positive disruption by: Tom Martin | New Orleans based Social Media Consultant

Cataloging Great Information

Note: I am not in any way affilicated with this product. This is just me pointing you to something I found and think is pretty cool.

If you're like me, you read a lot of stuff online. So often at the end of the day I have 20 tabs open on my Firefox browser, each with an article, site or blog post I meant to read that day. But then someone turned me on to Zotero.

Zotero is a super easy Firefox extension that adds some pretty incredible cataloging tools to your browser. I've been playing with it for a few weeks now and have to say, LOVE IT. It's so simple and easy and that is what makes it great.

After you add it to your browser, you just surf as usual. When you find something you want to save to reference later, you just click the Zotero link in the footer of your browser. It opens this:

and prepopulates much of the information for you. You can add custom notes, tags, and more. There is also the ability to load in bibliographic citation information in your preferred format and I think you can even save just sections of a page, but I havent' tried that yet.

Thus far, I have found this to be a great tool for saving and then finding (saved versions). Between the folder tree and the tags, you can pretty much find anything in a few seconds.

Check it out and let me know what you think. Are you using something else to catalog and organize the information you find on the net? If so, let me know what you think of it. I'm always looking for new tools.

Thanks.

What Advertising Agencies, Virgins & Hookers Have In Common

A few weeks ago, this tweet crossed my path:

agency advising on digital branding that isn't active in the digital space is like a virgin showing a hooker the ropes

Advertising has always been a tough business, but making it today takes true stamina.

What we have historically done for a living -- producing ads, logos and campaigns -- is quickly becoming a crowd-sourced commodity. So who can blame us for selling vaporware to clients? For telling them, "Sure we can do that" when asked if our firm does this or that. "This or that" often means lots of new fees for your firm and with far less price sensitivity than we see with more common outputs like collateral, TV spots, and media buys. "This and that" can be the difference between laying people off and having a pretty good year. So yes, lots of firms say they can do "this or that." Then they fake it or outsource it without ever telling the client the truth.

Read the rest at over at Ad Age's Small Agency Diary

photo credit: Elliott les yeux grand fermés

A New Search Tool For Finding Local Twitter Users

I love Twitter. Anyone who is around me for even a few minutes and brings up Twitter quickly gets the picture. But one of the things I've always wanted to know is "who else in New Orleans" is on Twitter? Seems a lot of folks also want to know who tweets in their town and a lot of companies would like to be able to see/find tweeters in whatever town the company has a rooftop.

Currently, probably the best method is Twellow. But the problem with Twellow and pretty much every other local twitter finder service is that you can only look up one city. So if I use Twellow to search for NOLA tweeters I can only see folks that claim New Orleans as their home city in their profile. If I want the whole DMA, I need to search for each suburb (Metairie, Kenner, etc.) and then manually compile a list.

Now this is fine for my hometown where I'm quite familiar with the geography, but what if I'm a brand manager with a product that has distribution in lots of cities around the USA? Maybe I'm a multi-market retailer or grocery chain, matters not, what matters is I'd want to be able to find and maybe talk to all the folks in a particular DMA who are on Twitter and who if I follow them, will follow me back. A tool to find all those folks in one easy search doesn't exist. Until today.

I gave this challenge to our interactive folks here at Zehnder Communications. They were able to create a pretty simple workaround using Google's search tool to build my local tweeter directory. The problem is, it still requires a person to manually create each DMA. Which is where you come in dear reader.

Go visit the Zehnder Local Twitter Users search tool and help us help you by building the search string for your town. When you get there we'll give you a few simple instructions, a few form fields and presto, you'll have created a DMA level twitter user search for your DMA. Best of all, if folks who come by after you don't want the entire DMA, they don't need to take it. They can turn off the suburb cities you assign to the master DMA and then just work with those results.

Best of all, the tool not only tells you how many tweeters there are, it also lists them so that you can go follow whichever ones seem to be the most interesting. Or all of them if you like. 

Our plan is to leave the page up forever and offer it free to anyone who wants to use it. Sort of our little contribution to the Twitter community if you will. NOTE: this isn't a perfect search tool. If a person uses N'awlins or their longitude/latitude as their "city" in their bio, they won't show up in this search. You'll only find folks that list a city that is in your search string in their bio.

So, do me a favor. Pop over, check out the tool and then leave me comments here as to what you think about it. If you think it has some value, be sure to tweet out a link back to this post so we can get a lot of people using the tool. The more folks that go in and build a DMA profile, the faster we'll have a really robust Twitter directory of local tweeters!

Prepare Your Fields For Rain

They say luck finds those that earn it. I think that's true. In fact the headline of this post is all about being ready for luck or maybe destiny. I do a bit of public speaking now and then. I'd like to do a lot more.

So I write decks, I give talks, I post them to Slideshare and when I can, I capture them on video and post that too. Why? Because it gets the word out and helps folks looking for speakers qualify me.

I also make myself available on a moments notice (if necessary) to pinch hit for groups who have had a speaker cancel on them. I spent five years doing programming for the NOLA AMA and I know what it is like to have  speaker cancel on short notice. I also know how thankful I was to the person who pinch hit for me when that happened. So I make myself available whenever I can.

Like last Thursday. The speaker that was scheduled to speak to the NOLA AMA got stuck in Houston. One of the board members rang me at 10:30a and asked if I could pop over to the Northshore for a noon luncheon (note: it's about a 30 min drive). She knew I had lots of decks and talks and didn't care what I gave, she just needed a favor. Luckily I had a light day and so I agreed.

I been working on a new talk, Using Twitter to Change Brand Perception. And while it was far from finished, it would work.

Using Twitter to Change Brand Perception

View more Microsoft Word documents from Tom Martin.

 

And it was great. I had a blast. The audience seemed to like it. And a number of folks came up after to let me know "they'd be in touch" to talk about opps to work together in the future. And best of all... I got to work out the kinks on that talk so that the next time I give it, it will be far stronger. Everyone wins. The AMA didn't have to cancel its lunch. The attendees learned something new. And I might even have picked up a bit of biz.

All because I prepared my fields for rain. Are you?

Book Tom to Speak

You Play Like You Practice

Continuing on my football inspired series of posts, today's let's talk about practice. No one really likes to practice. I know I certainly did not enjoy practicing in full gear in August or September in Texas - it was hot and not a lot of fun. But what I didn't know then, but certainly know now is that you truly do play like you practice or maybe better said for business don't practice.

I practice all the time now. If I have a big pitch or a big presentation I practice it a minimum of 10 times. When I tell younger staffers at our agency they should do the same they just roll their eyes and let out a little giggle. Don't make their mistake. Practice, practice and practice some more. A lot of folks think that by practicing their presentation they'll come off like one of those Disney Automotrons (sp?) in the Hall of Presidents. But nothing could be further from the truth. By practicing so much, I begin to know my spiel like the back of my hand. I don't even need to see my slides because I can recite all of them by heart - whether I have 2 or 200 slides. That frees me up to focus on the audience when I'm presenting. To ad lib a bit if I need to based on the verbal or more importantly non-verbal signs I'm seeing. It frees me up to focus on things like body placement, eye contact, posture and what the heck I'm doing with my hands while I'm speaking. You see, by the time I give a presentation I'm no longer giving it, I'm just talking about something I've known forever -- or at least that is how it seems to the audience. And because what I'm saying seems so natural and the knowledge so embedded, the audience trusts it and really focuses on it instead of evaluating me as a speaker to determine how much they trust what I'm saying. I once gave a 2 hour brand introduction presentation to a client company and not once looked at a slide. I would have slides changing on cue as I talked. You would not believe how many people commented on how impressive it was that I never looked at the screen and how "man you really know this stuff..." comments i got after the fact.

Remember, most of the folks you see presenting in a business setting today don't practice. So they look at the screen, fumble around and in general don't really look like they know their material. They play like they practice (or would have practiced). Seize the advantage and practice -- you'll thank me later when you get promoted and they don't. I promise.

Which leads me to my second thought. I think everyone in the world should talk to themselves.

First it would make me look far less foolish when I do it, which is quite often. But second it would further reinforce the idea of practicing. Again, I practice everything. If I'm about to have a tough conversation with my boss, an employee of the agency or a client, I rehearse the conversation outloud. I even play the part of the person I'll be speaking to later. Depending on the difficulty of the conversation and the importance of the outcome I may reherse that conversation 10 or 20 times while walking, sitting at my desk or my personal favorite, driving (just clip one of those goofy ear mic's on so folks think you're talking on the phone). My wife and kids have become fond of catching daddy talking to himself. But the truth is, hearing your voice say something outloud helps you to adjust word choice, argument selection, tone, pacing and in the case of emotional conversations helps you get those emotions out before you have the real conversation. Now here again, folks will giggle when I suggest this much like you are right now, but trust me, once you get over feeling like a fool, you'll find that this practice approach leads to better, more focused and usually more successful conversations.

So to bring this all around, I'm not saying practice makes you perfect - it doesn't. But what practice does, and is desiged to do, is to create muscle/instinct memory. Super atheletes don't think in a game they react. And business communications is much the same. Whether giving a big presentation, having a difficult conversation or just handling routine Q&A with your boss, co-workers or clients, you need to train your mind and body to react not think when placed in situations. This will enable you to be ready to rise to the occassion when it comes and I think make you more successful.

But hey, that's me - the crazy guy who talks to himself. What do you think? How do you approach these situations? Anyone else out there talk to themselves? Let me know that I'm not alone ;-).

photo credit: Aaron Montoya

Blocking and Tackling

When I was younger I played football. And beyond just being fun, my coaches taught me a number of things that even today, many moons later I find where not only important football fundamentals, but important business fundamentals. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to share a few with you and let you decide if you feel them worthy.

The first is the importance of blocking and tackling.

Let's take them in reverse. In the game of football (American football that is) the ball is considered "down" and a play is over when a member of the defense tackles the offensive player that is holding the ball. Up until that point, the offensive player is free to attempt to advance the ball until he crosses the goal line and scores points for his team. So it is really, really important that defensive players tackle offensive players. In fact, it's the single most important skillset for a defensive player. I don't care if you have the fastest, biggest, meanest, strongest, smartest defense in the world. If those 11 guys can't tackle well, you lose. It is just that simple.

Now blocking is just as important. While we all love to focus on the quarterback, running backs and wide receivers, giving them all the glory, the truth is great football teams have great blocking because without great blocking your running back has no hole and your quarter back no time to throw. I once remember a game when we ran the same play 15 consecutive times in a game. During the second half we ran it another 20 times in a row only to the other side. It was a simple tailback dive up the middle behind the strongback. The center & guard opened up a hole at the line of scrimmage and the strongback's job was to block the linebacker as he filled the whole using a hooking move. We got about 9-12 yards ever time we ran it. The crowd thought our tailback was da bomb. But the truth was, no one was touching him until he was 5 or more yards down field and the other team just couldn't adjust to the blocking and we just marched down the field. We didn't have to run fancy trick plays, or throw low percentage long bomb passes, we just slowly and confidentally marched down the field using a high percentage fullback dive play until he eventually dived across the in zone and scored. The next time we got the ball, we did it again. At the end of the game the fans chanted the tailback's name. The coach gave the game ball to the strongback. His was the invisible block that you couldn't see, but it was THE block that sprang the play -- every time we ran it.

So often in business we want to focus on the big idea, the next great promotion or ad campaign because that is going to drive our business forward. I get that. Hell I'm guilty of doing that. Who doesn't. It's fun. It's sexy and if you're the guy coming up with the big ideas, it gets you noticed and remembered. So I get that. It's way more fun to be the tailback than the strongback.

But the more I think about it, the more I think my coaches were right. Long-term success is all about blocking and tackling. It's about getting your customer's order right. Delivering that package on-time, every time. It's about making sure that your employees have a system they follow to ensure consistent product/service delivery BUT also making sure they are smart enough and well trained enough to improvise when there is a failure. Make sure it is easy to find your product on a shelf. Make sure when a customer calls your help line they actually get help -- and not frustration.

Focus on the little things. And here are a few tips to see how you're doing and to help you fix problems you may find.

1. Every month invite a few customers to use your product/service free on one condition. They have to be blatentaly honest about the experience and what is working and what isn't working. Begin to track that feedback and start to think about ways to erase the negatives. And don't invite regulars. Pick the random peeps you don't see very often. If you sell a product, do the same. Pick the company/person that only orders once and a while.
2. Practice. If you're in the service business this is really important. Practice is how you make sure that at the moment of truth your employee isn't thinking, he's responding. More on this in a later post.
3. Hire a coach. I know times are tough and often advertising/consulting expenses are the first things folks cut but resist that urge. Find folks that understand how to build good experiences and hire them to help you.

Anything else y'all can think of? Thoughts you'd like to share? Let me know. I think there is a lot of ground to cover here but that's all I've got right now. Help me out and teach me.

Now is the past

Before you read the rest of this post, do me a favor. Stop for a the next 60 seconds and just sit there. In fact, sit on your hands so you're not able to email, or tweet or do anything. Just sit there and focus on all the great things that you are doing right in your business or for your clients.

Ok...now did you feel it? Did you feel yourself travel back in time? Because you did.

While you were sitting there thinking about how good of a job you/your company is doing your competition just got a minute smarter, or sold someone a product or worse, invented a new widget that is going to become your biggest competition.

You see, time never stops. Your competition never stops. And if you do, even for a moment, then you fall behind. And sure, you can make up a minute, but what about an hour, a day, a week or worse, a month? Can you make that up? Hmmmm maybe, maybe not.

But history is littered with companies that did that very thing. They thought all was well and just rode their own coattails. Learn from their mistake.

Always be innovating - even if it's just in your mind. Be thinking, learning, experimenting and advancing. Even if it is just spending 30 minutes a day reading the trades, poking around blogs, or visiting with a consumer, if you spend 30 minutes a day (30 min x 364 days) innovating or in an innovation mode, that is 182 hours a year you spend thinking about the future of your business. And yes, innovation doesn't take weekends off but I did give you Christmas or your birthday off ;-) you can choose which one.

Seriously, now is the past. If you're standing still you're falling behind. Start today. Take the next 30 minutes and think about what is going on in your business and learn from it or tuck it away for future innovation.

Great Summer Reading Material

Well it's summer which means three things in my life: kid baseball, a beach vacation or two and a chance to catch up on reading that I've missed providing my kids behave on those beach vacations.

I read a lot. Actually I don't so much read books as devour them. I'm sort of an Emelda Marcos of books ;-)

So this morning, I pulled down few of my favorite books and listed them here for you to go check out and if you like, buy them, read them and then let me know what you thought of them. You won't find any of these on the current Top 10 or hot sellers list... they're all a few years old but the advice and wisdom is timeless. So impress your friends when they start talking about the latest Gladwell tomb by tossing out references from a few of these babies.

How Customers Think by Gerald Zaltman of Harvard. I read this book a few years ago and it totally changed how I think about marketing to consumers. Zaltman has developed a technique he calls Metaphor Elicitation, which is patented, to mine the unconscious. Truly one of the most interesting and impactful books I've ever read. If you really like that one, you can pick up his most recent  Marketing Metaphoria which picks up where his first book leaves off. Truly I wasn't as impressed with second book as the first, but still a worthy read.

Next I'd suggest The Hero and the Outlaw which draws on the Jung's concept of archetypes. In the book you are introduced to such archetypes as the hero, outlaw, lover, sage, magician, creator, and innocent, and that these archetypes cross lifestyle and cultural boundaries. I once used this book to help sell a truly great ad campaign by helping the client see how the work we created really spoke to a deeper need in his customers' lives. So if you wanna get your inner Account Planner Geek on, read this one... you can thank me later.

And if you're in the service business, such as a hotel, restaurant, or even a hospital, you absolutely have to read Clued In by Lewis Carbone. This book will teach you all about using environmental clues to communicate your marketing and brand message to your customer. His ideas behind humanic and mechanic clues have been used to drive great brands like the Mayo Clinic and others. It's not the newest book on my shelf but certainly one of the most well-worn.

And lastly for anyone that ever has to sell an idea or two to earn their paycheck, I'd highly recommend Perfect Pitch by the legendary Jon Steel. As someone who has been in charge of biz dev at more than one agency and had my own gig for a while, I can tell you that Jon's book taught me more than a few lessons on how to create and then sell ideas.

That's it folks. Kids are stirring so it's time for me to transform into my short-order cook costume and sling some breakfast. Have a great weekend and enjoy the books. But remember, come back and tell me what you thought of them. And if you have a few fav's you think I'd like - do be so kind as to let me know via the comments!

When Social Media Gets Creepy

So yesterday was my 40th Birthday. Lots of calls, cards, emails and a few Facebook shout outs... all to be expected because they were from folks I know, do business with and family. Just another birthday right?

But then I get this direct message on Twitter from some guy promoting his poetry writing service or something. Because I auto-follow he was able to send a direct message to me even though I didn't explicitly follow him which is a risk you take when you auto-follow. But that isn't what makes this creepy.

He knew I was turning 40. He knew the date of my birthday. That information is not available on my Twitter bio. Which means he took the time to follow me and then to look me up on the web where at some point he found my birthday. Then he noted that somewhere and at the appointed date, bingo a DM hits my Twitter stream.

That's just weird man. Guess who isn't being followed by me anymore?

Even God Needed Case Studies

Whenever I'm talking to prospective clients about integrating a Social Media strategy into their overarching marketing plans, I'm faced with the same question.

Do you have any case studies, either yours or other companies, that show how this will help?

Maybe it is just me or the fact I live in the SocMe echo chamber for large portions of each day, but why do you need a case study to believe it is good and beneficial to your business to do the following?

• give consumers yet another way to reach you
• engage in consumer conversations where consumers want to engage you
• create a 24/7/365 research feedback loop with your customers
• create an early warning detection system for bad product/service/brand conversations

I've never met a business owner that didn't intuitively understand the value of "knowing" his/her customers. But alas, the question arises and often times the lack of good case studies impedes the adoption of a SocMe strategy.

But then last week at church it hit me. People need proof in order to believe. Even God needed to show proof of his being, whether it was a burning bush, parting a sea or the ultimate case study, resurrection of his son from the dead. If you read the Bible, you find numerous instances of Jesus performing 'acts' which serve as pseudo case studies and give his followers permission to believe him to be the son of God and ultimately join his tribe. Now I'm not a scholar of the Bible and don't want to get into all of that... the point of this post is to say, like most things in life, better to understand the lay of the land and work within that framework than to waste time and energy wishing it wasn't so. While we'd like to be able to just say something is so and have others agree, case studies are the currency of persuasion.

So for me, I'm going to keep on doing things like my Mardi Gras Twitter Experiment to create shareable knowledge that SocMe programs do work, are trackable and can generate ROI along with the softer goals of just making your business more customer centric -- which is always a good thing in my mind. I hope others will do the same.

Thoughts you'd care to share? Do you have good case studies you want to share or resources for finding some? Just want to get something off your chest about case studies? It's ok. You can comment. It won't hurt a bit and only takes a minute. Join the conversation. Let me know you're here and what you're thinking won't you?

photo credit: omarrun