Old big things

When is social media interesting? When it will be old and dead! Read Seth Godin's blog about Dead Stuff to see the genesis of this idea, which is basically once something is no longer a big technological innovation, it becomes much more interesting. In other words, the dust has settled, we understand its limits and what it can offer and then the real work begins to obtain value.

Although I am almost afraid to admit it, I am a huge fan of permission based email - mainly e-newsletters and other updates. It just seems so retro at this point. I know the stats very well on industry percentages for open rates and read throughs - both well under 50%. But my gut tells me this is a powerful way to reach people who want to hear from you as an organization. The reality is that for every online conversation, many more people are on the sidelines listening and observing. They do not necessarily want to engage or have a conversation at this precise nanosecond, but they want to hear from you and may jump in at some point. Maintaining contact with them keeps you in their consciousness.

Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto is a shining example of engaging its donors and achieving monumental results, especially in fund raising - one of the hardest areas of sales. They have a gi-normous email base and they send out a classy e-newsletter on a regular basis with results of their scientific research, patients, fundraising events and much more. It's actually a good read at times - even if I am not a donor. I am also on their Twitter feed (1,200 followers) and Facebook (600 followers). But the reality is that they use social network to push people to information on their website, as they do with their newsletter and I imagine with their paper newsletter as well (which I don't receive). So it's all about reaching people in as many ways as possible to get them information of interest. And they succeed very well even if the success percentage of each one is limited. I never read about them in industry articles but I know they are doing great work with 'dead stuff' - the non-cutting edge of communications technology at the service of effective communications.

Thanks for reading!

Well, maybe social media...

Well, I am not on the bandwagon by any means, but I have gone from having my toe in social media to now being up to my ankle. I participated in my first Tweet Meet this week. And let me tell you, it was underwhelming. If social media is all about conversations and community building, this experience did not meet those goals. It was very clunky, slow and not all the tweets were even picked up properly. Most of the attendees were bystanders - and the group's theme is social media! It was a rather painful hour. 

I continue to ask - where is the value? The answer continues to be unclear to me most of the time.

But here is where I believe the sweet spot is, putting people in touch with others they find credible and trustworthy. My social media activity consists of following a few blogs (booooooom.com, sethgodin.typepad.com and ehealthmusings.wordpress.com). Why? Because they all have information that interests me from people I respect. I am part of their communities and conversations because of the steady flow of information that interests me from people I trust.


Like any form of media, that's the foundation. Social media is different, but not so different after all. Get the content/credibility basics in place and the conversation/community will follow naturally.

Thanks for reading! Next up, still old school - email does work.

Social Media - Bah! Humbug!

As we have survived the Christmas season and now turn back to our 'normal' lives - albeit likely a few pounds heavier - I have to continue my thoughts on social media, as they remain confused and conflicted.

Over the past months, I have read the blog of my friend Michael Martineau, www.ehealthmusings.com. Mike is the most passionate person I know about the use of social media in health care, coming back to it frequently especially the idea of blogging.  In all honesty (sorry Mike), I'm not convinced.

Before I go into why I think the value of social media and particularly blogging is limited, let me talk about my use of it. My favourite blog is www.booooooom.com - an absolutely amazing visual arts blog that I love and that in my mind is an example of a successful blog.  Almost no text, just images from three or four different artists every day.  I visit the site everyday as well as following on Twitter and Facebook. How successful is the site? Well, let's get it from Jeff Hamada who runs the site:

Our monthly traffic now tops 3.2 million pageviews with visitors coming from more than 200 different countries. More than 27,000 of you follow Booooooom on Twitter, and our Facebookfamily has grown to nearly 42,000!


Those are some pretty amazing numbers.  And yet...

If you look at any of the signs of engagement or conversation, they are very limited for such huge numbers of visitors.  Most postings of new work have a handful of responses.  Jeff also makes it a point of engaging his audience through contests and requests for comments, e.g. choosing a name for his cactus.  He often gets dozens of responses, but again the percentage is limited.

So my point is this.  Social media and blogging work well when a community of interest already exists, but their success in creating new ones is limited.  Mike's eHealth blog is followed by hundreds of people - but they were already interested in eHealth before and again, the amount of feedback on his fine musings is minimal.  People come to read but not participate.  Booooooom is very successful in its own way, but within limits.  So if there is not an already existing community of interest, social media and blogs in particular are not going to create or sustain a community of interest or conversation.  They can help establish a meeting place, but their sustainability and passion come from somewhere else.

Well, thanks for reading.  My thoughts on this matter are still a work in progress and I am sure will develop and change over the coming months.

Brandable Me

Well, it has been some time between posts. It was summer, I had an art show and I was obsessed with finishing some paintings, have a look at http://pk2kart.blogspot.com to see my recent single-minded focus. 

My big learning over the summer was about consumer marketing. It is field where I have had very little experience as most of my career has been in government or government-funded environments. These have been largely business to business corporate communications models.

But this summer, I held an art show of my work over the last year - my severance and EI show I informally called it, but the public name was Reflections on Windows. Here's what I learned.

First, marketing is all about a differentiated brand promise. Well, I certainly learned that as a individual, being able to talk about my passion for visual art was an immediate differentiator. All of a sudden, I had a subject to talk about people in my network. In fact, they almost always bring it up in our conversations and meetings, asking what I am working on, when is my next show and how I find ideas or work with my materials. I have actually been quite surprised at the interest it has created. It's a little bit of buzz marketing almost every day.

Second, as I organized a show, I had to tell people about it. And here is where more consumer marketing discoveries happened. Like others, I have hundreds of email, Facebook and LinkedIn contacts. Well, I had to invite them and if they could not come, provide a web locations for them to look at the paintings in the show. As a result, one of the things I finally got around to was a blog about my paintings (see reference in first line). I have been delaying this for quite some time, but it was a necessity. And I needed some print products as well. So I had to design it, get it printed and distribute and then remind people, answer their emails and basically organize a campaign all about me!

As marketing needs to be measured, here's my assessment. On the failure side, my reception was a bust. I put it on Sunday, July 4. Big mistake, weekday evenings are the best, so next time it will be Thursday and I'm sure I will get out some folks. On the positive side, I may sell as many as three of the eight paintings, which would be great and about as good as I can expect at this point of my development. And now I have postcards that can serve as business cards, a blog and lots more people who know I paint and ask me what I'm working on. One of my discoveries is that for artists, having a show is really the litmus test of whether you are really one or not. Following both my shows (last year and this year), I had sales inquiries from people who did not even attend! It's just that in the public mind, if you have a show, you are somehow a real artist. I would have never found that out without doing it myself.

Overall, the show was a lot of work in many non-communications areas, but also in my own profession, teaching me the dynamics of branding and marketing in a way that could not be more personal. Thanks for reading!

Starbucks Part 2

In November 2009, I wrote about How Starbucks Saved My Life. I have just finished Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz, the man behind Starbucks as we know it today.

The first book confirms the story of the second, namely of how Starbucks has a positive working culture based on values that are embodied by staff. In my view, part of communications at any organization is to foster a healthy corporate culture. I also know how immensely difficult this task is. Staff are often the most jaded of all audiences, with some members choosing to be physically present but not put their heart into the organization, and if anything, take a perverse pleasure in beating up the company to anyone who will listen. Another huge challenge to corporate culture is when the organizational leadership does not live the corporate values. We have an innate sense of dishonesty and it is usually picked up very quickly by staff, who turn off quickly and for good.

Howard Schultz was able to re-imagine a company and instill it with lived values that meant a manager across the country was open to hire and mentor a person of a different gender, race, age and social background. And yet, it worked - saving his life. I find that inspiring and almost impossible to believe given what I have seen in so many other workplaces. I do not think there is any secret formula or magic bullet. It boils down to being genuine and honest every single day. And Starbucks' corporate culture seems to pass this test with flying colours.

At the same time as I admire Starbucks, I am conflicted by it. The conflict comes from admiration for what they have achieved, essentially changing the way millions of people view their coffee and spend their leisure time. At the same time, they have done this by adding an incredible premium to the product, which has now gone upscale. Nike has done something similar, taking what were mundane running shoes to incredible levels of style, performance - and astronomical prices. I admire what they have done and how they have done it, but I do feel that somehow the price point is separating us rather than uniting us. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am asking too much of a company, but the discomfort is always there in the pit of my stomach.

Simplicity from Complexity

This week, I have been taking a deep dive into how my employer deals with its main audience - Ontario doctors. I have learned a lot. The main thing is just how complex and long the process is for those doctors.

Repeatedly during the meetings I have had with colleagues, I have told them that our job is to take the complexity of that relationship and turn it into simplicity for our audience. Having thought about it some more, I now believe that all communication fits this category. This simplification may be easy, but most of the time it is very hard work. I once had a boss whose mantra was hard writing makes easy reading. I think this is another take on the same message - what we do may be incredibly complex and hard to understand, but I am going to ensure that my audience understands it.

Think of any effective communication you have experienced, be it written, spoken, advertisement, movie, visual - what sticks out is that it is memorable and easy to understand. Somebody took a lot of time to think it through and work, rework and revise relentlessly to get to simplicity. The challenge is that in the course of all that work, we can suck the life out of the communication and rather than effective and simple, it turns flatter than a pancake.

I think the only formula for success is to stay focused on the audience. How is this going to be useful and interesting for them? Not being able to focus on one audience or not having a clear idea of the message are two common ways to go off the rails early and often. Not having enough time to do it right, not fully understanding the audience are other ways to lose your way. There are many pitfalls.

But out of this comlexity comes the simplicity of audience focus. It is essential, but also incredibly easy to lose.

So, keep on focusing on your audience and never get tired of bringing yourself back to them. It is the foundation (but no guarantee!) of effective communications.

Thanks for reading!

Why I paint and draw

My life has changed now that I have a job. I have now been back hard at work for a month. It certainly feels good and I have been even busier than ever because I had a whack of volunteer work on the go that I now have to finish off or wind down.

Which means that my passion for visual art has slowed down considerably. I just don't put pencil, pastel or paintbrush to paper or canvas like I used to. It's understandable and I don't really mind but I have to be disciplined to stay at it. So far, I have been pretty good.

What I have found over the last year is that I continuously surprise people when they find I am an aspiring artist. It seems out of character for me, so reserved and by the books. And certainly it has been a long time coming as I feel I have been in development for over ten years and only now feel confident enough to actually talk about it.

The irony is that art is a lonely pursuit, you need to spend hours by yourself to explore your vision of the world. And yet, it has helped me stay in touch with dozens of people. I actually have something to spam them about - and they don't mind! I can tell them about upcoming shows and they actually want to come (actually coming is another matter though).

It enlivens conversations and picks up my energy level along with my friends' curiosity. It has been a curious development. I never undertook art because I wanted to talk about it, I actually avoided it for quite some time. But now that I do talk about it, that time alone is actually helping me create a connection with more people. Funny how things turn out.

Thanks for reading!