WARNING: This email could lead to a very unproductive afternoon!

I received a text message last week from someone who wanted me to check out a website that outlines why Amreica is going to hell in a handbasket.  It pointed out all the things that are wrong with our system of government, healthcare, financial system, and on and on and on ad nauseum. Do we have problems? Of course. But instead of sitting back and watching it burn I encouraged my friend to ask himself what he could do to make life better for him and his family. I’m a big advocate of making change that begins from within.  In the spirit of changing our mindset and thinking positively, go check out some of the latest TED Talks.  Here are some that I’ve been thinking about:

• Brene Brown: Fear and Shame
• Richard St. John: 8 Secrets of Success (short and funny!)
• Ron Gutman: The Hidden Power of Smiling

Like to shop? Like discounts?  I’ve discovered MyHabit. This is a great little website with designer clothes and accessories for men, women, kids, and home.  I’ve become addicted and watch it daily!

Do you like shortcuts, tricks, and other hackeries of life?  Check out Life Hacker.

Ever wonder what someone would do for $5?  Now you can find out at Fiverr. Get creative!

If you’re bored and looking for some random knowledge on random topics, check out Cracked. It makes for some fun reading during those 2 o’clock in the afternoon drags.

Curious about your writing skills?  This writing analyzer will tell you reading grade level for your writing. Great for blog posts – 8th grade reading level is a good target. This email is at a 4th grade reading level. I’m not sure if that’s indicative of good communication skills or a really dumb communicator.

Here’s something you can use – get rid of those sticky notes and start using TeuxDeux.  It’s a very simple, free, online to-do list that moves the undone task from yesterday to today (not that I have a lot of those).

I just hired a student from UT Austin to help edit my book. So far I’ve been very pleased with the responsiveness and professionalism.  If you’re interested in hiring a student to help you out, now is the time to do it!  Go to HireALonghorn to post your job.

What I’ve been up to:

I’ve been speaking to a lot of groups and associations around Central Texas. I give a talk called “150 Monkeys in Cyberspace” This presentation is a summary of the book I’m working on.  I won “Best Session” for this presentation at ProductCamp a couple of weeks ago (a conference for product managers and marketers).  It was a great feeling and quite validating to receive that award from my peers.

Other than speaking and writing a lot, I’m still doing graphic and web design with the occassional marketing strategy consultation.  I tell folks that I’m in the middle of a page turn as I move to the next chapter of my life.  I appreciate all the support I’ve received from friends and clients.

What to do now?

• Check out the new website, tell me what you think.
• Remember me for your graphic and web design needs.
• Let me know if you hear of any groups looking for a speaker. My talk summary is here.
• Drop me a note to let me know how you’re doing and what you’ve been up to.

Be well,

Chad

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This TED Talk by Brene Brown is one of the best I’ve seen.  Brene makes the research so approachable.  If you’re interested in human behavior, vulnerability, fear, shame, compassion, how to be more open, the secret to live a richer life – watch this.

Let me know what you think.

The presentation I’ve proposed for Product Camp is grounded in research of non-human primates. After all, we share 95% of our DNA with our non-human primate cousins. It’s just that they’re better to observe than human beings – humans lie. By observing our cousins in their natural habitat, we’re able to learn a lot about our own primal instincts and discover more about who we are at our primal core. Researchers have observed the behavior of non-human primates and extrapolated that data in order to better understand human behavior. That research lends interesting insights for those of us in sales and marketing.
Human social groups like military units, church congregations, modern hunter / gatherers, and even our facebook friends are dictated by our primitive evolution. Regardless of your industry, product or service, sales and marketing is all about people and our relationships. With today’s emerging technology and consumer sophistication, it’s more important than ever to understand why we do what we do

In this presentation, I have applied research theorem, spanning over 65 years, from psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology, and several other “ology’s” to sales and marketing. By combing two concepts, cognitive social limitations and the parasocial relationships, I demonstrate how businesses can realize the benefits of social evolution.

We’ll answer these questions and more:
• How is social media interrupting our evolutionary process?
• Why are some people so exhausting to talk to?
• Why should my business hire a chief story-teller?
• How do I recognize important relationships and maintain them?
• What would happen if we took 150 monkeys and launched them into cyberspace?

No matter how good the story, you wouldn’t simply walk up to a stranger on the street and begin telling them a riveting story about how your product changed someone’s life. There’s an appropriate time and place for everything and in marketing, it’s becoming even more important that you be less “spammy” in your approach.  In today’s marketplace, you have to be invited by the consumer to engage – and even then there are protocols like not pitching your services so that you remain in their good graces.

I want to further the case for being the story teller of your company.  Narrative psychology suggests that stories are the most effective and natural human way to communicate. I would suggest that as the business owner, marketing director, or sales person that you begin to consider yourself as the Chief Storytelling Officer.  It’s a promotion that will help you relate to your customers and realize greater profits.

No doubt that language and the origin of communicating through stories has evolved.  An evolution largely due to the evolution of our social dynamics and the need to talk about other people.  Studies show that people spend about 60% of conversations gossiping about relationships and personal experiences.

In my research for this post I took a look at the historical / scientific premise for language and narrative.  I’ve extrapolated some of the highlights of that research to share with you here but won’t bore you with too much detail.  I will say that it’s the area of ‘personal experiences’ in the 60% of our conversations that hits the sweet spot for us as marketers.  Hang on to that 60% thought and let’s consider what scientist have discovered in regard to our brain and our biological capacity to build relationships.

There is a theory called “Dunbar’s Number”, first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar in 1992, who theorized that the number of meaningful relationships is limited,  ‘our neocortical size limits us to a predicted group size of 150 for human societies. this number limits the number of relationships that an individual human can monitor simultaneously.  The 150 number is supported by evidence from analyzing contemporary and historical human societies. Put simply, we don’t have the god-given smarts or time to maintain more than 150 stable relationships at a time.

You should know that I am not inferring that you limit the number of professional relationships to YOUR 150, but rather position your service in THEIR 150.  How is that possible?  Consider this; I don’t personally know everyone in my 150 but they still play an important role in my life.  For example, Oprah, Tim Ferriss, HuffingtonPost.com, and David Siteman Garland.

Oprah doesn’t know me, but her brand is a relationship that I maintain in my life. Why? Because it adds value to my life (more about Oprah in previous posts).  That relationship fills a need that currently exist for me.  She provides fresh content on a regular basis that I seek out and consume.

My life, like yours, like your consumer’s, is an invitation only party.  You get invited to the party when you have something to offer.  In many ways these relationships behave much in the same way I would relate to a book.  I chose it (invite it into my life), I then consume it’s content. If the content is good, I remain engaged.  If the content sucks, I close up and move on with no second chances.  Want to know what’s common amongst bestselling novels?  Most contain a pedagogic component – the value to the reader lies in the learning or how-to. The search for knowledge, know-how or entertainment is what gets your consumer there in the first place, as a marketer it’s your job to keep them engaged and keep feeding them content.

I want to encourage you to build a healthy 150 relationships, made up of people and brands that contribute to your overall well being as an individual.  Doesn’t knowing that you maintain only 150 relationships at a time make you think twice about who you let in?  After all, we’re all just an average of the five people we’re closest to in our lives.

I can’t offer you a definition of a relationship – but you’ll know it when you see or experience it.  These 150 relationships are with people we can ask for a favor and, most likely, they’ll accommodate.  We don’t throw family into this mix because the familial relationship is so different.  You can royally piss your family off and they’ll come back around and get over it, whereas a friend may not ever speak to you again.  It’s also interesting to note that familial relationships can endure distance where a friendship rarely can, a relationship requires nurturing.

Technology like social media has made that lead nurture process so much more accessible than it ever has been.  You don’t need television or radio as a platform to enter people’s lives, there are much less expensive and more effective ways to do that.  By providing valuable content to your audience they will make a place for you amongst their 150, and if you don’t piss them off by being “spammy”, they’ll keep you in the inner circle.

Tools like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are great places to start adding value to the life of your audience.  It’s true that if you give away the milk, they will buy the cow.  Milk is reproducible, not expensive and provides benefit.  The same should be true for the ‘milk’ your business gives away.  Save the beef for paying clients.

So start producing content that adds value.  If you’re having trouble writing content, consider what Helen Fielding, author of the Bridget Jones’s Diary said:

Write as if you were writing to a friend.  Do not try to impress an imaginary audience who isn’t like you. My experience is that it’s always better to write about what you know. I would also say, “Rewrite as much as possible.” I believe in showing it to a number of close friends who will be honest with you.  Listen to what they say, and rewrite accordingly.

So go, discover your 150 and work to be included in others 150.  The position is earned not assumed, invited not intrusive, and valuable. The power of the inner circle can lift your business to new heights.

Technology is changing the way we interact with one another.  Much in the same way that agriculture enabled us to move from living in small villages to living vast cities. Social media is even impacting our evolutionary path (more on that to come in later posts).

While technology can never take the place of face-to-face interaction, it can be put relationships in a holding pattern like never before. It can eliminate geographic barriers that limited generations before us. And the cost for entry is remarkably low compared to more traditional means of communication.

How has Oprah taken the medium of television to become a legend? How has she created an “intimate” relationship with viewers around the world? How has she penetrated the inner-circle of our lives?

Most marketers will agree that when taking your business online, it’s all about creating a community.  A community that is interested in what you have to offer and will regularly listen.

For her audience, Oprah has established what researchers call a para-social relationship (the illusion of friendship and or relationship to a media persona that one has never met).  Technology and social media has created an opportunity for nearly anyone to create a para-social relationship with their audience.  Harnessing that power is what I think every corporation in the world is trying to figure out right now.

How has Oprah done it?

1. Girl Talk: fresh content, regular schedule, valuable information, thought provoking.

2. Self-disclosure: a tendency most characteristic of female same-sex friendships.  Women talk about personal and affiliative issues that reflect who they are, men talk about task and power issues that reflect what they do. Oprah discloses information about her personal life, modern marketers would call this being “authentic”.

3. It takes time. Oprah’s success did not come overnight. She has been on the national stage since 1986.  Trying to create a community overnight just isn’t realistic.

4. Oprah peels like an onion:  She doesn’t over share about herself, uses discretion, and let’s the viewer in on information on her terms.  Think about her timing to reveal her up-brining, the sexual abuse, the weight issues, etc. It goes back to being authentic – reveal, but when appropriate.

5. Interpersonal voices:  There is a clear distinction when she is talking as a representative for her audience and when she is talking to her audience. Her choice of words always reflect the situation at hand. Think about when she’s addressing a typical audience member (ordinary Oprah), another African-American (sometimes uses slang, or folksy language), and when she’s talking to heads of state (serious Oprah).

6. Non-verbal behaviors:  This is especially worth noting for video bloggers. Oprah isn’t afraid to touch guests or audience members. It’s a form of virtual cuddling.

7. Sustained eye contact:  Again for video bloggers – she demonstrates a sense of interest in what her guests are saying.

8. Understanding the private space: Oprah enters our private space through our television into our living room, kitchen or even bedroom.  In turn, you rarely see her bring images of larger than life pictures of public space.  She comes into your private space conscious of her surroundings and her audience. If you’re blogging to a demographic that is likely to watch your blog in their kitchen, record your blog in the kitchen.  Is your demographic the business pro?  Record in an office environment.

Questions to ask yourself when engaging online:

1. Am I creating a para-social or parasitic relationship?

2. Is my blog giving the reader a return on their investment of time?

3. People like to talk about people – it’s what makes us human.  Can I illustrate my point by telling a story?

4. Am I being authentically me? Revealing when appropriate, conscious of my language and word choice?

5. Am I networking / connecting? Or just broadcasting?

What have you learned from Oprah? Are there other models out there worth study?

I could only think of a handful, a few, maybe only one of significance! What a small ratio of success stories. I was ashamed and devastated.

How could this be? I don’t fancy myself a failure. Why had so many of them moved on to something else, moved out of town, or joined the corporate ranks? Could it be a bad economy? Did they not have a good business to start with? Or worse yet, had I set them on a track for failure?

Enter rational thought.

We are each responsible for our own failures and successes. I have to own mine and I have to let my clients own theirs.

I equip my clients with the marketing materials that they need, but unless specifically asked, I’ve never taught them how to use them. Somewhere along the way I’ve allowed myself to become a technician and not a marketer. This was a hard pill to swallow, it’s difficult to admit in such a public forum, but true and relevant to personal and professional growth.

My devastation was a result of self-delusion. A technician is skilled to produce a specific product, he builds it but doesn’t teach you how to use it. And geez, this is true of many businesses! I have a membership to a gym with hundreds of machines but I’m at least 40 pounds overweight, I have multiple finance tools on my computer and online but my accounts are a mess, I had a piano as a child but I couldn’t play Chopsticks if my life depended on it.

I thought of myself as a marketer, but my clients thought of me as a technician. That’s an equation for misery and one that produces results that you won’t be happy with (i.e. low ratio of success stories). My equation for success should have been as a technician: (client need + my production = satisfied client), not as a marketer: (client product / service + my marketing = client success). Only after searching for my successes did I realize the error of my equation that’s forced a fundamental change in how I do business.

It’s an ancient Chinese saying from Lao Tzu, too often forgotten in business; you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.

Tools don’t make you successful, knowing how to use the tools will make you successful. My business has dramatically changed as a result of my aha-moment. I want to be my client’s personal trainer, not their building with treadmills.

What’s your equation for measuring professional success? How do you equip your clients / customers to get the results you’re looking for?

Like I mentioned in my last post, Why Telling Lies Will Help You Sell More, people relate and react to stories (that’s one reason why testimonials are so powerful).

Stories engage the right side of the brain, the creative side. Your audience will usually relax, let down their defenses and hear you out when you tell a story as opposed to a hard sales pitch. After all, decisions are emotion based – we rationalize our choices after we make them.

So what story do you tell about your company, product or services? Here are some thoughts as you begin to write your story.

1. It has to be believable and have some element of the truth to it. Most people can see right through bullsh*t, so don’t feed them a huge helping of manure. Your story should be authentically you.
2. Your audience should be able to relate to your company story. For example, if you’re selling a luxury item and your story does not relate to a luxury market, I would consider embellishing a bit for effect. On the other hand if you’re selling to the masses, tell the story from the perspective that the masses will connect to – think working hard, dreams, hope, overcoming obstacles.
3. The best company and product stories tell how you solved a problem – so are the best USP’s. “Once upon a time I was walking 200 miles to get to the shallow end of the river so I could cross over to the other side. Then I realized, why don’t I build a platform over the water so that I can cross at the most convenient place and not have to walk 200 miles out of the way? So I gathered up some friends and we built what we now know as a bridge.” Problem, your aha moment, solution.
4. Professional services: Tell a story that informs your audience of why you do what you do, crafting the story to make you approachable. It’s my opinion that professional services people can be intimidating. Your mission – as it should be – is to always set yourself up as the expert. Just remember that you’re in the people business and people don’t like arrogant asses. So the story confirms your expertise, but maintains your humanity.
5. Keep it short.

Stories; we relate to them, we react to them, we remember them. What’s your story?

I remember a good story a lot better than I remember a series of bullets, lists, facts or figures.  Ask me to remember statistics – forget it.  Do facts, figures and stats serve a purpose and have a place?  Of course they do, and the appropriateness all hinges on your audience. I would contend that most audiences however, would prefer your stimulating pie charts to be in the supplemental materials, not in your main presentation.

Whether you’re selling a product or service, tell your prospective client a good story.  A good story doesn’t use industry jargon or acronyms, has a clear beginning and ending (know when to shut up), presents a problem and offers a solution.  So tell stories, make one up if you need.  Your new client is more likely to retain and relate to what you’re talking about – you’re more likely to convey why they really need what you have to offer.

Which companies do you think tell the best stories?

While Japan may be the largest group of bar code users in the world, bar codes are a product of American ingenuity.  They were invented as a solution for quickly identifying railroad cars back in 1952.  Bar codes have been in commercial use since 1966 – the first commercial bar code was on a package of Wrigley’s gum.

We’ve come along way since identifying railroad cars and bar codes are now something that we can create freely and liberally on our computers.  Not only are we able to quickly create, but we can now read them with absolute ease.  We carry barcode readers around with us everyday – our cell phones.   A QR Code is a matrix barcode, the QR stands for “Quick Response”.

Did you know that you can create a bar code that when scanned, will automatically cause your phone to dial, open a website, prompt a text message, send an email?  All of the possibilities beg the question, how can I use this for my business??  I recently finished my first real estate flyer that included a QR Code printed on the back.  The technology is still evolving but I think will play a much larger role in our daily lives with the passage of time.  The applications are only limited to our imagination.

QR codes can contain any information you would like; text, web address, or other data.  For the last flyer I created the code contained contact information for the agent, MLS number, property address, and some other property specific information.  The code could also have contained the URL for that property’s website – something that’s becoming more common as more real estate consumers are expecting them.  The visiting agent can scan the code and capture all that data in their phone.  Now information about that listing is in the agent’s pocket – and there until they delete it.  I’m sure you can begin to see the potential in this technology.

Here are some other ideas I think could have interesting implications for QR Codes in your business:

1) QR Code on a brochure.

• URL that links to your website.
• SMS: Send a text to your sales staff to request more information.  Immediate feedback.
• Link to a YouTube video of a product or service tour.

2) QR on your business card.

• Include a link to your website.
• QR codes can initiate a phone call without dialing.
• Include a link to a YouTube video of yourself or of your latest video blog.
• Link to your Gist.com profile

Just a few of my thoughts on how QR Codes can transform the marketing process for your business.

Here’s where you can find free WR code generators:

• http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
• http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/
• http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator
• http://www.qrstuff.com/

Free QR readers can be found at:

• Check the iTunes application store for a number of free QR Readers.  I use quiQR and ScanLife
• Blackberry users can check out UpCode and BeeTagg.

Here are some codes you can put in a QR Code generator to enhance your marketing materials:

To initiate a phone call:
tel: 5124812423

To send an email:
mailto: chad@peevymedia.com

To initiate a text message:
sms: 5124812423

This is an organic blog post, I plan for it to change / evolve with my own continued research and from your input.

I have a hard time keeping up with all that’s out there for social media.  I admire those who do – or at least pretend to keep up.  Maybe it’s a combination of my ADD and OCD, but when I get on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn I get so wrapped up in what I see that I end up wasting hours of perfectly good productive work time.  To top it off, I have FB, Twitter, and LI on my iPhone so I can get my social media fix while I’m in the car (I know, Oprah), waiting in line, networking events (usually while talking to someone I had rather not be), even walking down the sidewalk or during movies (I’m that guy).  I’m sure my obsession is certifiable and within the next 5 years we’ll see a commercial for a pill to alleviate this attachment / addiction. My social media has become an extension of me, I love it.  It even feeds the voyeuristic side of my personality – I can people watch all day without ever leaving the house.  Best part of that is that they ask me to watch them, it’s a formal invitation to your daily life.  Fun, scary, and profitable.

That’s right, I get business from my social media obsession and I’m working hard to get more!  This only complicates my obsession.  You mean I can make money from my addiction?  All the sudden I feel like a drug dealer, but I don’t care.  Speaking of my ADD, did you notice that I only use 3 social media sites?  I’m not including blogs or YouTube, those are another blog for another day.  Why only Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you asked?  Simple answer, I just can’t keep up with anymore.  No need to pretend,  I own my shortcomings. There are a lot more out there and I encourage you to explore them if you have the self-discipline to manage it all without wasting a lot of time.

Along the way and while feeding my obsession I have found some pretty cool tech tools that fuel my fire.  I’ve listed them here and given a snippet description of each.  Please feel free to add to the list, I will be as I find them.

SocialOomph.com

Ever follow someone on Twitter and then you get a direct message (DM) from them, thanking you for following them?  You can make that happen for yourself using SocialOomph.com.  I’m not terribly crazy about the interface of their site, but I love the too. There is a free version.

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BubbleTweet.com

Check out the site.  It’s a little video bubble for twitter.  Confession: I haven’t used it myself but plan to soon.

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Landing Pages

If you have multiple social media,  websites or blogs I encourage you to look at having a landing page where all of those sites can live together.  Here is a sample I created for a real estate client.  You can give out one web address and allow folks to have a portal to everything you’re offering on the web.

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HooteSuite

Wish you could manage all of your social media from one place?  Tired of going from site to site to send out a status update?  Wish you could just do it once and it populate everywhere?  Ever wish you could schedule a status update or group of updates for future posting?  You can do it all with HooteSuite.  HooteSuite can save you lots of time and headache.

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Hootlet

Once you have HooteSuite click on the own in the top left hand corner.  Scroll down to Apps and Plugins and get the HooteSuite Hootlet.  This little tool makes it easy to tweet about an article you may have come across that you would like to share.

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Twilert.com

If you’re not managing your social media presence – well – it’s pretty dumb not to and could be disastrous for you.  Twilert is the Google Alert of Twitter.  You can get daily updates for and @person or #topic sent to your email.

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Google Alerts

Managing your brand?  Wonder what’s being said about you, your company, your dog on the web?  Google Alerts will send you a daily email for anything you want to monitor on the web.  I monitor everything.  Myself, my company, my friends, my competitors, my significant other.

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Klout.com

If you’re wondering how much influence you have in cyber world, check this out.

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FreshBooks

I use FreshBooks for my invoicing and love it. Dead simple – prepares estimates, invoices, and tracks time. Get it here…

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Metricly

Metricly aggregates your data from all over the web, allowing you to compare and combine all of your metrics in one place

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What are some of your dirty little social media secrets?  Share them here!