Business

On July 27th at 7:00 pm Wolfstar is hosting a Mashable Meetup in Leeds.

July 27th is Mashable’s, the top social media website, fifth birthday. What better day to plan a social media meetup? Cities all around the world will be hosting similar meetups.

We would like to use the event to meet those in the industry and also to allow individuals to showcase anything they want about social media in the Leeds area.

For example, attendees can use their 60 seconds to talk about their own blog, how their business uses Twitter or, if they work in social media, what their agency is up to.

Guests will then have a chance to vote on the most intriguing presentation and allow one individual to have a bit more than 60-seconds to tell us more about their topic and lead a discussion.

The event will be held at The Study in The Living Room and there will a bar for guests to buy drinks.

Hopefully, this event will lead to regular meetups in the Leeds area and provide an excellent way for those in the social media industry to network and learn from each other.

We will use the Mashable Meetup page as the official guest list, so please sign up on the site. If you have any questions contact Phylecia on Twitter or email her at phylecias@wolfstarconsultancy.com. Also, if you would like to present, please email your name, company and topic by Monday evening (26th).

A mass marketer needs to reach the masses, and to do it in many ways, simultaneously. The mass marketer needs retail outlets and fliers and a website and public relations and tv ads and more more more and then... bam...... Seth Godin

A mass marketer needs to reach the masses, and to do it in many ways, simultaneously. The mass marketer needs retail outlets and fliers and a website and public relations and tv ads and more more more and then... bam... critical mass is reached and success occurs.

Best Buy is a mass marketer, but so are Microsoft and the Red Cross. Ubiquity, once achieved, brings them revenue, which advances the cycle and they reach scale.

The direct marketer, on the other hand, must get it right in the small. That pitch letter can be tested on 100 houses and if it gets a 2% response rate, then it can be mailed to 100,000 houses with confidence. That business-to-business sales pitch can be honed on one or two or three prospects, and then when it works, can be taught to dozens or hundreds of other salespeople.

The key distinction is when you know it's going to work. The mass marketer doesn't know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning.

The mass marketer is betting on thousands of tiny cues, little clues, and unrecorded (but vital) conversations. The direct marketer is measuring conversion rates from the first day.

That's the reason we often default to acting like mass marketers. We're putting off the day of reckoning, betting on the miracle around the corner, spending our time and energy on the early steps without the downside of admitting failure to the boss.

Of course, just because it's our default doesn't mean it's right. Business to business marketing is almost always better if you treat it like direct marketing. Most websites that do conversion as well. Same with non-profit fundraising. As well as marketing goods and services to the bottom of the pyramid, people who live in villages where mass media and mass distribution are difficult and have little impact.

Get it right for ten people before you rush around scaling up to a thousand. It's far less romantic than spending money at the start, but it's the reliable, proven way to get to scale if you care enough to do the work.

It looks like The Times is paying a price for Rupert’s decision to take all online content behind a paywall. Figures sneakily (although I like their style!) produced by the Guardian via Hitwise show that they’ve lost 90% of their traffic since they started asking for payment for their work.

I’m guessing News International was expecting a big drop-off but who knows whether they thought it would be so dramatic? I’d caution against rushing to blow raspberries at the mean spirited anti-sharing capitalists. It’s true that the web is such a beautiful thing because of the ability to find exactly the right information for whatever you are looking for and the paywall idea puts a Murdoch-shaped spanner into those free-moving cogs.

BUT we are still in a new frontier and ways of working are still developing. The one thing that is certain is that mainstream media brands have a massive part to play in the information economy and it has to be economical to produce said information.

The mass media has been terrible at innovating in the past twenty years or so. The only competition has been price-cutting, funded by cost-cutting, which means gaps appear in the ability to produce quality information. It’s covered up by using more agency copy, more aggressive headlines, deals with celebrities etc. but people spot declining standards. Less people consume mainstream media and those that still do under value it or trust it less than they have in days gone by.

The paywall is experimental and it can only work by understanding deeply what your audience wants and giving them content that makes them part with cash, content that isn’t just what they can get elsewhere but with a better headline or more sophisticated SEO. They have to build loyalty, investigate more, tell us things we don’t know and actually want to know and create more interactivity within their stories.

TheTimesOnline has got some real innovators working away in there; Tom Whitwell, Joanna Geary, Lucia Adams et al. There’s lots of other innovation going on elsewhere – the Guardian releasing its API and experimenting with micro-news, and it’s nice to see Ilicco Elia of Reuters recognised for some fascinating work he’s doing to deliver news in different formats to niche audiences.

I’m not saying that the paywall is the answer but I’m excited to see someone trying.

Word of mouth is generated by surprise and delight (or anger). This is a function of the difference between what you promise and what you deliver (see clever MBA chart to the right--->). The thing is, if you promise very... Seth Godin

Word of mouth is generated by surprise and delight (or anger). This is a function of the difference between what you promise and what you deliver (see clever MBA chart to the right--->).

The thing is, if you promise very little, you don't get a chance to deliver because I'll ignore you. And if you promise too much, you don't get a chance to deliver, because I won't believe you...

Hence the paradox. The more you promise, the less likely you are to achieve delight and the less likely you are to earn the trust to get the gig in the first place. Salespeople often want you to allow them to overpromise, because it gets them through the RFP. Marketers, if they're smart, will push you (the CEO) to underpromise, since that's where the word of mouth is going to come from.

I have worked with someone who is very good at the promising part. She enjoys it. And when the promises don't work out, she's always ready with the perfect excuse. This is a great strategy if you have a regular job and the excuses are really terrific, but if you need internal or external clients, it gets old pretty fast. It certainly doesn't lead to the sort of word of mouth one is eager to encounter.

Surgeons have this problem all the time. They promise a complete, pain-free recovery and work hard to build up a positive expectation, particularly for elective surgery. And the entire time you're in bed, in pain, unable to pee, all you can do is hate on the doctor.

This is one reason why recovering from failure is such a great opportunity. If you or your organization fail and then you pull out all the stops to recover or make good, the expectation/delivery gap is huge. You don't win because you did a good job, you win because you so dramatically exceeded expectations.

Click to listen

or Download mp3

In May, I did a talk for the Independent Book Publishers (site). The link above gives you a free and slightly abridged recording of the talk, probably of interest if you are focused on how industries are making (or not)  the shift to the new rules of a digital age.

Click to listen or Download mp3 In May, I did a talk for the Independent Book Publishers (site). The link above gives you a free and slightly abridged recording of the talk, probably of interest if you are focused on... Seth Godin

Well it’s my sixth week at Wolfstar, (excluding my hen week in Glastonbury) and blimey have I had my eyes opened to a whole new world!

Before I joined Wolfstar I had been working at Morrisons Supermarket where I had been for the past 10 years, in a variety of roles in their PR department. I had never engaged in social media before I joined the team here, other than social networking with friends on Facebook. However, my bezzie Amy Johnston had been working for Wolfstar for over a year and a half and I was always interested to hear about her days at work and what she had been working on.

Lucky for me, Tim Sinclair, Stuart Bruce and Mark Hanson all took a chance on me and I now find myself sat here writing my first blog post!

Everything here is brand new to me and I have had to get to grips with loads of new stuff, even the basics. None of my colleagues know this (but they will now) but I had to Google SMNR when I first got here as I had no idea what it stood for!

There is so much to learn, not only the terminology, but the reams and reams of information that there is to take in; RRS feeds, Tweetdeck, Delicious, Wordpress, Mailchimp, Yammer, Skype, the list goes on and on. You may be thinking “She had to learn about Skype, what an idiot!!” But if you have never used it before, you never used it, simple as!

One of the things I have learnt is that you can become overwhelmed with information and the best thing to do is to find the channels that are right for you. I have found that following the right people on Twitter is a great help. At first, every tweet I was reading I was thinking “I haven’t got a clue what these people are talking about”, but this prompted me to go off and find out what they were talking about. RRS feeds are also a mine field, I was linking up to everything and anything and then panicking at all the information there was to take in, but I think with feeds start with just a couple and add only the ones you find really useful.

As a newbie to all of this, I am obviously by no means an expert (I will probably look back on this blog post in a year and cringe), but for people who are new to social media and media relations here’s my little top ten of useful hints and tips to get you started:

1. Follow the right people on Twitter. You can manage the information and learn a lot.

2. Sign up to TweetDeck, it helps you sort all your tweets easily.

3. Find a blogger who talks about things you understand, don’t just follow every blogger out there, or the ones with the biggest influence.

4. Sign up to Mashable, I think it’s brilliant.

5. Set up a RSS feed to keep track of up to date news, I can recommend xFRUITS.

6. Look at companies who are doing social media well, for example I like what Soap & Glory are doing.

7. Learn how to use live writer or similar. (I am sure I will have fun, trying to set this blog post live)

8. Ask questions offline and online, my new colleagues have been a power of information and help.

9. Look at previous case studies of good work – WOMMA

10. Don’t panic about all the stuff out there! Relax and have fun finding your way.

Thank you for reading my very first blog post, and if you have any hints and tips to help me on my way to becoming a social media guru, please drop me a line, I look forward to hearing from you.

What story do you tell yourself about yourself? I know that marketers tell stories. We tell them to clients, prospects, bosses, suppliers, partners and voters. If the stories resonate and spread and seduce, then we succeed. But what about the... Seth Godin

What story do you tell yourself about yourself?

I know that marketers tell stories. We tell them to clients, prospects, bosses, suppliers, partners and voters. If the stories resonate and spread and seduce, then we succeed.

But what about the story you tell yourself?

Do you have an elevator pitch that reminds you that you're a struggling fraud, certain to be caught and destined to fail? Are you marketing a perspective and an attitude of generosity? When you talk to yourself, what do you say? Is anyone listening?

You've learned through experience that frequency works. That minds can be changed. That powerful stories have impact.

I guess, then, the challenge is to use those very same tools on yourself.

Greetings have traditionally been an acknowledgment of the other person. "I see you." "Hello." "Greetings." Then, we moved on to, "how are you?" or even, "how's business?" Recently, though, our performance-obsessed, live-forever society has morphed the greeting into something like,... Seth Godin

Greetings have traditionally been an acknowledgment of the other person. "I see you." "Hello." "Greetings."

Then, we moved on to, "how are you?" or even, "how's business?"

Recently, though, our performance-obsessed, live-forever society has morphed the greeting into something like, "please list everything going on in your life that isn't as perfect as it should be."

In a business setting, this causes bad prioritization decisions. The owner of the bar says to the manager, "how was the night?" and the response is, "the cash register came up $8 short." Suddenly, there's an urgent problem to be solved. How to replace the eight dollars and who do we fire?

If the question instead had been, "what's up?" (as in literally up) the answer might have been, "well, there's a big party at table 12, another going away party. They've been buying champagne all night. And Mary told me she set a new record for tips. And the new beer we added on tap is..."

Highlighting what's working helps you make that happen more often.

Perfect is overrated. Perfect doesn't scale, either.

I'm not proposing you endorse theft or ignore the bad news. But it's clear that one more going away party on table 12 is going to make up for that one piece of bad news, every time.

isn't. Seth Godin

isn't.

There are two things we can get better at: 1. Getting accurate signals from the world. Right now, we take in information from many places, but we're not particularly focused on filtering the information that might be false, and more... Seth Godin

There are two things we can get better at:

1. Getting accurate signals from the world. Right now, we take in information from many places, but we're not particularly focused on filtering the information that might be false, and more important, what might be missing.

2. Sorting and ranking information based on importance. We often make the mistake of ranking things as urgent, which aren't, or true, which are false, or knowable, when they're not.

Dealing successfully with times of change (like now) requires that you simultaneously broaden your reach, focus on what's important and aggressively ignore things that are both loud and false.

Easier said than done.

I’ve just returned from a fascinating hour and a half breakfast with Peter Mandelson to talk about his new book The Third Man. From a professional point of view it was a great blogger relations initiative by publishers Harper Collins to invite a small number of ‘progressive’ (the words of their spokesperson) bloggers to a breakfast briefing where we were given exclusive access to some of the original source material from Peter’s book. Harper Collins won’t be giving these archive papers to mainstream media until Monday when they release the second wave of papers.

What I’ve received are copies of hand-written notes from and to Peter dating from between 1987 to 1997. I have studied them all in-depth yet, but the one I found most immediately of interest to me personally was Peter’s notes to Tony Blair about his thoughts on Clause IV.

For me this was a seminal moment for the Labour Party, when it threw off the shackles of dogma and returned to the true values and philosophies of its founding fathers and mothers. Personally, it was also the first time I became active in the Party beyond a purely personal level. I believed passionately in a new Clause IV that more truthfully reflected what the Party was really about. I campaigned hard, talking to members and going to speak at branch meetings and constituencies across the region to help convince members of the need for change.

I’ve uploaded the whole document, but have highlighted three of Peter’s notes:

“In para 1 I do not like ‘solidarity, liberty and equality’ – very old fashioned mantra. I do like ‘rights and responsibilities’, even ‘duty to others’.

"In para 2 ’in the hands of the many…’ sounds better but is it what we mean? Don’t we mean all? “… rather than birth” at end sounds a bit funny.”

“Remember this Constitution – suitably poetic and Jerusalem-like – is meant to get ordinary people to understand easily what we’re about + to vote for us”

Peter Mandelson’s note to Tony Blair on the new Clause IV

I’m going to do two other posts on this. The next will be a more public relations focussed one and look at how Harper Collins did the blogger relations, which had some brilliant elements to it, but also elements that I think won’t work in terms of generating positive coverage, but might contribute to generating more overall ‘buzz’.

The second post will be an actual proper book review. But it’s a big book and I’m quite busy, so that might take a while! I’ve just finished the second chapter so far and my recommendation would definitely be – read it! Yes, there are legitimate questions to ask about if this is the right time and what damage it does to the Labour Party, but if it was going to be published then now’s as good a time as any. And the Labour Party should be looking forward. If some people have behaved as they shouldn’t in the past then they’ve got to live with the consequences of their actions, justify them or apologise for them. Then we can all move and get on with re-connecting and defeating the Tory Lib Dem coalition.

I’ll also upload the rest of the documents, although I’ll probably be beaten to it as I can’t do it at the moment as the East Coast train wifi and my T-mobile signal are both too flaky (this post should have uploaded over an hour ago!)

And as requested by Peter, here is the Amazon link (disclaimer – it’s an affiliate link so I’ll probably get tuppence if you buy it from here – please do my three-year old daughter is growing out of her clothes!)

The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour

Not all failures are the same. Here are five kinds, from frequency = good all the way to please-don't! FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors. FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and... Seth Godin

Not all failures are the same. Here are five kinds, from frequency = good all the way to please-don't!

FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.

FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.

FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.

FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.

FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.

The thing is, in their rush to play it safe and then their urgency to salvage everything in the face of an emergency, most organizations do precisely the opposite. They throw their customers or their people under the bus ("we had no choice") but rarely take the pro-active steps necessary to fail quietly, and often, in private, in advance, when there's still time to make things better.

Better to have a difficult conversation now than a failed customer interaction later.