Sensei Blogs

Marketers, What Your CEO REALLY Thinks Of You

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You’ve earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in earned media. You’ve built your Facebook fans to 10,000 in 6 months. You’ve increased the lead funnel by 15% over last year. You’re the golden child of the organization; you’ve played squash with the CEO and received the keys to the executive washroom.

All is right with the world.

Until the company’s fortunes or the economy in general takes a downturn and the marketing budget is the first to get cut and the first department to see layoffs. Your executive washroom keys are taken back; you’re shocked that you once again have to “go” with the rest of the nobodies in the organization. You bide your time and do more of the same with less. Then (Oh Happy Day!) the economy rebounds and the marketing budget is the first to reap the rewards of the loosened purse strings.

Anyone in the marketing industry for more than 10 years, be they a corporate marketing or agency professional, has experienced this phenomenon at least once. When the business or the economy suffers, just as marketing is needed the most, CEOs stop investing in it. When the company’s fiscal outlook swings “to the black” and everyone is optimistic, budgets return to normal.

To my fellow marketers, what does this universal truth say about what CEOs really think of marketing or the value they place on what you do? I’ll tell you: it says they see you a marketer, not revenue generator. Your department is a cost, not a profit center.

Do you still think that branding, brand awareness and lead generation are the goals of marketing?

“What is the value of a mother’s hug?”

AAARRRGG! A week does not go by that I don’t bang my head on my desk in frustration with the articles, presentations and social commentary I see marketers spewing about the value and importance of branding and engagement, especially in the discipline of social media.

Of course brand awareness – the first stage in the customer lifecycle – is important; without it, marketers and sales teams cannot nurture the client towards strong purchase consideration. Of course social media is important; without it, we cannot identify the opportunities and obstacles in the way of consumers’ decision-making processes. Of course content marketing is important; without it, we’re not seeding social proof into the newly-social search engines. All of these go-to strategies and tactics marketers are so found of promoting these days are important, but without a calculation that demonstrates how they’re turning the marketing department from a cost-center to a profit-center, marketers will forever be the fair-weather friend of the CEO and the board of directors.

So, are you a marketer or a profit generator?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Image Credit: George Marks

Your Product Sucks; What It Does is Amazing.

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A common mistake that many software and product marketers make is to orient marketing collateral, Web site navigation and even brand messaging around its features and functions.

Take a look at most technical product or software web sites and you’ll quickly see a navigation button for “features.” Drill down and you’ll see a litany of sub-navigation listing each specific feature, a clever icon, a description of the feature and possibly a video tutorial on how it works. Everything a customer might want to know about the features – except why they should care.

Make no mistake; this is an ailment that many marketers suffer from. When diagnosed, I dispense a healthy dose of snark by stating,“your product features suck!” The remedy is usually met with guffaws, snorts, and hurt feelings. Undeterred, I continue with the rationale for this tough medicine; it doesn’t matter if the features are good or bad, just think they’re bad. Why? Because I’ve yet to meet a marketer faced with a bad product who doesn’t try to slap lipstick on pig. It’s meant to serve as a cue for marketers to rethink their content strategy.

With few exceptions – especially in the software industry – product features are not unique. Yes, marketers will attempt to wordsmith uniqueness into them, but in reality you can find similar features with a simple Google search.

I advise clients to orient that same collateral, Web site navigation and brand messaging around what the product’s features enable the client to do instead of what the product feature does. For example, sentiment analysis in a social monitoring platform doesn’t “identify positive and negative sentiment around brand mentions”, it “builds a better sales funnel by more efficiently identifying unsatisfied competitors' clients with the best opportunity to convert.” As a business buyer, which would you respond to more?

What’s motivating your customer?

When you ask yourself who is reading your content or visiting your site and what do they really want, it’s really a simple concept. What’s difficult is getting over your ego and obsessive need to talk about yourself or how clever your product’s features are.

Understand that when potential customers visit your Web site they already have specific questions in mind that they want answered. And if they don’t come with specific questions in mind, there are questions that are subconsciously driving how they navigate your site. For those in B2B industries for example, there are typically 3 types of users that visit your site from the same prospective customer, and each has their own unique set of questions they’re looking to have answered.

1. The Researcher – generally front-line employees or those in the trenches that have identified a problem that needs a solution. They’re looking for detailed solutions to their problems, what’s going to make their job easier, what’s going to get them that raise or promotion?

2. The Validator – typically a mid-level manager; they don’t care for solution details or demonstrations but are verifying the options provided by the Researcher in order to create cost-benefit analysis to present to their boss.

3. The Executive – spends the least amount of time on your site and are usually looking for one thing: comfort. They want to know they are not the only customer you have in their industry and that others have taken the risk and are happy.

Know that your audience is not interested in your product. They’re interested what it will enable them to do. Now go rethink and rewrite your product’s features. "They suck!"

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Have Corporate Blogs Become Sacred Cows?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

“Sacred Cow” is an idiom referencing the eminent place cows have in Hinduism. Figuratively speaking, a sacred cow is something which is immune from question or criticism. After challenging the #bizforum community on Twitter last night with the question: “Are corporate blogs still relevant?”, I’m beginning to think that corporate blogs have become sacred cows.

A corporate blog is defined as one branded by a corporate, non-media entity such as Staples, Proctor and Gamble, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Family Insurance, CitiGroup, Chrysler, etc. and not spearheaded by a single social-celebrity employee.

Blog readership as a whole is increasing but bloggers are on the decline as many are choosing to put their words down on Facebook pages or bite-sized quips on Twitter, as reported in eMarketer’s study on blogging entitled The Blogosphere: Colliding with Social and Mainstream Media. The increase in blog readership seems to be based on the rise in popularity of media or curated blogs such as Huffington Post, Mashable, Forbes, McKinsey Quarterly and the New York Times. Many of these blogs have the same content, but adoption and readership for the latter is growing while, for most, corporate blog readership is stagnant or declining.

My premise is based on the following realities:

    - the public’s appetite for content and information has grown and continues to increase
    - the consumer’s desire to engage with the brands they love continues to grow
    - the channels and devices that share content continue to innovate and expand
    - the competition for readership is growing exponentially
    - the reader’s attention is increasingly challenged by digital “noise”
    - the average person has less free personal and professional time to read

As the consumers’ need for – and access to – information grows, their appetite for content channels is evolving beyond the current mediums.   New channels and engagement options such as micro-blogging (eg. Twitter), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) and visual media (YouTube, Pinterest, SlideShare) are disseminating content with fewer characters and greater speed than blogs could ever hope to achieve. The more content the public wishes to consume and has access to, the greater the appeal of new media that provide easily digestible headlines.   These new channels are syndicating the same content for corporations that their blog predecessors shared, yet drive much more interest, engagement and return.

I’m arguing that the long-form corporate blog post that was once mandatory and the preeminent forum to educate customers, provide value-added information and demonstrate a brand’s personality, has proven to be just a stepping stone to modern delivery channels.

Holistic Content Strategy

Last night, many within the #bizforum community stated that you cannot argue for or against the value of a corporate blog, because the ROI from social engagement comes from an holistic content strategy that integrates content across many channels. I agree with this sentiment but refuse to be bounded by the gravity of past business practices, especially after reading Rebel Brown's book on Defying Gravity.

An holistic content strategy does not require the dissemination of content across EVERY social channel. Most agreed with that concept yet few are willing to acknowledge that the one channel which could possibly be removed from the mix is the corporate blog. Ask marketers to remove Twitter or Pinterest from the mix and they don’t bat so much as an eyelash. Suggest that the corporate blog might no longer be a relevant medium within the social mix and I’m branded a heretic.

When challenged, most presented an argument for what a corporate blog can do for the business, when the real consideration should be what IT IS doing for the business. Few even know.

See: The Corporate Blog Challenge

Should corporate blogs be forgotten completely? Of course not. Faxes are not commonplace in everyday business communications but they still exist. Even with a declining audience, a corporate blog can provide value in SEO link strategies and fodder for Google ranking but even then, social sharing and other tactics are beginning to challenge that value as well.

What started off as me questioning the current value of a corporate blog has evolved into a question about the reverence marketers give the blog. Has it been elevated to sacred cow-status? An untouchable deity in the social media mix beyond reproach and questioning?

What are your thoughts? Has the need for and value of a corporate blog diminished?

Sam Fiorella

Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Blogs are Thought-Provocation Not Thought-Leadership

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A trend is forming in our collective online engagement: less is more. Some maintain that Twitter’s ever-growing popularity is championing this phenomenon: build it and people will speak in headlines. On the other side of the spectrum, you have those who argue that micro-blogging sites have formed in response to our jam-packed lives and the resulting need to communicate more efficiently.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did technology force communication brevity or did technology simply evolve to address the need? Answer: It doesn’t matter. The force that brought us here is irrelevant; the fact is we’re here. We’ve become a society that demands more and more input across more and more channels, which has fuelled our collective information Attention Deficit Disorder.

Following suit, most bloggers are increasing their production with shorter, pithier and more headline-grabbing copy, which I will argue makes it near impossible to provide true thought-leadership. In fact, pundits claim that “thought-leadership” has become such a buzzword or business jargon that it – and the channels that claim to provide it – lack any true value.

The term was coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief for Strategy & Business magazine. The concept was to illustrate business leaders and their innovative ideas or business theories. Traditionally businesses and scholars have attempted to share thought-leadership through whitepapers, books and/or seminars, which required a thorough deep-dive into specific practices. Their goal was to educate the audience and impart the earned wisdom of the practitioner. This term and concept used to be reserved for people with years of proven experience. Fast forward to today and the term “thought leadership” is thrown around like barbeque sauce at a county fair Rib Festival.

Have Blog, Will Provide Thought Leadership. Or not, whatever.

Recent studies show that there are over 164 million blogs on the Internet and over 123 million people who read blogs. See where this is going?

Image Source & Stats

The greater the data sources provided the more we seek to absorb, regardless of the quality or content. As a result, there is less quality being shared and more headlines in an increasing array of formats. We blog, we tweet, we pin, we share, we podcast. We give thumbs up, bumps up, and rate our virtual high-fives across a dozen devices connected to our homes, cars, offices and body parts.

Businesses are quick to capitlize on corporate blogging but, it seems, with an eye towards brand awareness and customer acquisition. Using blogging for true thought leadership would require a greater investment research, writing talent, and real-life experience testing the theories promoted. More importantly, it requires a bigger time investment on the part of the prospective customer, which current trends indicate is a price they're not willing to pay.

With so much emphasis on volume, speed and brevity can a blog truly provide thought leadership anymore? Have blogs been relegated to thought-provocation instead of leadership? Is that enough? What say you? Join the debate; Agree/Disagree?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Is Free an Asset to Content Marketers?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I came across a rather colorful comment on a Facebook thread recently that criticized a web site for requiring a name and email address to access the article she began reading. Her indignation at the request was evident in the language she chose: “Let me read what I want to read for free or f@%$ you, I’m outta here”. Normally I’d ignore those who resort to such prose but the subsequent (more professional) rants and virtual “nods of agreement” from others reminded me that there’s little appetite for paid content, even when payment is due as limited personal information.

I wondered if the objection so many have with this request is a privacy issue. Overwhelmingly, the public seems to subscribe to a plethora of social networks as well as social and mobile apps with no hesitation for privacy concerns. Studies continue to demonstrate that few, if any read the actual Terms and Conditions they so willingly check “I Agree” to. And in most cases, the networks and apps they subscribe to are folly in comparision to the exchange offered by many businesses and news sites online.

I’ve often quipped that as a nation we’ve accepted lower privacy standards for the right to public voyeurism through social channels. Yet ask those same people to provide a valid name and email address to access good thought-provoking content and they’ll go out of their way to create and maintain fake email accounts or turn to Facebook with spirited outrage.

Is there too much content on the Web?

Maybe the issue isn’t privacy at all but the customer experience? A well-known marketing slogan for Tootsie Pops once asked: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Today that question might be: How many clicks does it take to get to the center of a web site’s content?

I wonder if there is simply too much content being produced on the Web today that there is no willingness to take a few extra steps to access quality content; to provide the producer some value by means of your personal information, which may enable them to continue to produce that content?

Yes, they may sell your information or use the collective audience profiles for targeted advertising campaigns but isn’t that a fair price to pay for equally targeted and valuable content? Have our standards for content fallen to such low levels that we’re willing to tell Facebook our most intimate secrets but not be willing to provide basic personal info to serious content producers? What does this say about us?

Newspaper and magazine subscriptions have steadily declined and paid digital content was a failed experiment for most in the media industry. Even the early success of E-Newsletters, which required at a minimum the user’s email address are now in decline in favour of free RSS and Social Feeds for that same content. There’s no question that the media industry has been turned on its ear due to Internet’s public access and sharing culture but what are the ongoing implications for businesses and content marketing?

Can free be valuable?

Often we’ve been asked about the return a business can expect from investment in content production and open public dissemination when the audience is no longer prepared to invest – financially or otherwise – in such content. We were never questioned when the content was blatant advertising and “about me” marketing messages; however, to be effective, marketing content today must provide personal value (information or entertainment) to the audience beyond marketing speak. Something that requires greater investment, is challenged with increased competition and is more difficult to produce.

So can free content drive value for the business producing it? My belief has always been that the value is generated by the author and not the reader. Great content marketers should not be afraid to produce and offer content without encumbrances.

They should be afraid of:

- producing content that does not add value to their readers

- producing content that does not demonstrate their understanding of their reader’s needs

- not producing content for fear of ROI

- not producing content period

Don't wait for your audience to deliver you that value - create it through great content.

I’m turning the debate over to you. Is there value in free content produced by corporations? Or is there simply too much content being produced for any to be considered valuable? Does the author dictate the value generated as suggested? Join the debate in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The Seven Rs of Modern Day Communications

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Each year sees a new trend in the evolution of business communications. Over the past years people have called out Unified Communications, Cloud Computing and more recently Mobility and SIP-Enabled Infrastructure. Most predictions focus on the evolution of the technology rather than the cultural changes that impact how we communicate within our organizations and beyond.

Have technologies evolved to meet the changing needs of business communications or has technology inspired shifts in communication patterns? Whichever camp you’re in, it’s important to take a breath, look up and scan the landscape so that you can best understand your employees' and customers' motivations, experiences and communication expectations. It is this realization that will enable you to improve how your business communicates, not an in-depth understanding of the underlying technology.

I took my own advice recently and looked up and across the communication horizon. What I saw is encapsulated in my Seven Rs of Modern Day Communications. They’re listed below for your consideration.

1. Rapidity
Speed is the hallmark of today’s business communications. Due to social networks or mobile technologies, the expectation is clear: I want answers and I want them now. Haste is challenging quality at every turn. Finding the balance is the corporation’s next big trial.

2. Relevance
Technology has spurred on the Big Data phenomena and crammed data stores with transactional, social and profile data on consumers, employees and other stakeholders. So much so that software (and budgets) cannot adequately mine the horde of data sets for nuggets of insight. On-demand contextual data will be the focus of productivity and strategy sessions in boardrooms across the country. Meta-information will supplement voice, video, chat and text communications to provide greater context for customer experience design.

3. Relations
The phrase “Content is King” was prevalent throughout 2011 and if it was accurate then, in 2012 Context is its Queen. Social interaction and customer care have become completely intertwined. Big Data requires a new understanding of the relationship between the content generated and collected among sales, marketing and customer service teams.

4. Reach
The proliferation of screens, especially mobile devices including smart phones and tablets, has added a new dimension to content creation and display. Multi-device formatting is quickly becoming the war chant of Customer Experience strategist globally. Blog posts for example must be written in various formats to ensure proper engagement across different platforms but this is no longer limited to text. Content translation to sensory preferences such as visual and audio mediums including podcasts, videos, audio, etc. is a newly mandated content strategy.

5. Resonance
“Cutting through the clutter” has been a catch phrase since the 90s but it’s no longer sufficient. Yes, content must be visible and stand out from the plethora of mixed media messages we’re bombarded with daily but it must now also impact the reader on an emotional level if it is to solicit any advocacy through sharing, commenting, tweeting, etc.

6. Responsive
Related to point #1 above, our 24/7 connectivity will increase the demand for unique content creation and content support. Front line customer service teams will have their hands full identifying, qualifying and addressing the flood in incoming messages that they’ll require 24/7 support services from content producers and eventually content analysts. Same applies to the sales and marketing teams.

7. Results
Lastly and maybe most importantly, will be the shift in focus to Content ROI. As businesses move along the strategy continuum from social media to social business, CEOs and CIOs will demand a demonstration of the financial value that social communications drive to the bottom line. “Measurable Content” and “Profitable Content” will be new buzz words shortly.

Content Marketing has hit the big leagues. And with it comes added pressure to perform, complete with greater risks and even greater rewards.

Do you agree with the Seven Rs listed above? Others you'd add? Some you'd challenge? I'd love to hear from you.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Join us Wed, May 2nd, 2012 at 8 PM EST for the #bizforum Twitter debate where we’ll explore the future of business communications. Follow along on TweetChat or your favorite Twitter application.

Content Pandemics and the Impetus for Enterprise Content Curation

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(2 Jeff Wilson) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The age of ferocious mediocrity is upon us. Like a virus slowly evolving and afflicting greater and greater portions of the population; mediocre content has been infecting every medium it touches. Not only has it overwhelmed and made scarce good content but it has reshaped our perception of what good content is.

It is, in fact, what I refer to as a content pandemic.

Classically a pandemic refers to a virus that has attributes like passing from species to species, affecting wide spread regions, and having an aggressive evolutionary lifecycle which makes it difficult to treat.

We can look at mediocre content the same way. It started with reality TV, then to massive sharing online with sites like You Tube, prolific blogging, and today’s major social platforms. Essentially it kept jumping channels or “species” and spread globally.

When we made the tools available to self-broadcast, we let the Genie out of the bottle. We took editorial and content quality control away where before it was in the hands of editors, media networks, and professionals whose specialized training ensured a level of quality in content regardless of medium. Now however, those controls are gone and professional media and corporate publishing is struggling against a content Tsunami.

But what does this mean to the enterprise? How do we find or create good content for our many stakeholders?

On Wednesday Feb 22 edition of #Bizforum Twitter chat, we debated the Role of Content Curation in the Enterprise. The debate was excellent and showed the enormous gap in understanding on key issues around content curation – even the need for it.

For Sensei, we believe content is the lifeblood of the enterprise - web, social, mobile, intranets and extranets, and email the veins through which it flows and the editorial team is the heart that pumps it.

There has been no more urgent need than now for enterprise to adopt professional-grade content curation to be or remain globally competitive.

Quality content is a sustainable competitive advantage

I have often discussed with peers and clients that the ultimate goal of your online presence should be to become a “Go To” source of information that your stakeholders log onto with increasing or sustainable frequency. Once achieved, the differentiation this status gives you becomes widespread generating respect, appreciation and business from both new and existing customers.

We often perceive this end goal as difficult, if not impossible to achieve, given the depth and variety of content required to deliver to an enterprise audience. But in the grand scheme of things, content curation is an essential part of carving out a position for your brand.

Here’s the kicker, it doesn’t always have to be content from your organization, they just need to be able to access it through you. Let’s be honest, creating enough content to fulfill demand is a daunting task. The best strategy is to aggregate and create content that best meets the need of your stakeholders.

It’s about being known for something and if that something is just making it easy for people to access great content then you are a step ahead of almost everyone else.

Key question: Is your company perceived as a “go to” source for content or are you just part of the pack?

Content curation delivers value to everyone, not just prospective customers

Content curation, much like everything else in the enterprise, needs to be strategically focused to deliver value. The current thinking around content curation is incredibly myopic and misses the majority of the value it can deliver. As an example, I have created this high level diagram (below) to show how a content curation program would work (roughly) inside a large enterprise company.

Ideally content curation should be viewed as a horizontal layer within the enterprise with the ability to pull from all departments and push into all departments. The rationale is that great knowledge and content resides in all corners of the business – from research and development, to operations to support and sales. Each department can, at the same time, benefit from the content created from within and better deliver value to customers and prospects alike.

Key question: Are you enabling employees with good content to better enable customers or are you leaving employees high and dry?

Professional content curation enables better organizational performance

Much like the rest of the enterprise functions, content curation is based on simple, powerful processes to make it efficient. In this case, we improve collaboration between content creators (thought leaders, executive, product development, R&D, marketing) and content consumers (service, support, sales, product development, etc…) to better serve external stakeholders such as customers, prospects and channel partners.

The results, while hard to measure, can be felt across the organization.

- Sales: Sales people and account management not having to hunt for material to woo new clients or improve relations with existing customers

- Exec team: Arm execs on critical issues and emerging trends to improve strategic positioning

- Product Dev: Gain new/timely insights into customer/market needs and tap into feedback.

- Channels: Align channel partners closer to brand/arm them with understanding on need, not just product/service.

In the end, if you can’t track it, you can’t measure it. Process allows us to track and measure how effective our content is both internally and externally thus enabling proper accountability back to enterprise goals.

Key question: Can you track the effectiveness of your content inside and outside the enterprise?

Content curation enables the social business

Let me connect the dots here and see what you think of this. If we believe content curation is an enterprise wide service and that it is a collaborative process then we have the makings for a key element of the social business. It all boils down to how we distribute or share the content and how we gain critical feedback.

A key distribution and feedback channel are social platforms. For the enterprise, we are talking the likes of Yammer, Jive and numerous other great tools that allow company wide sharing.

What’s missing most of the time is the incentive to be social. What is the best incentive?

It is the ability to contribute in a meaningful way and be acknowledged for that effort.

Content creation, content curation and the ability to give meaningful feedback on it effectiveness is a highly engaging way to involve hundreds, if not thousands of internal staff.

A great example is the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) where thousands of professionals volunteer hundreds of hours of time to create standards for everything from hockey helmets, to vehicles, to plumbing. Why do they do it? Meaningful contribution to something they are passionate about and acknowledgement of their efforts.

A recent McKinsey Quarterly article titled “How leaders kill meaning at work” (requires free registration) sheds light on how meaningful contribution raises performance and lack thereof impedes performance.

Key Question: Would your employees see meaning in contributing to the health of your content curation program? Will you recognize them for that?

Does the end justify the means?

Is content curation worth it in both the short and long term? It’s easy to say one way or the other depending on where you sit in the enterprise. The costs, in enabling technology, content acquisition and people resources can be significant. If it is implemented or managed poorly it becomes a cost without any measurable benefit – with the risk of actually hurting the brand rather than bettering it.

Done well however, it can assist in creating a more defensible market position, improve customer acquisition and improve share of wallet and loyalty from current customers.

Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts.

Jeff - Sensei

The Tides of Change: Capturing Customer Attention No Longer Enough

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Another battle has begun in the war for our customer’s attention and by extension, our marketing dollars.

This war is being fought on many fronts by many content producers and media channels, all of whom are vying for the attention that our Brand's audiences are giving to television and cable programming.

During last night’s #bizforum Twitter debate, our community explored the future of advertising and the impact that social engagement will have on it. The general consensus seemed to be: “television is not going anywhere anytime soon and ads don’t need to change much”. A sentiment I don't share.

As stated in my previous post, “consumers have, consciously or unconsciously, become accustomed to personal engagement with the brands they love or want to love”. Static advertisements and commercials that don’t find innovative ways to enable two-way, “real dialogue” with their audience will simply be skipped or fast-forwarded on DVRs.

During the debate Jeff Wilson, my esteemed colleague here at Sensei added that “new empires will be those that hold the keys to the content, not the channels”. The point being, keep content strong and you'll demand their attention. While content marketing is certainly a key marketing tactic today, in and of itself it is not enough to capture the imagination of a Brand’s audience that demands more than interesting content. They demand personal engagement.

There's a small group of national brands who have realized this and opted out of television commercials or other traditional ad networks (for some products) in favor of viral videos or Facebook campaigns such as Burger King, Ford and Nike - to name a few. Even perennial TV advertisers: candy companies are making the shift. Cadbury for example just launched a new chocolate bar, the Dairy Milk Bubbly exclusively on Google+, followed by mentions on Facebook and Twitter.

The Tides of Change

Appealing to the consumer’s need (and expectations) for engagement with Brands is only half the battle marketers (and television) face however. The viewing habits of our audience is changing.

According to Neilson’s 2011 State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report: 143 million people are now watching television programs on work or home computers; 30 millions are watching on mobile devices. Significant increases over previous years.

Even within the “off-TV” world there are drastic changes: ad clicks on mobile devices are growing faster than on PCs. Quarterly figures from Marin Software indicate that mobiles and tablets accounted for 10 percent of all search ad clicks in the U.S. in Q4 2011. That is double the amount of clicks seen on those same devices in Q3 2011.

The migration from traditional program-viewing devices to new, internet based mobile devices has started and moving quickly. And with it, viewer habits and expectations.

Google Upping the Ante

YouTube is betting on the changing tide (or maybe it’s creating it?) by investing $100 million into seeding professional production firms such as Young Hollywood, who is producing a series of YouTube-only programming that will premier this Monday. What does Google know that we should?

They are betting heavily that consumers will continue to spend more and more time consuming programming on their preferred devices: computers, tablets and smartphones, not televisions.

They also didn’t miss Nielson/Yahoo reporting that 80% of smartphone users multitask while watching traditional TV programs, choosing to look up products they see, discuss the programming on social networks among other tasks. Again, consumers are there waiting...expecting to be personally engaged with. Where are the advertisers?

Based on the comments in yesterday’s #bizforum debate, it may be just me, Google and a select few brands that see the trend currents and how radically advertising will have to shift to capture the audience’s engagement; however the P&L statements for those that continue to invest heavily in traditional media advertising and tactics will force a strategy re-think.

What say you? Am I reading the trend currents incorrectly?

By Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
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An Open Letter to Media Publishers (and other Business Leaders)

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Dear Publishers (and business leaders),

Your business is dying. You know it. Your readers know it. So what are you doing about it?

The belief that the Internet was the death knell of print – and maybe even cable news – was a bit of an exaggeration although your revenue statements clearly show it’s had a major impact.

I’ve seen attempts to move content online via tiered, paid subscription models, which clearly isn’t working to reverse your financial fortunes. I’m thinking you’re all sending Apple Christmas baskets to thank them for the iPad, which – for a time anyway – has enabled the sale of content via Tablet magazines. Still, adoption for paid digital magazines on tablets is a far cry from the heydays of the print publishing industry.

Lessons from the Music Industry

The music publishing industry took a similar, if not more devastating hit with peer-to-peer file sharing. Attempts by the industry to fight consumers in their revolution failed miserably and they finally had to completely reinvent their business in order to survive. Revenue is now bundled into “lifetime-contracts” that tie up a musician’s brand beyond their recordings to concert sales, endorsement, clothing and perfume lines, movie contracts and online activities. Compilation albums and digital singles have replaced traditional one-band album sales.

The Digital Pandora’s Box

If there’s one lesson we can borrow from the successful overhaul of the music business, it’s that consumers don’t want to be dictated to. Web and social technologies were the equivalent of a digital Pandora’s Box. Once subscribers were shown the free content possibilities accessible via blogs and peer-to-peer sharing, why would they ever go back to paying for a magazine?

The answer? Your audience no longer sees value in content so stop trying to sell it to them. Sell them what they really want and would be willing ot pay for: experience & choice…and the freedom to customize and access that experience across multiple channels from print to Web to mobile and whatever device the creative minds at Apple think of next.

Consider this future:

1. Content bundled with non-content products and services.
Imagine a fashion magazine bundling content with paid loyalty programs at top fashion retailers. Or bundling subscriptions with personal shopping or style consultation? The same could apply to financial publications that provide content bundled with access to financial planning services. Or technology magazines that bundles content subscriptions with access to conferences & trades shows or, better yet exclusive beta-access to new technologies.

2. “Content subscriptions” vs. Magazine subscriptions
The Web has opened up our views – and our demands – to limitless possibilities. We don’t want limits and a magazine’s covers and brand are limits. The past 2 years have seen unparalleled consolidation of publications and media yet why subscriptions are still fixed to individual publications is beyond me. Why can’t I subscribe to self-filtered content that pulls from multiple publications and pay for such a customized experience? Why can’t I have access to content about my beloved Maple Leafs only from Sports Illustrated and Financial News from the New York Post on the industries I wish to follow? Future publications cannot be defined by categories and themes created by you, but by me.

3. Master content licenses
If you wish to charge me for content, you damn well better make that content available on whatever device or medium I choose, whenever I want. And allow me to syndicate content to whatever device I want in order to customize my own experience based on my needs. Content should not be device – or print – specific

4. Interactive Content
Content is no longer static the way that advertising is no longer broadcast but conversational. Social Media has completed changed our expectations. So why is your content not more dynamic? I may value your article and its insights but I would more likely pay for it if I was able to engage a focused, private business group around the content. For example, why can’t I engage industry content along with a dedicated group of colleagues or industry execs to brainstorm how the theories presented could impact our businesses. Imagine the impact on the evolving social enterprise!

You cannot win a revolutionary war against your customers.

This lesson should be heeded by all business leaders, not just the publishing industry. The changes forecast by Web and social technologies require a complete deconstruction of your business model, culture and expectations, not simply a shifting from one channel to another. Leaders today cannot afford to be lazy in their creativity and certainly can't afford to "stay in the box". More of the same will yield less than that which was previously achieved.

Are you brave enough to take that leap?

Signed,

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
Follow on Twitter

The Business Value of Proficient Tweeting

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I was recently categorized as a “social chatterbox” by a colleague, referencing my frequency of tweets and engagement with followers on Twitter.

…I’ll give you all a few moments to nod your head in agreement…

I’ll admit that for a split-second my reaction was to be insulted but that quickly passed since I’m not hung up on what people think about me but more importantly – and frankly – because being a social chatterbox has improved my business skills. Yes, Tweeting has improved my business skills, which both I and my clients benefit from.

How you ask? (OK, pretend for a moment that you asked)

Speaking in Headlines

The 140 character restriction of a tweet forces you to edit your thought down to its core meaning; the nucleus of your argument. While some call this “speaking in headlines” and criticize the medium and its posts for having little value as a result, I argue that those who learn to do it well provide more insights than those who require a 2,000 word blog post to convey a sentiment. And with the often-cited “content overload” that is modern day media, the ability to convey an impactful message in the fewest words possible is a definite virtue and business asset.

You know when you’ve been successful: a well-written Tweet elicits an intellectual and/or emotional response within your audience base, which results in replies and re-Tweets. Ambiguous Tweets fail to impact your audience and drop with a resounding thud.

The exercise of creating a tweet that connects with your audience forces you to think and re-think your understanding of the subject. It’s not uncommon for me to edit a tweet 5 or 6 times before I publish it. In each edit, I have to carefully select the words that convey my intentions in the limited space available. The act of determining appropriate wording challenges me to clarify my real thoughts on the subject. In fact, at the risk of sounding schizophrenic a Tweet has often had me

arguing with myself in order to debate what I really wish to convey.

Consolidating a sentiment down to 140 characters or less generates an internal dialogue that has been the genesis of many of the articles that I've written. Participating in Twitter conversations and chats has been the best education and inspiration for defining my point of view and advocating it on behalf of my personal and corporate brand.

And in the end that’s what it comes down to. What do you stand for? What is your point of view? With so many voices and “noise” out there, differentiating yourself and getting your message heard is becoming increasingly difficult. Proficient tweeting is an excellent resource for both sharpening your message and sharing that message with a greater audience.

What say you? What is the business value, if any, of proficient tweeting?

By Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
Follow on Twitter.