Spotlight on Marketing

Twitter Tips and Resources – Part 88

Posted on 8 December 2015 | No responses

This is Part 88 of an ever-growing blog series, with each post featuring links to 10 useful, funny and/or provocative articles I’ve come across about how to use Twitter more effectively, especially for business (and how NOT to use it).

Here are the latest 10:

1. “The 9 Biggest Mistakes Too Many Authors Make on Twitter” by Diana Urban (@DianaUrban on Twitter)
2. “How to Retweet the Right Way (With a Comment) on Twitter” by Laura Fitton (@pistachio)
3. “What to Do When Execs Avoid Social Media: Answer Their Top 6 Excuses” by Charlene Li (@charleneli)
4. “7 Examples of Small Business Tweets That Create Demand” by Aseem Badshah (@aseemb)
5. “A Scientific Guide to Hashtags: How Many, Which Ones, and Where to Use Them” by Kevan Lee (@kevanlee)
6. “What, When and How to Share on Social Media?” by Courtney Seiter (@courtneyseiter)
7. “50 Companies That Get Twitter – and 50 That Don’t” by Belinda Parmar (@belindaparmar and @ladygeek)
8. “How To Use Twitter To Increase Your Expert Status” by Catriona Pollard (@CatrionaPollard)
9. “10 Habits That Make Everyone Hate You On Social Media” by Laura Vanderkam (@lvanderkam)
10. “How To Get The Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags” by Garin Kilpatrick (@Garin)

For a list of links to Parts 1-87 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

Twitter Tips and Resources – Part 87

Posted on 4 June 2015 | No responses

All About Improv, Applied Improv, Creativity, Play, Innovation… Part 2

Posted on 26 April 2015 | No responses

On April 26, 2013, I published a blog post titled “All About Improv, Applied Improv, Creativity, Play, Innovation…”, which included a link to a 16-page list of resources that I’d compiled.

In my travels since then, I’ve come across lots more excellent resources. I’ve read several books and hundreds of articles, watched lots of videos, and cherry-picked what I think are the most relevant, useful and interesting ones.

So here’s my gift to you: my 20-page list, “All About Improv, Applied Improv, Creativity, Play, Innovation… Part 2”, completely free.

All About Improv Part 2

In that document, I’ve sorted the resources into three categories:
Part A: Specifically about Improv and Applied Improvisation
Part B: More generally about Creativity, Play, Innovation…
Part C: Books

Within each category, the items are listed in alphabetical order, by the author’s surname.

If you click on one of the links in the document and find that it doesn’t work, copy and paste the link into your browser – it might work that way.

I’d love to hear from you. Is my list useful to you? And would you like to recommend other resources that I can include in the next edition of the list? Please post a comment, send me an email or tweet me nice at @kayross.

And if you love improv and applied improvisation, please feel free to share the list with anyone you know who might benefit.

 

Twitter Tips and Resources – Part 86

Posted on 20 April 2015 | No responses

Twitter Tips and Resources – Part 85

Posted on 24 March 2015 | No responses

Please Do Not Treat Your Customers Like This

Posted on 27 February 2015 | No responses

Sigh! In the past two days I’ve had three experiences, as a customer, of being treated as a nameless, commoditised piece of data.

Example 1

On twitter, I followed someone in the USA who is a manager in a company that helps other companies to attract, convert and retain customers.

She immediately sent me an impersonal, automated DM (direct message), saying: “Our case studies show $5000/mo in advertising value for $349/mo – [link to the company’s website] You might be interested :)”

I replied: “Oh no! Please don’t send a pushy ad about your company as an impersonal automated DM as soon as someone follows you. Not cool. Kay”
[By the way, here’s why I hate auto-DMs on twitter.]

And she replied: “Blame marketing and advertising lol.”

Fail!

Example 2

I watched the livestreamed video of an interesting event in San Francisco, and wanted to participate in the online chat as part of the event. When I tried to post a question on the livestream page, I found that I had to login, and when I clicked the button to do that, all the instructions were in Chinese. I guess the system could see that I’m in Hong Kong, and therefore automatically assumed that I read/write Chinese. I don’t.

Fail!

Example 3

I received a phone call from the company that provides my mobile phone service. I answered the call, expecting to have a conversation with a real-live human being, and instead heard an obviously automated, recorded message that started: “Dear customer…”.

Fail!

Please don’t treat YOUR customers like that.

Your Customers Are Smarter Than You

Posted on 27 February 2015 | No responses

Have you heard of Sugru? It’s the name of a product, and of the company that makes it. I’m a customer and a fan (and they’re not paying me to say that!). I especially like that the name Sugru is inspired by the Gaelic word for “play”.

Sugru is mouldable, silicone-based glue, kind of like playdough, that turns into rubber after it’s exposed to the air. People use it in all sorts of ingenious ways to fix, adapt and improve their stuff rather than throw it away – on Sugru’s About page, watch the video (only 1m 29s), and scroll down to see examples.

I used Sugru to make a badly designed knife more comfortable to use

So why am I telling you this?

The folks at Sugru are very smart, yet they concede that they get their best ideas from their customers. Users around the world send emails, photos and videos, and post tweets and Facebook updates, about how they’ve used the product, and how they want it to be improved. They even get to vote on which colours of Sugru should be developed next.

All those stories guide the company’s R&D efforts, and also become compelling, educational and entertaining source material for its content marketing efforts.

The inventor of Sugru and the company’s founder and CEO, Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh, said: “Our customers… do stuff with it that we couldn’t have dreamt of.”

Author Kevin Kelly had a similar message in his book, “New Rules for the New Economy – 10 ways the network economy is changing everything”:
“Expertise now resides in fanatical customers. The world’s best experts on your product or service don’t work for your company. They are your customers, or hobby tribe.”
(Thanks to my friend Stephen Barnes of the Hong Kong Visa Centre for recommending the book.)

So are your customers using your products or services in ways you didn’t expect and couldn’t have dreamt of? Asking for and paying attention to their stories might inspire you to develop some popular new products or services, lead to some profitable new revenue streams for you, and give you some terrific content to share.

Because as I always say, marketing isn’t just about advertising; it’s about understanding your customers’ behaviour, perceptions, motivations, expectations…

And because you’re smarter than me…

I’m asking for your help, so that I can better understand what you (and people like you) really want from someone like me.

Could you please take a couple of minutes to answer four short questions in my survey? No need to give your name or email address.

Thanks!

Twitter Tips and Resources – Part 84

Posted on 21 January 2015 | No responses

Books That Delighted Me in 2014 (And A Few That Didn’t)

Posted on 31 December 2014 | No responses

Here are some of the non-fiction and fiction books I read, enjoyed and was inspired by in 2014 (they weren’t necessarily published in 2014).

In each category, I’ve listed the books in order of my subjective preference. I’ve also listed some books that I wanted to enjoy but found disappointing.

With thanks to the public library system in Hong Kong (I borrowed lots of books from City Hall Library), and to Flow, my favourite second-hand bookshop, where I bought and recycled some books.

Non-fiction

This category includes books about marketing, branding, customer behaviour, business, personal development, healing, spirituality, psychology, the subconscious, meditation, mindfulness, the nature of reality, improvisation, creativity, storytelling…

1. “Improvisation for the Spirit – Live a more creative, spontaneous, and courageous life using the tools of improv comedy” by Katie Goodman
   Brilliant and funny! My new favourite book.
2. “The Art of Possibility” by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
   Beautiful. Rosamund is a psychotherapist and painter; Benjamin is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic – together, they offer practical tips, advice and anecdotes that “invite us all to become passionate communicators, leaders, and performers whose lives radiate possibility into the world.”
3. “Emotional Alchemy – How the mind can heal the heart” by Tara Bennett-Goleman
   Inspiring, helpful, practical.
4. “How The World Sees You” by Sally Hogshead
   An unconventional look at personality and branding that will help you to understand and market yourself better, and also to understand other people, how they behave, and how to communicate and work effectively with them.
5. “marketing – a love story – how to matter to your customers” by Bernadette Jiwa
   Delightful, juicy, practical, provocative and unconventional. The marketing book I wish I had written.
6. “The Antidote – Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking” by Oliver Burkeman
   Funny, fascinating and thought-provoking.
7. “Joyful Wisdom – Embracing Change and Finding Freedom” by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
   I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, but I love the practical methods outlined here, and I enjoy the writer’s honest anecdotes about his personal experiences of and challenges with meditating.
8. “From Workplace to Playspace – Innovating, Learning, and Changing Through Dynamic Engagement” by Pamela Meyer
   Brilliant! Lots of good stuff about play and improvisation.
9. “Steering by Starlight – The Science and Magic of Finding Your Destiny” by Martha Beck
   A funny, challenging, no-BS toolkit of stories and exercises.
10. “Wherever You Go, There You Are – Mindfulness meditation in everyday life” by Jon Kabat-Zinn
    Lovely!
11. “Uprising – How to build a brand – and change the world – by sparking cultural movements” by Scott Goodson
    About how to communicate the purpose of your business, identify what will inspire people to support your cause, and make it easy for them to do that.
12. “Chief Culture Officer – How to Create a Living, Breathing Culture” by Grant McCracken, an anthropologist
    About why and how to spot and act on the earliest signals of new cultural trends in society that could spell boom or bust for your company.
13. “How Hits Happen – Forecasting predictability in a chaotic marketplace” by Winslow Farrell
    About what makes some products, services and ideas take off while others are ignored and forgotten.
14. “Where Good Ideas Come From – A Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson
    Fascinating! I love the author’s wide-ranging and voracious curiosity.
15. “The Hidden Brain – How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives” by Shankar Vedantam
    The author, a science correspondent, journeys through neuroscience, psychology and behavioural science to identify and explain our unconscious biases.
16. “Drunk Tank Pink – The Subconscious Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave” by Adam Alter
    In the style of Godin, Gladwell and the authors of Freakonomics, the author shares anecdotes about the subconscious and sometimes surprising drivers of our behaviour. (“Drunk Tank Pink” is the name of a particular shade of pink that has a strange effect on people’s muscular strength.)
17. “Overcoming Underearning” by Barbara Stanny (Full of practical techniques and exercises – I’m looking forward to studying the book with a mastermind group in 2015.)
18. “Rip it up – the radically new approach to changing your life” by Richard Wiseman, Britain’s only professor for the Public Understanding of Psychology
    Down-to-earth examples and exercises about how our behaviour and physiology shape our feelings
19. “Search Inside Yourself” by Chade-Meng Tan
    About Google’s in-house training program about mindfulness.
20. “The Element – How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything” by Ken Robinson
    Brilliant.
21. “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” by Alan Watts
    Fascinating, mind-blowing, thought-provoking.
22. “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot
    Mind-bending.
23. “In An Unspoken Voice – How the body releases trauma and restores goodness” by Peter Levine
    This renowned psychologist explains his life’s work: healing PTSD by using the principles of embodiment.
24. “Lead with a Story” by Paul Smith
    Worth recommending for its excellent ideas about how and why to use storytelling in business and marketing, but there are many annoying errors and inconsistencies that I wish the editor had spotted and fixed.

Disappointing Non-Fiction

1. “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain
   As someone who is half-introvert, half-extrovert, I found the book irritating – it seems the author protests too much about why introversion is better than extroversion.
2. “The Improv Handbook – The ultimate guide to improvising in comedy, theatre, and beyond” by Tom Salinsky and Deborah Francis-White
   The authors share lots of good tips and games, but are annoyingly purist and judgmental about what kind of games they consider acceptable.
3. “Unconscious Branding” by Douglas van Praet
   I couldn’t finish it because it was annoying – the writer didn’t know how to use hyphens in compound adjectives, or the “not only… but also…” structure. It needed a good editor.
4. “The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business” by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School
   I couldn’t finish it – too much left-brain, analytical number-crunching for me.

Fiction

1. “The Signature of All Things” by Elizabeth Gilbert
   A beautifully written, fascinating and unputdownable novel, imagining a 19th-century American woman who becomes a botanist and, independently of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, researches and writes her own treatise about the theory of evolution and natural selection.
2. “The Invention of Wings” by Sue Monk Kidd
   A compelling tale, loosely based on the true story of Sarah Grimké, a 19th-century American campaigner against slavery. Lovely! I like all of the author’s other novels too.
3. “Tapestry of Fortunes” by Elizabeth Berg
   About a group of women, friendship, diving heart-first into change, and love. Beautifully written, like all of Berg’s novels.
4. “The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared” by Jonas Jonasson
   Playful.
5. “Jitterbug Perfume” by Tom Robbins
   Delightful storytelling about the power of the sense of smell, spanning centuries of history and many cultures. Thanks to my friend Michele Davis for recommending it.

Disappointing Fiction

1. “The Other Side of the Story” by Marian Keyes (I wanted to enjoy this novel because it’s set in the world of publishing, but I found it confusing and didn’t finish it – I couldn’t follow who the characters were or their relationships to each other, and didn’t find them worth caring about.)
2. “Reaper Man” by Terry Pratchett (I’ve enjoyed most of the books in Pratchett’s “Disc World” series, but for me, this one was… meh.)

Dear reader, what was your favourite book of 2014?

Twitter Tips and Resources – Part 83

Posted on 8 December 2014 | 4 responses

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