, updated portrait of this decade. I posted the Call for Submissions on a few sites frequented by this demographic and ultimately received almost 100 essays from 19 states and even Paris.

I’m not an author, or even an editor, by trade, so this was all a bit of a stretch. To generate some support, I developed a “review” team of six women to help me sift through the submissions, picking a compelling mix and providing feedback to those selected.

By this time, I had decided to donate all the profits to a national breast cancer non-profit, Breast Cancer Action because having our first mammogram is a rite of passage into this decade for most women. In addition to asking all the contributors to waive their royalties, we also asked a graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, web designer and web hosting service to all donate their services. It’s been a powerful reminder of how much we can accomplish when working on a project that’s not only fun and creative but also benefits a larger purpose.

We launched in October: Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
I held an intimate book launch party with the authors, family and friends at the Scharffenberger Chocolate Factory.
To build on this excitement, I coordinated with authors to schedule book readings.
Each author forwarded a press release template to home town papers and college newsletters.
Book reviews and interviews were secured by some authors who had connections with editors and producers.
We used a mix of social media and online marketing to promote our readings and local press coverage.
We created a Knowing Pains group on Facebook.
We built a dedicated website at www.KnowingPains.com.
We sent out updates with a Constant Contact newsletter.

When we reached out to The Today Show, we found a 40-something female producer who appreciated the honesty, the humor and especially the NO WHINING tone of the book. Lacking a personal contact, we went through the traditional channels, locating the name of the Today producer responsible for books and emailed her directly. She then vetted the book and our ability to speak coherently on TV (by watching a video previously done locally).

From the beginning, my goal was to cover all the costs of publishing the book and raise money for Breast Cancer Action. Three months later, I'm excited to write the first donation check with the proceeds from each book now going directly to breast cancer education and advocacy. And now two of my contributors and I will be appearing on the Today Show during the 9 am segment this morning.

Imagine what you can do if you follow your passion!

Molly Rosen spent the first part of her career in Central and Eastern Europe during the tumultuous early '90s. She then spent 13 years in leadership and management development, most recently on the senior management team of BlessingWhite, Inc. Visit her website Knowing Pains.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew's Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

The best kind of marketing (Karl Staib)

January 2, 2009

What's the best kind of marketing? Easy. Word of mouth marketing. The reason it's so good… it's relevant to the consumer. We relate to what our friends like.

We want to own what makes our friends happy because we believe it will make us happy too. If my friend buys the latest U2 album from iTunes, I'll be more likely to hear it in his car, enjoy it and want it too.

The Wii

I recently played the Wii over at my friend's house and fell in love with the active style of play. You move your arms, legs, and hips and there is always some laughter and excitement occurring in the room.

I'm adverse to television, video games, and anything that doesn't keep your brain or body active. Don't get me wrong, I watch the occasional stupid sitcom (love Scrubs), but most of my free time is spent building content for my blog, walking with my wife at the local park, or having a good conversation over a meal with friends.

Now that the disclaimer is over…I went out and plunked down $320 for a game system, extra game and a controller. I haven't owned a game system in over twenty years! I did this because my friend raved about it after I spotted it under his TV; we quickly ate dinner then played Mario Kart and Wii Fit (an exercise game). I was sold by its easy to use platform and the physically active nature of the game.

Restrict Access and Get More Word of Mouth

I don't know if they restricted the number of units that are shipped to the US on purpose, but the Wii is still hard to find. On-line stores are selling them in bundles (the game system with 4 games you don't want) to make extra money.

This only got me more curious. Why was everyone so excited about this game system? I kept hearing good things and everyone knows the old adage. It takes 12 to 18 repetitions before convincing someone who is a good prospect to buy your service or product.

Be Like the Wii

I haven't been so excited to throw down a chunk of money since my honeymoon to Italy. So the moral of the story is keep yourself out there. Give your customers a reason to tell their friends about you and when they call, don't give them instant access. When you appear too eager you'll lose their interest. Because the Wii was hard to get, it made me pine after it even more. Don't make them wait weeks to see you or buy your product, but make sure they know you are a popular company that is sought out for its quality work.

Nintendo created a system that made me so excited that I was guaranteed to be happy just to play it in my living room. Now that I own it, it's even better than I hoped. So the cycle has come full circle. I'm continuing the wonderful cycle of word of mouth marketing that sells products faster than Nintendo can make them.

Karl Staib writes about unlocking and kicking open the door to working happy at his own blog: Work Happy Now! Check out one of his most popular articles, Give Employees the Power to Impress Customers.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew's Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

IBM’s video game seeds market (Sandy Carter)

December 12, 2008

Drew’s Note: Here’s part three of Sandy’s grab the mic guest post. (see parts one and two here)

Without further ado…enjoy Sandy Carter!

Case Study 3: IBM video game seeds market

This holiday season, buying a Nintendo Wii, or the latest online games need not make you feel guilty. According to The Apply Group, at least 100 of the Global Fortune 500 will use gaming to educate their employees by 2012, with the USA, the UK and Germany leading the way.

With that in mind, we decided to leverage social marketing in education with a serious game. Thousands of universities around the world now have access to Innov8, IBM’s new "serious game.” Now students of IT management who grew up playing video games can benefit in learning activities in a fun way, like flight simulators teaching pilots to fly airplanes.

By interacting with the video game, students can make real-life business situation decisions.

They can see the results of their decisions right away, and if they make a mistake, it’s much more private than “failing” in front of a classroom of their colleagues. Because a love of gaming is shared around the world, professors have told us the game can help to bridge cultural barriers.

While it is too soon to measure the full implications, there’s a new business environment emerging. We cannot ignore the changing group dynamics and social implications. In fact, we should tap into the most innovative ideas to redefine the fundamental nature of educating the market.

Just as games present us with situations that invite players to make choices, consider the advantage of using graphics and decision-making steps of games in business. Using Social Media, we could allow decision makers to immerse themselves in the real-world simulations, judging cause and effect before making decisions.

Check out the Innov8 trailer.

Sandy Carter is author of the new book, The New Language of Marketing 2.0, which leverages the ANGELS methodology (ANGELS stands for: Analyze the Market, Nail the Strategy, Go- to- Market socially, Energize the Channel & Market, Leads and Revenue, and Scream with Technology.) Sandy is IBM’s Vice President, SOA and WebSphere Marketing, Strategy, and Channels. She is responsible for IBM’s cross-company, worldwide SOA initiatives and is in charge of one of IBM’s premier brands, IBM WebSphere.

Sandy blogs at Marketing 2.0: From a whisper to a scream and you can catch her on Twitter too!

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Dell uses Twitter to drive sales (Sandy Carter)

December 12, 2008

Image by Britt Selvitelle via Flickr

Drew’s Note: Here’s part two of Sandy’s grab the mic guest post. (see part one here)

Without further ado…enjoy Sandy Carter!

Case Study 2: Dell Uses Twitter To Drive Sales

Twitter allows people to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Businesses like Dell (and IBM) are using Twitter in more corporate instances.

Dell Outlet has inventory based only on equipment that is returned to Dell, which therefore can fluctuate quite a bit. When there is a large inventory "bubble" of a particular model, there may be time to generate an e-mail campaign to promote that particular system and generate more demand.

However, when the bubble is smaller, the major lever to drive sales has been to lower the price of the overstocked model.

Dell Outlet came up with the idea that Twitter may be a solution to the challenges presented, by offering Twitter-specific promotions and featured products. The goals were:

To drive increased traffic and thus increased demand for particular products for which Dell Outlet has inventory greater than desired levels
To grow the pool of Dell Outlet’s Twitter followers to the point where it is sizable enough to have an impact on specific demand-generation postings

Dell Outlet’s Twitter strategy revolves around regularly posting Twitter-only offers. When a new tweet is posted, it generally provides followers a coupon code to obtain a discount on that particular model in the Dell Outlet. Typically, this coupon is exclusive to Twitter, so they are able to measure the redemptions and know that it was due to being posted on Twitter. Twitter followers may share coupons easily with Twitter friends in a viral fashion.

For Dell, Twitter represented a new way to reach customers. Ricardo Guerrero, a key visionary for this work at Dell, claims that per their latest surveys, a significant portion of people who bought through Twitter were not aware of the Dell Outlet before Twitter. And by tracking the coupon code, in the first year utilizing Twitter as a promotional tool, Dell Outlet generated over $500,000 in revenue in sales of refurbished systems.

Sandy blogs at Marketing 2.0: From a whisper to a scream and you can catch her on Twitter too!

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

ROI of a serial social marketer (Sandy Carter)

December 12, 2008

Drew’s Note: As you know, I try to host guest bloggers every Friday. Sandy Carter just finished writing her newest book, The New Language of Marketing 2.0. The book contains 54+ case studies of companies who have successfully blended traditional marketing tactics with their web 2.0 brethren.

Sandy kindly offered to share summaries of three of her book’s case studies. Rather than cram all three into one very long blog post….I’ve broken them up and will post them separately throughout today.

Without further ado…enjoy Sandy Carter!

OK. I admit it. I tweet multiple times a day, I have 2 blogs, and I love technology. My passion is reaching customers and having them connect with my company in new and smart ways. As such, I experiment, learn from my peers, and measure these new tools for marketing.

As a marketing executive at IBM, I have found that these Marketing 2.0 techniques, combined with traditional marketing methods, drive down costs and increase revenue. My passion led to a book which resulted in over 54 case studies of companies using these hybrid combinations today and I’d like to summarize highlights from 3 of those stories.

Case Study 1: The Coca-Cola Company and Eepybird.com use Lightly Branding

People are very visual. In a recent preview of Google’s year-end Zeitgeist, “youtube” is so far listed among the fastest-rising search terms of 2008. Combine that interest in video with word-of-mouth and you have a powerful influencer in your marketing mix. Let us have a look at a compelling example of “lightly branding”, or the impact of others putting a face on your brand and then “endorsing” it by virally passing it around!

We are no doubt all familiar with the video of 2 “scientists”, 101 bottles of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos that showed the reaction of the 2 products together in a huge fountain effect.

After initially being posted online and shared with just one person, by the end of that night, there were over 20,000 views. Interesting, but perhaps less well-known, is the background on the inspiration for those videos. A juggler and a lawyer/entertainer, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, respectively, are the originators of these experiments and it was the wildly enthusiastic response (both online and in-person at their local theatre where they perform) that set them on a path to spending the next several months working on creating more effects and the concept was born.

Their company, EepyBird, combines the power of entertainment and marketing to assist companies in lightly branding their products. Not long after the initial buzz, EepyBird had heard from both Mentos and The Coca-Cola Company. Michael Donnelly, director of Worldwide Interactive Marketing at The Coca-Cola Company, realized the potential from this viral video and its impact on the company brand and sales, and said he saw it as an opportunity to celebrate creativity, self-expression and amateur artistry. The two companies formed a partnership and went on to create another experiment (#214), including a viral video advertising contest called “Poetry in Motion”, in which customers were challenged to produce and create their own videos and the winner was flown out to work directly with EepyBird on the next video. Once again, this video saw a huge amount of viral buzz, with EepyBird citing over eight million views.

In this case study, EepyBird’s videos helped customers to see the Diet Coke and Mentos brands in a new medium that was both authentic and fun. Customers were experiencing the brand without watching a commercial and this propelled users to share it with their respective social networks resulting in buzz around the world.

But what was the ROI of lightly branding? The results were that Diet Coke saw significant sales of 2-liter bottles and, Mentos’ sales increased by about 15%.

Sandy blogs at Marketing 2.0: From a whisper to a scream and you can catch her on Twitter too!

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

5 Ways to Work Less and Make More Money (Sam Carpenter)

December 5, 2008

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet another thought leader who shares his insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Sam Carpenter. Again. Enjoy!

Most people want two things: peace and prosperity. I was – and still am – no different.

Eight years ago, I was working ridiculously long hours for meager pay, crumbling under stress, and had zero time for myself or my family. The President and CEO of Centratel, a struggling telephone answering service business that specializes in emergency message relay, I put in 80 to 100-hour workweeks for 15 years, simply trying to keep my business and personal life afloat.

It was a week-to-week epic, making payroll, keeping staff and clients happy, and covering the bills for me and my children. I had no close personal friends or romantic relationships. After a decade and a half of this torment, my body was a wreck from the stress, and my doctor – convinced I was depressed – prescribed anti-depressants and then stimulants.

In my book Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Working Less and Making More, I describe my step-by-step transformation to now working 2 hours a week, instead of 80, and how, in a steeply declining telephone answering service industry, Centratel has blossomed, with more than 900 clients across the United States.

Follow these five integral steps to “working less and making more” and your operation will become enormously more efficient. At the same time, watch your personal life become more relaxed and rewarding for yourself and the people you care about.

Understand there is a universal propensity for order and efficiency. Despite the contentions of mass media, 99.9 percent of everything works just fine. Consider the systems of your life: The car you drive, the TV you watch, and the miraculous body that carries you around. You just have to “climb on board” and work to enhance the quality of the systems of your life that are not exactly the way you want them to be.

Shift your mechanical perspective of the world’s workings. Take a position “outside and slightly above” your work and your life. Understand that by perfecting a primary system’s sub-systems, the primary system will in turn be perfected.

End the fire-killing. Instead of repairing problems as they arise, dig one layer deeper, identify the inefficiencies, fix the dysfunctional systems that cause the inefficiencies, and stop problems from re-occurring.

Create simple yet comprehensive documentation. It has to happen. Boring, but true: the existence of documented protocols is the single greatest difference between large successful businesses and small struggling businesses.

Hire people who “get it.” You must surround yourself with people who agree with your system’s philosophy and methodology. If your employees aren’t on the same page, you won’t get the results you want.

So, if your day is too busy fixing recurring problems, take a step out of the fire-killing routine and get down to the heart of what is producing the recurring problems. Could it be that within your operation, processes are not being maintained and upgraded, tasks are not being delegated or automated, and attention isn’t being paid to the documentation and control of the systems that create the results? If so, then go to work and tweak those faulty systems into perfection.

Sam Carpenter has been featured by dozens of national media, including NPR, ESPN radio, The Wall Street Journal radio, Startup Nation, KTLA Morning News (Los Angeles), and Small Business Television. President and CEO of Centratel, the number one telephone answering service in the United States, he has a background in engineering, publishing, and journalism. Visit www.workthesystem.com to purchase your copy of his book, Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Working Less and Making More, and to register for one of his two-day Work The System Boot Camps.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.

Marketing Rocks. You’re A Marketing Leader. Act That Way. (Steve Roesler)

December 2, 2008

While I’m on vacation, I’ve asked some very smart bloggers whom I am fortunate to consider my friends, to share some insights with you. Enjoy their brilliance because before you know it, you’ll be stuck with me again! I’m back tomorrow, so soak up this last bit of smarts.

Last but in no way least, Steve Roesler.

"One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.”

–Dennis A. Peer

Do you measure your contribution and success by the caliber of the people who follow you? In this case, let’s talk about clients.

I’m betting that most people are simply "happy to have clients." I read the news.

I also read my own financials to find out what’s profitable and who is profitable. Not all clients are created equal. Right now it’s easy to ignore cost-of-doing-business in order to opt for any business at all. So let me ask you this:

Are you in business for the long haul?

If so, you’ve already looked at how to differentiate yourself from the pack "technically." Now it’s time to rise higher above the crowd as a Marketing Leader by the caliber of your clientele.

No Gas But Plenty of Yacht Buyers

In the ’70s I lived in a tiny town in New Jersey whose main employer was Pacemaker Yachts. These 60-foot puppies sold for six figures in 1970s dollars. At the same time, gas was being rationed on odd/even days according to the number on one’s license plate. Bad times, eh?

One morning I walked to the diner (uh, it was New Jersey) for an artery-clogging breakfast. Seated at the table across from me was the Sales Manager of Pacemaker Yachts, comedian Jerry Lewis, and Olympic swimming champ-turned-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller. A deal was being closed for the purchase of two yachts while I was counting the change in my pocket to make sure I could leave a decent tip.

What I learned was this:

In bad times, people with lots of money still buy lots of expensive, exclusive things.
The publicity from this sale–due to the fame and "quality" of the clients–generated more business from "quality" clients.
The company shut down it’s small-boat, dinghy operation. Not enough buyers, not enough profit margin, and no publicity when someone did make a purchase.

Who Are Your Yacht Buyers and Dinghy Dwellers?

According to a survey of U.S. senior executives, marketing will be the most important area of expertise for the next-generation of leaders.

The study, commissioned by the Institute of International Research, sought to identify key areas for leaders. Marketing was the clear choice, with 31% of votes, followed by 20% for operations and 16% for financial expertise. Sales and engineering were deemed least critical to leadership with 11 and 6% respectively.

I’m choosing to take this as super-encouraging news. It means that organizational leaders are becoming increasingly knowledgeable about, and accountable for, marketing. It also indicates that the importance of marketing won’t be the "sell" that it had to be in the past. Leadership and Marketing now appear on the landscape as intertwined.

With that in mind:

Sit down today and figure out who, in your world, are the Yacht Buyers and the Dinghy Dwellers.
Are you willing to allow those DD’s to float out to sea while you free up time to target your Yacht Buyers?
Will your decision position you as a profitable Marketing Leader or a weekend sailor?

Life is filled with choices. Successful lives are filled with wise choices.

Your choices and the actions that follow will reveal the kind of marketing life you really want.

Drew’s Note: Steve Roesler is one of those guys who just seems to know quite a bit about everything. His blog, All Things Workplace, has won many an award and earned Steve a legion of fans. I’ve always found him to be not only smart as a whip, but incredibly generous and quite witty. Who could ask for more?

The Art Of Listening In Social Media (Jason Falls)

December 1, 2008

I recently posed the question to a group of advertising professionals, “What do you think the first step to social media success is?” The answers I got were varied and some were close to being right but most of them made the common mistake of concentrating on the technology. “Get an IT guy who can translate all that web stuff,” is a common response.

But social media isn’t about technology, it’s about communications. The technology is just a common mechanism that facilitates the message exchange.

The first step to success in social media is listening.

But how do you listen to millions of blogs, posts on social networks and billions of websites? Well, it’s easier than you think. Here’s how:

Google Alerts
Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and type in a search for your brand or company name. Select “Comprehensive” as the type and “Once a day” for how often then put in your email address. Now do the same for your CEO’s name, any variations or additions to your company or brand (sub-brands, divisions, etc.). You’ll get an email once daily for each alert. Click on the links and see what people are saying about you.

You’ll want to refine your search term based on the number of irrelevant links you get. For instance, a search for “fruit loops” may yield lots of posts about fruit or even posts on roller coasters talking about loops. By adding quotation marks in the search term (“fruit loops”) instead of (fruit loops), you’ll get more relevant posts.

If you’d like to keep the links, sign up for and use a bookmarking site like Delicious.com. By using a one-click bookmarklet (or button on your browser’s top frame) and filling out a few simple fields about the page you’re saving, you can organize and save and endless number of pages. (For my bookmarks on public relations, click here.)

You can also take the efficiency one step further and subscribe to the Google Alerts as a feed in your favorite RSS Feed Reader. If you don’t know what an RSS Feed Reader is, go watch the CommonCraft video. It will change how efficiently you surf the web.

Other Listening Mechanisms
Keep in mind Google Alerts doesn’t catch everything. You’ll also want to conduct searches of Twitter and perhaps even a more advanced search of blogs using Bloglines, Icerocket or Technorati. But these results listings come with RSS feeds as well, making it very easy to manage. (Hint: You really ought to figure out that RSS thing.)

For more advanced listening, there are a number of paid services that not only help you identify who is saying what about your company, but also provide analysis and insights to help you … or pretty charts and graphs for the CEO who doesn’t want to try and understand it. Those services range from economical (Radian6, BuzzLogic, BrandWatch) which normally don’t include human analysis, to pricey (Nielsen Online, Cymfony, Collective Intellect). Some, like K.D. Paine & Partners, offer both do-it-yourself solutions and full-service reporting.

I’m Listening. Now What?
Now that you’re keeping up with what the world is saying about you or your product or service, you need to know what to do with it. There are several schools of though here, but let’s look at some examples:

1. Dell Computers was suffering from historically bad PR in 2006 when they decided to start listening to their customers. Now, Lionel Menchaca and others in the blogging/social media effort at Dell try to respond to ever mention of Dell online, be it on a blog, Twitter or elsewhere. All listening has done for Dell is turn their customer service reputation around, 180-degrees.

2. Comcast Cares monitors Twitter for mentions of cable issues, access problems and more when someone mentions the company. Again, the customer service reputation for Comcast, at least within the Twitter community, gets high marks.

3. You can also just choose to respond to only the negative, or at least only those that might be inaccurate. In January, Sara from Breaking Up With Bread posted her concerns that Maker’s Mark bourbon may have aggravated her gluten intolerance and made her sick. When the master distiller posted a comment not only assuring her there were no glutens in the bourbon, but even provided a link to a government study that verified that, the blogger posted an apology and took the entire post off her blog.

4. And, of course, the baby step is to respond to the positive to engender a multiplier effect on the good vibes. By posting thank yous when people mention your brand, it at least sends a message to the writers and readers of that particular post that you are, in fact, listening. But I would caution you that if you do this, people will expect you to respond to the negative as well. Be prepared, even if this method is the toe in the water.

Listening is really the easy part. It’s knowing how to respond and react to what you hear that is the fundamental indicator of how a company will be received in the social media space. While each company or brand will need to develop their own personality in doing so, the key to success is simple:

Respond online the way you would respond to the same thing being said in person and in public and the way you would want to be responded to if you were voicing the concern.

As risky as it might seem, as intimidating as the permanence of the web is, it just takes removing the marketing hat, setting aside your tendency to try and control the message and just have a conversation with people. Try it. It will change the outcomes to your liking.

Drew’s Note: Jason Falls is a stand up guy. He is an natural conversationalist, which may be why he gets social media like nobody’s business. He’s the director of social media at Doe-Anderson, a brand-building agency in Louisville, Ky. He is the author of SocialMediaExplorer.com, a leading social media, public relations, marketing and communications blog. He’s also completely ga ga over his kids. Another reason to like him.

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