David Meerman Scott’s New Rules of Marketing & PR

In one very readable volume, David Meerman Scott has pulled together a useful overview-and-how-to for anyone making the transition from old-school (print, TV, radio) marketing to the fearsome world of the Wild, Wild Web. It’s both comfort and concern to know that even someone as versed in the new media environment as Scott says there really are no hard-and-fast rules, that much is being made up as we go along.

Okay, then. Everyone into the pool.

New Rules does a great job of connecting the off-line and online worlds. Yes, Scott references his website and blog for examples. But he also footnotes his sources, many of which are other useful websites and blogs, and his acknowledgements read like a Who’s Who of online communications, complete with URLs. No better intro to this evolving field than what amounts to a self-study course in book-and-blog form, with enough humor to make it interesting.

Scott is also very pragmatic. He’s interested in results (read: generating income, sales leads, or both), and he knows marketing and PR (public relations) in the off-line world have often been associated with smoke and mirrors. It’s a strategy that no longer works very well off-line and online not at all. We’re far past the days when people had time to surf the Web. If you’re online, you want information quickly and easily, presented with clearly marked instructions about what to do next. As the title of Steve Krug’s book on website design admonishes: Don’t Make Me Think. David Meerman Scott concurs — and focuses his efforts on getting marketers (and the rest of us real people) to see that content is what drives online communications. Flying graphics and funky designs are only appropriate in certain spaces. Even sites with those attributes need relevant content or no one returns.

Online is all about the user, all about the buyer, all about the customer or client. We should know this by now, but the wealth of websites with confusing navigation or too much stuff means it bears repeating. Your site visitors (customers?!) are saying to you, “Let me in, tell me something I don’t know, make it easy for me to talk to you, make it simple for me to get what I need from you, and let me out. I’ll trust you if I know you as a real person, which may be the only reason I’ll buy from you, stay in touch with you, and give you the opportunity to stay in touch with me.”

The most difficult shift for businesses to make when realizing they must establish an online presence if they are to stay alive in the marketplace is to realize they are no longer in control of the messages about their own products and services. Buyers and customers have many ways to get past the filter of the messages you present and find “trusted sources” of their own — friends, family, blogs, search engines, social media networks, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, you name it — where they gather information and make decisions to buy or interact. Letting go of control is the big hurdle your business likely needs to jump.

Scott provides lots of encouragement for making the leap and lots of resources for how to do it. He spends significant space on reasons and methods to develop buyer personas as a good approach to identify and appreciate your audience/buyer and to figure out how to put these key folks first; how to develop content they will find interesting, useful, and compelling enough to make them want to return to your website (let alone your company or store); and, as importantly, tell others about what a great site or organization or opportunity they found. Scott understands the critical link between online and off-line behavior: you must deliver the real goods and services you promise or the relationship with your buyer will break.

With sections on thought leadership and “how to write for your buyers,” as well as the basics of blogging, podcasting, social networking, and search engine marketing, The New Rules of Marketing & PR is a great resource for starting or improving your business results in our brave new online world.

Social Media Perspective

Given the hype and hoopla currently focused on the imperative of social media, it helps to discover active professionals who offer more nuanced views and, perhaps, a bit of contrarian perspective.

Josh Bernoff, senior vice president for idea development at Forrester Research, co-authored Groundswell, a book about the rise of social media that describes how marketing has turned into customers taking over conversations about businesses.

The folks at Forrester dig into marketing and technology for companies around the globe. Because they’re seriously immersed in social, Bernoff has the perspective to say, “Social 2012 is Web 2000.” He recalls when the Web was filled with the same kind of hype, and every company felt compelled to launch an e-commerce solution.

In reality, the business model was not about the mechanics of the transaction; it was about service. And the deployment of broadband to more people, not the e-commerce software itself, is what helped online shopping expand. It wasn’t the hardware; it was the people. Customers. Relationships. Service.

And that’s where Bernoff says social sits today. It’s all about interaction. Once social becomes ubiquitous, both inside companies and out, Bernoff asks, “…how will the world be different? The strategic thinker prepares for that.”

Thinking Styles and Clear Communication

We all know about the left-brain/right-brain split, but current science shows that’s not such a neat division of upstairs labor. Yes, our brains have two sides. We also have front and back, in addition to diverse, tangled interconnections. As in many other realms, it’s a case of both/and, not either/or.

Learning how all the elements work together keeps scientists, artists, and human resource managers busy.

It’s our analogies that can’t keep up. Human brains are not computers, clocks, or anything resembling the mechanical or digital artifacts we find (and create) in the world. While we have lots of words to describe what we see, feel, and experience, putting those words into meaningful strings remains one of our biggest challenges.

Good Questions…
What’s the actual message your audience gets when you think you’re communicating with them? What do you know about how the brain works and how people think? How can such knowledge help you distill your message and communicate clearly?

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, in a fascinating take by RSA Animate, describes current brain science in such an accessible way, you’ll appreciate how our capacity for empathy helps us relate to each other — and communicate better.

The Divided Brain: Iain McGilchrist [video — 11:48]

Personality Assessments, Thinking Styles, and Communication
A related approach to this brain stuff and how it affects our relationships — all of which depend on multiple forms of communication — can be found in an assortment of personality assessments, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), DiSC, and Caliper, among others, including the four-quadrant “Whole Brain” model developed in the 1970s by Ned Herrmann for IBM.

Known as the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI)®, this assessment offers an interesting way to consider how our various personal preferences affect what we see, hear, think, perceive, and do as a result of the stimuli we encounter.

The HBDI distills these human preferences into four large categories: analysis, innovation, organization, and comfort/feeling. While humans use all four all the time, each of us typically exhibits at least one or two strong preferences — and these preferences affect the ways in which we extend and receive communication.

Ever wonder why the same message seems to hit the mark with a few folks while totally missing the boat with others? When you explore the HBDI’s four-quadrant whole brain model, you’ll discover how an awareness of thinking/communication styles can help you craft more effective messages.

Besides, when we engage all of ourselves — our whole brains — we function better than if we try to compartmentalize left, right, front, back, work, home, private, public, and on and on. Why wouldn’t you want to reach as much of your audience’s brain as possible?

Follow Interesting Tangents
Our perceptions color the way we communicate. As we keep learning about the magical mystery tour inside our heads, the better chance we have to connect with the humans who are important to us, whether that’s for business reasons or just because life’s a lot more fun that way.

What tangents do you follow to help you communicate better?

Write Better Every Day

No matter what you do for a living, chances are you spent a chunk of your time writing. For some us, that chunk of writing takes more time than anything else we might do. For others, writing requires just enough attention to get a point across, note an acknowledgment, or provide some direction.

Regardless of our reasons for writing, we can all benefit from reminders about the elements of the form, the rules, the exceptions, and the quirky developments that may affect how our messages are received and perceived. For excellent information, check out the DailyWritingTips website and blog. Thanks to members of the LinkedIn group The Content Wrangler for the heads-up.

Whether it’s 25 Synonyms for “Story”, How to Format Reader-Friendly Headlines, Exceptions in the Rules of Hyphenation, or ways to brainstorm ideas that can help you in Picking Your Perfect Title, Daniel Scocco (founder), Mark Nichol (editor), and the team at DWT offer one of the prime go-to resources for writing help online.

Do you use DailyWritingTips? How? What other online writing resources do you use? Why?

Copyblogger — Resources to help your online marketing

Although I can’t remember where I discovered Copyblogger, I subscribed to the blog a few months ago — and find their posts to be an outstanding source of quality writing, snappy headlines, great inspiration, spot-on marketing ideas, and just plain fun.

Founded by Brian Clark, Copyblogger Media supports not only the blog, but also a WordPress platform and many no-cost online writing and marketing resources. Some examples:

• In a post titled, “How to Write Weapons-Grade Copy,” guest blogger Roger Dooley —publisher of the blog Neuromarketing — shows how DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (some of the folks who brought you the Internet), thinks stories are so powerful, they recently issued a request for proposal (RFP) to explore how stories affect human thoughts and behavior. Then, Dooley ties this premise to five key points that make a good marketing story.
• As part of “Killer Headlines Week” — and with a post titled, “Sex, Lies, and the Art of Commanding Attention” — guest editor Jon Morrow takes readers through the rationale behind sweating your blog post headlines to create something that strongly appeals to readers. He even provides a formula to make it work.
• Copyblogger Media CMO (chief marketing officer) Sonia Simone offers inspiration when you’re stuck for a writing idea or just plain stuck, no matter what the cause. Although her focus is online marketing, Simone posts an “official permission slip” to help you overcome any of several roadblocks that may be holding you back from whatever’s next. She’s willing to give you the “permission” you may (subconsciously) need to take the next step and reach for the prize.

You’ll probably find much more at Copyblogger — enough to make it part of your regular sweep of web-based resources or, at least, worth the occasional check-in.

What other resources, online or off, help you do your work?

What’s Trending? Sources to watch for intriguing ideas

This time of year — typically filled with summaries, reviews, and looks into the rear view mirror of months just passed — can also be an excellent trigger for forecasts and trends. Of course, everything changes quickly. If we’re smart, we constantly look ahead and seek out sources for new information and intriguing ideas.

Here are three trend sources to check out in 2012 and beyond:

• Drew McLellan recommends JWT’s annual year-end forecast. Drew’s recent blog post, “2012 Trends Worth Watching,” points out that the folks at JWT were right on the money in both 2010 and 2011. Drew’s post includes the executive summary of JWT’s Slideshare presentation for 2012 and a Q&A with Ann Mack, JWT’s Director of Trendspotting.
• If you’re not subscribed to FastCompany, whether in hard-copy magazine form or its online/e-letter version, you’re missing an excellent source for ideas and trends on a wealth of topics related, however peripherally, to the business realities of today and tomorrow. FastCompany spreads its nets wide, capturing nascent trends in everything from the impact of good design on customer experience to the effects of sustainability thinking on the business bottom line. Looking back can also be a look ahead, as demonstrated in a recent blog post from FC’s Co.Design component — “5 Lessons From The Best Interaction Designs of 2011″ — where lots of video clips help remind: 1) Don’t look for breakthroughs; 2) Embrace the mundane; 3) Don’t buy into the hype; 4) Look past the screen; and 5) Video is the only shortcut.
• In our hyper-connected world, trends are global as much as local. Or, at least, transplanting an idea from one part of the planet to other locations seems relatively easy, although it often takes on quirks and characteristics of the new natives. Trendwatching.com, the self-proclaimed “independent and opinionated” future-focused folks based in London, are on top of (or trumpeting) the next new things, some with invented monikers they hope will turn into social catch-phrases. And they do it all year long. The monthly Trend Briefings e-letter is yours in exchange for your e-mail address; journalists, Fortune 500 companies, and multinationals often subscribe to the more in-depth and frequent postings and analyses. Just a few of Trendwatching’s Crucial Consumer Trends for 2012 include: 1) Red Carpet; 2) DIY Health; 3) Cash-Less; 4) Bottom of the Urban Pyramid; 5) Screen Culture; 6) Recommerce; 7) More-Ism.

So… Are you paying attention? What trends are you monitoring? How you do use trends when communicating about your products and services?

Where do you get your trend and forecast information? How do you use trends to generate interesting ideas, messages, activities, and products for your business?

Living Out Loud – Dyana Valentine Says “I Am Not Sorry”

Do you project confidence in your communication? Perhaps you exude empathy. Or maybe it’s arrogance. What if you tend toward apathy, anxiety, or apology?

It’s time to figure out your approach, make a conscious choice to live your life out loud — positively and productively — and communicate it clearly.

Professional instigator Dyana Valentine takes on the same challenge she presents to her clients: identifying why she’s not sorry for, among other things, loving chocolate-covered potato chips and asking, “What do you really mean when you say, ‘I’m sorry’”?

Check out Dyana at TEDxOjaiWomen from December 2011. [17:51 video]

What are the Messages From The Universe telling you about what’s happening in your life? Are you paying attention? What clues are trying to help you make better choices for yourself and make the world better for others?

Why do you or don’t you need to be sorry? How do you communicate either way?

Awash in the Social Media Soup …

… and coming up for air after the better part of two months. It’s been an extended slog.

Which is, no doubt, what everyone says who didn’t pop into this world with smart phone in hand and networking buzzwords tattooed in the brain. Which means most of us.

Nevertheless, the “social” approach to business, life, and everything is here to stay.

Of course, most of us were already “social” — it’s just recently exploded as the way to get anywhere or do anything.

Which is why it helps to dive in deeply on occasion, see what the fuss is about, and gain a bit of perspective.

Storytelling. Tweets. Content marketing. Friends. User-generated content. Likes. Retweets. Video. Blogging. Plus-1. Connections, connections, connections.

Even Google’s latest algorithm update includes a “freshness” value, which implies that websites showcasing continually updated, relevant content (about your product, service, offer) — often in the form of blog posts, Twitter feeds, Facebook or Google+ pages, and such — will be the most helpful to online searchers.

Like many “new” new things, social offers the temptation to get swept up in the latest gee-whiz, gotta-have-it wave. That’s especially enticing for business owners, marketing professionals, kitchen-table or garage-band start-ups, independent contractors, what-have-you, and organizations of every kind.

But after all the hoopla subsides and we work our way through the jargon, we come back to that old standby: the product, the service, the offer.

Are you creating and delivering something of quality, something that someone wants to buy, something that someone is buying? If so, you’re already ahead of the game.

In fact, two branding/marketing agency professionals — Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen — argue in FastCompany’s Co.design that three of marketing’s four P’s (promotion, place, price) are dead and that “only product matters.” Naturally, pushback ensued, but the discussion continues and adds value to the initial premise. That’s social media in action.

However…

Despite the seemingly pervasive pressure to jump all directions at once, get on the social media bandwagon, and create a virtual presence everywhere, it pays to focus on your core business and take the time to be thoughtful about the rest.

After all, social media are simply tools. Different (maybe “new”) outlets you can use in many productive ways.

The most basic social approach can be to open a conversation with people who currently purchase from you or use what you offer — via your website or blog and on platforms where you know they live. If you respect who these folks are and what they say, they may then invite their friends and professional contacts to check out your offer.

You don’t need to be everywhere, just where your best customers are. So take time to explore, think through your options, and speak with them as colleagues.

Creating valuable content, products, and/or services is your most important activity. (Marketers generally agree!) Word about your awesomeness then spreads on its own — with maybe a judicious bit of social boost.

If you build it well, talk about it properly, and give people a reason to care, they will come.

What’s your approach?

©2011 Jill J. Jensen / Clarity from Chaos

Four Conversations — Clarifying, Transforming, Crucial, Powerful

Given the flailing frenzy in social media, relationship marketing, customer care, and even more slippery business concepts, “conversation” ranks right up there on the list of current buzzwords. But it’s been part of human life for ages. If conversation is as common as what happens when people speak to each other every day, you wouldn’t think we’d need books about it. Au contraire. And you may be surprised to discover how much more effective your conversations can be with a bit of guidance, background, and perspective.

Content Rules

Whether you read this title as a prescriptive list or an emphatic cheer, you’re right. How’s that for broad appeal?! Although authors Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman concentrate primarily on non-print media — blogs, podcasts, videos, e-books, webinars, and the like — the excellent information in this book also applies to the words that end up as text on paper. Wherever we are, we’re reading more and more.