The Bridge Between “Evolve” or “Die”

Is it true that you have to evolve or die? Yes.

But no one said you had to do it alone.

There are resources and ideas and discussions, and value in baby steps. You don’t have to do it all tomorrow, or even today. Those that believe in what’s coming – nay, what’s here – want to help you understand what we find so compelling. We want to give you ROI and value and justification and the confidence that you, too, can succeed. We’re still learning too, but we want to bring you with us.

We want business to change because we know (a lot of) it’s broken. We know expectations have changed, and the business-to-customer landscape is being ever flattened. We love it. We embrace it, and we rejoice in it. We want to deliver all the proof. Because we love what we do, and we believe in the potential of each and every person – and company – to change the world if they really want to. We know that change is possible. Change that benefits everyone.

We are patient, and we understand that change is not instant. We know that resources and money and jobs are at stake. We understand that we are questioning the relevance of business practices and job descriptions and industries that have existed, unchallenged, for decades or longer. We are ready to do the hard work to justify that change. We know that evolution at this scale is scary. It shakes your confidence in what you do and who you are, as a professional and as a business, because if we’re telling you to change, we mean to tell you you’ve been doing it wrong.

So have all of us. Some of us are just ready to accept the need for difference, for evolution, and move on now.

Your choice is this. Accept that change is needed, and collaborate with the people around you who believe in that. Discuss. Debate. Collaborate. Act on something. Evolve. Find a path that works for you.

Or, pretend. Pretend that none of this is happening. Act as though the way you’ve always done it will be relevant for another two decades. Or three. Or until you retire. Tell yourself that none of this matters, that it’s a fad, that it’s hype, that it’s not really changing anything. Deny that what’s being talked about is old, old concepts clad in new, new technology. Keep doing what you’re doing and watch the distance between you and your customers – the “community” you all strive for – grow ever greater.

And make no mistake. Your attitude – your defensiveness against what may be unsettling but is real anyway – will give us permission to leave you behind. It frustrates us and leaves us no choice. Because our job is not to convince you. It is to empower you. But we can’t do that until you convince yourself that you’re ready, of your own volition.

Those of us that are learning, trying, educating want to surround ourselves with people who are working as hard as we are to affect change. We believe in this, not because it’s new or fancy or grants us a new title on our business card. It’s because we believe in a new way of doing business. Of communicating and collaborating and building businesses for and among people, not on top of them. Because whether or not we have precedent, we have millennia of human existence that tells us that putting people first is always for the good of the many. Even in business. Even if it’s cheesy. Even if we’ve forgotten.

We want you to come with us, and we’ll give you our ideas and our passion and our knowledge to help you get there if you want it. We are the bridge. But the choice?

That is entirely yours.

image courtesy of Shutterstock

Talk Like We Do

I got a pitch via email today that was actually for something pretty cool, and something I might actually pass along to folks. It included a short informational press release, which was fine.

But I nearly choked on the quote that was in the release. I’ve changed identifying details so as not to embarrass anyone outright, but it was essentially this:

“Consumers are increasingly looking to enjoy their entertainment while mobile and our new Very Cool Video Thing offers the ultimate on-the-go fan experience,” said Big Wig, important title with Big Recognizable Company. “We are excited to bring viewers another compelling option with which to experience our high-quality content and satisfy their curiosity in way that fits their lifestyle.”

Who talks like that??

Yes, yes. I know we were all taught the “protocols” of “proper” corporate communication. But here’s the thing.

The people you want to spread your message – bloggers, community members, “influencers” (whatever that means), regular people – don’t speak this way. We don’t use those words when we’re talking, so we’re going to feel really stupid reiterating things that way if we’re passing along the word to our friends or audience.

We don’t think of themselves as “consumers” or “viewers”. This doesn’t feel like you’re talking to us. It feels like you just want us to do your marketing for you, in your words. Not ours.

I’m actually not sure where we ever got the idea that writing “formally” was so much better than writing conversationally. But I’d really like to undo it. Clear trumps fancy any day of the week.

I know I’m not going to convert the corporate world away from marketing speak anytime soon – heaven knows many of us keep trying – but here are a few tips for and from the rest of us that might help people spread your message and information faster.

The Informational Release

If you want me to pay attention to you, I need to know right out of the gate:

• What you’re telling me about (be brief)
• What you want from me, specifically (hint: “FYI” means “For You to Ignore”)
• Why should I care? **
• Who you are
• How I can contact you for additional information, or where I can find more

Stop there. You’re busy. So am I. Do yourself a favor and give me a few facts to make a yea/nay decision on regarding my interest. Let me ask for more information if I need it, and tell me clearly how and where to get it. More flowery language does not make me more interested in what you’re offering.

Quotes

If you want to provide “approved” quotes for something, fine. But provide ones that sound, well, as if a human actually said them.

Lousy: “Increasingly, our viewership needs Whizbangs in order to achieve their strategic imperatives for content sharing online. We are delighted to be able to provide forward-thinking professionals with the tools they need, in mobile and portable format, to reach a new paradigm and bring value to their community.”

Good: “We’re super excited about the launch of our new Whizbang iPhone app. Our customers told us that they love our programs, but that they wanted to be able to share them with people. So, we built a Whizbang app for the iPhone that stores video clips and makes them easy to send to friends via email, text, or Twitter.”

Seriously. Which one sounds like someone – you?- would actually say it aloud? And as a result, which one do you actually believe?

Tone

I’m saying this on the record. Formal, stilted business-speak is dead or dying. If it’s still alive in your industry, quit making excuses for “the way we’ve always done it” and learn how to communicate like a human (or lead by example). Why? Corporate speak has a thousand limitations. Just a few:

• Most people don’t speak in your jargon.
• People share thoughts that are easy to remember. Your five-dollar words aren’t in that category.
• Big vocabulary does not indicate that you are smart. In fact, we tend to think you’re hiding something behind those big words.
• Your shareholders don’t talk that way, either.
• Clarity and brevity means a much lower risk that you’ll be misquoted or misinterpreted.
• Humans skim. If I have to reread your sentence to understand it, I’m moving on.
• We want to connect with people we can relate to. If you don’t talk like we do, we’re not likely to invite you in for tea.

I can’t stress this enough. You can be professional and clear without being shackled to buzzword bingo. You don’t have to use slang or cuss or be silly. But write like you’d speak to someone out loud and in a conversation. I can nearly guarantee that you’ll get a better response to your stuff.

Don’t Take My Word For It

For the love of all things sacred, read Copyblogger.  Read Bad Pitch Blog. Listen to Jason Falls and Beth Harte and Todd Defren and Brian Solis and Shannon Paul and people who GET what it means to communicate today (and how it should have always been).

Buy and read David Meerman Scott or Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis or Tamar Weinberg or the Brogan/Smith Super Duo.

There are so many resources out there that will guide you about what makes up a good pitch, how communication is changing, and why you can’t keep saying the same old crap you’ve always said.

Talk like us, and we’re much more likely to pay attention. So, sound off, troops, what would you add?

**Note: this isn’t elitist crap. It’s not that your stuff isn’t important. I know it is, to you. But remember, I don’t live in your world, and I have lots of other things I pay attention to, also. So I need to understand why this is relevant to me. Otherwise, it just feels like you’re using me as a bullhorn.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The Difference Between Hard and Hard Work

I think I’m going to end up repeating myself again, but I’m not sure I can help it.

One of the frustrations I have with the discussions that swirl around social media is that there’s a big, big difference between something that’s difficult, and something that takes work. Social media and specifically measuring and tracking its impact is not difficult. It’s time consuming. It’s meticulous, and takes thought and insight. But it’s not hard.

And as Katie Paine said to me today on Twitter: “Just because you can’t automate it doesn’t mean it’s not measurable.”

We demand far too many shortcuts. We want just-add-water strategies that don’t require us to do much work but rather roll out some kit of parts we can just plug into place. We’re busy, overtasked, under supported, and the idea of having to dig deep into something in excruciating detail with painstaking effort makes our skin crawl.

But it’s reality.

Results from business are rarely achieved easily. And as much as we’d like to use case studies as a template for what *we* should do, the truth is that someone else’s approach (much less that approach distilled into a two-page PDF) is often not going to line up with our business. We have different people, culture, infrastructure, customers, processes, challenges, priorities.  But we want to look to case studies as the way to reduce the variables and decrease the likelihood – at least in our head – that we might fail.

That doesn’t work, either. At least in terms of delivering to us the nuts and bolts of how to create a strategy, set goals, and measure impact. That, my friends, is all on us.

If there is no road map handed to you for how to measure your social media efforts (and there won’t be), you must create it. That means:

• Setting goals that are measurable in the first place.
• Understanding that impact doesn’t always mean something goes up (like sales or eyeballs). Sometimes it can be that something goes down (like costs of customer service or traditional marketing costs).
• Benchmarking, which means measuring where you are NOW relative to your goals so you can track future progress and impact. This takes time, but you can’t ever determine results if you don’t know where you started.
• Understanding that social media may not be the sales channel itself, but that there are a pile of ways it IMPACTS sales, and measuring those is key.
• Knowing that determining ROI is ultimately about doing the math between dollars in and dollars out.
• Learning the art and science of correlation of data, so you can tie your efforts in one area of the business to the results and impacts they have elsewhere.
• Realizing that software can give you the data and even help you crunch numbers, but you need to engage your brain to make it valuable to your work. There is no substitute for human analysis, ever.

If you’re still saying to me that it’s too hard, that means that you don’t have the mechanisms in place to measure well, or you don’t have a handle on what you should be measuring because your goals aren’t clear, or you don’t know where that information lives inside your company. All of those are NOT an indication that measurement is hard. They’re an indication that you have some work to do to build the foundation for measurement.

And here’s my harsh statement for the day: If you aren’t willing to expend the time, effort, and resources to do this properly and comprehensively, you have no room to complain to me when you’re unsuccessful. You cannot blame the medium for your failure to execute.

So I’m focusing on measurement here, but the same philosophy applies to the strategic planning or tactical and execution work. It’s called work for a reason. And if achieving your goals for growth, revenue, awareness, happy customers, and a thriving business are worth setting in the first place, aren’t they worth working for?

Tucking my soapbox under the bed for the day…

photo credit: dmahendra

Why Messages Aren’t Enough

Core messages. Key messages. Messages, messages. We really put a lot of stock in that word, don’t we?

Messages are built to be heard, and we feel like we’ve been successful if our message reaches someone’s ears. But that’s not enough anymore. And if you think your endgame in all this social stuff is to deliver a message, you’re going to lose.

Messages aren’t tangible. And as much as we marketers would like them to be, they’re not retainable for very long. Something will always come and replace them in our minds – something more timely, relevant, or momentarily interesting.

What people cling to are experiences. They don’t always have to be earth shattering, but they matter. I don’t remember your tagline *unless* I can relate that tagline to an experience I’ve had with you (or in spite of you). I don’t hear your “core values” because you labored over them in a board room. I *understand* your core values because you demonstrate them to me through the way you do business with me.

Social media isn’t just a message delivery mechanism. (Actually, I’ll submit that marketing, advertising, and all the other communication disciplines aren’t either, but that’s for another post perhaps). You can argue with me until the cows come home that awareness matters, and I’ll grant you that.

But awareness only translates – only *matters* – when that awareness makes me want to have an experience of some kind. With your company. With the people at your company. With your product, your service, your blog, all the cool content on your site. An experience that will ultimately drive home all those messages you so badly want me to hear.

But hear this trick: it won’t be because you gave the message to me in your words. It will be because the experience gave *me* the inspiration to create messaging of my own. It might be what you intended, but it might not. And it’ll never, ever be because you scripted it, or told me what to think. It’ll be because you gave me something worth talking about.

So if you think your end game is to get me to hear a message, I challenge you to think otherwise. Maybe your end game is to get me to create the message and find my own ways of communicating it. Maybe?

I want to follow stories.

It’s not your numbers that make you interesting. It’s not your title, your logo, your tagline, your brand promise. It’s not the colors you agonized over for your website. It’s not about what you’ve accomplished, because to me, that’s already in the past.

I want to follow your story. I want to follow your tomorrow, your hope for what’s next and your aspirations for how the world around you – however small – is going to be better for your presence. That can be making a better ballpoint pen, or building the nanostructures that will cure cancer. But tell me something interesting.

You don’t have to be big to have a story. True North is a snack company telling stories about its community, not just it’s snacks. Their stories draw you in, and tell you a little something about the nature of that company, make you want to know more. When I see them on the shelf, I’ll be intrigued. Not by their almonds alone, but by the fact that they’re committed to being and becoming something more interesting.

You don’t have to be small and quirky to have a story, either. During the Masters, Exxon Mobil ran a series of spots talking about their Mickelson teacher’s academy and their education initiatives. They’re talking about the future. Not laboring in the past, over things that have always been. They’re weaving stories. Focusing on what’s next for their industry, their company, their community. And they’re talking about it.

Your followers or blog subscribers or poorly veiled pitches disguised as e-books don’t tell me a thing about you, and flaunting them makes me wonder what’s behind it all.

Your press release on your blog doesn’t inspire me to think of you in a different, fascinating, personality-infused light.

Your carefully crafted brand message doesn’t motivate me to see my world differently and change my perspective on how and where I fit, either with or without you.

Convention is convention because it’s always been there, and there may well be a place for that. Sometimes. But in amidst the noise, I want to hear your voice. I want you to stand out, to rise above your function and instead find your purpose. I want to know why you’re here, what makes up the fabric of you.

Won’t you put down your style manual, your brand guidelines, your notions of what you think will make me open my wallet or write something nice about you?

Won’t you stop trying to get my attention by waving frantically, and instead invite me to hear a quiet story that’s instead been written just for me?