Area 224 Ltd.

Content + Communications Consulting

You are here: Home / Archives for Dave

Dave

3 to Follow – A Friday Alternative Centered Around Nichification

Hey! Today, Area 224 decides it might be cool to pick out three Twitter folks to follow – and we’re using some different criteria.

It seems like everyone’s list of Friday Follows goes a little something like this:

  1. Someone with mass appeal.
  2. Someone who tweeted with us once and is still on a list.
  3. And no real reason to follow them.

There are some alternatives, of course. @ginidietrich refuses to play that game and gives you a few on the Spin Sucks blog each week. Cool.

But, for the most part, it’s all about the #FF and big lists of confusion. Since we’re part of the team STILL working on the Nichification book (with Jim Alexander), we thought three nifty niche folks would we worth a follow. Here are our recommendations.

Kyle Thill – ToyotaEquipment. Yes, you heard right, I am suggesting that you follow a guy who tweets on behalf of a company that is in the lift truck business. He’s engaging and having conversations with folks in and out of the B2B space. Check out their blog here – falls right into the “Nichification” stuff we’ve been talking about at HQ. Find your niche, give them relevant information. Then keep giving it to them until you are the obvious expert.

Rick Bakas – Wine, Social Media, More Wine. Okay, this chap is rather popular on the Twitter front. (46,000+ followers.) And he has interests beyond wine (and food); spin through his site and learn that he actually designed the Denver Broncos’ branding.

Jennifer Vides – Outspoken Latina. Actually, it would seem like a bit of a cliche to say that you should follow Jennifer and check out her blog just because she’s a Latina and she’s outspoken. Yet, this week she has dialogue about the fact that, well, pinning down the Latino culture, and pigeon-holing folks into various categories is dangerous. Worth a read. Worth a follow.

What about y’all? Any good niche folks we should be taking a look at, or interviewing for the book? Let us know…

The Strategic Imperative: Using Strategy to Avoid Actual Work

While this could make sense as part of our “Buzzword Watch” series, we’re thinking “strategy” is in a class by itself. Follow along.

Sports analogies – “sport analogies” for the British in the crowd – are an awesome way to make sure you understand some of the business nuances. Such as “strategy.”

Objective: Win the game.

This brings us back to the title of this here blog post. And to an age-old question: why do you do what you do.

Not just in business, but in life.

A couple months ago, we did a four part series on the Marketing Martini Glass. It’s a series that turned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs on Its Ear. And it reminded us of some business discussions we’ve had over the past (gasp) 20 years – discussions with really smart people in really good organizations.

There’s a maxim, going back those 20 years, that rings true, still:

The higher you are in an organization, the more you can throw around the word “strategy” and use it to avoid doing actual work.

Think strategically. Let’s be strategic. It’s important to think about the strategic reasons for doing this. We need a strategy session.

Uh, no.

What you need are actual business objectives.

The actual business objectives – the why you do what it is you do as a business – are not only imperative to develop BEFORE your strategy session, they can be pretty darn liberating.

Back to the sport(s) analogies so you can see what it is we’re talking about.

Even the different disciplines within, say, a football coaching staff can have their own objectives. Objective, still, is to win the game. The Offensive Strategy might well be to “keep the opposition’s defense on the field by effectively running the football.” Tactics? Those are the plays the Offensive Coordinator calls: “off-tackle fullback dive,” or some such.

Quoting Sun Tzu: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

So how do the really savvy avoid work?

They throw around the word “strategy.” AND they keep it in the nebulous cloud between “objective” – which there may not be for whatever it is they’re doing – and “tactics” – which they may not fully understand, or have a grasp of, or be able to execute on.

The title of this blog post is tongue in cheek. There aren’t folks who are deliberately using strategy to avoid actual work.

But it can be pretty easy to do – having a Strategic Imperative without proper direction from above, or help from the trenches.

Great way to get out of doing actual work.

 

 

Buzzword Watch – 3 Cliches To Avoid

Before you use these crutch phrases, you should know their etymology.

1. Drink the Kool-Aid. It used to just be a drink that was “cheaper than soda” (so said the commercials) and had a large anthropomorphic pitcher of the beverage as its spokes-thing.

Then, tragedy in the form of the Jonestown murder-suicide – one of the largest losses of American civilian life before 9/11. Since most of the members of the People’s Temple who died drank a mixture of cyanide and a drink mix similar to Kool-Aid, the phrase “Drink the Kool-Aid” eventually became synonymous with those who will nod their head in agreement – even if they don’t really believe you.

Irony: the drink mix used in Jonestown was something called “Flavor Aid” and not Kool-Aid.

2. Going Postal. Between 1986 and 1997, more than 40 people died in 20 separate violent incidents at the hands of United States Postal Workers. The phrase became synonymous with those who would become uncontrollably angry – even if they were not postal workers.

3. “Grammar Nazi, Word Nazi.” A popular Seinfeld episode called “The Soup Nazi” led to communicators using phrases such as these often enough to get an Urban Dictionary reference.

Just remember next time you use one of these phrases – they’re often reminders of horrible, tragic events. There’s a better way to say whatever it is you want to say.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...