Where Do You Stand?

Unless you are a fellow mom-blogger or you read a lot of blogs, you may not have heard of Bossy. Bossy, a.k.a. Georgia Getz is the extremely popular author of humor blog, i am bossy (Technorati rank: 8,464, Authority: 553). Earlier this year, Bossy announced that she would spend five weeks on a road trip to visit more than 250 blog friends in 182 cities in 42 states. Last summer, I encountered Bossy at Blogher and she is, without a doubt, one of the Big Girls of Blogging (others include: Dooce, Pioneer Woman, Her Bad Mother, Fussy, Blackbird – all have the kind of star power clout that have other bloggers swooning in their presence. Or stammering compliments, as in the case of yours truly.)

Social media smart Saturn caught on to the opportunity to reach their audience by sponsoring Bossy’s Excellent Road Trip with a variety of free Saturn vehicles to last throughout her trip. A brilliant move as Bossy is not only test driving each model of car they make but actually reviewing them and sharing photos as she reaches hundreds of thousands of her blog’s readers.

Marketers should take note: if the audience you’re trying to target community you’re trying to attract* is female, 24-50, you need to be reading these blogs and understanding what interests your potential customers.

Way to go, Saturn! And good luck, Bossy — we’re enjoying vicariously riding along with you. Here’s the link to the archives in case you want to catch up and follow the rest of the trip: Bossy’s Excellent Road Trip 

*Note: the language of the blogosphere has created change in the way we talk about building business through marketing and PR. We no longer use phrases like “targeted audiences.” In the blogosphere, this unfriendly terminology is no longer tolerated. In the blogosphere, we build communities. We attract readers. We create conversation. Now, isn’t that a friendlier approach?

Friend of Standing, John Cass encouraged me to write a review for the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. Reviewers evaluate a Fortune 500 company’s blogging efforts for how the company deals with customer issues and gaining product feedback.

Easton Ellsworth began the project in 2006 and in early 2008, John and he agreed to resurrect the project and began inviting corporate bloggers (like us) and personal bloggers to review Fortune 500 blogs and post them on their Web sites and link to them on the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki.

The primary objective of this project, according to Easton, is to “talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each corporate blog and glean lessons for our own business blogging efforts.”

Without further ado, here is my take on the Graco Blog:

“The Graco blog is a place where you can read some of the latest news from Graco and engage in respectful dialogue with the team at Graco, fellow Graco customers and parents interested in the Graco brand.” The Graco Blog is one of the best Fortune 500 blogs we’ve viewed. Many blogs are too “busy” and take away from the actual content. The Graco Blog’s simplistic WordPress template doesn’t overwhelm the intention of the blog, to help parents perfect the “art” of parenting.

The blog is easy to access with such a simple URL and a dummy-proof subscription link allows every reader to be notified of updates, whether or not they use the aggregators that are still catching on with some folks who are just beginning to read and comment on blogs.

“Mommy Bloggers” (as much as the term makes mothers who blog cringe) are all the rage these days and the Graco Blog provides a professional companion in the form of a collaborative blog run by employees who are their target audience – parents. The biographies of each contributor can be found in the sidebar and each includes a photograph of the contributor and their child or children, and really establishes an understanding between contributor and reader that what the reader is reading is authentic.

Unlike many other Fortune 500 blogs, the bloggers come from all departments within Graco: branding, commercialization, public relations, marketing and strollers and travel systems.

The Graco Blog is great because of what it doesn’t do: it doesn’t speak down to its readers like many of the more technology-focused industry blogs. It is written in a conscientious and inviting manner and although the blog was founded under four months ago (in December 2007), it’s easy to tell (with readers’ comments and input into the content of Graco employees’ posts) that a community is being formed – and isn’t the purpose of a blog to engage with and perhaps create a targeted community? The Graco blog has thrown out pretense in favor of a simple product that delivers to the customers that keep it in the Fortune 500.

Yeah, I’m going there.

So you’ve probably heard about Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, being dumped by the Clintons (oh, I’m sorry - he quit on his own - uh-huh) after pushing for a trade deal with Colombia - a deal that Hillary strongly opposes. And that Penn, besides having a political consulting firm that’s earned mega bucks from the Clinton campaign, is also CEO of Burson-Marsteller, which was hired by Colombia to help educate legislators on the trade deal.

Confused yet? Apparently Penn was - enough to blatantly disregard the conflict of interest that my five-year-old would recognize. (Granted, she’s five going on 40, but still.)

Despite the best efforts of honest and ethical public relations professionals - of which there are many - the PR industry doesn’t have a good reputation. The average Joe thinks we’re flacks and spin doctors, doing and saying anything our clients want to make a buck. Ethics are given lip service at best and are completely thrown out the window when the price is right. When we have industry “leaders” like the CEO of one of the world’s largest PR firms pulling a stunt like Mark Penn did, why would anyone think any differently of us?

According to TechCrunch, Facebook launched an instant message  service over the weekend “in a few unspecified networks.” I graduated from AOL Instant Messenger after college and have since moved on to Google Talk. But with Outlook e-mail so readily available on my desktop, I use it infrequently at work and only sometimes at home. There’s just no telling if Facebook’s version will get much face time from me. How about you?

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has added patient satisfaction data to its Hospital Compare Web site.

A quick search of a few of the St. Louis region’s hospitals found patients gave a 54% - 86% satisfaction rating in 10 different areas, ranging from percent of patients who reported that their nurses “Always” communicated well to percent of patients who reported yes, they would definitely recommend the hospital. 

A few of the St. Louis hospitals with rankings include: Barnes Jewish, Missouri Baptist, St. Anthonys, St. John’s Mercy, St. Lukes and St. Marys The survey has some in the health care industry very nervous.  However, the survey results actually provide a great opportunity to drive home the importance of customer service and communication for health care employees who work with patients. 

A HealthLeaders article explores the future impact these surveys will have on hospital marketing and communications.  

Cathy isn’t the only Standing team member who participates in speaking engagements (although she definitely dominates the speaking scene). Tomorrow, April 8, Standing’s resident southern belle and Senior Counselor Mistie Thompson will participate in the Community Service Public Relations Council’s panel on “Gauging the Effectiveness of Your Annual Report/Newsletters.”

To be held at the Sheraton Clayton Plaza, the panel, composed of Mistie; Mary Lewis, resource development director for the School Sisters of Notre Dame; Mallory Rusch, associate development director for the Center for Women in Transition; and Laura Jones, vice president of Messenger Printing, will explore such issues as:

Keep an eye on Where Do You Stand for Mistie’s wrap up of the panel in the next few days.

In a world of TV shows, radio programs, the Internet, revolving billboards and restroom advertising, there’s no doubt that we’re overwhelmed with marketing messages (studies indicate numbers anywhere between 600 and 3,000 messages per day). So how does a company cut through all of that clutter? 

Let’s rewind to last week. My co-workers and I had the pleasure of participating in one of Chipotle’s marketing efforts. Zach, the regional marketing manager, brought in boxes and bags full of food, information and other goodies. As we set up the conference room, it occurred to me that Zach is more than just a regional marketing manager – he’s actually a brand ambassador.  

Some may argue that brand ambassadors must be celebrities. I would venture to say that a brand ambassador is anyone who represents your company and strives to create brand loyalty. They are charged with using every customer touch point to strengthen the brand and build relationships with current and potential customers.  

In this case, Chipotle used its employee as a brand ambassador. And there’s no doubt that they gained a few new friends last week.  

In fact, I think I just saw Beth walk in with a burrito…

This week I have the honor of attending the Forum for Healthcare Strategists annual meeting. Participants largely include the leading healthcare marketers at hospitals and health systems throughout the country. In the opening session, Jay Silverstein, chief imagineer at Revolution Health spoke. He chided the audience’s low participation in social networking and talked about what he perceives as the imperatives for the healthcare industry to change and become more consumer centric. Much of what he talked about has been discussed among product marketers for a few years now, but his company, founded by Steve Case of AOL, is putting these learnings to work in an industry that often believes it is different from any other industry, meaning the innovation happening in the rest of the world doesn’t apply.

I worked briefly in the healthcare industry and found Silverstein’s characterization of the industry to be 100 percent on target. It’s part of the reason I did not stay.

In his talk, Mr. Silverstein offered some tips to the audience. Of those he offered, the most interesting was to “open up your garden.” He asked audience members whose web site linked to somebody else’s in the room. From where I sat, no one raised his or her hand. (Maybe someone sitting behind me did.) He explained how these linkages were so important to search. Again, nothing new to us, but to this industry, it is a pretty big stretch. These hospitals compete with one another for patients. From their perspective, why in the world would they want to promote another hospital? But, as Mr. Silverstein points out, think of the consumer first. If, for example, your child has been diagnosed with a rare disease, why shouldn’t your local children’s hospital direct you to an online community of doctors who specialize in this disease, whether or not they are affiliated with your hospital. As a consumer, you will give your hospital credit for giving you access to the information you’re seeking and probably become very loyal. He even encouraged participants to think of models of partnership that include revenue sharing.

So, for those of you in healthcare, how can you open up your garden to make the healthcare experience better for your patients?

The engaged group of students, faculty and St. Louis businesspeople who came together Thursday for a social media symposium at Washington University heard from a passionate panel of four experts. The group energetically covered everything from the future of news and journalism to Twitter and Second Life.

In preparing, panelist Jason Fiehler of full-service interactive agency infuz confessed he and his team had changed their definition of social media just before the seminar.

Jason’s original definition was:
Social Media - An umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.

New definition (4/3/08):
Social Media – A publication model in which there is no distinction between audience and author.

Jason says, “I used this definition in the presentation because I decided the original definition didn’t get to the heart of the matter.”

To illustrate, Jason presented a list of well-known brands he feels are Social Media or NOT Non Social Media (according to the new definition):

Social Media  
eBay
YouTube
Twitter 
Digg
Wikipedia

Not Social Media 
Amazon.com
NBC, CBS, etc.
Yahoo Instant Messenger
CNN
MapQuest

Do you agree with Jason’s definitions and examples? What’s your definition? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Also, if you were at the symposium, what did you think?

Thanks!

I don’t get much out of the one-hour luncheon or breakfast seminars that PR/communications trade associations offer.  So, I’ve turned to reading business books, which provide a more in-depth look at challenging organizational issues.   Now, I’m sure many of you are thinking, “I don’t even have time to finish the novel I’m reading for my book club.  How could I possibly have spare time to read business books?!?”  You’d be surprised!  Many business books take into account readers’ busy lives and, therefore, are a far cry from the long, dry text books we were required to read in college.   In fact, the first book I’m reviewing is written like a novel, with plot twists, conflict and a bit of humor (see mentions of the green banana).   

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni gives you a “fly on the wall” perspective of how Kathryn Petersen ─ a fictional, but very realistic CEO of a tech company ─ helped DecisionTech move past a major obstacle in the way of its growth – getting a group of high-level managers to work together as a team. The book explores how to overcome:

1. Absence of trust (caused by invulnerability)
2. Fear of conflict (caused by artificial harmony)
3. Lack of commitment (caused by ambiguity)
4. Avoidance of accountability (caused by low standards)
5. Inattention to results (caused by status and ego)

Easier said than done, right?  Luckily, there’s a section in the back of the book that provides exercises that can build team members’ skills in each of these areas. I especially like the sharing of one’s single biggest strength and single biggest weakness in terms of contributions to the business as a way to embrace vulnerability and build trust.  Whether your leadership group needs a teamwork overhaul or just an infusion of new energy, this book is a quick read that won’t disappoint.