Quiver & Quill

(Image from Flickr: “Business Meeting in Coffee Shop with Windows Mobile devices” by gailjadehamilton)

What I look for in a face to face meeting with a vendor depends on the context of the meeting.
If I am calling a business meeting with you, I am likely doing so because you can solve a problem I can’t solve, or you can increase my efficiency.

1. The first thing I look for is whether we are in agreement on the purpose of the meeting: Do we both want the same thing from our conversation? That’s the “what.”
2. I next evaluate “the who.” If the meeting is important, I’ve searched online to know who I am meeting with and what matters to them.
3. If the what and who check out, I’m on to “the how.” I want to see clear examples that demonstrate that you can do exactly what you say you can do.
4. Next,  “when and how much.” I am looking for transparency and candor here.
5. If I’m really interested, I’ll want it faster. And if we’ve never worked together, I will look for ways to mitigate risk.

This post was inspired by Andrew Clark’s comment yesterday: “So you’ve covered ‘online…’ Where (or what) do you look at when meeting someone for the first time (face to face)? Where do you keep your “About me” page?”

For a blog post on great meetings see this one.

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I am interested in great “About Us” pages. Every time we craft one for a client, we access so much about the company, both about how they perceive themselves and about how they want others to perceive them.

When I evaluate a company’s “About Us” page my two criteria are credibility and personality.

For credibility, I scan bios of their leadership team to see where they’ve worked, attended school and when they’ve spoken at conferences. What makes them uniquely qualified?

Evaluating personality, on the other hand, is more of an art than a science.
I start by seeing whether the company has a clear vision, expressed as a story, which I can easily follow.
Why was the company established and what is its mantra?
Then I look at how effectively their design brings that story to life.
I next scan for involvement, and this will vary depending on the industry. For instance, if I am on an agency’s website, I want to see what social networks their employees are on and how they are using them.
Finally, I look for the personal touch: Who are the principals as people? Do I want to work with them? Video interviews, quotes, funny and intriguing stats help here.

I have shared a few examples below that illustrate intriguing about us pages:

1. Meebo – Instant messaging site

A nice mix of credibility and personality with short, descriptive bios visible when you click the arrow.

2. Zappos – The customer service company that happens to sell shoes

A good example of the use of narrative and intertwining the company’s initiatives into the overall story

3. Design Continuum - A design & marketing company

A good example of personality. Reading these pages gives me a sense of who they are—as people.

4. Headwaters - A Merchant Bank

The “About Us” page is a clear cut example of credibility, and the site exemplifies personality. It’s a gem amongst financial services sites.

5. Elastic Lab - A marketing agency

Although their video bios aren’t complete at the time of this entry, I like how they have positioned them on the site. If I want to learn more, or see their people, I can do so with one click.

6. Forty Media - Another marketing agency

Their whole site lives on one page, and their credibility derives from their involvement. Click under any of their team’s photos to see where they are active online. I love it.

I asked friends on Twitter for their feedback on about us pages. Here’s what they said:

@central_nm  on about us page - what is look and feel? does it convey a sense of person/company/service in honest & authentic? current?

@solobasssteve context, background info, links, credentials, personal info, photos, interests, friendliness.

@nwjerseyliz If biz, a BRIEF statement about goals whether that is a mission statement or a promise to customers to provide good service

@kirbstr I look for the 5 w’s. Who are they? Where are they? (this sticks in my mind even as it seems less relevant) what, when, why

UPDATE: @solskinner Check out DanSko’s “About Us” page. http://tinyurl.com/6pghnk

I have an idea for an “About Us” page I am considering for my agency’s website. The page would have two buttons. The first would be called “Just the Facts,” and the second, “Our Story & More…”

This would give visitors the ability to select how much information they want to know.

Want to read more on the subject? Check out:

The Power of the About Us Page, ClickZ, by Bryan Eisenberg
Your About Page is a Robot, A List Apart, by Erin Kissane
Calling for a Ban on “About Us” Pages, AdAge, by B. L. Ochman

Do you have an “About Us” page you love? Please leave it as a link in the comments below.

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(Packed House at SMB10 by Bob Collins on Flickr)

The theme of Social Media Breakfast Boston 10 was “ Getting ROI Out of Social Media.”
HubSpot’s CEO Brian Halligan discussed their method for measuring how social media conversations translate into sales.
Marketers at the event suggested that hiring good content people is a more attractive alternative than buying advertising.
Matt Cutler, Vice President, Marketing & Analytics at Visible Measures, presented on the ROI of viral video.
Visible Measures has powerful tools for measuring viral impact, a database of millions of videos and criteria to evaluate what makes videos “go viral.”
Matt drew a comparison to how much Nike would have had to spend on TV commercials to create the same impact that one of their viral videos had (with 16M views).

He calculated that broadcast TV CPMs are apx. $25 and online video CPMs are apx. $50-75, and he created an estimate.
His formula needs to add one critical consideration: context.
Watching a viral video forwarded to me by a friend, posted in a favorite blog or on a social network is worth much more than a tv spot that interrupts my show.

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Aaron Strout recently left Mzinga in an interesting way. He wrote this blog post that explained why he was leaving and reflected on his time with the company. It caught my attention, so I contacted Aaron to learn more about his background and business philosophy. The result was our robust conversation on social media marketing—how it works and why. Start by listening to minute 8:24 – 10 where Aaron discusses the criteria for social media marketing and suggests how to tie it into your business goals.

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Check out this UK promotion aimed at bloggers. Berocca appeals to bloggers in three ways: their tone is perfect, they are offering exposure and a free blogger relief pack.

They feature bloggers’ blogs who register on its landing page, which is brilliant. Bloggers want to be recognized.
They also provide blogger relief packs, “containing a stress ball, usb ’stress’ button, bubble wrap key ring, ‘Dead Fred’ pen holder and a pack of Berocca.”

Notice that the emphasis of the page is on relieving bloggers, not on selling product.

I like how they have subtly invited bloggers to learn more about Berocca by clicking to do so. However, when you click on “Click here for more information about Berocca,” you are dumped onto the homepage—it’s like a date abruptly ending without a goodnight kiss.
They missed an opportunity to customize the message to bloggers and to speak to them in a more personal tone about their product.

Nevertheless, great idea and execution.

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(Open Goal by dogfrog on Flickr)

I often see companies deciding on what they are doing before articulating what results they want to achieve.
They would save much time and money by identifying their desired outcomes first.

Not: We want to blog. Rather: In order to get invited to speak at more conferences, we are our asking our executives to blog.
Not: We are building a custom widget. Rather: To drive organic search results, we are building a custom widget.
Not: We are opening a twitter account. Rather: In order to find a new channel for product feedback, we are opening a twitter account.

Naming why you are doing something changes your approach to it.

Take a company that is ready to open a Twitter account to accomplish one of the points below:

• Find a new sales channel
• Help customers with questions about their product
• Understand if Twitter is a viable place to advertise
• Recruit employees
• Create strategic partnerships

The strategy a company would use to achieve one of these points differs from the one you would use for the others.
Next time you are identifying a new strategy, articulate the result you would like to achieve.
Even the most cutting edge strategies tend to support clear business objectives.

I wrote this post before listening to a podcast interview of Barry Judge, the CMO of BestBuy.
Barry makes many excellent points which offer a different perspective on the above, suggesting that while clear goals are important they should not prevent companies from experimenting.

Here’s my favorite quote from that interview:

“I think when you make yourself vulnerable, which is what I think you have to do to be interesting in the social media space, you gotta be interesting you gotta be vulnerable, you gotta be human, you gotta say things that a person would say, and I think that’s a very different approach from what companies have traditionally taken for the last 100 years.”

Can you make yourself vulnerable in a results driven environment?
Does the relentless pursuit for results preclude the risks associated with vulnerability?
That’s my question to Barry.

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Social media creates both collaboration and exclusivity.

Collaboration with tools like tags, wikis, forums and comments.

And exclusivity with limited invites to new services and the attention we pay to those with great stats, and friends & followers.

Does collaboration and exclusivity apply differently to businesses online than to people?

I recently came across OGILVY’s profile on Twitter which prompted this question.

Ogilvy is one of the world’s most influential advertising and communication agencies, positioning themselves as 360 degree brand stewards.
I am surprised that more than 500 people follow them on Twitter, and they are following no one in return.

I am sure there are pros and cons to this.

On the pro side, they have a good amount of followers and the fact that they follow none of them may make them come across as exclusive (a core brand characteristic?).
They also don’t need to concern themselves with offending someone they don’t follow since they follow no one.

On the con side, their exclusive positioning may prevent them from meaningful collaborative opportunities—and may make people on Twitter perceive them negatively.

So, Ogilvy UK—what was your thought behind not following anyone?

I would ask you directly, but since you’re not following me, I can’t DM you.

If the subject of online exclusivity interests you, check out: A Small World &  RUE LA LA.

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Should a brand build a single twitter account or ask each of its employees to build their own affiliated twitter accounts? It depends on the brand and why they are on twitter.

I will follow an employee’s affiliated twitter account if they have personality, or if they offer unique insight or access. Their actions do reflect on their company and impact my perceptions of it. In some situations, I have no interest in following an individual’s account. Take the online deal site Woot for example. I don’t care what their product manager had for lunch, I just want a good deal now.

I like Perkett PR’s approach to twitter. Their brand’s account features the picture of everyone who contributes to it. Each one also has individual accounts.

There are other more complicated considerations involved in creating employee-affiliated twitter accounts. Who owns the account? What happens to the goodwill and equity the employee created for your brand when she leaves the company?

In an ideal world, a brand would carefully select, train and celebrate its twitter brand evangelists. While their training would cover a code of conduct and key speaking points, it would also empower twitter brand evangelists to express their unique personality and willingness to help.

Until a brand can be sure that every person tweeting on its behalf exemplifies these qualities, I would stick with a single brand account.

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A RSS reader is a sales person’s secret weapon. This blog post explains what an RSS reader is and how it will enhance your sales process. The RSS reader makes it easier to gain market and competitive insights and become a resource to your clients.

Step 1 - How RSS works.
This 3:44 minute video explains the basics.

Step 2 - Select your Reader.
I recommend Bloglines for salespeople. I created a “How to use Bloglines” guide here:

How to Use Bloglines

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: guide bloglines)

Step 3 - Get Great Content.
Visit Alltop to find niche blogs. Subscribe directly to newspapers and websites you frequently visit.

Step 4 - Customize your Content.
Go to Google News, enter a search term and click “Search News”. Use your reader to subscribe to that search term to receive constant updates sent directly to your reader.

Step 5 - Get Newsletters.
Bloglines will give you your own email address to use when signing up for newsletters. You can sign up for your competitors’ newsletters too.

Step 6 - Folder like a Pro.
Group your feeds together in folders named for how you will use the information. For example, call one folder, “Read to understand
my market,” and another folder, “Read to prepare for a sales meeting”.

Step 7 - Build a sales resource library.
Clip and save your articles to folders. Name each folder according to step 6. When you are preparing for a sales meeting, use your clippings to provide value to your clients.

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Visa’s incentive to join their network is $100 in Facebook advertising. This ad clearly benefits both Visa and Facebook. Visa benefits by enrolling business owners and Facebook benefits by introducing their ad platform to new customers. I would love to know how It was sold: whether Visa paid for the ad on a cost per action basis, and Facebook paid Visa for the free ad trials.

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I recently ate breakfast at one of my favorite spots called “The Neighborhood.” They serve excellent Portuguese food widely adored by the 20-something crowd in Boston, and especially loved by Yelpers. As I was waiting in line, I noticed they had a white erase board with a special note to their Yelping customers. This was the first time I have seen a restaurant “talk back,” to their customers reviews in this way. It sparked a few ideas that I would like to share with you. If I owned a restaurant, here a 20 things I would consider doing to recognize and attract Yelpers.

1. Respond publicly to feedback on Yelp with a non-defensive and appreciative attitude.
2. Send a positive reviewer a private message thanking them.
3. Send a positive reviewer a coupon for a future dining occasion.
4. Invite a negative reviewer back to the restaurant for a VIP dinner on the house.
5. Invite a negative reviewer to tell you how you can improve the dining experience.
6. Respond to a review on your restaurant’s blog.
7. Make a big deal of a positive Yelp review. Frame it and take a picture with the Yelper and hang it in your restaurant.
8. Create special, “no-wait” tables in the restaurant for Yelp reviewers that have cool benefits.
9. Gather your Yelp reviewers to a private wine tasting or to sample new menu ideas.
10. Name dishes after Yelp reviewers.
11. Ask positive reviewers what they ate, post pictures of the dish on Yelp and reference the reviewer.
12. Make an offer to the friends of positive reviewers. If they print out their friend’s positive reviews and bring them to the restaurant, they receive a discount.
13. Have a Yelp-only happy hour for happy Yelp reviewers.
14. Create a menu item that you can only order if you have reviewed the restaurant on Yelp.
15. Conduct a focus group dinner for negative reviewers.
16. Indicate on your menu, “Yelp reviewed,” or  “Yelpers loved this.”
17. Post a blog entry that lists all the points in a negative review and how they were responded to.
18. Invite negative Yelpers to provide their feedback during a staff training session.
19. Offer free valet parking to positive Yelp reviewers (or unlimited drink refills).
20. Offer a discount when two Yelp reviewers come together.

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(image from Flickr, by Pear Biter)

I live in two worlds.

The first values transparency, collaboration and humanity. In this world, I bog, tweet, review, share pictures and videos and constantly update my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

The second worships results. An individual’s value is defined by his or her ability to make things happen.

Sometimes these worlds pull me in opposite directions.

During a recent interview I was conducting for one of my clients, the agency I was interviewing made a snide comment about my blog. The comment was awkward and inappropriate – I ignored it, but felt its sting. I thought of my options: Should I create separate blogs for business and personal reflections? Should I delete my Twitter account? Should I research the online profile of the person who made the comment?

I didn’t act for several weeks. During this time, I reflected on how social media brings my personal life into my business relationships. Clients may actually see the tweet I sent from South by Southwest at 3 a.m., my blog entry about adult communities online or photos of spring break from back when I was in college.

Does this mean we should sanitize our online footprints? Running a marketing agency focused on social media makes this question even more complicated. In some cases, my online footprint can enhance my credibility in one world while undermining it in another.

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Nokia is flying me, and 34 marketing and technology experts from around the globe, to join them in Helsinki over the next few days for the Nokia Open Lab.

They equipped us with their new e71 phone to review, encouraged us to share this experience on our blogs and social networks and have made every effort to ensure our comfort and spark our enthusiasm.

Here is our agenda over the next few days:

There are four workshop topics in total. Each will begin with an introduction by a facilitator who will talk a bit about the theme for that workshop and introduce the task. You will then be split into smaller groups to discuss the issues as set out below:

Workshop 1: Neighborhood
During this workshop you will be asked to outline your own online community involvement and social media history on a timeline. You will then get together to create a map/timeline of technologies and solutions for content creation in the future.

Workshop 2: Connected Life
During this workshop you will be asked to create future forecasts for geospatial solutions and technologies. The task will be to create such a forecast in three stages: very near futures, next 3-5 years and the more distant future.

Workshop 3: Entertainment
During this workshop you will try to identify which type of entertainment (e.g. music, gaming, movies etc) will have the most future potential. You will then be asked to create a business model focusing on how consumers will want to interact and pay for such an entertainment in the future.

Workshop 4: Work
During this workshop you will look at the communication technologies and solutions in use today and then try to come up with new uses and business models for one of those solutions.

I will share my notes and thoughts with you. Let me also say that I am extremely impressed with Nokia’s experiment for several reasons

1) When you invite experts who are deeply embedded into social communities, they are going to share their thoughts with those communities.
2) By inviting experts, paying for their travel and accommodations and making them feel like honored guests—they are circumventing any consulting fees these experts would otherwise charge their clients.
3) I can only imagine how much thinking and preparation was involved in bringing 35 people from all over the world together. It’s a very involved initiative, and I give them credit.
4) Nokia has made no effort to influence our opinion. In fact, quite the contrary, they have encouraged us to share our candid assessment.

Considering that on multiple occasions I was ready to toss my iPhone out of the window for dropping calls, not opening a browser properly or freezing, I am eager to find a replacement. And perhaps that will be the e71. Will keep you posted.

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I recently interviewed Beth Seabright, managing director of Tucker Arensberg, P.C., about her program to motivate young associates at her law firm to take business development initiatives. After you read this great article, check out how the program worked in a bit more depth by reading the below:

1.     Did you provide your team with additional resources to point them in the right direction. For example, did you create a list of possible speaking engagements for them to attend, or were they expected to research this on their own? 

I did provide additional resources for them.  I suggested publications for articles, speaking engagements, networking events and occasionally set up lunches with my contacts that I wanted my attorneys to get to know.   I coached them through phone calls when they were reaching out to contacts for the first time and walked them through various business development scenarios.  I helped the Associates to get to their goal in any way that I could.

2.    Did you post people’s point score continuously and publicly?

I sent out the results every two weeks to our Associates and occasionally included our Managing Shareholder.  

3. Did that create a competitive or a collaborative environment?

I would say more motivating than competitive.  A few Associates that were not making the time for the program initially saw that other Associates were making progress toward the goal and were inspired to meet with me to put together a plan to catch up with their colleagues.

4. What was the logic behind assigning which point values to which activities?

The more difficult the task, the higher the point value.  I made a list of all of the activities included in the program and ranked them from simple to challenging.  For instance, meetings with me: easy - Associates received 2 points/meeting.  New clients were worth 10 points.

5. And lastly, have you been able to correlate a dollar amount to the biz dev challenge–ROI?

To be honest, I did not go back and correlate dollar values to the challenge, simply because a lot of the value in the program was planting the business developing seeds with the Associates.  While our more senior associates brought in new matters and clients, which I could easily correlate with a dollar value, our younger associates were setting up meetings and writing articles for the first time, activities that were not going to create instant new business.

Quiver&Quill commentary: If I ran a business development program for a law firm, I would use a similar framework to motivate my young associates. Here’s how it would work:

The process starts by answering one of two questions:

• What, that our business prospects care about, could we help them better understand?
• What, that our business prospects are doing, could we help them do better?

The next step — turn the young associate into a resource.

Incent them to attend lectures, visit social networks, read niche publications and develop a personal interest in the areas that matter to prospects. Finally, place them into situations like conferences and events where they can help prospects and demonstrate their resourcefulness.

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American Public Media’s Marketplace, a national radio show, has a great interview with E&J Gallo Winery CEO Joe Gallo called “Growing up in the wine industry.” A few highlights:

“There are two big decisions to make in life: What you do and who you marry. And a lot of people get one right and not the other.”

“I’ve been guided by my dad’s philosophy on what it takes to be successful in business:
-Stay independent
-Hire good people
-Strive for perfection
-Never be satisfied
-Don’t plan too far ahead
-Have a sense of urgency
-Work like hell
-Be lucky

Listen to the entire podcast here:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/11/16/growing_up_in_the_wine_industry/

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