Getting You Noticed

By Christine Fife | Published: June 25, 2010

This post was inspired by a recent blog post by my good friend Tara Hunt. Oh wait, I’ve never met Tara Hunt! I tend to forget that I don’t actually know her in real life! I’m a fan of her book, The Whuffie Factor, and I follow her on Twitter and read her blog. Anyway, Tara’s blog the other day, There has GOT to be a better way, one of her terrific optimistic ramblings, referenced another blog post by Maureen Johnson, Manifesto: I Am Not a Brand.

Maureen’s post is terrific and a must read for any marketer who considers themselves a “branding” professional, as well as for any person who provides a service, thus needs to market themselves as their “product”.

So, with the two blog posts swimming around in my mind, I went back to what I’ve been working on lately, a seminar to teach individuals how to build an online profile that will help them increase their professional opportunities, as well as enhance their personal life and hobbies. The blog posts were causing me to rethink some of the terminology I was using in the seminar presentations. I was actually about to use the term “brand yourself” to try to get across to seminar attendees that they will want to illustrate who they are beyond boring data points. But as my Tara has been heard to say, “Instead of a personal brand, why not just get a personality?”

The line makes me laugh, but in my former career life (working with and counseling host families, schools and high school and university students from around the world) I discovered that for many people, sharing very much of your personality with people you don’t know yet can be a scary thing. Some people need a bit of guidance or perhaps a better way of looking at it is, they need a plan.

Sure, there’s no doubt that many, many careers can benefit from creating a thoughtful online presence and actively participating in online conversations, building relationships with influencers in specific industries. And, many people already understand the entertainment value of online gaming and social networking sites and others realize the enhanced enjoyment of personal hobbies when they connect with groups and individuals online who have common interests and share and tag information and multimedia. But perhaps I should define what I’m talking about regarding “Online Profiles.”

What is an Online Profile?

Many websites and social networks have users create a “profile”, but in this case I’m talking about creating a profile as a collective presence online. Search engines will do the work for anyone looking for you. All you need to do is have your information out there and know where to put your information in places that make sense for your career, your goals and your personal interests. Just because a social network or a web community is popular doesn’t mean you need to be there. It may be more appropriate for your career, goals and personal interests to be on niche sites. The best coarse of action is to understand the differences, choose what’s right for you, share information that is appropriate and that you’re comfortable with and participate in the conversations that are taking place.

An Online Profile is:

  • You, in Digital Form
  • As much or as little as you want to share
    • Personal Details, Contact Information & Calendars
    • Images, Videos & Audio Files
    • Communications & Documents
    • Medical, Lifestyle & Financial Accounts
    • Social Media & Web 2.0 Networks, Accounts, Communities
  • What others share
  • Information you “claim” or “tag

So, now I’m thinking I won’t use the term “brand yourself.” Maybe, “personalize your profile.” Or how about, “create a Profonality.” Get it–profile+personality… Oh, that’s just terrible! Back to the drawing board.

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Animal, Human, Person, Cog, Number & Now We’re A Business

By Christine Fife | Published: May 22, 2010

No, I didn’t drop dead and I didn’t win the lottery and just abandon writing a blog. I got lazy for a week, had the flu the next week, had too much work for a couple of weeks and then had a revelation. It’s hard to take time out and write a blog post amidst all that.

But now the revelation is going somewhere and I’d like to share it with you. You may not know this about me, but in my first, errr I mean second career incarnation I managed international educational exchange programs. Much of those responsibilities focused on marketing, which lead me to a master’s in marketing communication, but I digress. And I am the co-founder of Peace4Kids, a J-1 visa high school exchange program, which I still work with. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for working with teens and college students, which brings me to my revelation.

In the beginning we were animals, right. Then, at some point we were thought of as something more because, well, we thought more–we were humans. Then, someone thought a bit more about it and broke out of the proverbial box and said, “Hey, no. I’m not just a human. I’m a person.” Well, then wars happened and religions started getting all up in our business and the dark ages occurred and then some enlightenment or something and then the industrial revolution and suddenly we were cogs. Just cogs in the wheels. Then… there were so damn many of us and computers came around and we needed something easier to track all of us because there wasn’t just one or two John Smiths, there were 457 in Dubuque, Iowa alone, so we became numbers!

So here it is. The big revelation. We aren’t numbers anymore. Or actually, I should say, we are each so many numbers now–numbers and passwords, and bills and invoices, and accounts and rights and responsibilities–that we are each a business unto ourselves. It is so complicated to be a human being that we must all become business experts if we plan to succeed at our own lives. Oh sure, we can survive without any business training, but chances are that means you’ll end up one of the millions of Americans in major credit card debt or without medical insurance or someone who can’t figure out how to pay your taxes. And hell, think of how many people you know who don’t vote because it’s too complicated to figure out ballot measures (sorry if I’m now making fun of you.)

So this little tirade is not really about marketing, really. But in a way it’s related. We need to consider that each individual person is more like a business now than they ever have been in the past. Life is complicated and as a society we don’t seem to be doing much to catch up and teach the next generation. We need to be letting teens and college students know that they need to not only understand the basic business principals to prepare to run their lives, but they’ll also need the advantage of a bit of branding and messaging for their own career and personal lives as well. Be looking for more on this topic to come. I promise not to be gone so long again!

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Lights. Camera. Converse!

By Christine Fife | Published: March 30, 2010

Even if you’re the hottest, most outgoing guy in the world who sweats charm and has one of those perfect laughs that both men and women are ok with, making conversation does not just happen. It may seem so when you’re sitting with friends or family because you know them and have things in common so topics are readily at hand.

Or perhaps you don’t spend much time with family because conversation feels awkward because you don’t have things in common. The same is often the case in a business situation. It may turn out you have things personally in common with a business contact, but when you’re meeting for the first time you won’t know this off the bat. Or if your addressing a large audience you don’t have the opportunity to address everyone on an individual level.

As a child you learned, through family interactions and school situations, how to behave and what you were interested in, and you were subsequently drawn to others who wanted to talk about common interests. Unfortunately, in the business world, you can’t simply rely on having the common interest of your products or even your industry to make conversations lively and ignite engagement from your audiences. Many of the audiences you need to reach (particularly potential customers) come to the market conversation because they have a need or want and not because they want to discuss your product or the industry. This conversation is very different in nature than the conversation you would have with an industry analyst or reporter or engineer within your industry and this distinction should not be taken lightly.

Though most people learned how to “make” conversation by doing it—as an after affect of learning how to speak and interact with other people—make no mistake, it is a skill and has many outside influences and factors. And as with most things in business, as opposed to your personal life, it should be planned out and not done off the cuff. Conversation coaching is a best practice to consider and being done by many companies today, particularly with the growth of social media and the expansion of the number of employees who are now becoming spokespeople (whether officially or unofficially) for their companies.

Conversation Coaching

Conversation coaching can include a variety of techniques and exercises to build skills and develop comfort levels with different types of situations. Coaching activities might also include role playing, media/interview preparation techniques and active listening exercises. Re-evaluating the corporate messaging and understanding it from the perspective of how it helps people/companies fulfill their wants/needs is of key importance. It will also, undoubtedly, cover identifying what type of audience an individual is part of and what that means in terms of directing the conversation you have with them.

Conversation coaching will often include preparation materials for one-on-one conversations. When possible, it’s always best to know as much as you can about the person you’re going to meet with, so you can make the conversation personable. This is particularly important in influencer relations. At the very least you want to know as much as you can about the influencers work focus, the outlets for their work, their audience, their specialty/focus, what they feel about your company/competitors and any possible connections between you/your company and the influencer. Come prepared to have a conversation on a topic of mutual interest, not give a pitch. Share how your product/company approach might be shaping the industry/mutual interest and inquire on their opinion. See where this is going? (I digress.)

Who In the Company Needs Conversation Coaching?

Everyone. Certainly the company executives and management teams and anyone with an outward-facing role in the company such as the sales and marketing teams, but in today’s business climate, everyone in the company should have some level of conversation coaching because everyone in the company represents your company.

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Don’t Try to Boil The Ocean: You’ll Just Kill the Fish

By Christine Fife | Published: March 16, 2010

If only there were more hours in the day… I probably still wouldn’t get around to blogging more. But two things kicked me in the backside today and got me motivated. First, the #sm51 tweetchat (guest @johncass with topic Importance of Content and Engagement Strategy in Social Media) and second, Seth Godin’s blog post today, Driveby Culture and the Endless Search for Wow.

Since there aren’t more hours in the day, why do some people and businesses try to boil the ocean?

Recently I’ve taken on a new client in an industry that is completely new for me, which is super exciting for me, skin care services and products. From business and marketing perspectives they have a lot going for them, but they also have a lot of challenges they’ll need to overcome to take their business to the next level. One of the main issues for this client, and many of the challenges they face have arisen because of this, is that they’ve inadvertently been trying to boil the ocean.

If you haven’t heard this phrase before, it’s used as an illustrative term for saying you’re trying to do too much—perhaps to the point of detriment. In the case of my new client, they have so much going on they aren’t really seeing results from anything. They’re stretched so thin they can’t devote enough time to any of their initiatives. Their ideas are good, but they don’t have the budget or man power to do it all. They’re messaging is also going in too many directions at once to try and hit every possible audience so it becomes muddled and confusing. They have a great story, but aren’t telling it with focus to a targeted audience.

Whether your a small startup just getting things going, your a mid-size company in growth-mode or your a big corporation, the ocean is a big pool! Think about the pool you swim in and focus your efforts there. Don’t try to do everything at once. Don’t stretch your budget and human resources across too many tactics. Base your marketing decisions on your annual business goals (with longer-term goals in site). Choose a strategic marketing direction that is within your budget and human resources. Select your marketing tactics, activities and tools that are manageable within your resources and make sense for your audience. As your business grows, so will the size of your pond!

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Influencers: How Influence Manifests Itself

By Christine Fife | Published: February 23, 2010

During today’s #hastagsocialmedia.com Unconference (#sm48)—with guest moderator Ken Burbary—the topic of Influencers was raised. The topic of today’s discussion was actually Social and the New Model For Market Segmentation, but within the new world of social media, Influencers play an even bigger role in defining and reaching segments.

(Side Note: If you are a communications professional using social media or are responsible for developing a company’s strategic social media plan, I highly recommend this unconference series which occurs each Tuesday at 9:00 am Pacific Time.)

During the discussion, Ken raised several questions, and made several points, about how it’s important to understand who influences your audience and how and why they influence them. To this, I responded: It’s vital for a company to know how an Influencer’s influence manifests itself in the market conversation and engage with them appropriately to ultimately reach the Influencers’ audiences. (Of course this was stated in 140 characters.) Marc Meyer, one of my most favorite people to follow on Twitter, responded saying, “There’s a nice hidden question in there: How does influence manifest itself in market conversations?”

First, as a marketing/communications professional you want to identify the influencers in your market space. That’s another topic for another blog post, but I will say that in your research to identify the influencers you’ll essentially be viewing how their influence manifests itself! To answer Marc’s question, I’ll go ahead and use him as our Influencer—hope you don’t mind, Marc!

With Marc as our Influencer, how does Marc’s influence manifest itself in the greater marketing industry’s market conversation?

  1. Twitter: @marc_meyer
  2. Marc’s Blog: Direct Marketing Observations
  3. Marc’s Consulting Services Company: Digital Response Marketing Group
  4. SocialMediaToday.com: Contributed Articles
  5. Team member: hashtagsocialmedia.com unconference
  6. Marc is ranked on multiple Top-Blog lists including, Best of Alltop, Junta42 Top Blogs, AdAge Power150, PostRank
  7. Marc’s Presentations: SlideShare
  8. LinkedIn Profile: Connections and Group Membership
  9. Marc often speaks at industry events on marketing and social media topics, is a marketing and social media consultant and is often interviewed and quoted on his knowledge of these topics. He is asked to be a guest writer on other blogs and publications and is a member/participant of social media, marketing and technology groups.

These are great to know if you’re a company who considers Marc to be an Influencer to your target audience (maybe you’re a social media monitoring company, for example). You’d want to read his blog and comment with quality information. You might want to hire him as a consultant or ask him to speak at an event. You may wish to invite him to be on a panel with your VP of Social Media. You’d certainly want to have the appropriate person follow him on Twitter and participate in his online unconference discussions.

Marc’s influence does not manifest itself in any published books (as near as I could tell) or marketing industry research reports. Other ways an individual’s influence may manifest itself is by having a highly recognizable position or they are an event host/organizer. A traditional journalist’s influence is manifested through their print column or TV segment, but may also come out through their blog.

It’s important to identify individuals who are influential in your market space and then drill down into how their influence manifests itself and how you can engage with them through those avenues to build a relationship and thus get in front of their audiences.

Thanks, Marc, for raising the question and being my test subject!

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Marketing is Dead, Long Live Conversation

By Christine Fife | Published: February 11, 2010

I’m not sure when “marketing” became a 4-letter word for so many people, but in my recent experience more and more people think of “marketing” as sleazy. This sucks if you’re a marketing professional, which I am, but I don’t advocate any marketing practices that people associate with the dirty-word sense of marketing.

I had several great conversations over the past couple of weeks with Ooga Labs‘ people. Very interesting company. They are:

… a group of software engineers and designers developing several consumer Internet businesses at the same time. We come up with the ideas ourselves, and once a company finds its product/market fit, we might raise outside capital for it. We like to build digital consumer services that have a chance to touch tens of millions of users and make the world a little better than it was.

They have several cool properties already (PlacePop, MedPedia and WonderHill) and are about to launch a new one soon. I’ll leave it to them to announce what their new property is, but I’ll add my 2 cents–it’s going to be very cool.

Anyway… After meeting with them, I doubt they’ll mind my putting these words in their mouth–they probably define marketing in the 4-letter word sense. I can’t blame them. There is a lot of reasons why marketing has gained this reputation, even though there are a lot of great things that marketing professionals have done to positively increase their customer view of them.

What do you do when your profession starts to be viewed this way? What all do people with this view see as “marketing”? Do they realize that marketing is more than advertising? Many don’t. Many think that marketing is trickery–a plot to get people to buy stuff they don’t want or need. Unfortunately, there are companies that operate that way. But we marketing professionals have a choice. You can step up and say, “Marketing (as a 4-letter word) is dead. The conversation, the customer and audience engagement, the honest interaction, the straight-forward information, and the genuine listening and caring about what people need and want is King. Long live the conversation!”

As a marketer, to adopt this mind set and make it effective as an approach for your company/clients it may mean going back to your business and marketing plans. You may need to alter, adapt or amend your brand identity and certainly you’ll need to embrace some new technologies to allow your customers to freely communicate with you (2-directional conversation). You’ll need to release some control over your message and embrace what your audiences say, both good and bad, and face them head on.

The best advice I can give you is to jump in and start listening to the marketing industries market conversation. There you’ll find out the disappointing news of diminishing Return on Investments for many activities, but also the incredible upside of emerging tactics. As a starting place here is my Twitter Marketing Conversation List. Check it out. You don’t need to spend oodles of time participating if you don’t want to, but listening to what people are talking about, sharing and exchanging of ideas will jump start you into a new way of approaching your profession.

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Conversing with Customers vs. Writing Right to Them

By Christine Fife | Published: January 26, 2010

What the heck does this post title mean, is probably what you’re asking yourself, right? Well, my intention for this post is to raise the topic of being “conversational” in your communications with customers and prospects vs. writing perfect, grammatically correct informational conveyances. For that information, I recommend a few writing classes with text books on proper grammar.

This post is about writing communications that help people feel as if your engaging them in conversation. For sure, you need to be understood–the lessons from Eats, Shoots & Leaves shouldn’t be forgotten–but nothing says you have to sound like an automated phone tree system in everything you communicate. By now, most people on earth know that the first thing you do when you reach an automated voice is to press “0″ if you’d rather talk to a person. What do you suppose people do with written communications that sound that way? What do you do with them? Uh, delete? File under important in the trash can?

Let’s say you just signed up for some online service and you’re getting the auto email with important details about your account. Which of these statements would more likely keep you reading long enough to realize you should keep track of this information rather than quickly clicking delete?

  1. Dear Ms. ‘Whomever’,
    Thank you for registering at ‘Company Whatever’. We are very pleased to have you as a customer. Our services are meeting the needs of companies all over the world, with more features and options being added regularly. Please make note of the following account information in your records so that our customer support team can better assist you should you have any questions.
  2. Hello Jennifer,
    Your registration is complete–thanks for joining! Your account details for ‘Product Whatever’ are listed here, they’ll help you save time if you need assistance from us or our global community of users.

I’m sure you get the point I’m trying to make here. Of course, you want to be respectful of your audience, so this exact example may not be appropriate depending on what type of product you offer. But… food for thought–try considering all your communications and how they might be edited for easier reading, to make your company more approachable, to engage your audience, to illustrate that you care about them, etc.

Your communication pieces have a goal/purpose, right? (If they don’t, why are you sending them?) So, start by reviewing the goal and determine if a conversational approach would help you reach that goal. Staying with the example above, check to see how often customer support encounters people who don’t know their account details. Change the wording on the account details message and see if that number improves.

With the explosion of social media use, companies been moving toward a conversational tone, often by accident. The nature of social media is being “social”. Sounding like a dictionary or grammar book is far from being social. We don’t speak that way, so we don’t always need to write that way. Again, you can be understood, even if you’re writing is informal or doesn’t meet every grammatical rule.

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Listening, but are They Hearing?

By Christine Fife | Published: January 15, 2010

I’m always preaching to businesses to keep in mind the 5 keys of true participation when they are looking at getting into the social media/Web 2.0 options to expand their company reach and product awareness.

  • Listening
  • Speaking
  • Caring
  • Sharing
  • Building relationships

Lately, I’ve been talking with a number of engineers from startups who are in Alpha stages with their products, thus they don’t currently need to generate leads/awareness/purchases, etc. They’ve got great ideas for new software and some smart engineers on board. They’ve done enough market research to know there’s a market for the type of product they’re developing, enough to convince funders. But they’re still putting the marketing horse before the cart wanting to zero in on how to do lead-gen programs.

My advice to anyone in this situation is to do a solid dive into Listening first.

  1. Use online web and social media monitoring tools (many free as well as paid for options out there) and do some basic Googling and blog searching to hear what people are saying about potential competitors products. What do they like or not like about features, etc.
  2. What are experts and other industry influencers saying about the best solutions for fulfilling the need or want you expect your product to fulfill?
  3. Really dive into what people are talking about, outside of mentioning current brands, about the need or want they have.
  4. Start figuring out who the Influencers and market conversation Participants are, how that influence manifests itself and how they like to share information and receive information. What networks and online tools do they use to communicate?

This research will start to show you who to build relationships with as you work toward having a beta to show them–these are the people you’ll want to invite into your beta initially. They’ll give you the best feedback and help you generate awareness later on if your product meets there needs and you’re good to them. The optimal marketing mix that will ultimately achieve the best lead-gen results, generate the most awareness and trials of your product and sustain you for the long-run as you tweek and add to your product come out of the initial research. So start by listening and don’t forget to hear what is being said. Oh yeah, then be sure to internalize the info you deem important.

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Making Conversation to Build Relationships and Grow Your Business: 2010 Style!

By Christine Fife | Published: January 6, 2010

The definition I like best for the word “conversation” comes from Dictionary.com:

“Conversation: the informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc., by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy.”

But notice that the dictionary hasn’t caught up with the times. It’s 2010, Dictionary People! This definition specifically says “spoken” and “oral” and leaves out all other forms of communication available for the 2010s and beyond. With all the killer Web2.0 and social media networks, apps and tools, the “interchange of thoughts, information, etc.” can now be done via typed discussions (Twitter and forums for example), imagery (Flickr comes to mind) and multi-media (such as videos on YouTube with spoken and written words paired with music, graphics and other imagery.)

What is poignant in this definition is “the information interchange of thoughts, information, etc. … between persons.” A blogger and Tweeter I regularly follow, John Cass, wrote a post today titled Is Content Taking Marketers Down The Wrong Rabbit Hole? This struck a chord with me because I’d planned on writing about Making Conversation 2010 Style today. As John points out, companies need to consider the “social element” of social media rather than using it as just another outlet for their self-serving content.

Their are practically endless options now for where to converse with your target audiences, but the point is to have a two-way conversation that helps you build relationships with those individuals. Social media platforms, networks and tools are brilliant for this. They give your company the ability to listen (and then internalize) what people are saying not only about your products, but about their wants and needs. And you can respond to those individuals in a public forum so that others can read and benefit from the conversation (most people are Listeners–they don’t participate in the conversation but they listen and hear what others say.)

Also, these social media tools currently out, and coming soon, can help you be more efficient in conversing so that you aren’t trying to talk to all 1 million (or more) of your target audience by phone or in person. 2010 conversation style allows you to be much more efficient while reaching many more people. Sure, use these tools to tell people about your great content you’ve created, but also use the tools to get to know people and listen to what they want and need. We all know that the point of business is to sell your products, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be pals with your customers too. You listen to them, you help them fulfill their wants and needs with free, helpful advice, as well as with your products, and they’ll be more likely to buy from you and influence others to buy from you too.

Happy New Year and happy conversing!

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Getting Social Media to Work: Small Biz and Non-profits Can Join Market Conversation Too

By Christine Fife | Published: December 15, 2009

Social media isn’t just for the Fortune 500 world, but it isn’t a just a simple, free, easy 1-2-3 proposition, either. In fact, as major corporations build out their social media strategies to expand their place in the market conversation, increase market share, differentiate from competitors and expand their offerings and refine their customer support, they’re spending large budgets and directing many human resources to the efforts. But don’t despair, if you’re a small business or a non-profit organization, you can still reap the benefits of social media and stay within their budget.

5 Suggestions to Help You Be Successful with Social Media (with little money and/or few resources)

  1. You don’t need to boil the ocean–it’s not necessary to have an account or fan page or profile on every single social network. Figure out where your customers and potential customers are. Often the best place for you to engage in the online conversation is in smaller niche networks/communities. This site might help you research. http://sites.google.com/site/socialmedialistproject/networks
  2. You don’t need to spend a lot, but you’ll want to spend some money to create a plan on how to participate. Social networks and online communities are usually free to sign up, but you don’t want to waste a lot of time figuring out which network or community to get involved with if you aren’t familiar with them and once you’re set up, you need a plan for what to say, when to say it, who to listen to, how to respond to questions and mentions, etc. so that it actually benefits your business. I recommend hiring a consultant to help you do this.
  3. You don’t need to spend a fortune on social media applications or tools. There are many free social media management, engagement and research tools available. Check out my Delicious bookmarks for Free SM Monitoring tools, SM research tools, and see the Social Media Project wiki for other 3rd party tools and social media locations.
  4. Be sure to keep the 5 keys to conversation participation in mind:
    • Listen to current customers, prospects, industry experts and other influencers in the market space and internalize what you hear to improve your business.
    • Speak to the overall market conversation with quality, supportive and helpful content that people want to respond to, inquire about and pass on to others.
    • Care about what is being said about your products, your company, your competitors and your industry, but even more important, care about helping your customers and prospects fulfill their wants and needs.
    • Share your experiences—positive and negative—and your insights as you grow your company and evolve your product lines.
    • Build relationships with market conversation Influencers, Participants and Listeners based on the mutual interest of the consumer problems that need to be solved with product innovation.
  5. Spread the work out among more than one person. As a small company or non-profit, you don’t need a full-time person to make social media efforts work. Many of the social media management tools, even free ones, will allow you to create logins for multiple people and assign tasks to different people. Encourage your staff to help spread your word. Talk about guidelines for speaking out so that you’re all on the same page. I’ve set up CoTweet for a couple of small companies and non-profits. It works great for them to manage their Twitter stream.

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