brand communications

Sep 04 2012

Metrics Don’t Matter

In typical Area 224 style, a whipsaw title followed by some unexpected takeaways.

Image of BBW Cover, adjusted for oilpaint effect

I received the latest Bloomberg Businessweek over the weekend, and, when I saw the cover (photo over there), I figured this was going to be an article worth reading.

It was.

The article is called “Everywhere Sports Profit Network,” penned by Karl Taro Greenfield. Here’s a link.

Suggestion: read it, even if you don’t like sports. (Actually, read it ESPECIALLY if you don’t like sports.)

[NOTE: For my money, some of the best writing on the planet is in this magazine. A bold statement, sure, but, if you’re a student of the business game, BBW is becoming a must-read. The other must-read is referenced in this article.]

There are some great tips on business contained in that article about ESPN – and I want to give you three takeaways. Plus, as a bonus, you’ll be able to glean why metrics don’t matter.

1. Every Stinking Platform Network

We could have said “Social” or swore in place of the word “Stinking.” But the point here is that they don’t think of properties in terms of whether or not they will translate to the small screen (or website or radio or magazine), they instead think of translating the property to everywhere possible.

Take this example from the article:

“The company has moved aggressively into new media and platforms, without regard for how they may negatively impact the old…

“ESPN’s $5.6 billion deal with Major League Baseball…is typical of the kinds of multiplatform rights packages the company now seeks to acquire. Not only will ESPN continue to televise regular-season and playoff games through 2021, it also gets radio rights, international rights, unlimited highlights and, most important, the right to stream all that content through its mobile applications.”

What does this mean for you, business person?

It’s not necessarily about “mobile,” or “social” – it’s about…well, it’s about thinking creatively about everywhere and everything and how it gets used.

Repurpose. Repurpose. Repurpose.

What you have sitting on the shelf may not be valuable to you right now – but if it gets repackaged, shared in a different way, or presented to a different audience – there may be something there.

2. The Event IS The Thing

When I was reading the article, I couldn’t help but think back to the 2010 World Cup. (Soccer.) ESPN decided to send its big talent to South Africa to cover the event – even though a couple of their big names weren’t soccer reporters.

WHY?

Think about NBC’s Olympic Coverage (covered here a couple weeks ago.) Now think specifically about Ryan Seacrest. Whether or not the guy knows boo about sports is beside the point: he brings that “Big Game Feel” that you want. If Ryan Seacrest shows up, there’s now the imprimatur. It is now a Big Event.

ESPN continues to go out of its way to make events into EVENTS.

[I know what you might be thinking: “Dave, it’s ESPN! They spent Billions on Baseball!”]

But that doesn’t mean that your next THING can’t be an EVENT.

In fact, as the article reminds us, this is the network that started in trailers and showed a lot of Australian Rules Football.

Over time, they created a look, a feel, a brand. There’s a “lagniappe” element to it – originally that something extra was…well, everything. Now, it’s a rabid, everywhere-sports-are-there’s-ESPN element.

3. Inject Personality

Which Metrics Matter to You?

Here’s where we bring back the title of this article. Metrics Don’t Matter? No, they DO matter. Just…the RIGHT metrics.

Bill Simmons (The Sports Guy, Editor-in-Chief at Grantland) has a personality. Sure, it’s not without its foibles – as all personalities are.

But without his personality and years of allowing that to shine through, there’s no Grantland.

And Grantland contributes to an ESPN metric called “users per minute:” the number of mobile users visiting ESPN. This reached a height of 102,000 in June. (60,000 of those were from Grantland.)

You’ve got to have a vision – which Simmons had for Grantland (sports, pop culture, etc.) – and you’ve got to have the personality (and personalities) to pull it off.

“Personal BRAND” may be a whole bunch of BS to you. And, in some respects, that’s okay. But Personality – that can be translated, and effectively so, into your business.

THE POINT: THE RIGHT METRICS MATTER

ESPN translates a combination of all three elements above – Multi-Channel Storytelling, Events, and Personality – into some crazy numbers on all the metrics that matter to THEM.

The fact that Compete.com – pictured over there – has Yahoo Sports (WHAT?) as the top-ranking sports media site is, frankly, of no interest to ESPN.

And the fact that some site ranks you as the 56th most popular social media consultant in Idaho shouldn’t matter to you, either.

ESPN is keeping advertisers happy with engaging content, but they’re only doing that AFTER they’re able to have an engaging value proposition.

YOU can keep your stakeholders happy by…

ASKING what business problem you can help them solve
CREATING a valuable way to solve it
COMMUNICATING that value through whatever it is that makes your business unique.

Go. Read the article, and make some magic happen for the metrics that matter for you.

Aug 08 2012

Don’t Believe The Hashtag

Not all hashtags are created equal.

One of my favorite sayings is one of my own, probably stolen from somewhere: “the answer is always somewhere in the middle.”

Another saying that we’re twisting a little is one from Chuck D: “Don’t believe the hype.”

Public Enemy Frontman Chuck D

How do the twain come together, and support the premise that you shouldn’t believe the hashtag?

Here goes…

#NBCFail = $1 Billion

You read that right. After first projecting that they’d lose $200 Million on the London Olympics, NBC is now saying that they will break even on the games, bringing in ONE BILLION DOLLARS in advertising revenues.

Whether or not NBC’s Olympic coverage is a success or a failure depends entirely on a little word we’ll call “perspective.” Which brings us to “hashtags.”

For the uninitiated, the “hashtag” is the “pound sign” (“#”) that precedes a statement or saying that is shared on Twitter. When the Olympics started, corners of the internet started complaining that the events they wanted to see weren’t on live – since NBC’s main network was planning on showing the good stuff during prime time. Michael Phelps vs. Ryan Lochte in an epic swimming duel? Mass appeal, according to NBC, so they’ll save that for prime time.

Dumb move, according to the interwebs – if you trust the “trending” hashtag of “#NBCFail.”

Except…well, NBC DIDN’T fail, if you look at little things called “objectives.” To posit a guess, here are a couple potential objectives:

Show the good stuff during prime time, when we catch the casual viewer and pull in key demographics, like Moms with money
Sell lots of advertising so that people who watch during prime time can connect with brands
Make every single Olympic event available online so no one can complain if they have a cable package.
Break even on the games.

NBC has gone 4-for-4

We’re living in the instant failure world – where brands get pilloried for not answering to the masses in real time. (Want more on the implications for all sorts of businesses? Read this post from Sidera Works. It’s darn good. Link: )

But I’ve got news for you: brands don’t answer to you, Mr. Consumer. They answer to the bottom line – and what’s in your best interest (“Seeing Michael Phelps Swim”) may not be in the best interest of their bottom-line, and the masses, and the time-space continuum. (London is 6 hours ahead of New York.)

Would I do things differently if I were head of NBC Sports? Sure – in a few cases. But, with ratings up and people able to consume all the NBC Olympics content from anywhere and everywhere…I have no major complaints.

Somewhere in the Middle…

When you’re setting your own marketing strategy, social media strategy, or communications strategy – the extremes aren’t where you want to be. NBC could have kowtowed very early on to the social media diatribes, decided to abandon their ship and cause all heck to break loose. They would have then made a bunch of Twitter people very happy, and they would have “won the Internet.”

They also would have angered the people – and there are lots of them (Ad Age reports that the ratings for these Olympics are the best for any held outside of the US since 1976) – who turn in every four years and want to watch the Gymnastics. Or the Swimming. Or the Track and Field.

Beware the Angry Mob

Angry Mobs like to mobilize online. They can do so quickly, they can be loud and boisterous.

But they don’t pay the rent.

NBC, on the other hand, had a group of advertisers to keep happy, and a formula that they have used quite a bit (the network has carried every Summer Olympics since 1988).

Listen to the feedback, sure, but stick to your knitting as long as you know your knitting is what works.

May 09 2012

Real Work Takes Time

New to this site? We’d love for you to check out our book: Six Biggest Mistakes.

Photo by simpologist, used with Creative Commons license

The payoff of your online efforts is proportional to the amount of effort that goes into it.

Spend an hour working on your link-building, and get a few people to visit your site. Spend some spare time on launching a business – and get that sort of spare-time quality traffic.

And so on, and so forth.

No Shortcuts to Online Success

Here’s a for-instance: Let’s say you’re launching a blog called “New Frugality.” It’s not an overnight success, because it takes real time. Time for you to build relationships, time for you to get real quality content, time for you to carve out your niche.

We’re in our Fourth Month over at New Frugality HQ. And it’s taking some time to get over the hump – as expected.

But here’s the thing: we’re actually in this for the long haul.

The Tactics to Definitely Avoid

If you’re new to the online space – or you’re a veteran marketer but are just now getting into blogging – you can easily get sucked in to some shortcuts that are disguised as strategic moves. They’re actually just tactics that are kinda lame – and will end up giving you headaches as you build your online empire. And here are a couple:

1. The “Can I Guest Post?” Email

These can be great – and you need a healthy reliance on guest posting (as you will read in this awesome “Noob Guide” on the SEOMoz site). But we have had a few requests over at New Frugality that gave us some serious pause.

Quoting an email: “This is Jack…I went through your site while surfing in Google.com, am very much impressed with your site’s unique informations.”

AVOID.

We HAVE had some great guest posts on that site – but they came to us from legitimate people with legitimate social presence. (Hint: they had last names.)

2. The “Same Stuff, Different Site” Post

We have watched a couple bloggers of note make this mistake – and they may NOT be paying attention to words like “Panda” or “Penguin.”

“Penguin” is Google’s Algorithm Update. This controls search like nobody’s business. And this can affect your business like nobody’s business.

In brief, you can’t copy and paste content that you used on one site and put it on another site you own WITHOUT making changes to a good percentage of the text. (Estimates we’ve heard: 70% of the content can be the same.)

3. The Over-Reliance on Facebook Likes

“Engagement” by big brands on Facebook – that means how many times stuff the big brands say gets shared, commented on, or has the like button clicked – is as high as 0.2% in the auto industry, according to this report by “All Facebook.” (This study looked at “daily page engagement.”)

Wait. WHAT?

Ford is considered the industry standard for its social media presence – and they have 1,400,000 fans on Facebook. They should expect 4,200 of those fans to be engaged each day. A tiny number.

This isn’t to say that 4,200 is a BAD number for Ford.

But for you…that percentage of engagement multiplied by your number of Facebook fans (or people who click the like button) isn’t going to give you much. And the amount of time to get those fans – well, your efforts might be better spent elsewhere. Now, the last thing to avoid:

4. Posting Stuff That Isn’t Good

Chris Brogan had a great piece on this the other day – though we think the title of the post doesn’t match the content.

Upshot? Write Good Stuff.

Not everyone is an awesome writer – we get that. But that doesn’t mean that crap needs to be put on the page just to have the page filled. You’re not running a daily newspaper here – if you don’t have something good, productive, well-thought out, clever or (here’s that word again) “engaging,” don’t publish it.

Real Work – Online AND Off – Takes Time.

Mar 24 2012

It’s EBook Week Here at Headquarters

Last week, we were all over Amazon. This week, we’re launching not one…not two…but three different EBooks.

We love our Act Now button

We’ve thought of ourselves here at Area 224 Headquarters as something in-between. Not really an Internet Marketing shop. Not totally a Corporate Communications firm, either.

But, being in the middle of both things is pretty cool, we think – we’ve been able to watch how both sides try to tackle communications issues large and small. And we’ve tried to share that knowledge with you.

Which is Why This is EBook Week

First up: The Communicator’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing. This book is written for you if…

You’re in a Communications role – maybe an in-house marketing person, maybe a writer on your own, maybe someone who spins words into phrases for a living. OR
You’re a small business person – and you’re looking to augment your income by getting into the Affiliate Marketing world. OR
You’re in ANY sort of gig – and you’ve heard about Affiliate Marketing – but you’re not convinced it’s right for you. Or you don’t know where or how to get started.

So, you should give some serious thought to buying this book – if you’re any of the above.

Use the button below – it will take you straight to PayPal, where you can get the book for a price that won’t break the bank – but will give you a kick start in the world of Affiliate Marketing. (And stay tuned – a new EBook coming on Wednesday, and another one on Friday.)

Mar 08 2012

If You’re Gonna Hand Out A Business Card…

New Here? Why not download a free book. Social Media for First Graders.

Yes, I did it. I was at a lunch meeting and, at the tail end, I gave the other party a business card. A card that looked something like this one:

We sorta instagrammed it, for effect

Now, with the advancement of technology, with mobile phones and iPads and apps and the like, you’d think that the business card would be dead. But it’s not.

In fact, the business card exchange takes very little time – and there isn’t that dance macabre of whether or not you know the person (LinkedIn request?), whether or not you have met the person ever (Facebook request?), or whether or not you’re about to get spammed (the opt-in email address confirmation thing – more on that in a few).

So, since you asked, here are official tips that you can put to use with those most trusty of networking tools: business cards.

1. Don’t Scrimp on Paper

I’m going to assume for a half-second that your business cards are under your control – if you work for a mid-sized company or a big brand, standards are decided on by an Ivory Tower somewhere. Let’s hope those folks aren’t stingy with the paper stock.

Your business card’s paper stock is one of the most important decisions you can make.

Go thick. Go glossy. 14 point is the minimum. Mine are 16. The extra couple points (or millimeters of thickness) plus the glossy finish make a serious impact.

2. Design is Important as Heck

Hire a professional. Heck, go to fiverr.com and get someone to design one. I don’t care how you get it done; but, unless you are someone with a knack for graphic design, outsource this key function.

The back of the card is important to use, too. Go with one of a couple approaches:

Logo with links on a color background
Your logo – but again with color
OR space to write on.

BUT – don’t go with just white space. Here’s the approach we took:

You can write on the back

3. While You’re at it: No Dumb Titles

Thankfully, the bulk of the business cards sitting on my desk do not use dumb titles.

But there are a couple. “Chief Awesomeness Officer,” “Marketing Guru,” and “Master of Innovation and Vision” are some examples of what you want to avoid.

My card does not have a title on it – which is a great way to avoid having to reprint when you (a) promote yourself, (b) demote yourself or (c) get direct feedback from someone telling you that your title is dumb. (Consider this a warning: I have witnessed people delivering this news to someone. I have more tact than that: I use a blog.)

4. Handing You My Card Does Not Give You Permission to Spam Me

Start with a direct email, please. “Hey, Dave, great meeting you last night. We do a newsletter from time to time, and I’d love to put you on the list. Is that okay?”

You can even ask while you’re getting my card from me; if I give you permission, write that on the back of the card, along with the date.

Hey, it’s a Marketing and Networking Jungle out there. Try these tips with your business card. Trust me, you’ll make a positive impact. OR avoid a negative impact.