Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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The presentation blog test

Here’s an easy test to assess the value of any slide in a presentation, if the presenter is using slideware:

Credit: Norvig’s Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint

Would this slide make a decent blog post?

Not the slide itself, per se, but whatever the content is that’s on it or that accompanies it. Would it make a decent blog post? Would it be interesting enough that you could write about whatever the topic is for a few hundred words?

Sometimes when I’m putting together a presentation, I’ll find that a slide is just vapor. It originally might have had a point, but time, practice, and refining has whittled that point down to a pale shadow of itself, not enough to make content for a reasonable blog post. The slide gets the axe.

Sometimes, the opposite a true. A slide tries to say too much, do too much, and would probably make about three blog posts. I’ll mentally draft out the three blog posts and then blow up that slide into three, as long as the blog posts I’ve written in my head about them are reasonably good.

Try this the next time you’re working on a presentation or reviewing one you’ve already made. See how many slides you end up blowing up and how many end up getting the axe entirely. When you’re done, you’ll have a much stronger presentation…

… and a whole bunch of blogging to do.

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September 5, 2010
Do you care if the shelves in your store have more stuff?

One of the students in the course I teach on Advanced Social Media asked how in the world we are all expected to manage the tremendous number of services, tools, tactics, and ideas in social media. Various lists float around the Internet from supposed social media experts of the hundreds of different tools out there. New stuff gets announced on Mashable and Techcrunch faster than your poor mouse can scroll. How is someone supposed to keep up?

You’re not – and that’s more than okay, it’s the smart thing to do. Let’s change contexts to home improvement. Generally speaking, you go to a home improvement store because you have a home improvement problem or challenge. You want to fix something, build something, or paint something.

When you get to the store, a home improvement expert doesn’t immediately begin telling you where everything in the store is. Chances are they’ll ask if they can help you and then direct you to the aisle in the store that has the stuff you’re looking for in order to solve your problem.

Generally speaking, if you don’t have a home improvement problem, no amount of stuff added to a store’s shelves is going to matter to you. Even if the store issued a press release touting how much was on the shelves, even if home improvement experts blogged about how they knew about every product in the store, if you didn’t have a problem, you wouldn’t care.

The same is true of social media. Figure out first if you have a problem that calls for a social media solution, and then worry about which tool, service, or tactic fits the bill. There’s a very good chance that there are much bigger overall issues you need to solve first, and then apply social media methods as part of an overall digital marketing strategy.

You as a homeowner are not obligated to know how to use every tool in the home improvement store. You just have to know where to go and how to ask for help when you have a home improvement problem. You as a marketer are not obligated to know how to use every social media tool available. You just have to know where to go and how to ask for help when you have a social media problem.

Finally, if you as a marketer think that telling the world about your latest features in your product or service is going to move the needle, ask yourself this: when was the last time you saw a home improvement store do a massive campaign about new stuff in aisle 18?

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September 3, 2010
Public service message: ScheduleAPickup.com

Yesterday, I was walking along the streets of Boston, and noticed the biannual dumping of perfectly good stuff by college students on the sidewalks and streets. Mind you, this isn’t just the dorm room poster collection or something – we’re talking furniture in like new condition, clothing, lights, etc. – things that people with less money could use in their homes.

The problem is, most students don’t want to go to the trouble of hauling stuff like this to a charity. I can understand that, having been a student – the last thing on your mind as you’re moving out or in is moving yet MORE stuff somewhere else.

I’d like your help in spreading a simple message to every college student, to everyone and anyone who has stuff in still usable condition. There’s a charity I support called the Vietnam Veterans of America that has a charity donation system that kicks ass. Here’s how it works: you visit ScheduleaPickup.com and pick what you’re giving away, and most importantly

WHEN A TRUCK FROM THE CHARITY CAN COME TO YOUR PLACE AND PICK IT UP

That’s right: no hauling. No moving. No schlepping. A truck magically appears on Wednesdays and takes your still perfectly good stuff away. They leave you a receipt for tax purposes, too.

If you live nearby some college students who are throwing away perfectly good stuff, please consider corralling it to your yard or doorstep and then calling in the charity air strike yourself. There’s absolutely no reason that this stuff needs to take up space in a landfill when someone else can get some good out of it.

Please spread the word LOUDLY about ScheduleaPickup.com and solve both a waste and charity problem at the same time AND with little to no effort on the donor’s part. Everyone wins.

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September 1, 2010
Corrupting words

Once upon a time, the word gourmet conjured up sumptuous, rich foods of the highest quality:

It was something we desired, something we sought after, something we aspired to.

Then someone’s marketing department got a hold of the word and corrupted it beyond recognition into this sad joke:

Once upon a time, there were a few select companies that were actually industry-leading. Now the marketing departments of the world have deemed everyone industry-leading:

As Syndrome says in The Incredibles, once everyone is special, then no one is special. Everyone is industry-leading to the point where it’s a meaningless term. Every food is gourmet, every wine is vintage, every company believes its customer service is the best, every consumer good is luxury, every event is exclusive, every customer status is elite, every product is innovative.

What’s the competent marketer to do when the incompetent marketers around him or her are corrupting words faster than he or she can use them meaningfully? At a certain point, the thesaurus runs out.

How do you handle the business of being remarkable when all the words to make remarks have been used up?

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August 31, 2010
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from

Lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And you shall lead a life uncommon

– Jewel, A Life Uncommon

Tell me what you struggle against and I will know that it is powerful, because you spend energy, time, resources, money, and strength struggling against it. Sometimes, it’s a worthy opponent. Rape. Murder. Child slavery. Genocide. These are powerful dark forces that need the armies of light to be marshaled against them ceaselessly. These are enemies worthy of any crusader’s judgement and merciless verdict.

Sometimes, however, you admit your own fears and inadequacies when you only stand for what you fight against, rather than what you fight for. You grant your enemy, whatever it is, legitimacy in your struggle against them. Every time you rail against Barack Obama or Rush Limbaugh, you prove that they’re potent forces to be reckoned with, otherwise you’d not spend time and energy on them. Your battle validates them. Every time you protest a Muslim mosque’s construction or lack of a minority in technology, you reinforce your own position as one so lacking power that you cannot solve your problems any other way than by tearing someone else down.

Tell me instead what you stand for. What you fight for. Show me through your actions that if you emerge victorious from the struggle that you won’t immediately set your energy against tearing me down, because otherwise I’ll believe that you will. Instead of opposing a mosque, build a church or grow an existing one’s community and charity. Instead of opposing the other candidate, demonstrate your commitment to the people whose votes you seek that you are capable of good works with or without an opposing party. Instead of shouting me down, ascend past me so fast that I have no choice but to look up to you.

You have more access to power, to superhero-like powers than ever before in human history. You sit at your desk, basking in wireless networks that let you reach out and touch more of humanity than ever was possible. You can effect change and mobilize people on the other side of the planet with your capabilities. You have the superhero powers. Do you have the superhero’s courage to stand up for something, to do something, to make the world a better place?

… because in the world of superheroes, the person with great power who seeks only to tear others down and destroy?

That’s the evil villain.

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August 30, 2010
Are you hiring a social media strategist?

Are you looking to hire a social media strategist? Take your social media strategist job description and replace the words social media with military.

Think about that for a second.

How silly would it look for the US Army to advertise for the position of Field Commander by saying:

Wanted: someone who can talk a lot, tweet, monitor the battlefield and comment about it, blog some, and help boost our overall reputation in the trenches.

Is it more likely that the US Army, if it advertised for a Field Commander, would have a job description that reads like:

Must be able to win battles with overwhelming force and create decisive victories.

What if you’re not sure what victory is in social media? You might be in trouble. A lot of trouble. Consider clarifying that before you hire someone.

Is social media strategy as clear cut as military strategy? It’d better be if you want to win anything.

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August 27, 2010
Draw this
Get out a sheet of paper, totally blank. Go sit by yourself somewhere, no technology anywhere nearby.

Now remember the most important visual marketing campaign you did this year so far. Maybe it was a flyer. Maybe it was an email campaign. Maybe it was a new web site design or redesign.

Draw it from memory on the page.

Now go back to your computer and compare your drawing to the actual campaign.
- Did you remember the calls to action?
- Did you remember the design?
- Did you remember the content?
- Did you remember nothing at all except vague ideas?
If you were the manager of Old Spice, would you be able to sketch out Isaiah Mustafa in the bathroom wearing a towel?

If you are the CEO of your company, were you able to draw at least the homepage of your web site and its main call to action?

If you didn’t remember anything, then go back and figure out what you need to do to make your campaign more memorable, because if you can’t remember it, for sure your customers and prospects can’t.

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August 26, 2010
Getting stuff done (video)
A staff memo turned into a video on how to be more productive by chaining productivity ideas together.

Systems discussed:
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August 18, 2010
Social rain part 2
Social rain part 2

In the last post, we talked about how rain is formed, and why your sales and marketing efforts are like the formation of rain. As long as you’re bumping into other water droplets, you’ll eventually make rain… unless there isn’t enough water in the air. Then what?

You have three choices:
- Boil the ocean
- Take other people’s water
- Go where the water is
Boil the ocean is what the big guys do. Spend outlandishly on advertising and marketing until by sheer brute force you get to critical mass. Put enough water in the air that some rain has to fall. The downside is unless you have a massive bankroll, this is usually out of reach of most companies and certainly has intense resource requirements above and beyond money.

Take other people’s water is what a lot of companies resort to – the practice of attempting to poach customers away from similar companies. This is sometimes effective, but requires that you legitimately be much better than your competitors. While you can get some decent short term gains from this, bear in mind you’re getting the most disgruntled customers who are willing to switch. Sometimes it’s a better fit – and sometimes they’re a problem customer that no one really wants.

Go where the water is. There is rain somewhere, ready to fall. There are droplets somewhere waiting for a bump, waiting for a chance to fall to the earth. The most intelligent thing you can do is figure out where your current best customers are and go there too, because birds of a feather do flock together.

Social graphs and social data make this easier than ever. You can see who your customers follow and are followed by. You can target advertising to friends of certain Facebook pages. You can select and hyper-target only people who are talking about what you want to talk about already. This is where the water is, this is where the rain can be made to fall.

The smart money is on moving. Go where the rain is.

Here’s a simple exercise to try, one I recommend whenever I’m speaking publicly. Take a list of your top 100 customers’ email addresses, the people who drive the most business, revenue, growth, reputation, whatever criteria you measure success by. Start a fresh GMail account, a brand new one. Load those addresses in as contacts. Then go social network by social network, one by one, and click on the equivalent of Find Your Friends. When it asks you where you want to search, choose Webmail/GMail. Now you’ll be able to tell with just a few clicks what networks your best customers are on. You might have 55/100 on Facebook but 2/100 on Twitter – so focus your rainmaking efforts on Facebook. You might have 40/100 on LinkedIn but 7/100 on Facebook – adjust your strategy accordingly.

Go where the rain is.

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August 11, 2010
Repairs completed!

Many thanks – no, HUGE thanks – to someone for repairing the home base here with a fresh install and leaving my old hosting company, which has had huge security issues for its shared hosting service.

Big thanks also to everyone who noted that the blog was having some serious issues over the last week. After reinstalling just about everything from the ground up, Chel got the place cleaned up nicely and Google has certified that the place is free of malware and other nasty bugs.

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August 9, 2010

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