Dance With Strangers

Coffee meetings are my preferred means of discussion. They are more intimate than a rushed lunch and simply more civilized than a crowded happy hour. Coffee has been the lifeblood of communication for hundreds of years, people sitting around a cup of hot brewed java, the energizing effects breaking our brains out of it’s prolonged slumber. Often I’ll arrive at a coffee meeting early (it’s a blessing and a curse) and get the chance to look around at the other folks enjoying conversation over their mugs and a biscotti or three. People are always happy in the coffeeshop, the stress of the day has not arrived yet, only hope is apparent on the faces of those enjoying morning coffee.

The one additional challenge, which I enjoy, is recognizing the person you are about to meet. Sometimes you can get a clue from a Twitter avatar or LinkedIn profile, but often you are going in blind. I’m not suggesting this is a blind date per say, and as someone who has not had the opportunity to take part in that certain enjoyment I honestly would not know. But for me, as someone who is always there early, I watch the door and try to guess if the person coming through is my next meeting.

Well last week I had a coffee meeting scheduled but this time I was running a little late, so I didn’t have my same lookout position. I jumped into line, ordered a dark roast (black, if you must know) and then looked around. Near the back room a person sitting down was obviously playing the lookout role and we acknowledged each other with a very manly nod. Walking over we shook hands and sat down for our conversation. Now let me interject at this point and just say that I was introduced to this coffee meeting by my friend Tim Walker who thought this person and I would share several things in common.

From the get go the conversation was interesting, this gentleman had started an online business, had very vocal opinions, we both had families about the same size and his wife had a very fascinating job. About ten minutes in I noticed his resume in a portfolio and that he was writing down nearly everything I said. Strange, I thought to myself. Then I quickly thought to myself, I could use more coffee. Things progressed smoothly until this exchange:

Him: “So tell me about your team.”

Me: “Well we have a few people on the team, Tim, who you obviously know.”

Him: “Tim?”

Me: “Tim Walker”

Him: “At (COMPANY NAME THAT IS NOT MY COMPANY)

Me: “Um, I don’t work there, I work at BreakingPoint.”

Him: “Um, I’m really, really late for an interview.”

Yes, we had both been talking to the wrong person for nearly twenty minutes and this poor guy was very late for an interview with a company here in Austin. Eh gads. Fortunately, we both rushed to our actual coffee meetings and, I can’t speak for my new friend, it worked out simply fine. But I couldn’t help think about my new pal. What happened with his interview? Did he get the job? Suddenly, simply because of a cup of coffee, I was intrinsically involved with this stranger. An hour later I got an email from my mistaken coffee acquaintance, the subject line simply said:

“Best Interview Ever”

When time permits I’ve been known to talk just a wee bit about sports, especially the Red Sox. Often those posts are housed over on Big Pabelbon, started by my friend Aaron Strout. Because of this affiliation, some would call it addiction, I received this email:

Hey Kyle!

How are you? I was wandering from Red Sox blog to Red Sox blog, and came across yours listed in the blogroll section of OverTheMonster. I know Red Sox fans are pretty die-hard (especially when it has to do with the Yankees), so I thought you might appreciate this contest that Overstock.com is holding, called “The Ultimate Red Sox Experience.”

You get a chance to win tickets to see the Red Sox pummel the Yankees on October 2nd- including round trip air-fare,a pre-game VIP tour and the chance to turn the numbers on the Green Monster scoreboard during one inning. If you’re interested in knowing more there’s also a video that goes over the details.

Appreciate the contest? I LOVE the contest, especially since I live in Austin now, so it would be that much sweeter. But as a long time marketer and PR guy, who kind of “dabbles” in this “social media” stuff I also loved the pitch. Kudos to Selena Narayanasamy, the Director of Social Media Outreach at BlueGlass. Not sure if Selena knew some of the folks behind the Papelbon blog including Aaron, Tim Walker, Bryan Person, Adam Cohen, and Jim Storer…but let’s just say they are a bit of a big deal in the social media world and even bigger deals within Red Sox Nation.

Too much time is spent on the best practices of social media, or PR, or marketing, or lead gen….but what it all really comes down to is a few simple things that Selena did right:

1. Research your audience
2. Tell your story succinctly
3. Tell me why I would care
4. Make it easy for me to share the story

You could say the same thing for a great white paper landing page or email newsletter. The more things change in terms of our medium, the more the old best practices come in handy. I was so excited about this pitch, not simply because it really does seem like the ultimate Red Sox experience, but because it was a perfect example of a great communicator at work. If you want to check out the video it is below:

Because if you do you’ll click on this link and vote up the SXSW Interactive ’11 panel that I’m a part of with Tim Walker, Aaron Strout and Laura Beck. I’ve put the description below, hope you enjoy and you’ll take the time to sign up on the site and vote (all of 30 seconds). Thanks!

The Steroid Culture of Social Media: You Use?

Ever think about taking shortcuts to boost your numbers? You know, the numb that show the success of all those interactive social media marketing programs. The numbers that decide your end of year bonus. The numbers that make you “important” to all those other social media influencers. I know you have. You know you have. But did you use those performance enhancing social media techniques?

Humans are naturally drawn to shortcuts. Even when they are already successful. Take Barry Bonds. Not the Barry Bonds you remember with the bulging muscles in San Francisco. The younger, leaner version. The one who was with the Pirates and on his way to the Hall of Fame. Each day he worked hard on the fundamentals of the game. Then, boom, he was on steroids, a caricature of himself and a tarnished legacy. Why? The numbers competition. We all know the equivalent of a Barry Bonds in social media. Someone who is enhancing their performance the wrong way. Maybe it started with a simple list buy of Twitter followers. But then suddenly they were researching blackhat SEO techniques for a temporary boost in traffic. Then one day they wake up in a cold sweat after an all night Astroturfing session. It’s time to get help!

Join us for a frank discussion on how the steroid culture has infected the social media realm. We will discuss the signs of a social media steroid user, how it hurts us all and a 12-step program to rehab those that have already fallen down the hole.

Do you finish your day and realize you didn’t really accomplish anything?

Oh sure, you DID stuff, a lot of stuff. But nothing was truly accomplished. Ask yourself how you spent your time throughout the day. Were you going back and forth from task to task, biting of small bits of each task, only to swallow it quickly and move onto something else?

Or did you sit down, shut out everything else and eat up the entire task, while actually taking time to taste?

You will only be successful when you multi-task, not multiple-task.

It’s that time of year. No, not the dog days of summer. Trade show season is starting to rev up again for all of us B2B marketers. Looking around me in the hotel bar here in D.C. I think most of the folks are probably staffing booths over the next few days. This is how it is every year right around the middle of August. We all hop on planes and spend nights at hotels so that we have the privilege of sitting in a trade show booth for eight hours. Why do we do this every year?

Simple. It works. The leads from shows, assuming you did your research, are more qualified. They come out of the event already having seen a demo of the product. You can more quickly more to eval and shorten your sales cycle. What’s not to love?

Proper event marketing is a very disciplined practice and since we are doing more than 100 events this year we have had to practice ultimate discipline. Big to small. Major city to small. Each event poses different challenges and different techniques, but they all require one thing. You have to be ready to rumble.

Gearing up both mentally and physically for a trade show is important. It does take a toll and it is best if you are prepared going into the event. Tonite I will focus on what tomorrow’s event is all about, the type of prospect attending, what will resonate the most with these people, how to set up our presence and triple check that I brought enough business cards.

August through November is trade show season. Are you ready to rumble?

Conventional Wisdom is what knowledgable people know. / Conventional Belief is what the masses think they know.

Unfortunately we often times confuse conventional belief with conventional wisdom, particularly in marketing circles. For example, if you just listen to the masses, social media is still THE top vehicle for marketers. But shift through the noise. Log off Twitter and those annoying #chats and talk to some really smart marketers who are working in the trenches. The conventional wisdom has it that the tried and true practices of marketing are making an enormous swing back into the mainstream. But they have been rejuvenated by the social media assault of 2008-2010.

Direct mail. Email Marketing. Events. And, yes, even advertising, are getting the best results these days.

But today they are done in a smarter and more focused manner. Because of all the social media noise these smart campaigns have become a breathe of fresh air. Certainly creativity and strong content still win the day, but the “old school” delivery mechanisms remain the best way to sell your product.

I’m not trying to write some “social media is dead” post, not in the slightest, but it goes back to something I wrote in January of 2007, when the blog was the highest form of “social”, in the post “Blogs are to hieroglyphics as Scoble is to _______?“:

“Content is still King, the blog is just one form of transportation.”

Don’t be blinded by conventional beliefs that social media is a revolution that you must be a part of or you will never succeed as a marketer. Instead listen to the conventional wisdom and realize that social media is (still) just another fantastic tool for you to use. Use it as a compliment, not in place of fantastic content and creative results-driven marketing campaigns. Always trend towards the wise and away from the believers.

People love to talk about customer service stories. Good, bad and ugly. We all share them with each other as if they are our own personal scars. Head on over to Twitter, Facebook, Yelp or any other online network and you’ll read what people think about the customer service they just received. We all know that more people talk about horrid customer service. Sure I have a large amount of those stories (I’m looking at the continuously poor service of ING). Fortunately though people do take the time to provide some kudos when the service is divine. Today, I share one of those stories.

Marketing tools can often be confounding. They are overly expensive and over designed. They get deployed before they have a team to support the tool. They work, sometimes. But we try them all in hopes that they deliver what we need and provide us with more insight into the work we are doing. One of the tools I use each day is Act-On software and you can read how it provides real-time B2B marketing analysis, email management, demand gen automation and more, but it is not the tool I care to discuss today. Today I want to talk about Andrea and Dan, two people who work at Act-On and provided me with a wonderful example of proactive customer service.

One morning last week I got an email that Andrea and Dan, helping us with another issue, came upon something we had done wrong in implementing our forms. This was not a major deal, but it was causing problems in certain browsers (yes, that means IE). Now here is what could happen after they discover this issue:

1. Ignore the issue, AKA “Bad Customer Service”
2. Alert us to the issue, AKA “Customer Service”
3. Tell us how to fix the issue, AKA “Good Customer Service”
4. Fix the issue then tell us about it, AKA “Amazing Customer Service”

The fourth form of customer service is what I call proactive customer service and it goes way above and beyond what you expect of any company. But it is also that type of customer service that creates a loyalty to a company, a product, a person, a brand. That morning Andrea and Dan of Act-On took the fourth approach on customer service and it made a huge difference for my day. Rather than trying to figure out the problem and wasting a few hours I was off and running. Proactive customer service is the ability to put your customer’s needs completely ahead of your own, but then going even one more step further and providing a true solution.

Thanks Andrea. Thanks Dan. Thanks Act-On.

Take a moment and share your story of proactive customer service.

Sitting in DFW on the first leg back up north for a Maine vacation and I’m looking forward to a week off. not surprisingly it has become harder to actually and truly unplug. Just look at this post written from my iPhone. But there are ways to unplug in today’s highly connected world. Even when you have coverage on your phone or wifi in that rented cottage.

One example; change the email preferences on your phone to not push automatically. Better yet, turn that account off on your phone for the week. Another tip; remove all your Twitter search notifications related to work and disable any Google alerts for the week.

Obviously the best thing to do is shut it all down. But I do like to be somewhat connected. So I try to do some little things to make it a more relaxing time.

How do you unplug?

The nervous tension of the first day of school is a feeling that all of us can remember. Getting dressed in that new outfit you bought with your mom. Pimped out new sneakers, glistening and still smelling of fresh rubber. Hands in pocket looking cool at the bus stop, hoping to alter your image during this next school year, or at the least keep it at the same level. Seeing friends again after months apart and by the time that first day ends it is as if you never had a summer vacation. The first day is like any other day. And you feel comfortable and complete.

This morning I woke up and put on dress pants and a newly laundered shirt, a rarity for myself. Polishing my shoes I woke up extra early in order to prepare a strong agenda for the day, answer any early emails and mentally prepare myself for what felt like a first day. Driving to work I ignored the radio and sat alone in silence contemplating the day and my overall plan. This was exciting and I could not wait to make some first impressions and start it all anew.

Today we welcomed three new members to our marketing team at BreakingPoint and it felt amazing to be surrounded at a conference room table with specialists in their respective fields. Hear them ask intelligent questions and quickly contribute to our team objectives. I was seemingly catching up with old friends after a long summer break and by the end of the day I was comfortable and complete.

A few weeks ago I talked about Facebook privacy and how I purged my “friends”. To be honest I meant to write this post the day after the original one but I’ve been simply blown away by the amount of people who sent me messages telling me how they were doing the same. Most did it for reasons outside of privacy, but the main theme was the need to simplify their lives a bit and that included social networking. It also inspired many debates with friends on how they do the same thing on LinkedIn, but use Facebook to connect with more people (this still seems absurd to me). Overall there is a sense that people are trying to find ways to connect with people, but reduce the noise, while protecting their online presence just a bit.

But there was one question I got the most. How did I make the decision on who to keep as a FBF and who to let go. Actually, it wasn’t hard. Before I did anything, I created this decision tree:

Seriously, this is what I did and it made complete sense for me because I’ve chosen to use Facebook to share my personal family life with friends. Your use of Facebook, or any social network, is completely your choice. Nobody can tell you how you should use it. But once you decide your goal for that social network think seriously about who you want in that network and be sure and clean it up once in a while in order to be true to your goal.