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Archives for March 2012

Blinded by the Mission

by Margie Clayman

Come on in and take a seat. I’m going to tell you a story.

Since January 1st, 2012, I have been on a mission. I decided that I was going to set the extremely ambitious goal of finishing the Akron Marathon in late September. Now, that’s not saying I’m going to run the whole thing or that I’m going to even try to be competitive. I just want to start at the starting point and still be alive at the finish line. No one could be more shocked at this goal than me. I’ve always HATED running. Back when I was a kid and we’d have to run a mile in gym class, I’d stop a few minutes in. I wouldn’t even try to walk it because it felt embarrassing. I would just tell the teacher my side hurt (which was true) and I’d sit it out. But my goal for 2012 was set. I was going to get in shape and I was going to do a marathon.

I’ve been training pretty darned aggressively all year long. There is a certain pattern to the work-outs. One week emphasizes cross-training a bit more, one week concentrates on strength training a bit more. I’ve gotten to the point where I can walk/run 6 miles and not completely collapse in agony. All well and good, certainly.

Last week, the plan was that I was going to go up to the art museum with my parents, and we were going to get a pretty early start. I was slotted to do 6 miles and I knew I probably wouldn’t do it after walking around a museum all day, so I got up early and gave myself an hour and a half to complete my goal. It was pretty chilly, rather rainy, but I had my eyes on my mission, so I went on ahead. Things went pretty swimmingly too, till about 2.5 miles. I was taking a walking break and reached a point in the lap I was in where the ground was pretty darned slick from the rain. I was trying to walk fast so as not to lose time, but I thought I was being careful. Suddenly, I found myself on my right knee, my right hand flat on the ground, and my water bottle rolling away as if to avoid being collateral damage.

At that point, I felt rather pouty. Not only does falling down hard kind of hurt, but this was really messing up my whole plan. What if I couldn’t finish? What if it took me too long and I threw off the whole day? I got up and finished up pretty much on time. I did not really take inventory of whether I had injured myself. There was no time. I had my eyes on my mission.

Fast forward to almost a week later and I am still suffering from the ramifications of that fall. It seems I put my right arm out of whack a bit. My left knee is really sore, so I’m thinking I twisted it. Because I didn’t stop and evaluate my situation after falling, I probably made things worse for myself. But I was on a mission, and I wanted to complete it.

Is your mission blinding you?

In the online world, we see all kinds of advice for entrepreneurs. Don’t worry about failing because you can learn so much, right? Keep plugging ahead. You always have your kids but your business needs to be nurtured. That company needs to grow. You need to meet your goal for success, right? You’re on a mission, and you want to complete it.

But what are you missing along the way?

Maybe a really valuable team member resigned to go somewhere else and you’re finding it difficult to replace everything they did. But you keep plugging away. Maybe you had the worst month in company history, but you can’t take the time to figure out what happened. You’ll just beat it next month, that’s all. You have to. It’s part of your mission. Maybe you suffered a PR disaster. But you don’t have time to go back and fix that. You’ll catch it on the flip side, when you take a breather. Right now you’re plugging ahead. You’re on a mission.

As long as you keep on running, a little spill here or there won’t matter, right?

Except one day you realize your company’s knee is twisted or your own health is deteriorating, and you realize, “Huh, actually…I can’t keep going on the way I’ve been going. I’ve got some real problems here.”

The mission isn’t everything

Having goals is great. I’m nothing if I’m not a goal-oriented person. And being dedicated to your goals- hey, I’d have it no other way.  But sometimes there are things more important than that myopic mission view. My knee and my wrist are telling me I need to take a short break from my mission before I do worse harm to myself. What is your company (or your life) telling you? What pitfalls are you setting up for yourself as you walk past danger signs towards your one and only end-goal? What weaknesses could be fixed if you just took the time to stop and fix them? Or just to evaluate them?

Is your mission blinding you? Is it time for you to take a step back and evaluate where you are?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cori_m/6596284261/ via Creative Commons

Filed Under: Musings

Don’t lie

by Margie Clayman

Everyone these days seems to have a lot of advice about how you can find success in the online world. There’s advice about how to create compelling content. There’s advice on how to get the best results from Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook, and Pinterest. There’s advice on how to make loads of money using affiliate marketing, and there’s advice on how to create a compelling email campaign.

The best advice I have to offer can be boiled down to two words. Two small words.

Don’t lie.

Every problem I’ve seen in the online world could have been avoided had the folks involved heeded this advice.

Don’t lie.

Don’t tell me you’re interested in community building if you’re having someone else communicate for you.

Don’t say you’ll do something if you have no intention of doing it.

Don’t say you like someone only to turn around and bad-mouth them to other people.

Don’t lie to yourself about what you know or about what you are capable of, and don’t lie to other people about that either.

Don’t offer false advice because you don’t have the real answer.

Don’t offer advice that you don’t follow.

Don’t lie.

Even if the truth may hurt. Even if you are afraid people might think less of you. Even if the lie is so much more attractive.

Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to other people.

And most of all, don’t lie to yourself.

That is the most straight path to online success and contentment I can think of.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juehuayin/4654551155/ via Creative Commons

Filed Under: Musings

Myth: Just doing it yourself works best

by Margie Clayman

One thing you run into quite often in the social media world is talk of entrepreneurship. A lot of it is advice – how to monitor your time, how to make the sale, how to deal with failure of your start-up stops up. A lot of the advice too is meant to be motivational. “Bring your website design in house. You can do it!” “Run your own social media campaign – here’s how!” And the list goes on and on.

Not coincidentally, another common thread of conversation has to do with a lack of time or time management or how to balance life and work. It’s as if the left hand isn’t telling the right hand, “Hey, you just decided you want to do everything having to do with your company all by yourself.” But in fact that is just what you have done. No wonder you’re short on time!

What do you need to do for your own company?

If you haven’t read Carol Roth’s The Entrepreneur Equation, you really need to buy it or get it out from the library and read that thing. I’d recommend buying it because if you’re interested in starting or maintaining a company, Carol outlines everything you need to worry about as the head of a business. A bit of a glimpse?

1. Actually running your company – making sure money is coming in and going out as it should

2. Managing your clients

3. Looking for new clients

4. Marketing your product/service

5. Coming up with new products/services

6. Managing employees if you have any

7. Worrying about things like new tax structures, new healthcare structures, retirement plans – whether just for you or for you and your employees

And of course each of these categories includes endless sub-categories of other stuff you need to do. If you think just about marketing, the list can be nearly endless. Website, SEO, content, PR, developing your brand, advertising, mailing, email, e-newsletters, social media (yes, social media is *just* a sub-category under marketing in this case)…phew.

When you look at that list, it sure seems like any entrepreneur has more than enough to do. And yet, many entrepreneurs insist that they can do every single thing on this list (and more) with no assistance whatsoever. Speaking as a person who has spent a career (so far) *just* working on the marketing aspect of a business for other companies, I have to say that this seems rather delusional and probably dangerous.

A lack of understanding about marketing (real marketing)

One of the reasons I started this series, as you might have guessed, is that I feel social media is diluting what marketing really entails. That’s too bad because one of the things I love about most marketing tactics is that there’s an art to it. There isn’t just a simple “Do this for dummies” approach that I would be happy with.

Take, for example, the much maligned art of media placement. This is how I started in the marketing world. You might thing (assuming that you haven’t been convinced advertising is stupid) that placing an ad is really pretty easy. You choose something like the Wall Street Journal, you buy an ad, done. Right? Well, if that is your approach in your effort to do everything, you are missing out on so many important considerations. For example, where are your competitors advertising? Are they advertising? What is the circulation of that publication like? Can you get a better deal or does the publication stick pretty close to the rate card? Is there an extra fee for good placement? Would an insert be a better investment than an ad? Is it worth it to run a quarter-page black-and-white ad?

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Most marketing tactics include a lot of details that I fear people are now glossing over. If you want a new brochure, are you making sure all of your brochures share the same general aesthetic so people know it’s you? If you’re sending a direct mail piece, are you aware of all of the strange postal rules, like how far down on the piece you are allowed to have content?

Since I’m an agency woman, it might be easy to dismiss my concerns as self-serving. Sure, I would love if every entrepreneur contacted us and said, “Ahhhhhhhhh!” Well, maybe not. But this is not about a sales pitch for our agency or agencies in general. My concern is that no one seems to be really concerned about this “do everything” mode of work in which people are engaged. Is it realistic to think you can continue to handle the SEO for the website you designed and wrote the copy for while managing your new product/service and also keeping a grip on the latest tax rules? To me, this seems like an unnecessary invitation to harm. Because on any facet of work you are doing yourself, whether it’s marketing or customer service or HR, a big mistake can literally spell doom for your business.

Whether you hire an agency to handle your broad spectrum of marketing, a freelance web designer, a person to help you with your HR, or any other sort of help for any other facet of your business, I don’t want you to feel like you are now a failure. Getting help in all of these areas is a sign of realism. It’s proof to me that you are fully aware of all of the minute details that can come back and bite you in the butt. So long as the general chant is, “You can do everything,” I feel like many don’t truly understand how business as a whole, or any part of it, really works.

What do you think? Should an entrepreneur do everything, or is that just crazy talk?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilhelmja/2947831308/ via Creative Commons

Filed Under: Marketing Talk

Avoid the temptation to write something popular

by Margie Clayman

The world of blogging sure does seem to be getting more and more…echoey. Whether I’m looking at blogs I’m subscribed to, blogs I happen upon, or blogs I’m connected to in other ways, the following seem to be the main areas of focus:

1. Content Marketing – any angle of content marketing!

2. Pinterest

3. Google – whether it’s G+, SEO, etc.

4. Facebook timeline

There’s certainly nothing *wrong* about any of these topics. They’re all important. Well, Pinterest I’m still debating about, but generally, they’re all important. They all could be useful. But there’s just SO MUCH about each of these 4 topics. I find myself getting kind of bored.

Of course, it’s easy to understand why this happens. If you look at any of these posts, they seem to get a lot of comments, a lot of “buzz.” They are the hot button issues of the day, so Google loves them, the retweeters love them – it’s easy to get traffic when you’re writing about a topic that (in an MC Escher kind of way) is already on everyone’s mind. Even more, if a big name blogger has blogged on the topic and you link to their post, you might get on that person’s radar. It’s a self-fulfilling echo chamber of a problem.

In the face of all of these similar posts, I’m finding that I want to write about something entirely different. If my readers can find 15 posts in a second about one of these topics, do I really need to add a 16th for consideration? And am I really going to do a better job of covering something like Content Marketing when there’s a whole host of people writing for the Content Marketing Institute? Somehow, I am thinking maybe not.

At some point, writing the popular post may become the same thing as writing a post that isn’t the most valuable thing you have to offer. The information can get more and more diluted. A quote of a quote of a quote can get tired and meaningless. You might get more traffic, but the readers may be less appreciative of that which you are offering.

Is that a good trade to make?

Now of course, everyone has their own perspective on things. There’s a lot of debate about Pinterest. There’s a lot of debate about Google and Google Plus. There’s even a fair amount of debate about how useful Facebook’s Timeline feature is. But with so many people offering their perspectives, is it essential that you add yours to the mix? Will that extra drop of water change the ocean for the people you are trying to serve with information?

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like the blogosphere is becoming more about outdoing each other on the same topic rather than actually offering information about … something else. Maybe that’s just the nature of the beast, but it seems like diminishing the value of our own content just to get more eyes on that content is a silly trade.

What do you think?

 

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bertozland/33402924/ via Creative Commons

Filed Under: Marketing Talk, Musings

Business Killed the Social Media Star

by Margie Clayman

Phew. As I sit down to write this, I am one tired lady. We’re busier than we have been in quite some time. My brain is back to trying to finish up projects in my sleep. When I come home from work, pretty much the last thing I want to do is sit down at a computer and type some more. In fact, these days, sitting outside to read, exercising, doing anything that doesn’t involve sitting at a desk is where I wanna be when I’m not in the office. Maybe you’re feeling that way too. Things are looking up. Things are getting busier. You know, those things that don’t have anything to do with Facebook or blogging or Twitter. Those things that kept you busy before social media exploded right along with our economy (one in a good way, one in a bad way).

This has been on my mind since a friend of mine noted that Twitter seems to be getting more and more quiet these days. Someone said, “Maybe more people are working. Maybe people have less time to tweet.” That resonated with me. As people are getting jobs that keep them busy, or as business begins to pick up, they also have less time to spend Facebooking and blogging and tweeting. They’re doing their work. I’m doing mine. Twitter doesn’t make the cut.

What could this mean for all of these social media platforms? Am I saying that “social media is gonna die?” Nah. I hate those kinds of posts and anyway, social media as a marketing tool won’t be going away anytime soon. But I do think “social media the fad” will be fading away as time goes on. Time spent on platforms like Twitter and Facebook will be more targeted, more carefully planned. There will be fewer chats, perhaps. Maybe even less online drama. People will be busy. Drama almost always takes a back seat where busy-ness is involved.

Maybe blogs that teach you how to do social media will begin to evaporate in favor of companies using that knowledge to do their own industry-specific blogs. Maybe the age of the social media consultant will fade back to the future, to a time when marketing consultants just bring newer tools to the table.

People may not have a lot of time or desire to sit at a computer or at their iPad and read post after post about how to tweet. They might just say, “Come visit me and give me the basics. Offline. Face-to-face.”

Maybe we are gearing up for a counter-revolution. They always happen, you know. The revolters become revolting and are revolted against. It’s a tale as old as time. Maybe people will want to use all they have learned about how to nurture customer relationships and take that knowledge back to the golf course and the nice dinner. Twitter and Google Plus may begin to seem more and more impersonal. Distant. Virtual.

These are all wild guesses on my part, of course, but I find it likely that I am not the only person who is noticing their online time dissipating. I am making sure I peek in when I can. I am maintaining my friendships. But from blogging to Twitter to the whole shebang, I am less, dare I say it, engaged.

What about you? What are you seeing out there?

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=894247 

Filed Under: Marketing Talk

The role of Social Media in Tyler Clementi’s death

by Margie Clayman

In September of 2010, the news came that a promising Rutgers student named Tyler Clementi had committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington bridge. The news at the time tied his death to some actions of his roommate, who had set up a webcam, caught Clementi engaging in homosexual activities with said webcam, then tweeting about what Clementi was doing. Clementi said goodbye via his Facebook page. It seemed like the whole case was something new for the world of social media to worry about – the use of social media networking sites by bullies at all age levels. More and more stories started surfacing about children who were horrifically bullied and abused online to the point where they decided to take their own lives.

This past week, Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, was found guilty of several different faults, including invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence (he went back and tried to delete some of the tweets he had sent out about Clementi and his webcam). Ravi will be sentenced on May 21st.

Here’s the thing. Even though the story originally was framed as a sort of “the evils of social media” story, I’m not 100% sure that’s really the main story. Now, it’s great that the dangers of social media were introduced, but if you look at the story as it was told during the trial, most of Ravi’s actions could have been carried out before the advent of Twitter. Indeed, many of his actions could have been carried out before webcams.

The lack of privacy in college

Here’s the odd reality about living in a dorm – you are sharing space with another person whom you may not know at all, and the space you are in may only be 20 feet square or so. You have enough room for the beds, the desks, maybe a mini fridge, and that’s about it. You shower with everyone in your hall in a lot of cases. To put it mildly, privacy is something you learn to live without during your college years. As fate would have it, these years are the years when you might need your privacy the most. It is during these years that people begin to identify themselves as individuals separate from their parents and families. They begin to explore their sexuality and all sorts of other things. Life can start to get messy, and just at that point, you’re shuffled into a tiny living area with no dividing door or curtain.

When I was in college, we didn’t have Twitter or Facebook. AOL IM was still pretty magnificent as technology went. Our campus “broadcast” system was also mind-blowingly exciting. You could broadcast a message to everyone in your dorm with one simple click. Wow! But a case like Clementi’s still easily could have happened. The walls of our rooms weren’t exactly soundproof. You saw who came into a room and who came out. It wasn’t rocket science to figure out what had happened. Add to that the intense desire to gossip, juvenile jealousies, and general twenty-something craziness and there was plenty of fertile ground for drama of the most dire kind. In fact, during my freshman year, when I lived in an all girls dorm, one woman in particular was often singled out and made fun of because other women assumed she was gay.

Cutting to the core

Perhaps the main role social media played in the events surrounding Tyler Clementi’s death is that instead of just broadcasting his actions to a group of friends or to a dorm, Ravi, by using Twitter, was essentially broadcasting something veyr personal to everyone in the world who could see his tweets. This amplification of what could easily happen on any campus in the world is certainly a problem, but to my mind the priority remains the bullying itself. The webcam is something that existed beyond the realms of social media. The sense of discomfort Ravi clearly felt that homosexual relations were going on in a room he also lived in is something that we should talk to our kids about. And of course, there is the question as to why Tyler Clementi’s wish to have a new roommate after he discovered Ravi’s actions was not granted. Maybe college dorm counselors need to be trained in new ways when it comes to intervening in complex situations like the one Clementi and Ravi were involved in.

None of these things corresponds directly to social media though. Social Media is merely the amplifier of offline actions.

I am not sorry that Clementi’s death caught so much attention in the online world. I am not sorry that his tragic case made people question whether social media is truly safe for our young people to use. I’m not sorry that the case raised questions like social media privacy – when should a parent stop monitoring their child’s social media world?

But I think there are OTHER issues that may be just as weighty. Is there a better way to house students on college campuses? Is there something amiss in our society that Ravi could put up a webcam and not think he was invading anyone’s privacy because the webcam was up in *his* room?

We are living in complex times, and our young people seem to be in danger of bearing the brunt of it. That is the overriding concern. Social Media is just a small piece of the puzzle.

Do you agree?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dborman2/3258371445/ via Creative Commons

 

Filed Under: Musings

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