I should probably offer Mark Schaefer some sort of kickback since his blog never fails to stimulate new ideas. A couple weeks ago, he wrote a post on measurement in social media. Now you’re probably thinking, “Yet another blogpost talking about measurement? Why in the world is that so special?” It wasn’t just the content that was special…the post sparked some interesting comments around the necessity of measurement and types of measurement to consider for social media.

When most folks talk about metrics and ROI and all the various forms of measurement, they’re usually referring to a quantitative methodology. You know…like measuring number of Twitter retweets, Facebook fans, online WOM mentions, blogpost traffic, generated sales, etc. These are things that can be counted and evaluated fairly easily so long as you know why you’re doing it in the first place. Just measuring for the sake of appearances really isn’t going to help you or your organization get where you want to go. Which leads us to…

Why measure at all?
I’m not going to go into this too deeply because there are so many super-smart folks who’ve already made a compelling case for measuring online activity. I will merely add that measurement is a form of feedback, which is critical to learning what works and what needs to be improved. How will you know if your latest online customer engagement program is succeeding in meeting its objectives (you did establish objectives, right?) if you can’t measure the results.

Why add qualitative?
Because sometimes your quantitative data lies to you. Not deliberately, of course, but all those quantitative metrics you’re racking up may not be telling you the full story. This is particularly true in the area of social media where we’re trying to gauge not only action but more emotionally-charged and nebulous qualities like sentiment and beliefs. For instance, when a fan says they “love” their iPhone, what does that mean? Or when someone else tweets that your company’s sales efforts are old and they suck, what’s happening here? A strictly quantitative measurement approach likely will not dive deep enough here to give you tangible results you can use to connect with your customers and make necessary adjustments.

What kind of qualitative measurement methods can you use? The major knock against qualitative is the perception that it’s time-intensive, which can be true. But you have to weigh that through a cost/benefit analysis: is what I’m learning here worth the investment of resources? Still unsure? Then take a page from the work of social scientists and build a sample. Dont’ try to eat the elephant all at once. Your purpose here is to build bite-sized understanding. The key is to construct a random, representative sample that’s going to give you intelligible feedback on the sentiment of your customers (the whole topic of how to build good, measurable samples for social media probably should get a blogpost of its own).

Interviews: These don’t have to be long. Your objective here is to go deeper than a standard quantitative survey by uncovering the more subtle meanings of what “love” and “suck” mean for your customers.
Observations: The simple truth about us human beings is that we often say one thing only to turn around and do something rather different. There are plenty of reasons for this, but figuring out ways to observe our participants is a good way to get closer to actual action that drives behavior.

Do you still need quantitative?
YES! There’s no either/or proposition here…the best measurements will combine both quantitative and qualitative methods. Once we have a working hypothesis (we have to know why we’re doing this in the first place), it’s a recursive process where we use qualitative research to figure out what questions we need to ask, construct quantitative research to gather data, then another qualitative round to complement our data by delivering further depth of insight.

Okay, so it’s a rather high certainty you don’t have time to do recursive research, but the point here is that it’s important to not overuse quantitative measures. How can you best incorporate qualitative methods into your own plans? Or if you’ve used particular qualitative tactics, how well did they work for you?

photo credit: hutchscout (via Flickr)

Turn me to stone
Do anything you want with me
Cover my eyes
There’s nothing more they need to see
Turn me to stone
Before there’s nothing left of me
Make me a rock
And not what I appear to be
Turn me to stone
Turn me to stone
Stereotomy – The Alan Parsons Project

Once upon a time I was a hiring manager, and perhaps if fate has its way again, I’ll be in a position with this type of responsibility again soon. But for now, I’m on the other side of the desk. After reviewing some recent hires by prominent organizations, a rather interesting pattern emerged: how similar the hires are to each other…and to the hiring manager.

Hiring people like us is safe. It means we don’t have to challenge our own comfort zones. We’re getting people who fit a mold that we’ve already defined as “successful.” But I’ll argue these reasons are built on bad assumptions, made worse by the constant pressures of change and innovation. Hiring people who fit a highly pre-defined mold is a sure path toward stagnation. If you’re in a hiring position, here are a few questions to consider:

• If you hire people with a similar background as you, do you think you’ll be getting the breadth of expertise and thinking necessary for your team’s and organization’s success?
• If you hire people who you think are going to usually agree with you, are going to get divergent outlooks to fill in your own and your team’s blind spots?
• If you hire people just like you, are you sure you know why?

I’ve been there and intimately know the challenges of making the best hires possible. Just be mindful of why you’re hiring a particular skillset or background. Is it to mimic your own identity and preferred beliefs of past success? Or is it to add greater depth and diversity of ideas to your team and organization?

photo credit: tsuda (via Flickr)

Most businesses that know they need to create a customer engagement program start with good questions:

• How do we establish our brand promise and get it in the forefront of our customers’ minds?
• How do we become an essential partner with our customers?
• How can we best understand their everyday needs and challenges?

What’s missing here, though? Most questions and objectives that drive customer engagement programs focus on the external but give little thought and planning to the internal…you know, those people you might know as “employees.” I’m probably preaching to the choir if you’re a community manager or in a similar role where your success is tied to gaining internal buy-in (if this is you, feel free to share this post with your manager, CMO, or CEO who needs a good prodding).

Okay, so if you or your company is intent on implementing a customer engagement program think about how it will integrate into your organizational cultures and dynamics. The question that needs to be asked is:

• How can we generate acceptance and adoption of this program throughout the organization?

Success in your program begins with making sure your entire organization and workforce is aligned to your program’s goals. Here are a few ideas to make that happen:

Get internal buy-in. Yeah, I know…easier said than done. But consider this: your customers are savvy enough to know when they’re being conned and even a whiff of insincerity will trigger a nasty visceral response that will only get amplified through the web and social media. Avoid that insincerity by making sure that each one of your employees – not just the ones who are customer-facing – know the objectives and expectations of your customer engagement program. Each employee needs to embody the soul of your program. If they don’t, they might as well just answer the phone with “Hello, how can I lie to you today?”

Identify prospective employee evangelists. Just as you’re going to want to locate your customer evangelists, you need to figure out who among your employees are going to be crucial to successfully launching your program. Not sure? Conduct a social network analysis inside your organization. That will help you determine who your prime influencers and connectors are. These folks are not always managers and execs…they could be your receptionist or mailroom guy or junior salesperson. But whoever they are, you need to encourage them on-board, get knowledgeable about the program, and give them all the tools and resources they need to evangelize your program from the inside.

Understand and build competencies. Don’t assume all your employees are techno-wizards and social media smarty-pants. Many are not so it’s your mission to figure out which individuals need training and then deliver it. If you’re developing an online community, give your folks a chance to get their mitts on it. If you’re using video to connect with customers, make sure your employees know what’s happening so they don’t sound like ignorant buffoons. Nothing is worse than developing a slick new program but not having all your employees reading and working from the same playbook.

And for heaven’s sake, BE REAL. I’m going to level with you about something you probably already know: trust in corporations is at a pretty dismal place right now. Customers are on hyper-alert for any phoniness so if you’re thinking you can glide your way through an engagement program, you might want to let your PR folks know up front. Your program will only be successful if your business and brand are real, honest, transparent, and caring about your customers. Get that right and your customers will be open and willing to build a great relationship with your company.

photo credit: pdxdiver (via Flickr)

I’m always fascinated with the day-after fallout of the Super Bowl adfest. There are plenty of people doing their Monday morning armchair quarterbacking thing, lamenting how terrible the commercials were and how much they continue to suck year after year. It’s at this point I try to take my branding hat off and recognize something I think is rather important. The commercials were not made for us. They were made for the 95% of everyone else who wants to be entertained. They were made for people like my dad who could give two craps if there was an overabundance of slapstick violence and dudes trying to pick up chicks (Love you, Dad!). The only metric here is whether the ads were amusing and some of them were very amusing and entertaining, indeed.

Time for all of us who claim to be brand and online cognoscenti to get off our high horse and recognize that Super Bowl ads are not Shakespeare and they don’t need to be earth-shatteringly original. These commercials are made to appeal to a broad population and that population sits right in the middle of America. Like it or not. They like watching Betty White and Abe Vigoda get creamed in a football game, they like dudes wearing Doritos and attacking people, (and I guess they must like guys wandering the African savanna in their underwear).

Of course, feel free to not take my word for it. I grew up on Benny Hill and The Three Stooges so dumb, risque, slapstick humor is part of my cultural heritage.

I’m not the best one to talk about to-do lists, Getting Things Done, or the other various thinkings about task management. All too often, I still find myself just keeping those various things that need to be completed inside my head. I do have a Pro account with Remember the Milk so I can sync my tasks with my BlackBerry but it doesn’t take long for me to neglect the lists. Perhaps its a lack of discipline, but that’s not to say that I’m not productive…okay, maybe I’m not as productive as I could be.

Now I’ve heard plenty of people talk about the necessity of getting things out of my head and onto paper or a screen – something visible so I don’t have to try to remember it all. It’s that process of trying to mentally corral all those sundry tasks needing to be done where trouble lies for most of us. When was the last time you knew you had several things to do, but couldn’t remember them all? Or worse yet, knew exactly all the things that had to be done that day and felt overcome by a feeling of hyperanxious dread?

That last feeling was mine this morning…until I heard this story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich from Radiolab talked about an interesting experiment conducted by Stanford University professor Baba Shiv. It turns out that when we store all of these tasks (or anything really) inside our brain’s short-term memory, our rational self becomes overloaded giving our emotional self space to take over. It certainly gives greater insight into the panicky feeling I was wrestling with earlier today.

Here’s the page for Willpower and the Slacker Brain (but definitely listen to the audio story…it’s both entertaining and enlightening):

What do you think? Make sense to you?

photo credit: kristinized (via Flicker)

Is your business still thinking of marketing as a set of campaigns? It might be time to switch gears and start thinking more about connecting with prospects and customers via community. Today, we learned that two major brands are rethinking their strategies (also read here):

Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010.

Yes, these are the big kahunas of the corporate branding universe…but can their strategies work for small and medium-sized businesses? Not only do I think the answer is a resounding “100% yes!”, I believe that building community over campaigns is an absolute must for nearly any enterprise today. Why?

Read the full blogpost at BaileyHill Insights…

photo credit: scoobay (via Flickr)

Here’s the challenge that is weighing rather heavily on me as we enter the new year. As a blogger, I just don’t feel I can keep up with two primary professional blogs and a business blog for BaileyHill Media (let alone trying to continually grow BaileyHill Media’s business). I now realize that what I once loved to do has become an arduous chore and I don’t like it. So while there’s no perfect solution I’m trying to figure out what will allow me to sustain my passion for blogging ideas, my desire for further building a community here, and my commitment to helping our growing stable of clients at BaileyHill Media.

My chief challenge is that my interests don’t fall into one particular niche. I might talk about employee engagement issues one day, online community development another day, and finish the week with thoughts on creativity. I see these somewhat eclectic interests as a personal strength but understand they can also be a detriment to generating salient content that folks want to read. If you subscribe to read more about improving organizational leadership, you may not care at all about how to build a better Facebook community. And I really don’t want to be hamstrung into only writing about one thing…that wouldn’t be authentic to who I am.

I need your help and would love to get your feedback on what I’m considering as my next step.

The option I’m heavily considering right now is to consolidate Alchemy of Soulful Work and Gravit8 Interactivity into a single online presence (likely to be located at chrisbaileyworks.com) that would serve all niches. It would be focused on me and the somewhat disparate interests I have: future of work, organizational development, management and leadership, social business, business anthropology, online communities, social media and web communication, etc., etc. In many ways, I can see the overlap…but here’s what I really want to know: would you still subscribe and read my writing? As much as I sometimes try to pretend it doesn’t matter, I do need you as a reader and commenter. Your thoughtful feedback to my posts are part of the dialogue that I value.

So, there’s the question that I want to pose to you. If you’re a reader of Alchemy, would you mind reading more of the things I write about at Gravit8; and it’s the same question if you’re a reader of Gravit8. Or would you prefer and advise that I continue to keep the niches separate and find ways to maintain a writing regimen that emphasizes both of these blogs?

For this post – perhaps more than almost any other that I’ve written in a while – I do need your comments and advice. Thanks so much.

Prompted and inspired by Jay Ehret (@TheMarketingGuy), I thought I would take a look at which blogposts were the most popular in 2009 based on total pageviews. Here they are, ranked by popularity and with my own reflections:

1. The Power Of A…So Close Yet So Very Far Away
Nothing like a good controversy to drive traffic to a blog. Earlier this year, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) decided to create a new campaign called The Power of A. I didn’t like it at the time and am still not convinced it was well executed. However, it did provide a rather pointed example of what happens when you engage a major PR firm with little prowess in online social media to run your campaign.

2. The End Of The Industrial Age And Social Media
This was a useful example of what happens when a highly visible and well regarded twitter user promotes a post. In this case, it was David Armano and I am very appreciative of him sharing his popularity with me.

3. VIDEO: Building Your Brand Ambassador Program
Crikey, every time I see this post I ask myself in an exasperated voice, “Why the hell don’t I do more multimedia posts?” Probably because it was twice as hard to produce than a typical written post. The presentation that forms the basis of the content is one that I gave to a local nonprofit group. Maybe I’ll pitch the presentation again in 2010 with some subtle refinements.

4. Five Steps To Make Employees Your Best Brand Ambassadors
Technically, this post was written in 2008 but it makes for a nice followup with the Brand Ambassador video above.

5. Micro Center And The Art Of A Good Apology
I enjoy coming back to this particular post because it reminds me of what can happen when a company gives a damn about customer service. Whether Micro Center continued its good work or not…I can’t say. All of which is why one example of good customer service is fine, but it has to be demonstrated on a consistent, company-wide basis.

It’s always interesting when my favorite posts aren’t exactly the ones that are most popular with readers in terms of pageviews. Here are two of my favorites from the past year:

Beyond Engaged Community Members…Think Stewardship
I love the comments and dialogue that this post inspired. The idea of online community stewardship is one that continues to resonate with me. I hope I get to make more time in 2010 to explore this concept in more detail.

The (Weak) Ties That Bind: The Jobhunting/Social Network Connection
2009 marked in interesting year for me. I started up a new business and also had a hand in helping unemployed folks find new work. This post combined my interests in social networks and job hunting.

Over this past year, I’ve been blessed to make many new friends and build relationships that will only become stronger in the coming years. I hope that if you’ve been reading this blog for a while that you’ve found it useful and insightful. And if you’re brand new, I hope you’ll come back and engage in the dialogue.

Best wishes for a successful and kickass 2010!

A few weeks ago, Mack Collier asked the question of whether your blog is losing its identity. To a great extent, Mack’s post was about the increasing degree of homogeneity in blog content. His perception is that most blogs are going the route of How-Tos, Echo Posts, and Top 10 Lists. It’s an interesting observation considering that most folks will say that its these types of blogposts that get the most visibility and attention.

The post also provoked a slightly different reaction with me. Below is the comment I left with some subtle updates:

Mack, here’s the problem and it’s one that I believe affects all media, both new and old. Do people really want to read original and fresh ideas? Or do they want to read overly-provocative posts from familiar and famous sources? For old media examples, we see hyper-provocative personalities on TV and print get all the attention as well as find run-of-the-mill sitcoms and stagnant dramas remain on-air year after year. This is while smart voices and excellent programming struggles to gain visibility and survive.

If we’re really serious about wanting more innovative and interesting ideas from our blogs, we not only have to write them…we have to nurture them in others. It starts with stepping out of our comfort zones and reading new blog sources. If someone writes really great stuff but it goes unnoticed, it’s very likely that they’ll stop writing altogether or submit to the more formulaic blog writing ideas that seem to attract the most eyeballs.

Now, let’s all do something positive and introduce great AND NEW writings to our own readers.

I honestly believe that if you carry influence in the online space, you have an obligation to use your voice to not just lift up familiar folks you know, but perhaps more importantly, give visibility to smart and talented folks who are less known. This goes triple for A-listers, some of which are better than others in this regard.

So for 2010, let’s make it a point to share visibility with other smart folks who need more attention to their ideas. And I’ll start…here are a just few who I’m excited to see more of their work:

Kelly Stonebock (@kellyopoly): kellystonebock.wordpress.com
A.J. Bingham (@ajbingham): readaj.com
Roxanne McHenry (@roxannemchenry): roxannemchenry.com

What will you do to help bring visibility to smart folks you know?

I hate the holiday shopping hoards and the inevitable battle against the sea of over-tired and under-patient humanity. Thank heavens for the internet. I try to do most of my Christmas shopping online these days, but it’s almost unavoidable that I’ll need to pick at least one gift up at an actual brick-and-mortar store. So it is that I found myself at one of the local upscale outdoor shopping centers that are prevalent throughout Austin. These places are far more than your everyday, pedestrian strip malls. They have immaculate boulevards and well-landscaped walkways to entice us weary shoppers out of our hard-earned money by convincing us we’re far more cosmopolitan than we might actually be. These shopping centers also have their typical upscale retail establishments like J. Crew, Coach and Burberry with their artfully designed storefronts. But as I entered another of these stores, I found myself faced with a parallel to something I see frequently in my work.

The store’s windows and exterior were creatively developed to be eye-catching. I imagine someone painstakingly took their time to design and arrange the various props to entice casual shoppers like me to open the door. It was all so neatly done that I felt compelled to go inside and see if they had a gift for my wife. And here’s where the disappointment hit me like Santa himself swinging a bag of coal at my head. Not one of the sales staff welcomed me, not one asked if I was looking for anything in particular, not one did anything that would potentially complete a successful transaction. As easily as I entered, I left. What the hell was the whole point of the work devoted on the outside if it all goes to waste inside?

Now before you think this is just a problem with the retail buying experience as a whole, let’s think about a similar experience in the online world. Most businesses know they need a web presence to compete and so they go through the exercise of creating a spectacularly beautiful site. It has all the bells and whistles we associate with business or e-commerce websites. It’s chock full of animation and sliding panels and dancing kittens and all the usual links to every single social media network known to man. You look at it and think, “My word, this is the most impressive website I have ever seen and will likely see ever again!” And then what? Well, this is often where all that wondrous and creative design talent goes straight down the crapper. No one ever thought to ask about business objectives or about generating a sale. In other words, your customer just walked through the door based on an artful exterior but doesn’t know what to do next…so they wander aimlessly and likely leave.

Most consumer-driven websites unfortunately don’t focus on the all-important Ask, which is the primary funnel for directing visitors toward taking an action. But there are a few things you can do to ensure that your site not only looks great but fulfills the investment you’ve made in your web presence.

Know your goals before ever thinking about design. Don’t spend all that time on the external window dressing only to ignore the reason why your customers enter in the first place. I can’t say how many times I’ve seen clients get wrapped up in the design process without a clear vision for what they want their site to achieve. It’s the classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Before building a new site or committing to a redesign project, get clear about what you want your site to do to drive business to you.

Be crystal clear and inviting with your Ask. Think of your website’s Ask as the warm greeting your customer receives when they enter the store. If you know your audience’s needs, then your Ask should be a knowledgeable sort of “How can I help you today?” What does your business do and how does your website help you do it better? If your business is built to sell directly to your visitor, then develop an Ask that guides your prospect toward making a purchase or bundle of purchases. Or perhaps you’re a B2B company that uses your site to offer product information and generate leads; if so, then create an Ask that funnels visitors toward a lead generation form. Whatever you choose for your Ask, make it not only clear, strong and tied to your business goals, but focused on the psychological needs of your customer.

Measure your results. You just can’t assume that your Ask is going to be automatically successful. That’s like having a great storefront and a greeter at the door only to take whatever money you receive from purchases and toss it in a bag and forget about it. You have to know whether what you’re doing is leading to achieving the key objectives you set for your business at the beginning. Same thing for your site. Know whether your Ask is funneling prospects toward completing a goal. There are several tools to help you like Google Analytics. It’s free so you have no good reason for not incorporating measurement into your plans for success.

Your website isn’t just there to look pretty. It has a purpose. Help your customers achieve their purpose through a great Ask and you’ll see successful results.