Web design

Connection and Choice

Last Friday I attended a local networking group for business-to-business consultants. In this case “networking” meant real people in a real room drinking real coffee. It’s important to clarify because as it happens, our live networking group was talking about the how’s and wherefore’s of technology-facilitated social networking. The specific discussion topic was this: How do we understand all the many social media options and optimize them for our small businesses? The session opened with an overview of things like Search Engine Optimization and moved quickly to FaceBook, LinkedIn and, of course, Twitter.

Since it was my first time to the group, I was in a position to participate but remain somewhat detached. I observed as nervous laughter erupted over terms like “re-tweet” and “squeeze pages.” Participants talked about the number of texts the average teen sends a month (1,742 according to Neilson) or how super-texting young people go as far double-bag their phones so they can text their friends while in the shower.

Before long, the discussion took on something of a fevered pitch as the participants’ eyes got bigger and rounder—overwhelmed with all they weren’t doing; where they were falling behind and what they didn’t understand.

As I listened to the discussion, I was also monitoring whether or not future attendance of this type of (live) networking session would be of real use to me. The older I get the more miserly I get with my time. I am not interested in joining groups for purely social purposes. I am not interested in groups where we spend our time trading soap-box sermons and leave convinced we get it and the non-attending and unenlightened don’t get it. I am not interested in ever more access to ever less useful information.

And this brings me to my biggest concern about social media. What’s the value? I dutifully joined FaceBook because that’s what one does these days, right? Since then, however, I’ve found myself dismayed at the time-killer it is to scroll through updates about what people have recently eaten, which movies they’ve recently seen, and how the latest round of antibiotics is working on their tough sinus infection (seriously). I wasn’t surprised to hear that 60% of new Twitter users are “Twitter-Quitters” within a month. Why? Well, as it turns out, they also don’t much care if their loved ones or celebrity idols are off to buy bananas at the grocery store.

My concern with all the pressure to hop on the social media bandwagon is not borne out of a cynicism for technology. My concern is the pressure to do it without first aligning it to a strategy. Here are my thoughts…

Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Technology-facilitated dialogue has opened up so many opportunities. But the old rule remains: with limited resources of time, money, energy and focus, choosing to do one thing typically requires a choice against another thing…at least if you hope to do anything well. The alternative is to add new things to existing activities and watch everything suffer. I don’t have to tell you how activities like driving suffer when text-messaging or cell-dialing are added to the task. So the first issue is an issue of choice: Where are your resources best spent? If existing products and processes are broken, I’d recommend fixing them before launching into a new communication strategy that will fracture internal attention and resources and invite more people back to a sub-standard experience. Making careful choices enhances your focus.
Just because we can doesn’t mean it helps. We have all kinds of new ways for reaching out, but are they helping us connect? Herein is the question of value. I could Twitter you every hour on the hour and congratulate myself for “optimizing” my Twitter capacity. However, the real measures of a successful strategy should include these questions: What is our brand promise and how do the messages we send or invitations we issue reinforce and enhance of brand promise we strive to make (and keep?) What real value will our new (and different) technologies offer our target audiences? And, how do new technologies help us launch or add to the meaningful interaction we still need as live human beings?

Toward the end of today’s networking session, our guest speaker shared a quote from Plato: “Wise men [and women] speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”

I like it.

Focus, then connect.

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation

Sing Alone, Sing Along

In their excellent book, Make it Stick, the authors describe psychologist Elizabeth Newton’s research study in which one of two partners was assigned the role of “tapper” and the other the role of “listener.” The tapper was told to tap out the beat of a popular song by rhythmically smacking the table—just like a teenage boy might air drum to their favorite song onto the top of their desk. The listening partner’s job was to guess the song by listening to the taps. Newton conducted the experiment over and over and measured the results. The enlightening outcome of the study involved the tappers’ predictions compared to the actual results. The tappers predicted that the listeners would accurately guess the song 50% of the time based on their tapping performance. In reality, the listening partner was able to accurately name the song only 2.5% of the time. Newton concluded that the discrepancy between the tappers’ predicted odds of success and the listeners’ actual ability to guess the song was due to the fact that the tapper could not remember what it might be like to listen to taps without the melody playing along in their head. The tapper couldn’t hear their taps as their listening partner heard them—as a series of disconnected and discordant smacks on a table top.

I learned the truth of this communication disconnect lesson the hard way.

After being in the brand research and consulting business for a couple of years, I decided to take my own advice and focus my own brand. I spent the better part of a year doing it. I did the research, had the brainstorming sessions, the whole shi-bangy-bang.

After all my research, brainstorming, wordsmithing and discussions with my graphic designer, the first web design was a miss. But I should first tell you that I loved it. It did exactly what I thought it should do. And, loving it as I did, I took it out and proudly presented it to people whom I trusted to give me their honest (and what I assumed would be exuberant) feedback and…And? Their response was flat. They didn’t “get it.”

There I was, tapping the newly minted web expression of my brand concept out on the table and mentally singing along (alone?) in my head and—big surprise—I thought I sounded great. When I heard from trusted resources and potential audience members that they didn’t get what I was doing, I was given the poignant and painful reminder that my audience needs me to provide the background music so that, when they hear the beginning beats, they want to tap, sing and dance along with me.

I was discouraged and frustrated and briefly considered just going with what I had anyway; I was tired of massaging the damn thing and was anxious to just get on with the real work of using my website. But then I thought of the type of advice I would give clients and decided to listen to the painful input.

The irritating process taught me a lot. The first thing I learned was an appreciation for the challenge of building a solid brand and making sure the communication vehicles that deliver the brand are clear and on-message. Sure I’d done it for other organizations, but it was different when it was my baby they were calling ugly. No wonder so few companies get it right. The second thing I learned was the importance of objectivity. I struggled to get objectivity while doing my own website because I was too close. The third and most important thing I learned, however, was just how easy it is to commit the error of singing alone in my head and expecting others to guess the tune…and love it.

The challenge of good brand development and brand communication is to find out which song and dance styles show off your best moves while simultaneously appealing to your target audience so that they cannot help but jump in when they hear the familiar beat.

But therein is the beauty of good brand research.

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation

Connection and Choice

Sing Alone, Sing Along

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