People I respect

Posted by on Jun 16, 2009 in Rant | 7 comments

From Twitter:

sophware: @cspenn Good stuff. Do you have a similar list of people you respect? That’s usually harder to make catchy, but would be great to see.

People whose records actually do speak for them.

People who accomplish real, tangible results.

People who happily say “I don’t know” and follow up with “but I bet I can find out.”

People who Google first, ask questions later.

People who embrace thankless tasks and prefer unsung hero status.

People who can find that artful balance of truth and conversational appeal so that their words are fully truthful, neither underestimated nor overexaggerated.

People who can teach effectively.

People who never stop learning.

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People I'm Wary Of

Posted by on Jun 15, 2009 in Awakening, Marketing, Rant | 16 comments

Financial coaches who aren’t fabulously wealthy.

Chefs who crusade against foods. There’s more than enough to advocate for that if you’re crusading against something, you’re probably not cooking delicious things.

Fitness personal trainers who are seriously overweight.

Black belt “masters” under the age of 13.

Social media experts.

Any (American) politician whose ads include the American flag. If you’re so patriotic, why do you need to stuff Old Glory in your ads?

Life coaches under the age of 70. If you’re claiming to coach life skills, shouldn’t you have lived most of it first?

All of these share the same common theme: the claim a person makes directly contradicts the apparent evidence.

When it comes to your personal brand, how out of sync is what you say with the results you’ve generated?

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Souvenirs from MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Posted by on Jun 10, 2009 in Conferences, Marketing | 12 comments

I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking on the Robust Online Content panel with Dr. Matthew Grant, Phil Juliano from Novell, Valeria Maltoni from Sungard, and Mike O’Toole from PJA on Monday at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. One of my personal themes (that I didn’t articulate in the panel) for the conference has been souvenirs from conferences.

My friend Chris Brogan has an interesting quote – when times are good, people love strategy. When times are bad, people want tactics. I’ll take this a step further for conferences: people want something to take home. In this economy, people want a souvenir that they can take away that’s immediately usable, something that, when they sit down at their desk the day they get back, they can plug in and turn on right away and start making a difference, as well as show off to the folks who didn’t go.

Tony Robbins calls this sort of thing profound knowledge – information that once you have, changes everything. You can’t ever go back to the way you used to do things unless you try really hard. A good example of profound knowledge is the rule of thirds in photography. Put a tic tac toe grid mentally over your viewfinder in your camera. Put subjects at the intersections of horizontal and vertical lines, and instantly your photos are likely to become better. Now that you know that, you can’t ever go back to NOT knowing how to apply that rule.

I brought two souvenirs with me to give away at MarketingProfs, one of which I discussed in the panel, and one of which I discussed in the Twitter Therapy sessions. Whether or not you were at the conference (and you really should have been), you can have the souvenirs, too.

1. Customer service isn’t a burden. Customer service is a gold mine. If you’ve ever wanted for content to blog about, to podcast about, to share, to act on, you will never find a better source than the customers you already have and the problems they desperately want you to solve. I’ve recorded 900+ episodes of the Financial Aid Podcast and the customers of the Student Loan Network are my constant inspiration. I don’t need millions of dollars of research. I don’t need millions of dollars in marketing budgets. My customers tell me exactly what their problems are. Your customers are doing the same. The catch? You have to want to listen to them. Far too many people in executive suites are content to glance at their marketing dashboards and that’s as close to the customer as they’re willing to get. You have to be willing to dig – as you would in any gold mine – to get to the real treasure.

2. Try the 8 foot test. This is an easy test to do. Load up your web site on your computer. Maximize your browser. From 8 feet away, is there an immediate and obvious call to action that gets your visitors to do what you want them to do? Here’s an example I use in my demo – go to StaffordLoan.com and do the same. If you can’t tell what we want you to do (apply for a Stafford loan), then you need to see an eye doctor. If you don’t have a room big enough to walk 8 feet away, then load the sites up on your mobile device and hold it at arm’s length for a similar effect.

Hopefully, these two souvenirs are worth enough that they alone made it worth it for you to come to MarketingProfs. Hopefully, every other speaker and presenter gifted you with a souvenir or two as well, so that you went home with an armload full of stuff that will immediately make your business better.

My thanks as well to Ann Handley and the MarketingProfs team for putting on another great event and assembling a terrific panel.

Bonus: grab the eBooks I mentioned at the panel discussion here.

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Meet me at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Posted by on Jun 8, 2009 in Conferences, Marketing | 5 comments

I’ll be at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum today, speaking on a panel about creating compelling content with Matthew Grant, Mike O’Toole, Phil Juliano, and Valeria Maltoni. If you’re at the B2B Forum, say hi. If you have no idea what I look like, the photo at the top of the post should help a little, as it’s fairly accurate and very, very recent.

The Conference FAQ

So what do you do?

I’m the CMO of Edvisors, Inc., a college student marketing company based just south of Boston. We operate Edvisors, the Student Loan Network, and a few dozen sites, and offer federal student loans, private student loans, online degrees, and student credit cards to the higher education audience. We’re always looking to work with new partners, and our 1.5MM+ audience is a great audience to share your stuff with. Grab me at the Forum if you’d like to talk more, or shoot me an email.

I also run the Financial Aid Podcast and co-host the Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast with John Wall, the not-basketball marketing star. If you’re around Boston, I invite you to be a part of PodCamp Boston 4.

Do you have a business card?

You’re looking at it right now. If you’d like to contact me, there’s a handy form on this site. You can also email my GMail address, cspenn at gmail. I don’t carry a pile of paper cards because [a] they’re environmentally bad and [b] information changes so frequently, it’s easier just to give you my personal web site URL, www.ChristopherSPenn.com

Are you on Twitter?

Yes.

Are you on Facebook/LinkedIn?

Yes.
Yes.

I welcome all connections on all social networks.

Do you ever do other conferences, private speaking engagements, etc.?

Yes, through Edvisors. Feel free to contact me for more info on that.

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Social media's defining factor

Posted by on Jun 7, 2009 in Marketing, New media | 14 comments

I posed a question on Twitter that cuts to the heart of all of this stuff:

What is social media? Seriously, what defines social media from any other form of media?

Lots of folks responded.

bigguyd: @cspenn interactions. SM is a two way street where traditional media is one way, typically.
comedy4cast: @cspenn We all wear colorful hats!
discordia77: @cspenn other forms of media have “experts” telling the information, social media is interactive between all elements involved in the story.
seanrehder: @cspenn asks “define social media.” Social = peer and media = information. Social media = information gained from our peers vs. “the man.”
sizzlemaker: @cspenn Media–such as newspapers or broadcasts–is one way. Someone producing content to give you. Social media allows you to interact.
tommorris: @cspenn Nothing. ‘Social media’ is a term used by marketeers for just about everything. It’s lost all meaning. It’s a pointless buzzword.
keithbooe: @cspenn higher level of real time (or near) interaction and direct user involvement than traditional media?
mlseaton: @cspenn the amount of people claiming to be experts or gurus! That is pretty much what defines it.
Ed: Essentially @cspenn Built in sharing. Conducive both by design, and user intent
JoyHaynes: @cspenn For me, real time conversation and connections to other people.
theelusivefish: @cspenn imho, there are 2 things distinguishing social media from the rest – low barriers to entry and the ability for any to participate
kristenmchugh22: @cspenn SM is both expression & engagement. There are some ppl wielding infl for good&selfish int., but not engaging on meaningful scale.
heykeenan: @cspenn the connection makes social media different from other media.

Here’s what I think defines social media apart from any other form of media: Metcalfe’s Law.

From Wikipedia:

Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). First formulated in this form by George Gilder in 1993, and attributed to Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe’s law was originally presented, circa 1980, not in term of users, but rather of “compatibly communicating devices” (for example, fax machines).

Something can be termed social media when its core value relies on the network effect – Metcalfe’s Law.

For example, is a blog post a form of social media? No. The value of the blog post is the same whether one person reads it or one million people read it. Its value is inherent in and of itself. The same is true for a podcast, a TV show, a commercial, a newspaper, etc.

Contrast that with a bulletin board, a call-in radio show, Twitter, discussion forums, comments on a blog post, Facebook, etc. The core value that these forms of media deliver relies on Metcalfe’s Law – the more people who use them, the more valuable they are. The more social they are. The core value diminishes with fewer people and ultimately, the product or service has no inherent value.

When you need to develop an understanding of whether something or not falls in the social sphere, examine careful what its value is, and how the impact of more people changes its value. If the value of the item, network, service, or thing is independent of participation, if Metcalfe’s Law does not drive its core value, it’s not social – and that’s perfectly okay. A well-made hammer’s value is not reliant on the number of people who buy and use it.

If the same product, service, etc. has its value completely unravel if Metcalfe’s Law were applied in reverse – taking away people from it – then it’s social, and requires people to generate its value; the more people who generate value, the more value it has.

This also means that some aspects of “traditional media” are inherently social – call-in radio shows, the classifieds in newspapers, even a corkboard in the employee breakroom.

Three things for marketers to think about: if something isn’t social by design, that’s fine. Don’t try to force it to be social, because it won’t fit. A bouquet of flowers and a perfect sunset can’t Twitter, and never should. Instead focus your efforts on using a different marketing model that works with whatever the core value of your product or service is.

If something “traditional” is social by design in your work already, bringing it online will vastly accelerate its growth and value thanks to how easily socially-powered things spread online.

When your boss, client, friend, neighbor, or kid asks you to make something social (because social media is the shiny object of the day) ask them this: do you want to create something which [a] has no value of its own and [b] is solely reliant on the temperament of the crowd for its value, knowing that one screw-up can destroy everything and leave you with nothing of value?

Personally, I’d ask them instead whether they want to create something that has so much value inherent to it that others can’t help but talk about it and promote it for you in a social context.

What defines social media for you?

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