Web Ink Now

Thinking Right (and Left) about Content Marketing

As I evaluate Web marketing such as blogs and websites, one thing I look for is evidence of both left-brain and right-brain thinking in the creation of the content. This obsession might seem trivial, but I guess my right-brain outlook on life causes me to take a holistic view of content.

The right-/left-brain concept is widely credited to have developed from the thinking of American psychobiologist Roger Sperry in the late 1960s. Sperry's Nobel Prize-winning work opened whole fields of psychological and philosophical debate including the idea that there are two different sides of the brain, each controlling a "mode" of thinking.

What kind of thinker is your buyer?

Left-brain thinkers focus on the logical, rational, sequential, and analytical while right-brainers prefer more random, holistic, and free-associated approaches.

Psychologists say that left-brainers focus on words and numbers while right-brain people focus on visual images and patterns.

In our world of creating content for marketing purposes, one might say that left-brain people make logical deductions from information while right-brain thinkers prefer to make lateral associations from information.

What right brain / left brain means for content marketing

The best websites, blogs, and social pages (Facebook and G+ for example) include a combination of text content, images, video and charts. Your goal is to create a mix so that people who are visual have an infographic or photo and those who are analytical might have text and numerical charts.

But there are two problems.

1) Most ad agencies and design agencies are populated with people who are great at creating visual content but less good at writing and other left-brain content creation. This means that while sites offer visual cues and easy-to-access lateral information few deliver words and numbers in logical ways.

2) At the same time, left-brainers dominate the top ranks of many companies. Often the top marketing person is a left-brained MBA-type. Need proof? Just count the times "MBA required" is listed on the job description of marketing people at companies. How many liberal arts graduates do you see? Some, but they are greatly outnumbered.

One organization that does an excellent job delivering content for all types of people is Amazon. There are multiple ways to find content including search, by topic, and through "best of" lists. There are videos and images and graphics.

As marketers we need to include both right-brain and left-brain people in our content creation efforts.

Finally, a note to HR executives and headhunters: Please remove the""MBA required" label from marketing jobs—you'll have a better candidate pool if you don't exclude right-brain individuals.

Image: Shutterstock / Carla Castagno

Playing for Change

When I first saw the original Playing for Change video Stand By Me on YouTube I was moved and fascinated and jumped for joy. Wow. As a music lover and collector of social media success stories, here was both music and social media triumphantly on display and coming together to support a good cause. I talked up the videos via social and in person to everyone I saw.

Stand By Me now has 37 million views on YouTube and has sparked a movement. Now, Playing for Change has 15 videos in the Songs Around the World series with a combined 140 million views. If you haven't seen a Playing for Change video yet, please watch their version of Bob Marley's One Love.

I had the honor of meeting Mark Johnson, the leader and inspiration behind the Playing for Change movement at the NAMM show this weekend where I delivered a talk. He says: "Create inspiration and let it take care of itself."

Who would have thought that one person with a good idea could bypass traditional channels of getting attention (major record labels and mainstream media) and simply through the power of social media create an organization from scratch. In this short interview, I ask Mark about how he came up with the idea for Playing for Change and why YouTube was essential for its success to date.

Direct link to Interview with Mark Johnson from Playing for Change

Mark also created a separate non-profit organization called the Playing For Change Foundation which builds music schools for children around the world.

Learning from Playing for Change

In a world where marketers and PR people are still mainly focused on the traditional big budget mainstream approach to gaining attention, Mark shows us how a good idea can catch on as people share one to another on the social web.

If you are trying to start an organization from scratch it is nearly impossible to do so within the established system of your industry. Want to make a movie? Good luck getting funding from the majors (who will want to sue bloggers who talk it up anyway as the whole SOPA/PIPA nonsense showed). You’ve got to just get it done and get it out and see what happens. Same for music, or books, or software, or any other endeavor: Do it well, get it out, and go social.

“From people for people” – Mark Johnson

Stop SOPA Silliness

It didn't work with music: The music industry killed Napster and sued 16-year-olds to protect their dying business model of selling "albums" via top 40 radio. Instead of understanding the immense power of social media like YouTube as a marketing tool to sell single songs (iTunes) and streaming subscriptions (Spotify), the music industry honchos preferred to destroy in a ridiculous attempt to save the status-quo. Listened to top 40 radio recently?

It didn't work with email: I get many times more unsolicited (and illegal) email than I did prior to CAN-SPAM. Tons of it from legitimate companies that should know better. How's that email legislation working for you?

It's not going to work for movies: Now the silly politicians who wouldn't know a social network if it bit them in the ass are at it again with SOPA & PIPA that are trying to legislate "protection" for their friends in the movie industry.

SOPA legislates censorship (yes censorship – like in North Korea) in an attempt to get legitimate businesses like mine to stop linking to pirate sites. As written, the regulations suggest that if just one of the nearly 10,000 comments on this blog point to a URL that allows illegal downloads that I could go to jail.

Just like with CAN-SPAM, these bills won't shut down pirate sites. They bad guys will just set up shop at another URL and continue their criminal activities, while law-abiding companies will be on the hook and every information consumer will suffer.

SOPA & PIPA are not about copyright. It is about protecting a dying business model.

I'm a content creator too. I get it. I support my family by being able to sell content and I certainly don't want my books stolen on the Web. I've found hundreds of sites with free pirated copies of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and my other books. But that doesn't mean I want to shut down the search engine that led me to those sites.

This isn't about stealing for the movie industry bigwigs and their high priced lobbyists. It's about desperately trying to maintain the old familiar business model that afforded them a lifestyle of Armani suits, lunch at Nobu and limos. It didn't work for music and its not going to work for movies.

The winners in technology transformations are those who embrace change, not the old-guard that tries to legislate protection for their dying business model.

Today Wikipedia is dark. Google has their logo blacked out. Many other sites are protesting by curtailing service for a day. Here is a link to Wikipedia's SOPA informational site and here's link to Google's SOPA / PIPA microsite.

Image credits:
Wikipedia English homepage from January 18, 2012 which links to here.
Google SOPA site

Content Arbitrage

When I worked my first job on a Wall Street bond trading desk, I was fascinated by financial arbitrage, one of the ways that traders made money.

This technique involves taking advantage of a temporary price difference in two or more markets and is usually executed by simultaneously buying and selling the same security. A pure arbitrage involves nearly zero risk.

For a simple example, imagine the price of gold is at $1,600 an ounce in London and at the exact same time it is $1,620 in New York. A trader could simultaneously sell in New York and buy in London to lock in a $20 profit. (This simple illustration ignores risks and transaction costs).

Content Arbitrage

I've used what I sometimes call "content arbitrage" for years. Adapting the definition from the financial markets, content arbitrage involves finding information in one place and revealing it in another to take advantage of temporary differences in the knowledge level of people in those two markets.

We've all experienced content arbitrage in action. You're at your desk when somebody walks in and says: "Did you hear...?" and proceeds to tell you about the competitors' new product, or the CEOs resignation, or an earthquake, or a some other important information. One person learned the news and told another.

Content Arbitrage and Real-Time Marketing

But when it involves publishing that content as a form of marketing then content arbitrage gets really interesting. Here are some examples:

You're quietly checking out Google News while at a conference and some breaking news about your industry crosses the wires. You immediately grab the URL to a story and post it on Twitter using the conference hash tag. You "buy" the content on Google News while everyone else is paying attention to the speaker and then "sell" it by tweeting it to those who do not yet know about that news. The benefit for you is that you're seen as knowing things quickly and you'll get noticed (and re-tweeted).It's great for your personal brand.

Or you're watching television and an industry expert says something remarkable or controversial. If you blog about it right away, you're the first to share with the wider marketplace who had not been watching.

Content arbitrage, by definition, exploits temporary differences in knowledge levels. So you've got to be really fast when you jump in. Soon everyone will know the big news and if you wait too long to blog or tweet you look silly if people already know.

It's all about real-time. The more you dilly-dally the more the market for that information becomes stable again (when everybody knows the news already).

Straying into someone else's market

Content arbitrage also occurs when people stray into each other's territory on purpose to exploit simultaneous differences in information markets.

How about this: Ask kids what's hot in school and why. Listen carefully to what bands, movies, social networks, and other things are all the rage. You may have information that you can exploit in another market.

Or this: Watch for news releases from government agencies. You can sometimes spot an important development in your market that people aren't yet aware of. If you're first to blog it or explain what it means on a short video, you can effectively newsjack that release and have your industry's media quoting what you said in your blog or video. Not to mention the positive exposure you get to your existing and potential customers.

Content Arbitrage in the Financial Markets

Bringing this idea back to the financial markets, smart traders use content arbitrage to read beyond the financial newswires on their workstations, looking for emerging trends within publications read by the general public.

By the time news appears on the wires it's already too late. They might read Seventeen Magazine to learn about a hip fashion craze or Shape for the diet trend of the month. Even more interesting are those who lurk in chat rooms and read blogs for the nuggets of information that haven't yet hit mainstream publications. If you were the first to buy beef futures because you spotted an emerging low-carb diet trend before the financial wires wrote about it, you cashed in big time. Any time one information market (say the financial newswires) says one thing about a topic and the blogs and chat rooms reveal something completely different someone can profit. Cool—people actually get paid to do this.

But there's a catch. With all forms of arbitrage, the potential to profit only exists as long as there's an exploitable difference between simultaneous markets. It is a real-time idea.

Any great examples of content arbitrage for content marketing purposes out there?

Trader Image: Jefferies & Company
Network Image: Shutterstock / improvize

Go Mobile

In Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district you find several hundred bars within walking distance of the subway station. Yet only a few are visible from the main street; the vast majority are tucked away on the upper floors of back-street buildings. To differentiate, many cater to highly refined customer preferences. So if you want to listen to classic reggae while sipping a Red Stripe, there is a bar for you in Roppongi. But how do you find these establishments when you’re thirsty and confused in an unfamiliar city?

Your mobile of course!

Because buyers use their mobiles to search for products and services in the time of need (like I do when I'm in some faraway city), you've got an opportunity to reach them when they are ready to buy.

The elapsed time from firing up a mobile app like Foursquare or Google Mobile to a customer walking in the door is now measured in minutes (or even seconds).

Adding GPS (global positioning system) capability to mobiles has transformed a once mundane voice-only mobile phone into a targeted weapon focused on proximate surroundings. With onboard GPS capability, the mobile user gains awareness of nearby people, companies, and locations, even in unfamiliar territory like the bar district of Tokyo. Engaging people via mobile devices is a fast-growing and fascinating area that every modern marketer needs to be knowledgeable about.

That's why an understanding of mobile marketing is so important.

Fortunately, Go Mobile has the answers. The new book, part of my own New Rules of Social Media Book Series, is published today.

When I created the series with John Wiley & Sons, I said that it was essential to have a book about mobile marketing. Fortunately, Jeanne Hopkins, V.P. of Marketing at HubSpot and Jamie Turner, founder of the 60 Second Marketer agreed to write this book. Either one of them would have written a great book on mobile marketing, but having them collaborate is double the fun. I learned a great deal by reading this book and I’m confident that you will too.

Mobile marketing is for all organizations

The challenge is to understand this new landscape so you can get your business into the mix at that precise moment of decision.

It's not just consumer brands that need to pay attention to mobile marketing. There's also the often overlooked but essential requirement that you make your website mobile friendly which is essential to all. Many sites still don't have a mobile-friendly architecture, so those organizations miss out on opportunities to sell to the many people now accessing their sites from wireless devices.

Mobile offers the power to reach buyers at the exact time and place they're looking for what you offer. It is a revolutionary tool for building business and it's easy to learn.

Go Mobile provides a step-by-step roadmap for people interested in using mobile marketing to grow their sales and revenues. The book covers how to set-up a mobile website, how to run a QR code campaign, how to develop a mobile app and how to run a mobile banner ad campaign, and more.

USA QR-code Scavenger Hunt

To launch Go Mobile, Jamie & Jeanne have hidden 4 iPads with copies of Go Mobile in secret locations around the U.S. Clues will be available each day starting January 12, 2012. Scan the bar code to begin playing or go to the Go Mobile site to learn more.

Fun fact: There are 6.8 billion people on planet Earth. 4.0 billion of them own a mobile phone, but only 3.5 billion of them own a toothbrush.

Are you reaching this vast marketplace?

Disclosure: I am on the board of advisors of HubSpot.

How to lose $2400 in 24 seconds (and get it back from B&H via Newsjacking)

When Kurtis Hough was filming a video on Cannon Beach, Oregon using a tripod with his $2,400 Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera, he didn't expect that a storm surge would destroy it in just 24 seconds.

Fortunately his memory card was fine so he posted the resulting video which now has more than 1.5 million views.

Direct to How to lose $2400 in 24 seconds on Vimeo.

What surprised Hough even more than trashing his camera was when B&H Photo-Video, a NYC based retail and mail order retailer, stepped in to replace it at no cost. (Hough was an existing B&H Photo-Video customer).

Newsjacking.

A big story in the photography world becomes a perfect opportunity for a camera retailer to show support to a customer.

I connected with Henry Posner, Director of Corporate Communications for B&H Photo-Video to learn more about his newsjacking success.

"A couple of guys here found the original video on Vimeo which by then had 500,000+ views in 24 hours or so," Posner told me. "We shared it among ourselves for our own amusement because we're all photographers on one level or another and each of us felt the guy's pain. Then, we figured out that Hough was a customer and in fact had bought other Canon gear from us less than a year ago. That's when we began exploring replacing the camera and getting management on board to shoulder the price."

The B&H Photo-Video team reached out to Hough and made the offer. Soon Hough was talking up the camera replacement in television and print interviews.

"The response of the newscasters at the very end of the Right This Minute story is a strong indication of how this has been received," Posner says. "The buzz was fantastic and we were both glad to help Kurtis and excited to be part of and to have shaped the story."

In comments on photo blogs and the media stories, some people pointed out that B&H Photo-Video was offering the free camera as an inappropriate self-promotion. However, many others commented back to praise the company for helping Hough.

Posner's own reply in one of the forums told the company's side of the story: "Of course we did it in no small part for the advertising/publicity," he says. "We could have taken the same money and bought more pages in the back of PopPhoto or more air time on WCBS-AM, but in our opinion this was a far more useful way to spend that money. We did a guy who had a loss a favor and we got some PR for doing it. We're not a charity and we didn't do this for entirely altruistic reasons. But I’m glad we did it, glad the guy's got a new camera and glad it’s generated the conversation it has."

This story illustrates once again the incredible power of Newsjacking.

Learn more about Newsjacking here.

real time + marketing = revolution

This week, the new paperback edition of Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now is out.

The book was originally published in November 2010 in hardcover, and this edition is revised and updated with new stats and new examples.

As I was writing the first edition, I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness. Every time I searched the web for talk about issues relating to real-time marketing and PR, results were scarce. Pundits and practitioners seemed locked into thinking about long-term campaigns and not how to seize advantage from what’s happening right now.

More than a year later, search engines tell a very different story: "real time + marketing" is a topic that has exploded. Even the Direct Marketing Association is in the game. The DMA annual conference, one of the largest gatherings of marketing professionals in the world, is now billed as "The Global Event for Real-Time Marketers."

What happened?

Although my humble book did climb to number two on the Wall Street Journal best-seller list ("and stayed there for a week or two," as Jerry Garcia once said), I can't claim paternity here. The wave was coming, like it or not. I just happened to spot it early.

A Real-Time Revolution

When I first sat down to write, protestors in Tehran had just figured out how to use social media as a weapon of civil disobedience. Less than a year later, the same real-time techniques were toppling despotic regimes such as those in Egypt and Tunisia.

Even among CEOs 80 floors above the street, the realization has begun to seep up from below: "What happened to Mubarak is not unrelated to my business." The revolution now underway is not just political and it’s not just an "Arab thing." Upheavals are coming. Those who understand and adapt stand to be among the winners. Those who ignore what's happening may not fare so well.

The real-time revolution is very much a "people thing." And the people I interviewed for the book are its heart and soul: passionate characters at the forefront, from Amsterdam to Boston to Tokyo, each with an eye-opening story to tell. They made researching and writing such a compelling experience for me that I hope... even those who'd choose a root canal over a marketing book will not be disappointed if they decide to read Real-Time Marketing & PR.

By definition, this is a subject that changes quickly. So if you read the first edition you will find many new examples and anecdotes added.

I worked with my publisher John Wiley & Sons to make the look and feel of the new paperback edition of Real-Time Marketing & PR similar to the new third edition paperback edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Similar cover, same fonts, consistent use of terms and language. In a sense, Real-Time is a continuation of New Rules.

If you've read New Rules and not yet read Real-Time, this might be the time.

President Obama Newsjacks Iowa Caucus by joining Instagram

On Tuesday, the Obama campaign joined Instagram, using the @BarackObama ID. The account will be managed by his campaign staff.

As I wrote about yesterday when I talked about the Jon Huntsman for President campaign and the use of social media in a post called Marketing advice to Jon Huntsman and his daughters, I totally geek out about the marketing and PR aspects of the US presidential campaign season. I'm convinced that all marketers can learn from presidential campaign strategies.

The timing of Obama's joining Instagram is fascinating because it was the same day as the Iowa Caucus.

Newsjacking.

By attracting the attention of some of the world's media as they are intensely focused on the results of the Republican contest, President Obama shines a small amount of light on himself and his campaign. Read more about the marketing and PR technique of Newsjacking.

Advice for the Obama campaign on using Instagram: I hope the president shoots some photos himself. Here’s a suggested first shot. I really want to see a photo of his view from the podium while delivering the State of the Union speech, which is currently scheduled for the evening of January 24, 2012. Now that would be a historic photograph. The first President to photograph his own State of the Union would generate tons of buzz and energize the many millions of young voters who use photo sharing like Instagram every day.

We’re in for a fun ride this campaign season. I’ll report from time to time about the interesting marketing aspects.

Remember, this is not a political blog. I write about marketing and PR. I am not endorsing candidates like the President or Jon Huntsman by writing about their marketing strategies and tactics.

Marketing advice to Jon Huntsman and his daughters

I admit I am a big geek when it comes to the long drawn out US presidential campaign season. I enjoy the marketing and PR aspects immensely.

Many people think the two-year campaign is too long. Not me. I love all the debates and speeches and talk show appearances and news coverage.

All marketers can learn from presidential campaign strategies. It plays out in real-time for you to watch live. What fun. Here was my post from 2008 created to show how we can learn from last cycle’s winner: Ten marketing lessons from the Barack Obama Presidential campaign.

(Note: This is a marketing blog, not a political blog. I am not talking up the merits of any candidates but rather using their marketing as examples for all to learn from.)

Jon Huntsman stays local

Last night I attended a Jon Huntsman town hall event in Peterborough, New Hampshire (about 60 miles from where I live near Boston). This was local campaigning at its best. A beautiful small town with the local hall decked out in patriotic colors (and with television trucks out front).

It was particularly interesting because last night was the Iowa Caucus and Huntsman's strategy has always been to focus on New Hampshire and not compete in Iowa. During the Q&A, when someone asked the candidate if he had a message to the winner of the Iowa Caucuses, Huntsman said, "It would be welcome to New Hampshire; nobody cares."

Huntsman's campaign is an excellent example of buyer persona marketing. He is focused on voters in New Hampshire who want to meet the candidate in person. He has also been using mainstream media in a big way, doing lots of interviews with New Hampshire mainstream press and scoring some key endorsements. He decided not to market to the Iowa buyer persona. And, significantly, he has chosen to downplay the buyer persona who wants to get to know candidates through social networks.

I did note that he is the first candidate I am aware of this season to talk about Grateful Dead Marketing, saying: “I’m going to travel around the country with a Grateful Dead type of caravan & talk about term limits.” Nice!

This was Huntsman's 150th event in New Hampshire. His strategy is to focus at the local level, town-by-town, to build support. He's not focused on social media. In fact he said last night in his talk that Twitter and Facebook is not important. Hmmm...

(He does have a seldom-used @JonHuntsman Twitter feed and the campaign has built him a Jon Huntsman Facebook page. There is a blog too but it is written by “Team Huntsman” and not updated that often).

I had wanted to ask him about social media, but despite emailing the Huntsman for President media office and talking to his media people at the event, I didn't get a chance. However, several television stations scored interviews. Clearly, mainstream media is more important than social media for the campaign staffers. To be fair, I was told if I came to another event they would try to fit me in, however I said because I was coming from Boston, that wouldn't be likely.

Huntsman daughters as social media proxies

Despite dissing Twitter and Facebook, last night Huntsman made a big deal out of introducing his daughters who were in the balcony by talking up their Jon2012girls YouTube channel. He told the audience to check out the videos so I did. There are only two. This one Jon2012girls Smokin' Ad is kinda funny if you've seen the original Now is the time for action! This Jon2012girls video has generated 350,000 views, numbers which prove social media has value.

The girls are on Twitter too with a feed called "Huntsman Daughters" at @Jon2012girls with 19,000 followers.

Advice to Jon Huntsman: Don't dismiss social media in one part of your stump speech and then talk up your daughter's social media in another part of the speech. You don't have to like Twitter and Facebook yourself to benefit from its use. Social media was an important part of Obama for America campaign success so it does work to get someone elected president.

Advice to Huntsman for President media staff: Return emails from bloggers seeking an interview. It is okay to say "no". It is not okay to ignore. And you might check out who is contacting you and if the person has nearly 8 times the number of Twitter followers as your @Jon2012HQ feed, you just might want to connect.

Advice to Huntsman Daughters: There’s huge potential here for you to take on social media campaigning in a big way. Do a bunch of interviews and mini-documentaries from the campaign trail and post them onto the YouTube channel. Give us an inside look at what's going on behind the scenes of the campaign by using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other networks. Give us passion. Give us personality. Show us why your Dad should be president. Be the campaign’s face to the young and social media savvy people who will help him and vote for him.

Town Hall photos shot with my iPhone 4S and tweaked with Instagram.
Huntsman Girls is their Twitter profile pic.

Courage

Welcome to 2012.

What kind of year will it be for you?

Do you have the courage to make it a great year?
(It's up to you.)

You need courage to start a blog or video channel or Google+ to share your passion with the world. The passion is easy because you already have it. And the good news is there are many ways to create content to share your passion—by writing, doing videos, shooting photos, creating infographics, speaking. The tough part is the courage both to begin and to sustain the content creation effort.

You need courage to start your own business. Many people tell me it is “risky” to leave an employer and start something. But in my mind it is the complete opposite. The risk with a job is that you could be downsized. Or the company could be acquired. Or go under. Or get embroiled in scandal. I was sacked three times before I embarked on a business of my own because I couldn’t develop the courage otherwise. But you can.

You need courage to learn a new sport. It looks fun when you watch surfing or skiing or rock climbing from the sidelines, right? You've always wanted to try. But you know that you’ll feel like a dork in the beginning. It will take a commitment to get good enough to be comfortable and enjoy it.

It takes courage to lose weight or begin an exercise program (or both). It's easy to make a resolution and halfheartedly try to cut back for a few weeks. But making a sustained lifestyle commitment is really tough. I know - pizza and beer are tasty! (Especially together). But is this the year you have the courage to modify your diet and exercise for the long haul?

It takes courage to take up a musical instrument. The young 'uns seem to have no trouble learning quickly. But us old dogs?

Make 2012 a year of courage. Start the blog, begin playing the harmonica, establish a business, go back to school, learn to paint, get outdoors, get healthy, have fun.

Whatever you've wanted to do, this is your year.

Image: Shutterstock / Greg Epperson

Capturing the essence of a brand on video

One of my favorite videos is HP Invent, which was co-created by Tom Wrigglesworth. I've shown this video at many of my speaking gigs because it beautifully captures what HP Workstations are about. The video is not a product pitch. And it is entertaining as heck.

This HP Invent video has nearly 600,000 views. Imagine that – a video about technology that people actually share!

Tom recently contacted me with news of his new video called La Mer de Pianos. This time, he teamed up with Mathieu Cuvelier.

La Mer de Pianos is a short film about Marc Manceaux, the owner of the oldest piano shop in Paris.

This video is utterly different than the HP one, but it too beautifully captures the essence of a brand. In the film, Manceaux describes his "Organ bank for pianos." He says: "As long as I have some water, a candle, a hardback book, an old piano, I'll still be alive."

I love these two videos because they show what great filmmaking can achieve for a brand. Instead of a product pitch, videos like these entertain and inform. And they are shared on social networks.

Content Marketing even offline

Content marketing as a concept has become better known in the past few years, particularly because of Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman and Content Marketing World, an event produced by Joe Pulizzi.

Most people know content marketing as an online strategy and that's certainly true. What I call the new rules of marketing is when you create great web content including text based information (sites, blogs, a Twitter feed), video content, photographs, infographics, and the like, you brand yourself as an organization worthy of doing business with. Done well, an added bonus is that the search engines rank the content highly and people share the content on their social networks.

But with the efforts around online content marketing, don't forget that content marketing is not new - has been around for 100 years in an offline world. Here is a JELL-O recipe book from the 1960s for example. Or consider the Michelin Guides that were first published 110 years ago to help drivers maintain their cars, find decent lodging, and eat well while touring France. The purpose was to sell tires.

While staying at the Hotel Fabian in Helsinki this week, I was drawn to the restaurant's placements, which I quickly discovered are a fascinating example of content marketing. The placemats, produced by the hotel, include a map of the city and information on "How to survive in Helsinki" which I found hysterical. These are English to Finnish phrase translations but it is the choice of what phrases to include that is just terrific.

How to survive in Helsinki: English – Finnish translation essentials.

On the street
"That damned seagull took my meat pie."
"Is that stuffed reindeer for sale?"
"Can I scratch your dog?"
"My hovercraft is full of eels."

In the restaurant
"Do you have elk?"
"This gentleman will pay for everything."
"Oh deer."

Shopping
"That is ridiculously cheap, don’t you have anything more expensive?"
"Where can I get a fur hat?"

In a world of sterile chain hotels with boring branding, this kind of content stands out. People remember. The take the placemat and use the map. They tell their friends.

Remember, content marketing is not just on the web.

Disclosures, I wrote the foreword to Content Rules, and I delivered a keynote at Content Marketing World in 2011.

How a tweet led to driving a dogsled in Lapland

My wife @yukariwatanabe was checking out her Twitter stream a few months ago and noticed one of the people she follows tweeted about Hotel Kakslauttanen in the northern Finland town of Saariselka where you can stay in a glass igloo in winter. You can lie in bed and check out the stars (or if you are lucky the Aurora Borealis). She tweeted back and said: "I want to go there!" Then she emailed me and said the same thing.

We quickly discussed it that evening and agreed: "Why not?" Our daughter is now off to university so we have the time. So we booked it.

Now, I know that a vacation in December above the Arctic Circle might seem insane to some. Heck, the sun doesn't even rise in mid-December (there is four hours of twilight only) but for us it seemed perfect because we've travelled all over the world and are looking for unusual adventures.

How did we know that we wanted to go? By the hotel's website of course. The site lists all sorts of winter activities that you can do. When I saw Husky Safari I was ready to pack my bags. (Bucket list...)

But Yukari wanted to do one more check so she Googled the hotel, looked at the reviews on Trip Advisor and also read about the hotel in a New York Times article. Done deal.

Content Marketing

Everybody I know has a story like this. Somebody says something on a social network. It leads you to Google or a website. And you spend some money (or not).

If you are the seller in this transaction, it all comes down to content. What are you creating (like the Hotel Kakslauttanen site)? How does that compare to what are others creating about you (like the NYT article and reviews on Trip Advisor)?

You're in control. You create the content. You bring in the business.

Our time in Lapland was amazing. We had all kinds of wonderful adventures. The dogsledding was especially fun because I got to drive (more like hang on). We also visited a Sami village where Pentti took us on a Reindeer Safari and talked about his indigenous people who live in far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia. Pentti has 8,000 reindeer.

Sadly, it was cloudy most of the time, so we didn't see the Aurora Borealis. But we always said that if we did it would be a bonus.

Photos taken with my iPhone and tweaked with Instagram.

Here is a video I shot at Kakslauttanen Husky Safaris

Dear Blogger

I'm getting more email pitches that start out with "Dear Blogger".

What a silly way to try to get attention! Here are some of the many problems with this approach:

Dear Blogger tells people that you don’t care enough about them to read their blog and learn their name.

It's much better if you personalize your pitch with an appropriate greeting and some detail about why they were selected.

Dear Blogger means that it is a broadcast pitch going to many other people.

Those of us who create content are looking for something new and different, not the same old thing that everyone else is seeing. When PR people send me a pitch that begins "Dear Blogger" I trash it without reading because I'm simply not interested in being one of many.

It's much better to target one or several people instead of sending a broadcast pitch to a hundred random people you found on a list.

People who write blogs are more than just bloggers.

Bloggers are passionate about what they write about. Most of us share our passion on some combination of other social networks like Twitter and G+ and LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube. We have "day jobs". Many of us write in other formats (books, newspaper articles, research reports). Some of us are on the speaking circuit. Some of us are quoted in the media.

I get pitched by PR people several hundred times a week. I'm okay with that because now and then there is something interesting that I use. But you've got to let me decide how to use it! Don’t assume I will blog it. Would you like to be in my next book? How about a mention when I am next interviewed on television? Interested in a tweet or a mention on G+? How about having me write about you in the Huffington Post? How about making your story part of my keynote speech?

It's much better to make your pitch and assume that the person has other ways to talk you up than just on their blog. If we’re active in one media (a blog) chances are close to 100% that we are active in other media.

"Dear blogger" is a symptom of poor pitching. Why not take the time to pitch effectively?

Content marketing Japanese unusual style

Last week, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, which I wrote with HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan was released in the Japanese language. The book is doing great. It's been ranked in the top 20 or so of all books sold on Amazon Japan and most physical bookstores have already sold out so the publisher has ordered another print run. Brian & I are psyched to introduce the ideas of Grateful Dead marketing to Japanese businesses.

Much of the Japanese edition's success can be attributed to Shigesato Itoi, the visionary who brought together the all-star team that worked on the Japanese edition. Itoi-san is a popular cultural figure in Japan who is a pioneer in Web content creation. He's got a remarkable 430,000+ Twitter followers @itoi_shigesato and his Hobonichi site is one of the most active in Japan. Hobonichi is based on excellent content.

A particularly interesting aspect is daily content available for only 24 hours and then disappears. There is no archive of the daily information. This unusual content strategy is exactly the opposite of what SEO experts would tell you to do and therefore, because it is unique, is a very Grateful Dead approach.

Itoi-san and I traded Q&A back and forth about how he creates real-time content.

1) When we met in Boston, you struck me as unique in the Japanese marketplace because you create content for your buyers. Most other people in Japan create content that talks about what the products do. How did you become so "unusual" in the Japan market?

It's almost happenstance. In 1998, I launched Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shimbun, or Hobonichi, with no prospect for selling merchandise. My intention was to take what I think is interesting, edit the stories like a newspaper (Shimbun means newspaper in Japanese), and put it out on the web for many to read. As we were searching for revenue to sustain Hobonichi, I stumbled upon the idea of selling products, which I think is also content, only that it takes physical form. There was no grand plan.

2) How do you create content that is interesting to people?

I see Hobonichi as a shop where we create "content." For us, content is an idea, emotion, or that light bulb that turned on in your head, expressed in various ways such as text, performance, or a physical object, i.e. products. I keep on producing "content" to meet new friends -- readers, customers, collaborators, vendors, who will enjoy them with me. It's like a kid in an open lot with a ball and a bat, starting the game, and always waiting for someone to join.

3) I consider your content to be real-time because it is only available for one day and then it disappears. You do not have an archive of past content. Why do you do this?

It was an intuitive decision I made from the very start. Maybe it's because it allows me to discuss the same theme over and over again. It's natural: don't we do that every day? Perhaps I wanted to replicate this behavior. That said, I still haven't found a good answer for this one.

4) When I met you in Boston early this year, you struck me as someone who is happy with your life's work. Why do you think so many Japanese people are stuck in jobs that they do not enjoy?

I think it's because the Japanese work ethic values obedience to orders and skillful delivery of results. Each of us needs to be our own leader to live our own lives. Unfortunately, those people are not.

5) Why did you decide to work on the Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead project?

I am attracted to things and people who tell me "Being free does not lead to decadence. It brings out potential." My job is to disseminate this message. The more people there are who believe in this, the easier my life will be. Well, at least, I'm hoping it will make my life easier.

Japanese language edition of Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

Today, the Japanese language version of Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History was published.

If you liked the English language version and read Japanese please check it out. If you have Japanese colleagues who are marketers or music fans, please pass along. If you are a fan of great design and the Grateful Dead you might be interested even if you don't read Japanese.

My co-author on Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead (and HubSpot CEO) Brian Halligan and I both lived in Tokyo in the 1990s, so having the book in Japanese is sort of a homecoming. It has been an exciting project and the finished product is absolutely stellar.

Here is the Facebook page for the book and here is the Amazon Japan page. (As of this writing, the book is ranked number 29 on Amazon Japan among all books they sell). In addition, you can check out an interview with me in Wired Magazine Japan.

Normally I don't write about each translation of my various books (so far nearly 30 languages), but this one is special for a number of reasons.

The book was produced with a true all-star team. Shigesato Itoi corralled the team to create the book and he wrote the foreword. Itoi-san is a popular cultural figure in Japan who is a pioneer in Web content creation. He's got a remarkable 430,000+ Twitter followers @itoi_shigesato and his site is one of the most active in Japan. I'll be interviewing him for an upcoming blog post.

Itoi-san brought in his friend Shin Sobue to design the book. His book creations are so popular that some of his fans buy his work no matter what the topic of the book! He used fantastic fonts (think late 1960s Haight-Asbury meets Japanese) and managed to capture the improvisational nature of a Grateful Dead concert in a book. Amazing.

The Japanese language version was translated by none other than my lovely wife Yukari Watanabe Scott. Yukari, who has quite the following herself on Twitter @YukariWatanabe and her blog, has tolerated my Grateful Dead fandom since we met in Tokyo nearly 25 years ago.

The book was published by Nikkei BP, which also published the Japanese edition of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and will soon bring out Real-Time Marketing & PR in Japanese.

Like the original English-language edition, this book features awesome photos by my friend Jay Blakesberg, who has photographed the Dead since the late 1970s.

Thank you team!

Newsjacking the Republican Presidential Campaign HubSpot Style

Today, HubSpot launched the brand new Marketing Grader – a free tool to grade your online marketing. You can read about it on the HubSpot blog.

Newsjacking the Republicans

What I found interesting about the launch was the example they chose to highlight. The info graphic they made shows the Marketing Grader scores for the leading Republican US Presidential candidates.

As we are less than a month away from the Iowa Caucus, the media is focused on who is ahead. There are polls galore looking at who’s up and who’s down. Into that mix comes an analysis of the candidates online marketing.

The infographic is a long shaped image so I have included it as a small size. Click it to expand or download.

It will be fun to see if any journalists pick this up and run with it in a story.

Social Media ROI Hypocrisy

New research - published here for the first time - proves that executives who demand that Social Media ROI be calculated are hypocrites.

HYPOCRISY

It's ridiculous that executives require marketers to calculate ROI (Return on Investment) on one form of real-time communications: Social media like Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. Yet they happily pay for other real-time communications devices for employees like Blackberrys, iPhones, and iPads without a proven ROI.

Often, the first question I am asked at my talks is about ROI. So I turn the question back to the audience as you will see in this very short video shot on location at recent gigs in Amsterdam, Bahrain, Baltimore, Barcelona, Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, Istanbul, Miami, Rotterdam, Stockholm, and Washington DC.

Direct link to Social Media ROI Hypocrisy on YouTube.

My recommendation to you when faced with executives who demand that you prove social media ROI is to point out the hypocrisy by asking them to show you the ROI of their Blackberry.

I conceived of this video and shot the location scenes myself at my gigs. The final video was produced and edited by my friends at Rewatchable.

Please share. Especially with those in your company who demand that ROI calculation.

Is BMW an email spammer?

UPDATE - On the evening of December 1, BMW of North America responded to the issues I highlighted in this post. Do make sure to read what they said (11th comment down).

+++++++++++++
Many years ago I opted in to emails from BMW because I wanted to get notice when they released short films in their excellent series. For example, I liked The Star featuring Madonna and directed by Guy Richie. At the time these films were a new and exciting form of online marketing and I wanted to know when new ones came out. I wrote about BMW's use of video on my blog back in 2007 and included a mention in one of my books.

Gradually over the years my email address seemed to be added to BMW sales lists as well so I opted out of all emails from BMW last year.

Like most people, I am on a bunch of lists that seem to grow like weeds. Every time I buy something online, I'm added to a new list. I frequently opt out and that's the end of it, but I do not keep a tally of opt outs. There are too many and most companies simply honor my request and stop sending me email.

I distinctly recall opting out of BMW emails so it was strange to me based on my habits that I would mysteriously be added back somehow against my wishes.

So when I again received an email from BMW in November 2011, I opted out again but this time I kept a screenshot record showing I opted out from all items in their list.

The opt out itself was very convoluted. I clicked an UNSUBSCRIBE link on the email and got a sort of "Communications Preferences" error notice followed by an automated email linking me to a place where I could push buttons to opt out of each type of mailing. Click the thumbnail to see what I did.

Note that I do not own a BMW so there is no other way I can think of where I would have been added to their lists.

After that opt out, I again got an email from BMW!

This one was from BMW of North America with a subject line "Shop BMW gifts on Cyber Monday." This email most certainly arrived after I expressed my preference to receive no more emails and recorded the attempt.

Perhaps there is an explanation and if so I would love to hear it.

Maybe there are many different lists for BMW and they require different opt out methods (this one was from BMW of North America)? Perhaps it is user error and I did something wrong several times in a row? Perhaps their system takes many days to process requests and I need to independently opt out of each type of mailing (silly in a real-time world but possible)? I really want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Even if there is a good explanation for what happened to me, I would like to suggest that as a company that prides itself on quality and engineering, BMW is failing with their marketing.

I wanted to see BMW videos and ended up being hit up to buy Holiday gifts from BMW.

Email marketing is a certainly a component of quality and engineering, and BMW need to re-think how they communicate. The 4 step opt out procedure itself is sort of stupid and the fact that it doesn't actually opt me out is unacceptable.

8 ways to get people to discuss your new product in social media

On November 14, 2011 I introduced my new book Newsjacking to the market.

One of the challenges of my work is that I write and speak about strategic marketing. I have to admit something right here: I obsess over the use of my own marketing strategies to market my work. Heck, if I can’t launch my own book, how good are the ideas, right? I was under pressure.

In order to generate the most excitement around Newsjacking, I chose to do some particular things that I hoped would help to launch the book with excitement. These are the ones that worked well for me and that I would do again in the future.

I'd suggest that these techniques should be used at launch to get people to discuss any new product in social media. It is not just for books.

1. Don't talk too early.

I chose not to talk about the book ahead of time. In fact I never used the word "newsjacking" anywhere on the web prior to November 14, which was launch day. I find that people have short attention spans. If I say "a book is coming" but people cannot actually read it, few will act. So I chose to keep quiet.

2. Choose a memorable name.

The title I used - "Newsjacking" – had been used before by people like Urgent Genius but it was not very popular a term, especially outside the UK. Most people were hearing the word for the first time and it was memorable to them.

3. Inject some controversy.

The concept of newsjacking feels like a black hat technique to many people and some wondered if it was ethical. (Newsjacking is perfectly legitimate, as I do explain in the book). But that sense of perceived negativity is a powerful tool to get people talking. John Jantsch wrote Is Newsjacking a Legitimate Tactic? And Erica Glasier wrote Ethical question: Is newsjacking black hat? These blog posts were tweeted hundreds of time, spreading the ideas in the book.

4. Seed the market.

I gave an early heads up (about 24 hours notice) to a few friends so they could prepare blog posts that ran on my launch day.

5. Have a news hook and newsjack.

I chose to launch Newsjacking, which is in e-book only format, on the same day that the new Kindle Fire launched. My goal was to newsjack the Kindle Fire announcement and that tactic actually worked because writers for publications such as the Vancouver Sun, Forbes, and MediaBistro talked about my book in context of the new Kindle Fire.

6. Respond to people in real-time.

I did my best to comment on each of the dozens of blog posts about Newsjacking in real-time, I also tried to react to as many of the thousands of tweets as I could without cluttering my stream too much. It was exciting to participate in the launch this way.

7. Don't forget international markets.

I woke up very early to interact with people in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. And I checked in again in the evenings to connect with Australia and New Zealand. I was psyched that people wrote about the book in many markets and found blog posts in multiple languages including Japanese, German, and Dutch.

8. Measure, report, and improve.

I measured via TweetDeck, TweetReach, and Google to see how the Newsjacking meme was spreading. I reported the progress to my publisher so they could help push things along and when possible, I tweaked what I was doing to improve. Note the takeup of the meme "newsjacking" in just the 48 hours after my launch as measured by TweetReach (below).

Qantas Airways Twitter #fail

This morning my Australian friends lit up Twitter talking about an epic Twitter #fail from Qantas Airways. I saw messages from Trevor Young, Jim Stewart and others pointing me to what was the top trending topic in Australia today.

Turns out the Australian airline announced a contest on Twitter.

Most times a contest like this would be just one of thousands that populate Twitter at any one time. Normally there would be no backlash.

Timing is important

The reason this blew up is due to terrible timing. In the past month, Qantas had faced a major strike, which grounded the fleet and has experienced ongoing disputes with the unions that represent pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers, and caterers.

The travelling public was greatly inconvenienced during this period of turmoil and cancelled flights. I had friends who couldn’t make it to America for long-planned meetings because of the strike.

Qantas offering this frivolous contest struck people as insensitive.

The frustration was taken out by people who used the #QantasLuxury hashtag to vent their frustrations. Here are a few I found:

@2FBS: #QantasLuxury is dressing your staff in t-shirts that say "We're Sorry" and believing that makes up for missing a friends funeral.

@GrogsGamut: #QantasLuxury - when the passengers arrive before the couriers delivering the lockout notices do

@mrpaulb: #QantasLuxury is having gold plated taps in the bathroom where some poor qantaspr person is throwing up right now

@indednsible: #qantasluxury is when they enforce 11 hours of artificial night on the MEL-LAX flight, and hand you a plastic bag full of junk-food.

@Ivalaine: #qantasluxury having your bags "misplaced" not just at arrival after 28 hours of travel. but then "misplacing" them again when you get home

I've learned a bunch of things from this.

1) Timing is important. If you are dealing with sensitive corporate issues, you should think carefully before implementing a fun campaign.

2) When you offer people a chance to use a Twitter hashtag, they will. But you don’t have any control over what they say. You need to be prepared for negativity.

3) The prize in this contest was lame. You get the amenity kit that first class passengers get. Big deal – some PJs and a toothbrush. If you want to do a contest right, offer a really valuable prize.

4) As I’ve talked about many times, in a real-time world news jumps quickly from social media to mainstream media. As of this writing, there are well over 100 mainstream media stories about this. I’m sure there will be many more.

5) Anyone seen a newsjack of this story yet?

Make your writing easy to understand

Doug Brockway points us to some world-class gobbledygook from a company called ITA Software by Google.

Yikes, what does this company do?

I looked at a bunch of pages on the company's site and honestly didn't understand what they do. It wasn't until I went to some external sites that I sort of figured it out.

Here is the about page. (I have pasted the headline and first two paragraphs below). Click the thumbnail to see the screenshot of the page as of November 21, 2011.

Travel Technology's Game Changer

ITA Software is a leading provider of innovative solutions for the travel industry.

Founded in the mid-nineties by MIT computer science graduates, ITA Software has pioneered a new generation of travel technology. Our world-class engineers and travel industry experts are solving the industry's most complex computing challenges, and in doing so reshaping its very foundations.

This is not a good way to talk about what you do.

Here is the product page. Click the thumbnail to see the screenshot of the page as of November 21, 2011.

The problem with using language like game changer, innovative solutions, next generation, world-class, customer-centric, and the like is that these words and phrases are so overused as to have become meaningless.

Here is an analysis I did on gobbledygook phrases so you can avoid the most overused ones. (Incidentally, the most overused phrase in my analysis was innovation / innovative.)

Make your writing easy to understand

I've taken a stab at re-writing the about us section for ITA Software by Google by learning more about what the company actually does. My suggestion is certainly not perfect, but it is, to my mind at least, easier to understand than the one currently being used by the company.

Software for the air travel industry

ITA Software by Google helps air passengers, airlines, and online travel agencies by making it easier for people to comparison shop for flights. Because of the huge volume of real-time transactions in airline pricing, the ITA Software engine is central in the travel industry’s most complex computing application.

The company was founded in the mid-1990s by computer scientists from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and was acquired by Google in 2011.

What do you think?

Kindle Fire delivers a new kind of business book

Today the long awaited Kindle Fire is released. I am looking forward to getting mine.

The Kindle Fire is the new full-color tablet from Amazon. It is part of the Kindle family, which I've continually upgraded upon new releases. I take my Kindle on all my air travel, for me it is the ideal way to consume content on the road.

The Kindle Fire (as well as the Apple iPad and Barnes & Noble Nook) bring a non-linear experience to reading a book. You can instantly jump from one part of the book to another. And it is in full color.

Kindle Fire delivers a new kind of business book

I specifically wrote my new book Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage to take advantage of these full color interactive components. Newsjacking was conceived, written, and published as an e-book only publication.

Amazon leads the way in this marketplace for one simple reason, content. Amazon is a content company that happens to create technology. The Kindle is built to serve the content, not the other way around. For that reason, I predict it will become very popular.

Most tablets are just technology. The computer is built because every company needs a tablet but it is not purpose built to drive a content experience. Apple (with the iPad) and Amazon are both pioneers in this new world of optimized electronic content.

As an avid reader, one of the most compelling aspects is interactivity – you can instantly link from the book to external content. It means a book read on an iPad or Kindle Fire is like reading a blog post with links to valuable content from other places. It means you can check out the Twitter feed of the expert cited in the text or watch a video that provides context to a concept.

As a content creator, it is fantastic to work within these platforms. Readers get a terrific experience.

Incidentally, I'm not advocating that print is going away. Heck I read a daily print newspaper, many print books, and a bunch of print magazines. But strongly believe there is room for both print and optimized e-content.

Another important aspect of the Kindle Fire and iPad is the instant nature of content consumption. I’ve heard from about 50 people who, in less than a day, saw my new book, downloaded Newsjacking, read the entire thing (which takes about an hour) and wrote reviews, blog posts, or tweets about the book.

Now that's real-time.

Are you getting a Kindle Fire? Do you read books on an iPad?

Newsjacking!

Today my newest book is released.

Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage

The traditional PR model -- sticking closely to a preset script and campaign timeline -- no longer works the way it used to. Public discourse now moves so fast and so dynamically that all it takes is a single afternoon to blast the wheels off someone's laboriously crafted narrative.

Enter newsjacking: the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.

A new kind of business book

I wrote Newsjacking to take advantage of the many features of the ebook format used by Amazon’s new Kindle Fire, Apple's iPad, and the Barnes & Noble Nook. Here's the book on Amazon. and here it is for iPad. For example, with the interactivity to Web content built into these readers, when I talk about a blog post in the book, I link directly to the blog post.

Newsjacking is in full color and contains infographics to illustrate the important points.

While Newsjacking is ebook only, it is from Wiley, my long-time publishers. Newsjacking will not be printed on dead trees. It is a short and punchy book (you can read the entire thing in about an hour) and is priced right. Read more about my ideas (and the many excellent comments from others) on the transformation of books.

You can get your copy of Newsjacking and begin reading right now via Amazon Kindle, Apple iBook (for iPad and iPhone), an Android edition, and Scribd. It is coming very soon for Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony ereader.

Anybody can Newsjack.

As journalists scramble to cover breaking news, the basic facts -- who/what/when/where -- are often fairly easy to find, either on a corporate website or in competing media outlets' copy.

The challenge for reporters is to get the "why" and the implications of the event.

Why is the company closing its plant? The corporate website may offer some bogus excuse like "because it wants to spend more time with its family." Competitors may quote some expert's speculation on the real reason, but a reporter can't cite that without adding something self-demeaning like "according to an expert quoted in the New York Times."

When a story is breaking, journalists need original content—and fast.

Enter newsjacking.

If you are clever enough to react to breaking news very quickly, providing credible second-paragraph content in a blog post, tweet, or media alert that features the keyword of the moment, you may be rewarded with a bonanza of media attention.

Newsjacking creates a level playing field —- literally anyone can newsjack —- but, that new level favors players who are observant, quick to react, and skilled at communicating. It's a powerful tool that can be used to throw an opponent or simply draft off the news momentum to further your own ends.

I stuffed Newsjacking with tons of examples: Rick Perry, Larry Flynt, Oakley, and the London Fire Brigade to name a few.

There's an action plan for how you can newsjack and own the second paragraph of the news story that everyone in your market is watching.

Newsjacking is both a new PR technique and a new kind of business book.

I'm interested in your thoughts.

The transformation of books

What is a book?

Seems like a silly question, doesn’t it? Everyone knows what a book is.
Or do they?

Books used to be made out of dead trees. Lots of paper and ink.

Then we had audiobooks.

Ebooks became quite popular first as PDF style documents and later via readers like Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, and a few others.

I see a new transformation happening right now.

It was started last year with the iPad. And from next week's release of Kindle Fire, Amazon jumps into the world of interactive books.

Interactivity means business books come alive! As an author, that is a terrific opportunity.

The Apple iPad and Kindle Fire bring a non-linear experience to reading a book. You can instantly jump from one part of the book to another.

Of course it is in full color.

Better yet, now you can instantly link from the book to external content too. It means a book read on an iPad or Kindle Fire is like reading a blog post with links to valuable content from other places.

The new book experience means watching the video the author mentioned with one click. It means you can check out the Twitter feed of the expert cited in the text. You can see the cool picture that was once worth 1,000 words.

I'm convinced that this new business book paradigm will aid anyone in learning. It means university curriculums will need to adapt. Textbook authors must scramble. It is a new world.

Watch this space. There is more to come.

Images:
Old books via Shutterstock / Ferenc Szelepcsenyi
Kindle Fire via Amazon

You need honest feedback. You need a coach.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with my speaker coaches Nick Morgan and Nikki Smith-Morgan of Public Words. I meet with them about once a year so they can help me fine-tune my presentation skills. Sometimes they attend one of my live gigs and we meet after to debrief. Other times, like yesterday, we watch a recorded speech together and they provide honest feedback so I can improve.

Some people wonder why someone who has delivered about 500 speeches still needs a coach? Actually the better question is: After you become skilled in your field, who else but a coach can provide you with valuable insight? You need to call in an expert.

Yesterday we watched a recent keynote that was filmed. We focused on a few very particular issues of my speaking style including my breathing and the way that I plant my feet when I make an important point. These are the issues I'm working on now and once I nail these, we will move onto another area of my presentation skills.

You must never stop improving.

I'm a fan of Bob Lefsetz writings. His post about coaching talked about the music industry and how it is virtually impossible for musicians to get honest feedback. He suggests hiring a coach and points to a fascinating article in the New Yorker Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you? by Atul Gawande.

In the New Yorker piece, Gawande talks about how an important surgeon, someone at the absolute top of his profession, hired a coach and learned small things he could improve like how he held his elbows and how he draped the patient and its affect on the other medical professionals in the room. The surgeon improved.

You need a coach.

Top athletes have coaches. Michael Phelps is the best swimmer in the world but he spends hours each day with his coach Bob Bowman.

Your coach could be your boss. Or your spouse. You coach could be a peer. But the person you choose as your coach needs to give you the honest feedback you need to improve.

Nick Morgan and Nikki Smith-Morgan, my speaker coaches, are a very important reason that I feel comfortable on stage because I know I am performing at the peak of my abilities. That knowledge gives me the confidence to deliver a great talk that audiences enjoy and those who hire me are happy with bringing me in.

Who is going to be honest with you? How can you improve?

Image: Shutterstock / Maria Dryfhout

Why I love Instagram

It's rare that I get really, really excited about a new social network, but that's happening to me with Instagram. My friend Ann Handley introduced me to it last month and I am loving it.

Since there are already ten million Instagram users, I'm certainly not an early adopter, so forgive me if you're already an Instagram pro.

Instagram is a photo sharing iPhone application that makes it easy and fun to manipulate a photo with various filters and turn it into instant art. Then with a few clicks, you can share your photo with a caption via Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.

Here's what my photo Sunset over Florida and the wing of a 757 looks like on the Instagram site. Here it is on Twitter. And on Facebook. It took about a minute to snap, filter, and update my social sites.

I love that Instagram makes it so easy to create content. In my travels, one of the first things people push back on is how much time they think it takes to create content and publish it on the Web. Instagram is easy. It takes a minute or two. Others say they cannot write so they are hopeless on social sites. Well with Instagram, you aren’t writing (except maybe a caption) so even word-challenged people can create awesome content.

Check out the Instagram blog post on the recent NYC Marathon to see how they showcase some user photos. It's fascinating to see the different ways people have captured the event.

There are tens of thousands of social networks out there. Many are copycats of existing networks or add just a tiny incremental feature to another network. They don't succeed.

True new ideas as social networks are rare – I can count on one hand the social networks that I felt that "wow" factor that I had found a new way to create and share content. YouTube makes video sharing easy. Twitter is for sharing short messages. Facebook for connecting with friends, Foursquare on my whereabouts, and now Instagram for photos.

Instagram is cool because it allows content sharing but with a twist. It is photography turned into instant art and it is addictive (at least for me).

When I have a few minutes of downtime, I like to pull out my iPhone and scroll through the photos of the people I follow on Instagram. It is like a stroll through an art gallery.

It was really cool that as soon as I jumped on Instagram a few weeks ago, some of my friends found me and started following. It was so quick. I am now connected to people in a new way.

Are you an Instagram user?

How to build a crappy workforce

It's simple.

If you are eager to employ second-rate employees and cannot wait to build a team of D-players, just ban Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks at your workplace.

As I have heard many times from young people, social networking is their preferred method of communication. Banning these tools is a sure way to have the best candidates re-consider working for you.

Finally here is some proof

To demonstrate the role of the network in young people’s lives, Cisco commissioned an international workforce study of nearly 3000 college students and recently employed college graduates, many working in their first full-time jobs.

Here are the findings I find most interesting:

• More than two of five would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
• The study revealed that one in three college students and young professionals consider the Internet to be as important as air, water, food, and shelter.

For several years, whenever I speak with college students (like I did Wednesday at an entrepreneurial marketing class at Tufts University) I've told them that if a prospective employer bans social media, they’ve got to resist working there. I tell them to ask about social networking at the office. If it is banned or restricted, I tell them to stand up, thank the interviewer and leave because they will not be happy at that company.

Do you trust your employees?

Guess what? When companies ban social networking, the best employees leave. They sense they are not trusted. Those who reluctantly stay go into the restroom or outside the office with their iPhone or Android to get onto Facebook and Twitter.

Here is a video where I explain this idea to a group of Microsoft interns considering a first job. And I provide some advice.

Direct link to Advice to students about getting a great first marketing job

Image: Shutterstock / Monkey Business Images

Persona based content marketing at the Nobis Hotel

Have you noticed that nearly all hotel websites are exactly the same?

There's the photo of the property on the front, the "reserve a room" widget usually in the top left and a bunch of boring, superlative language. Basically the sites are interchangeable. I just booked a hotel in California for later in the month and the three hotels I considered looked like they had all been designed by the same agency.

Several months ago I stayed at the Nobis Hotel in Stockholm. I made the choice myself based on - you guessed it - the site. This hotel website seemed different.

That difference continued as my wife Yukari Watanabe Scott and I checked in and explored the property. It seemed so perfect that we had to find out why. So we met with Ana Maria Nordgren and Oliver Geldner to learn more.

Nobis Hotel buyer persona

Oliver told us the buyer persona of the people they attract to the Nobis are frequent travellers who are sick of sterile chain hotels and want something different. They make their own decisions on where to stay using the web and social media. Buyers want upscale luxury but in a modern style, not the old-world traditional style.

As Oliver is going through this with us, I stole a glance to my wife. "That’s us!" I almost shouted. How cool that we were actually attracted to the hotel based on buyer persona created by Oliver and his colleagues!

The persona of the Nobis Hotel

The most fascinating story that Oliver told us about Nobis Hotel marketing was the persona they use when they communicate for the hotel on social networks like Facebook. This is what Oliver told me is the Nobis persona he uses on social networks:

"The Nobis Hotel is a grand old lady who lives in a vast apartment in Stockholm. She's a dame of means. She has a cocktail party starting every day at 11:00 am and is slightly tipsy by 5:00 pm and that is when she is communicating to you via social networks as a friend.

The Nobis is a Swedish hotel, but she insists on communicating in English even though the majority of guests are Swedish.

She has a sense of humor and has interesting things to say. She wants to be relevant, have a sense of humor and not take herself too seriously."

*** WOW!! How cool is this description??!! ***

Storytelling at the Nobis

Here are a few short stories I pulled from the Nobis Hotel Facebook page. I can see the slightly tipsy grand old dame writing them:

"Animal question of the week: 'I am travelling with a duck, and would need a room with a tub'. I can't wait to see the cleaning ladie's face when she comes in to make up the room ! Well at least today we got nice weather, for ducks..."

And this:

"Note to all parents of 3-old boys: there is a subtle but very distinct difference between peeing in the steam room and peeing into the steam room. The first can be the sign of an emergency, the latter is a signal you might have a hooligan on your hands...."

Isn't this fantastic! Can you imagine a big chain hotel communicating like this on social networks? Not a chance!

Amazing way that the Nobis looks for words and phrases that are important for their business.

Oliver told me that he does a semantic analysis of the Nobis Hotel listings on travel review sites such as Trip Advisor to find out what words and phrases visitors use in their reviews. These are then used in Nobis marketing.

So rather than make up their SEO terms they actually use the terms like "beautiful modern hotel in Stockholm" that people use in social networks as their SEO phrases.

Love it!

Offline content marketing at the Nobis

Amazingly, the Nobis Hotel published a book! There is a copy in each room and in the common areas. I thought it was so cool that I purchased a copy.

The hardcover book explores how they created the hotel all the way down to fine points like the typefaces of the written communications and the furniture and fabrics used throughout.

There is a section of the book talking about the original building which was a bank made famous by the robbery and hostage taking that came to be known as The Stockholm Syndrome.

Oliver told us it was not conceived as a marketing book but rather as a way to tell stories about the choices of what materials and designs were chosen and why. They did not create what Oliver would call “an artificial brand” but instead focus on the actual stories of how the hotel was built and the book shows all of that to guests like us.

As a marketer and author I found the book fascinating and had never seen anything quite like it.

Content marketing even offline!

Thank you Oliver for taking the time to share what you are doing at the Nobis. In a world of sterile and boring marketing, you are doing it right. Keep up the great work.

Fishy QR codes and deep sea transparency

This past weekend, the Boston Globe ran a fantastic series of investigative articles on the fish business. It turns out that DNA testing organized by the Globe revealed nearly half of 183 fish samples collected at restaurants and supermarkets in the Boston area were not the species ordered.

As a fish lover and frequent restaurant patron, this is certainly stinky!

Fish misidentification is especially common at sushi restaurants the Globe found, partly because they use various names for the same fish. Testing showed that 32 area restaurants that serve sushi sold misnamed fish.

But there is hope in the form of QR codes!

A company called Trace and Trust, a network of fishermen, distributors, processors and restaurants, has organized a system that uses QR codes to track individual fish from the ocean to your plate.

What a fantastic use of QR codes in marketing!

Trace and Trust tells customers exactly who caught their seafood, as well as when, where, and how it got caught. The community believes this level of transparency results in the highest quality and freshest possible seafood you have ever seen.

The system delivers complete transparancy and is fun too.

Do you know who caught your seafood?

Here is a sample of a QR Code.

If you were sitting at a restaurant, enjoying a meal, you'd be able to scan the code and learn that Chris Brown landed your Summer Flounder on 10/20/2011 while fishing near Block Island. Captain Chris Brown’s vessel, the F/V Proud Mary, is docked in the harbor in Point Judith, Rhode Island. Wild Rhody shipped 45 pounds of this catch to Tastings Wine Bar and Bistro and 606 Congress.

There's even a photo of Chris with the fish that you're about to take a nice bite out of. How lovely.

What a fantastic example of real-time marketing at work!

Here are ten more examples of QR codes for real time marketing

NASA and facility tours as great public relations

Last month I had an opportunity to tour the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio with David M. DeFelice, Community Relations Team Lead. We checked out some way cool space research facilities and got to hold the first baseball used as the World Series ceremonial first pitch from space.

Fortunately I was able to film some highlights of the tour.

Direct link to A tour of the NASA Glenn Research Center on YouTube.

This got me thinking about how great a PR tool facility tours can be.

In our world of electronic communications and social media, sometimes we can forget that the best asset to get the media interested in what we do is a tour of where we do our work. NASA certainly knows this.

But you don't have to have an out-of-this-world facility to conduct an interesting tour.

I've been on some terrific tours (and wrote about them on my blog or for other publications) such as the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team HQ, the Pentagon (I even went into the park in the middle!), and General Motors world headquarters where I saw the new Chevrolet Volt being made. Cool stuff all.

When an interested member of the media is treated to an experience at your facility, it can often generate great press.

If you have something interesting to show, do it. The world does not live by social media alone!

New B2B lead generation calculus

Business-to-Business marketers fall into two camps

There are the people who believe in email registrations for things like white papers to drive leads. This group believes that with a gate, value comes from capturing an email address of each person downloading the content because they become sales leads. There is very little sharing of content on social media with a gate because people do not want to expose those in their social networks to possible spam.

Then there are those who believe in making content like white papers totally free without registration in order to spread the information as far as possible. For these folks, value comes from many more people being exposed to the content and more spreading the free content via social networks. My research suggests that between 20 times and 50 times more people download free content. But you get zero traditional "leads".

Like religion, nobody is right and neither of these approaches are the best way.

(Except me of course. I believe in free and I'm right. The others are crazy and can't see the truth!)

I had such a religious debate on video with HubSpot Marketing VP Mike Volpe. Check it out here.

Gated content with squeeze page calculus:
(No sharing / every single download is a "lead")
10,000 people initially exposed to the white paper content offer
x 5% register their email address to download the white paper
+ Nobody shares on social networks
RESULT = 500 email adressess captured from people who want to read the white paper. No sharing and no inbound links created.

Totally free content calculus:
(Tons of sharing / zero traditional "leads")
10,000 people initially exposed to the no registration white paper content offer
x 50% download the no registration white paper
+ 10% of those who read it share on social networks
= an additional 5,000 people download the free content
RESULT = 10,000 total people download the white paper. Inbound links created from social networks. Zero email addresses captured so zero traditional "leads"

New lead generation calculus

I wanted to offer an alternative, a new lead generation calculus that takes both religious views into account. It's essentially a hybrid model.

I suggest the first offer be totally free (such as a white paper). Then within the white paper, include a secondary offer that requires registration that you can use to capture leads. A secondary offer might be a Webinar that is related to the content in the white paper and educates people even more on the topic.

Hybrid model with initially free content then a secondary offer:
(Tons of sharing / lots of inbound links / bonus = lots traditional "leads"!)
10,000 people initially exposed to the no registration white paper content offer
x 50% download the no registration white paper
+ 10% of those who read it share on social networks
= an additional 5,000 people download the free content
RESULT #1 = 10,000 total people download the white paper. Inbound links created from social networks.
+ Secondary offer within the white paper offers a registration required Webinar
x 5% of those who download the free white paper register for the webinar
ADDITIONAL RESULT = 500 emails captured from people who to attend the Webinar

All leads are not equal.

An added benefit of this hybrid new lead generation calculus approach is the difference in leads. The Gated content approach simply generates email addresses from people who want a white paper.

The hybrid approach generates email addresses from people who have already read the white paper and now want more information about your company and its products and services and are eager to attend the webinar. With most lead scoring systems, the hybrid model leads are hot and the white paper leads not.

Image: Shutterstock / Tomas Skopal

The Power of Real-Time Marketing Takes Focus at DMA2011

Last month I delivered a presentation at the DMA annual conference. The theme of the entire #DMA2011 was "The Global Event for Real-Time Marketers" so it was fitting that I talked about the ideas in my book Real-Time Marketing & PR.

I give the DMA a great deal of credit for recognizing the real-time revolution early and adapting the organization to the new world of instant communication we live in today. I'm happy to see that next year's #DMA2012 is also focused on real-time marketing.

Fortunately my talk was filmed and you can see it here.

Direct link to the video on YouTube.

My talk was sponsored by SAS as part of the company's efforts to educate people about the importance of real-time customer analytics. In the video, you'll see Hillary Ashton from SAS introducing me.

The video was filmed and edited by the talented pros at Rewatchable. I've seen many videos of talks that are filmed from one camera angle or are otherwise predictable. Once you see this, I think you’ll agree with me that the way this is filmed and edited makes it far more interesting than the typical speaker video.

Thank you to the DMA, SAS, and Rewatchable for making this video available.

ROI

Let's talk about calculating Return on Investment (ROI)

Question: What is the ROI of spending time calculating the ROI of something?

In many large organizations, fear of something new leads to an insistence that the new thing’s benefit be proven before it can be undertaken. Perfect example is social media.

How's that working for you?

People tell me this ROI approach leads to followers, not leaders in a market. It means that the only things tried are those that others have pioneered.

Did Jeff Bezos calculate the ROI of Amazon.com becoming the world's first online bookstore?
How could he? The Web was brand new. He just built it. And later he pioneered again, this time with ebooks by launching the Kindle in November 2007.

Where is Amazon.com now? Net income in 2010 was over a billion dollars.

Did Borders calculate the ROI of building the world's second online bookstore?
They probably did and they would have concluded this newfangled online stuff was silly and just a tiny market compared to these hundreds of great stores they had in prime retail locations. And ebooks? On July 7, 2010 Borders finally opened it ebook store nearly three years after Amazon, perhaps because the ROI calculations finally worked for them.

Where is Borders now? Nowhere. The company closed their doors on the last remaining stores on Sunday, September 18, 2011.

Sometimes vision and guts trumps the business school ROI approach.

Especially with new technologies, a traditional ROI calculation can steer you in the wrong direction.

Thanks to Kenny Madden for the awesome drawing. Kenny works in market development at Spiceworks and spends a lot of time listening and engaging with 1.7 Million IT buyers on how they want to be marketed and sold to. He expresses his passion for sales and marketing in art.

So, Kenny, what’s the ROI of doing these drawings?

World class, cutting-edge hospital gobbledygook

Would you want these guys to take care of you or a loved one?

"We have assembled surgical and clinical expertise second to none, have a state-of-the-art trauma center, developed sophisticated minimally invasive techniques, and called on innovative training and technology to ensure the highest level of patient safety and quality of care. These clinical initiatives, a thriving research enterprise and an unparalleled [Famous University]-affiliated medical education program all enable [Hospital Z] to fulfill our mission."

When I read this I don't imagine people working at this hospital have a great bedside manner. Sure it's "just website copy" but it is important.

When I deliver talks around the world, I try to include some gobbledygook from the industry or company whose people I am addressing.

Earlier this year I spoke at the Forum for Healthcare Strategies and popped up this gem. While the slide was up, @chrisboyer snapped a pic and shared via Twitter.

The example contains the following world-class, cutting-edge, mission-critical gobbledygook:

-- second to none
-- state-of-the-art
-- innovative
-- unparalleled

Not to mention all the healthcare specific jargon contained in just two sentences.

I'm always fascinated by the words "innovate" and "innovative" which I determined from analyzing every press release sent in the English language over an entire year (there were 770,000 releases) to be the most overused gobbledygook term of all.

Let's eliminate the gobbledygook!

As Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman say in their book Content Rules, just "speak human."

The content you create is meant to build a relationship with buyers. The best content is developed through an understanding your target audience and using the words and phrases that they use. Focus on buyer problems, not your own ego or the jargon in your industry.

Marketing & PR advice to Occupy Wall Street protesters

I've been following the Occupy Wall Street movement with interest. What started as a small group has grown remarkably quickly and protest elements are popping up all over the world.

As this is a marketing strategy blog, I am not commenting on the political aspects of the movement. Rather, I'd like to offer some advice from the marketing strategy perspective.

Consolidate logos

The Occupy Wall Street movement is using at least three different logos. This is a problem for people to know who you are and what you stand for. When I go to the site the logo is different than the one on your @OccupyWallSt Twitter feed which is different still from your Facebook page.

Try to come up with one iconic image and go with that on all of your social sites and printed material. Make that onto buttons and T-shirts. Design matters.

If you want the world to take you seriously, then you need to take yourselves seriously.

Put a face (or faces) to your organization

I know that one of the tenets of Occupy Wall Street is that it is a horizontally organized movement. I get that. But I think the movement needs people who become the human face of what you are doing.

Because you don't have a recognized human face as your voice in the media, journalists latch onto people such as the woman who was pepper sprayed or the women showing their bare breasts. Those images of people won't let you move beyond where you are today.

You say that you model your movement after the Arab Spring tactic. Take a page out of their playbook and find your Wael Ghonim. During the early 2011 Egyptian protests, Ghonim became the international face of the Egyptian Arab Spring. The media wants to put a face on Occupy Wall Street. Don't let them default to naked girls.

Give your website some personality

The Occupy Wall Street website has the same flaws as the media approach – lack of personality. When I go to the site, it is completely anonymous. The posts are by "OccupyWallSt" rather than a human (which is just like the terrible problem many bloggers have of using the default byline of "admin" when they blog). The contact information is anonymous too.

The reason this is such a big problem from a marketing perspective is that your movement seems to be anti-corporate. Certainly it is anti-big financial institutions. But what do the big banks do on their web site? Yep, they make them anonymous. You can't find any humans. There are black holes for contact information.

Don't copy the banks! Do the opposite. Make your site human.

The site needs to highlight the individuals who are leading the organization. I'd suggest that each and every day you profile one of the movement's people. Include a photo and a video interview. Let us see the humans behind the movement.

Clearly articulate what you want

Every successful movement clearly says what they are after: Giving women the right to vote, ending apartheid, overthrowing the Mubarak regime.

It is not clear exactly what Occupy Wall Street wants.

Do they want the Glass Steagall Act reinstated so that once again commercial banking and investment banking would be separate?

Do they want to create a limit to the amount of long-term investment income people can take on their personal income taxes? Today, Hedge Fund managers take as income the profits from the gain of their portfolios under management at the long-term capital gains rate of 15% while those who earn income from, say, running a restaurant pay the ordinary income tax rates which are 35% at the top end.

Should a teacher pay more tax as a percentage then a hedge fund manager? That is the sort of clearly articulated idea the Occupy Wall Street protesters could grab a hold of. So far they have not.

For more on concrete solutions that the Occupy Wall Street protesters could get behind, check out Matt Taibbi’s article in the October 27, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

Attention Occupy Wall Street – marketing and public relations matter. Sleeping in parks and chanting will only take you so far.

Cool event alert - Nature and Leadership Expedition to Panama

Early this year, I visited the jungles of Panama with Nathan Gray and Lider Sucre of Earth Train, staying at their beautiful Mamoni Valley Preserve campus.

During my visit, I was able to reflect on what the natural world can teach about leadership. I wrote about it in a post Biodiversity and business leadership, which includes a video interview with Nathan.

Nathan, Lider, and a group of talented artists and businesspeople are taking these ideas forward with an exciting one-week executive level leadership seminar-adventure in Panama. I'll be attending the week long event from January 28 to February 4, 2012 and there is space for just 8 others to join us.

The team is looking for accomplished and articulate executive-explorers to join the hiking and kayaking trip through the jungles of Panama. You will need to share our passion for enquiry and adventure, have an open mind, be physically fit, and have an enthusiastic desire to share your ideas with the group.

Together we will explore:

• The latest insights from Nature about social organization; cooperation and "coopetition;" social networking; and applying ecological tools in the business environment.


• The most effective ways of using natural environments as executive training and learning resources.


• How nature and the arts - especially music - stimulates creativity and develops pattern-recognition skills.

The guides and program leaders are an incredible collection of people from around the world. Learn more here.

We will be video documenting our time together, covering our kayak trip from the Continental Divide to the Kuna Caribbean coast.

If you're looking for a fantastic adventure that gets you about as far away from the office as possible, this is your chance to be a part of an expedition together with other leaders in the arts and business.

Photo above: Doug Bruce (shot in the Kuna village of Cangandi)

How would you react?

As I've been talking about the ideas of Real-Time Marketing & PR, many people tell me they have difficulty identifying opportunities and threats.

Throughout the real-time online world of the web, I see the same patterns again and again as stories are driven by the Real-Time Marketing & PR Power Law.

You've got to react quickly.

News breaks in moments. Your opportunity is now. Not tomorrow. Now.

Could you recognize a snowballing situation in its early stages? Is your organization prepared to react with a real-time mindset?

How would you react if, right now . . . ?

• Your company is cited as the best place to work by your local newspaper.
• A customer raves about your customer service on an influential trade magazine web site.
• A well-known industry analyst says on his blog that your company is too difficult to do business with.
• A competitor announces they are lowering prices by 25 percent.
• Your CEO is fired.
• In forums and chat rooms, people said your product poses a health risk.
• A huge company announces its intent to acquire your competitor.

Be they opportunities or threats, you may be confronted by scenarios like these when you least expect them.

If you understand how quickly events can unfold and are ready to react, you will gain significant competitive advantage.

The key is having the right mind-set.

Endorsements and opening acts

As a live music geek, I am always interested in the opening act.

Who has the headliner (and their manager) agreed to share the stage with? Why was the act chosen? Is it simply because they are on the same label and somebody owes somebody else a favor? Or do the headliners love the opener’s music?

I always arrive early at the music venue to check out the opener.

Back in April 2009 I caught The Faint at my favorite music venue in the world The Fillmore in San Francisco (apple anyone?). The opening act was Ladytron.

I hadn't heard Ladytron before, but was instantly transfixed by the New Wave style Electropop combined with a high-end dance-club light show. Their sound sort of reminded me of some of my favorite bands from my college days like the B52s but updated.

The next morning I went to iTunes and downloaded several Ladytron albums (yes I support artists by paying for music). I also put Ladytron into my Ticketmaster alert profile so I'd know when they next hit the Boston area.

On Friday night, I finally got to see Ladytron again, this time at The Paradise in Boston, a perfect small club for live music.

The idea of opening acts intrigues me as a marketer. If Ladytron hadn't opened for The Faint, I never would have heard the music and spent money on their art.

Opening acts are smart marketing

There are many other ways that opening acts can be used by marketers. An obvious parallel is in the conference business where an organizer chooses a headliner who will draw a crowd and sell some tickets but they also offer an opportunity for lesser-known speakers to share the stage. When done well, the opening speakers are up and coming presenters who are just as skilled as the headliner with an important message to deliver, but aren’t as well known (yet). When done poorly, the opening speakers are poor presenters but given stage time because they paid a sponsor fee or they’re buddies with the organizer.

Endorsements

Looking at it more broadly, offering someone an opening act slot is an endorsement.

There are many examples of endorsements as a marketing tool. A few that come to mind are product endorsements used in advertising, book jacket endorsements, quotes offered in press releases, references for job applications, the setting up of blind dates, and well-known people serving on high-profile advisory boards. LinkedIn built an entire company on endorsements of business peers.

As with the music world, all of these forms of endorsements work well when the person doing the endorsing truly believe in the product, company, or person they are plugging.

When it is strictly a financial exchange, the entire endorsement system falls apart. If someone simply takes money to endorse a product they do not actually believe in, they diminish their credibility. Do that too many times, and there is no credibility left.

If you are in a position to offer your endorsement, do it carefully. Don't be afraid to say "no." Be extra cautious about taking money for an endorsement.

If you are looking for an endorsement, find someone who people trust. Aim high.

PS. Ladytron's opening act on Friday night was VHS or Beta. Never heard of them before. Now I have. And since Ladytron introduced me, I take the introduction seriously.

DMScott Photo: Ladytron at the Paradise on October 7, 2011.

Telling the Truth

UPDATE: On October 7, 2011 at 2:00 pm a representative of Starwood Social Media Team commented on this post. Please take a look at the response.

+++++++++++
“Your call is important to us.”

“We love our customers.”

Are you telling the truth? Or is some marketer making something up in an attempt to sound good while hiding what's really going on?

You know what? Your customers can see through the smokescreen.

Truth: We're trying to save money by firing customer support reps and therefore average wait time is now over 5 minutes.
Marketing: Your call is important to us.

I stayed at the Gaylord National, a Westin property near Washington DC this week. The hotel sports a massive energy sucking atrium. It's really a rather nice atrium. I liked being in the climate controlled outdoors.

So is this the truth? (This is what the marketers say in one place.) "The Gaylord National Resort features a dramatic, soaring 18-story glass atrium complete with vibrant indoor gardens, flowing waterways, and panoramic vistas of the Potomac River."

Or is this the truth? (This is what the marketers say in another place.) "One of your Heavenly® Shower heads has been turned off in an effort to minimize water usage and protect one of our most precious natural resources."

Does the Gaylord National want to protect the environment? Or do they want an atrium with water fountains and sunlight coming in during the hot day?

Or maybe this is the truth? Some bonehead convinced the Westin to install these newfangled shower heads and when the CFO saw the huge increase in water and energy use the CFO had a fit and told the boneheads to do something about it so they made up some hogwash about how they love the environment.

Or this: Westin Hotels really want to save the planet and some idiot convinced them that an atrium makes sense and now they are stuck with it.

Your customers can spot hypocrisy a mile away. What are you saying to people? Are you telling the truth?

Shower photo by David Meerman Scott
Atrium photo via Gaylord National site