Because they’re not clustered in nice fat groups claiming a proud central space in the garden, they’re not complimented by neighbors of other carefully-groomed organic matter. They’re insubstantial, really.

These wild communities may be lone, thriving on a long-thought-dead channel with small membership numbers. It may be easy to discount the discovery of a wild community as unintentional, lacking organization (and brand stamp) and therefore, insignificant. Something that stubbornly survived the winter unprotected. But to discount the accidental community is to presume it has little merit. Unimportant. Incapable of rising tall and casting a long shadow.

That would be a mistake. If the long tail is a worthwhile SEO investment, would it not bear the same fruit for a brand community? Some companies think so, helping others walk the fringe of their community gardens to discover untapped possibilities. Information can flower into knowledge, and knowledge is power.

I get it. Budgets are tight, revenue is down and resources are scarce. Outliers, while duly noted, are the least of your worries.

That is, unless there are holes in your operations and you’re deaf to customer feedback about broken old processes. Unless your service delivery people aren’t inspired to own each customer’s happiness, one call or tweet at a time. Unless you prefer 1x customers over those with strong LTV potential for your brand. In these instances, you better believe even the outliers matter because small can multiply.

Are you looking outside your carefully tilled, fertilized, and weeded patch of Facebook (or Twitter, or G+) ground for your brand’s accidental communities? What do you do when you find them?

Image courtesy of  Horia Varlan.

I’m reading a book titled “Edge” by fiction author Jeffrey Deaver. The story line centers on a personal security expert whose job it is to protect innocents and whistle-blowers (along with the occasional bad-guy-turned-informant) until they can safely deliver their damning testimony to the appropriate state or federal officials. Once the beans are spilled on record, the threat to bad guys cemented, the innocents are presumed to no longer be at risk.

The good guy, the protector, is referred to as a shepherd. The term seems a bit random (especially since the bad guys are either “lifters” or “hitters” and I suggest you avoid both) and low-tech, especially in context with all of the wizardry in the characters’ pockets, pens, and personal protection devices. But as some things will, the “shepherd” concept stuck in my mind. He minds a flock, right? A flock is, in some ways, like a community (well, without the self-selection and ability to walk upright).

Hmmm. Community shepherd. There’s something there….Then I went to bed.

But the shepherd idea nugget is still there, rattling around in my brain. So I fleshed out the community shepherd analogy a bit.

A community shepherd:

• Always monitoring the landscape for potential threats.
• Scans the landscape for strategic opportunities; mindful of places and activities offering distinct advantage (like a high bluff) or potential risk (like a narrow, rocky ravine).
• Is mindful that one or more of the members may wonder, and have a plan for regrouping the lot.
• Works incrementally toward an objective (another pasture rich with resources, a corral with a barn, etc.). Ensures daily sustenance and protection leading to longer-term goals.
• Has a quick mind, capable of assembling and disassembling bits of information quickly to choose routes, gauge temperament and attitudes, and respond appropriately on an individual or group basis.
• Is a gentle leader who ensures the flock gets what it needs.

No, community members are not sheep. I’m definitely not suggesting that. They’re not black sheep or white sheep, nor do (good) community shepherds look at them simply assets to be weighed and measured.

I think almost anyone in a role that directly impacts or indirectly touches the customer, from sales to service to marketing to distribution to billing, bears the responsibility of acting as a community shepherd.

It matters not the size of the flock, but the level of commitment to serve it.

Image courtesy of Jo@net on Flickr.

It seems we’re OK with doing less, getting by, and volleying the ball back into someone else’s court so we can move on to the next thing (email has been a great enabler of this).

Assumptions – the lazy man’s (non)solution

Earlier this week I received an email from a hockey coordinator involved with my son’s travel team. His email consisted of a link to a hotel and this lone message: “When you click on the link, ignore the price. When you put in the dates, the price will change to reflect our rate.”  Whaaa?

I had only the vaguest of ideas what he could possibly be writing about. A tournament, I thought. But I didn’t know the dates. I didn’t know the city. I didn’t know if we should factor in additional time for practice or dry land training. Would we have our jerseys by then? What was the tournament schedule – would I need to make arrangements for my other kids to get to school, which starts back that week?

Sure, I emailed back & forth with him until I had those answers. But there are better ways to communicate effectively over email than one-word replies to my scattershot questions.  It’s simple – contextual information leads to better decision-making. Repeated omission of context is like walking up to some folks already in deep discussion about 5th century Chinese politics. You don’t know what the heck is going on and have no clue what you’re supposed to do in order to get your information objective accomplished. In this case, poor communication didn’t favor the hockey coordinator and it put 12 sets of parents at a disadvantage. Not good when the elements of time, travel, and money are involved.

If you’re gonna wear the badge, you gotta act the part

Most people don’t spend time thinking about the Who/What/Where/Why/Hows of communication. I get that, sure. But I argue that if you put yourself in a position as being a beacon for a group, you better bring your A game. Step it up. Be their lynch pin based on your ability to lead, not by the default nature of the station you hold. Mild discord turns to chaos real quick when groups are involved. And if you discount the blue-collar parent as someone who’s likely not to notice or care that you didn’t sufficiently think out your flyer or your email or your voice mail, think again.

People notice when communication sucks. And they see it for what it is (most of the time) – a lack of concern, inattention to detail, a carelessness that can only exist in the mind of the one person who has the answers others need.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that company – the one that leaves customers and service providers to fend for their information meals.

Once again about assumptions

When you assume too much:

• It leaves people with the impression you’re disorganized and careless.
• People feel uneasy, wondering what other important details you may have missed that may end up affecting them negatively. (not a confidence builder)
• You demonstrate a lack of empathy and basic social skills. People need transitions, bread crumbs to follow.
• You place the burden of information discovery on other people. They may not know whom to ask for more information, or may be too reserved and uncomfortable to ask.

Because you’ve assumed too much:

• I have to email you back, hoping I know the right questions to ask to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.
• I feel isolated, wondering if I’m the only person on the distribution list who doesn’t “get it.”
• You miss an opportunity for collaboration and group problem-solving.  One-way flows based on your own linear thinking make for a narrow stream.
• I’m placed at unnecessary risk. If you don’t tell me, and I don’t know enough to ask the “right” questions, at the end of the day you get defensive or worse – eschew ownership – and I have to re-work, scramble, pay a late fee, or patch something together.

Let’s shoot for thoroughness, completeness, and decision tree logic over assumptive end runs, okay? Your relationships and quite possibly the work products you’ll be given will be better for your effort.

It seems the IT techno-scanners in my friend’s office discovered one employee sent 348 instant messages one day last week. Someone (or maybe the sniffing software itself?) determined 348 IM’s equaled an investment of about 5 hours, 50 minutes of time. The department works an 8-hour day. The incident has social media stupidity written all over it.

Social media time suck and so much more

At a loaded cost of $63 per hour (salary and benefits), this employee cost the company around $365 in direct expenses in a single day. Consider if IM’ing were a daily habit for her. For even a handful of others in the 148-person company.

Think about downstream effects like reductions in service delivery to internal teams. Mathematical and procedural errors due to lack of focus or delays caused by sense of urgency (she’s in the accounting department). Damage to team dynamics and increased resentment by others aware of her behavior. Some reports suggest employees are only productive 5 to 6 hours a day at best; what affect will social media have on our office behavior in the future? What changes will there be?

What’s the big deal?

I imagine the employee meant no harm. She might even be surprised to find out the exact number of instant messages she sent in one sitting. She probably considers herself capable of multi-tasking and staying on top of the most urgent work. Most certainly she considers parts of her job rote enough that the she could easily do it error-free without a lot of concentration. But these are just rationalizations, yes?

She put aside good judgment and moved beyond a sense of duty to her employer and team members to openly, deeply indulge in personal interests on time that wasn’t her own. This is not a scenario of a quick Facebook photo update over lunch about the best gyro she ever eaten at Momma Grita’s.

The lesson here is that we’re never an island. The choices we make – even when we’re not consciously aware our natural behavior is a choice – affect others, their outlooks and their outputs. When we indulge ourselves then justify our actions, we force others to make hard decisions. Just because we stopped following the rules doesn’t mean they should, and it may be unfair to ask for exception.

The tighter the grip, the more that slips through the grasp

Few companies survive when there’s an iron grip around employee expectations and accepted behaviors. Fear only germinates desperate, weak gardens. An open culture of trust supports the kind of free thinking leading to innovation and high output. Smart businesses will look for ways to walk the razor-thin line between the two environments with operational frameworks permitting some measure of personal latitude.

Take care so that one employee doesn’t tarnish what’s being built – and appreciated – by many others. Do what’s necessary to ensure the fractional minority of disgruntled or system-gaming customers don’t sully (online or IRL) what others find so rewarding and valuable about your business. Are crackdowns the answer? Maybe, maybe not. Social media doesn’t cause either situation, but it does add another element to the mix.

Perfection isn’t possible in human relationships, regardless of the value exchange or implied obligation or contract. Technology and an increasingly socialized culture will undoubtedly affect the way business is organized. I’m hopeful we advanced mammals can rise to the challenge.

The information group consisted of two staff librarians and one support person. In retrospect, their roles may have seen a little extravagant (very “agency” like–you’ve read the rants about inflated professional rates) to some.  But my firsthand experience with the knowledgeable Jo Pearson all those years ago leads me to know otherwise. The work the librarian did was as much a tactical necessity as it was fundamental
knowledge development. And I think today’s social media managers and content planners/developers need to take lessons from yesterday’s staff librarians.

image courtesy IGN

Library science is an interdisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology and education. It focuses on the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources, and the political economy of information. May also include how information resources are organized to serve the needs of select user groups.—Wikipedia

Jo saved my keister more than once when our big mobile phone client wanted detailed information about a market (she often worked in tandem with the staff media planners who helped create segments and profiles of customers). She also made sure we regularly fed our minds so that we could add insight to deliver greater value to our clients.

Sometimes that meant sending over an enlightening article from an obscure publication (the old-school version of the Share This button). Other times it meant culling data from several subscription-only databases to validate a proposed idea and “sell it in.” As an eager young account manager, it also meant getting smarter about business concepts and sharpening my competitive edge by checking out book after book at Jo’s recommendation.

The information caretaker

As the role of social media manager evolves, I think information – the acquisition, cataloging, funneling, and sharing of it – will play a more central role in the job, maybe looking something like this:

I imagine some social media managers, like community managers, are already doing some of the things outlined in the right hand column. But I suspect results would be stronger if methods were codified and people from cross-functional teams helped identify challenges, issues, and needs that often exist in pockets within an organization.

What do you think about this idea of an “information backbone” to the social media manager role? Does it exist already? Am I making it more complicated than it needs to be? Holla.

After all, aren’t strategies that build interest and demand for a business’s products far more sustainable – and viable for secondary advocacy strategies based on forged trust – than those that pluck weak runners from the back of the herd (if they live long enough, those guys end up feeling resentful anyway)?

Hmm. Same old funnel? What about the new decision journey?

Go on, take a closer look at the secondary copy:

What's wrong with this picture?

With the exception of the word “nurture” in line 2 (which I’d argue they don’t use the same way I’d use “nurture” when thinking about growing customer relationships), these words are cold, clinical, and imply some sort of automated and robotic process for adding new customers to the “done” pile. It’s one-way only. And the very nature of a one-way conversion funnel implies nowhere to go but down (as in, “sold!”). Nothing there implies establishing common ground or mutual interests served through fair and equitable relationships.

Fully recognizing that some B2B channels are very cut-and-dried (and admittedly, I’m not a “sales” person), I maintain that even with purchasing agents and rigorous policies guarding the forward territories, businesses that recognize the value of investing in the growth of deep (and wide) customer relationships will successfully overcome price-minded hurdles in many cases.

How about this approach instead:

• Offer products and services, uniquely positioned to serve the unmet needs of your customer base. Think in terms of a blue ocean.
• Develop rapport, ask questions, give advice, offer assistance. Humanize your brand by being a person first. Yours may not be the best solution; tell them that.
• Affirm the customer’s good decision to buy by continuing high levels of support and value after the sale. Give them reason to continue to feel good about their choices. Let them know it matters.
• Work to help them become vested in that decision to buy. Vested people feel a commitment, an obligation. Vested people make recommendations to peers within their trust networks –>word of mouth. Their success is your success, always.

I’m not out to get B2B Magazine; it’s one I often enjoy reading. I just think they’re off center on this one, and will continue to grow more obsolete as technology fuels competition and satisfaction/service gain weight in decision-making processes. No one wants to be sold to. But some businesses are looking for remedies and will gravitate toward companies that openly offer assistance and support.

What do you think?

But first I thought it would be fun to look at some reasons why some companies don’t think content matters. From the hallway and lunch table conversations I noted, these issues are fairly commonplace.

1. Your boss, or your boss’s boss, is unfamiliar with the term Objectives and his friend, Goals. Look, squirrel!
2. Internal politics is so wound up that content everybody’s concern. And nobody’s end-to-end responsibility.
3. Code and programming are specialized skills. It’s not necessary to hire someone to come in and write. Janis could probably handle it. Did you check with her?
4. We spent a lot of money on the corporate brochure and web site a few years ago. Still waiting for that to pay off.
5. Sure, a new website is on our list of priorities. It’s just that everybody really needs to focus on sales right now.
6. We have just the one website, and it only has a few pages. Anything more is overkill, really. Plus we’re in the book and go to the major conferences.
7. The company’s been around a long time. Everybody knows us already.
8. We’re a manufacturing company (distributor/niche services provider/soup kitchen, whatever). We really don’t have that much to say.
9. There’s no way to measure that.
10. We spent the last of the marketing budget for this fiscal on these great thumb drives for Sales to hand out in the field.
11. Pretty sure our competitors aren’t worried about content.
12. Our information changes so fast because of the industry and product development cycles. There’s no practical way we could keep up.

Tongue-in-cheek, of course. Well-planned content that’s clear, useful, and relevant is indeed important to business because of the myriad ways it (and the supporting values system) matters to customers.

What reasons would you add? What other excuses or fallacies have you heard that gave you a <headdesk> moment?

As a customer, how many times has “It’s the rules, ma’am.” stood in the way of a mutually agreeable solution? How many times has the sharp drop-off between “Thank you for your business.” and “That’s no problem. We can work with you on that.” sent you spiraling over the edge of logic, into the abyss of disgruntledness and negative perception?

Black and white

Rules are meant to protect the primary interests of the issuer (“The Man”), and establish a field of parameters. We acknowledge rules, perhaps even study them (think: driver’s exam prep). We know they’re there; we’ve run into them before. They cause us to consider risk versus reward. But one size does not fit all.

…and shades of gray

Life and circumstances being what they are (unpredictable whims of nature, or holy master plans if you’re feeling more respectful), sometimes situations – everyday mundane stuff – don’t fall easily into clearly defined boxes. You know what I mean – the slight pause when you decide between 64 mph or the “safe bet” 60 mph for the cruise. The age you give the cashier at the restaurant where kids 12 and under eat free (and your kid’s 13).

The applicability or necessity of certain rules can be fuzzy, even sticky. Making the right choice, doing the right thing may not be so clear-cut, obvious or popular. The right choice may not make your company a buck nor cut out x-number man hours of annual administration time. The right choice may cost your company easily deployed, by-the-books, across-the-board simple rigidity (the kind even a monkey can parrot) that efficiency experts recommend.

“It’s company policy, ma’am. No exceptions.”  I call B.S.

Many times, doing the right thing – making the right choice – can be the right thing to do even if it’s against the rules.

Life, unscripted

It takes good judgement, independently vetted and dispensed, to determine the appropriateness of a formal rule to any situation.

The sooner companies citing “no exceptions” rules wise up to the fact that sometimes life won’t wedge into a predefined box of circumstances, that good people make human mistakes, that there are exceptions to every rule and statistically few customers are out to game the system, the sooner those companies dissolve high-handed barriers that keep their customers at arms length.

And isn’t the key to entangling your customer, wrapping them up in service and value to create loyal ambassadors, isn’t the key getting them closer, not pushing them away?

Business is business, I get that. Structure and procedure are important, especially to scale. But there’s a point when rigidity overrides just plain smart thinking, when a businesses’ need to exert control and maintain procedure squashes out the softer art of interpretation, situational awareness, service-mindedness, and basic human compassion.

Your rigid rules just made you look like a jackhole. And customers don’t like jackholes.

Learn from the likes of the Ritz Carlton. Turn your rigid rules into suggested guidelines, and let your smart employees serve your customers well.

Watch their lifetime value soar.  Bonus: they might even tweet about you in a good way.

• Are you giving love and praise unconditionally?
• Are you generously sharing the bounty of your talents so that others might learn and grow?
• Are you holding fast to the promises your brand makes to its customers?
• Are you committed to doing more, even when no one is looking, even when no one specifically asked?

Such things will be the measurement of our lives. They’ll determine the course of our businesses.

As Danny Brown demonstrated, the degree to which a company serves its customers isn’t limited by the constraints of contracts or terms of service. Those boundaries represent obligations, and as such define minimum expected behaviors. We give you this tool, you pay us x dollars. It’s what’s required. Leaves you feeling a bit cold, yes? Maybe even of transitional (read: subjective) importance, good while it lasts.

While transactions form the elemental basis of commerce, it doesn’t define the relationship. Not the trusted relationship between seller and buyer, nor the fragile one between teams and leaders developing the goods for sale.

Definitely not the relationships that social media – the mindset, the channel, and its tools – can enable among users hoping to add value, experience more, and receive knowledge.

Yes, the overused R word

Relationships are a balance between vested parties that can transcend market flux, a tactical bungle, or a CMO guard change. Relationships make things happen. A relationship sometimes means saying “I’m sorry,” or “That was a bad idea” and mustering forward with a healthy self-awareness and mutual respect. Relationships stick. They flex and adapt, and take on the shape of their environment. And I’m convinced they can’t be measured. There’s no time box or scale.

Relationships can’t be measured, not in the terms of social voting as a factor establishing some meaningless position of social rank.

Some measuring sticks deserve to be broken, to splinter apart like dry kindling. These sticks harm like emotional weapons when they were wielded during tender high school years.  Yet we can’t escape the measuring stick of popularity, the golden gloss daintily painted on the “in” crowd even as adults.  The stick is smuggled into the hiring process and baked into our Twitter “follow back” criteria, and serves only to distance people, to maintain a proper spacing between the elite and the (as yet) unrecognized.

Those measuring sticks are superficial, narrow-minded, and misleading at best. At worst they create a caste system that has nothing to do with talents and skills or work product. Let alone aptitude or commitment.

Hook a developer up with an eager entrepreneur-type anxious make a TechCrunch and you’ve got one more way to measure social influence. Or so some say.

Me? I say tools like this one – and use the term loosely – do us all a disservice. They plant the seed of separation and a hierarchy that has nothing to do with true worth.

Nothing to do with the measuring sticks that matter.

Vanity parlor tricks

Someone I’m connected with on LinkedIn triggered the invitation to join Mixtent. The language was ambiguous and I wanted to see just what it was I’d been voted on. Amazingly, this tool pits one person in your network against another (“Who would you prefer to work with, A or B?”). Your choices help determine rank and suck you in to try to advance your own position. It evokes a sense of competition through a leader board. It gamifies personal endorsements, circumventing a lot of critical areas. And it’s horse pucky.

No sour grapes, I’ll tell you straight up that my score was low. And I’m entirely OK with that, so far as Mixtent’s scoring system goes.

It has nothing to do with the measuring sticks that matter.

Today we’re going to look at one by Guy Kawasaki and another by Scott Klososky.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

Gotta say, I’m a Kawasaki fan. I’ve read Reality Check and The Art of the Start, and enjoyed them immensely. I had high hopes for Enchantment and it didn’t let me down. The author systematically built a well-supported thesis for the power of magical moments between brand experiences and those who are enveloped within them. That kind of power evokes disruptive change from status quo transactions.

Put another way, Kawasaki examines the soft, irrational, and emotional reasons why we align ourselves with a product, a cause, or a movement. Moreover, the art of enchantment isn’t so much a marketing strategy as it is a commitment to learn what your audiences are thinking, feeling, and believing. While knowing these things will undoubtedly help  marketers craft winning messages that helps stuff sell, the kind of insight gained through the commitment will lead to better-performing, more relevant, and useful products. Enchanting brands surprise and delight.

In a lot of ways, Kawasaki tells us how to get back to the business of connecting and serving people, without all the high-falutin salesmanship stuff clogging the path to relationships.

I liked this book for its content, its readability, and the injection of real-world examples from big-name brands and little-known organizations. It’s written with humor and clear language. And the quotes? Great punctuation throughout the story.

Enterprise Social Technology

I struggled quite a bit with this book, I’m sorry to say. On the tactical side, it just wasn’t very readable to me. It’s lengthy and dense with long “preachy” paragraphs, two traits that seem incongruous with the image I hold of social media and multi-channel connectivity. There were no visuals to support key ideas or concepts.

The book was crowdsourced, and harnessed thoughts from many different sources to construct individual chapters. I read a reference that many hours were spent editing to ensure consistent tone, voice, and style throughout the book. Unfortunately, I think the heavy editing squashed the unique quality an array of author voices would have brought to the table.

Maybe its a by-product of multiple authors (in that case, perhaps something the editing should have weeded out?), but I also felt message threads were repeated, annoyingly so. Is the book for a newbie or experienced professional? The repetition says “newbie” but I sense the book aspires to be much more lofty than that. In my opinion, other social business books have done a much better job at covering the shifts in culture required when a company commits to forging and maintaining direct relationships with customers.

Lastly, I was troubled by the repeated use of the term “social technology” and “social tech.” It felt contrived and intentional. I just don’t think we need another term to muddy the waters.

But maybe I’m not the right target for this book, or perhaps put off early by a few things that prevented me from receiving the intended messages. If anyone else read and liked this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts to learn what I missed.

Side note to PR reps, publicity folks, and publishing people

Just a thought, but when you send out a book (they’re not cheap!) to a blogger, include some sort of documentation along with it. A simple letter explaining why the author felt it important to write about his or her topic, a bit of background on the research and writing process, etc. Links to multimedia resources – images, infographics, videos, etc. – that help illustrate key points can help the interested blogger learn more about the topic and the author’s passion for writing about it.  When you send a book in a box with nothing else, and no follow up email, I can’t help but feel like the author’s been let down by his/her representation. Why bother if you’re just going to drop the book in my hands and then leave me to my own devices? This is even more remarkable when the book in question is about social media.

Editors note: I was sent these two books by their respective publishing houses free of charge. I did not solicit the books, nor did I commit to providing favorable reviews in exchange for compensation of any sort. I simply got a book, and in exchange made no promise to read, much less write a post about, said book.