Logic+Emotion

Goodbye Logic+Emotion, Hello Armano Design Group

This will be the last blog post I'll write on this Website. 

Let me take a step back.

In February of 2006, before TikTok, Snap, Facebook, and Twitter, there was a form of social media built on the open Web where like-minded people found others like them, (as well as audiences). They were called blogs. 

I picked a weekend during this coldest of months in Chicago to dig into what it would take to learn more about this space. I was intrigued by the potential and had become a reader of blogs myself. I started writing about what I knew most about back then—my first blog post was about user experience design (we call it UX now). 

Blogging opened up a whole new world to me as the Web started becoming more social. Before I knew it, I had built an audience, started getting invited to speak all over the world, and I had new career opportunities which stretched me in entirely new directions from advancing leadership abilities to learning communications and public relations to expanding my knowledge through practice in the broader category of marketing as well as business transformation. 

The world has changed much since 2006, and a recent Pandemic has accelerated decades of change and transformation in less than two years. We're only just at the beginning. Like many others, my career was unceremoniously disrupted and faced with uncertainty; I started my own venture with the fortune of securing some early contracts while dealing with my own fairly substantial case of Covid. I am happy to report—that which doesn't kill you, does in fact make you stronger. Yes, I've learned firsthand about the over-hyped word "resilience."

And as it turns out that when change is accelerated—experience in managing change comes in handy. I've found myself working with some amazing partners and hope to share more on that later when the time is right. 

So, a new chapter begins. I'll still be writing and sharing insights, but not here. You can find me at the following places:

Armano Design Group
We’re a design-inspired strategic consultancy that untangles complexity with purpose and passion so projects can be executed with precision.
We help organizations solve complex marketing, communications, and business problems—by design.

David by Design Newsletter on Substack: Personal thoughts, observations, and insights 
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@Armano on Twitter

DavidArmano.ME

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"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
~Stephen Hawking

The Mentor / Mentee Value Exchange

Originally posted on David by Design

For the past five years or so, I have been informally mentoring people. I’m happy to report that some of the earliest are ridiculously successful and I still keep in touch. I’m also a mentee to a few people I look up to. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Understand Your Motivation Before You Become A Mentor or Mentee

You’re entering an informal agreement and you should know what’s motivating you and clearly articulate that to the other person. In my case, I realized I had not been seeking out mentors so becoming one was an intentional act.

Embrace That It’s A Two Way Learning Street

Regardless if you decide to seek or provide mentorship, you are accepting the role of both teacher and student. As a mentee, you will be teaching your mentor on a daily basis. Understand this dynamic works both ways.

Be A Mentor Means Being An Active Listener

If you want to become a valuable mentor, you either are a serious active listener or want to get better at it. Don’t become a mentor if you don’t value listening. It’s the number one requirement.

Being A Mentee Means Being You

If you’re not comfortable being yourself, you may not be ready for mentorship. Being a mentee means bringing your true self to the informal arrangement. There’s no room for anything less.

The Mentor/Mentee Value Exchange Transcends Professional Development

Being professional is a core value of my being. I strive to act ethically. I’m also a follower of radical candor and encourage mentees to explore a degree of personal life as part of professional development.

Trust Is The Literal Foundation Of Mentor/Mentee relationships

In every engagement where I have been both mentee as well as mentor, I seek to build trust. It’s the bedrock of the Mentor/Mentee value exchange. And it also flows both ways.

Don’t Become A Mentor or Mentee If You Can’t Make The Time

Time is our most precious asset and it’s limited. We have demanding projects, family duties, self-care, etc. all competing for time. If you can’t prioritize being either, you aren’t ready for it.

The Mentor/Mentee Value Exchange Is A Human Investment

In the age of crypto and a red hot housing market — becoming a mentee or mentor is an investment in another human being. If you value the ROI that comes with human investment, you’ll benefit from being either.

Investing In The Future Is Investing In Yourself

Recently, I spent an hour with a colleague who is just starting out in his career and wanted to learn more about what I do, how I do it and how he can apply that knowledge to his exploration of a career path.

If you have the opportunity to have conversations like these—you should take them. First, because if your professional life has been good to you (and mine has) you have an obligation to pay it forward, especially to those who will build the future.

Secondly, it's not just an investment in someone else's future but it's also an investment in yourself. When you are faced with the energy, passion, and curiosity of someone just starting out, it's a great inspiration and a reminder of why you do what you do.

In a world where win-wins are becoming less frequent, this is one. So make time for that person just starting out and don't be surprised if you both leave the meeting better than when you started it.

The investment is mutual.

True Leaders Are Forged In Fire

I’ve had some success and some failures in leadership.

Leadership opportunities come in many forms—from formal to informal. I’ve done both kinds and probably more of the latter.

I’ve also seen other leaders in action. Some great ones. Others less so. The great ones have something in common—they really step up when things are at their worst. This is a sign of true leadership. Actually it’s a great test to see who’s manager material vs. the stuff of leadership.

Some of the best managers know how to fly under the radar when times are tough. And I don’t blame them for it at all—leadership is meant for the few and even fewer excel at it.

It’s fun to watch leaders work when they are at ease but it’s educational to watch the really good ones go to work when they are under duress. They take it all on. The challenges, the responsibilities. The fire.

True leaders are forged in it.

Intelligent Generosity + Successful People

You’ve heard this before no doubt and it’s true. I’ve been reminded of this recently when...

-A senior executive of one of the world’s top tech companies agreed to take time with someone they’ve never met before whom I introduced out of the blue

-One of my mentors, now a wildly successful CEO took time to meet and encourage me

-I see so many people in my network doing making time for others when they are busy themselves

These are acts of Intelligent Generosity. Successful people are intelligently generous because they understand that life and business aren’t only about performance and professionalism but also relationships and relevance. And we’re only as relevant as the strength of our relationships.

This makes me think of a conversation I had with Rishad Tobaccowala not ago. You should see how he does this. He’s a master at it—generosity that is (amongst other things). When times are tough, it can be tempting to conserve energy, keep what you know to yourself and limit your exposure.

There is a time and place to say “no” (more on that later) But Successful people know how and when to give. They reach out, connect and share—knowing that positivity given is positivity received.

And that’s why they’re successful.

Being Creative vs. “a Creative” vs. Creativity

I’ve been called creative, been “a Creative” in my career and like to think I was born with an innate ability to create (we all were).

But In the business world, especially in marketing where I spend the majority of my days, creativity can be a tricky topic...

-Creative: You might not get paid professionally to be this but you probably already are, especially if you’ve ever solved a problem unconventionally or applied your imagination to accomplishing a task.

-A Creative: Your professional role in an organization or position of self-employment that pays you to apply a level of creative craftsmanship to produce professional-quality output in the form of created deliverables.

-Creativity: The fuel behind “being creative”. When creativity levels are high, we are most creative. When they are low, we are the least creative. When someone says “my creative juices are flowing” they have high levels of creativity.

When I work with “Creatives” I always strive to appreciate their craft and role and respect both. When I work with “everyone else”, I try to stimulate creative problem-solving potential. Being creative can be a full-time job, a quality or a state of being, but it’s also a part of being human.

Because we’re not robots. Yet.

Client Meetings: More Jazz Than Classical

I was recently prepping with the team for a client meeting...

We were doing the usual drill—moving slides around, clarifying roles and practicing our talking points for what we wanted to accentuate and where we hoped we could lead the meeting.

It’s all good practice. Meeting preparation that is. No matter how informal a meeting, one should be prepared and knowledgeable of the topics to be discussed.

However, more times than not, client meetings turn into jazzy jam sessions vs. a classical music concerto where the solo presenter performs for their captive audience.

Reading sheet music and reading the room doesn’t have to be at odds but put yourself in the shoes of a client on the other side of the table who is depending on you to help them do their job—do they need perfection or professionalism?

The two aren’t the same.

Being a professional in a meeting means knowing when to stick to your sheet music and when to riff, following the client’s lead. More times than not, meetings with clients both new and familiar should be more like improvised Jazz than perfectly performed classical.

The client isn’t your audience, but an integral part of the band.

Professional vs. Personal Brand: What’s The Right Mix?

I’ve been managing the mix between professional and personal before social networks became mainstream. Whenever I talk to someone who’s looking for advice in this area, I usually say something like…

See what Gary Vee does? Don’t do that. 

Well, let me take a step back because there’s a huge caveat here. Gary’s got a near perfect professional/personal brand model if you’re one of the following:

- An entrepreneur/business owner
-CEO
-Full time digital influencer
-Your only job is to be an Internet personality for your company 

For everyone else—Specifically employees of companies who expect your focus to be on building value for the company NOT building your personal brand, you can follow something of the 80/20 or maybe 70/30 rule:

Bring some of your personality into what you do professionally and do it purposefully to build equity for both you and your company. It’s not easy and gone are the days of the traditional employee so some personal brand building is now expected by employers. But a good rule of thumb is that you should never shine brighter than your company and what benefits you should benefit them. 

It’s not a perfect mix, but if it’s not your name on the check, it’s a decent guideline. 

Do Not Go Quietly

Once upon a time I was the youngest kid in the corporate conference room. I never thought twice before I spoke and digital jargon rolled effortlessly off my tongue. There was some good reason for this.

I had decent knowledge of HTML, taught myself Flash (some of you may need to look that up) and when digital media went social, I mastered that as well, at least in the early days. I can still remember the son of a local ad agency owner calling me “the digital guy”. These were heady pioneering years...

Now I’m often one of the older people in the corporate conference room and it’s striking how different my role is today. While there are times I’m vocal, there’s even more times I am actively listening so when I do speak, it’s informed and meaningful (or I hope it is).

Wisdom is earned through experience.

But outside the boardroom is where I’ve noticed the greatest change. Something happens as you advance in your career. That blind confidence is replaced with caution. You become quieter. In fields like marketing and tech, you wonder if your experience is as valued as youth. Going quiet is the last thing you should do at this point. My output is the best it’s ever been. It deserves a voice that goes with it. Not loud, but selectively impactful.

Do not go quietly.

If You Want To Make A Point, Make It Real

I started my career as a visual designer. For the first few working years of my professional life, my days were dominated by pictures over text. Over the years my skill set, tools, and approach to work evolved. Written communication helped manage team and client expectations.

Verbal communication was also useful, especially in situations where you find yourself going toe to toe with fellow A-type executives where a sharp mind and wise tongue are mandatory requirements. But recently, I was reminded of the power of making something real in order to make a point.

Instead of using words, I reached into my visual communications toolkit and mocked up what I was trying to say. If nothing else, it made it clear that this was something we needed to do for all of the ideas the team is debating.

More than ever, decision-makers need to see (and feel) something real before they make that final decision.

I still love words and verbal communication but sometimes it takes tangible visual communications to make something feel more real.

What Strategists Do

Several years ago, I shared a flight with a former colleague who was at a crossroads in his professional development. We had a spirited conversation about a number of things and I asked him what he wanted to do. He looked at me with a sense of clarity and said: “I want to do what you do”.

I paused for a moment, there’s always that micro decision to be made—do you speak the truth and try to be helpful or do you nod and smile? I turned to him and said as plainly as I could...

“I’m a strategist and I take complexity and simplify it, so it becomes actionable”

Then I said:

“I’ve seen you do the opposite. You make things complex and difficult to grasp”

I wasn’t sure how else to put it. After that, I encouraged him that if he wanted to do what I did, he would have to learn how to make complexity actionable. "Strategist" is a strange label. I’ve become used to the fact that it’s non-descriptive and vague and many strategists who have this in their title represent a wide spectrum of talent.

Strategy is a big tent. But as big as it is, any strategist despite their background should have the ability to immerse themselves in complexity and tame it to the point where it no longer induces paralysis.

Anyway. That’s what I think strategists do.

Gratitude: Giving and Getting

The other day I ran into a former colleague who had gone on to take a senior role with a highly respected fortune 100 company you’ve definitely heard of. He’s kind of a big deal.

Yet after a few minutes of chit chat, he made it a point to go out of his way to express gratitude for learning the art of the Whiteboard...from me. And then I felt like kind of a big deal.

He knew what he was doing. Expressing gratitude to someone for something that they probably didn’t even know that they did is powerful stuff. And it’s rarely done.

So it’s something I’ll try to do more of myself. And then one day when I run into him again, I’ll let him know that I learned the art of expressing gratitude from his example.

Leading By Example

Recently, I reached out to a colleague who had accepted an incredible new opportunity after many fruitful years with our company. We had never worked closely together but every brief interaction I had with her was positive and professional. And I watched from afar as she led her teams and regions to success.

Her response to my outreach was of course immediate. Great leaders have a way of doing this—even when they don't respond to every inquiry, they have a good sense of where their time and attention should and can go. So we chatted for a bit, and afterward, she shared with me one of her greatest moments of stepping up as a leader—a communication she had sent to her team, which really if you boiled it all down, championed what's known as "the golden rule" (do unto others).

Great leaders get that at the end of the day if we're all just a little more empathetic—if we all just appreciate where others are coming from a bit more, then the stage is set for better collaboration, behaviors and ultimately shared success. We follow leaders for these moments of simple clarity. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of what we know is true. Great leaders are great at reminding us of these things when we need them the most.

SXSW 2017: Should Age Diversity Matter?

This was my tenth consecutive year attending SXSW. This means I started attending in my mid thirties during a very different time in tech, marketing and culture. There's no need to go into how different these things were or bask in the memories of those early years. What's still special about SXSW is that many of the people who were pioneers during that time still attend joined by a new generation in a now mature market where the Googles, Facebooks, Snapchats and Sprinkler's of the world operate. 

BUT, outside of the informal conversations in the convention hallways, the restaurants and bars I noticed an interesting trend. There was almost a theme in terms of the panels that addressed inclusion in tech—mainly defining that inclusion through diversity in gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. This is obviously a good thing as many organizations are dedicating time and resources to address gaps and divides in these areas especially in specific industries. Diversity in these areas should be challenged. How women are treated in tech should be discussed. What hurdles minorities face should be issues we speak about out in the open... 

Visa's Everywhere Initiative supports and encourages female led startups

What About Age Diversity?
What was absent from debate and discussion is an increasing reality that in the start-up, tech, and even marketing worlds (to name a few), there's increasingly less diversity in age especially at the 50 plus range. This dynamic affects all people regardless of background and it begs the question if people in this age range have a fair shot at applying their years of wide experience to compliment the energy and distinct skills of younger colleagues. As a forty something GenXer, this is something I am thinking about a good deal—what happens when I cross that threshold of 50? Will my experience be valued or viewed as antiquated? Tech and marketing especially are fast moving spaces and even if you adapt your skills and stay ahead of the curve—age may be held against you. They are also industries where you are expected to look and act the part, especially if engaging with millennial audiences is a part of the job. 

Being The Change
Despite the lack of age diversity or inclusion for that matter in these industries being a topic—it's something that's worth talking about. Mixed generations who work together, Boomers Xers and Millenials reflect the same generations we create both digital experiences and build brands for. This goes well beyond these two industries. We have much to learn from each other, and should band together ensure employers both know and see the value in it. I'll be thinking much more on this topic and have some ideas. If you'd like to be a part of it—let me know in the comments.

Five Things I Learned In Five Years

According to the US Department of labor—the average tenure at at job for 2014 is 4.6 years. In less than a month, I'll be celebrating five years at Edelman, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect in what can be learned in five years, not just on the job but in life as well. I'm a big believer that looking back can help you look forward, so here are are a few things I've learned over the past five years. 

Mentorship Comes In Many Forms
The traditional image of a mentor is someone who takes you under their wing, puts time aside for you, and imparts wisdom—often a more senior person who you view as established or experienced in areas you yourself seek experience in. But mentorship is really another way of thinking about relationships, and growing from them in the process. I can think of several relationships I've established in the past five years both with people senior to me and junior alike, where I learn and grow from. As a result, I've come to view mentorship, both giving and receiving it a bit differently. It's a mindset about relationships more than a formal arrangement. 

Travel Requires Discipline 
I do my fair share of traveling. Not as much as some of my colleagues or peers outside of my company but also more than others. One thing I've learned over the years is that it requires discipline. Sleep, food, drinks, work and even socialization—they can all be overdone or just the opposite. Business travel requires a certain level of discipline and balance as it represents a state of living, that isn't the same thing as your everyday life (unless you indeed travel every day) and stresses like flight delays can sometimes threaten to throw the balance off. I've found that all things in moderation help keep the road from getting the best of me.

The Enterprise Adapts (And That's How It Should Be)
Five years ago, tablets weren't even introduced in the market and when they first arrived—they weren't seen as viable work devices. Today, it's a different story and the same goes for mobile devices of all shapes and sizes. We've moved beyond work happening on desktops and laptops, and our IT and infrastructure has had to adapt whether they wanted to or not. A lot of technology change happens in five years. 

We Are A Collection of Our Experiences 
When we have new experiences, we grow. My biggest professional growth spurts in the past five years either happened from taking on a challenge that was a stretch from my core competencies, jumping on a project or engagement doing something I had not done before. Once we do it—whether we "succeed" or not, we learn from the experience. And learning is growing. 

You Have To Make Time For Yourself
The higher you move up in an organization, the more people expect you to give of yourself. Giving is a noble thing and many of the great leaders I know are generous with their time, knowledge and attention. But nobody is going to help you make the time for yourself to replenish your well. I've learned to block out some time on the calendar so I can catch my breath—on weekends, I'll huddle in my office or a coffee shop. In the past five years especially, I've learned that time is precious and should be treated as such. 

Five years is half a decade—no doubt that I've still much to learn, but it's definitely more fun learning by being surrounded by great people who strive to do great things. 

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The New York Times Innovation Report is Both a Manifesto and Warning For Entrenched Organizations

"To improve is to change; to perfect is to change often"
~Winston Churchill

There are few documents, articles or any media for that matter that capture and illustrate the complex yet efficient nature of disruption than the New York Times 2014 Innovation Report. Recently leaked, presumably in some connection with the dismissal of executive editor Jill Abramson the 91 page report has been somewhat eclipsed by the debate around Abramson. But while that story has been garnering the most attention in the media—it is the innovation report which needs to be read cover to cover by anyone whose work includes a digital media component. 

Scratch that—anyone who works should read it. And you have no excuse—I'll make it easy for you. You can download the PDF from here. Print it out or save it to your iPad/tablet but just READ IT. After spending a few hours with it myself over an evening, my conclusion was that the document, while not earth shattering in the recognition of disruption nor the recommendations to combat it—it paints an eerily detailed portrait of an entrenched organization struggling with itself to adapt, change and succeed in a world that no longer recognizes the New York Times as king of the hill. If you read between the lines as you digest the information, it is astonishingly insightful. 

I don't think I can do the entire document justice, but I'm going to try to capture a few reoccurring themes that stood out for me. I'll also include quotes from the report—but again, please do yourself a favor and make the time to read it yourself. 

Agility
Page 32: "Launch efforts quickly, then iterate. We often hold back stories for publication, as we should, because they're "not quite there yet"...we can adopt a more basic form so that we start getting feedback from users and improve it over time"

Agility in some form or another is a constant theme in the report surfacing as a response to the reason it was being championed; disruption. In fact the entire report is essentially a response to the disruption from competitors who move quickly and seem to have an intuitive understanding of customer media behaviors from mobile to social and beyond. The notion of agility highlights initiatives such as Snow Fall but also promotes a systematic approach to both experimentation and innovation highlighting setting goals and tracking progress. 

Culture
Page 38: "At The Times, we generally like to let our wok speak for itself. We're not ones to brag. Our competitors have no such qualms, and many are doing a better job of getting their journalism in front of new readers through aggressive story promotion".

I could not help but feel the tension in culture in nearly every page of the report. Old vs. new, editorial standards vs. attention grabbing techniques, silos vs. open collaboration—you could almost feel the palpable struggle of an established organization grappling with itself. One of the areas where you could feel culture at play was in the section where the report discusses "connection" and puts forth the idea that journalists like Nick Kristof, David Carr and Charles Duhigg—all journalists who promote their own work are doing it right and these skills can be taught. it remains to be seen if the organization can stomach a small army of staff who have built personal brands at scale and leverage them for mutual benefit. Ultimately the document evangelizes a "digital first" movement to be embraced in all corners of the organization, de-emphasizing the front page, print and other hold outs from a previous era. Some would question if it's too late—but that's where the report is rooted. 

Customer Centricity
Page 60: "The many business-side development and roles which we refer to as "Reader Experience" throughout this report —need to work more closely with the newsroom instead of being kept at arm's length."

I debated on elevating this, but I think it's a macro theme in the report and it's not unusual for any organization, especially a large one that has enjoyed dominance in market for a time to lose sight of how their customers think, act and behave as it relates to the world you have in common. There are numerous areas in the report that reference how the NYT's competition have seemingly mastered timeliness, relevance or features which media consumers can't get enough of. The report also goes into some detail about the silos the organization needs to work through as an impediment to serving the modern needs of customers. it seems elementary, but there's enough evidence to support a concerted effort to make "Reader Experience" a top priority. 

Talent 
Page 88: "I looked around the organization and saw the plum jobs—even the ones with explicitly digital mandates—going to people with little experience in digital. Meanwhile, journalists with excellent digital credentials were stuck moving stories around on section fronts"

There were numerous references to the type of talent The Times had at their disposal from analysts to design to technology, product, R&D and more but it wasn't toward the end that you got the sense that there was a struggle to ensure that the right talent was retained. Digital talent by definition can be fickle, impatient and drawn to emerging trends (as digital media typically is always evolving)—but you got a sense from the report that there was a concern for today's departures becoming tomorrow's competitors. 

Summary: Disruption Happens
The NYT Innovation Report provides a glimpse into an industry under tremendous pressure and illustrates what it looks and feels like for a large, established organization with a rich heritage to come to terms with a world that looks very different than it did when tried and true formulas worked. It should be required reading for any executive or professional whose job it is to make sure their business is resilient enough to thrive in spite of change. In short, being an entrenched organization or a business resistant to change is no longer a viable strategy. 

Also: See Scott Monty's excellent take on the same subject. 

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What Comes After Social?

Social media has been good to me. It's re-defined my career, opened new doors and enabled me to make connections that would have been impossible had the Web not gotten connected. I started blogging in 2006 and in less than a year found myself in the pages of BusinessWeek. From there things only got more interesting, not only for me personally but for the business world at large. One by one, brands, organizations and even governments had to come to terms with the connected Web and subsequently the rapid evolution of mobile. It all makes me wonder what's next—and I've been thinking a lot about it. Here are a few not so random thoughts. Many of them fall under the lens of marketing and communications, where I spend a lot of my professional time. Consider it thinking aloud: 

Social Increasingly Becomes a Paid Game
The early days of social under the broader context of the marketing function was organic by nature. Facebook, Twitter etc. weren't even thinking of monetization models—for them it was about building an audience around the platforms. Today, it's increasingly difficult to reach an audience through your social channels without leveraging a paid component. 

Content Isn't Enough Anymore
The problem with content is that it can be anything. Text. Photos. Video. It's not enough. People don't share content but they do share stories which resonate with them and their friends/connections. Telling really good stories is hard. Today, we have to be able to do it in a single Instagram sized image and in a six second Vine. We also need to be able to make marketing feel like something bigger—something with a larger purpose. It's the reason we see Dove and Guinness and instantly want to share the story. This is not content—it's a narrative. Narrative which stops us in our tracks and breaks through the noise to earn our attention.

Integrated Marketing Becomes Mandatory
One of the stories I love to tell about Oreo is how they launched Instagram. "Dunk In The Dark" is a diversion—a one hit wonder, but Oreo is a masterful integrated marketer and incorporated social and digital into their Superbowl advertising, leveraging paid dollars and creativity to build a sizable audience on Instagram literally overnight. Why this story doesn't get told more is beyond me. Smart integrated marketing is the future, while social one hit wonders will become a thing of the past. 

Art Director + Copywriter + Social Engineer: The Creative Team of Tomorrow
As someone who works in the "Public Relations" industry, I can reflect upon how we were quick to hire social savvy individuals who knew how to manage and grow communities. Now we hire creatives and planners who must figure out how to partner with these social savvy individuals. Madison avenue was built on the duo of art directors and and copywriters. Tomorrow's creative team will be a trio at the core (and don't forget analytics).  

ROI Becomes An Efficiency Play
The early days of social revolved around proving out a specific ROI (did you sell more X?) for example. But in the maturation phase that we are in today—under a marketing lens, it becomes about proving out that metrics like reach and impressions were achieved at a cost reduction, or even better, cost reduction combined with qualitative benefits like better targeting (did you reach the right people?). 

Yesterday's disruption was digital. It created a new economic model and dominant players (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.). Social came next followed by the infusion of mobile—we consume information and participate on demand, anytime, anywhere. But none of these things can be viewed in isolation. I've talked about the responsive marketing model recently and some even talk about the responsive organization. Even marketing in an iterative and more agile fashion has to be a connected part of a bigger machine. I believe what comes after social looks more like the aggregate of many pieces vs. the single view of one or two which have dominated the industry discourse for years. It's time to elevate the role of digital, social and mobile as core elements of a bigger, complex and integrated machine. 

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It's Time to Re-Invent Advertising

Several weeks ago I drafted a post articulating the need for the Public Relations industry to re-invent itself. That still needs to happen—and there's a lot of work to do. What I didn't communicate in that post is the fact that it's becoming increasingly meaningless to distinguish yourself as a practitioner of "advertising" or "public relations" because increasingly to the end consumer, user or stakeholder—it's all just becoming content. And as I've stated many times before:

Content is today's currency in marketing and communications. And context dictates how that currency gets spent. 

And the reality is—nobody has perfected the content model yet—it's still an open playing field. The advertising industry has it's own problems. It may have, in some cases strong chops in creative and in other cases it's perfected the slicing and dicing of data especially tied to demographics. But when you break down most advertising at the core—you begin to uncover this dirty little secret.

It's all about the campaign—and traditional tactics (television & print) still rule the campaign and media spend.

Are their exceptions? Yes, of course. But if you work in the industry, you know the truth. For every Old Spice Twitter tactic there are scores of traditional led campaigns where the lion share of the budget goes into broadcast. Then there are the traditional-digital budgets. These have exploded over the years. Companies invest in banner advertising on Websites and Websites themselves—but are they producing valuable, sharable content through these tactics? If content is today's currency (think memes) then, budgets share should reflect that. 

They don't.

So the ad industry with a few exceptions has their own problems. It now needs to create content designed for instigating second and third screen behaviors (like sharing). It needs to apply "journalism" sensibilities to the advertising machine so that a regular drumbeat of content and engagement can act as a foundation which supports the burst of campaign activities. With all the hype around "creative newsrooms" permeating the industry, the table stakes outlined by the below framework are being overlooked. This does not look like traditional or even "tradigital" advertising. It's something entirely unique:

At this point, it's anyone's game to pioneer the future of marketing. Doesn't matter if it's a PR firm, a digital led agency, a large traditional led agency or on the client side, an organization who works with a number of partners in order to be able to execute at scale. 

Advertising is being re-invented before our eyes. And not everyone is ready for it. 

I am really loving the below deck, led by my colleague Monte Lutz because it outlines several key trends in a more articulate way than I've seen elsewhere. It's a shot across the bow—to marketing professionals who come from any background, that we're smack dab in the middle of a sea change. But it' still early on. It's not that traditional marketing strategies and tactics are no longer relevant. I'm not saying this. But if you're an advertising executive or CMO—you should really ponder about the trends in this deck and think about how your budgets are allocated. And you should ask yourself if you are ready for the next ten years. 

Edelman Digital 2013 Social Media Trends from Edelman Digital

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Change Happens

Immediately after I wrote my last post about the need to re-invent public relations—I began getting questions/reactions in real time (starting on Twitter). The nature tone of the questions came with a raised brow as if to say "are you on something?" albeit uttered more politely. Immediately I asked myself the same question. "is change really possible—and can it come from the inside out"? Was I being realistic in thinking that the desire I had to see re-invention through was doable?

I'm writing this post several days later from Los Angeles where I am attending an offsite for our US senior leadership. It's 3:20 AM PST. I can't sleep—but I am inspired. Mark Hass our US president and CEO delivered his vision for where he feels the organization needs to go and all I can say is that it dovetails perfectly with what I wrote recently—if I had to choose a word it would be kindred. It wasn't only the content of Mark's vision and the philosophical alignment that got me all fired up, but also the style as well. Mark pulled a clip from the film Lincoln and used the former president and his leadership style to illustrate what "operational vision" is all about. Lincoln didn't simply have a vision for the nation—he was laser focused on operationalizing it and ensuring that action applied to the vision resulted in impact. 

Then the lightbulb went off for me. Change is possible when it comes from both the bottom up and the top down all at once. It's possible when you have a leadership team with a shared vision and the chops to operationalize. Not easy, or even immediate—but possible.

And on that note, I want to end this post with content from a release regarding a recent hire. It's not something I do often— leveraging this space to get the word out on these types of things—however this is important for me as my team and I represent the "bottoms" up change in Edelman and I can directly influence our Chicago digital operation (there are eighty of us now). We've made a few key hires/moves and the most recent is Steve Slivka—a talented creative director who has put in a decade of digital work at Leo Burnett and departed Mullen to become a part of our re-invention. Steve's only one person but his arrival is symbolic, at least in terms of how I view it.

Change happens—especially when it's put in motion at both ends. 

Edelman Digital Appoints Steve Slivka, Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director, Chicago

Slivka to Lead Chicago’s Digital Creative Efforts

Edelman has named Steve Slivka senior vice president, group creative director, Edelman Digital, in its Chicago office. In his new role, Slivka will lead the charge in elevating the digital creative for both content development and digital builds. He will report to David Armano, managing director, Edelman Digital, Chicago.

“Steve will be instrumental in driving our digital strategies as we define and refine our client offerings in converged media, merging social platforms with paid and earned tactics,” said Armano. “The future of digital creative content lies at the root of this overlap, and his leadership is critical to the firm as we evolve to align our clients’ strategies and tactics and craft unified creative campaigns.”

Slivka will work closely with Elizabeth Pigg, senior vice president, director of converged media services, Edelman Digital, a 12-year veteran of the firm who recently returned to the Chicago office for her newly created role. They will work to raise the creative output in digital content generation and innovation for the firm.

“Digital creative today requires a reevaluation of how content is created and delivered,” said Slivka. “Edelman holds such a respected place in PR and social that it seemed a natural fit to bring next-generation creative to life here, and by tapping into Edelman’s strong capabilities in analytics, converged media and strategy, my team will be well-positioned to deliver creative that meets the constant innovation required to exceed clients’ goals.”

Slivka joins Edelman from Mullen, a Boston-based full service integrated advertising agency, where he built the creative social-digital team at the agency’s North Carolina outpost and was responsible for creating content for clients such as Tresemmé, CSX and Honda Jet. Prior to working at Mullen, Slivka spent a decade at Leo Burnett in Chicago and also launched his own boutique agency, Colossal Squid Industries. He attended Columbia College Chicago for music composition and interactive media as well as The American Conservatory of Music.

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It's Time to Re-Invent Public Relations

It's Time to Re-Invent Public Relations

I didn't pick PR—PR picked me. 

Let me take a step back. 

Thinking about my own career path since the beginning, I realized there's a pattern. I've always been drawn to industries in the midst of change and disruption. I landed my first job as a graphic designer because I had entered the workforce with a valuable skill at the time—I had learned the essentials of desktop publishing and the company I went to work for was in the process of overhauling how they produced their marketing materials (migrating from traditional tools to digital). It was a huge change and for those who were resistant to converting their skills to digital desktop publishing—they faced early retirement.

Next, I spent about a year working in cable news—but it was an intense year as I worked with the Fox News Channel team helping launch the 24 hour cable news network. Fast forward over fifteen years later and that network is thriving, having tapped consumer demand in cable news and niche media coverage. I've worked at the Chicago Tribune in digital news media and witnessed first hand the differences in how the "digital" team and the veteran employees viewed their work. I spent nearly six years working for one of the original digital agencies which back then was expected to transform the agency space and now doesn't exist anymore (agency.com)—the remains have been swallowed up by corporate entities.

It was at the tail end of my experience there that I discovered "social", first through the blogosphere and then Twitter and Facebook and I did stints at other digital firms and even a start up—hoping these organizations would lead the way in the transformation from traditional digital to a more connected form of digital communications. Eventually in 2009, I found a home with Edelman because it seemed the culture prioritized and valued everything that was changing because of the emergence and disruptive nature of social media. Back then, it was the PR firms that seemed to understand best what was changing. Today, it's not the same story. 

I believe search, social and mobile are the three most disruptive forces in modern communications and they are working together to wreak havoc on organizations and their agency partners. Because I work for a public relations firm—I feel a sense of urgency to start here and lay out what must evolve. The people (stakeholders) we want to reach move effortlessly across a media landscape often times making no distinction. Increasingly they spend time on mobile devices skimming content in "streams or feeds". The average consumer of media has the attention span of a squirrel on ritalin and getting them to pause to read anything more than paragraph is becoming increasingly difficult. The media industry has been disrupted and thereby public relations is an industry in the midst of change. Here are a few areas I believe PR must aggressively embrace and do differently. 

Creative
Most PR firms will say they have creative talent, but we have to ask ourselves if it's the right creative talent. Can we produce apps that live in Facebook or mobile? Are we working on the next Nike Fuel or are we in position to just do the media outreach for it? My most recent hire is a digital veteran who has spent most of his career at advertising and digital agencies. We aren't going to just get people talking about things—we are going to create the things they talk about.  

Analytics
Analytics in Public Relations has to move beyond just counting "placements" similar to the act of pulling together traditional media clippings. Analytics in public relations has to integrate with the other measurement functions of an organization (like connecting earned to owned properties). It also needs to go beyond measuring and move into data collection and analysis. And analysis needs to evolve beyond merely analyzing into deriving core insights to inform decisions like how to spend media dollars and what the tone of messages should be. I'm currently hiring a senior analytics lead for my team and I describe the ideal candidate as part measurement wonk and part digital planner.    

Converged Media
Public relations was built on the notion of "earned media" which differentiated it from advertising. Today, it's all just content as part of the vast quantity we are able to digest on a given day thanks to the deluge we are subjected to. It was Google that began infusing ways to "pay" to help raise visibility with the search engine. It is Facebook that has introduced to the mainstream a convergence of media through things like the promoted post—and it is the media itself that is offering more ways than ever to make advertising feel like it's a part of the editorial universe. This convergence defies both traditional advertising, marketing and public relations constructs—yet poses great opportunity for any of the disciplines who are nimble enough to master. 

This brings us to today and tomorrow. Here's what I am seeing in the industry: PR got a head start on social but it's been rapidly eroding. Companies who value customer service have moved beyond how many PR professionals think about social and are gradually evolving how they service customers. The advertising industry which has always held "creative" in high regard no longer sees social, digital or mobile as add ons but rather core to their business. They are bent on not just talking about the digital world but rather they want to help build it—and they also understand how to leverage creative communication to get people's attention. The partners who handle media transactions do so in bulk, but increasingly it will need to be done in real time. In short, it is the marketing and communications industry that is being disrupted and for those of us on the "PR" side—we must act quickly and decisively to re-invent ourselves in a way that looks more like the future and less like the past. 

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Five Considerations For Branded Content During Sensitive Times

Like many of you reading this, I am horrified by the events which unfolded at Sandy Hook and as a parent—especially affected by the thought of parents who will be grieving during a season when they should be celebrated. The tragedy is incomprehensible on so many levels and it makes my heart heavy. But I am also more than a parent and as a professional who spends so much of my time working with companies who are grappling with new dynamics in marketing, communications and doing business in a real time connected environment, I can't help but think about how much this creates the need for organizations (and people) to be sensitive (and responsible) especially during times like this. If we are really moving toward a "content economy" as I've recently outlined, and all brands and organizations can now directly manage their own media—then they are going to have to do it responsibly. Here are five suggestions for managing branded content during sensitive times.  

1. Call a Meeting Between Staff & Partners

Most organizations now have staffers such as community/social media managers and agency partners who are running their social and owned properties (Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress etc.). When a sensitive story breaks which dominates the news cycle or at minimum their industry—they must themselves act like a news organization and huddle together the teams responsible for putting out content. Call an "all hands" meeting to discuss impact of story and devise a real time strategy for immediate steps moving forward. 

2. Determine Appropriateness of a Response

Once a sensitive situation is in play, your organization is now faced with a question: do you stay silent or speak out? I recently advised an organization on this telling them that it's always best to "do the right thing" however, if they acknowledge what's going on (in this case with Sandy Hook) they had to be prepared to steward any conversation good or bad that came along with it. When determining if it makes sense to make a statement during a sensitive situation, it's best to do the right thing but be prepared for what may follow. If you're not prepared, then your organization has a bigger issue. 

3. Temporarily Disable Automated Posts

Auto posts (scheduling content and posting later) are now a reality for how brands communicate at scale and the technique isn't going away any time soon. However during a sensitive situation there is no way to better damage your brand's equity and reputation than allowing auto posts to continue as if nothing is happening. There's a simple solution: direct your content team to temporarily disable them until further notice. It's ok to take a break and back to point no. 2, it's the right thing to do. 

4. Review Content Calendar

Many brands and businesses now run content calendars to help them plan in advance for posts, marketing, communications etc. If your organization does this—check your content calendar to see if there are any scheduled communications that could come off as tone deaf or inappropriate due to the situation at hand. Reschedule evergreen content for another time and remove "at risk" content. In short, proactively manage your calendar or it will manage you. 

4. Edit/Remove/Reschedule Sensitive Content

No matter how vigilant you try to be, there will always be situations where a communication is already out in public for whatever reason, maybe the publisher wasn't aware of the news. This is where the public can be your best ally, by alerting you to the issue and as long as you are listening, you'll have the opportunity to correct the mistake. Do it transparently and over-communicate over-communicate. If you end up deleting an offending piece of content which was not intended to offend—be sure to explain the steps you are taking. 

One could question the timing of this post and my intentions. As I've stated, I'm both a parent and a professional, and while I have trouble wrapping my mind around recent events, I feel called to share whatever I can to get us all thinking about how we can manage direct communication channels responsibly. Brands are now built in real time and they can be unbuilt just as quickly. 

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Six Social-Digital Trends for 2013

Originally published on Harvard Business Review

It's that time of year again — time to take a stab at what's going to matter in the year ahead as technology continues to influence how we work and live. In previous years, I've looked at trends under the "social media" lens because that has been the major disruptive force, creating both opportunities and threats. This year, I'm using the umbrella term "social-digital" to broaden the focus. First, a quick re-cap from the last year:

While I didn't specifically connect it to the election, social sharing was a trend I cited and one that many of us felt because of the election. You couldn't get away from Facebook posts and streams of tweets from friends who were all too happy to leverage their networks to talk politics, often sharing posts and memes in support of their candidate (Big bird, binders and bayonets anyone)?

And social TV, another trend I saw growing, has continued to gain steam, though interestingly enough it has been TV itself fueling the trend. For example the popular series The Walking Dead has been experimenting with simple Twitter hash tags for each episode in addition to the official one connected with the series. Social entertainment platforms however like Get Glue, which was recently acquired for 25 million in cash have yet to go mainstream.

What has gone mainstream, however, is the micro-economy fueled by once unknown entities such as Kickstarter. Individuals are now raising thousands and even millions of dollars without a middleman thanks to crowdfunding. On the flipside, gamification has lost some of its luster, taking a backseat to useful functionality. A recent Gartner study urges us not to "believe the hype." I may have been too caught up by the promise of making experiences sticky via serving up rewards, when this comes at the expense of raw utility.

The cult of influence continues to attract a following with new digital influence measurement services like Little Bird receiving funding, followed by studies crowning the most influential CMOs.

So what can we potentially expect to see next year? In no particular order, here are six social-digital trends to watch in 2013:

The Content Economy Content may become your company's most valuable asset in 2013. For years Google has been refining it's algorithm cracking down on unsavory tactics that compromise the quality of search results. The algorithms are good enough now that the most compelling content dominates search results. Organizations must create compelling content to exploit this. Some already have, including companies like Coke and Intel, who launched groups focused purely on content. Separately, Facebook is making it's own changes, forcing companies to rely on both creativity and spending (promoted posts) to ensure their content is seen and shared. Brands like Oreo may have unwittingly set the bar for content creation for other organizations by pioneering a form of "content marketing" putting out one piece of timely, relevant and highly creative content every day as part of a campaign. In 2013, content will not only be king, but queen, prince and jester, too.

Cyborg Central Think your mobile phone is making you part computer? Now it has accomplices. Gadgets like "fuel bands" and Google Glasses are just a preview of what we'll see more of in 2013 as we begin to mesh machines with humans. There are already ski goggles which display a tiny screen which lets you not only sync to your mobile device but helps you determine where you are and how fast you are going. As we move into the next year, the phrase "personal computing" will begin to take on another meaning.

The Smobile Web Social + mobile = "smobile." While there's no real insight in pointing out that both mobile and social are going to be big in 2013, I believe they're becoming co-dependent, and most businesses aren't ready for that. A smobile Web means your customers, coworkers and colleagues expect their digital experiences will be optimized for mobile/social sharing and as a result spend less time tethered to a PC or television.The technology for this is evolving rapidly. Near field communication, or NFC technology, for example, allows you to transfer data to your mobile device via a touch rather than scanning a QR code, which seems cumbersome in comparison. While Instagram developed for smobile before the traditional web, Facebook is still playing catch-up, but by the end of 2013 it may become one of the leaders. Will you be ready for the smobile web?

Six Social-Digital Trends for 2013 from David Armano

Sensory Intelligence Sensors will get smarter and become more pervasive. We already have cars that can help us parallel park and seats that vibrate if we're too close to another vehicle. We have thermostats that learn based on how you use them, eventually programming themselves. In 2013 there will be sensors built into athletes' helmets that measure the impact of blows and provide real time data outputs thus potentially preventing further injury. Sensors will be everywhere, in our homes, transportation, technology, and clothing. They will become a part of our lives and will tie into our existing devices and networks, If our plants need water, we'll get a text or tweet, and even a note of thanks. Now that's smart.

Social Commerce In many ways, social has mirrored the original digital revolution. And when digital took on transactions and financial exchanges, things really picked up. So it will go for social as we begin to buy each other gifts through social networks or even set up a storefront. The idea of social commerce isn't new, but signs indicate that 2013 may be the year it actually begins to coalesce.

Data Surplus, Insight Deficit As I write this, Facebook has already begin rolling out its "Photo Sync" feature which automatically downloads photos from your mobile device to Facebook (privately). Some see this as a land grab for data but it's not the only one. "The cloud," "social data," or the overhyped macro label, "big data" will dominate the tech conversation. While it's true that more of our data is being collected, mined and stored, that doesn't mean people know what to do with it. There aren't enough qualified human beings (analysts, sociologists, strategists, anthropologists etc) to mine all this data. But this won't last for long. 2013 may be the year we focus less on data and start thinking about how to understand, interpret and make good use of it.

Whether it's content, data, sensors, smobile, or feeling like we've become one with technology, 2013 should be an exciting year for the social-digital revolution as it continues to change the game. What do you think will be trends to watch in 2013?

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Friends With Benefits: Employees Are Social Too

Several months ago, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel at the Pivot conference in New York City. With me on the panel was Chris Heuer from Deloitte (and Social Media Club) and Phoebe Venkat, head of social at ADT. We discussed a less explored conversation when it comes to all things social—but every company has them:

Employees.

The reality is that while places of work want to separate employees and the work they do from their personal lives, they have really become intertwined, and technology usage even supports this (how many of us have used a personal device for work, or vice versa)? We discussed the phenomenon of a social workforce through the following lens:

Internal to internal (employees using social technologies behind the firewall)
Internal to external (employees talking about their work/companies out in the open)
External to external (employees engaging with multiple stakeholders externally—outside of the company walls). The folks in Edelman's Employee Engagement practice take a similar view:

Chris mentioned some interesting findings from Deloitte which found that high performing employees who leverage social technologies for work, stay with the company longer and continue to perform. Phoebe made the case that social activity at the employee level behind the firewall can make companies feel more like "families". And we collectively discussed the potential for companies to leverage the power of employees and their social networks by thinking of them as "diplomats" or "ambassadors" instead of a highly connected liability. 

If you have 20 minutes to spare—give the video a once over. This was a great panel from my perspective and a refreshing take on a topic that receives less attention in general but can impact a business both in reputation and the bottom line.

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The Future Isn't About Mobile; It's About Mobility

Originally posted on the Harvard Business Review

While the globe grapples with uncertain economic realities, "mobile" appears to be gold.

Facebook is expected to announce their uniquely targeted mobile advertising model before the end of the month. Amazon is talking to Chinese manufacturer Fox Conn with ambitions of building their own mobile device to serve as a complement to Amazon's considerable digital ecosystem of products and services. China itself has surpassed the US as the world's dominant smartphone market with over a billion subscribers and roughly 400 million mobile web users. Advisory firm IDC predicts that by 2014 there will have been over 76 billion mobile apps downloaded resulting in an app economy worth an estimated thirty five billion in the same year. Mobile business will become big business in the not so distant future.

However, there will be blood as the business world pursues the mobile gold rush.

We've seen this movie before. In the early days of the web, it was the website that created a browser-fueled gold rush — until organizations realized that maintaining a website that provided real value was more difficult than launching something quickly. The same story is now playing out in social — getting something launched on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest is easy, but building an engaged and meaningful following isn't. And the same will happen in the rush to mobile if companies take a "channel" approach vs. a behavioral approach. In short, it's not about mobile as much as it is about understanding mobility.

In the early days of digital, the core behavior we needed to understand was that people wanted information at their fingertips and the convenience that came with digital transactions. In the social era it was all these things plus social connectivity. Mobility means information, convenience, and social all served up on the go, across a variety of screen sizes and devices.

Mobility is radically different from the stationary "desktop" experience. In some cases, mobility is a "lean back" experience like sitting on a commuter train watching a video. In other cases it can be "lean forward" — like shopping for a gift while you take your lunch break at the park. And in many cases, it's "lean free" when your body is in motion, or you're standing in line scanning news headlines or photos from friends while you wait for your turn to be called.

Mobility trumps mobile. The difference between mobility and mobile is like the difference between hardware and software. Mobile is linked to devices — it is always one thing, wherever it is. But mobility changes with context: cultures incorporate mobile technologies differently. For example, in Africa, SMS technology helps farmers pay bills electronically. In America, it helps teenagers keep up with their friends — an average of 60 times a day. Mobile itself is the nuts, bolts, and infrastructure, while mobility is the context which determines if it all works together or doesn't.

To avoid "bloodshed" in mobile, learn from past lessons in Web, digital and social. Improve your understanding of the nuances of mobility and mobile behaviors before you ramp up your investment in mobile. Resist the temptation to rely too much on a guru; hiring a guru will only take your organization so far. Many of the organizations who brought in "social media gurus" learned this lesson the hard way. A single individual cannot scale. However, if the organization is willing to put real teeth behind their mobile efforts, a single smart person can help form a center of excellence. Establishing a center of excellence that puts mobility at the core, and integrates it with other business initiatives, can get a business thinking about mobile more strategically.

Secondly, realize that going mobile is not the same thing as having an app. In fact, avoid the temptation to "app everything." A lot of content — whether video or text-based — can easily be optimized for mobile consumption. Popular apps such as Flipboard or Pulse point to a future of consumer "appgregation" — using one app to aggregate many sources of content. Instead of creating a whole host of apps that few are likely to download, invest in making your "digital ecosystem" more mobile-friendly.

Lastly, don't put mobile tactics in front of strategy. In the early days of the web, every site seemed to have an animated GIF or a clunky site-counter. In the early days of social, companies spent millions on costly Facebook apps with cute gimmicks but no real utility or sharing value. Today, companies are scrambling to come up with something "mobile" whether or not it makes sense for their long-term business goals, and whether or not users will actually want it. The outcome is the same in across all of these examples: a low number of visits/installs/downloads and ho-hum business results. Tomorrow's winners of today's mobile gold rush will boast significant (and sustainable) usage numbers due to the value of their content, whether it's sheer utility or impossible-to-ignore entertainment value.

Today's mobile realities are stark. Competition is fierce and users are demanding. If your company wants to put out a fitness app, you're competing not just with Nike FuelBand or Run Keeper, but with dozens of other apps put out by scrappy start-ups.

Before doubling down on mobile, any business should first ask themselves if they really understand mobility as a behavior and lifestyle, followed by tough questions about the role mobile plays in their business. From there, a strategy for mobile, built on an understanding of mobility, can take root.

Build on the expensive lessons learned from past bubbles and there will be less "blood" all around.

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Confessions of an Intrapreneur

Several weeks ago I wrote an article for Forbes titled "Move Over Entrepreneurs, Here Come the Intraprenuers". The above video shot by Bryan Elliott as part of his "Behind the Brand" interview series was actually the catalyst for that piece. Here's a few things I cover in the video:

What Is An "Intrapreneur"?
An Intrepreneur is someone who works in an entrepreneurial fashion with the benefits of having a big organization back them.

How do you combat the naysayers within your organization?
You don't. You try to make every interaction count. You try to be professional, generous and use your talents not just for yourself but for the organization. It's not what you say about yourself, but what others say about you. 

How do you convince your boss that it's a good idea to fund an Intrapreneur?
The company has to take ownership too and make it clear that if they are going to carve out roles like this, they will support it. 

What do you think? Have you ever worked with an Intrapreneur or as one? 

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From Islands To Ecosystem: Connecting Social, Digital + Mobile

From Web And Desktop To Anytime, Anywhere.
In the early stages of digital, businesses first dipped their toe on the Web by launching brochure like Websites which had to be located initially through a browser "URL" (WWW) followed quickly by search engines which organized the Web. Today, the Web and the digital landscape looks dramatically different compared to the Internet's frontier years. For starters, the Web has become mobile, with 1.2 billion of the world's population accessing the Web through a mobile browser. In addition, the internet is increasingly being accessed by tablet or mobile apps and aggregators such as Flipboard and Pulse. To add even more complexity to today's fragmented digital environment, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have proven that a business must extend it's digital ecosystem into social spheres in order to remain relevant. Today’s digital ecosystem is composed of the following increasingly overlapping areas:

Owned:
These are the Websites, corporate blogs, intranets and extranets your business has full control over.

Paid:
These are media properties your business “purchases” in order to drive traffic and raise awareness.

Earned:
Properties which drive traffic/raise awareness but rely on organic distributions.

Social Networks:
Platforms where a business can build a social “embassy” (combines paid and earned tactics) that it partially controls.

Search Engines:
Primarily Google, Bing and regional search engines used to find information on the Web (Siri for mobile meets Ai).

Mobile:
Technology such as phones, tablets and the mobile social-digital behaviors they foster. 

In short, the Web era which was dominated primarily by stand alone slow moving Websites is gradually though systematically becoming a thing of the past,(this is why Facebook must master mobile). Today, a business must approach the Web from the standpoint of connecting its external and internal "digital ecosystem" which brings together "owned properties" such as websites and mobile apps with social "embassies" as well as a fleet of new platforms from third party providers such as customer reviews or popular social networks. Many businesses will face huge challenges in this area as their large global Website structures were built with dated legacy systems and not architected for the future state of digital ecosystems which the industry is moving toward.

Five Ways To Go From Digital Islands To Integrated Ecosystem
Ensuring that your business is building a digital ecosystem vs. disconnected "islands" means fixing the foundation while moving forward in areas where your business needs to be relevant (social and mobile). Media companies like The New York Times have begun to show the way here as they've had no choice but to optimize their content for a mobile, social, digital world. Professional organizations, brands and corporations are the next in line. The steps below are meant to provide high level guidance and is not comprehensive but designed to provide general guidance:

Perform A Digital Footprint Audit
A digital footprint audit takes stock of all digital, social, and mobile assets (both external and internal) and evaluates them against a set of criterion which is customized for your business and industry. Digital properties should be looked at critically. Are their properties which are outdated or not optimized for search or mobile? Are there properties with unrealized potential? Are some properties being kept on life support when they should be put down? A digital footprint audit takes a wide look at everything your business has out on the digital space  and identifies gaps, issues and opportunities.

Implement A Content Strategy
A comprehensive content audit should be performed to determine what content is valuable vs. what's not optimized for a social, mobile Web. A content audit compliments the digital footprint analysis and provides the roadmap for what content stays, what needs to be re-located and identifies gaps. From this, a content strategy should be developed aimed at producing optimized content for search, social sharing and mobile interactions.

Assess Signals Derived From Search And Social
A digital ecosystem is only as effective as it's ability to be found and it's relevancy to current conversations. A conversation assessment looks at what's being said about your business and relevant topics across the digital landscape. It also looks at how effective your digital ecosystem is in sending signals which are being shared across multiple social platforms. On the other side of the fence, a search audit looks to see if your properties are being found in search engines specifically guided by relevant terms critical to the business. Both exercises will provide clues to the question: "is my digital ecosystem both findable and shareable"?

Re-Assess Your Infrastructure
Large complex sites are never easy to maintain, update or evolve but this doesn't take away from the fact that they will need to become more effective at handling change faster. A comprehensive audit from an unbiased and qualified third party may uncover legacy issues rooted in IT which need to be addressed. Some issues may involve updating existing infrastructure and others could require a gradual overhaul of not only existing systems but also partners and vendors. In either scenario an exhaustive audit here would likely be the place to start. Without it, root issues will likely never be addressed no matter the quality of your digital strategy. 

Evaluate Current Resources & Processes
Moving from digital islands to a connected ecosystem means taking a look at your existing organizational design. A modern ecosystem requires staff and resources which can manage social properties, develop for mobile and produce valuable content which travels effortlessly across that ecosystem. An organizational process design exercise can be useful in documenting current state and visualizing future state providing a roadmap for how to navigate the changes needed in order to optimize the organization.

Ecosystems Take Time
Planning, building, maintaining and ensuring that you've grown a healthy and integrated digital ecosystem will not happen overnight. Be prepared for it to take time, resources and the stomach to deal with multiple stakeholders from marketing to IT to customer service. The above activities are more likely to be effective if approached globally but executed against with local and regional execution. Digital ecosystems for large businesses will also require the cooperation and coordination of multiple partners in order to realize the potential. The burden of this coordination will fall largely upon the organization driving the initiatives and it's key partners. 

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Move Over Entrepreneurs, Here Come The Intrapreneurs

Originally posted on Forbes

In the wake of Facebook‘s IPO, and despite where the stock goes from here, one thing is clear: Entrepreneurs–especially successful ones–arethe new rock stars of business culture. Despite this trend, the reality remains that for every successful entrepreneur who builds even a modestly successful business, there are thousands who struggle and toil endlessly and may never see the fruits of their labor come anywhere close to commercial success. Add that to the fact that while entrepreneurialism seems to be enjoying a golden age of sorts, it isn’t for everyone.

Some individuals don’t want to go off on their own and build something from scratch wearing every hat (or hoodie) under the sun in order to find professional fulfillment.  There’s no shortage of books and media messages that paint the world in black and white in this regard. You are either a faceless corporate cog in the machine of a large, soulless organization, or you are fighting the good fight as a free and independent entrepreneur in charge of his own destiny. But I’m here to tell you from experience that there is a third way, and it’s called being an intrapreneur.

What does that mean exactly?

An intrapreneur is someone who has an entrepreneurial streak in his or her DNA, but chooses to align his or her talents with a large organization in place of creating his or her own. To the classic entrepreneur this may be puzzling, but to what I think is a growing class of 21st Century “employees,” it may sound like the best of both worlds. I didn’t come up with the word “intrapreneur,” but several years ago when I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman at a train station and I described what I did for a living, he said something I’ll never forget: “Oh, you’re an intrapreneur–so was I.”

And I’m not alone. Some of my peers who are doing work in the social business industry also are intrapreneurs whether they suspect it or not. Scott Monty of Ford, Ekaterina Walter of Intel, Richard Binhammer of Dell, Pete Blackshaw of Nestlé, Bonin Bough of Kraft and Frank Eliason of Citi, to name a few–and I could go on and on here. The start-up community has successfully demonstrated that the modern world needs entrepreneurs. For every app, social network, or new Web service you discover with delight–there are entrepreneurs behind them. But this only makes intrapreneurs more critical, because in a world filled with fast-moving change, a large organization that becomes complacent and loses sight of the benefits of having an entrepreneurial streak built into their massive global systems can find themselves disrupted in short order.

This is where intrapreneurs come in handy. Smart organizations will seek out individuals who like to invent, innovate and want to be on the front lines of change. These individuals can work independently but even more important can work seamlessly as part of an integrated team structure and also effectively embrace and embody the culture of the intrapreneur’s host organization. Intrapreneurs are most successful when management/leadership empowers and supports them and in turn the intrapreneurs represent the best interests of their organizations while earning the respect of corporate peers. So here’s to intrapreneurs everywhere: The corporate world needs us now more than ever, and you might just be one without knowing it.

Five (Intuitive) Reasons To Bet on Facebook

There's no shortage of commentary around Facebook as the smoke literally builds around it's engine while the social media rocket prepares for IPO liftoff. This piece won't be full of rational analysis but rather gut intuition. Here are a few things to chew on as you think about the global future with or without Facebook. 

Zuckerberg Isn't Steve Jobs, But He's Jobs-Like
Mark Zuckerberg gets social like Steve Jobs got design. Furthermore, both share a core foundational value which is irrationally committed to making products and experiences which please their own sensibilities first and the market second. Does this guarantee Facebook's success? No, but it does guarantee that there will always be a vison and if you look up Facebook's corporate governance structure, you'll realize that it's a company being set up to be purpose and vision led. Bottom line, you're not betting on or against Facebook, but really Mark Zuckerberg. 

Facebook Is Today's Telephone, E-mail & Internet For Many
Think about how you use Facebook, how your children use it (if you have them and they are old enough) and how your parents use it. It's already moving past "social network" status and moving toward something which looks more like a lifeline to the outside world. In conventional wars of the past, communication lines such as telephone would be cut so the enemy could not communicate. If conventional war broke out today—generals would plan to take the Internet out because of platforms like Facebook. Think about that. 

Ecosystems Trump Products
Facebook was never a product from day one—it started as a social network and it's been steadily building up an ecosystem ever since. It's on our mobile devices, it connects with our Websites, it offers it's own line of credit, it has apps and developer communities built around it and it's spawned hundreds of start ups that employ thousands of people who would not be in their line of work if it were not for Facebook. The company has already gotten to this point with a significant advantage in that it looks more like an octopus than it does a shark gobbling up everything in it's path. 

Big Business Is Built On Addictive Behaviors
Facebook is extremely addictive and one can find themselves spending a good chunk on their day there either working, playing or doing a combination of the two. Gambling became big business because of this. Drug trafficking, while illegal in most cases is big business and so are food industries built on menus with addictive items. As long as Facebook remains addictive to use, it will find a way to build business around it. 

Global & Local Are The Future
While Facebook is still working on markets like Russia and China—there's no dispute that it's well into the process of being a global phenomenon and in addition, it can be especially relevant in local markets. Any local business which is self sustaining or part of a larger company can have a presence and run it with the local knowledge of their own markets. It is this combination which positions Facebook as something of a "virus" with the ability for it to "infect" markets through the people who use it. 

Personally, I would not bet against Facebook. Even GM which announced this week that they were pulling out of Facebook advertising spending concedes that they are committed to other ways of integrating it (via content etc.). GM isn't betting against Facebook as much as deciding display ads weren't working for them. Of course, I could be wrong on all of the above—but intuitively my instincts are telling me, "don't bet against Mark Zuckerberg". 

Own The Data, Own The Future

Now that some of the dust is settling around Facebook's massive acquisition of Instagram this past week, we can all take a step back and think about the bigger picture. Yes, Facebook understands the critical role mobile will play in how billions of people interact and communicate but they also understand that interactions, engagement, consumption or whatever you want to call it generates one thing.

Data.

Facebook wants it. Google wants it. And all businesses will want to understand it. There is huge, big business to be built around all kinds of data. Targeted marketing is the first salvo and it's a pretty big one. But that's likely the tip of a gargantuan iceburg. I had some fun recently chatting with Richard Quest from CNN on some of these issues. It's only a few minutes, but you get the idea. The Web is going social, mobile and local. All of this will generate a lot of data, and that's going to be valuable in a lot of ways. What do you think? Where is all of this going?

Social by Design: Design Thinking & Business

Social by Design: Design Thinking & Business

View more presentations from David Armano

From a recent Keynote I delivered at the Constellation Connected Enterprise. "Design" is more important than ever, but greatly misunderstood as a business tool. In addition to the numerous business process design models in the deck—I used Facebook's browser experience as an example of a design problem. Facebook is in the "feature-itis" stage of their ecosystem design and I suspect they know this and will work to fix it before the experience becomes too complex for participants to tolerate.  Enjoy the slides—a collection of work and other examples to illustrate how design and business strategy work together.

How To Innovate In Spite of Innovation

I recently gave a talk, or more like a "therapy" session with Mullen's Chief Innovation Officer Edward Boches at the MIMA Summit in Minneapolis. A fantastic event populated by some of the most innovative companies in the world including Target, 3M and Best Buy. I have a bias when it comes to "innovation" that people tend to hyperfocus on what Google's Avinash Kaushik called "transformational" innovation. Ironically, a great example of transformational innovation would be Facebook which is transforming the Web from information to social interactions. But I focused my portion of the conversation on where I spend most of my time which is "incremental innovation" or smaller innovations which are not designed to dramatically transform, but can be effective ways of moving an organization in the right direction. Here are a few tips on how to innovate in spite of innovation.

Think Small: Fireflies vs. Lightbulb
Innovation doesn't always occur as the result of a single big idea (lightbulb) but can often times be the result of many little ideas. If we think about ideas, concepts or thoughts as fireflies vs. a giant lightbulb, you realize that fireflies need to be "caught" and placed in a jar. When collected, lots of fireflies can generate just as much light as a light bulb, but the trick is pulling out the right firefly or idea at the right time. Many good ideas were ahead of their time. 

Prototype
Coming from a design background, I stress the value of prototypes and define them broadly. Prototypes don't always need to be built out of code or material. A prototype needs to go beyond spoken or written word. It can be a visual, or process design or even a concept video. But it should be tangible, and it should communicate the value of the innovation.  

Culture Matters More Than Technology
Edward busted my chops a bit because I was using index cards to gather my thoughts vs. an iPad. I took that opportunity to stress that culture is more important than technology when it comes to innovation. I've seen companies with state of the art working spaces and those with just the basics in place and innovation happening at the latter. When it comes to pushing things even just a little, you don't need the latest and greatest tech but you do need a fire in the belly which is shared by your peers.

Create A Coalition of the Willing
Related to the last point I referenced specific examples where I had seen better ideas come out of hallway conversations vs. "brainstorming sessions" where the most "creative" people are invited to the table. When trying to innovate, as a manager the most effective thing you can do is find, harness, and conspire with those who are willing to take up the cause with you. Innovation is a cause. It makes people uncomfortable and challenges them to stretch their own abilities.

Speak The Language of Business
During our session, several individuals expressed the frustration of not being able to get "innovation funded". There are creative ways around the obstacle. On the professional services side, one way is to make a business case to a client which funds the initiative for you and gives them first dibs on an idea. On the corporate side, it can entail working up a business case and showing how much can be made or saved. Or there can be business cases built around things like visibility, marketing, press etc. Speaking the language of business means speaking in terms of business outcomes and not just the brilliance of the potential innovation. Do this and you'll be one step closer to finding a sponsor.

Meet A Need
One of the things that I like about Kickstarter is that it meets a need that has previously been unmet. There are lots of people with projects in need of funding, and as it turns out there are also a great deal of people who feel good about supporting a project they believe in. The results is a marketplace where "buyer" and "seller" both benefit and exchange value. But prior to the platform, neither group likely knew that needed to work this way.

These are a few personal "values" that I try my best to consider when I work and hopefully push things forward. What are yours?

Please Steal This Idea

Not long ago, I found myself talking with several clients about a trend I felt would truly impact their business. Social Sharing. There's no brilliance to identifying this as a meaningful trend, we see social sharing everywhere. In the real world and most recently on networks as people not only share what they are doing, but what they are reading, listening to, and even purchasing.

I've made suggestions multiple times to whoever would listen that they should take another look at their Website and integrate social sharing (beyond content and more toward commerce). For example if you are even considering buying a product, you should be able to tell your friends about it. If you booked a vacation or a hotel room with a view—same thing. If you recommend a product or service you should be able to broadcast that across your entire social network (and not just one) directly from the site.

Social networks have turned people into bragging machines. It's not the most appealing human trait, but spend time on them and this is a significant portion of how people share. We want others to know when we do something that makes us feel good. So why don't we see more of this integration in transactional Web experiences? See Sears for example:


In this example, Sears allows a participant to share products they are interested on Facebook. They can also do reviews of products and share those. The benefit for Sears is a very potent form of "social marketing" in that they get their product right into the main feed of a user and their friends/connections are likely to see it. It's more word of mouth than it is advertising.

So why aren't there more examples like this across the Web from major brands? It takes several "departments" to make something like this happen. Here are a few:

Legal
IT
Marketing
Social

It also takes the commitment of a senior leader within an organization to say "go make this happen". In nearly every conversation I find myself in with professionals in the industry, the struggle to define "social ROI" (return on investment) becomes a roadblock to innovation.

If you really want to connect the dots between social integration and purchase intent then please steal this idea and integrate social sharing to your products and services on your sites. Figure out how to do it and make it happen. And figure out how to track the links back to your site. You'll be one step closer to solving the "ROI" question in social media social business integration. Have you seen any great examples from big brands here? Share in the comments.

Location-Based Marketing: What's in it for Me?

The following is a guest post from Mike Schneider and Aaron Strout, co-authors of Location-Based Marketing for Dummies. Mike is the senior vice president, director of digital incubator for allen & gerritsen. Aaron heads location-based marketing efforts at WCG. You can read more about Aaron and Mike here: http://locationbasedmarketingfordummies.com.

What is Location-Based Marketing? While an official definition doesn't yet exist for location-based marketing, we (Mike and Aaron) like to explain it as the art of engaging your customers and prospects using services like foursquare, Yelp, SCVNGR and Gowalla to drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing and referrals. These services are mostly available on smart phones (mobile phones that are web and GPS enabled) and allow users to "check in" to a physical location such as a restaurant, bar, print shop or dentist's office. Some of these services allow the businesses to reward their customers for checking in with special discounts, prizes, experiences and recognition.

Because more and more people are starting to use smart phones, it's becoming easier for software and application developers to take advantage of knowing within a tight radius, where someone is assuming that "someone" doesn't mind revealing their current location. The key here is for marketers and small business owners to provide enough value (discounts, prizes, recognition etc.) for customers to want to check in so that customers will share their data with them. Over time, marketers and business owners can leverage this rich data (age, sex, past check-in behavior, frequency of checking in, etc.). Even better, if the location is cool enough or the offer compelling enough, marketers and business owners can count on their customers sharing their "check ins" with their networks on places like Facebook, Twitter and Google +.

How Does a Business Get Started with a Location-Based Marketing Campaign?Knowing that people like lists, we've put together a straightforward blueprint for companies to help them think about how they might go about building a location-based marketing campaign. This isn't everything you need to know, it's a good primer for getting started. If you're really interested in digging in, we hear there is a good book to help you get started (shameless plug, we know).

1.  Set goals: Are you looking to drive foot traffic? Loyalty? Sales? Engagement? Think about how to measure this.
2. Claim your location: simply put, search for your business across the top LBS (foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and SCVNGR) and put a "claim" in on your business's location(s). In most cases, this is a ten minute process. While you're at it, make sure you take a look at your location on Google Places.
3. Pick a service (or two) to support: Find 1-2 services to use (hint: if you’re in the travel and entertainment industry, Gowalla is a great choice). One way to decide which service(s) are right for you is to see how active your customers are across each service.
4. Reach out to your Influencers: Find out who your influencers are (the mayor, ambassador or the person at the top of your leader board is usually a good place to start) and get to know them. Heck, invite them in for coffee, lunch, a wine tasting.
5. Pick a great offer: Note that “great” doesn’t equal “expensive.” Sometimes, a sign in your store/venue honoring the “mayor” might be enough. My co-author, Mike Schneider, and I have what we call the “Ben & Jerry’s Rule” named after one of the first successful campaigns ever to roll out on foursquare. They offered 3 scoops of ice cream for $3 for everyone that checked in (cost for 3 scoops is normally $5.50). And even better, the mayor got a free extra scoop.
6. Measure, refine and optimize: This one is pretty straightforward. Have a plan and execute against it.
7. Gamification FTW: Don’t be afraid to leverage the “game dynamics” of some of these platforms as appropriate. For instance, on SCNVGR, you might give extra points for a picture with the store manager. Or if you sell coffee, a bonus for the best drink recommendation.
8. Let people know about your campaign: Remember to let people know about your program by putting up signs, telling them in your newsletter, including a mention on your “on hold” music, etc.
9. Operationalize, operationalize, operationalize: This means that if you are going to run a location based marketing campaign, train your employees. Train yourself. And make sure you have whatever it is that you’re promising. Not operationalizing is where many companies fall down.
10. Try out an API: If you are tech savvy (or have some tech savvy developers), try experimenting with some of the APIs these location based platform providers make available for free. You can jazz up your website or your mobile app.

Where is Location Based Marketing Headed?

We're seeing a lot of interesting developments in the space. The over exaggerated death of Facebook Places signals something that we have had our eyes on for a while.  The audience that knows about and understands checking in its current form is a subset of highly technical (geeky) early adopters, gamers and social networking dynamos. These folks spend money, they're loud and they are worth activating, but that behavior on its own is not going to pay off the true value of location. Instead, there are other ways for consumers to use and express their location to get value.

• Passive Checking In / Precision: Reward cards like Tasti-D-Lite's check people in automatically using the foursquare API, but companies like Shopkick are experimenting with sound wave emitters that can track people to specific aisles of a store and test whether they can get people to spend with targeted offers, but also see if they can get them to change behavior. I remember proposing similar technology to a pharma client which did the same using RFID trackers. They thought this was too icky, but Shopkick, according to some chats I've had with Forrester has 2.5 million users and 40% are active. That is huge and represents a seriously amazing opportunity to get to shoppers and interact with / influence them at decision point.
• Intent / Future: Applications like Forecast, Plancast and Ditto have people telling where they are going to be. This represents a huge opportunity for merchants to use structured data to serve a group of people who need their services, or to attempt to change their intended behavior. The first ones into the pool get the advantage and I bet they get it at almost zero cost.
• In a status or meta data: Facebook, like Google+ is using location as a feature and it's actually pretty brilliant because they are getting more than just a check in. They're getting personal and professional expressions wrapped around a location. The problem is that the data is still highly unstructured and difficult to analyze, but if anyone can figure it out, it's Google. Look for them to do cool things with the location data that you provide to Google+. I see recommendations based on what your friends or others like you like without you having to answer many questions.
• Recommendation Engines: Bizzy and WHERE are the leaders in this category. Bizzy recently integrated with foursquare so they can pull in your locations and add places you have been to their recommendation technology. They also have a concept of "checking out" [BTW are the shenanigans at techcrunch wacky or what? start another blog Mike] where you rate your experience in a structured manner. They also just released a reminder notification that pings you 60 minutes after you check-in on foursquare to remind you to check out on Bizzy.
• At Point of Sale: Screw checking in, just pay. Technologies like The LevelUp are capturing your location, but they aren't broadcasting it to anyone (yet). Instead they're quietly building a future-forward loyalty, cross merchant loyalty program that will have one of the most interesting sets of data anyone has seen. Look for them to possibly merge with SCVNGR at some point and connect the social aspects. For now, though, we'll take one step mobile payments and behind-the-scenes discounts on anything we want. You can leave your wallet at home!

Hopefully we've piqued your interest in location-based marketing. If you have any questions, please ask away in the comments and we'll do our best to answer them.

Maybe Agencies Should Be More Like Blue Chip Companies

If you work in either an agency, consultancy or professional services firm, then you've likely seen an article or five over the past few years making the case for agencies to act more like start-ups. The logic goes something like this: start-ups are nimble and product focused. They embrace "cultures of code" and they build things. Start-ups move fast and adapt, and they celebrate experimentation and innovation. And some of the most famous start-ups are literally changing the way we live, work and play (see Facebook).

In the spirit of full disclosure, I once subscribed to this point of view but I do not any longer. Professional service firms like any industry are facing multiple challenges, from disruption generated in places like social media (anyone can be a publisher now) to the fact that there's convergence making it less relevant to distinguish how different your firm approaches the areas you provide services in (is it advertising, marketing, PR, or other?). In many cases, the dollars being pursued are up for grabs.

First, let's state that start-ups have their own issues. A very TINY percentage of them ever make it to a sustainable business model. Many start-ups are founded by ADD ridden entrepreneurs who build one, sell it for a modest price and move on to the next because that is what they do. Also, start-ups are in truth a commodity—there are thousands of them out there that are trying to be the next location based network just like the others before them trying to be the next Twitter and Facebook. Nobody talks about those.

Now let's move on to agencies and or consultancies. Some have actually figured out (or at least are trying to figure out) how to reconcile products vs. services. A social media agency called Mr. Youth created a community-rewards type product called Crowdtap and it's worth noting they even they call out the differences in the models:

Back to agencies and perhaps business in general. A few weeks ago in London, I had a very stimulating conversation with an Edelman colleague who was talking about "corporate memory" or simply put, the connection between the knowledge which is retained in any organization between their employees & their work product. It hit me that this is not only a challenge for "client side" businesses, but for agencies it can be a complete nightmare. Many agencies are revolving doors, where high turnover rates are expected and planned for. However, like any other business—each time a professional services employee leaves a firm, they take their corporate memory with them. In my opinion this may be the number one issue that any business, especially the professional service industry faces as disruptions continue to enter the market place.

My hypothesis here is that looking to the start-up world may not provide the inspiration agencies seek. In fact, the inspiration may lie in sustainable blue chip businesses who do a good job of retaining not only their most critical employees but the knowledge they amass as they spend their time with the company likely going from department to department. Having worked with several significant brands/companies over the years you can spot these individuals—they've put in their time and deeply understand the culture, values and mission of the company. They've provided value over the years and been there through good and bad times.

Whenever I meet an Edelman collegue who has been with the firm over 5 or 10+ years—(and there are many) I always ask them the same question. What keeps you here? The answer is usually consistent:

The people
The culture
The work

Perhaps agencies need to look not to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world but to the sustainable business models that have withstood the test of time and are smart enough to invest in and keep their "corporate memory" intact. It just might be that unless you build the next Facebook or Google, that start-up culture is overrated and today's "empty suit" is actually an empty hoodie.

The ROI of Your Mother

From Chris Brogan's blog

"Gary was talking about a person in the board room who was hounding him, “What’s the ROI of social media? What’s the ROI? What’s the ROI?” Gary’s answer, when he’d finally had enough? “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

Cue the laughter and give Gary Vaynerchuck a high five. Saying something like "what's the ROI of your mother?" is bold, human and funny. Several years ago I watched as Ford's Scott Monty delivered a talk in Paris and he also asked "what's the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning?". Also a great way to work a crowd and get you thinking. But keynotes and meetings in boardrooms with executives are two different things. I bet Scott digs into things like metrics a bit deeper as he plans multiple marketing campaigns which integrate social strategy and implementation. So to be clear, Gary is great, Scott is great—now let's talk metrics, behaviors and financials. In fact, let's get specific on an example for illustration. Many of you who know me, may remember that we raised nearly 17k for a family in need (12k in less than 24 hours) a few years ago. We used nothing but social networks to do this. Let's break this case down to see if the above model holds:

Metrics: Things you can measure
There were so many metrics that I was able to look at during that initiative and they meant different things. Here were a few that I noticed:

-Re-tweets: The number of re-tweets from my Twitter updates was something I kept track of for a while. It Was one of the main indicators that the messages I was sending out was indeed getting amplification.

-Page views/traffic: Traffic to my blog was over 10x normal traffic. This gave me an indicator that the message was not only being amplified but that it was driving traffic the the right destination at a rapid rate.

-Clicks, Diggs, Referrals: Back in 2009, Digg was still kind of a big deal in terms of routing traffic to a destination. Today, shares, likes, and any type of measurement which tracks sharing across networks mean your content is being routed.

-Google Page Rank: The word "Daniela" ended up being the 8th most popular result out of 42 million. In this case, not hugely relevant. However, to go back to Scott Monty for example, I'm confident his teams are tracking Google page ranks of words such as "Focus" and what they can do to improve Ford's ranking.

Behaviors: Targeted actions and desirable outcomes
There are lots of actions which lead to micro metrics, for example influencing the behavior to share a link or click on something. These are hard metrics. Then There are soft metrics. During our experience with the Daniela effort—I was caught off guard at the fact that it drew criticism. This was due to fact that it got amplified so quickly and drew so much attention. There were certain things that I did intentionally to help influence a certain behavior; Advocacy. As some of the criticism was documented, a small percentage of "nodes" in the network became activated and advocated on our behalf. Advocacy was the desired behavior. The desired outcome included things like Twitter being pressured to shut down an account which was impersonating me. That was a favorable outcome. Behaviors lead to outcomes—don't forget that.

Financials: Cost savings or earnings
Typepad costs me under two hundred dollars a year. Twitter costs nothing. However I spent hundreds of hours of my personal time in putting effort into informing the stakeholders of this initiative, blogging, setting up the payment infrastructure etc. In addition to that, there was the thousands of hours spent actually building up the network. But, ultimately there was a number reached which we could point to: $16, 880.60 to be exact. There was also a percentage we could point to—we had exceeded a targeted goal by 337%.

The bottom line: Business likes tangible results
There were a lot of intangible results I could go which relate to this example. It was the catalyst for many interactions which have benefitted others as well as myself. All soft "ROI" indicators but valid nevertheless. This side of the equation speaks to the "what's the ROI of your mother" part. Or you could just say we did the right thing, and it paid off for all parties. However, for most CEOs, CMO's and business execs—doing the right thing isn't often enough. And it's why we need to measure and analyze and report. The ROI of my mother is common sense—I would not be here today without her. I just don't expect the CMO of a global organization value that as much as I do. We're in the "doing" stage now of all of this and like it or not—we need to move business conversations beyond putting our pants on and invoking our moms.

Campaigns & Ecosystems

 

From Business Insider:

"Here’s the thing about many social media agencies: they often find themselves in the position of having to polish a turd. You pay them to get the word out about something, but you might not have an actual thing (a “social object” if you will) to talk about. The internet likes to talk about things - cool things, new things, awesome things, shiny things, fun things. Social media agencies don’t make things. They talk about things"

Go ahead and read the rest of the article. I found it to be a shallow industry perspective and poor use of earned media in my opinion. Essentially it was an advertisement for the firm who's CEO wrote it. That said, it does underscore a huge challenge any business will face and I think it goes beyond the notion that having a great product leads to great marketing. Well of course it does, but if we're going to define business through a marketing lens, we are forgetting the relationship between two essential constructs.

Campaigns
Products that sell themselves are a myth. We only have to look to Apple for the truth in this. Of course they create solid products through offering up a desirable experience, but they also have some of the most well integrated and executed marketing initiatives on the planet. What should a campaign be like when the product itself is no Apple? When Domino's Pizza realized that their product was not all it could be, they launched a truthful campaign admitting that they could and would do better. Results? The campaign along with menu change increased sales.  

Ecosystems
Back to Apple. It does marketing. Lots of it. It also builds ecosystems. These are iTunes, the App store and what they are attempting with mobile me. But you don't have to be a software company to build a business ecosystem. Starbucks (Edelman client) is doing this with mobile payments, Nike does this with Nike+ and American Express does this in the B2B world with Open Forum. Ecosystems are systems, not messages meaning that they are complex and go beyond telling a story. The really good ones though, empower stakeholders ranging from customers to employees to tell their own stories.

CEOs, CMOs & Agency Partners Unite
Good agency partners will challenge their clients to do the right thing, which in this economy is to integrate campaign and ecosystem initiatives. However all agencies react to market demand. When a CMO with a limited lifespan forces them to get quick results—they often create significant demand for "viral marketing"—quick hits which can lead to short term results which can validate their existance. But the businesses which succeed in the long run (and the CEO's driving them), understand that it's the coordination of a good product and service, combined with an integration of ecosystems, support and marketing initiatives which will result in long term value for not ony customers but all stakeholders. My advice to business and agency alike? Take a pass on spinning the wheel of marketing misfortune and work on integrating these efforts today.  

Building A Disruption-Proof Business

 
Originally wrote this back in 2010, but with news of Blockbuster selling, and Borders shutting down stores—to name a few recent example of business disruption... I thought it would be worth  re-visit.

Over the last two years, businesses have tightened belts, cut spending and some have gone out of business altogether due to the economy. But there is another threat that many organizations face which will likely remain, even as the cycle of recession begins to fade - disruption. Many business models are simply not disruption proof.

The media industry has been turned upside down partially as a result of technologies which empower anyone to act like a journalist. Newspapers have seen their classified cash cows cannibalized by free or low-cost services such as Craigslist.  Web designers who once charged premium fees for their services now compete with Wordpress or other do-it-yourself services. The music industry has been upended, with record stores going out of business as a result of the iTunes ecosystem and digital file swapping.

The advertising industry has been thrown into chaos by technology which empowers the consumers to skip over ads and demand value in place of messaging.

Disruption fueled by technology, such as a younger generation that lives more digitally, and other global trends will force businesses to re-assess how they spend media dollars and influence the creation of new products and services. This will gradually trickle down into every facet of an organization, forcing changes in job descriptions, demands and skills. In an effort to become a disruption-proof business, brands and organizations will need to become more connected and in tune with their customers, employees and partners than ever before.

Disruption-proof businesses will need to become better at predicting possible outcomes and adapting quickly to changes in their environment before their business models become disrupted. Listening tools and “real-time” focus groups on social networks will make meaning from the data. These will become increasingly essential for enabling an organization to stay informed, while internally they will improve how their own employees share information and collaborate.
In 2010 2011 and beyond, technologies and the human behavior it influences will continue to disrupt — but organizations who learn to adapt quickly will thrive.

Your Social Media Followers Are Your Best Customers

The following is a guest post from Joe Chernov. Joe is the Director of Content for Eloqua. Co-chair of WOMMA member ethics panel. You can read more about Joe here: http://www.jchernov.com

If you’ve ever suspected your social media followers are your best customers, your instinct was correct.  The customers who choose to follow you on social channels are considerably more apt to promote your brand to others, at least, that’s what a recent internal study at Eloqua tells us.

Inspired by a conversation with SiriusDecisions VP Jonathan Block, we decided to shift our focus from the number of people following us and instead concentrate on the nature of our followers.  Who exactly are these people who’d gone out of their way to “Like” us, tweet about us and join our online communities?  What are they most apt to talk about?  And, most importantly, are they good for our business?

We looked for patterns in the most recent 500 tweets mentioning Eloqua, the dialogue on our 1,500-member Facebook Fan page, and the chatter in our LinkedIn Groups.  We uncovered some compelling statistics – data that supports the instincts of many social media marketers.

Those who engage with us on social channels have a much higher Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a popular, albeit controversial, measure of brand advocacy – than our “average” customer.  Over all, the NPS for customers who engage with us on social channels is more than 450% higher than our total customer base. We had assumed the NPS for our Facebook Fans would be the highest – after all, the type of content our Fans prefer is more “personal” (staff photos, party updates, employee profiles) than what’s shared on Twitter or LinkedIn.  But although Facebook Fans registered a staggering 700% higher NPS score than our total client base, it was Twitter that stole the show.  A customer who tweets about Eloqua is nearly nine times as likely to be a brand promoter as our average user.

Before completing this post, I chatted with social media A-lister Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group.  Owyang has blogged in the past about NPS and social media, so I figured he might have some insights to share.  He certainly did.  He told me, “NPS doesn't take into account that customers already are making referrals.  To get a holistic view of customer sentiment, referrals and word-of-mouth, brands must also include measuring the organic opinions of customers happening every second of every day around the globe.” 

In other words, NPS tells us if a person says they would promote a brand; social monitoring tells us if that person actually did promote a brand.

Yet having run communications at word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent, I can tell you that most brand-related conversations still occur face-to-face, and no listening platform can (yet) monitor in-person discussions.  So while I agree social media analysis should incorporate sentiment, I still believe the correlation between NPS and social engagement is valuable in that it speaks to the likelihood of brand endorsements in real world conversations as well online chatter.

Certainly, this study only begins to address the correlation between social media and brand advocacy.  It doesn’t touch on causation.  It’s unclear if our best customers engage with us on social channels because they like us, or if the act of engaging with us induced them to favor us.  That’s a question we plan to tackle soon.

What else did we discover in the process of analyzing our social followers?  Lots.  Here are a few gems.

• The company’s blog is the #1 trigger for customer tweets
• Although social CRM and support are, justifiably, hot topics in the media, calls for support account for only 1% of all tweets
• SMB clients are nearly 2.5 times as likely to create online content than enterprise clients
• The more engaged the company is a particular social network, the higher the NPS of the customers who are active in that community

Does this analysis affect the way you will approach social media?  Have you conducted any studies that advance or contradict these indicators?  We’d love to hear your thoughts.  In the meantime, the next time your CEO, CMO or Board asks if any of this social media stuff truly matters, you no longer have to trust your instinct.  You’ve got data on your side. 

Are Quora Votes A Viable Metric? Influence, Popularity, Expertise, Campaigns & Currency.

As I mentioned in my brief recent post on Quora, I would be digging into it a bit more. First, if you want to know more about the service, here is one of the best descriptions around. I particularly like this part:

"It’s like the community side of LinkedIn, merged with the organic networking of Facebook, smashed up with the informative aspects of Wikipedia, topped with a dash of the “I just can’t see this catching on” from Plurk. With blog comments."

Now, lets get to the business of dissecting an interesting detail about the service. Let's say someone asks a question about the company you work for or a brand you really like. More specifically, the question itself could itself be unflattering or could be resulting in answers that put the company/brand/product or even issue in a negative light. But you may have information which answers the question credibly, adding value and depth to the topic. While you may edit answers and even the question itself, one of the best ways to "be seen" on Quora is to have your answer "voted up" by others. Think page one of Google or getting voted up in Digg. Now this is one specific scenario to illustrate a business case. Quora is ultimately a search engine play, meaning that while it is a network, it is not a walled garden and what gets said about you can be found, tweeted out and shared on any popular network including facebook. In my opinion, getting "voted up" much like a re-tweet, Facebook Like, is an emerging metric. I would not overstate it's importance since the service is in its infancy, but I'd watch it. So with that, here are a few factors to chew on.

Popularity
Many will say that getting lots of votes that pushes your answer up on a page is about popularity. And this is partially correct. As someone who has a considerable network, I find that it's easier for me to get votes without ever having to ask for them. People read my answers and my popularity gives me broader distribution therefore increasing my chances.

Expertise & Quality
Others will say that it's a quality answer or one that adds value & expertise that gets votes. This is also true in my opinion as many of the answers I see with votes are often simply good answers. Despite my reach, several of my own answers have not gotten lots of votes. This has something to do with variables in both the question and the answer, but it discounts popularity as being a sole indicator.

Lobbying & Campaining
A third viewpoint is that Quora's social system can be gamed. Gaming a system in this case may not be the most accurate description here while it's true that many social systems can be gamed. For example, there are services which increase your Twitter following. In the case of Quora and getting voted up on a page—a more accurate way of looking at it is campaigning. Anyone can e-mail their friends, mobilize co-workers or campaign for votes either in public or private however this makes a statement. For example having employees vote up an answer that is favorable to their company leaves a trail and can send a message that either someone conducted a campaign or that the employees are genuinely motivated to engage. In other words, it's a gray area.

Social Currency
A fourth POV is that participants could use votes as "social currency". In other words, you vote mine up and I'll vote yours up. Again this is merely another proof point that Quora is a social system. In other social systems such as the blogoshphere, links are often traded as currency. Favors are simple a staple of social interactions.

Why It Matters
There are reports of journalists beginning to use Quora and sourcing opinions from there. And as I mentioned, Quora may indeed be something Google ends up integrating—it certainly has the potential to show up in searches on the open Web. Participants can share questions and answers with their social networks so it has social amplification built into it. This is why I believe that the placement of an answer on a page could affect your business. But beware, that much like all social media—unsavory or unethical campaigns to alter information tend to come back to the person/company who tries to influence outcome in a way that isn't accurate, credible or is misleading.

A Q&A With BlackBerry's Social CS Team

Originally published at Blogworld 2010

Research In Motion (BlackBerry), is one of the sponsors for BlogWorld 2010 and also an Edelman client (my employer), but what you might not know about them is that they are quite active in the social media space, especially when it comes to providing customer care in addition to tips on how BlackBerry fans can get the most of their devices. With over 154k followers on Twitter, the CS (customer service) group regularly engages customers out in the open in a variety of ways. I was able to catch up Michelle Kostya and Baldev Solanki who are two of the architects’ behind the social customer service efforts at BlackBerry.

DA: Blackberry offers support to customers in a variety of ways including online forums. Why did you extend this in places such as Twitter with @blackberryhelp?

MK: Due to the nature of the business, customers usually dealt with their carriers rather than directly with us. This meant that when we launched the forums we were able to truly connect with our customers in a way that wasn’t possible before. All of a sudden we had the ability to gather valuable feedback and work directly with our customers to solve their issues. By being able to help our customers immediately and by showing them neat tips and tricks we were able delight them! But, we recognized that just as not everyone will call to get help, not everyone will visit a forum to ask for help. It became our goal as the Social Media Support team to be where our customers were. Our Digital Marketing counterparts had set up channels on various social channels and customers were asking support questions – it only made sense that we were there to help!

DA: Doesn’t interacting with customers who may be frustrated with your products open the door to public displays of dissatisfaction? How do you manage the risks?

BS: On the contrary, every dissatisfied customer is an opportunity for us to provide a great support experience. The real risk is not engaging. Our goal is to always be professional and follow through. It is a great feeling to delight a frustrated customer and see them become a raving fan.

DA: You decided to take a somewhat personal approach to providing customer care in a social channel by putting the faces of the team behind the account vs. it being the single brand. Why?

MK: Customers service is about a 1:1 conversation. Even when you are talking about traditional customer service it is one person talking to another on the telephone. We wanted our followers to know that the team on Twitter are real people. So they sign their name on each tweet and have their pics up on the background. And, we are taking it offline too! At Blogworld two members of the team will be “live” at the BlackBerry booth providing on-site help and tips!

DA: In the traditional customer care model, success in channels such as call centers is often measured by volume and time per call. What are some of the ways you measure success?

BS: Sometimes defining success measures feels like a quest for the holy social media grail. We tweet a lot of tips so we use retweets as a measure of how useful the content is. In addition we treat positive tweets and thanks as a measure of customer satisfaction. On our forums, Accepted Solutions from the community is a good measure. Remember that some of the standard call centre metrics still apply. Response time and mean time to resolve are definitely things to track.

DA: @blackberryhelp isn’t the only social embassy you’ve built to help your customers get the most out of BlackBerry products. You also have the BlackBerry Help Blog. In the age of Facebook, Twitter and other “shiny objects”, what does a blog get you?

BS: Blogs are about sharing with authenticity. A good enterprise blog can help you really connect deeply with your customers in a meaningful way because the content is not only relevant but insightful and personal. I think most enterprises miss that point. When you do it right, your customers will walk away not only having learned something new but will also feel much more connected to your brand.

MK: Some of the CS staff already wrote how-to posts for Inside BlackBerry Blog and we discovered that these posts were incredibly popular. Our customers wanted to be better (or, the best!) at using their BlackBerry and these posts gave them the info they needed to do this – in a fun and personal way. As with all of the Inside BlackBerry blogs our intent is to get our readers the inside scoop – just focused on the know-how we have on cool tricks, shortcuts and how-to in more than 140 characters.

DA: What are some of the most common requests you get from BlackBerry users? Do your responses vary?

MK: There isn’t really a “typical” request coming to our @BlackBerryhelp team. They get 800 tweets a day from our 155,000+ followers and they range from technical questions to feature requests and from questions about release dates to conversational tweets asking the team how they are doing. So, yes our responses definitely vary although we do have some typical answers for more common requests. Plus, we have a huge library of helpful tips and tricks that we share throughout the day.

DA: What is the one piece of advice you would give to other major brands looking to help their customers leveraging social media?

BS: Don’t succumb to “Cheshire Cat Syndrome” (remember how confused Alice in Wonderland was in choosing a path?). Be careful of starting down the path of social media customer support if you don’t know where you want to end up. Define objectives first, and then try a pilot to limit the risk. A lesson learned from the trenches – most of the time in Social Media land, when you open a door, it’s really hard to shut.

MK: I would say the biggest piece of advice I have is that you need to recognize that customers don’t care what department you are from when they are talking to you via a social channel. A customer is just as likely to ask a technical support question, as they are to provide you with product feature requests, or post they are looking for a job at the company! No matter who “owns” the channel internally– you need a way to route feedback and respond when necessary to your customers. Participation in social channels means breaking down silos inside your business.

Michelle, Baldev, Thank you both for your time and insights. If you’re reading this and attending BlogWorld (and have a BlackBerry device), feel free to bring it to the BlackBerry booth to receive complimentary tips and general assistance from members of their customer service team.

BlackBerry Help:
Twitter:  @blackberryhelp
Website: http://helpblog.blackberry.com/

5 Rules For Your *Other* About Page

Recently Seth Godin did a really nice job putting together a few salient points for how you should approach your "about page". It's really worth a read. Now, what if you had an "about you" page? (you actually being "them"). In addition to an "about me" page, I also have an "about you" page which encourages guests here to use the site to tell their side of the story. In the spirit of Seth's post, here are 5 rules to make it about "them".

1. You actually need to create an "about them" page. Most sites don't do this, so if you own your own business go ahead and add it to your site. If you work for large company, make a case for something that allows for your community to tell you who they are.

2. Make sure your guests know there is a place for them to tell you a bit more about themselves. Invite them to participate.

3. Encourage the sharing of links and media so your guests can share more than words.

4. Provide guidelines around what your guest share and monitor their contributions. A little self promotion is OK, but an "about them" section isn't meant to be overt advertising. You'll have to moderate.

5. Promote your "about them" section regularly. Put the spotlight on your guests.

I don't recommend calling the page "about them". That's for you to figure out. But, the main point is to make it about them and not you. You'll be surprised what people share about themselves when given the invitation.

How To Be Amazing

The first step to being amazing is to realize that you aren't. There are hundreds or thousands of coaches, and self help types who will tell you otherwise and some of them make a pretty good living at it. But they're wrong. It's not about you at all in fact. Your self confidence, your "personal brand", your (insert star quality here...). That's not how to become amazing. You become amazing when you lose sight of yourself and immerse every talent, skill, and ability into helping somebody else be amazing at something.

In short, you yourself are not the product you think you are—but what you teach or the tools you build or the services you provide become the bridge between you and the people you invest in. That bridge of course has two way traffic lanes and each destination on other side benefits from it.

Truly amazing people, products, brands and companies have a way of making others the star even more so than themselves. The bridge between the two is usually built on incredible value. And this is always where the focus needs to go—on building that bridge on foundation points which provide indisputable value to others. Do this, and you'll be amazing.

Productizing Ideas

Can an idea be owned? I'd say it can certainly be rented for a while. The question then becomes how does a renter make the most of their property? In Linchpin, Seth Godin tells us how important it is to ship something. I'd add that the packaging is equally important. The value chain today looks something like this. Text has value but it's like the wind—e-mail, tweets, and comments allow for widespread communication with low effort. Blogs take it up a notch. Decks put even more form to it (if you know how to build decks) Apps and books package thoughts even further.

The reality is that all of these things together can bring an idea to life and really keep the idea alive. The act of creating a book is likely different from the act of promoting it. The tweets, e-mails and posts that were less important in the act of creation may become more important in the act of distribution.

But as it's been said in Linchpin and likely in lots of other places in other times, the question in need of an answer is "did something ship"? In other words, owning or renting an idea is likely impossible if you haven't shipped out something tangible that's worth sharing.

Most Marketing Is Unremarkable

The e-mail came in like hundreds of others. I read it, thought about it and took the e-mailer up on their offer to unsubscribe.  Frankly, I was upset that I ended up on the e-mail list. I never asked to be. And while it tried to come across as humble, real and authentic—it just didn't really do it for me. It took time out of my day that's valuable to me. I felt inconvenienced to have to go through the unsubscribe effort, though strangely satisfied after it took.

The reality is that most marketing is unremarkable. It's an annoyance. An inconvenience. A reminder that I'm just another cog to serve the benefit of the individual, brand, or company who wants me to do something for them.

It doesn't have to be. Make a connection. Make it real. And I'll pay attention. It's hard work and difficult to scale. But it's more difficult to unsubscribe from a relationship. And that's the bottom line.

Why I Have a Boring Title

I lived and worked through the original dot.bomb. For those of you who don't know what this was, essentially it's a term that described the bursting of an irrational bubble fueled by reckless funding and many Web ideas that were simply ahead of their time or simply not good ideas. During this time, I witnessed several silly titles ranging from Chief People Officer, to Director of Fun, and anything with the word "innovation" in it.

My title is boring. SVP, (Senior Vice President) signals the level I hold as an Edelman employee. "Digital", signifies where I spend much of my focus. It's literal, straightforward and not very clever. And I'm not entirely sure it should be. Lots of folks in my shoes would likely rush to integrate the word "social" into the title. This is, of course the flavor of the week—and is understandable.

But as a matter of philosophy, it comes down to what you think really makes your job. Having the right words in your title mean nothing if you can't put them into practice. For yourself, for your co-workers, your peers, or your clients. Yet it's the first place we look to. We start with the headline and then write the story. But as someone who does fair share of writing as a form of professional and personal communication, I can share a little secret with you. After I've written a piece, I often go back and change the headline to reflect what I've written. Sometimes it's not even close to what I started with. This and my experience during the dot.bomb have taught me that the story is more important than the headline. And I'd rather have a boring title than a boring story.
Image credit: UglyKitty

Six Digital Trends To Watch

Originally posted on Edelman Digital

My colleague Steve Rubel and I wear many hats at Edelman. One of those hats is keeping an eye on the trends unfolding in real time and deriving meaning from them as they pertain to organizations and brands. Attached to this post is a slideshow where we identify what these trends are and at a high level how your organization needs to plan accordingly for them. They are:

1. Marketing in the age of streams

Your customers, consumers and employees are no longer only visiting static Web pages but participating in conversations which increasingly occur off domain in “streams” flowing from Facebook, Twitter and even apps. In order to catch them, you must be highly relevant in their streams.

2. The Googleization of media

Quality Content and potent social connections in addition to traditional keywords are influencing how visible you are to the search engines. Everyone is media.

3. The data decade

Data is increasingly becoming available to anyone and everyone. From it we can derive insights into behaviors. We must become “data junkies” to fully harness this trend.

4. Business becomes social

Moving from designated spokesperson to employee engagement at scale—business itself is beginning to look more social as organizations start to engage all stakeholders in open and mutually beneficial ways.

5. Location, location, location

Where you are is becoming the new what are you doing as multiple platforms begin to adopt the new geolocation status update generating new kinds of data.

6. Private becomes public

Despite privacy concerns, applications and behaviors which support social sharing are still going strong as what is considered private becomes re-defined as we continue engaging in networks.

We believe these trends are not future gazing but what’s happening at this very moment and that they will cause organizations to adapt to change, adopt new practices and innovate accordingly. For more industry insights, ideas and perspectives you can visit our newly created “branded channel” on Slideshare.

Preparing A Social Readiness Gameplan In Seven Steps

 

Photo Credit: Avanash Kunnath | Originally posted on Jive Talks

Two industry articles recently surfaced which caught my attention. The first on Media Post indicated that more than half of the companies polled for the article go at social media initiatives without a strategy. The second, from eMarketer included some statistics behind common social initiatives but indicated that there was a gap between tactical implementation such as reserving URLs and properties which most organizations were already doing, to planning for relevant protocols which many had not. Both pieces left me wondering—are organizations really preparing themselves for a day where engaging in public will become more mainstream, ubiquitous and even expected? In other words, will the organization truly be “social” when they need it most? To help answer this question, I’m going to list a few core “plays” that your organization should be incorporating into their gameplan if they truly want to move toward making their business more “social”.

Play 1: Active Listening & Analysis
It’s often repeated, but common sense dictates that this is where you begin. Your organization should be aware of what’s being said about it and where it’s being said. There are a variety of social media monitoring tools which make listening possible ranging from the free to the more expensive. Other articles exist to point you to those tools—this one is designed to stress that it needs to be in your gameplan and more importantly integrated into your business model. For example, The Gatorade brand took listening and analysis so seriously that they actually had a physical “social media command center” built into their Chicago headquarters. But whether your listening is digital, physical or a combination of the two, what’s most important are the insights you derive from doing it.

Play 2: Influencer Mapping & Network Dynamics
Call them influencers, mavens or connectors—these individuals exist in both an organization’s internal and external networks which are relevant to your organization and it’s your job to find out who they are and what motivates them. But it’s not just the influencers that matter, it’s the overall way the networked ecosystem works and how it responds to things such as perceived threats or hot conversational topics. Before your organization enters any social ecosystem, it should have spent some time studying the network dynamics around it. Services such as Networked Insights, Skyttle, and others like them exist to provide select intelligence which can arm an organization with the knowledge it needs before ever stepping foot into a community.

Play 3: Technology Assessment, Integration & Adoption
Technology is key in developing a social readiness gameplan because it’s what accelerates anything from collaboration to communication. Internally, the right technology may not be in place in order for your organization to move as quickly, intelligently or as socially as you would like. This is where solutions such as Jive and others come into play. Externally, the plumbing is complex but also open in many cases (API’s). In both cases there needs to be an assessment of what can or can’t be done. How it integrates with what’s already in place and who is likely to use it.  For external integration examples, think Facebook connect—for internal, think of your legacy intranet and what might replace it. In both cases, perform audits to determine what technology will best serve your purpose, goals and business culture.

Play 4: Organizational Planning (People & Process)
Technology alone never solved anything—it is the human capitol part of the equation that completes the picture. Change requires existing processes to be re-designed. Rules of engagement should be put in place that act as guidelines for how to engage for the mutual gain of the organization and it’s stakeholders. Training should be implemented. Policies need updating and every business unit within the organization that plays a role in the gameplan should know the rules even when they change.

Play 5: Strategy
No game plan is a plan without a strategy in place which outlines what needs to be done before you actually do it. What’s most important is that you think before you act. What’s the competition doing? Who is succeeding? Who is failing? What does success and failure actually look like for your initiative—and HOW will both be measured? These questions should and can be answered before any substantial initiative begins and that in a nutshell is what strategy is.

Play 6: Pilots, Programs & Transformation
If strategy is the plan inside the gameplan, then consider pilots (small, bite sized initiatives) the scrimmage. Pilot initiatives allow you to test theories on the field taking calculated risks. They should be small by design. Successful pilot initiatives often inform and sometimes evolve into more ambitious undertakings. A pilot could be platform specific, such as testing a collaboration tool with a department vs. the entire organization. Or externally, establishing an embassy on Slideshare vs. ramping up dramatically on Facebook. Pilot projects when done with success and shared around the broader organization can occasionally lead to a larger business transformation.  

Play 7: Measurement, Metrics & Success
Every organization will determine and measure success differently. For some it may be sales. For others it’s adoption of a platform. For some it’s measuring the levels of participation or specific actions such as a sign up, donation, or even saying a positive word in a public space (sentiment). Whether it’s increasing visibility, driving sales, or generating a cost savings, your game plan should include what you intend to measure and how you will measure it. 

Consider the above a high level checklist for your organization in the quest to evolve it into a more connected brand and ultimately a social business. Perhaps you are doing many of the things listed in here. Perhaps you are just starting. What’s most important is that you have a game plan in place which is strategic enough to get you started and adaptable enough to change as fast as conditions in the game do—because change as we all know, happens.

London Calling

 

Next week (June 23rd-26th) I'll be spending a few days in London for business. Since I know a ton of you in the area (though have not met many in person) I've "enlisted" long time virtual friend George Nimeh who has graciously offered to plan a Tweetup in the area. It's on a Friday night, so you have no excuses. Hope to see you there. In other news, I've been using Plancast more often to plan my travels. The social aspects of it as well as the mobile version make it a nice option. If you're in London next week—come out and say hello. Below is the Plancast widet which I've added to the right column of the site.

Social Business Planning: Aligning Internal With External

 

Some small businesses start without a business plan, finding success in a breakthrough product or service early on and building upon that success organically. However, it’s inevitable that the venture will need to have a structured business plan put in place at some point if the business is expected to scale, expand and ultimately thrive. This well understood concept is the basis for what I’m informally labeling “social business planning”, yet from my experiences working across multiple organizations, the current focus remains on social media programs (the external) without putting in the appropriate social business infrastructure (the internal). Sound like theory? It’s not. Many of you reading this are probably initiating your own versions of social business planning and if you aren’t you will be.

Parallel Path Planning & Implementation

 
There are several considerations to factor in while aligning your social media programs with your social business infrastructure. The first is that in today’s agile world it’s realistic that neither comes first. When I visited Dell several years ago, it was clear that the company had leapfrogged others in the social space because they were not afraid to take risks and implemented “pilot programs”. Pilot programs are small, manageable initiatives where progress can be made rapidly and leveraged as proof points while gathering data. Today, you can be assured that Dell is looking to scale and integrate social into their entire business model and this will likely be an ongoing process which requires a good deal of incremental change. But this is inevitably the next step. So in a digestible format, how does social business planning break down? I have a few thoughts:

Employee Engagement:
The program side of social media often includes initiatives where brands and companies perform outreach toward customers or engaging them in the hopes that they will advocate on behalf of the company or brand. Employee engagement is a similar model but focused on employees and it acts as an umbrella over much of the social business infrastructure. When Nokia implemented an internal forum where employees could freely complain about the company anonymously, they in essence created a form of employee engagement where they are able to gain valuable insights. Companies such as McDonalds are known for engaging employees prior to launching major branding initiatives. Specific to social media, engaging employees in semi-public environments such as Facebook is where the lines between social media and business blur. Helping employees engage each other on secure internal networks can help ensure that they socialize internally since it’s likely they already do this externally.

Training
 
I often hear from companies that they have the most personal and effective sales and customer service reps. This is followed by the fact that few of them feel comfortable leveraging social networks for the company, or that the organization has not taken steps to formalize this as a function. Before any formalization can occur, it’s worth considering that your representatives may need training just as they did in traditional channels. Providing customer service in social spaces often means that you are engaging in public and not everyone is naturally comfortable with this. Some companies have found success through their business culture—Best Buy being one of the few to succeed in modestly scaling customer service via social systems. If your organization doesn’t naturally lean toward engaging in public spaces, you’ll need to identify the people in and outside of your organization who are and have them systematically train others. I’d recommend training start with small connected groups and gradually expand through the organization. Edelman’s belt system is a good example of a training program which can work at scale, moving your employees from rudimentary to more advanced levels of social media proficiency.

Process

 
The speed at which social technology moves translates to the need for new processes to be in place. Whether it’s Motrin Moms or Dominos, it’s been well documented how real time the internet as become. A crisis can go full blown in literally minutes and hours and doesn’t take weekends off. Organizations will have to take a second look at their existing process models and find ways to streamline as a result. This may mean opening up new channels of communication between departments so information can flow freely, or removing single approval bottlenecks and replacing them with multiple sources of authority (think nodes on the network as opposed to silos). Process will have to be intentionally re-designed not replaced with chaos.

Organization Models
 
Implementing a “social media center of excellence” or committee that works with core and extended teams cannot occur without there being some changes in the way your company organizes and staffs employees. Some companies such as Comcast have begun organizing around their service groups. Others have marketing playing a more prominent role. Each organization will likely organize and staff differently when it comes to integrating programs with infrastructure. Altimeter Group recently shared some of the models they are seeing emerge in this space. 

Knowledge Sharing

My experience in the workforce has been that people don’t naturally share what they know and that even if they wanted to, IT departments have struggled with finding the silver bullet of technology that allows them to. In contrast, the external social networks allow us to share knowledge like crazy. In my estimation, platforms such as Slideshare, blogging and Wikis have actually changed how people view knowledge sharing. Instead of being rewarded for hoarding what you know, participants are rewarded with visibility and accolades. This is a complex problem for organizations and I’m not going to solve it in this post, but suffice it to say that your social media programs are less likely to be successful if you can’t even share internally. 

Policies & Guidelines
Several years ago organizations instituted guidelines around blogging. Social media has evolved into much more than that since then. Real time communications and location based services signal what we are doing, when and with who. Policies need to be updated constantly and more importantly be relevant to companies who activate their workforce in social systems. Guidelines should provide employees with basic rules of conduct within the relevant social systems. At minimum, I’d recommend that your organization revisit both areas and ensure that they are still relevant and actionable.

Culture
 
More specifically your corporate culture and don’t be fooled your company likely has one—every social system does. Before Zappos, Southwest Airlines was engaging customers via Twitter. They were also one of the first to launch a highly engaging and informal blog. How? They have an entrepreneurial and scrappy corporate culture which stems directly from their founder. The culture of your organization is likely going to be tied to the success of your social business planning and any initiatives that involve engaging participants authentically. Cultures can be notoriously open or closed and everything in between. Consider though that even secretive corporate cultures such as Apple benefited by opening up (in an intentional way) their ecosystem such as the App Store. I’m not an expert in transforming corporate cultures, and common sense dicates that it’s amazingly complex. But, companies such as P&G have historically experienced transformation in areas such as innovation and design. It likely takes a long time, but it’s possible and in my opinion may be needed for the best business results when it comes to “social”. 

Follow The Money

 
Which brings us to the conclusion. What are results? That’s fodder for further analysis. But consider the above chart from Forrester. It estimates that the highest increases in spending will be in the areas of social media and mobile technology. Why? Because attention has shifted from broadcast to networks and this trend isn’t going to reverse itself any time soon. If you accept this as a viable thesis, then making the case for investing in infrastructure or “social business planning” shouldn’t seem very far fetched. So what have I missed here? What would you include? How are you performing your own version of social business planning. I’d like to hear about it.

Getting The Basics Right

This post isn't about Foursquare or the latest social buzzword bingo, so I assume it will go largely unread and that's a shame. I'm on month four at my new gig with Edelman Digital. My job is to consult with multiple clients across global social initiatives, support staff across various regions, grow business, and I've also been tasked with ensuring that our own Web presence becomes the industry standard.

Employee Engagement
As I recommend with so many clients, to be successful with any social initiative (a non-automated program that involves engagement between live human beings) often requires changes in areas such as staffing. So the numbers in this chart which I'm fairly proud of are only possible because we chose to create the role of a "community manager" and were fortunate enough to find the perfect candidate to fill that role. The lesson here? Bootstrapping only takes you so far.

Corporate Culture
A number not on the chart but essential is that we've had 30 contributors in 30 days. Not simply one anointed "company voice", but 30 individuals ranging from new employees to veterans who feel empowered to speak and engage with the support of the company. To be fair, being a communications firm means this is in our heritage, but it's still not easy to execute against regardless of any industry.

ROI
At this point you may be asking, "do these numbers matter"? Well, they are metrics—and metrics are signs to be analyzed. But, from a business perspective we work in an industry where attracting the best talent for what we do is critical. The traffic and increase in applicants in the careers section is a good thing. Also, new business leads have been coming in through the site. That's probably the easiest way to cut through the clutter of "is this worth the effort" and also a positive sign.

Well, it's only been a month and I'm proud of these metrics and more importantly the team who powers the results. I'm really happy to see something like this become a contagious effort (with more people raising their hands to contribute). It's only one aspect of my job, but it's also one of the more enjoyable ones. These are the basics—putting in the right infrastructure, getting the strategy right, building things, creating momentum, changing how things work gradually over time and moving forward. It's not as sexy as the latest technology, but it's closer to real life.