The Engaging Brand

Building Social Media Audiences

Goldie Hawn explains how she picks acting roles - by choosing characters who evolve from A to B to C in a natural way - not foreced. A role which has its own arc in which she can portray the story for the audience, within the structure of the film.

Social media is like that too....when people build large audiences, it is I believe because of the following

• They have a direction, an arc which the reader can follow and help shape through comments.
• They are not one off articles but reflect the growth in thinking, when you subscribe you watch the brand story unfold.
• They are true to their brand character. They know their values, they know what they stand for and consistently reflect them in their writing.
• They express views but leave those slight gaps for the audience to fill in with their personal reflections. The content provides a brand framework with the reader allowed to add their own colour.
• The social media activity is a story within a story. It needs its own uniqueness but within the full story of the company.

It is often easier to think of today's story, or a story for a blog post....but do you approach it in a way that takes the reader on an evolving story over time and one which tells enough to express the brand but not too much to prevent the reader adding their own reflections on reading it.

 

The Risk of Mediocrity

Last week I interviewed Todd Henry on The Engaging Brand podcast because I love his work.

In his book there was a quote which I wrote down and have on my whiteboard as a constant reminder

"A lifetime of mediocrity is a high price to pay for safety"

The irony for me is too often we play the safe route - add a line extension instead of investing in new concepts, compete on price rather than value, get trapped in a job because of the pay rather than our passion.....and by playing it safe we increase the risk. The risk to profits, our job security and customer loyalty.

The risk is -  mediocrity will always eventually spiral to becoming the lower end as you become outdated. 

Safety is gained by continuing to delight, continuing to have that element of surprise...continuing to build value between you and the customer. 

To risk is to dare to be better than yesterday, to risk is to safeguard your future

The 10 Step Creative Manifesto

Thought for the day.

How many firms of policies regarding health & safety, confidentiality, use of the internet, equal opportunities...you name it IF there is a law, then there will be a policy.

But what about the value added area of the business?

Do you have a policy on creativity, ideas, risk?

Think about it...wouldn't that send a wonderful message if you had a manifesto on how creativity will be nurtured?

1. Thou shalt feel free to put forward any idea. There is no such thing as a daft idea.
2. Thou shalt not start any answer with " I like it but....". 
3. Thou shalt only play angels advocate not devils advocate.
4. Thou shalt be rewarded for taking calculated risks no matter what the outcome.
5. Thou shalt be surronded by different magazines, books to act as stimuli to your ideas.
6. Thou shalt be encouraged to have a meeting with your boss outside or during a walk, to encourage openness.
7. Thou can only bring a problem if you have a go at thinking of a solution - you will gain points for the thinking no matter the idea.
8. Thou shalt be encouraged to live a balanced life with outside interests.
9. Thou shalt be loved for being you and bringing your individuality to the table.
10. Thou shalt live their life thinking of ways to improve what we do and not judged as a troublemaker for expressing them!

6 Killer Apps of History

I was lucky enough to go to TedxGlobal streaming at the National Media Museum. The first speaker was the historian Niall Ferguson who was speaking about how the West economy had succeeded in history - he mentioned the 6 Killer Apps, which are not in any order

1. Competition
2. Scientific Revolution
3. Property rights
4. Modern medicine
5. Consumer Society
6. Work Ethic

It made me think about how this list would look like in a 100 years time - when we are probably talking about South America, China, India and possibly parts of Africa. This is what I came up with  - the 6 Killer Apps of the Future

1. Competition
2. Scientific Revolution
3. Intellectual Property Rights
4. Connectivity (in its general sense)
5. Social entrepreneurship - (reducing power of governments?)
6. Creative ethic

What would yours be?

Getting Your Enthusiasm Back

Jon Bon Jovi was being interviewed about why he acts during his breaks from recording music....his answer was simple...to reinvigorate.

It struck me that this is so important. No matter how much you love your job there will be times when you feel trapped or on the notorious hamster wheel.....so how can we get our enthusiasm back?

Of course, you can change jobs...but the same thing will happen again. When you start a new job the adrenaline flows because you are new to the task....so instead of moving why not create that adrenaline rush in your existing life?

Instead why not build in to your life, roles or projects which are new to you. Roles in which you are not experienced...to feel the humility of not knowing something, to feel the enthusiasm of finding out a new skill, to feel the idea of starting over....

It may be by volunteering, it may be by taking on a stretching project, it may be by taking up a new hobby, or learning a different skill.

If you feel stuck in a rut, then refuel the enthusiasm by creating the exuberance of youth again...and call it your Bon Jovi plan!

10 Sites From The Past That We Miss

Each weekend I publish guest posts - this week on brands which we miss online. If you want to publish a guest post then feel free to email me a great article!

10 Sites From The Past That We Miss

Websites and services come and go on a daily basis. Unfortunately, often these websites become some our favorites and it’s really hard to let go when they get shut down. We have to move on and find something else to use in its place. What’s even worse is that often there is never another website or service that can take its place. Let’s look at 10 of those site now that are greatly missed.

Imeem

Imeem, a very popular music sharing and discovery site, was acquired by MySpace and then abruptly shut down. MySpace was trash talked for weeks after doing this by many of Imeem’s loyal users. The shut down came as a huge surprise because there was no warning: one day it was there and the next day it wasn’t. The shut down has left behind a lot of angry and lost users who now refuse to turn to MySpace for their music needs. This was definitely a lose-lose situation for MySpace.

Pownce

Pownce was once one of Twitter’s top competitors and was labeled by the New Your Times as “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley.” It was one of the original microblogging sites and allowed users to embed content (photos, music, videos, events) right within their posts. a social task management company I worked for even used it internally for collaboration. Unfortunately (and surprisingly), they were no match for Twitter. Their traffic kept declining and they were soon acquired and shut down.

LimeWire

LimeWire is currently under a court order and has been forced to shut down for violating copyright laws. LimeWire was a popular and free peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing client that used the gnutella network as well as the BitTorrent protocol. It first arrived on the scene in 2000. While LimeWire did contribute highly to software and music piracy, hey just didn’t adhere to the rules and will now never be able to make a comeback.

Millsberry

The Web is a dangerous place, especially for kids, but Millsberry was a cute site where kids could have fun and parents didn’t have to worry. Millsberry let kids play games, get cool wallpapers and posters, and connect with other kids their age. Being that it was such a kid-friendly site and did a great job at educating parents on the ins and outs of the site, it’s frustrating to see it gone. Sadly, there really aren’t too many safe sites left out there for kids.

GeoCities

If you were on the Web in the late 90’s/early 2000’s and wanted to create a quick and easy website for free, you probably started one through GeoCities. People loved it because you didn’t need to know any type of HTML to build a website. You could have a free website about anything you liked up and running in no time. It was one of the original sites (before social networks) that let you create a homepage and tell the world about yourself and what you liked.

AllFreeCalls

Who doesn’t want a free way to make phone calls, especially to foreign countries which cost the most to call? Well, this is what AllFreeCalls was for: making free international calls. It’s only natural that a site like this would be successful and that phone companies would be highly upset. “Users would first have to call a phone number in Iowa and then call out to any of the dozens of countries from there.” AT&T wasn’t too happy about this and eventually had the site shut down.

LaLa

LaLa was a hub for online music discovery and purchasing. It lets users listen to music for free and tracks to playlists. You could even download a plugin to you computer that would let you sync your own personal music library with your LaLa account. LaLa was soon acquired by Apple and was then shut down; I guess we have iTunes to thank for that.

MyBlogLog

Though MyBlogLog wasn’t too long ago shut down, it’s still already greatly missed. MyBlogLog was a cool tool that let you add a widget to your blog so that you could track who was visiting. You could also create a network for your blog and gain more visitors. There was also a cool click tracking tool that would showcase the top clicked links on your blog for the day. With all of its unique features, it’s really disappointing to see MyBlogLog gone.

Tr.im

The shut down of Tr.im was kind of inevitable since most URL shortening services do not last long. There is really no way to monetize them because people are not going to pay to shorten links with so many other free options out there. While Tr.im did have a decent sized, loyal user-base, it just couldn’t stand up against it’s biggest competitor Bit.ly.

Yahoo Buzz

Yahoo Buzz was Yahoo’s own news ranking system (kind of like Digg). You could buzz stories up or down and even share your own content. You could add comments to stories and have conversations with others who liked it as well. If a story was popular enough and got enough Buzzes, it would then be features on the Yahoo homepage. After a hard decision, Yahoo decided to shut it down along with many other services that weren’t doing so well.

Long live these 10 sites, they’ll forever be missed. What site from the past do you miss the most?

This post was written by Lior Levin who is a student and consultant for the MA in political science program in the well known TLV University. Lior also advises to a psd to html company that works with developers from all over the world.

Show 342 - How to be Prolific and Brilliant

Show 342 of The Engaging Brand leadership and marketing podcast is ready just for you. To subscribe or listen for free, you don't need to download anything and all explained at the end of the post.

Todd Henry, CEO of Accidental Creative helps creatives and teams be prolific, brilliant and healthy. He regularly speaks on how to build practices that lead to better ideas and today joins Anna Farmery to talk about the ideas from his business book The Accidental Creative and his podcast

• How to get the right rhythm in your life.
• Where the meaning of work comes from
• How we can create our own complexity to hide our confusion
• How books should not be read as pure information but conversations like social media
• The concept of the Big 3 to allow you to focus on your critical creative goals
• How to send messages to your brain to look for solutions!
• How you can learn to be brilliant, the work behind great creativity.
• The need to build space into your today.
• The need to be effective rather than efficient.
• How to record the trends and patterns in meetings rather than just facts

If you have feedback for me on the show or topics that you would like me to cover then e-mail me at anna@theengagingbrand.com or join me on twitter.

How you can listen to the Engaging Brand

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8 Tips for Success

Orison Swett Marden (1850 - 1924) was an American writer associated with the New Thought Movement who founded the Success Magazine. His story was briefly covered in this months Success magazine.

I noted the following business quotes on leadership which I wanted to share with you

1. Make opportunities rather than waiting for them to happen.
2. Your judgment is your best friend, your common sense your great life partner.
3. Some of the greatest men in history, never discovered themselves until they lost everything but their 'pluck and grit'
4. The world makes way for a man with an idea.
5. The idle man is like an idle machine it destroys itself very quickly.
6. No matter how humble your work may seem, do it in the spirit of a master.
7. Don't be a person imprisoned by ignorance.
8. Impossibilities are merely half hearted efforts of quitters.

I don't want no satisfaction!

Where I say that contentment is underrated, I always argue that satisfaction is overrated.

Contentment is a wonderful balance, happiness is wonderful but in many ways an extreme.

Satisfaction is a word I don't like.....I hate job appraisals or customer feedback forms which talk about how 'satisfied' you are!

To keep on moving forward, to keep on bringing fresh ideas, it is important to never to feel satisfied. In fact if you ever feel satisfied in business it may be time to give up!

For me personally contentment is a goal.....for me professionally satisfaction is a risk to success.

Why you should not try to do a little better!

If you want to beat the competition then

• if you do something a 'little better' then you may compete but you won't beat! Price becomes central to the comparison.
• if you do something differently then you are competing and potentially beating the competition. Value then becomes more central to the comparison.

It is rarely the 'what ' of the product but the 'how' of the product that creates a premium for the brand.

The issue is whether you can be brave enough to split your approach

1. For existing product/service/market....how can you do it a little better?
2. For the future products/services/markets...how can you do it differently?