Social Media is Live Jazz

This morning, Thelonious Monk revealed to me how we should really be thinking of Social Media. Forget the Social Media Guru. Social Media is pure American jazz, and its practitioners are Social Media jazz artists.

On most days, I listen to an audio book on my one hour (plus) commute from the western suburbs of Boston to my office in Newton, but this morning I just couldn’t locate my iPod. I ran to my CD collection and randomly grabbed Thelonious Monk’s, Misterioso, a live album from 1958. About three numbers into the album, it struck me. Social Media is live jazz compared to classical e-mail and direct marketing.

In jazz, you introduce a theme and your tightly knit network of colleagues back you up and then take turns exploring every aspect of the theme. They turn it around and pull it inside out. Sometimes you throw in a completely different yet recognizable melody to make sure people are paying attention, but play it in the context of the piece. Others echo (reTweet) the theme or travel down alternate harmonic paths.

The really cool thing about the live recording is that in the background, you hear the din of life. Conversations rumble below the music. Glasses and bottles clank raucously between notes. Occasionally someone in the crowd bursts out in laughter or exclamation. And yet, they are still tuned in to the music. They react to the solos or a particularly clever turn on a phrase or rhythm that leaves you breathless. And sometimes someone in the audience will call out with a whoop that perfectly fits the rhythm and key of the music.

It’s poetic, sometimes clever and sometimes messy. Sometimes, even the messy is poetic. Maybe it’s not the perfect metaphor, but it’s revealing how this uniquely American art form is so closely emulated by the Social Media phenomenon. Maybe it couldn’t have been developed anywhere else.

There – I’ve thrown down a melody. It’s all yours now.

Rob Teplansky

Trust Agents + Tactical Transparency = 360 Degrees of Social Media

Late last year I attended a webinar by Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and Julien Smith (@julien) in which they talked about how to be a Trust Agent. During the webinar, Julien mentioned that the book Tactical Transparency by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens (@johnchavens was one of the best around, so I picked up both books. Turns out that Trust Agents and Tactical Transparency are perfect companion pieces for anyone interested in either learning more about social media themselves or promoting the concept of social media within their organizations.

Where Trust Agents offers loads of practical advice for what you can do to become a Trust Agent, Tactical Transparency lays out a strategy and rationale for the organization.

As a marketing professional with an interest in nudging your company or your client towards more active involvement in social media and use of social media tools and strategies, the information in these two books offers a range of options and entry points, along with compelling examples, success stories and cautionary tales. There are also links to outstanding tools and resources. Having just finished reading Tactical Transparency, I was particularly struck by how it builds on Trust Agents (even though Tactical Transparency was published first) to give you a 360 degree view of the current marketing and communication environment.

These are both must-reads for marketing and communications professionals.

Rob Teplansky

Teplansky Communications

Don’t Get Blogged Down: Good Strategy Makes Good Blog Content Easy

For many years now, I’ve listened to this argument repeatedly:

“I know blogs are the way to go, but no one here has the time.”

I’m sorry, but this is just wrong.

There are a couple of misconceptions and outright fallacies that contribute to the perception that blogging is too hard:

• You don’t have to blog every day (but you do have to blog every week and you do have to be consistent).
• Senior management doesn’t have to blog weekly (but they should contribute thoughts, interviews, and quotes regularly).
• Blog entries aren’t necessarily personal journal entries (but they should address topics and issues that are relevant to your audience).

So where does all this resistance content come from?

I would argue that at least 50% – maybe more – of what you need to create content for your blog already exists. So, cut your trepidation in half right now!

If you are a manufacturer or retailer, you will find that the product descriptions on your web site will bring you half way towards a blog entry.  The other half is the story of how you created or found the product and the effort and care you took to introduce that product to your customers. Or perhaps the other half is a unique story or customer experience related to the product. Do you have more than 52 products? That’s a year’s worth of weekly blog entries.

If you already produce white papers, research reports, books, podcasts and other sophisticated content, you have a great resource in those pieces. Your marketing strategy has been built around the messages in that content. Your blog should also be built upon those messages. A single white paper may have enough content for half of five to ten blog entries. A podcast may be good for half of three to five. A research report or book can supply you with half of the content for six months to a year of blogs. The other half is your sincere interest in audience feedback on that content and questions to solicit information that will help you to serve your customers with better service or new products.

Have you presented at an industry event recently? The presentation you delivered is probably good for half of a couple of blog entries, and the questions you fielded during the Q & A portion of your presentation are fodder for the other half.

Your marketing strategy is about delivering messages that are consistent, well thought out, and designed to position your company to effectively sell your products and services. If you are effective at marketing, you have developed (or have plans to develop) the content that will be used to convey your message. Blogs don’t have to change the game, they enhance it. Don’t get blogged down in concerns about where all that blog content is going to come from because half of it already exists. Good strategy makes good blog content easy.

Have you encountered the same objection in your organization? How have you overcome it? Or have you? What do you use as source material for your blog entries?

Rob Teplansky

Teplansky Communications

Marketing’s Fragile Balance: When to Pounce

I think that I’ll stick with the complex B2B service theme I started last week, primarily because there are so many layers and there is so much more to say. In my last post, I drew some parallels between social media, globalization and outsourcing, with the common thread being trust and transparency. This week, I’d like to explore the development of trust a bit more, and how to develop an understanding of when it’s time to ‘pounce,’ so to speak.

There is a significant educational component to marketing complex services, especially if outsourcing is involved. To further muddy the picture, the maturity of the both the lead and the marketplace are complicating factors. For example, in a growth market, you will need to educate the lead on the potential value of the service you provide, the process for outsourcing and transitioning the service, and arguments to counter resistance to outsourcing in addition to selling the lead on the idea that you are the most qualified, innovative and cost-effective solution. On the other hand, a more mature 2nd or 3rd generation outsourcing requires a different approach. You are no longer convincing the lead (or perhaps your client) that outsourcing is the way to go. Instead, your focus is convincing them to move along the value chain and approach the relationship from a less tactical and more strategic approach. If you’ve built trust along the way, you’re off to a great start. On the other hand, if the market is saturated, and you’re only hope is to defeat an incumbent to win new business, a completely different approach is required. Trust and transparency are critical in this effort.

The tricky part is understanding when the education is complete and it has become time to push the lead towards a decision. Push too early and you may scare them back to the comfort zone where they continue their in-house service delivery model. However, it is equally comfortable to put off the decision indefinitely if they don’t receive that firm nudge.

In the world of social media last week, there were some interesting parallels with the announcement of the Third Tribe venture by Darren Rowse of Problogger, Brian Clark of Copyblogger, social media ‘superhero’ Chris Brogan, and Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication. The premise? That the traditional ‘two tribes’ of social media, made up on one side of those who never ask for a sale and on the other by those whose approach is likened to that of the used car salesman don’t provide enough options. The Third Tribe would be made up of those who understand that sometimes your audience requires a nudge.

Where do you draw the line? It’s a fragile, and critically important balance.

Rob Teplansky

Teplansky Communications

Trust & Transparency: Social Media’s Lessons for Outsourcing

Last week, I attended a meeting of the New England chapter of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, an organization in which I have been involved since its inception in 2005. The meetings are regularly attended by a cross-section of professionals representing different roles in an outsourcing transaction: the client, the service provider and the advisor.

The meeting began with a presentation by representatives from Topaz Partners, a PR and communications firm who did an admirable job trying to explain why the individuals in the room should be interested in Social Media in 15 minutes or less. Their main point was that if you are going to wade into social media, you have to be willing to give up some control and commit to the themes of trust and transparency in your business. There was nothing surprising or earth-shattering about this explanation, and I don’t know how it went for them at the networking portion of the meeting, but I suspect it was a hard sell. As the speaker was talking about different corporate cultures, and how many large corporations continue to have prohibitions against any use of social media by their employees – regardless of the potential benefits, I saw confirming head nods and people whispering, “That’s us,” to their neighbors. This is understandable for two reasons: 1) outsourcing is not PR friendly; and 2) leaders in outsourcing as a business strategy tend to be large, global, public companies whose communications are legally regulated, like those in the finance, banking and healthcare industries.

Fast-forward to the portion of the meeting that consisted of a panel discussion talking about trends in globalization. There were a couple of points that I thought were particularly noteworthy:

1. Although the outsourcing industry has always tried to convince the world that the strategy is as much about talent as it is about labor arbitrage, in practice, it most often appeared that labor arbitrage was the primary concern. I definitely sense that the industry has turned a corner on that issue. It’s all about talent now. Only companies that are late to the game turn to outsourcing to get themselves out of a financial jam rather than to gain competitive advantage.
2. As this shift has occurred, two things have happened: 1) service providers have moved up the value chain, becoming strategic partners applying their knowledge and expertise to solve problems and increase value; and 2) client companies have become skilled at giving up control in certain areas where they know that their service providers are the experts, resulting in contracts that focus more on results and less on process.

Now, in order for outsourcing and globalization to make this shift, two things had to happen (sensing a “2″ theme here):  1) client companies began to trust a maturing outsourcing industry; and 2) both clients and service providers had to make significant progress towards transparency so that the service provider can function seamlessly as part of their client’s operation.

So, in the course of this meeting, the discussion came full circle, starting with social media, the need to be willing to cede control of the conversation and commit to themes of trust and transparency, and ending with a discussion of how globalization has matured through a willingness to cede control of critical functions powered by increased trust and transparency.

Now, if only these client companies would begin to trust their own employees to the degree they have placed trust in their outsourced service provider, we could make some real progress. But that’s another discussion. Is this the decade of trust and transparency? Is globalization at the root of this paradigm shift, even more so than technology? Where else is this development manifesting itself? What do you think?

Rob Teplansky

Teplansky Communications

Strategy for 2010: Refresh and Renew

An important aspect of my strategy each year is to include strategies for individual growth. As we all know, it is easy to get lost in your work and to become overwhelmed with the day-to-day grind. Be sure to build in time to renew, refresh, and reinvigorate your mind, your soul, your imagination, and your networks.  Yes, even your networks can become stale if you don’t plug into new social circles. Here are some suggestions for diversions and resources:

TED http://www.ted.com/ This web site is packed with videos of, in their words, “Riveting talks by remarkable people….” Each video runs from a few minutes to as much as an hour, but most of the videos they promote run in the 15 – 20 min range. You can become a fan of TED on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TED. Content is quite varied. Take the 15 min or so each day and have your mind opened. If you really want to go all out, view or attend their annual conference.

PechaKucha http://www.pechakucha.org PechaKucha is Japanese for the sound of chitchat. PechaKucha events are live and face to face. They currently take place in 276 cities around the world and the list continues to grow. The events include presentations from individuals who are truly excited about their work. The presentations have a unique format – each presenter is allotted 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to tell their story. The presentations are quick, focused and creative. I attended a recent event in Worcester, MA on 1/23/2010 that featured 8 presentations from artists, engineers, architects, DJs, and photographers. Look for an event near you.

Professional Associations. I’ve always been a great fan of professional and trade associations. Find your relevant professional or trade association – not just marketing associations like the American Marketing Association and others, but relevant for the market your are addressing. Don’t just become a member, go to meetings, join a task force or committee, volunteer and participate side by side with your peers. There’s no better way to keep your finger on the pulse of  a profession or industry.

Visual Thesaurus. Sometimes you get stuck when you are writing. We all do. The best way to get unstuck is to head over to http://www.visualthesaurus.com, plug in a word, and follow the thread wherever it takes you.

Meetup Groups: If you are looking for groups of like-minded people to expand your networks or help you find inspiration in a common interest, try http://www.meetup.com. I’ve been a member of a writers group I discovered through Meetup.com for over a year now, and my wife belongs to a photography Meetup group. We’ve found them to be inspiring and great for networking – and believe me, you can find a Meetup group for just about anything.

Start a new special-interest Twitter list. Sure, I have Twitter lists for various professional interests, but I’ve recently started a list just for interesting individuals related to some aspect of art or philosophy or the humanities that I find interesting. The Twitter tools make it easy to create a view that lets you take a mental break and see a completely different type of conversation once or twice a day.

Whatever you choose as your strategy for recharging your batteries, don’t put it off. Commit to it and follow through. You need the inspiration. Your clients or employers need your inspiration. Even your family benefits from you feeling more inspired and energized. Make it a part of your 2010 strategy.

What’s your strategy for staying fresh and energized in 2010?

Rob Teplansky
Teplansky Communications

MLK, Social Justice & Social Media

I was struck yesterday at the lack of coverage in the media of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the national holiday that is supposed to commemorate his life and accomplishments. Throughout the day, I continued to click through to my online subscription to the Wall Street Journal looking for a headline related to commemoration of this day – to no avail.  Even the headlines on my local www.boston.com, home of the Boston Globe, featured the Senatorial election, fashion at the Golden Globes, and more understandably, the unspeakable tragedy in Haiti, but no prominent feature on the legacy of Dr. King.

So, unable to find any reasonable information in the mainstream press revisiting the thoughts and words of King, I turned to Google, which, ironically, is fighting a battle to preserve its ability deliver uncensored material to individuals around the world who search for truth and dignity. I came across the text of King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” on www.kingpapers.org. What struck me, as I was reading the letter, was that the power of social media has so rarely found its “social” footing in a way that could be world-changing. It struck me how fearful we have become of change. It struck me how careful we have become since 9/11 and how potentially destructive is that fear.

In the letter, Dr. King recognizes “the interrelatedness of all communities and states.” Later in the paragraph, he goes on to say, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” How much more true are those statements in today’s globally networked and interrelated community?

Most of us talk, most of the time, about the power of social media as it relates to marketing, innovation, and other business related activities. We see ample evidence of the mundane as well as the profane. But earlier this year in Iran, we got a real inkling of the future of Social Media.We saw how it can be used as a tool for social justice, and how those with an interest in sustaining a culture of fear, resistance to change and extension of a repressive status quo will fight to censor these new and powerful tools.

For King, his church and the networks it afforded served a similar role. In King’s letter, he writes about earlier years and the power of the church: “In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.” That is a powerful metaphor. If part of your strategy for 2010 is to do good and not only to do well, think about how social media may be elevated from a thermometer to a thermostat.

Rob Teplansky

Teplansky Communications

Using Twitter Search in Social Media Strategy

I’ve been on a mission over the last week to find useful tools related to “Setting Goals and Developing Strategy,” which is my theme for the month. This week, I’ll talk about a couple of the tools I have found useful, and how I have used them.

Today, my topic is Twitter Search.

How to Use Twitter Search

As is often the case, making more effective use of the tools you already have can yield terrific results. One tool you should spend some time fine tuning is Twitter Search. Assuming you have a Twitter account, simply log in and type in your search terms in the search box. You will instantly see all conversations in the Twittersphere related to that search term.

As with any search, the key is to refine your search terms so that the results are useful. Typing in “strategy” may result in some useful tweets, but is also likely to result in so many useless tweets that any gems will be lost in the clutter. For example, when I typed “strategy,” the results included a job posting for a strategy analyst, a link to an article on using data mining as a strategy for assessing asynchronous discussion forums, and a simple status update that someone was spending the morning updating a client’s social media strategy. Changing the search term to “branding strategy” yielded a completely different set of results. Twitter allows you to save searches so that you can periodically see what people are saying about a topic.

Just be aware that search on Twitter is a quickly moving target, and depending how popular the term may be in conversations that are occurring on Twitter, the results you get by searching on a term may actually get swallowed up in the Twittersphere from one minute to the next. As I am writing this section, over the course of 7 minutes 20 additional Tweets have been posted containing the search term “strategy,” which means that everything that was on the page when I conducted my initial search will be off the first page now.

Benefits of Using Twitter Search

So what are the benefits of Twitter Search? I have a couple of goals. My first goal is to jump outside my current network – both for myself and for my clients. It is easy to get caught in a closed loop where most of the people you connect with are connected to the same people or constantly refer to content created by the same people. Twitter search can help you to expand your network outside of that closed loop by identifying people that are tweeting about topics of interest, but are doing so through other networks.

My second goal is to plug into the  valuable ideas and content posted by these new individuals. For me, it proved to be a valuable exercise.

My third goal is to do a more effective job of monitoring the twittersphere on behalf of my clients. The standard approach is to monitor the company name as well as names of key executives in the company to watch what others are saying about them. You may also punch in some key words related to the products or services they offer, or the markets in which they operate. For instance, one of my clients is Armeno Coffee Roasters, a micro-roaster of specialty coffees which is located in Massachusetts. Of course, I can search on “coffee,” and I will see tweets which range from “Coffee Time!” (you’d be surprised how many of these there are every day!) to links for reports on the global coffee market (did you know that coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, behind oil?). So one strategy might be to do a better job of filtering out the recurring and numerous “Coffee Time!” tweets to focus on tweets by people whose motivation is more around an appreciate of fine, fresh roasted, specialty coffees from around the world, not mainlining Folgers crystals for a caffeine rush.

Alternatives to Twitter Search

There are tools you can use to conduct searches on Twitter other than the Twitter Search box. As I have mentioned before, one of the tools I use to manage my social media activity is HootSuite.  HootSuite makes it easy to store mulitple searches and monitor different Twitter streams, but it is certainly not the only tool that allows you to do this. Another commonly used tool is TweetDeck.

I’d love to hear about how you use Twitter Search, why you use it, and how you use the results to enhance your social media strategy. Please feel free to comment and reply.

Rob Teplansky

Teplansky Communications

Developing Goals and Strategy for 2010

I think I have probably put more thought and care into building my strategies for 2010 than I have ever done before. There are a couple of reasons for this:

• I believe that 2010 will be a year of tumultuous changes as well as great opportunities, and I want to be thoughtfully positioned to make the most of the opportunities that arise.
• More than ever, I understand that I am a part of a global community of 6 billion people and in order to effectively collaborate – and compete – in this global environment requires careful strategy, a well developed network, effective listening, rapid adaptation, and clear objectives.

A couple of blog entries have caught my attention while preparing for the new year. I thought I would share these with you if you, like me, are still putting the final touches this week on your 2010 goals and strategies.

• Chris Brogan shares his approach in a blog post, My 3 Words for 2010.
• Don Miller says it’s important to tell a story, not just state your goals in a blog post, Living a Good Story, An Alternative to New Years Resolutions.

Both of these posts go beyond the standard advice to set goals, make them specific, etc, etc. They are more about defining your guiding lights for the year, creating a vision for your success, and then building strategies, milestones and schedules that support your objectives. Being a writer myself, Don Miller’s vision was particularly useful for me.

One of my objectives this year is to be more structured in my blog posts – the ones I always put off in order to do work on behalf of my clients. I’m committed to posting at least one a week, on Tuesdays, and more often when possible. Each month will have a theme. The theme today and for the rest of this month is “Setting Goals and Developing Strategy.”

Have you seen some particularly useful posts related to this theme over the last couple of weeks?

Rob Teplansky

Teplansky Communications

How to Get Started in Social Media – Listen to This!

It is still surprising to me how many business men and women roll their eyes at the mention of Twitter, Facebook, blogging or other forms of social media. Okay, well, it’s not surprising really, because I see it every day. And every day, I commiserate with other marketing professionals who are trying to convince their bosses that an investment of time in the development of social networks can pay off down the road.

So, if you are trying to figure out how to get started in social media, or you are trying to build a case to present to your boss, where do you start? I suggest that the best way to start is to do some listening. Not only is listening critical to understanding how social media will help your business, it is critical to your success once you are actively engaged. The good news is that when it comes to social media, listening is free.

If you are reading this blog, you have discovered WordPress. Do you market an assisted living facility? Conducting a search on ‘assisted living facilities’ yielded 1,762 results. Read through them to see how others are using the tool and monitor the conversations that result. Are you a vocational counselor? Create an account on Twitter and monitor relevant keywords to listen to conversations of real people who are concerned about the topic. Ditto Facebook , MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.

What you will find is that it can quickly become a little confusing to keep track of all of these new accounts, but there are some great tools that help you to aggregate and monitor multiple social media accounts through a single interface. Two that I use are HootSuite and Disgby, and both are free.

Sure, there are people out there that post every time they scratch their nose or crave a cheeseburger, but the great thing about social media is that you are in the driver’s seat. Tune out conversations that don’t interest you, and listen very carefully to those that do. You will soon find that there is a wealth of information that will help you to understand your marketplace, your customers, your competition, and even your own business. At that point, it’s basic business. Develop a strategy. Execute. Monitor. Measure. Report. Refine.

Oh, and have fun!

Robert Teplansky

Teplansky Communications