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December 6, 2011 By 52 Comments

No, you don’t need a stupid social media policy

No, you don’t need a stupid social media policy

Social media in the workplace is (still) a popular topic of discussion. While those of us living in our marketing/tech bubbles see social media as just everyday communication, there are still many large organizations that are struggling to figure out how to use it, how to leverage it for business advantages, and how to minimize risk.

Based on what I’ve observed, there is a popular notion related to social media floating around among consultants that really bugs me. When discussing social media in the workplace and in business communication, the battle cry seems to be “you need a social media policy!”

No, you don’t.

A social media policy sounds like a good idea on paper but let’s look at the message it sends. First of all, let’s agree that social media is not some weird, magical new thing that requires it’s own set of rules. It’s not. Social media is communication. Technology has changed in ways that allows communication to become more transparent, scalable, and flexible. However, at it’s core it’s still just communication.

Next, let’s agree that our employees are not stupid. As business owners and managers, I’m going to assume that we want to hire smart people that know what they are doing.

Finally, let’s agree to trust our employees. Again, I’m going to take another leap of faith and assume that we want to hire people that we trust. Sound fair?

If all this is true, then why do we feel the need to regulate and hamstring what our employees do on social media?

I, for one, love it when my team members show their personalities on Twitter, write insightful and opinionated blogs, and talk to our clients on Facebook. I trust my employees. I hire smart people. I enjoy what they bring to our team and encourage them to be visible and active online.

“But what about regulations and stuff, Reynolds! Your company is all fluffy marketing and shiny things but I have to worry about compliance and blah blah blah!”

Ok, so what? Is this a social media problem? No. This is a company culture issue. If you hire smart people with common sense and train them adequately to understand what their outcomes are, do you really need a social media policy? Or would you rather set them free to be creative and authentic?

And if you don’t trust your employees, then why are they working for you?

Please stop over-regulating, over-policing, and over-policy-izing your employees. If you trust them, you may just be pleasantly surprised.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
August 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Course correcting as a professional speaker

Course correcting as a professional speaker

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at Blog Indiana. If you’re not familiar with it, Blog Indiana is a popular blogging and social media conference in Indianapolis and is very well attended and includes some great content.

So I gave a presentation called “Internet Marketing in 90 Minutes a Week” during the afternoon slot. Now normally, I am pretty confident in my speaking. I usually get great feedback, I spend hours and hours tweaking my content to be very high value, and I genuinely love connecting with the audience.

However, at Blog Indiana I did not have an outstanding experience. It started off with some technical glitches that involved me having to use a handheld microphone instead of a lapel mic (I hate handheld mics!) so that sort of bummed me out. However, the real problem was how I was targeting my presentation. Because my title was catchy, I filled the room and they had to open up the side wall in order to accomodate everyone who attended. This was awesome and as a speaker I love to see this. However, as I was giving my presentation, I started to realize that I had made a mistake.

My presentation was not about Internet marketing, it was about content marketing – which is much more specific. In my effort to create a catchy, demand-creating title, I had boxed myself into a corner of having to deliver something sensational to a crowd that included some pretty savvy marketers. To be fair, their were some beginners in the crowd, as well, who learned a lot but a lot of the attendees were already doing a many of things I was covering and were probably not all that impressed.

As I continued the presentation, I got more and more upset with myself for getting the title out of sync with the content and I felt terrible for incorrectly setting expectations. My presentation was a great overview of how to be productive with a content marketing plan but I could tell that a lot of the attendees were there to be wowed by my supposed ability to boil all of Internet marketing down to 90 minutes.

The presentation went ok and didn’t bomb or anything and I even got some decent feedback afterward, but since I’m a perfectionist I was pretty bummed. I beat myself up over it and got really upset.

I was even more upset because I was giving the same presentation the next day as a webinar. How could I repeat the same mistake? Then I realized that I didn’t have to. Two hours before the webinar, I changed the title, tweaked a few slides to get even more specific, and then presented “Content Marketing in 90 Minutes a Week.” Guess what? It went great. I could tell that my message was flowing logically, my content was accurate and relevant, and I got a ton of great questions and lots of positive feedback afterward.

What did I learn? Well, one thing I learned was that I need to be careful when creating presentation titles. I tend to come up with titles first and then create the presentation afterward which can sometimes backfire. More importantly, however, I learned that it’s ok to fail and then course correct. Not every presentation is going to be a 100% knockout. Sometimes I will make a mistake and deliver 73%. As long as I understand what went wrong and can course correct, it makes me a better speaker.

Was it a little awkward to change my title two hours before the presentation? Sure, a little. But all I had to do was explain very honestly why I did it at the beginning of the presentation and then it was on to delivery. It wasn’t awkward because I believed in my message again.

Has anyone else had experiences like this as a speaker? I would love to hear your stories in the comments below.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
August 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Augment data collection with LinkedIn Polls

Augment data collection with LinkedIn Polls

A lot of organizations are interested in gathering data in order to make better decisions. Whether it’s marketing, sales, recruiting, HR, or other functions, good data can help us make better decisions.

While there are plenty of enterprise solutions for surveying employees and constituents (such as solutions provided by Chris Woolard at Walker in Indianapolis), what if your needs are more modest and you want to do some quick and dirty data collection? For this task, I absolutely love LinkedIn Polls.

With a LinkedIn poll, you can set up a single question, create multiple choice answers, and then collect responses along with detailed demographic information. LinkedIn Polls is dead easy, powerful, and social. Not only can you easily create polls, but you can easily post them to networks, contacts, and groups. LinkedIn also makes it easy to share your poll on other social networks or even embed it on your website.

If you are a presenter, like me, you can use LinkedIn Polls to gather data to use in your presentations. If you are a marketing director, you can use polls to support your decisions and initiatives when reviewing strategies with your team. If you are a non-profit exec, you can use polls to satisfy boards of directors who are looking for data to support decisions.

I created a simple poll for one of my upcoming presentations on personal branding. If you view this social media profile photo poll, you’ll see that it displays all sorts of interesting information on the people who responded, like:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Seniority

It also allows you to filter by specific responses to see which groups favored which responses.

Is the LinkedIn Polls app an enterprise-level survey tool? No. However, for simple needs it can be a powerful and inexpensive way to gather data.

Additionally, the more groups you join and the more connections you make, the more higher your chances are for getting a critical mass of data to use in your reporting. That’s yet another reason to work on building a strong LinkedIn profile.

Filed Under: Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,
July 19, 2011 By 4 Comments

QR codes on postcards? Stop the madness!

QR codes on postcards? Stop the madness!

Ok, so I think everyone knows my take on QR codes by now. I think they have very useful applications in some contexts, but I am frustrated to see so many marketers acting like they should be used to push more marketing at people.

Just to prove that I’m not a QR-hater, here is an interesting story of how the Wall Street Journal got it right. This is an outstanding use of QR because they identified the context as appropriate for QR (someone sitting down with a newspaper) and they encouraged sharing, rather than pushing more marketing. Brilliant!

However, for every great example of QR code usage, there are a million (made-up statistic) examples of poor usage. For example, I often get postcards in the mail that feature a big shiny QR code on it. Next to the code, it usually says something like “scan this code for a special message!” Hmmm… is that really a good conversion system?

Let’s analyze this. First, where do most people receive these postcards? Yep, at their offices. Next, where do most people typically sort through the mail? Yep, at a desk (with a trash can nearby). Finally, what is usually sitting on that desk? You guessed it… a computer! Now, if I have a postcard in my hand while I’m sitting at my computer, why would I pull out my phone, open an app (that I may or may not have on my phone already), carefully scan this little box, and then look at the tiny screen on my phone while it pulls up some content? Wouldn’t it be easier to just turn to my computer and type in a website address in a full browser?

Aside from incorrectly assessing the context of the recipient, the other issue is that most of the postcards I receive simply encourage me to scan the QR code just to get more marketing. What’s my incentive? Why not offer me something of value instead and clearly explain it? What is a “special message?”

Before jumping on the shiny QR bandwagon, I think it’s important to answer two questions:

  1. Is QR the easiest way for my constituents to get this information in the context that they will be getting my message?
  2. What is their incentive to ask for it?

Sometimes the answer to the first question is yes, which means you can happily QR to your heart’s content. However, let’s stop using QR codes because we can. Let’s start using them because we should.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,
July 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

What your business can learn from the Mormon Church

For those who may not be aware, I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Other less formal labels for this denomination include “LDS” and “Mormon.” My faith is a source of great happiness in my life and I am always happy to answer questions about it. However, this post is not about religion, so I would ask that if you have any religious questions about the LDS faith, please contact me directly and I will be happy to discuss.

The LDS Church is one of the largest religions in the world. It has over 14 million members and is the second-fastest growing church in the U.S., according to the National Council of Churches. Other statistics on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be found in the LDS Newsroom.

All spiritual debates aside, it’s easy to see that the LDS Church is doing something right. What are the Mormons doing that has lead to such dramatic and steady growth and how can it apply to your business?

Strong systems

The Mormon church is extremely systematic about everything from building churches and temples to teaching sunday school. If you go to a Mormon church anywhere in the world, you will find that they all follow the same meeting agendas, the same processes, and even teach the same lessons. If you attend a church meeting one Sunday in Indianapolis and then attend a meeting the following Sunday in California, it will be very familiar and you will be be able to stay on the same lesson plan. If the Mormon Church wants to form a new congregation, it follows a proven system for setting up the meetinghouse and can very quickly set in motion a process to get it up and running (complete with local clergy) very quickly and with very few issues. This saves time and money.

In a similar fashion, your business can benefit from strong systems that allow you to execute tasks and projects quickly and consistently. If you have proven systems for sales, marketing, product delivery, and customer service, your business will run much more efficiently and enjoy faster growth. If you’re unfamiliar with creating business systems, check out The E-Myth (affiliate link).

Member empowerment

The LDS Church makes it a high priority to encourage members to share their faith with others. In fact, one of the three main components of the mission of the church is “to proclaim the gospel.” Church members are encouraged to talk about their faith, share information with others, and speak openly about religion. This creates a culture that empowers all members to become “marketers” for the church. They are encouraged to follow their enthusiasm for their faith and make it a part of their everyday lives and communications. As a result, almost every member of the LDS church is prepared and eager to be a polite but ardent evangelist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Your business can also turn employees into evangelists. If you continuously encourage your employees to talk about your company with others, share your brand, and openly talk about their jobs, your company will enjoy greater name recognition and awareness. This will result in more leads and potential customers. Empower your team to use tools like social media to inform the public what your company is all about.

Training

The Mormon Church has a phenomenal training program for its 52,000+ missionaries around the world (who are volunteers, by the way). Before serving, a missionary must spend anywhere from three weeks to three months in a training program that helps them utilize systems, processes, and procedures for reaching prospective new members. Every missionary goes through the exact same proven training process. If some part of the process is improved, it is rolled out to every missionary in the world. The Mormon Church is very serious about proper training and equips its missionaries with the systems and support they need to be successful.

Does your business provide sales training? If not, it might be worth considering. Proper sales training gets all your sales people on the same page, gives them a system to follow, and provides ongoing coaching. My favorite sales system is the Sandler system. If you’re in the Indianapolis area, I recommend Trustpointe or Lushin.

Rapid embracing of technology

Technology evolves at an frenzied pace and it can sometimes be difficult to keep up. However, the Mormon Church sees almost every form of new technology as an opportunity to grow the church’s brand and message. You’ll find that the church has a presence on just about every major social network in use today and even organizes messaging among specific focus areas, including newsroom communications, and member training just to name a few. The church has an incredibly strong SEO strategy which brings lots of relevant traffic to its websites. Additionally, the Mormon Church facilitates messaging through the use of apps, blogs, video, mobile, podcasts, and email. The church even has web portals and apps that allow all members of a congregation to instantly download directories and leadership information directly to their phones in order to facilitate easy communication between members. Most church buildings also now have wireless Internet access in order to encourage members to make use of these technologies as learning aids.

Your business can also benefit by embracing new technologies. If you look at each new form of technology as an opportunity to share your message, your brand will travel faster and your business will grow. Just as the Mormon Church does, carefully study each new tool or technology that evolves, decide how it can strengthen your brand messaging, and then deliberately integrate it into your business.

Partnerships

The Mormon Church does not see other religions as competition. Instead, church leaders throughout the world work with leaders of other faiths to serve and provide humanitarian relief. Some notable examples include Indian Ocean tsunami relief efforts in which the Mormon Church partnered with Islamic leaders and the church’s partnership with the Catholic Church to bring aid to Niger. Other less-dramatic events include interfaith concerts and other social events.

In a similar fashion, your business can also grow faster by leveraging partnerships. Instead of viewing other businesses in your space as competitors, try reaching out to them and looking for ways to work together. Not every prospect will choose to work with you and some may choose your competition (just as some people will choose another religion over Mormonism). However, if you have a positive working relationship with your competitors, you can create opportunities to refer to each other and network constructively, which raises the level of respect for everyone.

Conclusion

The Mormon Church continues to grow quickly and recruits new members very rapidly. With new churches and temples being built all the time, it’s obvious that the methods in and practices of the church lead to growth and success. So what can your business learn from the Mormon Church? By creating systems, embracing new technology, utilizing sales training, creating partnerships, and empowering your employees, you can have a business that enjoys similar growth and success.

Filed Under: Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
June 30, 2011 By 1 Comment

You have to care

Many times when I do speaking and training about social media, I see excitement and enthusiasm from the people I talk to. I like that. I really like that. It makes me really happy to see people getting excited about using new communication tools and methods.

Sometimes, however, I also encounter people who are just the opposite. They whine, they complain, they say “I don’t have time” or “I don’t want to try to keep up with all that stuff” and they defeat themselves before even trying.

I don’t know how many times I can say this: social media is not a chore. It’s not about “learning Twitter” or “getting LinkedIn.”

Social media should be fun. Social communication is about extending your platform to reach new constituents. It’s about magnifying your message. It’s about giving a voice to your passion.

You have passion for what you do? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you have something worthwhile to say? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you care about your customers, members, or constituents? Then you’ll be “good” at social media.

The key is, though, you really do have to care.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,
January 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Systematic Business Blogging

The benefits of business blogging are numerous. A great business blog can bring benefits in the form of SEO, authority, and increased trust. However, one of the most common complaints I hear when it comes to blogging is “I just don’t have time!”

Interested in overcoming this? Read more about it in my guest post for Rhoda Israelov called “Systematic Business Blogging“.

Filed Under: Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,
October 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The secret to effective time management in social media

I give regular presentations and training sessions on social media, online marketing, and technology-related topics. My audiences include business owners, professionals, and non-profit teams. 100% of the time I get this question or some variation of it:

“How much time do you spend on this stuff?”

Variations include:

“How do you find the time for all this?”
“How many hours a week do you spend online?”
“How much time do I need to spend on social media?”

My favorite is:

“When do you actually work?”

If I sense that my audience is truly looking for some practical “runway-level” tips on time management with online marketing, I will talk about automation, batched activity, block scheduling, and so on.

However, sometimes I will give a much simpler answer:

“Love what you do.”

That’s it. If you love what you do, you won’t ever have to ask how to find the time to talk about it. Social media is about communication with other people. If you love what you do, I mean truly love what you do with a passion, then talking about it with others will be effortless and natural. It won’t be forced and pushy; it will be honest and passionate and your business will grow naturally as a result.

You won’t have to “find the time” to be active in social media. It will become a natural extension of what you already do. You will be excited to have a new set of tools to expand your network and participate with a learners mind.

The bad news is, if you don’t love what do this message will be uncomfortable for you. It might prompt you to question why you do what you do. It might make you think about change.

The good news is, what you do with your life is up to you.

So what is the secret to effective time management in social media? You could try block scheduling and other fancy things. Or you could simply love what you do.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
June 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Personal Branding with Social Media E-Book

Personal branding is becoming more important today as people are becoming more interested in relationships and personal communication. Sales professionals, job-seekers, and professionals in a variety of industries are finding that how they relate to people and how they are perceived in the marketplace on a personal level makes a huge difference in how successful they are.

Social media is enabling us to strengthen our personal brands like never before. In order to address this, I’ve written an e-book to help others understand the dynamics of personal branding using social media and how to take advantage of social tools to strengthen their personal brands.

The e-book is free and you are encouraged to share it with others. If you have any personal stories you would like to include, please feel free to contact me and I would love to include your notes.

The e-book can be downloaded here:

Personal Branding with Social Media (PDF)

As always, comments and feedback are welcome.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
May 26, 2010 By 1 Comment

Better usability in conference websites

As a speaker, I attend and present for a lot of conferences. As an attendee, I register for events online and consume information primarily online via the conference website. As a speaker, I submit proposals for presentations with the intention of presenting at the conference.

As I analyze conference websites, I see a lot of opportunities for improving usability among them. Why is usability important on a conference website? Probably the most important reason is that it can play a huge part in determining how many people actually register for your event, as well as the quality of the speakers.

Here are some things to think about as you plan your conference website or landing pages.

1. Online registration is a must. I know it seems surprising but I still see conferences that do not have online registration as an option. They require you to call, mail, or fax in your registration. This puts up a huge wall between your event and your prospective attendees. Who has time to mail in a registration these days? Not me. I need quick, easy, secure online registration with credit card or I’m probably not going to bother. The same goes for your exhibitors.

2. Use online forms for speaker proposals. As a speaker, few things irritate me more than having to print or fill out a Word document to submit presentation proposals. Many speakers like me are submitting proposals to a variety of conferences and the more cumbersome it is to apply, the more likely I am to skip over your conference. I think I have a lot to offer and bring a lot of value to conferences when I present but making it hard for me to submit a proposal often keeps me (and other speakers) away. Make sure speakers can fill out application forms directly on your website.

3. Create landing pages for each session. I sometimes see conference websites that will give a general outline of the sessions for each day but do not break out sessions into individual landing pages. It’s important to give each session a specific landing page because this allows your speakers to promote their own sessions better, which in turn helps market your conference. It also gives you more specific content to publish on social networks and for search engines.

4. Make your conference website socially-aware. In addition to session landing pages, each session page should allow easy social media distribution. Two great ways to encourage social sharing of your conference material are with a Re-Tweet button via TweetMeme and a share button via AddThis. Both services are free and allow website visitors to easily market your sessions for you with one click. If you make it easy to announce your sessions, your will find that your speakers will help a great deal with your marketing efforts.

5. List all relevant time and location information clearly. This seems like a pretty obvious one but I still see conference websites that neglect to list the times and locations of breakout sessions. Not everyone wants to attend every session so make it easy for them to see exactly when and where each session is. Also, make sure your website includes interactive Google maps to your location so that your attendees can easily find it.

6. Include detailed speaker bios and photos. Few things are more boring than a big chunk of text listing presentation titles with no information on the speakers. Be sure to include speaker photos and bios with the session pages and perhaps even create speaker landing pages to help showcase them. Link out to their own website and social profiles, as well. This helps your attendees feel more connected to the speakers and can sometimes encourage people to register because they have an interest in seeing a particular speaker.

Paying attention to some basic usability details can make a huge difference in the quality of your speakers and the number of people who attend your conference. Do you need to make any adjustments to your conference website?

Filed Under: Design, Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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