Okay, so maybe you caught my rant last week…or my condensed version the day after.

Now I want to try to present a more formalized version.

I'm torn, actually. Part of me says  "is this really that new?" And, truth be told…it's not. It goes right along with things people like Seth Godin, Hugh MacLeod and Christopher Locke have been saying for a while now.

And at the same time…while people—especially agency folk—nod their heads as if to say "Yep…yep…that makes a lot of sense." …no one is doing anything about it.

In fact, they seem to be going in exactly the WRONG direction. They are blogging…and they're on twitter, and facebook…they're podcasting or publishing webshows…but they are doing it as a business-as-usual promotional tool, as opposed to actually trying to engage their markets in a real and meaningful way.

This shift isn't about putting new tools to use to get your message out to the masses in a new environment. It is about re-thinking EVERYTHING…including the way you use traditional media as a means of engaging in and listening to your customers and prospects.

So, "The Rules" aren't some new methodology for "Social Media Marketing." They are a philosophical cornerstone that should act as the foundation for your ENTIRE corporate communications strategy: marketing, PR, advertising, customer service training, internal memos, SOPs…the works.

In light of that, let me re-intorduce the Rules:

This stands in stark contrast to the way most marketers interact with their market, which usually involves something along the lines of "Hey, I know you're in the middle of something…but BUY OUR STUFF! Okay, thanks for listening…as you were…"

And most of the time, they're really not trying that hard to get THAT right.

Now I'd like to explore The Rules a little more in depth…

1. Act from Passion
This is what's missing from so much of the business out there today…not just the marketing. The business entity as a whole.

If you aren't passionate about what you do…why in the hell are you doing it??? Worse, if your agency isn't passionate about what you're doing…why in the hell are you letting them speak for you???

Sure, we all get in ruts now and then. But if you can't get excited about something in your business, you don't stand a chance of getting anyone else excited about it. Change your product, or your business model, or your target market…change SOMETHING to get that fire back, and you're halfway to winning the battle.

If you're not getting out of bed in the morning eager to do more than "pay the bills," then you have some serious re-evaluating to do.

If you have a passion…pursue it. Pursue it with everything you have in you. That passion will translate well with your audience, and it's infectious. And it will sustain you when things get rough.

It's not the only way to succeed…but it's the only way that's worthwhile.

2. Speak with Authenticity
You can't fake passion…not long-term, anyway. If you get all geeked out about something, it's going to show, day after day after day. It will be evident by the way you speak about it today, and the way you speak about it tomorrow. Because people will be able to see how you spoke about it yesterday.

That's not to say you have to be completely transparent. We're all human, and nobody wants to see every one of our flaws on display any more than we want them to.

But when you try to hide your very humanity, you lose…very publicly…very shamefully. Unfortunately, many companies…especially big ones…try to ignore the fact that they are made up of people. The travesty is that there are often people with a deep and abiding passion for what the company is doing that are never given a voice.

Today, letting those voices be heard can be a huge boon to your company. Not only in the fact that that contagious energy will spread faster than swine flu (that's right…I went there)…but because others will realize that you have watchdogs within your own ranks…people who believe in the integrity of the company and just might not hesitate to call you out.

How many companies have gotten in trouble in recent years because they thought no one was looking?

Want to cause a sensation in the marketplace? Admit you made a mistake BEFORE anyone else calls you out on it.

Speaking with authenticity means embracing the humanity of those who make up your company, your customers and your prospects…and making it easy for them to give voice to that passion.

3. Listen Responsibly.
I've been trying to make the case for publicly engaging with your customers and prospects. A key factor in this is learning to listen responsibly.

Criticism isn't bad. It really isn't.

But some companies (those who don't get #2), rather than hear what people are saying, go immediately on the defensive. Or worse, the offensive. Cease and desist orders. Libel suits. Gag orders.

Shush.

Listen to what people are telling you. And if they have a legitimate grievance…then fix it.

You have an unprecedented opportunity to find people who are offering feedback to you. If you'll be still, listen…then before you act simply ask yourself…"are they right?"

That's a customer you don't have to lose. And the private audience they would have told their story too, instead has a front row seat to your public efforts to fix the problem and do right by your customer.

…or you could simply unleash the hounds. The choice is yours. But your audience has a choice too…

4. Give generously.
This I think is going to be another hard one for business to swallow. Give? Really?

No. Not just give…give generously.

If you have someone willing to shout the virtues of your product or service from the mountaintop…reward them. No strings attached. Simply "We've noticed you, and we want to say things. Here's our latest product." Or better "Here. You're the first to see this. Until now, it's only been a rumor. And it's yours, free."

Give your time. Your attention. Your Gratitude. Your stuff. Why?

Because your customers are connected to lots of people who aren't. Yet.

Your prospects are going to buy based on recommendations from people they trust. The best thing you can do is have a handful of people acting from passion on your behalf, and encourage them to speak with authenticity about you.

Try and control the message, and it is going to come back and bite you. But cultivate real relationships with them and get out of the way…and you have a chance at real, lasting success.

5. Serve Tirelessly
Sadly, this is where most businesses fail on a massive scale. They're in the business of selling stuff, instead of serving others.

All of the other rules actually come out of this one. If you approach them from any other perspective, you're not going to have the stamina to make it in the long run.

All too often, business leaders get caught up in serving the wrong people. CEOs and managers profess to be devoted to serving their customers. Most of the time it is lip service. The rest of the time, the effort is wasted.

It is your front-line staff's job to serve your customers. Your job as manager or officer is to serve your employees.

Take just a minute with that. It's a little counter- intuitive. Your job is to serve the people you are paying, not the people who are paying you.

Businesses operate under the misguided notion that marketing sells the product or service, and the front-line staffers are simply place-holders there to handle the transaction.

The front line, rather than being treated like skilled workers, are more often like commodities. Like "human resources."

The first thing I'd do is destroy your HR department and replace it with an Employee Relations department. Not rename…REPLACE. You can re-label a cancerous tumor an "Accellerated growth area," but it doesn't change its destructive nature.

Your goal should not be to bring your employees in line with the company, your goal should be to structure your comapny so your employees have everything they need to serve your customers.

If you're a public company, I pity you, because your entire company's sole existence is likely dominated by it's fealty to ravenous, parasitic shareholders. A few lucky companies aren't. But most publicly traded companies are more concerned about next quarter's share price than cultivating life-long customers through exceptional service.

I was a hotel manager in such a soul-crushing company, and struggled to take care of my employees in the face of policies and procedures that seemed specifically designed to devour it's front-line staff like a Suburban burns through gasoline.

If you think your company's policies are simply "business practices," then you are dangerously mistaken. Dealing with that job took me to a very dark place that took me years to recover from once I left. And I know I'm not alone…I've got a good friend who stayed for five years after I left…and it only got worse.

Conference calls were all focused on "delivering more shareholder value," and hardly a word was spoken about serving customers. Increasing Revenue Per Available Room, sure. Getting more Heads In Beds, absolutely. But nothing about "how can we improve our guests experience while they're here?" And definitely not "can we do anything to help our employees take better care of the guests?"

If you want to serve your customers, serve the people you hired to take care of them…and get out of their way.

If you don't have employees, then ALL of your efforts should be focused on worshiping your customer. Not in a "customer is always right" fashion.

(That is a stupid adage…your customers are as human as the people who make up your company. )

I mean worshiping your customer in a sense that you don't want to take their money unless you are certain you can deliver an amazing experience. Absolutely certain. I don't care if you're a bed and breakfast, a dentist, an ad agency or two guys in a truck with lawnmowers and weed eaters.

The economy and technology are shifting society. Time isn't money. Attention isn't money. Hell, money isn't even money.

Trust is money. If you have former, the latter will be easy to come by. If you start with trust, each sale will bring more and more sales with it. Unfortunately, the converse isn't true. If you start with money, you will struggle for each and every sale.

That is the nature of the new marketplace. If you want to win, you must win trust. And you can only to that by authentically, generously, passionately, tirelessly serving.

I wonder if you have what it takes…

Posted via email from The Lefthanded Writer’s Everything

I don't know that I'm going to read anything better than this today…time to go make something happen ;)

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

– Sir Francis Drake
who sailed in 1577.

(via http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/?ShowMe=Life56)

Posted via email from The Lefthanded Writer’s Everything

via sciencedaily.com

Posted via web from The Lefthanded Writer’s Everything

I've heard encouraging things from a few of the people who managed to wade through the whole thing (one referred to it as the "Danifesto." I kind of like that). And as I've thought a little more about it, I've managed to give a little structure to the ideas I rambled about at length ;)

And so, here they are:

I think I might get some blowback on this. Much of the above doesn't sound very professional. "Business is Business, " usually austere and objective and detached. Passion? Give? Serve?

On the other hand, I'd argue, this stuff should be common sense for anyone in any type of customer service role.

If you want to start building relationships (and, in fact, you NEED to start building relationships) with your prospects…I don't think there is a single one of these you can leave out.

I'll elaborate in depth on each of these rules next week.

(…the Danifesto. Hehe. I really like that. ;) 

Posted via email from lefthandedwriter’s posterous

I couldn't sleep last night.

I finally dozed off around midnight and was up again at 4am. And I was thinking about—God help me—the future of marketing.

No, seriously.

Now, I'll admit I'm a hardcore AdGeek. And, yes, I think a lot about marketing. But it normally doesn't keep me up at night, even when I'm working on stuff for my own clients, much less thinking about the business at large.

And the last thing I wanted to do was write some long dissertaion on how marketing is changing and what we need to be doing to get ready and blah, blah, blah…

Yet…here we are.

See, I am a marketing copywriter (Yes, I KNOW you know that. Shush, I'm talking). I've written print ads and TV spots and radio spots. Lots of them. I've written websites and landing pages and email blasts. And I've commented before (a few years ago) about how, while we as an industry were talking about what to do when the "the change" happened…the change happened.

Of course, people are still talking about what to do when the change happens, and the change is still happening even as I type this. But I digress…

Let me see if I can show you the perspective I'm coming from here, starting on a macro scale, and moving into personal detail, before I get to what kept me up.

Iran and China, two autocratic, authoritarian states, can't control the news. For years, if you controlled the medium, you controlled the message. Now all it takes is a cell phone, and the message slips through your fingers no matter how tight your grasp. In china, there were the earthquakes that hit right before the Olympics. In Iran, it's the post-election protests.

Here little is different. Within the last two weeks we lost David Caradine, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. North Carolina's governor was embroiled in scandal. Washington is trying to hash out health-care reform and revive a steadily sinking economy. And I've gotten the latest on all of them not from NYT, or CNN, or even Google News (all of which I get email updates from), but from Twitter or Facebook.

The Christian Science Monitor, one of the nations oldest nationally-circulated dailies, announced earlier this year that they were shelving their entire print operation and going completely digital. Word is that NYT and a few others are seriously considering similar options…even though no definitive revenue model has been developed yet.

Now then…as an Internet junkie, I couldn't be more thrilled. But as a marketer, I'm a little dismayed. Because it's not just about the news.

See…I don't watch TV. Well…let me rephrase that. I'm home with 3 boys during the day…so I watch a lot of cartoons (quiet…this post is not about my child-rearing skills). Or I watch the kids play video games.

Just as often, we're at the park, or the zoo, or a museum (see…I give them plenty of enrichment, too. So there.). When they nap, I'm on the computer working. When they sleep, I'm on the computer working…or I'm on the computer watching Hulu.com.

I can't tell you the last full :30 or :60 spot I watched.

But, looking at the last purchases I've made…from the Dell Mini 10 that I'm writing this on, to the Chik-fil-a we ate for dinner last night…those purchases were definitely influenced by marketing…just not print or broadcast.

Now, I know what you're thinking…one can't assume the market behaves the way you do. And you're right. But I'm not basing this solely on my own behavior. Chick-fil-a last night was my wife's idea. She's not on Twitter, and has only in the last few days started a Facebook account (and hasn't checked it since ;). But she received the Chick-fil-a special offer via email. She plans the grocery shopping using the sale updates on the grocery store websites and a few "frugal shopper" lists she belongs to.

And judging from the people I know who ARE on Twitter and Facebook, even when they DO watch TV, they are tweeting and updating during the commercials. Heck, my grandfather just set up a Facebook page and my grandmother uses email to keep in touch on mission trips deep into the Brazilian jungle (both are staunchly pre-boomer).

I'm not giong to go so far to say traditional marketing us dead. But I do think it's in trouble. And so is anyone who is pouring most of their marketing budget into it. 

Unfortunately, too many people get into online/digital marketing and push hard for SEO. Optimization is like good design. It can important, but it is a secondary (possibly tertiary) element.

Now, there is no "medium" where the message can be self contained. The message might be initiated in traditional media (though it increasingly is not), but once out there, it takes on a life of its own. And it is likely that someone else—someone in the former audience—will use it to make something more interesting. More engaging. More inpactful.

As media gets more social and more interconnected, it becomes less important to "be found" and more important to actually MATTER. Because if you matter, if what you do matters, if what you say matters…then the people you matter to will spread your message to others to whom it might matter, in whatever form they deem relevant. 

Reach is being re-defined. It used to be to spread your message to as many people as possible and hope it sticks with a certain percentage. Online technologies today mean that it is possible to send your message across deep but narrow networks of people that are going to care about it.

You don't have to make your message appeal to the masses. This is a good thing, because the more people you want to attract, the more diluted your message must be. But the more specific you are, the more likely your message will be to resonate with the people who matter to you.

But this requires a dramatic shift. your marketing efforts will need to look less like advertising and more like PR. Less like sales and more like conversation. Less about you, and more about your customer.

There are people out there who are doing it right. CEOs, managers and sales people who are engaging their customers on twitter. Companies using blogs to help their customers rather than simply talk about themselves. Business owners using carefully crafted emails over a month, rather than a 4000-word online sales page, to not only deliver the message, but build a relationship.

I'm not talking about a casual "come on over for barbecue…here, look at these pictures of my cat" relationship, but one of trust that comes from engaging with your prospects, listening to their concerns, answering their questions and treating them like more than the next sale. 

I'm not going to forecast the future of the marketing medium. Right now it's up in the air as to whether the future of online media is going to be one which is federated, through something like Facebook Connect or Google Friend Connect, or aggregated, through something like Posterous or Friend Feed.

It will likely involve audio, video, pictures, text, flash, and who knows what else, spread across multiple sites, mediums and likely live real-world events, where people can choose when, where and how they interact with you.

But I can say with certainty that the future of marketing will be one of personal connection and one-on-one relationships with customers. Because they are listening. And if you're not talking, someone else is.

Truth is…it's easy.

Start a twitter account. Don't know who to follow? Visit http://search.twitter.com and search your company name. See what pops up.

Now here's a tip that sounds counter-intuitive: bad remarks are better than no remarks. Not in the same way that "any press is good press." Bad remarks let you know that your company has let someone down. Twitter gives you a chance to connect with them and make it right.

If no one is talking about you…then your company isn't making much of an impact. You've got a lot of work to do. More on that later.

Find the people who are talking about you…good or bad. Passion, for good or bad, is important. If you can convert a nay-sayer into an evangelist for your brand…you win. Or, if you can turn a mildly interested customer into a zealot…you win.

And all you have to do is show them a little attention— not lip-service, but genuine attention. Talk to them. Be more interested in fixing than explaining. Then take the best two to five members of the crowd, and reward them for their efforts.

I followed a link from someone I follow on Twitter to his review of the new Mini that Dell had sent him for free. It was an honest review, with the good and bad spelled out in plain English (with photos). They didn't even ask him to review it. They sent it to him to say thanks, with no strings attached.

From that review, I went to Dell.com to check it out. I read other reviews. A week later I was walking out of Best Buy with one under my arm.

…

Last week I was talking to a colleague 75 miles away via Gmail chat. While we were talking, he decided he needed a new camcorder. While we talked, he did some research. He read reviews online. He asked a few friends online about it. He ordered it. Within 30 minutes, he'd gone from "I think I need a new camcorder" to "It should be here on Wednesday." And he was as well-armed to make the decision as anyone who might have spent a few hours thumbing through consumer reports. Maybe even better.

…

Yesterday, my wife got an email from Chik-fil-a saying they were giving out free chicken sandwiches from 5pm-8pm. Guess what we had for dinner…along with fries and drinks? And we saw lots of people there getting shakes and brownies and other stuff. It was standing-room only inside. And I know I'm not the only one who talked about it in Facebook and Twitter. I doubt they lost any money.

Contrast this to the KFC fiasco, where they promised people free chicken, and then pulled the rug out from under excited customers. (has anyone out there received their "raincheck?")

Again, marketing in the future is going to trend toward a relationship with your customers, and not "the same old advertising, but on the internet." Use blogs, Twitter, video…whatever feels right. Then, once you've figured out how to do it online, maybe you might think about…oh, I don't know…giving it a shot in the real world with customers, face-to-face?

Point is, the old traditional way is in bad shape, and the new way hasn't been codified yet. So get out there. Try something new. Something bold. Something brash. Something genuine.

I am. (stay tuned ;)

Posted via email from lefthandedwriter’s posterous

One of the most valuable things you can have as a marketer is unfettered access to interested prospects. KFC is destroying a HUGE opportunity to get just that.

Their current promo—an online coupon for free chicken—was an awesome way to build an enormous list of people who are obviously interested in eating chicken, at least occasionally.

And if you give them free chicken, they are actually going to look forward to the next email from you.

But if you promise them free chicken in return for their email address…and then DON’T give them the free chicken, then you have just tricked them into giving you their email address.

And that’s what they’re doing…if you sign up now you get taken to a page where you hear: *so, sorry* but people are TOO interested in free chicken (who knew???)…so we had to slam on the brakes!

Instead you are told to GO to the nearest KFC and fill out a form for a RAIN CHECK for free chicken! You’ll get your free chicken some day.

We promise!

Yeah…you know, it doesn’t matter if you were trying to trick them or not…that’s how they are going to feel (and since
visitors aren’t told that the promotion is unavailable until AFTER they enter their email address…it feels pretty tricky to me—and I didn’t even give them my email address).

And now, every time you contact them, they are going to remember how dumb you made them feel. How shady the whole thing seems.

Instead of how delicious that free chicken was.