Cluetrain a Day

Introduction.

I’m committing to working my way through the 95 theses of The Cluetrain Manifesto to riff, expound, and hopefully ask new questions about what they mean today.

What’s that? You haven’t read Cluetrain yet? Go buy yourself a copy now (disclosure: affiliate link). You’ll thank me. I promise. In fact, you should buy one for a business associate you care about as well. They’ll thank you.

This series won’t refer to the original Cluetrain so much that you MUST read it, but I can’t recommend enough that you should read it anyway.

Kudos goes to Annie Heckenberger for the original call to action here. We often talk about how much better off the PR and Marketing industries would be if, as a pre-requisite to entering the profession, they had to read Cluetrain.

I hope you’ll join me in this experiment. You can even subscribe to just these posts or have them emailed to you.

Thesis #1: Markets are Conversations. This is the core thesis that, naked and contextless, I believe has misled so many people.

Brian Oberkirch ranted about how completely borked the use of “conversations” in marketing has become:

Marketing should be dialogic. True dat. But the goal isn’t conversation. That’s just a way station en route to customers doing their thing.

Marketing isn’t a conversation. Opening your mouth doesn’t make you a marketer. It makes you noisy, and very likely, annoying.

Markets do converse, with or without you. Just because you have access to their conversations doesn’t give you permission to butt in.

In 2009, having a conversation is easier than ever before. Social media (which, for the context of this discussion only, is a set of tools that enable online discussions to take place) is the solution to, and the cause of, all of our current problems. The signal to noise ratio is extremely difficult to manage, and contributing more noise in the name of “marketing” doesn’t help your effort one bit.

But the fact that conversations are easier now than ever before means that both parts of the conversational equation have been improved: both speaking, and listening.

Listening isn’t sexy, even if the tools are better. We like seeing our name credited in the bi-line of a blog post. We like seeing our traffic stats spike. The Pavlovian effect of “share my opinion”–> “gratifying feeling” is an easy cycle to get caught up in, since the reward tends to magnify each time. We get asked to write more posts, our traffic spikes more. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Listening is silent, and the perception it carries involves less quantifiable reward. Unfortunately, that perception is bogus.

There are 94 more theses left change that perception .

Thesis #2: Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

On Christmas Eve of 2008, I had a phenomenal dinner with some friends visiting from NYC, UX Designer Whitney Hess and Flex/Flash developer Orian Marx. During that dinner I took took the opportunity to pick Whitney’s brain on what some of the pieces of her client projects look like. One of the core techniques she utilizes heavily is taking user and stakeholder interviews and molding them into user types, often called personas. What’s great about the way she goes about it is she gives those personas names, faces (literally, pictures!), and back stories. This gives the entire team a point of reference for decision making, and instead of it being against abstract cases and market verticals, they get to refer to people. Additionally, when Whitney makes recommendations, it turns her into the communicator (which is really a larger part of her job than being a “designer”, per se) speaking on behalf of the “users”, rather than just expounding her opinion.

Why is this important (and in my opinion, extremely effective)? Because market verticals don’t use your product or service. Human beings do. And those human beings don’t have singular interests or backgrounds, they have complex sets of interests, back stories, turn-ons and turnoffs, etc.

When putting together a marketing plan, don’t base it on abstract target groups and demographic sectors. Demographic sectors lead to speculation. Base it on real people. Real people lead to real answers, which lead to real results.

There is a catch. There’s always a catch. The catch is that you’re going to need to find some of those real people, and, gasp, interact with them. Ask them questions. Let them ask you questions. Listen, for crying out loud.
Sensing a trend yet?

Thesis #3: Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

So far,  listening has been a theme. In order to be an effective listener it helps to know what you are listening to.

The crux of this thesis (and coincidentally, the two that follow it) is that in order for conversational marketing to work, it must take place between human beings speaking the same language. The problem is that companies, while made up of human beings, are traditionally dehumanized. Dehumanization removes all traces of the human voice, the language that customers are speaking in. Makes it kinda tough to be a part of that conversation, dont’cha think?

Things like “the royal we”, using a we that doesn’t clearly identify who (or how many) people it represents, is a common mistake. If you’re a single person company, own that. If you’re one of one hundred employees, say who you are and what part of the company you represent. This boils down to transparency and even more basic, honesty.

Automated responses and legalese are other common mistakes. They are usually designed to confuse the customer into forgetting what they were there for in the first place.

These are examples of misplaced voices in customers’ social dialogues with one another.

The socializing that happens in the marketplaces outlined in Cluetrain is between customers, not vendors. Unfortunately for both parties, the languages they speak are not the same.

Travel tips from the Cluetrain

I admittedly haven’t traveled extensively to non-English speaking countries. It’s not out of ignorance that I don’t speak more than two and a half languages (1. English, 2. geek, and 2.5. enough French to navigate Montreal), it’s that I don’t do it enough for it to stick. One of the most common tips I have received while traveling is to learn enough of the native language to ask if they speak English in their native language. It’s not universal, but many popular travel destinations are inhabited by people who know a little bit of English, and if they do, they will appreciate the gesture of asking in their language. If they do not, knowing what “no” sounds like and how to say “thank you” is also worthwhile.

The lesson here applies to Cluetrain: If you are intending to participate in your customers’ conversations, you’re going to need to use enough of their language to not be percieved as rude. Much like world travel, languages and dialects vary across different communities. Even if you’re not 100% versed in “customer speak”, learn at least enough to not be rude. If you’re lucky, and you’re authentic in the gesture) they will appreciate it and quite likely welcome you.

Once you’ve made first contact without having the door slammed in your face, you’re going to need more than pleasantries to sustain a conversation.

Lucky for you, speaking “customer” isn’t as difficult as you might think.

Thesis #4: Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

What this really says is: don’t change your voice just because you think “doing business” requires a different voice than your own.

If you’re one person, you have one voice. Your own.

If you are a company of multiple people, you have a collection of voices. A collection of voices and the motions and patterns that they represent can be called a culture. While harder to measure and certainly harder to control, corporate cultures still represent a voice, and that voice is heard and perceived by your customers.

So regardless of a solo company or a gigantic company, are going to be heard by your customers.

Once your customers get used to that voice (assuming they stick around long enough to do so), don’t lead them into a bait and switch. Maintain consistency. If your voice changes from “how can I help you” to “how can you help me”, you’ve successfully alienated the customers you’ve worked so hard to gain the trust of.

Pro-tip: the human voice is easiest to maintain when it’s not faked in the first place. So don’t fake it. We can tell.

Thesis #5: People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

Listen first. Introduce yourself. Interact like a human being. Repeat.

What about the time in between that cycle, or between those cycles? Another aspect of marketing is establishing yourself as a leader in your field. Every day, more and more companies are beginning to get their heads around blogging, tweeting, and other methods of online publishing as a mechanism for posting news updates about their businesses.

The missed opportunity here is to use these publishing platforms for sharing more than the robotic, formulaic contents of press releases. Progressive companies are allowing their employees to share knowledge from the inside. The more editorial control that the company removes, the better these efforts tend to be. One of the original Cluetrain concepts was trusting your employees to know more than you do about whatever they’re best at. That’s what you hired them, right?

Then let them speak, and in their voice instead of yours!

This is a scary barrier to cross. What if they say something offensive? What if they misrepresent the brand? What if?

I think one of the best examples of a company embracing their internal voices on a large scale, and having more success than any of the negative alternatives, is Zappos.com.

Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay”) is the proverbial “Tweeting CEO”. Beyond Tony himself being extraordinarily accessible and candid about his life and his business on Twitter, he’s gone one step further. He’s encouraged his employees to tweet, too. And not just about business stuff, but about whatever they want. Whatever they are thinking. Whatever they are doing. It’s up to them.

But Zappos didn’t stop there.

Zappos built a website that consumes all of their employees’ tweets and republishes them. A megaphone for the collective voice of Zappos employees, in real time, for anyone to read.

But Zappos didn’t stop there.

Zappos also runs a blog network within their company, with contributions from the CEO and COO, all the way through the depths of the company. These blogs share not just company news, but insights, event announcements, musings, and more. They rarely link back into their product catalog. Instead, Zappos uses these opportunities to provide value, and establish natual dialogue between their customers and their employees.

Why? Because people are interested in other people. We recognize the human voice in others, and identify with them. Companies are not human, so we humans do not identify with their voice. But if the voices within the company, the human voices, are allowed to shine, customers can once again identify with “the company”.

Rather than have an ivory tower with now windows or doors, Zappos purposely put not just one human face on their company, but hundreds (435 at the date of writing this). What are the odds of calling in an order or customer service request to Zappos and getting a twittering CSR? Reasonably high. And that’s the Zappos way. Tony explains that Zappos culture, the collective voice of Zappos, is Zappos brand.

The result is what we’re really interested in, right? Well how’s this for results.

Right before the new year, Zappos announced that they had achieved $1 Billion in annual revenue a full 2 years ahead of their anticipated goal, and attribute every bit of success to their customer inteaction and extrodinarily high value placed on corporate culture. From Tony:

Our focus continues to be on building our brand and our culture around providing the very best customer service and experience. Our hope is that 10 years from now, people won’t even realize that we started out selling shoes online. (emphasis added).

Zappos is close to that hopeful goal already. More and more people know that Zappos sells shoes, but they’re never talking about how great the shoes are; they’re talking about how great the service experience is. Need more evidence? Take a look at this tweet from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Thesis #6: The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

This is the first of many eerily predictive theses of the 1999 version of The Cluetrain Manifesto. In 1999, personal publishing wasn’t as we know it today. Sure, you could put your message online fairly easily, but that’s about as far as had hit “mainstream”. In 2009, we take comments and reviews for granted. Every single node of data on the web seems to have a comment field or a 5-star rating on it.

Feedback, as we know it, has become a ‘roided out monster that Doc, Rick, Chris, and David could have never imagined.

What’s important to realize, though, it that the dialog never changed, it just also moved online. The tools just keep getting better. Feedback became easier. Data begot metadata.

The internet of 1999 (which I barely remember, admittedly) was still very read-only, which is one of the many distinctive differences between that swell in industry growth and the one we’re immersed in now. When the internet was only really able to offer publishing capabilities, the real values it provided beyond mass media were a) low barrier to entry and b) reach. Ultimately, a read-only workflow designed to collect and then flip eyeballs into a commercial product turned into an awful business model.

Create a service that users need, not a service that needs users

These days, the mainstream web is extraordinarily different. Hyperlinked pages aren’t the only tools at the disposal of businesses and their customers. Customer feedback, product reviews, fan-communities, low-cost video production and knowledge sharing are just a few of the tools that have completely changed the way that people talk about themselves, their activities, their likes, their dislikes, their surroundings, and their observations.

Companies have begun tapping into these resources, but it’s only the beginning. Companies are using old models with the new tools, and still attempting to be an imposing force.

On the Internet in 2009, the companies that are succeeding are checking their their egos at the door, and noisy customers are figuring out how to provide valuable feedback instead of just bitching into the void.

Now and again, companies and customers are meeting in middle ground, and magic is happening.

Thesis #7: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

While the interactive  hyperlinks that geeks are familiar with come in the form of text, code, bytes of data, hyperlinks also come in the form of dialogue, rapport, and relationships. Most importantly, both kinds of links represent shortcuts. They represent a faster way to get to that other thing that I need, should I need it.

One of the best definitions of the value of hyperlinks was one I heard from David Dylan Thomas, a writer and film maker in Philadelphia. David explained from his perspective as a writer how hyperlinks gave him freedom to write in a third dimension; he found himself able to write more concisely and for more audiences when using hyperlinks. He was able to focus on his core message and provide value to many of his readers, writing movie reviews that had enough self-contained context to be useful. By adding hyperlinks to other websites and resources, David was able to provide further depth to his words, sentences, and even to illustrate tone more effectively to someone who, perhaps, wasn’t as familiar with the content or his writing style.

The hyperlinks of 1999 were the chief source of interactivity on the web. They were what got me from over here to over there.

In 2009, hyperlinks are more than a pointer.

Hyperlinks are inclusionary. Their purpose is to point to something else and include it in the given context.

Beyond the technological variation of the hyperlink, are the human hyperlinks. The connectors, as defined by Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

Not just what, but who, are the hyperlinks in your business?

Thesis #8: In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

Hierarchy is meant to provide structure and order. Instead,  it’s more often perceived (with any semblance of fact or not), as practice of obfuscation.

Hierarchy says, to the person attempting to get shit their job done, “You aren’t trusted enough to figure out the next steps on your own, so we need to make sure that the steps you’re taking are in our best interest before you can take them.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m insulted just thinking about that.

Again, we’re back to a trust issue. Much like companies are fearful of their customers’ and employees’ voices, they’re even more fearful of their actions and decisions.

Hyperlinks (as a means of communication, not just code) subvert this process by providing a window into what’s beyond the immediate scope, allowing customers and employees alike to make more informed decisions.

The importance of “hyperlinks” in business today isn’t that they have increased the amount of dialogue, and we’ll get back to that point.

The importance of “hyperlinks” is that they have increased the efficiency of honesty.

Hyperlinks of the digital and human variety have connected customers to other customers, employees to other employees, and in best cases, opened bi-directional exchanges between customers and employees of the same company.

And all of this dialog is open, candid, honest, and in the human voice.

Thesis #9: These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

Service industries traditionally benefited more from referrals than they have from traditional advertising. It’s hard to appropriately advertise things that people don’t necessarily seek out.

When do you go looking for a plumber? When the plumbing is broken.

When do you go looking for an electrician? When the lights are out.

In some cases, a solid advertising campaign (or a catchy jingle) might jog your memory at that moment of need, but more often, you either already “have a guy” that you’ve worked with, or you call around to trusted family/friends for a recommendation. Ever wonder what the “social graph” of a service provider’s clientele looks like?

Do your clients know each other?

Service industries have long valued referrals, and many quality service providers have existed an entire career without spending a nickel on advertising. They rely on the fact that their customers talk about their work, and when a need arises, their name will come up.

My father’s (hi dad!) Chiropractic practice thrived for 30+ years on word of mouth, and has never operated with an advertising budget to speak of. At its peak, his solo practice was taking care of 100+ patients per week, 75% of whom knew each other. He’s gone through a bit of a career change mid-life and started a custom carpentry and home remodeling business, with no more than one partner at any given time. In the 10 years of operating, the carpentry business has never spent a penny on advertising, and averages 20 clients per year (which is high for the industry). Of those 20 clients, he estimates that 15-17 are return clients, and every new client can be traced back to the original “trunk” of the customer tree.

Both of these businesses are small, but demonstrate how having community among your customers works to supplement, if not entirely replace, your advertising efforts.

Imagine if the walls of that referral network were blown down. Imagine if every time you were seeking a new service provider you asked every person you passed walking on the street, taking notes on the sampling and averaged the responses.

And imagine that it wasn’t just for services, but it worked nicely for products too.

Welcome to online commerce in 2009. Discovery is no longer as simple as a single “hyperlink”, but consumers are evaluating every single data point they can get their hands on. Entire communities are forming online with the purpose of being what “consumer reports” could only dream of being: an uninhibited discussion surrounding the good, the bad, and the ugly from the perspective of real customer experiences.

Can there be bad data points? A customer who you’ll never please? A lemon from the production line? Of course. But as more and more people congregate around these reports, it becomes easier and easier for the creamy information to rise to the top.

Thesis #10: As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

We know that participation in these smart, organized, and informed markets is changing people.

News breaks differently.

I cannot remember the last purchase I made without first checking consumer reviews.

I no longer have to ponder the risks of trying a new restaurant.

Talent recruitment has changed.

Even the latest US presidential election set new precedents, and the president elect continues that leading up to inauguration.

Unfortunately, businesses are still operating under the same old presumptions that information travels wherever they direct it.

Press releases turn into press.

Advertising dollars turn into goods and services sold.

Except they don’t.

I mean, they do, but people’s attention to their markets have fundamentally changed, now that they are participating in them.

Consumers’ participation in a networked marketplace means that less of what businesses pump out is being seen when .

People have direct access to information that’s been organized organically, by people they trust more than the companies that have old school expectations.

People no longer rely on the businesses press releases, advertising campaigns, etc for discovery.

Eyeballs are still there, and they are still important. But they’re looking someplace else. They’re looking at each other, instead of upstream.

Businesses are scrambling for tools, sources, any “magic” they can find. Those businesses are falling behind every day.

It’s not about the tools, sources, or magic. It’s about participation.

There is no way for businesses to experience the benefits of the changes their customers have undergone…without participating in those markets themselves.

Thesis #11: People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

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Imagine walking through the aisles of your local Walmart with a shopping list. You know with a certain degree of confidence that you’re going to be able to grab each item on your shopping list, and the more generic the contents of your list are, the better your chances of leaving with 100% of what you came for. Walmart, and other mass market vendors, have mastered this model by carrying not just one, but many of the same commoditized product.

To the undiscerning eyes (or the carefree shopper), soap is soap. Socks are socks. Televisions are televisions. So long as they do the same thing, the sale goes to the lowest bidder.

Walmart is the intermediary, and doesn’t care who the lowest bidder is because they make a margin on it either way.

But people have fundamentally changed, and they are more than just value conscious.

The carefree shopper cares more now than ever before, because they are more informed. It’s an interesting set of cause and effect, too.

Companies are too busy selling a line of marketing drivel, so in true “Boy who cried Wolf” fashion, every bit of messaging companies sent out is assumed to be marketing drivel.

Now consumers have networked markets. They have each other to find which soap leaves their skin the softest, which socks keep their feet the warmest, and which television the big game will look best on.

And they trust each other WAY more than they trust your marketing department.

Thesis #12: There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

The tone of this thesis related to transparency, which is more relevant now than ever before. For two reasons:

  1. Your (that’s your company, not just you personally) every move online is being watched by somebody (apologies for getting all “big brother” for a second)
  2. The watchers are almost as busy watching each other as they are watching you.

That’s the power of a networked market. For every ounce that it can work for you, it can also work against you.

This is the point where companies freak out about the internet, and understandably so. They are no longer the only source of information about themselves, and the press wire is no longer the only channel that information travels along.

You can’t stop it. Hiding from it doesn’t make it go away. So lets turn lemons into lemonade.

Growing up, my mom always told me not to lie or try to keep secrets from her. I don’t know if my mom had a “networked market” at her disposal, but “I’ll always find out”, she said. And more often than not, she did. Eventually, I learned that it was easier to just be forthcoming all the time, since she went much easier on me if I told her how I’d fucked up, rather than having to deal with admitting to lying AND cleaning up whatever I fucked up.

Companies are going to need to learn the same lesson I did from my mom, and be a part of that networked market response.

If the market talking, good or bad, they’re also talking with or without you. If your company isn’t a part of that discussion, what happens? You breed mistrust within your customers, and you scorch any loyalty you may have already built.

Two examples.

Recently, Hulu did a great job of handling a mis-step that could have easily been spit back in their face. When there was a customer backlash about removing episodes of a very popular show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, they could have said “tough, our content partner said we had to take them down”. But instead, Hulu’s CEO openly admitted to dropping the ball and apologized, avoiding a potentially messy cleanup with their customers, and FX (the content provider).

Another recent example of this sort of open, transparent reaction was when Cork’d was hack’d. TechCrunch, notorious for being one massive megaphone for the networked market of startups and technology startup culture, and its’ rabidly opinionated fingerpointing audience began speculating. Their speculations were stopped dead in their tracks when the site’s owner, Gary Vaynerchuk, showed up in the comments of the post with a video.

There was no finger pointing, no blame on anyone but himself. Gary admitted to Cork’d having fallen out of his priorities, and explained his roadmap for recovering the site. Later, he went on to post a video on his personal blog recapping the day. Gary didn’t just avoid keeping secrets, he turned the whole day into a lesson for his readers!

Again, the lesson is simple: for better or for worse, your every move is being watched. By a networked market, or my mom, you will get found out, and everybody will know.

Be a part of the networked market to know that people are talking, and use that as an opportunity to regain footing.

Be honest. Be authentic. Be transparent.

And end up looking like the hero.

Thesis #13: What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.

So we’ve established that every day a trend continues to pinch companies out of the equation of providing products to consumers. Consumers rely on each other more every day for things like marketing, acquisition, even support. That change of working together, flattening the heierarchy, is allowing for greater efficiency and better experiences for customers.

Interestingly, that same pinch is happening within companies. It’s a fairly common occurance for a couple of employees from the same company to jump ship, get their bearings, and regroup as a smaller collective later, especially when the type of work they do allows the flexibility of being mobile.

“The Company” as we know it is becoming more of a formality, and more very real, very successful businesses are existing without all of the structure once thought necessary to be win.

Remember Thesis #2, Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors?  Actually, remember nearly every thesis we’ve covered so far? The lessons apply to employees, too.

Are you the company that’s in the way of your employees’ success? Do you realize the implications of that? Your employees’ success is your success.

You’re not as in control as you thought you were, and your employees knew it before you did.

Time to stop being big brother, and instead, be big mother.

Start by asking yourself, “what can I do to guide my employees towards successful experiences, besides getting out of their way.”

Thesis #14: Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

It’s really difficult to discuss “voice” when related to text and messaging. While there are different types of “voice” related to language and communication, the type that many people most lucidly process is the audible kind.

This is going to make things difficult when it comes time to turn this series into an e-book or go to print, but in the mean time we don’t have to worry about those constraints. This is the internet!

So. It’s example time.

Twine.com – What happens when you let things unwravel

Twine.com launched a beta back in October 2007. It allows it’s users to collect, share, and discover things they are interested in. Early semantic web stuff, whatever that meant then. Cool platform. Not my point.

They launched a year later with a redesign (yay beta feedback!), some solid press. Unfortunately, most of that press left users confused about what it actually did. Semantic web is a kinda heady concept that we won’t bother getting into here. That, itself, isn’t even the problem.

The real problem was that the corporate overview language was…well…just that. Corporate. It’s bad enough that the concept is heady, why would you fill your descriptive – read “marketing” – messages with language that normal people don’t use?

Twine: The Overview

This overview was descriptive…but it’s voice was mechanical. It sounded like it was written by someone who’d been immersed in Twine for a while, instead of by someone with a voice that the audience could identify with: someone trying to understand what the heck Twine is for.

The day after the launch, a Twine employee uploaded the same overview video to their personal Youtube account. OK. Not the exact same video. Here’s the caption from that video:

Our site www.twine.com needed an overview video. I came up with this as a practical joke on the team with some help from Sam. Basically, we changed the voice over and the music to make the video a little less “corporate”.

Warning: this is extreme, and has some…um…language issues.

Twine: The (Unofficial) Overview

The video didn’t change. But the voice did.

The unofficial parody voice was extreme, but it was one that somebody could identify with. The only people who could connect with the original one were the internal people at Twine, and even they seemed to prefer the parody video.

What’s really amazing is that the company embraced it. A video like this could have come from anywhere, employees or customers, and Twine could have buried it. Instead, they have a video that got 25x more viewership on Youtube compared to the corporate-speak variation.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this demonstration is to show the difference between corporate-speak, and…the other thing. It’s not to say that every company can, or even should, convert their marketing messages into Web 2.0 gangsta-speak.

Thesis #15: In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

The homogeneity of voice predicted by the Cluetrain of 1999 has been realized. What’s worse, is that its artificiality has this creepeing effect that leaves no corner of communication untapped.

The Cluetrain has been cited as a precursor, possibly even a crystal ball, into the world of Social Media that we live in today. Of course it seems that way, hindsight being 20/20 and all. Realistically, though, I think what the Cluetrain did was recognize patterns in how humans communicate in real life, how humans communicate in business, and the differences between them. Social Media, whatever it can be defined as at the very moment that I’m writing this essay, is the convergence of those conversations. Human conversations and business conversations.

But we’re experiencing a culture clash.

Funny for some, uncomfortable to watch for others. Either way, a poor representation of reality.

The language we use to describe business activities is almost equally as absurd if you consider it in the context of the rest of your life. In the rest of your relationships.

I recently “overheard” a dialogue recently, a couple of Tweets shared between between Dave Troy and Tony Bacigalupo about “sustainability” as related to business.

Sustainability is a term that’s thrown around in business a whole lot, typically tied to business modeling. Even worse, it’s found it’s way into marketing, and we’ve started talking about building “sustainable relationships” with our business partners and customers.

Think about that for a second. It sounds positive at first, but put it into context.

twitter-_-dave-troy_-tonybgoode-if-someone-ask-1

Right.

The homogenized business voice is so unaware of itself and how contrived it sounds that it doesn’t even know that it’s in a hole, let alone how to dig itself out. Meanwhile, the human conversations are more real than ever before, with more people discovering their own voices and how powerful they can be when they are honest and authentic.

Here’s the problem. Discourse in business is taking place as if it’s still “us” versus “them”. Like this is a high school dance and the boys are afraid of touching the girls.

Cooties. Ew.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

There is no them.

Thesis #16: Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

As we’ve established, the language of “pitch”, which includes sales, marketing, campaigns, verticals, leveraging, and more…is ineffective.

When it works, it only works when you cast a net so massive that you are working the power of numbers. If you pitch to hundreds of thousands, even millions of individuals, of course you’re going to have some rate of conversion. But that’s a ton of wasted energy. And in terms of voice, and language, is a great way to the business equivelent of laryngitis.

Why is the language of “pitch” ineffective at anything other than alienating your audience? Think about it this way. While some of us are better at it than others, we all have some innate “lie detection” built in to our communications arsenal. First line of defense? Irregular speach patterns, followed by messaging designed to obscure intent.

Now let’s examine the physiology of “the pitch”. By definition, a pitch is meant to succinctly explain

a) what you are pitching b) why it is valuable c) who you are, related to that element of value

Notice anything missing?

The ideal pitch explains how perfect your product or service is for the person being pitched to.

Unfortunately for the “pitcher”, that’s when our innate lie detection kicks in. For me, it’s the “too good to be true” meter that usually goes off the charts.

That’s usually when I turn my back. I don’t know about you, but the things that set off my lie detector send me the other way.

As soon as I hear a pitch, I assume that I’m in the middle of a bait and switch.

“Here, stay for the weekend in this beautiful ski resort. It’s free. All you need to do is sit through a 2 hour presentation about our time share offerings”.

Right. I saw that episode of South Park and I’m not buying it.

Which is why the companies that use the voice of “pitch” in all of their communications are finding that they look up from their pitch script to realize that they are talking to an empty room.

“Where did everyone go?” the pitching marketer asks.

They’re online, and they’re talking to each other.

Note: This is a guest post from Stephen Smith, editor of Business Development in Context and a co-founder of the work.life.creativity forum. You can follow him on Twitter at @hdbbstephen.

Thesis #17: Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on TV are kidding themselves.

This thesis was true when it was written 10 years ago but for different reasons than it is today. The evolution of the marketspace is the biggest change in the worlds of (“big M”) Marketing and PR since the invention of television. The ubiquity of the internet generates the pre-condition for markets (read customers) to talk to each other for free. Once separated by geography, marketspaces are now connected in multiple ways in online communities.

Unsolicited feedback is the rule, not the exception

Corporations are still spending vast amounts of money on research, polling and “focus groups” but the thought-leaders are inviting their markets to provide this information, or better information, for free. On the other hand, as the “Motrin” and “The other white milk” episodes prove, companies can get vociferous and very public feedback whether they want it or not. (We will re-visit these social media firestorms again with Thesis #19)

The Social Media transformation continues

The marketspace is changing, the markets are changing, the customers have already changed. And changed again. Stay-at-home-moms used to be a special sort of target market, ripe for the broadly-cast TV advertising messages. They used to be bored and lonely. Today they represent a purchasing powerhouse that is one of the most interconnected groups in America. Social networking sites report that the SAHM groups are among the most active and most frequent users of the services. The SAHM groups, once isolated, are now spending a lot of time talking, sharing, and comparing information on every product and service available.

For more on this fascinating evolution, I recommend also reading a book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” . You can find out more about the book at the Groundswell blog. What Marketing Departments need to know

Here are the “secrets” to understanding the changes in marketspace:

1. Your market can now talk back, and to each other, in a way that was impossible during the TV era. 2. Your market is going to talk about your company, its products and services and policies, whether you like it or not – and you cannot control this discussion from the outside. 3. Your market wants a place to gather, to talk and ask questions and share answers. Give them that place or they will build their own.

As Alex wrote in Thesis #11:

…they trust each other WAY more than they trust your marketing department.

In my next post we will explore Thesis #18: how markets are now marketspaces, interconnected person-to-person virtual networks and the impact this has on Marketing.

Note: This is a guest post from Stephen Smith, editor of Business Development in Context and a co-founder of the work.life.creativity forum. You can follow him on Twitter at @hdbbstephen.

Thesis #18: Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

Changes and Opportunities

The internet has developed as an agent of change unparalleled in human history. The near-instant communication it provides to people all over the world is a more important change than even the Industrial Revolution. The internet is tearing down walls faster and faster every day:

Consider the new tools

Twitter and its “private” counterpart, Yammer, enable a stream of instant chat, or “Tweets”. These tweets are snippets of information – what you are doing right now. Or what you are thinking about. Or sharing a link to something that you think is interesting.

In the previous post we discussed how Twitter became the focal point for the Motrin-mom fiasco. Twitter also became the clearinghouse for information about the “miracle on the Hudson”, with the very first photo made available online at TwitPic.

[via cnet] The rapid-fire spread of a close-up photo of the US Airways plane that crashed in the Hudson River Thursday resulted in the service that hosted the picture going down.

This photo, of the US Airways jet that crashed into the Hudson River Thursday, brought so much traffic to TwitPic that the site, which allows users of several mobile phones to post pictures to Twitter, saw its servers get overloaded.

(Credit: Janis Krums) TwitPic, an application that allows users to take pictures from their mobile phones and append them to Twitter posts, went down after at least 7,000 people attempted to view the photo of the airplane taken from a commuter ferry by Sarasota, Fla., resident Janis Krums. According to Noah Everett, the founder of TwitPic, who still runs the service by himself, after the photo of the plane was re-tweeted by a large number of people and then picked up by several news sites, including Silicon Alley Insider, the resulting traffic was too much for the site’s servers.

Many of the most internet-savvy, and a large number of young people, are turning to social media for their news. As Mack Collier expressed just the other day:

mack collier tweet

Which of course led to a heated debate. A debate that is likely going on in the boardrooms of collapsing newspapers across the United States.

What do we do about these customers talking to each other?

The short answer is, “You need to get out there and talk to them, too.“

The long answer has a lot more to do with how you engage these customers, in order to gain their trust. As Searls and Weinberger wrote in Cluetrain Chapter 4: Markets are Conversations:

For thousands of years, we knew exactly what markets were: conversations between people who sought out others who shared the same interests. Buyers had as much to say as sellers. They spoke directly to each other without the filter of media, the artifice of positioning statements, the arrogance of advertising, or the shading of public relations.

For a long time – nearly two generations – the sellers were in control of the conversation. The idea of a “spokesperson” came into being, that is, a person who spoke what the sellers wanted them to say. TV, radio, newspapers – all designed to push messages out to the buyers. Broad-based messages that told you, in effect, that you needed this product or service so that you could be just like everyone else. This was the seller’s ultimate goal: to create a market of uniform buyers that could be manipulated, whose behavior could be predicted, and whose money could be harvested.

Then the internet showed up and threw a monkey wrench into the mechanism.

What Marketing Departments need to know

Here are some thoughts on understanding the changes in methods of conversation:

  1. Buyers want to talk to other buyers in order to share in the experience of your product or service. This is market research of the purest kind, the most valuable and the most unpredictable.
  2. Sellers must learn to join in these conversations without coming across as bullies, or smarmy salesmen. Partners, parties to the discussion.
  3. Sellers now have an opportunity to do something that has never been available before: to find and build a real relationship with their best buyers and advocates.

Don’t waste it.

Note: This is a guest post from Stephen Smith, editor of Business Development in Context and a co-founder of the work.life.creativity forum. You can follow him on Twitter at @hdbbstephen.

Thesis #19: Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

Harsh words. But very true, to a point.

Engage your market directly

There are examples of companies experiencing the positive and negative effects of direct communication. You can check out Dell & Zappos on your own, to get more acquainted with those examples.  I’d like to explore 3 simple rules that companies can use to guide how they share, communicate and reach out to their customers.

Simple Machine ForumRule number one: People that use a product or service like to talk to other people using that product or service. Give them a place to do it, and participate honestly and fairly. A forum is a common, and often cheap/free way to get give your customers’ dialogue a home.

This is a dead-simple way to create an FAQ (frequently asked questions) tool set for your company with “official” answers and user-generated comment. No matter how much testing you do with your product or application a clever user will find a way to use it (or misuse it) that you did not anticipate. Sometimes, if you are quick enough, these sorts of happy accidents can lead to new products to sell, increased customer loyalty, and word of mouth advertising worth more than a trip to Hawai’i. Or a marketing department.

tweet statusRule number two: Let your employees talk to your customers. @Ambercadabra pointed out a remarkable truth on Twitter the other day, and the community ran with it. With just 6 degrees of distribution via from some of Amber’s followers this question went out to over 11,000 potential watchers. Of course, not everyone attributed the quote, so it went out even further [search "trust+employee+twitter"].

This is a topic that a lot of people are thinking about.

Yet the answer to Amber’s question remains elusive. Why indeed?

Is it because the conversations that take place online are there forever and legal departments are afraid of getting the company in hot water over an “unapproved” comment or blog post?

Doesn’t this mode of thinking reveal something more basic (and perhaps a little bit sinister)?

What is your company trying to hide if the employees can’t talk to the customers?

If every employee is not on-board with your corporate vision and dedicated to the success of the company and its products/services then that means one of these things:

  1. Your vision is a lie. Or impossible.
  2. Your employees know that you don’t mean it, so why should they?
  3. Your product or service sucks.
  4. Your product or service isn’t worth the money and they know it.
  5. Your employees don’t feel like they are treated fairly, because they know the customers aren’t.

It means that you can’t be trusted to communicate with your employees.

Once you have taken a good hard look at yourself, and your corporate culture, then you can take a look at this fantastic post from Beth Kanter on Social Media Strategies for Non-profits:

Set objectives based on a clear understanding of how social media changes the feedback loop between your organization and stakeholders. The key thing that is different with setting a social media objective is that it is not about reaching a mass audience and blasting your message out, it is more about reaching the influencers, developing relationships, having a conversation, and getting insights. Make your objectives “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound)

laptop spamRule number three: Initiating a relationship is not an invitation to spam. Just because a customer comes to you, your company website or forum, does not mean that you can open the floodgates of special offers. Or trap them in a never-ending series of opt-ins, opt-outs, and surveys.

Clue: Customers hate this!

Don’t teach your customers to hate you. Jonathan Kranz writes at MarketingProfs Daily Fix:

Customers are quick learners. We’ve learned, for example, to ignore subscription renewal letters that come months in advance of our actual expiration date; from experience, we know that there’s no urgency – plenty of other letters will come in the next few months reminding us to renew. That’s why I’m concerned about a prevailing abuse of the word (or concept), “relationship.” As a pretext for sending me overwhelming amounts of unsolicited email, marketers tell me (in the fine print), that I’m receiving this cascade of irrelevant and irritating material because we have some kind of “relationship.” Often, I cannot recall what that “relationship” is; when did I give permission for this volume of vacuous nonsense? It turns out that by purchasing a product, I’ve initiated a “relationship.” By downloading a free case study, I’ve initiated a “relationship.” By simply making a request for more information, again, I’ve initiated a “relationship.”

A relationship is a fragile thing, a mutual thing. A relationship is to be tended by both parties involved. A relationship requires trust (see Rule number 2, above).

Remember, trust can be won and lost. This is the most incredible chance your company has ever had- a chance to tell the whole world about your story.

Are you going to blow it?

ITS GOOD TO BE BACK! Thanks again to Stephen Smith for taking the reigns on the last 3 posts in this series (theses 17, 18, and 19). It was a much needed recharge for me, plus an opportunity to get ahead a little bit. So, without further adieu…

Thesis #20: Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

simpsons_nelson_haha2uwrIf a company makes a mistake in the woods, and there is no-one there to point a finger and laugh at them, will they correct their mistake?

Everybody makes mistakes, and it’s ok. It’s human. That’s a good thing, remember?

To be human.

Companies seem to think that their mistakes are their weakness, and do everything they can to control where their mistakes end up. Ultimately, they get found out. There are no secrets, remember?

So life hands you lemons, in the form of public ridicule for your mistakes. More likely, you planted those lemons yourself. But you’re not going to admit that.

Let’s make some lemonade.

Get over your Gelotophobia

Prior to writing this post I had no idea that this word existed, and for the first 30 seconds of knowing this word existed I was under the assumption that it had something to do with italian ice cream.

Gelotophobia is a debilitating fear of being laughed at, and doesn’t seem to have been studied extensively (if at all) in the United States. The majority of the research that has been done has been conducted in the last year.

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the researchers who are putting energy into researching this affliction should look no further than commercial enterprises, and the people that found them/run them. This has to be the most common affliction of companies.

What I really mean is, the people who comprise the companies. Not just the entrepreneurs that start them.

What’s fascinating to me is that the affliction of “fear” is the is the most human emotion that companies seem to let bleed through from the people inside, to the outside world. From what we’ve seen, companies are really good at being afraid, too. They can’t quite send their high powered attorneys after someone who laughed at them, can they?

The optimist in me see that as a good thing, and if nothing else, a starting point. If we can get companies over their fear of being laughed at, the cluetrain can continue down it’s path.

Ahem full steam ahead ahem.

Thesis #21: Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

There’s a misconception in corporations that seems to stem from the manufacturing era. That misconception is that work and play are mutually exclusive.

Now, hang on a second. I’m not so bold as to assume that just because someone is serious all of the time that they aren’t a hard worker. Or that they work too hard. Or anything like that.

What I want to point out is two things:

First: this thesis points to companies and says “lighten up”. We’ve already established that “the company” is a construct full of people. Those people operate within a culture which is based on their own behaviors, but also with the guidance of the company’s leadership.

So in order for a company to “lighten up” as this thesis suggests, we’re talking about a corporate culture shift, which is a pretty large undertaking because people don’t really take imposed culture very well. Instead, “lightening up” needs to be a holistic change for the company.

This is hard. Really hard. Especially in a litigious country like the US of A, companies are afraid of humor because of the potential for harrassment lawsuits.

Again, the one human emotion that companies are any good at expressing, fear, and it’s in the way again.

Note: I have a little bit of a problem because I also think that this thesis is a little bit one sided. In order for companies to lighten up and take themselves less seriously, people (read: customers) need to be prepared to view companies as fallible constructs full of people, just like them.

I wonder if this is a problem that will be sorted over the course of a generation or two. Already, we’re seeing indications that new companies can enter an otherwise humorless industry and lighten things up.

Let’s look at one industry that many of us love to hate: airlines.

Flying the Friendly Skies

There is practically nothing to laugh about when it comes to flying. The experience sucks.

I hate waiting in line. The food is crappy. The seats are small and my legs cramp. Crying children. Smelly people.

I’m cringing as I write this because I know I’m getting on a cross country flight in 24 hours.

I have a ton of respect for people who spend their lives in airports and on airplanes, because it’s one of my least favorite places to be. I love to travel, but I don’t like the experience of getting from here to there.

With two exceptions.

Southwest Airlines and Virgin Air.

Both of these airlines have competitive pricing, more comfortable seats…all sorts of amenities that I appreciate. But that’s not what makes the experience special.

Unlike the majority of their competitors, who view air travel as a sort of cargo delivery process, Southwest and Virgin have lowered their guard and exposed a sense of humor.

In the case of Southwest, many of their flight attendants have taken the otherwise droning takeoff and landing announcements and spice things up. I imagine there’s some scripting that the attendants share because I’ve heard some of the same quips, but in other cases, it’s been clear that the attendant took this chance to show off their own sense of humor.

My experiences with Virgin have been even better. Their company mission statement (not just for air travel, for the entire Virgin brand) reads:

We believe in making a difference. In our customers’ eyes, Virgin stands for value for money, quality, innovation, fun and a sense of competitive challenge. We deliver a quality service by empowering our employees and we facilitate and monitor customer feedback to continually improve the customer’s experience through innovation.

Not too far from the humorous Southwest attendants, check out Virgin’s pre-flight safety video:

As a side note, Southwest and Virgin are two companies very active in social media, both having numerous social campaigns under their belt and active Twitter Service Representatives (see @southwestair and @virginamerica). These companies have a sense of humor, and strong senses of human social interaction, as part of the company’s existence.

It’s not (just) a campaign. It’s part of the company’s being. The companies empowering their employees to interact like normal human beings (who have a sense of humor) instead of agents of a machine (that doesn’t).

Can this be done in a pre-existing company? I think so.

It will take time.

It will take leadership.

It will take commitment.

And it will take trust.

Hm. Maybe this is going to be harder than I thought.

Thesis #22: Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

In the previous example, I pointed to a couple of very tangible experiences where a sense of humor improved my experience as a customer. But aligning those experiences with this thesis, you begin to realize that there’s more to humor’s effectiveness than clever scripting.

Wikipedia sez humor occurs when:

  • An alternative (or surprising) shift in perception or answer is given that still shows relevance and can explain a situation.
  • Sudden relief occurs from a tense situation. In this context, humour is often a subjective experience, as it depends on a special mood or perspective from its audience to be effective.

Getting a sense of humor is hard because humor is fueled changing your perspective.

Business is notorious for stagnation. So long as profits aren’t down, there must not be a problem.

Stay the course. Stay the course.

Oh, that massive inefficiency in our process? Who cares.

Didn’t I tell you, profits aren’t down?

It boggles my mind how many businesses don’t seek improvement until there is a problem. And more often, they can’t even see the problem until it’s too late because they weren’t checking operations from more than the most comfortable angle available. On their asses. Behind their desks. Looking at spreadsheets.

Changing your perspective in itself is a valuable action for you to take for your business. Along with an opportunity to understand and, maybe even invoke some humor about your business, you have a chance to take a look at business process from that new vantage point. Poke holes. Experiment.

There’s a LOT to be said for some quality self-analysis, and the willingness to take on a sense of humor is a good incentive.

This is your chance to own your problems instead of keeping them outside of your field of vision. Maybe you can even make a joke about the problem once you know about it.

Relief of tense situations

Shit happens.

If you freak out, like a deer in headlights, you’re paralyzed.

Isn’t there something soothing when someone can take an otherwise tense situation and diffuse it with humor? It needs to be done carefully, but the sense of likability that can come with a good understanding of humor has a good chance of taking the edge off some potentially tense situations.

Some notes, though.

  1. Don’t be condescending.

That’s part of being genuine.

  1. Don’t laugh at the customer. Laugh at yourself.

That’s humility.

  1. You want them laughing with you.

That’s teamwork, and that’s progress.

Thesis #23: Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.

I don’t like this thesis. Well, I don’t like the second half of it.

I do agree that companies need to own who they are. But the second part of this suggest something dastardly.

Something that, if you’re not careful, it leads you down a road of being unauthentic.

You can’t just hire a clever copywriter to position your company as quirky, off the wall, or funny because that’s what your market wants.

That’s not the point.

If your position only exists to appease your market, you’re doing it wrong.

Your position shouldn’t be what everyone else thinks, it requires introspection, and a strong set of values. Not only does that make it easier to take that position, but it lets all of the bullshit of trying to maintain that position go away.

If your market doesn’t care about your position, you’ve got two options: pick a new position to execute against, or pick a new market.

Here’s the clincher.

There’s only one of you. There’s always another market.

Be yourself. Be authentic. That’s the only position you can have.

My boy Gary Vaynerchuk has a lot to say on this, he calls it “executing against your own DNA”. You have to know what you are, and own it.

Thesis #24: Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position.

This is the sort of “positioning” that you may sling in front of your investors…but your customers don’t give a crap.

Your customers, if they care about anything, it’s what you are committed to. At least one of the things you’re committed to should be them, at least in their mind.

Boastful “positioning” is about as valuable as a mission statement. Remember when Guy Kawasaki suggested that business ditch meaningless mission statements for meaningful mantras? The real reason the mantra was valuable was it gave businesses something to execute against.

Something to make decisions against.

Your “position”, should it be to “become the preeminent provider of XYZ”, says nothing to your customer about how you plan to make decisions, only where you plan to get with those decisions, even if it includes sacrificing them.

Today, I challenge you to drop your position for a set of core values.

A value system is a set of consistent ethic values (more specifically the personal and cultural values) and measures used for the purpose of ethical or ideological integrity…The first value category is Core Values, which prescribe the attitude and character of an organization…

In your business, your core values define how the members of your company will act and who and what are your priorities in order to attain desired goals for the business.

Core values put people first.

Unlike a boastful “positioning”, which does not.

Thesis #25: Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

The issue with companies coming down from their Ivory Towers, as we’ve discussed repeatedly, is that companies aren’t particularly good at talking to people.

Worse, is that the real people inside the company that are good at talking and building relationships aren’t empowered by the company to do so.

At the Twestival in Philadelphia this past week, I met Phil Baumann and Carrie Estok. We had a really awesome discussion about Carrie’s work with Yelp (one of my favorite companies) as a community advocate, and the real value that she’s able to provide to the Philadlephia community, as well as the businesses being reviewed on Yelp.

If you’re not familiar with Yelp, it’s a review site. But unlike Amazon, it reviews businesses. And more importantly, it’s local. As we’ve discussed before, people don’t trust marketing nearly as much as they trust their peers, so the recommendations shared on Yelp are authentic and peer-to-peer. They can be good, they can be bad. They’re all honest, from the perspective of the author. And Yelp continues to find ways to capture the customer-to-customer conversations and expose them for the benefit of other customers, and ultimately, for the businesses being talked about as well.

I think part of why I like Yelp so much because of how “Cluetrain-y” their model is.

There’s two things I took away from my conversation with Phil and Carrie related to this thesis:

First, Yelp as a company embraced a mechanism for coming down from their Ivory Tower: hiring and empowering community advocates. This type of job has been recognized as extremely important for any community oriented business, and increasingly, any business at all.

While Carrie and I didn’t discuss this explicitly, I’m fairly certain that she’s able to do her job best because Yelp empowers her (having carefully selected her) to be their representative, and to represent the community she’s a part of.

That’s the difference. It’s impossible for “Yelp”, the business, to be a part of every community that they service. But they knew the importance of building quality relationships with their users and the businesses that their users review, so they needed representation. Furthermore, that representation would be most effective if it came from within the community. There was no Ivory Tower for that person to have to come down from. That person, in this case Carrie, is able to continue being a member of the Philadelphia community and have the tools and facility that Yelp provides at her disposal. Yelp trusts her to be an ambassador for their communication. If they didn’t, there would be no point to having her on staff.

The second takeaway from our conversation will address the next thesis, Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

Thesis #26: Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

In the last post, we talked about how Yelp empowers Carrie Estok to effectively communicate with their users. The second takeaway from the conversation I had with Carrie and Phil relates to this thesis, and has to do with companies that get reviewed on Yelp.

At the end of the day, there are two kinds of reviews on Yelp: positive and negative. What business doesn’t want to hear positive reviews from their customers? The problem is, that’s the only kind of review that many businesses want to hear. There’s been lots of talk about businesses negatively reviewed on Yelp threatening to sue for defamation.

Now, I see where these businesses are coming from. And considering Penny Arcade’s “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory“, malicious defamation certainly increases in probability online. But Yelp is a community first. And when you’ve got a community contributing, there are checks and balances, and thoee sorts of intentionally malicious reviewers tend to be filtered out.

But here’s the kicker: if someone was poorly reviewing your business, offline, they’d be talking smack and you’d have no idea about it.

Yelp is providing a chance for users to talk about your business, and for you, as the business owners, to do something about it! For free! Stop being a knucklehead and realize how valuable that is for you!

Companies are petrified of what their customers have to say about them. The attitude of “What happens when someone says something bad about me online” is ridiculous. This should not be your cue to call out the legal team. It should be your cue to reflect, and go “hm, maybe they’re right. Let’s see if we can show ‘em what we’ve got”. And then, with the help of someone like Carrie, relate to that very real person having that very real problem.

You’ll never satisfy everyone, but that’s not the point. Carrie had some really great insight: the companies she’s made contact with that got negative reviews and at least tried to improve, won her (and other community members’) respect. Even if the service didn’t really improve, their ability to come down from their Ivory Tower, take criticism constructively, and at least recognize that there could be an issue and make an attempt to correct it is far better than ignoring the problem.

Coming down from your Ivory Tower to build relationships means letting down your guard, and being prepared to hear the things that you couldn’t from all the way up there.

Some will be good.

Some will be bad.

With the appropriate perspective, it’s all valuable.

You have nothing to be afraid of besides your own ignorance of what’s being talked about inside your marketplace.

Thesis #27: By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.

The Public Relations department (or a hired firm) is often the gatekeeper for communication in a business. I’ve always found that amusing, since the methods of communication chosen by most PR practitioners are designed to protect the business and it’s interests (and there’s more on that in our next thesis).

When I was in a fraternity in college, everyone was allowed to speak on behalf of the fraternity when it was good. We saved the “single point of contact for all communication” for when shit really hit the fan. You don’t want everyone talking to the cops. But during recruitment, it was everyone’s shared responsibility to share in the communication with our new potential members.

By limiting the number of people allowed to communicate with the pulic on behalf of the company, the company is doing what we tried to do when the cops showed up at the fraternity house: keep them at bay.

But by limiting the number of people allowed to communicate with the public on behalf of the company, something else happens: that communicator’s guard goes up. If they’re the bottleneck for communication, they can only field so much at any time. Any additional communication above their comfortable threshold, their instinctive reaction is to block new requests out, and a distant uninviting, and arrogant voice, is a highly effective way to alienate your customers and keep them at bay.

Furthermore, they’re excluding the communication that goes on outside of their carefully controlled communication channels, rather than using their momentum to their own benefit!

The lesson here: don’t just allow, empower your company’s employees as well as your customers to communicate, instead of relying on a single point of contact. Try to remove communication bottlenecks except when absolutely necessary. I believe that the arrogance and distance in the collective communication “voice” of the company will begin to fade away.

Thesis #29: Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

We’re caught in a trap I can’t walk out Because I love you too much baby Why can’t you see What you’re doing to me When you don’t believe a word I say? We can’t go on together With suspicious minds And we can’t build our dreams On suspicious minds So, if an old friend I know Drops by to say hello Would I still see suspicion in your eyes? Here we go again Asking where I’ve been You can’t see these tears are real I’m crying We can’t go on together With suspicious minds And be can’t build our dreams On suspicious minds Oh let our love survive Or dry the tears from your eyes Let’s don’t let a good thing die When honey, you know I’ve never lied to you Mmm yeah, yeah

Be it a relationship between Elvis and a lover, or between a company and it’s customer, relationships aren’t sustainable if you’re always wondering if the other’s been lying to you.

Trust is hard to earn, and even harder to earn back. Don’t make me suspicious, or I will walk out.