Ilana Rabinowitz, Author at Social Media Explorer

7 Ways To Become A Rock Star of Innovation

Ilana Rabinowitz — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:00:09 +0000

Great innovators are the new rock stars. Steve Jobs was the Mick Jagger of innovation. Like Jobs, sometimes the stars are individuals, like Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington or Phillipe Starck, but more often it is a company, like GM, Square, Intel, Facebook, Google, 3M, or Nike that achieves this status.

Today innovation is more than a nicety; it’s a survival skill. Rapid changes in technology over the last ten years mean that you either innovate or get left in the dust as entire industries undergo major upheavals.

How do you set the stage for innovation and create an environment where new ideas are welcome and the organization is set up to implement them? What is the culture of the companies that win at innovation? Here are seven qualities of the innovative organization.

1. Innovation is stated value and a priority.

There are people, titles and budget assigned to assuring that innovation is part of the culture. One way to do this is to have an innovation team making sure that everyone knows their ideas will be heard and more importantly—management commits to hearing them. I am part of such a team at my company, Lion Brand, a brand that has been on the market for 135 years.

2. Welcoming innovative ideas means making the time to explore them.

Innovative organizations know that if all the time in a day is spent taking care of emails, attending meetings about the status quo and fighting fires there is no time to think about and discuss innovative ideas. It’s not easy to step back from the response-based activities to the more generative process of creating something entirely new. If people are too busy to hear about and consider innovative ideas, they won’t be too busy for long.

3. Innovative companies are aware of the competition but not focused on them.

The danger in focusing on the competition is that you will replicate what’s already been done, simply because you think it’s successful. Innovative ideas arise when you look outside your own industry or connected two ideas from unrelated disciplines to create something completely new.

Nike didn’t look to the designs of Adidas to make a better sneaker. They looked at how a future that connects technology with health and athleticism could create a new product.

4. Innovative companies get comfortable with uncertainty.

They understand that it is not easy to evaluate and budget for innovation. It’s difficult to project the ROI of something that doesn’t already exist, and for which there is little precedent. If you wait until all the possibilities are accounted for, you won’t innovate.

5. Failure must be an option.

If failure is the worst thing that can happen in an organization, then the only path to success is to bet on tried and true, use best practices and repeat history over and over again. Everyone who is considered a successful innovator has stories of the failed attempts that preceded their successes.

Chris Sacca, an investor in Twitter, spent his college loans in the stock market, made $12 million and then lost it all, going $2 million in debt when tech stocks crashed. He hustled his way into becoming an angel investor with a business card and a website and became a success investing in early tech startups. Francis Ford Coppola, creator of Apocalypse Now and the Godfather films, and has had more failures than successes at the box office (fortunately the financial gains of the successes were significantly higher).

6. Great innovators notice things and ask good questions.

The culture in an innovative company is comfortable with people questioning the status quo. Innovation results when you as “why not?” or “what if?” The compliant, rule-following, people are not the innovative rock starts of the future.

Henry Ford asked how he could make cars more affordable using technology. Today a good question for every business is “How can technology help lower the cost of, improve, or market our product?”

7. Great innovators get out a lot.

Sitting at your desk, checking off your to do list, answering emails and filling out budget forms virtually guarantees that you won’t have an innovative idea. Going to a conference, taking a walk around the block, going to lunch with a colleague—just getting out more and exchanging ideas—takes you off the well-worn paths that lead away from new ideas. Avoid the familiar in routine and get out of the online echo chamber.

Step into the world of innovation by immersing yourself at a conference.

I’m a big believe in attending the right conferences to stay up to date on the cutting edge thinking in your industry. But for everyone, attending a conference that inspires them to get on a path to innovation is worthwhile. Because of the burgeoning interest in the topic a number of conferences have sprung up that feature speakers from a wide array of fields including neuroscience, academia, technology and film. These conferences include the Social Innovation Summit, held at Stanford this month, The Innovation Uncensored Conferences run by Fast Company, the 99U Conferences and a conference, for which I am an evangelist, Creativity and Commerce (C2-MTL) Conference in Montreal. C2-MTL happens this May and features speakers including James Cameron (filmmaker), Christian Loubouton (designer) and Tony Hseih (Zappos).

If you’re stuck for ideas, plan the time to step out of your everyday activities and get inspired by the innovation rock stars and the creative people who gather to hear them. I can offer a significant discount off the C2-MTL conference that’s good until December. Feel free to email me if you are interested at Ilana221@gmail.com

The post 7 Ways To Become A Rock Star of Innovation appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Marketing Lessons From The Suicide Hotline

Ilana Rabinowitz — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 10:00:17 +0000

For several years I volunteered on a suicide hotline. Before taking calls, I was required to take about 100 hours of training in using active listening skills. From that training, and the experience of talking to people in situations where what you say really matters, I learned some of the most valuable lessons in communication.

The first thing I learned is that what you’re most likely to say to people in crisis is probably the worst possible thing you can say. Yet, no matter how much I (and everyone I volunteered with) learned about what NOT to say, it was hard to get out of the habit of saying the wrong thing. Our knee-jerk reaction was to give people advice. What’s wrong with that? It puts the focus on you, not the person who needs help. Giving people advice tells them what you would do. It might make you feel better that you’ve got a quick fix for them but it’s really not helpful.

When we talk to people, we often focus on what we want out of the conversation, not what they need. If this is true of people who are volunteering with the idea of helping people, imagine how much more true it is of people who are in the business of trying to get people to buy more products?

So, here’s the principle that makes for the most effective marketing communication:

It’s not about you.

I know that’s very hard to swallow. There you are with a job to do—getting people to want more of your product—and as it turns out, asking them to buy more of your product is not the way to do it!

When you share content on your blog, your Facebook page, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, or any other form of media, remember this:

It’s not about your product or service. It’s about what it means to the people who might use it; how it can make their lives better, or how other people are using it to improve their businesses.

It’s not about your promotions and special offers but how your product or service is different and meaningful and useful to your audience.

It’s not about your newsletter. It’s about what you have to say in your newsletter that is helpful to them.

Attention is the most precious commodity online. Do you think people will give you their attention so they can hear you talk about yourself?

If we could all remember this simple principle, we would be better crisis managers, better friends, and better marketers.

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What’s the Next Trend In Digital?

Ilana Rabinowitz — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 10:00:39 +0000

Most digital marketers I know are fascinated with trends. And one of the best tips in predicting trends is that for many major trends, there is often an equal and opposite countertrend. I learned this from Robyn Waters, the former trendmaster at Target, who developed the idea of design for the masses, and described countertrends in her book, The Hummer and The Mini.

Trend: Connecting. Countertrend: Unplugging

So it’s no surprise that as we become more and more focused on technology in our lives, there would be a trend to unplug. A recent cover story in Fast Company described how Baratunde Thurston, one of the most active people on social media, disconnected from the internet for 25 days. Fast Company devoted practically an entire issue to the idea of stepping back from technology. They described who among the digerati digitally detox and how; what you can do to lessen the effect of the technology barrage on your personal and professional ife; what unplugging can do to improve your life; and how to determine whether you are addicted (you are).

There’s already a movement for people to take digital sabbaticals by planning to unplug on weekends or for periods of time every day.

Early Adopters Predict A Trend

I wrote about the emergence of this trend two years ago here on Social Media Explorer. What is most surprising about it is that the early adopters of the unplugging trend are at the highest echelons of the digerati from Google, Twitter and Facebook. They are the developers and presenters at a conference about how to be more mindful and less distracted by the internet, called Wisdom 2.0 that has grown in three years from a couple of hundred to thousands of attendees and is followed by livestream to hundreds of thousands of people around the world..

As parents, many of digital elite send their kids to The Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, where kids aren’t allowed to use screens until 8^th grade. The curriculum focuses on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks like knitting.

What Does This Trend Mean For Digital Marketers

Is everyone going to eventually reject the internet? No. Not only will this not happen but we are going to become more connected as the internet becomes wearable and ultimately implantable. Google Glasses and the Pebble watch, are the first steps in this process. There is virtually no one for whom a complete unplugging is a viable option.

Mitch Joel, in an article asking people not to unplug, talks about how to minimize our Pavlovian response to the onslaught of information and communication by turning off virtually all of your alerts. You really don’t have to know every time you get an email, a meeting invitation, a Twitter follower. You can step back without stepping out. It’s a start.

Like any situation in life that is powerful, out of our control and inevitable, the only way to effectively deal with it is by changing our relationship to it. There are many tactics but there is one way that is emerging as a long-term strategy.

Going Out On A Limb

Personally, my goal in using digital is to regain my focus and attention–two areas that have been challenging since I’ve been deeply involved in digital marketing for 15 years. Taking digital Sabbaticals is healthy, but it doesn’t solve these problems. There is, however, a daily exercise that has proven effective in gaining clarity and enhancing attention and that is mindfulness meditation. Years ago, when I edited an anthology on the subject, I committed to practicing daily for a year and was amazed at the results, including increased creativity. If you commit to a meditation practice as you would to something as simple as brushing your teeth, it won’t seem onerous or strange.

Google trends shows an increasing interest over the last 10 years. It used to be considered woo woo New Age stuff. Today, you’ll see a Harvard Business School professor write about it and companies like Disney, General Mills and Google promote the practice for their employees. A recent Huffington Post article entitled The Daily Habit Of These Outrageously Successful People is about meditation.

So my prediction, is that the next trend among the highly connected (that will ultimately become everyone) will be one that helps people become more focused and allows the mental space for creativity to flourish. We will all be dealing with the effects of too much information forever. Meditation is a way that many will discover can change the way we deal with it. As we become even more digitally connected in the next 10 years, so that we are barely aware of it, awareness and focus will become a quality more highly valued than knowledge. Meditation is the exercise that builds those muscles.

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Show, Don’t Tell: 5 Lessons In Communication

Ilana Rabinowitz — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:00:24 +0000

I recently attended a conference dedicated to creativity and commerce called C2-MTL. The paradox of the event is that you can’t teach people to be creative with traditional teaching methods. Yet I walked away awash in ideas.

How did this happen? How can you teach someone something that isn’t teachable The conference played by the first rule of communication: “show, don’t tell.” Show, don’t tell is about conveying a message so that the lessons learned are personalized, rather than a list of laws. That’s a tall order. One that we, as marketers need to take to heart.

Here are 5 ways that this conference was able show innovation, rather than telling people how to be innovative and they can be applied to communicating lessons in leadership, writing, speaking or marketing.

1. Create An Experience

The environment and the in-person experience in itself is part of the communication. There is a reason why churches have soaring towers and stained glass windows. The design of a church invites people to go beyond mundane thoughts and feelings.

The conference environment at C2-MTL was in a dramatic, recently renovated 19^th Century building that sometimes houses modern art and had custom-built spaces designed to encourage collaboration and small meetings. There was a loft space where cocktail parties and other special events could occur overlooking the conference floor. There were small rooms set off by unusual looking dividers where people who signed up in advance could have time to meet the speakers. No sterile lecture halls here.

2. Tell A Story

A story provides lessons that can be translated and interpreted

Show, don’t tell is about storytelling. The beauty of teaching through storytelling is that a story provides lessons that can be translated and interpreted. Storytelling inspires people because someone is sharing what they have accomplished and the listener learns it is possible and can use her imagination to decide how to apply it.

Blake Mycoski of Tom’s Shoes told the story of how he went from selling 35 pairs of shoes to selling millions by performing an extraordinary act of charity—giving away one pair of shoes for every pair he sells. I doubt that everyone who left that presentation believed that he was suggesting that everyone give away one item for every item they sell, yet there were lessons along the way about doing extraordinary things to set your business apart, and about having a purpose to your business that were more impactful because of the story.

Bobbie Brown told the story of how after she was acquired by Estee Lauder, her business suffered because the atmosphere was out of sync with her brand. When she moved her office and the culture changed, business improved. There were no tactics that anyone could walk away with, just a clear picture of how corporate culture matters.

3. Use A Metaphor

Think about the problem in a new way by making it look like something else. Instead of conference as learning opportunity, C2-MTL was more like a theater experience. (It helped that Cirque du Soleil was one of the sponsors of course.) As one example, instead of a standard biographical introduction of the speakers, a costumed, storytelling master of ceremonies appeared under big-top style lighting reading a story from an oversized Steampunk style book . There was music on stage between presentations and a set that made the stage more dramatic.

A metaphor (conference as theater in this case) is a shortcut to understanding something in a new way by comparing it to something very different. If I say conference as theater, I don’t have to give you a list of what I mean.

4. Set An Example

To be creative, look at a problem from a new angle

One main reason people go to conferences to network. Like-minded people with similar needs and interests are gathered together in real life. If that didn’t matter, there would be no point to spending money on flights, hotels and conference fees. Yet, at a typical conference, networking is a haphazard activity at best. C2-MTL purported to be innovative and showed that by inviting attendees to use a new software tool, E-180, that allowed them to set up their profiles before the conference and enter specific offers and requests. Other attendees could then request meetings to learn or teach any subject. Over 1,000 meetings were scheduled this way.

Another case of creativity by example was the presentation by Andy Nulman. Instead of the standard presentation (of which there were few at this conference) it was an improvisation about creativity.

Nulman had arranged for images he had never seen before to be onto the giant screen behind him. In one image was a photo of a man sticking his head out of a car trunk. Nulman’s lesson form the slides? To be creative, look at a problem from a new angle. So, if you’re a car designer, consider examining a care by sitting in the trunk. I remember that example well because the image was so representative of looking at a problem from a new angle and it showed (rather than told us) that sometimes the pressure of having to find a solution quickly can lead to creativity.

5. Reward The Best Examples

Intel, a sponsor of the conference ran a competition to find emerging innovative talent. The winners and their stories were an integral part of the events, and the meet and greets. By offering an incentive to people to be creative, the sponsors could highlight examples of creative endeavors.

Shining a light on the best examples of what you are trying to teach, is another way of communicating by example—the example of others.

As marketers, our job is to educate, inspire, talk to and listen to people. We’re often inclined to do this by lecturing but the most effective way is a less direct route that has more impact and better staying power. Show, don’t tell.

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Technology Is A Canvas, Not A Platform

Ilana Rabinowitz — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:00:25 +0000

This statement, spoken by David Droga, founder of the creative agency Droga5 at the Innovation Uncensored Conference, best captured the truth about digital marketing today. It points to the shift in marketing that’s occurred since the advent of social media and explains the surge in popularity of conferences and books about creativity and innovation.

The social platforms where we work and play–Tumblr, Vine, Pinterest, blogs, Flipboard and of course, Twitter and Facebook–are perfect examples of the canvases we are offered for our work. Digital canvases, like any two dimensional canvas, have constraints, which could be time, size, or number of characters, but by their nature, they offer open space with infinite possibilities for delivering and consuming content. I also heard about SoundCloud at the conference for the first time, a platform that focuses on sharing audio content. It’s become an embarrassment of riches. The challenge becomes trying to figure out what’s right for your product or service and what will resonate best with your potential audience.

Why Creative Content Sells

It’s not surprising that musicians and movie studios have taken advantage of these platforms to share creative output, but there’s no reason why brands can’t rise to the occasion as well. In fact, because of all the noise online, no one is going to pay attention to mundane communication. Brands and marketers specifically, must raise the bar on content and start thinking of themselves as creators.

Creative content not only stands out, but it has the power to impact people emotionally. Since people make decisions based on emotions, it’s the only effective way to market. As Diane von Furstenberg said on her panel at the conference, “people share emotional content often and content about your products almost never.”

What This Means For Marketers

Marketing in the traditional sense is longer a discipline about offers and campaigns, calendars and coupons. It’s about spontaneity and creativity. Knowing how to set up a social media account, create and follow a schedule, or adhere to a company’s social media policy, is barely table stakes in the world of marketing.

It’s both thrilling and daunting to realize that as marketers, the only way we can make a difference is as creators. This includes writing, especially humor and storytelling; photography and photo editing, illustration, including comics and infographics; music; editing of words, sound, images and videos; fashion sense, film-making, storyboarding; and curating. As the head of a marketing department you must be a good curator, talent scout, critic and creator in your own right.

And as if all of these creative disciplines were not enough, the technology requires us to improvise and be in the moment.   For marketers, using technology as a canvas means our challenge is to produce original, attention-grabbing content while understanding how best to use each of the media available to us to its best advantage. And we need to do all of this while understanding that it must resonate with the community we want to reach.

It’s a challenge that is shaking up the world of marketing, changing who gets hired and who enters the field and makes it a far more rewarding discipline than it ever was.

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Why You Are Ignoring The Most Important Data

Ilana Rabinowitz — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:00:28 +0000

Business is having a love affair with big data. In the last few months it seems that every conference and webinar I come across has “big data” on the agenda.

Big data is the allure of more. More information. More access to behavior. Opportunities for more sophisticated analysis. The thinking goes likes this: If we know every move people make then we not only know everything, but we can predict everything. As business people we love it because the information is finite, scalable and measurable.

It’s ironic that big data has such an allure in an age when some of the most important information happening online is coming out of conversations. And the way to analyze online conversations is to read them, participate in them and try to understand them without a formula.

Conversations are not data. Anyone who has ever tried to analyze them through sentiment analysis knows this. If you ever watched Star Trek, you can imagine clearly that even an advanced, science fiction character like Data, misunderstood human conversation.

Computers don’t understand context, sarcasm, emotion and tone. They are likely to misunderstand a line like “I just love the way (insert brand name) waits 3 days before answering my email.” Formulas also can’t see subtle patterns and long term trends in the ways people respond to certain topics.

The fascination with big data is allowing marketers–particularly the bigger brands—to set aside the need to listen to and participate in conversations. They grapple with the concept of making meaning out of conversations since you can’t plug them into an algorithm and come out with useful guidance.

There is only one effective way to understand conversations, which are the most human form of information, and that is to listen to them and use a human thought process to analyze them. This may be blasphemy to the quants, but the human mind can intuit things that a computer can’t. There are some things that you just can’t take a measuring stick to.

Understanding conversations means you have to read Facebook comments and blog comments, often responding and then gauging the response.

Here are the objections I’ve heard from big brands: It doesn’t scale. We don’t have time for that.

The problem with this excuse is that you can’t really leave your Facebook page or blog on auto pilot. Someone trained and talented at qualitative analysis should be reading those conversations and hopefully responding when necessary and deleting spam. Nothing says “I’m not listening” like Facebook and blog comments filled with spam. The person reading those comments should be sharing what she learns weekly. Sometimes the learning comes from the content of the messages and sometimes it comes from recognizing that historically, certain types of posts get more comments than others. You’ll only understand why because you’ve read them.

The curious mind of a great community manager will ask herself questions to try to understand the conversation. How was the post worded to elicit the responses we received? How rich in content are the comments for different types of questions? What types of posts give us the best information about our readers?

One thing is true–understanding content on this level doesn’t “scale.” You have to put more time into it and use people that have the qualitative analytical skills to understand what’s happening. What doesn’t ring true is that there isn’t enough time or money. That statement reveals that it isn’t given importance and is too complicated or “fuzzy” to make an effort to understand.

If you don’t put the effort to understanding conversations, there is nothing genuine about them. Not only do you learn more by reading and responding, but when people know you’re listening, they share more.

On the Lion Brand Facebook page we delete spam comments and respond when its clear that our community needs information that isn’t available from others in the community.

What we learn by being part of the conversation

The “why”

Why people do or do not like a pattern or product we shared. This helps us with product development. People aren’t robots and beyond hitting the “like” button, they’ll tell you why they like or do not like your offerings. This information is not the same as the information you get from doing surveys. It’s organic and self motivated.

Sleeper ideas

We offer yarn, related products, and patterns to use them with. Every once in a while someone will suggest something different than what we are offering and when the community starts raising their hands and indicating that they’ve heard a great idea (not from us) we take notice.

Content ideas.

The topics people bring up naturally, in response to our posts help us know what associations they have with subjects we bring up. After running a comic about knitting needles used as weapons, we discovered that people had been stopped from bringing their needles into courtrooms. This gave us an idea for a post about when and where people are stopped from doing their hobby—a very emotional topic.

Knowing our customer

You understand your customer on a whole different level when you are in conversation with them and care enough to learn to communicate better with them. We learned what topics turn our customers off (politics!), where they are uncomfortable with technology so we can respect their concerns by providing more information about how to access content, which venues are appropriate for edgier content and which will get you in trouble; the fact that we have really different kinds of people on different social platforms and how to speak to them in their own language.

Sometimes it’s not about numbers

We recently learned something from listening to our community that surprised us. We didn’t hear it from a lot of people but the fact that it came up a few times and the intensity with which it was said told us that we had to do something about a wrong impression people had. We intuited that it could be more widespread than we were hearing about. It’s the kind of information that I can’t share publicly but we do know just what to do about it and we would never have figured it out had we not paid attention to a few voices without counting the “ocurrences” of a word.

That’s the kind of information you’ll hear if you realize that humans do not communicate only in ways that can be analyzed by a machine.

RELATED:

How To Hire A Great Social Media Community Manager

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Will Social Media As We Know It Be Enough?

Ilana Rabinowitz — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:00:28 +0000

I had the misfortune of being home sick last week and watched daytime T.V. for the first time in years. Barely able to change the channel, I watched a lot of commercials. What I noticed was a trend in focusing on personal service and hand-crafted products.

The Personal Touch Is More Important Than Ever

Commercials for the Discover Card had the message that when you call, a human being will answer the phone. And that person will talk to you in a way that feels like you are being talked to by someone who is like you. Over several different Discover ads, the main character was a completely different demographic, and in each one, the customer service rep on the other end of the line at Discover spoke in his or her accent, looked like the caller and completely understood the caller’s needs.

In another commercial, for Stella Artois beer, the story focused on the making of a beer glass, showing the art and craftsmanship that goes into hand blown glass with the tag line “if this much care goes into the chalice, imagine what goes into the beer.”

At first glance these two messages—personal service and hand-crafted with care—are different stories. But they have something in common. It’s the human touch.

Being in an industry—the craft business—that is literally about the personal and hand-crafted, I have a unique insight into the meaning that these words have for people.

“Made By Hand” Is A Trend About Physical Interaction

My company, Lion Brand Yarn, sells a basic craft supply, which is hand-knitting yarn. You can take a ball of yarn and make it into virtually anything: a hat to donate to a homeless shelter, a work of street art, or a blanket for the family’s first grandchild. Everything made with our product has one thing in common: It is touched by a human being who takes time, and care and adds his or her unique creative mark on it.

I’ve watched the trend in hand-crafted and personal touch grow for about 8 or 9 years now. It has fueled the growth of our business and of companies like Etsy, that sell hand-made goods and Craftsy, an online education business that teaches people how to make hand crafts. As Chris Anderson points out in his book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, this trend is about to take a giant leap forward with the introduction of the 3D printer that allows anyone to manufacture one-of-a-kind products of all sorts from digital information.

The maker revolution is a trend that is effecting every industry. People want more high touch activities as a counterpoint to virtual, high tech activities.

Social Media Has Raised The Bar On Communication

As people crave less and less mass production and more and more personal, just-for-them service, products and communication, will social media as it stands today be enough? Five years ago, people accepted being stuck in voicemail hell for 20 minutes. That is no longer the case. They want immediate communication through Twitter or Facebook. Is it possible that as people become more accustomed to personal communications with brands, they will demand more and more from the relationship?

Might social media need to evolve to be even more human and personal? I wonder what that would look like? Is it possible that the human voice and the in-person connections with consumers will become more important aspects of our marketing in the future? Or will it change in ways we haven’t yet imagined?

One thing I do believe is that social media as we know it today will not be enough. We are just at the beginning of the consumer

RELATED:

The Future Of Social Media Is Real

Notes:

Discover Card commercials for different customer demographics showing that the company is speaking uniquely to you.

Stella Artois ad featuring hand-blown chalice.

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A Conference That Can Help You Reinvent Your Business

Ilana Rabinowitz — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:00:54 +0000

Why do you go to a conference? Perhaps to learn more about tactics that have worked well for others. Or to network with people in your field. Often, it’s to educate yourself on cutting edge techniques or tools.

But can a conference help you become more innovative? Can a conference help you think beyond the scope of best practices and industry trends? Is it possible to return from a conference inspired and equipped to do the creative work that will help you reinvent your business?

Last year, C2-MTL, which stands for Creativity & Commerce (the MTL announced the City of Montreal, which is integral to the event) was an experience that took the challenge.

I’ve been to a lot of conferences because in digital marketing the landscape changes daily and you can’t stay current sitting at your desk. Most of these conferences cover topics like “25 things you can do to increase your conversion rate” or “how to have a human voice in social media.” The presentations can be anything bullet-pointed PowerPoints and pep-talks to panels of people discussing a topic. At the breaks the attendees walk the exhibit hall of vendors giving pens or notebooks with their business name imprinted on them.

But people don’t stay in business by being more competent or by simply keeping up. Because of the rapid pace of change we need to constantly reinvent ourselves.

Trying to help people be more creative in business is a rather audacious goal. To be successful, this conference had to reinvent the idea of the conference itself.

Here are some of the ways they did it:

The venue wasn’t an airless, generic, massive conference center but a revitalized 19^th century building with character and unexpected architectural features that were put to use to serve interactive art exhibits; casual, comfortably furnished meeting spaces that included sofas, chair groupings, and even a two person swing; play spaces where people could play with Legos or work on other projects at a community table and open air spaces set up like an outdoor poolside lounge with a food bar. There are collaborative workshops and meet-ups and personal guides for attendees, known as concierges.

The schedule didn’t include just individual speakers and panels. There were conversations, interviews, theatrical presentations, and visual storytelling. One of the presentations by architect Winy Maas was something I could not even characterize. Repeating the line “what’s next?” throughout a slideshow of mind-bending architectural photos and renderings, he offered a series of images of extraordinarily bold and unconventional buildings that took the audience on a visual and mental adventure. I’m still not sure exactly what I was seeing but by the end, I think most people who saw the presentation thought, “what’s next –what’s possible—is almost anything at all.”

The speakers didn’t fit into any one category of business or area of business. This wasn’t a conference targeted to marketing people or designers or entrepreneurs but to everyone who wanted to expand their minds to take in new possibilities for the purpose of expanding their business. Speakers for 2013 include Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck, architect, inventor and designer; Elle MacPherson, the model who hosts America’s Next Top Model and who started her own line of lingerie, Fred Dust, IDEO partner, and John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods. The only way to classify the speakers is with the word “eclectic.”

The attendees were as eclectic as the speakers. Coming from all over the world they could not be characterized by their job description or appearance. Last year I met a neuroscientist, a person whose agency branded a country (Israel) and a woman whose job was to take care of the needs of the performers at Cirque du Soleil, in addition to several of the people who were named the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company.

Listening to people tell the stories of the work they do was part of the extraordinary experience of C2-MTL and contributed to the experience of opening up my mind to possibilities.

I was thrilled to be chosen as an ambassador for the 2013 conference after enthusiastically sharing my experience of the 2012 conference on this blog and on my own blog. As full disclosure, I was offered a ticket to the conference this May and an additional free pass for every 5 people who use the code. But I’d be talking about the C2-MTL no matter what, because I believe there is nothing more important and nothing that makes work more enjoyable than being creative in business.

If you are interested in attending C2-MTL in May, please email me (Ilana221 (at) Gmail.com) or let me know in the comments and I’ll forward a code for a 10% discount.

RELATED: How To Avoid Becoming Obsolete

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In Marketing, Motives Matter

Ilana Rabinowitz — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:00:31 +0000

Marketing is becoming a very different business. I’m not talking about the new tools and platforms. I’m talking about how marketers themselves have to change the way they think about the people they reach. That change is going to be counterintuitive and uncomfortable for business people. It requires that we look at the ultimate goal as the relationship.

Now, I can hear you saying “we’re in business to make a profit. That has to be our goal.” And I promise you, behaving in a more human way won’t hurt you there.

Think about how people choose us. Think about what it takes for them to decide we are worth spending time with; talking to; listening to and sharing with their friends. It’s true in your personal life and in business as well. Did you learn how to do that in B school? I didn’t. But that’s what marketers need to practice today.

The relationship is an end in itself

When my marketing team meets to discuss our plans each week, we focus on how to surprise and delight people. We brainstorm ways to inspire them or teach them something we think they’d like to learn. Because we’re in business, we constantly look at the feedback we’re getting to make sure we’re resonating. The goal; however, is engagement first and foremost. We nourish the relationships as an end into itself.

But even if you know that relationships are important, you may be doing them with an old marketer’s mindset.   The old world marketer’s goal is to engage in order to manipulate with only their key performance indicators in mind.

Transparency isn’t about what you choose to share

we are transparent whether we like it or not

We all talk about transparency in social media. What we sometimes forget is that with all the online communication on Facebook, blog comments, and Twitter, we are transparent whether we like it or not. People can see who we are. It’s not just what you do, but why you do it that becomes apparent. And, that’s why motives matter.

Think about your closest friends and loved ones. You work hard to maintain the relationships because you value them. Unless you are a social climber, or person “on the make” you don’t look at people as targets or opportunities to improve your situation. In our personal lives we can sniff out a manipulator. What makes you think that people in business aren’t capable of doing that as well?

There are two kinds of relationships in business and in life

It’s a radical idea to view business relationships in the same way–so much so that many will roll their eyes at the idea. Engage with people online with the motive that you truly care about them? Little bit crazy for a business person. But if you’re ready to shift your attitude toward healthy-relationship marketing, here’s a reminder of what the two kinds of relationships look like:

Healthy relationships

You give without a specific expectation of quid pro quo. You do it for the relationship first.

You genuinely care about the person

You don’t abuse the relationship by behaving in a way that could be detrimental to the other person just to satisfy your own needs.

Manipulative relationships

Your sole motivation for acting friendly or generous is to benefit from the relationship

Your only desire in understanding the other person is to further your ability to control their behavior

You judge your success only on short term results and eliminate marketing that results in engagement without conversion.

Are you ready to think about online relationships in social media, email marketing and e-commerce the same way you think about your healthy personal relationships? The comments are yours…

RELATED:

How To Hire A Great Social Media Manager

9 Ways Business Needs To Change To Become Social

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The Secret Sauce Of A Great Blog Post

Ilana Rabinowitz — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:00:46 +0000

People are wired to connect. Neuroscientists have discovered that there is a part of our brains in the prefrontal cortex that helps us tune into other people, making the connections that are necessary to create relationships that help us survive.

How does this little bit of neuroscience have anything to do with blogging? Because the most successful blog posts are those where the writer has tuned into something that the reader is experiencing. This affects that part of the brain, generating an emotional connection with the reader.

For those who understand how people really make decisions, that’s the key. You may imagine that we weigh all the rational choices and do some mental calculation in our heads that helps us make a choice but in reality, all the possible considerations would literally stop us in our tracks if we didn’t have the shorthand of emotions to guide us.

Typical objectives for a corporate blog don’t take this into consideration. They focus on goals like providing thought leadership, generating traffic, or to improving SEO–all reasonable goals for a blog but they tell only part of the story. If you want to truly influence people, the most effective way to do that is to connect with them on a deeper, emotional level.

And as a marketer, influencing people is your job.

This means that when people read your post, they must feel something. When a reader connects with you emotionally, you are able to establish trust and as we all know, trust is what makes people want to do business with us. The secret sauce is how you accomplish that.

At Lion Brand, we have several talented writers who are passionate about our product. Our objectives are to inspire and educate people. But the real home runs are when we are able to touch peoples’ emotions. A recent post by a guest blogger is a perfect example of creating that emotional connection.

Franklin Habit, wrote a post called Me, Me, Me, about how he feels guilty about knitting sweaters for himself. He talked about how he gives away most of what he knits and it is sometimes unappreciated. He goes on to say that if he knit more for himself, he would know that he could make something that fit perfectly and it would give him great pleasure. Franklin was able to tune into a universal truth about knitters and about people in general that speaks to the guilt of taking care of yourself. He did it with openness, vulnerability and humor. (I invite you to read the post and consider how you relate to it, whether you knit or not.)

The numbers back up the power of connection. That post, written within the last couple of weeks has been viewed over 11,000 times, shared on social media a couple of hundred times and has received many comments that talk about how he captured their feelings exactly. Clearly engagement is closely related to connection.

There is truly nothing like the feeling that someone “gets” you. People who read that post knew they had been “felt.” This mirroring of peoples’ emotions is one of the most important ways to connect with others. When reading his piece they said to themselves, “Yeh, that’s how I feel too sometimes too.”

I know myself that my most successful posts were written when I was emotional about something and felt I needed to right a wrong. When I wrote this post about how businesses need to change to be able to participate in social media I was feeling angry about an interchange with someone who didn’t understand this. I believe that the sharing of this post was based on others who felt the same frustration that I did.

It’s not realistic to think that you can create a moving piece of writing every day. In the same way that relationships are built on a range of communication from small talk to deep, relationship-building conversations, a blog will consist of a mix of different types of writing.

There are probably thousands of blog posts about (pick your number) of ways to get more traffic or to write a successful post. And all of those tips and tricks can lead to the “small talk” part of the relationship.

But the real secret sauce of a great blog post is the ability to connect with another human being and to make that person feel that you know her. That’s how we create relationships that last.

RELATED:

For an excellent explanation of how we connect with people by mirroring their emotions, read Mindsight by Daniel J. Siegel M.D.

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The Most Important Marketing Tool You Probably Aren’t Using

Ilana Rabinowitz — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:30:43 +0000

Before social media taught us we had to sound human, we could talk to everyone in the same generic business-speak to everyone. Now, people have come to expect businesses to speak to them in a more personal way and to be more relevant. Personas allow you to do that.

Personas will determine the content, tone and language that you use when communicating. To better understand how important this is, imagine yourself at a family holiday party. You would not discuss the same topics or use the same kind of language with your grandmother who loves to garden, your college-age nephew who is fascinated with politics, or your sister, who’s an executive at a software company.

Personas have traditionally been used to develop website designs, but they are an excellent communication device for all marketing purposes. Content marketing, which is what we are all doing, depends on knowing who you are speaking to and developing personas helps you craft the message that allows you to relate more personally. Whether it is through email, social media or in-person, when your words speak to a specific human being, you will better be able to connect. People want to feel “she is talking to me.”’

What Is A Persona?

A persona is a fully formed description of a particular person that represents the needs and qualities of a segment of your audience. The description includes demographic details, like age, gender, income level but goes much further. You round out the description with psychological, social, cultural or attitudinal information that may affect you speak with the person and which methods you use to reach her.

A persona tells you where a customer hangs out online and what her preferred communication vehicles are. The details of the persona will depend partly on your product or service. For example, if you are in the business of selling pet related products you’ll want to know what type of pet the person has. The more detailed the better. So, if you can represent an entire group of customers by specifying small dog owner, it will help you when you are thinking about content. The rule of thumb is 3-5 personas.

How Do You Get The Information?

You can get actual demographic information in several ways.

If you have a customer list, there are database companies, like Experian, that can overlay public databases like driver’s license records and catalog buyer lists with your list to give you a profile of your list’s age and buying habits, without attaching the information to specific names.

Ask direct questions using surveys with survey tools like Survey Monkey.

Use Facebook polls to ask an occasional, multiple-choice question.

Use Facebook Insights to determine the demographic profile of your Facebook likes including age, gender and location. You can also tell which of those demographics are most likely to interact with your Facebook page.

Speak to people at conferences, trade shows and other in-person events. Note their questions and concerns and associate them with their buying habits.

Use your knowledge of one specific person who represents a typical segment of your audience and think of her as a start. You can add detail and richness to the description of a persona by doing this. Your personal experience and gut feel do play a part in developing personas.

Questions To Ask

Since you can’t talk about your product all the time, you want to increase engagement and opt-ins to your marketing efforts, you’ll be more successful if your customers know that when they hear from you or visit your branded media, they have a place where they feel known.

Asking the right questions will make a big difference in how well you market on social media and all forms of digital marketing. For Lion Brand Yarn Company, the questions we ask include those below plus specific questions that relate to our product—hand-knitting yarn. They include questions like what percent of her knitting is devoted to charity, gifts and personal items. In addition to demographic information, here are some general questions that will help you develop your content so you can be a better marketer.

What kind of shopping experience does she want?

What is her favorite leisure activity?

What does she economize on and where might she spend more freely?

How does she shop for your product? Knowing that she researches online but shops in stores, or uses her Facebook friends for advice tell you a lot about your content strategy.

What products related to your brand do they buy? This is a great opportunity to develop strategic alliances with other brands.

What does she care most about in life? When you are talking about things other than your product, this is the subject you should be addressing.

What keeps her up at night? This allows you to show empathy and evoke conversations. Find a way to solve problems with your product.

What makes her laugh? People love funny content on Facebook.

Evolve Your Personas

When I started at Lion Brand Yarn Company over 15 years ago there were probably two or three personas. Today, as knitting has become popular with young people and there are so many more ways that people connect with us, we developed our personas to reflect the lives and interests of younger groups and new platforms and ways of shopping.

Personas may not be a perfect device, but without them, no matter how hard you try to be personal and human in your communication, you’ll be talking like a mass marketer.

RELATED

How To Use Facebook To Develop Personas

Scaling Empathy (Part 1)

Scaling Empathy (Part 2)

Are you using personas? Do you think you should be? Let us know, the comments are yours.

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Want Your Digital Marketing To Win? Choose Your Words Carefully.

Ilana Rabinowitz — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:00:52 +0000

The simplest and most important thing to know in being a good digital communicator is this: Talk to people as if you are both human beings.

You wouldn’t think people need lessons in acting human. But many of us assume a business façade at work. We put on our work attire, go to an office, sit in meetings and write memos or emails to customers, forgetting that we are human beings talking to other human beings. We speak a language filled with buzzwords, clichés and acronyms that we would never use with friends. Imagine inviting your guests to the dinner table with a statement like “please be advised that dinner is served.”

Once a new buzzword enters the corporate suite, everyone picks up on it because they feel it makes them sound more “professional.” Before you know it there’s a verbal epidemic. Everyone is recycling the same canned phrases. Then, when it comes time to communicate with customers, we speak to them this way as well.

Some examples of cringe-worthy phrases are statements like “kindly refer to our return policy” or “in the absence of an approval,” “we apologize in advance for . . .” and “your business (or your call) is important to us.”

© happystock - Fotolia.com

Corporate speak is even rampant in person. Whenever I go to a trade show booth and ask a software company or agency what they do, nine times out of 10 they parrot some cookie cutter description with the words “leverage,” “synergy,” “cutting-edge,” “optimize,” “best practices” and “solution” in it that makes my eyeballs spin in opposite directions.

Buzzwords and acronyms may make you feel smarter, but this kind of communication is a problem for three reasons.

It eliminates the need for you to think about what you are really trying to say. Recycling common phrases puts your communication on auto pilot.

Jargon distances you from people by making you sound like a computer program.

Worst of all—maybe this is all that matters—no one really knows what you are talking about. You are not communicating.

The stiff, uniform language of corporate speak is a vestige of the days when men all wore white shirts and dark suits to work and women wore black suits with sensible pumps and a non-descript cotton button down blouse. Being conventional, using mind-numbingly consistent phrases, and checking your humanity at the office door is a practice that won’t hold up in digital marketing. You are already once removed from other people online. Find a way to let the real personality behind the logo show through.

I recently had a series of email conversations with the customer service folks at Warby Parker. Their emails provided an example of an extremely warm and human communication style. I was trying to get my prescription verified by my optician in the midst of the Sandy storm during which the optician was closed for a week. I was also trying to figure out how to order my first pair of glasses online, which took a lot of back-and-forth. These are excerpts from several of their emails. I was truly charmed by the language (and of course tweeted about that fact).

The first email I received after contacting them included this paragraph:

I hope your new Warby Parkers make you jump for joy. If there’s anything at all I can help you with—shopping questions, eyewear questions, you name it—just let me know. I’m here to help.

Notice they don’t say “I trust you’ll be pleased with your purchase.” And you know what? That colorful image of jumping for joy was in my head when I did receive my glasses.

Then, it took several emails to get all the information they needed to fill my order. Instead of saying “kindly provide the following information” or “we still need the following” they said:

I just have one more question, I promise!

One of the pieces of information they needed required me to use an online tool they created to get a measurement for fitting the glasses. Here is how they asked:

To send your new frames to you at lightning speed, we’ll need this measurement. Luckily, it’s a cinch to get! Here are a couple of ways to do so . . .

Then, when I accidentally sent a prescription that they couldn’t fill (my fault, I should have known this from their site), they apologized and instead of saying, “please be advised that we don’t handle transitional lenses” or “kindly refer to line 6 of our policies and procedures” they said:

I’m very sorry about this hassle—nobody needs another hassle. When you have a free moment, let me know how you’d like to proceed, and call or email if you have any questions at all.

You see? Compassion, no subtle blame, no canned phrases, and helpful options.

Notice the use of “I” and “me” throughout instead of the corporate or royal “we.” I felt I was talking to . . . a human being! I was actually surprised to look back on the series of emails and discover that there were several different people representing the company in each one. I still felt that human connection with someone who cared and seemed to understand how I felt.

The best, most effective emails, social media posts, website copy and face-to-face conversations are not only simple and easy to understand, but they have signs of humanity.  If, when you’re communicating with people you remember that you’re human and so are they, you’ll bring humor, empathy, and caring when you choose your words. Word-of-mouth marketing is the result of delighting and surprising customers. Sometimes all that’s necessary is to behave like a human being.

RELATED:

The Most Successful E-mail I Ever Wrote (the viral email that helped launch CD Baby)

The Intangible Element of Social Media Success (the personal qualities of a successful community manager)

Life Is Messy, Work Is Messy, Share it All (how to be open and real on social media)

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