I was going to write a post about how important it is that we don’t obsess over the futility of social media – that actually it’s only an outreach of what we do every day in our business anyway. That social media is mostly about understanding your customers better.

That when you pair it with newsjacking for your customer’s benefit, it’s a beautiful tool. That when you think how much competitive advantage you get simply by reading social media conversations and blogs, and listen to some of the best podcasts out there, you’re literally a tour de force. That everything’s going to be ok.

But it isn’t. Look at this blog! What the hell happened there?

Photo Credit: Walt Stoneburner via Compfight cc.

What did I press?

There are some much worse things you can press. At least this is a work in progress and an atrocity of design (right now – come back in 15 light years and it’ll be stellar, promise) won’t land me a suspended eight-week jail sentence. What a total mope!

On the flipside, this guy is amazing - though if you’re anything like me you’ll be bothered they didn’t link directly to his Facebook page. Which I just did.

Finally as far as relevance goes, a big hurrah shout and congrats to my gorgeous pal Prakky in Oz for turning the world upside down with the revelation she’s a fellow social media superstar. We did a few podcasts together and I enjoyed every one. Great job, Mich!

We’ll get there with this. Soon I’ll have my social media books for you to download, and my ace eight-part getting started in web video series to watch. It’s going to be like an adult Fisher Price centre, but on the web. Awesomebubbles!

But until that bit happens, you just get my name on a pink background. And that picture behind the text, which is Venice, by the way. Because that’s the way I roll, baba.

Go find someone else to inspire you. I’ll be back just as soon as I clicke… wTF!?

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

Chances are you’ve inherited someone else’s work, or got the chicken wire and papier mache out the cupboard to muddle something together with some dog-eared, half-eaten document that wouldn’t look out of place in the British Museum.

Use precision. Photo Credit: TschiAe via Compfight cc.

I have such a delicious task in front of me. It’s sitting below this monitor, which sits alongside another monitor and makes me feel a little like Matthew Broderick in Wargames.

Fight the good fight

And in many ways it can be quite a battle having a social strategy approved in an organisation which hasn’t given much thought or love in that direction in the past. A double-edged sword, then, for the social media pioneer in 2013.

The work doesn’t begin and end understanding how social media fits inside your business. It’s way more complicated than that.

Like it or not, there’s always a trust issue. It’s not helped by the legion examples of social media malpractice that always seem to find their way to the C-suite while all the good news stories lie neglected and unknown on some invisible cutting room floor.

Find the diamonds

So once you’ve identified the social media champions in your organisation, you’ve got to figure out a way of keeping tabs on their Facebook and Twitter activities.

And that’s precisely why companies like Hootsuite have cropped up.

They understand the only way social can succeed for large businesses is to have some kind of baked-in accountability.

You can have people sign all kinds of disclaimers but it won’t stop something happening like this or that.

What’s peculiar is how little the social media management space has changed in the past couple of years. Hootsuite gets bigger, and the cost of taking on such a dashboard is frankly exorbitant.

I was at Blue Light Camp recently and I pressed one of Hootsuite’s sales managers on exactly this issue. How can you possibly justify charging such a high price for something that is essentially a layer on top of the core service itself?

They can charge it because there’s no real competition. They are beholden to social networks for the reporting element, but in all but the Enterprise version of Hootsuite you have to pay extra for that.

I’m holding out for a hero. I think Muster Point might be that Batman. On the surface unlimited users and unlimited social profiles makes for tasty reading but I’m reserving judgement until a Hangout with one of the creators next week.

In any organisation offering disparate services it’s a near impossible challenge managing social profiles on a budget unless you’re prepared to sustain sizeable compromise.

What do you do?

You can figure a way of bleeding the greatest possible value from the least possible spend.

If you like me work in social media (we’re a dying breed, apparently) you need to demonstrate results while keeping the ship watertight and free of any potential malarkey on the networks.

Every situation is different. Here’s mine:

I work in an organisation spread across three entirely different geographical areas. In each area we provide a range of entirely different services, provided at entirely different locations.

So our opportunities in social media are three-tiered. Four, if you’re picky and believe B2B can make big inroads in social:

• (Master B2B organisational account for reporting to the press/partners/suppliers)
• Geographical
• Service-led
• Venue-driven

Hootsuite offers a Pro package for up to 10 users for about £850 a year. Which includes managing unlimited social profiles. This is an important distinction to understand.

You could have 8 users managing 1 social media profiles, and it would cost you (say) £680.
You could have 8 users managing 100 profiles, and it would cost you the same.

Since we’re relatively new as an organisation to the social space, and we need to prove its worth, it’s unlikely we’d splurge more than £850 on the first year.

Talking about being new to social: the principal priority for us or anyone in this situation of making a serious and concerted effort to succeed through social networking is to understand exactly why it matters.

It took us literally hours and hours to get this right. In many ways your social media objectives must reflect, influence or even guide your overall business priorities. That’s something I was able to advise early on, and it was invaluable in waking up those who previously were largely sceptical about the point of social media.

Once you demonstrate all your social media efforts can contribute towards the bottom line by generating unprecedented levels of awareness, conversation and feedback that would be highly difficult or impossible to gather otherwise, the penny drops and the stakes are raised.

Here are the opening social media management options for us as an organisation:

1. One person managing all social profiles across Twitter and Facebook (YouTube upcoming)
2. A master Twitter profile per geographical area, and a dedicated Facebook page per venue. There would be one representative for each service area allocated a Hootsuite seat. In turn, those staff working at venues would alert service area social champions to messages needing to be published on social networks. The biggest challenge in all this is having social media champions follow a content strategy, and for those supplying them with updates to follow a simple process. If a content strategy isn’t evidenced and executed, you’re farting in a wind tunnel. If people don’t inform the champions about things that are happening on a granular level, we potentially miss out on some great discussion topics and rationale behind us purposefully laying ourselves bare a social standpoint to better engage and empathise with our communities. Ergo, the whole notion of being social is easily ridiculed.
3. A master Twitter profile per geographical area, Twitter accounts for particularly passionate or business case-reinforced service areas or venues, and many different users spread across the organisation.

There was a cheeky fourth that kind of contravenes ethics.  Hootsuite charges per user registered by email. Which means technically you could have eight people signing in using the same email address.

But how can you monitor individual usage if eight people to Hootsuite and its reporting, are one and the same?

We want the chance to see who posted what. There’s a very real reason why this is important to us, and it cannot be circumvented. So that’s out.

Where we are

Traditionally we’re a social enterprise. Our staff are keen to do better so everyone we work for is better. That explains why we’re not short on people who want to use social media to express themselves, the great work their teams do, and how it joins up with what people want and need. Perfect.

But there are about 35 people contesting for the ‘coveted role’ of social media champion.

Something has to give. Knowing what you know:

• We need accountability
• We need to spend £850 or less for the first year

As a corollary, we already have literally dozens of social profiles. Most are dormant or extremely low level.

It’s indicative of the novelty factor of being associated with social media. It’s hip to start, and after a while, the excitement starts to wane. Those we worked tirelessly to captivate are now not only falling away, but some of the most engaged are actively missing the conversation and mentioning the passing of a once great organ to their friends.

They’re so inherently social that they feel you’ve done them wrong. So all those incredible things you did in the early days aren’t just going to waste – they’re working against you.

Accountability and a relatively small investment. 35 people wanting slots on the social program. You’ll understand we need to strip the willow. That’s a phrase I know well from my days of ceilidh dancing. It is probably the wrong one to use here.

That’s option 3 out the window. Let’s tackle the other two.

Getting to the rub

Option 1 is a little troublesome, at least. Knowing the scale of our operation, while it’s indubitably cost-effective from a social media management dashboard point of view, having one person manage all the social updates is borderline lunacy. Channelling all the requests through to, well, me, is a bridge too far when I’ve got websites to manage and an intranet to build.

Which rather tidily leaves a solitary solution up for grabs.

What I like most about the idea of having a master account per geographical area, with dedicated Facebook Pages for each venue that wants them, is everyone can have their moments in the sun.

It’s not a perfect fit.

There’s a more pointed argument to not choosing this route. Some of our service areas rightly suggest that they have their own niche communities to serve. Our golf courses want to update their followers with tee times available that day.

But that’s precisely what their Facebook Page can do. Not only that, but we can squirt their very latest updates from Facebook into the home page for their venue on our website.

The thinking on the Facebook thing is that we potentially have a far greater reach and minimise resource wastage. For more than 10 people to work on social media, for even a relatively small proportion of their weekly hours, is a ridiculous commitment during the first year of being on the networks.

In my experience conversation is easier to follow on Facebook. You can multiply by 10 the average number of active daily users of Facebook compared to Twitter, and the whole experience is just that bit more fulfilling in the way you can consume rich media.

We may go down the Google+ route if it continues to gain ground on the two titans. We may experiment with Instagram and Pinterest. We probably won’t.

But the number one priority in all of this is integration. Making sure everything you do in the organisation ties together. One thing I’ve stressed time and again in every role is the importance of thinking of the internet as a channel, not a siloed marketing system. Every channel complements another. Marketing today is a rich ecosystem blending reach with opportunity offered through sophisticated analysis of your target customer’s psychographics and demographics and behaviour.

It’s complicated, but simple. Everything and nothing have changed. Whereas we once used a shovel, we now have a scalpel. It’s all about refinement and choice and measurement.

Because ultimately this is all about reward versus effort. The same for everything in life, and business.

But at least we’ve made a start. And it’s one that feels right.

I’ll keep you updated.

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

Seriously. Me, singing. I blame Sam.

Photo Credit: Rob Shenk via Compfight cc.

Merchants of snake oil (or the naive – me, c. 2010) will tell you in business the internet makes everything easier. Realists will point out you have a heck of a harder job competing against a world of choice.

There are some massive hurdles to overcome to deliver against expectations in any company these days.

But there are some easy wins that everyone, no matter where they are in the world of enterprise, should embrace.

If you’re going to succeed in 2013 and beyond digest these:

1. Take the best bits from others, but don’t emulate – enhance. It’s easy to think you’re ‘the next Gary Vaynerchuk’ or ‘just like Chris Brogan’. But you’re not, and you’re not. You’re you. You’re better than they are when it comes to a bunch of things, and their strengths mean nothing to the advancement of you. The biggest challenge in life is identifying your own plusses. Do the Myers Briggs test or the Highlands Battery to kick things off. And ask others what you’re best at if you’re short on cues. But once you’ve found it, you’re sorted for life. It’s a journey well worth taking.
2. More than ever it’s vital to have your own physical shop front. The honeymoon is over. Amazon is the exception, not rule. There’s a lot of deceit online, people saying if you spin this way or twist that, you can make a fortune with an exclusively digital business. But the internet is complementary to, and not a replacement for, being available and accessible physically. Never forget this, as more and more these days people are looking for a friendly face, not fancy pixel, to reassure them of the validity of their prospective purchase.
3. Stop talking about ‘we’. Start obsessing with ‘you’. The very basics of marketing decree we need to sell the sizzle, not the sausage (hat-tip to my old boss Andrew Hill of Holiday Cottages Group for instilling this logic in me). That means be in pursuit always of promoting the benefits, not features, in everything you do and sell. Relentlessly devote yourself to your USPs, what separates you from everyone else including your competition, and soar.

Have you got a fourth? Do share.

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

But after a few minutes of self analysis and navel gazing I jumped back on the horse ready to set off on another rip-roaring adventure.

Why? Because nothing, ultimately, really matters. Nothing but happiness and a rebootable yearning for unflappable faith in yourself.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t see the logic in everything. I can have a cup half empty moment as often as the next guy or gal.

I’m aching to be the guy who is impervious to wobble. I’m as far from that as Nelson Mandela a foetus. But I have this chance and it only lasts a lifetime so I’ve mastered the art of the shrug. It’s much easier to let things go than to let it hang around your neck.

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks via Compfight cc.

Back to the day in hand. A great session at work, making some monumental progress towards the greater good. Website is looking dang fine, social engagement is through the roof, and more importantly than all that stuff, people are starting to notice a difference. Actual human staff.

And that to me – the respect of my peers – is everything.

Day done, off to Manchester. The city. My nemesis. I’m the guy who would give everything away for a pokey little beach hut or a crumbling shed in the country. But I’m going to try.

And try is what I attempted at tonight’s recording of Yakker, the show determined to demystify digital and talk tech specifically for the workers of Manchester, generally for anyone with an ear for the geeky, progressive and modern business-focused.

After my wonderful other half had dropped off the audio rig at Studio North I was in a good state. Everything was in place.

Curveball #1: We had five people on the show. Three regulars, some guy who really knew his onions about social media, and Nick Wright, the co-founder of Studio North.

In the world of podcast, three definitely is a crowd. Four is unlikely, five is unprecedented. This was no man’s land. Know why? My board – the mixer where all the mics go – is configured for four.

This required some hasty decisions to be made with the limited number of leads in my magical podcasting sack.

Serendipitously I’d brought my trusty Zoom H4n to mediate on proceedings as chief recording device. It records four channels.

My mind went into overdrive figuring out the various ways I could and could not record five voices. I settled on bringing the left channel output from the mixer into the external mic input of the Zoom H4n and, after a while, further consolidated two of the five mics to the XLR inputs on the base of the recorder.

The problem that later transpired was having one of my co-hosts – one incredibly talented and super svelte Chris Marsh from Melbourne Server Hosting (and he of @marsh80) – on the right channel.

For the first 20 minutes I was confused why he was only coming through on another mic. His was working as a solo track before recording. Why not now? The right channel on a left-only recording settled that score.

But I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Nick Wright, that Studio North co-founder, either. His feed wasn’t making me smile.

Maybe it was because his mic was coming directly into the recorder, and it needed phantom power (or maybe it didn’t, and phantom power was switched on).

Regardless, not a great sound there, either. The levels in the Zoom H4n reflected my weakness as a preditor (producer/editor; love that) but mindful of the shortness in time we had to get the show down, it did go on.

Curveball #2: The script. I like to have a semblance of a show framework upon which to riff. Tonight the table was awash with paper. I was sure I had my own manuscript, but as I started the preamble it was clearly not. “Circling the runway” was how Goog Al Mackin delicately put it.

So I had to cut and start over. Not the work of a professional podcaster and veteran ambassador of the European Podcast Award.

By this point I was perspiring profusely. I was exhibiting the kind of nerves reserved for Felix Baumgarten or that guy on the motorbike in Las Vegas about to descend 10 storeys on an invisible ramp.

I bumbled. I erred, I lost the plot. I was in many ways the very epitome of a drug-addled teenager trying to make his first benefits claim. It wasn’t pretty.

Sat on the bus home right now I’m looking back at that sorry episode wondering how I could have made things work.

I have the answers. More planning. More practice. More careful consideration, due diligence.

Like the mischievous inflatable boy with a pin in the inflatable school, I let everyone down. It’s not something you want to do on a regular basis but it is character building.

But like a butterball, I’ll be bouncing back for more. I’ve learned my lesson. Do more, before. Spend way more time in preparation mode.

Thinking about this specific example:

1. Establish the parameters as accurately as possible. Recognising in advance there were five players in this game would have made the recording situation a darn sight easier on the day. In any situation recognising what you have to work with, what the objectives are, and giving yourself plenty of buffer time to get the job done, is sometimes – frequently – more important than the physical act of completing the task itself.
2. Rehearse. Whenever you’ve got something important to do it rarely harms the situation to play it through. Think theatre. When does the actor venture on to the stage to paying public without having spent many weeks or months mastering the script? Anything less would render their performance sub-standard. It’s how life works. Rehearsal can simply be mastering a skill. It’s finding your voice. Talking to the right people to get the background information you need to deliver that presentation. It’s filling in the gaps to give of yourself wholly and without reservation. Rehearsal in its many forms breeds the kind of bulletproof and unwaivering confidence that puts the extra in ordinary.
3. Master your surroundings. Whenever you’re doing anything public, or involving people other than yourself, it really makes a difference to get the lay of the land. This is particularly useful if you have an important meeting upcoming (and if it’s not important, it’s not in my calendar). Feeling at home is halfway to being in control of any situation. It fosters confidence and when paired with being prepared through rehearsal, it’s everything you need to be that superstar you are.

Though the fourth episode of Yakker is borderline disastrous in my eyes, purely on account of my momentary incompetence, it teaches me everything I’ve ever needed to know.

To be fully rehearsed. To never be rushed in the context of a very important occasion. And to always know your place.

Yakker is purely awfully good, rather than just awful. By my own admission I was the weakest link in the latest incarnation but it’s definitely growing up to be a respected member of the digital community in Manchester and beyond.

Here’s how to listen to it. Enjoy!

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

Well, it’s been one of those weeks. I put out my eight part internet TV series, launched a podcast for digital businesses and redesigned a website. So, yeah, it’s been a little on the productive side.

But nevertheless, my apologies for coming at this somewhat late to the party. It won’t/probably will happen again.

Elbows-deep in updating my expertise in producing radio and video shows and websites, I haven’t had two minutes to rub together in pursuit of crafting a polished blog. This whole ‘being employed’ malarkey really does sap your free time for developing your very own one-man Speaker’s Corner. Tsk.

So it’s always a blessing getting the chance to join my pals Simon and Paul on BBC Radio Merseyside to talk tech when some news story or other transpires vaguely relating to the modern world around us. Which is increasingly often. And since I love the sound of my own voice, I’m all in.

Photo Credit: Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel via Compfight cc.

Friday 24th May 2013 was the day a woman with quite the Twitter following held her hand up and said yeah, I can see why an inference of mine reflected badly on an old boy stroke poster child for silver surfers.

Sally Bercow, wife of the House of Commons speaker John, was the individual in hot water. Not only did she do herself a mischief with her unfounded suggestion all was not as it seemed for McAlpine, she also put the fear of god into many Tweeps now suddenly all too aware of the power they wield with a potential audience of millions.

That Bercow thing

The BBC reported on Friday:

The wife of Commons Speaker John Bercow tweeted two days after BBC Newsnight wrongly linked a “leading Conservative politician” to sex abuse claims. Amid widespread speculation about his identity, she wrote: “Why is Lord McAlpine trending. *innocent face*.”

Her inclusion of the words “innocent face” revealed that the question was “ironical”, Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled at the High Court.

Bercow accepted an offer of settlement tabled by McAlpine in January.

She said: “Things can be held to be seriously defamatory, even when you do not intend them to be defamatory and do not make any express accusation

“I did not tweet this with malice, and I did not intend to libel Lord McAlpine. I was being conversational and mischievous, as was so often my style on Twitter.”

Bercow didn’t make accusations directly. She inferred. And that was enough to force Sally to settle. Bercow had a duty of care and responsibility, the kind of commitment that comes with having a Twitter tribe of tens of thousands – and she crossed the line.

But really, that figure – followers in bulk – matter naught. Even one person reading your words is a potential flashpoint. Sharing. It doesn’t discriminate only in favour of the good stuff.

So what do we learn from this?

It’s simply about Common sense and decency

Commons sense

The slack-jawed public has had it way too easy, its loose lips sinking ships free of retribution. So many reputations have been ruined through social media, but McAlpine has set a precedent.

This is now case law for future claims. Which means we, whether acting as businesses or individuals, have to take note and wind our necks in and learn social media rules of the road that should hopefully help avoid costly knee-jerk reactions.

But the social media framework is an interesting one. Just as we don’t have an official guide book for things like life and parenting, nor is there a blueprint on how we should use social media. Things such as the Bercow situation only help social networks get free publicity. And just as Barnum exclaimed, there is no such thing as bad press.

In a way this is vindication for the media which is getting hammered from all sides for its handling of sensitive news. But fighting against a tide of citizen journalism taking instant news reporting to extremes, when it goes too far it pays the price. Now it’s our turn.

We’re all publishers, but the only thing we have to guide us is common sense. I think now would be a good time for all social networks to come together and codify a framework of simple rules of the road so we can abide, and in turn be more responsible inhabitants of this brave new digital world.

Given these incredibly powerful tools – more potent than anything Gutenberg had in mind – and our thoughts are now public. We spend no time with ideas in our head: keyboard is the new cranium.

Too many people use Twitter like a chat in the pub. I remember back when I was working in newspapers we had a content editor drafted in to make us produce better stories. He came back from court one day with a tale about a man who had been caught with a quantity of drugs, It turns out it was actually rugs. Had that been spoken about among pals in a pub, fair game – but since it made a newspaper with thousands of readers, he didn’t last much longer on our beat.

Same things apply on Twitter – you just can’t go shouting your mouth off.

I was asked to appear on a BBC TV show, The Big Questions, a few weeks ago. That episode featured a debate called Is Social Media Out Of Control? The thing is, things like Twitter used to be very niche. It was a playground for nerds. Now there are more than 200 million active users (half a billion accounts) and the UK has the fourth-largest number of Twitter users in the world, according to Charles Arthur from The Guardian.

Word spreads like wildfire.

And there’s this whole viral thing. Facebook has more than 1.1 billion users. Many people assume it’s safe territory to gossip without libellous ramifications but confusing privacy settings mean more often than not the things you say among friends can be shared to a much wider audience.

Things haven’t changed much since World War 2. Loose lips sink ships, they said. It applies, more than ever, today.

Be careful out there

Be a help, not a hindrance. But don’t stop using it. There are massive opportunities for every user.

I was reading about a company making £30m a year on fitness clothing which wouldn’t have even been successful were it not for social media. @houseofcoates Tweets about the actual house. Temperature, lighting, all that.

And then there’s the latest craze – cat beards. We’d miss so much without Twitter.

If you want to stay safe there’s a Do’s and Don’ts of using Social Media event on Friday June 7 at Hill Dickinson, a commercial law firm on St Paul’s Square in Liverpool.

It’s a free morning workshop.

Call 0151 934 3450 to get your place.

Or you could listen to Yakker

I started this podcast counselling digital businesses. It’s called Yakker, and it features a few pals highly respected in making magic on the internet.

It’s at yakker.co.uk and I wrote about Yakker this week.

Verdict

I still think social media offers unlimited oppoortunities to those who use it wisely. Focus on the niche, attend the needs of every switched-on follower, and you’ll go far.

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

I remember the first time I met DP, co-founder of our fair city’s supercharged digital agency Studio North. We talked about an unlikely meeting of he and the boss of another Studio North, they of several thousand miles west someplace in yee-hah-ra-ra land.

He inspired me. I inspired him. Something was going to happen, further down the line.

No surprise, really. He’s in part at least responsible for cranking out seriously spirit-enhancing community gifts like this one.

Deliciously digital, totally tech

Ultimately Yakker came to be. It’s a podcast with a website, all about things that tick in tech.

It’s rough round the edges, just as that perfect pizza should be. It’s packed with tasty talk and while no horse’s head will end up in your bed, should you choose not to listen you’ll be significantly worse off in lessons unlearned from what’s happening out there in this technology-fuelled world of ours.

When we’ve earned your trust I’ll get together with DP to talk more about the birth of our audible lovechild.

In the meantime join us (DP isn’t yet a mic-hogger though he does dip in occasionally to guffaw or set us straight) and fellow regulars Chris Marsh of Melbourne Server Hosting (@marsh80, one of the chaps on that big picture up there) and Goog-Al Mackin, a head honcho at search marketing shebang The E Word (@almackin, the guy with the wisdom who appeared in pre-shows 1 and 2) on a fairly regular basis from now on.

Episode 1 ‘proper’ is about 20px below. Whaddya think?

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

When we launched it, it cost. A lot of my time went into it.

But I want to give more. I want you to see it. I want you to understand what it takes to create a great video you can share with your followers, and demonstrate your expertise to those customers of tomorrow.

So really, this is all about satisfying me, right? All those wants don’t make a right! But humour me and what you’ll get is 90 minutes of great advice.

Nothing is complicated. As for producing effective web video, it doesn’t take much more than common sense and some serious attention to planning, preparation and promotion. But at the end of the day, if yours is a commitment to sharing your passion, you’re already halfway there.

I put together a playlist of that eight part series here:

Getting Started In Web Video

If you want to take it offline and watch it in some internet-free zone, use something like KeepVid to download the videos, with my blessing. And let me know what you think – down there.

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

I’m prepared to bet you are, though. So listen up and grab yourself a sea breeze.

After this, by Mitch Joel, who is so insightful they named Billy Joel after him*. This is proof Slideshare is great in exceptional circumstances other than for the reason I outline much, much deeper in this parable.

In Sharing Superheroes I was bullish about the potential of Slideshare for companies wanting to grow their authority among their prospective partners in the B2B arena.

But I’m not, any more. Not for those who see it as a magic bullet.

It’s the same with YouTube.

About that light… Photo Credit: marfis75 via Compfight cc

And it’s all because in the internet era, business has become desperate. Increasingly competing against a near infinite number of other distractions, instead of laser-focusing in on  a vastly smaller customer base with the objective of rendering them hyper connected to the message, most are spending all their time, energy and resources on going viral.

It ain’t gonna happen to you. Ever. And

you won’t be an overnight success. You won’t change the lives of millions. You’re wasting your time on that stuff.

Please believe this. It’s important to me, but it’s even more important to you, the cashier at your local bank and if you insist on persisting with this futile mission, the local social security office.

Oil with a scent of snake

It’s the same with everything on the internet. You can buy the courses, buy the hype – but the reality boils down to that spectacular article all about 1,000 true fans.

I’ve been doing some research. And it opens up a bigger can of worms, really. The upshot being, simply being out there is not enough.

Like many people, I have presentations on Slideshare garnering tens of thousands of views.

We shoot like the fish are in barrels, but this is an ocean deeper than your imagination.

Content marketing is just marketing content. To get the pearls, you need to first find the oysters, and that takes more planning and intelligence than getting to the top of search engines or answering frequently asked questions on your website.

Slideshare to me is one of those great metaphors for failing to see the bigger picture.

In the right light

Mitch Joel’s shared presentation is a great example of doing it right. He understands his market, he goes where the fish are, and uses the right bait to reel ‘em in.

That Slideshare preso is his gift to the world, but it’s his hyper-connected followers who get it on a different, vastly more meaningful axis.

Reach or storage?

The 1,000 true fans thing is our goal. Slowly, we work ten-by-ten through our most vaunted customers – using social media as the oil that lubricates these relationships.

To enhance the flavour of this Kool-Aid we hope they will drink, rather than use artificial additives we provide sound proof and reasoning. A backdraft of substance which helps us build trust upon those first dainty moves towards engagement. Which ultimately leads to loyalty, and paydirt.

To be tack sharp at methodically building our tribe of true fans, we need hooks to hang our genius upon.

And that is where the likes of Slideshare and YouTube come in.

You, me, we make Slideshare work for us by using it to provide storage, not reach. We – you, me – are the clever ones.

Thanks to the likes of Slideshare and YouTube, we can

• embed presentations and videos in your LinkedIn profile.
• embed presentations and videos on your website.

I’d wager that with the exception of a handful, this is the only logical way to elegantly and successfully waste your time on these rich media vessels.

YouTube. Millions of moments uploaded every second. Why does yours deserve extra special attention? In among the morass, you have a yearning to go viral. Leave that fantasy in the dumpster, where it belongs.

Using Slideshare and YouTube as facilitators, not destinations, is the path.

On optimising

I spent a few hours on Slideshare recently and I was aghast at how few people had bothered to add their contact details.

Worrying, in that I got the sense people were simply dumping sales slides on there ignorant of what the internet is, and how by simply giving people an email address your chances of being contacted rocket.

Be

• relevant
• absorbing
• factual
• entertaining
• available
• specific

I emboldened that last one because it works hand in hand with our absolute devotion to less. Because ultimately, that is more – right?

I hate multi level marketing as much as the next ethical guy. But I can see the tremendous power it wields when instead of hiring suckers to earn pathetic sums for peddling crap, those further down the pyramid are your devoted customers who receive as much from you as you, they.

Why should they listen?

You is the USP. That uniqueness needs to be unchained and publicised.

I mentioned a kazillion days ago how even by focusing on 0.0005% of the world’s population, you have the chance to build a community of thousands. You are important to them, through your message and your wares.

To me, that’s what Slideshare and YouTube are all about. Activating the interest, creating the conversation, one sliver at a time.

YouTube lets you upload unlimited amounts of video. Slideshare does the same, but with presentations (that might well contain videos from YouTube – the perfect circle of life).

What Slideshare and YouTube let you do is show the people who care, how much you do.

So keep producing those short and longer form pieces of content. Keep producing the presentations and videos, but expose only those your people – they who work with you, inside and out of your organisation – feel have some form of currency in the wider scheme of things.

Where we are now

Modern life is simply an optionally terminal disease in which we delude ourselves that success is about spending more time online than our competition. To those who live otherwise, it’s about step by step methodically following through on this widely-held belief by our customers that the internet has facilitated – or should enable – better, more personal service.

Be better. Be truthful, to yourself. And go incremental. The internet is here to give you the reins.

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

The only route to being hired is by being raw. This guy would rather have a bin man come sign up as his apprentice than a fully fledged bread-crafting genius.

To him the rites of passage to becoming part of the fabric is all about starting from scratch, learning with no preconceptions to create the perfect product. It’s that you don’t have to undo all the nuances and quirks that have built up in that baker through years of habit-forming in pursuit of artisan excellence elsewhere.

Learning the ropes through an intense and long-lasting training programme, these fresh-faced incumbents fast understand that baking is part-passion, part-devotion, all-nature. The way he makes bread isn’t about baking – it’s poetry.

It’s not the bread… Kudos for the photo to wolfgangfoto, via Compfight cc.

To a sceptical outsider, it’s simply a loaf. To the devotees who cram inside his shops, day after day, it’s the meaning of life.

Who do you think the baker cares for most?

Agencies don’t understand

A couple of months ago I had a chat with an inbound marketing agency. The boss was gracious in his honesty that it was impossibly challenging to truly get under the skin of his clients with what little time they could commit in return for the financial resources allocated.

To me, that made perfect sense. As a journalist, I would skirt and skate around and a story would prevail. Then the next one. And another. The bursts were all to which we could aspire. Graduating to becoming a feature writer would mean instead of having half an hour to write a piece, you’d have two hours. They fleshed out the detail, added some colour and gravitas.

And then they, too, moved on.

As the outsider, you have little chance to truly uncover the subtleties of a product, a service, a brand, that ultimately generate profitable, long-lasting, connected customer communities.

Inbound marketing is by its very nature subtle itself. You gently prod and tease the questions and pulse from the customer, and you answer and massage them. And you keep doing that, using all your rich media might.

It takes four years to be that baker. It takes a lifetime to be you.

Can you imagine pitching for the job of representing that baker, or you, to intimately act as the conduit with those you hold dearest?

Agencies stand no chance of being your inbound marketing maven.

If you think they can, you value your business like you do a tin of beans. While many think inbound marketing is unquantifiable, I believe done right, with the passion of that artisan craftsman, it is priceless as a smile.

A smile is a sale

Keep the smile, keep selling.

To the tribe, having that backstage access through your revealing blog, photos and videos, radio shows, physical invitations and live Hangouts, is Christmas.

Many people curious about inbound marketing don’t see what’s at the end of the rainbow. They see the rain of competition, the sunshine of opportunity, but they don’t understand what happens when you see in stereo and the two concoct to produce a journey worth making.

With patience, persistence and passion, you’ll reach that pot of gold. An unswerving, unflappable commitment to your product, to exposing its manifest benefits that matter to your customers of today and tomorrow, is inbound marketing.

Tough love

You have to do the work. But you have staff. And they being your heartbeat, can make it work.

Hiring should no longer be simply about matching candidate to criteria. Every single recruit I’ve made has had to sing their way into the job. Figuratively. If I don’t see the light in their eyes, they’re not coming back.

You can teach skills. Negative, passion. The right peer will never shirk the chance to market your business, any way that works. And that’s magic dust.

Sadly, the agency can never replicate that enthusiasm or potency. But you can.

And your customers will love you for it.

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.

And I don’t want you to think I dish the dirt on my employers. Far from it. He deserved to have intimate relations with that woman and yes, the dry cleaners didn’t do their job.

The problem in this sorry anthem is passion. For years I worked with every ounce of devotion to a single cause. I could see the opportunities, conveyed them at every opportunity. Yet at every junction the signposts were turned the wrong way.

That was then. I’m now happily rooted in a new role, a permanent one, and I have been able to put into practice learnings from those darker times.

And I hope you can, too. Because here they are.

If only these were made of marshmallows… Photo Credit: viZZZual.com via Compfight cc.

I’ve finally bolted the door and drawn the curtain on a long-standing working relationship with a big brand. Said alliance has consisted of a loving, hating series of episodes that has helped me grow in ways I don’t yet understand.

I’m not a muckspreader. I did all my death knocks as a journalist. I’ll leave the bitterness to Nasty Nick.

But I can be wholly constructive to help you avoid the mistakes made in the world of BIG BUSINESS.

1. Don’t fear the shareholder when it comes to social. Man alive, did we have a tug-of-war getting the authority to even autopost new articles to Twitter. Don’t even think about peppering the odd update with a splash of personality. No way, Jose/Joseph.
2. Get your staff involved. I was working with a beast consisting of many, many thousands of employees. All completely talented, all ridiculously experienced. All with some knowledge of what the customer wants, how they want it, and how to blow their minds with something beyond what’s expected. Yet tapping into that resource was harder than finding oil on Mars. Not a Mars bar, smarty pants – the goddamn planet!
3. The big guy didn’t get it. Noone in power really understood what we were doing. And believe me – we communicated the heck out of ourselves and the schizzle we sweated over so hard and dearly.
4. We were in competition with ourselves. When I was employed at this place in the publications team, we were considered the red-headed stepchild of the overarching marketing unit. When I returned as a consultant there were different magazines and different publications teams in different geographical regions of the same company. All producing magazines in isolation. With very little synergy in terms of which features went were. All that disconnect, all that shortage of communication in a communications-focused but fragmented global team. And social media efforts were the responsibility of a small and siloed team who considered themselved demigods. Everyone was singing a different hymn, working to a different agenda. In short, a fucking nightmare.

I don’t want this to come across as a godforsaken rant (apart from that very last sentence).

There were times when things were beautifully orchestrated; a podcast series we created was killer, generating leads and strengthening relationships with existing clients, but I simply couldn’t get access to the right people inside the organisation to tap the internal expertise (which was voluminous) and ultimately the incredible networking potential of a radio series.

That was a majorly crushing blow: if you know me even a small amount, you’ll know I’m a pretty inspirational guy (who writes nice books like Sharing Superheroes about doing better business). I want to do the best for any employer. They have faith in me and by return, I find it necessary to give them my all.

I’m sure there are things here that resonate with you. I know nothing is perfect. But I know we can be more so and that’s why I wanted to share this stuff with you today.

What have you learned you think we should know?

Enjoyed this lesson for content strategy success? Get in touch on Twitter @davethackeray and let me know your thoughts.