By Leo Valiquette

Back in November, Peter Hanschke blogged about the need for the lean and mean startup to beware the million-dollar cheque. In that spirit, I have an anecdote to share which illustrates that the mere prospect of such a windfall can also do significant damage.

At a time when early-stage ventures, particularly those in Canada, are thirsting for capital, be it traditional VC or an angel round, it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that a startup should be wary of a nice fat cheque.

But as Peter explained, for a startup that has taken a lean and frugal approach to market that relies on iterative product development and using a Minimum Viable Product approach, a sudden windfall of cash can have all sorts of negative consequences. The most obvious of these is that the product, which has until now been developed with only those features and functions that have the strongest market pull, gets bloated with all sorts of additional bells and whistles that dilute its focus and send the sales and marketing teams running in too many directions.

My story isn’t a clear-cut example of this, but the same lessons apply. This venture, let’s call it BigContent, was developing a unique library of content which it would make available through a subscription model. It was incubated with a nest egg the founders had put together from a previous venture. In fact, it was their experience with that previous venture which provided them with the idea for BigContent, as well as the initial proof of concept. From a marketing standpoint, BigContent’s founders were doing exactly what they should to identify, define and validate a strong market opportunity which BigContent could exploit.

Executing BigContent’s business plan didn’t require external financing. The founders were wholly committed to bootstrapping the venture through to positive cash flow. BigContent proceeded to develop its library of content, a distribution model through which to deliver that content and a strong roster of subscribers. Everything was proceeding well toward a soft launch of its service.

And then a Big Name VC comes calling without an invitation.

Well, what startup on the eve of its launch is going to slam the door in a VC’s face? At the VC’s behest, launch plans were put on hold. BigContent’s founders revamped their business plan to reflect the addition of external financing. A VC round may not have been necessary to BigContent’s get-to-market strategy, but it would certainly have accelerated the process and made for a bigger, bolder launch.

Big Name VC made lofty promises, even said it would bring one of its compadres to the table. Meetings were scheduled, then cancelled. After several months of song and dance, the VCs said a polite “No thank you” and moved on.

The damage was done. BigContent’s lean and mean go-to-market strategy was in shambles. One of the principals had also resigned from the company. Months later, the team is still trying to get everything back on track for a launch, as per the original business plan.

I don’t intend this post as a knock against VCs, but this story does demonstrate that both parties to a deal must always beware. The onus is on the entrepreneur to have a clear understanding of where their business is going and what it will take to get it there. There is always more than one route to a destination and the choices which lie along the way seldom fit easily into the “right” and “wrong” columns. If there’s a moral to this story, perhaps it’s the importance of staying the course when in the midst of executing a plan in which you have confidence.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: financing, investor, startup, entrepreneur, VC, venture capital, business launch, business plan, bootstrap, get to market, market validation, minimum viable product, MVP, product development, iterative

Demonstrating a marketing program’s success is key to maintaining a happy client. Do good work and prove how it contributed to the client’s goals – seems like a simple enough equation. But managing client expectations throughout a social media marketing program can be tricky. This is because these programs typically require a huge amount of small work spread out over a long period of time and over a large number of channels. It can be tough to maintain the faith at the outset of a program while communities are still being developed. Without a strategy and regular communication, it will be challenging to convince your client to see past the masses of tweets and status updates and understand that all of your wee daily efforts add up and support larger goals that will provide a return on investment.

As an outsourced community manager, it’s imperative that I maintain regular communication with my clients and demonstrate that I am using their dollars wisely. While my clients can see all my activity online, it’s my responsibility to articulate how each of these activities are contributing to their goals and show that the program is on track for success. I really have two management responsibilities – managing my client’s online presence as well as their expectations.

Here are some tips that I employ to maintain good client relations throughout a social media marketing program:

Make sure the strategy is sound and detailed at the outset

As mentioned, you can’t prove return on investment if you don’t have a clear understanding of what it is your client is investing in. Social media provides lots of opportunities for businesses, including the ability to increase influence, provide customer service, foster customer loyalty, boost awareness about a product or service, bridge relationships with industry influencers and form partnerships, garner media attention and attract leads. What does your client want to do, how much are they willing to invest in pursuing these initiatives, what exactly will you do to carry out their requirements, and what can they expect as a result of their investment? The more precisely you can identify your activities and establish a time frame with specific objectives, the better you will be able to manage your client’s expectations.

Your client has every right to know exactly where their dollars are being spent every step of the way; to maintain good faith you need to articulate how those dollars are being invested. Your strategy should therefore mark clear checkpoints that indicate where the program should be at established time periods to assure them that your strategy is on course.

You can make predictions by examining your client’s online marketplace. How successful are their competitors? How engaged is the community that is interested in their space? What are analysts saying about their industry? Is the media particularly interested in that space right now? Does your client have a powerful story that will attract interest? Social media should be regarded as an element of a full marketing program. Whether the marketing team is in house or outsourced, you should be able to collaborate with those people to determine realistic social media marketing targets.

Track your progress and communicate that progress regularly

Carrying out a successful social media marketing program requires frequent communication. In my opinion, social media managers should be regarded as communications liaisons, connecting company representatives with their interest groups online. Communication runs between the account owners and their managers and between managers and their communities. It doesn’t matter whether social media marketing activities are carried out in house or if they are outsourced, communication is imperative to success.

For social media managers, the success that comes from maintaining good communications in both directions is twofold.  First, when communications is smooth between account owners and managers, social media communities thrive because they have the benefit of receiving the most current information and having direct access to company representatives.  Second, the social media success you see as a result of proper management will put you in higher standing with those people who pay for your work.

Have a conversation with your client about how often they want to be updated on your activities and successes. I provide my clients with metrics every week or every month depending on how closely they want to monitor my progress (see social media measurement for more details on what I include in my reports).

When you send them your report, be sure to explain what has been accomplished. Was there a surge in followers and likes as a result of a particular initiative? Did your client receive a record number of mentions? What drove that level of engagement? If something didn’t work, tell your client about that too, but be sure to communicate what you learned as a result. They will be far more understanding if you maintain open and honest communications throughout the extent of the program. Bad things happen and sometimes these things are out of your control. Being able to identify what went wrong gives confidence to your client that you are effectively steering the program’s course.

Encourage the client’s participation

I’ve found that allowing clients to participate in social media activities gives them a better understanding of what’s required to build and maintain social media communities as well as the results that can come from certain activities. Familiarizing your clients with the social media space helps them to understand your job and all that is required to grow a presence online. Understanding the full scope of work as well as the individual activities that go into running a successful social media program helps to ground their expectations and instill a greater appreciation for the work you do.

For example, because LinkedIn only allows individuals, but not companies, to participate in Groups and Answers, I encourage my clients to participate through their personal accounts on behalf of their companies. I’m here to write and edit their responses as necessary and can even post their responses if they provide me with their login credentials, but I try to convince them that they will be better able to establish a thought leadership position by showcasing their own knowledge.

In one case, a client saw more than 100 responses to his Group discussion. He was “chuffed” to see such a positive reaction to his work and the experience helped him understand the benefits of the platform. I also encourage clients to participate in social media by posting Facebook status updates and tweets when they are feeling particularly inspired. Again, I’m here to review, edit, add comments and post if necessary.

How are you managing your client’s expectations for your social media program?

Image: Totally how to

Technorati Tags: Social media marketing, client expectations, social media strategy, social media management, social media measurement, community management, return on investment, ROI, marketing strategy, client communications, outsourced social media, outsourced community management

This is part one of a two part series. Part two will be published next week.

I recently had an extended discussion with someone which resulted in the conclusion that there is more to patenting than just getting patents. We started with a discussion of the business value of a patent and then addressed the business value of patenting. Here is the concept.

If you are going to start the patenting process, it is absolutely essential that you do some searching.  Searching is essential because you can only patent an aspect of your own idea that is new.  There is no point in filing a patent application if you cannot identify a feature that is new. So a patent novelty search is about searching for bad news: defining the boundaries of the forbidden territory that you cannot claim because it is delimited by the “Prior Art Wall.”

My conversational partner had previously taken coaching from me on how to do his own patent searching. He remarked how amazed he was at the amount of valuable information he learned when he carried out a patent search for the first time. Reviewing the efforts of other inventors helped him clarify the problem he was addressing — he got to see his own initiatives in the context of the alternate solutions that others had proposed. He observed that prior inventors are, in a sense, available to act as consultants to coach you in respect of your own invention. He experienced his first dose of competitive intelligence in the field of his invention.

I liked hearing this because it is a “good news” aspect of the patenting exercise. Whether or not a prefiling patent novelty search establishes that the road is clear for you to attempt to obtain patent rights, there is tremendous value to be obtained by just carrying out the search.

For novelty purposes, blocking prior art can arise anywhere, from any source. However, we search at the patent office amongst issued patents and pending applications because the records there are highly indexed. Here is a link to the main website at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office – U.S. PTO. And here is a link to the best page to start searching using key words. Note that this is the page for searching issued patents. There is another page for searching pending applications.

Searching at the U.S. PTO is preferred because the records there are full text as of 1976. Searches at the Canadian Patent Office can only address the words used in the Abstract or the Claims associated with a patent or application. To start searching at the U.S. PTO, simply choose two words that are closely related to your idea and enter them as search Term 1 and Term 2. The fields for the two search terms can be left at the default “All Fields” for now.

Demonstrations search

Let us assume you have an improved garden rake. In such a case, two words to enter might be “rake” and “handle.” We can defer limiting the search to documents including the word “garden” since you always patent structure and there may be rakes that have a similar structure used for other applications.  Entering these two terms gives you the following result:

Results of search in U.S. patent collection db for rake and handle: 3,199 patents

This is far too many documents to look at.  But beneath the above report and above the list of the first 50 references is a box that starts with “Refine search.” In that box we can add to the initial search terms to produce the search string “rake AND handle and (claw or hook).” I am assuming that these are all features of our inventive rake concept. Entering these terms gives results as follows:

Results of search in U.S. patent collection db for ((rake and handle) and (claw or hook)): 485 patents

This is still too many documents to look at. However, looking down the list of the first 50 hits we see that U.S. patent 7,987,658 has the title, “Multi-purpose garden tool with pivotable gardening head.” Clicking on this reference to open it, we see an Abstract which describes in a complicated way a garden tool   (note that it does so without using the word “garden”). Do not spend too long reading the Abstract. A quick activation of the link “Images” takes us to a page where we can see the drawings if we have a TIF reader (if you do not have a TIF reader, you can download one for free by clicking on the red “Help” link in the yellow bar above the black space where the pictures should be on the “Images” page).

From the drawings associated with this patent we see that it really does relate to a garden rake. Locating this reference enables us to switch to “classification searching.”

Conclusion of part 1

This article is divided into two parts to give readers time to reflect on the valuable learning opportunities provided in each of the parts. The object is to demonstrate that searching at the patent office is a doable procedure that is available to anyone who takes the time to learn the relatively simple steps and protocols.

A major benefit of searching is the mind-broadening effect of seeing how others have addressed a problem, which can help you make better inventions!

Looking forward to seeing you in part 2.

David French is the principal and CEO of Second Counsel Services, which provides guidance for companies that wish to improve their management of Intellectual Property. For more information visit www.SecondCounsel.com.

Technorati Tags: Inventions, patent, intellectual property, patent law, patenting, prior art wall, U.S. patent and trademark office, Canadian patent office, patent research, patent searching

A few years back, my pal Ian Graham acquainted me with his “law of three.” If any subject or person or issue crosses Graham’s attention three times in relatively short order, he believes he ought to pay attention to it. It’s an intriguing notion that I have found plays out in my own life more often than I might expect. Graham’s law intersected last night with my colleague Leo Valiquette’s piece earlier this week about “the mocking white glare of an empty page.” Having begged off posting yesterday to finish a client project and faced with having to produce a post for today, I was struck by an article I read about Canadian movie house Alliance Films seeking to charge Canadian journalists as much as €2,500 for interviews with bold-name stars such as Brad Pitt at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It was the third article I read this week about interesting and controversial developments in modern journalism and, not wishing to be mocked either by my empty screen or by my hardacre blog editor, the idea for this post was clumsily conceived.

The first of the three issues to catch my eye was a brief paragraph in a story on Monday by the Globe and Mail’s superb public health reporter André Picard. If I was pitching a public health story in Canada, Picard would be at the top of my list; he is a knowledgeable and thoughtful reporter who provides well-considered analysis of the complex issues facing public health and healthcare in general in Canada today. My high opinion of Picard is not an isolated one; he has been repeatedly recognised for his work and it is clear that most other practitioners of the media relations craft single him out when they have a story to pitch to his beat.

The result is that he is regularly given access to reports and other material in advance of their official publication or release date. It’s a practice known as an embargo; PR people negotiate a contract, usually no more rigorous than a verbal or emailed agreement, whereby they give a reporter advance access to a story and the reporter agrees not to publish or broadcast anything until a certain day and time. (In our PR practice, we regularly employ embargoes, and have written about the advantages and disadvantages of embargoes.) On Monday, though, in a story about a new national strategy on mental health, Picard wrote, “The Globe and Mail obtained a copy of the strategy, entitled ‘Changing Direction, Changing Lives,’ under embargo but is publishing before the Tuesday release date because of leaks to other media outlets.”

It’s unusual for reporters to reference such arrangements in their stories, so I took notice. When I decided last night to include this episode in this post, I emailed Picard asking him a few questions about the specific circumstances of this embargo and what led him to break it, and I invited him to share with me his views about the ethics and practicality of embargoes. As of the time this post went up, I hadn’t heard back from him. If I do — and I hope I will because I’d like to hear from a reporter whose professionalism is unquestioned — I will update this post.

Embargoes have been around almost forever, and are likely not going anywhere soon. Reporters and PR people can debate the ethics and merits of them, but I continue to see them as useful tools, albeit tools that can be misused at times. However, there is always the hazard, both to the organisation pitching the news and to journalists who comply with an embargo, that a less scrupulous outlet will not respect agreements into which it freely entered.

The second and third issues are more central to the challenging economic model that is the news business today. Both cropped up yesterday and, again, both were reported in the Globe and, either directly or indirectly, involved the Globe. (Guess what major Canadian media outlet is my go-to source!) Mid-yesterday afternoon, the paper announced it would start charging for access to its online content, a practice known as erecting a paywall behind which its previously free content would now shelter. Other papers have experimented with paywalls, only to dismantle them after a period; others still, including some of the best-known media outlets on the planet such as the New York Times, have persisted, with the Times reporting it expects to earn $85-million this year through online subscriptions. It’s not-insignificant incremental revenue any newspaper surely could use.

In defending his paper’s move to put up a paywall, Globe publisher Phillip Crawley said it was in response to an unpredictable advertising market that has seen both print and digital sales drop this spring, according to the Globe’s own story on the subject. (The story also reported that the Globe would be asking its staff to volunteer to take unpaid vacations this summer in a futher effort to balance the books.)

Within three hours of the story going live on the paper’s website, some 500 comments had already been posted. I scrolled through dozens of screens of comments without finding a single one that wasn’t critical of the move.

I’m not sure I agree with all those critics.

Producing excellent journalism costs a great deal of money and the Globe and Mail is a lonely bastion of excellence that has bucked the near-industry-wide trend towards reducing staff, buying cheap wire and filler copy, and otherwise joining the race to the bottom. Like the Times and a few other exceptional titles such as Britain’s Guardian, the Globe has continued to invest heavily in high-quality content. In the Globe’s case, it has also preserved its many bureaus in Canada and around the world, producing original and expert reporting that is unmatched anywhere in Canada and only rarely matched anywhere on the planet. That excellence has been rewarded by generally rising subscription levels although, as yesterday’s twin economies suggest, that increased readership apparently has not levered higher levels of spending by advertisers.

Newspapers are stuck between a print rock and an online hard place. Revenues from the former are eroding swiftly; the latter has not yet delivered a replacement business model. Paywalls and other experiments will, I expect, become more common.

The sketchy economics of journalism and its often-unsavoury relationship with those from whom it gets its news is at the heart of the third and last issue, which I referenced at the top of this post. I don’t suppose I should be shocked but I still am at the proposition that a major film house would seek to charge journalists for interviews with stars at a film festival. On the other hand, such interviews rarely rise above the puerile and mundane, and so I suppose it’s difficult to classify their outcome as news. It falls more clearly in the entertainment category, and who can blame studios for wanting to charge media outlets that make money off their interactions with the studios’ talent. Then again, as already made painfully clear by the paywall issue, there ain’t much golden fleece left to be sheared from this media sheep.

The doubtful economics aside, I was struck by the irony, as was the Globe reporter who wrote the story about Alliance’s sliding-scale menu of charges for access to its stars, that perhaps the biggest victims of chequebook journalism are the very stars who are now being pimped out by their studios. Most of the tacky revelations about the lives of movie stars and other celebrities are bought and paid for by media outlets only too happy to lay often-staggering sums of money on relatives, neighbours, former lovers and others who will spill the beans. Perhaps there is some sort of justice in this but I doubt anyone will be well served when every reputable outlet declines to pony up, leaving the stars at the mercy of those whose willingness to compromise their ethics will already have been well established.

Image: Steele’s student

Technorati Tags: Alliance Films, journalism, Globe and Mail, Andre Picard, embargo, PR, public relations, journalism ethics, paywall, New York Times, Phillip Crawley, print advertising, online advertising, newspaper subscriptions, Guardian, media, chequebook journalism 

As a regular weekly feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Copyblogger, GigaOm, The Flack and GeekWire.

20 mistakes that will undermine your call to action and cost you sales

As content marketers, we spend a lot of time obsessing over increasing traffic. It’s the sexy thing to do. However, the number of leads fails to match our expectations because we don’t spend enough time creating a killer call to action. There are dozens of call-to-action mistakes that can doom your efforts to convert traffic into leads or sales. Copyblogger shares 20 of the most common.

What exactly is a tech company?

Author Om Malik says ‘tech company’ and ‘tech startup’ are over-applied labels that have outlived their usefulness. Calling practically all growing contemporary businesses ‘technology companies’ is about as useful as calling the enterprises of the industrial era ‘factory companies;’ it accurately describes one aspect of what they are (or were), but it doesn’t really capture the totality of their operation. This post is a great discussion piece. What exactly is a tech company, in your opinion?

Startup sustainability

Anyone with a stake in a technology (or any other) startup will certainly appreciate the challenge entailed in prolonging editorial interest in their fledgling investment. Once the initial flurry of hyper-activity in the news and social spheres evaporates, however, how can a founder (and his PR consiglieres) build “legs” to ensure long-term success? Author Peter Himler offers great tactics for startups to sustain media coverage.

The venture capital model is broken, and this damning report explains why

Industry watchers have been talking for a long while now about how the venture capital industry is broken, highlighted by poor returns that in many cases don’t even exceed those of the major stock indices. Thanks to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation — which has invested in nearly 100 venture capital firms across the country over the past 20 years — we’re getting an inside look into the problems rattling the industry. In a blistering 51-page report, the foundation details its own experiences, writing that limited partners such as the foundation routinely “invest too much capital in underperforming venture capital funds on frequently mis-aligned terms.”

Technorati Tags: Copyblogger, The Flack, GigaOm, GeekWire, call to action, sales, content marketing, leads, technology company, startup, Om Malik, Peter Himler, media coverage, PR, marketing, venture capital, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

As a student of the written word, I’ve dealt with just about everything when it comes to catering to a client, managing a team of journalists and editing the work of others.

But the greatest challenge is often found in the mocking white glare of an empty page.

As we have discussed before on this blog, writing is one of those skills that only gets better with practice. Reading examples of great writing with a critical eye, heeding the wise counsel of quality reference material and, most importantly, appreciating the value of a good editor, are all fundamental to honing your craft.

As with anything, becoming a good writer is a longer and more painful journey for some than it is for others. I often encounter people who are far more eloquent and articulate orators than I am. And yet, they run into a wall when asked to say the same thing in print. There is a certain thoughtless spontaneity with speech that is lost when confronted by a blank page. It isn’t that they don’t know what to say, they just don’t know where to begin.

But those of us who write for a living also find ourselves daunted by a blank page, or, even worse, with such a volume of material and research we’ve lost sight of the forest for the trees. Nonetheless, the job still needs to get done by deadline.

So, for what it’s worth, here are my tips for making the words move. This isn’t about writing better or even writing for a specific audience. It’s just about writing, period, whether it’s for personal, professional or journalistic purposes.

1. Don’t think about it, just do it

Write down the first thing that comes to your head, followed by the second, and the third. Before you know it, you’ll have written a few paragraphs that will have dimmed the glare of that empty page. Is it great writing? Who cares? As Ernest Hemmingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” It’s a start and that’s what matters. It’s easier to revise than it is to draft.

2. Don’t try to write the beginning first

Now I’ll let you in on a little secret. If you wrote the first thing that came into your head, you probably didn’t write what should be the beginning of your work. I write 3,000-word magazine features all the time by banging out the first 800 words in a rush. Next day I’ll come back, rip what I’ve done to pieces and then get down to the good stuff. It’s a creative enema that often needs to be part of the process.

3. Give yourself time to play around

That means you can’t leave things to the last minute. Whenever possible, bang out a rough draft of your work and let it lie fallow for at least a couple of days before coming back to it. The outcome will always be better than if you tried to go from zero to final finished product in one go, or even in one day. (Of course, I’m breaking this rule myself right now with this post.)

4. Start with somebody else’s words

It could be a quote from a source, an anecdote or an interesting statistic. These are all icebreakers that give you a place to start. Follow that first line up with an explanation of what it means and why it is significant.

5. Start with an outline

This is particularly useful for those situations where you may feel overwhelmed by your volume of material. An outline helps you to organize your thoughts as well as your material and distinguish the useful from the irrelevant.

6. A full belly and an empty bowel

Seriously. Nothing is more distracting than snack time rumbles or the outcome of last night’s dinner overstaying its welcome. Bob Bailly wrote a great piece for us a while back on how our systems tick on ultradian rhythms and the need for regular pit stops and refuelling.

7. The value of idle distraction

Maybe it’s toying with a stress ball, clicking a pen or listening to the soundtrack for Lord of the Rings. We all have those things we do that help put us in that almost meditative creative state. The key thing is that is something you can do without getting up from the computer. Otherwise, you risk falling prey to all those other external distractions that will sap your productivity.

8. Change the scene

Sometimes, nothing gets the creative juices flowing faster than a change of scenery. Grab the laptop, get up and take a walk to a local coffee shop or a branch of the public library.

9. Start fresh

The morning, when you are fresh and alert, is often the best time to tackle a writing project. Try to ignore the inbox and the voicemail and focus. From a productivity standpoint, it is often better to keep to the desk in the morning and save meetings and conference calls for the afternoon.

10. Know when to walk way

And by the same token, sometimes you should leave to tomorrow what you could do today. I’ve often found myself late in the day or in the evening trying to get a head start on something when the creative drive just isn’t there anymore. Often, I’ve produced far better material and in a far shorter time by leaving it to the following morning.

What would you add to this list?

Image: Cindy Thomas

Technorati Tags: writing, editing, writer’s block, ultradian, Ernest Hemmingway, Bob Bailly

I shamelessly adapted the title of this post based on the original Fast Company article, Anything they can do you can do better, which explained that when it comes to designing new products, companies must aim to build them better than their competitors.

On the surface, this advice seems obvious. But it becomes more complex when you consider how fine the line really is that separates a pioneer and a “me too,” and what it takes to differentiate and improve your product enough for people to take notice.

Marketing plays a key role in identifying and promoting a product’s key differentiators. Marketers don’t simply explain the product and what it does and cross their fingers that people will somehow decide that they need it. They identify a market need and strategically situate that product within the market, explaining how it improves on, or sets it apart from, what’s already available. They tell stories about why people need it now and contextualize those stories according to the experiences of their target market.

Social media is becoming one of the most important channels for telling these kinds of stories. We’ve called the practice content marketing and, interestingly enough, earning an influential status on social media comes from publishing content that sets you apart from the masses — or, in other words, identifying and promoting your key differentiators. Once you have built an influential online presence, your content carries more weight and you have a better ability to promote your company and its products. And so, through proper content marketing, a win-win scenario is born — online influence rises with the public’s perception of your company and its products.

Fundamentally, we are all doing the same things on social media. We are all playing on the same platforms according to the same rules. We are posting status updates, publishing blog posts, listening, engaging, and being authentic, sharing photos, videos, webinars, Slideshare presentations, running campaigns and all the rest.

So, for argument’s sake, when I say “pioneer” in this post, I am referring to those individuals who improve and take a new direction on already established social media activities.

The only things we have control over in social media that give us the potential to differentiate ourselves are content and (generally) how we deliver it. What sets pioneers apart from the parrots is their approach to content and their ability to situate that content within wider social media discussions. Contextualizing content delineates its relevance according to the larger story of what’s going on in your marketplace. This increases the possibilities for discussion and allows people to connect with the content on various levels. It deepens the conversation and broadens its reach. Content shared through social media becomes pioneering when it influences the broader stories that define your market, when it builds such momentum and clout that it breaks down all the walls and spreads virally into the mediasphere at large.

Producing great content for social media isn’t easy. Neither is the process of developing a winning marketing strategy for a company.

Here are some steps I hope you find helpful as you develop content for the social web.

Look at what your competitors are doing

Fascinatingly, unique social media marketing content cannot be created in a vacuum. To differentiate your social media content, you must look at what your competitors are already doing. Identify what your competitors are doing well in social media and what areas of your marketplace they are not addressing. Also, look at who is following them and what content resonates with their communities. This will help you narrow down your key content differentiators.

Develop a content strategy

Lay down your editorial calendar for at least three months to ensure you have a plan for what you are going to post, how often, and where you will post. Also, identify who will be responsible for creating content. It’s a good idea to give this responsibility to a handful of people within your organization who are experts in key subject areas to showcase your company’s thought leaders. You can also recruit outside help in the form of guest bloggers and paid contributors. I’ve written on what to include in a social media content strategy before.

Ensure content is timely, concise, unique, sharable and transformable

Social media is a fast-paced environment where content has a short shelf life. Therefore, when producing your content, hold fast to the motto “be bold, be brief, be gone” to ensure your content is timely and pungent so that it lingers online as long as possible. Give it a longer shelf life by making it sharable and transformable. Serve up easy-to-digest sound bites that articulate your business case and that people can simply copy, paste and share. And allow people to consume these sharable morsels in various arrangements. For example, one blog post can become a photo, tweet, Facebook status update, LinkedIn discussion and all the rest. I’ve written about how to create transformable content before.

What are you doing to compete in social media?

Image: Trusted Advisor

Technorati Tags: social media marketing, competing in social media, marketing strategy, key differentiators, market need, content, contextualizing content, content marketing, story telling

This is the inaugural post by Rob Woyzbun, whose work in marketing and broader business strategy I have admired for years. We get together periodically to share war stories, discuss strategy and generally commiserate on the sorry state of technology marketing. We always part with an expressed desire to find some way to work together and it is my hope that having persuaded Rob to become a regular contributor here is just the start of some stellar collaborations.

– Francis Moran

By Rob Woyzbun

The near-ubiquitous availability and always-on nature of the internet has changed how consumers learn about, consider and make decisions regarding almost everything — purchases, politics and even the causes they support.  We live in a world where Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic claim that “the medium is the message” is true — in ways even he might not have considered (See: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; 1964).

Ironically, while the proliferation of paid, owned and shared media channels has created limitless opportunities for innovative thinking and tactics, marketers still drag old-school errors into this brave new world. In our media research and planning practice, we see companies continue to make the same avoidable, costly mistakes.

Here’s our top five list of old-school mistakes creeping into the digital and social media arena, and some ideas on how to avoid them:

No. 1:  Failing to fully understand the customer decision journey

Many marketers still use the traditional purchase “funnel” (a linear customer journey starting with consideration of numerous brands, narrowing down to a set of fewer options, and ending with a purchase).  While parts of this journey are still relevant — such as the idea of a consideration set — research strongly suggests that once an initial brand set is developed, consumers spend far more time in evaluating a smaller brand set, and do so in an iterative fashion (including much peer and digital reference), and continue to do so even after purchase. In some product categories, there is actually more discussion about brands after a purchase! If this shift is missed, a marketer might set unrealistic objectives or expectations for his communication strategy. For example, not allocating enough resources to help consumers “spread the word” versus simply evaluating a set of brands. More on this issue in mistake No. 2.

No. 2: Inappropriate media objectives and measurements

This mistake comes in two variants, and follows closely on the heels of No. 1. Mistake 2A is to equate business objectives with communication objectives, thereby setting inappropriate measurements. Unless your business is a pure online, direct response, long tail, niche play with unassailable patent locks and a killer value-prop, your media or advertising objectives should not be sales, profit or market share. Those are business or marketing objectives. There’s a BIG difference. There are too many mitigating variables (product, price, customer experience, etc.) that make it unreasonable to hold advertising or communication responsible for final sales numbers. Your advertising or communication objectives are about knowledge and behaviour: What you want your customers to know about your brand, how it fits into their consideration set, how they should feel about your brand, and finally, how you would like them to act. Mistake 2B flows from No.1: If your customer journey is not well understood, it is likely you will set inappropriate objectives, such as “building awareness” when in fact the objective should be to “draw visitors to x product review sites or to amazon.com,” or to join a community of advocates.

No. 3: The trap of patterned, conservative thinking

This trap gets in the way of profit and innovation. Patterned thinking allocates resources (i.e. budget, people, time) based on unnecessarily conservative decision-making and a reliance on misleading indicators such as prior industry patterns. For example: “In our business, social media never works,” or entrenched ideas like “At ACME Inc. we’ve always used sales flyers.” Patterned thinking is very costly. A recent study in The Journal of Advertising Research (June 2011) suggests that in a variety of industries, profitability could be increased an average of 14 percent through improved spending allocation, simply by avoiding decisions fueled by false pre-conditions such as habit, and fear of change or disruption to an existing marketing eco-system. Marketers in relatively new industries, who actively seek new insight, are less likely to be trapped by these harmful patterns.

No. 4: Failing to evaluate competitive proposals or multiple vendors

When viewed through the media planning and implementation lens, we see poor business practices translate to media mistakes. The most prevalent is the “all-in” strategy (working strictly with one vendor or publisher) at the cost of reduced audience reach and impact. While one can often save time and effort by dealing with one publisher or vendor, there’s a lot to be said for good old competition. Unless a media vehicle or channel has a 100 percent reach of your target audience, and touches them at the perfect point in their decision journey, with the right brand environment and with reasonable cost efficiency (see Mistake No. 5), alternatives should always be considered. We’ve seen advertisers fail to reach their target audience effectively because they’ve committed their resources to one vendor in a market served by many. We’re not advocating an adversarial relationship with the media, simply one based on comparative values and knowledge gained through due diligence.

No. 5: Selecting and buying media on price alone — or by “unit” price

It’s been our experience that negotiating media campaigns for the lowest CPM or cheapest rate compromises other critical elements of media planning, including creativity and innovation. Media vendors who give up reasonable profit margins in negotiation are not inclined to collaborate with a marketer seeking added value or media innovation. Rather than leading with a low-cost focus, share your campaign objectives and insights with the media, and encourage them to consider a range of criteria (that includes but is not limited to cost efficiency) in developing a media solution best suited to your needs and objectives. Invite your vendors to become partners in creating a media solution that levers the strengths of their properties, while recognizing the value of your message and audience. We believe that the true measure of a media strategy should be value, not cost. There is more to gain from a cohesive media buy that addresses specific communications objectives and is not driven by price alone.

Rob Woyzbun is the director of media research and strategy integration for Vector Media Canada, and also a partner and founder of the firm. In its 20th year of business, Vector Media provides paid, owned and earned media planning and consulting services for B2B and B2C clients. Rob is also a professor at the Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ontario. Rob’s mantra is to challenge patterned thinking for better marketing and communication results.

Technorati Tags: media planning, new media, digital media, social media, marketing strategy, marketing mistakes, paid media, shared media, owned media, customer decision journey, sales funnel, measurement, marketing objectives

As a regular weekly feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Business2Community, Financial Post, VentureBeat, eMarketer, and TechVibes.

‘Looking big’ is not an effective B2B marketing message

It’s not rare to see B2B companies sucked into the distorted reality that they must market themselves as larger companies to woo their prospect bases. The traditional logic is that if you are selling to larger companies, you should act larger in an effort to appeal to them. Author Brian Jameson explains that B2B marketing is not a boxing match where fighters fall into weight classes.

Two common mistakes inventors make

Inventors make a number of common mistakes when trying to turn an innovative idea into reality, but most of them fall under two categories: presenting an idea to investors too soon and lacking a clear marketing strategy for the product.

The dirty secret behind the incubator boom

By its very nature, entrepreneurship involves a certain amount of throwing spaghetti against a wall. This “spaghetti” is called a minimal viable product, and it is launched because nobody really knows what’s going to stick. Eventually, with a little luck and learning, entrepreneurs become better chefs, and their spaghetti will stay up more often than not. But while watching a recent demo day for one of the countless incubators that have sprung up in the last 18 months, author Francisco Dao was struck by a horrifying revelation. There are now so many people out there trying to build the next app or website that it has become a better bet to throw minimal viable entrepreneurs against the wall than it is to teach them how to throw their own spaghetti.

For brands, social media shows returns but measurement hurdles remain

C-suite executives are increasingly convinced of the benefits of engaging with their customers on social media platforms. A February 2012 survey of 329 senior executives in North America found that the vast majority of companies who had invested in social media saw a positive shift in their bottom line as a result. Despite positive results, almost half of executives said that the major impediment to social media campaigns was the lack of a standardized metric that can measure a return on investment.

Okay, so what’s the difference between an incubator and an accelerator?

Somehow, the words “incubator” and “accelerator” have become interchangeable. They’re not. They’re two different things. Business incubators have been around for decades—they’re the original. Accelerators, the new kids on the block, started popping around the turn of the millennium. Author Knowlton Thomas expertly examines their similarities and differences.

Must-read for founders: A VC explains how to build a key value proposition

On the surface, value propositions seem straightforward. In reality, getting a value proposition right requires some focused thinking and structured analysis. In this post, author Michael Skok examines the DNA of a value proposition by stripping it down to its foundational elements and reassembling it around a variety of new business ideas.

Technorati Tags: B2B, marketing strategy, messaging, inventor, incubator boom, minimum viable product, social media, measurement, incubator, accelerator, VC, funding, key value proposition

These topics merely scratch the surface of our coverage last month. If you missed any of our posts, here is a handy roundup.

April 3: Getting ready for the big show by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette

April 12: Learning how to deal with the unexpected by Francis Moran and Alexandra Reid

April 25: Do you know how to dance with angels? by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette

And on a related note…

In addition to our series, our associates and guest bloggers were also busy writing on a great range of topics. Here are our other posts from April, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:

April 19: What’s going on in Waterloo? by Francis Moran

April 24: There is no magic recipe for a successful company, only good cooks by Francis Moran

April 16: Innovation and the budget by Denzil Doyle

April 23: Tales from the trenches: New associate joins our team by Jeff Campbell

April 17: Social media strategy: Why meeting in the ‘real world’ matters by Alexandra Reid

April 2: Making measurement work for communications professionals by Caroline Kealey

April 5: How to municipimp your municipality by Alexandra Reid

April 18: What an entrepreneur can learn from a literary conference by Leo Valiquette

April 30: From whiteboard to customers: a perspective from the startup world by Jesse Rodgers

April 9: Are we getting value for all the money we’re spending on patents? by David French

April 4: There were other business-related incentive tidbits in the federal budget by Terry Lavineway

April 26: Victoria Lennox: Startup champion by Alexandra Reid

April 13: The importance of developing a social media image strategy by Alexandra Reid

Technorati Tags: startup, entrepreneur, technology, marketing, marketing strategy, angel, VC, startup financing, startup investment, Waterloo, innovation, budget, startup teams, social media strategy, measurement, communications, tourism, patents, Victoria Lennox, Startup Canada, image strategy