August 2009 – Page 3

Current Events And Marketing

Should you use current events in marketing?
Yes and no.

Yes, if the medium has a quick turn around
for changes.
Grounding a marketing message
with an appropriate current event
makes the message more relevant,
more emotional.

No, if it costs too much money
or time
to change the marketing message.
What is popular today
might not be popular or even positive
three months from now.

For example…
I write my novels so they should still be relevant
five years from now.
It takes me three years for my novels to be published
and then I have at least two years to sell them.
I don’t use current references.
I keep technology vague.
If my hero and heroine see a movie,
it is usually a classic.

My short stories on my blog are different.
I write them a day or two ahead of the post date.
I expect them to be read immediately
and then forgotten.
I can refer to current events.
I can make the stories timely.
In my current story,
the hero and heroine make a date to see
The Time Traveler’s Wife.
There are references to Twilight
and current fashions.

Use current events carefully.

Gossip Is A Career Killer

Gossip can kill careers.
Not only the career of the person talked about
but of the person doing the talking.

When I hear someone pass along information
they shouldn’t,
I immediately put that person
in the do not talk to category.
Because I know if they gossip about others,
they will gossip about me
or my projects
or my beloved sources.

I try not to gossip
but sometimes the gossip is too juicy
to keep to myself
and I need to talk it out with someone
because it might affect me.

When that happens,
I turn to a handful of buddies
with my own stance on gossip.
I’ll choose one of those buddies,
well out of the industry I’m ‘gossiping’ about
to confide in.
I’ll tell the story,
leaving out names or other identifiers
(and because the buddy isn’t in the industry,
he or she doesn’t care about the gossip enough
to probe for more information).
I’ll ask for his/her feedback.

The urge to gossip is satisfied,
I get another opinion on it,
and my reputation is still intact.

Gossip carefully.

An Award No One Has Heard Of

I’ve entered the Eppies
(eBook awards)
and they’ve posted the list of entries online.
I see the entries are a little light.
Yikes.
So what I’ve been doing
is promoting the heck out of the award,
recruiting new entries.

A buddy asked why I would want more competition.

My reply was…
an award everyone has heard of
is worth more
than an award no one has heard of.

Plus I truly believe that Invisible, my novel,
is a great enough book
that it will final
regardless of the competition.
I want the books I final with
to be so damn good,
my novel gets extra press because of it.

If you have the best product out there
(and if you don’t, why are you in business?)
then you shouldn’t worry
how much competition you have.

Twitter Being Down And Blogging Every Day

I’ve blogged here
(well, first on Road To Forbes)
every day for the past four years.
Some days, frankly,
I don’t feel like posting.
I’ll be knee deep in another project
and find it challenging
to focus on anything else
including a 100 word blog post.

But I do post.

Why?
Because I want to be your early morning habit.
Something you can count on.
Something that is a constant
in a changing world.

Which leads me to Twitter.
Twitter was down for a couple days
(I couldn’t post to Twitter
though some other people could).
Twitter, for me, was a habit.
I’d log onto it
when I needed to check the latest news
or send out a quick note to readers
or chat with a friend.

After only two days down,
it was no longer a habit.
I had other sources for news.
I emailed friends.
I asked a question on one of my blogs
to get reader feedback.

Think of that
the next time you…
…take your blog offline for maintenance
…renovate your restaurant
…go on vacation

Asking Questions At Company Meetings

There is only one reason
to ask a question
during a company meeting…
… to market yourself positively
to the management team.

It isn’t to get answers.
Answers to real concerns
should be gathered quietly.

Normally, I like to know the answer
to the question I’m asking
the management team.
I don’t want them
to end up looking like jacka$$es
and remember me in a negative way.

I always allow the answerer to ‘get back to me.’
I graciously allow them to flub a reply.
I phrase the question openly.
I ask questions that
an average intelligent employee
would ask
(i.e. no talking about secret projects).
I also walk up after the meeting
and thank the management team
for answering my question.

Company meetings are marketing opportunities.
Don’t waste them.

Awards ARE Popularity Contests

An author
complained to me
that she never wins any awards
even though her books are wonderful.

She’s right.
Her books ARE wonderful.
Unfortunately she is not.
Or at least she isn’t perceived as wonderful.

Awards,
especially those that
can be traced to the manufacturer,
are popularity contests.

And they should be.
By choosing the product (book),
the committee/judges/whoever
are choosing the manufacturer (author) to represent that award.
Until the next recipient is chosen,
they will be working closely with that manufacturer.

I don’t enter any awards
the judges don’t want me to win.
I don’t enter an award
that, in the past,
has only been given to large press authors
no matter how good my small press book is.

I campaign during awards season
to prove to judges
that I CAN represent them properly.

And when I’m given an award
or even a nomination,
I represent that award.

Can Only Women Market To Women?

I was once on a development team
for a product
targeting men in their early 20’s.
I was the only woman.
I knew I was at a disadvantage
so I researched my ass off,
ensuring that I was locked down
on that demographic.

Turns out,
that disadvantage was an advantage.

My male coworkers approached the launch
with a
‘I’m male, if I like it then our target will like it’
attitude.
The thing is…
they weren’t the demographic.
They were older.
They were better educated.
They weren’t ‘average.’

I ended up challenging their perceptions.

That’s why when I hear
‘only women should market to women’,
I groan.
A man with no personal bias,
relying on research and study,
can out market a lazy female marketer any day.

Don’t assume you know all about your target market
just because you’re the same gender.

To: CC: BCC:

Having recently received an email,
addressed to one ‘influential’ blogger
and cc’ing the rest of us,
I thought I’d review e-mail sending etiquette.

To:
is used for the recipient you are writing the email for.
If my name is in the To: section,
I know I’m supposed to take action,
even if that action is to send back an LOL
to your hilarious joke email.

CC:
is for information only recipients.
That recipient may be responsible for tasks
but you’ve already contacted them
about their parts.
If the entire email is informational,
the To: recipients are considered more important
than the CC: recipients.

That’s what went wrong in this email.
The blogger in the To: field was seen as more important
and the CC: field bloggers got insulted.

BCC:
This field can come back to bite you on the ass.
Usually recipients in the BCC: field
will receive the email as though they were To: recipients.
This is great for mass mailings
and for other delicate address lists
where you don’t want recipients
to see everyone’s email addresses.
I use BCC: ONLY if there is no connection
between the recipients.
That is, the recipients aren’t going to talk to each other
about my email.

THIS is the field that should have been used
in the blogger contact email.

I’ve never used BCC: in an office situation
(other than to BCC: myself so I have a copy).
Folks that use BCC: get well deserved reputations
for being sneaky bastards.
You don’t know who the hell is included
in the conversations.
Once someone uses a BCC: on me,
that’s the end of trust
AND I assume everyone
is getting a copy of my emails.

But that said…
I assume everyone ALWAYS gets a copy of my emails.
Emails are forever.

The CEO’s ONLY Job

When companies do bad things,
the media usually focuses on
‘did the CEO know?’

I don’t give a shit
if the CEO knew.

I guarantee that
the CEO didn’t know everything.
Why would he?
That wasn’t his job.

His job, his only job,
was to build an environment.
The environment he built
allowed the bad thing to happen.
He was responsible.
He should pay the price.
End of story.

As a leader,
how much time do you devote
to purposefully crafting your company’s environment?

Art Petty has an insightful list
of other concepts leaders should know.

The Tough To Say Brand Name

Rapper Wale is very vocal
about ensuring his name is pronounced correctly.
It is Wahh-lay, not Whale.

Good luck with that.

Brands today grow by word of mouth.
That means fans need to remember the word
AND get it out of their mouths.
No one is going to risk
looking like an idiot
by repeating a name or brand
they may be mispronouncing.

Wale is a made up name.
The rapper has a choice.
He can accept the average person’s pronunciation
of his made up name
or
he can fight it
and slow the spread of his brand.

Looks like he is choosing the latter.

BTW…
Kimber Chin is also a made up name.
It is a part of my very complicated
and often mispronounced real name.
Readers remember my brand name.
I have uncles who can’t remember my real name.