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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
Making choices has become more difficult in an era of significant transformation – transformation in the economy from consumer obsessed to consumer cautious, from gatekeepers to personal brands, from physical to digital.
The mindset required to first absorb the present, and then plan the future, is quite difficult to establish. In the last post, we examined how Seth Godin’s direction is to first shed what you learned in school and then pursue your craft. In today’s podcast with friend Stephanie Hester, author of Choose a Better Life, it’s a story of a personal journey from blindly being on society’s typical treadmill, to hard times, and renewed dedication.
It’s one of those stories where personal experience allows Stephanie to connect with her audience. Stephanie Hester conducts workshops and team building session with Fortune 500 companies, government organizations focused on helping unemployed, and HR directors in retraining programs.
And so first is always a personal choice to view the world differently. In Hester’s case it’s to choose the positive, then work your way from there. Sure this is nothing new, but certainly one of the most difficult things to do. Then Hester weaves a little social web thinking into her commentary which is excellent with three critical tactics as you pursue your destination
Preface: Linchpin is a new book by Seth Godin the premise is that you must make yourself indispensable to your employer, clients in order to truly have job security. “A linchpin is the essential element, the person who holds part of the operation together. Without the linchpin, the thing falls apart.” quoted from Mashable interview.
For those who attended yesterday’s Seth Godin Linchpin event they received a workbook called ShipIT. It’s a small guidebook to make sure the high you get inside the event doesn’t turn into a reality hangover when you go back to work the next day.
For those that need a frame of reference, Godin is a combination of Dr. Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, and Dr. Wayne Dyer, but truly that’s only for those that need a reference. Godin is uniquely Seth.
Seth Godin is navigating his way in uncharted waters. His brand as I see it is – Marketer for the new century – but his words and passion in the presentation I attended yesterday in Minneapolis (see on Twitter #sethgodinmpls) is one part marketer, two parts motivational speaker, and one part rebel, kind of like Peter Finch rebel in the movie Network.
I’ll cover separate parts of Godin’s message in several blog posts here. Let’s set the stage with these points.
Brilliant Points for Marketers
These are Seth’s ideas filtered through a Maruggi perspective (yes it may be a little twisted but that’s why you return here) : )
1) Figure out the world view of your audience and use it to frame your discussion. Example, say you are trying to sell NBA Timberwolves tickets to a fan upset by the number of blowouts last year. Now it becomes a question of selling the youth, athleticism and hustle (and yes the product actually needs to produce that expectation) as opposed to some notion of playoff contender. Plus I would not make a big deal out of seeing Wade, Bosh, and that other guy.
2) Lizard thinking. The ability of some people in an organization to protect their species called status quo. You run into Lizard think in many larger organization, usually because smaller organizations don’t survive with many Lizard thinkers on board.
I worked as a political appointee in the Federal Government and the agencies are loaded with Lizard thinkers on both sides of the political spectrum. They know their species has lasted a hell of a lot longer than you. The thinking goes like this, “I’ll just bake here in the sun and watch you try to change the world, then your kind will die off and they next generation come in. Democracy is great ain’t it?”
Godin’s guidance about the Lizard thinker – distract them, appease them, remove them. Details of doing this are unique to every situation and past success does not predict future performance with Lizard thinkers, but suffice it to say the world is full of them, don’t let them get you down.
Funny on the topic of people who are protective of the status quo and resist change, I asked Robert Scoble years ago whether they can stop social media from growing and he said no. I asked why and he replied, “they will eventually die off.” As a 51 year old social advocate and believer in the current revolution, this was a bittersweet statement.
Brilliant Personal Note
Godin talks about following your passion, making a difference and creating art. His palette is comprised of words, so it is easy to get caught up in the moment of “Yes this is my destiny.” Godin, more so than others who talk the “follow your passion talk” does include a healthy reality check. Thank God.
He acknowledges the parameters that most people face, family obligations, work constraints, time, money, etc. In fact, when he talked about these he gestured by placing them around his body as if they were walls of a box. And without any sugar coating he said one of these may need to get blown up, he also used the word sacrifice. Yup, that’s it. Sacrifice, and for those in the audience who have built a career, family, obligations, those walls are higher and thicker than for others, that’s just reality. For those individuals, Godin’s words are no less inspiring, but the path to implementing them is more arduous for you and those that depend on you.
Brilliant Perspective
The lens through which the reality check should be seen is Godin’s comment about the revolution now underway. Godin said each of us is both worker and factory owner. The digital factory which each individual now owns is a computer, each enriching asset a person owns is an idea, and the myth many of us need to shed, is the myth of needing to ask permission to succeed.
You don’t need permission to pursue your art. This was the most enlightening, realistic and sad concept of the presentation. Given today’s ability to create and share we don’t need any one’s permission to believe and work towards a dream. The industrial system rewarded conformity, bastards. It’s a yoke the anyone born before 1990 may well be carrying around. I’m not talking rebel with long hair and torn jeans, I’m talking, as I interpret Godin here, the ability to create anything, period. A book, a Tshirt, a store, a widget, anything. I submit to you this mindset is more important to success than talent, an idea, a network, anything. The myth is the first thing to blow up, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Now so I don’t go too far a field from the readers of this blog, this myth of permission is also true for your potential competition and for your customers. They have few if any barriers to implement their ideas about themselves or about you. So if you have linchpins make sure the Lizards don’t get them down or they can become your competition. If you deal with consumers directly, understand their ability to share their perspective, right or wrong. Doctors, are you listening? Hotel front desk people do you get this? Wall Street, your next because the cost for this revolution are magnitudes less than 10 years ago so do you know what that means? Conformity to your short-sighted view of the world may not be in my world view.
Thanks Seth, more in the days ahead as we get deeper into the Linchpin revolution. I recommend you attend a Linchpin event in your area.
I’m less inclined to believe the website is dead, but acknowledge our mark is left in many more digital places including Facebook. Will companies abandon their websites for their Facebook page? Companies active in the social web have an increasing percentage of their content on Twitter, YouTube Facebook et. al. but they do need the digital version of the American Dream, home ownership and not to be a tenant in Facebook’s apartment complex inside a walled city.
A website is a place to keep your stuff organized, a place to call your own. From a business perspective it’s a place where you can engage and set the rules without the whims of a crowd which only a very small percentage have an interest in you (and visa versa truth be told). Perhaps as a destination the website has seen better days. It’s really not that imperative to “drive” people to my site, it is more important to engage with others, especially from a business perspective. Perhaps the term web repository is better than destination, even if it is just there to make me feel comfortable about my own possessions, my own content, my own intellectual property. After all without that, what do I have? A website is like a book, a place where I can compile my ideas, my way. Yes I know books are dying too, but not the concept of the book as a place of structured thought.
Format Note:
For those regular listeners of the Marketing Edge Podcast I am trying this a bit differently today by using an audio file I recorded using Cinchcast. I use Cinch as a supplement to the regular Marketing Edge Podcast as a quick, unedited audio capture and release type of format. Most of the time I record on Cinch while I’m walking the dog early in the morning. Since I added my thoughts in print and wanted to link back to Holtz and Baer, I figured it would be more complete to include the audio file as well. Let me know if you like it or it threw you off. thanks
You know I could have done the solutions headline and just throw a number in there, but I hate those things. The hungry part is because in some of this podcast we talk about Facebook and restaurants. Facebook Marketing, An Hour A Day is a book by Chris Treadaway and Mari Smith. In this podcast we talk to Chris Treadaway about some of the ways Facebook is used to market companies. Facebook is a place that requires attention, lesson one if you are not prepared to give it attention, forget it. This is where the hour a day comes in.
To pull a favorite useful idea out of this podcast I’d call attention to using Facebook as a market research tool. Creating an ad in Facebook will give you insights into potential online market size. Here is an example where I took the city of Chicago, people age 21 and over that self identified interest of football or fantasy football. The kind of information of interest to a sports bar owner. Targeting by interest, geography, age and other variables is a great feature of Facebook.
We are holding a drawing for the book Facebook Marketing An Hour A Day. Email MarketingEdge AT Providentpartners DOT net – put Facebook in the Subject line. Link should do that for you.
Other Examples of Social Marketing to Hungry Patrons
Smalley87Club – Tied Twins ticket drawings to items people like on the menu with a link to the Smalleys 87 Club menu page. (I helped on this one)
Dino’s Gyros IAMDEZ – Guess random number between 1 and 10,000 on Tuesdays before 7PM, closest 10 get a free gyro.
Izzys Ice Cream incorporates a variety of platforms and communities. Also has unique notification of the availability of limited time flavors Dave Erickson
In this podcast we highlight two major issues 1) The idea of resonance as implemented by promoted Tweets and interpreted by Brian Solis at a recent presentation in Minneapolis, and 2) We dig a bit deeper into the 9 ways marketing is being transformed in a conversation with college curriculum developer and instructor Mia Lee
We have a winner for the drawing for Brian Solis’ book Engage with my commentary in the margins where necessary – Ken Okumura of Minneapolis and a Marketing Edge listener is the winner of Engage. Solis was a guest on the Marketing Edge prior to his presentation in Minneapolis on July 27.
I attended his presentation which was thought provoking. One of his key areas for social media moving forward is the concept of resonance. It’s a word Solis combines with Relevance and Significance as a major way to determine value of social object. A social object is a piece of digital content, a tweet, a photo, etc. As companies continue to find ways to engage social commnities and platforms look for ways to garner advertising dollars, measuring the investment of time and dollars is being refined.
Measurement includes Retweets, mentions, clicks, actions, influence etc. During Solis’s presentations I tweeted this :
@WichitaCindy on Twiter asked me why. The reason for the excitement is because it’s a chance to engage and perhaps have an impact on anything, products, service, government etc. The reason for the nausea is caused by the many ways popularity and influence can be manipulated. The irony is that as consumers we revolt against advertising, even coming up with technologies to circumvent ads and now on social media those same consumers may well be part of message, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean just because you get a $5 coupon for a burger if you get your friends to fan a restautant doesn’t make it any less of an advertisement. In some respects we are being coopted under the guise of being social.
This is a fine line, and I hope I’m not the guy throwing sand in the social media sandbox, but the potential exists and there are plenty of tactics being used that contribute to search and klout. For more on resonance see Jeramiah Owyang of the Altimiter Group. The Solis event was produced by Jen Kane who does a wonderful job on these events.
The tables have turned in five years. Back then social media zealots were telling company execs, “you don’t get it”. They loved to bring out charts of percentage growth and the ever referenced “if Facebook was a country…” It took among other things, two election cycles, (the US and Iran), numerous gadget launches, a pop star’s death, a golf icon’s fall from grace, the year-long roll out of the first “social” car (you can comment which car you think I’m referring to here), and a World Cup for executives to retort, “We get it now.”
And now it’s their turn to say to the social media business community, “you don’t get it.” The it for them is how companies work for anyone to move from side project freak show to bonafide, no snickering business function. The holy grail for social media practitioners is Engagement, the holy grail for corporate executives is Process. The mutual nirvana are the key performance indicators (KPI) that give each side a reference point for their work.
Engagement means dialogue, participation, exchange of ideas
Process means your work is part of a decision oriented workflow system with predetermined actions to be taken based on certain events
In this Marketing Edge podcast with Brain Solis, we discuss how to support the social media champion in an organization by understanding how to fit social into the company’s goals. Even the smallest pilot project needs to be structured in a way that will assimilate into the larger picture if it is to succeed.
I love when Solis says every champion hits a ceiling. You can’t just walk into a meeting of senior executives, say the world is going this way, and they will come along. His latest book Engage Solis peels the onion back a few layers than most social media books by examining how to work social media into the corporate process. The journey to achieve getting social media included in corporate processes is what Solis calls the last mile. He has written about the last mile in social media on his blog BrianSolis.com
I look at the culture of the business to determine whether the last mile will be a walk in the park or the last mile of a long journey across a desert. I highlight social culture vs social tactics in a podcast called, Is Your Company Social At Its Core ? It’s the story of a small, but growing premium ice cream brand, Izzys Ice Cream, and how their culture is spawning sophisticated uses of social technology.
Fun for Listeners
We are going to do a few neat things with this podcast and post.
First we have a drawing to win Solis’ book Engage. Email MarketingEdge AT providentpartners.net and put Engage in the subject line. This is not just a copy of the book, but it is the copy I have read and included comments in the margins, kind of like a combination book and blog. The physical replication of social media, only slower with fewer people, but unique nonetheless.
Second, we invite you to join Brian Solis in Minneapolis, July 27 at 6PM at Solera in Minneapolis. It’s an event An Evening with Brian Solis, sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of PRSA, register for the event today, it will be enlightening and inspiring. Hat tip to Jen Kane for leading this event.
All the social media talk in the last year or so is like gnats on a humid, summer day at dusk. It’s time to get inside, take a deep breath and consider the state of social media. I did that with business communicator and IABC Fellow Award winner Shel Holtz. Holtz and I had dinner at Smalleys 87 Club in Minneapolis after his keynote presentation at the IABC gala.
We share some concerns about the state of social media, they are:
1) The continued blocking of access to social sites by more than 50% of companies.
2) Still too many voices echoing the fear of negative comments about their brand or company. (clearly denying access to the social web will shield those ostriches from their critic, sorry just had to slip that in. the timing seemed perfect)
3) Chasing the A list is not the same as gaining influence, it’s about niches and communities.
4) Over promising that social is a replacement pitting communication functions and their practitioners against each other. Business communications is not a zero sum game, nor should social media advocates do so at the expense of other media which will contribute to the ultimate business goals.
So what does stimulating conversation about business communications over a quiet dinner and a couple of beers get you. Some ideas for consideration what it means to integrate social media into a companies strategy.
1) Drop the word social and approach the communications strategy from the end objectives, essentially what do you want the recipient to do, feel, believe. As you plot out how the recipient of your message will interact with that information, who they do so in a digital way? If so, then social will naturally work it’s way into your effort. No big fanfare necessary.
2) Social cultures are easier to create from scratch than insert comfortably in an established institution. Patience and flexibility are key to bringing about change, incorporating social will require rewriting some company policies along with believing in them.
3) Social media is a communications support function, communications is a business objectives support function. Holtz raised this simple concept as a reminder of how the pieces of this puzzle can fit. Credit given to Shannon Paul for the reference point.
What are the chances of social media being implemented as a standard practice? Is it a fad or a true evolution of business in America? Catch more of Shel Holtz on his podcast For Immediate Release with Neville Hobson.
Disclosure: Smalleys 87 Club is a client with good burgers and beer selection. I suggest all consultants have at least one client with these qualities. Follow Smalleys87 Club on Twitter for fun stuff.
I’ve been in communications for 25 years spanning all types of the functions associated with organizations “getting their message out”. Those functions included journalism, grassroots campaigns, legislative lobbying, technology marketing, and public relations.
Perceptions are a largely based on perspectives, so laying out this experience I thought would be helpful to appreciate the lens through which I see these transformations. I’ve also experienced working in large companies and venture capital start-ups and mid-size growth organizations. I share this because it plays into the context of the obstacles facing marketers over this second decade in the 21st century.
Marketing Transformation #1 – Naked conversations leads to naked behavior. Gaining insights to consumers as they willingly (or unwillingly) act transparently by giving up their privacy. This data with be cross referenced and used in proactive programming.
Marketing Transformation #2 – Marketing Rhetoric vs Reality Reconciliation made simple with social media. Careful with your company puffery, there plenty of people and chances to call Bull.
Marketing Transformation #3 - Companies as media properties. Contribute to the stream of conversation that surrounds your company without being the center of attention (don’t be that guy, very difficult for some companies to do). Those that do will gain respect and leadership.
Marketing Transformation #4 – Consumers as marketers, really? When the novelty of social communities wears off, and the reality of the time commitment necessary to be social sets in, be ready to answer the consumers’ question What’s in it for me?
Marketing Transformation #5 - Social Culture vs Social Tactics. Plenty of companies will not make the transition which is OK, social culture will be similar to systemic corporate change like Total Quality Management and Six Sigma. There will be a divide between social companies and social hacks.
Marketing Transformation #6 – Greater consumer participation necessary. As the dismemberment of old advertising continues, companies desperately want to know what motivates you, the more you interact, the better the relationship.
Marketing Transformation #7 – Yesterday’s direct mail lists are today’s personal brand networks. Regardless of FTC blogger regulations, established individuals are conduits of word of mouth as being social on the web has significant overlap between helping and being helped, it’s the ultimate form of interdependence.
Marketing Transformation #8 – 2010 is the year of social media skeptic, have a contingency plan. The more social media is absorbed by the mainstream, the more people will try to game the system causing all kinds of turmoil among the ranks of advocates, enthusiats, and critics.
Marketing Transformation #9 - Less about convincing and more about delivering. Taking a page from the World of Mouth adovcates, companies with enough confidence in their ability to build products and delivery services that consumers are comfortable recommending will spend less time having to “message” their way to growth, they will listen their way to profits.
Recommendations
I don’t see the current format of social media being the end game. It’s extremely time and labor intensive and unless companies are willing to commit to those elements of participation, they will merely pay lip service through this initial adoption phase of social media.
Some believe the data is circumspect, sure if Facebook was a country it would be the fourth largest, but what does that mean? What kind of country exactly? Will its inhabitants grow weary of sharing their data, lobbying each other for worthy causes, and doing the work of marketers who were laid off because friends don’t make friend buy bad things? Or will they unify in a community of users of like mind, feed off of their shared new experiences, and expand to improve their current condition?
The lighting was poor in this interview, but the content timely and perhaps a bit of a conversation starter here. The questions are these, as the networked individual takes root in our new economy, do we begin to see interdependance among each other or do we break off into packs of networks? In the early adopter phase of the social web there was a sense of creating something new, contributing to something greater. As the adoption curve progresses, there is ample information to create what Rainie refers to as a culture of amateur experts who are now in competition selling their expertise and services. This is an information imbalance that can put significant pressure on companies, agencies and individuals. An imbalance where you may believe you give more than are getting back or taking more than you are giving. Interesting in that this is a similar situation that impacts personal relationships.
My perspective for many industries is for companies and individuals to give their way through this imbalance. Be as generous as you possibly can because technology and access to information are a breeding ground of new competition.
Networked individualism also has a stealthy side. As you look at an individual who is networked, you get the perspective of a single person reach out to hundreds even thousands of others. The less visible network, is the one where individuals combine for the gain of the group as a whole and individual benefit. For example the way wolves assemble in packs to hunt their prey. The network of the like-minded, the network of the ad hoc project team, are other ways individuals gain access to business, achieve their individual goals and create some of the scale that was once the exclusive domain of large companies.
Rainie posits that the following big forces are pushing/pulling us toward networked individualism
Affluence and affordable technology
Changes in family composition, roles, responsibilities
Expanding consumer options
Income and wealth volatility
Job security and longevity
Rise of free agency and freelancing
Employer changes pushing workers towards management of retirement and health care
Rise of DIY politics and religion
Do you believe social media is making us interdependent or highlights that we are independent entities?
Ideas are wonderful things, especially when they are the basis for action and evaluation. Creative marketers can be a tad like the Jackie Gleason’s character Ralph Kramden in the television series The Honeymooners. (this show will resonate with boomers, TV fans, and New Yorkers). The video below is a classic, a live advertisement of Kramden’s new kitchen gadget that does supposedly everything. Ed Norton, his best friend and in this case calm presenter.
Regardless of the outcome, ideas are the seeds of innovation. Those who till the soil and nurture ideas, whether successful or not, are advancing knowledge for everyone who learns from their experience.
In this podcast we share a real life example of how a marketer (me) and a developer (Justin Dessonville aka @iamdez can work together to test an idea that I have simmered for a long time. We explored whether it was possible to get real-time data on Twitter followers. I realize there are several apps that report on Twitter counts, followers patterns, ( a great resource for this is One Forty.com I am interested in something similar to the chat feature in Facebook where I can see who among my friends are present and engaged. Why does real time twitter follower persistence matter?
More accurate quantification of exposure of tweets and to whom
Indication of audience interests that are currently following (a subset of a tweet chat if you will)
Increased accuracy of follower engagement during times of the day
We’ll also get a better sense of whether this type of information is necessary as the data promoted tweets program being run by Twitter is evaluated.
Some of the lessons learned about objectively evaluating ideas include:
Be brutally honest in the midst of being hopefully energetic
Being overly focused on competition will paralyze
Not understanding the competition will waste time
Don’t be afraid to fail and admit it, the next idea is right around the corner
Have you tried to develop an application, or product or service? What are your tips on getting the project to a go no go decision? Provident Partners gives a food item for every comment we get on this blog. Also as a special just for this post, Justin will match our food item contribution. Your thoughts are worth a lot more than a penny.
Conference Recommendations
Innovation can only come from ideas and that’s what the Big Omaha conference is about, innovation. Big Omaha is a Big Deal Conference – May 13-15 (OK the 13th is a party night but hey what’s a great conference without a party, then a day and a half of substance) The Silicon Prairie News is producing a conference on innovation, technology, and social media in Omaha with Tony Hsieh CEO of Zappos and Dennis Crowley CEO of Foursquare among many others. I don’t have discounts because it’s a great starting price, give a look, but you can tell them we sent you. Why? no financial kickback, just the marketers’ joy of knowing the decision path.
small guidebook to make sure the high you get inside the event doesn’t turn into a reality hangover when you go back to work the next day. 
exchange on Twitter with WebbieGirl AKA 
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