As online marketers, we aim to cultivate emotional connections online. Sure, we can gain followers, drive likes and comments on Facebook posts and even get a retweet or two, but unless we are able to get consumers emotionally invested in something, our efforts are always short term.

Sometimes, it pays to take those experiences offline. Recently, TheNextWeb reported that a consultancy that teaches businesses to use Facebook is taking their show on the road. Social Bizzle is riding a van to different locations across the UK to gain more one-on-one interaction with small business owners while providing those services for free. Why would a digital company that makes its money helping others grow online relationships go to all this effort? Because sometimes, to really grow and nurture a business, you have to have those in person interactions.

An Doggie Style Influencer Experiment

One of my main clients is in the pet food industry. Last October, we discovered a large dog blogging convention happening just down the road from us called Barkworld. Knowing that we would potentially be reaching out to this group of people for future influencer programs, we decided to leverage our home court advantage.

The night before the conference began, we hosted an Opening Night Tweetup at Hotel Indigo in Midtown. It gave all the pet owners attendees to bring their dogs to a cocktail hour and have the opportunity to get to know each other before the “official” networking started. Many of the attendees were able to build relationships with others but also were able to get to know a few of us even better. We were able to cultivate those in-person relationships with influencers in the pet space over time and when we ended up running a few influencer outreaches for product launches, they were willing to help. The cost of that in-person experience was far exceeded by the value of earned media our clients garnered.

Some people would even go as far as calling that ROI.

Engauge was the catalyst driving emotional connections between people at an event, which resonated more than a gimmicky coupon or promotional product in a swag bag. We were reminded about the value of a personal touch.

In a digital world, do in-person meetups still matter? Will we rely all on connecting on a computer? Or will in-person experiences actually increase in value because we’re so digitally minded?

To achieve mastery at something, you should invest 10,000% of yourself into right?

That also means reading every next business book, marketing tip, or  other non-fiction “how-to” starter guides on how to be better at your career. While I really enjoy these types of books and gain a lot of new wisdom and learnings out of them (Switch is probably my favorite book like this), there is a lot of value to curling up with a good fictional story from time to time.

Reading Fiction Makes You Socially Smarter

The same way a flight simulator helps you learn how to navigate a plane, reading fiction could help you simulate different social situations. Living in certain situations vicariously through characters in a book, you are able to navigate how these personas handle different challenges and situations presented to them throughout stories.

Neuro studies show that when you recognize an emotion in a fictional character, those same emotional neurons in your brain are triggered to mirror those emotions. This mirroring helps you become more empathetic and ultimately more socially intelligent. It helps people be able to connect with something larger than themselves, which helps them connect better with people in social situations.

As career paths lie just as much as how you are able to handle social situations as much as it does what you know, this building of social intelligence is a vital key to success.

Helps You Become a Better Storyteller

Whether you are in marketing pitching a client, a new grad vying to gain full-time employment or just trying to communicate as a leader to your employees, storytelling skills are crucial. I work in a field that completely relies on your ability to tell a story (though most call it “convey a message”). Fictional books thrive on compelling story telling, keeping readers locked in to keep turning the page.

Keeping your audience captive, even if it’s just a powerpoint deck that pitching new business, has to have this same level of compelling storytelling. If you lose your audience in the room, there’s no way you’ll win that business (or the new job or that organic social media growth etc).

It’s Fun

Honestly, your brain needs a break once in a while. Fiction, to me anyway, doesn’t put my brain under the same type of stress that work does. I remember in college when I took a semester-long class on CS Lewis, reading one book of his a week. If you’ve ever read anything CS Lewis that isn’t a Chronicles of Narnia book, you know how deep and thought provoking his writing can be. Needless to say, one book a week was like a mental bootcamp for me on top of all the other schoolwork.

About halfway through the semester, we got to read a fiction book in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The book took me about two hours to read – and I really enjoyed it. Taking that time to just go on a mental vacation helped me power through the rest of that class with an A. Just like you need rest when exercising or cross-training on a bike or swimming when training to run, you brain needs to switch up. Reading fiction still gives your brain that exercise without burning you out.

What about you? Does reading fiction help you?

What are you reading right now?

If you look at history, the places we do the most communicating are typically ones where we try and “escape” brands. Not saying that we changed communication platforms as a result of marketing, but it probably acted as a catalyst for movement.

Snail mail was overrun by direct mail ads. They started out as an effective medium and lost value over time. Telemarketers corrupted our phone lines. Email now has folders marked for spam. Internet ads used to be the most effective marketing medium in terms of click through rates – but now if you can get a 1% click-thru rate you’re a marketing genius.

Is it really that brands interrupt our lives and are unwelcome? Do we actively try to hide from marketing messages any way we can? Is the reason platforms like Path are emerging, since they currently have no marketing pushes inside the platform?

I don’t think so. I think generally we would welcome brands, provided those brands add value.

Add Value, Not Noise

Take a look at the Super Bowl. Over 100 million people tune into watch it. Are 100 million people that interested in the teams playing in the game? Of course not. They tune in because they are interested in seeing the newest ads that come out – most of which have never been seen before. The ads, unlike most of the year, are highly entertaining. They provide value to users in two ways:

• Entertainment
• Exclusivity

Providing Value in Functionality

Image via Wikipedia

The one thing I know about most of the other individuals in my profession…they’re passionate about what they do. It’s a good thing. Working in marketing, especially digital, is fast paced and rapidly changing. You have to really love your field of work to be willing to keep up with all of the changes always taking place.

However, is there such thing as too much of a good thing? I believe so. It may seem fruitful to always be reading the next big business book, the newest inspirational Seth Godin book and not leave time for anything that has nothing to do with your industry. Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes 10,000 hours to hit mastery skills, it only makes sense to achieve that level as fast as possible right?

Not all the time. Sometimes a more well-rounded approach works as well.

Advice From Outsiders

I read an interesting article by Jonathan Baskin in AdAge not long ago about two different conversations he had with two CMOs. One CMO was always checking his Blackberry, always chased the latest fad and copying his competitors trying to chase their successes. He notes that this individual has won marketing awards but sales at his company were average at best.

Then he describes another CMO who was also busy (it took three weeks just to schedule an hour long chat) but how both parties took copious notes and they talked on several subjects, some that touched marketing….but some that didn’t. Baskin notes how this CMO was actually the more successful of the two and was one he wanted to seek out for another meeting.

What’s the differentiator?

CMO #2 had a more well rounded approach to learning. Sure, he took the time to learn from marketing greats and smart people in the industry. However, he also took the time to learn things that not only made him a good marketer but a more interesting person. He invested time in learning things outside of his day-to-day body of work. He took time to invest himself in a world that didn’t involve branding and selling.

Learning More About the World, Not Just Your Craft

As weird as this may sound, I think it’s easy to forget that we’re not selling to other marketers…but to people. People with all different tastes, interests and perspectives on the world around them. Knowing marketing best practices are good to have in your arsenal. However, taking time to learn more, outside of selling products and driving Likes, will help you better understand that world around you. The world that you’re trying to sell to, not necessarily win awards from (though awards are a good thing too!).

The executive VP at my old company and I didn’t always see eye to eye. However, one thing he drove in me from day one that will pay off was learning a little about everything. He talked about reading everything, from fiction books to books about science, art and history. I will say, he had some base of knowledge on almost any subject presented to him. His marketing acumen, in terms of reading people, was pretty good.

There’s even research done that people who read fiction are smarter and more well-rounded, socially savvy individuals. Think about that before you read your 10th straight business book.

Preaching to the Choir

This is advice I need to take myself. Getting my head out of social marketing and coming up for air once in a while will be good for me. I know after a marketing-free vacation I come back to work sharper. Making a point to see what’s going on around me will help me be better at my job in the long term.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

What do you think? Is there a line between passion and unnecessary obsession?

I rarely take a polarizing stance on a site idea, because who am I to judge? However, I felt like making an exception.

Over the last week, I’ve had several of my co-workers tell me about Gentlemint. In a nutshell, a few guys got together and didn’t like the fact that Pinterest seemed to be women dominated…so they made their own site where men could pin things. It too is in private-betamode and is invite only. It’s shares the same “not going to be brought down by the wo-man” mentality that fueled our own Board of Man. However, I feel it’s more of a “me too” effort and not really anything innovative.

Not Anything New

Gentlemint isn’t anything new. It’s Pinterest, except “for men.” Functionality-wise it shares the same features for the most part. It’s makes about as much sense as saying “Facebook has too many college students. Let’s make our own Facebook.” Social content is what you make of it. You can follow who you choose to follow and filter content accordingly (though filtering is easier to do on some sites than others). I don’t see any other big differentiating aspect to Gentlemint other than the gender targeted angle (although females have been allowed access into the site).

The Gentlemint guys don’t feel the act of pinning is less masculine, just the content. That’s only a temporary thing. The early adopters of the site in this case just didn’t happen to be tech/marketing folks but women interested into that Etsy-ish content.

Pinterest can be whatever you want to make it. If you’re tired of DIY crafts and fashion, then don’t follow those boards. You can provide whatever content you want on Pinterest, organize and share your interests, and eventually like-minded people will come follow you. Like what @juliacantor told me before we helped create Board of Man, “if you don’t like the content on Pinterest, change it. Do something about it.” I feel like we did.

Lack of Critical Mass

The one thing Pinterest has, especially now, is critical mass. There are over 7 million people using the site right now. The odds of being able to find people who share the same content interests as you are increasing with the user count. The momentum swinging Pinterest’s direction is overwhelming. There are a lot of copycat sites, most of which I don’t see reaping long-term dividends. Gentlemint included.

Men and Women Are Allowed to Share Similar Interests

The one thing I’ve really enjoyed about Board of Man is that I’ve been able to watch people connect through it. Sure the Board of Man is very heavily concentrated in male-related humor, beer, bacon and Sean Connery. However, I’ve seen people connect on common interests through the board. Since our board has a TON of contributors (collaboration is an awesome feature for boards BTW), there is a lot of variety in what people pin.

Board of Man isn’t a move to dominate Pinterest. It’s mainly a place for guys to “hang out” on Pinterest. It helps get males off the bench on the site and realize that there is a place for them on the site. That said, it’s okay for men and women to share similar interests on Pinterest. For example, some guys really enjoy cooking or baking, so the recipes they see are things they genuinely may be interested in. Other guys are more fashion oriented and may share those interests with other female users. Some females may have a real penchant for bacon and can celebrate that with other dudes.

There’s a place for everyone on Pinterest. If your niche doesn’t exist inside of it, carve one out. Attack the white space. People will follow, I promise.

Who knows, Gentlemint could take off. If it does, my hats off to those guys. It definitely shows a shift towards the art of manly pinning and I feel we share the same sentiment that guys can pin. However, remember that Pinterest was originally created by dudes.

What do you think? Is Gentlemint innovative or just another Pinterest copycat site?

Note: @calebgardner shared a similar rant on his blog today as well. Check it out at The Exceptional Man

The other day I talked about the Board of Man’s television debut. That’s just a snapshot of some of the cool stuff happening at my office right now. What other forms of awesomeness are taking shape at Engauge?

Google Plus

Now that there’s a swirling controversy and discussion around Google+ and its impact on SEO, it’s probably even more important to learn more about the platform. What’s Engauge’s POV on the subject? @socialdivo and @JM_Allgrownup led an effort putting together our first “skinny” paper outlining our agency perspecitve on Google’s first legitimate stab at being social. You can see the report on our website or download it here.

Facebook Studio Awards

A couple of Facebook promotions put together by teams here at Engauge are now submissions to the Facebook Studio awards. The first was our agency’s efforts promotion Cow Appreciation Day for Chick-Fil-A‘s Facebook page. The campaign incorporated a QR code scanned in store that directed fans to a teaser video about the event. Users were also invited to either download printable cow costumes or download an iPhone app to viturally share cow costumes for fans who couldn’t physically participate in the event and were able to share those photos via Facebook. The effort received 91 million Facebook impressions and 95,000 Likes and Comments.

In addition to the Cow Appreciation Day campaign, our agency also has an entry in the Facebook Studio Awards for work done on the Reese’s Mini launch.This launch told the story of Reese’s Minis through a series of interactive Facebook posts and vintage poster art. The effort helped garner over 40,000 tab views in less than a month as stands as Reese’s best performing social media campaign to date.

You can check out more details about Chick-Fil-A’s Cow Appreciation Day here and the Reese’s Mini Launch here. Do me a personal favor and Like or Comment these campaign entries. The judges smile on entries with a lot of engagement

In a nutshell, I work with a lot of rockstars. Good job Engauge team!

So we started Board of Man as an experiment this past October, thanks to a conversation with @juliacantor. Now, sitting at well over 70,000 followers, the Board of Man has garnered attention from the media outlets across the country.

The NBC affiliate KSDK in St. Louis called me up and asked about the growing trend of men using Pinterest after hearing about The Board of Man on the interwebs. Here’s the story they ran this morning.

Just don’t make fun of my phone voice. I sound a little creepy. It was early in the morning when we spoke.

Thanks to Sara Dayley of KSDK St Louis for reaching out to me and featuring our new hobby. You can see the full write-up here. In addition, this blog Brain Wads (though misspelled) makes its television debut mention as well.

Also, thanks to the wisdom of @gumboshowjoe, you can now tell your friends about the Board of Man through www.BoardOfMan.com.

Where else do you all see guys taking off on Pinterest?

UPDATE: The team at 6Wunderkinder had an amazing response time (via email, comments and tweets) that I now have early access. Those guys rock.

Everybody is talking about SOPA and afraid that the Mayan calendar was really referring to the end of the Internet and not actually planet Earth. (Quick poll…how many people do you think actually know what the SOPA initials stand for?)

Now that SOPA day is over, we need something new to protest. I think my new stance is this: I really really need an invite to the new Wunderkit platform.

I’ve been a huge fan of Wunderlist for a long time, before it was cool. I’ve even written blog posts about it here here and hey, even here. It’s been one of my go-to productivity tools for the longest time. From watching the demo video below, it seems like it would be just about everything I’ve looked for in my quest for a productivity platform.

It also seems like Wunderkit achieves what social productivity should look like. The integration with Facebook friends and being able to invite anyone to the platform and integrate them with different tasks and projects.

What Would I Do With Wunderkit?

I would definitely leverage it in my client work at Engauge, helping organize and juggle all the different digital projects I have going on at one time. In addition, I’d use it to help plan out my wife and I’s one-year anniversary trip in August and help plan outings and events for our house church’s weekend fun. The features of Wunderkit definitely wouldn’t go to waste.

The bottom line is this: Wunderkit is still in beta and I’m waiting on an invite. I would love to put this to good use and write blog post after post about how it helps me stay together. Unfortunately, I don’t have one. All I have is this invite code here: bit.ly/yRRTPW

So really, when you get down to it, this blog post is self-serving. I know I could send tweets and emails asking for earlier access but hey, a whole blog post couldn’t hurt right? At least it’s honest. I love Wunderlist and can’t wait to get my hands onto Wunderkit. I know @leesnewton is too.

How about you all? Anyone been able to use it yet?

We all strive for “the good life” it seems like. The American Dream. We try and find that job that we can clock in and clock out, pay the bills and eventually be able to live the easy life. Is there anything wrong with that?

Not necessarily. Comfort is a good thing. It makes all the hard work worthwhile when everything is said and done. There is a balance in achieving and really enjoying those comfort moments and staying in those comfortable moments to the point of our detriment.

On a plane ride back home last week I finished up “The Flinch” by Julien Smith. He talks about how we are all given that natural reflex, “The Flinch,” that protects us from danger. It’s a helpful thing…but has taken a larger role in most of our lives than we think. Julien says that the flinch helps us from avoiding simply “uncomfortable” situations more often than it does protecting us from legitimate danger. The main point of the book is that when we avoid that discomfort, we fail to grow and really live. I believe that.

Discomfort Is A Good Thing

Not long ago Michael Hyatt posted in his blog his thoughts about why we should embrace discomfort. He draws his inspiration from Dean Karnazes with his quote (that is also in Hyatt’s post):

“Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.”

It’s facing that discomfort, those moments of insecurity head on that we grow. I remember running cross country and track in high school and college, it was the painful runs that made me better. I remember going through all my classes with this nagging fear in the back of my mind about how that’s afternoon’s workout was going to hurt. However, the more I stared that pain in the face, the faster I got. Along with that, I went from being intimidated by almost everybody on my team and not making the team one year to being a vital scorer the next.

Now, I’ve been blessed with a job where you can’t afford to be comfortable. As many of you who read this blog and also work in digital, you know it’s a rapidly moving place. You can’t rest on your laurels but have to keep looking ten steps ahead, trying new methods, testing new platforms and not being afraid of failure is something we have to face every day. Throw in challenges with client needs, being knee deep in work and having those days where “things just aren’t going right for me”, it’s a job that makes me face discomfort…but in a good way. It’s a place that helps me grow and where I have a lot of encouragement and pushing from the people around me every day.

How To Work Through That Wall of Discomfort

In “The Flinch,” Julien suggests exercises like taking a coffee mug and shattering it on the floor or taking a cold shower. Some people do it through exercise (something I try to do). Other ways I do it is something random like playing ping pong at work, especially those much better than I. Being down my a lot of points is discouraging and not being “the best” is not in my comfort zone. However, keeping my head down and not giving up helps me not mentally back down and keep playing like I still have a chance. Another way is trying to get rid a lot of my own personal items like clothes, movies etc that I don’t really need and looking at what is really “necessary” to have around our apartment. I’m hoping these simple exercises have a positive carryover to other parts of my life.

I know that you shouldn’t take a risk for the sake of taking a risk but sometimes there are risks and uncomfortable situations that really help us grow.

Does “The Flinch” hold you back from reaching your potential? What do you to to face fear and uncertainty (no matter how big or small)?

The Flinch is a book part of Seth Godin’s Domino Project. You can download it for free here. 

While on one of our holiday trips I was introduced to a new company – The Duluth Trading Company – on YouTube. Their ads are short, simple, creative and hilarious. Here’s one of the first videos that I saw from their company.

What makes this an awesome marketing effort?

Identifies a Problem

The video identifies a problem that we are all too familiar with, whether we’ve fallen victim to it ourselves or not. The Duluth Training Company identifies the epidemic of “plumber’s butt” but doesn’t just stop there.

Solves Said Problem

The Duluth Trading Company tells the viewer how their product, the Long Tail T, will help solve the problem of plumber’s butt. It not only says “hey our product helps” but also gives a step by step demonstration on why their product is effective. There is an undeniable educational element in this video.

Call to Action at the End

Not only does the Duluth Trading Company tell you how well their product works in solving a problem, using a step-by-step demonstration but they also give you a call to action. At the end of the video, they tell the consumer to go to their website and order their own Long Tail Ts and effectively remedy cases of plumber’s butt that may be happening in their own lives. It’s amazing how often something simple as a Call to Action can be easily overlooked.

Targeted Appropriately

You can tell that the video is tailored toward their demographic – men. Not only men but men who are less concerned about fashion and more concerned with functionality in their clothing. These videos speak to this demographic perfectly. They don’t try and make a “viral video” but instead make videos that are tailored toward the needs of their target market.

And yes, this is a real company.

The marketing efforts of the Duluth Trading Company show that sometimes the simplest thing can make the biggest difference. I would love to see how many purchases are made as a result of people coming to their website through YouTube. It would be a great case study in social ROI.

In case you are still not a believer, here’s how Duluth Trading Company jeans stand up to an angry beaver.

What other simple concepts have you seen out there lately?