Solving Not Selling

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Scott Gould

I read this awesome article, Stop Selling and Add Value on Monday from the N2 Growth Blog. Mike Myatt, and his awesome moustache, writes:

Call me crazy, but I don’t want to talk to someone who wants to manage my account, develop my business, or engineer my sale. I want to communicate with someone who wants to service my needs or solve my problems. Any organization that still has “sales” titles on their org charts and business cards is living in another time and place while attempting to do business in a world that’s already passed them by. It’s time for companies to realize that consumers have become very savvy and very demanding. Today’s consumer (B2B or B2C) does their homework, is well informed, and buys…they are not sold.

This is right in line with what we’ve discussed on the subject of ‘Making It Personal‘, and in the ‘PR 2010 Framework‘. By making your product or service an experience by actually solving the problem (of course, the user may not see the problem until you highlight it) rather than providing the tool to do it, you are engaging far deeper with your customer, and can also charge a higher markup.

In fact it’s not just Mike and I thinking about it. Jeremy Epstein (have you seen his client list?) wrote an article yesterday entitled “your value = your relevance“. What a title. Your value to your customer is equal to your relevance to your customer. Beautiful. But also very conceptual. Let’s break it down:

The History Of Economic Progression

A hundred years ago, tell a commoner that they’d paid £50 for a haircut and dry, and they’d laugh at you – why pay when you can do it yourself? 10 years ago, tell average Jane she’ll pay for shopping to be home delivered, and she’d reply she’d rather save the cash and pick them up herself.

The history of economic progression is one of paying for someone else to do what you used to do yourself, for free. My examples are rather peice-meal and conceptual, but there are very intelligent people out there writing about this is hard cover books. My simple understanding is that as technology enables us to become better specialists, and as we culturally have more responsibilities and roles, we are more willing to pay others to handle the things that we don’t have time to.

Of course, we don’t pay them just for their labour. We pay them in accordance to their expertise, their relevance to our needs, the results – the value they impart. Quite simply taking a book, we know that we aren’t paying merely for the product in our hands, but the time and effort that produced the intellectual property that we are reading and receiving value from.

An excellent example is Nike+. Consider the fact that to measure your running day on day, you can simply use a map and a stop watch, and then a some paper to graph it out. But Nike solve a problem by removing the map, watch and effort of drawing by simply giving you something to put in your shoe, and watch in amazement as it charts everything online for you. In fact, what Nike have done is lifted restrictions and just made everything easier by doing all the work for you.

And the happy catch is this: you are paying far more than the free DIY version. But you are getting greater value through expertise, technology, and the reduction of your time, effort, and in some way, the stress of having to do it. As I often say to clients “make it one less thing your customer has to do.”

Solving Not Selling

All this stuff appeals deeper than fiance. It gets down to advocacy, passion, experience, change. Sure, there are inventions that are cheap and cheerful, but the majority of these game changers are lifestyle products and/or services in some shape or form. And very often, they are ahead of the curve.

I’m sure right now that you can think of plenty of ways to solve problems, rather than sell stuff. But as is the nature of innovation, only certain people buy it – early adopters. Many times I thought I had a great idea and everyone would swoop at it, only for it to flop. So I have realised that the need to 1. know you target market, and 2. grow by trial and error, is significant when solving problems. Some tips:

The best place to start, in my opinion, is with Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Art of Innovation‘. It’s helped me no end, and continues to.
Sound the depths. Segment some clients and experiment. Use social media to test the waters, as it is very cost effective and quickly helps you draw conclusions.
Continually re-think and re-write to get down the core of your ‘solution’. I’ll be honest with you, I still haven’t got mine down to a single phrase. If you can only describe it using examples or a paragraph, then you know that you have too much of ‘you’ in mind, and not enough of your customer.
Draw on others. Pass it round the office, bounce it off your friends. Their perspective with save you lots of time, and open new paths to explore.
Adapt in public, rather than perfect in secret. This way you gather a following while you are growing (even if things are unclear), you pick up people who do get it, and you also get criticised and challenged which will sharpen you and help you cut out the rubbish.

I trust these points help you solve a few more problems this week!

Delivering Multi Touch And Multi Sense Strategies

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Scott Gould

I wrote a while ago that you should cast your bread on the social media waters – in other words, get your message out there without too much prescription over where your message is placed – the reason being that more often than not you get growth from areas you did not expect. Today I’m going to address a way to do that through two strategies. But first of all, we need to define a few things:

A strategy is a set of projected outcomes that move your desired ‘thing’ from one place to another, be it a market position, car journey, a blog rank, increased wallet-share – whatever.
We fulfil these outcomes by employing tactics. In the case of driving from A to B, we require the tactics of driving a car. Note that tactics not are equal to the strategy, they are part of the strategy.
Therefore, in the realm of social media, for example, the tactic of creating a Facebook page and setting up a Twitter account are not a social media strategy. And creating posters and flyers is not a marketing strategy.

I say this because a lot of ‘social media gurus‘ and dodgy marketers across all boards equate hooking one free service up to another a strategy – but it is not – this is just a tactic. We must have strategies that plot where these tactics lead to other than paying through the nose for SEO, PPC, etc. There is more to marketing success than hits and eyes.

Now that we have that out of the way, you may be wondering why I have a picture of our recent Exeter Tweetup above, and thinking to yourself “why is that there?” – Well, I’m so glad you asked! Here’s the answer: every person in that photo is part of a multi-touch and multi-sense strategy that I have employed.

Shock, horror?!?! “You mean they are a part of a strategy?” Well, yes and no. If you mean whether I’m treating them all as a marketing project, then no. But if you mean, am I treating them all differently because of who they are and what we have in common, then the answer is yes.

See the reality is that we are all using multi-touch and multi-sense strategies. Some people that we know are more visual than others, and in order to communicate more effectively to them, it’s all about painting pictures and metaphor. You might not even realise it, but guaranteed there are people in your life that you act differently towards that have different dominate senses, and your relationship works because you are ‘translating’ from one sense to the other.

Making Multi-Sense

We all learn and think differently. Some people see a film and remember the lines. Others remember the car chase scene, where others still remember how they felt about the characters. Any event you hold, any website you have, any interaction you make, anything, is all being perceived differently by people with different dominate senses.

So the question is, are you making sense to all the senses? I look at this a few ways. First, out of the 5 senses, we rarely engage taste and smell in the normal course of marketing (when I run events, I make sure I engage them both.) So that means hearing, seeing and touching. Do you provide content in text, in audio and in video? Do you provide tactile workable examples, and do you provide inspiration testimonials? These are relate to these three senses. If you are missing one out, you are missing out some of your audience (don’t feel guilty, I’m missing out some of mine too – it takes time to build it up.)

Next up is people’s motivational sense. It is considered that people are motivated in two basic directions – either towards success, or away from pain. Given this, do you make sense to both? If you marketing is all about success, then what motivation do you provide for those moving away from pain? And if your products are all about alleviating stress, then what about those who want to move towards something?

Being Multi-Touch

Our second strategy involves how people can interact with you and find you. Last week, when I published my PR 2010 framework, I updated my LinkedIn status to say that I have just published it, and provided a link. It just so happened that someone I’m connected with on LinkedIn saw that, read it, and contacted me. If I have just stuck to my usual Twitter stream, I would’ve completely missed it.

Likewise, I became friends with someone on Facebook the other day whose business I have helped through some of these principles (and a few others too – there’s more where this came from.) As I accepted his friend invite, I look on his profile to see that he was having whole conversations with people on his profile where he had posted links to my articles. There was a whole conversation going on about me but I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been multi-touch.

Multi-touch, for many, means thinking outside of the goldfish bowl. Don’t just use your preferred channels and methods of communication – experiment with other forms and see how you get on. At the least, as far as social media goes, you should keep your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles active, and I suggest using Flickr to store all your photos, while using Posterous to link a lot of this together. I regularly get people finding me through all 5 of these services.

Multi-touch really worked for me when Aaron+Gould marketed Touch 09 – an annual Christian woman’s conference with a lot of style. Over the course of a year, but concentrated over a 3 month period, we marketed the conference through multi-touch, across multiple social networks, digital channels, and traditional marketing. Of course, every touch was integrated and holistic, and linked back to the hub – the website where all the information, communication, and bookings existed. This approach increased by registrations by 100% – in a recession.

You also need to escalate multi-touch. Don’t leave your interactions at just tweets. Sending an email is still more personal than a tweet or facebook, because it requires more effort and is kept private. Set up Skype calls with the people that you connect with, and if you are able to, meet new contacts face to face. By escalating the level of touch you have, your relationship becomes stronger, more personal and more unique.

I can quite honestly say that I feel closer to people who I have met face to face and shared only a few tweets than those I have shared many tweets with. When I worked on a fashion start up, I sourced our designers by finding them on forums and emailing hundreds of potentials. After hundreds of emails, I developed the expression that a phone call is worth a thousand emails. It’s true.

And Finally…

In a shameless act of self promotion, and in the spirit of experimentation, I want to let you know that I actually consult with companies and individuals on these frameworks, and believe it or not, it even works. And if you want to see how this stuff looks in real life, check out Like Minds, and run a search on it too. It ticks most of the boxes.

Lift The Restrictions

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Scott Gould

Last week I attended the launch night of Carluccio’s in Exeter. I got to talking with the PR guys who had handled the event about my freshly released New PR in 2010 framework, and to illustrate the point, I conducted a little test. I quickly tweeted if anyone had anything to ask the people at Carluccio’s, and within seconds I had responses that kept coming for ten minutes or so. I was able to show to the PR guys that there had firstly already been a conversation about Carluccio’s taking place earlier that day, and that I was able to obtain instant reviews and carry out realtime customer service, with very little effort. You can see the tweets here.

Today I want to show why real time micro media is so important, using my framework from last week.

The model above illustrates the link between spreadability and relevance, measured from static to dynamic. My point is that as technology advances, existing technologies become more static. This means that the difference between static and dynamic is comparative between old and new technology.

As I did last week, let’s take TV as our example. Initially, TV was exceptionally dynamic in comparison to radio and/or theatre. Theatre was fixed to a location, and radio was fixed to a single sense. Television lifted these restrictions by providing entertainment and information without the need to be at the source and instead allowing access from the comfort of your own home, and without the need to supplement what was heard with images produced in their own imagination. Previously, location was governed; now location was guided because individuals could be entertained and informed wherever the user desired (to a certain degree.)

As tapes, and later DVDs, were introduced, this newer technology made TV in its existing form more less dynamic and more static. The medium of tape allowed people to record programmes and play them when they desired to, as well as hiring or purchasing other recorded videos. This lifted the restriction of time, because the viewer no longer had to watch when the programme was aired. Time had previously been governed, but now it was only guided. And so it continues:

Cable and satellite increased the number and therefore lifted the restriction of channels, and increased variety. At this point, terrestrial television became, like, so last season. And again, the number of channels means that the choice is less governed and more guided.
Built in DVD, VCR, Freeview, etc, lift the restriction of dependencies, because they are built into the device.
Hard drive recording on satellite and cable devices lift storage restrictions.
IP TV lifts device restrictions, as you now watch the programmes on your laptop, mobile phone, etc.
YouTube lifts even further time, device and channel restrictions.

Track back over each of these iterations of television and you will also note that each advancement increases the spreadability (ease of access, ease of use, ease to share) of television by becoming more dynamic, more customised, and therefore, more personal. And with each restriction that is lifted by the enabling of new technology, the less governed and more guided it becomes.

The more dynamic and therefore personal a technology is, the more spreadable it becomes.

Applying This To Small Business

I’ve said it again, and again, and again, that mobile technology will merge offline and online together. Recently the User Experience consultant Darren Smith wrote about Foursquare and the ubiquitous world of the future, and how social media technology is enabling real life interaction. I totally agree.

As in Darren’s article, as per my test at Carluccio’s, as well as the recent Exeter Tweetup, and in running Like Minds, real time micro media is a shinning example of guidance over governance, and the resulted spreadability, and the convergence of two opposites of on- and off-line becoming one.

This isn’t for everyone. But for the innovative few out there: by customising your offering through being more personal and more dynamic, by lifting the restrictions that your static competitors fix their customers to, you gain market differentiation and offering a far more compelling experience by creating an alternate, dynamic reality from the existing static one.

Phew! Quite a statement. To illustrate, consider the following restrictions pertaining to micro media and how they can be lifted:

Location. How can you provide high level of support wherever your customer is? Your static competitors require a phone or website – they haven’t even considered a tweet or facebook from a mobile phone.
Time. What happens when your customer is frustrated and it’s out of hours? Your static competitors are sleeping, not tweeting.
Device. Do you have mobile friendly portals for all devices? Your static competitors, if not friendly to none, are friendly only to the device they use.
Channel. Can you be found on whatever social network and micro media your customer prefers? Your static competitors, if they don’t just snub social media right out, probably only have a dead Facebook group at best.
Dependencies. Do you offer a simple and complete service, from start to finish? Do you have procedures to get the info you need in a few 140 messages? Your static competitors require signups, feedback forms, and long processes – all of which just frustrate an already frustrated customer.

By lifting static restrictions, you increase your ease of access, ease of use, and importantly, ease of shareability. As in the Carluccio’s test, realtime reviews come hard and fast, and a dynamic, personal experience will produce positive reviews that will be instantly shared.

PR 2010

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Scott Gould

First I said this, then, I said this. Now, this:

If you’ve arrived at reading my blog for the first time, or the first time this week, then you’ve come in the middle of a discussion on what I’m currently calling New PR, probably until a far buzzier word gets made up. This diagram above is how I see New PR working in 2010. Let me explain.

Metrics: Spreadability and Relevance

We all know that word of mouth is a not a marketing technique, because you can’t create it. You can only create the environment for it – by giving words for mouth, making something remarkable, etc. Spreadability therefore replaces reach, because as the volume of channels increase, the volume per channel decreases, and we therefore need more than ‘reach’ in a channel at one given time, we need spreadability over time and across channels. In many ways, this is value over volume.

Relevance is the difference between personal relationship and public relations. The former is dynamic (as per yesterday’s post), the latter is static. The former is homemade, the latter is manufactured, or factory made. What this also means is public relations is mass distribution, whereas personal relationship gains uniqueness through mass customisation – by being personal, it is unique and not one-size-fits-all.

Two Sides Of The Same Triangle

We don’t want to sacrifice the old wine for the new (again, see yesterday). We want to preserve static, whilst adopting dynamic.

The right side of the triangle is traditional public relations – it is centrally governed. This means the message is sent out via a press release, onto TV, onto radio, but at every point the message is governed, entrusted to editors, camera men and reporters to use what has been provided, make their edit, and then we approve. In TV, for instance – and I have been on the TV sets – everything is checked to ensure it is in line with the message, i.e. governed.

The left side of the triangle is personal relationship, which is centrally guided. The message is put out, but all along the way, like a chinese whisper, the message is adapted, changed, retold, updated, and a whole host of other synonymous activity. This change is guided, not governed. You cannot control it, only guide it. Therefore the ability for the message to preserve its original intention is determined by how clear the message is. Continually, the conversation is guided through the beauty of realtime media. But note again, it is guided, not governed. Think: retweeting, posting on walls, reblogging, trackbacks, pings, etc – all of this is adaptation of the message.

Working The Triangle

By the very nature of governance (the right side), the message is restricted to safe and controllable channels. This is a hands on approach. Take TV as an example. The production team produce something that is within the guidelines, according to a script, with roles that are cast. The programme is televised on a fixed channel that can’t be shared or retweeted, commented on, except when the programme is discussed using those digital forums, or even through a ‘did you see this last night’ conversation. But none of this is real time – production, airing, and review are all asynchronous.

This form – traditional TV – as far as I am concerned, is the most spreadable static medium because of widespread adoption – i.e., who doesn’t own a TV. No static medium has more spread, and in order to gain more spread, TV has to become more dynamic, hence this capped corner in the triangle.

TV that is aired live, with phone in interviews, etc, begins to move from the static to the dynamic – such as reality TV that envoke mass public hysteria and text-votes. However, even then, to see the programme one must be watching their TV device, and that particular TV channel – at the exclusion of other TV channels being watching simultaneously.

TV has now gain increased spreadability by becoming more dynamic and personal through the likes of YouTube and the iPlayer. It breaks the governance of channel, device and time by becoming on-demand. Better yet, the spreadability of YouTube through the left-hand channels of Facebook, Twitter and email enables the programme to swiftly move past thousands, millions, and hundreds of millions of eyes, as in the case of Susan Boyle and all the others. No surprise that the news today, then, from Brand Republic is online spending is now greater than traditional TV spending.

In order to progress up the left side – centrally guided – one must take a hands off approach and allow users to edit, adapt, mash and spread the message through the channels and in the methods that they please. You simply cannot have your hands on the message. As long as you do, it is yours, and it can’t become personal to the user, and homemade. To be personal to another, you must give it, or share it at least. The reward is far larger spreadability because the message has become personal, not public – this of course is basic community building, where the cause has to become personal to the individual – they have to make it theirs.

Taking Your Hands Off

How does the New PR consultant, who desires to guide personal relationship (not govern public relations) do this? In fact, take a step back – how does the company / brand / business muster the courage to relinquish their governance, in the fear of mis-guided efforts? This article on Social Media Today lists the Top Six Reasons Companies Are Still Scared Of Social Media – a pertinent reminder of what the fears are. However, when I talked through the social media strategy that the board of a charity had paid me to lead, I found the same fears. It was both interesting and striking to see how many of their concerns were either ignorance, or imaging worst case scenarios. Petty things like ‘Can we moderate comments’, were both almost insulting and hilarious – ‘Of course?!?!’ was my response.

Our aim then must be to remove ignorance, and prove the rarity of worst case scenario by proving the abundance of good and even great scenarios.

Having worked through those fears and tried to think it through from the other side, I’ve worked on a framework that can be reproduced for yourselves or your clients. As with the above model, this is a draft, so feedback is appreciated.

Voice. Establish the core of your message, and in turn, your market differentiation. This is pretty much a branding concern. This must be potent to your audience, and your voice strong enough to be heard even when others have mashed your message up. However your message may be edited, adapted and redistributed along the left side, your voice is still heard because it is that distinguishable to your audience.
Listen. This helps you identify the advocates who will help spread the message, as well as identify the needs of the market, enabling to you to build a far more accurate:
PRE. All copy, images, tweets, comments, blogs, discussions must be personal, relational, and show your expertise in your market. This means, practically, that you create a 140 character PRE bio. You have a PRE paragraph, PRE about copy, a PRE avatar, and a full understanding of PRE is to your market, written down, for those who are later going to PRE tweet.
PRE will also determine what is Not-PRE – the non negotiable things that you do not do, based on impressions that you do not want to create.
Multi-touch strategy. ‘Users are stupid’ is a useful thought to keep in mind (no offence, BTW). They use odd search queries, they often don’t think with initiative, so a multi-touch strategy takes your message to them, or at least has your message in the place that they will find it. Practically, it means creating a Facebook page/event/group, LinkedIn company/event/group, Twitter account (keep it PRE – a person, not a business), having a blog that has share buttons, etc. These must all be synchronised – use Facebook notes to import your blog, use Twitterfeed or Twitter Tools for blog to Tweet publishing, etc. These also build better SEO.
All these social media outposts (thanks, Chris Brogan), use the 140 PRE bio, the PRE paragraph, the PRE avatar. And again – use personal names who represent the company or brand.
Multi-sense strategy. Different people have different prominent sense. Therefore you need video, audio, micro-media, blogging, events, and yes, press releases. All your social media outposts above should clearly link to all your content, making it simple for anyone to access anything you are producing, from any channel that they access it. Easily said and very obvious, but seldom done right.

PAUSE. Up until this point, this is already performed, in large or in small, by existing marketers, PR consultants, etc. Setting this up should therefore be easy, as you are working with what is mostly already existing content, but re-expressing it through PRE. Therefore, this is still somewhat goverened as opposed to guided.

What comes after here is guidance. In the same way paid production staff, under an employed director, edit and produce governed content that is ‘signed off’, guided content is mashed up by unpaid users, under an influential socialiser, and the content is ‘handed off’.

New PR creates the role, not of consultant, advisor or ‘contact’, but the role of a socialiser, who here after guides personal relationship. So;

Inject and Infect. I completely agree with Seth Godin’s Idea Virus and I’ve successfully used it for years. Here you must inject your ‘idea virus’ (the message) into sneezers (advocates) who infect whole hives of people on your behalf. You have to know who the opinion leaders are, and infect them first. They will then do a bulk of your marketing work for you due to the influence they have.
Add. As everyone mashes up your content and message, the best thing you can do is add to it, not subtract. The socialiser guides the spreading by adding value through PRE.
Escalate by Sharing Your Voice. As new mashups, and new influencers come to the fore, you must escalate the level of relationship with these influencers, and also escalate the mashups by linking to them on your blog. You must share your voice with those who identify with it in return for their support. Remember, these are the people that are informing others’ with their reviews and opinions.
These people are easily identifiable: they comment, they retweet, they blog, they use your language, they initiate contact.
Measure. It is too easy for social media, and will be even easier with its successors, to lose track of time and not measure your effectiveness. Combat this by measuring social media return on investment and measuring your metrics bi-weekly. To learn how to do this, visit Olivier Blanchard‘s http://smroi.net, or attend Like Minds next month.
Review, Adapt, Extend. Adaptation happens almost daily, but you must also adapt and extend your strategy from a higher level than the way you write your tweets. This reviewing looks at new markets, new channels, new methods, and even changing this framework.

How To Get The Boss Or Client To Go With It

If you are either a social media savvy person in an organisation, or an agency trying to get clients to look at social media, then my advice is thus: Use a small, containable project, and ask for a small part of the research and development budget, to use the above to create a proof of concept. Document it fully, review each step and then provide a review to the powers that be on the return on investment.

Phew!

Its taken me a long time to thinking this through, develop a diagram, and write it up – and I’m fully aware that this is not comprehensive, has holes, and needs to be reworked. Leave your comments, please, as I’m very interested to know what ya’ll think.

Now, with all that thinking and writing, it’s time for lunch.

PR, Static Wine and Dynamic Wineskins

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Scott Gould

So The Good Book says you don’t put old wine in new wineskins. You put in the old wine in the old wine skin, and the new wine in the new wine skin, and then that way, both old and new are preserved.

Yesterday I started a little fire, on the subject of New PR. We all agree that social media (Facebook, Twitter, the mobile web, and the concepts behind them) is bringing about change in marketing, PR, advertising, etc, and amongst much hyperbole my point was, and I quote;

Companies are no longer able to procure their voice through paying an agency to write distant, removed press releases and expect them to connect and engage with their customers. Why? Because the press doesn’t form opinion anymore.

What followed was some great discussion, mostly contrary to my point, which you can read here. Today is part 2, which is in part a response to the comments, and in another part it’s that uncomfortable middle movie in a trilogy. Oh well.

Static and Dynamic

It is the case that the world is full of innovation. Something is created, and is fresh and new. But over time, thinking happens, abilities increase, and a new thing is made, that eventually over takes the old thing. Note that it doesn’t necessarily replace it, but it becomes more prominent. Think radio and TV. Think horses and cars. Think caves and houses. Think paper and computers. And if you’re Gen Y, think writing and typing.

It is also often the case that the first innovation, if it is a breakthrough, creates its own language that even outlasts its own life. The printing press gave birth to ‘The Press’ and ‘Copy’, language that remains despite its antiquity. Even ‘Script’ which predates the press has outlasted all its predecessors.

It is my observation that this innovative process also follows a pattern of increasing dynamic. Each new innovation grants new flexibility, new dexterity and new adaptability that renders the old thing somewhat static. And what fresher example to illustrate that the advent of social media. Static webpages give way to dynamic blogs and posts. Static updates give way to instant messaging and status updates. I’m sure you can fill in the gaps, which allows us to skip right to this:

Press is static. Social media is dynamic.

And you don’t put static press releases into dynamic wineskins.

All agreed. None of yesterday’s commentors would disagree. It’s obvious, right? Then why oh why are PR agencies, and other companies and firms, literally filling blogs with press releases? And why are the blogs they maintain devoid of names, and their Twitter accounts lacking faces, initials, or anything relationally accountable? Why are faces absent from their websites, their content lacking any differentiation or hint of personality?

Why is the dynamic being filled with the static?

The answer: they believe that social media equals public relations.

But it does not. Social media is the next curve. In mobile technology, it is the merging of offline and online, that will eradicate the difference between them. Everything is becoming connected – dynamic. Truly dynamic digital. As marketing, advertising, PR, new media, all begin to merge and the lines become blurred – this dynamic digital is not a successor, but a whole new innovation with new guidelines.

The New PR, the one that will become more prominent than the old PR, is personal relationship. In some ways, we’re not there yet. But in many ways, we’re certainly already there. Dynamic, personal interactions, like this example from Sarah Gilbert, or another on LinkedIn from Exeter’s own Sophy Norris.

Practitioners must begin to divide between the static and the dynamic, and the wineskins that they belong in. And I can tell you right away that social media is not a static wineskin. As we begin to divide the two, we can preserve the press release, and not muddy the blog.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss a framework that we can run this through.

The New PR

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE&fmt=18

In case you didn’t know, PR is changing. Companies are no longer able to procure their voice through paying an agency to write distant, removed press releases and expect them to connect and engage with their customers. Why? Because the press doesn’t form opinion anymore. Because customers have taken matters into their own hands, and found a way to get their reviews and opinions from real people with real experience.

Personally, I find it insane and insulting that companies think they can connect with me through cold and calculated statements that I might happen to read. PR needs to be reborn. Press Releases are antiquated remnants of a broadcast age and printed media. We need a rebirth for the engagement age of social media and beyond.

Allow me to introduce you to the New PR: Personal Relationship.

Say it to yourself, let the saliva flow. Let every rip-off PR agent quake in their boots. Let the Removed CEO‘s blood run cold. Because it is true. Personal Relationship. The public has no interest in a lifeless press release. PR is dead. Long Live PR.

Now breath. Let newness of life fill those lungs. And let it dawn upon you: the customer wants a personal relationship. Not quite a back-slapping relationship. Maybe not a share your lip gloss relationship. But they do want a relationship, and they want it to be personal.

In Case You May Have Forgotten

Whilst enjoying the booms of profit and becoming more and more distant from your customer, you may have forgotten how to be personal and have a relationship. So I’ll help you out.

First of all you have commonality. That’s what started your relationship with the customer friend in the first place. Remind yourself what you have in common, and build on that. Perhaps through your commonality, you and your friend will find more common ground, or even adapt to be more like each other. But it starts with commonality.
It takes more than things to be friends, and sooner rather then later you’ll need to contribute to the relationship. One sided friendship is abuse.
To earn trust, you will need to be consistent. Consistency is the foundation of trust. People who continually change can’t be trusted.
At this point, if you haven’t already, you care deeply for your friend. Emotions can go up and down, but after you have contributed and been consistent, this care transcends emotional whims and gets to the deeper parts of the heart. At this point, both friends in the relationship are prepared to put up with a certain degree of crap, every now and then – why? – because you care for each other. My friend, Apple, sure has let me down enough times. But I care for them.
For the relationship to truly last, as any married couple knows, you need communication. And any married couple knows that not all communication is a press release verbal. Remember, up to 93% of communication is non-verbal, according to our good friend Professor Mehrabian.

Personal Relationship. Simultaneously the simplest human instinct yet the most complex. Today I’ve discussed the change. Tomorrow, we’ll look at how we do this.

Copy and Paste

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Scott Gould

In setting the context for today’s post, it helps if I take a moment to shamelessly promote the good work a bunch of us have started with Like Minds. Last week I went from having a great idea, commitments from some speakers, and the help of a really great co-founder (Drew Ellis, take a bow) – to having a kicking website, paying sponsors, expert panelists, and best of all, actual paid bookings. It’s been a momentous seven days or so, but it would’ve been impossible if I wasn’t standing on the shoulders of giants.

You see this past week I’ve written copy, created press releases, and masterminded panels, but none of this thinking has been original on my part. It has been a case of finding those who’ve already done it, and copying and pasting. (Thank you, Media140.)

Of course this isn’t a secret. In any industry, you first find your voice by listening to the others around you, finding out how you are similar to them, and then once you have some confidence, establishing how you are different to them. In the digital industry this just happens far faster, and the advent of social media has made this ‘adaptation’ way of working quite the norm as long as your attribute the original author.

There is, for some people though, something unsettling about this, and I want to uncover it. In my mind, it’s about this:

The Truth and Lie of Experience

There is an understanding that the person with experience is not at the mercy of the person without it. I agree. Experience certainly trumps theory, and my first year of business has all been about gainly costly wisdom where there was once just mere knowledge.

Yet a lack of experience does not mean that we are left without any clue. The whole point of parenting is to guide the child’s decision making by providing ‘inside knowledge’ of life. Fast forward twenty or thirty years, put yourself around some great mentors, and it’s the same thing – you are getting insider knowledge.

The amount of pain I’ve avoided, mistakes I’ve sidestepped, etc etc has been reduced by copying and pasting the experience of others. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of failures, and I’m glad I have – but I often wonder how far I would’ve gone without the luxury of borrowing others’ experience.

In turn, providing others with your experience is then what blogging is largely about. That’s what wikis are about. That’s what church and the Bible is about. Knowledge share. Experience share. Copy and paste.

The question, then, is two fold:

Are you copying? If so, from where? If not: find people who you not only respect, but want to mimic in a small way. This means in person, through social media, through books and biographies, through documentaries, etc.
Are you pasting? If so, to where? If not: begin taking time out to think. Map out your life and see where you could be pasting in advice and experience from others.

What I’m thrilled about is in addition to the mentors in my life, I’m also copy and pasting from wonderful people who’re commenting on this blog. In particular, Robin Dickinson and Jim Connolly. You guys are great.

Thinking Outside Of The Bin

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Scott Gould

Coincidence. Sometimes wonderful. Other times, darn right annoying.

Yesterday was the soft launch of Like Minds, a gathering of like minded people around creativity, technology and fresh thinking. The slogan sums it up best: Collaboration over Innovation.

So around midday yesterday, I send the tweet that Like Minds is now open, and ready for registrations to attend our first conference in Exeter on the 16th October. So I’m expecting a nice bunch of in-the-buzz-of-it registrations to come in over the following hours, right? Guess again. Eventbrite, the service we’re using to take all registrations, decides to one of those days that is plagued by intermittent service. It’s not until late last night that the first (get that: first) registration comes through.

That’s pretty bad, right? Guess again.

The beloved feed service Feedburner (the way blogs get into people’s inboxes and RSS readers) also decides to have a day off. So all the momentum I had built through my blog dissipates in one beautiful and inglorious moment. Fortunately some people visited my blog by tweet or by routine – but all my wonderful readers who are signed up the easy way, didn’t get the message.

It all ended ok though because as we all know, Google are great on customer service and this was all resolved last night, right?

Guess again.

Feedburner still hasn’t picked up my feed, meaning this blog post probably won’t make it to more than a precious few. (Of course, you can help out by retweeting this article using the button at the end of the post – thanks!)

Coincidence. Not my favouite word right now.

Yet coincidence is, as I’ve pointed out, much of how marketing apparently works. I wrote about casting your bread on the social media waters and the fact that very often when people tell me how they heard about me it was through a series of events I had never predicted, anticipated, or even planned for. What then do you do when coincidence conspires against you?

These last 48 hours I’ve learnt to think outside of the bin. Forget the luxury of even having a box with which to think outside of – thinking outside of the bin is survival mode – the kind of thinking you need when you are scratching the ground as you are descending into a pit of FAIL.

Here’s my survival kit for thinking outside of the bin, courtesy of ‘coincidence’:

Fix the problem. Easier said than done. The rule here is that if you can’t fix it immediately, get someone on it, and while they’re trying to figure it out, you can:
Have a contingency plan. When emotions get the better of you, you need a framework with which to stick to, that you’ve planned in advance. This helps keep your head cool while everyone else is loosing theirs. Failing this:
Use multiple channels. In the absence of my auto-posting, auto-emailing, auto-feed-reading, auto-marketing system, I’ve become best friends with Facebook walls and events, old Ning profiles and good ol’ texting. Failing this:
Ask your friends to help. It takes a good dose of humility to ask for help – but if you’re doing business personally, then you understand that friends in business help each other out. So, hopefully you’ve built good relationships with others who can reach some of your audience for you. Hopefully. Failing this:
Prepare to bounce back. Convert the stress of ‘it isn’t working and what on earth are we going to do?’ into preparation for a huge bounce back. Write a great press release. Make the website better. Write your contingency plan while it’s fresh in your mind. Again: convert stress into preparation. Failing this:
Watch The Office.

My descent last night actually went one step further. Failing owning the office, I embarked on the most fruitless of excercises: trawling through Google Groups to find a Google employee who could help. Yes, I went to bed late last night.

So anyway, I hope this helps. It’s fresh thinking, that’s for sure.

And one other thing is certain, this is the most peculiar blog post for announcing a new event ever. (Unless someone can find something even more off the wall?) Hopefully Feedburner will have me back up and running soon, but in the meantime, I want to thank you for being a loyal reader who visits my site. As you know, I really appreciate you, even more so today. You’re a like mind

Yours, most truly,
Scott

P.S Don’t forget to click the magic share buttons below – I normally wouldn’t ask, but I really need it!