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Archives for September 2011

RoundUp of Global Guest Posts

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Guest posting can be a wonderful thing. I’ve written about how you can be a better invited guest, and I’m wondering how well you’re finding the experience when you guest post at others’ homes?

The last month or so has been quite zany on my guest-posting circuit. I saw Laura Click do this this week on her blog, and while I’m not familiar with its etiquette, I’m going to use Laura as inspiration to:

1. Share my latest round up of guests posts around the world

2. Thank my hosts for inviting me while returning the favor with some love backatcha

So, here are some pretty decent writings (because I work harder as a guest poster to write better) I’d like to share, for the record, all in one spot:

##  Danny Iny is principal of FirePole Marketing, and this week my topic is on small business branding. Apparently, Danny went off on a honeymoon (congrats!) and had to fill the pipeline whilst celebrating. Stop in and share your thoughts on how your small business branding is successful or getting derailed.

## If you don’t know Robert Dempsey, then you’re missing the boat. His intellect and amazing approach to analytics and SEO is astonishingly smart. He blogs from Thailand, and he invited me to share insight on blog voice, so I wrote on Finding Blogging Voice with 3 Cs.

## Jon Buscall of Jontus Media in Sweden invited me to experience my second podcast with him, and we had a blast speaking on social media best practices (although we rambled about so much I don’t believe we ever got to the actual fine tuning of a best practice, did we Jon?).  Jon is the master of podcasting; I am always amazed and slightly envious that I’m not doing it, too.

## My public relations colleague from Bulgaria, Petya Georgieva, invited my topic on whatever I wanted (always a pressure-filled endeavor to pinpoint a topic) so I wrote on Social Media Makes the World Smaller.

## This man, Ken Mueller of Inkling Media is a hoot. He cast a wide net for guest bloggers and I acquiesced. And, I wrote a really, really good piece and then he sat on it. For a long time. I began to give him grief and threaten to publish it before he did…that did it. Here’s one of my all time favorite pieces with a ton  of real-time inspiration called Bloggers On Pedestals.

## The venerable and highly intellectual Spin Sucks is always a destination location for any blogger, and it’s with great pride when I write for them and see my name in lights (ahem, just half kidding). Another highly popular post in my twin’s community “Three Things Threatening Authenticity.”

## Ms. Laura Click (love that name) was first to grab me during her holiday out of the office. I filled the queue with a topic on how to build a blogging community…had never even thought about it until she asked for that topic; in fact, I don’t know the first thing about that…heh.

 

I still have a few more guest posts to fulfill, and ideas are gelling, promise. Meanwhile, thank you, wholeheartedly, for the invitations as above. I enjoyed visiting your house!

 

 

Failure To Innovation With Competence

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Check out this article in the Wall Street Journal, “Better Ideas Through Failure.”  It’s about a unit of WPP Grey Group’s creation of the Heroic Failure award for employees who take an edgier, riskier approach to innovation and winning.

Then there’s the recent point of view piece I read in Ad Age from a vice president of marketing at Hoover’s. He was all set to hire a candidate when something struck him; the candidate was good, and he was competent, but that’s all. Competence is no longer good enough; candidates have to show more — get out of the corporate box and prove themselves as risk takers and, gasp, be entrepreneurial!

Putting two and two together, take a look at this picture:

** The status quo in the workplace is being shot down.

** The global platform is the new sandbox, and if you don’t come equipped with unusually innovative experiences then you can’t play.

** Thinking is what’s now required; in fact, it’s demanded in the workplace.

** Entrepreneurs rule. Have you seen all the hoopla about how those who innovate and manage their own companies are supposed to save the U.S. from a double-dip?

The initial concept about failure is nothing new to parents. We watch as our babies fall only to get up and walk. I’ve written about my failures as a blogger with the back end and analytics of this site (which can also be construed as lack of knowledge or failure to learn in a timely fashion, perhaps). Others can share failures as learning experiences all the time.

In business, though, failing is an expensive endeavor, but if that’s the new path to innovation, then by all means…make some stupid mistakes! Am certain the expectation is intense to learn from the errors, establish new and creative methods of winning and get teams to reach key performance indicators without failure, without negative effect on the bottom line, and efficiently.

Here’s what else the Wall Street Journal piece says of innovators:

** Take time off so original ideas can incubate.

** Be free to take risks, work on multiple projects at once to spark flexible thinking.

** In society and culture, civil conflict, political fragmentation and cultural diversity can trigger divergent thinking.

** What also helps individual creativity (and I don’t agree with this one IMHO) is “aggressive, egocentric or antisocial behavior makes it easier to ponder ideas in solitude or challenge convention.”

Fascinating stuff, eh? I’m sure you readers of the Harvard Business Review can muster some further food for thought on this topic? Or, perhaps an actual workplace experience might trigger a story or two?

 

Your Avatar Had A Birthday

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There’s been so much written about avatars – how to get one, whether to use your face or a favorite image, how to use Gravatar to populate your mug all over the web, and much more.

Today, though, I’d like to address our aging avatars, and encourage (talking to myself here) an update. When you have a birthday, so does your avatar! But, it’s so easy to ignore my avatar’s birthday when I have one.

What prompted this post today were a few things:

**I went to a tradeshow and was shocked when meeting a few peeps in person because the images they’re using on the web look to be about 15 years younger.

**Someone said recently, “Omgosh, he looked nothing like his avatar; I didn’t know who he was in person.”

**And a prominent blogger decided to alter his avatar as a side view tweeting he didn’t want to show his face full on.

So with full disclosure and a lot of guilt, I am going to show you what I look like yesterday and last week. And, then, I’m going to update Twitter and Facebook, but I’m going to leave my really skinny face shot on LinkedIn (after I had lost 20 lbs a year ago which I need to do again). Why? Just because.

Why does it matter, you ask?

People are people, and gossip runs amok. Social media breeds tongue waggling, and if someone is going to suggest behind my back that “she’s chubby,” “she’s not very young anymore,” or “my gosh, she’s got a lot of gray hair!” then I’m going to be the first to admit it instead of hiding behind a cuter, younger, leaner me.

We’re a tough crowd, and coming clean that I’m 50-years-old and a mother of a 9-year-old is therapeutic in and of itself. No sense hiding what’s true, is there?

 

Media Training, Hoodies and Facebook

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Advertising Age has a fascinating article in its Sept. 5, 2011 issue oriented to the media training of 20-something leaders of tech companies who sit in their hoodies and sweat under drilling questions posed by reporters. These CEOs typically have no concept of media training and have not been privy to the wily nature of seemingly friendly reporters who turn aggressive to get their story.

Mark Zuckerberg proved that correct when he stated  his notorious faux pas, “privacy is over.”

He’s not the only one…every CEO and business leader regardless of age, industry or company needs to be savvier when being interviewed by media. It’s easier in the internet era for reporters to dig up dirt from more channels than just a printed magazine, and thus it’s easier to get hung up during an interview.

Where I have to disagree with this AdAge piece is when Brandee Barker, former VP of PR at Facebook, suggests that Zuckerberg helped “shape a media environment more accepting of the less-structured response or mishap.”  She states in the article, “There’s an authenticity that comes across, and if it’s awkward and they say the wrong thing, that’s OK.”

Really?

This woman is sending entirely the wrong message to young CEOs that it’s OK to come across as a noob and act befuddled. How can this be appropriate media training? When that tech leader grows up and heads to another company will that style be acceptable? In fact, like the Zuckerberg debacle, those situations will stick like glue and be resurrected throughout a leader’s career.

Ask Sarah Palin! She floundered and fell flat on her face in front of Katie Couric during her bid for vice president on the ticket with John McCain. Ask John Kerry who ran for president and all anyone could talk about was that he needed a haircut and acted like a statue in front of the cameras.

Being polished in front of reporters certainly comes with seasoned experience; losing your personality is one thing with too much messaging and training, but getting permission to bumble an answer and be accepted for it is another.

Media training is what we public relations practitioners strive to do with our internal and external clients.

It begins with research. When there’s a story brewing, the PR person must conduct due diligence to find all the stories and reporting style of the interviewer.

Then, we develop Q&A using the company’s approved message map so everyone says the same thing. Approved messages help deliver the facts without straying into murky waters (although this happens frequently).

Role playing is part of media training. A PR team tries to trip up the executive and put him or her in a stressful situation with a barrage of media questions. Using that message map is critical at this point, and knowing the tricks to sidestep a tough question is always helpful.

The onus is on PR only at the back end during prep. Executives must always be cognizant about their accountability to position the company in the most positive light. Often, company leaders forget they’re still on tap at the very end of an interview. This is when reporters swoop in for the kill, when there’s an apparent moment of relaxation. Leaders have been known to really mess up at this time because they think the interview is over.

It’s never over until the mic is off, the phone is hung up, and the reporter has left the building!

If you’re a business owner and you’re seeking the limelight to tell your story, or if you’re a politician running for office, then media training is absolutely a must. There are varying levels of training, and you don’t need to hire the big guns, either. Unless, of course, you’re Sarah Palin or John Kerry seeking the presidency of the United States.

Is #FollowFriday Still Cool, Twitter?

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This week I read a blog post by Bill Dorman who is lamenting the turn of events in social media – the “no one’s home, but the lights are on” syndrome many of us are feeling. In that same breath, he asked, “Why isn’t #Follow Friday cool anymore?”

Is it? Is the previously popular Twitter weekly hashtag, #FollowFriday or #FF, during which peeps list all their faves so others know whom to follow, now passé?

What’s your take? Here’s mine…

** I welcome and appreciate all #FollowFriday tweets; in fact, it’s darn nice to be acknowledged by someone who takes their time to put a list together and include me. Mark C. Robins is one of the most thoughtful and never misses a Friday. I am in awe of this because people are just not doing it any longer. (Mark is with  Lawyer Locate in Canada.)

** Twitter has changed forever. I lament the Twitter of yore. While I wasn’t an early adopter in 2008, I did jump on in early 2009 and was hooked…for life (we’ll see). There were rainy Fridays (kinda like today) that I watched the tweets roll in and interacted all over the world. No longer.

** My Twitter stream is laden with links. That’s why I’m trying not to add links to that many tweets any more. I want to keep my tweets authentic and humanistic. Because you ought not to RT a tweet with a link unless you open it to verify, I have changed my RT patterns, too.

** Back to #FF, as I just digressed…I hasten a guess that relationships on Twitter are more superficial than before? Do peeps take the time they used to to develop in-depth friendships as before? I’m saying no, and this contributes to the lack of recommendations.

** What about time? If your time is as limited as mine, then this is the biggest culprit.

** How about channel overload? G+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr blogs, your blog, Foursquare, Yelp…OMG! We are at the peak of sensory overload! Our cups runneth over! How can we develop new relationships the way we used to via social media enough to #FF?

** Like any trend, the newness wears off, and the “abuse” (I use this lightly) of #FF caused a bit of negativity. When the bots rolled in and started to add lists of peeps haphazardly with #FF, that’s when we became suspect of #FF recommendations from peeps we didn’t know. Shall we blame it on the bots?

So, finally, Bill, #FollowFriday is still VERY cool when:

1. It comes from a genuine and authentic place – your heart.

2. It recognizes someone for a job well done, gratitude, an impact, an influence, and more.

3. You want to bring a smile to someone’s face who needs a lift.

4. You want to be a coolio friend who recognizes someone else’s accomplishments.

5. You want to plain old #RocksHot.

So, I’m gonna just #FF this entire community right here…you guys do #RockHot. THANKS!