The original lesson on leading was as follows:

12.  If you’re not a leader, don’t even bother.  Your writing will show it.  The best bloggers are natural leaders and exude confidence.  You have to be if you hope to stand out in a world of infinite choice.  It’s basic sociology, why else would anyone listen to you?

Let’s look at Jackie’s reaction to this:

Forgive me for this generalisation, but I don’t have an image of bloggers as leaders. I picture the average blogger as someone who enjoys their own company, with no desire to lead anyone.

Jackie is right – the average blogger may not have a desire to lead anyone.  And due to this, their content will remain in perpetual obscurity and they will never find the path of rapid growth.  Think of the most popular writers or bloggers in your niche of choice – they are at the top due to the fact that their thoughts are worth following.  In many cases, their leadership ability can actually trump their content.  People stick around because they are being lead down a desirable path and trust what is coming next.

She goes on to say:

I would describe myself as quiet and thoughtful, not a natural leader – saying that, I do end up leading lots of things, but this is more due to the fact that no one else will volunteer, rather than any aching desire to run things!

In essence, Jackie is finding that blogging is bringing out her inner ability and motivation to lead.  What an amazingly great thing.  To create content is to lead and be an influential force.  In this case, Jackie is leading some incredibly interesting conversations about books.  Consider that most who read books never go as far as to publish a thing about them, instead counting on people like Jackie to help guide their decisions on what to read next.

Bloggers as a group are confident and elicit the qualities of leaders.  Consider some stats from the 2009 year’s state of the blogosphere that apply to leadership:

• Bloggers do agree their medium is ascendant and 69% agree that blogs are getting taken more seriously as information sources.  This implies that bloggers see the medium as a leadership platform.

• 70% of bloggers say that they are better known in their industry because of their blog.  In other words:  bloggers are actively trying to be leaders in their industry.

• 15% say that they have more executive visibility within their company as a result of blogging.  So at least some bloggers are successful at reaching leaders organizationally.

• 15% say they are paid to give speeches on the topics they blog about.  This is a huge leadership opportunity afforded by blogging.

• 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry.  So brands themselves are achieving success at establishing leadership at the company level in addition to the personal level.

This data backs up that many are using blogging as part of their leadership strategy.  In fact, I would argue the act of creating content for groups of people with a common interest is  leading them.

What did other bloggers have to say in response to Jackie’s question:  do you think leaders make better bloggers?

Meagan says:

I would have to disagree that you need to be a leader to be a blogger. I do think it helps, though. I’m very much a follower and a quiet one at that, and I can tell which bloggers are leaders, or at least are more so than me. They’re always organizing events, challenges, and so on. I assume no one would really want to participate in anything I put forward (which I know is silly) so I don’t bother. I don’t necessarily think it’s my writing that suffers, but it’s more of a community involvement thing. I’m happy to be involved in the community but I know I’ll never take a leadership role in it.

Sandy says:

That is an interesting question. Most of my life, I led something…groups, departments, teams, etc. When I quit working, I swore I didn’t want to lead another damn thing in my life. I wanted to rest, and follow quietly. It didn’t really work out that way though. Do I think it makes any difference in the blogging world? I don’t think so. I’ve met people who are this close to being a hermit, but when they start talking about a topic that is their passion, they have all kinds of confidence and they inspire. Some of the best writers never came out of their caves. So why would it be any different with bloggers? In fact, blogging (the act of sitting at a computer and communicating) lends itself to introverted people being able to do their thing without face-to-face interaction. There are alot of leaders out there that can’t sit still long enough to string three sentences together. They would just make their assistant do it!

Trish says:

Someone else pointed out that the article was specifically talking about professional bloggers/industry bloggers. However, I think the points made could certainly be applied to book bloggers.

As far as being a leader…well, I wouldn’t say you *have* to be a leader to be a blogger. But it all depends on what your goals are for your blog. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a leader. But do I jump in if no one else is volunteering? Yes. Would I rather sit back and let someone else do it? Absolutely!

It’s hard to say what’s most important. What makes various bloggers successful (and here’s I’m thinking of bloggers like Dooce, PioneerWoman, Pro Blogger, Seth Godin, etc) varies depending on what they’re providing. But they all provide *something* that people connect with. If you’re providing people something they can connect with, then I think you’ll be successful. You might not get millions of readers, but you *will* get people who look forward to what you have to say. To me, that’s when you’ve succeeded.

What do you think?  Is leadership a required skill to be a successful blogger?

image credit: Eric Isselée via Shutterstock

To Blog Is To Lead is a post from The Future Buzz

This is a complete 180 from how PR used to be done.  But it’s a higher value path because it is organic and scalable – your influence grows by virtue of your presence if you fully embrace a pull strategy.  Bring your desired audience to you where they will listen intently as opposed to unartfully pushing your messages to them.

I could speak from a strategic level on why shifting PR from push to pull is smart, but let’s drill down to a simple example to illustrate it.  PR is far more than just publicity, but publicity is certainly a KPI of nearly all PR programs (if not an objective of many).  In other words:  all PR people can agree publicity is vital.  Yet it’s not working so well from a push perspective anymore.  Consider two major influential groups PR folks target, and why push is failing:

Traditional media are more concerned with if they have a future than whether to write up your pitch.  While just a decade ago, traditional media and PR shared a symbiotic relationship, that relationship is currently on the rocks.  As PR folk become more pushy (and noisy) and traditional media feel the squeeze of a changing landscape, this relationship won’t get better anytime soon.

Bloggers may not be interested in your pitch at all.  Technorati’s 2009 state of the blogosphere revealed that 72% of bloggers are most interested in sharing their expertise and 71% blog in order to speak their minds.  Does push PR really fit into these motivations?

With that said, as push PR fades in relevance, pull PR only continues to grow more potent.

Pull offers sustainable growth

By embracing a pull PR strategy, one that includes tactics such as content marketing, you’ll build out your digital footprint naturally over time.  And more content will attract increasing amounts of attention from all channels monthly – search and social -  as you put more digital hooks in the water.

Pull PR is strategic, push is inherently tactical

Push PR is inherently tactical in nature, whereas pull is far more strategic.  Blogs are the ultimate pull marketing/PR tool, and the reason most fail is because they don’t act strategically, they act tactically.  The problem is success is not easy and results take time to see.  Most simply won’t commit, or will quit before their strategy has started working.  However the returns payoff huge for those who develop an effective pull strategy and follow it long term.

Pull PR lives at the intersection of PR, SEO and social media

Is your PR agency is SEO & social media savvy?  I asked ten questions to asses this at Online Marketing blog:

1. Are you implementing social media marketing, but not SEO?
2. Do your social media and SEO efforts work together?
3. How do you measure the return on investment of your social media engagement efforts?
4. Is social media something you do in your spare time, or is it a core function that requires a dedicated resource?
5. How much effort is put toward managing the search and social media friendliness of your corporate website?
6. How strategic are the recommendations for the company blog?
7. What is your company’s approval process for micro-blogging?
8. Is your current PR agency effectively optimizing your news content for search and social media?
9. What is your PR firm’s true core competency: traditional PR or social media and SEO?
10. Have you considered hiring a social media specialist?

The answers to these questions your firm provides are key to assessing whether they understand pull PR.

Pull creates the right kind of web popularity

By developing a PR strategy to bring people to you instead of always pushing your message to them, you are going to nurture a very different kind of reputation than if you were always badgering people to spread your messages.  It will be a relationship based on permission (they will want to hear more).

Pull PR makes you less reliant on traditional media

And yet, the amazing thing is that in time pull PR will deliver far more truly earned media.  The reason is simple:  it’s more powerful to be found by influencers than seeking them out.

Conclusion

Public relations is evolving quickly and it’s clear why.  When everyone is media, you can carve out your own share of voice in the world.  And as a byproduct of this, you’ll actually attract more media.  When you have the ability to shift your programs to be less reliant on externalities and more on your own strategy it seems shortsighted to ignore this.

Related posts from The Future Buzz

Shutterstock Gets Social – Digital PR Case Study

Matt Cutts Is Representative Of Next Generation PR

10 Skills All PR Pros Need For 2009 And Beyond

image credit: mitzy via Shutterstock

Shift Your PR From Push To Pull is a post from The Future Buzz

He takes social scientist Scott Page’s diversity prediction theorem (collective error = average individual error – prediction diversity) a step further to identify the three conditions which must be in place to know when crowds will predict well:  diversity, aggregation and incentives:

Each condition clicks into the equation.  Diversity reduces the collective error.  Aggregation assures that the market considers everyone’s information.  Incentives help reduce individual errors by encouraging people to participate only when they think they have an insight.

If you think about it, this is one of the core ways we derive value from the web.  Consider:

• The most interesting social areas of the web (especially but not exclusively horizontal networks) have diverse userbases.
• Popular platforms aggregate by design – or if they don’t – external parties are building technologies on top of them to allow for easy aggregation (think TweetMeme for Twitter, Technorati for blogs, Google News for news, etc).
• There are multiple incentives for participation – either personal branding, a passion for the subject matter or desire to build permission with an audience.

The web brings diversity, aggregation and incentives together in a way that is instantly accessible.  But what exactly does this allow for as a marketer, an artist a business or anyone else looking to spread their ideas?

Simple:  it allows you to form a basis for what will succeed tomorrow based on market data that exists today.  I’m not saying you can predict the future with 100% accuracy – that would be impossible.  But you can get close in cases where the problem is complex and specific rules cannot solve it.

This is a key for developing successful media, marketing or PR:  use the larger patterns in the noise to your advantage.  In a world where all media are marketers, and all marketers are media (there’s far too much choice for it to be any other way) gaining an edge against competitors is necessary.  Attention is finite.  And, the crowd may be more powerful than your own intuition as a predictor of where attention will flow in the social web.

Specific advice for leveraging networks where diversity, aggregation and incentives are present:

For those engaged with content marketing or creating media that will resonate: research established networks to form the basis of what the most popular content will be.  You can discover content archetypes that work and use them to your advantage.

A quick example – by doing a search of 204,096 technology-related stories on the network Digg (a place where diversity, aggregation and incentives live) we can see that the top 5 most popular stories on the network have to do with either breaking news or product announcements/scoops.  Any expert in technology media could have told me that.  But I didn’t need them when I have open access to a network of technology geeks.  The data is at our fingertips:

Defining a messaging strategy: look at the messaging/tone/style that resonates highest and let that form the basis of your messaging.  This needs to be just one element of your larger audience acquisition strategy.

For an example of this, look no further than the icanhascheezburger network.  They found a messaging strategy that sticks and used it to create additional, similar networks.  TechCrunch reports on the efficacy of this:

We all know about Cheezburger, which surpassed 1 billion page views last month. But FAIL blog went from zero to 10 million page views-per-month in just 90 days, and the recently launched ThereIFixedIt.com has matched that pace.

It’s important to point out that icanhazcheezburger was an almost completely unoriginal idea.  They ripped it off from the (relatively) underground message board culture of previous years.  Yet all of their sites follow similar messaging strategies, and for it they are successful:  they found a formula that worked and stuck with it.  The formula was what the crowd reacted to, and they knew it.

Creating the next hit product: you can leverage networks where diversity, aggregation and incentives are present to quietly discover the next hit product.  When we conducted the java beta test of more than 1,500 bloggers one of the items noticed was the most common response to the question of “if you could invent a new coffee flavor, what would it be” – was an extra bold, highly caffeinated blend.  This was useful data to create a new product based on the feedback of a diverse audience with aggregated data and an incentive involved.

Conclusion

It’s not that you can’t come up with an original idea as a creative individual that will be successful:  you can.  But if you are able to conduct research in an area where diversity, aggregation and incentives are present you may able to discover valuable data that will be predictive of whether your idea will be successful or not.  It could either support your decision or help you rethink it – but either way, leveraging crowds as predictors of outcome is now possible for everyone.

Related posts:

Influence, Trust And Authority

The Psychology Of Parking

Are You Organized For Failure?

image credit: Losevsky Pavel via Shutterstock

Diversity, Aggregation, Incentives is a post from The Future Buzz

For those not tapped into the marketing event circuit, PubCon is four days of leading edge education and networking in over 90 sessions featuring 200 expert speakers in social media, affiliate programs, search, and SEO/SEM.

Check out the details of the panel, and if you’re planning on attending the event be sure to drop by this session or find me around the conference.

The session will be on Tuesday, November 10^th from 2:55-4:10pm in Salon C.   I’ll be speaking with:

• Sean Jackson, CEO/Creator, Ecordia
• Lisa Buyer, President/CEO, The Buyer Group
• Ben Fisher, President, TechPad Agency

Working on something original and impactful for this panel, if you’re into my social media posts you will not be disappointed.

Also, don’t miss any of TopRank’s 2009 PubCon panels – there are quite a few.

If you can’t attend, I’ll also be doing some liveblogging for Online Marketing Blog or you can follow me for real-time updates on Twitter.

Hope to see you at the event.

See Me Speak On Social Media At PubCon 2009 is a post from The Future Buzz

I’m not talking a shallow understanding of the genres your audience is interested in.  I’m talking about an innate understanding of the content archetypes readers react to, the motivations behind readers as individuals interacting with media, and the steps necessary to develop an interested, activated community.

No longer is this skill-set reserved for the editor.  The writer must now have complete comprehension in the motivating factors an audience has.  Content strategy can’t be reserved only for executives, if so, their publication will slowly lose out to competitors whose writer’s mindsets live at the intersection between strategist and creator.

You can be a great writer, yet if you don’t understand your audience you’ll never create content which sticks.  Content no longer happens in a vacuum as part of a process for eventual consumption.  The friction has all but been removed.  There are many with talent for writing, but few with a talent for writing and the vision for creating strategic content that will resonate with targets and allow them to stand out in a world of infinite choice.

Consider that we have data at our fingertips about:

• Visitors to our content
• Subscriber interaction
• How users are sharing our content
• What the current hot content archetypes are
• What kind of writing style/tone users react to
• What content is resonating in real-time
• The influencers in any given niche
• What activates users behind ideas
• Search trends
• Category specific news trends

And that’s just a high level.  What I’m getting at is you’ve got more than enough data to fully understand your audience in meaningful ways.  As a content producer (or even a social media power user) using this data can let you develop a seriously powerful and effective strategy to win the future.

Questions to ask when developing this type of strategy include:

What type of style will resonate with your audience?

Is your audience typically used to very conservative media brands?  Great – create something stylish and maybe even a bit extreme.  That’s how you permeate the niche, not by cultivating yet another conservative image.  Just because the audience data tells you they’re used to one thing doesn’t mean you should copy a strategy which already exists.

How can I approach my niche in a way that larger competitors will have no defense against taking attention from their audiences?

If everyone in the niche has allegiance to certain brands, styles or tastes and you can position yourself as the antithesis, you’ll siphon away audience members who secretly think your way.  It’s a misnomer that everyone follows the trendsetters.  Many do, but there are plenty who don’t and quietly resent them.  And on the web, even a few percentage points of users can be enough.  Attack the players in subtle ways and you’ll pull their dissenters.  The aggregate amount of attention available daily is finite, you have to take attention away from someone else, it is the web’s – and the world’s – scarce resource.

How can you frame content in a way it will resonate?

Are you framing content in an appropriate manner for your target audience?  All of your content should be framed in such a way to create a referential brand behind your ideas and help them permeate the niche.

Are you taking advantage of ideas your audience can’t resist?

Study the successful tactical items – such as content archetypes or promotion plays.  I’m not advocating the theft of ideas , rather, you can make the ones that work become your own to fit within your unique strategy.

How do you plan on reaching sneezers/connectors?

Without some careful thought to understanding your audience, you’ll never push through ideas that resonate enough, frequently enough, to reach the all important sneezers/connectors of the web.  Seth Godin argues as few as 10 people can make or break a new idea.  This sounds accurate if you have the right idea.

The point is this:  understanding your audience is underrated.  Once you do have audience comprehension, take the time to think about how you can use this knowledge to formulate a content strategy.  With every company (and every person) now a media company, this matters for everyone.

Understanding Your Audience Is Underrated is a post from The Future Buzz