Web Ink Now

B-to-B marketing fundamentals do not change

Times change.
Markets change.
Technologies change.
Fundamentals of B2B marketing don't.

I keynoted the Business Marketing Association's 2009 “UnLearn” national conference in Chicago last month.

Just prior to my gig was a live staging of McGraw-Hill's classic 1950s "Man in the Chair" ad. Fortunately it was captured on video because it is terrific. (Tough act to follow!)

It's fascinating how the fundamentals of business-to-business marketing are the same today as they were 50 years ago. It's still about relationships although today we have new tools and techniques at our disposal.

Direct link to the video on YouTube here.

Times change. Markets change. Technologies change. Fundamentals don't.

How are you changing? How are you staying the same?

Social Media is the new punk rock

Thanks to Trevor Young the PR Warrior for alerting me to this wonderful video produced by Engage | ORM.

Back in the day, I was into punk rock. It was loud, it was NOT disco, there was a culture surrounding it, and the cult-like followings for the bands were intense. Although I didn’t do the hair thing, I did dabble in the clothing and attitude a bit (well, as much as a suburban kid from Connecticut going to Kenyon College in Ohio could).

This will date me, but… The Ramones played my high school at the time their first album came out. That was Rock and Roll High School. I was fortunate enough to have seen a bunch of other cool bands live including: The Clash, Sex Pistols, and the Talking Heads.

Watch the video now. I think the gang at Engage | ORM are onto something with this analogy. It does seem a little like the late 1970s.

Are we social media punks?

photo credit: Shutterstock

So you want to write an ebook? 30 tips for success

Ebooks are one of the most effective forms of new marketing.

Ebooks have tremendous perceived value and therefore people tend to pass them on. They help solve problems and therefore buyers appreciate the content, branding the writer as someone worth doing business with.

Ebooks lead to sales!

Many people have achieved business success by writing an ebook. So can you.

Martin Soorjoo sent me his latest ebook The Black Book of Lie Detection: Effective techniques from a professional lie detector. It is really well done and I hope Martin doesn't mind, but I am using his ebook as our example.

What should I write about?

1. You should write about something that you know well. Martin is a Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and expert in Body Language and has assisted individuals, companies and law enforcement officers in developing lie detection skills and detecting deception. Damn. He's credible!
2. You should write to solve a problem that people have. Martin's potential readers ask: How do I know if somebody is lying?

How should I write?

3. The ebook should be authored by a person. Don't make it by your company. You need the personal connection with readers. An ebook by "Premium Landscape Company" will not do as well as an ebook by "Mary Smith, chief landscape architect at Premium Landscape Company."
4. An ebook is a medium length document, maybe 20 to 30 pages. But since this is not dense text like a white paper, it is usually around 3,000 to 6,000 words.
5. Make it interesting.
6. Have a definite point of view.
7. Do not sell your products or services in the body of the ebook.
8. Write using conflict. Martin has a warning at the front of his ebook. And the content (is someone lying or not) drips with conflict.
9. At the end, in the biography section, have a place where people can learn more and can contact you if they want to work with you.
10. You will need a great title that intrigues people. The Black Book of Lie Detection
11. Use a subtitle to say what the ebook is about Effective techniques from a professional lie detector

How should I distribute?

12. Make the ebook a simple PDF document with no reader software required
13. Lose control of the content by making it totally free with no registration required. You will have 20 to 50 times more downloads than if you require people to submit an email address to get the ebook.
14. Add a Creative Commons license to encourage people to share.
15. Point people to a landing page where they can learn more, but allow people to point directly to the ebook URL if they want to. Here is Martin's landing page
16. Tell people about the ebook, especially those in a position to talk it up. I am writing about Martin's ebook because he sent me the URL via a direct message on Twitter.

Design considerations

17. Invest in a great design
18. Focus on the cover – the first thing people see
19. Use landscape orientation, not portrait (so it fits on a computer screen)
20. Include a biography section at the end with your photo where people can learn more
21. Use a header or footer with the title of the ebook with page numbers. (Sometimes people print out one page).

What about the landing page?

22. You should have a permanent place to point people. It could be on your blog or site or you could even make a micro site with a unique URL
23. Consider search engine optimization. The title tag for Martins's landing page is "How to tell if someone is lying – free lie detector ebook." I wouldn't be surprised if he gets to the front page on Google for the phrase "How to tell if someone is lying"
24. Use bold section breaks so people can determine immediately if the ebook is for them
25. Add the first link to ebook above the fold on the top of the landing page.
26. For those who do not download immediately, provide details on how you can benefit from reading the ebook
27. Add some author credibility at the bottom for those who need convincing

Martin's ebook and the related parts are excellent. But here are several things he might consider for the next time around

28. Make the landing page a permalink with the URL part of the SEO term. I am concerned that Martin's URL www.communicationdownloads.com/Links.aspx is not a permanent link.
29. Make the inside design a little less font heavy. The font choice should add to the text. I'm not a fan of the various colors at the top of some of Martin's pages because I think it detracts from the writing. However, this is a personal observation.

Question to Martin

30. How will you promote the ebook? How will people find it? A well done ebook has potential to generate hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of downloads.

Some other ebooks to check out

New Rules of Sales Enablement by Jeff Ernst

Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex, by Dr. Helaine Smith

The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free my ebook that has been downloaded more than 600,000 times. (Do a search for the phrase "viral marketing" and see where the ebook come up).

What did I miss in the tips? Do you have one to add?

Have you written a great ebook? Congratulations! Go ahead and add the link in a comment and let us know about your success. How many downloads did it get? Can you tie the ebook to sales?

Launching ideas at the U.S. Air Force

I recently spent the day at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ to meet with public affairs officers and senior leaders of 12th Air Force / Air Forces Southern Air Combat Command.

In this video, I ask my friend Capt. Nathan Broshear about his current role as Director of Public Affairs, how he uses social media, and a little about his 6 months in Baghdad working in public affairs in a war zone.

Capt. Broshear says of his work: "We're not launching missiles, we're launching ideas."

While mainstream media is critical for launching ideas such as the 60 Minutes story that Capt. Broshear worked on with Lara Logan reporting On The Increasing Use Of Drones In The Battlefield, he frequently uses social media to get the word out.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a fan of what the hard-working public affairs officers at the U.S. Air Force are doing with social media. Here are some other posts on the topic:

The US Air Force: Armed with social media

U.S. Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment

The U.S. Air Force and social media: A discussion with Colonel Michael Caldwell

Free social media ebook and video: New Media and the Air Force

ZeroTrash shows how to create a social media grassroots movement

I had an opportunity to connect with Chip McDermott, founder of ZeroTrash who I originally met at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. I haver become fascinated with the online grassroots movement Chip started that's gathering momentum and is now instrumental in ridding the streets and beaches of Laguna Beach, CA of trash.

Chip started ZeroTrash Laguna as a nonprofit organization in November 2007 with the support of XS Energy Drinks, Hobie Sports & Thalia Surf Shop. Though population and tourism had exploded, the city had not kept up in providing a sufficient infrastructure for public trash and recycling.

Social media to influence people

"The spark of the idea was that trash was becoming commonplace on the streets and the sidewalks of Laguna Beach," Chip says. "We started with a Facebook fan page for ZeroTrash Laguna that now has hundreds of members."

People use the Facebook page to organize events and connect local storeowners and residents. Before and after photos of trash on the streets incite people to action.

"We met with store owners to get our first Saturday movement going," Chip says. "We meet at a couple of stores and got volunteers to walk the city and pick up trash on the first Saturday of each month."

The storeowners love it because they people support local stores and the shopping areas remain clean. Chip has tapped storeowners as sponsors who fund the purchase of supplies and tools like trash pickers, t-shirts, trash bags, and gloves.

Chip has also started a ZeroTrash blog and is on Twitter as @ZeroTrash. The social media sites serve to keep people updated. For example, on the first Saturday of May, 2009, the Laguna Beach community helped to remove another 590 lbs. of trash and 375 lbs. of recyclables from the streets.

He has high hopes for the organization and ambitions to spread the movement beyond Laguna Beach.

"We want people to take individual ownership of each new local ZeroTrash community," he says. "How can they get people with a passion to take control and start in their own communities? The obvious answer is to use social media to influence people."

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are a great place to start (or extend) a movement. If you work at a nonprofit, are you tapping these resources to reach your supporters?

John Hodgman talks nerd with President Obama at RTVC dinner

Last night at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC, John Hodgman was the keynote speaker.

Imagine following President Obama at the podium?

Hodgman nailed it big time. Watch this video. Now.

John Hodgman, of course, is a World Wide Rave. He appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as the show’s Resident Expert. He is also "PC" in the Apple TV ads.

It was really cool that Hodgman was posting photos to Twitter as he was waiting to go on. Now that's nerd. Well done, sir.

I met John Hodgman at his book launch event in Brookline for his book More Information than you Require. At his event, he kindly signed my poster and let me take his photo.

More Information than you Require is excellent. See my review on Amazon - it is the first one.

Multi-tasking at BEA: Speaking and signing while talking sex with Dr. Ruth

At Book Expo America last month, I launched World Wide Rave to the book trade.

My friends at Wiley, publishers of my last several books, asked me to do something I've never tried: Sign books while I deliver a presentation.

There were 150 people in line to get a copy of my book and we had a tight time window because we did not want to keep people waiting.

Yikes. Talk about multi-tasking!

I was also trying to pay attention to individual people in the audience (about 100 people were out of camera view).

At about the 6:00 point of this short video, you'll see me talking about Dr. Ruth and her new book. Dr. Ruth was in the crowd and she LOVED the tweet I did from the BEA floor Now exploring the Top 10 Secrets to Great Sex.

Here's what I find interesting about this. When you know your material really, really well, you can deliver a performance while doing other things. But this level of multi-tasking is impossible unless you are totally prepared.

The first time I recall being aware of this was when I sat in the front row at a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park in Boston in 2005. During Satisfaction, Ronnie Wood was playing right in front of me (see photo) while chatting up the cute girl right next to me: “Hello Love!” Ronnie said. “How are ya?”

Do you know your stuff so well that you can multi-task?

The truth about blog and twitter content syndication

I'm a huge fan of blog syndication.

I write a post once on my Web Ink Now blog, push the button, and it appears in many places such as my Amazon page, sites like MarCom Professional, the search engines, Newstex Blogs on Demand, and more.

But many bloggers don't understand how syndication works and why it is important. And some are downright fearful of syndication.

The ability to provide blog content to many places through syndication is incredibly valuable. With no extra work, syndication allows you to reach a potential audience of millions of people you would not otherwise reach.

Free ebook

A new free ebook from Newstex called The Truth about Blog and Twitter Content Syndication, helps you to understand what options are out there and what might be right for you.

Disclosure: I syndicate my blog through Newstex and I am an advisor to the company.

A rant about noise pollution inside U.S. airports

Warning: This blog post is a rant. (But it does have a purpose.)

I travel a lot, over 100,000 miles so far this year in 8 countries.

As I pass through airport concourses (after security), in nearly every U.S. city I hear loud messages every ten minutes or so that are more or less like this:

"In order to expedite the security screening process, Transportation Security Administration regulations now require that liquids, gels, and aerosols carried through the screening area must be in three-ounce or smaller containers carried in a single, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag. Each traveler can only use one bag and must remove it from their carry-on and place it in a bin or on the conveyor belt for X-ray screening. So remember 3-1-1 to speed your screening process."

I'M ALREADY THROUGH THE SCREENING AREA.

I’m in the freakin' airport already! Why do you insist on playing this inane announcement again and again and again and again and again and again for people who have already passed through the damn security area?

I asked a TSA representative about this. He couldn't have been nicer as he explained the concourse announcements are not required. He said that the airport he works at has only one Public Address channel so the announcement is played everywhere, all the time, including to the tens of thousands of passengers inside the terminals.

This is annoying and stupid.

Do the airports not care about passengers? Is noise pollution not an issue?

As long as I have your attention, another noise pollution issue inside many U.S. airports is the constant blaring of CNN Airport Network in every gate. According to the CNN Airport Network site, this noise pollution "is available in 43 of the busiest U.S. airports and is seen in more than 2,000+ gates and other viewing areas."

I wonder how many of the gates of those 43 airports do not have CNN Airport noise pollution? Probably zero.

Oh, and don't get me started about "Logan Radio" that plays constantly at my home airport in Boston.

I do not experience this level of noise pollution at airports I visit outside the U.S.

Hey, airport administrators – you need to create some quiet space for passengers who don’t want to listen to this sort of crap. While you're focused on being "green" (the buzzword of the year at airports), why not spend some time being silent too?

[end of rant]

This sort of tuned out behavior happens when organizations do things for their own benefit, rather than their customers benefit. Are you unwittingly doing something to annoy your customers?

The most successful organizations understand their buyers and create positive experiences for them.

Image credit: Shutterstock

How an understanding of body language transforms your public speaking

Some of my more popular blog posts in recent months have been about public speaking.

Top ten tips for incredibly successful public speaking

Presentation 201: Why public speaking is like billiards

So I wanted to offer another set of ideas for successful public speaking. I was thinking about the differences in what I do now as a professional speaker with 50 gigs a year compared to what I was doing five years ago when I speaking about once a month.

The importance of body language

The big difference in the way I present is that I am now focused on body language. I learned these important techniques from Nick Morgan, my speaking coach and the author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.

After a gig, I run through video of the presentation with Nick.

I thought it might be interesting for those of you who are honing your own speaking skills to see the clip and hear from Nick about body language too. I realize this puts me out there for analysis, both good and bad, but I'm game.

So watch this clip from the Convention Industry Council CMP Conclave 2009 and then read Nick's comments below.

Here are Nick's comments on my performance, both good and areas for improvement:

"The great thing about David as a public speaker is that he is technically good so that his passion for the subject shines through. I should know – I'm his speaking coach. Every communication is two conversations, the content and the body language. When the two are aligned, you can be a persuasive, authentic, charismatic speaker – as David is. When they're not, people believe the body language every time. We're all unconscious experts in body language, and we pick it up instantly when someone is nervous, unprepared, winging it, or not passionate about the subject.

When I first started working with David, I could see right away that he had the passion and that the goal was to make a few technical improvements in his body language so that the passion could come through unfiltered.

All speakers have adrenaline-induced energy when they get up to speak. That energy comes out in different ways. David’s tended to come out in too much pacing around the stage. Pacing is good when you move purposefully to a point in relation to the audience, stop, plant your feet, and deliver. But when you just wander, you've got ‘happy feet’ and that’s distracting for the audience.

David quickly got the idea, and one of the great things that comes through on this video is the combination of good motion and passion that he’s now – almost – mastered. His move out into the audience about half-way through is brilliantly timed – and it becomes the high point of the speech both in the room and on video. Notice how many people talk about the Air Force in relation to this presentation. David covered a number of topics, but it’s the Air Force that will be remembered, because he went into the personal space of the audience at that point.

Personal space is 4 feet to a foot and a half away from audience members. (Never go into intimate space – a foot and a half to zero – in a public setting.) Because we all crave personal connections with our speakers, celebrities, politicians, and famous criminals these days, thanks to TV, we really engage as an audience when a speaker gets into the personal space of a few of us.

David still needs to work on his motion when he’s on the stage. The goal is to move on a thought, plant your feet, and deliver to a different segment of the audience – and make it look natural. David still has a tendency to move a little too much across the stage just to get rid of adrenaline.

Remember, the point of mastering all this body language stuff is so that people will hear your message, rather than be distracted by something you’re doing. David is a great storyteller, and because he’s on the way to mastering the technical stuff, you can get his stories. He opens this clip with the Singapore Tattoo Show story, and it’s a perfect illustration of his point, that social media is a new, better way to market than spending millions on TV ads. That’s what a good speaker does: informs and entertains at the same time. There’s a reason why David is in such demand as a speaker these days."

Thanks Nick.

Thinking about body language has transformed my presentations. I hope my clip and Nick's analysis is helpful to you too.

Do it Right Now: Set your Facebook username

Starting today (four hours ago as I write this), you can set your Facebook username.

Do it now!

Previously, Facebook URLs were a series of random numbers. Now you can have a username and provide friends an easy to remember URL. This is an important component of personal branding.

I set my Facebook username to be the same as my Twitter username. So now I just tell people to go to Facebook.com/dmscott and Twitter.com/dmscott

Here is the URL to get your username.

Here is more information from Facebook.

Stop reading this damn blog and get your username! Do it right now! Today!

If you don't do it, you'll end up with some AOL-like name like SmithJohn4562

Image credit: Shutterstock

Ranking Speakers Bureau websites: The good, bad, and ugly

This is a long post detailing my analysis of 12 speakers bureau websites. While it will be of tremendous interest to people who work at speakers bureaus (particularly the ones I profiled), this analysis should also be valuable to any B2B marketers in a service business.

Earlier this week, I delivered a special presentation at the Convention Industry Council annual CMP Conclave in San Antonio. The 200 or so people in the audience were professional meeting planners who frequently book professional speakers like me for the events that they organize.

Watch a portion of the speech broadcast by Convention News Television (CNTV)

After my speech and later at the cocktail reception, I had an opportunity chat with several dozen meeting planners, and I asked many how they use speaker bureaus (specifically the bureau websites) in their job.

I was doing classic buyer persona research to understand how the buyers of speaker services (the meeting planners) make decisions. Based on the buyer persona research (what the meeting planners told me), I have analyzed and ranked the top speaker bureau websites and provided specific recommendations for improvement for each.

What the meeting planners said

The themes that came through in my discussions with the meeting planners are that they want websites to be more than just a database of speakers. In particular, they wanted the bureaus to tell them something they didn’t already know. The meeting planners said there are many places to book a speaker when you already know who you want to hire, but very few places to have someone provide valuable suggestions when you don’t know who you want to speak.

The meeting planners said the speakers bureau websites were mostly boring and were interchangeable. They said that the sites make it seem like this is a commodity product. When I looked at the sites, I found that was generally true. However the bureaus at the top of my rankings were excellent.

All the sites I looked at had the database approach front and center, and nearly all talked about how they are "focused on you, the client" (or words to that effect).

One meeting planner said: "What makes your bureau and site different? And it isn't your 'client focus' because everyone says that." (ouch).

Site analysis methodology

A) I chose the 12 speakers bureaus to analyze by going to Google and typing in "speakers bureau." I chose the top 8 listings in the natural search results and the top 4 in the paid Google AdWords sponsored links results at the time I looked.

B) I did a several minute gut check on each bureau website as if I were evaluating bureaus based on the site alone. The short time I devoted for each site (exactly as a potential client might evaluate) meant that the homepage was critical and the main links from the homepage were important.

C) Since every bureau has a speaker database, I was looking for what else was there to set that bureau apart. Did the bureau make it easy to browse? Were there recommendations? Any surprises? Was there a "wow factor"?

D) I looked for bureaus that are active in social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. (Note that if there wasn't a link from the homepage, I may have missed it.)

E) I ranked the bureaus in rough order. Note that bureaus near one another in rank were very close and are basically interchangeable.

F) To be helpful to those people who work in the bureaus who read this post, I have provided a specific recommendation or two for improvement for each site.

Disclosure: I am a professional marketing speaker and have been booked by many of the speaker bureaus listed here. My evaluations were made on the sites alone and not my experience with the bureaus nor any specific feedback on individual sites from the meeting planners.

Speakers Bureau Website Analysis

1) Speakers Spotlight site

This is a great site. There is tons of valuable information starting with the Speaker Buzz blog. I really like that as each speakers' image comes up on the homepage, there is one word to describe that speaker. Words like "Courageous," "Passionate," and "Visionary" help meeting planners to immediately grasp the essence of the speaker.

WHAT'S COOL: OMG – I really like the Speakers' Bookshelf. As an author and a speaker, I am keenly aware of the direct link between a speakers writing and their speeches. As an aside, Speakers Spotlight is based in Canada and Canada is cool in many ways.

RECOMMENDATION: I'd love to see you add some of your own expertise to the "Browse a Speaker" section. Who do you recommend and why?

2) American Program Bureau site

This is a very well done site with an interesting "This week at APB" section detailing information about speakers. I very much like how the featured speakers (such as Alan Alda, Bob Geldof, and Mikhail Gorbachev) are highlighted on the home page.

WHAT'S COOL: This is by far the most social media savvy speakers bureau I checked out. I love that APB has an active blog Speaking of a Speaker, is on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the social media sites and the links are available right on the homepage.

RECOMMENDATION: It was impossible to find the APB twitter ID and blog URL via Google search for American Program Bureau. The reason is that sometimes the company calls itself APBSpeakers and sometimes American Program Bureau. The bureau should go with one name throughout and make sure the other is in the description for Google to find.

3) The Lavin Agency site

By far, the Lavin Agency does the best job in helping event planners browse for a speaker. It is incredibly intuitive. When you mouse over "I have a pretty good idea of who I'm looking for" / "I'm looking for someone to speak about a specific topic or industry" / "I'm looking for the latest, the greatest, the hottest, the hippest speaker" it is simple to find what you're looking for.

WHAT'S COOL: The tools for browsing are terrific.

RECOMMENDATION: I'd like to see Lavin humanize themselves a bit more on the site. Who works there? There is a message from the president of the agency, which is good, but why not shoot a video from the president instead?

4) Big Speak site

I like that Big Speak lists some of their big corporate client logos on the home page. That says to potential buyers that they are big.

WHAT’S COOL: The For Meeting Planners tab has valuable information about booking speakers, working with a bureau, how to promote the speaker, and speakers bureau FAQ. This is really good stuff.

RECOMMENDATION: Take the great content in the meeting planners tips section and re-purpose it into an ebook like my ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing that you offer on the homepage as well as use to create a world wide rave viral phenomenon.

5) Premiere Speakers Bureau site

Premiere Speakers Bureau has some intriguing news and blog posts on the right side of the homepage. I was drawn to this because it was different from the other sites I have reviewed. While really interesting, the news was confusing because some posts were news about the speakers PSB represent (such as a TV appearance), some seemed to be written by the speakers, and some were valuable advice for buyers written by PSB people (like Top 10 tips for finding the right speakers). I noticed that all of the most popular posts were ones that PSB staff wrote

WHAT'S COOL: The blog, which generates the newsfeed.

RECOMMENDATION: The blog posts need much better categorization so that it becomes instantly clear what each post is about. You might consider two blogs, one about your speakers and one providing valuable advice on meeting planning for your clients. If you stick with one blog, consider color coding the posts or having a simple and intuitive category code.

6) Washington Speakers Bureau site

Arguably the largest and most famous bureau, WSB frequently snags the top speakers with exclusive representation. Currently on the site they are promoting George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. The site reeks of upscale, top-drawer class in the way that the Apple site does for computers. That's good, because the clients who can fork over the bucks for a six-figure speaker want to deal with the best. However, the WSB site content is as basic as it gets. Ironically, the most detailed content is the extensive (and rather scary) privacy policy link on the homepage.

WHAT'S COOL: It is certainly cool to be ranked number one on Google for the term "speakers bureau." I also love that WSB is booking gigs for Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger of US Airways landing in the Hudson fame.

RECOMMENDATION: The site is built with the "Nobody ever got fired for going with Washington Speakers Bureau" mentality. Can WSB afford to just make do with a basic (but pretty) site much longer? The nice interactive brochure approach is dated. I'd worry about sitting at the top of the heap without an interesting and content rich site. Just ask GM where that got them…

7) AEI Speakers Bureau site

The categories on the site are extensive, but seem to be a disjointed jumble of job types (astronaut), speaking topics (inspiration) and even ethnic types (Asian Pacific Americans). The speaker profile pages are good and cross-referenced against categories.

WHAT'S COOL: I like the extensive Industry Terms list.

RECOMMENDATION: The long and wordy welcome message is not an effective use of the real estate on the home page. There really isn't anything there that is unique or exciting. I'd like to see AEI wow people with something better in this position, something like a featured speaker video or your pick for breakout speaker of the year or something like that.

8) International Speakers Bureau site

The ISB site has a hip and stylish design that draws you in, particularly if you've been reviewing many speakers bureau websites.

WHAT'S COOL: The sleek, black design is quite different from other sites. I also like that ISB is on Twitter.

RECOMMENDATION: The extensive text at the bottom of the page "Gain unparalleled VIP access to today's hottest celebrity speakers, thought leaders and entertainment" is very egotistical. It reads like advertising copy. The section "client resources" could be made better if it focused on more on the client perspective than the ISB perspective. Rather than make these sections all about what ISB does, why not re-write it to reflect what problems you solve for your clients? I would also like ISB to update Twitter more than a few times a week and would like to see the full company name in the Twitter profile.

9) Executive Speakers Bureau site
This is a generic speakers bureau site with no pizzazz. The Executive Speakers Bureau site needs something to set it apart.

WHAT'S COOL: I really like the Meeting Planners Survival Guide Meeting Time Line. I learned a lot from this!

RECOMMENDATION: The homepage shows photos of five speakers, but I only recognize one. The bureau should add the speakers' names to the photos. I would really like to see a link to the excellent timeline from the homepage and you should make it easily printable as a PDF (with your company logo and contact information on it).

10) Leading Authorities site

I had a very difficult time getting past the really annoying video that plays automatically on the home page.

WHAT'S COOL: The speaker news section is very well done.

RECOMMENDATION: Leading Authorities must lose the self-playing video. It's okay to be there with a manual start, but don't force it on your visitors. You might also consider using some color to brighten up the washed out feel of the light gray color scheme.

11) All-American Speakers Bureau site

This is a very basic speakers bureau site. The focus seems to be on "celebrity" with the more famous the person the better. The focus of the site implies that customers book people through All-American who they already know from TV, rather than helping meeting planners find the perfect speaker.

WHAT'S COOL: Love the scrolling list of the actual speakers you've booked. Showing the name if the speaker and where he or she is speaking is very interesting. While I think this is very cool, I wonder if the companies doing the booking know you're doing it?

RECOMMENDATION: I know that the company name is All-American Speakers Bureau, so the American flag on the top of the site is okay. But to me the exclusive use of red and blue color on a white background is very annoying and an overkill of the American thing.

12) American Speakers Bureau site

This site is way too confusing. It seems like there is two company names (American Speakers Bureau and Motivational Speakers Bureau). The site has the feel of being so highly search engine optimized that the content for users is compromised.

WHAT'S COOL: Sorry to say this, but nothing on this site is cool (at least for me). However, the URL speakersbureau.com is very cool for search engine optimization purposes.

RECOMMENDATION: The homepage currently has something like 50 different font and color combinations, which is extremely confusing. I kind of felt hung-over as I was looking at the site. I'd make it much simpler. Also, I would definitely delete the blog, which was last update on July 11, 2006. The abandoned blog (which has lots of links to it from the mains site) implies that the bureau either doesn’t care or is asleep.

If you work at one of the bureaus I analyzed, than you for reading this far. I would be pleased to spend time with you either on the phone (or in person the next time I am in your city) to discuss your site in more detail.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Authenticity vs. Authority

Mark Olson asked a bunch of marketers to write a one-paragraph riff on Authenticity vs. Authority. We did not see what the other’s had written until he posted the responses today.

Here's what I said:

I remember in college there was a professor who had tons of authority. He was tenured, had written books, and was the head of the department. Although he had authority, he was not a popular teacher and his classes were empty. I recall other teachers who were young and dynamic and had no authority. Barely older than the students, they had an authentic love of their subject and of teaching. Their classes were packed. In the always on, one-click-away world of the Web, authenticity wins every time because unlike a college class, people can immediately leave the sites that don’t capture their interest. That’s why a lone blogger can be more popular than a stuffy old trade journal both on the same subject.

Read Mark's post to find out what Seth Godin, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, and Mike Volpe wrote for their paragraphs.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for including me, Mark.

Image: Shutterstock

Everybody is wrong

What conventional wisdom that "everybody knows" can you challenge?

I've gotten tremendous pushback from thousands of people over the past decade on these ideas. But I’ve also had thousands of people reach out to me to say that these ideas have been incredibly helpful to them.

Some of the best ideas come from contrarians.

Here are some things I’ve challenged in the past ten years.

"Everybody knows that marketing is about promoting your product."

Everybody is wrong. When you adhere to the famous "four Ps of marketing" and talk up your product (the first P) you end up with egotistical nonsense. Nobody cares about your products. They care about themselves and solving their problems. Marketing is about understanding your buyer personas and creating information that they want to consume.

"Everybody knows that PR is about pitching the media."

Everybody is wrong. These days, journalists don't passively wait to see what brilliant PR pitches are sitting in their email in-box. In fact, they increasingly see email pitches as spam. However journalists are looking for story ideas all the time by searching Google, reading blogs, and following Twitter. Are they finding you?

"Everybody knows that the press release is dead."

Everybody is wrong. The press release is an effective media to reach buyers directly. When you craft a release from your buyers’ perspective and send it through one of the press release distribution services, your news hits people’s Google Alerts, is indexed by the news search engines, and is syndicated to hundreds of news portals, vertical market sites, and via RSS feeds.

"Everybody knows that newspapers are dying."

Everybody is wrong. When television came around, people predicted the death of radio. Radio didn’t go away, but the ways people consumed radio content changed because people didn’t sit around watching the radio in their living rooms anymore. The Web will not kill newspapers. But individual newspapers like my hometown paper The Boston Globe have to change and adapt to survive.

"Everybody knows that working for a big company means you have job security."

Everybody is wrong. Just ask people who worked for Bear Stearns or Enron or Worldcom or Lehman Brothers about job security. You make your own security by being excellent at what you do. I was fired three times. Now, by working for themselves, millions of people have the greatest job security there is.

Here's a new one I am hearing more and more.

"Everybody knows that social media changes everything."

Everybody is wrong. Yes, social media is changing the ways that companies are communicating on the web. But that doesn’t mean that offline marketing and communications is changing. You still need to meet with customers. Sometimes attending or exhibiting at a trade show is a good idea. TV and magazine advertising can still be effective. And getting your company into the Wall Street Journal or seen on Oprah (or your trade publication) has tremendous value.

What conventional wisdom that “everybody knows” can you challenge?

Image by Shutterstock

Clip this coupon for $1 million dollar off Ft Myers FL home

Here's a clever marketing & PR approach that I really like.

In an economy when there is a glut of luxury homes on the market, what can a homeowner do to make his property stand out? Why, get people talking about it of course!

Homeowner Rich Ricciani created a fun and creative world wide rave by thinking up the idea of running a coupon for $1 million dollars off the price of his $7 million Ft. Myers, FL home in newspapers.

Unlike the vast majority of people who just think of ideas, Rich actually followed through.

This creative approach sure beat simply reducing the price of the home on the real estate Multiple Listing Service database.

Rich worked with Lani Belisle of VIP Realtors to list the home and book the advertising space for the coupon, which initially ran in last Sunday's Ft. Myers News-Press.

Then it was time for Tina Haisman Public Relations to get the word out.

Tina used PRWeb to send a well-written, SEO optimized press release complete with photos, an imbedded YouTube video, and links to the coupon and home web site. "I also used PR MatchPoint to compile a list of real estate writers in the south and northeastern U.S. and I also personally targeted the big news outlets, such as CNN, Fox, NBC and more," Tina says.

The story appeared front page of The Fort Myers News-Press, aired WINK-TV and WFLX-TV, and is being picked up by real estate blogs.

The coupon will run this Sunday in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe. I love the selection of the Globe, chosen because Ft. Myers, FL is the home of the Boston Red Sox Spring Training facility. The choice of running the coupon in the Boston paper an excellent example of buyer persona profiling.

Gimmick?

Some may call this a gimmick.

Well, sure. But I think its great. When people are talking about you, your product stands out in a crowded market. And guess what? This kind of marketing is fun! If you're a realtor, it sure beats pounding wooden signs into front yards.

Well done Rich, Tina, and Lani. Let me know when the home sells.

Attention GM: Here are the top 5 marketing ideas for your reinvention

This morning when I opened my Boston Globe, I found a full-page ad from General Motors. The ad and a new television commercial both say that GM is re-inventing. (I've re-written the newspaper ad text at the bottom of this post.)

Hey GM that's great and I wish you the best.

But I wonder if, during the reinvention of the COMPANY, you are really serious about re-inventing your MARKETING?

I see some tiny glimmers of hope. The new site at GMreinvention.com is quite good. I found some interesting and valuable information to check out on the site.

However, from the marketing perspective, the whole reinvention rollout seems to be typical GM, which leaves me a bit sad and depressed.

I fear for your long term survival, GM.

Here, then, are my top five things that you can do right now to accelerate this reinvention.

1) Fire your Madison Avenue advertising agencies.

From a marketing perspective, you've become addicted to the crack cocaine of big budget advertising. Everywhere I turn I see GM this and GM that and this has got to be really freakin' expensive. The television commercials, the "sponsored by" stuff, and other high ticket Madison Avenue marketing might make you feel good, but is it effective?

These days when people are thinking of buying a car, they go to the Web first! When people go to the web they are not looking for TV commercials, they are looking for information to help them make a decision. Your Web properties can deliver that (if you let the people who work on the web do their jobs). How about taking just a tiny sliver of that money you spend on TV and football sponsorships and giving it to the people who are doing the fledgling social media work that I see on the GMreinvention.com site so they can expand their efforts?

2) Show, don't tell.

The biggest problem I have with the whole re-invention launch is that it says a lot but doesn't deliver. For example, the text of the ad talks about "GM car," "Genuine GM parts," and "GM Warranty." Hey, you're GM, right? I didn't see any GM brands listed in the ad.

So why does the URL you provide me in the ad to get to my "GM dealer" insist that I "select a GM brand" before I can find the dealers in my area? I get a big fat red error message when I want to find a GM dealer!

Sorry, GM, it's just empty words when you tout the new GM, invite me to check out the new GM, ask me to buy GM products, and then go back to your stupid old ways of requiring that I know if I want a Buick or Hummer or Chevy or GMC truck or Saab or an Oldsmobile or whatever brands to happen to sell. How about letting me search for GM dealers? Or all GM SUVs? Why obsess about your damn brands?

3) Create the products that people want to buy.

Not much I can add on this one, but one thing does come to mind. If you rely on coercion techniques to make sales, then your products suck. When people want to buy a car, they want a good one. Your reliance on coercion such as “$5,000 cash back,” “employee pricing,” “free gas,” “ten year bumper to bumper warranty” and the like send signals to people that your cars are not worth the price.

4) Earn attention from your customers and potential customers.

There are four ways to generate attention. You can BUY attention with advertising, you can BEG for attention with Public Relations, you can BUG people one at a time to get attention with salespeople or you can EARN attention online by creating valuable information and publishing it online for free: A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like.

GM has a corporate culture around buying attention. That's probably because your executives came up through the advertising side of the business. The problem is that you over invest in advertising and under-invest in your Web and social media efforts.

5) Humanize your company.

Sorry to have to tell you this: You are a nameless, faceless, corporation.

Your ad in the newspaper today was signed by the CEO, but why no photo of him? Did he even see the letter that some marketer wrote on his behalf? The new TV commercial you launched today is an inane collection of stock photos together with a few cars. It is generic. With a few different cars, the ad could have been made by Chrysler.

What about the people behind the reinvention? I want to meet the car designers. I want to know who the person is in your company who chose that weird color of purple of my latest GM rental car. People want to do business with people. Hey GM! Knock knock! Is anyone home? Who the hell are you???

I really want you to succeed. But you've got to re-think your marketing. You've got to unlearn what you've learned about marketing. Now. Today.

OK, those are my five. Anyone got any to add?

Here is the text of the full page ad from today's Boston Globe.

To Our Customers,

While a lot is changing at our company today, one thing is not: our commitment to you, our customers.

We want to assure you that your GM warranty will continue, whether you already own a GM car or intend to buy a new one. Genuine GM parts will be supplied. GM-trained Goodwrench technicians will perform service. Simply bring your vehicle to your GM dealer and you will receive service.

If the dealership you usually visit will be closing, we sincerely apologize and regret that it has affected you. We stand ready to serve with one of the largest dealer networks in America. Please visit GM.com/vehicles/dealer for information on dealers in your area. We pledge to make your next GM experience a remarkable one.

At this critical point on our history, we cannot afford to lose your business. Or your trust. You have our word.

If you are in the market for a new car, I urge you to shop GM. We are open for business, with some of the best vehicles and financing rates available. When you come in, I encourage you to be a critical judge of everything – from your experience in our dealership, to the quality of our cars. We owe you nothing but the best. And we will deliver.

General Motors may look different down the road, but we are here to stay. By accelerating work that is already underway and making fundamental changes from top to bottom, GM will be leaner, greener, faster, and stronger. We’re not just rebuilding our company. We’re reinventing it.

Over the coming days, months and years, we will prove ourselves by being more transparent, more accountable and, above all, more focused on you, our customer.

I invite you to track our progress at GMreinvention.com. And on behalf of all the men and women doing the hard work of changing our company for the better, we look forward to showing you the New GM.

Sincerely,
Frederick A. Henderson
President & Chief Executive Officer
General Motors.

Positioning magic at the top end of the market

On Saturday I enjoyed an evening of very intimate magic—a showcase of modern conjuring—by Steve Cohen, the "Millionaire’s Magician".

Steve's story is a fascinating example of personal branding success with exclusivity as a market position.

Steve doesn't advertise his Chamber Magic shows. He doesn't sell his services. It's his positioning plus word of mouth (and word of mouse) that gets him attention and selling out his shows many months in advance.

He performs on weekends in a beautiful, private suite in The Waldorf Towers. His guests arrive in cocktail attire making the performance feel like a trip back in time. (See the video below for a taste of the show).

To create the show and his market positioning, Steve worked with positioning expert Mark Levy (Disclosure: I have worked with Mark on several projects).

Mark was perfect because he not only is a positioning guru, but also a magician (he has co-written Magic for Dummies and the positioning and communications book How to Persuade People who don’t want to be Persuaded). Mark and Steve talked over the course of a month about how to develop a unique position in the crowded market for magicians.

Amazingly, no magic performer was in the exclusive space. Other performers were billing themselves as the funniest, or the edgiest, or the flashiest, or the coolest. Or adept at performing at trade shows, or at parties, or for children, or at functions, or they were the best at a specific kind of magic. But no one was focusing on the ultra high end.

With the new positioning, Steve Cohen was able to raise his private fees by 2,000% (yes, you read that right - he raised his fees two thousand percent) and he has been hired to perform at events for people such as Martha Stewart, Michael Bloomberg, the Saudi royal family, and Warren Buffet.

Of course, not everyone can be exclusive. The vast majority of magicians perform at children's birthday parties and county fairs.

How about you? Does the top end of the market appeal to you? Is it a position you can own?

More about Chamber Magic and Steve Cohen
Direct link to the video of Steve performing

Hey Twitter: What are you doing? Wrong question!

It seems like every week, I'm explaining Twitter to people. You probably are too.

I don't know about you, but I frequently find it challenging to describe Twitter. I was at a dinner party this weekend and there were four people who had (of course) heard of Twitter, but none had used it.

When I showed a few things on my iPhone, they seemed perplexed.

Reactions were something like: "Who cares what I'm doing for lunch?"

Well, that's true!

Unless there is something very special, nobody gives a rat's ass about what you or I are doing!

I think the problem is that damn What are you doing? question posed at the top of the Twitter Web client.

When people have been using Twitter for a few weeks, they usually have a light bulb moment as they realize that Twitter is much more than answering that stupid question in that dumb little box.

Then they begin to really make use of Twitter and gain followers.

Based on how I personally use Twitter, here are a few suggestions for better questions to answer in a tweet:

"How can you be helpful?"

"What's got your attention and why?"

"What's interesting, or funny, of valuable that you can link to?"

"What's cool?"

"What's frustrating?"

What do you think?

The New Rules of Social Media book series

Today, my publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. announced a new series of books that I will be editing called The New Rules of Social Media book series.

The idea of the series is to expand on the ideas of my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR with books that provide valuable insights and detail on different aspects of social media marketing.

We've got two amazing books to kick off the series:

The first book, scheduled for publication in October 2009, is Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, founders of HubSpot.

I chose Brian and Dharmesh to write the first book in the series because they are social media marketing pioneers and have tons of amazing ideas for companies to get found online. In my work on HubSpot's Board of Advisors, I’ve learned so much from Brian and Dharmesh and I know their book will be a hit.

The second book in the series is Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business by Steve Garfield, a media advisor, video producer, and new media teacher, currently scheduled for publication in December 2009.

Steve is a videoblogging pioneer, and has a rabid base of fans. I've come to respect Steve's amazing grasp of online video. His engaging writing style and video expertise is perfect to help people understand the power of online video.

We will be working on a third title for early 2010 and plan three books per year. I will write forewords to each book. I’ll be at Book Expo America this weekend to talk up the series with booksellers and the media.

I'll be coordinating with Shannon Vargo at Wiley to help choose the books for the series. Shannon has a keen understanding of both social media and the book business and is an ideal partner in the series.

I am very interested to hear what ideas you have for future titles to include in The New Rules of Social Media book series. What book(s) would you want to see?

Anti-Starbucks filmmakers hijack Twitter marketing campaign

Simon Owens points us to a fascinating example of what can "go bad" on Twitter. The instant, always-on aspects of Twitter can make a well-organized "campaign" take off in an unintended direction.

Check out Simon's blog post Anti-Starbucks filmmakers hijack the coffee company’s own Twitter marketing campaign to learn how an anti-Starbucks filmmaking group hijacked the Starbucks hashtags developed for a multi-million dollar marketing campaign and forced the company to abandon the contest within hours after its launch.

A few things stand out for me:

With social media, people don't have to agree with your message when they talk about you.

It's fascinating how quickly a big Madison Avenue-style "campaign" can go wrong.

Starbucks seems to have reacted quickly to what was happening when they took down the contest.

What do you think?

I am not your colleague

Have you noticed that more and more bulk email comes in these days with an opening "Dear Colleague"?

What’s up with that?

According to Wiktionary, a colleague is: "A fellow member of a profession, staff, academic faculty or other organization; an associate."

I recognize that this might just be a pet peeve of mine. But when I see an email that starts out that way my brain turns off. I just delete the damn things.

I often get these emails from trade publications making offers (such as inviting me to a webinar) and event organizers who have me on a list because I have attended in past years and they want me to sign up for the next shindig.

If I am on your list, you should know my name. So please either say "Dear David" or just leave the salutation out completely.

Please let me know if I'm being overly harsh here. (I didn’t get much sleep last night.)

Should Roger blog?

Last week, I had a conversation with Roger Marquis and we can use your help.

His company, True Wind Sailcloth Bags, makes a terrific product, popular with his target market.

I decided to put Roger's question to you for your comments and suggestions.

Roger asks: "I understand the various reasons to blog, and they all make perfect sense, but the part I get stuck on is what to write about. Yes, I can write about an event that we sponsored or attended, or about a charity that we are involved with, but other than that 1) I am not sure what people would want to read about from day to day, and 2) I am not sure I would have enough to write about to keep the blog going from day to day or week to week."

So what do you think? Should Roger blog? And if so, what should he blog about?

Roger (and I) would appreciate any and all comments, especially those from people like him who run businesses who have also grappled with this question.

A Flip Video camera in every marketers and customers pocket

I love my Flip video camera.

It is a small and inexpensive digital video camera that I take with me on every business trip. You never know where a great video interview might present itself like the one I did with Scott Monty, Ford's digital and multimedia communications manager or where an idea that is best told in video such as Do you sell camels? Which I filmed outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia might pop up.

Marketers should carry one to interview customers, employees and industry analysts and post the video on your site or your blog. You can shoot short clips showing how your products are made or used.

No professionals required

This thing is so damn easy to use. There's a big red button on the camera to start and stop the filming. If you want to get fancy, there is also a zoom. That's about it. Even a technology challenged person like me can use it. The "flip" name comes from the USB drive built into the camera that flips out, making it simple to upload videos to YouTube, Vimeo, or other video sharing sites. Really, it's that easy.

When people push back on the idea of creating a corporate blog or writing an ebook, I always suggest making some simple and short videos with a Flip as an easy way to create valuable content that helps to get the word out. Hey, did I mention that this is easy?

Some companies have started experimenting with providing cameras to employees and even customers.

For example, Sven Patrick Larsen, Chief Marketing Officer for Zemoga, a digital agency based in Bogota, Colombia told me that he gives custom designed Flip video cameras to all of his employees and customers.

Zemoga puts what they call a "Z Portrait" onto Flip video cameras. "The customized Flips started as a cool employee and client gift but they've quickly become an essential tool for all Zemoga team members," Sven says. "We've used them at work (to capture client meetings, discovery sessions, and interaction tests), home, and play and our clients and team members have spread their experiences (and the Zemoga brand across the Web). It's a terrific example of empowering clients, giving up control of the brand message, and seeing it spread like wildfire as a result!"

Click the image to enlarge

Chris Brogan: popular with jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, and teachers too

I'm fascinated by online popularity. Why does one YouTube video have 100,000 views and another seemingly similar video only 100 views? I believe that popularity is something that you can help to influence and I wrote about it in World Wide Rave.

But what about extreme popularity?

My friend Chris Brogan has a blog at chrisbrogan.com that's ranked by Technorati as one of the top 100 blogs in the world. He regularly gets 50 or 100 comments on his posts. And @chrisbrogan has 69,000 followers on Twitter as I write this.

WTF? How does one achieve this extreme popularity?

Bottom line is that Chris is helpful and friendly and funny and smart. People like to be around him. And he's prolific.

I'm reminded of High School. Remember those people who could move within any group and be friends with all of them (even the teachers)? That's Chris. I have no doubt that in High School he was tight with guys on the football team, had friends who played Dungeons & Dragons in dank rec rooms, and could sit with the cheerleaders at lunch. And he likely hung out with teachers after class.

And that's true for him online today.

BTW – Chris writes VERY FAST. I sat with him at the MarketingNow conference in Wellington New Zealand a few weeks ago and watched him bang out a blog post in about the time it took me to write a tweet. Get this: Chris has updated twitter over 40,000 times. That’s forty thousand tweets. Yikes. Photo credit @SiobhanBulfin

I asked Chris about extreme popularity and in this video he shares some thoughts.

Watch the video to learn about online popularity. Direct link here.

How a focus on buyers doubled Web site traffic, increased Google positioning, and sold more product

Victor Konshin, the author of the #1 book on gout, Beating Gout: A Sufferer's Guide to Living Pain Free, shares with us his before and after experience of a new Web site design.

Read on to learn how he made the number one page for an important search term and how his new Web site is selling more books.

So many Web sites that I take a look at are just big online brochures. The people who create a product centric site really miss out on an opportunity to educate and inform. When visitors are provided with something of value, they become eager to do business with the company that helped them.

Victor's original site was a classic product-centric site designed to promote his book. The design and the copy were created in a style I call direct mail hype. (Click the image to enlarge.)

"I had been disappointed with the lack of attention that my site was getting both from customers and the media," Victor says.

So he completely transformed his site into what he says is the most accurate information about gout available anywhere on the Internet. Rather than re-work his existing site as many people do, Victor scrapped the entire thing and started from scratch, this time creating a site focused on his buyers.

His new site at BeatingGout.com is totally focused on providing detailed search engine friendly information on gout.

Victor says traffic has more than doubled and is increasing rapidly while the bounce rate (one page views) has decreased by about 60%. And the Amazon ranking for his book Beating Gout: A Sufferer's Guide to Living Pain Free has increased, meaning he is selling more books.

"But more importantly, my site has been coming up in much higher position in search results," Victor says. "For example, my site used to come up on the third or fourth search page for the phrase 'gout myths' but it is now at the top of the first page! In the past I was afraid to 'give away' content, now I realize customers reward you for it."

What about you? If you have a product-centric site, can you transform it into a buyer-centric site?

What we all really want is ATTENTION

Since it's Friday, I'd like to be bold and boil down thousands of conversations I've had over the past ten years into one word: ATTENTION.

Image credit: engincamp

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners want people to pay attention to their company. Marketers, PR pros, advertisers, and salespeople are on the payroll for one reason: To generate attention.

In thinking about attention, there seem to be four main ways to generate it today.

You can BUY attention

This is called advertising.

You buy access to people through television commercials, magazine and newspaper ads, the Yellow Pages, billboards, tradeshow floor space, direct mail lists, and the like.

Advertising agency staffers are really good at buying attention. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult an advertising agency, the solution always involves buying attention.

You can BEG for attention

This is called Public Relations

You beg for access via the editorial gatekeepers at radio and TV stations, magazines, newspapers, trade journals, and more and more these days, bloggers, podcasters and other social networking sites.

I realize that the word "beg" is a little extreme, but in my former life as VP of corporate communications I did feel a bit like a beggar. And these days I get hundreds of pitches a month from people (usually PR agency staffers) who want me to write about something in this blog or my books or in magazine articles and many of these pitches have a whiff of desperation about them.

Public Relations agency staffers are really good at begging for attention. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a public relations agency, the solution always involves generating attention from third parties.

You can BUG people one at a time to get attention

This is called sales.

You knock on doors, call people on the telephone, send personal emails, or wait for individuals to walk into your showroom.

Again, sorry about the extreme nature of the word "bug" but that's what I feel when the confronted with pushy sales tactics.

Salespeople are really good at getting attention one person at a time. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a sales professional, the solution always involves generating attention one person at a time.

You can EARN attention online

There is debate on what this is called.

People have referred to creating information on the Web as "inbound marketing," "new marketing," "social media marketing," "content marketing," and "permission marketing." The idea of all of these is creating something interesting and publishing it online for free: A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like.

An increasing cadre of social media gurus claim to be really good at generating attention through social media. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a social media guru, the solution always involves earning attention by publishing content online.

I've come up with a few important things to understand about attention. Perhaps you have others to share here.

> You should know what the four ways to generate attention are. And you should understand the point of view of the person you are talking with about attention.

> Most organizations have a corporate culture around one of these approaches to generating attention. (Examples: P&G primarily generates attention through advertising, Apple via PR, EMC via sales, and Zappos via social media). Often the defining organizational culture is because the founder or the CEO has a strong point of view. When the CEO comes up through the sales track, all attention problems are likely to become sales problems.

> Chances are that your boss did not come up via the social media track. So you’ll have to convince your boss to invest in social media.

> Most organizations over spend on advertising and sales and under-invest in social media.

> Nearly all organizations should be doing some combination of all four ways of generating attention. For example, even though I am a huge proponent of using social media to generate attention, in the past year I have 1) bought Google AdWords advertising 2) Hired Fortier Public Relations to help promote my new book and 3) personally approached a few bookstores about stocking World Wide Rave. But the vast majority of my attention-generating efforts are in 4) creating content such as this post.

What do you think? What else is important about attention? Are there more than four ways? What’s the right mix? What does your company do?

Before You Open Your Mouth: The Keys to Great Public Speaking

Nick Morgan asks: "Why is most public speaking so awful? Why do we subject our fellow human beings to this form of torture when there are so many better things we could all be doing, like cutting our toenails, baking snickerdoodles, or watching re-runs of The Prisoner?"

Nick is the author of my favorite book on public speaking Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.

I have worked closely with Nick on improving my speaking skills. He knows what he is talking about!

Nick just released a ChangeThis manifesto called Before You Open Your Mouth: The Keys to Great Public Speaking. If you do any public speaking at all, you should read this (totally free) manifesto.

"Why is most public speaking so awful? Beyond soulless venues and Death by Power Point, speakers make the same four mistakes over and over again, continuing the sorry state of the art."

Download Before You Open Your Mouth: The Keys to Great Public Speaking and learn what the four mistakes are (and how to avoid them).

Scott Monty of Ford Motor Company discusses social media

Yesterday I was at the worldwide headquarters of Ford Motor Company and had an opportunity to connect with my friend Scott Monty, Ford's digital and multimedia communications manager.

I asked Scott about what social media initiatives are happening at Ford. Watch the video to hear Scott talking about the new Fiesta Movement, working with bloggers (hint: they are not all the same!), and why all large companies need to be active in social media.

Direct link to YouTube video here.

It was particularly interesting for me to learn about the Fiesta Movement. Ford chose 100 "agents" to spend 6 months behind the wheel of their own Fiesta, "lifestreaming their experiences, and completing monthly missions to show what the Fiesta is all about." The Fiesta Movement is a very interesting social, media experiment and worth checking out.

Disclosure: While at Ford's offices I delivered a paid presentation to a team of communications and marketing staff.

Sasha Vujacic - The official Web site of The Machine

For a look at a terrific professional athlete fan page, check out the site of Sasha Vujacic, the point guard / shooting guard of the Los Angeles Lakers' triangle offense. Sasha was a member of the Slovenian junior national team and was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2004 NBA Draft. He's now in the thick of the NBA playoffs.

The Sasha Vujacic site is beautifully designed and contains a huge amount of information about Sasha, including videos, photos, and much more. And get this, there's content in multiple languages (English, Italian, Slovenian, and even Chinese and Japanese) because Sasha has fans from all over the world.

The @SashaVujacic twitter feed updates on the site and there is an RSS feed of "regularly updated insider information and stories that you may publish on your Web site automatically as Sasha publishes them."

The best part of the site is that it gives off a vibe that Sasha is approachable. There are many casual photos of him. There's a tool where fans can ask him questions and can even create their own T-shirt design and send it to Sasha. If he likes the design, he will post it on his official online store.

Vladimir Cuk and his firm Attention Interactive built the site for Sasha. But more importantly, Vlad and his firm developed a terrific strategy for Sasha to interact with his fans and the media.

"The site is a hit with fans and NBA officials alike," Vlad says. Sasha and his management team are amazed at how the site looks and the level of interaction and response from fan community, according to Vlad.

Other players have noticed as well and are intrigued about the possibilities of engaging more intimately with the public via the Web and social media.

When Vlad was pitching for the business, he was up against the traditional public relations firms that frequently work with other NBA players. Sasha and his manager asked very intelligent questions and during the meetings and came away ready to try what to date is non-traditional promotion for a pro basketball player.

Most players use the media to tell their stories and are removed from interacting directly with fans. Not Sasha.

I have several suggestions to improve what is already a great site.

Sasha could update Twitter a bit more and maybe provide a little more about his life. Fans would be interested in the details of a player’s day and Twitter is a perfect way to do this.

The site should have permalinks. The way it is set up now, it is impossible to point to individual pages or photos.

But these nits are minor. Great job Sasha (and Vlad).

And good luck in the playoffs.

Social media company entrepreneur official garb

I just love this photo I snapped at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco this week #IMS09

Social media company entrepreneur official garb
1. Faded jeans
2. Dark jacket or sweater
3. Very comfortable shoes
4. Slight smirk
5. Hip sideburns
6. Microphone held at jaunty angle in lap
7. Head turned 45 degrees to the right

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Panel was called Discovering the Power of Your Community and included these executives from very successful companies:

Markus Nelson, Co-founder, UserVoice

Joseph Kleinschmidt, CTO, Leverage Software

John Kembel, CEO, HiveLive

Ross Mayfield, Co-founder and President, Socialtext

I guess if you're looking for VC funding in Silicon Valley this is what you should wear.

Social media is a cocktail party

I'm fond of thinking of the Web as a city.

Seeing the Web as a city helps make sense of each aspect of online life and how we create and interact.

Corporate sites are the storefronts on main street peddling wares. Craigslist is like the bulletin board at the entrance of the corner store; Ebay, a garage sale; Amazon, a bookstore replete with patrons anxious to give you their two cents. Mainstream media sites like The New York Times online are the newspapers of the city. Chatrooms and forums are the pubs and salons of the online world. You've even got the proverbial wrong-side-of-the-tracks spots via the Web's adult-entertainment and sp*m underbelly.

So what about social media?

I like to think of Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites as the cocktail parties of the city. To extend the tortured analogy even further, Twitter is sort of like when the girls go to the ladies room and talk about the guys while the guys are discussing the girls while they are away. Photo credit: cityscapeabudhabi.com

What this means for you

Viewing the Web as a sprawling city with social media as the cocktail parties helps to make sense of the best ways for marketers to use the tools of social media. How do you act in such a situation?

Do you go into a large gathering filled with a few acquaintances and tons of people you do not know and shout "BUY MY PRODUCT"?

Do you go into a cocktail party and ask every single person you meet for a business card before you agree to speak with them?

Do you listen more than you speak?

Are you helpful, providing valuable information to people with no expectation of something tangible in return?

Do you try to meet every single person or do you have a few great conversations?

Or do you avoid the social interaction of cocktail parties all together because you are uncomfortable in such situations?

I find these questions are helpful to people who are new to social media. This analogy is a good one to discuss with social media cynics and those who cannot see the value of this important form of communication.

The Web as a city approach is especially important when dealing with people who have been steeped in the traditions of outbound marketing – interrupting people to talk up products and using the coercion techniques of advertising. Sure, you can go to a cocktail party and hit everyone up as a sales lead while blabbing on about what your company does. But that approach is unlikely to make you popular.

Guess what? The popular people on the cocktail circuit make friends. People like to do business with people they like. And they are eager to introduce their friends to each other.

So go ahead and join the party. But think of it as just that – a fun place where you give more than you get. But what you get in return are lasting friendships, many which lead to business opportunities.

+++++++

UPDATE: A few minutes after I sent this post, I learned (via @johnvlane) that there is a book with the same title as this post. I have not read the book and I do not recall seeing it. I probably should have Googled the blog title first. Apologies to Jim Tobin & Lisa Braziel authors of the book Social Media is a Cocktail Party. I should read it!

Are you a craft marketer?

Douglas Burr points us to this amazing video called I am a craft brewer, a collaborative video representing the camaraderie, character and integrity of the American Craft Brewing movement. Created by Greg Koch, CEO of the Stone Brewing Co. with Chris and Jared of Redtail Media and featuring more than 35 amazing craft brewers from all over the country.

As I was watching this video, I kept drawing a parallel between the craft brewing movement and the "craft marketing" that I see so many people doing with great success these days. When someone like Tom Dickson can shoot videos and increase his business five fold, it's craft marketing. When Dr. Helaine Smith writes an ebook that brings tens of thousands of dollars per month in new revenue, it is craft marketing. This video which promotes craft brewing is a great example of craft marketing.

People like us who rise up against corporate-style Madison avenue advertising within their business and do something authentic online are the same as craft brewers, aren’t we?

Please watch the video and let me know if this analogy works for you or I'm just a little crazy.

The video I am a craft brewer was shown to a packed audience of 1700 craft brewers and industry members at the 2009 Craft Brewers Conference as an introduction to Greg's Keynote Speech entitled "Be Remarkable: Collaboration Ethics Camaraderie Passion."

The video ends with this quote: "One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised." Chinua Achebe

So many of you who read this blog and my books are rising up in the face of big-budget marketing. You are the pioneers. You are going against conventional wisdom. And you are succeeding. By the way, aren't you thirsty for a tasty craft beer?

What do you think?

Thoughts on new media in the Dominican Republic

I've enjoyed an incredible four days in the Dominican Republic, learning a great deal about new media in this quickly developing economy.

In this blog post, I provide some ideas for government, politics and industry and some thoughts for the future based on my discussions with dozens of people.

On Thursday I spoke at FUNGLODE, an NGO think tank in Santo Domingo, to a packed house of business and government leaders, but it was the enthusiasm of the young people in the audience, especially marketing and PR students that made the event a pleasure.

After my speech, I had the honor of meeting Dr. Leonel Fernandez, President of the Dominican Republic, for a private executive dinner in the Presidential Palace. I was impressed by the knowledge President Fernandez had of social media and his eagerness to adopt new tools.

But first some background.

In this video, I ask Frederic Emam-Zade, Director General of FUNGLODE, about the intersection of new media and government. FUNGLODE was founded President Fernandez during a period between terms as President.
Direct link to YouTube here.

Here are some of the things going through my mind as I reflect on my visit:

For President Fernandez
I would like to see you establish a weekly or bi-weekly video address that you distribute through YouTube and other social media channels. The video address can be casual (you do not need extensive preparation) and should be short (between 4 and 8 minutes).

I would also suggest that the subject of each address be partly chosen by the public through a submission process. You could use a social media tool such as Twitter to announce the new videos and receive suggestions for future topics.

For the government of the Dominican Republic
One word: Infrastructure. A vital task will be bringing Internet access to the entire country. It would seem that wireless should be a priority, but I would like to see a goal for having the country networked at some date in the future.

Governments have always been about infrastructure. A hundred years ago roads, railways, and ports were a high priority. Fifty years ago it was airports. Now internet and wireless connectivity should be a high priority.

No less important for the government is to foster transparency and accessibility of government leaders via the Web. In a country that has gone through periods of corruption in the past, the current leaders need to be as open and honest as possible, and the Web is a great way to accomplish this.

For the media
Newspaper, television, radio, and magazine journalism has potential to be much more interactive and real-time with the adoption of Web content delivery and social media. Members of the public now have direct access to journalists and can comment on anything they say in the media.

For example, I had a conversation with Alexei Tellerias, who writes for the daily newspaper Listin Diario. Alexei is the model of a journalist who makes extensive use of social media. After our interview, we connected via Twitter and I checked out his popular blog Catarsis Diaria (although I do not read Spanish).

For tourism and industry to reach your international audience
One word: Segmentation. There are some good sites in the English language promoting tourism. However, most are generic and focused on everything the country has to offer. You need to create micro-sites that appeal to different buyer personas.

For example, I love to surf. When I chose a beach location I want it to be near great waves. The Dominican Republic has some epic surf spots, but it is difficult to find appropriate information in English. A quick Google search for Caribbean surfing delivers information leading to Puerto Rico and Barbados as the top hits.

While I love to surf, my friend Larry is a scuba diver so he is another buyer persona. Another friend travels with small children and needs kid friendly resorts. Eco-tourism is popular now. And couples in Japan frequently get married in resort locations. Each of these buyer personas should have a separate site leading them to the wonders of the Dominican Republic as a tourist destination.

For everyone
Your greatest national resource is young people. Tap into the knowledge and social media savvy of smart people like Raul Delgado. Understand the international success of people made popular through social media like singing sensation Cristal Marie. Hire the services of social media experts such as Juan Carlos Pena, a Santo Domingo Web 2.0 advocate who runs a boutique ad agency.

Thanks for reading this far.

What do you have to add?

Stop what you are doing and get or update your Google Profile now

What happens when you enter your name into Google? Do you come up number one? If not, are you on the first page? And if you do appear, is it something valuable? Or is the listing a photo of you as attending your ten-year high school graduation party (or worse)?

You need to be found on Google. Personal branding is essential in today's world.

1) If you're looking for a job, potential employers will search your name.
2) If you're a lawyer, consultant, or real estate broker, your clients will search your name.
3) If you're a salesperson, your potential customers will search your name.
4) If you're single, potential significant others will search your name.

There are several strategies to make the first page.

If you have a unique name, congratulations, you will be found. If you don't, and your name is something shared by many people like "David Scott," you could use your middle name professionally like I do. When you make yourself unique, you own the results for your name.

You can blog prolifically and post other valuable information on the Web like my friend Chris Brogan and rise in the search results.

Or you can get a Google profile.

I wrote about Google Profiles a few weeks ago, but since then there have been some enhancements that effect how your profile appears.

Your Google profile can now be a simple URL using your Google ID. Mine is google.com/profiles/davidmeermanscott. This makes it easy to remember and share.

Google now shows Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. Read more about it on the Google blog.

Even if you already appear in the search results for your name, you should have a Google profile and keep it up to date.

Stop what you’re doing and create or update your Google profile now.

Marketing lessons from the [Grateful] Dead

Alert readers of this blog and my books will recall that I discuss the Grateful Dead as an example of an organization with great marketing. I'm a fan, having listened to the music since the first live show I went to as a teenager in 1979. I've managed to slip a Grateful Dead reference into each of my five books and usually manage a mention in my speeches.

Counter-culture marketing

The band is a big case study in contrarian marketing. Each of the band's many marketing innovations seems to be based on doing the opposite of what other bands (and record labels) are doing at the time. I really like how the band has cultivated their fan base and I think all organizations can learn from what they do.

Starting in the 1960s, the Grateful Dead encouraged concertgoers to record their live shows, establishing "taper sections" where fans' equipment could be set up for the best sound quality. When nearly every other band said "no" the Grateful Dead created a huge network of people who traded tapes in pre-Internet days. More than 4,000 shows from the band’s 44-year history have been taped.

The band was happy to have Deadheads trade tapes and make copies for friends. The cult of the Grateful Dead concert became a pre-Internet World Wide Rave, driving millions of fans to the band's live shows for over thirty years and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Of course, photography is also encouraged. Take a look at the tickets for other concerts and you’ll see "no cameras or recording equipment" printed on most of them.

The band in 2009

I watched with great interest when the Dead announced a 22-show tour, hitting the road for the first time in five years. (The band dropped the Grateful part of the name when Jerry Garcia died in 1995). What would they do this time?

Of course, I wanted to see the band. So I used the Grateful Dead's own ticketing as I have for nearly 20 years. When most other bands were happy to rely on promoters and the early electronic ticketing services like Ticketron (and later the oline Ticketmaster), the Grateful Dead sold the best seats directly to fans through their own ticketing service.

I got three tickets for the show in Worcester, MA (near my home in Boston) for Saturday night's show so my wife and teenage daughter could attend their first shows. With the band's ticketing service, we sat in the ninth row (I snapped this photo). At the show, I ran into my friends HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan and Overdrive CEO Harry Gold. (Brian and Harry, what is it about the Dead and marketing company CEOs?) I also went to last night’s show, but two nights in a row was too much for my family.

Free club gigs

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In late March, I was in New York City to open the NASDAQ Stock Market with GlobeNewswire when I got an email from the Dead ticketing office asking if I wanted to go to a free Dead show at the Roseland Ballroom in New York that night. Yes, please! The band handed out free tickets to the club gig (and two others the same day) for fans as a way to build buzz for the tour. And of course, I tweeted it. Free stuff sells product.

For the best quality, buy from the band

Even though the band encourages fans to photograph and record the music and trade with others, they record and sell themselves to guarantee fans the best quality.

You can get recordings of any of the tour's shows by buying from the official Dead site as a download or purchasing a CD at the show itself which is available just 15 minutes after the end of the show. The guy next to me said he buys the CD because he wants to re-listen to the show on his three-hour drive back to Vermont. I buy the band’s recordings too, because I appreciate the high quality and professional mixing.

Because each show is different, fans enjoy having dozens or even hundreds of show recordings. In the 2009 concerts, the band has drawn from some 150 songs they had rehearsed in the months leading to the tour. In fact, through the seventh show (that I saw at Worcester), they had yet to repeat a song in concert.

A new innovation on this tour is a partnership with Blurb to offer an official tour book for each show. At each stop on the tour, a collectible book featuring the photography of longtime Grateful Dead photographer Jay Blakesberg is available.

A few days after the show, you go to Blurb.com and place an order. The book will include photos from the show that you attended. You can choose softcover or hardcover and even upload your own cover image. I love it. Even though I snapped my own photos, I'll buy the book because it was my daughter's first show. I'll have a photo of my family taken at the show as the cover of my personal copy of the book.

I find the custom tour book innovative. Instead of producing one book for the entire tour (as most other bands do), the Dead allows fans to create their own custom book.

New fans

Even though many Dead fans are in our 40s like me, having found the band in the 1970s (or original fans from the 1960s who are in their 50s and 60s now), many younger fans are at the live shows. My daughter ran into to people from her High School at the show and learned of several others who went (via Facebook of course). After the show, she posted her own photos onto Facebook and will wear her concert T-shirt when she goes back to school on Monday.

What I learned from the Grateful Dead

1. I learned that even though most of the content in my last several books is available for free on this blog or as one of my free ebooks, people will still pay for premium packaging in the form of my print books.

2. I learned that the more people who know about me, the more live gigs I am asked to do.

3. I learned that it is critical to rehearse for live performances.

4. I learned that an audience wants to feel special and customization of each live performance is essential.

5. And I learned that your most passionate fans are also the best people to tell your stories and spread your ideas. Treat them with care and respect.

What can you learn from the Dead?

New Zealand All Blacks: Experimenting with social media to reach global fans

Early today I had an opportunity to visit the Wellington headquarters of the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU), at the invitation of David Barton-Ginger who serves as the online manager. The New Zealand Rugby Union is the governing body of rugby in New Zealand, administering all parts of the game in NZ from grass roots, Air New Zealand Cup, Rebel Sport Super 14 and the All Blacks (the national team).

David has a challenge and he would like your help.

While he has gotten started with social media (see below for details), David is in the middle of a process to convince the managers of NZRU to "lose control" and jump feet first into the swirling waters of social media.

His goals are to inform existing fans from around the world and to bring new fans to the All Blacks who may purchase shirts, caps and other items and may buy tickets to attend games.

David has a big meeting coming up in a few days and he needs to know, from you, why a sports team with fans all over the world should pay close attention to social media.

What in particular should David be doing? Please leave a comment here if you can help.

All Blacks and social media

During the season when the All Blacks are playing, the site gets more than a half million unique visitors per month. Interestingly, 80% of web visitors are from overseas.

David knows that he needs to use social media to reach fans. Several weeks ago he started a Twitter feed @NZRU and an All Blacks Facebook page and he also has a YouTube channel. These are all new initiatives.

David also administers The Direct Line on the All Blacks site. Each month NZRU selects five questions submitted by fans and put them to NZRU CEO Steve Tew to answer via video (which David films). For example, in a recent video Tew gives a brief explanation why players tend to not swap their jerseys on the field after a game anymore.

David has been with the team for five years. Like many people who gravitate to building content-rich Web sites and experimenting with social media, he came to his work by accident. "I was a foreign exchange trader with Westpac and then went to live in London for a few years and worked in banking there too. But I was looking for something more creative. I came back to New Zealand and on a whim attended a Web design course. I really enjoyed it so I started doing some Web project management in the banking industry."

Then the opportunity with the New Zealand Rugby Union came up and David grabbed it. "It was a three-month temporary assignment, but I'm still here after five years," he says.

David says while he is a big All Blacks fan, he tries to put his role first and look at things from a web perspective. He thinks that if he were much more passionate about the team, it would sometimes be more difficult to do his job.

OK, David here’s my idea.

I really think you need to play up the Haka more on the site and in social media. I suggest you consider creating a microsite with photos and video of the All Blacks and the Haka. For many new rugby fans, the Haka is the first thing that separates the All Blacks from other teams.

FYI, in case you don't know, the Haka is a traditional war dance of the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. New Zealand's national rugby team, the All Blacks, perform a Haka war chant prior to each match. In the rugby world, the All Blacks performing the Haka is definitely a World Wide Rave. I've seen this at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens and can confirm that it intimidates the other teams.

Check out the All Blacks version of the Haka here.

How about you?

What would you suggest David does to promote the All Blacks via social media?

Shiny plus old-school funky colors meets terrific design

I ran across Petr Lysak's WebCoffee blog and from the first moment, I was wowed by the design. It really appealed to me.

That got me to thinking about how important great design is to a Website, blog, ebook or other mainly text-based content.

Petr says he used "shiny colors" and "funky old school colors". I just love the cigarette in the logo.

He describes how he created this compelling design here.

Petr built the entire design himself without the use of any commercial blogging software. Maybe that's why I was so drawn to it. Because it is an original deign, it doesn't look the same as a TypePad blog (like mine) or a Wordpress or Blogger blog. It does not have that template feel.

Well done Petr. Good luck with the blog.

Do people love your products?

At South-by-Southwest a few weeks ago I hung out for a while in the blogger lounge.

I noticed that quite a few people who own Apple notebooks have personalized them with stickers like Francine, Jason, and Gary. I've got a bunch of stickers on mine too.

And I also noticed that of the few people using PCs, none had not personalized them.

Interesting, don’t you think?

Do people love your products so much that they personalize them?

Free social media ebook and video: New Media and the Air Force

The United States Air Force Public Affairs Agency, Emerging Technology Division just released a new ebook and video about how social media is used in the Air Force. The ebook and video contain excellent information for all organizations and should serve as a blueprint for social media guidelines for those who do not have them.

Ebook
New Media and the Air Force
(Please note that this file is nearly 2MB, so be patient)

Video
Air Force New Media
video on YouTube

For those of you who work in large organizations struggling with social media, please share this with your bosses.

Both the ebook and the video show how Airmen are using social media to stay informed and inform others. Airmen have the ability to communicate and tell the Air Force story better than anyone else. By reaching out with social media tools, they're able to it quickly and in their own voice.

As Colonel Michael G. Caldwell, acting director of public affairs for the United States Air Force told me: "We want 330,000 people to be in Public Affairs."

Top Gobbledygook phrases used in 2008 and how to avoid them

Boston, MA - April 8, 2009 - David Meerman Scott is pleased to announce a partnership with Dow Jones and HubSpot to leverage and focus on innovative solutions for new and improved, next generation, cost effective, world class, high performance, value added outcomes.

Does the sentence above suck or what??

That's how so many PR people write — using gobbledygook-laden phrases that are so overused to have become meaningless.

I have just completed an analysis of all 711,123 press releases distributed by North American companies in 2008 through Business Wire, Marketwire, GlobeNewswire, and PR Newswire. The project looked at 325 gobbledygook phrases from a variety of sources, with the detailed analysis on the number of uses for each phrase done using Dow Jones Insight.

So how do you avoid using gobbledygook?

Easy! Write using the words and phrases your buyers use. You can also run your press releases, web site text, brochure copy, resume or any other document through the brand new Gobbledygook Grader from HubSpot. The Gobbledygook Grader (released today) will give you a score based on how many over-used gobbledygook phrases you use and suggest ways to improve.

Here are the top 25 gobbledygook phrases used in press releases sent in North America 2008.

Gobbledygook terms were drawn from these sources:

- Informal survey of my journalist friends in order to create The Gobbledygook Manifesto, first published in 2007.

- Suggestions within comments on the Gobbledygook Manifesto blog post.

- Seth Godin's Encyclopedia of Business Clichés.

- This Paperclip is a Solution: A survey of general business and trade publication editors in September, 2006 by Dave Schmidt, VP, Public Relations Services at Smith-Winchester, Inc.

- The book Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language by Don Watson

Resources:

- Take a look at the results for all 325 gobbledygook phrases

- Analyze your content using the HubSpot Gobbledygook Grader

- Read my original Gobbledygook Manifesto published in 2007

- Learn more about Dow Jones Insight, which I used for this analysis.

Disclosures: I am on the board of advisors of HubSpot and I provide coaching services to Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.