Archive for March, 2011
How do I find the “voice” on my company blog?
Mar 3rd
I received this great question from Josh Cantrell, a B2B blogger …
Who is my audience? Is it the people I want to sell to, or the people that will regularly follow our blog? How do I determine the blog’s “voice”? My writing style/personality may be different than the corporation’s. Do I do my own thing and just be myself or do I try write AS the business would?
Whether you have a personal blog or a corporate blog, your tone and voice will change over time, primarily as your knowledge and confidence grows. When you get right down to it, your “voice” is the key differentiator for your blog — it probably makes the difference on whether somebody even reads your blog or not.
I would define “voice” as the personality and style of your writing. Are you witty or buttoned up? Flowery or factual? A story-teller or a reporter? There is no good or bad way to be, as long as you are connecting with your audience.
In the business world, your audience must be defined as the people you are trying to influence. Your company blog should be aligned with your marketing and business strategies, otherwise … why do it?
A business normally has many audiences. Obviously customers … but also suppliers, employees, people in the community, even competitors! One emerging best practice is to have multiple blogs for your differing audiences. This is impractical for many businesses so you should probably focus on customers — yes, the people you want to sell to.
Aligning your “voice” with the company’s can be difficult, but not impossible. I’ve worked with blog-start-ups at several companies and here are the phases I see most companies going through:
1) Uptight – At first, the company is tentative about becoming a publisher. Writing is tightly controlled, wedded to a schedule, and perhaps even approved by legal.
2) Disenchantment — “What?? We don’t have comments on our blog?? What are we doing wrong?” Also in this phase you realize all those people who said they would contribute blog posts were big fat liars.
3) Re-alignment – Expectations come more into line, and a more realistic view of the long-term contributions of a blog emerges. Maybe you even have a small win — “Hey a customer mentioned our blog today.”
4) Relaxation — Company begins to trust the content developers and the process. Content begins to be incorporated strategically into sales and marketing efforts. Maybe you even get a comment! The blog becomes cool.
So a voice does evolve and hopefully over time it will become less press release-like and more human, accessible and friendly.
In the short-term, if there is a disconnect between how you write and how they WANT you to write, you have to live with it. Change takes time and let’s face it, if the company is paying you, they can ask you to write any damn thing they want, even if it sucks.
Here is another remote possibility. Your company might be right. Most companies are run by experienced, well-meaning people who want to do good work and care about you too. As I look back at my own career, when I was 25 I didn’t know half as much as you do Josh. Worse, I didn’t know it at the time! Thankfully I had patient bosses.
Hang in there. Most companies do get to that relaxation stage. And besides, I LIKE your blog Josh!
I would love to hear stories from the rest of the blog community. Are you finding your voice on your blog? Is it matching what your company wants you to say?
Josh Cantrell submitted this great question through MLT Creative’s blogging seminar and is a marketing coordinator and blogger behind Cloud 9, a very entertaining B2B blog at Claris Networks, a cloud computing provider in Knoxville, TN.
4 Ways to Use Social Media to Beat the Big Boys
Mar 2nd
By Stanford Smith, Contributing {grow} Columnist
They say that the rich just get richer and the poor get poorer. Seems this brutal maxim applies to social media too; big brands crush smaller upstarts in a blizzard of social gimmicks and PR.
Savvy startups understand this law and struggle to achieve scale before larger competitors recognize the threat. Even social media’s egalitarian roots can’t vaccinate it against the big brand onslaught. Just review the latest “top social media brand” list to see evidence of the Fortune 100’s adroit use of the latest social tools.
So, can the little gal (guy) still compete?
Absolutely.
How Social Tools Level the Competitive Playing Field
As social tools mature, small brands are finding ways to use them to wage a competitive insurgency against the 800-pound gorillas in their space. In fact, there are abundant signs that the small guys may be gaining an important competitive edge.
Successful small-brand insurgents cleverly use social media to create vibrant, closely-knit communities with a particular twist. You see, while big brands mistakenly count on big numbers, small brands builds their communities around their company’s passion and core values. These values sustain the community and their passions turn normal people into extraordinary evangelists.
Ironically, while big brands can create cool promotions they often stumble in the “authenticity” department. Furthermore, they struggle with creating long-term relationships with communities. After all, quarterly earnings usually dictate the half-life for any great idea.
A Little Inspiration for the Social Trenches
Recently, I went looking for truly innovative small brands that were kicking big brand butt. I examined their social media activities searching for the key drivers of their success. In the end, I found four specific ways that the most successful small brands use social tools to gain a competitive advantage:
1) Build awareness of their unique brand proposition: Facebook’s 600 million+ member platform competes with Television as an efficient branding tool. For a relatively miniscule investment, smart businesses are out-foxing bigger competitors.
Example:
Moxsie (http://twitter.com/#!/moxsie) is a fashion retailer that caters to indie fashion-philes. They beat larger fashion houses by giving their audience access to high-end fashion in real time via twitter and their Facebook presence. Their appreciative fan’s spread their unique slant on fashion far and wide.
2) Responding to customer feedback in real-time: Small brands view Twitter, Facebook, and their blog as canaries in the mine that indicate danger or opportunity. Negative experiences are transformed into customer service wins that get spread rapidly around the web. Aggressive brands have mastered the art of watching their competitor’s streams and beating them to the punch.
Examples:
Naked Pizza: (http://twitter.com/nakedpizza) is using a full arsenal of social tools to aggressively grow its presence in the mature and hypercompetitive pizza market. Their secret weapon? They have installed Twitter Kiosks in every retail location to gather customer feedback in real-time.
3) Intentional Tribe building: It’s tempting for large brands to take their audiences for granted. It’s easy to create a 100,000+ Facebook community when you can use a Superbowl commercial to build your following.
On the other hand, small brands have limited time and resources. Each follower is precious and Tribe building is taken very seriously. Comments get high-level attention, every new Twitter follower is welcomed, Facebook Likes are treated like gold. Equal attention is given to growing, nurturing, and pruning the tribe.
Etsy’s http://twitter.com/etsy Tribe is diverse and powerful. Etsy publicly celebrates the contribution of every tribe member. Social sharing tools are tightly integrated into each customer touch point throughout the community. The handmade DIY leaders platform is more than a match for any big-budget retailer.
4) Link Social branding with Sales: Small brands need sales to survive. They can’t wait years for a brand to mature. They need to see revenue from all of their online channels – including channel. The most nimble brands find stunning ways to turn their social equity into foot-traffic.
Example:
Marmite (http://www.marmiteshop.co.uk/) raced to be the first retailer to use Facebook sampling ads to get samples of its new Marmite Chocolate bars into the hands of Facebook users. Its quick action leveraged its Facebook audience while beefing up its bottom line with new customers.
How to Win
If you are staring down a giant then remember that your size can be an advantage. You can outwit, outlast, and outplay your competitors by using social tools to beat them to the punch. Here are some pointers:
- Never Miss A Chance to Start a Conversation: Your customers want to know you. Give them every opportunity to reach out and talk to a real person. Take this one step further by including an invitation to talk on your product packaging, email signatures, website content and so on.
- Extend Your Brand’s Story: Think of your brand as a 3D full-sensory story. Then take your story apart and distribute it across the social web. Stunning photos and stills camp out on Flickr. Entertaining culture “shots” and product demonstrations hang out on YouTube. Your Manifesto lives on your blog and is discussed on Facebook.
- Equip Your Evangelists: Quickly find your evangelists and equip them to tell your brand story. Have fun with this. Support and retweet your fanatics on Twitter. Give them sneak peeks at new product. Offer them free services and pay special attention to what they have to say. Put your evangelists at the core of your social strategy and follow their lead.
This is (Much) Easier Than You Think
You just have to get started. Once you’ve made social branding part of your DNA you will be surprised how easy it is to steal the show from the big boys.
What do you think? What challenges do you have with using social media to build your business’ brand?
Stanford Smith is a hopelessly addicted angler, father of 3 hellions, and the wild-eyed muse behind PushingSocial.com. Follow him on Twitter to get his latest unorthodox tips for getting your blog noticed and promoted.
Silence and the Perfect Leadership Moment
Mar 1st
I’ve worked with many wonderful leaders over the years but there was one moment that, for me, represented a perfect example of what leadership is all about.
I spent much of my career at Alcoa, a Fortune 100 metals and mining company. Alcoa was a principled company. Values like safety, environmental stewardship, and community involvement were not just slogans, they were sincerely lived out every day, and demonstrated actively by the leaders of the company.
Having an employee killed in an industrial accident is heart-breaking, but it is even more tragic when it is YOUR employee.
That’s what happened to my friend Joe. Joe was one of many extraordinary leaders at Alcoa. He was a mountain of a man in both size and heart and he had worked his way up the company ladder to a VP position with a style that was tough yet thoroughly authentic.
Many years ago, a female hourly employee — and one of Joe’s friends from his days in operations — was crushed by a piece of conveying equipment. The weekend accident defied any rational explanation. She was an experienced employee who actually was on the safety committee that wrote the rules for the safe operation of the machine. The conveyor was moving at such a slow speed she easily could have stepped aside to get out of the way. She had crossed strong steel barriers, violating safety protocol, to even get to a place where the accident could have occurred.
And yet, it had happened. She was gone. A single mother of three, and a long-time friend of Joe’s, had died on our shop floor.
On Monday morning, an expanded staff meeting had been called to talk about the accident and investigation.
The room was jammed with about 75 employees when Joe entered the room. He stood in front of the shocked room with his head bowed. The room was so full of tension at that moment. Finally, Joe spoke.
“I don’t know what to say right now,” he said. “I think … we … just need to pray for a moment.”
The room fell silent. Many wept.
For me, this was one of the most unexpected and beautiful examples of leadership I have witnessed. Asking employees to pray? This was the ultimate gift and gesture, because nothing COULD be said at that moment. We all felt like crying . We all needed to be quiet for a minute and pray about this woman and her children in our own way, whatever that meant. We didn’t want to see those pictures. We didn’t want to think about investigations and safety reports. We needed that one moment to be human and grieve for a life.
To me, this was the most authentic, perfect moment of leadership, even though it was carried out in complete silence. In a world of constant content and chatter, quiet can be stunningly powerful.
Sometimes we are most effective when we are most human. Don’t you agree?
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