Hurray, my hometown New York Giants won the Super Bowl. Yet another fourth quarter comeback for the Big Blue. They also won big with a record-breaking number of mentions on Twitter and Facebook.

The team’s owners scored big time with the leadership and enduring commitment to a philosophy that produces winners. It’s a lesson that other CEOs could emulate that I’ll discuss later in this post.

Super Bowl Site Traffic

Twitter tweeted that in the final three minutes of the Super Bowl there were an average of 10,000 tweets per second.  That is mind-boggling, really – 10,000 x 60 x 3 = 1.8 million tweets.

The Washington Post reported that sports fans sent about 11.5 million comments during last night’s game over social media networks (quoting All Things Digital), about six times higher than last year’s game. The Giants were interacting with fans on Twitter and Facebook before, during and after the game.

Giants Leadership

Eli Manning was the game’s MVP for leading his record-breaking fourth quarter comeback. But I want to talk about the team management’s leadership that has made the Giants one of the most respected franchises in sports history. It is a lesson for every company that wants to build the core competencies that will lead to success over the long haul.

It began in 1925 when Wellington Mara bought the NFL franchise Giants for $500. Over the years the Giants went through some very bad patches. But in the last 20 years the current ownership has honed a philosophy that you pick the right people, stick by them when things are tough and love your fans and players.

A Winning Philosophy

This philosophy has led to four Super Bowl victories, including this year when fans and media were calling for coach Tom Coughlin’s removal when the team lost four straight games. But the owners publicly continued to support their coach. They committed to him and their team and they were rewarded with the ultimate prize – the Lombardi trophy.

The Mara family still owns a half interest in the Giants, along with the other owner, Steve Tisch, from another respected New York family, (you can read about their leadership philosophies in a New York Times interview of the owners and Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots who lost to the Giants 21-17).

Loyal Fans

The Giants fans are among the most rabid and loyal fans in football. The Giants have never had a “blacked-out” game. If a team doesn’t sell-out the game, it is not televised locally. The waiting list for season tickets is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years. Seven hundred fans paid $5,000 each to travel to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl.

In post-game interviews, the players, the owners and Tom Coughlin repeatedly mentioned how much the fans contributed to their victory.

Employees, like Giants fans, want to see their team succeed. Do you have a winning philosophy of hiring the right people, providing them with training and showing your love and respect for them? If you do, they will work their hearts out for you.

What more could you want?

That was the question that Bea Fields, a top leadership coach, asked 14 business leaders. I’m flattered that she included me in that group.

There were a variety of answers, as you might expect. She printed them, including mine, in her post Gaining Loyal Customer By Building a Strong Leadership Brand.

Bea’s Definition

Bea’s summarized own take on the question as follows, “When you build a brand based on true, enduring leadership, each person in the company not only speaks about the brand and the promises you make to your customers in your marketing strategies… each person in your company truly lives those promises every day in both their personal and professional lives…”

What is Your Definition?

Both personal and company branding can be confounding to define. How do you define your leadership brand? Don’t be shy. Please leave a comment below.

February is American Heart Month. More people die from heart disease than any other ailment. What is still not widely known is that heart disease is the number one killer of women.

More women die of heart disease than all forms of cancer combined. As part of its campaign to reach women called Go Red for Women, The American Heart Association has designated Friday February 3d, as “National Wear Red Day.” Wear red to work, or a Meetup, or anywhere you might be on February 3rd to spread the word and show support for the campaign to reduce heart disease among women and men.

As a former Board member of the New York Affiliate, and chair of its first Women and Heart Disease task force, this is a subject that is close to my heart.

CPR Protocol

The American Heart Association has a new CPR protocol that it calls “Hands-Only” CPR. You might save someone’s life if you know how to do it. You can learn in this 1:07 minute video. Pass it on to your friends and family.

They will write blogs, not term papers

The words “term paper” strike fear into the hearts of students, followed closely by “essay.”  I remember those dark days of burning the candle to finish a term paper in college. It usually wasn’t fun if you had been assigned a specific topic.

I was lucky that my English professor, Dr. Edward Chalfant, didn’t require term papers, but simply asked us to write what we felt about an American novel or a Shakespearean play.

He was ahead of his time and foretold the coming of the blog, an informal style of writing that can enable a more personal connection between students and professors and between companies and customers in the business world.

Blogging for Grades

The New York Times weighed in on this topic recently, quoting educators who advocate trashing the old-fashioned term paper and those who still preach that students need the discipline of the format: make a point, defend it, repeat it.

Championing the blog as a legitimate and more modern style of writing is Cathy N. Davidson, an English professor at Duke, who has written extensively about learning in the digital age. She wants to replace the term paper with the blog and says, “This mechanistic writing is a real disincentive to creative but untrained writers.”

Instead of term papers, she assigns her students to publish 500-1,500 word entries on an internal class blog as essays for public consumption. Many professors at other institutions are following her lead

The New Way of Writing

There is no doubt that writing has become informal with the advent of the Internet and social media. But don’t blame the Internet for everything. The trend towards a more conversational style started long ago when television entered almost every home. We’ve become accustomed to receiving information in “sound bites.”

Let’s face it: we want to be entertained. Fox News leads the audience ratings because the network understands this new paradigm.

Training students to write term papers and dissertations that no one will ever read again is not training students for the workplace. Yes, students must learn the basic rules of grammar. People won’t read poorly written blog posts just as professors will downgrade poorly written essays.

Out With the Old, In With the New

But the format for writing has changed:

Old

• Make a point
• Defend it
• Repeat it
• Summarize

New

• Grab attention
• Make your point
• Support with evidence
• Persuade to your point of view
• Call to action

Communication Preferences

Students who enter the workforce will soon learn the rules. How do their managers want to receive information: verbally, by email, in a written document? They sure don’t want something that reads like a term paper.

The most important element to any communication – written or verbal – is the call to action.

During our entire work lives we will be required to persuade others to our points of view. That’s how we assume more responsibility and authority. It isn’t good if no one pays attention to you.

George H. W. Bush famously insisted that his staff prepare one-page summaries on important issues. The President had the power to start conflicts, appoint Supreme Court Justices and approve or veto legislation. Yet, he wanted his information in short takes and felt that was enough to make a decision.

Blogging is the New Term Paper

Kudos to those professors who understand that the way we communicate has changed forever. Holding onto to old communications vehicles – like the term paper – is self-defeating. Worse, it doesn’t prepare students for the real world.

This isn’t going to be an in-depth discussion about Google+. I’ll leave that to the experts. In fact, before my search tips, let me point you to two sources that provide updates on all that’s new on Google+.

HubSpot has published a comprehensive free e-book How to Use Google+ for Business. Just click on the title and you will be able to download the PDF from the home page.

The other is also a lengthy tutorial (slightly more technical) but well worth reading on Blind Five Year Old by AJ Kohn.

My Tips

These are predicated on your being a member of Google+. My good friend Richard Newman at the Newman Group pointed out this new feature when you conduct a search on Google.

Search Personal Results    

You now have the ability to search a subject and get the results, plus see your own Personal Results for that search. The way you do that is by clicking on the tiny icon on the upper right side of the screen. It’s the one on the left that looks like a head and shoulders. The icon next to it, that looks like a globe, allows you to Hide Personal Results.

Here is a screen shot of the two icons:

Google+ Personal Results Icon (head and shoulders)

I put in the search term The New York Times, which I happen to mention often in my posts. I’ve also written letters to the editors and commented on their stories so I knew something of mine would show up if I typed in “The New York Times” in Google search.

First, I clicked the Personal Results icon. Sure enough, I found a reference to a recent post I wrote about The Times and its mistake in accidentally cancelling the subscriptions of 8 million subscribers.

My Google+ Personalized Search of The New York Times

When I hit the globe icon, that reference disappeared. Neat.

Highlighting Words in Google+ Posts

I wish I could find where I read this because I would give attribution. It’s a tiny but nice little touch that Google+ has incorporated so that you can highlight important words in your posts. Highlighting may improve your search results. I tried this tip and it works.

For example, see the bold face in this mock post:

 “Learn more about Google+ in HubSpot’s new ebook”

Here’s how you do it. Type the words you want to highlight. Then type an * in front and at the end* of the words. Like this: Learn more about Google+ in *HubSpot’s new ebook * and you get “Learn more about Google+ in HubSpot’s new ebook.” Viola!

I’ll pass along other easy-to-understand tips on Google+ as I find them. Please include your tips in the comment box. I’d sure like to know about them.

The title tag is the most important element of your blog or website. My blogging coach Bea Fields just recorded a tutorial about optimizing the title tag for her Become a Blogging Maniac course. It’s at the bottom of this post.

Your title tag must contain key words that describe your business. A descriptive, keyword-laden title tag is essential for increasing rankings in search engines.

The title tag appears at the very top of a blog or website and is usually overlooked by visitors — but not by Google or other search engines.  Search engines will “bold” (or highlight) those terms in the search results when a user searches for those terms.

Here is a screen shot of the title tag of SEOmoz.  I don’t need to tell you what they do. Below the screen shot is the video. Take the 5 minutes or so to view it and learn how to write a powerful title tag.

Related articles

• On-Page Search Engine Optimization Information and Facts (seotacticstoday.wordpress.com)
• Search Engine Optimization – Title and Meta Tags (stepup2success.wordpress.com)

Brainstorm ideas

Over the years the term “brainstorming” has fallen out of favor.

An image of people throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick – meaning throwing out ideas to see if they have any merit – is likely to induce fond memories among old-timers who remember when brainstorming was all the rage.

But, done properly, brainstorming still works.

What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming was the creation of Alex Osborn, a founder of my former agency, BBDO (formerly Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn). He posited that a group could generate more creative ideas for solving a problem than an individual. There’s been a lot of controversy over the years about his methodology, with research both for and against it.

The New York Times last Sunday carried a very long story entitled The Rise of the New Groupthink in which the writer, Susan Cain, debunks the current trend of people working in teams in open space – or possibly cubicles if they’re lucky – as they collaborate on projects.  She champions the introvert who needs quiet and privacy to be creative. I think she makes some valid points

When Brainstorming Works

Where Cain and I diverge, though, is when she writes, “Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity…people in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic other’s opinions and lose sight of their own; and often succumb to peer pressure.”

I beg to differ. I’ve participated in, and facilitated, numerous brainstorming sessions, which I prefer to call group problem solving sessions. They generated many original ideas that were successfully implemented.

The Facilitator’s Role

Think of the facilitator as a conductor, bringing the strings, brass and percussion together to produce beautiful music. Without the conductor, the outcome wouldn’t be half as enjoyable with musicians coming in a beat too late or too loud.

When brainstorming, the group has to first identify the real problem. They may have come prepared to work on what they thought the problem was only to discover it was something else.

Let me give you an example. A number of years ago I was invited to facilitate a session for an insurance company in New Jersey. They were losing a lot of sales to the competition. Their products and services were equal to or better than the competition, in their view. The sales team was working hard and making lots of calls. In advance of the session, the team’s leader had concluded that what they needed were more sales people.

The Real Problem

When I arrived, I started by facilitating a discussion about the problem. What did the individuals in the group think? What had they experienced in calling on prospects? Where were things breaking down?

After not too much discussion, the team discovered the real problem. The problem wasn’t that the company did not have enough sales people. The problem was it didn’t have enough trained sales people. The team was making calls but they lacked the training to be successful. It was like a light bulb going off. In changing the problem statement by one word “How do we get enough trained sales people?” we had an entirely different discussion and the ideas came tumbling out.

How to Brainstorm Successfully

Alex Osborn laid out a template for brainstorming that is still used today: focus on generating as many ideas as possible, withhold criticism, welcome unusual ideas, combine and improve ideas.

By also following these guidelines, you are more likely to generate ideas that are actionable:

• Invite a mixed group of staff. Individuals with varying job responsibilities add different perspectives. Invite an employee from outside the department who knows little to nothing about the problem. Some of the best ideas come from people who don’t have a clue that the great idea they contribute is something no one else would have ever thought of.
• Invite your client to participate. This terrifies some agencies – the client will think we don’t know what we’re doing! When I first suggested the idea I thought the managing director would have a heart attack. But the client loved being part of the process and we invited clients regularly after that when we were planning a campaign.
• Maintain control of the group. Cain is correct when she points out that a few members of the group may hog the conversation but it is the facilitator’s responsibility to ensure that everyone contributes. Even introverts have ideas to share.
• Assign responsibilities and deadlines. This is where groups can fail. What do you do with the ideas you generate? The group, the client or the head of the project decides on the ideas to be implemented based on criteria that is established after the session. Don’t give criteria in advance, such as the budget, because it will stifle creativity. At the end of the session, members of the idea team are assigned specific responsibilities with deadlines – not second quarter, but by April 1.

Brainstorming can be an effective tool in generating creative ideas. Not everyone is a Steve Wozniak who invented the first Apple computer or the next Einstein. But everyone has ideas that are worth exploring.

And brainstorming, when done properly, is an effective tool to unleash the creativity of teams whose members aren’t copywriters or designers or great inventors.

Sometimes two heads are better than one, four heads are better than two and eight heads are better than four.

Social Media Examiner (SME) hosted an online webinar yesterday and described how 9 small businesses are attracting thousands of visitors and, in some cases, millions of dollars in revenue. Most of them have only been at it for two or three years. I have to say I was more than impressed.

Social Marketing Makes Dollars and Sense

In the opening slide, we learned why social media is essential for any business.

My key takeaways from the presentation were:

• Give away free content. I’m not talking about the content of your blogs. But useful stuff like Ana White, Carpenter, does — diagrams and detailed instructions, for example, about how to build a cabinet.
• Use very personalized images. In most cases, the business owners had several informal shots of themselves sprinkled throughout the site — with their spouses, holding their dogs, etc.. Photos give you an emotional connection with your visitors.
• Create and empower your community. For example, run a contest to engage your readers. If you have a photography business, you could invite your audience to submit their best photos, select winners and post them on your site.
• Enable readers to share your content. Be sure to prominently display social media buttons for social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ so that your followers can share your content with their followers, potentially drawing many more visitors to your site.
• Leverage social proof. If you have impressive followings on Twitter and Facebook put those numbers up on your site. Include testimonials.
• Choose the channels that work best for you. If you’re a small business, it takes time to be active on every social network. Experiment and see where you should place your focus. You don’t have to be everywhere.

I liked that he showcased offbeat companies such as Easy Lunch Boxes and Orabush tongue cleaner (don’t laugh, he’s raking in the money). I concluded from the presentation you never know when an simple idea will turn into a profitable business.

Lessons Learned

At the conclusion of the seminar, Michael Steltzner, founder and CEO of SME, summed up the key lessons in this slide:

Please share in the comments box how your small business is using social media to build your business. I’m all ears.

I’ve been waiting for the day when an idiot would leave his cell phone on during a play or concert I was attending – even after the usual announcement to turn them off — and the phone would start ringing. It happened the other night and how Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, handled the incident was so instructive that I thought I’d share it with you.

Ring, Ring, Ring

Disrupting Mahler's Ninth

The orchestra was playing Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, his last masterpiece. Just prior to his death, the composer had also been music director of the Philharmonic so he holds a special place in the hearts of the orchestra and its fans. Below this post is a video of the famous last movement of the symphony.

If you’re familiar with the symphony, in the final movement there is an exceedingly soft period when the violins are scarcely whispering. Guess when the phone went off?

Finally, Alan Gilbert stopped the orchestra, turned in the direction of the phone and asked that it be turned off. The phone kept ringing. Obviously, the offender didn’t want anyone to know who he was – probably afraid of a lynching.

How to Handle Disruptions

Maestro Gilbert demonstrated what an effective communicator he is. After the phone finally went silent the conductor faced the audience and said, “I apologize. Normally when these things happen we ignore it because stopping is even more disruptive. But in this case I just had to.” He turned to the players and told them where they would begin again.

Then he turned back to the audience and, with a smile, he said, “Well, we’re ready to go!” That brought laughter and a big round of applause. The orchestra went on to finish this brilliant piece of music and deservedly won a standing ovation. Stopping a concert is so unusual that The New York Times wrote a piece about it.

What I Learned

We all face disruptions and disappointments in our lives. It’s how we handle them that can turn a negative into a positive.

When you’re making a presentation, do you scold people who are talking and disturbing others in the audience? Or do you make a joke and ask if you can join their conversation? Scolding them will make the audience uncomfortable (not to mention the offenders).

Taking the high road will gain you the respect of the audience like it did for Alan Gilbert when he carefully communicated to the audience why he had to stop the performance.

When you lose a piece of business do you go into a funk and blame it on the client? Or do you try to learn what went wrong and try to fix it? Maybe other clients are fuming about the same thing and you’re not even aware of it – like not returning phone calls or always being late with assignments.

Protecting Your Brand

The New York Philharmonic is one of the world’s great orchestras. A simple disruption of one performance isn’t going tarnish its brand. But what if Alan Gilbert had gotten into a shouting match with the offender with the ringing cell phone? Ironically, that could have turned the audience against him because they would have become so uncomfortable with the way he handled it. But he didn’t do that, of course. He handled it with grace and style.

I hope you don’t mind my sharing this experience with you. Like the rest of the audience I was furious at the owner of that darned ringing cell phone. It could have totally ruined the performance. But Alan Gilbert managed the incident like a true leader.

He and the orchestra went on to give a ravishing rendition of the last movement. The audience was on its feet. The cell phone incident was but a memory.

Update: The mystery of why the phone kept ringing has been solved. It was the alarm clock of an iPhone. The phone’s owner is interviewed by The NewYork Times.

I was in a new business meeting the other day and suggested that starting a company blog had the potential to increase visitors to the company’s website. We all know (don’t we?) that Google rewards dynamic content so posting regularly will eventually boost your rankings.

Why Blogs are Abandoned

The designer I was with said “Oh, no” that won’t work. I couldn’t blame him. He had designed websites and blogs for a number of clients and within a short time the blogs had been abandoned.

It’s a commitment to write a weekly or twice-weekly blog. Who will write the blog – someone inside the company or will we outsource it? What will we write about? Where will our ideas come from?

These are legitimate questions, but I believe it is a lack of will and commitment from top management that is behind the failures.There isn’t a plan in place to keep the blog going and building momentum.

Tips for Bloggers

So, if you, or your company, have abandoned your blog here are some steps to take:

• Make a commitment. Decide that you want to increase traffic to your website by x% within six months, or whatever benchmark you want to establish. A blog will help you do that. Static websites don’t cut it.
• Choose categories, or “buckets” of stories. Suppose you’re an accounting firm. You could decide to write about how to finance your retirement, tips for cutting taxes, and estate planning. Over time you could add more buckets.
• Assign responsibilities. Like any other marketing activity, you’ve got to allocate the necessary human and financial resources. Identify content experts in the company as sources for information the writer will need. Think carefully about assigning revenue-producing employees to write. They will usually find an excuse not to do it – I have a client calling, or I need to go to a new business pitch, etc. Better that they supply the writer with the facts she needs. Let accountants be accountants. Let writers be writers.
• Build an inventory of posts. Set a launch date for your blog and then prepare a schedule of posts for the first three months. Write your launch post and at least four other posts from different categories before you begin publishing. The first day, have a launch post that introduces your blog and why you are writing it. At the same time, publish the first four (or more) posts. Why? Because a single post will look like an orphan all by itself. The posts will contain great content and encourage readers to subscribe.
• Offer an incentive. Give readers a reason to subscribe, such as a special report, or something free that would otherwise cost them.
• Solicit guest posts. Ask clients and other experts to write guest posts. You will get backlinks to their sites (another SEO boost) and provide your readers with differing points of view.
• Post to social networks. Now that you have a blog you can automatically distribute new posts to social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. You will be reaching new audiences who may visit your website and decide you’re a company they would like to do business with.
• Repurpose the content. Turn your blog posts into articles, slide shows and electronic brochures. You will be leveraging your investment and distributing your content through other communications channels.

Beat the Competition

It’s true that many companies have abandoned their blogs. Shame on them. They are missing out on a great opportunity to establish the company’s authority on topics of interest to clients and prospects.

Most people still get their information about a company from its website. Your blog will serve as a sort of Pied Piper, luring in readers searching for valuable information to improve themselves and their businesses.

Why not have them come to you and not a competitor?

Related articles

• The benefits of business blogging: Part 1 (marketing.yell.com)
• 12 Business Blogging Shortcuts for Time-Crunched Marketers (hubspot.com)