Sharing Deep, Sharing Wide

One of my clients called last week to say,  “I love your newsletter but I want your blog delivered to my email too.”

No need. Every blog post for the preceding month is referenced in my monthly newsletter (along with some original content). Why do I do this?  My readers have lives of their own and I need to make it easy for them to access my information (duh).

The good people at ShareThis have a little application that can be inserted into blogs and websites. It enables readers to share what they’re reading via email and social media platforms in a couple of clicks/keystrokes. This gives ShareThis a unique vantage point from which to watch sharing behavior.

And what do they know? 46% of shared information reaches its new destination via email, in spite of social networking sites in the aggregate edging email out.

Tweets and Retweets

I owe a great deal of my traffic flow to Twitter, where I actively participate in financial, economic and marketing conversations and share what I’ve written as it’s appropriate.  At least a third of my blog traffic is Twitter generated, so I was surprised to read ShareThis stats on this beloved service:

We found that Twitter is the least engaging share platform with users visiting an average of 1.66 pages when they click through to a site, while users coming in off e-mail were the most engaged, visiting 2.95 pages (emphasis mine),  and Facebook trailing closely behind 2.76 page views. Of course this varies by vertical and site, but if you think about your own habits, it makes sense. Getting an emailed link from a friend may cause you to pay more attention than the more random discovery that you get on Twitter as you consume quick opinions. We think there is tremendous potential for Twitter to increase its engagement when and if better filters are applied – the type of filters that Facebook has built in from the start.

My best recommendation, even if you devote time to build your presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites, re-distribute your messages with a regular e-newsletter. A belt & suspenders approach to being heard.

End of Email?

Interesting article in WSJ about email’s younger, prettier communication sister: social media.

For those not using Twitter, Facebook and other means of connecting with the outside world, this WSJ quote explains the difference between them and ye olde email: “We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.”

The story quoted Alex Bochannek, curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA: “The whole idea of this email service isn’t really quite as significant anymore when you can have many, many different types of messages and files and when you have this all on the same type of networks.”

What’s this bode for email newsletters?

The article doesn’t make my point explicitly, but sets it up well. Email newsletters and all THOUGHTFUL communications have a place OUTSIDE social media. Said another way, to communicate thoroughly, thoughtfully and confidentially, if you can’t meet in person, start with email.

This mirrors my own experience, as a fairly active Twitter(er) who averages 30 daily updates.  For those of you not yet using Twitter, don’t take the impression that I have that much to say about myself — my tweets are usually in response to news items posted by other users or part of a conversation with my “followers” (feels a bit Jim Jones-ish calling them that, but oh well…that’s what they’re officially called).

Sure, I occasionally tweet out the odd “gonna clear my head by taking the dog for a walk” message, but the fun thing about social media is how people find you on the basis of these throwaway tweets. I now have a number of followers who send me pet food coupons and even Cesar Millan aka The Dog Whisperer follows me!

Belt & suspenders approach

Back to the topic at hand. For THOUGHTFUL, well-written communications, there is no substitute for email.  The only thing that comes close is what you syndicate through your RSS feed. However, people get busy and forget to check their readers. An occasional email poke to check the RSS feed will probably always be in order.

Here’s my belt & suspenders approach to being heard:

• My website is home base. It’s the hub of external communications
• Primary communications spokes
  • Blog and its RSS feed
  • Twitter
  • Newsletter
  • Email

1. When I post to my blog ( my website is actually a blogsite), it automatically sends a tweet with the title and a link for all the world to see. It also sends out an excerpt of the post through my RSS feed for those who’ve subscribed and to those directories like Alltop, that carry my content. Those who are linked to me via LinkedIn can see this excerpt on my profile page.  Anywhere that anyone sees an excerpt of my blog posts, they can click to read the whole thing on my blog.
2. I use Twitter to entice the Twitterverse to read my blog posts. With 140 characters per tweet, I use the url shortening service bitly to get the links down to 16 characters, then use what’s left to tease with leads like “Why Email Isn’t Dead.”
3. I also use Twitter to ask specific people to read or comment on posts, according to their inclination and expertise. I know who wants to read my posts about SPAM and who wants a financial blog writing prompt and who’s the best expert to comment on one of my posts. If I’m fortunate, some of my followers will “reTweet” what I’ve sent so their network of followers will have the opportunity to read something they would not have otherwise known existed.
4. When I get comments on the blog I Tweet that out to keep the conversation going. This helps those who’ve commented get their ideas in front of a wider audience, too. The least I can do.
5. My newsletter promises three things every month: something on whole-brain communications, a bit on brevity and updates on topics related to email marketing and newsletters. Eventually everything from the newsletter shows up in the blog. For those who don’t want to read every blog post or remind themselves to check my RSS feed in a reader, they can read my monthly newsletter and click through to anything else that might interest them in the blog. The newsletter is an efficient portal to all the information I offer.
6. I reserve email for my most formal and private correspondence. It’s also how I communicate with those not on social media.  As the WSJ article says, some things require attachments and confidentiality and email is the next-best thing to a tête-à-tête

OK, that’s my communications methodology.  What am I missing that works for you? Do tell (if you comment, I’ll tweet it out)!

Advice for those who need a ghostwriter

As a writer with some tech savvy and a general tendency to extroversion, social media works very well for me and and I’ve found a way to bind all my efforts together strategically. My experience is that those who invest the time in social media will benefit, but not everyone will want to make that investment. Fine.

If you’re a professional of any stripe, start with a custom newsletter written by yourself or a ghostwriter — not something you stick your logo on and call “customized.” No idea what to write? I offer news-driven writing prompts, if that helps.

Keep a consistent publishing schedule and maintain a searchable repository of your articles (not just prior newsletter editions, the individual articles) on your website. One of my clients does this so that we can eventually compile his newsletter articles into feature articles for professional journals. Another client’s newsletter articles go into his blog and will eventually become a book. Re-purpose your material.

My observation is that people are often reluctant to start small when they have big aspirations, but every desert is composed of tiny grains of sand. They add up.

ADDED 10-19-09

Further evidence of the power of Twitter: this morning one one of my tweeps, @derekhernquist, brought this video to my attention:

How to Quench the New Media Thirst?

I’ve got street cred talking about adolescent boys — mine are 17 and 20.  So believe me, when it comes to technology, I’m like an adolescent boy learning how to deal with hormones; my ego swells and deflates according to the company I keep.

Last week I addressed a business networking group of small business owners and solo-preneurs.  Their program director asked me to speak on e-newsletter marketing, but they wanted to know EVERYTHING about social marketing, from blogs to the proper form for declining a Facebook or LinkedIn invitation without offending.

Since nothing they asked stumped me, my head swelled .  Like an adolescent boy, it doesn’t take much.

Getting the job done

Half an hour for Q&A was insufficient; books have been written on each question!

As marketing and media become more granular and everyone’s expected to publish SOMETHING, even a 140-character tweet,  there’s an audience for what I have to say about effective business communications and plenty of opportunities to ghostwrite. But I’m a Business Person who writes like an English Major, not a new media guru.

Fortunately for us all there are technology scouts out ahead charting the best path to success. Given the thirst for new media information, I’m going to address the specific unanswered questions of the Charlotte Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs through a series of posts and invite the REAL GENIUSES out there to comment on and enhance what I have to say.

Blog versus Newsletter:  what’s the difference?

The word “blog” is truncated from web log.  Remember Star Trek, with “captain’s log” entries?  Well, a blog is a web-based log of thoughts, activities, articles, and whatever else the author publishes in a “post” (as opposed to a web page).  Lots of great (and free) software makes publishing a blog easy.

A newsletter can contain the same kind of materials that are published on blogs. Newsletters can be published electronically or on paper, but the blog is called a “blog” because it’s a web log.

If you publish both a blog and newsletter, they should reinforce each other.  Your blog should be updated more often than you publish newsletters, so refer to blog posts that take the reader further down the knowledge path of the articles and topics in the newsletter.  For example, in my recent newsletter I referred to six blog posts on how to keep your e-newsletters out of the SPAM filters.  No need to condense six blog posts in the e-newsletter!

OK, that’s enough from me on this particular question.  If you have further questions or want to elaborate on my answer, have at it — floor’s open.

Regulatory Purgatory

Professionally speaking, I grew up in the financial services sector.  Literally grew up there (in grade school I did light filing for my father, an insurance agent).  After college I worked for insurance companies, a bank, and LendingTree, a financial services firm.

So believe me when I say I understand the need for compliance when talking about other people’s money and

investments.  Even more so since the 2008 meltdown.

An acquaintance works for a Mass Mutual general agent.  Like most financial services companies, Mass Mutual rules external communications with an iron fist.  As a result, her “original” communications options are limited to transaction requests like “Please send me the street address and phone number of the surgeon who removed your gall bladder  in 2002. “

How’s a financial representative to compete with so many businesspeople in less-regulated professions who send e-newsletters and blog about their work? She does her best to stay in touch with prospects and clients by sending links to holiday cards.  Pretty lame, but keeps her name out there.

Last week she sent this message:  “Every few months, I try to keep my clients and friends up-to-date with current financial issues or critical concerns. Here is the latest. This is not a download or an attachment. It is a safeguarded link.”

Ahhh, I thought, now she’s putting some meat on the communications bone.

Clicking through the link I went to what was essentially a six-slide PowerPoint presentation about how awful taxes are and the stunning conclusion that “The IRS collects more tax than many people want to pay.”

When it got to the teaser line that said “Review strategies that can help you reduce, defer or possibly eliminate current taxation,” I thought I was in for some meaningful information on the next slide.

I was wrong.  The next slide was simply a text box where I was supposed to talk about my taxation vexation so that an insurance agent could follow up within 48 hours.

The whole thing was sooooooo far from meaningful that I think it did her more harm than good to send that one.

Financial Writing Prompts:

I’m interested in the variety of compliance hurdles financial services professionals face.   Wondering whether communications policies are more similar than different from firm to firm.  Here, you can write under another name if need be, so cut loose!

• What are you doing to stay relevant in this social media business environment if all your conversations are recorded and written communications censored?
• What are competitors with other firms doing that you think go over the edge?
• Are any changes in sight?

SPAM “Arms Race”

Confession:  I’m an NPR junkie.  I get a real return on my taxpayer dollar (for once).

Yesterday they ran All Tech Considered focused on SPAM, which is mushrooming across all media, including mobile phones.

In this segment, Omar Gallaga of the Austin American-Statesman said most email (in volume) is SPAM, but the American ISPs have gotten pretty good at scrubbing it before it hits our inboxes.

But the bad news is that the spammers have set up camps abroad, notably Ukraine, where risk of prosecution is about nil. Spammers constantly adapt to anti-spam efforts.  All Tech Considered ran a story-within-the-story interviewing a computer security expert who said “From my perspective, it seems … kind of like the arms race of the Cold War era. We built more bombs. They built more bombs. We built bigger bombs. They build bigger bombs.”

Why this matters to emailers like YOU

Corporate web servers are starting to use “reputation scoring,” which looks at sender, time it’s sent, whether it’s a trusted source aligned with a real person, and other indicators of wholesomeness.  This is why it’s so important to send e-newsletters and other digital media ONLY to people who signed up for it.

Mr Gallaga also discussed “Bacn” which is email that might be useful to you but that is not generated by a real person.

An e-newsletter or social network notification, like who’s following you on Twitter, are examples of Bacn.

The rise in Bacn led to the development of a service called “other inbox“  which separates Bacn from real-people email.  With other inbox  you can open that notice from your bank when it suits YOU, instead of having it glare from your inbox while you’re trying to do the work that generates the check that pays the overdraft.

I want to know who’s using other inbox, which is apparently included with gmail right now.  In your case, does it intuit the Bacn from the real-people-email? Tell me a funny story about what went into your other inbox.

LinkedIn Answer on Business Planning

See how I answered this question for someone in need of a start-up business plan:

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/startups-small-businesses/business-plans/STR_BPL/435991-34984446

Social networking is a great way to tap the knowledge of people around the world for free.  Give it a whirl.

Friedman and The Onion

Although it can at times be raunchy, overall I love The Onion.   Evidently so does NYT columnist and bestselling author Tom Friedman.

In his recent column he quoted a four-year-old Onion faux story on Chinese manufacturing that seemed to capture American consumption up to last summer.

“FENGHUA, China — Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the “sheer amount of shit Americans will buy. Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy these.’ … One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity.”

Friedman, who authored both “The World is Flat” and “Hot, Flat and Crowded” brought it back to reality when he cited Australian  environmental business expert Paul Gilding, who named this point in history,  “The Great Disruption”– when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once.

“When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?’  Often in the middle of something momentous, we can’t see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker — the year when ‘The Great Disruption’ began.”

I walk in entrepreneurial circles, where there’s an uptick in the number of people hanging out their shingle, joining multi-level-marketing schemes and trying to turn a hobby into a mortgage-maker.  I honestly believe that all the laid off MBAs, PhDs, geeks and artists in the world today, enabled by social networking sites, will pool their intellectual horsepower and transform the world into something no one can yet envision.

Retooling takes time and takes a toll.

As Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Ode to Open Source

I had the itch for a better website. With a big speaking event coming up, a newsletter to launch and downloads to offer, I knew there was a better way. Heck, I worked for a dot-com eight years ago, shouldn’t I know how to proceed?

Well, I knew how to begin. Craig’s List, of course. Placed an ad on Craig’s List and elance.com for “HTML & Google Analytics Expert” because I thought that’s what I needed. Whoa, out of the woodwork crawled DotNetNuke, Drupal, Adobe Contribute and base code (ASP) options.    My head swam and bank balance belched.

What’s a Web 2.0 gal to do? I went to LinkedIn and perused the Q&A.  Found an interesting discussion on WordPress as a content management system.  That’s funny, I thought of it as a blog platform.  Dug a bit deeper. Asked a LinkedIn question  whether WordPress was possible or advisable for my specific goals.  Answer, YES.  I admit to being a sucker for most things open source.  I browse with Firefox, get my mail with Thunderbird and now run my site on WordPress.  All part of the wisdom of crowds.

I’m now part of a worldwide community of WordPressers — no Dow Jones Big Brother watching my every move, just lots of friendly worldwide cousins who let me borrow a monkey wrench and tell me how to best use it.

In addition to web searches I dug into my Rolodex (is that a term people still use?) and was referred to Andy at Nuance Labs .  A mutual friend worked with him on his own site and on some nonprofit sites including the Charlotte, NC chapter of Slow Foods.   Anyone into the slow foods movement is likely to be my kind of co-worker.

Of course we met in a coffee shop.  Of course he sports a ponytail and wields a Mac.   Of course he manages me very well — tells me he needs to stay on task and produce the deliverables I prioritized before following me down several rabbit holes of other interesting options.  I assure him I’ll be a “good client,” and let him grind it out.

Then, ON TIME and ON BUDGET he sends me the first peak at my new site.  I almost cry when I see the functionality, the design elegance, and his judicious selection of passages selected from my old site, my LinkedIn profile and other things I’ve written.  “Yes,” I think, “we can be very good coworkers.”

I say to him “Use your Millenial/GenX sensibilities to spice it up” and that’s enough prodding.  He gets it and I get what I’ve asked for.

Bottom line:  LinkedIn’s a gem mine of information. Consider WordPress for your next site.  Nuance Labs is a great web partner.