Here are the latest 10:

1. “Tweet People Nice” by Kay Ross (yes, that’s me, @kayross on twitter) – my presentation at the HKSocial meetup, May 3, 2013 (video, 25m 2s)
2. “25 Of The Most Engaged Brands On Twitter” by Emily Price (@Emily)
3. “30 Terrible Pieces of Social Media Advice You Should Ignore” by Ellie Mirman (@ellieeille)
4. “Do you make these 5 mistakes on Twitter?” by Deborah Lee (@debsylee)
5. “What Twitter is, and isn’t” by Konrad Yakabuski (@konradyakabuski)
6. “The Best Twitter Accounts for Entrepreneurs” by David Mielach on “Business News Daily” (@BNDarticles)
7. “Five good and four bad examples of brands using Twitter” by David Moth (@DavidMoth)
8. “The Benefits of Twitter” by Mandy Edwards (@memktgservices)
9. “Don’t Use These Twitter Tactics! How NOT to Get More Retweets on Twitter” by Edmund Lee (@EdmundSLee)
10. “How to Destroy your Social Media Credibility through Automation” by Mike Allton (@mike_allton)

For a list of links to Parts 1-75 in this series (which was born on May 19, 2009), see the Twitter category on this blog.

Would you like to recommend any other good twitter resources? I certainly don’t list EVERY article about twitter that I see – I might recommend an article that I disagree with, if I think it contributes something useful to the debate, but I won’t recommend an article that I think is badly written.

Happy tweeting!

Kay Ross
http://twitter.com/kayross

Alan See

I was one of them (thanks, Alan!).

Then he contacted us and asked two questions:

1. How and where do you find innovative ideas?
2. What’s the best way to keep your eye on the future?

Read Alan’s article, “50 Marketing Leaders Over 50 You Should Know”, to find out how I – and lots of other interesting people – replied. It was published in the April edition of Global CMO The Magazine (@TheGlobalCMO on twitter). That article includes only the first 25 people on Alan’s list – Part 2 in the series is coming soon.

No matter how young or old you are, how would you answer Alan’s two questions? Please post a comment.

And if you’d like to follow me on twitter, you’ll find me here: @kayross.

Improv: A tool for creativity

I perform with People’s Liberation Improv, an improvisation (or improv) group in Hong Kong, and I and many other improv performers around the world have found that improv is a very effective tool for helping people to develop their creativity and thrive in a complex, volatile, unpredictable world. Improv is also great for developing skills in leadership, teamwork, trust, communication, selling, risk-taking, thinking on your feet, problem-solving, embracing failure and dealing with change – all valuable skills in business.

In fact, many improv performers and groups around the world teach workshops for companies, non-profit organisations and community groups about how the principles and mindset of improv apply to life, business and group dynamics. We call that concept “applied improv”, and there’s an international organisation called the Applied Improvisation Network. Improv is even taught in many leading MBA programmes around the world.

Yes, and… Participants at an applied improv workshop presented by People’s Liberation Improv at the Hong Kong Fringe Club, June 28, 2011

Some resources for you about improv, applied improv, creativity, play, innovation…

Over the past few years, I’ve compiled a humungous list of resources (newspaper and magazine articles, blog posts, videos…) about improv and applied improv, and more generally about the related topics of creativity, play and innovation. And I keep finding new goodies every day.

Recently, in response to a request from someone on the Facebook group page of the Applied Improvisation Network, I extracted a shorter list of what I think are the most useful resources, and I’ve decided to share it with the world. For free. Enjoy!

Here it is (it’s 16 pages long!):
Some Resources about Improv (and Creativity) for Business – A list compiled by Kay Ross

Want a sneak peek of that list? Here are some of my favourite articles and videos

1. “TEDxAlbany – Kat Koppett – Improv – Not Just For Comedy Anymore” (video, 18m 13s)
2. “Unpacking applied improv” by Applied Improvisation Network member Viv McWaters
3. “Improvising Creativity” by Douglas Eby (it includes a 6m 47s video with Tina Fey)
4. “Collaborate to Create” – a TEDx talk by British improv performer and corporate trainer Neil Mullarkey (video, 13m 5s)
5. “Why leading business schools are turning to applied improvisation – Times report” by Applied Improvisation Network member Paul Jackson
6. “It’s Not Quite Funny Or Die, But Improv Works To Fuel Powerful Innovation” by Lydia Dishman
7. “Five Innovation Lessons from Improv Comedy” by Woody Bendle
8. “Tell New Stories: Andrew McMasters and Andre Golard” – a TEDxRainier talk about the lessons of improv for daily life (video, 6m 11s)
9. “Improv 101: The Key to Thinking Fearlessly” by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd
10. “Creativity in Business: Bringing Your Whole Brain to Work” – a video (29m 55s) with Michelle James
11. “Comedy in Business: What Improv Can Do For Your Team” by Julia Camenisch
12. “Wanted: Idea Fusers” by Bronwyn Fryer
13. “A Crash Course on Creativity” by Jessica Stillman (it includes a 40m 32s video with Tina Seelig)
14. “John Cleese on the 5 Factors to Make Your Life More Creative” by Maria Popova (including a video, 13m 35s)
15. “state of create study – Global benchmark study on attitudes and beliefs about creativity at work, school and home” from Adobe
16. “Fast Company – Storytelling & Creative Process Tips from the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012” by Mike Brown
17. “Creativity as a Life Skill: Gerard Puccio at TEDxGramercy” (video, 18m 45s)
18. “How Serious Play Leads To Breakthrough Innovation” by Bruce Nussbaum
19. “Seth Godin on Why Business Leaders Should Think Like Artists” by Bryan Elliott (with a video of Bryan’s interview with Seth, 44m 27s)
20. “10 Practices from the Most Innovative Organizations” by David Burkus

And here are three blog posts that I’ve written about improv and applied improv

1. “Thriving in Uncertainty – The Promise of Improv”
2. “How To Succeed In Business: Improvise!”
3. “34 Reasons To Learn Improv”

(They’re included in the 16-page document.)

I’d love to hear your comments

• Is my list useful to you?
• Would you like to recommend other resources that I can include in the next edition of the list?
• Do you perform with an improv group?
• How do YOU apply the principles and mindset of improv to your life and business?
• Do you teach applied improv workshops? If so, how do you educate and persuade your potential clients about the value and relevance of improv? And what kind of results have participants and companies reported?
• Do you have any questions?

Please post a comment below or send me an email. And if you love improv, follow me on twitter: @kayross.

Here are the latest 10:

1. “42 Twitter Tips for Small Business and Solopreneurs” by Tracy Sestili (@tracysestili on twitter)
2. “Twitter For Business: The Ultimate Guide” by Sian Phillips (@_Sians)
3. “10 annoying social media behaviors” by Shanna Mallon (@foodloves)
4. “LiveTweeting Tips” by Fernando Gros (@fernandogros)
5. “Alert! Screenshots Of Tweets Can No Longer Be Trusted” by Mary C. Long (@MaryCLong)
6. “Here’s why 100,000 people unfollowed me on Twitter” by Mark Schaefer (@markwschaefer)
7. “Twitter Etiquette: To Block or Not to Block?” by Michelle Quillin (@MichelleQuillin)
8. “Fake Twitter Followers Becomes Multimillion-Dollar Business” by Nicole Perlroth in “The New York Times” (@NYTimes)
9. “How to Use Twitter for Business and Marketing” by Charlene Kingston (@SocialMediaDIY)
10. “100 Things to Tweet About on Twitter Besides Yourself” by Pam Moore (@MktgNutz)

For a list of links to Parts 1-74 in this series (which was born on May 19, 2009), see the Twitter category on this blog.

Would you like to recommend any other good twitter resources? I certainly don’t list EVERY article about twitter that I see – I might recommend an article that I disagree with, if I think it contributes something useful to the debate, but I won’t recommend an article that I think is badly written.

Happy tweeting!

Kay Ross
http://twitter.com/kayross

That was the most quotable quote and memorable message by Mark Ragan at the Content Marketing Boot Camp in New York City on February 12, 2013.

I won a ticket to attend that one-day event because I was one of the winners of a competition on twitter (see PR Daily’s blog post about that). Mark, the CEO of PR Daily and also the CEO and Publisher of ragan.com, was the trainer – follow him on twitter: @MarkRaganCEO. He shared lots of practical tips and case studies, and I met some wonderful marketing, corporate communications and PR professionals from around America (I was the only participant from outside America).

Mark Ragan

If you haven’t heard of Content Marketing before, here’s the definition from the Content Marketing Institute: “Content Marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” It’s about compelling storytelling rather than pushy sales messages, and it’s about enabling your customers and employees to share their stories.

Of course I can’t reveal everything that Mark told us at the event, but here are some of the highlights:

• Don’t sell or pitch. Content Marketing is all about THEM (the audience), not you.
• Be entertaining, useful and relevant. Your content must be: targeted, easily shareable, discoverable, measured and analyzed, strategic, consistent, frequent, free of corporate-speak and jargon, brief and to the point, and something that people want to keep and share.
• Never bore people!
• The benefits of Content Marketing include: thought leadership, increased visibility, wider reach, more word-of-mouth publicity, more sales/revenue, and more credibility (apparently 70% of customers prefer to get to know a company via articles rather than ads).
• Think and behave like a journalist/editor/publisher (even if you’re just a one-person band). Set up your own newsroom to create and distribute your own content via multiple online and offline channels. (I recently came across this example of a bank in Denmark that has done that: “How Brand Content Helped Transform a Bank into a Media Master” by Joe Pulizzi.)
• Make it easy for your customers and employees to create and submit content.
• Curate other people’s content, and make it relevant to your audience by adding your own unique voice, opinion and personality. For a fraction of the cost of advertising, you can become the most trusted source of content about your industry.
• Banish the silos between your Marketing, Advertising and PR departments – integration is key, and everybody in the company (not just the communications professionals) needs to be involved. One company that’s very good at that is Southwest Airlines – see its “Nuts About Southwest” blog.
• Just one of the many examples that Mark told us about was that of Dr Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a charismatic and highly credible advocate and educator about children’s health. She’s very active on social media, with her own blog and twitter account (@SeattleMamaDoc). The hospital does not vet her social media posts – they trust her. Results: 250,000 people on her blog; 700,000 blog page views; 500 media placements; 12,000 Twitter followers; 40 speaking engagements.
• And what about measurement? Mark spoke about how he and his team-members are obsessive about checking their metrics every day, and quickly adjusting the content they produce, and where and how they publish it, based on the results they see. One useful tool he recommended is Alexa, which enables you to track who is visiting your website.

A visiting guest speaker at the Boot Camp, Mindy Mizell (@mindymizell on twitter), Media Relations Director of World Vision in the U.S., shared an inspiring case study of how she produced on-the-fly news videos in Ethiopia, with very simple equipment. The videos helped World Vision raise US$1 million in donations. Her message: “Start somewhere, and measure the results as you go.”

I even had the opportunity to perform at the Boot Camp! I told an improvised story incorporating random words suggested by the workshop participants, and they loved it.

And finally, here’s a related blog post by me, “The Story of Content Marketing”, a simple seven-line story with pictures.

The lesson: Content Marketing means you don’t have to depend on the traditional media to reach your customers – it’s all about thinking and behaving like a journalist/editor/publisher to create and distribute stories that get results for your business.

Action step: Start somewhere!

1.    The client probably doesn’t know what editing and proofreading are, how long those tasks take, or what they’re worth. That’s not their fault. It’s your job, as an editor/proofreader, to educate them.

2.    No matter how clear you think your instructions are, the graphic designer won’t make all the corrections you asked for, in the way you expected.

Me with my trusty red editor’s pen

3.    The graphic designer will change something you didn’t ask him/her to change.

4.    Even if you asked the graphic designer to change just one single little itsy-bitsy comma, you absolutely MUST check the finished artwork before the document goes to print or gets published online.

5.    You won’t spot every mistake in your first round of editing/proofreading. In the first round, you’ll spot most of the obvious grammar and spelling mistakes. Once they’re fixed, you can focus on the higher-level errors of style, tone, rhythm, consistency, fact, logic, structure, layout, marketing effectiveness… It helps to take a break (and even better, to sleep) between rounds of editing/proofreading. You’ll always spot more errors the next day.

6.    You’ll spot more errors if you read a hard copy of the document than if you read it on your computer screen.

7.    You’ll spot more errors if you read the text out loud.

8.    As soon as you see the printed/published document, you will spot something you missed. It doesn’t matter how many rounds of editing/proofreading you did, or how many people checked and approved the document before it went to print. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.

9.    Some people will accuse you of being an anally retentive perfectionist, or they’ll sneer: “Get a life!” Ignore them.

10.    Good editing/proofreading makes documents better, and that’s good for business.

Do you have any other laws to add to the list? Please leave a comment.

Photo credit: Kenneth Lim

Here are the latest 10:

1. “140 Twitter Marketing Tips for 2013” by ExactTarget (@ExactTarget on twitter)
2. “Twitter Survival Guide & 15 Must Do Tips for the CEO, CMO, CTO, CIO” by Pam Moore (@PamMktgNut)
3. “What does “MT” Mean on Twitter?” by JD Rucker (@0boy)
4. “Tweeting a Tragedy: 5 Things to Remember When News Breaks” by Karen Fratti (@karenfratti)
5. “13 Ideas for Interesting, Engaging, and Just Plain Awesome Tweets for Business” by Amy Fowler (@_AmyFowler_)
6. “How to Decode Twitter Bios” by Eric Deckers (@edeckers)
7. “Be Loud On Twitter Or Don’t Bother Trying” by Lisa Barone (@lisabarone)
8. “Are You Still Talking About Yourself on Social Media?” by Claire Diaz-Ortiz (@claire), with a video, 2m 47s
9. “7 Ways to Make your Tweet Go Viral” by Douglas Idugboe (@douglasi)
10. “How to Keep Up With Over 100,000 Twitter Followers” by Ann Tran (@AnnTran_)

For a list of links to Parts 1-73 in this series (which was born on May 19, 2009), see the Twitter category on this blog.

Would you like to recommend any other good twitter resources? I certainly don’t list EVERY article about twitter that I see – I might recommend an article that I disagree with, if I think it contributes something useful to the debate, but I won’t recommend an article that I think is badly written.

Happy tweeting!

Kay Ross
http://twitter.com/kayross

Each part in the series lists 10 (or sometimes more) articles, videos etc. by various people. For a list of links to Parts 1-19, see the Media Relations category on this blog. This series used to be titled “So You Want to Write a Media Release and Influence a Journalist?”

Here are the latest resources:

1. “Infographic: 75 percent of reporters want videos in press releases” by Kristin Piombino (@KristinPiombino on twitter)
2. “5 ways to get on a reporter’s blacklist” by Mickie Kennedy (@CauseWire)
3. “The 12-Step Insider’s Guide To Getting Press Coverage” by Brett Nelson (sorry, I don’t know his twitter handle)
4. “Editor shares important dos and don’ts of pitching” by Amy McCarthy (@aemccarthy)
5. “Journalist shares 7 common PR sins to avoid” by Amanda Marsh (@AmandaNMarsh)
6. “What’d You Say? How To Write Killer Quotes For Your Online Press Release” by Tara Geissinger (@TaraGeissinger)
7. “6 adjectives to reconsider in your next press release” by Doug Self (@dougself)
8. “How To Get Media Coverage For Your Startup: A Complete Guide” by Leo Widrich (@leowid)
9. “Get Famous Fast: Helping entrepreneurs win at media relations” by David Meerman Scott (@DMScott)
10. “Advice on getting media coverage for your business” by David Meerman Scott (@DMScott)

Would you like to recommend any other good resources on this topic? Please post a comment (but please beware: I’ll delete spam) or send me an email. I won’t list EVERY article I see; I’ll only recommend articles that I think are well written and that add something useful to the debate.

Kay Ross
http://twitter.com/kayross

Just a few days ago I read “What is the Big Question in Social Media Marketing Everyone is Afraid to Ask?” by Jeff Bullas. That big question, according to Jeff, is: “What is the return on investment?”

The article includes an infographic that claims to offer “10 Examples of Social Media ROI”. But the examples tell us only about the reported results of the companies’ social media activities, not the investments the companies made in order to achieve those results.

Technically, ROI is a mathematical equation:
ROI = (Gain from Investment less Cost of Investment) divided by the Cost of Investment

So to get an answer, you have to allocate a numerical value to both the cost of the investment and the gain from the investment.

Success stories: yes. Examples of ROI: no

In a similar article published in January 2012, Peter Kim offered “101 Examples of Social Business ROI”.

In response to Peter’s article, Olivier Blanchard wrote “101 success stories: yes. 101 examples of ROI: no. Here’s why.”

Olivier commented: “For something to be ROI, you need two ingredients: The cost of the activity and the gain from that activity. (That cost is the investment. The gain is either revenue or cost savings.)”

So how do you calculate those costs and gains?

Here are my questions:

• How do companies calculate the dollar value of their investment in social media? Do they count just the budget that they’ve allocated to a specific short-term social media campaign, or do they also include a percentage of all their costs of doing business: people’s salaries, website design and maintenance and domain name registration, office rent, electricity, phone bills, travel…?
• Over what period of time do they measure the costs and the results? What if a customer sees a tweet about a product but doesn’t buy the product until a year later?
• Does “Gain from Investment” mean just actual sales of products/services? How do companies calculate the dollar value of intangible gains such as goodwill, positive mentions on twitter and Facebook and Pinterest, the number of followers and “Likes”…? (And is a “Like” on Facebook even worth anything?!)
• How do companies prove that there’s a direct causal relationship between their social media activities and a given sale? Aren’t there lots of hard-to-measure factors that influence a customer’s behaviour?

I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t measure the results of our social media activities. I’m just saying that I don’t know how to calculate useful, accurate numbers for the ROI equation. But then I’ve never been a numbers person; I failed maths at school.

And here’s my request: Please don’t use the term “ROI” when you talk about the results of your social media activities unless you’re willing and able to reveal the result of your ROI equation. If you just talk about the results of your social media activities, that’s not ROI.

How do YOU calculate the ROI of your social media activities, and how do you convince skeptical bosses and colleagues about the value of social media?

Related posts

Here are two related blog posts in which I list lots of articles by many people about the ROI of social media:
“52 Articles About the ROI of Social Media” (December 2012)
“How to Measure Your Social Media ROI, Success and Influence” (July 2011)

Until one day, thanks to the Internet, the balance of power shifted from the companies to their customers.
And because of this, customers everywhere rose up and declared: “No more pushy marketing!”

And because of this, marketers started using a strategy called Content Marketing, which was all about telling memorable, shareworthy stories to inform, inspire and engage with customers.

Until finally, customers became enthusiastic advocates for the brands they loved.
And ever since then, business owners, marketers and customers have been happy!