Connect with top marketing example: Güdrun Sjoeden
“Creativity takes courage” - Henri Matisse
Quality content that connects with its audience - that should be your objective.
One simple an sure way to produce that sort of content again and again, is to look at the work of creative individuals and companies. Absorb fresh ideas and mould them, to become your own.
Connection with top-quality professional marketing makes an exciting way to boost your own marketing efforts. This example comes from my experiences over 2009 and 2010. It is the output of a woman designer, who makes brilliant use of both online and traditional offline communication methods.
Surviving in the thick of professional marketing over these two financially hectic years (either in small businesses or arts or non-profits) has been hard going for all.
During this turmoil, three marketers have stood out, at least for me, and their market impact bears me out. The first two are: IBM and Aldi.
Watch a designer in action
But the third best marketer whom I have seen tackling the downturn, is a Swedish women’s- wear and household furnishings designer with a small staff and only five stores, all of them in Europe and UK.
Her name is Güdrun Sjoeden. I have no idea how to pronounce her name. But in our household, the arrival of her monthly boutique catalogue and occasional small mailers are occasions, not mere events.
Random sample of Güdrun Sjoeden designs
Connection Style and Creativity Flair Innovation.
Sound to you like a fine recipe for any sort of business?
Gudrun’s appoach connects with buyers with style and creative verve. Her phenomenal flair controls decisions on fresh photo-shoot locations, settings and poses, and a unique choice of photographic models that spans a wide size, build, age-range and skin colour. Those decisions that are now being reflected in other countries, were there in her work from the start.
When we can afford it, we buy shoes, blouses, dresses, household linen and even carpets. I spread word- of-mouth (WOM - yuk!) about her work all the time, even in Australia and USA where she doesn’t even operate! If Seth Goden knew about her, he would blog her and join in the conversation. I don’t clothes but I am her ambassador and prophet here.
The opening remark on her website home page for Spring speaks like this (English version):
“Welcome to the premiere of my Home Spring collection!
“A small article in a magazine set us off on our inspiring journey to some fantastic circus caravans in the countryside outside St Rémy in Provence. The heart and soul behind the “colourful caravans” project are Madame & Monsieur Bayol, two artistic characters who have made it their life’s work to renovate and create the very different environment you find in a home on wheels.
Hand-woven rugs and embroidered cushions, print and weave tablecloths, striped and spotted towels, curtains and bed linen – all inspiringly presented in a way nobody will be able to resist. Well I can’t, anyway! “ – Güdrun Sjoeden
Just look at what follows. In fact look at her site for yourself. Words fail me. Here is the url:
Or enter this url in a search engine and see here how her inspiration works.
Pencils down. This is not a Blog-side Lecture!
No, I am not an affiliate of Güdrun Sjoeden in Sweden but she is one of the best designer- marketers around. She is canny-witty entrepreneur. Her work first caught my eye when her monthly sales brochure hit our mailbox four years ago and we have been hooked, since.
But Güdrun has done the creative “hard yards”. She isn’t an overnight sensation. (Do they exist?) Her passion sparkles from her eyes. Her brilliant marketing took full flight in recent years and led to the establishment of five retail outlets in Europe and UK. The get rich quick merchants of the internet should take leaf.
The rest will be retailing and design history. Enjoy.
Words to challenge or comfort small business: & action to match?
Well, somebody out there loves small business.
Singing the benefits of small business services
Here are two sample quotes from the recent days:
“Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.”
http://www.MakeAReferralWeek.com
AT&T Your World Delivered advertisement in The New Yorker, March 1, 2010:
“We know that small businesses create the jobs that fuel economy. And high speed Internet gives them the tools to grow and compete“
What is referral and Referral Week?
”Make a Referral Week” should run all year, but today it is all but over.
If you haven’t consciously tried referral marketing, let me try to define it: obtaining a short endorsement from a satisfied client or customer and using it to add a new strength to your marketing.
It can simply mean getting a nice call or letter from a satisfied customer, but it also includes actively soliciting such endorsement. That can be a sticky wicket for some and the week is designed to dispel the anxiety some feel about “selling”.
Referral Week - what is that?
The week-long virtual event driven in part by the author of Duct Tape Marketing, Dean Jantsch, features daily education programs focused on teaching small business owners and other marketers how to tap the power of referral marketing.
Featured guest experts include Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author Masters of Networking, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and the Go-Givers Sell More, Ben McConnell, author of Creating Customer Evangelists, David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing and PR, Guy Kawasaki, author of Reality Check, Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents, Rohit Bhargava author of Personality Not Included, Dan Schawbel author of Me2.0, Anita Campbell, publisher of Small Business Trends, Ann Handley, editor of Marketing Profs, Lisa Barrone, Outspoken Media, Scott Allen, author of the Virtual Handshake, John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, Scott Ginsberg of Nametag TV, Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response, and Pam Slim, author Escape from Cubicle Nation
It is a good idea especially, for small businesses who have to watch their pennies more closely than others. The above list of authors and their books should prove useful to you. Fortunately, there are women listed. Find out more.
The real world of small business looks like this?
From the day I first opened my office door and looked out for my first client, I have known how it feels. Know the bumps, triumphs, stumbles, joys and horror of it.
That reality has very little to do with what the gurus and fat-promises people say about it. There are so many suckerfish adhering to the skin of small business all over the world and the sum total of their contribution to you or humanity is around nil.
See them on any one scan of the Twitter stream every minute of the day, like the sweep of mating fish heading up-river.
As a life-time small business communicator, I make sure my business keeps its feet on solid ground. What we offer is this and only this: “To pass on a handful of fragments from experience that might otherwise be lost.”
That applies to referral and a full range of communications you should be using, just to make an impression that converts a new customer client or audience member.
You are welcome to make a connection and see how our outlook might be the help needed right now for your small business.
Try and catch Referral Week today and also me! Ready and waiting
Here is what someone said, about what we do: “our advisors sit down with you, get to know you and involve you in outlining a specialized plan that addresses your individual … goals.”
That wasn’t really us, but was co-opted and improved from a Wells Fargo Advisors advertisement in a magazine. Now I know that is not a referral. But I embrace it, as exactly what I wanted to say, had I the budget their agency might ask for.m But we are a small business. Get the picture?
Love your feedback on Referral Week. Love your refferal.
Just …..email info@professionalword.com I guarantee we will treat your referral company with the professional standard assistance that we give you!
Check out our Gary Gelbart post for ideas for your referral letter text.
Wating for my virtual assistant
Secret copywriting tips from Bond Halbert
Secret as in Secret copywriting tips is a word that copywriters in the guru mould love to throw around. Just how often do you feel that a mainstream marketing tips presentation on the internet or in email will be a comfortable fit for your arts or non-profit audience?
“No, I’m an arts purist! or “I’m a Non-Profits loner! “
Pay attention then: this newsletter, interview combination is one instance!
The latest Internet Marketing Speed newsletter from Australian Internet marketer James Schramko was in fact so remarkably good, that I felt that I must bring it to the notice of Arts and Non-profits marketers like you. It is a good fit for any market environment. It comes from a copywriting family who have covered all bases.
Although your market is highly-specific and you may feel that mainstream marketing techniques are often crass or worse, it would be a shame to walk-by and miss out this excellent Schramko’s interview with a competent copywriter who is the son of a genuine giant in the field of marketing copywriting, the late Gary Halbert.
It was a disarmingly personal, generous and revealing 30 minutes. I will link you to the video shortly.
What rang best for me was that Bond Halbert was so relaxed and open that many practical insights were revealed. Among a host of clear, sincere and obviously market-tested observations and suggestions were:
It is a good idea to just write first, whatever you feel might be useful to your readers about a topic, rather than hack and chip your way into it, worrying about how good it is. Don’t restrict yourself at that stage. Polish later. That could mean forgetting about key words and powerful headlines.
Second, you have an advantage as a copy writer, if the topic is one that you have a passion about or that is specific to the excitement you feel about the daily achievement and work your prospective reader.
In the case of arts and non-profits marketers, I feel, you have an additional advantage: you don’t have to ginger-up enthusiasm in order to convince. Involvements, passion and commitment are your stock-in-trade.
Demonstrates clear, valuable tips about effective interviewing
This was incidental but turns out to be another unexpected bonus from a marketing newsletter, in this case Shramko’s: The chat rolled along with remarkably few questions and almost no interruptions from the interviewer. (Dr Wilson of Internet Marketing Online is another of the few ‘professionals’ with similar restraint.)
Arts and on-profits marketers often need to interview, in order to obtain evidence and endorsements of their offers and to elicit information from clients.
Allowing an interviewee to extend his answers can sometimes prove alarming for you, but a short remark, even a phrase-only, keeps him on track most times. In this instance, Bond relaxed and was more revealing as he forgot about the camera and microphone. Rare
These were both unusual events to happen with mainstream marketing ‘experts’ but they account for a deeply interesting and sometimes very personal recollections, all of which rang true.
How to Get Organized, Stay Organized and Take Back Your Life #4
Personal and business project to set up an Integrated Management System: Day 4.
This is the fourth day of this short series of posts about using Sally McGhee’s book: “Take Back Your Life”, Microsoft Press.
So far … we have looked quickly at re-organizing yourself and your arts business or non-profits organization so it stays organized. Of course the book spells that out. We are just 45/250 pages into this meticulous plan of action. Don’t worry. I am attempting to give you a taste rather than hit you with the whole thing.
We looked at a number of sensible, clear steps, as used in association with Microsoft Outlook as the technical tool.
On Day 3 we used an example (my day) to show how the overlap of private and family life matters and business, needs to be addressed as part of the process.
The goal is an integrated management system.
Ms Mc Ghee reassures us at this stage, with a quote: “Small things done consistently in strategic places create major impact.” - unknown author
“You can choose two or three changes that would make the biggest impact and focus on them,” she says.
Pruning the email In-box is a good example: Instead of opening each email and deciding to close it back into the In-box, decide what to do with it in Outlook or dispose of it then and there. This deals with just one Collecting Point, but a major one.
You notice that I stopped at 8 Collecting Points in my office. But there are more I didn’t admit to you! Most of them will go and maybe 5 will survive. Decisions that change old habits are sometimes difficult to make. They are the essence of the McGhee approach.
She balances “What will you let go of?” with “How will you feel then? What do the changes brings for you?” by applying the pressure of a Weekly Review Point. It is there in Outlook, giving you the overview of how essential things are at last coming under control. Re-enforce them by acknowledging your progress, This is the way she feels changes will be come new habits.
The Middle
We have reached the middle of the book today and that is where I will break off and let you consider what you will do about changing the state of your office, your business and your life.
What lies ahead is what McGhee calls the Workflow Model. It is a way to process and organize information.
The key steps seem to me a bit like Danny Kaye’s character in “The Court Jester” movie long ago: He instructs his cohort to raid a castle thus: “Get in; get it over with; get out. Get it? Go it! Good!”
Sally McGhee’s version of the Workflow model has seven points. What to do with information lumps:
” What is it? Can you act on it? Does it relate to a Meaningful Objective? What is the Next Action? Do it? Delegate it? Defer?”
Now?
I am about to start on that sort of processing. My initial feeling of relief from the overload and then a growing assurance of control, have continued.
What would you do if: this morning at 8.00 the parcel delivery person dropped two books in: The Redeemer, a crimi by Jo Nesbo, from Amazon’s back list and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo of Business Week?
Drop everything, right? No. I put them aside until I get things running up here in my office. (Then I brought them up to get the spellings correct for this post. But still You get my drift… and I forgot my stomach tablets and coffee in the kitchen.)
It takes a while to kill old habits.
In your own way, as you come to it, “Take Back Your Life!” could unlock some blockages for you and bring benefits, especially in the form of messages that connect with your clients, donors or patrons. You will have found the ingredients easily because they are stored where you can find them, ready for use!
If you would like to see more about the book and the reaction it has generated down the years, you can visit Sally McGhee through her company McGhee Productivity Solutions: http://www.mcgheeproductivity.com
The book itself has gone through several upgrades since 2005 (Mine is the 2005 Special Edition, but has all the key elements at a lower price). It is widely available through your regular book store.
Time to get going. Best luck with it!
How to Get Organized, Stay Organized and Take Back Your Life #3 *
Personal and business project to set up an Integrated Management System: Day 3.
Today I will be very brief. The reason is that my children are home with me (my home office) on a local public holiday (Shrove Tuesday) and my working wife is 2.5 hours away in falling snow.
Don’t these things happen? Don’t you suddenly have to set aside work plans?
Sally McGhee’s book, the core of this project, is one of the first “how to” book I have read (that’s hundreds it seems) in the last three years that accepts the concept of work and life balance and does something about it. It actually demands balance as a central element
What you want to do and how your life fits in
Sally says, later the book: “When you review your personal and business Meaningful Objectives, focus on them collectively and ask yourself, ‘Do these objectives create balance for me? It’s important to include both personal and business because you cannot create balance in a vacuum you need to evaluate the whole picture and not just a piece of it.”
Taking a break is critical to a working management system and it must be able to support that. Doing just what I am doing, taking quality time out, is happening for a rare time in my life. The book and its sensible simple ideas is starting to work on me. At my age and after more than four decades in business communication, I doubted I could change like this.
I am crossing my fingers. Still at that raw early stage, like someone stepping out of the atmosphere of a two-day workshop with a jet flame burning out the back, about a foot long. Fragile
McGhee has a definition of what she calls the Cycle of Productivity. But first, productivity itself: “the simplest form is completing action.” But that is not enough: you can cheerfully complete actions until you are blue ithe face and still not experience productivity … ”Simply completing actions is not enough for them,” she say of managers she has observed, “What’s important for them is that thie actions are kinked and driven by the Meaningful Objectives.” She describes Meaningful Objectives as “your North Star (she writes north of the equator)”.
The cycle she talks about has these steps:
Identifying Meaningful Objectives
“It takes time to clarify objectives but the value you receive from having them is enormous.” Use them a s the key filier with which to sort out the inputs you get daily; the flow of data from every direction: reading emails calls meetings conferences responses to action …
Creating Strategic Next Actions
Action items should be capable of being completed in one step. No ifs, buts nor maybes
Scheduling and Completing Strategic Next Actions
Plan your next actions on your calendar without losing your balance or missing deadlines, Yui cannot do everything and what drops out is either picked up or surrendered altogether - like delegating. Don’t say yes to something extra or an interruption; if the new request really can’t be done without dislodging something more important (see Meaningful Objectives)
Reviewing and Acknowledging Progress Towards Objectives
This is a tricky one. More complex, at least for this head I will come back to it. Wait a sec while I put it in my Outlook calendar. (Done and flagged for tomorrow.)
That is a far I can go today, it has been personal and that is a risk, I am sorry to say, on the internet.
How about your feelings on this process?
Like any solution (in this case cleaning up the office and mind), what we have here is not a dogma, not a super plan. But it is a map that you might use to fit your own territory - and that is when it could become truly useful for you; when you own it.
Two illustrations: Snag It page picture of my Outlook Tasks column, showing the next post.
Cover shot of the book I am using here. 2005 Edition
Here are my outlook tasks with next post highlight
Meanwhile, how are you proceeding with your lists of collecting points; the places where you stow information-luggage that could make or break your success or your business. Or you
Love to hear from you.
This is the "old" edition. Fits my budget and more... Courtesy: Amazon Uk
How to Get Organized, Stay Organized and Take Back Your Life*
Personal and business project to set up an Integrated Management System: Day 2.
Note: This short series of posts (see the title above me here) will talk about Microsoft Office as a tool for running an integrated management system. It also refers to ideas as presented by Sally McGhee in a book: “Take Back Your Life! Using Microsoft Outlook To Get Organized and Stay Organized”. I have no affiliation with either Sally or Microsoft.
In Day 1 …
In Day 1 I asked: Do you think your arts or non-profit organization needs better productivity? I wondered if you are so well organized that you have thinking time; time to do what you like most in business, creative work or profession?
Would you, I inquired, like to take back your old lifestyle and live a balanced and healthy life?
Dissatisfied with my own answers on most of that, I invited you like to chew on your situation and what we might do about it. You are very welcome to look over my shoulder for a few posts and to offer any input you might want to share. Let’s go!
If you are just joining this project, take a minute of two now, to scan the first post for more back- ground on where this “project” began; who I am and why I am doing this.
Now read on …
Yesterday, I went to my SENT file in Microsoft Outlook email system -and tossed out every one of them; 300 emails
That was scary
I will now wait to see what happens. Who will follow me up when I tell or my correspondents that I have accidentally lost all my emails, from the last four months?
It is not exactly what Sally McGhee recommended in the book I am following for this project: * “Take Back Your Life …” (see Day 1)
Confession - I am an data hoarder
My Nest: My Collecting Points
I tell you now I am what Australians would call a true Bowerbird:
1. Hoard scraps of information: like emails, in and out.
2. Scribble Post-It Notes and gaze at them until the sticky-stuff wears off and they hit the floor.
3. Write To Do lists.
4. Subscribe to a number of “experts in various fields related to non-profits to arts business”. Most of them hit me with email once a week.
5. Print out “interesting, useful” emails, web site pages, blogs post articles and pdfs that strike my fancy each day. I puit them into piles of loose- leaf folders all over the office and even on my bedside table, alongside 30 New Yorkers and a Jo Nesbo crime novel, my Ventolin puffer, an alarm clock and a brochure I picked up at the Frankfurt Book Show last year. (I work from a home office.)
6. Store “maybe use useful one day” items in trays, of which I have 7.
7. Pile up How To books in or on my bookshelves.
8. My unopened emails number 759 by today’s count. I have not investigate my total email In Box. Dare I do what it I managed today with my Sent Emails Box? Empty it?
Sally McGee calls the above items (I have only listed 8 as you see) my Collection Points.
The Collection Points like I have listed, do this to me:
Create a high level of distraction
Drain my energy
Use up my time
Reduce the time and energy I have left for productive work
Nag at me
Waste my time
Is this, and more, happening to you? Are you a collector? It’s not good, but welcome to this series of short posts.
I hope you find them interesting.
Here is a simple task for today:
Make a list of the Collection Points in your office, work space or small business set up.
I have chosen this listing step as my starting point, in following Sally McGhee’s plan for getting organized and staying organized.
Next, I will start working on “Three Phases for Creating an Integrated Management System”.
Neil McPherson Join me in this project?
Thank you for joining your fellow arts and non-profits marketers, who are getting prepared to change how they look at their business backroom paper piles , over- full email boxes, and fat in-trays - that never seem to get smaller.
Professional Word; our pledge is to help you produce marketing messages that connect. But that can’t begin, if you are nagged by the presence of chaos in your creative environment. I look forward to hearing from you.
Follow me on Twitter @Lonewordsmith along with 1600 followers from your field of work. My daily tweets focus of new ideas to make things hum in your own marketing.
Make direct contact if you like; email: info@professionalword.com
How to Get Organized, Stay Organized and Take Back Your Life*
Neil's piles of files and paper
A personal and business project: Day One.
Do you think that your arts business or non-profit organization needs to get more productive and so well organized that you have time to think; to do what you like most in your chosen field?
Would like to take back the life you once had, before you entered business - and rediscover a balanced and healthy one?
Now, I have asked a mouthful up there. Would you like to chew on it with me for a few posts?
Do Arts and Non-Profits need this idea?
Well it certainly seems so.
Three views:
An experienced and successful consultant who I have posted about here: Nancy Schwartz of Nancy Schwartz and Company, recently envisioned Non-Profits (and Arts) marketers as tending to be: isolated from the flow of business information that they might usefully access; “over-stretched” and under resourced. She didn’t use those exact words.
Another consultant in the brand re-engineering field, Wendy Moore-McQueen (Mormac.com) Toronto, surveyed small businesses and found that over 80% of owner/marketers didn’t seek the help they knew they needed. Instead, they battled on alone, doing the best they could.
Me. Despite the fact that I am a consultant to arts and non-profits myself, I also operate isolated from my two associates. In setting up my own web site after a ten year absence from the net, I tried to battle on alone too. It was hell: so much to discover; so little time to implement it. Result: heaps of “would-be-useful” files and heaps of paper; over 750 unread emails in the inbox, despite culling 200 last week). Chaos In short, I was going nuts until …
in desperation: I entered “organize Outlook” into a search engine. What popped up, and I soon bought online, was a book: * “Take back Your Life: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized“. (Yes, though I live in Germany these days, I used all those zeds. Sometimes I have to compromise.)
The author, Sally McGhee is a productivity consultant and executive coach, who founded a company called McGhee Productivity.
Her book (no. I am not an affiliate) is the first of its kind I have struck that is a no-nonsense, straight from the shoulder blueprint for getting the chaos of my life and my work sorted out. It runs 248 pages (Special Edition) before the copious index and is a page turner extraordinary. Ask my wife: I am very picky about that kind of book. Oh, and it doesn’t promise to make me rich for only $147
The only volume that came near, in my two years’ floundering around doing a web site to offer my forty years’ experience (without a team to do it) was Steve Krug: “Don’t Make Me Think”. It’s about Web Usability.
I am a Barracuda fish when it comes to reading (swallow whole; absorb little) but this time, since it could be my last chance, I want get the tidied up. More on that next time
You see (if you have come this far, you may wonder) I have these objectives … but there I must pause.
We’ll get to that later.
An invitation to watch a private journey from a safe distance
(Like a television series that you may know)
Because I have failed to reform and re-organize myself many times, I confess to you that I am scared to death of getting this project thing wrong too. Ring any bells yet?
This is why I am inviting you, dear reader, to join this process with me. Keep me honest. I will blab about myself. But I will keep that under control, I promise.
After reading the first fifty pages of Sally’s book I confess that the Barracuda phenomenon was setting in. For it demands reading, absorbing and implementing there-and-then on Outlook 2003, Outlook Version 2002 or Outlook2000. Ms. McGhee has a new edition of the book “in the works” I believe.
I invite you to join me as I set out to read and set in motion every step in the book.
How I would love you to chip in with your ideas, experience and comments. In the process and the series (3 to 5 posts on my blog), I hope you find this useful in your own work and life. OK? End of sermon, and a heartfelt invitation.
Just to give you an idea of this book, here is a short quote: ” How many times in the last five years have you told yourself, “This year, I’m going to get more organized and improve my work balance”?
“All of the solutions (to your productivity problems) can be implemented immediately, and they relate to real-time circumstances that you’re experiencing today.”
This was day one: Introduction
Do get in touch to share in this project. I can promise nothing, but I feel it could be useful to you as it has been already, for me.
Neil McPherson Join me in this project?
My blog and web site tackle the task of helping Arts and Non-profits organizations or businesses to create messages that connect with their intended audience.
In this unusual little project, I wish to share with readers - the experience of a manager reorganizing his own office, work area and business along with personal life aspects, using the implimentation of recommended steps from an excellent book by Sally McGhee, usng Microsoft Outlook.
You can contact me at Professional Word web site: http://www.professionalword.com
email: info@professionaword.com
Twitter: @lonewordsmith
Produce & Send Non-Profits Messages that Connect.
Is your message getting through?
If you don’t produce Non-profits messages that connect, you may be are joining a large group discovered in a recent survey of your industry,
The crisis facing messaging by marketers is that they rarely “connect”.
What does connect with messages mean? Here is one definition: “message that uses writing that the intended audience can read, understand, and act upon.” (That paraphrases a quote from the Plain English Campaign, UK.
New Survey brings News… and HOPE
New evidence about the state of Non-Profits messaging emerges from a recent survey conducted by Nancy Schwartz & Company in New York.
Nancy’s findings should be “required reading”.
Have a close look at a recent assessment of what your colleagues and their organizations are achieving. But first, in the privacy of your own keyboard, take three or four minutes right now, to test yourself out on one of her questions. It is a question about the sort of messages you send to clients, potential donors, future supporters, future advocates:
“Which of these message elements are standardized, that is; used in the same way, consistently, across channels, programs and teams?
(Is it) your Tagline (organization), Tagline for programs or campaigns, Positioning statement (Brief, what your org does for whom, how & the unique value delivered), Talking points or key messages (for organization), Talking points or key messages (for programs, campaigns or audiences)?”
Still working on it? Try the remainder of the survey yourself and your eyes should pop open, as Nancy’s probably did when she saw her results coming in.
One key finding and what steps to take now
The results of the full survey led Nancy Schwartz & Company to say: “messages …poorly targeted, difficult to remember and uninspiring.”
Getting attention with messages that connect
Poorly targeted, difficult to remember and uninspiring messages
Reversing this triple-set of negatives requires a lot of work and, for many marketing message producers, using the freely available advice seems too hard.
But Nancy Schwartz has one special suggestion that I am keen to pass on to you:
Seek the help of a similarly-motivated and but more experienced company or individual, someone who has done “the hard yards” (learned the ropes) and best of all, succeeded.
Economical and sometimes free help is out there. But seeking help is the rub: “Why not just soldier-on alone?
Going-it alone: an epidemic in Small Business
Early last year, one of my associates Wendy Moore-MacQueen in Toronto, surveyed small business in her region on the question of “going it alone” without any professional help at all. In a tough economy with many diversions facing your potential donors or supporters, rejecting assistance and “soldiering on” might be noble in some respects relating to antiquity, but close to destructive to your business future. It is as bad as that. The number of respondents who, according to the survey, had chosen to “battle on alone” was enormous.
Help is on the way
Nancy Schwartz and Company, bless them, have marched in to fill the gap and to lay out some ‘starting-off solutions’ to the poor messaging problem. My team, more modestly, will contribute what we can in this neck-of-the-woods and online. The more helpers - the better.
3 first steps to stronger messages
Here are three clear suggestions from Nancy Schwartz’s report:
i. Ensure that your organization’s strategy and goals are crystal clear
ii. Build understanding and support of leadership and colleagues — You need their insights and reach
iii. Start with your tagline — less is more “Keeping it short is the very essence of messaging” Nancy has made the results of another survey feely available, this one where the focus was top taglines.
With just those points in mind, I think you will find that there is a way out of the current malaise in Non-Profits marketing messages.
Footnotes:
Mea Culpa! I confess to being right Fachadick in claiming Nancy Schwartz’s recent survey on the Non-Profits messaging was conducted with 1400 organizations. McPherson erred. The corrected version should be 900- still a huge sample, you’ll agree.
The results were extraordinary. The signal was that Non-Profits must lift their act, and fast.
“Many are doing an inadequate job of connecting with their key audiences and characterize their primary messages – intended to motivate donors, volunteers and advocacy – as poorly targeted, difficult to remember and uninspiring,” said Nancy Schwartz in a recent post.
Like Nancy Schwartz, I would love to hear about have your messaging story. Sharing experiences and raising questions could just take some of the pressure off you! I join her now, to invite you to do just that.
Sources:
You might like to see my full review of the Nancy Schwartz and Company survey of Non-Profts messaging. Follow this url to Slideshare Business:
http://www.slideshare.net/ProfessionalWord/vital-survey-reveals-messaging-crisis-for-nonprofits
Wendy Moore McQueen’s Canada-based business and its web site and blog posts http://www.mormac.ca presents a number of helpful services tackle problems faced by Non-Profits marketers. I wrote a book review for that site.
About this blog: “Arts-Business (and Non-Profits) Merge”
In my posts on behalf of Professional Word, my aim is to bring you tips, ideas, news and techniques to produce content which connects with your potential supporters, donors, clients or audience.
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- I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and another 50 posts on this blog, so far. Email me at info@professionalword.com
- You can also find me on Twitter @lonewordsmith
“How NOT to be The Social Media Guru”- blog post revisited
- Social media guru or snake oil man? (Dress rehearsal)
“How Not to be The Social Media Guru” was a blog post from Econsultancy that experienced a good day or more, in the blogosphere.
What happened with it provides lessons to other market communicators especially those of you involved arts and non-profits. It brings several cautions in its wake.
It was posted at 11.24 am Central European Time (I think), garnered 6 comments by 1.50 PM and by 15.45 Central European Time, it boasted five pages A4 listing of Twitter Retweets. (Europeans use the 24 hour clock convention.)
I followed one of those Retweets to get to the post.
The blog post was born out of a reaction to this observation: that “there’s a lot of scepticism when it comes to high-paid constants who claim to have mastered it” (social marketing).” It says: “that skepticism is reflected in an amusing animation called The Social Marketing Guru.
First, a check of how ” … The Social Media Guru” looks to search engines:
The blog post has these tags: The Social Media Guru, consulting, consultants, snake oil, clients.
And these words appear in the first paragraph: social media guru, social media, consultants
In the third paragraph are: “The Social Media Guru! ” (2), “100, 000 views on You Tube” and- social media
“The Social Media Guru” phrase is repeated gain in paragraph 4, social media
And in par. 5: social media consultant, and the ubiquitous again “The Social Media Guru”
Although I felt that search engines might have suffered indigestion by that point, I was wrong. They loved it. (End of “Blogging 101″, I guess)
What was the fuss about and what is going on here?
Like the lifelong journalist and writer that I am, I looked around for some attribution and a back-ground on the writer of this highly numerically-successful blog post. In the Advertising Age’s Adage Power 150 top marketing blogs list, Econsultancy ranks number 12 (24 November 2009), ahead of Problogger (my favourite blog) by several places. http://adage.com/power150/
Looking closer
It is ironic that researching the writer, Patricio Robles, a tech specialist with expertise on social media gurus, has been frustrating:
He does not have a Facebook account - or at least Facebook says under his (?) photo, that he is “not the one you are looking for …”
One picture, recovered by Bing showed a personable, young, lightly-bearded man whose name could well be Patricio Robles. He has been working in associated fields since about 1993. “About 1994″ is more commonly used in e-guru profiles. Seems so long ago, to some
On the Econsultancy website (a kind of co-operative online “club” for ecommerce writers), Robles is allowed about three lines in his online profile - and no links. (My “deeper” research found that one Patricio Robles Gil is a respected nature photographer. A passionate singer of stirring art songs in South America has a similar name.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Patricio%20Robles%20Gil%20&FORM=BILH#focal=dc2e5e0c0b834ec58a80c08389630622&furl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oceanoasis.org%2Fdesertandsea%2Fimages%2Fgil150.jpg
On Twitter there can be found, a certain Patricio Robles. But he is aged about 18, poses with a large dog on his Twitter page and has fewer than 20 followers.
Econsultancy has three accounts on Twitter and this morning the main one was rating 16,361 Followers. Not anywhere near Tour de France cyclists of note, but workable..
All of which is a pity, because the fine mixture of assured-professionalism seemed based on practical-experience and that rises through the texture of the blog post itself. So, for this writer, gathering the credentials behind the blog post - forgotten the name? - How Not to be The Social Media Guru - was fruitless. It is such an interesting, biting, even subversive affront to all those deserving men and women of internet Gurubia.
The sausage amid the sizzle- 5 tips about keeping out of Internet Gurubia
Turning from the blogging expertise and SEO skills imbedded in it, the substance of the Econsultancy blog post: “How NOT to be The Social Media Guru” hinges on just 5 points:
Don’t equate prolific use with prolific ability
Bring some experience to the table
Don’t make excuses
Avoid the abstract
Execute, don’t pontificate
Don’t sell fear
Avoid appeal to authority
Your compensation has to be aligned with tasks you pe4rfomr
Don’t call yourself a social media guru
Here is the blog post itself (link)
http://www.econsultancy.com/blog/4995/
How arts and non-profits can benefit from this post
You hard-working denizens of arts and non-profits businesses should draw nourishment from this exercise:
Although most Blogs, Twitters and Facebook Fan Pages pay scant attention to you, many of their techniques can be stretched with minor distortion, to fit the communication imperatives of arts and non-profits.
That applies especially to those concerned with content and techniques.
There is enough evidence that - what works for the rough-and-tumble crowd of entrepreneurs, start-ups along and “creatives” in almost every medium-sized business on the planet, will help arts and non-profit marketers - by their example.
What you add to your content is passion, distinction and a unique attention to craft and art, with a touch-of-class.
However, CAUTION is required!
What you must also add, I think, is a large measure of care to attend to questions of ethics in communication. Your clients are special: they demand and expect integrity with a fervour that by far eclipses the demands made upon your general market colleagues.
This is not necessarily the stuff of sacred trust, but your audience, your clients and all those who contribute to your causes and enthusiasms, do adopt higher standards regarding you.
So the questions of attribution and governance along with the meaning and pitfalls of social capital bring up questions that you need to consider, especially in hard economic times. The arts shouldn’t be so vulnerable on such issues, but that is alas, how it is.
I have found several of the sources that raise the questions and some of the answers: The Saquaro Seminar (Harvard) on Civic Engagement in America, and Ethics World on Non-Profit Governance. Just click to inspect.
http://www.ethicsworld.org/corporategovernance/nonprofitgovernance.php
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/primer.htm
Opinion:
Even in a fever, most arts marketers wouldn’t repeat a title and “key words” so many times in five paragraphs. But you (and I) may need to think about how far we can compromise, in order to “succeed” on the internet these days; how much we’ll accept in terms of the degradation of our language and self-respect - Neil McPherson
Neil McPherson (Lonewordsmith) is director and web master of Professional Word, an online business dedicated to sharing a well- spring of ideas, resources and experience to assist hard-pressed and under-resourced arts and non-profit marketers. Professional Word helps clients, site and blog readers to produce quality in effective content. He was educated in Australia and now resides in New Europe.
Writers’ Book Tours:Thrill or Drag?
Out on the track again, for Harry Potter.
This post about book tours, publishing and book sellers begins more than a decade ago.
In a June, 1993 issue of Esquire magazine, a fishing writer and budding novelist Thomas McGuane managed to combine the toil and trouble of a writer’s book tour with a quail hunting and trout fishing trip in Texas. The Sturm und Drang came together superbly well.
“Even on my short holiday home,” McGuane’s story began, “my wife thought I ought to be fishing; she said my mind was ‘in ribbons’. I was going to be back on the road so soon I really just wanted to curl up somewhere. In the year of a book tour, an author saunters from airport to airport supremely confident of the value of his talks and readings. It’s a crying shame that this feeling gives way to an all–consuming fear that his first auditors will turn up in the later cities and discover his bonne mots reduced to cheese-skulled yammering and the geekish didacticism of the mentally bankrupt.”
Those words forever endeared me to McGuane’s work as he continued his writing career. I supposed that he still dragged his weary length through book promotional tours, finding the circus ever-gruelling. But what happened to that reluctant book sales-promotion-tourist, I wondered.
