Dodgeball and Hot Dogs for Professional Networking

A friend was promoted recently, and while that may be somewhat interesting in this bad economy, there's a networking nugget or two in her experience worth highlighting. It was a reminder to me about the power and potential of casual networking, even within an organization.

The situation was this - my friend, I'll call AK, volunteered to help with her company dodgeball and a hot dog eating contests, basically team building exercises. There was no additional compensation for helping, just a chance to help employees interact and bond on a social level outside the normal work structure.

The event was well run, and during the course of the event several people complemented her on her efforts and organizational skill. One such person happened to be an executive who believed in fun and the value of team building. It turns out he had sway within the organization. He asked her about how long she had been the company and what her goals were. A few short weeks later, my friend's boss and boss's boss heard about the 'great job' my friend had done, and soon after that she was notified that paperwork for a promotion was in motion.

Now why is this story important? Does this showcase anything but luck and serendipity? The point of this story is that it's just one of several I remind myself of when people talk about networking. Networking is not about being a mercenary and seeking out the people who can benefit you, it's about participating and engaging with others with similar interests and making the most of the relationships you develop through them.

A wise friend once told me - "It's not what you know. It's not who you know. It's who knows and trusts you." By putting herself in a position where her organizational skills, penchant for fun, and dependable demeanor, my friend created an opportunity for a beneficial relationship.

Random Twitter Followers - Good or Bad?

I recently saw a linkedin in question about Twitter followers. The asker was creeped out about the number of Twitter followers with sexy pictures of women who were suddenly following him, and he wanted to know what to do.

The sexy user picture for Twitter is a tried and true social media marketing technique that proved itself on Friendster, YouTube, Orkut, Myspace and more. It turns out that people tend to click on pictures of a attractive women. The problem is so prevalent, that YouTube now demotes videos that show cleavage.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote about banner blindness and indicated that plain text, faces and cleavage (or other private body parts) were the three design elements most effective at attracting eyeballs. It turns out that the same effect that Nielsen discussed was used successfully at YouTube and has been reliably used on other social networks, namely Myspace, and now Twitter.

For the user who was worried about sexy women following him on Twitter,my recommendation is: don't waste time worrying. The good thing about Twitter is that you don't need to follow someone back who follows you. The users with sexy pictures are likely male marketers, or even just one marketer, working for a business trying to build a listener base to send marketing messages to in the future. Why does he follow so many people?

The notion is simple. Follow as many people as possible, and some % will follow you back. So for demonstration sakes, for every 1000 people he follows, 100 may follow him back. If he follows 10000, he could get 1000 followers. In that process 200 people may have clicked his profile image and seen/read his Twitter profile and been exposed to his marketing message (2% click through rate). After amassing 1000 friends, he may send out 1 or more advertisements. Let's say he sends 10. That 10 advertisements to 1000 people, or 10,000 impression. Not bad if he's using an automated follow tool that autofollows Twitter users.

Apply your own basic math, and you can see that using Twitter in this manner provides an advertising and marketing vehicle for marketers to reach this growing user base.

Outrageous Marketing Stunts by the Clueless

Over the course of lunch, I overheard a marketing professional discuss how he needed an outrageous marketing stunt to be successful. The belief was that the stunt would generate a ton of publicity and people would flock to his website. "What short sighted thinking," I muttered to my colleague. "Who would notice, and what would people do when they got to his website?" Sometimes overeager marketers simply grasp at 'standout marketing' without a clue.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a publicity stunt, and they can indeed draw an audience. Heck, I ran marketing for a startup that grew from 254 Google search results to 44,000 results in a less than a week. My team leveraged an outrageous stunt on the stage of an AlwaysOn Hollywood event to hit those numbers. The more outrageous the stunt, the more attention you might grab. But what is the quality of that attention and how does that translate to users or sales?

A few outrageous stunts that come to mind are: the Aqua Teen Hunger Force blinky lights marketing campaign, the woman who tattooed her forehead for a casino, the Tokbox taco truck with free tacos for laid off Yahoo employees, and the giveaway of the Pontiac G6 on Oprah. Each was an interesting and somewhat outrageous marketing stunt, but all yielded mixed results.

To clarify my point, some additional facts are in order. The Aqua Teen Hunger force campaign ran in 10 cities, with little to any market buzz until it shut down the Boston Airport. How many of you cared enough, even after the buzz, to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force for the first time? The woman who tattooed her forehead got a permanent tattoo and was paid only $10,000. Do any of you remember the woman, what casino sponsored it, or visited that casino? Tokbox, who did the taco truck promotion seven months ago, recently let go 50% of it's workforce, and all the founders left, so it's not clear what the gains were there. The car giveaway on Oprah was a big success for Oprah, but it was Pontiac's idea (no one gave them credit), no one remembers that the car was a G6, and Pontiac is being closed as a division of GM. Looks like memorable stunts that didn't do the job in these cases.

So what's wrong with outrageous stunts? Nothing, but the context, goals, and audience need to be aligned to make the sure the stunt even has a chance at yielding returns. In each of the above examples, the stunts were memorable, but not in ways that increased brand goodwill, drove the right kinds of customers or audience, or yielded leveragable attention.

Just being outrageous may make your memorable, but that's not really the point, is it? As much fame and notoriety you may get for the marketing stunt, you still have to drive adoption, registrations, and/or sales. A stunt for visibility sake is no guarantee of success.

No Search Ads for Coca Cola

I was watching the twitcast from revenue bootcamp (#revenuebootcamp) when I saw a message from designmom. It read:

Coca Cola is one of the top 5 advertisers on the world and they don't do search ads.

At first I thought "wow", but then I thought "why should they?"

Coca Cola is a major brand offering a product that is largely a consumable impulse buy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but have any of you searched for anything related to Coca Cola before buying a Coke? I know I haven't, and I don't know anyone who has. To put it in broader market perspective, do college or high school students search for "Coke" when they want to buy one? Do your parents or grand parents search for it? What if we broaden the scope to not just Coke, but to other comparable consumable impulse buys in the same category. Does anyone search for Sprite, 7up, Pepsi, etc? In reality, the Coca Cola company does run search ads for coke rewards and other loyalty programs, yes, but not for the consumable.

Maybe there's a lesson here that a subconscious truth for me may be explicitly proposed as a general rule of thumb: Consumable impulse buys have an inherently short buying cycles and are poor search advertising targets. This matters in the bigger picture of advertising. Even in a recession, a flight to measurement and ROI does not guarantee increased usefulness or applicability of search advertising for the product itself.

Now the real lesson here, is that advertising is situational - it has a time, place, and context. Not all forms of advertising applies for all products, and, some advertising only makes sense in certain contexts as well. Thus is makes sense to advertise Coke in movie theaters, since it could influence you to buy more Coke, and a search ad wouldn't apply there. Your situation is an entertainment venue where people eat and drink. On the other hand, if you love Coke and are going to a Coke Museum, when you search for Coke or Coke Museum you may get search ads for the Coke loyalty program, Coke related film shorts, or other promotional programs. The context is looking for information and the search ad is intended to further loyalty and word of mouth, not satisfy an immediate need to eat or drink.

So, @designmom, thanks for the topic, and for reminding me about the rules of advertising, the importance of context, and that search advertising isn't the necessarily the answer to all revenue problems.

Who is supporting your customers?

There are three truisms about supporting customers, regardless of your product or service:

• A customer's primary goal is to have what they bought, or even are using for 'free', work the way that they expect
• Huge numbers of people feel ill-served or ignored by the companies they've patronized
• You can't control the conversation about your products - and you may not even know the conversation is taking place

Even consumers who aren't technology mavens are likely to start trying to solve their problems with a basic internet search. Do you know - have you ever looked? - what two or three top search results they're going to see? Does a company-sponsored site show up? Do you know about the sites that do?

As a simple test, I did a Google search on 'Canon S2 Camera Problems'. The top search returns? fixya.com, cnet.com, amazon.com,and dpchallenge.com. No Canon sites showed up in the first 4 pages of results. In fairness to Canon, if the search was 'Canon S2 Camera Support' then a Canon USA site was on the top of the list. But the point remains valid - you have to know what your customers are seeing and where they're seeing it.

One example from two of those sites (cnet.com and fixya.com)was a 'stuck shutter' reported by an seemingly large number of people. The fixes suggested including 'jogging the shutter open by tapping the camera against a wooden surface'. This was not from a Canon representative, so it 's hard to know if this is a recommended solution (seems unlikely), or if Canon is aware of a problem with this particular model. But it might give a consumer pause - and the lack of a response from Canon doesn't help the perceptions.

The simple fact is that most of the entries in discussion/tech support forums are going to be negative by their nature - after all, not too many people post a lack of a problem. There are more and more independent support sites like GetSatisfaction.com that actively solicit participation by vendors - and implicitly set customer expectations around that participation.

Shopping and review oriented sites may be somewhat less negative since many consumers feel compelled to defend their purchase choices, but there is still plenty of 'dirty laundry' hanging out there. All of these sources are having an influence on future purchase decisions for everyone who visits.

So some things to ponder until my next post:

• Do you really know what people are saying about your products?
• Are the customer support resources you've invested in, like FAQs and knowledge bases, doing the job based on the questions being addressed elsewhere like FixYa and GetSatisfaction?
• Is there something you can do to reach out to customers with a problem, rather than hoping that they find you?

Be a sustainability business shark

Sharks have thrived for eons, and not by waiting it out.
Is your business still moving, or waiting for more target-rich times?
Many firms are hanging on in survival mode, but need a more sustainable focus to thrive.

Witness the growing number of government-owned companies, and those successful mainly via acquisitions - it seems harder to make a sustainable business these days. What sustains a business, really? Customers, of course. So could too much internal business focus actually be a problem?

At large and small businesses alike, I experienced the daily draw to focus internally - after all, these are the people in front of you every day. It's easier to deal with what is in front of you. Easier positive feedback loop too. There's something to be said for a tight organization, esprit de corps and all, but in this economy, with every customer watching their spend, lack of customer focus could be the critical factor in whether your company is on the way up or down. And that could make for some uncomfortable internal meetings. Like layoffs. Which, by the way, are easily quantifiable ‘benefits’ to the organization (at least in the very short term).

But consider some longer term business sustainability thinking.
How about words like value creation, unique value proposition, and customer satisfaction? Would things work better for business if those terms were more commonly used today? If all hands focus on cost-cutting, or on the internals of the ship, who's left to ensure it serves its intended purpose, taking customers where they need to go, and encouraging them to book another trip?

Customers aren’t interested in our ship, just in where it can take them. And cost-cutting invariably springs leaks.

Given economic recoveries last much longer than recessions, now is the time to soak up all the mindshare, marketshare, and wallet-share of weaker, less-focused companies. And enjoy a the longer ride up.
Why just survive, when you can thrive?

Next post will take a look at using this recession to work out the fundamentals and getting your business model right to provide security and profits for the long-term: Still on a cost-cutting diet, or finding fresh meat?

Valley Arrogance and the Niche Market Blinders

What? Arrogance in Silicon Valley? Surely you jest.

It's true, and no matter how many times I've seen companies flail and fail, as engineers and marketers insist that they're "right", this phenomenon is alive and well in the SF Bay Area. This is both good and bad, depending on where you sit, and what you do on a day to day basis. At its worst, this phenomenon is typified by the "who uses that technology/service" remarks and the "I've moved on to X, which is much superior". At it's best, the press and investors-types call the technology or service "revolutionary" in hindsight, the 30+ also-rans fall by the wayside, and no one snickers because at least one worked.

While every market shifts, the true value of a technology or service is firmly established when the technology, company, or service makes serious money. The "moved on" comments become justified when the new technology, service, company overshadows the previous generation and a new way of business is established. Why does this matter? From a business perspective, respect typically comes from generating revenue, not just buzz and coolness. In my experience, many, many more people have been fired, reprimanded, and demoted for choosing cool technology that did not do the job at all, did not do the job better - to justify cost incursions, or generate enough added value than those who stuck with established, working products & services.

The saying used to be "nobody gets fired for buying IBM", and versions of that phrase still largely ring true. Here's a few examples the come to mind. Feel free to add better ones in the comments if you have them.
- Apple Newton & General Magic's Magiclink: I loved both of them, as did everyone here in Silicon Valley, but they died a tragic death as the love didn't spread very far
- Windows NT vs XP: While "everyone" was supposedly on XP in 2004, I ran into numerous businesses AND government agencies that still used NT. If you didn't know that your enterprise software may not have sold at all.
- Vadem Clio: Another valley love-fest for this "convertable tablet", very cool, and everyone adored it when they saw it, even years after the company went out of business
- Facebook vs. MySpace: Silicon Valley types seem to pan MySpace while trumpeting Facebook, even though MySpace still makes significant revenue today, and has made more for the past three years while people were cheering the superiority of Facebook
- Twitter vs. Google: Twitter gets a sureal amount of buzz about real-time search, while Google continues to dominate search, besting Cuil, Powerset, A9, and other Google killers over the years

Many will and should argue that "when the main stream gets it, it's too late." It's too late for what? Bragging? No, there are two different forces at work here. Building an innovative, valuable service/business that's disruptive is one thing, while establishing a sustainable trustable business is another. It often takes innovation and value creation to establish a sustainable trusted business, but what you often see is bragging and chest beating by startups who do something differently, because they can. Forget about the successful operating companies that have not been bested by the startup. The user bravado, which accompanies the early adopter myopia, when translated, is basically "I use a cooler service than you, but ignore that it makes less money and appeals to less people than what's out there".

The point here isn't that I favor any of the old or new companies/services/products, but that buzz, coolness, and Silicon Valley boasting can really mean little without the revenue, longevity, and trust of being an established business. Arrogance from believing you are the best is a weaker foundation than pride, accomplishment, and satisfaction of actually being the best and/or dominant market force.

All talk and no action? Social Media Gumption

socialThis is a brief post about all the talk about "joining the conversation" and all the pontificating about it. As a lead in - this post is NOT about talking about "joining the conversation" but instead about actually getting involved.

Over and over again I hear people and so-called social media experts talking about "joining the conversation." Sometimes they're effusive, sometimes they're instructive, and other times they pragmatic. This subject, as it turns out, is exactly one where the debate of "do" vs. "teach" comes into play.

Ask these people how many of the following have they done?
- youtube videos uploaded
- youtube videos commented on
- blog posts they have written
- blog posts they have commented on
- twitter messages they have sent
- twitter @reply messages they have received

Then ask them how many of the following they have:
- total views on their youtube videos
- friends or subscribers on youtube, facebook, or myspace
- followers on twitter

If the answer to any of those items is less than 10, then there's alot of work to do. The actual absolute number of any of the above do not matter, but instead the participation does. Becoming part of the conversation and participating in social media is NOT about pontificating about what the benefits might be, but it is simply participating. I think it was either Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu who said " the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". Joining the conversation is not really as hard as you might think, and all it takes is one comment to get involved.

Just to be clear, though - there is a difference between social media and building your personal brand. I'll get into that in a later post.

That's all for now.

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