Aaron Strout : Citizen Marketer |
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Keeping It in a Box
What does it Mean?
Working with our chairman, Barry Libert, over the last two years, one of the many important lessons he's taught me is to "keep it in a box." It's taken me a while to internalize this important lesson but as they say, it takes hearing things 11 times to really "hear them." With me, it may have taken 111 but the message has finally started to sink in. Essentially what Barry has instilled in me is how important it is to keep what I do on a daily basis:
- Closely aligned with our business goals
- Prescriptive vs. descriptive so that others can take action
- Easy to understand (could I explain what I do to my grandfather?)
The reason I'm writing about this is that like many of my colleagues that work in the world of social media, it's easy to creep out of our box. It's easy to get caught up in the conversations and to lose sight of what's important for our personal and professional goals. This ultimately does us a disservice because we are not recognizing our full potential. It doesn't necessarily mean that we are not adding tremendous value to our companies but it does mean that we make it difficult for those around us (including our bosses) to recognize our value to the business.
 How Do You Get Back in Your Box?
At Mzinga, we constantly hammer home the importance of strategically aligning our customers social media or online community goals with those of their business. If they ignore that step, they will fail. The same is true with us as individuals.
One of the ways I work on "keeping myself in a box" is to do the same thing i.e. realign (or in some cases, re-frame) what I do with our overall company goals. I probably don't do this enough but at least once a quarter, I try and sit down and review our high level goals and then write out what I do to support those goals.
This exercise is well worth the valuable time for three reasons:
- It forces you to weed out things that you are doing that don't support your overall corporate goals
- Seeing your work load on paper can help you evaluate where you should be spending more or less time
- It's a great way to create a reminder for your manager so that they recognize that you are creating value for the business - if they look at your list and disagree, it's also a great way to get realigned early enough to avoid a difficult conversation around review time
To be honest, this is the first time I've sat down and gone through the "keep it in a box" exercise in a blog post but I thought that it might not hurt to share this concept with other friends that may struggle with the same issue. If I'm missing anything, please feel free to add it in the comments and I'll be sure to work it back into the mix.
Is the Stuff in MY "Box" Supporting Mzinga's Corporate Goals?
Because I work within the marketing organization, I have four essential goals that I support. Below I've listed these goals along with the supporting activities I do every day that roll up to these goals:
Lead generation
For some people in the social media world, the term "lead generation" is the equivalent of a dirty word. Not for me. Where I do draw the line is not giving people outright sales pitches because nobody wants to hear them (at least not from me). The way I work on accomplishing this goal is two-fold:- I am continually building my social network through tools and sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Plaxo and good old fashioned physical conferences
- I regularly create content like blog posts, podcasts, webinars, tweets, status updates etc. This gives people a reason to come and learn more about me and our company
Because I've built a network of nearly 4,000 people, I have the ability to drive people to attend our webinars, listen to our podcasts, read our blog posts and ultimately talk to our sales team about buying our product and services. I don't take a "pray and spray" approach in marketing to these folks -- many of which I consider friends -- like I might have when I worked at Fidelity Investments. Instead, I take a nuturing approach. What this means is taking a little extra time to have conversations with people, getting to know them, their interests and their needs. Right channeling those conversations so that what I'm saying and how I'm saying it is different depending on the channel I'm using.
Brand awareness
Creating brand awareness is probably the most important part of my job but the hardest to measure. If done correctly, however, the end result is media or blog coverage and positive recommendations for our company:
- Analyst relations - I take pride in the fact that in spite of launching a mere 8 1/2 months (November of 2007) my marketing colleagues and I have successfully positioned Mzinga as the leading provider of business social media and learning solutions in the industry. Just ask the analysts who they think the top three players are in our space and I can guarantee you to a man or woman that they will include us in their top three. As I mentioned, this has been a team effort with a blended mix of traditional and social media efforts helping to move the ball forward. My contributions in particular include:
- Events - speaking at nearly a dozen industry events like Community 2.0, Webguild's Web 2.0 Conference, and Enterprise 2.0. I also attend dozens of other events and make it a point of getting to know as many new people as possible at each event.
- Blog commenting, twittering, networking - Many of today's leading analysts are blogging , Twittering and joining public social networks like Facebook. I try and spend time each day reading and commenting on their blogs, conversing with them on Twitter and paying attention to their other social networking activity. As a result, I've created friendships with folks like Jermiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, Peter Kim and Oliver Young at Forrester Research. Kevin Martin at Aberdeen Group, Jonathan Block at Sirius Decisions, Kathleen Reidy at the 451 Group, Joshua Holbrook, Brian Kotlyar and Jonathan Edwards at Yankee Group, Zack McGeary at Jupiter Research and Rachel Happe (before she moved over to Mzinga) at IDC. In many cases, I also talk to these analysts on Twitter which helps me keep abreast of what they are focused on and what's important to them.
- Webinars - leading or participating in live events with Don Tapscott, Jeff Howe, Bill Johnston, Francois Gossieaux, Barry and other industry leaders helps position us favorably in the industries eyes.
- Blogger/media relations - I like to think of this as "influencing the influencers." This may take the form of taking key bloggers out to dinner (colleagues, Jim Storer, Heather Strout, Colin Browning and I did this ast South by Southwest), giving them "link love" on Twitter, Facebook or in your own blog, or simply making an effort to chat them up at events. I've met and gotten to know folks like Michael Arrington | Techcrunch, Stowe Boyd | /Message, Chris Brogan | Chrisbrogan.com, Pete Cashmore | Mashable, Shel Israel | Global Neighborhoods and Steve Rubel | Micropersuasion.
These same tactics have also given me access to traditional media folks (who also blog) like Steve Baker | Businessweek, Abbie Lundeberg | CIO Magazine, Robert Scoble and Francisco Dao | Fastcompany among many others. This has resulted in Mzinga and WeAreSmarter coverage, link-backs to our site and favorable reviews of our company.
Content creation
In my mind, there are four major benefits that come with content creation:
- Search engine optimization (SEO) - I don't need to say much here as this has become somewhat of a universal requirement for any company that wants to take SEO to the next level.
- Material for our sales team - our sales team regularly comes to us and asks if we have a particular blog, podcast or video that can help them with a client pitch. This is 100 times more effective than any collateral that we could ever write (although don't get me wrong, we need collateral but usually it's to engage folks much closer to the top of the funnel).
- Create link-backs to your site - The beauty of social media is that it is often a link magnet. If I write a blog post about someone, do a podcast with them or video of them, more often than not they will link back to your site. I've had people like Kelly Thompson, EVP at iStockphoto ask me if I wanted him to link back to our site. "We've crashed people's servers with the traffic we generate" he warned. We accepted his offer (no crash but tons of traffic).
- Position us as thought leaders - I can't stress the importance of being a thought leader in a fledgling space. With 100+ white label community providers out there, we need a way to differentiate ourselves. To my knowledge, very few of our competitors do this well (Sam Lawrence of Jive being one of the exceptions).
There are a few other tangential benefits that come along with content creating including: - associating our relatively new brand with more established brands like Dell, Forrester, Netflix and Businessweek.
- I get a chance to share
online community/social media best practices from some of the brightest minds in the business with our prospects, clients and fellow Mzinga employees.
Only recently have I realized the importance of the support my colleague, Jim, and I give to our sales team. We've been doing it informally for years -- many times in a one off fashion -- but never in a formal, scalable way. That's just now changing as we're starting to create certain blog posts, videos and podcasts with the explicit goal of helping our sales team do a better job of selling. This includes interviewing our senior sales people, key executives, product manager and those leading our moderation and strategic consulting services in order to make what's in their collective heads more scalable and ALWAYS available.
As a result of working in the agency world for serveral years combined with co-founding and ultimately leading a local organization called Boston Interactive Media Association (BIMA) for a couple of years, I've created a number of strong, senior level agency relationships over the years. These relationships are starting to come in handy as I hand them off to my colleague, Colin, who heads up our "channels" group. We've found that working with leading agencies to provider "subcontractor" tool, strategy and moderation support has been a huge area of growth for our business.
Some of the same techniques used to support the sales team also help serve to educate our customers e.g. blogging about how to use Twitter or discussing the risks and rewards of building a community vs. joining others. It also helps our product, services and technology teams stay abreast of the latest industry trends. Of course I augment our own user generated content with leading analyst reports from companies like Forrester, IDC, Aberdeen, Yankee Group, Jupiter, Sirius Decisions and Gartner as well as sending relevant external key articles, blog posts and podcasts. This may seem easy but trust me, this is a full time job in and of itself.
Conclusion
Next time you hear me say that I'm "social media guy," feel free to slap me and then tell me to "keep it in a box." At the end of the day, I like being involved in social media but what I really would like for my family's sake would be to see Mzinga succeed beyond its wildest dreams. We're not going to get there unless my activities support our business goals.
Wed, Jul 30 2008
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Comments |
@bryanperson - thanks man. You and I we'll have to have to continually compare notes and make sure we're keeping each other "in a box." ;) ----- Aaron | @astrout |
September 5 2008 - 10:48:14 PM EST
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Great post, Aaron. You've laid out a great blueprint here for building relationships -- both online and off -- and producing quality content in a way that absolutely contributes to the organization's business goals. Well done!My new role as a social media evangelist at LiveWorld is not all that dissimilar from yours at Mzinga: being active on social networks, attending and speaking at events, producing content, helping the sales team, connecting with the influencers, etc. I've picked up a few pointers from this post -- so thank you!Bryan Person, LiveWorldTwitter: @BryanPersonWeb: BryanPerson.com |
August 07 2008 - 12:06:52 PM EST
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Thanks guys - I appreciate the fact that you think I "make it look easy." I definitely put a lot a lot of elbow grease into making it all work. Seeing the great feedback from folks like you Ed aka @pixel8r makes it all worth it! Best ----- Aaron | @astrout |
August 06 2008 - 2:11:01 PM EST
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Aaron, thanks for sharing this. Wonderful post and full of important points - I will defiantly share this with others. With all the demands competing for our attention it is easy to get lost. You make it all look so easy.Thanks, Ed Stafford | @pixel8r |
August 4 2008 - 8:47:06 PM EST
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thanks @astrout I am horrible at oversimplifying things but, basically *stay on point* huh. It's very obvious that you are working your ass off. Mzinga is blessed to have a guy who is as dedicated and ambitious as you.A side note: let's not forget that some conversations that may seem *off point* can also be extremely beneficial down the road. I think when we can truly be ourselves and have conversations about things we're interested in, we are building trust without even trying.thanks for sharing as USUAL! |
August 04 2008 - 6:00:22 PM EST
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@tomhumbarger they go in a separate but equally big box! ------ Aaron | @astrout |
July 30 2008 - 6:06:44 PM EST
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Aaron - that's one BIG box...so where do the #redsox twits fit? Tom Humbarger - http://tomhumbarger.wordpress.com/ |
July 30 2008 - 5:36:06 PM EST
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@marismith love the "rabbit holes" analogy - it makes me think Alice in Wonderland (one of my favorite books ever). @isle the thought of you up in PEI with a box on your desk makes me chuckle @hjstrout WOW! thanks. @michellebb Invite me to your quarterly meeting - I need to be kept on track too! ----- Best, Aaron | @astrout |
July 30 2008 - 5:12:21 PM EST
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Aaron, nice post. And a good articulation (and reminder) of marketing's true job. It's easy to get swept away by last minute projects, urgent requests and even, well, Twitter; it's hard to stay on task. I'll take heed and plan a quarterly review for myself and my staff - a good opportunity for us to reinforce why we're here and what we need to accomplish. @michellebb |
July 30 2008 - 2:51:32 PM EST
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Aaron, I think this is your best blog yet. Well written on a subject that is often difficult to articulate. Thanks. -- Heather Strout, Mzinga @hjstrout |
July 30 2008 - 2:18:48 PM EST
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Great post Aaron. A good reminder for me to analyse and define the value I am providing, in order to keep on task, validate, and itemize my accomplishments, both for the GM and my own satsfaction. As you well know and note...it is at times hard to describe to others, or yourself..what exactly all that hard work is, and what it is for and why... even when you know you are working your box off :)I think I may keep a small taped cardboard box on my desk, just to remind me of this. -On second thought, a picture might be easier on the chaotic stickynote hell I already reside in. Thanks for this. | @isle |
July 30 2008 - 1:54:09 PM EST
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Love this concept, Aaron. Too many peeps get real scattered with so many demands on our attention and enticing "rabbit holes" (um, present company excepted. ha!).Whether you work for/with a company or you're a solopreneur, your advice to keep it in a box applies. Well said.Cheers,Mari Smith@marismith |
July 30 2008 - 1:37:40 PM EST
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Hey, thanks Barry, Susan and Tyson (not sure who the fourth comment is from but thanks to you too - I'm sure it's someone I know on Twitter). This has been a long time in the coming. For me, it's all about the business value! ----- Best, Aaron | @astrout |
July 30 2008 - 1:22:38 PM EST
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Aaron,Great post. I've tried to explain to others what you do and this is a perfect piece to: a:-describe what you do in great detail -I love the details) and b: give people a little bit of your job description and resume at the same time. Nicely packaged. Another thing... you have no idea how many people have told me- "wow, I'd love to have Aaron's job"...Tyson Goodridge, Spire @goodridge |
July 30 2008 - 1:04:52 PM EST
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Great post and right on target. We follow the same prescription at our firm. It begins with an integrated and aligned plan that features goals supporting of achieving the company's overall goals. Mzinga has it all going on. Great to know you, Aaron. |
July 30 2008 - 12:19:51 PM EST
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Excellent points, well laid out for the rest of us to take off to our own blogs, talk about, link back here, tweet about and generally spread the social media love.Susan Reynoldshttp://susanreynolds.blogs.com |
July 30 2008 - 12:19:22 PM EST
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wow - fantastic - can you edit this for mzinga's home page |
July 30 2008 - 12:02:34 PM EST
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