I continually get asked “what books should I read if I want to get up to speed on marketing and social today?”

So, thought it would be worthwhile to share the Never Stop Marketing Recommended Reading list again.

Hope you find it useful.

So, what’s the best marketing advice you’ve ever received?

I chime in my thoughts in this Digiday article.

It’s been a while since a post generated this much response as the “Was I too harsh?” one from the other day.

Good news is that most people thought I wasn’t.

Here are some of the responses.

• Edith said “Both”
• Derek’s long comment, summed up as “You did the right thing.”
• Marc Sanders:
  not harsh at all.  In fact, I bet he’ll appreciate the fact that you gave him an opportunity to revise his approach, and that you were specific with your feedback
• Mary Kramer:
  Not too harsh! Truthful and precise as always. Love you & I balance lesson- will use!
• Tom Siegman:
  -Super generous response.

But I had to hand it to Maxine who went after my ego as the motivating force for the post.

I don't usually respond to your mails but this one made me think you just wanted praise for being so clever...
It reminded me of my husband :)

I have 2 daughters (18 and 15) who would have asked advice in writing such an email. If you do not work in a hard nosed industry and your parents are 'nice' people then you probably do not get the advice you need to make your email stand out. Wait until your kids are sending out emails like this.. and receiving replies.. :) Anyway, its nice you took the time to reply to this person.

Some days I think Chris Brogan knows what he is talking about. Some days I think he’s an idiot.

I’m sure readers of mine feel the same way about me at times.

Still, his post the other day that he was quitting LinkedIn has been on my mind.

While I’m not prepared to quit the service myself (and there are those who think that Brogan was off base entirely to begin with), it did make me ask the question of how I use it (here’s my profile).

Perhaps better, to define how each of the social networks/tools play a role. In there, I think, lies some possible answers to some lingering social network questions.

• Facebook-when I’m there, I’m not thinking business. I’m thinking, “what are my friends doing and what are the people I am interested in building a personal relationship all about?”
• Twitter-for me, it’s for breaking news, to “take the pulse” of common events (Super Bowl, debates, etc.), but mostly to get content from people I really trust as it relates to my interests.
• Google +-Still learning to appreciate this network, but it’s for deeper conversations around the kinds of things I find on Twitter.
• Blogs—In depth reading from those people I know and trust.

So where does that leave LinkedIn?

1. an extension of my database so that I can answer the question of “who do you know in City who does Profession?”
2. when I am referred to someone, I use it to check out their profile. Do they have recommendations? A good narrative? Do we know people in common?

And, well, that’s it.

I even turned off notifications of invites, etc. so I only go 1-2 times per week.

It just made me wonder if my experience is typical or not and, if it is, what does this mean for LinkedIn?

I received the following note today. Read this and my response. Then, weigh in. Was I harsh or did I do the young man a favor?

Dear Mr. Epstein,

My name is _____ , and I have just completed my second year at ______ University. I'm now back in Maryland with my family for the summer, and last week I was fortunate to have been able to speak with Mr. _____ at length about his work at _______.

I was fascinated by his explanations of how he utilizes strategic marketing to exploit environmental markets, and he was kind enough to educate me about the marketing industry in general, and how best to pursue a career in it. He heavily recommended that I speak to you about the possibility of obtaining an internship at Sprinklr, and about the marketing industry in general as well.

I did some reading about how Sprinklr's dynamic SIREn platform aids businesses to manage multiple social media channels in a scalable way, and I am highly interested in learning what it is Sprinklr does in detail, and about what it is that you do for them.

I'm also hoping to discover if there are any potential internships at Sprinklr that would fit my skill set and interests, but just by reading your NeverStopMarketing blog and about Sprinklr, I'm certain that the opportunity to speak with you in person would be highly beneficial for the development of my interests and career path. I'm available to meet whenever is convenient for you, and if you prefer to contact me by phone my number is xxx-xxx-xxxx. I look forward to hearing from you, and hope that you will have the time to talk, but I completely understand if time constraints render that an impossibility.
Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
xxxxx

Here’s what I wrote in response.

XXX,

Thanks for writing. Appreciate you reaching out.

Your first marketing lesson, whether you intern for Sprinklr/me or not, is something called the "You/I" test.

You should look at your writing and ask yourself: which is used more frequently? "You" or "I/We".  If "you" doesn't win, you should start over.

The second lesson is "relevance."  You wrote a nice email, but your key point is "anything that fits my skill set."  However, you didn't provide any insight as to what, exactly, your skill set is. Nor any URLs for me to investigate, so I have no idea what the answer to the question is.

Now, you have a choice. You can be disheartened by this email and wonder how I can be so harsh and say, "I don't want to work for this jerk," in which case, we both move on.

Or, you can say, "what a great learning opportunity" and come back with an email that shows some real potential as a marketer.

Jeremy

One thing that I struggle with is the degree to which you should think about your competition.

Obviously, you don’t want to ignore them entirely because your customers and prospects are having their perceptions shaped by what they hear in the marketplace and being oblivious to what competitors say is foolhardy.

On the other hand, being obsessive about every move that a competitor makes can be as well.

In Different (still the best book marketing book I’ve ever read-review here, Amazon link here), Youngme Moon stresses the point  that benchmarking yourself against the competition becomes a race to “me-too” land (my words, not hers) which ultimately will dilute your core differentiators.

As she writes:

“The minute we choose to measure something, we are essentially choosing to aspire to it. A metric, in other words, creates a pointer in a particular direction. And once the pointer is created, it is only a matter of time before competitors herd in the direction of that pointer.”

I suspect the answer is similar to the way that great athletes and teams approach their games. They certainly know what their competition is capable of, but you’ll hear them say, “if we just focus on playing our game, we’ll be fine.”

Focus on your game, not on the game of your competition.

Unfortunately, the other day, I had to attend a funeral.

It was a very emotional event, but in a moment of techno-marketing clarity, I looked around and noticed something.

In pretty much every lifecycle event you attend these days, there are a number of people holding up their smartphones and video cameras.

A funeral, however, doesn’t seem to have that. I think people feel awkward about that.

The thing is…the raw emotion of the funeral NEEDS to be captured on video.

Tells me that there’s a business opportunity there…how to do it in a sensitive way.

But, I really walked away thinking bigger than that.

What it tells me is that we have to be open to how technology change paradigms, how pre-existing notions of what should or should not happen need to be re-examined, and that by starting to ask questions like “what if this entire thing happened on Facebook? YouTube?, etc.”

How would that change the experience..be it an event, a meeting, etc.

In there are plenty of opportunities for revenue and social connectivity.

It’s not about “how do we fit social into our activities?” it’s about “the activity will leverage social…now how will that happen?”

All fueled by coffee.

Sorry, just had to share this one.

 

Java drinkers live longer…

One of the toughest parts of marketing is remembering that it’s not about what you or I think, it’s about what the customer thinks.

Actually, thinking is the wrong word. It’s about perception.

In their classic book, Marketing Warfare, Ries and Trout talk about how the end game of marketing is to own a “piece of real estate” in the mind of your customer. And that piece of real estate is shaped by perception and psychology.

There are so many things that go into it, as we have discussed. Look, feel, experience. All of things play a role.

Today, I saw a typo in a tweet that went out. It wasn’t really that big a deal, but I pinged the Community Manager and said, “hey, just be aware, people make snap judgments about us for all kinds of reasons.”

If it’s a calculated risk to be remarkable, that’s fine. Otherwise, try to avoid it.

This post was stimulated by a fantastic talk by Rory Sutherland. I recommend you watch it.

 

I’ve become a huge fan of the new AMC series “The Pitch.”

It’s like watching sports, but the game is business. Even the losing team wins because it shows the “behind the scenes” of how each agency approaches their creative process and you see how hard they work (which is why people are willing to go on, I would bet.)

Still, there were a few things about the show that were bothering me.

Flipping through my Twitter stream the other day, I saw from Ariel Dos Santos that I wasn’t alone.

Proud I finally picked the winning concept on #thepitch. Social business principles seem to be missing though. Need more than ads.

— Ariel Dos Santos (@agds) May 8, 2012

While the ideas that they come up with are (sometimes) exciting and inspiring, they are decidedly one-way in their approach.

The anchoring concept seems to be “the commercial,” something I find doubly ironic since the people who are creating/doing most of the work are the so-called “Digital Natives” on each team who are, I would bet, barley watching commercials at all.

In fact, I have watched all the shows on DVR (shout out to my Windows Media Center) and haven’t watched a single commercial in 3 episodes-(I’m a bit behind-as I think it’s up to 4 now.).  In other words, the creative process of making the commercial is actually more interesting to me than all of the commercials in the show itself).

I suppose this is the ultimate nod to the power of “Content Marketing” and “Brand Journalism” in today’s world of fragmented audiences and tools allowing us to block out interruptions of all kind.

And that is one of the things, I believe, to which Ariel was referring.

1. Be a Storyteller
   Instead of a commercial, which is about interruption, tell a story that gets people involved in your brand. In a social world, as Sprinklr sees it, this is the function of the Content Manager.
2. Community-Source Ideas
   Recognize that good ideas can come from anywhere. This is one of the key roles of the Community Manager which we at Sprinklr see as not just a moderator, but someone who can find good stories for re-purposing (and why we give them the tools to identify and route these ideas all over the org).
   Now, I will say that the leveraging of Mac Lethal by the McKinney team (episode 1) was a good example of this, but it was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of possibilities and finding that “big idea.”
3. Start the Conversation
   Why not use the print or TV to drive people to social properties where their preferences and interests could be further explored? Or, even better, where they could (for free) amplify idea that the brand began? With the exception of one funky mobile play, I haven’t seen much of that. In Sprinklr’s mind, this is where the Subject Matter Expert and the Social Strategist MUST be integrated and coordinated in any/all campaign planning. Otherwise, you are leaving a lot of potential Social activity on the table. Big miss. What’s more, there are not thinking multi-channel here…so many different ways to extend the campaign via social and engage the community.
4. It’s More than Marketing
   Once upon a time, marketing was its own siloed function. Not anymore. Now, any campaign that you start is going to have social ramifications (whether you plan for them or not). Customers will tweet/post/video about the brand and it could impact HR, PR, Customer Service (which is why we have specific focus areas on these) well beyond marketing. None of those folks seems to be in the room with the VP/Marketing and his/her team. They need to be. In our mind, this is critical to doing Social@Scale (which is what all of these brands will be doing when they launch these campaigns. The only question is whether they will be doing it well or not.)
5. Metrics and Governance
   We’re definitely not seeing much talk about measurement of the campaigns. What’s more, we’re not seeing much from the agencies about how they will help the brands speak with one voice when the campaign goes beyond their one-way broadcast approach. You need an Escalation plan and you need a corporate-wide system of reporting so that the can measure the impact of the effort (when it does spill over into social) in terms that relate back to the business.

Maybe I am asking too much for a 1 hour reality show that is already really good. I just think that there’s a danger here, which is that agencies and brands will default to playing to their strengths of broadcast and not continue to drive social business principles into every single corner of their communications efforts.