Signal to Noise in Design

I have a high school reunion coming up, so I’m paying more attention to, and spending more time on, my health and fitness.  My workload has been (thankfully) significant, and as a result the pressure on my time is at record highs.

I try to remain abreast.  No high school humor intended.  I have for years been tweaking google alerts, RSS feeds in my reader, Twitter lists and searches and groups — all to try to instrument the flow of information which is overwhelming, growing, and, in my opinion, 99.99999% (that’s five nines for you carrier-grade readers) junk.  Crap.  S#!t.

When I started my business (and no longer had corporate IT support), I became a much more frequent user of the online forum.  Specifically, for annoying Windows XP problems, or issues arising within my temperamental home backup server.  I was blown away by the number of cloned support sites there are — loaded up with stolen junk just to create a content farm which SEO bots will favor in order to drive advertising clicks.  Blown away, and profoundly disappointed.  I felt a lot like you do after you pass through a flea market.  Just a little grimy from the overwhelming quantity of bogus product.

The rates at which information is being created (or in too many cases, duplicated, stolen, reused, plagiarized) is phenomenal.  We are creating so much digital information that the shrinking percentage of content which we actually print is still driving growth in our global consumption of paper.  Though we print less as an overall percentage of the content we interact with over time, print growth is outstripping those “performance improvements.”

There’s hypocrisy in here somewhere.  On our naive and idealist side, we love the idea of information being free, thanks to the internet.  Access may not be free, but it is relatively cheap (at least for us in developed regions).  But what Frankenstein have we created?  Content is stolen willy-nilly.  We spend otherwise quality innovation cycles trying to find ways to automate ad clicks and to generate more and more spam.

How many snake oil emails have you received this week, offering to generate you $6723 per week while you channel-surf from the couch using the new app there is for that?  I rarely applaud Microsoft, but was thrilled to hear they had “decapitated” the Rustock botnet.  A significant victory in the #signal2noise campaign trail.

For my part, I’m going to use the #signal2noise hashtag and do my darndest to identify both the sublime and the ridiculous on the signal to noise front.  Today I tweeted about Joe Roy’s blog, because Joe is “teaching me how to fish.”  His plain guidance on straight talk helps me use fewer words to express my thoughts.

Are you willing to join this crusade?  I’ll be looking for your tweets and comments and posts…

Are you a marketer in a small technology company?  It’s been hard work being a smaller vendor in a competitive market space these past few years, eh?

In more robust economic times, small company agility can be a valuable marketing tool: “We can deliver new features faster than larger, more sluggish vendors.”  But as sales cycles have been drawn out and big wins harder to close, the bigger players have had a whole lot more stored fat to draw energy from.

Opportunities do present themselves, even in the most difficult of times, however, if you are tuned in to you competitors and looking for those weaknesses in the defense to take advantage of.

One of my favorite tactics is to spring into action when a competitor gets acquired by one of the big players — such as IBM, Oracle, HP or Microsoft.  When a small, agile company gets absorbed by an industry giant, the smaller vendor’s customers who may have been perfectly happy with their vendor have to ask themselves some questions:

1. Is the acquiring company going to modify the acquired company’s roadmap?  (Probably)
2. Will the acquired company be forced to integrate with some other offerings in the acquiring company’s portfolio? (Probably)
3. Will execution lag while the regulatory aspect of an acquisition takes place and decisions about organization and potential “resource optimizations” are investigated?  (ABSOLUTELY)

A client company executed this tactic recently — and the results were immediate and (predictably) positive.  RSD issued a press release in response to the news that IBM intended to acquire PSS Systems.  PSS Atlas competes with one of RSD’s latest offerings from their RSD GLASS Information Governance suite.  The basic concept was simple: PSS Atlas customers will need to have an answer to management’s obvious question: “Is the IBM acquisition a good thing, or a bad thing?”  Raise doubt in the PSS Atlas customer’s mind by presenting an offer: “For the amount you are paying PSS in maintenance, we’ll convert you to our competitive offering, RSD GLASS Mosaic.”  A simple and clear alternative to the path into IBM’s software portfolio, and an opportunity for RSD to upsell the balance of their Information Governance solution.

Not only did the story get wings in the Twittersphere and over LinkedIn, but more importantly it generated an emotional response from the PSS Systems CEO, @dee_dray.  “Ignore false rumors from RSD. Atlas will continue to be info governance hub for all data sources & types + enterprise execution scale.”  And of course, that generated a host of retweets — all to the benefit of RSD’s disruptive tactic.

Chalk this one up for RSD!

When I became a corporate “outsider,” almost three years ago, I felt that marketing as a business function was changing fundamentally.  I plunged into research mode to learn how the “old media” (print publications, radio, network & cable TV, with staff writers employed by giant media companies) were giving way to the “new” (citizen publishers producing content on the web for free).

I launched my consulting business by exploiting social networks, this blog, and free content (see Resources) in order to stimulate my network and tease out interest in project work ranging from part-time-CMO to white papers.  It worked.

I also witnessed “tulip mania” as self-styled (and genuine) experts emerged and captured the attention of almost everyone on a marketing career path.  For a time during 2009 old media events (conferences) were popping up left right and center headlined by new media gurus extolling one of the movement’s foundation principles: Give, give, give… listen, listen, listen… engage… and in the end you will be rewarded a hundredfold with opportunity (and, presumably, filthy lucre).  Become known as a source of quality content, and customers will beat a path to your door.

A couple of months ago, I spotted an ad on Facebook which quoted social media beacon Chris Brogan’s daily rate at something in excess of $20,000.  The offer was to gain all of that wisdom by joining a new community featuring Chris, Darren Rowse, and Brian Clarke — known as Third Tribe Marketing — for a mere $97 initial payment, followed by $47 per month.  As their blogs, collectively, have over 300,000 readers, even using the old school marketing yield on direct mail of 2%, that’s a neat $3 million (with an M) per annum!  Now that’s capitalism for you.  My guess is they timed that initiative just right.

Go for the promotional material on the website if you wish (after all, they’re amongst the best at web copy writing), but let’s be clear: as well as these guys have been doing living off the “give it away for free” model, these leading lights have clearly seen an opportunity to do business one $500-per-year subscription at a time.  Perhaps, like Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — it’s not about their ego or the money — they just want to win the new media world championship.  Time will tell.

Another recent observation: though the new media mantra of “inbound marketing” (nowhere more religiously observed than at Hubspot) poo poos the old-school outbound tactics of telemarketing and direct mail, I know many of us with marketing in our online profiles were bombarded with offers to sign up for the April Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco — notably as the conference’s dates were drawing perilously near.

So should this mini-bubble burst, should the petals drop from the precious tulips (and I believe it/they will), what can we take away?

First, it is true that the media have irreversibly changed. The problem is, the changes are not that dramatic, nor are the implications that difficult to understand.  There isn’t a huge amount of magic; no need for wizards; no new secret handshakes and shibboleths for the elite of this new marketing paradigm.  Brands are their own publishers, and they are largely in control of their own media.  A capability once outsourced to one or more agencies has moved in house, and media costs are heading toward zero.  That’s about it.  I speak to groups of young entrepreneurs from time to time… and after two hours of very high level teaching, they are off and running and becoming their own content foundries.

Psst… guess what… it’s not really that hard to figure this stuff out!

Second, brands (and marketing professionals in particular) need to take much more seriously the content responsibility with which they are now saddled.  We used to talk about a people to programs ratio of 40:60.  Leverage in marketing meant distributing costs 40% in human resource costs, and 60% in media and external programs designed to “drive the fish to the nets.”  Today companies need to invest much more heavily in the creation, curation, and distribution of content — using human beings to do so.  Marketing departments will be moving discretionary spend (which is easy to cut in case of a revenue shortfall) to personnel expense (which is difficult to cut, at least for most sentient humans).

Finally, marketing needs to attack with every fiber in its being the “signal-to-noise ratio” problem which all of this new media and social networking technology has created.  Zero barriers to entry for publishing and vastly expanding user-generated content volume conspire to create a polluted information environment which makes the BP Deepwater Horizon mess look like “On Golden Pond.”  In addition to relentless promotion of our own messages and achievements, we are going to have to exhibit leadership in filtering the extremely high volume of extremely low value information, and continuously enhance our web sites to make them more like museums, libraries, and exhibits — destinations for quality, creativity, and clarity — and less like cheesy storefronts.  Content curation solutions, like the one just launched by HiveFire, may be extremely valuable in attacking this enormous challenge.

What do you think?

I had the great pleasure and distinct honor to give a talk to about 200 students of photography a couple of weeks ago — out in Turner’s Falls at the Hallmark Institute of Photography.

I was invited by an old friend, John Nordell, who is an artist and photojournalist, and also an instructor at Hallmark.  He writes a great blog on the creative process, called Create Look Enjoy, and you can see a great variety of his work at JohnNordell.com.

My purpose was to impress upon these budding entrepreneurs (most will be going into business on their own, others joining established pros as assistants) why the outbound marketing era is over; the importance of embracing the techniques of inbound marketing; and to get “unbound” — to begin NOW to get their brand-building efforts going.

What a great time… and what an amazingly gratifying set of responses from the students!

During my talk (a link to the slides is below), I told some stories from my own experience with social media.  How I got my first really big consulting gig through my blog and Facebook within about ten days, how one of my amateur photos is on exhibit at Arizona State University thanks to Flickr.  I wonder if  Woody Allen knew how much marketing and the media would change when he wrote, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

What a thrill to hear from Tanisha Stephens, who shared the following on Facebook after my talk:

Yesterday @ school we had a guest lecturer by the name of Tim Dempsey, who talked about the importance of social media and the positive impact it can have on your business. Today we had a class(w/ John Nordell) on social media in relation to gaining business exposure through sites like FaceBook, Twitter, & Flickr. Because I believed every word of what they said, I now have this FaceBook account !

Tanisha started her Facebook page… Tanisha Stephens Photography… the very next day.

But she didn’t stop there.  She started reaching out to build her network, and posted an offer to kick start her business when she graduates this Spring:  Here’s her promotion piece, which was featured only on her Facebook page:

Tanisha's Promo Piece

Hi Tim, I didn’t get a chance to speak to you personally after you spoke, but I want to say thank you. Since you were here, I have really taken advantage of the benefits of social media. I’ve planned a photo shoot in my hometown in Alabama for the end of this month & without any advertising other than facebook and I booked all 32 of the appointments I had available in less than a week. I printed flyers that my parents were supposed to put around town for people who aren’t on facebook, but at this point there is no need for that, because I already have a waiting list. I went from about 200 friends when you were here to over 700 friends today. I started a fan page and have 400+ fans. You were 100% on point and I thank you so much for coming and sharing this knowledge.

There’s not much more rewarding than having this kind of impact on a young entrepreneur!

Here are the slides… and don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like me to speak to YOUR group of budding businesspeople.

Merry Christmas.  Whatever your celebration at this time of year may be — may each of you enjoy a warm and restful holiday break.  I most certainly intend to!

2009 has been one of those “Best of Times, Worst of Times” years.

In what ways was it “Best?”

• My consulting business not only survived, but thrived.  I added several new accounts, including Acquia, GolfTripGenius, and Rosen Law Offices.
• My most significant piece of marketing advisory business, RSD, remains a strong account for me.
• I added Presence Engineering, or interactive website design and delivery to our offerings, launching several small business sites including Olde Thyme Home, Dana Landscaping, and Todd Michel Construction.
• I added photography services, bridging my lifelong hobby with my business, via my ‘affiliate’ Synopshots.

In what ways was it worst?

• Many friends and former colleagues experienced varying degrees or financial or professional hardship.
• The markets are seeing signs of recovery, but somehow no one believes we are in a dynamic recovery just yet.
• Our domestic political atmosphere is as partisan and replete with hypocrisy as I have ever observed.

So looking forward to 2010, here’s a few things I foresee:

1. Glacially, buyers will be authorized and funded to invest… and well-positioned businesses will begin winning and growing once again.
2. The businesses that are in position to win have the following characteristics:
   1. Rather than reinventing themselves under the stress of the last 18 months of economic uncertainty, they further refined and in many cases narrowed their “addressable market” scope.  Did you?
   2. They pulled back, perhaps both in overall spend and in staff levels, but are poised to reinvest in calendar Q1 as the number of indicators of recovery, however soft, begin to build.   Are you?
   3. They have built strategic reinvestment strategies and tactical plans, which are not radical in their love embrace of social media, but aware of the need to earn a loyal prospect / buyer community.  Is yours?
3. Small and growing businesses (most of the companies I work with) will clearly see that in the online world, they can stretch their brand to have every bit of the presence, authority, and reputation that far larger businesses possess.  And because they can act with more agility, they can disrupt those larger competitors with decisive strikes and aggressive tactical actions.  In other words — it’s going to get fun again!

And that’s what I miss most… the fun.  Let’s raise a virtual glass to seeing the fun return to our business lives in 2010!

I was walking to work this morning (after writing my Apologia to the Blogosphere for last night’s rant & rave), and out of the corner of my eye I caught a passing delivery truck with a large soft panel bearing a promotional message for a printing company.

“Plus que du papier.  Print.”  More than paper.  Print.

Imagine the challenge you face if you are in the print industry today.  The butt of carbon footprint jokes, the scourge of the global climate change movement.  “People who consume paper are ravaging our wilderness.”  Though printers rarely consume paper except at the behest of their customers, it must just the same be extraordinarily painful to be a printer in the current climate, so to speak.

I’ve always believed that outdoor is the most challenging medium.  In few words, with the opportunity to capture attention which is measured in milliseconds, how do you inspire minutes of follow-on reflection and reaction?

“More than paper.  Print.”  This firm’s  job is to help you communicate.  The paper is a detail.  An important one, an interesting one, an emotion-laden one.  But for me these five words effectively persuaded me to rethink the role of the printer… and to stretch the category in my own mind.

I find this extremely compelling outdoor copywriting.  I did a Google search, but found no reference — and I did not see the panel long enough to capture the company name — another hazard of outdoor.  Do any of my Swiss readers have a tip on whose great work this was?

I work with executives and entrepreneurs in businesses large and small.

Most are technology firms.  They are trying to innovate — to create a solution which never existed before to a problem which is plain to see but perceived to be difficult or impossible to solve.

On the other hand, I also work with small businesses, like a couple who just opened a gift shop where they want to offer quality crafts,  gifts and decor at an attractive price.  Far more straight forward.

Both, however, need to build a brand — create a memorable impression for potential customers about who they are, what value they offer.

Larger, more sophisticated businesses seem to have a far harder time remaining steady and consistent in expressing their essence to the community.  Smaller firms in niches, in general, do a better job “sticking to their knitting,” than larger companies hoping to serve many segments or industries.

“Who am I?”

Here, I am a writer and from time to time the provider of advice and services related to marketing and communication.  I may be other things to my family, loved ones, and even to my enemies.  But here, I am an advisor to businesses seeking to grow — not only to survive but to thrive.

In that role, I try to inspire my customers / partners to imagine and to stretch — but I also try to help them avoid making mistakes — including some which I have made myself.

Have you ever rolled down your car window so that you can honk the horn, make a gesture, and holler all at the same time after getting cut off in a downtown intersection?

When I was younger, I used to do that a lot.  I do it far less frequently since a friend offered me this timeless piece of advice: “Breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.”

Well I stopped breathing yesterday.  I was riled up after a very busy (if productive) day.  I was packing up at night and feeling energized about my final day on my current business trip — and excited about getting home again.

I “checked the traps,” which is my term for catching up on email and other networks, reading some news, and so forth.  Someone sent me a link to a funny YouTube video which got me clicking through several related links of very funny and irreverant celebrity impressions.  I have no idea what he was singing, but I was laughing myself silly at a Korean band where the lead singer was doing an impression of a pop duet — both the male and the female parts.  Switching gears, I checked out some the blogs I regularly read.

Then someone must have cut me off in the proverbial downtown intersection of cyberspace.  I decided to “rant,” which I think is to blogging what a “flameogram” used to be to email.

It felt great to get some of my deepest darkest feelings off my chest.  I swore in my blog post.  I was vitriolic and mean.  It felt great.  I got more comments within an hour than I’d received on my best-read posts in weeks.  By some blogosphere standards this was a good thing.

Another questions: have you ever wished you’d waited just a little longer before pressing the “send” button on an email?  I know I have.  And a trusted friend who has, too, called me up and provided me with some marketing advice: Unsend.  Hit the delete key.

What I had done was wrong.  And so I took advantage of my self-publishing power and I hit the delete key — a privilege one has in the blogosphere (which my rant had just viciously criticized).

Today I can’t wait to get home.  Today, I will breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.

Have you made ever made a mistake?  It feels great to admit it, and to learn from it.

One of the fastest-growing categories of articles or posts I read in the blogosphere these days is “ego posts.”  I wrote about this once back in the early days of the swine flu… suggesting that the downfall of our nice little social media world may be “IM#1,” not H1N1.

I’ll figure out how to use semantic tools to rate blogs’ ego quotients some day.  The lowest of the low might get the “Bill O’Reilly” prize, which should probably be 30 days spent in O’Reilly’s company.  Those with ego in check might earn the “Barack Obama” medal.  OK — I’m kidding with that one.  I’m sure you’ll share even better ideas for the prizes.

But you know what I’m talking about: those posts which describe “how someone as famous and busy as I get through my fun- sun- fan- and follower-filled days;” the rants which essentially proclaim “hey, I’m out here — criticizing you and your business, and you haven’t even bothered to tweet me back or comment on my post.”  It’s a pet peeve of mine.

So here I am writing an ego post.  I hate these things, but this request forced me to reflect a bit, do some writing that isn’t in support of some commercial enterprise, and so I’m going to go ahead and share it here.

I’m hurtling toward my 30th college reunion next spring, and some of the fine folks organizing the event asked me to complete a “survey” to share with classmates during the run-up to the big party.  Whether this serves to encourage attendance or scare away I leave to them… but here’s a slightly edited version of the questions and my responses:

• What did you think you’d grow up to be when when you were age 5:
  • A singer with The Four Tops or The Temptations
• Your current life ambition:
  • To teach my children and other young people the hard-learned lessons from my own life
  • To teach small business people that they can have as great, or greater, an impact on their customer communities as bigger, better-funded brands
  • To capture more of life and the world in pictures
• First impression of  your freshman year:
  • “Ok, pinch me: I’m surrounded by beautiful women, I’m getting As, and I can have all the beer I can drink at a Speakeasy for $5.”
• Memorable experience at college:
  • Sunny fall afternoons spent with Florence and friends at Harkness Beach.
• Favorite professor and why:
  • Mel Woody (Philosophy).  He would take the title page of every paper written for him, roll it back-side into his typewriter, and provide an entire page (single-spaced) of comments on my exposition.  ‘Nuff said.
• Biggest misconception about life:
  • That the majority of people would work hard to achieve their life’s dreams.  Rather, I find one-third do, another third don’t care, and the final third are just plain entitled to them.
• What are you proud of?
  • I’m proud of the balance I have in life.  Though occasionally extremely stressful, I’ve been able to start a business which allows me to spend time working with growing companies in the States and in Europe; to be available to my children as they grow up into young men; to resume my love of photography; to help local small businesses get with the web marketing program; to continue the never-ending project which is my current (and fourth) significant home renovation.
• Words you live by:
  • “Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night”
  • “Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”
• Guilty pleasure:
  • Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concerts, in “the pit.”
• If you could be anywhere in the world right now I’d be . . .
  • On Block Island, at sunset after a day at the beach, relaxing with family and friends, cooking dinner.
• Your road not taken:
  • Boston University Law school, likely followed by law practice down on the Jersey Shore
• Biggest myth about you:
  • That I had cosmetic surgery to create this fine if somewhat pronounced proboscis
• How is college part of your life now:
  • On my Connecticut College chair, given by my mother, is a needlepoint pillow, made by my mother, featuring the Connecticut College camel.  Next to it, another needlepoint pillow, also my mother’s work, that reads: “Money may not be everything, but it sure keeps you in touch with your children.”
• My favorite song from college that I hope we dance to at Reunion:
  • Birdland, by Weather Report
• Who I am dying to see at Reunion:
  • Anyone who ever attended “Scotch Night” at the Park Housefellow Suite during our senior year.
• Why I am coming back after 30 years:
  • Fellowship.
• Other fun facts about me:
  • I spend about 100 days per year in Geneva, Switzerland
  • My photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Taliesin West” is on display at the Skysong Center at the University of Arizona
  • I hold the world speed record for reciting the alphabet backwards.
  • The night the ball went between his legs in the 1986 World Series, Bill Buckner slept in my bedroom.  I slept elsewhere.

I really feel for startups or small businesses trying to figure out where to start in understanding the new media which their customers and prospects are using to get information about products and services they’d like to buy.

Dana Landscaping goes online...

If you look around on any of the search engines, you are overwhelmed with tips, tools and techniques to get going in social media.  Once you start investigating them, weeks have passed and you have been up until all hours trying to figure out which of the thousands will help you weed out the massive volume of noise and focus on the signal — the valuable information about how to start and where to go.

There are three things you can do easily, and you can do today — which will get the ball rolling.  The nice thing about these three things is that they start rolling fast — and so do the results.

First: Move your website from that cheesy template-based site your host sold you to WordPress.

The key to gaining visibility in the noisy world of web media today is to become a publisher of interesting content based on your expertise.  That static site you are paying $4.95 a month for (or whatever) is not fresh, it’s not changing… and as a result it is probably NOT driving great search engine results for you.

With WordPress, you have incredible options for customization and design — to give your site a branded look.  If you don’t think that’s your strength, there are armies or WordPress professionals out there ready to help you out with design services.  It’s a competitive market, and rates are reasonable — you can get going for hundreds, not thousands, of $s.

But most importantly, WordPress is a blog platform.  In addition to the core, and infrequently changing information you want for your website, blogging allows you to write a professional diary.  As often as you like, you can publish snippets of insight, experience, a story from a day in your life… which communicate to readers a little something about you.  Your personality comes through and prospects begin to develop a sense of who you are and how you think.  You can blog from your mobile phone, your browser, at home or on the road… and WordPress makes it really easy.

Second: Establish a fan page on Facebook.

Add your logo, use your business description from your web site (to be consistent and clear… one of the keys to building your brand), and post a few images to give your page some character.  You can host discussions on topics of your choosing, encourage your Facebook friends (and theirs…) to become fans of your business page, and before long you have a little Facebook community ready to receive updates in their feeds about your business.

Search for “Dana Landscaping” on Facebook… and become a fan!  Every page needs 100 fans to be able to obtain a more attractive and useful custom URL for their Facebook business page.  Thanks in advance!

Third, establish a Twitter account for your business.

Use your logo for the picture, provide your web site address in the account settings panel… and begin exploring this medium as well.  Dana Landscaping has set up standard hashtag searches for #landscaping and a few other terms, to find out like-minded Tweeters.  Tom follows those guys, and is rapidly building out his Dana Landscaping following.  You can follow Tom and Dana Landscaping here.

These are the key first steps.  If you make these moves, and set aside 30 minutes to an hour, three times a week, to nurture the community you are building, write new posts, respond to comments and feedback, you will be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Tom Busta of Dana Landscaping, a family-owned and operated landscape design and build company based in the Merrimack Valley, in Andover, Massachusetts, recently dove in and took these first three steps.  He is developing a great online personality (though he is almost completely new to this new media world), and is building following.  And most importantly, within the first few weeks he already started receiving requests for designs and price quote for new jobs.  And in a slower economy, that makes all the effort worthwhile!

And the cost to Dana Landscaping to develop and launch these new marketing activities?  Zero.

You may find the technology intimidating, and so firms like Elastic Brands are here to help you get going… but the point is the barriers to entry are low.  It’s just hard to figure out where to start, and for me these three things are the must-do first steps.

What do you think?  Are you ready?

Michael Calienes is a blogger and marketer I stumbled across as one does about a year ago.  I clicked through a link recently to a fine piece of guidance for marketers planning their next communication program — whatever the media and however narrow or broad the goal.

It’s called the “three-step strategy statement,” is available readily at his site, and represents the kind of simple but planful thinking we should all do to keep our communication programs on the same path as our broader business strategy.  An excellent tool.

Thanks, Michael!