Happy Birthday, America!

Eloquence, courage and passion:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The United States of America: Spitting in the face of tyranny since July 4, 1776.

I’ve loved you seemingly since the moment I was born. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.

You are ALWAYS in Beta.

You’re always in beta. Always. If you think you aren’t, you’re already falling behind and bleeding relevance.

What does being in Beta mean? It means being in perpetual test mode. It means constantly asking “how could I do this better,” even when this worked just fine. How can I listen better? How could I improve customer service? How can I make my billing process smoother? How could we improve the UI/UX of our websites? How can I engage my user community even better? How could this brochure have been better?

I know what you’re thinking: Poor kid. He’s terminally obsessive-compulsive. (Actually, I’m just compulsive, not obsessive, but that’s a topic for another day.)

The point is this: The moment you start thinking that you have found the perfect model, the second you start adopting a “let’s not change anything” mentality, you’re screwed. The “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” saying I hear a lot in the South is may have been pretty good advice a hundred years ago, but it isn’t anymore. Not if you want your company to stay competitive. Not if you want to see your company grow. Not if you want to see chronic improvement in everything you do.

Check out today’s video if you haven’t already. And if it doesn’t launch for you, go watch it here. (Thanks, Viddler!)

Interestingly, the “you’re always in Beta” mindset that I am talking about today seriously reminds me of the mindset athletes and coaches get into when it comes to improving performance. Say you’re currently a 24:00 5K runner, and you want to relive your college glory days by running an 18:00 5K a year from now. How do you do it? Simple: By stressing your system one little bit at a time. By challenging your comfort zone with every run. Going from 24:00 to 23:55, then 23:50, then 23:45 for the same distance, and so on. Turning up the heat and the intensity for a few weeks, then giving your body a chance to adapt. To plateau. And then starting over with a new cycle of stress and adaptation followed by a rest period. During that time, you are constantly testing your boundaries, monitoring success and failure, learning what works and what doesn’t. (And yes, measuring your progress to know what works and what doesn’t.) Pretty basic stuff.

The alternative would be to keep running the same 5K route every day at the exact same speed, in the exact same way. What would happen? Well, you would become pretty good at running a 5K  in 24:00. Comfortable? Sure. But whatever happened to improvement? See where I am going with this?

Okay, now let’s complicate things a little bit:

As a triathlete, training and competing in what essentially amounts to three sports (swimming, cycling and running) adds some pretty substantial layers of complexity. Not only do I have to figure out how to train for three specific sports, but I have to figure out how to combine and integrate all three in a way that doesn’t lead to injury or burnout. I also have to fit all three in my already busy schedule. Then I have to consider how to time my training cycles to coincide with specific races. In addition, I have to incorporate changes in nutrition and hydration based on my workouts, my training mode, outside temperatures, etc. And if I get into my head that I am going to train for a marathon, half Ironman or full-on mac-daddy Ironman, all of these variables take on a level of complexity I can’t even begin to explain in one blog post. How much Gatorade should I drink per hour in 94 degree temperatures at 80% of my maximum heart rate? How many energy gels can I absorb per hour without getting sick to my stomach? What cadence should I adopt to sustain an average speed of 21mph for 112 miles? Only one way to find out: Test it.

And I haven’t even talked about gear. Will the improved aerodynamics gained from dropping my aerobars down 2 millimeters shave 20 seconds off my 40K time? Maybe… but as a result, will my upper body’s new angle offset my hip angle enough to reduce my power output or stress my hip flexors enough that I will start cramping up 5 miles into the run? How will I find out? There’s only one way: Getting out there and testing that theory. It’s clipboard and stopwatch time for the next six weeks.

Should I go with a disc wheel or a deep dish rim for my next race? How will I know which works better for me on a moderately hilly course in 15mph crosswinds? Only one way: I have to go test each wheel configuration on a variety of courses in completely different wind conditions. Then I’ll know what works best in specific course conditions.

Rear-mounted bottle-cages or frame-mounted? Aero helmet or regular helmet? Motion control shoes or racing flats? Test test test test test. You get the picture.

Call it an occupational benefit or a pre-existing condition, but being a triathlete kind of trains you to be in a perpetual Beta mindset. And it isn’t a stretch to jump from the world of competitive endurance sports to the world of business performance. Different application, but same principles and same basic methodology: Ask, test, observe, validate, learn, repeat.

But before you do all this – the testing, the experimentation, the analysis and learning and adaptation – you have to make a choice. You have to pick a camp. You have to decide whether you are satisfied with your business performance as it is today (”good enough” is good enough for you and your customers), or hungry for improvement.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It doesn’t matter what camp you decide to align yourself with: The one happy with the way things are or the one looking to kick ass a little more each day. What matters is that your decision work for you. But let’s be clear about the impact that your choice will have on your business: Sticking with a “let’s not change anything” mindset will not earn you more customers, increase customer loyalty or generate more sales. Where you are today is exactly where you will be tomorrow. If you’re lucky. Eventually, perhaps not next week or next month or next year, but eventually, this mindset will seal your doom. A Beta mindset, however, will help you uncover ways to innovate, earn more customers, cut costs, increase customer and employee loyalty, improve product design and performance… You name it: Whatever the opportunity to improve, do do things better and smarter, may be, you will systematically uncover it in the same way that Apple, Nike, BMW, Cervelo, HBO, Michael Phelps, IDEO, Lance Armstrong, Comcast and Zappos have.

If you want your company to be best in class, to own a market or an industry, to be the trendsetter, the example to follow, the leader in a category, you must adopt a perpetual Beta mindset. You have to constantly stress your systems and processes. You have to turn every action into a test an look at every activity as an opportunity to experiment.You have to measure, analyze, learn, adapt and repeat the cycle over and over and over again.

Question everything.

Work harder than the next guy to build the best XYZ the world has ever seen, and then find ways to make it even better.

Perfection is a process, not a milestone.

Embrace a state of perpetual Beta.

Is your Social Media Director qualified?

Social Media Directors should know how to do their jobs without having to ask for help every five minutes:

So I look down and the (twitter) DM reads: “Hey, can you help me out? Not sure how to do this. How do I use Twitter to gain traction for my company? Thanks!” I stare at it for a while and decide to blow it off for now, not because I have better things to do (which I do) and not because I don’t really have time to build a Twitter business plan for this person right this second (which I don’t), but because that DM comes from a newly minted Social Media Director at a fairly visible company who basically just asked me to help them hold on to a job they obviously didn’t deserve to be hired for.

I slide my Blackberry Storm into my back pocket and find myself flashbacking to 11th grade: It’s final exams time and I am in hour two of IB Biology. The essay section. One of the kids in my class is behind me, gently kicking my chair, whispering, begging me to move my scrap/notes where they can read them.

And I am almost tempted to do it.

That same conversation starts taking place in my head. I’m in a position to help someone in need.  But wait… cheating is cheating. Don’t do it. But still, I feel that I should help. Arrrgh…

I reach for the blackberry, launch Twitterberry (which is not my favorite app, by the way), and respond: “Wait… You got the job, right? Don’t you know how to do this? Isn’t that why you were hired?”

For hours, no response. And then it comes. “Yeah, but I’m in a little over my head. I’ve never worked with Social Media in a business context before. “

Again. This from a Director-level individual now working for a pretty well known company.

Not cool.

I suffer through similar exchanges weekly now, and I am not happy about it. What does this trend say about what types of people are going after Social Media management jobs – and landing them with alarming frequency these days? At the very least, I am worried about how this is going to end up hurting Social Media’s legitimacy in the business world. (Watch the video for my reasoning on this specific point.)

If the video doesn’t launch, you can go watch it here. Thanks, Viddler).

With this disturbing development weighing on me more and more these past few months, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what is going on in the Social Media “management” world, and I’ve basically come down to two conclusions: The first (which we’ll get back to in a few minutes) is that the qualifications of Social Media Directors may not be entirely clear to the folks interviewing and hiring applicants for those positions. The second is that as a result of this, confusion, we are now looking at three distinct types of Social Media Directors/Managers scampering about in the corporate world, some good, some okay, and some really bad.

The first type is the best type: These folks are super smart, talented, experienced in a broad range of disciplines, have an established footprint in the Social Media space (through blogs, Twitter, Ning, various communities), are recognized as thought leaders (or as emerging thought leaders), and are unquestionably passionate about what they do. Folks like Chris Brogan, Frank Eliason, Amber Naslund, Mack Collier, Beth Harte, Valeria Maltoni, etc. These are folks who are truly writing the book on how to build social media practices and smoothly integrate them in the organizations they work with.

The second type isn’t quite as savvy, but it isn’t lacking in talent, smarts and enthusiasm. These are people who basically don’t know how to be Social Media directors yet, but are learning fast. And most importantly, they are completely open about the fact that they are still in that learning stage, which means that their employers are okay with it. In spite of the fact that they are still very junior, the companies they work for saw in them a lot of potential and decided to hire them toward that end. (I dig people like this a lot.)

The third type is what I would call the bad type. Not bad as in cool, but rather… bad as in unethical, inept and unprofessional. These are the con artists. The shams. The hacks. The folks whose egos and selfishness led them to a moment in their lives when they unapologetically took a job they knew they weren’t qualified for. And now here they are: Social Media Director for Company ABC, soon to move over to Company XYZ, and so on. One position validating the next, one impressive brand on their resume justifying consideration by the next, and so it goes: A perpetual daisy chain of high profile Social Media management job built on unadulterated douchebaggery and thinly-disguised mediocrity.

(Ironically, this third group tends to be the same one that perpetuates the notion that Social Media ROI either doesn’t exist or is “unwise” to try and measure. Yeah. Convenient, isn’t it?)

Before we go on, here are some red flags to help you identify deadbeat Social Media Directors:

Every time you see a major global consumer brand engaging with less than 5% of its active (vocal) customers on a popular Social Media platform like Twitter after 8-10 months of activity, you can bet that their Social Media Director belongs to that third category.

If every time you walk into your monthly status meeting with your new Social Media Director and ask them for the latest, they either talk to you about google analytics, confuse you with endless spreadsheets or launch into a “Social Media takes time” monologue, chances are that they belong to that third category.

If you ask your Social Media Director why their efforts aren’t scaling very fast or producing the numbers you expected and they give you a story about engagement not being a numbers game, chances are that they belong in that third category.*

If when you ask them for real business metrics, impact analysis and (god forbid) ROI and they either give you a blank stare or explain that these things don’t apply to Social Media, they probably belong to that third category.

And when you ask them how they plan to integrate Social Media into customer service, Human Resources, Public Relations, Marketing, Business Development or any other silo in your organization and they schedule a later meeting to address that instead of answering on the spot, guess what category they probably belong to.

The thing about that third category is that they’ll never admit that they don’t know something. Because they get by every day by producing massive amounts of bulls**t, they will automatically default to making something up on the spot or deflecting questions with well crafted excuses. That’s their most damning trait, and what gives them away every time: They always know, and they’re never wrong (except… they don’t, and they are, and now you’re wise to it).

* Simple test to prove or disprove a “depth before breadth” response:

First – On Twitter, look  at the number of brand mentions vs. the number of your brand’s account mentions. Big difference? Ask why. Then ask your Social Media Director what they are doing to raise awareness for your presence in the space. Breadth matters, no matter what your overpaid hack of a Social Media honcho tells you.

Second – Look at the number of comments directly aimed at your account. 20 per day? 50 per day? Now look at how many of these requests for attention were acknowledged with some sort of reply. 100%? 80%? Less than 25%? If your Social Media Director claims that they are focusing on depth of engagement instead of breadth, yet they only respond to less than half of the handshakes thrown at them daily, maybe it’s time you found out what he/she actually does with his/her time.

What should you be looking for in an applicant interested in becoming your next Social Media Director ?

I could go on with my indictment of poser Social Media Directors all day long, but I would rather put this post to a more productive use: Since so many of these hacks are getting through the recruiting filter, why don’t we focus on helping interviewers distinguish good applicants from bad ones, starting with some traits and skills they want and need in a Social Media Director. Think of this as a checklist for would-be Social Media Directors, and please feel free to add your own suggestions by leaving a comment.

• Applicant has developed and managed marketing programs before. Not just campaigns but programs.
• Applicant has had a continuous professional presence in the Social Media space (via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Ning or other platforms) for at least one year.
• Applicant has managed a business blog and/or business community for a minimum of one year.
• Applicant has built or managed a community for longer than one year.
• Applicant has at least two years of experience managing projects and working across organizational silos.
• Applicant has managed a brand or product line for more than one year.
• Applicant has demonstrated a strong ability to forge lasting relationships across a variety of media platforms over the course of his/her career.
• Applicant understand the difference between vertical and lateral action when it comes to customer/community engagement – and has working knowledge of how to leverage both.
• Applicant demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the Social Media space, including usage and demographic statistics for the most popular/relevant platforms as well as a few niche platforms of his/her choice.
• Applicant has managed national market research projects.
• Applicant demonstrates a throrough understanding of the nuances between Social Media platforms and the communities they serve. (Example: MySpace vs. Facebook or YouTube vs. Seesmic)
• Applicant understands the breadth of tools and methods at his/her disposal to set goals and measure success in the Social Media space. (Applicant’s toolkit is not limited to Google analytics.)
• Applicant can cite examples of companies with successful social media programs and companies with ineffective social media programs. He/she can also argue comfortably why each was either successful or unsuccessful.
• Applicant has been active on Twitter for more than 8 months.
• Applicant knows who Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang and Peter Kim are.
• Applicant is comfortable enough with business measurement methods to know the difference between financial impact (ROI) and non-financial impact. He/she also knows why the difference between the two is relevant.
• Applicant demonstrates the ability to build and manage a Social Media practice that works seamlessly with PR, product marketing, event management and customer support teams within the organization.
• Applicant has managed a work team for more than one year. He/she was responsible for the training and development of that team.
• Applicant has spent at least one year in a project management role outside of an ad agency, PR or other Marketing firm.
• Applicant can tell a personal story involving either Digg, Seesmic or both.
• Applicant has been responsible for managing a budget/P&L.
• Applicant demonstrates a high level of proficiency working with popular Social Media platforms and apps such as FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Ning, Seesmic, YouTube, FriendFeed, WordPress and Tumblr.
• Applicant is capable of mapping out a basic Social Media monitoring plan on a cocktail napkin.
• Applicant is more excited about engagement, building an internal practice and finding out about your business’ pain points than he/she is about firebombing you with the full scope of their Social Media skills’ awesomeness.
• Applicant already has the framework of a Social Media plan for your company before he/she even walks through the front door, and thankfully, it doesn’t involve setting up a fan page on FaceBook.
• Applicant actually knows how to use Twitter to help your company build brand equityonline and offline without having to DM people for help.

Your turn. What do you think is missing from this checklist?

And how do we stop this kind of nonsense?

Brandgroovin’

Photo by Matt A.

If brands start with people, great brands start with great people. Not great in the sense that they are wealthy or successful or influential (yet), but great in the sense that ego, self-righteousness and self-serving agendas aren’t part of the equation.

Instead, these people are devoted to a cause. Infected with an idea. Motivated by success measured in other people’s smiles and excitement and ownership of the things they do for them.

Need help getting into that kind of groove? Check out John Moore’s awesome post on Dan Sullivan’s Laws Of Lifetime Growth here. Not super recent, but timely.

I’m serious. Go check it out now. (No, not later, right now.) It’s that good. (Well… it’s really the ten laws that are good, but… same difference.)

What… you’re still here? Tsssk.

Technorati tags: service marketing, John Moore, Dan Sullivan, marketing.

Aventures Modernes: My trip to Boston

Thanks to the awesome folks at Radian6 for inviting me to tag along Wednesday for their “Rock Stars of Social CRM” event held in Boston, Mass – which coincided perfectly with the #e2conf. Watching how Radian6 now integrates seamlessly with SalesForce.com, effectively merging Social Media monitoring and CRM, was kind of a strategic “wow” moment for a Marketing and Social Media geek like me. (Actually, I think my exact words were “Holy $#%&!!!! You can do that?!?!?”)

Having been on the client side of the Marketing and Business Development world for years, this stuff to me is the Holy Grail of apps.

Literally, people: Mind. Blowing. (Not only the fact that you can plug one of the best CRM platforms on the market and Radian6 into each other now, but also how smoothly and seamlessly it all works for the user/manager. Chris Newton is a genius, pure and simple. I’ve been saying it for months now: 1. If you aren’t already using R6 and 2. if you aren’t driving this thing like Speed Racer behind the wheel of a Mach 5, you are seriously missing the boat when it comes to properly managing your Social Media program(s).  - By the way, I am not being paid to say this. I am not affiliated with Radian6 in any way. Just stating the obvious about the tool’s impressive, ever evolving capabilities and the super smooth U.I., for starters.)

Okay, so anyway, there’s a lot I didn’t film while in Boston (as much as I love to play with cameras, there’s something a little unsettling about shoving a camera in people’s faces every time you have a conversation with them), but what I did film ended up here. So no, you won’t get to see my very first handshake with Chris Brogan, my first hug with Amber Naslund and Anne Handley, my first laugh with David Armano or any of the really fascinating conversations I had with two dozen super interesting tweeps who also happened to be wicked smart. (Yes, I was in Boston. I mentioned that, right?) But you will see me aimlessly walking through airports, talking to my toothpaste, laughing at snoring travelers, getting lost in parking garages and even goofing off with some of my favorite bloggers on the planet. That should be worth something, right? Today’s is not exactly a business video, but hey, behind the scenes stuff can be pretty cool too. (If it doesn’t work or launch properly, go watch it here.)

I need to start going to more of these conferences. The face-to-face interractions are just phenomenal. How often do you get a chance to have breakfast with Comcast’s Frank Eliason, lunch with Chris Newton and Chris Ramsey, coffee with David Armano and drinks with so many others whose ideas, insights, questions and experiences send your brain into a hundred new directions? Seriously priceless.

Back in Greenville.

I just flew in. Downloading video from my shenanigans in Boston. Posts on the way.

Good grief… I just wrote a blog post like a Tweet. I’ve hit a new low.

I am in Boston and I don’t have time to blog today

… BUT I am shooting video and taking notes, so I have some great stuff brewing for you when I get back to the brandcave.

Meanwhile, if you’re in Boston, Mass. today and want to come hang out, this is where I will be later today:

Go here for details. (Be sure to register RIGHT NOW or you won’t get in. The event is capped and you have to be on the guest list to get past the velvet rope.)

Back Laterz.

Engagement Paradigm: Just relax, be yourself, and have fun.

With all this talk of lateral vs. vertical action, depth vs. breadth of engagement, community managers, what Twitter “followers” are and aren’t, the conversation can quickly get a little overwhelming, especially if you are new to the Social Media  management world. So while everything we have been discussing here lately is pretty important, take a big step back and relax. Put it all aside. Forget all about measurement, business objectives, strategy and tactics for a little bit…

… and just get out there. Start listening. Start responding. Start participating in discussions.

Find your community and join it. Start getting to know everyone. Shake some hands, pat some back, give out a few high fives, enjoy a hug or two, even. Introduce yourself. Enjoy the company and the interaction.Start showing up regularly. Weekly. Daily. Hourly. Whatever works.

Just relax and get out there.

Don’t over-complicate customer engagement (in the Social Media space or otherwise). This is still, in its most basic and powerful form simply about people connecting with people. Bonding in some way. Building relationships.

I could tell you that a big element of this is to put a human face to a logo, to “humanize” a brand or company, but even that would be too strategic. Too “objective” minded. I don’t want to go there today. I just want you to relax and mingle. Put your fears and reservations aside and just step out into the world.

Engagement doesn’t have to be a perfectly designed and executed PR program where every bit of interaction is carefully crafted and weighed against all possible outcomes. Let it be a living, breathing, imperfect thing: Wing it a little. Let your edges be a little rough. Respect your community enough to drop the corporate mask and be real with them. Be authentic, warts and all – though it’s okay if you pace yourself a little there. Embrace criticism as much as you embrace praise. Learn from your customers, fans and detractors. Empathize. Learn not to be defensive when they don’t see things your way. Even allow yourself to screw up sometimes and make it up to those you offended.

Just relax and get out there.

People don’t bite. It’ll be okay. Nothing really bad will happen. And what you’ll find is that if you’re real, if you truly open up and embrace engagement for the sake of engagement, people will respect you for it. They will find your courage and candor refreshing.

And they will learn to trust you, marketing ploys and all, which is more than I can say for the scores of other companies still holding on to illusions of vertical-minded message-driven control who still resist real engagement in the Social space.

So while all of the business strategy stuff is great and invaluable to your company, find a way to detach yourself from the complexity of it all long enough to remember that a handshake and a smile will get you a lot further along than too much focus on “earnings per share,” “impressions” or demographic targeting.

Engagement is about people. Don’t forget that you’re people too.

Note: I’m flying up to Boston for a few days, so I may be slow to approve comments. If your comment takes longer than usual to appear, don’t worry. I’ll get to it as soon as I have a few minutes of internet access. I should have some video of my trip and some of the folks I will be hanging out with later this week, so hang tight. (Expect some Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund and Dave Alston sightings – at the very least.)

Oh, and your bonus content today is a little unexpected visit from Chico, the BrandBuilder blog’s mascot (yes, he’s real). Check it out:

Engagement Paradigm: Focus on Lateral Action

So we’ve been chatting about engagement these last few days, and particularly vertical action (essentially brands addressing their communities from the top-down, and creating mechanisms through which their communities can communicate vertically with them using the same channels). When you look at corporate blogs, Twitter accounts and most branded community sites, this is mostly what you see: Vertical engagement between companies and their customers/fans/friends/users.

Likewise, the breadth and depth conversation we had last week also relates to vertical action: Brand managers, Community managers and/or Social Media managers finding ways to engage customers from a brand-to-community perspective. Even when dialog exists, even when the communication channels are truly 2-way, most of what happens is vertical: Brand-to-customer and customer-to-brand. And that’s nice, but it is only half the story: In order to understand the power of the social web, the power of communities and the power of truly engaged fans, you also have to tip your hat to lateral action.

What is lateral action? Simple: Lateral action is simply peer-to-peer engagement that happens within or across communities. A brand or community manager may have planted a seed along the way (a tweet, a blog post, a comment, a promotion, etc.), but once it has hit the community, the message/info/conversation is spread from customer to customer without having to be prompted by any official brand representative.

Another example of lateral action is WOM (word-of-mouth): Peer-to-peer recommendations are classic examples of lateral action. Rumors are examples of lateral action. Community tweetup invitations are examples of lateral action. RT’s on Twitter tend to be examples of lateral action.

Lateral action is what happens when the brand, the company, the official presence of a business gives its community the opportunity to BE a community by taking a step back and letting people share what is important to them with peers.

And lateral action is often the answer to the question raised last week about breadth and depth of engagement: Once a brand has managed to scale its community to several thousand or tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands, even), how can a team of community managers possibly engage so many people properly? It’s impossible, right? (This being the logic behind some Social Media directors’ decision to focus on depth at the cost of breadth.) Truth: Vertical action alone cannot serve the purposes of engagement (breadth mostly, but depth also) in the Social Media space… or even when it comes to fostering vibrant brand-centric communities in the “real” world. Lateral Action is the yin to Vertical Action’s yang. Lateral Action is how community engagement actually scales and transcends any breadth-related engagement limitations.

And though Lateral Action is nothing new, it is not a typical strategic mode of thinking for most Marketing professionals who have spent most of their careers working in traditional media (yes, even in the world of the web). This is why MANY Marketing folks still talk about the challenge of creating “content” even in the Social Media space. This is why advertising, messaging and marketing products are still among the first things marketers try to “plug in” when it comes to leveraging Social Media “channels.” This is all top-down thinking. Vertical Action thinking. And though it has its place here, it cannot succeed in the Social Media space without an equal (and in many cases greater) measure of Lateral Action.

Brand managers, Social Media managers, Community managers – whatever their designation may be – need to understand that their job isn’t just to produce content and constantly stimulate vertical engagement. There is only so much they can accomplish this way. What they must also do is empower their communities to manage themselves to a great extent and generate conversations and motion from within. Community members have to reach out to each other. They have to reach over to other communities. They have to share and discuss and debate and organize themselves. Brand Managers in the Social Media space have to learn how to be good hosts and patrons and supporters without being mother hens 24/7. This lateral action has to be fostered, nurtured, and built into their online and offline communities.

This is a crucial point for all brand managers to understand if they want to be successful in the age of Social Significance and Community Marketing. I hope the video and this post help you understand the difference between vertical and lateral action… and their importance our ongoing discussion of community “engagement.”

Tomorrow, we will bring our engagement discussion to a close with some far less strategic yet much more valuable advice than what we’ve touched on so far.

Have a great day!

Bonus Footage: Oui, en Francais! (For my Francophone readers, a question: Since I can, should I also start shooting videos in French?) And since a few of you have asked me if I would say my name in its original French so you can hear what it sounds like – Two birds, one stone. You ask, I deliver. (And yes, I take requests.) Check it out:

Engagement Paradigm: The Breadth vs. Depth question

Yesterday, we redefined the term “follower” on Twitter and in doing so, discovered that followers are in fact not hapless little ducklings in search of a mama duck but actually community managers in their own right with a tremendous amount of power when it comes to helping brands gain traction in the social web (and particularly in communities like Twitter).

Now that we’ve covered that subtle yet fundamental topic, let’s look a little more closely at the two main strategies behind engagement: Breadth and Depth.

Breadth and depth are essentially opposite sides of any reach strategy. One focuses on quantity while the other focuses on quality.

Breadth

When it comes to engagement in the social media space (and particularly on Twitter), a focus on breadth looks like a numbers’ game: If having 5 followers is good thing, then having 10 followers is better. If having 5,000 followers is a good thing, then having 10,000 is better. And so on. (Now remember that we redefined the term “follower” yesterday and that we aren’t talking about acumulating points here.)

So in essence, a breadth strategy would look like this: 100,000 people on Twitter mention Brand X on a regular basis. The Social Media director for Brand X sees in these 100,000 people a vibrant yet untapped community. In his mind, reaching out to every single one and getting them to “follow” Brand X on Twitter would be a great thing. By doing so, that community of 100,000 fans would have access to the Brand X feed, have the opportunity to engage with it, spread their love, RT content, ask questions, etc. And that rocks.

But the flip side of that is Brand X only has a team of 3 people managing their online communities, and that isn’t enough to truly engage with 100,000 people. So what ends up happening is: While Brand X has a community of 100,000 “followers” on Twitter, its staff just can’t create deep connections with more than a few dozen of them. So by spreading itself too thin, Brand X might come across as having very superficial “engagement” on Twitter: Lots of followers, but not a lot of meaningful interaction. That doesn’t rock, and it evidently scares a number of companies looking to truly connect with their fans in Social Media.

Depth

The flip side of breadth is depth. On Twitter, a focus on depth looks like a private party: Small numbers, a tiny community, but lots of interraction between a brand and its relatively small numer of followers. The idea here being that engagement is about building relationships and true,lasting emotional connections. Numbers are the enemy here since you just can’t be “friends” with more than a few hundred people anyway.

So in essence, a depth strategy would look like this: Out of 100,000 fans of Brand X on Twitter, Brand X chooses to only truly engage with a few hundred (or a few thousand). That’s a manageable number, and any more than that would get in the way of “true” engagement.So what rocks here is that those folks with whom Brand X truly focuses on are going to feel ultra special about their relationship with Brand X, and that’s pretty solid.

But what happens to the other 99,000 or so fans Brand X chooses not to engage with? Well… hopefully, they can talk about Brand X amongst themselves and be perfectly happy. Better yet, maybe the chosen few will go out and evangelize Brand X to the other 99,000 as… good will agents of Brand X. They have big networks anyway, so why not create a tiered system of influence within Twitter? But see… that doesn’t really work. The reality of having too narrow a depth strategy is that the other 99,000 fans feel disenfranchised by Brand X. They feel ignored. Worse yet, they opt out of following Brand X and engaging with it on twitter because they find no value in what Brand X is doing on Twitter since they don’t seem to be on the Brand X radar anyway.

The result of either too rigid a depth or breadth strategy is a stalled overall engagement strategy. On the one hand, you get numbers without purpose or value. On the other hand, you get an exclusive clique effect that doesn’t scale enough to matter. Neither is a good outcome.

Red Flag Diagnosis:

Too much breadth = 500,000 followers out of 500,000 fans but interactions with only 20 of them per day and zero impact on anything relevant relating to your business.

Too much depth = Only 5,000 followers out of 500,000 fans. Outside of your core fans, either nobody knows you’re here or  nobody cares.

(And in some awful cases, you get poor execution in both, which looks like only 5,000 followers out of 500,000 fans, and interactions with only 20 per day. Ergo: Nobody cares, and you blow off the few who do. Double-whammy.)

The Engagement Strategy Trap: Depth and Breadth are not mutually exclusive

Strangely, I still see a good number of companies choosing to focus on either breadth or depth when they should instead combine both. And frankly… I wonder why any marketing professional would ever make that mistake when it’s so clear that in order to really have an impact, you always have to combine the two (not just in social media but in most other areas as well). Unless your brand is about exclusivity (Ferrari, Cartier, Ferre) “engagement” can’t stop at your core customers. Not in Social Media, and certainly not on Twitter.

Without some measure of breadth, depth becomes an exercise in navel-gazing. It becomes an echo-chamber. It goes nowhere.You end up chatting with your clique every day and congratulating each other on a job well done. Great. Awesome. Except… not.

Without some measure of depth, breadth becomes an exercise in scale without impact: You may have an enormous following, but what is it doing for you? Nothing? Ooops. It’s back to the drawing board for you.

So… if you are a major consumer brand with an engagement strategy in the Social Media space and your hundreds of thousands of followers don’t move the ball for you in some way (increased WOM, increased traffic to your website(s), increased conversations or social mentions, increased traffic to your stores, increases in transactions – remember FRY?) then you’re wasting your time “collecting” followers instead of truly building a community.

Likewise, if you are a major consumer brand with an engagement strategy in the Social Media space and in the last 12 months of activity in the space, you’ve only managed to attract 5,000 “followers” out of your 500,000 active fans and customers on Twitter, somebody’s playing too much golf or computer solitaire or something. Your “engagement” program is barely on autopilot.

If your goal is “engagement” and you ignore the majority of your fans , you’re completely missing the boat. First: Whatever you’re doing, it isn’t creating value or relevance, and you are failing in that regard. Second, if you aren’t reaching out to your fans, acknowledging them and making new connections every day, you just don’t understand what engagement is about.

Repeat after me: Engagement without reach doesn’t work.

So the key to successful engagement in Social Media, especially on Twitter is to combine breadth and depth in a way that makes sense, and in a manner consistent with the overall goal of the strategy. Reaching out to 100,000 fans doesn’t mean all 100,000 want to chat with the Brand X team every single day. Some will engage daily. Others will engage weekly. Others monthly. Many more won’t engage at all. They’ll just listen and share and be happy to be part of the community without being particularly active. Some will crave more attention than others. It’s okay. Let your fans, your “followers,” you community tell you how much engagement they need. Let them tell you what kind of engagement they want from you. Every single person is different. There is no cookie-cutter model for engagement that works for every single person who’s a fan of your brand. Don’t sweat the depth vs. breadth. Work on both. Measure both. But most importantly, LISTEN to your fans. Invite them to join you on Twitter. Give them a reason to “follow” you so that you can have that kind of dialogue and feedback. Follow them back. If many never drop by to say hi, that’s okay. Let them dictate the pace and mode of the engagement.

And believe me, they’ll tell you if you’re dropping the ball or doing a great job.

Remember that engagement isn’t about YOU. Engagement is about the value you bring to your community, and the community, not you, decides what is valuable to them. Your community on Twitter is not what you want it to be, it is what IT wants to be. (If it is 500,000 strong, embrace all 500,000 even if it seems inconvenient at first.)

So stop worrying about too much or too little, stop worrying about depth vs. breadth, and just reach out. Set up shop on Twitter, listen to what is being said, introduce yourself to folks who seem to care about you (Brand X), and start there. When people say hi, say hi back. When people ask a question, answer it. When people pay you a compliment, say “thank you.” When they complain about something, try to solve their problem. When you have something cool or valuable to share, share it. When someone wants to talk to you about their cat, count that as a blessing and understand that in that interraction lives the very essence of the bond between you, the brand you are paid to represent, and the person sharing something personal with you. This is invaluable. The conversations and relationships you foster on Twitter don’t just stop with the medium. They cross the digital/real world barrier. What happens on Twitter translates into people’s perception of you in the real world.

So like the old commercial says, get out there and touch someone. Be a courteous, engaging Twitter host, and make your time in social media count for something. You’ll be glad for it.

*      *      *

Bonus Section: Outtakes from this morning’s failed video shoot.

If you’ll notice, the end of today’s video about engagement is cut off and some of the post’s points are never actually made. Why? because of lawn mowers cranking up in the background AGAIN.  The video shoot was aborted and one of the draft/backup vids was used in the post.  Pretty annoying, but kind of funny… Kind of like all of the yard debris (pollen, grass, etc.) on my black shirt. Oh, and I hope you’ll enjoy the little background music. It was so awfully generic that I just had to add it in there for good measure. Check it out:

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.;)

Engagement Paradigm: Defining the value of “followers” on Twitter

I was chatting with PepsiCo.’s Bonin (@boughb) and Josh (@jkarpf) about engagement last week when it occurred to me that the term “follower” may have sent a lot of people (and a few companies) astray when it comes to looking at depth vs. breadth of engagement. (I love these kinds of conversations. I always walk away with tons of ideas and insights. Great stuff.)

We will actually cover depth and breadth of engagement tomorrow, so hang tight, but first things first. Today, let’s focus on redefining what a “follower” actually is (and watch the video for a deeper perspective into today’s topic):

A follower is NOT a little duckling who actually follows you around like you’re his mama duck. A follower is not an impressionable outcast looking for a cult leader on Twitter. A follower is not a faceless, mindless joiner who just happened to accidentally click “follow” when your last comment popped upon their screen. In other words, followers are not zero-value dry little seashells you can collect to show how cool you have. Followers are not points and this isn’t a game.

Followers are people (for the most part), and these people tend to follow you for a reason. If you aren’t trying to game the system to build followers for the sake of having as many of them as possible, chances are that you are creating genuine value through your activities on Twitter. Earning followers is a measure of the success of that engagement, particularly as it pertains to the value that you offer to these specific people. If you are relevant (important, even) to their world, to their experience on Twitter, they will opt-in to your “feed,” to your content by following you. If they don’t find you relevant or important, they won’t follow you. It’s that simple.

What people (and especially companies) need to understand immediately if they don’t already is that everyone on Twitter is a community manager: People on Twitter aren’t just individuals, they are at the center of a specific community that they shape every day by opting to follow or unfollow accounts that matter or don’t matter to them.

When someone opts-in to your content, to your specific voice, feed and opinions, they are bringing you into their community. They are endorsing you. They are vouching for you. And they are sharing you with everyone else in that community. Whether that community is 5-strong or 500,000 strong is inconsequential to today’s discussion. (We’ll get into it more tomorrow.) What matters to our discussion today is this: Followers are not “followers.” Followers, as  community managers, are potentially promoters, advocates, ambassadors and advisers. Followers are tremendously valuable to companies looking to foster real engagement on Twitter or in Social Media as a whole. Followers are the lifeblood of engagement in Social Media because they ARE your community. Not just that, they are the individual managers of hundreds, thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of interconnected communities that transcend the digital/real world barrier: Relevance, importance and recommendations online do impact relevance, importance recommendations and ultimately transactions offline. (If you’re a business, that last one is pretty important, whether or not you are comfortable admitting.)

So when it comes to followers, and particularly numbers associated with followers, don’t get sucked into depth vs. breadth arguments: There is no winner in the ‘less is more‘ vs. ‘more is more’ debate. It isn’t about less or more or too many or too few. The discussion you really want to have centers around whom, why, how and what: Who are our followers? Who are they really? Why do we matter to them? Why do they want to engage with us here? How do we fit into their world? How can we fit into their world even better. What are their expectations? What can we do to improve their lives or experience in some way? What can we do to engage an connect with them better?

If you can start looking at your community of followers as more than a number, as more than a gaggle of “consumers” waiting for your next campaign pitch or discount code, you will be on the path to true engagement in the Social Media space, particularly on Twitter.

If you start treating your followers like the community managers they truly are, your understanding of “engagement” in social media will already be years ahead of most of your competitors still scratching their heads about the “value” of being on Twitter. If you don’t yet glimpse how that will impact your overall success (and traction) in Socal Media and in reaching your “engagement” objectives, you’re still way behind the 8-ball. No worries though: Tomorrow we chat about engagement in terms of breadth (volume) vs. depth (connection), which will bring some clarity to this whole thing if it’s still a bit fuzzy.

Have a great day, everyone.

Impossible? Think again.

“The person who says it can’t be done is always interrupted by the one who just did it.”

- From the movie “Daylight,” with Sly “Rocky/Rambo” Stallone

To every Social Media pundit or measurement “guru” out there who claims that calculating the ROI of Social Media is either impossible, too imprecise or even irrelevant, I have an ice-cold bottle of reality waiting for you: You’re wrong and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Just because you don’t know how doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Fact: R.O.I. calculation isn’t rocket science. I can teach a 10-year-old the basics of R.O.I. calculation in 30 minutes.

Fact: R.O.I. calculation is media-agnostic. (It isn’t an old media or new media discussion. Not even close. If you are talking about impression, CPMs, clickthroughs or other media metrics as R.O.I. values, check your map: You are hundreds of miles off course.)

Fact: R.O.I. matters to people who run businesses because it either validates or invalidates an investment (Social Media or otherwise). So you can’t skirt it, blow it off or make it up.

Fact: R.O.I. monitoring allows companies to fine-tune their marketing and business-development efforts on the fly and improve outcomes over time. (If you don’t understand R.O.I., you can’t measure the effectiveness of your activities, and if you can’t measure effectiveness, you can’t truly impact performance. It’s kind of like driving blind.)

Fact: If you don’t understand R.O.I. from a business (P&L) perspective, you just don’t understand R.O.I. Sorry. That’s just reality. Deal with it. (And fix it. For your own sake.)

Fact: Claiming that Social Media R.O.I. is difficult or impossible to measure is as ill-informed as saying that changes in transaction trends are difficult or impossible to measure.

Fact: Every time I turn my head to see who just used the word “impossible,” all I see is the ego of someone who thinks they have nothing new (or old, in this case) to learn.

Fact: The more specialized a measurement “expert” is (especially when it comes to media measurement), the less likely it is that they will be able to help you put all of the pieces of the Social Media R.O.I. question together. So beware the gurus. Their focus is likely too narrow to be of any use to you when it comes to calculating R.O.I.

The truth is, R.O.I. measurement takes work but is relatively simple to do. You just can’t get caught up in mistaking media metrics and “impact” measurement (like increased traffic to your site, social mentions or positive WOM) with actual R.O.I. analysis. (Apples and oranges.)  Those of us with practical business management experience (in which R.O.I. analysis and real business performance come in daily doses) AND  in community or brand management have been doing this sort of thing for years. We know how to measure what matters, and it’s simple.

So if you’re a business executive who feels frustrated by the lack of R.O.I. understanding in the Social Media “expert” community (or the media measurement community), relax. Don’t buy into the “it can’t be done” cop-out. That tired old line is about to be swept out the door for good.

Hang tight. We get into the “How” in just a few more days.

From hot to boiling: The “one degree” rule.

At 99 degrees Centigrade, water is hot.

At 100 degrees Centigrade, water starts boiling and turns to steam.

Steam can power locomotives, factories and ships. Hot water can’t.

The difference between just being hot and being capable of moving a twenty ton hunk of metal is just 1%.

That’s it: 1%.

The difference between winning a race, coming up with a better design or a stronger concept is in that 1%.

Plan 1% better. Prepare 1% harder. Work 1% longer. Think 1% further. Proofread 1% slower. Research 1% deeper. Execute 1% better. 1% faster.

Forget about the ridiculous notion of “giving 110%.” Forget about giving it an extra 20%. Or even 10%. Those numbers mean nothing. Even if they did, they would be unrealistic.

Focus on the 1%.

Chances are that if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably already hitting that 99% pretty much every day. If not, you come pretty damn close. (It’s okay, you can admit it.) The point is that you’re already doing 99% of what you need to do to be kind of successful. What’s 1% more?

1%. That’s where the magic happens. It’s the tipping point of design and ideas and insight. The difference between pretty good and great. The sliver that stands between running a 6:00-mile and a 5:57-minute mile. It’s what separates the top percentile from… well, everything and everyone else.

I’ts just 1%, folks. That’s all it is. Why fall short?

Choose to be great today.

Thanks to my good friend Frank Roth who used this analogy not long ago to explain to me how he went from being a decent age-group triathlete to being a top finisher in almost every race he enters… in just one season.

Fearless

People are driven by emotions. By needs. By fear and courage. By love and hatred. By hope and despair. By a need to change things, or belong to something greater than themselves. At their core, drive and motivation come from the same inner place, whether you’re a G.I. storming a beach under a hail of bullets and mortar fire, an entrepreneur, a designer, an athlete, an artist, an emergency worker, or whatever it is you happen to be in your mind when you are considering certain types of purchases.

Many of things we do, we are driven to do because they define us as human beings. They help us articulate our identity: Soldier. Photographer. Designer. Triathlete. Chief Marketing Officer. Soccer mom. Surfer. Intellectual. Devout believer.

I’ve watched people drop $7,000 on a bicycle. $15,000 on a camera. $160,000 on a car. Their lives in exchange for one moment of glory or terror or pleasure.

At its core, the trigger that makes a soldier or fireman run toward danger isn’t so different from what makes us buy things that we are so passionate about that we can’t do without them, however unimportant… like a pink iPod, or a Birkin bag, or a vintage Jaguar. It isn’t so different from what leads some people to invest all of their life savings into an idea. It isn’t so different from what drives people to never compromise, to never cut corners, to never take the easy way out.

There’s this thing called courage, which is one of humanity’s greatest gifts. I’ve seen it in the military. I’ve seen it in sport. I’ve seen it during elections. I’ve seen it in art and design studios. And believe it or not, I’ve seen a whole lot more of it in the business world than you would think. That makes me feel good.

Courage didn’t die with “The Great Generation.” Courage is alive and well in this somewhat bloated, disjointed, self-centered and dysfunctional little society we live in. Courage is all over the front page of your newspaper. It’s in the gay marriage debate. In the Iraq war debate. In the war on global warming. In the fight against AIDS, disease and famine. It is alive and well in every word spoken against domestic violence, child abuse, prejudice, and corporate fraud. To a much lesser extent, at least seemingly, it is also alive and well in the worlds of marketing, product design, advertising and business in general.

Sure, there’s a whole lot of noise out there. A whole lot of boring, “also-in,” vanilla stuff. A whole lot of snake oil and BS. But the heroes, the innovators, the enlightened souls on a mission, the courageous renegades, they’re out there as well. I seem to keep meeting them. They are real, and they are everywhere. Seek them out. Make them part of your lives. Make their brands and products part of your purchasing habits. Support them. Protect them. Encourage them. Endorse them.

Make a choice to support something great, whether it’s a cause, a product, a design or even something as vague as an idea.

Align yourself with the fearless visionaries whose work will make your world better. Cleaner. More interesting. More beautiful. More enjoyable. Their circumstances aren’t the same as those of those thousands of men who charged German positions on June 6th, 1944, but in some way, even if it is small, they share a similar spirit. Honor it. Cherish it. Embrace it. Make it your own.

I swear to you that you won’t be sorry.

In honor of the sacrifice made by so many on June 6, 1944.

Army troops brought to the beach by a Coast Guard manned LCVP wade ashore on “Omaha” Beach during the “D-Day” landings, 6 June 1944.

Photograph from the U.S. Coast Guard Collection in the U.S. National Archives.

What Marketing Can Be

A little thought for today:

Marketing is usually there to help sell a product or brand, but when you actually have something real to say – something valuable, something authentic, something that matters – marketing simply turns into a means of celebrating your culture and sharing it with the world.

Peeling back the layers of your day – Infographics Heaven

This is what your day really looks like.

Brilliant, cool, and so well done. If the video doesn’t work, watch it here.

Who exactly is driving the Social Media bus in the Enterprise space?

I dig Jeremiah Owyang’s blog. The guy is wicked smart, usually spot-on with everything he says, and when it comes to digital media analysis, I can’t think of anyone who does a better job (Forrester Research really scored when they landed him).  But last week, one of his posts stopped me dead in my tracks – not because he got something wrong, but because he got something so painfully right: Large consulting firms (as in the “Big Four”) are joining the social media gold rush and already looking to plant their victory flags in the enterprise space. (My words, not Jeremiah’s.)

What that version of Social Media strategy, implementation, training, execution and measurement will look like is everyone’s guess. But before we get too far into this discussion, watch this little video to get into the spirit of today’s topic:

Here’s a link to Jeremiah’s post about Social Media and the enterprise space: Click here.

The part that really jumped out at me was this point:

Large consulting firms are preparing to offer million dollar packages to enterprises for change management and social integration systems.

Incidentally, when I first read that post, I started rapid-fire-DM’ing Jeremiah on Twitter about it, but after a string of about 30 140-character comments, he politely suggested that I stop blowing up his inbox and just write a blog post about it – so here we are, and as you can tell from my relaxed demeanor in the video, I have chilled a bit about the ramifications of this whole Social Media gold rush debacle.

Even so, for the purposes of this discussion, let’s take a few steps back and put the Social Media bandwagon in perspective for you:

Prologue – Social Media becomes the marketing world’s newest buzzword. Twitter starts to explode. Everyone with half a brain sees the writing on the wall: There is money to be made in Social Media. The gold rush begins.

Phase 1 – Independent business consultants (mostly marketing consultants) start rebranding themselves as “Social Media Consultants” or “Social Media experts.” In some extreme cases, even “Social Media gurus”. They spread like locusts… By November 2008, you can’t throw a cat without hitting at least two or three Social Media experts. The epidemic reaches catastrophic proportions.

Phase 2 – Marketing firms, ad agencies and a few PR outfits start to look into this whole Social Media “thing”. Billings are shrinking and clients are asking “hey, do you guys also do Social Media?” Many of these firms stretch the truth and say “yes”. Agencies and Marketing firms now start billing clients to launch blogs, Twitter pages and Facebook groups with absolutely no concept of what they’re doing. (Overheard in the men’s room: Where does the ad go?” and “How do you write a 140-character press release anyway?”) Web analytics people get brought in to measure clickthroughs, impressions and web traffic from social sites to prove effectiveness. This methodology fails to impress. Ineffective strategic planning, poor execution and a lack of measurement insight result in  Social Media getting a bad rep in the business world.

Phase 3 – Large Consulting firms jump on the Social Media bandwagon. Better late than never, right?  There’s money to be made after all, and since they’realready the experts in everything else, why not Social Media as well? Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy… is it.

And that’s just the rub: How many people in the world really know how to strategize, implement and execute a Social Media program for a company (large or small)? I can think of maybe 50-100 in the US, and that’s stretching it.*

Now tell me how many people in the US know how to actually measure the effectiveness of Social Media programs? (Not just impact on X, but actual R.O.I.?) You can probably count them on the fingers of one hand. Maybe two.**

*/**  It won’t stop thousands of people from claiming that they can do it, but we all know where that conversation is going. ‘Nuff said.

So back to my point: If we know pretty much who belongs to the small community of truly Social Media-savvy professionals we just mentioned, and only two or three actually work for the “big four,” then who is putting these million dollar social integration packages together?

Whom within the big four is building these programs?

Whom within the big four is capable of training clients and implementing these programs/packages? Of customizing them for each individual client? For each brand, market,company culture and distinct business objective?

Whom within the big four is capable of executing on any of this? (Listening outposts, Customer Support, customer engagement, online reputation management, blogging, HR, PR, promos, true social web integration, community management, etc.)

Whom among them actually knows how to set up real measurement methodologies that look beyond web analytics? (Back to the R.O.I. discussion again.)

Will it be some guy with a digital communications background who read a few white papers about Social Media and follows a cookie-cutter methodology that a few analysts and MBAs put together, or will it be a team of Social Media-savvy pros with extensive hands-on experience (and a relevant presence) in the Social Media space?

Right now, though the latter would be 1,000 times preferable to the former, it seems pretty unlikely. What seems most likely (unless you guys prove me otherwise) is that the large consulting firms Jeremiah mentions in his post are mostly winging it, just like the rest of the Social Media hacks looking to take advantage of the Social Media gold rush.

If you disagree, that’s perfectly okay. Actually, I hope that you can prove me wrong. This is one of those rare times when I truly hope that I’ve assumed the worst and completely missed the boat. So if you want to prove me wrong, please do – and here’s how: Give me names. Tell me who the big consulting firms have hired to put these packages together and help deploy them for their clients. It’s that simple.

Once we know who they are, my quick little assessment of their “worth” in this space will be simple: Are these people we know? People who actually live and breathe this stuff? People with an ounce of credibility in this space? People who have been doing this in some way shape or form for more than… six months? Not just analysts, mind you (I know some great ones who fit the bill) but practitioners. The folks who actually DO this stuff.

If so, great.

If not, the enterprise space is about to be taken for a very expensive ride… and I don’t think I am alone in thinking that the stakes (economic, professional and contextual) are too high for this sort of nonsense to go unanswered. So… in the event that I am right, that large consulting firms are about to launch blindly and clumsily into the world of Social Media consulting, how do we come to their rescue?

1. How do we make large consulting firms realize that they have a wealth of resources out here in the real world who cold help them actually bring their social integration packages to life?
2. How do we make them understand that it is in their best interest to reach out to many of you and seek your help, advice, insights?
3. How do we give them visibility to who you are and what you have to offer, and give you the kind of access ?
4. How do we bring together large consulting firms with a need for expertise in this field with those of you who have key pieces of the Social Media puzzle they so desperately need to be effective in this space?

Am I being naive? Is this type of logical partnership strategy too much to expect from organizations that aren’t in the habit of asking for help? I don’t think so: We aren’t talking about ERP and CMS here. This isn’t a vendor-driven discussion. This is not about technology or systems integration. This is about something far more organic than that. Change Management and Social Integration don’t quite plug into a company culture as well as conventional enterprise products plug into an IT infrastructure.

So how do we fix this? How do we bring everyone to the table to actually make this work? Do we create yet another conference? Do we set up closed-door meetings with these firms in which we discuss likely candidates with specific skillsets so they can create talent pools for various contracts? Do we create a forum using the various tools at our disposal to discuss issues or trouble-shoot with them? You guys tell me. What do you think?

The forum is all yours.

As a company, what are you really investing in?

Time for your weekly BrandBuilder reality check.

There are only two types of businesses: The ones you know are the best in their category, and… everyone else.

Advertising and marketing are nice, but too many “also in” businesses waste money on marketing and advertising when they should instead revamp one or two elements of their business that would help them actually gain market share. (The most pleasant and efficient customer service experience in your industry, a perfectly designed user interface, a 100% uptime guarantee, stunning design, impeccable ergonomics, remarkable flavor, etc.)

Advertising is basically a load of bulls**t unless you have something worth advertising to begin with. (Otherwise, what are you advertising: Hey, come buy from us! We’re the thirteenth best shoe store in the 29601!) You’re either the best at something, or you’re just another voice in the crowd getting fleeced by just another run-of-the-mill ad agency or “marketing firm.”

Before you start spending money on advertising, ask yourself what your super-special value to your users/customers/clients truly is. Maybe you have the best prices. Maybe you have the most comfortable meeting rooms. Maybe you have the most square footage of any gym in your area, or the freshest produce, or the most knowledgeable staff, or the fastest check-out. It doesn’t matter what that something is as long as it is something concrete (as opposed to another lame marketing spinfest). Is that one thing truly hitting the mark? Are you really delivering on it as well as you could? As well as you should?

Whatever your value differentiator is, whatever your brand’s value advantage is (or should be), this is what you need to invest in FIRST. Once you have that aspect of your business nailed down, THEN and only then should you even bother with advertising.

About a year ago, Seth Godin posted some great advice to college grads on his blog: Only borrow money to pay for things that increase in value. A pair of shoes or cool clothes never increase in value. An education or professional experience, however do. Great advice, especially in the crux of our current economic/credit crunch. The same applies to businesses, which is why Seth’s advice is so damn relevant to the discussion today.

Perhaps more relevant to today’s topic is a slightly tweaked version of Seth’s advice: “only invest in things that increase in value.”

Like shoes and clothes, advertising never increases in value. With advertising, you are at best buying a small percentage of the public’s attention across a very narrow sliver of space and time (and paying a premium price for it.) Before you know it, your advertising budget is gone, and so is that very expensive bubble of attention.

Investing in better products/services, better people and better processes, however, makes a whole lot more sense as these things never lose value. Great employees, great products, great customer experiences and fostering a unique relationship with your fan base are the types of things worth investing in. These are the true foundations of a great brand. These are the types of things that will help strengthen your brand equity.

Advertising rarely translates into brand equity unless these foundations exist to support it. Even so, the more solid the brand’s foundation, the less relevant advertising becomes.

Starbucks doesn’t advertise much and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Whole Foods ad anywhere, yet millions of people drop solid stacks of greenbacks there every year. I don’t shop at Target, wear Rudy Project sunglasses, drive a VW or crave a BMW because of advertising. Other than creating awareness for a product that hasn’t managed to capture anyone’s attention yet (red flag), advertising does little to impact most companies’ growth. Do they create spikes in interest, eyeballs and sales? Sure. When executed well. But growth? Over time? Nope. Growth is a completely different animal, and advertising alone, boys and girls, won’t get you there.

Building a strong reputation by developing great products, buzz-worthy experiences and generally delighting customers/users is a much stronger strategy than paying loads of cash for advertising.

Something to think about as you prioritize items on your budget for H2.

Have a great Wednesday, everyone.

It isn’t the media, it’s you.

image by ilisu

Something Seth wrote quite a while back that still resonates with me today:

“As soon as they start using the tactics of the other guys, playing the game they play, they become them. As soon as they decide that they can buy (not earn) attention, it all changes.”

With all this talk of new vs. old media, the R.O.I. of Social Media, advertising spend and SEO, chances are that you’ve forgotten what made your company or services or products so different. So unique. So good.

Chances are that your success has driven you away from those early days, when being different from everyone else, when being better was what it was all about.

Back when taking care of every new customer was like going out on a first date.

Chances are that you’re more focused on aligning your pricing to that of your competitors now than you ever were.

Chances are that you’ve started to copy their every move. You advertise where they advertise. You offer the same services they offer. If they get a Facebook page, so do you. If they start a Twitter account, so do you. If they launch a BOGO offer, you aren’t far behind. Every day that goes by, the more like them you become. The less different and remarkable you are.

Chances are that you are slowly becoming a clone of the very people you once thought sucked.

“As soon as they start using the tactics of the other guys, playing the game they play, they become them. As soon as they decide that they can buy (not earn) attention, it all changes.”

Stop.

Take a breather.

Go back to the start.

Are your products still the best? Are they still unique? Is your company still unique? Are you who you promised yourself you would be when you started? Are you building real relationships with your customers? Do you matter?

Are you still earning attention?

If the answer is yes, congrats. You’re one of the rare few. I hope you manage to keep it up for decades to come.

If not… well, maybe it’s time to let go of the superficial tactics and get back to basics. What do you say?

How to NOT calculate Social Media R.O.I.

At the Greenville Sprint Triathlon

So Andrew Mueller (@andrewmueller) pointed me to this Social Media R.O.I. calculator thing yesterday, and I have to admit that I was pretty psyched at first that someone had figured out how to create what I thought was… well, impossible to create in a table/equation type format.

That was until I started actually looking at it and realized that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Watch the video for the full explanation (and the kind version of this post):

Here is the link to the calculator: http://www.dragonsearchmarketing.com/social-media-roi-calculator.htm

First of all, let me let you in on some truth about the “how” of R.O.I. measurement that will probably disappoint you: As far as I can tell, there really is no way to calculate Social Media R.O.I. through an equation or a cost-accounting type table. It just doesn’t work that way. I know it isn’t what you want to hear, but I am not one to blow smoke or sell you sunshine and daisies on a cloudy day.

In order to do it right, you have to take timelines into considerations: When a campaign or program started and ended in relation to deltas (changes) in sales and other metrics.  You have to separate spikes from trends. You have to measure the impact of all media and all channels in order to isolate sticky elements from ineffective ones. You have to be able to look at the impact of special offers and promotions separately from the impact of your social media activities alone. It is a multi-phased and multi-layered process. Kind of like pealing the layers of an onion while looking at each layer’s tangential relationship to (overlaid) timelines for a variety of activities. Not difficult, (and certainly not as difficult as it sounds) but much more involved and complex than a cookie-cutter equation on a spreadsheet.

I know everyone wants that magic pill, that miracle R.O.I. calculator that fits on just one page (fill in the blanks and watch Excel do its magic), but it isn’t that simple. If it were, ad agencies and PR firms would have figured it out long ago. And while it is tempting to want to believe that such an equation or calculator exists, it doesn’t.

Not that it will stop masses of Social Media and measurement “gurus” from trying to sell you their own particular flavor of “proven, secret” measurement snake-oil. Be forewarned because they are starting to come out of the woodwork and this whole R.O.I. thing is about to become a monumental clusterf**k if we don’t start calling people out on their BS right away.

Getting into the R.O.I. Calculator: Section 1 – The setup

So anyway… since Social Media R.O.I. can’t be calculated in one single step, the very notion of this calculator is flawed from the start. But then it gets worse: All you have to do is take a look at some of the elements of this “calculator” equation to smell the pungent and all too familiar aroma of BS. Check out these screenshots:

(above) Not a bad start. We have some cost accounting there, some setup and training costs… Good wholesome stuff to start with. But it doesn’t take long for the calculator to start getting into cost per click and incoming traffic… Which might belong in the calculator somewhere… but front and center like this? Not likely… unless whomever crafted it happens to come from a web analytics background. (You tend to first want to measure what you know.)

The danger in this is that less than five lines into this calculator, we already find ourselves prey to an old-school web analytics mentality that has absolutely nothing to do with Social Media.

Mark my words: The tendency to turn solely to web analytics specialists to measure the impact of Social Media is going to be a monumental mistake made by most businesses that engage in Social Media in the coming year. And sadly, it is inevitable: Business folks making these decisions don’t understand that the social web is the Seine river, not all of Paris.

Just like IT managers shouldn’t be the de-facto bloggers for their companies, web analytics people shouldn’t be measuring R.O.I. just because the tools are digital.

But back to this post and the calculator: Is traffic to a site really the most important metric to focus on? And based on this calculator, are we to infer that our Social Media strategy to attract customers begins with pay-per-click banners and Google Ads? Seriously?

As an aside, “cost of incoming traffic” might be a better title for the bottom section than “value of incoming traffic.” Just a thought.

But that’s nothing. It gets much worse:

Getting into the R.O.I. Calculator – Section 2: The dollar value of stories and WOM (Huh?)

(Above): I don’t need to dive too deeply into the nonsense on display in the above screenshot. It kind of speaks for itself – with the help of my little red comments. Quantity of stories? Value of stories? What? Um… What stories? and how do you assign arbitrary value to a story? Even if this were relevant to Social Media and conversations in some way (which it isn’t), someone please explain to me how one calculates the value of a story.

Or the value of puppies?

Or the value of sock-flinging?

The worst are yet to come (my favorites): “Word of Mouth Value” and “Word of Mouth Value Gross”. I can’t even come up with anything smart to say about this. How do you assign a dollar value to WOM exactly? Oh, never mind.

And then we get into focus groups. Seriously. Focus groups? In a Social Media R.O.I. calculator?

I swear on my front yard’s emerald lushness, this thing is real. I did not make this up.

But hang on, it isn’t over:

Getting into the R.O.I. Calculator – Section 3: We’re already out of ideas so let’s just make **it up!

(Above): The third and final section of the Social Media R.O.I. calculator looks at the cost of employee engagement, right? Yet the three elements of this cost accounting fiasco ask for estimates. Not hard numbers, but estimates. As in a questionnaire to circulate around the office asking people to estimate how much time they spend using Social Media.

Not hard numbers, but guesses. To calculate R.O.I. Seriously.

Not only that, but this is it. Calculation over. Hit submit and you’re done.

Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me.

But wait, there’s still more – The calculator comes with a digest of what you’ve actually calculated, in context:

(Above): The benefit analysis spreadsheet (priceless). The four elements listed are “Advertising value,” “PR value,” WOM Value” and focus group equivalence value.

Take a close look at that table. Read every word. Get into the thinking behind it (if you can). Now answer these simple questions:

1. What does any of this have to do with Social Media, engaging in conversations, building relationships with customers, building value, managing a brand’s online reputation, or increasing brand relevance – for starters? How is any actual engagement measured?

2. What is this actually measuring, aside from estimated labor costs, pay-per-clicks and… focus group substitutes? (I can’t figure it out.)

3. In what universe does this actually calculate R.O.I. of… anything?

4. Were transactions or sales ever mentioned? Social Mention, maybe? Conversions? Loyalty indicators?

5. Would you like that giant bag of bulls**t sent to you pre-paid or C.O.D.?

One final word about Social Media and Professional Responsibility:

Note that this calculator was developed by two pretty smart and well respected people in the New Media world, and I am sure they meant well, but this is the kind of thing that companies really need to watch out for: Well-packaged nonsense that just doesn’t work.

At all.

Not even in make-believe land.

Which leads me to my last point: This is the real world, people. Where the stakes are: If you screw companies out of hefty consulting fees and they follow your made-up advice, they lose money and people end up losing their jobs. Real people with real families who depend on them. Because of you. So if you lie about what you can and can’t do, shame on you for being part of the problem instead of being part of the solution, and for preying on open-minded execs who stick their necks out to try to do something cool for a change. Shame. Really.

So… Social Media “experts” and measurement “gurus” or whatever you like to call yourselves this week… Stop with the bulls**t. If you don’t know how to calculate Social Media’s impact or its R.O.I., don’t just make something up. Admit that you don’t know how to do it, and go talk to someone who does know so they can help you. If not for your own sake, for the sake of the companies who PAY you to be their trusted advisors and need your “expert” help. It is the professional (and the ethical) thing to do. Don’t just take the cash and make it up as you go. Come on.

Okay, rant over for now. Have a great weekend. We’ll continue this discussion next week, and my videos probably won’t be so very nice.