Web Ink Now

Why Make Art? And how to fund it

This morning, Seth Godin announced his newest book The Icarus Deception and a fascinating Kickstarter Project to fund it.

Seth's new book is about the mythology of success (and failure) and how our economy rewards people who are willing to stand up and stand out.

Seth writes: "For too long, we've been seduced into believing we should do less. It's time to redefine what we're capable of. We are all artists now, and the connection economy we're living in relentlessly rewards those who do work that matters."

I'm a Seth Godin fanboy and enjoy reading each of his books the second they are released.

I'd certainly read The Icarus Deception anyway. But this book is also interesting because of how Seth is funding it.

Kickstarter and Seth's art

Seth has a Kickstarter project to fund the new book. Like Amanda Palmer, who raised over $1 million to fund her new album through Kickstarter (I wrote about Amanda's project here), Seth is tapping his loyal fans to help him fund his new book – using the proof of support to convince his publisher and bookstores to back it in a big way.

As I write this, it is just a few hours into the project and one funding level has already sold out. It looks like Seth is on a similar trajectory as Amanda was in the early days of her project.

Seth is betting (rightly it seems) that his fans are willing to fund the book even before it has come out. People like me are going to buy it anyway, so why not get a commitment up front and use the fan support to make the book even more successful.

Supporting your favorite artists

Yes, I am a backer at one of the higher pledge levels. Sure, I want all the stuff that comes with being a backer.

However, more than that, I want to support the artists, like Amanda and Seth, who I believe in. I want them to live well so they can continue to produce art and enrich my life.

People want YOU to succeed too!

If you provide great art, even in the form of products and services, your fans want to support you. That's why people line up to buy new Apple products without even trying them. Do they line up for your art?

If you make great stuff, people will take a chance on you. They'll order the software upgrade, visit the chef's new restaurant, reserve a room in the resort on a different island.

Never pitch again

How do you generate new business? Or find a job? Or get ink in mainstream media?

Do you cold call? Do you send email pitches? Do you hang out in your tradeshow booth and approach passersby? Do you go to networking events and hand out business cards?

Each of these methods for generating attention requires you to approach others -- potential new customers or employers or journalists -- to tell them about what you do in the hope that they might be interested.

These classic outbound marketing techniques are all we really had prior to the ability to become brand journalists by creating valuable information on the Web. Yet many people operate as if we are still in 1993 and the only options available are outbound strategies.

Inbound Marketing

Many organizations are finding tremendous success by planting hundreds or even thousands of new business seeds in the form or blog posts, ebooks, infographics, videos, photos, how-to guides, research reports, Twitter feeds, and other forms of Web content.

In a technique called Inbound Marketing, each of these marketing assets gets indexed by Google, Bing, and the other search engines so when people enter search terms related to your business, they find you via your valuable information. When people find something interesting you created, they may share it on their social profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and the like.

Here are some real-world examples of Inbound Marketing in action in healthcare, from a rock star, in finding a first job, in retail products, for PR agencies, in politics, and for B2B products. You can acheive similar results.

INBOUND 2012

I'll be delivering a keynote at INBOUND 2012, a 3-day inbound marketing conference and training event produced by HubSpot.

More than 2,000 inbound marketers, entrepreneurs and executives are expected in Boston August 27-30 and the agenda includes keynotes, breakout sessions, parties, learning, and fun. I'm speaking the first day but will be at the event the entire time.

HubSpot has kindly offered readers of this blog a 25% discount on tickets to INBOUND 2012. Use the code DMS25. This link has the discount code already applied.

Disclosures: I am Marketer in Residence and on the advisory board at HubSpot. I wrote the foreword to the book Inbound Marketing, by HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, which is part of my New Rules of Social Media book series.

#FAIL: When copywriters don't know the product

At the beautiful JW Marriott Starr Pass resort Hashani Spa in Tucson, Arizona there is a big disconnect between marketing and reality.

The copywriters say:

"At Hashani Spa, one is not healed by the treatment they are receiving, but by the sensory bliss of the magical Sonoran Desert."

The rocks are engraved with the words: Tranquility. Harmony. Peace.

Check out the very relaxing photos on the Hashani Spa site.

They play loud music with vocals. You cannot relax. There is no tranquility. There is no harmony. There is no peace.

#FAIL.

Direct link to #FAIL: When copywriters don't know the product on YouTube.

I spoke with four different people about this disconnect. It turns out the music to the outdoor part of the spa is on the same channel as the other outdoor pool areas. You know, the ones with adults drinking and kids screaming – the place where blaring music is acceptable.

It was impossible for hotel staff to eliminate the music being piped into the spa.

Do the copywriters know this? Probably not. My guess is they're in some comfortable corporate office somewhere and have never visited the property.

How can we trust marketing if there is a disconnect with reality?

Avoid controversial topics like politics and religion in your marketing

There are subjects that should not enter into your company's marketing because they are too controversial.

For many organizations, politics and religion are topics to be avoided (unless you work at an issue-based nonprofit, for a political candidate or elected official, or at a church).

Another touchy subject is sex. There may be others in your market.

Most organizations should avoid politics and religion

I've been a subscriber to the Publishers Weekly email newsletter for many years because I like to keep up with what's happening in the book business.

I was surprised this morning to receive an email from PW with the subject line PUBLISHING PEOPLE FOR OBAMA. The email was one big image (reproduced below) which links to a landing page on barackobama.com

I can't figure out for sure if PW sold their list to the Obama campaign or if PW is supporting the President’s reelection. (I think they sold the list).

Either way, I think this was a mistake for PW to venture into politics like this.

Seth Godin says that an email list is permission marketing - "the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them." PW subscribers like me give PW permission to contact us. We can just as easily revoke that permission if we are offended.

If you are in the business of renting your email list, you need to be very careful who you allow to use it. When doing your own marketing, you need to consider the ramifications of alienating people who not share your beliefs.

Note -- this is a marketing blog, not a political one. I am not talking about the merits of the presidential candidates here but rather the marketing aspects of this example.

Risk

"Don't do that, it's too risky."

In business, people spend a great deal of time and money evaluating risk. It's one of those things they teach in MBA school.

But are we looking at risk in the right way?

According to the American Bar Association, there were 1,143,358 resident and active attorneys in the United States in 2007 (the most recent data I could quickly find). That's over a million people, many of them advising businesses on what to avoid because it is risky.

They lawyers say things like: "Don't let people blog and tweet because they may say something that gets the company in trouble." As I wrote last week, lawyers clamping down is especially true in highly regulated industries.

From the legal perspective, saying "no" might make sense (it avoids lawsuits). But thinking about risk in totality (instead of just what the lawyers think) is saying no the right way to do business? Frequently the businesses and the people saying "yes" to risk are the ones that succeed.

When the perceived risk is low, we tend to do okay evaluating a situation. Yes, it is risky to fly to the business meeting (the plane may crash) but we figure the risk is worth taking.

But when the risk seems high (starting a business or quitting your job to go freelance) we are unable to accurately evaluate the risk.

I think this is because we humans fail to evaluate the risk of staying the course. We don't evaluate the risk in *NOT* starting the business or keeping the job at the big company.

How's that big stable company working out for you?

Perhaps your parents advised you to get a degree from a good university and then work for a nice, stable, well-known company. We're told that is the least risky path. But is it?

If you worked for Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual or Enron or your company had to downsize or your division was acquired or manufacturing moved to Laos or your boss thought you were too smart and therefore a threat or the company moved to Atlanta or you hit 50 years old or any number of other scenarios - BOOM - you were out of a job. Unemployed.

When you put yourself at the mercy of an employer, you have significant risk. When you work in an industry in decline, you have significant risk.

The flip side of risk

In my experience, people fail to evaluate the risk of taking the opposite course. They look at risk without thinking the problem all the way through.

What is the risk of *not* starting your business this year?

What is the risk of *not* letting your employees communicate via Facebook?

What is the risk of *not* taking a few years off to travel with your rock band?

What is the risk of *not* learning that new skill?

What is the risk of *not* quitting your job and going freelance?

Consider the opening line of this blog post again: "Don't do that, it's too risky."

Maybe the better statement is: "You had better do that, because it's too risky not to."

photo credit: postaletrice via photo pin cc

open cycle launches today and is a company to watch

open cycle, the new project from Gerard Vroomen, officially launches today.

Back in 2006 when I was looking for interesting examples of companies for inclusion in the first edition of The New Rules of Marketing and PR (now in its third edition) a cycling friend told me about Cervelo. I checked out the site and quickly learned Cervelo was a content marketing pioneer so I interviewed Gerard, a co-founder of the company.

Back then, Gerard told me that he is an engineer, not a marketer. He said that Cervelo does not have any marketing experts.

Yet, in the past six years, Cervelo has generated much more attention than their bigger rivals and has grown quickly into one of the most important bike companies in the world.

Yes, Cervelo has awesome products used by the top road racers and triathletes. But the content on the Cervelo site as well as their attention to social networks, built to educate and inform and keep the community involved, has been instrumental in the company's success.

I've kept up with Gerard via social media and this past January went on an expedition with him into the jungles of Panama where he told me about selling Cervelo and shared his vision for a new company called open cycle which he is launching today.

open cycle

open cycle, co-founded by Gerard and his partner Andy, is producing high-end mountain bikes unlike any other on the market.

As they say on the site:

"Three words describe this new venture: bikes, open and simple.

Bikes we live and breathe. Andy's career spans from downhill racer (back when helmets were optional!) to CEO of a mountain & road bike company. Gerard’s career includes co-founding Cervélo, where's he's done everything from engineering and design to sales, supply chain and marketing.

Open means open to new ideas; from our customers, retailers, vendors and ourselves. Open to show the intricacies of our products but also our company. Open even to issue shares to some of our customers.

If open is the goal, simple is the tool.

'Relentless simplicity' is our guiding principle. Reduce the number of models and you simplify production, logistics, customer decision making, the website, everything. Avoid traditional advertising or sponsorships and free up precious time. Transfer logistics to third parties and you can focus on what matters most, which in our case means:

Designing better bikes, the first of which we introduce here.

Connecting with our customers.

And when you put it that way, is there really anything else to do?"

An unfolding marketing case study still in its infancy

open cycle is a marketing example to watch because we will witness a social media and content marketing enthusiast launch a company from day one.

Right from the start, the company is focused on social engagement throughout the site, with community aspects and social network links. Anyone can comment on anything. They are committed to having the community of enthusiasts help them so everything is open.

The open cycle site also features a blog. What's interesting is that Gerard and Andy have been blogging for a year as they’ve secretly developed the technology for their new bike. But the blog posts went unpublished until now. Kind of cool, don't you think?

Are you a marketer?

A few days ago I revisited the question I asked in 2006 when I again asked Gerard about marketing. As I wrote way back then, I think he is a marketer extraordinaire, but he always pushes back:

"To be honest, I don't think of it as marketing," Gerard says. "It feels simply like talking to people. And companies like Facebook, Twitter, et al have given us some interesting ways to do that.

They turn companies such as open cycle into the global version of the village baker of yesteryear (to paraphrase Gary Vaynerchuk). You know your customers, they know you, so you want to treat them well. You want to give them good quality and they tell their neighbors. You mess up and you feel bad and try to make it right. The opposite of what's happening at many companies today (Goldman Sachs anyone?)

And of course, the flipside is that if you don't treat them well, they'll tell the rest of the village."

I'll be updating the progress of open cycle from time-to-time in the next months and years and expect great things from Gerard and Andy.

B2B sales leads are too important for salespeople

Every salesperson loves leads.

And in most B2B companies marketing people spend lots of effort providing them.

But too often, especially in B2B sales, there’s an artificial demarcation between the role of sales and that of marketing.

Consider the tradeshow: many companies spend thousands of marketing dollars to exhibit at important industry events. But after the show concludes, marketing simply ties a pretty ribbon around the business cards they received from prospects and tosses the leads over their shoulder to the sales manager.

B2B sales and marketing circa 2012

How can you deliver valuable information to people who express interest in your organization? How can you do it without annoying them?

How about warming up potential customers by giving them gifts of valuable content well before the salesperson bugs them by triying to sell something?

The right measurements are required to achieve tough goals

In the past year and a half I have lost 40 pounds.

But losing 40 pounds actually took two decades because that's how long I was paying attention to the wrong measurement and failing.

When I measured just on my weight, I couldn't lose weight. No matter what I did I stayed basically the same.

However, when I measured different things such as bodyfat percentage, metabolic age, calories burned, and the foods I eat, I changed my behaviors leading directly to weight loss.

I see the same idea at work with organizations and how they measure success. I'll share those ideas in a moment, but first I want to talk about my health.

Bodyfat, burning calories, eating right, and metabolic age.

My exercise.
I use an elliptical trainer every morning. I used to measure the length of time I exercised and I did a half hour a day for a decade. It felt good but I wasn't really making progress with my weight.

Turns out that time exercising was the wrong measurement. For me calories burned is the better measure.

When I started to focus on the readout for calories burned on my elliptical, I realized that I was not working hard enough or long enough to do much good. I gradually increased my activity by measuring calories burned instead of time on the machine. For the past year, I've burned 800 calories each morning, which takes me about an hour of hard work.

Several weeks ago, I also added a Nike+ FuelBand as another measurement of calories burned and how active I am. The Nike+ FuelBand is an awesome piece of technology that you wear on your wrist and synch to your iPhone. They are tough to get because they are so popular. I got mine on eBay by paying a premium.

My body:
The most important measurement tool for me is my scale. When I was using a standard scale that only displayed weight it was so damned frustrating because I would exercise like hell and my weight would stay the same. Or I’d eat like a rabbit for a week or a month and lose a tiny bit of weight and then gain it right back because I was hungry.

Turns out that weight was the wrong measurement. For me bodyfat percentage and metabolic age are the better measures.

I now use a Tanita Body Composition Monitor (there are other brands available that do the same thing). It gives about a dozen readouts, but the main things I focus on are bodyfat percentage and metabolic age.

Your bodyfat is simply an indication of the percentage of your body that is made up of fat vs. everything else (mainly muscle and bone).

Metabolic Age is a calculation made by the monitor comparing your stats to averages of other people of your gender and chronological age and is used to describe overall fitness and metabolic activity.

I'm incredibly excited that my metabolic age has gradually dropped over the past year from being my actual age to now be the age of 25. In other words, I now have the body of people just out of University, people who are half my chronological age.

My food:
I used to "diet" which for me meant smaller quantities of the foods I normally ate. Instead of two slices of pizza I had one. It was awful. I was always hungry.

Turns out that quantity of food was the wrong measurement. For me the type of food is the better measure.

When I started to focus on what I ate, I realized I was eating too much of some things (such as starch) and not enough of others such as vegetables, beans, and chicken. Now I eat the right things and eat until I am stuffed full so I am not hungry. A few books that helped me with eating are The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and The End of Overeating by David Kessler.

I realize this is a really long lead in to talk about some ideas about measurement for organizations. Thank you for reading this far.

B2B companies obsession with sales leads are the wrong measure.

Consumer brands’ obsession with advertising creative and awards are the wrong measure.

The PR industry obsession with the thickness of the press clip book is the wrong measure.

Just like me focusing only on my weight, when companies focus on awards or leads or press clips, they have a difficult time achieving the ultimate goal, which is usually to profitably grow their business.

Here are some things you might consider measuring instead at your organization:

Do customers love your products and services? When you have happy customers, they talk you up. If your customers aren't happy, what can you do to increase their level of happiness?

Where are you appearing in search results for important phrases? Are you in the top of the natural search results for broad and long tail search terms? How about local search via mobile devices? How about real-time search? You can implement a content creation strategy to increase your search visibility.

How often are people talking about you on social channels? And what are they saying? You can measure levels of interaction and things like sentiment.

How many people are eager to participate in your online efforts? You can measure how many people "like" you on Facebook, subscribe to your blog, follow you on Twitter, sign up for your email newsletter, or register for a Webinar.

How many people are downloading your stuff? You can measure how many people are downloading your ebooks, presentation slides, videos, podcasts, and other content.

How are sales looking? Is the company reaching its goals?

Ultimately, the most important form of measurement within management teams is revenue and profit.

Content Marketing Obama style with The Road We've Traveled

Late last week, Obama for America (President Obama's reelection operation) released a 17-minute film called The Road We've Traveled.

It's interesting timing for this content marketing effort because the Republican challengers for the nomination are locked into a protracted battle that is unlikely to be decided until this summer.

The film is worth a look because it is classic content marketing. It is an excellent example of using video to tell a story.

As regular readers of my blog may recall, I love looking at US presidential campaigns as case studies in marketing that can be applied by all sorts of organizations. This is not a political blog, nor am I supporting a particular candidate by highlighting what they are up to.

The Road We've Travelled is directed by Davis Guggenheim and narrated by Tom Hanks. It gives an inside look at some of the decisions President Obama made and featues interviews with President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, and others.

Direct link to The Road We've Traveled on YouTube and on the Obama for America site.

Using video to tell a story

No matter what sort of organization you're part of, a short film featuring interviews is a great form of content marketing. It works for companies, educational institutions, rock bands, nonprofits, individuals, and, well, any organization.

Communications revolution means Encyclopaedia Britannica print set discontinued after nearly 250 years

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still in production, was first produced in Scotland in 1768.

The company announced it is going completely digital. If you want to pick up your very own copy, the final 2010 print set edition is available at The Britannica Store for USD $1,395.00.

Everywhere we turn there is evidence of the communications revolution.

I've often said the revolution of Web content and social media is the most significant communications revolution since the invention of the printing press.

It took centuries for the world's population to become literate. But in just a few short years, of the 6 billion people on the planet, 4.8 billion have access to online information in the form of mobile data. In fact, there are more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes.

I've been talking about the importance of online information as a tool of marketing and PR for nearly 20 years now. For the last decade I have run my own business focused on helping companies make the transition from traditional offline marketing to online marketing and PR strategies.

In 1998, people thought I was insane to argue that marketing & PR is going to the Web.

In 2002, I was that weird Grateful Dead listening oddball insisting that the revolution is coming. That's the year I got fired from my corporate VP of marketing job partly because I insisted on the Web and didn’t agree on investing in print direct mail the way others in the company did. In 2002 I started my own company to develop strategies and write and speak about what the communications revolution means to marketing & PR.

In 2005, others began to realize we're at the cusp of a revolution. These pioneers fought the bosses and the entrenched powers and started to create content on the Web as a form of marketing.

In 2009, many people saw the power as hundreds of millions gravitated to social tools like Facebook and Twitter.

Now, in 2012, while over a billion people are engaged via social media and tens of thousands of organizations have a dedicated online content effort for marketing purposes. However, there are still many holdouts resisting the revolution.

Encyclopaedia Britannica print set discontinued after nearly 250 years

In a New York Times blog post, Jorge Cauz president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. was quoted as saying: "It's a rite of passage in this new era. Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia."

Exactly.

So here are a few questions for you:

• How much effort are you putting into producing brochures and other print materials?


• How about those print advertising efforts?


• How's that print direct mail campaign going?


• What's the budget for Yellow Page ads?


• What about your resume?

We're in the middle of a profound communications revolution.

Are you on the leading edge? Or are you clinging to the way we communicated in 1768?

Images via britannica.com