Blog by Chas Grundy

Higher Ed Funding: Taking the First, Painful Step

2012-01-17T21:33:49-05:00

Missouri looks to cut funding for higher education by 12.5% next year. On the surface, this seems like it could deal a crushing blow to higher ed institutions (at least, in Missouri). They’re just the latest in a slew of states making similar cuts.

But maybe higher ed needs its funding cut in order to survive. In her book DIY U, Anya Kamenetz describes the economics of higher ed tuition funding. In short, schools raise tuition and governments keep pace by raising funding. She quotes Dewayne Matthews from the Lumina Foundation, who says that “the public has engaged in enablement of these bad behaviors on the part of colleges.”

If you’ve had your budget slashed, you may have heard the terrible and unhelpful advice, “you need to do more with less.” I’ve always disagreed with this and taken a different stance: You need to do less.

Michael Fienen his the mark with his recent imperative, Do Less Better. But it’s not just about our marketing mix – it’s about everything we do. We’re competing for students with expensive amenities and perks (e.g., fitness centers).

So maybe the first step—the painful, ground-breaking, wave-making first step—is to cut higher ed off and force us to focus on the essentials. I doubt it’s the driver behind the Missouri Governor’s budget slashing, but I hope their institutions respond in an innovative way that the rest of us can learn from. Because Missouri certainly won’t be the last state making these cuts.

Do Long Scrolling Pages Work?

2011-12-21T10:35:57-05:00

I’ve been meaning to share this information for a while now, but two recent articles moved me to action. First, Matt Klawitter wrote about how the growing trend in higher ed of using super long, richly designed pages in Scroll is the New Flash. He noted that “without more data, it is too early to determine if these approaches are effective.”

As if in answer, Mike Nolan wrote about how they are using Google Analytics event tracking to observe how users are interacting with their Javascript-navigable pages.

One of the examples Matt uses is the AgencyND-designed ND.edu InDepth stories. At over 12,000 pixels tall, these scrolling monstrosities were a hotly-debated design approach among our team. But we weren’t silly enough to leave it as a guess; we measured the heck out of them.

First, an example

On the right is one of the stories, shrunk down so it would fit on this page without destroying everything else in the article. Click on it to go visit the actual InDepth Story from October.

Do People Scroll on Long Pages?

The first question was whether anyone would scroll and read all that content. Developing anywhere from 4-10 small stories along one theme could easily have been delivered as separate pages. But as they flowed together as one large, feature-length story, we felt the experience was better as one page. So we used Google Analytics event tracking to see whether people were scrolling to each story section.

First, we set up two different event types to measure: ScrolledTo and Pin Clicked.

Each section has a header, and with a bit of Javascript we were able to track whether the user scrolled down far enough to see that header. As the chart predictably indicates, there is drop-off as you go down the page. Interestingly, only 74% of users made it to the first section, which reflects the visitors who didn’t stay to read anything.

	Section	Pageviews	Uniques	% Scrolled to this section
1.	Where the Heart Is	10,659	9,719	74%
2.	Grabbing a Bite	7,898	7,327	56%
3.	Keeping the Faith	7,627	7,065	54%
4.	In the Name of Fun	7,313	6,783	51%
5.	Academically Speaking	6,932	6,473	49%
6.	A Tradition of Giving	6,648	6,222	47%
7.	Good Sports	6,358	5,951	45%
8.	And Our Hearts Forever	5,904	5,613	43%
9.	Comments	5,727	5,442	41%

Special Navigation Tool: Scrolling Content Pins

One problem we found with long pages was that users didn’t know where they were in the story, except for the position of the scrollbars in their browser windows. Unfortunately, some browsers (e.g., Chrome) hide the scrollbar unless you are in the act of scrolling. So that’s not particularly useful.

We developed an interface tool we called content pins, which correspond to each story section and appear next to your scrollbar on the right. Each pin expands to show a bit of the section and let users know where they are in the story, give them a sense of what’s coming up next, and allow them to navigate anywhere very quickly without scrolling. The brilliant Erik Runyon made it an open source jQuery plugin.

What did we learn?

First, about 41% of users scrolled all the way down to the comments section at the bottom. This is higher than I would expect, but it reflects the high quality of the content and the design.

Second, the content pins don’t get used nearly as much (12% of users interact with them) but those who do use them about 3.5 times per story. So they’re a useful tool if you want to use them.

Finally, the long-scrolling (InDepth) pages have an average time on page of just over 5 minutes – much, much higher than the site average.

Unfortunately, we can’t measure whether the reader’s opinion is changed, if the stories have affected Notre Dame’s reputation, or if there will be any further offline action on the visitor’s part. And a major challenge is simply driving users to the stories themselves. But we know that the content is not being lost on users once they get there.

While the long-form articles may appear risky, the format itself is not failing. And it certainly works contrary to the widely-held belief that web users want small nuggets, have short attention spans, and won’t read your content anyway. You just have to give them content they want to read.

Leaving AgencyND

2011-11-11T16:50:33-05:00

In the next couple of weeks, I am moving out of marketing communications and over to the Department of Development at Notre Dame.

My new job will involve starting a new fundraising program within the existing department. It should be a fun and interesting challenge, and it allows me to explore my non-profit interests in a way that I haven’t before.

As regular readers of this blog know, I maintain a separate blog at Non-Profit Chas for all of my non-profit content. I volunteer for several organizations and serve on a couple of boards. I love the challenges and opportunities that come from being entirely mission-driven.

I will continue blogging here, but Non-Profit Chas will see a lot more activity over the coming months.

Over the last six years, I have worked with some of the most brilliant minds in higher ed web. I’ve made good friends over Twitter and at conferences, through collaborations and conversations. The community continues to be one of the brightest spots of our industry.

I’m sad to be leaving AgencyND, but I am very proud of what we have accomplished. As I’ve gone from developer to project manager to director, I’ve seen a lot of changes and realize we’ve come a very long way. But as with any change, this can be an opportunity for rapid improvement and growth. I look forward to seeing what they become in the coming months and years. Fortunately, I will get to continue working with them, albeit as a client.

So here’s a parting thought: for an industry that’s not quite 20 years old, taking place in institutions that are often hundreds of years old, we have much to offer to higher education. We are, if for no other reason than our chosen profession, explorers and innovators and risk-takers. Higher education is changing and we are well-suited to usher that change in and guide our institutions to the future. As the old guard moves on, we find our voices amplified and our minds equipped to face the challenges. We’ve had to fight to be taken seriously, to get the resources to do our jobs, and to demonstrate the value of what we do. As new challenges arise, always keep fighting. As a friend once said, if you’re not making waves, you’re not doing anything important.

Difference Between Creativity and Innovation

2011-11-07T08:44:14-05:00

I once attended a class on innovation and the instructor led with this question: what was the difference between Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison?

Both are regarded as scientists, inventors, and brilliant minds. But where Leonardo left us his journals, drawings, and prototypes of new ideas, Edison left us practical inventions. You might say Leonardo was the creative, while Edison was the innovator.

The classic story of Edison’s search for the right filament for the incandescent light bulb illustrates this nicely. While others had created incandescent bulbs prior to Edison, he sought a better bulb and worked tirelessly to find the right combination of materials and factors to make a bulb that lasted more than a few hours. He (and his lab full of workers) tried thousands of combinations before settling on the long-lasting carbon filament he patented in 1880. Even after he found the one he eventually patented, he continued searching for better materials.

Both Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison are rightfully revered for their contributions. But the way they approached their work can teach us a lesson. Leonardo created new things out of nothing, while Edison methodically revised existing ideas. Leonardo’s genius may be unparalleled, or at least unattainable by most of us. But Edison’s dedication, his use of process, and his commitment are easily emulated. It just takes hard work.

My 1996 Spam Filter

2011-10-26T15:21:19-04:00

When I was a sophomore in high school, I took the PSAT. That’s the “preliminary SAT” – you know, so you can indicate interest in schools, areas of study, demonstrate that you’re a super-genius. Well, I don’t remember how I did but I do remember seeing the results come back in the mail, addressed to Chas Grundyy. They added an extra “y” on the end of my last name, probably because it was manually keyed in back then.

Within a few weeks, I started getting the usual bombardment of college marketing materials. Heavy viewbooks, course catalogs, postcards, and brochures started crowding my mailbox. And all of them were addressed to Chas Grundyy. I threw them all away – they bought my info from the PSAT.

Years later, I started getting email addressed to Chas Grundyy, presumably linked to my email through some massive data warehouse. These were invariably spam.

The funny thing is that I still get these in the mail and in my email. Today I received one, and knew right away to delete it. It’s second nature now. But for a brief moment I paused and recalled that crisp fall day in high school when I discovered my best spam filter.

Leadership and Football

2011-10-23T13:58:22-04:00

This is a guest post by Brian Grundy, my brother and an engineer who works at Boeing Corporation on super-cool projects he sometimes can’t tell me anything about. He’s recently started an internal blog at work about leadership. He’s also a big Notre Dame football fan, and today’s post has nothing to do with yesterday’s game (he wrote it prior to the game).

Guest post by Brian Grundy

I am not your average football fan. Sure, I love a good heart-thumping one-handed-catch-in-the- endzone-display-of-raw-athleticism as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy a more cerebral appreciation to the sport. That’s why, with football season back in full force, so too is my rekindled fascination with systems theory concepts such as emergence and the organizational principles of leadership. Let’s begin with emergence. According to Wikipedia:

Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions

Within the 60 minutes of an American football game, any one moment of action there are a mind-boggling list of variables that directly affect the outcome of the game. Without going into excruciating detail, consider the simplified idea of a single offensive play. At its heart there are 11 players on offense, each with a specific assignment to try to assist or progress the ball into one end of the playing area. On the other side are 11 players who in general are each trying to out-scheme, out-play, or out-technique just one of the 11 offensive players to stop the progression of the ball. Sounds simple right? From there you just add factors like, wind, rain, crowd noise, emotional states, athletic ability, coaching acumen, the pressure of failure, the blinding desire for success—-okay, you get my point. There is nothing simple about all of this. With so many variables, it would certainly seem that anything could happen on any given play. And while that is to some extent true—there are still very predictable outcomes. Some teams are just better than other teams. Why? Well of course there are too many variables to simplify it—better talent, cohesion, but perhaps above all: leadership—or in football parlance “coaching”.

One of the things that consistently fascinates me about football is how the presence or absence of a great coach can drastically change the performance of a team. In 2002 coach Paul Johnson took over coaching for a Navy Academy football team that had only won 1 game in their last 20. That’s 1 win in two seasons of football. His first year as head coach he modestly doubled that success, by going 2-10. But over the next 8 years he won 8 or more games every year and took his teams to 5 straight bowl games. How did he do it? What makes Paul Johnson and other football coaches great coaches? How can one person have so much influence over a team’s success?

What makes the Paul Johnson example such a good one is that Navy’s institutional mission has nothing to do with winning football games. While other big-time college football schools may be able to go out and recruit bigger, more talented kids—Navy is going to have play the hand it is dealt. Navy’s offensive linemen are over 50 lbs lighter than the average Division I school. Their players’ speed, size, and strength just don’t stack up to the recruited athletes who fill out the rosters of powerhouse programs who dream of playing in the NFL. Navy players—typically—do not go on to play in the NFL. And yet, a simple thing like a coaching change and greatness started to emerge. Somehow, in a relatively short time, all the tiny interactions within the program both on and off the field started to equate to winning football games. Football, and especially college football is littered with stories like Paul Johnson’s where a single coaching change has a dramatic effect on the course of a program. According to Robert Nealy of Football Relativity blog, there are a few measurable qualities that make a great football coach, great. I submit that they are the same qualities that make a leader in almost any organization great. Each of them plays a big part in shaping the emergence of greatness from an organization.

Creates a system. Nothing is more vital to an organization’s success than, well, organization. A coach is responsible for defining that system of expectations, goals and priorities, that each member can work towards. The overall goal of every football team is the same: win games. But the system employed is what gives legs to that ambition. Often times it is a simple matter of efficiency—having a system where everyone knows their part and what they are responsible for allows each contributing member of the organization to focus on doing their job really well.
Selects a Staff. While not all organization leaders have the luxury of handpicking a staff, most still have a decent amount of authority over what roles and responsibilities each member of their team will take on. Knowing the strengths, weaknesses, and objectives of your team members/staff is another vital key to creating an efficient organization. A president/manager/coach is often many levels removed from the work efforts they are leading, but by putting the right people in place, he can rest easy at night knowing that progress is being made.
Delegation. – Once the right people are in place, a true leader must be ready to delegate. Trusting your staff to do the right things, and empowering them to do their jobs not only frees the leader up to be more effective, it provides an atmosphere of passion, creativity and interchange where people’s ideas are not overshadowed by a micromanaging boss. So many times a leader or coach ascends to that position by doing something really well: (calling the plays for example). Still—continuing to do the things that got you into that position are not necessarily the keys to being successful at that position. Leading in and of itself requires a skill-set that is often very different from the rest of the positions on the team.
People Skills/Motivation. – the so called ‘soft-skills’. Without these, your effectiveness drops dramatically. People in any organization are likely to feel tired, confused, concerned, apathetic, fearful, isolated, mis-trusted, or just plain unhappy from time-to-time. The mark of a great leader is to be able to affect people’s moods and make them feel empowered, challenged, and appreciated.
Know your Game. – the rest of the qualities described in the Football Relativity blog about what makes a great coach revolve around things like clock-management, play calling, knowing when to challenge a play.. etc. I think the apt metaphor here is to lead effectively you must really know your business. It should be a constant part of your daily routine, to better understand the ins-and-outs of your core business function. As a team lead, it is very difficult to evaluate a team-member’s work without first knowing what it takes to do that job.

As this football season continues, cheer for your team. But if they are not doing well—you must ask yourself: is the right leadership in place?

6 Things I Wish I'd Known 10 Years Ago

2011-10-12T20:14:48-04:00

Inspired by Katya’s post, Six Things I Wish I’d Known 20 Years Ago.

My blog is 5 years old, and I’ve been working professionally in this industry for a decade. Reading Katya Andresen’s blog got me thinking about what I would have told my young self, just embarking on a career (without quite realizing that’s what I was doing).

Find mentors, for they can help you know what you don’t know.

At 22, I started my first company. I didn’t really understand what I was doing with our business. My partner and I were winging it, and we made a lot of mistakes. We learned from those mistakes, but we didn’t always recognize those lessons at the time. Build relationships with smart, experienced people and learn as much as you can from them.

Create and publish – content, tools, ideas.

It took me five years before I started blogging. As I noted in my very first blog post, I was advising clients to blog long before I was doing it myself. I was writing code that would have been useful to others and I was solving problems that others needed solutions for. I should have published those ideas, shared my code, and gotten credit for the work I had done. Experts are people you seek out and hire to solve your problems.

A live product is worth a thousand un-launched ideas.

Ideas aren’t worth the napkins on which they’re sketched.

Ideas aren’t worth the napkins on which they’re sketched. It’s depressing to see a company hit it big with an idea you had and never pursued. Before the dot-com bust, I had written a niche social network and had great success with the small pilot run. I could see stable revenue streams and had a business model that would work. I never went public with it, because I couldn’t finish it out. I believed it had to be perfect before I could go live, and that paralysis cost me a chance at a successful business.

Volunteer early and often.

I’ve written on my non-profit blog about the benefits of volunteering. There are thousands of small non-profits that need help, need new ideas, new blood. In exchange, you get the opportunity to develop new skills by simply volunteering to take on responsibilities. And you get to grow your small, but invaluable network.

Find your passion and become great at it.

If you love your work, you’ll want to do it. You’ll get good at it. And you’ll get paid because you’re good at it. The money follows. So do something you love. Of course, it also helps to look at what people will pay for (it’s a lot harder to get paid to play video games, even if you’re really good).

Plant a tree today.

There’s an African proverb that goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time to play a tree is today.” It’s never too late to make changes that will pay off down the road. Or, you know, plant a real tree.

Real-Time Stats from Google Analytics

2011-10-23T12:34:53-04:00

Seriously? For years, Google Analytics has, by default, shown traffic for yesterday and before. If you adjusted the date range to today, it would provide information but it wasn’t entirely clear how up-to-date that information was.

Today, Google unveiled Real-Time Google Analytics and released it to a handful of accounts. You could request to have it turned on for your account, and within a couple of hours of making that request they turned it on for me.

Live data is addictive

A few months back, OrderedList launched Gaug.es, a real-time web traffic app that looks gorgeous and provides a constant stream of data. We pay for this service because frankly, waiting an extra day isn’t suitable. And while Gaug.es doesn’t provide analysis, it does make it possible to be responsive. In crisis or "holy-crap-this-story-just-blew-wide-open mode, such a tool can be invaluable. Enough that we pay for it.

Watching the flow is entrancing, with numbers climbing and seeing which pages people are on, where they’re going, and where they’re from. The map view is fantastic. Mostly useless, but it sure is addictive.

How would I use this?

Like I mentioned, there are a few obvious uses in crisis mode or when your content goes viral. Responding to blog posts or social mentions can be a great opportunity to capitalize on a story. Or it might be critical to redirecting a crisis by correcting erroneous information.

Another interesting use, as Google mentioned in their announcement, is to know when engagement is dropping off. I’ve often wished I could tell when one of my blog posts is getting a lot of traffic – and when the ideal time would be to fuel the fire by tweeting. Until recently, it’s been hard to even notice such traffic and gauge the traffic patterns.

What’s Missing

If you’ve set up goals, that seems like a great thing to see in your real-time dashboard. But GA doesn’t seem to show that. I’d also love to see a funnel visualization with real-time data.

Finally, a key thing we often need to do is configure event tracking or some custom parameter. These aren’t always successful, and we can miss out on key data because we’ve made a mistake. Google notes how useful the real-time data can be for testing campaign tracking, but seeing events would be wonderful as well. Not everything is a pageview.

So, isn’t this just a flashy object?

If data isn’t actionable, don’t pay attention to it. In other words, if the information you get wouldn’t cause you to take action or do something differently, it’s not useful. And a lot of the real-time data isn’t necessarily useful (whoo-hoo, a visitor from Texas!). But if you’re using Google Analytics strategically, then I’m sure you can imagine strategic and useful ways to use Real-Time.

Have you gotten this beta feature yet, and how do you see it being used?

Design Convergence in Higher Ed Websites

2011-10-12T11:41:27-04:00

If you asked 50 people to design a new roller coaster, what would you get back? Since roller coasters have been around for over 100 years, and most of us have ridden on one or at least seen them, wouldn’t most of the designs be very similar? There are common, established ways to hold the coaster to the track, to push the coaster up a hill, and so on. It’s possible someone would add a new twist, but given that there are plenty of other people tasked with designing innovative and increasingly exciting new roller coasters, these 50 people probably won’t break new ground.

So it is with much of our daily work. How do you organize your institution’s website? What layout do you use? How does the navigation work? Asked to solve any non-obvious problem, a sample of people will converge on very similar answers.

We’re not alone

There are over 4000 higher ed institutions in the United States. With largely similar audiences (prospective students, current students, parents, faculty, alumni, donors, etc.) and goals (recruitment, retention, donations, etc.) we’re certainly not alone in our challenges.

Nowhere is this more evident than at our conferences, where like-minded professionals come together to share knowledge, tell stories, and generally commiserate. And unlike many corporate environments, higher education embraces this sharing. We look at the competition (oops, we use the term “peers” or “aspirational peers”) and compare notes. We even call them up and ask for the inside scoop, which they readily share. Add to this the popular blogs, books, and design galleries we all keep our eye on.

Thus, when faced the same problems we come up with the same solutions. This is what I call design convergence.

A specific example

A few years ago, we did some research on the top 25 institutions’ website layouts (I wish we’d published the results). What struck us was the commonalities – feature area, news, events, audience navigation. All of these sites had similar content and, more surprisingly, very similar layouts. There were only a handful of sites that stood out. Drawn up as wireframes, it was clear that there were only a few homepage layouts in play across the sites.

Our new ND.edu has a slide-down navigation. We’ve done it on other sites, too. We didn’t come up with it on our own – we saw it on King’s College London and Boston University first. But when we worked on improving our navigation usability, that was where we ended up.

Flattery Schmattery

Sometimes people rip off your work, copy your design, and generally steal your ideas. It happens. But I contend this is relatively rare in higher ed. It’s much more common to see sites that borrowed “inspiration,” with similar features, organizational approaches, or design elements.

But it makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s not stealing; it’s coming to the same independent conclusion. I’m certain that most of those teams would defend their process and the hard work that got them to that point. With research, testing, and all the smart people out there is it surprising that we might find the same solutions to our problems? If you think about it, the only surprising thing is the realization that we’re not really that unique – even though we all think we are.

"That Sucks": Negative Feedback after Launch

2011-10-23T12:35:22-04:00

On July 1, we launched ND.edu 4.0. This was a new look and feel for the site, as well as a conceptually different approach to the homepage and navigation. But the biggest change was a fundamental shift in who our audiences were. I’ll elaborate on these later, but that’s not the point of this post. The point? Every time we make a major change to the design of the ND.edu homepage, we get feedback. And it’s overwhelmingly negative.

Back in August 2007, when we launched the ND.edu with the Flash carousel, we were really proud of it. But people were surprised by the new site. The old site had been up for about eight years, and it wasn’t a very effective tool for us. To many of our visitors, though, they knew the old site. They could find what they needed and they were accustomed to it. The new site changed a lot, including navigation and content. Suddenly, people were shocked and their business was disrupted. (The site also launched on the first day of classes, which made matters even worse.)

To my group, that’s ancient history. We’ve learned our lessons and moved on. So when we came up on our July 1 launch goal, we knew we needed to address it differently.

As I mentioned earlier, the new site had a new approach to our audiences. Most notably, we knew that our internal audiences (faculty, staff, and students) represented a high proportion of our traffic. Other internally-focused online tools weren’t meeting their needs so they went to ND.edu to do their business. This diluted the main website because it had to address that many more audiences. Language, resources, navigation – all had to accommodate a wider range of users.

The Feedback

We prepared our internal audiences over the course of several months with a series of emails, articles, and meetings. The new internal tool was launched a month before the new ND.edu. There was time for transition.

When we launched, the feedback came flooding in. For a site that gets somewhere around 500k visits per month on the low end, we expected a quick response. “I think it’s just ugly” and “How could you do this????” were tame responses. Some 75% of the responses were negative.

After further analysis, it was clear that the vast majority of the negative responses were internal users who didn’t like the change to their usage patterns. They didn’t like having to go somewhere else. But it was satisfying to see comments like “now I’m going to change my homepage to inside.nd.edu” because that was the whole point.

Lessons Learned (good and bad)

Knowing our strategy meant being firm in our decisions. We didn’t waver when we felt the pressure on moving internal users out. We were right and we stuck to our guns.

Listen to feedback and respond to each one. One of our team members personally replied to every email we got. Sometimes it was a generic “thanks” but most of the time it was to direct the user to the new location, answer a quick question, or take the suggestion and report back to the team. One major issue we discovered was with the new internal resource – people still struggled. Within hours, it was fixed and the complaints about that issue went away.

Roll out early and you’ll have more time to anticipate the real issues. We didn’t publicize the change as early as we could have, and I think that meant there were many users who didn’t get hit with our rollout plan. Instead of dealing with the real issues, we had to wade through feedback about changes that should have been communicated.

Anticipate and prepare for the feedback you’ll get. We met and brainstormed all the complaints we might get, and developed responses to them. This exercise forced us to think hard about our decisions and was highly beneficial. We compiled our preemptive FAQ and we shared it with our bosses so they were armed to defend the site as well.

Celebrate your accomplishment. Our whole team came back to the office after dinner and we had a launch party. Some spouses joined us and we listened to music, played video games, and generally joked around a bunch. Once the site was live, we did QA testing and watched the initial feedback. Oh, and we TPed our boss’s office just before he came in to join the party.

Afraid of Letting People Work from Home?

2011-10-23T12:35:45-04:00

Last year during a higher ed panel discussion, I mentioned that most of my team works from home several days a week. In fact, sometimes an employee is only in the office one or two days a week.

This immediately generated questions about productivity, how I keep tabs on their work, and whether HR approves of this policy. (What HR doesn’t know won’t hurt them, I said, but in our case HR knows and takes a similar stance to mine.)

Today, I saw an infographic about the rise of mobile workers enabled by increasing use of mobile devices. And recently, there was this Dilbert cartoon poking fun at traditional work setups:

Behind the Fear of Letting Employees Work from Home

The biggest reason managers are afraid of these kinds of arrangements is the lack of control. Managers can’t see their employees working, can’t pop in to make sure they’re being productive, and can’t measure the time they’re spending. For a long time, I got advice to the effect of “be the first one in and the last one out.” Presumably, working hard means working a lot of hours. And obviously, this only happens in the office.

The problem I found, in my early years of employment, was that I often went home and continued working. There wasn’t any difference between the office and my living room. In fact, I sometimes logged more hours working at home during nights and weekends than I did during the regular work schedule.

Drawbacks to Working from Home

The first problem is the blurring of work and home. Television, your family, the refrigerator – these can all help pull you away from your focus on work. Not everyone is disciplined enough to balance this, but it helps to create a specific work space and set expectations for yourself and your family about when you’re working. I’ve heard it helps to dress up as if you’re going in to work, though I rarely do this unless I have a video chat. Comfort is one of the biggest benefits, in my mind. It’s also possible to go the other way – to work extra hours without really intending to – and find yourself out of balance.

A second problem is the lack of organic, collaborative interaction with your colleagues. This continues to be a struggle in our office. Sometimes you need a quick meeting with people, and the phone or video chat are poor substitutes. And frankly, meetings where one person is present on the phone often leads to talking over each other, misunderstanding tone, and altering the emotion in the room. Technology hasn’t perfectly addressed this yet.

Overcoming Our Fears

My policy is that as long as you get your work done, hit your deadlines, and are reachable and responsive – it doesn’t really matter when or where you work. If those aren’t happening, then working from home might be the problem. Or it could be something else – and that’s our job as managers to address. Simply being in the office certainly isn’t a cure-all for productivity ills.

We can’t police what everyone is doing all the time. And if we’re honest with ourselves, does it really matter? What matters is the result: I need good (no, great) work done and I need it on time. If you take a break to write a blog post or watch a YouTube video, did it stop you from getting your job done?

As they say, work isn’t a place you go but a thing you do.

Yes, You Should Chase Shiny Objects

2011-10-23T12:36:35-04:00

If Google does something, we all notice. If a hot, new social network hits, we all notice. So this week, the world is a-buzz with the latest social network, Google+.

If you’re reading my blog, you’re probably well aware of Google+ and probably already have your invite. You’ve also likely started forming an opinion, whether or not you’ve actually used the site.

And if you’re a cynic, like me, you’re thinking, “Great! Another social network. What makes this special?”

Here’s the thing: it’s ok to be intrigued or cynical.

We can’t very well speak to the possibilities and pitfalls without participating.

Recently, I’ve written about what a waste of time social media can be for organizations and businesses that don’t have their business and marketing fundamentals down. And Google+ is part of that.

But for us marketers – those of us who have to help those clients – our job is to make damn sure we know what we’re talking about. So that means checking out every new tool and exploring potential uses. It means reading articles and blogs about Google+ and seeing what works for companies and what doesn’t. It means forming a well-informed and well-considered opinion.

And that means using it. We can’t very well speak to the possibilities and pitfalls without participating. So go ahead and take a look. Decide for yourself. Just don’t let the shiny blind you to the fundamentals.

Social-Media-as-Savior Syndrome

2011-10-23T12:37:09-04:00

New term, you heard it here first.

SMASS: Social-Media-as-Savior Syndrome.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a return to business fundamentals and away from the eager puppy focus that many of our colleagues have to social media.

Then I presented to a group of marketing professionals at “social media club” and told them Social Media is a Waste of Time.

I’m not the only one saying this, of course.

Peter Shankman writes in Business Insider:

Social media is not â€œcool.â€ MAKING MONEY IS COOL. Social media is simply another arrow in the quiver of marketing, and that quiver is designed to GENERATE REVENUE.

And here’s Jay Baer, who’s saying much the same thing, though he’s also defending the social media industry as still maturing but has value:

“It just means that there are a variety of sophistication levels in the social media services business, the same way there are levels of sophistication in accounting, law, plumbing, auto repair, psychiatry, plastic surgery, tattoo application, and almost any other service.”

All of this reminds me of a great quote for which I have no source:

“Communications is like marketing, but with no accountability.”

Maybe it’s time we start thinking about social media in this context, and asking ourselves if we’re marketing or just “communicating.”

Should there even be a backchannel?

2011-10-23T12:37:36-04:00

At major conferences, there are always attendees to blog, tweet, and chat about the conference while it’s happening. This is known as a backchannel.

Many conferences and events share official Twitter hashtags (e.g., #eduweb) to help attendees find each other. At Railsconf a few years ago, someone built a tool that pulled it all together and displayed it in a real time visualization.

But that’s in tech-centric conferences. In other events I’ve attended, I don’t see any many laptops and phones out. A handful of people are tweeting, but there’s very little backchannel.

I’ve been watching the audience more while I speak. There are usually a few people with their phones or laptops out. Are they tweeting or doing email? Are they taking notes or screwing around on Facebook?

I find that I focus my attention on people who are engaged – paying attention to me and interacting. There’s eye contact, nodding, and they laugh at jokes. The people on their phones seem distant, disconnected from the event they’re at. It seems rude.

I’ve also noticed that I’m less engaged when I’m live tweeting. I hear the audience laugh and I look up quickly, wondering what I just missed. I was too focused on capturing a great quote and posting it somewhere. Am I getting the most out of the presentation?

Do you tweet at conferences? Have you been annoyed by attendees who are on their laptops or phones the whole time?

Is Social Media a Waste of Time?

2011-10-23T12:37:58-04:00

Yesterday I taught a workshop on social media to a group of small business owners. Halfway through the session, I realized that teaching these folks about social media was all wrong. They didn’t need to learn about making friends on Facebook or video blogging on YouTube. Half the room didn’t have a website.

What they needed was marketing help.

So we changed directions halfway through and talked about audiences, goals, and measurement. People shared stories about things they’d tried that worked (including someone who was doing some really smart SMS marketing). And we looked at some of the websites people did have and gave feedback.

In the end, social media is just a tactic. And for many of the tools and for many kinds of businesses, it provides little or no marketing value. We often describe social media as a party, one in which you have to know the right social rules and expectations in order to fit in. And experienced social media practitioners advise our clients not to be the guy who shows up at the party to sell.

So the question is this: when is it ever ok to sell at the party? At best, the relationships you form at the party are what will lead to a potential business opportunity. But let’s torture the metaphor just a tad more and ask what business markets itself by going to parties?

Now I’m not saying that social media never works for businesses. There are wonderful benefits for customer service and support, business networking, and communications. But the greatest use of social media is to amplify word-of-mouth. And that brings us back to the beginning: the best way to market your business is to be remarkable.