BarnRaisers

I hope this holiday season finds you reading a good book.  In my case, that book is Life by Keith Richards, who surprises not only because he writes well (with the help of James Fox) but, even more surprising, remembers everything lucidly.

Keith is a great storyteller.  Here are 6 lessons in storytelling I learned from Life:

1. BEGIN WITH AN EVENT:  This book begins with Keith and Ronnie Wood on tour in the US in 1976.  They stop at an Arkansas diner and are soon looking down the gun barrels of a half dozen redneck cops.  In the parking lot is their car with secret compartments filled with every imaginable drug.  If one of your fascinations with Keith Richards is his 9 lives, what happens next fulfills every one of them.
2. SET THE STAGE:  Working class England in Post World War II begins his writings about childhood.  Craters from bombs line the middle of streets and food is rationed.  But the establishment of time and place is important for perspective.  We develop an appreciation for the storyteller, his affection for his parents and his lifelong attachment to his mom.
3. DEFINE WHAT HAS TO BE ACHIEVED:  Once the original nucleus of the Rolling Stones forms, Keith states their mission a number of times.  He and the band are “a bunch of white guys intent on bringing black blues to the world.”  Throughout the book, even though some players change, the band find new life every time they realize these roots and lose their way whenever this focus is clouded.
4. DEMONSTRATE DRIVE:   There are no shortage of homage to heroes that inspire.  He is driven to: 1)  Play guitar like Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker and Chuck Berry; 2) Capture the showmanship of Little Richard and James Brown; 3) discover the wonders of “open tunings” on guitar; particularly open G tuning with 5-strings and 4) realize his musical story, after 40+ years, is still unfolding.
5. PLACE OPPONENTS IN THE WAY:  There are opponents of every kind:  The law (in the US and England), judges, police, managers who turn greedy, the press, guys who don’t like that their girlfriends like them, girls who mob them to the point of suffocation; even band members with split personalities.
6. SHOW HOW, ONCE YOU GET TO THE END, THE STORY CAN BE REPLICATED BY OTHERS:  The messages of love what you do, learn from what you encounter (both good and bad) and be grounded by a strong sense of family are the consistent themes behind his journey.  Although none of us will have a life like Keith’s, it’s clear these values can be practiced by anyone and guide him until he goes.

Now, if I could learn some of his lessons on song writing and guitar.

Are you reading any good stories this holiday season?  What lessons are you learning?

Some say social media is a lot like high school.  People follow the popular kids.

But most of us never were or will be ”most likely” to…succeed, funniest or best looking.  The popular kids represent a small segment in high school.

According to new data from eMarketer, there’s a greater asset available; trust and it has little to do with being popular.

This eMarketer data comes from Scott Monty, Global, Digital and Multi-Communications Manager at Ford.  Scott is one of the most trusted, “go-to” social media voices in corporate America.  He writes a great blog, The Social Media Marketing Blog.  I go to this blog because I trust Scott.

And the same applies to businesses and brands.  If you’re not #1, #2 or #3 in your category and are being outshouted, you can gain a stronger competitive advantage.

Here’s what the data says about trust and social media:

1. PEOPLE LIKE TO DO BUSINESS WITH PEOPLE THEY KNOW.  And who they know is who they trust.  That’s why social outposts with the most content and expression give people the chance to learn more about, know and trust you.  Whether it’s people or companies, blogs generate the most trusted information source, followed by Facebook then Twitter.

2. TRUST CAN’T BE BUILT BY POPULARITY; IT BUILDS BY BEING GENUINE.  It isn’t how many fans or followers you have; it’s how open, engaging and responsive you are with every connection.  So, unlike high school, you don’t have to worry about being outgoing and extroverted; you do have to listen, engage and be timely about it.

3. TRUST IS CURRENCY FOR AWARENESS THAT CAN’T BE BOUGHT.  Social media is different from traditional media where impressions, reach and awareness are a function of spending.  Social media is available to anyone, but only if you jump in, keep at it and show you care do you secure trust and awareness, the kind you can’t buy.

Good research tells a story.  This story here is social media is more egalitarian than high school.  Everyone gets the chance, every time they put themselves out there, to be trusted.  Anything stopping you?

Thanks to eMarketer and Scott for bringing this to our attention.

The meaning of this well-known maxim is clear: Some extra planning time upfront avoids a lot of uplanned time undoing and redoing mistakes.

The application to the internet is especially relevant, because once something is out there, it stays there, even if you abandon it, and time commitments to social media are very real.

With many available resources, there’s never been a better time to take this counsel to heart.  Here’s the “Measure Twice, Cut Once” Guide to Social Media with the available tools for those looking to build.

• CONTENT REALLY IS KING:  This may sound like a cliche but, if you can’t start with a passion to tell your story (or your business’s or brand’s) and convince your audience (with the content you bring) you do it better than anyone else, think again about starting.
• LISTEN:  Identify the topics, key words and phrases you’re going to talk about.  Investigate who uses them and how.  Learn from your colleagues and competitors.  There are many available tools.  Starting at 30,000 feet, there’s Google Trends.  Then, be notified daily of news with Google Alerts on primary keywords.  If you want to go where people say the most, which is usually blogs and consumer reviews, some great blog search engines are: 1. Google Blogsearch, 2. Technorati, and 3. Alltop. From there, social networks searches at Twitter Search and Facebook Search are good resources.  In addition to social media, it’s also valuable to see how these keywords and phrases rank with the online tools available for Search Engine Optimization but we’ll save that topic for another blog.
• CONNECT: Look for the conversations (quantity and quality).  Determine where you will find others who share your interests and values.  For example, we recently did some listening for a company that makes women’s over-the-counter contraceptives.  We found the phrase, “birth control,” to be a magnet on blogs for passionate discussions with women looking for information on choices and product options.  But, we found on Facebook, this same phrase revealed groups that were cheap dating services with questionable content.  Same keywords.  Where would you want to place your client’s business?.
• BUILD:  Create your social media presence.  My advice is to be grounded in a blog because it’s where most of your content comes from, most of your measurement are and benefits to your business are big.  Start with an  ”open source” blogging platforms; one with a great selection of templates, design and custom features.  My favorite is WordPress, which Google owes.  They also have many plug-ins, widgets and the functionality and updates are advanced.  Regardless of the platform, the benefits of blogging are:  97% of businesses that blog have higher search rankings; 55% drive more visitors to their web site and 44% report increased revenues due to their blog.  Connect your social networks to your blog.  Customize background for social networks wherever possible.  Twitter has a helpful feature called Twitter Themeleon.
• BUILD-IN MEASUREMENTS AND ANALYTICS:  Equip your blog/website with Google Analytics.  Equip your blogposts with Social Network widgets and plug-ins to allow for Sharing and Re-Tweeting.  Use Short Links for your blogposts to publish on social networks for outreach.  Add a social network sharing feature like Add This so other can share with their networks. The combination of these tools allows you to measure: 1) Who’s coming to your site, 2) where they’re coming from, 3) how long they’re staying, 4) what they doing while they’re there, 5) where they go after they leave and 6) how many share your information with their friends/networks.  That’s more information than store owners know from customers who walk through their doors.
• RECOGNIZE OTHERS (MORE OFTEN THAN YOURSELF):  A paradox of social media is, by recognizing the work of your peers (and sometime competitors), you draw greater attention to yourself.   Comment on the blogs of others, Share and Re-Tweet their work with some brief words on why it’s valuable to you.  Put a Blogroll on your blog to show where you go.  This step is relatively easy to do but it is also easy to forget to do, regularly.
• MAKE IMPROVEMENTS:  Learn and put the learning to use.  Examine what your readers want, what builds audience involvement and what drives further engagement.  For example, I have one blog on this page with over 90 comments.  Another with 0.  I thought they offered equal value in writing them but, obviously, readers told be different.  That doesn’t mean I won’t write about what is meaningful to me but I have to understand the balance of what readers want and why.

I know many people reading this blog may use many of these tools, if not all and more.  But I thought it was worth putting down because I didn’t know about them when I started.  People like Chris Brogan, Amber Nusland, Jason Falls, Mack Collier, Mike Volpe at Hubspot and Mike Stelzner at Social Media Examiner helped me “Measure Twice, Cut Once.”

Social media promotes a culture of sharing so a refresher is worthwhile, occasionally, to help guide others.  Can you think of others tools or advice worth considering that has helped you “Measure Twice, Cut Once?”

For my money, the best wisdom per word on marketing, management and business strategy comes from Peter Drucker.  Born in Vienna in 1909, Peter wrote 39 books by the time he left us in 2005.  He was frequently sought after by the Harvard Business Review, The Economist and the Atlantic Monthly.

Much of Peter’s best remembered advice was written over 40 years ago, but he rarely needed more than 140 characters to make his point.  Hmmm.  Here are a dozen I turn to now for guidance.

1. Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
2. Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
3. Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
4. Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
5. Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.
6. Most discussions of decision-making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
7. People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
8. Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
9. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
10. The purpose of a business is to create and keep customers.
11. There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
12. The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

Peter’s teachings are alive and well at the Drucker Institute, or Drucker_Quotes on Twitter in 140 characters or less.

Since there were plenty of rocks on our property, I saw no reason not to try this for myself.   We now have a dozen cairns.  At first, they didn’t stay up long.  Then, it was a couple of weeks before they toppled over.  Now, they’ve stood for years even through heavy wind and ice storms that brought down sizable tree limbs.

I don’t know anymore about the physics of cairns today than the day I started.  And no matter how many I build, there is always that moment of truth when the hope of a connection between the stones competes with the fear and frustration that the rocks won’t balance and it will all fall to the ground.

But I know now even if a heavy wind or a storm knocks them down, I’ll be able to put them back together so they stand stronger than before.

Could that help explain why people have put them up for so long?