Inbound Social Marketing and Nonprofits

I recently read Heather Mansfield’s book, Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits. As I finished the book several thoughts came to my mind:

1. Why have few nonprofits made major investments in inbound social marketing?
2. How come nonprofits do not seem to understand the ROI or value of integrating social media across the organization?
3. When will more nonprofits have a dedicated person for inbound social marketing?
4. Why do many nonprofits think of inbound social marketing as an optional or add-on part of their overall marketing, PR, and donor development strategies?

As I thought through these questions, several possibilities came to mind based on my experience with nonprofits across the country:

1. The entry cost for social media management and inbound marketing tools seems too expensive for many donation-based nonprofits.
2. Determining the ROI for inbound social marketing campaigns means having a solid handle on existing data trends and intensely tracking and comparing the impact of social marketing campaigns across all channels.
   1. Integrating social across the organization is rarely heard of and usually relegated to the marketing department – never being considered for customer service, donor development, public relations, support, R&D, nor sales.
3. Dedicated resources cost, yet if you want to do inbound marketing right it is worth the investment to get the right person or team in the door to monitor and manage it daily.
4. Inbound social marketing is here to stay and works best when it is integrated across all departments: operations, HR, marketing, PR, IT, broadcasting, customer service, and development.

Certainly, some will push back on these ideas it is built on my experience interacting with nonprofits. It is unfortunate, but I can count on one hand the nonprofits that have a dedicated resource for inbound social marketing.

This is where Heather’s book comes in. Every nonprofit C-Level should read this book. While a few may see this resource as a primer, everyone will get nuggets of wisdom to apply to their organization. An excellent companion book for ROI and social analysis would be Social Media ROI by Olivier Blanchard.

Start With Benchmarks

Below is a list of benchmarks that Heather has seen through her years of experience with nonprofits. While these are not strictly to be adhered to they are excellent goals to shoot for.

• 5000 fans/followers as a first tier goal
• 10,000 fans/followers as a second tier goal
• $2,500 – $10,000 annual budget for:
• eNewsletters
• List building
• Donation landing pages
• 20% email opens as a first tier goal
• 25% – 35% email opens as a second tier goal
• eNewsletter of 500 words with 1-2 updates per month
• $12.48 is the average value of an email subscriber
• Online giving should equal 25% of all organizational giving
• 40-50 hours a week for social media management

Best Practices

I have also included a list of best practices that Heather recommends. Look at your organization and weigh these in light of your current situation.

Facebook

• 6-10 posts per week (1-2 day)
• Goal is for 1 comment and 3 thumbs up per each status update per 1000 fans
• Ads equal $1.07 spent to acquire a fan

Twitter

• “Old school” retweet 80% of the time
• Auto-RT (retweet) 20%
• 25% of all tweets should be replies and retweets
• 4-6 tweets a day (20-30 tweets a week) 8am-8pm

YouTube

• 1 video per quarter (3-4 per year)
• Create a “Favorites” channel
• Customize and brand your YouTube page

LinkedIn

• 1-2 updates per week
• 2 hours a month participating in online groups
• Comment or participate 1-2 times per month to get your name out
• Goal of group size should be 5000
• Rotate “Manager’s Choice” discussions 2 times a month
• Send group announcements 1 time a month featuring 3 articles
• Launch a sub-group after the main group has reached 5000 members

Blog

• Post 1-2 articles per week
• Post summaries from events 1-2 days afterward
• Choose only 1 category per post

FourSquare

• Create a FourSquare Business Page
• Add a reward for checking in or stopping by

Mobile

• Link to mobile channels from mobile site
• Text message open rate should be 90%
• Send no more than 2-3 text messages per month
• Expect to budget $10,000 to build a custom smartphone app
• Promote apps for 2-3 months per year

Heather’s book if full of good information and how-to advice. You will especially like the checklists for getting started and tactical planning.

If you’re part of a nonprofit, purchase a copy of Social Media for Social Good and begin implementing the information immediately. If you have already been involved in social media marketing then compare your benchmarks for success to those above. You do not need to start with a big budget but in today’s world you have to be involved with inbound social marketing. It is not too late to catch up and you surely don’t want to get left behind.

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Mobile Design and Development by Brian Fling

By E. Brown

In March 2013, the U.N. said 6 billion of the worlds 7 billion people had mobile phones. Of this number over 1 billion had smartphones. Although there are some slow adopters due to cost and bandwidth issues, the fact is mobile is here to stay. And the mobile web is a maturing part of doing business in today’s world. Are you engaged?

Most organizations have a mobile-friendly web site. This allows for audio and video playback and touch interface navigation. While that is a start it is only the bottom rung of the ladder. You need a strategy, a mobile design, and well developed site to compete for the eyes of mobile savvy users.

Brian Fling’s book, Mobile Design and Development is a good place to start. As Fling says, “I wrote this book to be a beginning—your beginning in mobile—and to give you all the information you need to know in order to start thinking of your site, application, or business in the mobile context.”

Brian Fling. Mobile Design and Development (Kindle Locations 305-307). O’Reilly Media.

Before you dismiss this book as too basic, be sure to check out the chapters on:

• The Mobile Ecosystem
• Designing For Context
• Mobile Strategy
• Mobile Web Apps versus Native Apps
• Adapting to Devices
• The Future of Mobile

Everything rises and falls on strategy and a good mobile strategy is the key to a successful mobile design and roll out. In the case of mobile, context is king! Understanding your users and, consequently, their needs will get you most of the way there. Based on proper personas you can assess the needs of your mobile audience and begin to define goals for meeting those needs. You will most likely have a large list of needs and related goals. Don’t be tempted to develop them all. As Fling notes, “keep it simple.”

Without going into too much more detail, suffice it to say there are many good nuggets of information for application in Mobile Design and Development. This book should definitely be amongst your personal library.

Competitive Behaviors versus Competitive Strategies

By Dan Coughlin

There has been a lot of talk lately about what the U.S. needs to do to be more competitive on the global stage. On March 13, 2009, Charlie Rose interviewed Michael Porter about his eight steps to fix the U.S. economy. Here is the link: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12809.

These types of conversations are about strategy. A strategy is a guideline for making decisions that affect the type of organization you will be and the type of activities your organization will do in the future. Strategies are important for businesses and for countries. Without a strategy there will likely be no connection between the types of activities people in the organization are doing or the people they are working to serve. Without a strategy, either written or unwritten, guiding your organization, you will likely end up with a very weak brand, virtually no effective innovations, and very poor results.

However, even with the most brilliant strategy, you cannot compete effectively as an organization if the people in the organization are not acting in a competitive way. In this article, I’m going to focus on how individual competitive behaviors can make an organization more successful. You can extrapolate these behaviors for the members of your organization, and for the citizens of the U.S. and for any other country in the world. We don’t just need the U.S. to be more competitive. We need every country to be more competitive. That’s how we raise the bar on a global basis. It starts with individuals behaving in competitive ways.

What Competitive Behaviors Are Not

There are certain behaviors that some people think demonstrate competitiveness, but I argue that they don’t. I call these behaviors The Three Killer B’s: bravado, boorish, and brutal. Bravado is synonymous with brag, bluster, and bombast, and it means a swaggering display of courage. Boorish is synonymous with uncouth, unmannered, and insensitive, and it means a coarse and blatant lack of sensitivity to the feelings or values of others. Brutal is synonymous with ferocious, gross, and rude, and means to act in a savage, cruel, and inhuman way. (Source: dictionary.com) Bragging about your past experiences, eating like an animal or dressing like a slob or swearing like a drunken fool just because no one will tell you to stop, and putting people down and having to win every single conversation in the hallway does not make a person competitive. Repulsive perhaps, but not competitive.

Talking with bravado, acting boorish, or being brutal might intimidate other people in the short term, but they do not help the intimidator or his or her organization compete more successfully. There is a dramatic difference between intimidating people and competing successfully.

Look for Analogous Competitive Situations

I suggest you think of a competitive situation you’ve been in outside of the business world. It could be sports, music, acting, academics or some other activity where you had to compete against other people or your own past performance in order to win. You can then use insights from that activity to see more clearly how to be competitive in the business world. For me, sports provide that analogy.

Competitive Business Behavior #1:
Define Winning

Winning in sports is very easy to understand. You get a schedule of games to play in, and then in each game you either win or lose. At the end of the season, you either win the championship or not. In practice many drills are set up to immediately determine whether or not you won in a particular activity.

Winning in business is not always as short term or easy to figure out. However, in order to compete, you have to define what winning means in your role as a business leader and you have to be able to measure it.

Some parts of business are easy to define in terms of winning: growing revenue, reducing cost, increasing profit, beating last year’s sales numbers, adding five new customers, and so on.

Other times winning is not as obvious, but these aspects can be more important in terms of being successful over the long term. This might include improving the reliability of small parts in a product that no one ever sees, reducing the complexity of a customer’s instruction guide for one of your products, or improving the impact of a presentation on an audience member’s future behaviors, which can only be loosely measured by anecdotal information down the road and somewhat by his or her actual results.

I like to think about Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios. It takes them four years to make a film, and then over the course of a few weekends their financial success is largely determined. Certainly they include box office receipts and DVD sales and video downloads as one way of defining whether or not they won, but I also believe they define winning as improving the quality of the images and the development of their characters and the impact of the message within the film.

Within your role in your organization, what would have to happen for you to be able to say you’re winning? I’m not talking about your title or income or authority level. Those are by-products of winning. Increasing your salary so you can do meaningful things for other people might very well be fueling your energy at work, but that’s not the type of winning I’m referring to. I’m talking about what would have to happen in terms of an outcome for your organization in order for you to say that you and your team have won? If you don’t know how to define a victory, then how can you compete?

In order to win in business, you can’t just plow through a ton of activities and work a million hours and call yourself a winner. You actually have to impact some outcome, some measure of success. What is yours?

Competitive Business Behavior #2:
Prepare to Win

If you’re a competitor, you don’t just show up and perform. You prepare as well as you can to deliver a winning performance. I think if people spent less time talking about being competitive and more time preparing to win in their organizations, they would actually become much more competitive. Talking about winning is in-the-public-eye, exciting and sexy. Preparing to win is behind-the-scenes, mundane, and ordinary. Take that improved instruction manual as an example. No one in the media is going to write a front-page story about how much easier it was for customers to understand the instruction manual or how it helped the customer to assemble the product in 40% less time, but that’s an example of winning within an organization that helps the organization to be much more competitive in the long run. To improve the instruction manual perhaps the person studied the competition’s materials and studied instruction manuals from other industries. Maybe this person prepared himself or herself by taking courses on effective writing. All of this behind-the-scenes preparation pays off in fewer customer complaints and more loyal customers.

Competitive Business Behavior #3:
Bring an Intense, Sustained Desire to Win

Do you show up just for the paycheck, or do you have an intense, burning desire to win within the framework of how you have defined winning?

Let’s switch back to my sports analogy. The athletes regardless of their sport who win consistently over the long term have a burning desire to constantly prepare and improve within their sport.

It doesn’t matter what role you have or what industry you work in. If you want to be a competitive person at work, you have to have a burning desire to do what you do as well as you can do it. I’ve been writing monthly articles on business leadership at this desk since September 1999, and right now I’m trying my very best to craft a message that will hopefully have a tremendous impact on your competitiveness as a business leader. This article might not help you, but I have an intense desire to try to help you be a great business leader. What is your intense desire at work? What are you willing to work for?

Competitive Business Behavior #4:
Persevere through Challenges

Life is difficult. These are the three famous opening words from Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled. They are powerful because they are true. On the road to winning you are going to face challenges on a daily basis. We all know that. We also all know that we have to persevere in order to win. The tricky part is to actually keep going. This is where a sense of purpose comes in. You need a purpose, a reason for working, a reason to be competitive, a reason to keep on keeping on. What is yours? Why do you want to win at work? Do you want a greater salary so you can provide for your family and pay college tuitions and help your aging parents? Those are noble reasons to keep on keeping on.

There are other reasons why people persevere. They want to leave a legacy of having mattered. They want, as the late Steve Jobs used to say, to put a “dint in the universe.” They want to fulfill something deep inside of themselves. These are also noble reasons to keep on keeping on.

For an athlete to compete, he or she has to persevere within a practice, a game, a season, and a career. For a business leader to compete, he or she has to persevere within a meeting, a project, an organization, and with suppliers and customers. You have to keep going in order to have an opportunity to win.

Competitive Business Behavior #5:
Analyze Performances and Improve in the Details

Being competitive doesn’t mean that you have to be always performing. Sometimes, or maybe more like a LOT of times, you need to stop doing and step back and reflect on what you’ve done. Look at your performance and ask yourself what you’re doing that is helping your chances of winning, what you are doing that is hurting your chances of winning, and what you could be doing that might increase your chances of winning. Reflection and discernment are perhaps the two most underrated aspects of competitive business behaviors, but they are two of the most important. Rather than wasting time on bravado and boorish, brutal behaviors, I encourage you to step away from your activities and really think about what would make them even more effective.

One caveat: don’t cheat. Cheating might help you “win” in the short term, but it can also ruin your career and destroy your organization. Winning only counts if you are competing in an honest way.

Competitive Business Behavior #6:
Be Comfortable with Other People Getting Uncomfortable

On the road to trying to win you will likely encounter people who simply don’t want to put in the physical or mental effort necessary to win on a consistent basis. It’s okay to be honest and professional with them and to point out in a very clear way why they need to make some adjustments. This is where your leadership skills come into play. To me, business leadership means influencing how other people think so they make decisions that improve results for the organization in a sustainable way. That’s a long way of saying that business leadership is about competing to win. As Tom Landry, the long-time coach of the Dallas Cowboys, used to say, “Coaching is about getting people to do what they don’t want to do so they can achieve what they want to achieve.”

Even if you have hired competitive people, you are likely going to make them uncomfortable in some way at some point in time. That’s okay. It may very well be that discomfort, okay let’s call it pain, that will help them to learn how to be more competitive in the future.

If you’ve hired people who are not competitive and who aren’t willing to learn how to compete, then you are facing a very difficult decision. Do you move forward with folks who are friendly and who do a good job but who are unlikely to do what it takes to win as an organization, or do you decide to move on without them? Competitiveness and competitive behaviors are essential elements in a winning organization. I encourage you to teach and develop competitive behaviors in your organization, but also realize that some people are not going to want to compete in order to continually improve and to press on for victory. In those cases, you have to decide what you are going to do. It’s not about bravado, boorishness, or brutality. You can still maintain professionalism and integrity in whatever you decide to do.

Conclusion

Intelligent strategies that affect the type of business you will be in and the types of activities your organization will do in the future are important to consider carefully and to create.

However, an organization will not be competitive in the marketplace, and a country won’t be competitive in the world, just because it has a good competitive strategy. What organizations and countries need are employees and citizens who consistently demonstrate competitive behaviors. There is nothing in the world that is wrong with being competitive, as long as we’re clear about what that means. Competitive behaviors include defining what winning means, preparing to win, maintaining a burning desire to win, persevering through obstacles, analyzing performances, and influencing other people even if it means causing them to get very uncomfortable.

About Dan Coughlin

Visit Dan at www.thecoughlincompany.com

Dan Coughlin works with senior-level executives and managers to improve their impact as business leaders on teamwork, execution, innovation, and branding. His clients include McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Abbott, GE, Marriott, Coca-Cola, Shell, Toyota, Boeing, BJC HealthCare, RE/MAX, Subway, St. Louis Cardinals, Jack in the Box, Denny’s, Prudential, Land O’Lakes, ACE Hardware, Holder Construction, Kiewit, McCarthy, and more than 200 other organizations.

New: Common Sense Leader Blog

I recently  started a blog on common sense leadership. Many people I talk to are tired of all the latest trends and fads in leadership and management? Me too. Leadership and management is really quite simple — the common sense application of it is what’s hard. Join a growing number of business people who are fed up with trendy principles and workplace hypotheses created in order to sell sensationalism and books. Check out the new blog and let me know your thoughts and the kinds of content you’d like to see.

14 Tips For A More Effective Online Survey

By Dana Fine

Developing a useful, well-written online survey that extracts the information you need from your users can be a challenge. In this article, I will review 14 tips for creating a useful online survey.

1. Write a brief, concise survey. Start with a mental framework that focuses on only what is essential to know. Ask questions only if the answers will give you the data you need and can use. Try to envision each question as its own specific theory that you are testing. In addition, research has shown that people skim and skip on the web, so your online survey completion rate will be higher if the survey is short and succinct.
2. Try to begin the survey with interesting questions. Interesting questions will inspire the respondent to keep reading and complete the survey.
3. Develop questions with answers in the proper format for your purposes. For example, if you believe your students need more time to complete the questions in your lesson, ask, “How long did it take you to complete the unit and accompanying questions?” with various time intervals as possible answers.
4. Plan ahead of time how you and your company will analyze the information before you send out the final version of the survey. This may affect your questions and format when you realize that the statistical analysis you need to perform.
5. Use the simplest language possible and respect the respondent’s dignity when constructing questions. Your survey respondents will undoubtedly come from many different groups.
6. Use neutral language. The online survey is being developed to find out what your audience thinks and is not a forum for you to air your perceptions or opinions.
7. Relax your grammar a bit so your questions do not sound too formal.
8. Be sure to ask only one question at a time and put them in a logical order.
9. Avoid double negatives, difficult concepts, and specific recall questions. Respondents are easily perplexed when trying to interpret the meaning of a question that uses double negatives.
10. Try to use more closed-ended questions, with no more than one or two open-ended questions. Respondents usually have a better understanding of closed-ended questions because they are more straightforward and offer responses they can choose from. Open-ended questions require a written response.
11. Scaled response questions should have answers that are at balanced, comparable intervals. For example, offering choices of excellent, very good, good, and terrible would cause you to miss important information in between the values of good and terrible.
12. Whenever possible, responses should be developed as discrete amounts instead of general statements of quantities, with specific options from which to choose. It’s better to ask, “How many times a month do you go to the movies?” “0”, “1 to 3 times a month”, “3 to 5 times a month or more”, instead of “How often do you go to movies?” “almost never”, “once in a while”, “I am there at least once a week”, etc.
13. Name your survey and write a brief introduction. It prepares them for what is to come.
14. Craft a well-written subject line for the email you send with the survey to capture your respondents’ attention.

In summary, a well-written online survey has higher completion rates and is an effective method for gathering information.

About the Author:

Dana Fine is a Senior Instructional Designer at SyberWorks, Inc http://www.syberworks.com. SyberWorks is a custom e-Learning solutions company that specializes in Learning Management Systems, e-Learning solutions, and custom online course development. Dana is also a frequent contributor to the Online Training Content Journal.

Best Purchase I Made All Year

I love my new ScanSnap S1500M! I just do. This product paid for itself not 4 hours out of the box. Tasks that would have taken me days, even weeks, to do were accomplished in a short time.

Business cards that were piled up – done! Oh, and input into my contact manager! Conference manuals and notes stacked beside my desk – now digitized and searchable. Sweet! File cabinet print outs from previous projects are now converted to Word documents.No more paper clutter.

Did I say I love this tool?!

Save files as PDFs, searchable PDFs, Word, Excel, add to your contacts and in color or black and white. Everything I have wanted to do the Fujitsu designers and engineers seem to have thought of. Even if there is a paper jam, a window pops up showing me the last item scanned and asks if I want to rescan it after I clear the rollers and continue with my project. Nice work.

If you are an information hound and collect research, periodicals, newspaper clippings, business cards, and more – you have to get a Fujitsu ScanSnap. If you do, let me know what you think. If you already have one, tell me of your experiences here.

Web Strategy: Doing The Right Things

This is an article I wrote for the Five Q blog – Enjoy!

“Strategy is doing the right thingsand tactics are doing things right.” Everything rises and falls on your web strategy, which is why it is critical to place such emphasis on it being part of the project process, no matter how large or small.

Strategy questions are the foundation for any organization’s web initiatives. Without a solid web strategy, everything else will crumble and fall. Imagine building a house. You don’t start by nailing siding to the framing; you begin by determining the purpose and needs for the house:

• How you will use the house?
  • Do you like to entertain or do you like private spaces?
• How many people will be living in it?
  • Will you have occasional overnight guests or will your in-laws need a suite to live out their years?
• How much money and time can you afford to spend on building the house?
  • What are the features you need to have now, and which ones can wait until later?

Having these determined first ensures that the plan foundation will be solid. A website is much the same way.

Preparing The Foundation

To build a web presence that you will not quickly outgrow, start with the following questions:

• Who are you talking to? Do you have a clear understanding of your existing web audience? Why do they come to your website? Why should they come? What are their unique needs compared to another audience type (e.g., a Baby Boomer vs. a Gen Xer)? How many different audience types do you expect to reach? How do they each use the Internet?
• Where is your audience going? If you have a website, where do you get most of your traffic on the website…and do you know why? Are you providing for your visitors’ needs or only your own? Where do you want people to go on your website (i.e., what are the main calls to action)?
• What media draws your audience? Are they looking for community and social interaction? Are you using audio and video content to engage your visitors? What formats and platforms should you make your content accessible in: desktop/laptop, mobile phones, tablets, impairment friendly?
• How do you build the right web team? Are you planning on maintaining the website and content yourself? Do you have an in-house web team? Does your team have all the necessary skills to take care of your web-related needs? Do you need the assistance of outside partners—vendors, agencies, interns, volunteers?
• When will you see a return on investment? What will you be measuring and analyzing? What are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? How will you know when you are meeting your targets? How do you know what strategies you will need to change or revise?

Can you see how these impact your project from the start?

Ready to Strategize?

These questions should be reviewed and revisited through your web project process as well as regularly after launch. Successful organizations are the ones that stay flexible enough to change, adapt, and grow when it makes good strategic sense.

Ready to get started? Take our self-evaluation form and take the first step toward building your successful web presence.

Comment Below:

• Have you tried to create a web strategy? What parts did you find most and least valuable?
• What other core questions need to be answered before building a website?

Mobile Websites: Strategy Plus Tactics Equal Success

This is an article I wrote for the Five Q blog. Enjoy!

With the rise of mobile devices–laptops, tablets, and smart phones–having a clear mobile strategy is a must. If “strategy” is doing the right things, and tactics are “doing things right”, then there are multiple things to consider when creating a mobile strategy.

Data Analysis

Good decisions are made with good data. Reviewing your mobile trends in your web analytics tool will help you see trends as well as learn more about your mobile audience.

Key items to review in your analytics for mobile:

• Mobile traffic on your website
• Mobile devices used: iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, etc.
• Mobile browser usage
• Top entry pages
• Top exit pages
• Bounce rate and more

Having a good understanding of how mobile users are accessing and viewing your web content will help you better set the direction for your goals and metrics.

Goals and Metrics

All good strategies begin by identifying your key goals for building and delivering your mobile brand. Some examples could include:

• Expanding your reach
• Increasing sales/donations
• Usability for mobile users
• New market outreach

Once your goals are established, then you can set your clear and concrete metrics for success. Some metrics for success could include:

• 50% increase in page views for the website
• 100% increase in time on website site
• 25% increase in donations
• 20% increase in contact form inquiries
• Adding 1,000 new Twitter followers
• Increase to 5,000 new Facebook fans

Remember that your goals and metrics should be grounded in data as well as flexible enough to adjust to keep pace with the activity your users are experiencing on their mobile devices.

Best Practices

Now that your goals and metrics have been established, you can consider some best practices in developing your comprehensive mobile strategy:

• Mobile Visitor Goals and Mobile Surfing:
  • Visitor’s goals will be different when visiting the mobile website than when visiting the desktop website.
  • A Nielsen study from May 2010 showed that Americans spend the bulk of their time on their mobile phones checking email, visiting social networks, and reading the news.
  • Mobile users will often be interacting with mobile websites in 5-7 minute chunks of time.
  • Therefore, they will have less time and desire to read content.
• Mobile Content:
  • The best mobile websites do not simply make the original website viewable in a mobile browser, but restructure the website to meet the needs and goals of the mobile user.
  • Content blocks need to be shorter than they are on the desktop version of a website.
  • Navigation needs to be limited to meet the immediate information needs of mobile users and should be action oriented.
• Mobile Donations:
  • Making a donation may not be the first thing a mobile user thinks to do, but if the timing and ask are appropriate to the channel, increasing donations via mobile is an attainable goal.
  • For text message donations, you are limited to $5 or $10 per gift.
    • This may not be strategically aligned with your ministry/organization’s objectives to further develop donors who are able to give more or those who would be willing to donate more if approached properly.
    • The dollar limit may likely cause someone who would be willing to donate a larger amount to settle for donating $5 or $10 since it is the path of least resistance.
  • If using a donation form, make it as easy to use as possible, including pre-populating it with the visitor’s information when they access the link from email on their mobile device.

Responsive Design & Progressive Enhancement

A trending discussion about mobile design revolves around Responsive Design and Progressive Enhancement.

Responsive Design allows your site to be designed to perfectly fit a specific platform/environment–smart phone, tablet, or desktop–with a single design. Through specific adjustments to the website code and style sheets, the design scales and responds accordingly per the device. Here is additional information about responsible web design and its adaptations for mobile.

Progressive Enhancement, on the other hand, “is a way of designing web pages so that the more features a user agent supports, the more features the web page will have. It is the opposite of the design strategy graceful degradation that builds pages for the most modern browsers first and then converts them to work with less functional browsers.” (About.com) A how-to guide for progressive enhancement is provided by Webdesigner Depot.

Knowing that the design is also part of the user experience is something to consider when crafting your mobile strategy.

Deliverables for Your Mobile Strategy

Keeping the goals, metrics, data, and best practices in mind when developing your mobile strategy will lead to success. You will also want to include in your strategy:

• Audience Analysis: clear definitions of your mobile users, trends for different demographics, and usage patterns
• Mobile Sitemap: defining the core website navigation and pages for your mobile offering.
• Mobile Wireframes: taking into careful consideration that your mobile audience will interact with your mobile website differently than on a desktop, establishing a clear information architecture for mobile will be key to ensuring no gaps exist in the user experience.
• Mobile Design: with the information design complete, you can elevate your wireframes to life through your mobile design.

Be sure to work closely with your web team to ensure that your goals and metrics are clearly being met throughout the mobile production process. As technology continues to evolve, you want to be sure that your mobile strategic efforts grow with your brand.

Comment Below:

• Have you started thinking through a mobile strategy yet? Why or why not?
• What about a mobile website vs a mobile app? Are you seeing your organization lean more toward one or the other?

The Collapse Of Distinction – Book Review

By Eric Brown

It has taken me a while to write this review. Not from lack of reading time, I assure you, I often have 2-3 books going at once. Scott McKain’s book, The Collapse Of Distinction: Stand Out and Move Up While Your Competition Fails, is not a book you skim through. I found myself taking it a bite-at-a-time. I often paused to reflect on and look for ways to apply the action steps outlined in the book. I have many pages dog-eared and chunks of the content underlined.

Some of the questions early in the book that bear reflection are:

• How can your customers distinguish you from your competition?
• Do you bring a higher value to customers?
• Besides product and price, what do you really sell?
• Why would your customer pay for you over your competition?

If you are new to brand development or in the process of reviving your brand, answering these initial questions may be all you need in order to set yourself head and shoulders above your competitors. Yet, you would be doing yourself a disservice if you did not process the remainder of McKain’s material.

Understanding The 3 Destroyers

According to the author, there are 3 destroyers of distinction:

1. Incremental Advances – emulation; replicating small advances your competitors make.
2. New Competitors – new challenges; trying to be like competitors and not staying on top of the competitive landscape.
3. Familiarity Breeds Complacency – customer boredom; being so familiar you are taken for granted.

Think about it – what have you changed in the last year about yourself or your organization to freshen the approach with your customers and constituents?

Don’t Be Different – Be Distinct!

McKain goes on to define what he calls “The Ebert Effect” named after movie critic, Roger Ebert.

When people, from their perspective, are inundated with indistinguishable choices, they perceive a product, service, approach, or experience with a specific point of differentiation to be superior.

This means creating small strategies that are recognizable as different from your competition. This is only one step to being different in the customers eyes. We are encouraged to move toward being distinct. The only way to do this, says McKain, is to create a foundation of distinction built on the following four pillars:

• Clarity – Who are you? Be specific about what your organization is and is not.
• Creativity – McKain says, “Creativity without clarity is devoid of distinction.” What creative strategies are you employing to enhance the quality of customer contacts?
• Communication – Know the benefits of compelling story telling. Tweak your distinct communication for your audiences.
• Customer Experience Focus – Create a unique customer centric experience that cements loyalty.

Each of the pillars works with the next. You cannot have one without the others if you wish to truly be distinct.

Final Thoughts

The book was more than a business book, it was a work book. It is laid out for those people who have the time to consume the book page by page. It also has executive summaries at the end of each chapter followed by action steps to put the material into practice – which I would highly recommend.

The publisher, Thomas Nelson, also added a unique feature. Published as a “Nelson Free” title allows the buyer access to three formats for the price of one! I got the hardback version and that gave me access to both an ebook and an audio version of the book. At this writing, it looks as though Thomas Nelson has continued this practice with only a small handful of their titles. A nice perk but not a must-have for many readers.

Nevertheless, if you are wanting to improve your brand distinction, The Collapse Of Distinction, is definitely worth the read. It is full of practical tips throughout and resources at the back of the book that can help you dig further into differentiating your company from the myriad of others vying for consumer attention.

Was this helpful? Please comment below

Enjoy!

10 Practical Tips For Facebook

When it comes to social media tools like Facebook, we are often asked, “How can I get more mileage out of [Facebook]?” and “How can I leverage Facebook for growing my organization?”

With the recent interface changes and the opportunity to reach over 500 million active users, Facebook has become the social media tool of choice. This month, we want to give you our 10 Practical Tips for Facebook.

1. Create a Facebook Page
   Most users start with a Facebook Profile. Profiles are intended for personal use. Facebook Pages are for business use, and offer a more robust set of features for content management. Facebook has even provided instructions for converting your Profile to a Page.
2. Establish Your “Vanity” URL
   This is the customized extension for your Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/MyAwesomeCompany. This will make it easy for marketing and publishing your Facebook web address. You can get a personalized URL after your Page has been “Liked” by at least 25 people.
3. Post Regularly
   We recommend posting with the same frequency every other day and on weekends (we typically recommend posts in the mornings). This is the time you will get the most amounts of interaction, and that is the strength behind Facebook. We also recommend having multiple Page Administrators so in the event you are out sick or unable to publish, another administrator can jump in.
4. Take Part in the Conversation
   Your followers want to feel a sense of connection to you—a sense of community. Only posting information without responding to comments makes people feel ignored and not valued.
5. Be Authentic
   Every organization has a “tone”. Remember on Facebook, people expect you to be real and a little casual. Don’t be afraid of this. Show that your authentic responses are coming from a person by adding your name to the end of a company-related post.
6. Metrics are Your Friend
   Use Facebook Insights to see how your Page is being used. You can review statistics on wall posts, page views, discussion topics, and photos views. Also, “listen” to the conversations happening on your Page. This will help you gauge audience interest.
7. Add Images, Links, Feeds, and Videos
   Photos are a great way for people to feel connected to what you are doing as an organization. Tag your images for SEO by including your company name, location, and relevant keywords in your captions and album names. Leverage the power of links by including links not only to your branded website content, but other relevant and related topics through feeds or manual updates. Finally, videos are a fun way for people to see and hear you, as well as learn from your expertise on a subject.
8. Promote through Cross Pollination
   Be sure to link from your website, blog, emails, and social media feeds to your Facebook Page. Encourage your Page followers to link to your Page as well as share with their friends. You’ll be surprised how quickly your network will begin to grow.
9. Optimize Your Page for Search
   When creating your vanity URL, use “key words” for your organization such as your organization’s name. Be sure to keep it as simple as possible, and remember once you have chosen a name you cannot change it. Also, be sure to adjust your privacy settings for search rankings.
10. Advertise on Facebook
    If you feel your content is relevant and want to further target your audience, try Facebook advertising. Be sure to review the “Best Practices” and “Reasons for Rejection” as you begin. When pricing your ad, we recommend using “Pay Per Click”, since click-thrus are typically low on Facebook. Don’t let this worry you, as your ad will be viewed by thousands and drive awareness and interest.

Food for Thought:

1. If you already have a Facebook Page, what other tips or advice would you recommend?
2. What is the biggest mistake you are seeing from other organizations/companies on their Facebook pages?

Facebook Changes That Affect Your Page

It is offical: as of March 11, your Facebook pages are now using iFrames. What does that mean? For the average user, it really won’t mean much since the way you update your Facebook page will be the same, for the most part. For the more sophisticated user, here are a few things you will want to pay attention to: FBML has gone away and you can host your own media using iFrames.

Facebook Markup Language
The FBML tab is gone. If you used FBML on your old page, the tab will still be there but Facebook will not allow creating any new custom FBML tabs. Luckily, there are several companies that have come to the rescue and created applications you can use to continue to leverage FBML:

• Wildfire (As of this writing, this app is free for the next 90-days)
• Involver
• Iwipa

For more information about what this means for you, see Mari Smith’s post about iFrames and Fan Gates.
Other Items of Interest
Over the last months, Facebook has been making other changes as well, the most noticeable differences are Use Facebook As Page and Real-time Analytics for Social Plugins.

Use Facebook as Page
You used to access your Facebook page from the bottom of your profile, but now you can use the Account drop-down to use the feature Use Facebook as Page. When you click on this, you will be given a choice of the pages you own and can switch with a simple click. Switching back is just as simple: click on the Account drop-down and click Switch back to [your profile name]. Aside from the FBML changes, you can edit your page just like before by accessing all your tabs from the left sidebar.

Real-time Analytics for Social Plugins
Facebook also recently announced website and social plugin analytics to their Facebook Insights. This will allow you to gather more actionable data about your page and how well it is performing.

Food for Thought:

• Have you already started implementing some of these changes?
• What could you use a little more information about?

Trends Come And Go While Direction Is Here To Stay

The company I work for, Five Q,  has Subject Matter Experts or SMEs (pronounced “smees”) on a variety of topics. Our staff has expertise in web and marketing related areas, including but not limited to web strategy, usability, SEO, social media, information design, mobile strategy, user experience, email marketing, and project management. Our SMEs are continually researching new trends and directions in web technology. The distinguishing factor between a trend and a direction is that trends come and go, but a direction is a solid shift and movement in web usage and technologies. For our client partners, here are some of the prominent directions we see for 2011 are:

• Mobile-optimized Websites: Web users are “going mobile” at an alarming rate. If you do not have your web content optimized for this platform, you will be behind the curve.
• Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Are you prepared for inbound marketing? Traditionally, we think of marketing as outward focused, but good customer service creates influence that leads to word-of-mouth marketing to generate sales and donations. Are you making an impact?
• Online Brand Management: How are you managing your online brand? Does your audience perceive you as relevant or as a “has-been”? What do people think of when they think of your brand? Taking control of your online reputation is something you can and should do.

How do these new directions fit with your web strategy? Is your plan flexible enough to accommodate change? Five Q can help. Contact us today for more information.

Tight Budgets Breed The Best Innovations

By Dan Coughlin

Innovative thinking means searching for and implementing a better way.

That’s it. Nothing more. Do not overcomplicate this topic. It’s not about pontificating on highly theoretical concepts and wasting a lot of money. Innovation is improvement in motion.

A business innovation is the process of creating additional value for your customers that they will pay for at a greater profit for your business. Your innovations have to do both: increase value to customers and increase the profits that your organizations make. Creating value that erodes profit is not a business innovation. It’s actually a self-induced death blow to your business.

The Process of Innovation

Step One: Focus, don’t spend.

For many years I worked with executives in one of the world’s largest companies. Each quarter we would study the business results of the industry in a wide variety of categories. Every quarter one of my client’s competitors, which was much smaller and had far fewer resources than my client, would win in several key performance categories.

I didn’t understand what was happening. The people at my client organization worked incredibly hard on a large number of projects to create and deliver more value to the customers. They invested enormous resources into these innovative projects. And yet this small competitor kept outperforming them quarter after quarter.

Then one day my client hired one of the key executives from this competitor. On her second week on the job I asked her, “How in the world did your former company keep outperforming your new company?” What she said I will never forget.

She said, “We had very, very limited resources. We couldn’t try a lot of things. We had to succeed with the few projects we could afford to do. We were forced to concentrate on delivering great value on one thing at a time. Here we have tons of resources. And that’s the problem. It allows us not to have to focus in order to survive. So we end up doing too many projects and overwhelming our front-line employees and customers.”

Within a few years my client’s organization was achieving incredible results that were lasting far longer than ever before. What was the difference? In spite of having massive resources to work with my client narrowed their focus to a few key areas. No longer did they allow themselves to go off on three dozen wild tangents. They poured all of their effort and concentration into improving just those few areas. Today they are achieving truly remarkable results quarter after quarter.

Note: recessions are good for innovation. It forces every company to operate within a tight budget and be extremely focused. This tight area of concentration generates far more useful innovations than the conceptual free-for-all that companies often use during good economic times.

In the past six months I have served as a business speaker to the National Automobile Dealers Association, National Association of Home Builders, and a national conference of a major residential real estate company. These were three of the hardest hit industries in the past three years. Yet I didn’t hear talk about gloom and doom at any of the meetings. I saw and heard a lot of ideas about how people were working to create greater practical value for their customers in a few concentrated areas. It was clear that everyone understood that innovative thinking was a requirement to survive through this recession and thrive on the other side of it.

What is the one area that you are going to focus on improving for your customers?

Step Two: Ask.

Of course, one way to find out the best area to focus on for customers is to ask the customers. I suggest a simple question such as, “If there was one thing about your experience with this product (or service) that you would like improved, what would it be?”

Now be patient. Customers don’t have the answer on the tip of their tongues. Allow them to think. If they can’t think of anything, you can follow up with probing questions on specific aspects of the product or service. Another approach is to ask, “What was of value to you with this product, what was not of value to you, and what would have been of greater value to you?”

Before you start to come up with an innovative product or service, identify the statement you are trying to fulfill. Write a one- to three-sentence description of the desired outcome. Say you want to create a new countertop in public bathrooms for the sinks and faucets. Your statement might say, “In the end, we want a countertop that stays dry so people can place a book or small bag on the countertop and the item won’t get all wet.”

Innovations don’t have to be about computers or cell phones or medicine. Innovation is about searching for and implementing a better way. That “better way” can happen in any industry.

Step Three: See.

Remember: insight comes from sight. If you want to understand the customer experience in order to improve it, then go see for yourself what it is that customers go through. Don’t just ask them for ideas on how to improve the experience. Go look for yourself.

A few weeks ago I bought a quarter-sheet cake for a Valentine’s Party at my church. I went to the bakery, and asked the baker if I could see the cake before I paid for it. She opened the box, and it said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, St. Lucas Women in Red”. I looked at the cake, I looked at the baker, and then I said, “Why does it say, ‘St. Lucas Women in Red’?”

She pulled out a sheet of paper, and said, “It says right here, ‘St. Lucas Women in Red’.” I looked at it, and I said, “I meant I wanted the frosting in red, not the words.” She said, “No problem.” She scooped off the red letters and replaced it with vanilla frosting.

At the party that night I told that story. Someone else said, “I had that same experience at that bakery.” If the owner of the bakery had been a customer of the bakery, then he or she may have gained the insight necessary to create a better experience for customers.

Step Four: Stop and start over.

Sometimes you have to start over from scratch. Don’t feel compelled to merely tweak what you’ve always done.

Several years ago McDonald’s sold Salad Shakers. The idea was to put the salad dressing in a cup with the salad ingredients. Then you shook it up and, voila, you had a salad. Only problem was there were a lot of problems. You had to ask for a plate to pour the salad onto after you shook it up, and the salad dressing oftentimes ended up on the customer’s clothing.

So McDonald’s stopped and started over. They gained insights from customers. They went and observed the Salad Shaker in action at restaurants. And then they came out with a completely new salad, their Premium Salad. This new salad has been wildly popular for several years and helped to significantly increase sales of Happy Meals.

Don’t be married to your current way of doing things. Once you’ve identified the statement you are trying to fulfill and have gained insights into what customers really want be willing to take out a blank sheet of paper and start with new ideas on what will deliver the value that you want to deliver.

Step Five: Improve.

A prototype is a model that represents what your idea will look like when it’s put into action. You can create simple prototypes for both products and services. Use cheap, basic materials to assemble your prototype. Use paper, napkins, paper towels, paper clips, cardboard, and Styrofoam. Don’t use expensive materials to make fancy looking models. That’s a waste of money.

When you are explaining your concept you can refer to the prototype and that may very well help the other person understand better what it is you’re trying to get across. My all-time favorite book on innovation is The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, who is the general manager of IDEO. My favorite quote from that book is, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a prototype is worth a thousand pictures.”

Start with five or six prototypes under the area of focus that you selected earlier. Study the prototypes, capture the best ideas, and then continue to make prototypes as quickly as you can as better ideas evolve.

Notice so far you have not spent very much money. You’ve invested time in talking with customers, observing customers, and developing prototypes. The process of innovation is not expensive. The primary investment is a mental investment, not a financial one.

Keep improving the prototypes until you land on the one that you are ready to actually create and deliver into the marketplace. This is where the costs primarily occur. You will have to spend some money in producing the product, training people on the new service they will be delivering, and on marketing the new product or service. However, notice that if you hold off on the spending until this stage you are able to provide something into the marketplace that has a far better chance of success at a lower overall investment from your business.

Step Six: Sell.

At some point you have to attempt to sell your innovation. You can’t innovate in a vacuum forever. You’ve got to put your idea out in the market and see how people respond to it. Innovation does not end with the first sale. Innovation is an on-going process. Find out what customers like and don’t like in your new product or service. And then keep working to make it better and better.

Step Seven: Find out if the proper connection has occurred

One important question to ask after your product or service has been in the market for awhile is, “Do customers feel they received the value that we intended to deliver to them?”

There is value to you regardless of the answer to that question. If customers feel they are receiving the value you wanted to deliver, then you can tell how much this value is worth to them. If customers believe they are receiving some other value that was unintended, then what is it? Perhaps that unintended value can lead to great profits for your business. If customers feel they are receiving no value from this new product or service, then you can work to determine if you need to scratch the idea or merely modify it.

My point is that I don’t want you to just stop after you’ve sent the new product or service into the marketplace. Allow customers to teach you what you don’t know about this new innovation. It doesn’t matter what value you think you put into the marketplace. What does matter is what value your customers think you put into the marketplace.

Keep searching for and implementing a better way. It is the key to surviving in tough times and thriving in good times.

About Dan Coughlin

Dan Coughlin teaches practical ideas that improve business performance. His purpose is to work with executives and managers so they achieve great performances. He is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, executive coach, and author of three books on management performance, including Accelerate, Corporate Catalysts, and The Management 500. Dan’s new book Find a Way to Win: Management Insights from Terry Michler, America’s All-Time Winningest Soccer Coach, will be published in May 2010.

Python Programmers Twice As Productive As Counterparts

Saw an interesting article today by Kurt Grandis. After a six-month productivity study of teams using Python and C#, Kurt states, “Given our development processes we found the average productivity of a single Django developer to be equivalent to the output generated by two C# ASP.NET developers. Given equal-sized teams, Django allowed our developers to be twice as productive as our ASP.NET team.”

A programmer friend of mine says, “You have to write 3x more code in C# just to do the same stuff….”

Read the article on Kurt’s blog and tell me what you think about Python v. C#

Leadership – It Is Not A Label

By Dan Coughlin

It’s official. I’m at the halfway point in my career. Over the last 25 years of working with individuals and groups the topic I have focused on the most is leadership. It is my favorite topic of all. Here are five lessons I’ve learned about leadership.

Lesson #1: Leadership is Not a Label
In studying leaders and in working side-by-side with leaders as a management consultant in over 30 industries, I have always searched for what these individuals had in common. First, here is what they did not have in common: height, size, race, gender, sexual orientation, spiritual focus, political preference, or personality type. Leaders come in every size and shape. Some are men and some are women, some are tall and some are short, some are big and some are thin, some are light-skinned and some are dark-skinned, some are straight and some are gay, some are devoutly spiritual and some are atheists, some are conservative and some are liberal, some are quiet and some are loud. I found no title, income level, or authority that ever automatically made a person an effective or an ineffective leader.

Lesson #2: Leadership Means Influencing How Other People Think
After studying leaders for a long period of time, I discovered that leadership really means influencing how other people think in ways that generate better sustainable results both for the organization and the people in it. It is the person’s ability to influence how other people think that determines his or her effectiveness as a leader.

Lesson #3: Leaders Answer Four Critical Questions
I did find one thing that all effective leaders have in common. They all actively worked to answer the Four Critical Leadership Questions. Now they didn’t call it that and most of the time they didn’t write down these questions. However, each person did work to find the answers to these questions and then persevered to implement his or her answers.

The Four Critical Leadership Questions are:

1. What outcome do I want to improve for my organization and why do I want to improve it?
2. Who do I need to influence in order to improve that outcome?
3. What do I need to influence them to think about?
4. How will I influence them?

Now let’s go through the four questions together and I’ll offer some additional thoughts for each of them. Take out a sheet of paper and write down your answers to these four questions as we go through them.

What outcome do I want to improve for my organization and why do I want to improve it?

Leadership is not acting. You can’t just walk into a room and say with a deep voice, “Let’s go out there and rock the world.” Leadership has to be geared toward improving some outcome. On your sheet of paper, write down the specific outcome you want to improve in your organization. Be as clear as you can be about what it is you want to have happen. Then write down as many reasons as you can think of as to why you want to improve that outcome.

Who do I need to influence in order to improve that outcome?

After you identify the desired outcome, then write down who needs to be involved in improving that outcome. Be clear about whom it is that you need to influence.

What do I need to influence them to think about?

Notice an important point here. The question doesn’t say, “What do I need to tell people to do?” If people are just doing something because they are told to do it, what happens when you’re not there to tell them what to do? The key is to identify what you want them to think about when you are not present. For example, if your desired outcome is to have customers who are vastly more loyal to your brand than your competitors, you might want to influence your fellow employees to think about the value of significantly more loyal customers. Once people start thinking about that outcome they can come up with all kinds of ideas on how to improve the customer’s experience. If they buy into the idea that vastly more loyal customers will improve their careers over the long term, they may very well focus to an even greater degree than you do and in more of a hands-on fashion than you can toward improving the customer experience on a consistent basis.

How will I influence them?

Now we are getting down to the act of leading, or influencing, others. There are 12 different types of leaders I’ve met or studied in my career. Each type can be effective in leading other people, and you can be more than one type of leader as you go about trying to influence your target audience to improve the desired outcome.

Lesson #4: There are Different Types of Leaders
In reflecting on the various individuals I have watched effectively influence the way other people think and generate significant and sustained results for their organizations, I have found that each of them provided one or more of the following types of leadership.

Types of Leaders

1. The Researcher – this person’s advice is based on data and carefully selected interviews and examples from the past.
2. The Exemplar – this person’s behaviors and personal choices model the desired performance so well that he or she influences other people simply by being watched.
3. The Teacher – this person breaks down the idea and explains it so well that other people truly get it and can run with it even when he or she is not present.
4. The Listener – this person simply listens while the other person shares the details of his or her situation.
5. The Visionary – this person describes a compelling dream of what the future can look like and that vision is what people hold on to as they go about their daily activities.
6. The Storyteller – this person tells stories that convey a powerful point.
7. The Coach – this person engages the other person in a conversation and offers advice based on observed behavior.
8. The Facilitator – this person asks open-ended questions and gets multiple people involved in developing the answers.
9. The Collaborator – this person exchanges ideas with the other person and works together with the other person to develop even better ideas.
10. The Organizer – this person influences other people based on the roles he or she places them in and the way he or she distributes resources.
11. The Motivator – this person provides inspiring words with an inspiring tone, but his or her impact oftentimes has a short shelf life.
12. The Dictator – this person tells people exactly what to do and how to do it, but this approach is generally only useful in dramatic life-or-death short-term situations.

To familiarize yourself with these different types of leadership, here are a few exercises for you to consider doing.

Exercise #1: Think of three leaders who affected your life in an important way. Then scan the list above and determine which type or types of leadership they provided.

Exercise #2: Think of a time when you were an effective leader. Then scan the list above and determine the type or types of leadership you provided.

Exercise #3: Write down how you will influence the individuals you identified earlier in question #2. Which type or types of leadership are you going to provide to influence them to think about what you want them to think about?

Lesson #5: You have to Earn Your Platform in Order to Lead

Regardless of the type of leader you want to be in any given situation, you have to earn the right to be the leader. Speaking from a platform is not difficult. You walk up three steps, walk over to the middle of the platform, and start speaking. The greater challenge is to earn your platform as a leader, which is the privilege of having people trust you and be willing to consider your influence. Tony Dungy, the former Indianapolis Colts head football coach, talked about this in his book, Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance.

What do you need to do to earn other people’s trust and their willingness to consider your influence? Essentially, you need to do what you said you would do and you need to be seen as being credible on the topic you want to influence them on. Anyone can be a leader, but no one is guaranteed to be a leader. Take the time to answer the Four Critical Leadership Questions, and then every day act in a way that other people can trust you and will want to consider your influence.

Once you have earned your leadership platform never take the privilege of having a platform to influence other people lightly. It can take many years to earn a platform as a leader and a few minutes to lose it.

Interviews with Experts on Leadership

A relatively new feature on my website is my Featured Book Recommendations section. In this section I provide an in-depth book review and conversation with the author(s). Currently this section contains interviews with three experts on leadership.

The first expert on leadership is Steve Jamison, who is in my opinion the world’s best author at interviewing extraordinarily successful athletic coaches and extracting their insights on leadership and teamwork. He has worked very closely in writing books with the late Bill Walsh, the former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, John Wooden, the former UCLA men’s basketball coach and winner of 10 NCAA Division I Championships, and Brad Gilbert, the extraordinarily successful tennis coach of Andre Agassi and Andy Murray. I reviewed his newest book, The Score Takes Care of Itself, which he wrote with Bill Walsh and his son, Craig Walsh.

The second expert on leadership is Jason Jennings, who has studied in-depth more carefully selected business leaders than anyone I know of. In his most recent book, Hit the Ground Running, he studied the 10 most successful new CEOs in the first seven years of the 21^st Century.

The third expert on leadership is Roy Spence, CEO of GSD&M Idea City, who along with Haley Rushing from GSD&M Idea City, wrote the book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For. These two have worked closely with leaders at Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines, BMW, and a host of other companies.

To read these conversations with the authors and the book reviews, click http://thecoughlincompany.com/featured_book_recommendations.html

About Dan Coughlin
Visit Dan Coughlin’s Free Resource Center on Business Acceleration at www.thecoughlincompany.com. Dan is a student and teacher of practical processes that improve business performance. His purpose is to work with executives and managers so they achieve great performances. He is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, executive coach, and author of three books on management performance, including his newest, The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success (AMACOM 2009), which has been endorsed by Jason Jennings, Marshall Goldsmith, and Brian Tracy. Dan’s clients include Coca-Cola, Abbott, Toyota, Prudential, Shell, Boeing, Marriott, McDonald’s, Denny’s, and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Why You Do Not Want A Job

By E. Brown (Repost)

Did you know that many people use the words, job, career, and vocation synonymously? Are you one of them? These words are actually very distinct with distinct definitions.

The Dictionary says of these:

Job – A paid position, responsibility, or piece of work.

Career – Time spent in an occupation for a significant period of one’s life.

Vocation – A strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or a person’s main occupation.

When thinking about your work, how do you see yourself positioned? Many newbies to the workforce see themselves in particular jobs for the money. Yet studies have shown that after 5 to 10 years, money is not the prime motivator many thought it was. Many lack passion in what they do, but it pays the bills so they stick it out in an environment they dread returning to each Monday morning. Today, employees are asking themselves if they are truly making a difference with their lives in regard to work. After all, in the western world, work is such a big part of one’s life, you cannot help but wonder if there is any lasting impact. “Is this all there is?” many are asking.

So, how about you? Are you in a job, a career, or a vocation?

Dan Miller offers the following definitions as you think about your life and its purpose as related to work. Read on.

Job - A job is the most specific and immediate of the three terms. It has to do with one’s daily activities that produce income. The average job is 3.2 years in length, meaning the average person will have 14 to 16 different jobs in his/her working lifetime. Jobs will come and go….

Career - Career comes originally from the Latin word for “cart” and later from the Middle French word for “racetrack.” In other words, you can go real fast for a long time but never get anywhere. That is why in today’s work environment, even physicians, attorneys, CPAs, and engineers may choose to get off the expected track and choose another career. You can have different careers at different points in your life.

Vocation - Vocation is the most profound of the three, incorporating calling, purpose, mission, and destiny. This is the big picture many people never identify for themselves. It’s what you’re doing in life that makes a difference and builds meaning for you, which you can review in your later years to see the impact you’ve made on the world. Stephen Covey says that we all want “to live, to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy.” Our vocation will leave a legacy. The word vocation comes from the Latin vocare, which means “to call.” It suggests that you are listening for something that is calling out to you. Everyone has a vocation or calling. (48 Days To The Work You Love, pages 38-40)

Anyone can do a job. The question is, have you been listening for your vocation? Are you fulfilling a purpose beyond the weekly grind? Are you proud and excited about the legacy you are leaving?

These are not easy questions to answer. They will take some introspection but in the end you will find the time you took was worthwhile. You will approach work with exuberance.

You will have fun.

You will find yourself content.

Contentment is not a word used much anymore. Yet, isn’t that something we all want at the end of the day - contentment?

Go. Pursue your vocation and at the end of your life you will find contentment!

Now tell me about you — are you in a job or vocation?

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Is A Balanced Life Really Attainable?

Note: Reposted as a good reminder

This is one of those primary yet tough life principles for me. I have learned that I need others in my life to hold me accountable to this principle. Accountable to my dreams, goals, and aspirations as a businessman, father, and husband. What is this primary life principle? It is balance.

I can still hear Mr. Miyagi yelling at Daniel LaRusso in the movie, The Karate Kid, “Balance Daniel-san, balance!” There is some truth to this in the concept of “life-balance”. We’re all torn in two directions, as illustrated below:

Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Productivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . Serving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Giving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Applying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Confidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Duty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . External Life . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Leisure Meditation Following Listening Recreation Waiting Receiving Learning Humility Solitude Freedom Sorrow Internal Life

So, how do you find balance? Is it appropriate or even possible in this day and age to find balance in life? With all the competing areas above, most people settle for focusing on one area alone.

Sacrifice For The Sake of Excellence
Excelling in one area is good, right? Where would Michael Jordan be, or Donald Trump be unless they excelled in one focused area? By no means am I suggesting we stoop to the level of mediocrity. Yet, while unbridled attention in one area may bring success, it almost always brings failures in many other areas. For example, “it is not uncommon to discover a physician who fails as a parent, an entertainer who fails as a spouse, a pastor who neglects personal health, or an executive who fails at all the other areas,” says author and educator, Dr. Richard Swenson. Stanford Physicist, Dr. Richard Bube, recommends a more balanced approach so that we do not fall into, what he calls, “negative excellence.” A person who chooses to strive for high degrees of excellence in one or two areas often fails in others. While, the person who choses to live balanced has no outstanding levels of excellence but, they do not have any areas of failure either.

There Is An Answer
You’ll be glad to know that life balance is attainable. It starts with time. You thought I was going to say priorities. Business people practice prioritizing a lot. The mistake is, prioritizing dictates that one area is more important than another. What I am saying is that all these areas are important and that to attain balance we need to start with the time we give to each.

Learn to say “no.” In today’s Western society it is easy to overload and overbook ourselves. Saying “no” puts you in control of your time demands. This leads to the next item: Get better control of your life.

Getting control means overthrowing the tyrannical rule of the urgent. Reorient your life around the important, not the urgent things of life.

Next, watch out for the circular trappings of trying to find the imbalance in your life. In doing so you run the risk of becoming even more unbalanced. George Rust warns, “We respond to our sense of imbalance by committing more time and energy to an area in which we feel deficient.” The last thing you need is to commit more time than you have.

Finally, be considerate of others trying to live a balanced life. If someone tells you “no”, learn to accept it. Just because we choose to overburden ourselves doesn’t mean we have to do the same to others.

Balance is attainable. It takes work but it can be done. You might consider sharing your desire to live a balanced-life with a close friend and then ask them to hold you accountable. Give them permission to ask you how you’re doing on a regular basis — and, be honest in your reply.

Related Links
- Living More With Less
- The Overload Syndrome
- Margin
- A Minute of Margin

Saying No Drives Great Careers

By Dan Coughlin

Great organizations are defined by what they say no to. The same is true for great individual careers.

A great career is one where the individual made the type of contribution he or she believed was the optimal use of his or her talents, passions, and values and generated the types of desired outcomes that he or she wanted. In other words, the person generated both the desired input and output.

Manifesting such a career requires saying yes to a few key opportunities and saying no to a huge number of good, and possibly great, opportunities.

Dedicate Yourself to a Proposition

What’s up with Abraham Lincoln? There have been literally hundreds and hundreds of books written about him. These include the most introductory of children’s books to the most sophisticated of adult books. Why did he have such a memorable career? I think it all comes down to one thing. He dedicated his professional life, his career, to two propositions: “united we stand, and divided we fall” and “all men are created equal.” These two propositions guided his career choices and his decisions within his various jobs. In the end, I think that’s what made his career so successful: he remained committed to two very clear, important propositions.

What is the proposition that you are dedicating your professional life to? This will help you a great deal in deciphering what to do and what not to do in your career.

More than twelve years ago I dedicated my professional life to this proposition: mastering business basics drives better sustainable results. Not quite as catchy or life-changing as Lincoln’s propositions, but it’s been clear enough to help me make decisions on what to do and what not to do.

I then determined that the best contribution I can make toward improving performance in organizations across all industries is to uncover these business basics, these processes for improving results in a sustainable way, and then explain them in a user-friendly manner. In other words, I see myself as a teacher. Not a teacher who has all the answers because there are no set answers in business, but rather a teacher who causes people to focus on understanding and executing the basics of business at a very high level. In choosing to be a teacher, I simultaneously chose not to be a manager or an executive.

Before reading on, take out a sheet of paper. Decide on the proposition that you are willing to dedicate yourself to. Write it down. You may end up rewriting it many times over the months to come. With a clear proposition in hand, you can then decide where to place your time and where not to place your time. Your proposition will help you to choose which roles you will want to fill and which roles you will not want to fill.

Choose Your Opportunity Costs Carefully

My third-grade son, Ben, came home with his folder of papers. One of them said, “Explain the idea of opportunity costs using the example of Pizza Hut.” Ben smiled and said, “That’s easy. I like sausage pizza and I like pepperoni pizza. If I choose the pepperoni pizza my opportunity cost is the sausage pizza.” What a great explanation. He learned something valuable that day from Mrs. Edwards. When you choose something that means you are also choosing not to have something else.

As you go about building a great career always take the time to clarify your opportunity costs, the things you are choosing not to have. If you choose to work as an employee, then you are choosing not to be an entrepreneur. If you choose to be an entrepreneur, you are choosing not to work for someone else. Both choices can be good, but you can’t have both simultaneously.

Fifteen years ago I was considering starting my own business. I was a full-time, tenured teacher at a very well known high school in St. Louis. I wrote down my opportunity costs if I left, which included the following: really wonderful students would no longer just show up for me to teach, I would not have colleagues to bond with between classes or at lunchtime, I would not have a guaranteed paycheck every month or a guaranteed job for life, I would not have three months off in the summer time, and I would not have my curriculum to teach handed to me. To me that was a lot of opportunity costs to give up. Only once I became comfortable with what I was giving up was I able to go out on my own. However, once I left I didn’t go back and try to teach at the high school while trying to run my own business.

I know people who did just the opposite. They were entrepreneurs and chose to teach or to work for someone else. They had considered their own opportunity costs of not running their own businesses and they chose to work inside an organization. My point here is you have to choose what you think is the best route for your career. I’m just encouraging you to step back and clarify what you will do and why you will do it and what you won’t do and why you won’t do it.

You have to choose your opportunity costs as much as, and maybe more than, your opportunities. As you consider your next career move, take out a sheet of paper and write down all the things you are not going to get as a result of going in the direction you are considering to take. Make sure you are comfortable with what you are giving up BEFORE you get comfortable with what you are going after.

The Choices of Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose is my favorite interviewer. I knew who he was, but I didn’t really study him until I recently read an article about him in Fortune magazine. Here it is if you want to read it: http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/25/magazines/fortune/charlie_rose.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009092811

The proposition that Charlie Rose has dedicated his career to is, “wanting viewers to feel like they were eavesdropping on a conversation each night – fully engaged if not actually participating.” He honed his craft over a number of years until he got the opportunity to do The Charlie Rose Show on PBS Television in 1991.

He had walked away from a well-paying program called Personalities in 1990 because he wanted to do a more serious talk show. He also said no to a full-time anchor slot on Sixty Minutes II in 1996 that would have earned him a great deal more than he makes on his own show on PBS. He turned it down because he felt doing his own show was, as he said, “the chance to find your own reality – for yourself, not for others, what no man can ever know. In the end I have not finished the journey.”

In saying no to a variety of opportunities, Charlie Rose defined who he was and who he wanted to become. He wants to do serious interviews with people on important topics without any pretense whatsoever. And he does it very well. I encourage you to invest a few hours at www.charlierose.com and soak in the lessons that are extracted during a variety of his interviews.

Actively Accept Limitations and Consequences

At some point, and I happen to think this is as good a time as any other, you have to get comfortable with the ideas of limitations and consequences. You can spend your whole life trying to be everything in the world and keep chasing one career dream after another. Or you can say, “I’ve chosen this path for my career. Here is the general path where I believe I can make my greatest contribution.” And then be ok operating within the limitations and consequences of the career you have chosen. Actually, there’s real power in deciding on the limitations you are going to accept. It means you are willing to get seriously focused at work that you have chosen to pursue.

In studying hundreds of really successful people, I’ve noticed that the best of the best stick with their chosen path. What’s Steven Spielberg doing these days? He is still making movies. What’s Oprah doing now that she’s made billions? Still interviewing people to find out what they have to offer her audiences. What’s Steve Jobs up to? He’s working on guiding Apple to make electronic technology incredibly useful for consumers. What is Charlie Rose at the age of 67 doing tonight? He’s interviewing one of the world’s movers and shakers. Now that Bruce Springsteen has turned 60, what’s he doing? Putting on great concerts. What’s my mom doing today at the age of 80? She’s still being a great stay-at-home mom as she has been for the past 54 years and caring for other people.

Be OK with who you are and who you are not. Stop wasting time always wanting to be someone else and always wanting a different career path. To manifest a great career you have to stick to the path of your own choosing, and not feel bad about all the paths you have chosen not to pursue. In reality, the more you consciously say no to alternative paths, the more sincerely you say yes to your life’s work.

About Dan Coughlin
Dan is a student and teacher of practical processes that improve business performance. His purpose is to work with executives and managers so they achieve great performances. He is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, executive coach, and author of three books on management performance, including his newest, The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success (AMACOM 2009). Read Chapter One from this new book free of charge. Dan’s clients include Coca-Cola, Abbott, Toyota, Prudential, Shell, Boeing, Marriott, McDonald’s, and the St. Louis Cardinals.

How To Improve Your Job Search – Deliver A Great Performance

By Dan Coughlin

Before you can deliver a great performance, you need to have an opportunity to perform. With at least 15 million Americans out of work, the importance of searching for and gaining a desired type of job may be of importance to you now or in the future or for someone you know. Or you might have a job, but want a different job.

The Definition of a Job
A job is an opportunity to create and deliver value for other people for which you are financially reimbursed. Both parts of that definition are important.

If you create and deliver value but don’t get paid for it, that’s a volunteer activity. I’m a big fan of volunteer activities. I’ve invested a great deal of time over the past fifteen years volunteering as the president of three different associations, teaching Sunday School classes at my church, and coaching youth sports. I’m guessing you have volunteered a great deal of time as well. Volunteer efforts are critically important. First, you might make a great positive impact on other people’s lives. Second, you might sharpen your skills in important areas. Third, you might meet someone who enhances your career. Volunteering is important, but it is not a job.

If a person receives financial reimbursement for an activity that does not create and deliver value for other people, he or she may be surprised when that activity is no longer considered valuable enough to keep around. Be sure that as you are being financially compensated you are also creating and delivering value. During a terrible recession sometimes valuable contributions are eliminated. But even during the best of times organizations will examine the value contribution of every role and decide if they are worth keeping around.

A Job Search is a Microcosm of a Business
Everything that is important in searching for a job is also important in running a successful business. Entrepreneurs naturally understand this because entrepreneurs are always searching for the next job, even though they call it the next “project” or “assignment.”

Every business, small, medium, or large, focuses on preparation, operations, research and development, marketing, branding, selling, innovation, problem solving, finances, legal issues, and building value-added relationships with customers and potential customers. Every one of these items is critically important in searching for a job.

Job Search Action #1: Be prepared.
Be ready for an employer BEFORE the employer is ready for you.

If a person has had a job for twenty years and then suddenly finds himself or herself without a paycheck, it can be a very difficult blow to the person’s self-esteem. The person may not clearly see the value he or she brings to life’s party. Consequently, I think it’s very important for the person to take exceptionally good care of himself or herself.

So my very first suggestion when you’re looking for a job is to physically exercise and get in the best condition you can be in. This is something you are in control of. Rather than working eight hours a day searching for a job, I suggest you carve out ninety minutes a day to warm up properly, exercise, and warm down properly. Even if this means walking around the block one time to get started, do it. As you begin to get in much better physical shape, you will strengthen your self-esteem and remind yourself that you are to a large degree in charge of your destiny.

Also, continually sharpen your mind and your skills. This is where volunteering can help you. Put yourself in situations where you have to execute in the types of areas you want to be hired for. If you want a senior-level executive position, volunteer to be a board member for a local or national organization. If you want a sales manager’s position, volunteer to organize a fundraising effort in your community.

Be prepared for an employer before the employer finds out about you.

Job Search Action #2: Research Before You Search
Before you start searching for a job, research the industry and any targeted companies you would like to work for. Learn everything you can. Talk to customers, go on line and study their websites, know the trends and challenges and opportunities in the industry and the organizations, and know who the most important movers and shakers are in that industry or organization.

Before I speak to an audience I always interview at least a dozen people, study as much information as I can get my hands on about the organization, and usually volunteer to go on site and observe people in their normal workday activities. When the actual job opportunity opens up, you will be infinitely better prepared if you’ve been doing your research all along.

Job Search Action #3: Clarify Your Value
Businesses sell products and services. You are selling yourself. You are the product and service that you are selling. Your product consists of your values, strengths, passions, knowledge, skills, and experience. Take out a sheet of paper. Under each of those headlines describe what you bring to a potential employer. Then think of an example that supports why you feel you bring that characteristic. Invest sixty minutes in this exercise. Pretty soon you’ll see that some employer is going to be very fortunate to hire you.

Job Search Action #4: Use a Comprehensive Marketing Program
When I speak to entrepreneurs and salespeople I often explain how some of my biggest business opportunities came from people I never would have expected to help me. I just didn’t know who was going to open a door for me or how big the room was going to be. And neither do you. Never write off the possibility that someone you don’t expect to ever help you might turn out to be the most important person in your career.

I used to be a high school teacher. I wanted to be a management consultant and business speaker. That was thirteen years ago. I taught freshmen algebra. The father of a sophomore whom I had taught the year before worked for McDonald’s Corporation. We connected on a very small school event. A year later he invited me to speak to a group of department heads at McDonald’s. That one speech led to me serving as an executive coach for more than 60 people at McDonald’s and to more than five hundred presentations to executives and managers at a wide range of organizations in over thirty industries.

Think of yourself as a business. Now think of all the ways this business can market what it has to sell to prospective buyers. When it comes to a job search you only need one perspective buyer to actually buy/”hire you.” The key is you may need to attract a mountain of opportunities in order to land one that you are really excited about.

Take out several sheets of paper. Start writing down every single person you know. Really challenge yourself to think of people who might know you. Write their names down. Let these individuals know specifically what type of job you want and what type of organization you want to work for. Remember: clarity is powerful, vagueness is not. You are trying to stir up a wide range of people who can recommend you to a potential employer. If they don’t specifically know what you want, what are the odds they are going to be successful in recommending you?

Go on the internet and be creative. Put in search words for the type of industry, organization, or job that you want. See what you come up with. Keep searching on-line to see if you can find a key person to contact. Intelligently use Facebook and Twitter to reach out to people to see if you can uncover opportunities for the type of job you want and the type of company you want to work for.

Attend meetings at organizations that help people find out about jobs. I’ve spoken at these organizations many times, and I’m always impressed by the quality of folks who attend their meetings. You never know who might know someone that you need to know. Don’t think of a job search as an embarrassing activity. Think of yourself as the CEO of a major company and you are letting the marketplace know about a great new product/service that will be of tremendous benefit to some customer/employer. Be proud of your job search and of what you have to offer. You are like a professional baseball player who just became a free agent. Be selective in whom you decide to play for. And make sure the financial compensation is what you consider to be fair and appropriate. If you go to work every day feeling that you are being taken advantage of, you may very well further hurt your self-esteem.

Job Search Action #5: Establish Your Desired Brand
A brand is the value customers think they get when they buy from a particular organization or prospective customers think they would get if they did buy from that organization. Companies don’t own the brand. The brand exists in the minds of their customers and prospective customers.

You have a brand as well. When potential employers think of you what is the value they think they would be receiving if they hire you? Do they think you are the best at resolving difficult obstacles, a master at negotiating complex contracts, or an expert at explaining in-depth technical information in ways that ordinary people can understand it?

Just as customers and potential customers rank products in their mind for a given category, potential employers rank candidates in their mind for a given position inside their organizations. What can you do to enhance your ranking in the minds of employers for the positions you want to be considered for? This is no simple assignment. It requires thought.

Job Search Action #6: Close the Deal and Sign the Contract
Searching for a job is not a job. A job is when you receive an opportunity to create and deliver value for other people for which you are financially compensated. You don’t have a job until you close the deal. That is, stay focused until you have worked out the details of what you are agreeing to do and the way in which you will be financially compensated. Then sign that contract or shake that hand, and get started on the job.

Instead of thinking of a job search as a once-a-decade activity, think of it as part of your professional life. Whether you have a job right now or not isn’t the point. The point is I encourage you to always sharpen your ability to search for a job. It’s really like running your own business, with you serving as head of research and development, marketing, and sales. Get yourself ready and go after the marketplace. It’s an exciting and challenging adventure, and it will bring out the best in you.

(Note: If you want the MP3 recording of this article, please send an e-mail to dan@thecoughlincompany.comwith “Job Search Article” in the subject heading.)

About Dan Coughlin
Dan is a student and teacher of practical processes that improve business performance. His purpose is to work with executives and managers so they achieve great performances. He is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, executive coach, and author of three books on management performance, including his newest, The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success (AMACOM 2009). Read Chapter One from this new book free of charge. Dan’s clients include Coca-Cola, Abbott, Toyota, Prudential, Shell, Boeing, Marriott, McDonald’s, and the St. Louis Cardinals.

38 Tools To Listen To The Social Media Buzz

Sebastian Barros, at Penn Olson, has put together a nice list of 38 free tools for monitoring social media. Evaluating return on investment (ROI) or, for social media enthusiasts, return on engagement (ROE) is a must! Seeing results is often challenging for many that want to get a handle on what is happening related to their online brand.

Check out Sebastian’s article and be sure to visit the links to the resources listed. I think you’ll find some that will definitely need to be added to your tool box.

If this was helpful, let me know by commenting below. Enjoy!