At a recent corporate training I held, one of the participants blurted out “I’m not creative. I can’t do this.” Actually, she said that no one in her division ever asked her to be creative and it made her feel uncomfortable.

It was a shocking statement, but not surprising.

Let me give some context: The training was primarily to educate employees and vendors about certain company policies and best practices. I mixed in a number of design thinking exercises to make the training more hands-on and collaborative. The last part was key, since the policies would work best when people from different silos worked together.

The last exercise allowed people to take some leaps, to improvise and innovate, to create. It was loose enough to allow lots of leeway, but focused enough to provide direction. The last exercise built on the previous exercises in a consequential way.

The person in question was, in my mind, creative in her own right. She had asked good questions during the training. She dealt with people, often difficult people, all day, so she had to be adept at crooked paths. She did admit she liked to organize things, a creative talent to be sure. 

But to label herself as a non-creative person because no one at her job asked her to do so is a sad statement. It’s a sad statement about her state of mind and a sad statement about her enterprise group. What’s most disappointing is that I don’t think this as uncommon as it sounds. 

People in business are busy getting things done. Usually they are busy doing the things other people tell them to do. The Tellers want things done quickly. They want them done in the ways they’re used to, rather than done in the ways that will have the most impact. That last part is critical: that’s where the creativity comes in.

When we’re so busy doing, we don’t have the license or time to be creative. There is no constant culture of innovation, failure and insight. After all, those things could reflect badly on you at review time.

The problem isn’t that the woman doesn’t feel valued for her ideas. The problem is that her managers have created or accepted that culture. They’re the ones who need re-programming. And their bosses, and their bosses.

Not being creative reinforces a safe status quo. Since most businesses would rather have predictability than constant innovation, they don’t see a problem with this. It’s only when things get tough that they realize they’re too late to change. Then things get ugly. Over the last 15 years, we’ve seen a lot of this ugliness. Unfortunately, the ones who suffer the most are people like this woman who’s never been asked to be creative. So when she looks for a new job, she won’t find many like her old one.

Corporate America, even Small Business America, needs a mental reset. Competition sucks, but it is, after all, a cornerstone of the very capitalist model we’ve all embraced. Not being creative is not an option for the future.

Recently I’ve been struck by two simultaneous trends that at first glance seem diametrically opposed to each other, but may have more in common than you may think.

On the one hand, marketing departments are still having difficulty changing and transitioning from old practices of broadcast marketing to social businesses. Yes, many marketers have embraced social media tools and channels yet they continue to treat these as broadcast channels. In that sense, they find it hard to transition out of their old marketing habits and become more nimble and customer focused. It’s odd, in some sense, that so many very smart people have so much trouble changing. Or maybe I should say changing their marketing departments and organizations.

Change is a scary thing for most people and most brands. If you make a change and it doesn’t quite work out, your job or position may suffer. At the same time many marketing people have expressed to me their desire to change and their confusion as to what to do.

On the other hand, I’m witnessing a number of new people jumping into jobs in marketing departments who can’t wait to change things. Unfortunately many of these new people’s desire for change doesn’t stem from wanting to shift an organization but rather to put their mark on existing tactics.

This reminds me of the evolutionary strategy of male lions: kill all of your competitors’ cubs before you mate with a female lion.

New marketing people have a tendency to want to erase or undo their predecessors’ work in order to show their evolutionary value. Unfortunately this often entails doing the same type of work, just with a different spin or a different color. Coming in and fundamentally changing an operation is hard; just ask former J.C. Penney’s CEO Ron Johnson (who didn’t do organizational change well at all).

Change, especially in a digital world by traditionally oriented marketers, is a frightening proposition. It gets worse when marketers try something new and flashy, only to have it fail miserably, an occurrence more common than one thinks. This raises the distrust level of anything new and increases the resistance toward new initiatives.

For marketers who know in their guts that they need to change and are held back by fear of the unknown, here are a few steps to consider when jumping into the digital or social worlds:

1. Do your homework – Remember: You are not alone. You are not the first marketer to try something. Make sure you do your research about brands that have done what you’d like to do. Pay attention to what has succeeded and what has failed. Pick a few small lessons from each and extrapolate to your own brand.
2. Figure out the “Why” – “Everyone else does it” is not a good reason for doing something, even if we are herd animals. Why should your brand start a digital or social initiative? Ask the question: In the long term, how will this benefit my customers and ultimately our brand?  A good discussion about “Why” will stop a lot of poorly thought out initiatives.
3. Start small and grow – Big initiatives are exciting. They take time and resources. They also have greater risk of failure. Instead, start modestly and follow your strategy. That will allow you to learn as you go. Small also means that failures along the way aren’t that important. They turn into actionable intelligence instead. If you can make failure your ally, your boss will give you more space.
4. Connect with real people – Your customers are not an audience; they’re real people. Build your small digital/social experiments with real people in mind and make sure you are using these initiatives to connect with them through the digital channels. This human connection will give you more actionable intelligence and give your internal stories value.
5. Educate and inform – Internal communication is important when you want to try a change. Tell stories and keep telling them. Successes and ruts keep people interested and allow you to keep changing. Make sure to keep the stories on a human level.
6. Don’t pay attention to the shiny – Let the crows gather shiny objects. Your initiatives should have a longer perspective. That means that apparent quick fixes, like flashy contests or “new” social channels should take a back seat, unless you find a strategic use for them.

None of this will transform your marketing department or brand overnight. That’s not the point. Instead you will be building a culture that will accept change, even if it doesn’t always embrace it. It will make the “new” feel less risky. I’d like to hope it would make you happier and more successful in your job, too. 

This weekend I was part of an experiment conducted at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. Marketing Director Leigh Chandler invited a group of local “Tweeters” to attend a concert in order to share live reactions through social media. Using the hashtag #FlynnTweets, we sat in the first row of the otherwise closed off balcony and watched a show with guitarists David Hidalgo and Marc Ribot.

As I walked into the theater, I met a colleague of mine. Her husband was one of the sponsors. The first thing he said to me was that he hoped we weren’t going to disturb the performance.

I can understand that. No one wants to pay money to see a concert only to have someone in the next seat tapping into their (bright) smart phone and giggling when reading responses. That did happen up in the Tweet seats. But since we were far away from the paying guests, no one seemed to mind.

Watching and tweeting simultaneously is a tough balancing act. It’s a common challenge even at social media conferences, where people spend more time tweeting out key quotes from speakers than they do sitting back, listening and reflecting. It was an issue at the Flynn as well; several Tweeters lamented that they felt “split” between trying to enjoy the concert and providing social commentary. 

Another challenge is that we who tweet love to see what kind of response we get. After all, that is the whole idea of “social” media; not just broadcast but response and conversation. It was a little too tempting to check your smart phone to see who responded or retweeted you. More often than not, it was the person sitting next to you in the balcony. So there was this strange but fun conversation happening between us as almost a secret layer to the concert.

The tweets, though, did get great feedback outside of the building. A number of people on Facebook or Twitter responded that they wished they were there at the concert. It certainly spread the word about Hidalgo and Ribot to people who might not have known who they were. It definitely got good PR play in the local media (it helped that the major newspaper had a person in the Tweet seats).

Will it have a long lasting effect, or will it be sustainable? According to Leigh Chandler, she wants to do this again. She certainly pulled together a fun group of people for the inaugural event. I’m sure there are others who would love to have a great, free seat in exchange for tweeting.

Will it sell tickets? Well, that’s the real question. It’s not feasible to do this for a sold out concert, nor does the Flynn need to. I wonder, though, if it’s possible to always have a few Tweet Seats way in the back, so they don’t disturb anyone.

One idea might be to not focus so much on the concert or event itself, but to reward people who’ve already purchased tickets backstage access before and after a concert so that they can tweet and post pictures. That would be a great, social reward to paying and loyal customers. It’s certainly something tweeters and others would brag about on social media. The content from those interactions could provide a sustainable fodder for Flynn’s ongoing marketing. 

What the Flynn Center really did during #FlynnTweets was to firm up its position as a very innovative organization in Burlington and to firm up established relationships with key influencers. Whether the tweets themselves provided great value might not be the point. I would love to see them continue to integrate social into their core business beyond the occasional social event.

I hope that’s the case, mostly because I love what they do, in our community and in our schools.

Check out my Storify stream of #FlynnTweets.

I stumbled across some data about Facebook engagement rates the other day. Apparently Michael Leander has been analyzing how Facebook fans react to brand posts based on how big a following that brand has on Facebook. It’s made me wonder – If we know engagement rates, and we know how much it costs to acquire a Facebook like, we should be able to calculate the cost of fan engagement. How much does it cost? And is it really worth it?

Leander found that the rate of people who like or comment on a post starts at less than 1% for a brand of 10,000 Facebook followers and then plummets the larger the audience. Here are his statistics:

Number Of Fans/Likes	Average Engagement Rate
10,000	0,96 %
20,000	0,29 %
50,000	0,21 %
100,000	0,19 %
200,000	0,16 %
500,000	0,13 %
1,000,000	0,11 %
1,500,000	0,09 %

Compared with banner ad engagement rates, those numbers might look good. I’m also starting to wonder what the cost of all this is. For the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to calculate the cost of what it takes to manage the Facebook channel or to create all of that content people are engaging or not engaging with.

Instead, I’m going to look at the cost of attaining those fans and calculating what the cost per interaction is.

Let’s take one year. I’m going to assume that brands might reasonably attain 10,000 fans without buying any likes (a leap, I know, but bear with me). For each number above 10,000, I’m going to assume that 1/3 of those total fans were purchased. That is, brands spent money on Facebook ads to get people to “Like” them.

According to a WebTrends report in 2011, the average cost for a Facebook Like acquisition was $1.07. Maybe that’s gone up or down since then, but let’s use that as a starting point.

Let’s also assume that, on average, a brand posts on Facebook once a day, or a total of 250 posts per year. With that, the cost per interaction for a smaller Facebook brand starts at $0.49/interaction over the year. For a big brand, the cost jumps to $1.59/interaction for a year. 

Fans	Bought Fans	Cost	Posts Per Year	Total Interactions	Cost Per Interaction
10,000			250	24,000
20,000	6,667	$7,133	250	14,500	$0.49
50,000	16,667	$17,833	250	26,250	$0.68
100,000	33,333	$35,667	250	47,500	$0.75
200,000	66,667	$71,333	250	80,000	$0.89
500,000	166,667	$178,333	250	162,500	$1.10
1,000,000	333,333	$356,667	250	275,000	$1.30
1,500,000	500,000	$535,000	250	337,500	$1.59

 

Remember, that’s not covering the cost of managing the channel or creating content. That’s just the interaction cost. Of course this is only for a year, if you spread that over 2 years it gets a little cheaper.

 The number of interactions isn’t terribly impressive either. But it starts putting things into perspective, such as:

• What is the real impact of an engagement?
• If people engage more with emotional imagery, say of kittens, is it worth the cost to the brand?
• None of this starts connecting interactions to real business goals. Does that matter?
• Is it really worth it to purchase fans on Facebook?

Actually, it’s that last question that’s important. Based on this calculation, however imprecise, I’d say no.

What do you think?

The business of strategy is a funny one. Lots of people talk about strategy and ask for it. I seriously doubt that there’s a lot of commonality in what people believe strategy to be. In its essence, a strategy is a plan for what to do. Bud Caddell has modern spin on a digital strategy that I think is a good one. 

Is that what businesses want when they ask for a digital strategy? I don’t think so. So here is what I’m calling the Five Stages of Strategy: What businesses ask for when they ask for “strategy.”

1. Tactics – This is by far the most common intent. We see this in a lot of web strategy but social media has taken this to a completely new level. Social media strategy has in many cases come to simply mean: set up our accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Social agencies are complicit in this bastardization; they’re really selling implementation services. Strategy is just a way to open the door. Tactics without strategy are usually not sustainable, though, which is probably why many companies end up paying big bucks for Facebook Likes and even bigger bucks to communicate with those new likes through Promoted Posts.
2. Cover My Butt – One of my favorite stages, this usually happens in companies with larger internal marketing staffs. The cover my butters come in a couple of flavors. One flavor is someone who needs a smokescreen with upper management to ask for more money. It’s also useful for those who feel pressure from above to move on digital initiatives and want a way to insure themselves from blame in case things don’t work out. In either case, the strategy process can be a long one that ends up having little impact on the actual work.
3. Prove I’m Right – Many organizations listen to employees very poorly, if at all. Organizations contain a huge amount of intelligence, creativity and innovation. Unfortunately no one has time from his or her busy day to mine that intelligence. In the Prove I’m Right strategy, one quite often uncovers a plan or idea that some of the key players have pushed for, without any luck. The strategy from the third party validates that and provides impetus for implementation. Of course, if you prove someone wrong, then results may vary.
4. I Know We’re Behind – It’s easy for people to look at the success of others and to feel that they don’t measure up. This is a good place to start, strategically. There’s an uncomfortable acceptance that people don’t like the place they’re in and want to move somewhere, they just don’t know where. Strategy has the potential to move organizations like this along a continuum by providing a plan to do so. The best part about this is that people who ask for this are already willing to try something new, one of the key conditions for implementing a successful strategy. The challenge for the strategy is to not overshoot reality, something that’s easy to do given both the market place and the desires of the organization.
5. Help Us Change – The holy grail of strategy is working with organizations that embrace and recognize the need for change. Face it; if things were working perfectly, no one would need a strategy, a plan, for doing things differently. In this phase there’s not only support from upper management but also a desire from employees to do things differently. While not all strategy is change, change is a critical part of most great strategies. When organizations reach this stage of strategy they are usually poised for great success.

The red thread through all of this is tolerance for internal and external change.  Many organizations have no desire or tolerance for anything beyond cosmetic changes. That’s why the first stage, tactics is so popular.

While Elisabeth Kubler-Ross would probably turn in her grave if she read this, it’s worth thinking about before that next strategic engagement. Ask the question to determine what strategy stage your organization, or client, is at. It will make the results that much more palatable.

The discussions about social media policies moved from the “nice-to-have” guidelines to the necessary legalistic, corporate documents a few years ago. Most companies who engage in social media now have some type of policy outlining guidelines and expected behavior from their employees. Some brands have a link to their policies from their Facebook “About” tabs.

The need for having an internal social policy is simple: it reduces risk. In reality, the social policy is most likely a variation on other internal, employee documents. One advantage it does have is that it clearly states what behavior is allowed and forbidden in specific social channels.

Legal teams like social policies. Social media scares them to start with, so having some type of protection is necessary for them. It’s also a good for all of the employees. The clearer companies are with their employees, the fewer misunderstandings and mistakes will happen in the social channels. Social policies won’t stop all poor behavior. But they will cause some people to pause and think before they act socially. And if companies need to take disciplinary action, employees can’t say they haven't been warned. 

Do all companies need a social media policy? Maybe. But there are certain types of companies that do themselves a disservice by not having one.

Take HubSpot, for example. HubSpot is one of the bright social media stars out of Boston. It’s seen strong growth and has assembled one of the best teams of social media thinkers in the country. It offers a suite of inbound marketing tools along with training and is a boon for both newbie social companies and more mature ones. It’s one of the reasons we at the #BTVSMB invited Rick Burnes to come to Burlington a few years back. 

Which is why I was quite surprised to see this pop-up online in a comment stream:

It made me wonder: Does HubSpot, who teaches others how to act socially, have a social policy themselves? Here is a clearly self identified HubSpot employee, a supposed social media pro, talking about minors and “Over The Pants Hand Jobs.” Posting on company time no less. 

Now maybe I missed the post where some of my social media favorites like Laura Fitton, Dan Zarella and Brian Halligan, all HubSpot gurus and some of the smartest people in the business, write about social media masturbation (although you could make the case that this IS what social media is all about. But that’s another post.). I can’t remember them tweeting about encouraging employees to make highly inappropriate comments with the brand name attached. 

Actually I’ll bet the opposite is true, given the recent examples from Chrysler and Kitchen Aid.

The super smart Mike Volpe wrote an opinion piece a few years ago arguing that having a social media policies was stupid . I think Mike only got it half right that time. You need to hire smart people AND have a social policy. I think Brian Halligan’s gang went 0 for 2 this time.

Insurance companies are risk averse industry sector. That’s an understatement. Their business is based on risk avoidance. That might be one of the reasons why many of them have been late to online and social media.

Yet in that same comment stream referenced above, there are comments from an employee of William Gallagher Associates, a company who describes themselves as “a leading provider of insurance brokerage, risk management and employee benefit services to companies with complex risks and dynamic needs.”

In the comments the young man expresses great support for the risky behavior of underage and binge drinking.  Now, I’m not an insurance guy but shouldn’t they be promoting less risk, not more? While the guy is not as easily identifiable as a William Gallagher Associates employee as the HubSpot guy, it doesn’t take much effort to find out, or to see that he too is commenting on company time.

I’ve worked with a few insurance companies in Massachusetts and I know it’s a tough, competitive environment. I’m not sure promoting binge, underage drinking is the right brand message for William Gallagher Associates. Insurance companies place a great emphasis on building trust between their sales people and their customers. Maybe saying impetous comments builds trust for some people. But I’d rather not buy my insurance from someone like that.

WGA does participate in social media: they have a very good blog, a small Twitter presence and a pretty good Web site. I bet that they don’t have a social policy either. As a risk management company, they probably should. 

I may be missing something though. WGA CEO Philip Edmundson also tweets under the name PoliticsOfObesity. It's a great stream, by the way. Could it be that he's starting a new focus, Politics of Binge Drinking, and using some of his staff for research?

None of this really comes close to the Chrysler debacle. Maybe I am picking on HubSpot, but it’s only because they’re big guns that can take it. But both of these comments are so off brand as to raise some serious questions.

What do you think?

[If you want to actually dig into the comment stream I reference put on your waders because there’s a lot of garbage there. Another example of how broken online newspapers comment sections are.]

I was at a meeting a while back when someone exclaimed “I think we’re doing great. Why can’t everyone see that?”

It’s a common enough sentiment. You can hear that on the client side or on the agency side. It’s what happens when people become so highly focused on their own work that they lose any outside perspective. At work we concentrate on getting our work done, perfecting our internal systems, navigating through internal politics and improving our products. Most all of that is within our control, or at least it feels like it is.

The challenge is that most other people can’t see you doing that because they’re either not that interested or because they’re focused on their own needs. But if what you’re “doing” is supposed to meet the needs of other people, you may be in trouble. One thing that continues to astound me is the lack of interest or desire in actually listening to what your audience needs and says.

Listening has never been easier than it is today. Social media has turned into a powerful tool to connect with and listen to people. The brands that stop overly obsessing about selling stuff on Facebook and use the channels to listen and to build stronger connections to their customers end up doing better. We’re (thankfully) moving past straight-up focus groups and market research as a way of gathering intelligence and moving toward design-thinking and ethnographic collaborations with customers instead.

The super power of social is that people love receiving attention and love knowing that someone is listening to them. That’s a human super power too. It doesn’t take much for companies to take some time and listen to their clients or customers; to ask them what matters to them; to inquire how you’re doing serving them. 

Why don’t we listen more? Probably because we’re afraid of hearing bad news. “I think we’re doing great” might be code for “I don’t want to hear what I’m doing wrong.” Face it; we’re all people here, with our thin skins and sensitive egos.

Rather than desensitizing yourself, cloak yourself in “listening” disguise. Pretend you’re putting on a lab coat and geeky glasses, or a pith helmet and jungle boots. Pretend you’re a scientist or an ethnographer out on a mission. Whatever you hear and see, you probably won’t take it personally.

Here’s what I’ll guarantee: Even if after asking and listening you don’t hear anything earthshattering or breathtaking, you will hear enough from customers that will cause you to rethink at least a few of the things you’re doing in your normal, day-to-day work. Those things might help you improve a service or product, or might allow you to improve the way your company deals with customers.

Listening changes people. It changes the person telling and it changes the person hearing. After listening you won’t have to “think” you’re doing great, you’ll know.