The Brainzooming Group

It’s always very rewarding when people appreciate Brainzooming blog content and find value from applying our strategy, creativity, and innovation ideas in their careers. It’s especially fun when there’s an opportunity to extend the Brainzooming message into new venues in collaboration with others.

Today, we’re highlighting two people who’ve been particularly kind in their appreciation for our content and in featuring Brainzooming content through their own social media presences.

Join Us and Let’s Talk Live on the WiseTalk Teleconference, May 30

Sue Bethanis, Founder and CEO of Mariposa Leadership, has been a recent, much appreciated retweeter of Brainzooming content. While Sue is newer to Twitter, she’s been hosting the monthly WiseTalk Leadership Forum since 2004 when she published her book, Leadership Chronicles of a Corporate Sage: Five Keys to Becoming a More Effective Leader.

One interesting wrinkle to WiseTalk is since it’s a live teleconference (before becoming an archived recording), listeners can ask live questions via phone and email.

This opportunity to converse and shape the content to the live audience’s interests is just one reason why I’m looking forward to being a guest on the hour-long 99^th episode of WiseTalk on Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 2 pm EDT. Sue and I will be talking about the Brainzooming approach to strategic and creative thinking, plus anything else you want to talk about specifically!

Since it’s too infrequent that I get to talk live with Brainzooming readers, I’d love to take the opportunity to do so during WiseTalk. Plus if it’s a really great show with lots of call-in questions, maybe we’ll make the greatest hits 100^th episode!

Register Today for WiseTalk and Let’s Talk Live!

How do you join in to help shape our May 30^th WiseTalk conversation?

Register for the May 30 WiseTalk teleconference right away on the Mariposa Leadership website to get your dial-in information.

Check out Stephen Lahey and the Small Business Talent Podcast

Stephen Lahey, a great phone and social media friend, is the self-proclaimed #1 Brainzooming fan! Stephen is the successful leader of Lahey Consulting, a search firm and HR consultancy he founded in 2000, with a focus on marketing recruitment and retention.

Additionally, earlier this year Stephen introduced SmallBusinessTalent.com® to help business people take advantage of their “knowledge and talent to attract more ideal clients.” Among the free resources Stephen offers on Small Business Talent is a weekly half-hour podcast providing in-depth information small business people can directly benefit from in the varied roles they play.

I was honored to be the first guest on the Small Business Talent podcast when it debuted in January 2013. Stephen and I talked about how blogging, social media, and content marketing specifically apply for small businesses, including how it fits into The Brainzooming Group business strategy. You can listen to the kick-off podcast here or on SmallBusinessTalent.com®, along with all the fantastic guests Stephen has interviewed.

Stephen has made quite an impact in such a short time with the podcast. In talking with Stephen, he has some very exciting, big name authors coming up in the near future. Additionally, we’ve talked about doing another podcast soon to dive deeper into content marketing strategy for small business. To get the first word on when that’s scheduled along with updates on Stephen’s other weekly guests, sign up for Stephen’s email list today!

What’s Next?

We have several other public appearances coming up in July, including a live, in-depth webinar on strategic thinking and a  social media workshop in Boston. More on those later, but in the meantime, let’s talk May 30! – Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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If you follow the @Brainzooming account on Twitter when I’m live tweeting a luncheon with someone incredibly tweetable, don’t be surprised to be inundated with forty or fifty tweets (sorry!).

That’s exactly what happened when Alex Knapp, Social Media Editor and staff writer at Forbes, headlined this month’s Social Media Club of Kansas City lunch talking about the intersection of publishing and social media strategy.

For those who don’t follow @Brainzooming on Twitter, here via reformatted tweets and paraquotes, are just a few of the social media strategy insights Alex Knapp shared.

Mistakes Publishers (and others) Make with Social Media Strategy

According to Knapp, the biggest mistake publishers make is thinking there is something new in social media. Publishing changes based on the platform, and the only thing that changes over time is the type of content you put on each one. The challenge (and opportunity) with social media is that it is communicating, engagement, and marketing all at once.

Social Media Talents

Social media requires multiple abilities from someone in a short time in a small space. Many publishers (and other types of companies) make the mistake of picking people with only one talent who then struggle. Among the many skills needed to be great at social media, headline writing is THE social media skill.

Alex Knapp proposed a thought experiment: You have two people, one of whom you can hire to do social media for a publication. Do you pick someone who is early in a business career and all over Twitter or someone more senior with lots of work experience and no clue about Twitter? Knapp advises picking the more experienced person since it’s possible to train someone on Twitter in an hour. Training someone who understands social media to write well, think better, and market more effectively? Well, that takes considerably longer than an hour.

Not Every Social Network Should Have identical Same Content

When it comes to taking the best advantage of varied content across channels, Knapp pointed out a great example from the world of publishing to illustrate his point: The New York Times wouldn’t run an arts story on the sports page unless it had a very specific sports angle. Given that, why would an organization run the exact same story at the exact same time on very different social media platforms?

Similar to how we covered Mall of America featuring different content by social network, Knapp shared that at Forbes, Google+ is for tech news, LinkedIn is for startup news, and there are twelve different topic-oriented Twitter feeds, some of which have come and gone over time based on what’s working. Ultimately the goal for each platform (which may have much larger readership than a publication’s paid subscriber base) shapes how a brand approaches it.

When faced with too many social media options and not enough time to go around, Knapp recommends to start where a brand has its biggest audience and focus there. He also advises against the common idea of not putting resources toward social media because it’s free. He asked why a brand WOULDN’T want to put resources toward something that was free and worked vs. paying money for marketing efforts that cost a lot and are difficult to track.

Social Media Strategy Fundamentals

• Social media is the industrialization of word of mouth, so it’s vital to make sure social content is easily shared.
• If you have great content that’s working, run it again, adding variety to how you feature it. He suggested pulling out a quote (because people love quotes), trying an alternative headline, or featuring a specific item from a longer list.
• Invite and reward engagement with personalities, content, and readers themselves (i.e., readers whose content and comments are featured will turn around and share it with others). It’s vital to show you are listening to social media exchanges and are able to engage your audience.
• Data from multiple sources helps determine the effectiveness of social media efforts. Social data sources may disagree, so you have to compare and contrast them. Knapp points out that Google Analytics doesn’t provide accurate information on Facebook traffic.
• Run analyses as often as possible (or as makes sense), measuring to the extent the results will drive change in what you are doing. While you’re measuring, look beyond the top clicks and shares. If you avoid going deeper or looking at alternative views, you’ll miss other valuable insights.
• Don’t get caught up in your own preferences. If readers love something you do, even if you hate it, keep doing it anyway.

Social Media at Forbes

There is a 3-person core social media team at Forbes. Their efforts are complemented by many, many freelance bloggers who are paid (very well according to Alex) based on the hits on their blog posts. (Hey, Alex, where do I apply?)  - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I was writing a story for The Social Media Monthly magazine recently on the Mall of America and its social media strategy. In the course of interviewing Mall of America Senior Public Relations and Social Media Manager, Bridget Jewell, she discussed how the Mall introduced each of its social media presences based on a specific opportunity or seasonal campaign. Instead of immediately hopping on every new social network right away, MOA creates a presence when there’s a clear business reason to do so.

Not surprisingly then, as Bridget reviewed the content strategies and specific content media shared by channel, each had a different purpose. While its multiple social media presences are brand consistent and integrated, the Mall of America Twitter and Facebook sites are used differently (i.e., not simply sharing the same links), and Instagram isn’t simply for sharing photos from MOA YouTube videos.

Can you answer these 5 social media strategy questions as well as Mall of America can?

Taking a cue from the smart social media strategy at MOA, here are five questions any organization should ask about its own social media content strategy:

1. In what ways is our content well-suited to the specific social media network and our current and prospective users on each of them?
2. How is our content across the channels integrated and collectively representative of our brand?
3. How does our social media content vary across our different platforms?
4. What is included in our social media content to move the audience toward progressively beneficial behaviors for our organization?
5. What do we incorporate into our social media content that makes it worth remembering, sharing with others, and returning to in the future?

All five are very rich strategic questions. That means you need to be able to provide strategically rich answers.

Need some ideas for your social media strategy?

If you want to go to school on an organization doing it right to get a sense of how these questions should be answered, check out the varied social media presences for MOA. You’ll learn a lot – trust me. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Yesterday’s Brainzooming blog post was about 7 easy ways to get one or two more blog posts weekly by improving your social media productivity. Today’s post takes it one step further to answer a question that came up with Max Utsler’s Blogapalooza group last week: How do you keep yourself and your blog content fresh when you are blogging daily?

7 Keys to Keeping Your Blog Content Fresh when You Are Blogging Daily

With the limited time to answer during the class, here is a more in-depth answer on 7 things it takes to keep blogging daily:

1. Self-discipline

There has to be a reason your daily publishing deadline is meaningful and motivating. The answer will vary by blogger. For me, making a public commitment  years ago to blog daily has been the ongoing personal motivator to keep producing daily content.

2. Developing more blog topic ideas than you need

You always want to have choices when it comes to the blog you plan to publish. When you have multiple blog post possibilities, you can select the best option from among a few topics instead of being in the position of having to run the only blog you have close to being done.

3. Improving your communication skills all the time

If you’re signing yourself up for daily blogging, you need to be getting better and faster at producing and publishing content all the time. If you stand still or go backward in the effectiveness and efficiency of your communication techniques, you’re doomed.

4. An audience that cares

Even if it’s only a few people, you need to feel (or better yet, know) somebody will notice whether or not you publish a blog post on any given day. That’s why I so appreciate those of you who have reached out over the years to say you look forward to reading the Brainzooming blog daily. That’s huge information for any daily blogger you enjoy to know.

5. Flexibility in some way, shape, or form

If your publishing commitment is going to be unwavering, something else has to be able to waver in your life if need be. Making any type of daily commitment is about both discipline AND compromise. Make sure you know where you can compromise when you need to in order to sustain a daily blogging schedule.

6. Comfort with brevity and incompleteness

When you’re producing daily content, you aren’t going to want to write a novel or shoot a feature length video blog post every day. That means you have to be comfortable with and good at editing liberally, leaving things out, and revising and tweaking what you publish later.

7. Tools to make you better than you otherwise would be

There are many moving parts behind a blog. It’s not just writing or shooting a video. It also involves editing, making SEO adjustments, creating graphics, scheduling posts, and social sharing, to name a few activities you’ll be doing. Tools that are both effective and work well with your style are vital to blogging. daily.

That’s my formula for keeping blog content fresh when blogging daily

I hope you agree our content here is fresh! And if you’re doing a daily blog, what is your formula for doing it successfully?  - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Photo by: Bastografie | Source: Photocase.com

There is value in increased web traffic and brand reputation from being more frequent and consistent with business blogging. But achieving a multiple times per week business blogging schedule can be a challenge when an organization does not have enough people to handle everything it needs to get done.

In those cases, it is beneficial to consider easy ways to enhance your social media productivity by taking advantage of normal business activities to create one more easy post weekly.

Seven Ways to Enhance Your Business Blogging and Social Media Productivity

A key to improving your social media productivity with business blogging is to tie the extra weekly blog posts to typical weekly business activities you (or your organization) are doing any way. Here are seven ways to take advantage of your:

1. Online Reading – Create a compilation blog post featuring links to valuable articles you read in the past week.
2. Tweeting – Put together a post with ten of your most pithy tweets (or use Facebook or Google+ status updates instead).
3. Customer Service Calls – Feature a customer service question of the week along with the answer.
4. Email Inbox – Summarize the most intriguing upcoming webinars and conferences related to your industry that you’ve been invited to this week.
5. Web Analytics – Create a compilation post listing previous blog posts receiving the most recent visits related to specific keywords of interest.
6. Sales Calls – By using a three- or five-question set of guest blog interview questions, feature a written or video interview with a client or business partner of interest to your readers.
7. Business Conversations – Share insights and industry commentary from discussions you’ve had with business associates and clients.

Through these ideas, it is possible to create an easy one or two additional blog posts weekly. If you’re better with video or images than writing, there are even more possibilities. This boost to your social media productivity can move our business blogging from one post weekly to a consistent multiple times per week blogging frequency. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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During a conversation with a business owner on the advantages of content marketing, he asked why he’d want to continue paying to educate somebody who decided to go with another provider other than his company.

My quick response during our conversation was to ask whether potential clients his company didn’t win ever come back after being frustrated with their initial choices. He said they did. If the client opportunity was significant in the first place, that’s reason enough to keep using content marketing to maintain contact and educate even those who aren’t doing business with you right now.

11 Reasons to Use Content Marketing to Educate Non-Customers

Unfortunately, the business owner didn’t select us to develop and implement his social media strategy. But demonstrating that we do what we recommend, here’s a more in-depth answer to his question.

Using content marketing to educate non-customers allows your organization to:

1. Help maintain and build targeted awareness.
2. Demonstrate new thinking and capabilities as you develop them.
3. Stay top-of-mind for when the new wears off with the new provider.
4. Keep filling apparent gaps that still exist in the case you made to use your products or services.
5. Maintain contact with only a small incremental investment in effort, time, and cost when you are already engaged in content marketing.
6. Have a reason and a means to contact them in the future for something other than a check-in sales call.
7. Build relationships with additional influencers and decision makers involved in future sales opportunities.
8. Be in the potential consideration set in case they know other organizations / people who may be nearer-term prospects.
9. Add value to the relationship outside business transactions.
10. Raise ongoing issues they may be experiencing currently that you have solved for other customers.
11. Keep the door open to uncovering new opportunities matching your current or new capabilities.

Beyond this blog post, I’ve forwarded the business owner who inspired it a Content Marketing Institute article to address some of his questions and our white paper on social media ROI metrics. In our initial presentation, we also shared our own case study and strategy assessment of where his organization had clear social media opportunities.

How are you staying in touch with prospects or customers who’ve passed you over previously?

Are there other benefits you see to educating non-customers? And how are you doing it successfully?

Will our content marketing and education pay off with this potential client? Only time will tell, but if nothing else, it’s made us smarter on laying out a solid business case for successful business-to-business content marketing, so we’re already ahead of where we were! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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For more on World Creativity and Innovation Week, visit http://toronto.wciw.org/

This World Creativity and Innovation Week, I’ve been thinking about the people I most cherish for their creative help, advice, and prodding over the years. They are a diverse and eclectic group!

21 Talents and Creative Thinking Skills Among My Creative Friends

Here are twenty-one talents and creative thinking skills I cherish among creative friends and team members:

1. A sense of humor
2. A strong listener
3. Active on social media so it’s easier to reach them
4. Open to having impromptu time to talk
5. Will challenge my thinking or perspectives in a constructive way
6. Have different interests in life than I do
7. Think in intriguing ways
8. They are confident in their opinions
9. Know lots of things I don’t have a clue about
10. Express themselves well in varied ways
11. Honesty
12. React to ideas in predictable ways
13. Have a positive attitude
14. Are encouraging to others
15. Can work together well with each other to create and strengthen ideas
16. Have an appreciation for spirituality
17. Both encourage and are willing to try new things
18. We have complementary strengths and weaknesses
19. They share and teach what they know
20. They push me to be better than I am now
21. They know intriguing people

What talents and creative thinking skills do you cherish in your creative friends?

Do they know how much you cherish them? If not, maybe it’s time to thank them during World Innovation and Creativity Week!  – Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you improve your creative thinking skills and generate fantastic ideas! To boost your organization’s innovation success, contact TheBrainzooming Group to help you rapidly expand strategic options and create strong implementation plans. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ll deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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