QViews

How to Get Past the First Date

I recently discovered an excellent feature on the Staples web site that lets me review my past orders and re-order something quickly and conveniently. Steve Yastrow wisely points out that when you have a conversation with a friend, you pick up where you left off. Some business-to-business marketers are good at this, but consumer companies, especially brick-and-mortar retail, have a long way to go.

Tompeters!: Steve Yastrow (Second Cool Friends Interview), 2008-May-15, by Erik Hansen

Erik: There's a small, outdoor sporting goods store near me that I've been shopping at, I think, since 1986. No one in that store knows my name. And I'm in there regularly. ... I'm so frustrated. I want to be loyal to this place. They are half a mile from my house ...

SY: Imagine what happens with your customers if you have an ongoing conversation. But being the customer of most companies, like you in this store, is kind of like that movie that Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler did, 50 First Dates. I don't know if you saw this movie. Well, they have this great time together. She's got a memory problem and every day their relationship has to start over. That reminded me of what it's like to do business with most companies, right?

How Liberty Mutual Opens a Conversation

Have you ever tried to start a conversation with someone who just wasn't interested? Marketers face this problem all the time. They want a dialogue with their audience but find it challenging to connect. The key is to take it lightly and keep trying. I'm not overly impressed with Liberty Mutual's new site, The Responsibility Project, but it has possibilities. If they can allow it to evolve, they may have a marketing system. They currently support the site with their TV campaign, but they hope to cut back on general TV advertising over time.
 

Mediapost: Liberty Mutual Doubles Spend To Back Web-Based Films, 2008-Feb-29, by Karl Greenberg

Speaking at Thursday's Association of National Advertisers' conference in New York, Stephen Sullivan, SVP/communications for Liberty Mutual Group and chairman of ANA's Board of Directors, said that programs like The Responsibility Project reflect the maturity of the Web....We made a major financial commitment to produce 20 original films this year that will be put on our Web site and will be published in a way that will be very easy to share. People will click and drag and put them in e-mails," he said.

How to Welcome Email Newsletter Subscribers

Here is an excellent checklist to make sure your new subscriber welcome is "best practice." These are from Margaret Farmakis, Return Path's director of strategic services. You can download an entire white paper on the subject at www.ReturnPath.com.

Target Marketing: Eight Steps to More Effective Welcome E-mails, 2008-Mar-1, by Hallie Mummert:

1. Welcome new subscribers within 24 hours.
2. Allow subscribers to manage their own profile.
3. Give them a thank you gift.
4. Remind them of the content and frequency they can anticipate.
5. Ask them to add your sending newsletter address to their address book.
6. Include unsubscribe instructions.
7. Personalize the message to their name or email.
8. Summarize your privacy policy and provide a link to the policy on your web site.

How to Reanimate Beached Prospects

In the world of sales, an aging new business lead stinks faster than a dead fish. No one wants to handle them, but that attitude can cost you business, as Philip Baltazar of mortgage lender American Funding explains.

MarketingSherpa: How to Convert Old Leads Into 11.07% New Sales. 2007-Nov-14 (subscription required)

The new system of refreshing old leads was a huge reason why they increased sales by 11.07% compared to 2006. ... "If we were not using the system for aged leads, we’d be like the rest of our competitors that’d be shut down or depleted of a significant amount of volume." Under better market conditions, Baltazar says this contact strategy will be a bigger boon. Due to the performance, they now use the system for all leads, and it’s bringing in around 19% of their closed loans.

What American Funding did was develop a special multi-message email campaign for people who had completed an application but not responded to the sales person within 15 days. These emails included surveys and fresh information--they did not repeat themselves!

• Emailed on Day 21: Offering help for a stalled loan
• Emailed on Day 25: Incentive
• Emailed on Day 49: Testimonials
• Emailed on Day 56: Rates update
• Emailed on Day 62: Humorous ecard

The unsubscribe button was big and easy to find, but the re-activation rate was awesome. So here's the bottom line: if your email campaign doesn't stink, neither will your slow-to-convert leads!

How to Ask Questions, Revisited

In developing more conversational marketing, it's important to use language that resonates with your customers and reminds them what is special in their relationship with you.

Think Customers, The 1to1 Blog: Measuring Great Service . 2007-Nov-1, by Jeremy Nedelka

The short questionnaire had only 4 questions, and each made sense based on what I’d experienced during my three days there. The hotel wanted to know “who created a wow experience” (every staff member I met gave me their business card), “how the experience could be better next time” (I would have a hard time coming up with anything), and “will you return” (which also asked for an explanation), were three of the four. The last, asking for a 1-5 rating of the overall experience, was very unique and caught my eye most. Instead of the typical excellent, great, etc…, the 1 to 5 were labeled “not so fab, ehh, ok, good, and fabulous.”

How to Ask Questions

Good conversationalists know how to ask questions that people enjoy answering. (Bill Cosby used to have a routine about what NOT to ask your children, "who made this mess?" being a prime example. In my inbox, "when do you plan to purchase?" makes me feel the same way.) Marketing Sherpa recently shared some tips for asking questions in emails. You can quiz your customers in separate survey emails or in a question added to the newsletter, but always:

• Make it easy and fun.
• Don't be pushy or nosy.
• Show you care.
• Don't use embedded forms in email.
• Let them unsubscribe.
• Test different formats.
• Place more faith in trends than raw results.

Marketing Sherpa: Special Report: How to Conduct Email Surveys - Tips to Lift Response & Write Subject Lines, 2007-Oct-2 (subscription required).

Using Mail to Strengthen Email

Restricting your communications with customers to email can be dangerous to the size of your audience. To keep up with everyone, you should provide a benefit for providing a physical mailing address (pocket calendar at Christmas time?), and then you should mail at least twice a year. For broken email addresses, Toyon Books created a fabulous "You Bounced!" postcard. I suspect this type of notice to become an industry best practice. This card is particularly well designed--have a look! (from the VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog).

Something to Talk About

Now here's a novel idea. Instead of surveying your customers, do a survey FOR your customers and prospects. Collect some information they can use. Maybe something they would enjoy talking about. Make yourself indispensable.

Business First of Columbus: Nationwide finding success with research surveys as marketing pitch. 2007-May-25, by Adrian Burns

Nationwide's surveys mostly have targeted aspects of consumer well-being that touch on Nationwide's products, such as vehicle safety, funding retirement or identity theft protection. Case said a gauge of the marketing campaign's success lies in how the surveys are used by newspapers, television stations and even bloggers.

Shockingly Simple Way to Share

If someone had pitched this idea to me, I would have said "ho hum, who'll bother to participate?" but I am shocked to discover it so easy and fun and heartwarming...who wouldn't? At the Country Crock site www.SpreadTheSharing.com you can upload a simple story or a long one, add pictures, and browse the country for stories and recipes. I think this is actual a good step up from those web sites that encourage sponsors to donate $1 for every click. That always seemed TOO easy, cheap, sort of. Country Crock will donate a meal to Second Harvest if you contribute a story.

Promo magazine: Country Crock Taps NASCAR Tie to Aid Second Harvest. 2007-May-10

Country Crock is using its sponsorship of NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne to drive consumers online to take part in its Spread the Sharing campaign with America’s Second Harvest. The brand will donate one meal to Second Harvest for every story about sharing that consumers post on its site....Country Crock hopes to collect 1 million stories by Thanksgiving. So far, consumers have posted 5,318. To support the effort, Country Crock put a “Please Share” logo on its No. 9 Dodge and Kahne’s racing suit.

Aligning One's Passions

One reason so many companies struggle with new media forms such as blogging and evangelism is that their staff is not deeply committed to the company's business. For instance, if I work for a bakery, I may or may not feel it's the greatest bakery in the world, but I should at least enjoy making and/or eating baked goods. I mean one or the other, at least! Unfortunately, few companies check whether job applicants care. Even worse, many business owners have no particular attachment to how they make money. It's hard to generate conversation about a topic that doesn't interest you.

Gapingvoid Blog: Edelman Talk. 2007-Mar-21, by Hugh MacLeod

If corporate blogs work, it's because they help humanify the company. I wrote about this earlier in an article I called "The Porous Membrane". To paraphrase: Ideally, you want the conversation between customers [the external market] to be as identical as the conversation between yourselves [the internal market]. The things that your customer is passionate about, you should also be passionate about. This we call "alignment".

Dove Starts Conversation about Beauty

I knew that Dove has gotten a lot of positive publicity for the Real Beauty campaign, but I wasn't certain if they considered it successful. Pete Blackshaw of BuzzMetrics says 'yes' based on the number of viewers, mentions in blogs and forums, strong positive referrals, borrowing of the imagery, links, and emotional level of the conversations. Since "Real Beauty" communicates a position instead of promoting a product, it qualifies beautifully to meet the ClueTrain Manifesto's definition of "marketing as conversation." Now the challenge is for the Dove product manager to produce plenty of products that demonstrate this stand they have taken.

ClickZ: Real Beauty, Real Breakthrough in Consumer-Fortified Media 2006-Nov-1, by Pete Blackshaw

..If you put all the CGM [consumer-generated media] related to this campaign in a blender, you'd see a unique set of emotions bubble to the top: empathy, compassion, rage, empowerment, excitement, and even cynicism and defeatism. Like it or not, all this feeds dialogue and conversation. The big caveat is all this is very difficult to repeat with consistency or precision; often it backfires....

Cingular Joins the Network at YouTube

Cingular understand how to participate in the new social networks. Too many companies just want to post a profile and try to attract "friends." Cingular is bringing more benefit to the rest of the network by sponsoring a search for an emerging, unsigned band who will get an appearance on "Good Morning America" along with other forms of support. Over 2,000 video clips were submitted.

...“The Underground Contest” is the first big sponsorship deal YouTube has struck with a major advertiser, but it won’t be the last. ...Increasingly, brands are warming up to the year-and-half old company. And part of the lovefest is due to the way the company integrates advertising into its consumer-generated content, said Beth Taylor, vice president of media for Boston-based ad agency Digitas, which helped broker the deal...

from BostonHerald.com: YouTube contest may discover the new U2. 2006-Oct-5, by Jesse Noyes

Tapping into Natural Networks

Tapping into a network can be tricky, but Skyzone wants to reach people who will pay for great games on their phone, so they sent out a free mini-game that people could play then forward to a friend with a challenge to play. The free game could lead to a game sale, but just collecting the phone number of potential players was the big win.

1to1 Magazine: Peer-to-Peer Marketing: Skyzone Dials Up Referral Results, 2006-Jul/Aug, by John Gaffney

Skyzone had two goals with Ragnorak. The first was to reach out to younger users through a mobile game that had offline components. The second was to convince wireless providers to license the game, which can be customized and forwarded to other users with its refer-to-a-friend feature.

Zoom In on Audience Members with Networking Tools

Why?  Getting closer to your audience requires you to see them as individuals. Learning more details helps you break down dangerous generalizations you may be making about them.

Context  Online networking tools have evolved past the glorified rolodex to places where you can research people, companies, and trends. You'd be surprised at how much information can be had for free or very little commitment.

The Diving Board  End of the Cold Call? May-8-06 from Jeannette Borzo (Paid sub) profiles businesses that locate and qualify prospects using such onlines tools as

• LinkedIn is designed to get people to start working their connections. Very well designed and growing.
• Jigsaw is an innovative service targeted to people who want to swap information. Looks promising.
• Spoke helps companies apply knowledge management tools to leverage who their employees know.
• ZoomInfo seems geared to recruitment, but also offers powerful tools for profiling someone's web presence, including you own.
• Plaxo really IS the automated rolodex. Be careful that you don't substitute its convenience for acutally maintaining your network on a human level. I no longer accept Plaxo update requests from people who don't return my emails or phone calls.
• iProfile, Hoovers, and CI Radar are tools for researching companies. If you subscribe, these services will supply you with contacts at the companies you're tracking.

Next?  Have you browsed your contact list recently and zoomed to learn more about a couple of audience members? Did you learn something that surprised you?

Instant Network from P&G

When entering a new market, it can take a long time to build up an audience who will give you reliable feedback about your new product. Now P&G is selling a business service that will provide an audience who's already predisposed to talk and talk back. Instead of focus groups and surveys, can you find a community that wants to become the "lead users" of your product?

Trendwatching.com: May 2006 trend briefing

P&G also recently rebranded its Tremor Moms program to Vocalpoint. In their own words: ‘’Vocalpoint is a unique marketing brand powered by the Procter & Gamble Company that helps companies do a better job developing products and services that moms care about and want to talk about. We work with this influential group of moms to help companies in industries that include entertainment, fashion, music, food and beauty. We collect feedback and generate valuable knowledge and insight for our clients through surveys, product sampling and previews of products and services.”

For Major Purchases, Consumers Tap the Network

As the number of product and purchase reviews logged and blogged on the internet explodes, marketers can't afford to sit on the sidelines. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project Director Lee Rainie, consumers have always sought advice for major purchases, but the internet has made it easier for them to find real experts and easier for marketers to observe the process. The Pew Internet & American Life Project details how people are leveraging the internet to improve their networks.

iMedia Connection: Social Nets Study has Marketing Lessons by Nanette Pietroforte

We found that the internet plays three important roles as people seek help when they face important decisions. First, the internet helps people connect to others who can offer them advice and support. Second, the internet yields information that allows people to compare their options. Third, the internet is seen as a source where people can find experts to help them work through all the information they find. If marketers find out how to tap into one of those three realms, they could prove helpful to customers.

Many retailers, such as CompUSA are now encouraging customers to post product reviews. Are you reading your reviews?

Surprise! Word-of-mouth Influences Corporate Reputation

Harris Interactive has been researching corporate communications for years, and now for the first time they've asked people which is more important to their opinion of corporations, advertising or experience? Here is the ranking of influencers, which will come as no surprise to Shell.... I guess we should feel relieved that 70% of people say advertising influences their opinion (at all).

• 92% personal experience with a company
• 85% word of mouth communications
• 84% opinions of company employees
• 75% media stories
• 70% advertising and PR

WSJ: Word-of-Mouth Is Cheap, But Valuable, Survey Finds by Ron Alsop (subscription required)

Among the top-five companies in this year's ranking, word-of-mouth buzz proved to be a significant driving force, accounting for a quarter to more than a third of the intent-to-purchase decision. The greatest word-of-mouth impact was with United Parcel Service Inc., at 37%, compared with only a 9% effect for corporate communications. ...

Word-of-mouth had similar impact on companies with the lowest reputations in the ranking. It accounted for about a third of the future purchase decision in the case of Royal Dutch Shell, while corporate communications showed minimal effect, at 7%.

Letting the Gold Emerge from the Content

We spend so much time trying to anticipate what people will like that we sometimes forget to notice what they like. At Lifetime, Lisa Black didn't make that mistake.

NY Times: The Grandchildren of 'The Golden Girls' by Julie Bosman

After nearly 200,000 people registered for a "Golden Girls" online newsletter, the network realized that the fan base was skewing younger, said Lisa Black, vice president of business and marketing development at Lifetime. A large portion of the respondents were in high school or college and visited the Web site, www.lifetimetv.com, with surprising regularity, she said. "We thought based on who the fans are, and the fact that they're technologically savvy, to really leverage the desire they have for any new content with these ladies," Ms. Black said. "We really designed it with our fan base in mind." ... the "Lifetime Video Lounge," features "Golden Girls" clips and a series of testimonial vignettes from fans of the show.

Community Has New Rules

Great article at ClickZ on the state of the art in community web sites.

ClickZ: Community Rules by Hans-Peter Brondmo

"What about ease of use?" you ask. Most sites I've tried, with a few exceptions, are complicated. It takes effort to learn how to use this stuff. That's OK, as long as there's tangible benefit on the other end. When there is, people start using the services to hook up, share, collaborate, and just plain old gloat. The consumer Web is hot.

Though I'm fascinated to see how many copycats take good ideas and wrap them in ever-fancier window dressings, there are some novel ideas, too. I love the Wikipedia phenomenon. Backfence is good, too. Del.icio.us introduced a neat hack in the social bookmarking space (but the space's killer app isn't yet apparent). I like the idea behind EVDB, too. There are many others. Lots of neat tools and some good technology... and waiting in the wings there'll surely be some that will defy gravity and take off.

Continental Shows Listening Skills, Starwood has Talking Skill, too

Dean Burri (left), by being smart, patient, and playful got the ear of Continental CEO Larry Kellner. Kellner, demonstrating curiosity and considerable listening as well as political skills, showered an audience of purchase influencers (members of the FlyerTalk online community) with recognition. And what the Cluetrain Manifesto calls "marketing as conversation" took a big step forward.

The Continental VP of Marketing, Mark Bergsrud, says they often listen at the online message boards and use what they learn to improve service, but Continental is shy of posting themselves. Over at Starwood, they have William Sanders participate as Starwood Lurker. At first he looked like an outsider, charging in with all the answers, but now he has recognized that other members of the community also know some answers and he has really become a member of the community, sharing his interests outside Starwood as well.

Both these companies desire kudos, as well as Dean Burri, for speaking up.

NY Times: On Board the Message Board by Susan Stellin

Early in April, Continental Airlines played host at a gathering in Houston for members of FlyerTalk.com, a travel Web site best known for its message boards where travelers discuss, dissect and often complain about pretty much anything related to travel, but mostly airlines and their frequent-flier programs. The event grew out of a bet made by Dean Burri, a FlyerTalk regular (screen name: Cigarman) and Lawrence W. Kellner, Continental's chief executive. ...

The bet? If Mr. Burri could get more than 60 of the site's members to fly to Houston, paying for their own airfare and hotels, Continental would give them a behind-the-scenes tour of the airport and a dinner, and Mr. Kellner would give them a talk and take questions from an audience not accustomed to pitching softballs.

A lot more than 60 showed up - 274, in fact - putting faces to screen names like Flyzabit, MileCrazy and UpgradeFreak and engaging in a give-and-take with Mr. Kellner and other senior Continental executives that Mr. Burri described as "like Oprah."

Good Blogging is about Sharing a Passion

There's a lot of good stuff in this article about American culture and how it's evolved, but I'm just quoting the insightful remark about blogging. I highly recommend the whole article. It's long but easy to read because it's so well written.

Link: Commentary - Culture in the Age of Blogging by Terry Teachout

As has often been remarked, blogging is an amateur culture in the exact sense of the word. Even those bloggers who are artistic or intellectual professionals of one kind or another are motivated chiefly by love of the things they write about. And whereas journalism in America has come to be regarded as a “profession” open only to trained, credentialed specialists, life in the blogosphere more closely resembles the European notion of journalism as a skill that can be practiced by anyone who knows how to write and has something to say.

Our Culture of Choice. Uh huh, uh huh, we like it!

The wisdom of Grant McCracken, below. In 46 years I have observed that stupid fads fade, that the easy way out turns out to be a dead end, and that goodness and mercy prevail. Just watch, you'll see it, too.

Link: This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics.

When all those consumers are surveying all those meaning sources, embracing and using them and throwing them off, in all those various ways, we create a net out of which our culture comes. This is what we use instead of the wisdom of elites and the presumption of ideological or religious world views. This is what it is to live in a society of strangers, this is what it is to share a society with strangers. This is what it is for us all to pursue our separate projects and somehow create a single universe. In the great voting procedure that is the consumer society, we all act for ourselves in millions of consumer choices and in the process construct something like a single cultural world. It is of course a world that is multiple, fractious, contested, confusing, conflicted, changing and for all of these and other reasons, dynamic and emergent. And unless I am very much mistaken, that’s the way we like it (uhuh, uhuh).

New Manual for Community Building

Here's how I found out about Jim Dier's book, Neighbor Power (linked below), which I hope will be an important source of tips for me in building community. I visited the Fast Company Now blog where Heath Row pointed my attention to John Thackara who is guest blogging. Although my awareness of Thackara is low, I admire his Doors of Perception conference and hope to attend one day. In one of his postings for Fast Company, Thackara mentions picking up a copy of Neighbor Power. So two existing resources intermingled and bred a new resource. How organic.

Link: Amazon.com: Neighbor Power: Building Community The Seattle Way.

In the 1990s, Jim Diers helped Seattle neighborhoods face challenges ranging from gang violence to urban growth. The Neighborhood Matching Fund grew to support over 400 community self-help projects each year while a community-driven planning process involved 30,000 people. Diers provides evidence that productive community life is thriving, not just in Seattle, Washington, but in towns and cities across the globe. Both practical and inspiring, Neighbor Power offers real-life examples of how to build active, creative neighborhoods and enjoy the rich results of community empowerment.

Sincerity Doesn't Make You Right

I'm not sure if this originates with Jon Carroll...time will tell. But it's very funny and worth reading all the way through. I excerpted the part that made me laugh the hardest.

Link: JON CARROLL's April 8 column in the San Francisco Chronicle

We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.

Thanks to Sharon Brogan of Watermark for the sighting.

Being is Being Connected

I was supposed to be watching television with my family the other night and my husband abruptly said, "WHAT are you reading?" My teenage son and daughter stopped watching the TV and looked at me, sitting in the swivel-rocker with the laptop computer in my lap. "I'm reading about the Doors of Perception, this cool conference that took place in India, and I hope I get to attend one day. So then I read a couple of paragraphs to them. But it was clear they think I'm deranged.

So I'm reading the Fast Company blog and Heath Row has an extensive excerpt from a speech that David Weinberger gave at a meeting called Freedom to Connect, and David links to Joi Ito's comments about his experiences at Doors of Perception, and I'm reminded how Fast Company keeps me connected to the tiny fraction of people in the world who care about the same things I care about. Here's what David said,

Rather than hear about the spread of democracy, I want to hear about the spread of connection. There is no freedom without connection. There is no peace without connection. There is no joy without connection. That doesn't mean that this is about getting the protocol stack right, but it kind of is. We need to speak truth. More, louder, more directly, and in terms that are technical -- and not.

Thanks, danah, for Explaining the Overlap between Blogging and Journalism

One of the reason I like to read blogs is to see new and interesting points of view. I also scan the editorial page of the paper, but I never find anything as insightful as this.

Link: apophenia: Are Bloggers Journalists? Wrong Question..

Paper. What do people use paper for? They take notes, write lists, document their lives, and publish things. Hmm. These practices sound a lot like some of what people do with blogs, only using a different medium. Of course, i'll be the first to argue that blogs and paper are architecturally very very very different - that have notably different affordances and result in entirely different culture. But they both have an array of practices associated with them. And thus, you would never ask something like "Are paperists journalists?"

We know that not all bloggers are journalists. The question then becomes - are some? Well, this is where it gets interesting. Who gets to determine who is and is not a journalist?

Getting Clues about Social Networks

I haven't joined as many online networks as Stowe Boyd, but I have noticed that they're oddly hollow. When I joined 43 Things, I thought we were going to work together on something, but it never jelled.

Link: Get Real by Stowe Boyd

Peter Kaminski of Socialtext provided me some real leverage in my thinking about social networks. At the American Cancer Society Innovation Conference, he characterized social software as technology that allows people to create together. That insight immediately helped me understand the distinction between the social networks I want to continue on with (Plazes, Flickr, NetFlix Friends, and many others) and the ones that I am planning to drop out of (LinkedIn, ZeroDegrees, Orkut, and a long, long list of others). I want to stay where I feel that I am creating something with others, and I will drop out when I don't.

What they meant, "Computing is Social"

Robert Paterson is inspired by the resurgence of authenticity in our writing and our working. It does make you think maybe the world is spinning in the right direction.

Link: Robert Paterson's Weblog: Going Home - Our Reformation.

I believe that it is not a fad. I believe that Blogging, and its wider family of Social Software tools, will not only affect education but will shake our entire society to the core. I believe that our descendants will look back at its arrival the same way that we now look back at the advent of the printing press.

Thanks to Nancy White for the sighting.

We're Lucky to be Living in the Time of Blogs

If it were not a joyous luxury to blog, I would not do it. It's so nice to find that such an influential person as Peggy Noonan feels just as privileged to be able to read a blog, as I feel to write a blog.

Link: OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan.

I remember what the late great Christopher Reeve said on "The Tonight Show" 20 years ago. He was the second guest, after Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield did his act and he was hot as a pistol. Then after Reeve sat down Dangerfield continued to be riotous. Reeve looked at him, gestured toward him, looked at the audience and said with grace and delight, "Do you believe this is free?" The audience cheered. That's how I feel on their best days when I read blogs.

Why Good Networking is Hard to Find

Every other month, someone calls me and asks me if FastHouston is a good place to come and network. So I immediately tell them about the content of our meetings: we discover and discuss new ideas and how to put them to work. Then they ask me "can I find customers there?" And at that point it's really hard NOT to say, "if what I just told you doesn't inspire you to come, then NO." I try to let them down easily, saying "what kind of customers are you looking for?" Then I find out their launching a hair salon, or a residential mortgage business, and this is heartbreaking: they are targeting people with hair, or anybody who hasn't already bought a mortgage. And at that point, I really don't want them at my meeting. I start suggesting other places for them to go.

Business networking is such a misunderstood activity. One of the very best place to learn how to do it right is at www.AskTheHeadhunter.com. Nick Corcodilos takes a very tough stand. Here's a quote from a recent newsletter.

The fact that two people share a third contact does not necessarily establish sufficient common ground or trust between them. And there is certainly no value guaranteed by the link they share. (I know someone who knows George Bush. Do you think that would get me anything from George Bush?) Of course, a diligent person could strengthen weak networking links by investing sufficient time and effort. That would be a wonderful use of social networks. But let's face it: People who rely on such networks are likely looking for a quick and easy favor. Rather than invest what it takes to build trust and value in the connection, they are more likely to move on to the next name on the list. They're not looking for quality. They're looking for a payoff by exploiting the quantity of available links.

And that's the key: quality of relationships. Having good contacts is more important than having lots of them.

Good networking has three key ingredients. First, it requires common ground. People must have something to share and a valid context in which to cultivate their mutual interests. The best place to start is your work. Identify people who do the work you do (or want to do). E-mail them. Call them. Meet them.

Second, good networking demands value. Contacting people is not enough. Investing in the relationship and creating value is what matters. What can you do to help or genuinely engage another person? How about asking honest, sincere questions about the work she does, and offering a thoughtful tip that will help her be more productive?

Third, good networking takes time. People build trust through repeated good experiences. Once I trust you, I'll draw you into my circle of friends -- and that's where job referrals come from.

The secret is not in the quantity of contacts you can make, but in the quantity of time and value you can contribute to others. That's the only way to parlay quantity into quality.

The best way to become well-connected is to meet and stay in touch with people in your business who are good at what they do. Don't go to them when you're job hunting. Establish the kind of reputation that makes them want to call you when they learn about a great job opportunity.

Hard to Achieve More than Expected

Check out the link below for more evidence that bad employee performance is driven by poor management. We can only afford to expect the best from each other.

Link: EBF Articles on Europe Business Management Economics & Strategy.

bosses who think they can mask their real opinions of subordinates should think again. Under-rated employees can read their minds; they can feel the underconfidence. Does it matter that subordinates can discern their boss’s low expectations? Research suggests that it matters a great deal, both in terms of effort and performance. There is clearly a strong link between expectations and employee performance.

In the rest of the article, the authors give tips for managers to avoid denigrating employees, but most of it is obvious stuff like, giving mostly negative feedback, double-checking work, not using or crediting their ideas, and other signs of distrust. However, they mention to more insidious behaviors that I can catch in myself sometimes.

• Giving unneeded advice, especially suggesting the obvious, and
• Pressuring co-workers to conform rather than letting them make a few mistakes.

At Techxans, See Networking Evolve

Houston is one of the most networking-mad cities in the world. When I talk to out-of-town coordinators from the Company of Friends (Fast Company magazine's readers' network), they often say how professionals in their city need someplace to network. In Houston, professional groups fiercely compete for your networking investment (usually more time than money, but money does come up regularly).

Anyway, what I want to say is that being such a hotbed of networking, it's natural that Houston networking groups will be forced to become more innovative in order to compete. A recent announcement from a networking group for IT professionals, Techxans, demonstrates a real commitment to evolve the group and to invent new ways to meet members needs. Here's an excerpt from a recent email announcement.

Eric and Natalie would be happy to hear from you, including any feedback that you may have to help us improve Techxans. 

What's New in 2005:
   1.  All attendees business card images and list will be online and available to members immediately after the event.
   2.  All social activities will be $10 for non-members and free(included) for all members.
   3.  Members will receive private invitation to dinners with a CIO.
   4.  Members will get a cool new Techxans T-shirt.
   5.  Techxans now has a secured online eCommerce website that lets you sign up and pay your membership directly online.

More Spiritual MBAs

Recently I noted that you could get an MBA with spirituality in London. Now more business schools are getting in on the band wagon, including my alma mater Columbia Business School.

Link: WSJ.com - M.B.A.s Get Lessons In Spirituality, Too. (Subscription required)

"Work hours are so grueling these days that if you don't love what you do, you are in hell," says Srikumar Rao, who teaches "Creativity and Personal Mastery" at Columbia University Business School. "You need the work you do to express your values and be of benefit to the larger society. This is very, very important, but is not acknowledged at most business schools, let alone addressed."

So whuffo?! Whuffo you blog?

So there's this old Pogo comics strip where Ol' Bun Rab keeps following around the crew with a fire hose. When asked, he says, "I carry the hose," until Albert, exasperated, yells "Whuffo?! What for do you carry the hose?" Then Bun Rab turns the hose on Albert..."that's whuffo."

Link: This Blog Sits at the: blogging: what it's for, how it pays.

I have a friend whose mom, an avid gardener, retired to West Africa. If Mom doesn’t like the look of her new garden, she only has to replant, and, hey presto, she has something new and fully formed in a couple of weeks. Things grow so fast, Mom has taken to experimenting. “What would happen if we made everything blue?” Twelve days later, she knows. Blogs are experiments. Each of them says, in effect, what happens to this way of thinking if we apply it to a variety of topics for an extended period? Do the ideas flourish or wither? Do they evolve or merely repeat? Do they scale up in their complexity, or, forgive me, bog down.

Group Behavior Still Unpredictable on Internet

As more off-line groups are using the internet to communicate internally, we are encountering varied expectations about how to use the tools. Groups that were built online probably don't have the same problems, but since all this is so new, we do have lots of cross-currents.

For those of us looking for guidance, the Center for the Digital Future does a very good annual study of how people are using the internet and what the typical user is doing. It's very helpful.

Link: Center for the Digital Future's 2004 Trends Announcement.

One of the more interesting findings in the Digital Future Project is that we may be seeing the first hints that the most experienced users are not going to answer e-mail as often as they used to: new users think e-mail needs to be answered faster than do the experienced users. While e-mail is used regularly by practically everyone, a “common etiquette” for its use has not yet emerged. Thus far, no commonly accepted conventions about dealing with e-mail: how quickly should users respond? What types of correspondence should be handled electronically? Do users need to respond to every e-mail?

It's still impossible to predict what an individual group member expects, but at least you have a baseline to proceed from.

The Challenge of Convergence

Clay Shirky, quoted below, provided a great perspective to the NY Times on the discourse of blogs, noting how people can use them to inform one another or not. I have observed that in any online discussion, convergence is a struggle where people have to be committed to listening to each other. In this NY Times article (registration required, free for only a few days), John Schwartz does a great job of showing the competing forces.

Link: The New York Times > International > International Special > Communications: Myths Run Wild in Blog Tsunami Debate.

the key to reasonable discussion [is] to get beyond flames and the "echo chamber" effect of like-minded people simply reinforcing the opinions of one another and to let the self-correcting mechanisms do their job in a civil way. "You hope the echo chamber effect and the fact-checking effect will balance out into a better and more nuanced set of narratives, and a more rigorously checked set of facts," he said. But in such a sharply contentious world, "The risk is it will largely divide itself into competing narratives where what even constitutes a fact is different in different camps."

Getting a Perspective on Our Behavior

One of the best reads on the internet is Grant McCracken's This Blogs Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. I laughed out loud twice during the post below.

Link: Asians of America.

I was sitting in his tiny, chilly living room. Jetlagged, disoriented, and freezing, I was asking slow pitch questions in the hope of slow pitch answers. Something I could hang on to. Dream on, Grant. This is China. “So why didn’t you want to live close to your grandson?” I bleated. “I don’t want to be a wise old man,” he explained. Hui said he did not wish to be stuffed into the conventional notions that await the elderly. He was, he said, curious about retirement without “retirement.” He was happy to be a “friend” to his grandson. He just didn’t want to be his “grandfather.” Who knows what we are looking at here? I am no China expert. (I do labor to make this clear to my clients but they send me anyhow.) It looks like the virus of individualism.

Grant is one of the best observers of culture we have, partly because he's always observing himself observing the culture.

Value of Blogging

Link: InfoWorld: The network is the blog: December 10, 2004: By Jon Udell .

As a blogger, I worry when I see statements like this one by Jon Udell:

Just as telephones are meaningful only when connected to the telephone network, so blogs are meaningful only when connected to the blog network.

I don't agree that as a blogger you necessarily have to connect to other bloggers, but I agree it's crucial that you be "findable," and being in the blog network is one way of being found. But your best audience may not be other bloggers.

However, Jon does have some very powerful things to say later in this article:

The blog network is made of people. We are the nodes, actively filtering and retransmitting knowledge. Clearly this architecture can help manage the glut of information. More subtly, it can also help ensure that no vital inputs are suppressed because nobody has to rely on a single source. If one of the feeds I monitor doesn’t react to some event in a given domain, another probably will. When they all react, I know it was an especially important event.

The resemblance of this model to the summing of activation potentials in a neural system is more than superficial. Nature knows best.

This phemenon exist without the world wide web? It's like we're watching our brain evolve outside your head.

Communities of Shared Interests

Salon has a terrific article (see link below) on the new social activity taking place on the photo-sharing site flickr. Recently I mentioned a Nielsen report that showed people are going online for 'shared interests,' and surely this is one of the best examples. The simple premise that people might enjoy talking about photos that strangers took of the same subject has led to amazingly collaborative creations. Then there are the people who share images with their existing social network. It's incredible to read about all the different activities which are emerging.

Link: Salon.com Technology | The Friendster of photo sites. (Free if you agree to watch an Ultramercial.)

On most sites, you create your own album or page of photos, and invite your friends to look at them. But on Flickr, you can mingle all your photos with similar images, creating an endlessly beguiling cross-pollination of photos that spark a host of unique communities. Flickr allows its more than 176,000 members to meet each other through both images and words in an ever-evolving visual playground. The onslaught of images that appear on the site range from the truly artistic to the bluntly documentary, a pool of more than 2.2 million photos that's growing at the rate of about 30,000 a day. What's unique is that 82 percent of the pictures on the site are publicly available to anyone who cares to look at them and riff off them. Members can keep their photos private, shared only with a specified group of intimates, but most choose not to, allowing the pictures of their cat or car to freely commingle with others.