Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Molly Niendorf, content and social media manager for Emma email marketing software.

If you work in content, you know that your job involves a lot more than the content you produce. If you write a blog post or publish a webinar or post a YouTube video without a coordinated content strategy in place, your content is no more than the sum of its parts. In fact, it’s probably less.

Author of Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson defines content strategy as the practice of planning for the creation, delivery and governance of useful, usable content. It’s a helpful definition, and it’s worth exploring. Useful: does your content support a business objective? Usable: does it actually help a user complete a task or solve a problem? Even just focusing on those two goals goes a long way toward effective content. (By the way, If you haven’t read Content Strategy for the Web, get your hands on it. The second edition just came out. Yay!)

You may have a pitch-perfect content strategy in place and a well-oiled content machine (with dutiful content worker bees who deliver the content honey on call) and no competing departmental needs to navigate. (If you do, please call me from utopia.) If your company is on earth, you probably have a working strategy, lots of contingencies to manage and a changing product schedule — and the need to reassess and reformulate your plans often.

photo by Matthew Hauck

That’s where children’s books come in. Believe me when I tell you that, while Halvorson’s book is a veritable tome in the CS world, you might just find some of the best lessons in the children’s books you read and loved in Kindergarten. If you think this sounds silly, give me a moment to convince you.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

You know how this one goes. If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to get thirsty. So he’ll ask for a glass of milk. And then he’ll want a straw for his milk. Pretty soon you’ll be running around trying to suit lovable, needy Mr. Mouse’s every whim (gimme a napkin! scissors! a broom!). You’ll find yourself frantic and exhausted — and, in the end, you won’t have a lot to show for it.

The lesson: We all know what it’s like to be super busy, but is the state of busyness just a seductive farce? Oftentimes, yes. A successful content strategy doesn’t mean doing more; it often means doing less very well. Just because you have pages and pages of content doesn’t mean you’re supporting your customers any better. But if you’ve been smart about creating that one resource that helps users answer a burning question, that they want to share with others, that even makes them smile? You’re onto something.

Your work is also for naught if you’re simply listing everything that needs to get done and moving one-by-one through that list. If all of your content to-do’s start to look like they’re carrying the same weight, chances are you’re entering fat-and-happy-Mr.-Mouse territory. That is, you’re answering to others — or to the situation at hand — without really setting priorities. If you know the content landscape at your company — if you’ve listened to your customers, analyzed how they use your product and site, and strategized a plan for creating, producing and maintaining content — then you should be well-suited to figure out what’s most relevant and needed now. You’re also well-positioned to say no to those things that sound fun but will direct your energies away from what’s needed (and those things can be fun, too).

Corduroy

Remember sweet Corduroy and his quest for a missing button? While he searches throughout the department store at night, he imagines that the elevator might be a mountain, the furniture section of the store is surely a castle. His curiosity infuses ordinary things with whimsy and adventure.

The lesson: You know how I said content priorities can be fun? It’s true. But it’s easy to get caught up in the details: Have we done enough user research? Are these articles labeled with the right meta keywords? Is this page template easy to navigate? Is that author going to finish their article on time?

Step back for a moment. Realize what happens when the details come together. You’re not just working on a bunch of disparate projects; you’re telling your company’s story. And you’re instilling your brand’s values in everything that you say and do. And those users? Hey, look at them: they’re people. They’ve got their own stories and values and backgrounds that affect how you interact with them.

When you start to see the situation as more than a bunch of ordinary moving pieces, something sort of spectacular starts to happen. It’s a content castle, folks.

Bread and Jam for Frances

Just saying this title makes me want some toast. Dear, picky Frances only likes bread and jam. She won’t eat a hard-boiled egg. She turns away a chicken salad sandwich. She’s loathe to try a veal cutlet. (How much do you love that veal cutlets are a meal de rigueur in this storybook from the 1970s?)

The lesson: We all have our bread and jam, that piece of the content process that we really like, that we’re probably pretty good at. And that we may get a little hung up on, because it’s where we want to spend most of our time.

But if you’re always paying attention to your bread and jam, you may be overlooking, or even outright ignoring, another piece of the puzzle. And if you find yourself answering the same sorts of questions with the same sorts of answers (every single time) — This button worked before! Let’s use it again! Let’s always use it! — you might be rushing to the finish line without finding the right answer.

It’s terrific when you’ve discovered tried-and-true practices that work, but don’t let yourself fall into a rut. See each challenge with a fresh perspective, and find the best solution — even if it’s veal cutlets — for the situation at hand.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

The first line of this book says it all: “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on my skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”

The lesson: The Alexander affliction is certainly not unique to folks who work in content, but you’ll know it when you see it. That point in the project where you begin doubting everything that’s led you here and questioning everything that must happen next. It’s usually accompanied by a lot of self-defeating talk and derisive snorting. You’ll ask, have we identified the right business goal? You’ll answer, no. You’ll ask, are users getting what they need from this content? Um, no. Are we adequately measuring the success of this content? Again, no. You’ll throw up your hands and say everything’s awful.

Okay, hang on a sec. It might be true that you need to re-assess your objectives and workflow, but it’s not likely that you need to start from scratch. Abandoning ship does one (or both) of two things: 1) It denies all of the work, research and preparation you’ve done up to this point and 2) If you don’t address the roadblocks that you’re coming upon right now, you’re going to come upon them all over again when you get back here.

To use another expression from childhood: Stop, look and listen. Identify what’s really going on. Call in some backup — a coworker who works more closely with customers, a UX designer who’s an expert in IA, a sales member who’s up-to-speed on what competitors are doing.

And give yourself a reality check. If content strategy were easy, it’d be called Eating Cookies. The reasons you’re feeling stuck are some of the same reasons why you do this work: it’s challenging, multifarious and it’s never done. Stick with it. When you arm yourself with the right resources, tools and teams, and when you push for the right answers, not just the easy ones, you end up in a lovely place: where useful, usable content becomes the rule, not the exception.

Molly Niendorf is Emma’s content and social media manager, working from the company’s Portland office. She dislikes rainy weather (go figure), loves color-coordinated office supplies and is an Honorary Member of the World’s Biggest Cheese Eaters Club (well, she would be, if that were a thing). Read more from Molly on the Emma blog, and try Emma for free at myemma.com.

I’m proud to tell everyone that two of your regular writers here, me and Nichole Kelly, have decided to merge our companies to form a new digital marketing agency. It will be a division of Social Media Explorer called SME Digital. Nichole is now the president of our new effort to combine forces. We’d love to talk to you about how we can help your company with strategy and implementation of social media and digital marketing to produce measures that connect with the three things that matter: sales, revenue and cost.

For the official company word, visit our release on PitchEngine.

This partnership has been brewing for a while. Most of you know Nichole has written here for a year and a half. We even wrote about her previous work on the brand side of things where she became widely known as a measurement super star in the business. Her firm, called Full Frontal ROI, has been firmly focused on delivering profitable social media strategies that are measured in metrics that matter to brands. Her no-nonsense approach and bottom line focus matched up perfectly with my “No Bullshit” stance. Only she’s smarter and more detailed than me, so she accounts for some weaknesses in what I’ve done, too.

SME's leadership team: President Nichole Kelly, CEO Jason Falls and Chief Product Officer Aaron Marshall

Bottom line, SME Digital is stronger than either Social Media Explorer alone, or Full Frontal ROI was, now that we’re combining our efforts. The Full Frontal ROI will be woven into what SME Digital offers. Our plan is to focus on that bottom line measurement, coupled with smart, strategic approaches to our client’s business and build a digital marketing agency that brands will be proud to call theirs.

Working with Nichole is awesome, too. She’s über smart and has some awesome ideas on how we can approach branded entertainment, fan advocacy programs and more that we’ve had a lot of fun collaborating on. Now that we’ve hit the ground running working on client projects, I can tell you we’ve got something neat here. We’d love to help you, too.

For the record, we’ve merged her company and the consulting arm of my company. I didn’t hire her. If anything, she’s hired me. She had the agency model for Full Frontal ROI fleshed out and focused whereas I added consulting to our information and education products when I needed to or the opportunity arose. This merger allows Full Frontal ROI and SME’s consulting services to transition from boutique social media firms to a full-service digital marketing agency with the combination of resources now available. And provides the opportunity to apply the Full Frontal ROI methodology and framework around the consulting services that were previously offered by Social Media Explorer. In the end, this allows us to provide superior service to our clients.

Social Media Explorer now has offices in Louisville and Baltimore with SME Digital headquartered in the latter. We’ll have team members on both the information products side (events, The Conversation Report, our learning community, etc., which Aaron Marshall helps lead) and the agency side (SME Digital) in both cities eventually. Our hope is to expand to 10-15 full-time staffers by year’s end, then grow from there.

We’ve got a lot more on the horizon to tell you about. All in due time. But for now, if you’re looking for top-teir strategic help with digital and social media marketing, SME DIgital is here to serve. Drop us a line and let’s see how we can help you plan, execute and measure your digital efforts.

And thanks to all of you for your support then and now!

In case you missed it yesterday, my buddy (and now co-author) DJ Waldow and I threw together a quick webinar revealing five secrets of email marketing. It was a tee-up to share the news about our new book, The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing, which you can pre-order now on Amazon. It will hit stores late summer/early fall.

We recorded the webinar for those of you who couldn’t make it live so you could enjoy the content, as well. It’s fast, fun and useful. Enjoy!

Thanks for sharing in the celebration for the new book. Preorder your copy now!

If you joined DJ Waldow and me today for our 22-minute webinar on five secrets to email marketing, you learned that one of the secrets was that he and I have written a book. I’m proud to tell all of you that The Rebel’s Guide To Email Marketing is now available for pre-order on Amazon and will be in your local book stores late this summer.

This is my second book (thanks to all of you who have supported No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide To Social Media Marketing) but DJ’s first. And if you know both me and DJ, you know he’s truly the subject matter expert on email marketing. But we wanted to work on this together and, well, I know a couple things here or there that might be helpful.

Who’s A Rebel?

This book is for anyone who wants to be excellent at email marketing, but that also knows best practices are only applicable to you and your organization if you test, measure and prove them. Your brand, audience, market, industry and more are unique. So listening to the “rules” from software companies or even industry thought leaders is like choosing to eat chocolate ice cream because it’s the most popular flavor, not because you like it. We’ve broken email marketing down to help you understand its usefulness, the necessary technical elements for the business owner or marketer, how social media and email marketing work together to form a more perfect marketing union and then we break down all those pesky “rules” and show you why and how you can break them and be successful.

Preorder the book now. You’ll learn something good and have fun reading it, for sure.

Why The Rebellion?

As you could tell from No Bullshit Social Media, I’m not a fan of rules. Yet everywhere DJ and I turned to discover information and advice on email marketing, that’s all we saw. “You must do it this way!” “You shouldn’t do it that way!” We wanted to poke holes in the rules and show people that you can do the unthinkable (using ALL CAPS in subject lines, using one big image rather than text, etc.) and still kick ass with your email marketing efforts.

Plus there just hasn’t been a lot of updated information for the non-web-centric reader on email marketing in a while. With the advent of social media, the advancements in email marketing software and more, the book world was ripe for a book that included a fresh look at email marketing and what companies can do to use it successfully.

Here’s more from both of us … we’re excited!

How You Can Help The Rebellion

Well, yeah, you can preorder the book. But we also need help making sure more people know they don’t have to follow the lemmings off the email marketing cliff! If you have a blog, magazine, newsletter or similar and would like one of us to contribute to it in the form of an interview or perhaps a guest post on email marketing, let us know. We’ll do our very best to accomodate those requests.

If you are involved with a local professional organization that would like to talk about improving email marketing as a monthly topic, we can both provide virtual content (live interviews, webinars, Q&A sessions via Skype or similar). Both of us have limited availability for coming to your community to talk about email marketing as well. We only ask that your organization or its sponsors purchase a minimum of 100 books and cover our travel expenses. Just fill out our contact form and let us know the details. We won’t be able to do visit every one, everywhere, but both DJ and I love getting out and networking socially rather than just social networking online.

And, of course, if you know of an organization that is doing a poor or no job with email marketing, buy them a copy or several copies. Or introduce us to them. Maybe we can help correct that by showing them The Rebel’s Guide.

Here We Go

Writing a book is a project and a process. It’s been a fun one to work on with DJ, who is enthusiasm incarnate. The book is useful, fun and even a little irreverent. And it doesn’t have a swear word in the title, so it’s coffee table safe. Heh. You’ll soon read and hear more about the book as we get closer to the publishing date, but rest assured, it’s going to be a good primer for those who don’t quite know email marketing well and a useful reminder and refresher for those that do.

We’re going to have a lot of fun talking about email marketing in the coming months. Thanks for supporting us in this.

So go ahead: Preorder The Rebel’s Guide To Email Marketing now. I guarantee that with or without the leather jacket and shades, you’ll immediately be more cool.

Jeremiah Owyang offered an insightful piece on how social profiling will work in the real world last week. We’re all aware that influence tools like Klout are being used to reward people with deals, perks and discounts based on their measure of online influence. Owyang rightfully predicts that what we’re seeing now is the tip of the iceberg, like it or not.

But for all its potential, social profiling scares me. It harkens back a day when people were treated differently because of their race or gender. The various Civil Rights Acts in the United States were essentially an effort to force people to not consider how someone looks when deciding whether or not they could be treated like everyone else. Yet with the social profiling future Owyang portrays — facial recognition on iPhones allowing us to see someone’s Klout score just by aiming our phone at them — I think we’re in for a universe of hurt.

Image via CrunchBase

There are several reasons I worry about social profiling. The tale of Sam Fiorella being overlooked for a job because of a perceived low Klout score which appeared in Wired last week (and is also an early case study in Mark Schaefer’s book Return on Influence) is just one example. Sam Fiorella is brilliant, experienced and few people in the digital space can hold a candle to his qualifications to help brands kick ass. Yet some bozo somewhere eliminated him from contention for a digital strategist position because of his Klout score?

Whomever that person or agency is, be glad Sam is a professional and wouldn’t think of disclosing who you are. You might be laughed out of the industry for that one.

My problems with their improper use of Klout?

• Klout is just one way of looking at the data of influence
• Klout is limited to reach and resonance on social networks online, and further limited to only a handful of them.
• Klout doesn’t measure offline influence, email influence, word-of-mouth influence, publishing influence (blogs, news sites, newspapers, magazines, broadcasting), job titles, name recognition, whether you’re connected to the mafia and so on.
• Klout, to date, is very, very, very, very, very, very (is that enough veries?) immature. It doesn’t link what a person does offline or away from social profiles to their impact. For example, as of April 29, Walt Mossberg, arguably one of the most influential people in tech, has a Klout score of 68. Mine is 69. That’s bullshit. Better example: P.J. O’Rourke, perhaps one of the most influential political commentators of our day? Klout score of zero. But there’s an “I want to be P.J. O’Rourke” account on Twitter. It has a Klout score of 20.
• Then there’s my argument that not everyone is online with the intent and purpose of growing fans/friends/followers. Most people are online to stalk their ex’s and see pictures of their grandkids. Klout doesn’t mean anything to them and never will. I content that is true of most (greater than 75 percent) all all people online anywhere. Some research points in that direction, but no one has really asked those direct questions yet.

So the future Owyang tells of is one based on metrics that are incomplete and, on the whole, less than compelling.

Regardless of the accuracy and significance of the data used to measure influence, the whole notion of profiling is morally reprehensible to me. Perhaps idyllic and utopian in my opinion, and certainly based on the fact I grew up in a struggling, middle class family in a small town where what clothes you wore and where you lived was more important than whether or not you could speak coherently, I believe human beings to all be of equal value to the world. Ashton Kutcher doesn’t deserve to be treated better at a restaurant than Ashton Johnson, a resident director at Lyon College in Jonesboro, Arkansas. (Whom I picked randomly from a search of people named Ashton on LinkedIn.)

Yes, the reality of our world is that the restaurant in question thinks that treating Ashton Kutcher well might mean he’ll recommend them to millions of people on Twitter or that he’ll let them take his picture to hang on their wall of fame. Yes, marketers are going to do the same with online influencers because they’re dying to find some measurable outcome from social media. Maybe that 25,000-followers Twitter guy will drop a “loved shopping there” Tweet that will mean a few more “Likes” on Facebook!

But this doesn’t make it right. And one day, we may find, it won’t make it Constitutional.

What social profiling does is allows us to play favorites. Every time that’s been done in this country it has created one, or both, of two things:

• Animosity between groups of people, typically the haves and the have-nots
• Laws to abridge a person or organization’s ability to do so

Yes, there’s a difference between racism, sexism, religious prejudice and letting someone with more Twitter followers get First Class seat upgrades before everyone else. Or is there? We have loyalty clubs and rewards programs. They play favorites. But those programs are opt-in and fueled by purchase. I can buy enough airline tickets or miles to jump in front of you in line and have access to the private club.

Everyone else can’t buy online influence. It’s not a true opt-in, opt-out system. It’s prejudiced against people who don’t want or need to be well endowed, virtually. It is not a level playing field and can’t be leveled by money or time, necessarily.

What social profiling does is creates a system of being able to judge a person by their looks, even if those looks are augmented by technology, and say, “You’re not worthy.” I see nothing good coming from that.

Sadly, it’s going to take an Act of Congress — literally — to stop it from happening.

Have You Registered For Explore Minneapolis?

Don’t miss two days of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Join SME’s Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly, The Now Revolution co-author Jay Baer, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and more at one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, August 16-17 in Minneapolis, Minn. DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Note: Amazon links here are affiliate ones.

Leadership. We all want it. Need it. Strive to have it. Leadership in ourselves. In the people around us. Leadership isn’t limited to a human quality, it is also represented in the companies and brands we follow.

Many people talk and tweet about leadership. When the COO of Facebook and the CEO of American Express talk about leadership, it is important to pay attention.

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and AMEX’s Ken Chenault sat down to discuss the topic of leadership earlier this year during the #fMC in New York City. The Facebook Marketing Conference was a day-long event designed to announce the latest products and features driving business growth through the use of social technology. During #fMC, Sandberg and Chenault warmed the hearts of marketers and sparked the corporate creative spirit as the audience watched the two successful C-level executives discuss leadership during a fireside chat.

Sandberg and Chenault chat about leadership at #fMC

Indeed, these two juxtaposed juggernauts have earned the title of leadership. One, a newcomer tech giant trailblazing towards Wall Street. The other, a financial institution, steady and consistent as powerful as the bell towers of Notre Dame. As we seek solutions to lead in today’s digital divide, tips from the tech to traditional can help.

Facebook: A fresh and forward-moving example

Last year Facebook boasted of 680 million active monthly users. According to an amendment filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week, the tech giant’s value has skyrocketed. Their continued growth includes a recent acquisition of Instagram and now claims 901 million active monthly users, with 488 million mobile users a month. Responsible for new friendships, influential online communities and razor sharp advertising targeting capabilities, this social technology game changer has proven leadership capabilities that business leaders must respect.

AMEX leadership: Old as gold

This shiny gold card carrying financial institute was founded 162 years ago. Like a fine wine, this traditional establishment has only matured and grown its wealth of wisdom as it evolves, keeping a smooth pace in today’s marketplace. Once catering to the business traveler, AMEX has shifted their market focus to the small business owner. With partnerships and alliances with social tools like Facebook and Foursquare, this traditional institution has earned the social creds to not only be included as a cutting-edge market leader, but also to be reverend and respected as one of the leaders in social marketplace.

One common theme Facebook and AMEX exude? Leadership.

Personal, Professional Leadership

These two chief executives have earned the right to speak on the topic of leadership. On a personal level, the stories they could share of their own career climb could teach us a thing or two as individuals. Both leaders represent diversity. As a female executive of a tech company and an African-American executive at a financial institute, there is no doubt their positions were earned by tried and true leadership qualities.

From a business perspective in today’s marketplace however, there are key points to understand as professionals seek to lead their businesses upward and onward, beyond the digital divide. As Sandberg led this fireside chat discussion, here are the leadership secrets Chenault shared on how AMEX has approached today’s tech-driven marketplace and maintained a position of leadership:

LINK

Link with people at a personal level. Inspire hope in others that leads to innovation. Don’t be consumed with competition that you lose sight of who you are. Own your identity and brand, never allow others to define you.

CONNECT

Connect and build trust through consistent thoughts and actions. Without trust, progress and innovation is stalled. Content should never be an accessory, but part of the relationship. Provide relevant content through engaging socially.

DRIVE

Drive change. Reinvent yourself as needed to reach your optimal purpose. Listen to where the needs are and what the market is wanting. Drive is not coasting or riding shot-gun in today’s digital era.

Chenault’s LCD approach can be scaled to today’s challenges we face where leadership is needed. This fireside chat represents proven leadership we can all apply. Throughout the discussion, Chenault shared the importance of trust as a foundation to leadership.

Would you agree that the LCD leadership principles built on trust is a solid approach to today’s digital divide? The comments are yours.

Here’s the question you don’t want to hear while you’re building an audience: “When will we see a dollar from this?”

There is a Zen aspect to audience building goes like this:

• If you want to be able to sell people something, don’t focus on selling.
• If you want people to listen to you, don’t talk about yourself.
• If you want to get something back from your audience, be generous.

So, how can you see a dollar from this?  Wrong question.

An engaged audience is a valuable asset, but not necessarily for the purpose of selling. And you cannot fully fathom the value of that asset in the short term.  Over a period of years, as you grow your audience what happens is this: opportunity knocks because of your audience.

© Marc Roche - Fotolia.com

Most business bloggers understand this about their blogging efforts.  They don’t expect their blog to generate revenue.  It’s the same reason that celebrities and newsmakers grant the most desirable interviews to Barbara Walters or Oprah. It’s not because they get paid more to do it.

Over the past ten years at Lion Brand Yarn Company, we have built an audience and a community that today numbers in the millions. And of course, these are not just top line numbers. We are engaged with each other.

Virtually anywhere that people who use, or are likely to use our product spend time online, we established a branded venue, sharing and communicating, without always knowing how we could “use” that audience or how they could pay us back for our investment. (Blasphemy, I know.)

How do we know how we’re doing?  We know because the size of the audience grows organically. We know by the numbers of people who comment, open newsletters, download podcasts, and share posts at rates that grow and consistently meet our own internal standards.  In general, these standards are simplified versions of the Google and Facebook algorithms.

We keep our investment small.  We engage agencies only to teach us how to do things ourselves when we enter unfamiliar territory. We gradually shifted spending out of print, print ads and postage line items. Digital marketing has always been a lean startup.

With Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Ravelry, YouTube, a podcast, a blog,or the 7 million email newsletters we send each month, our goal has been to build an engaged audience first and foremost.

The direct, measurable revenue we generate from the people we are engaged with is not the main point. And yet we are on intimate terms with our numbers.  Through tracking links and Google analytics we know how our Pinterest traffic and blog traffic convert; we know each source’s relative performance in terms of all key performance indicators.  We study Facebook insights and regularly test new third party Twitter measurement tools.  We look at the numbers and continuously ask, “Why?” Our small but smart, creative marketing team figures out the how.

It is only in retrospect that we can look at our efforts and say that this audience building made sense.  When we do want to promote something,  we don’t have to (as Seth Godin says) wait for some big media outlet to choose us.  We choose ourselves.

Opportunities that are invaluable come to us because  licensors, corporate relationships and other business building partners know that we can reach a very specific but relatively large audience within minutes of deciding to do so.

If you think of yourself as a media outlet, you understand that an engaged audience is an end in itself. There is value in having the attention of the right people.

Jeff Bezos understood this.  According to a Fortune Magazine article on the 12 top entrepreneurs of all time, “He was in no hurry to boost profits at the expense of building an important and lasting company.” In fact, for about the first six to eight years, most people wondered what the heck Amazon was doing.

Building a business that lasts means or building an audience that is willing to give you their attention involves long term thinking. It’s not that the ROI question is wrong.  It’s the timing of the question that makes the difference.

Have You Registered For Explore Minneapolis?

Don’t miss two days of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Join SME’s Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly, The Now Revolution co-author Jay Baer, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and more at one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, August 16-17 in Minneapolis, Minn. DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

I’m always amused when someone proudly describes what they are or do by using the term, “serial entrepreneur.” The more technology companies I encounter, the more founders and C-level folks waive that banner as if it’s some sort of badge of honor.

I suppose if you’ve created and sold a number of companies for lots of money, being a serial entrepreneur is a good thing. But most people who use the term (at least to me) have only started several companies. They’ve never sold them.

What they’re really saying by “serial entrepreneur” is one or more of the following:

• None of my ideas have worked
• I can’t raise money
• I have no attention span
• My passion is about getting lucky and making a wad of money

A friend of mine calls himself a serial entrepreneur. He helped build one company as a young man and made a meager profit as a vested employee. He then started his own company, spent 10 years building it and sold it for low seven-figures. He’s now on his second company that he started with only himself and his former business partner as an investor. They’ve been at it six years now. He’s in his 50s.

When someone that age and with that history tells me he’s a serial entrepreneur, he’s saying:

• I know how to build a company
• I know how to sell a company
• I’m focused on my business
• My passion is about building something of value

It’s a different spin and it’s not subtle.

If you’re calling yourself a serial entrepreneur and you have as many companies or ideas as you have zits, you’re not impressing anyone. In fact, you may be hurting your chances of making headway toward becoming a real one.

Food for thought. Yours are welcome in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Mike Schneider, SVP Digital Incubator at Allen & Gerritsen, and co-author of Location-Based Marketing for Dummies.

Location-based applications seem to all fall into the same trap of unnatural behavior. You whip out the phone, take 20 steps and then pray that the person behind the counter will know how to give you the deal you deserve. Marketers like Aaron Strout and I have been big proponents of passive check-ins or making location a secondary data point in an app that is part of a user’s natural flow.

Boston’s LevelUp has combined location and commerce data to not only give businesses a rich profile of who their customer is, but also a new kind of acquisition and retention program. allen & gerritsen recently got some data from the SCVNGR team and put together this infographic demonstrating some of the behaviors of consumers who are using this new “inverted deals” app.

Have You Registered For Explore Nashville?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, Friday, April 13 in Nashville, Tennessee! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

SchneiderMike has over 17 years of experience in tech and marketing and now runs the Digital Incubator for Boston’s Allen & Gerritsen. SchneiderMike is mobile obsessed and works on brand, SoLoMoCo, content and app strategies for startups, retail, restaurant, CPG and B2B brands. He is a beer extremist, loves longboarding, soccer, wine, tea and food.

A picture is worth a thousand words right? Then why do we depend so much on writing word after word, sentence after sentence and hope that words alone will communicate the message we want to deliver? In many cases we rely on our words to stand on their own and forget the power of images to reinforce our message or an experience.

Over the last year we have seen a number of emerging trends and social applications that have proven just how engaging, fun and effective images can be to audiences. In fact, in many ways this is leaving marketers scrambling to figure out how they might take advantage of the popularity of services like Pinterest and Instagram to increase brand affinity and attract inbound traffic. The biggest barrier? How to communicate and engage with customers almost entirely visually? Let me attempt to provide some ideas that might help you solve your image problem.

Making Data Easier to Consume with Infographics

Infographics have become one of the hottest trends on the web over the last year or so. If you are a marketer then you have likely been bombarded with enough infographics to circle the globe 1,000 times, just in the last week. I don’t see that trend slowing down anytime soon. At Secret Sushi Creative we have designed a few for clients recently and have seen the demand increase. If there is information that needs to be conveyed quickly and in an engaging way, infographics are a great way to go. Just think of that last bullet-point-riddled Power Point presentation you had to sit through. Would you have paid attention and absorbed more of the information had it been in the form of an infographic?

Pros:

• If done thoughtfully infographics make complex data easier to absorb and understand. Especially when attention spans are short.
• A well designed infographic can also set a tone making the data more fun, serious, spooky (Halloween anybody?), etc.
• Infographics can be visually branded. Logos, colors, typography and more can stay on-brand.
• Infographics can be easily shared via any social media channel in the same way any other image can be. Facebook, Pinterest, your blog, Twitter, etc are all great places to share your infographic.

Cons:

• Designing infographics can sometimes be costly if you don’t have a design resource in-house.
• The turn around time for a decent infographic is at least a couple days due to the data collection, design time and approvals needed to produce one.

Tips: 

• Although you may miss out on the complete flexibility of creating your own infographic from the ground up, try your hand at service like Piktochart. It offers a a set of themes, common infographic elements and a WYSIWYG editor enabling non-designers to create your own infographics on the cheap.
• When posting your infographic to your blog I recommend appending “(Infographic)” or something similar to the end of the title. Since the title of your post is usually the only things that people see when it is shared via Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn,  Twitter and just about anywhere else… this will let those rabid infographics fans know that you have something that might interest them.
• Although many infographics are large and take a while to scroll through, consider making smaller, bit-sized ones from time to time. They take less time to produce and are more easily shared on sites that scale down image previews that are shared.
• Infographics are not about slapping pie charts and bar graphs on a pretty background. The best infographics usually tie in interesting data with a thoughtful design that helps reinforce the theme of the data. There are a ton of examples here in this group Pinterest board.

Sharing the Experience with Photos

Brands have been doing this on Facebook for some time now. Take a look at one of the great photos Red Bull has posted on their Facebook timeline (below). The new kid on the block is the social sharing service Instagram. With 27 million users and growing, Instagram is a growing community of people who fire up the app with the expectation of seeing some great user-generated photos.

Red Bull has carried their use of great photos on over to Instagram and amassed a large engaged community. Most of the images that they share is obviously shot by professional photographers versus an iPhone, but their followers are eating it up nonetheless. Local custom bag maker Rickshaw Bagworks has been using Facebook to share inside peeks into their company, some of the more interesting custom bags their customers have ordered and the culture of San Francisco where they are located. They recently started carrying that activity over into Instagram as well.

Red Bull on Facebook

Pros:

• The Instagram user-base is continuing to rapidly grow. Initially only released only on the iPhone, the app will be released to Android users any time now opening the community up to an even larger audience.
• Snapping photos and sharing them on Instagram is quick, painless and takes barely more effort than the act of taking the photo.
• Photos on Instagram can be cross posted to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumbler and more. In most cases, the cross posted images show up in other networks the same as if they were posted directly.
• Instagram enables users to LIKE or comment on images a la Facebook style. Comments can sometimes turn into conversations between the users and/or the brand.

Cons:

• Images can only be uploaded via the mobile app.
• Images on mobile devices are small due to the screen size so detailed images have less impact.

Tips:

• Add an interesting and/or engaging caption to every photo you post on Instagram. Keep in mind that the caption is the text that is included when you cross post your photos to Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere. A good caption might make a big difference whether or not folks check out your image when cross posted to other sites.
• Similar to Twitter, Instagram supports the use of hashtags. Also like Twitter, the hashtags on Instagram are searchable directly on the Instagram app. Adding hashtags will greatly increase the reach of any photos you post beyond your direct followers on Instagram. I recommend initially posting your image with a meaningful caption and then adding one or more hashtag to the image as a follow up comment. This way you are still able to have a clean caption, especially if you cross post the image, and then the added benefit of the hashtag. In most cases you will add a hashtag related to the content of the photo. For example… if you posted an image of a model wearing your newest line of sneakers you might add the hashtag #shoes or #fashion. People searching for those hashtags will find your relevant photo. You might be surprised to see that the most active hashtags are very broad and can be can be appended to most images. To see what the most popular hashtags are being used at any given time scroll down to the “Top 100 Tags” list here: http://web.stagram.com/hot/. I’ve seen engagement double just by adding an appropriate hashtag.
• All Instagram hashtag searches generate a feed that can be subscribed to via RSS. This means, with a little help from a programmer you can pull a hashtag feed into a web page or app. To get the feed for a hashtag use http://instagr.am/tags/[hashtag name]/feed/recent.rss. 
• Create promotion specific hashtags and encourage Instagram users to shoot photos that fit the theme or subject matter of your hashtag. Then using the hashtag feed you can collect all of the photos and display it in one place. My local news recently started asking residents to contribute great photos in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can see what people have shared here.
• Want to make your images a bit more dynamic and interesting? Consider using an app like Diptic to creatively display more than one image in one. This is a good way to tell a quick story or showcase multiple angles of a subject all within one image.
• Instagram doesn’t currently provide analytics. Until they do, get some basic stats related to your account using a service like http://statigr.am/

Curating and Collecting Images

It’s no secret that Pinterest is the talk of the town lately. With well over 10 million users and a growth rate that has been outpacing just about every other social web site to date Pinterest has caught the attention of brands and marketers curious how to tap into it’s very active community. I even highlighted a few ways you might use Pinterest for marketing research in a previous post.

A study from Shareaholic shows that, to some publishers,  Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.  The popular site seems to satiate the inner hunter (those scouring the web for great images to pin) and gatherers (those who enjoy collecting and organizing the pins that others share directly on the site) in many of us. Social bookmarking site Delicious.com had a very similar model around sharing and collecting links to sites, but never caught on with mainstream users, likely because collecting text links wasn’t very fun for the average person.

Pinterest is visually rich and feels very much like the experience of window shopping at your favorite mall, enticing you to dive in and out of images that catch your eye or quickly add it to one of your pin boards (a collection of images) to check out later. Bottom line, lots of folks are addicted to Pinterest. Will it’s popularity be sustainable? Only time will tell, but brands like Whole Foods and Lowe’s are creating a presence on the site and seeing a decent amount of engagement.

Pros:

• Pinterest’s user-base continues to grow and shows little signs of slowing down making it one of the largest and most active communities on the web
• The user experience on Pinterest makes liking, repinning and commenting on images quick and painless encouraging more engagement from less tech savvy users.
• The highly visual nature of Pinterest makes it one of the best online communities for design, DIY, home improvement, fashion, food, gadgets and other similar brands.

Cons:

• The user-base has been noted at around 90% women. This is excellent for some brands, but may be limiting for others that cater to a more male demographic.
• Brands that provide services or products that don’t naturally translate into compelling images will likely see much less engagement. Whereas other types of brands may simply post images of their products, they will have to get more creative with the images they share. For example: A law firm would have to think out of the box to make any use of Pinterest in comparison to an iPhone case maker.
• Sharing your own content is fine, but pinning content from other parties is a current point of discussion amongst some folks that think Pinterest may be traveling into rough waters regarding the use of copyrighted images. The Pinterest team seems to be trying to address this sooner rather than later.

Tips:

• All images on Pinterest can include a link. This link can point to a page that includes more detail and a way to purchase a product, a post on your blog where the image was featured or just about anywhere else. You can manually upload any image, but always make sure that you include a link to drive traffic to your site.
• Find interest ways to integrate collections of pinned images into larger marketing campaigns. Texas advertising agency GSD&M used Pinterest boards as a way to collect interesting information about the Austin area in an effort to welcome SXSW conference attendees.
• Remember that you can pin not only images on Pinterest, but videos as well. We use it to create a pin board collection of our podcast episodes from our SoLoMo Show Podcast.
• Currently, Pinterest does not have any analytics. That may change in the future, but to get a decent snapshot of your overall Pinterest account and numbers per board check out http://www.pinreach.com/

The Wrap Up

So there you have it. A few ideas to help you solve your image problem. How might you be able to take advantage of these visual strategies with your business? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Have You Registered For Explore Nashville?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, Friday, April 13 in Nashville, Tennessee! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Related articles

• 3 Ways Instagram Is Promoting Big Brands (socialmediatoday.com)
• 5 Reasons Your Infographics Are Falling Flat (outspokenmedia.com)

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Megan Feltes, a member of the content team for the email marketing and communications company Emma.

How to deal with mistakes, failures and assorted slip-ups

Email may ultimately be sent and tracked by machines and robots, but it’s still a human endeavor at heart. And as such, email is vulnerable to human error. B2B campaigns are no exception, and errors in emails to customers can feel especially magnified. No matter how many times you read (and re-read) your email copy, a mistake may sneak through. It could be a simple misspelling or a glaringly incorrect link. Did 6,000 recipients see the wrong event date on your email invite? Yikes. Or you could do everything perfectly, but still experience unexpected fallout. Did your website crash after a free shipping offer caused a mad rush? Double yikes. While possibly embarrassing and humbling, mistakes are not the end of the world. Email’s strength lies in its innate timeliness and flexibility.

via Meredith Atwater - opensourceway

We’ve all hit send and quickly realized that something wasn’t quite right. Whether you made a simple typo or a more involved mistake, how you respond is key. In many cases, you might not have to build an entirely new campaign. Instead, quickly correct and resend a copy of the original email while identifying the issue upfront. Adjust the subject line and add a short message at the top of the campaign, identifying what’s been corrected in case some of your readers opened the faulty version. Email recipients have become used to seeing “correction” subject lines in their inbox. In fact, if you catch the mistake and send the corrected version quickly, people will most likely skip over the first message anyway. If it’s a situation that takes a longer recovery time and a more in-depth reworking of your initial campaign, consider drawing more attention to what’s different by sending a separate, dedicated apology email.

Minimizing email mistakes & making good on your apology

As you smooth over the situation, here are a few more things to consider:

• Try to avoid mistakes in the first place. While this knowledge may not feel great post-mistake, it’s something to keep in mind for future campaigns. Never send an email newsletter or promotion — no matter how insignificant it might seem — without getting some other eyes on it first. Create a special group of test email recipients who you trust to double check personalization, links, spelling and even inbox rendering. (Most email service providers, including Emma, allow and actually encourage test emails.)
• Keep your correction message clear. Address the mistake in the subject line and be specific about what was incorrect in the copy. If it’s simply a quick followup to a small mistake, don’t add more content beyond the note up top. If it’s a dedicated apology email, resist the urge to clutter the message with irrelevant information.
• Have a sense of humor. While you shouldn’t go outside of your normal brand voice, it’s okay to laugh at yourself a little. This example from the Workshop for Youth and Families pairs a humorous subject line — “In our haste to cut and paste…” — with a fun image to bring a bit of levity to their admission of a mistake.
• Give a peace offering. Consider offering a small discount or extending a special offer. An unexpected deal along with your mea culpa will surprise and delight your recipients and make them forget the mistake all together.

And realize that an email snafu may actually be a happy mistake. Unfortunate moments can be useful in reinforcing your authenticity and vision, and email is the perfect channel to spread the word. Recently, Ohio-based Jeni’s Ice Cream sent an email announcing that new cake-infused flavors were coming soon. When the flavors didn’t appear in stores on schedule, they sent a followup email with a personal message from owner Jeni Britton Bauer. She warmly explained that the batches just weren’t up to snuff and that she wanted to make sure her customers got the best quality — so the wait would be a little longer. Jeni’s is known for impeccable quality, and the apology message assured customers that the delay, while a short-term letdown, was actually a good thing for cake lovers in the long run.

An email mistake doesn’t have to be a PR nightmare

What if your mistake goes beyond a few typos or inaccurate details? If you’ve encountered a more serious problem that affects your customers’ experience, money or future loyalty, it’s even more important to address the situation.

• Be prompt and honest about what happened. If ignoring the situation would be bad, lying about it would be even worse. Your email subscribers are one of your brand’s greatest assets and they’ve given you their trust in the form of their email address. Don’t abuse or ignore it. Get out in front of the issue by sending a prompt, forthcoming message. You may even build stronger relationships and trust in the process.
• Say you’re sorry and mean it. Your readers expect you to take the mistake seriously. Be transparent about what you’re doing to fix the problem or prevent it from happening again. A little empathy and a human voice go a long way, too. A personal message from a staff member is more meaningful than a blanket statement from your marketing team.
• Expect a few disgruntled responses. If you nail steps one and two, you will hopefully head off most (if any) backlash. But, no matter how honest and sincere you are, you won’t make everyone happy. Stay available and responsive. Make sure responses to your “from address” go to a monitored inbox so nothing falls through the cracks. If someone takes it out of email and to social media, be accommodating, but stay on message. Don’t police your pages or delete comments. Respond, shake it off and move on.

And, remember, even the best laid plans — and email marketing campaigns — will sometimes go awry. Keep a level head, and have a recovery plan. Your recipients will be forgiving. After all, they’re human, too.

Have You Registered For Explore Nashville?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, Friday, April 13 in Nashville, Tennessee! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Megan is part of Emma’s content team in our Nashville office. One of our resident bakers, Megan is always searching for new ways to incorporate Nutella into recipes. She’s also a yoga enthusiast and bears an uncanny resemblance to Julianne Moore. Read more from Megan on the Emma blog.

Emma’s a web-based communications service that’s taken a unique approach to email marketing and surveys. We think it should be easy to create, send and track emails and surveys. It should be designed for you. And it should even be sharable for your audience and fun to use. We’re all about style and results, and it’s why more than 30,000 small and mid-size businesses, non-profits and agencies have chosen Emma to power their email marketing newsletters and campaigns. Learn more about Emma and try us for free.