Top and bottom 10 blog posts of 2011

Posted by on Dec 30, 2011 in Blogging | 2 comments

New Year's 2010

As the clock ticks down, here are the top and bottom 10 blog posts of the year. I picked 10 of each because I think it’s interesting to see what caught on and what didn’t.

The Top 10

The Bottom 10

I’ll close out 2011 by saying thank you for being a reader, a supporter, an advocate for my blog and what I publish here. Without you, this blog would have stopped a long time ago, so thank you for being here, and I look forward to sharing even more with you in 2012.

Happy New Year!

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Expand your three words

Posted by on Dec 29, 2011 in Awakening, Strategy | 2 comments

A bunch of folks are starting to put together their three words lists. I’ve seen some from Tim Brechlin, Helena Bouchez, and many others. While we’ve said in years past that the three words aren’t resolutions or goals, I wanted to take a moment to explore how they could give rise to goals and measurements. If you’re the sort of person who likes to be able to take something like the 3 words exercise and turn it into a plan of action, here’s one way of doing that.

First, the three words aren’t measurable. Let’s be very clear about that. They are abstract concepts.

Next, we need to set down vision, strategy, and tactics. Lest we get caught up in the degenerate corporate versions of these words, we should define them clearly now.

Vision: what will you and your life look like when you have achieved?
Strategy: what tangible, measurable things will you do to achieve your vision? (and how will you measure them?)
Tactics: how will you do the things that your strategy dictates?

Let’s put this in a mind map so you can see more clearly how this might break out.

3 words exercise

It becomes clear how we can take the word and start to expand it into a broader picture of how that word might influence our lives in 2012. I’ll use one of Tim Brechlin’s words, initiative. Tim mentioned that he wants to bring more initiative to his photography. What would this look like in the vision of a successful year for photography in 2012? Tim might be so bold as to say, “By the end of 2012, I will have shot 12 photos that I’m proud enough to sell and will have made at least one sale of them.” That way, at the end of 2012 he can legitimately say that he’s a professional (shoots photos for money) photographer.

This gives rise to questions about what he should be doing and how. Let’s see how this might break out:

3 words exercise

Now we’re truly digging into the what and how. What’s more, now that we’re digging into the specifics, we can see a plan of action and a weekly agenda beginning to grow. Each task can be broken down even more granularly until what was just a single word is now an entire recipe:

3 words exercise

Here’s the beauty of this kind of structure. By doing this kind of mind mapping explosion of the meaning of the three words in vision, strategy, and tactics, we can feel the depth and reach of what those three simple words really mean to us. We avoid the trap of those words becoming cliches or even punchlines to jokes later in the year as we confront our inevitable deviation from them. Recite the words with the plans you set down in front of you now and those words will have much greater meaning in the year to come.

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Three Words for 2012

Posted by on Dec 28, 2011 in Awakening, Blogging, Buddhism, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin | 6 comments

Every year since 2006, friends of Chris Brogan put together our three words for the coming year that define what we’re focusing on in the coming year. They’re not goals, but more like rails or guides that help keep us moving in the general correct direction. Here are mine for 2012.

MFA Buddhist Art

Story

When I look at what I’ve created in the past few years, there’s value in the content. How-to lessons, detailed research, data and techniques, but something’s been missing. Something’s been lacking. On the way home from the dojo one night, I was listening to master teacher Stephen K. Hayes talking about how the deeper lessons of both Buddhism and ninjutsu are transmitted. He said, “We’re going to tell a few stories here, and hopefully this will evoke some stories in your mind of your own. That’s how this training works.” At that moment I realized exactly what has been missing from a lot of my work. In 2012, one of my three words and focus points will be on better learning this skill.

Restoration

One of the more interesting healing classes in World of Warcraft is the restoration druid. Rather than heal with holy powers and flashes of light, the druid uses the powers of nature to restore allies to health. Regrowth, nourish, rejuvenation, lifebloom, swiftmend, tranquility. Here’s what’s powerful about the idea of restoration druid spells on real life: so much of what we’ve done in the past few years has burned everything to the ground. We’ve exhausted our email lists. We’ve tapped out our social networks. We’ve cut staff down to the bone to scrape up a few extra pennies per share on earnings calls. In short, we’ve depleted all of our resources and wondered why our marketing is getting less and less effective. In 2012, one of my study points will be restoration. How do we continue to be effective as marketers while restoring our resources to health?

This extends to personal life as well. When you go all-out, inevitably, something has to suffer. My question to myself is, how can I bring restoration and regrowth to areas of my life other than business?

Compassion

Originally I had chosen something else for the third word, but as I was looking over the years, I thought it’d make 2012 more challenging and interesting to focus on something I’m not good at. Compassion I mean in the Buddhist sense – the ability to see through your own issues and feelings enough to understand what someone else is going through and provide some kind of legitimate help. One of the greatest dangers of social media, particularly as you start to develop any kind of following, is that you tend to attract like-minded people. As a result, you hear less and less about things you disagree with, things that challenge you, things that make you think. When all you hear is how awesome you are (whether you are or not) you face the great danger of your ego overwhelming any good work you’re providing. I have heard in the back of my mind from time to time the ugly, egotistical whisper that says, “this (person/place/thing/task) is below me”. It’s exactly at those moments when compassion can provide a much-needed bitch slap upside the head to bring reality back into the picture.

My task for 2012 is to be more rigorous and more disciplined in my own mind, guarding against that ever-growing danger.

So there you have it, my three words for 2012: story, restoration, compassion. Blog yours and leave a link in the comments!

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Looking back at the three words for 2011

Posted by on Dec 27, 2011 in Advertising, Marketing, Strategy | 2 comments

Photos from Dallas, Texas

Back at the beginning of the year, I shared with you the three words I chose for 2011. If you’re not familiar with this, here’s the original post. Let’s see how they panned out, shall we?

System

The original idea was to see how many ideas from automation of the World of Warcraft Auction House could be put to use in real life, and this year was an excellent year for systems. Together, you and I developed some fairly useful templates for making exciting things happen. The most telling example of this was the sheer number of “How to” blog posts I wrote this year, many by request, from Facebook Insights to Google+ analytics. Some of the templates turned out to be case studies in their own right, such as my book launch roadmap. Other systems you can see the results of, but not necessarily how the machinery works.

Overall, 2011 was a very good year for systems.

Shatterpoint

The original idea of shatterpoints was to find where little things can make or break a company, make or break a system. Thanks to many different events this year, I got a chance to clarify many of the frameworks I talk about and where the exact shatterpoints are. The method you use to judge how a lead is qualified in a sales and marketing funnel can make or break your company’s entire revenue stream and simultaneously break all of your marketing efforts. One of the biggest shatterpoints this year was around metrics. So many people are choosing the wrong metrics to measure by, which in turn either invalidates or outright breaks their marketing programs entirely.

Shatterpoints were clearly important as part of 2011.

Leverage

The flipside to shatterpoints was leverage, or where little things can make a big difference. If there was one defining factor of 2011, it was that social became an integral part of other marketing efforts and added to them with unforeseen synergies. For example, one of the biggest was that search engines began to use social to adjust search results, which was a giant game-changer. That turned little habits like #the5 into legitimate search boosters, and this became obvious by the number of people asking to be listed in it. Other simple things like a welcome message on Twitter generated giant results:

Pages - Google Analytics

Little things created great leverage in 2011.

Our three words exercise gave some great focus for 2011. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the three words for 2012.

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Always on

Posted by on Dec 26, 2011 in Advertising, Marketing, Strategy | 0 comments

We live in the age of always on. I don’t just mean the electronic devices that surround us, but that the audience itself is always on, which means we are always on. There is no time now when you and your employees are not potentially on YouTube, on Twitter, on Facebook. Your average smartphone or handheld camera can boot and be ready to record in 3-8 seconds, so if you and your company are not performing up to expectations, the cameras are rolling.

Some of the more famous examples of always on that have bitten companies?


(what’s especially scary for the brand is that searching for Fedex in YouTube brings this out as the first result)


(again, search for Domino’s Pizza on YouTube and this is the first result)

Pop quiz: how often do you search for your company’s name on YouTube?

In the age of always on, how do you operate effectively? Well, I suppose you could always back draconian Internet censorship legislation and try to legislate your way out of failure, but that’s not really an effective way to operate.

A more viable strategy might be something like this:

1. Run a company worth working for. We talked about this a while back, about having a legitimate vision and mission.

2. Hire people who genuinely want to work for you because they believe in what you do. Small businesses can do this relatively easily – once you become a large corporation, it’s exponentially harder (but not impossible) to bring on employees that have belief in you.

3. Figure out what the operational impediments are that keep employees from doing a 100% job. In the case of the Fedex guy, it could have been an employee having a bad day, or it could have been a delivery schedule that put added pressure to just “get it done” and not “get it done right”.

4. Encourage your employees to have a digital presence (this is dependent on steps 1 and 2) so that their other human aspects show regularly. It’s much easier to say, hey, I’m human and was having a bad day if you have a well-run blog, Twitter feed, etc. that’s showing other aspects of your professional life. Your CEO should have a blog, and so should your marketing intern.

5. Say I’m sorry, but say it in a couple of different ways as humanly as possible. Domino’s did well with their CEO apologizing for their employees’ misdeeds:

In the case of Fedex, where it was an employee not behaving with gross misconduct, having the employee appear with the president/CEO explaining why the package was delivered like that in an honest, sincere way would go a long way towards reassuring the public that the majority of Fedex packages are not delivered so carelessly.

In the age of always on, we have to be able to demonstrate that we are all human beings, not robots, who cannot be always on and delivering perfect performance 100% of the time. Having dedicated employees and dedicated media channels well in advance of a crisis are the necessary ingredients to mitigating those times when we are not on.

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