Social Media

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just write an email knowing that the reader would simply interpret the direct message and respond accordingly?

All this reading between the lines and subtext is a pain.

Too bad.

Communications is about far more than just sending a message. Matter of fact, the overt message is almost the least important element of communication. While you’re struggling to be as clear as possible with your message, your prospect is evaluating your body language and picking out sub-text from your word choices.

Lose focus on your whole message and it can kill a deal.

My son is finally at the age where we’re ready to graduate from Cub Scouts (crafts, hand puppets and games) and move up to Boy Scouts (camping, fire and knives!). As we happen to live in a bizarre area with multiple overlapping Boy Scout Troops we actually have to put some time into touring and selecting the best-fit Troop.

I'm not sure your knot tying is up to our standards.

In most cases, it means scheduling a time to visit the Troop during one of their meetings to give your son a chance to interact with current members and get a sense for how the Troop operates.

In almost all cases, this has been a positive, if slightly bumpy process. Boy Scout Troops are run by volunteer parents. They have the best of intentions but may not respond to an email on a business timeframe. No big deal.

One Troop, however,  knocked itself out of contention because of the attitude conveyed in the response.

This is one of the bigger Troops in the area. I sent an email asking about setting up a Troop visit in the next few weeks and awaited a reply.

From a technical perspective, the reply was everything it should be. It shared the dates for upcoming meetings, talked a little about the Troop and let me know what I needed to do to schedule a visit. So far, so good.

However, through word choice and presentation, the primary message that came through on the email was pure arrogance.

It was a form letter email with no greeting. It didn’t even open with a “Thank you for considering our Troop, we’re excited to meet you!”

If I could paraphrase, this is what the message really said:

Dear Prospective Scout,

We’re a very large Boy Scout Troop and lots of people want to join. You can join if you want. The following procedures will let you do that with the least inconvenience to me.

Thanks,
Membership Chair

Now because I’m a classy communications professional I didn’t actually respond to the email, but here’s what was in my head:

Screw you.

It’s a large Troop. Recruiting and on-boarding prospective members is a daunting task. I get it. I’ve been there. But their “invitation” email told me all I needed to know. Being big is important to that Troop’s identity, and having my son join was only interesting if it was in pursuit of that goal and it wasn’t inconvenient.

I wish them the best. We’ll be looking elsewhere.

Stop insisting that everything works.

The video below shares the insights of Tim Harford at The Undercover Economist. He’s spent several years studying failure  and apparently has a book coming out on the subject in the near future.

Failure is the key to success – or, more to the point, understanding failure is the key to success.

Organizations cannot accomplish new things without a willingness to court failure. Not all new ideas will work. From my experience, most ideas will rumble along with just enough success to justify keeping it going, but not enough to be truly considered  a success. The ideas that are a flop are almost a relief, because at least then you can pull the plug with no regrets.

Professional associations are often stuck in a rut because they don’t have an appetite for failure. That’s one reason why they tend to approach social media with such fear. It could be a fantastic tool to build a relationship with members and prospects, but no one has really figured out how to make that work yet.

Instead, associations either ignore it (because without the support of professional associations social media will collapse, right?) or they take such tentative steps that nothing concrete is accomplished.

Take the risk.

I’m putting together a pair of presentations for Roosevelt University to help alumni navigate the world of social media. This one is a bit of an evolution of the presentation I gave a few weeks back for Catalyzing Collaboration in two ways:

1. Focus on Job Seeking
2. Build a questionnaire follow-up

Iteration 1 of this idea is going to be more low tech. I imagine there’s a module for polling that lets you build a questionnaire. I’ll simply have that send me an email and I’ll produce a short assessment by hand. Longer-term, maybe I can automate it.

Obviously, the idea is for this to serve as a lead generator. I provide useful information and ask for permission to add the recipient to a newsletter list. I’ve counseled several clients to do something similar. It’s about time I did one for myself.

The details aren’t yet worked out, but the presentation will be on August 4 (downtown campus) and August 5 (Schaumburg campus).

Note - View the recording of the Social Media for Job Search and Career Needs presentation.

How many membership organizations or university alumni programs could claim the following problem statement?

• Our Alumni/Members should be better connected to support the organization and each other’s businesses.
• Our organization overall needs a more effective outreach effort to existing and prospective members

Well yes. Those things should happen. Got some spare budget?

Concept

Let’s say you’re due for a redesign on your website.

Well, okay not you. Your website rocks. Because of you. That other guy though. He needs to redesign the website.

Pieces are already there, it's a question of assembling the structure

In our new website, we’re going to build one that can support an online community and user-generated content. The core of this site should be a searchable online directory of member businesses.

We essentially have three elements in play on the website to address the needs outlined above:

1. The user-generated content (with some quality controls, obviously) creates interactivity and engagement among the alumni/members. This satisfies a business networking need and allows contributors a platform to establish expertise and thought leadership.
2. This content over time creates a deeper footprint online (i.e. Google) and establishes a valuable business-oriented resource. An expanded footprint means more prospects, and a better served alumni/membership base.
3. The online directory provides a useful resources for all participants – a directory of relevant service providers and vendors – that a more tangible, easy-to-understand entry point than “thought leadership articles”. It also generates an ongoing revenue stream as companies will pay to list in the directory.

So, to accomplish all this awesomeness we require a website with a content management system so it can grow without requiring continued investment in programmers and development.

User Generated Content

Quality and consistency is the key here. We need to find a few leaders who understand the vision, and are willing to take a leadership role because of the benefits it will bring them professionally. They will be volunteers, but their reward for all the work required will be to develop a fantastic business network and reputation. There are such leaders in any group. They will identify themselves.

Really.

You can’t pick them. You can try to recruit them, but you’ll be surprised by the ones who run with it. However, they are already there in your base. Somewhere.

Outreach

Your alumni or your members have practical needs, and little time to meet them. If you can produce tightly targeted, relevant, high-quality content, then your members will use it. The smart ones will also contribute to it.

For example, if I run a T-shirt shop and I write a short article explaining how you can take that T-shirt idea and make some money from it, then I am by definition the reader’s go-to resource to make it happen and I didn’t need to sell myself at all. My ideas made the sale.

As long as we have a review process for contributed articles to maintain the quality, everything else falls into place (included an enhanced image for the brand).

Online Directory

This will be a Yahoo!-style directory. That means that listors are NOT buying an ad. This is an online directory that offers a high-quality inbound link to the listor’s website. If it generates leads as well that’s a nice side benefit, but the main goal is that link.

Listors pay a recurring annual fee (say $100 or $200) for consideration – not a listing, just the possibility for a listing. This allows you to control the quality. Quality is critical.

That goes beyond just barring certain inappropriate listing types. It makes an enforceable requirement that the listing be well written, clear and descriptive. No junk. No freebies. The value for this directory is that we vigorously enforce quality guidelines so that it means something to be included. That means slower initial growth, but far greater long-term value. It also means recurring revenue.

Resources Needed

1. Website with a Content Management System

• Login and user profiles
• Content approval system (editors)
• Content options such as blogs, video embed, articles, etc.
• Searchable online directory
• Ecommerce enabled

The End Result

1. An activated alumni/membership base, useful in your recruiting, fundraising and growth.
2. Enhanced brand position to support everything else you do.

Generate recurring revenue so you can build this community you need without having to go begging to the CFO.

Everyone says social media offers unprecedented opportunities for companies and organizations to connect with customers, constituents and members.

Everyone said the same thing about blogs five years ago. Some organizations achieved impressive results with blogs such as new customers and engaged members. Most did not.

Why?

Recruit champions, let them lead

The potential strength of social media (and blogs) is also its weakness. Social media is, first and foremost, a social activity. That means you need people who are passionate and committed to making a social media strategy work.

It’s not about websites. It’s not about technology. It’s not about content. It’s not even really about strategy. It’s about people.

Professional associations need to find a few champions, offer them a bit of guidance and encouragement, and turn those champions loose to engage the outside world.

Passion and creativity drive success in the social media world. To the extent that membership associations need a social media strategy, it’s a strategy to identify, train and nurture a core of champions – whether employees or volunteers.

I gave a presentaton to the Catalyzing Collaboration organization on Friday about building a life sciences community in Chicago, and it’s been dwelling in my brain ever since.

Catalyzing Collaboration is a relatively new associaton looking to raise Chicago’s profile as a life sciences hub. There are a lot of organizations that do that, now and in the past, of course. Their approach is focused more on the poeple in the field rather than the companies or even the science. The idea is to bring together academics, investors and executives from Chicago area life sciences companies to share ideas ad resources.

The discussion overall was about building community. It was implied that we were talking about online community, but I suggested dropping that online part because it’s distracting. As soon as you use that word, you get all distracted with Twitter, Facebook etc. and miss the real point.

The whole presentation is called Building Community: Online or Otherwise and hosted (with audio) on Authorstream.

Basically, community is about harnessing self-interest toward a group goal, not about light and fluffy concepts like “helping each other”.

As a working definition, a community is a group of individuals who, for self-interested reasons, choose to work together for a larger goal.

That’s it.

This is certainly not a new idea. It’s a concept that is thousands of years old going back to the earliest agricultural societies. Agriculture is an incredibly labor intensive activity, particularly when you move beyond subsistence farming. Establishing irrigation networks, protection against animals and neighboring villages – all of that required a large group of people working together, but doing it for their own reasons.

community + self interest = irrigation

In our picture here, we have a group of people working on digging a canal for an irrigation system. The purpose is to bring water from a nearby river and deliver it to fields further away. On a broad level, that means better crop yields, higher income and a better lifestyle.

This picture has about 10 or 11 men working on a hot afternoon. Some are above the new canal with shovels breaking up the dirt. Others are down at the bottom scooping dirt into buckets, while others carry it off. There’s even the visionary leader, which I assume is that guy on the left not holding any tools who clearly has no intention of getting dirty today.

And this picture doesn’t show the whole group. These guys get to be in the picture and when it’s all done I’m sure they’ll be at the table of honor at the celebratory feast, but maybe off to the left their wives are preparing lunch or dinner meals. I’m sure their sons are making multiple trips to the well to bring fresh water so no one passes out from heat stroke. This is a small view of an entire village working together on a major project.

Not one of these guys in the picture is there because they want to build an irrigation system for the village. They’re there because they own farms on either side of this ditch and they want to get a more reliable water source to their fields.

Self interest.

The word “Community” sounds all light and fluffy, but the core is understanding and leveraging self interest toward a common goal.

Can Twitter put butts in seats at an event without having to market through email?

That’s a vital question for many organizations as email’s effectiveness continues to dwindle. To be sure, email is still important and there is nothing on the horizon to replace it, but it’s nowhere near as effective as it once was. People are shifting communications to venues where they have more control – mobile text, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I’ve run several informal programs over Twitter in the past year that worked well to accomplish some limited marketing goals. Today, I’m launching a more formal Twitter-based campaign at www.twengaged.com.

The campaign will drive registration to a Chicago AMA resume writing workshop that we’re hosting in partnership with Lynn Hazan – midwest marketing recruiter extraordinaire.

The idea is to get an organization’s membership based enaged through a fun promotion. Engaged + Twitte r= Twengaged.

The pilot campaign is with the Chicago AMA, and if it works it can be run for any number of organizations.

With this one, people will Tweet their resume’s Objective Statement  - the one-sentence summary at the start of a resume – with a designated set of hashtags. Participants can then vote (thumbs up / thumbs down) and the top vote getters get the glory of a leader board position.

At the end of the promotion, a team of judges will decide on a winner - who receives a free ticket to the Chicago AMA resume writing workshop on July 28.

The idea is to leverage the viral nature of Twitter with the self-interest of participants. If I post my objective statement, I want two things:

1. As many people as possible should see my Objective Statement, which will help me find job opportunities.
2. I want to win the free ticket.

Therefore, participants have every incentive to spread the word about the promotion and we should enjoy viral growth in a short period of time.

Very exciting!

I spent the weekend working out what I think is going to be a very effective marketing program for a music venue in Michigan. Their goals are straightforward:

1. Butts in seats
2. Develop an opt-in platform for the future.

The promotion will tie into an upcoming concert and will use Twitter, PR and traditional marketing outlets to encourage the public to donate a large volume of small donations to a cause – preferably something local. Mobile text can be used to collect donations, and Twitter’s API allows for collections through applications like TipJoy. Rather than big donors, the focus is on spreading a message virally to collect $1 here, $5 there.

I have high hopes that it will not only raise significant money for the cause, but it seems like it has all the elements in place to go viral pretty quickly.

Let’s hope the client sees it too.

Came across an interesting opportunity to help the American Cancer Society tap into the power of Twitter networks to ramp up fundraising at events.

Events now can have several hundred people to raise money, but the footprint doesn’t extend far beyond that. Twitter and its viral nature, can magnify that audience to thousands very quickly.

Also came across several applications that support online micropayments for donations. One in particular, Tipjoy, looks like it was originally created for blogging, but has really promising applications for charities. By bundling donations, it enables donations as small as $1 without losing it all in processing fees. Basically, Tipjoy takes 3% off the top and the charity keeps the rest.

In a bit of Sunday evening goofiness I cut a video promo for Chicago AMA’s Brandsmart conference on June 18.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=josbLeY5shM&feature=channel_page

It was an interesting experience. First, the details really matter. From comments I heard the other week at Ragan’s Unconference (reg. the Domino’s Pizza video), I knew I had to keep it to 30 seconds or less. I wanted to get the factual info out, but make it fun and memorable with the help of the ridiculously cute puppy, Olivia.

I also learned about the difference between AVI and MP4. AVI is a raw footage format that uses an enormous volume of memory. The 36 second video used 250MB of memory and on my first upload attempts, it took more than an hour, and played out of sync.

I finally found a very easy to use freeware program called Prism Video Converter that let me convert from AVI to MP4. That made a huge difference (5mb) without losing much quality. Thumbs up to that program. Many of the other freeware programs’ trial versions were useless. They only converted half of the video, or put a flashing red “watermark” in the middle of it. Prism has a paid version with more editing tools. If I go more into video, which is likely, they now have the inside track.

Distribution-wise, I went full bore. Posted it to Chicago AMA’s LinkedIn group and Facebook page. I also sent it to contacts in Facebook (and finally sorted my Facebook friends into business and non-business). At the moment, several friends are re-Tweeting it on Twitter, so we’ll see how far it goes.

Accountants don’t know what they’re missing. Who else has this much fun at work?