PR Communications

Deb Hagen-Lukens Advocates For Entrepreneurship & The Environment

Deb Hagen-Lukens is an advocate for entrepreneurs and the environment. I met her on Twitter recently when Deb followed me. Deb's profile had a reference to the University of Washington where she teaches entrepreneurial marketing as a part-time lecturer at the school of business. And having once lived in Seattle I thought it would be great to reach out to Deb to learn more about what she teaches at UW, and her work in consulting.

Deb moved to Seattle in the late 90's, when she worked for large communications and public relations agencies, working on technology accounts. By the mid-part of the last decade she wanted a change of scene and started her own consultancy, Clarity Communications, as well as teaching entrepreneurial marketing to undergraduates and MBA students at UW.

Her students are mostly generation Y and a few generation X, I asked Deb what the biggest cultural differences where teaching these generations, Deb thought the biggest differences between the two groups come from the people who are already in the work place.

Later this fall she will be handing off the MBA class to teach a new course, UW's Environmental Innovation Practicum, where there will be a mix of undergraduate and graduate students from schools across UW including business, engineering and environmental studies. The new class combines Deb's passion for teaching and environmental entrepreneurship and aligns even more closely with her consulting business' focus on environmental nonprofits and companies.
 
When enrolled in Deb’s classes, students get the chance to learn directly from business people, as Deb invites speakers into her classes on a regular basis. Plus, her students work all quarter long with one of two local businesses to create marketing plans as their final project. Students get to work directly with entrepreneurs, and both the business people and students learn a lot form the experience.
 
Students enjoy the practical application of marketing, to the extent that visits from business people were consistently highly ranked by students in class reviews. Deb teaches a practical course, how to do entrepreneurial marketing in today's world. It's difficult to find good books that teach this today, not because what's been written isn't good, but rather the changing nature of business means that often business books date rapidly, so Deb gives a short list of books, but a long list of blogs, articles and up-to-date sources. However, she still uses Geoffrey Moore's book ‘Crossing the Chasm’ where she teaches the two chapters on the technology life cycle and market segmentation.

Initially when Deb started her business, she worked with a lot of technology companies, but in the last few years she decided to take some time out to rebrand her business, and now focuses on eco-businesses. Deb told me she decided to focus on these areas partly because that was how she was raised, but moving to Seattle increased her conviction to focus on the environment. Seattle is such a beautiful place to live, the environment is really part of the way of living, you can see the Olympic Mountains easily from the city, and walking down any street you get the occasional peep at Mt. Rainer, one of Washington State’s enigmatic volcanoes.  Those daily experiences increased her conviction to work with companies that support the environment.
 
Deb has been involved with the GoGirl Academy for about a year now; this company helps women be more successful through empowering them. Deb told me the Academy’s curriculum focuses on “three groups of women, those just starting their careers, those ready to make a big move ahead (like pursuing a promotion) and those ready to do a little reinvention by transitioning to a new field, starting their own business or reentering the workforce. It's not just for young women.” Deb is a member of the organization's Leadership Council and teaches its personal branding class. Deb really believes it’s important to think careful about what associations individuals have with companies and organizations, as those associations influence your reputation.
 
Deb's work with personal branding reminded me of the critique of the term last year by a few of my colleagues in social media land, especially in the context of a post about Scott Monty written by Josh Hyatt on money.cnn.com.
 
Josh’s article has caused a lot of controversy because Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford, was featured in the piece. To some, the post appears to paint Scott Monty as an egotist, and because a lot of fans of Monty have so much respect for him many people criticized Josh's article.  I had written about the post, and thought the critics were incorrect, and the error was just a matter of readability on the article. But the reason I bring up this post is that so many people thought the term personal branding was bad to use because it may imply to some people that you are self promotional.
 
In chatting with Deb about personal branding, I thought we were in agreement that the term is an effort on the part of an individual to think carefully about what your own relationships say about you to the world, rather than an attempt at ego-building. Deb thought that entrepreneurs can benefit when it comes to personal branding, and that it’s “particularly important for entrepreneurs who don't have any other brand to leverage for credibility than their own and those they can bring into the business like Board of Advisor members or high-profile partners from whom where the start-up can borrow some of that brand credibility.”

 One aspect of becoming a freelance that shows Deb's humility was the advice she gives to people who are starting their own freelance business, to anyone thinking of forming their own business who is now working at a large company, Deb said. “Make sure you know how to solve your own technology issues. Don't rely on the IT department so much!”
 
Deb recently started writing her own blog, and is focusing her content on her thoughts about what’s happening in marketing, communications, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs. Take some time to read some of Deb’s posts, comment, and give her your feedback!

Marketing Books To Hardwired Brains

I enjoyed reading Geoff Livingston's recent post, "Everyone Has Written a Book."

In the post Geoff describes a popular meme at social media conferences that everyone has written a book about social media. However, Geoff doesn't think the meme is true, one, because it’s tough to write a book, and two, it's tough to market the book.

Having written my own book, I agree on both counts. Though I did reuse some of the content I'd developed on this blog and in other places. 90,000+ words in a couple of months is one project I will not be attempting lightly again!

I think part of the secret to success with book writing comes from the design of the book. How you design the chapters, and how content is presented. That influences both the readability and the marketability of the book. For example, if you ask colleagues to contribute, or interview them for quotes, not only will you enhance the value and credibility of the book, but you will also increase the chance of those who contributed, promoting your book because their content is in the book. I think this is one reason Seth Godin writes so many forwards for books, what a great way to gain a little publicity by helping out a fellow author.

Geoff went on to say that personal publishing makes more sense given the declining power of publishers. I think the reality for elite authors is that there will always be publishers willing to publish and market a book. Rather the decision for most book authors has become is it more profitable for me to publish on my own?

Perhaps the real dilemma for the average author is to get help with editing and publishing their book. Sites like Self Publishing Review can help.  And Amazon.com has CreateSpace, part of the Amazon group of companies, which helps people self-publish and distribute books.

One question for me I've been thinking about recently is 'are books the right medium?' If everyone is reading online, whether is desktop, mobile, tablet or ebook. Perhaps you don't have to write a book to get published, instead the format, and reader's attention span means writers have to think about alternatives to books in size and scope.

I'm reading a book, on Kindle, called "The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our Brains," by Nicholas Carr, and the research cited in the book suggests we may be all becoming hardwired to reading digital content through our online activities, and this change in reading habits makes us less willing to return to the long form. Interesting, and gives us all food for thought when it comes to designing content for books or marketing.

Mutual Insurance Company Social Media Rankings

Content gardens can be easy and difficult to find. In researching the mutual insurance industry, I’ve developed a list of the top ranked insurance companies by Twitter and Facebook followers and fans.

Now don't get me wrong, the numbers don't always mean a company is running a good content marketing strategy, or an engagement strategy. But big numbers sometimes do indicate signs of success.

Out of the 20-30 or so companies I found several interesting companies to review, and for me State Farm's website stood out as an example of a content garden. I'll review that site in a future blog post; in the meantime here are the rankings for mutual insurance companies for twitter and Facebook.

Facebook is certainly the leading social networking for mutual insurance companies. We see high numbers of fans at 630,000 for State Farm and over 150,000 for USAA the second ranked company. While Twitter has a smaller number of followers, with USAA at 14,000 and State Farm at 10,000 follows. Facebook's lead makes sense, because insurance is going to be b2c, and so many people have adopted Facebook as a social networking technology compared to Twitter.

Facebook Insurance Social Media Rankings

Twitter Insurance Social Media Rankings

Agile Interview With Scott Wilder

Scott Wilder, partner at Human 1.0 and former Intuit Communities Manager gives Frank Days and me, co-hosts of the Agile Marketing Podcast, his insights into Agile Marketing, from background to tactics and the value of marketing with agile.

I've known Scott Wilder for a few years; I reached out to him when he was head of community at Intuit. Scott has a marketing and product marketing background, and I wanted to put together an event featuring product managers for the Boston Product Managers Association. Scott flew out from California, and we had a great evening discussing product management and social media. I kept in touch, and have watched his career as it progressed.

I was recently chatting with Scott about the new agile podcast and discovered he uses the techniques in his consulting and when he worked at Intuit.  Learn more from Scott over at the Agilty Marketing Podcast with co-host Frank Days. 

Content Marketing Case Study: Eloqua $2.5m Sales Boost With Grande Guides

Last year I wrote a case study about Eloqua’s social media infographic and ebook. Joe Chernov, Eloqua’s Director of Content Marketing was kind enough to give me some of the results from the content marketing campaign. That was back in August of 2010, it’s been a few months and so I Facebook messaged Joe to ask what additional numbers he had on the campaign. Joe suggested I look at the ROI of another campaign he and the Eloqua marketing team have been running, and also described how the new campaign evolved from the first.

The goals for the original Eloqua infographic and ebook campaign were twofold: “(1) to get people to notice Eloqua that hadn't previously noticed the company (hopefully those people would be marketers or those who influenced marketers), and (2) signal to those in our industry that this was a "new" Eloqua (in terms of our approach to marketing).”

And as I related in my first post, the initial campaign did a great job of creating wider awareness for Eloqua. However, one of Joe’s colleagues approached Joe and the marketing team and suggested, “All this stuff you are doing is cool and all, but we sell marketing automation software, how about you sprinkle some of your pixie dust on our industry.”

Inspired, Joe with the support of his peers in marketing developed Eloqua’s new ebook series, the Eloqua Grande Guides (www.Eloqua.com/grande), “which promise subject matter expertise in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.” Joe told me about the concept behind the guides, “to combine some of the "visual communications" that made people dig the infographics / playbooks with subject matter that related to what we sell. So we created these stylized e-books, each is essentially a small piece of a larger whitepaper on the industry, but we splinter off one topic at a time (because ... well because who in their right mind reads full-on whitepapers anymore?).”

Three of the four Grande guides relate directly to Eloqua’s buyer’s interests, (Grande Guide to Sales Enablement, Grande Guide to Lead Scoring, Grande Guide to Deliverability & Privacy). However, the fourth guide is written for top marketers, and aims to create awareness amongst these decision makers, as well as generate leads. It’s the The Grande Guide to the Social CMO.

The guides were distributed via email, where Eloqua could easily track leads, and through social where Eloqua tracks awareness. As Joe explains Eloqua gains greater value from direct targeting, “the higher value is to push them out directly to segments of our email database. Take the GG to the Social CMO: That ONLY went to people with VP titles (or higher).”

The Results

In the last two quarters in 2011 and 2010, Eloqua has developed $2.5m of revenue from at least one of the 4 guides. In that one of the guides was downloaded by a customer prior to making a sale, while the guides have influenced another $3.7m in revenue that’s currently in play.

In addition the guides help Eloqua achieve two sets of goals. (1) Collect more profile data on recipients, (2) accelerate them on the path to closing. Eloqua also collects additional data on about 10,000 prospects using the four guides. Using a system called "progressive profiling" to collect data on prospects a little at a time because if you ask for too much at once, people disengage.

Final Thoughts On The Case Study

Content for the campaign was developed based on roles, and there’s a effort to tie content development into the sales funnel, where lead scoring is influenced by whether prospects read campaign pieces. And lastly Joe and his team were kind enough to share marketing results, illustrating the benefits of following a good iterative content marketing plan. 

The Social In Content Gardens: Refining The Definition

My first stab at a definition of a content garden was this, "A high quality site, edited by journalists and community managers, where there's a combination of paid journalist content, moderated free content, and aggregated content."

Refining the definition of a content garden, today's website has to be developed with an understanding of how the eco-system of the web and internet works. So you have to think about search marketing, social and content generation strategies.

The concept of content gardens really evolved from thinking about works today. Especially in light of the Google Farmer update.

Depending upon your industry and community you may have to have a high quantity of content, but at the same time if you are going to be successful in getting rankings on search engines you have to have an organic strategy for link generation.

Bruce Clay's early online search engine map comes to mind here. Bruce's search engine map played a big part in getting links and helping to build the industry.

Viral marketing, word of mouth marketing, or content that attracts attention is a strategy that works. However, if you know more people the greater the likelihood that your word of mouth campaign will work. Even the Old Spice campaign was an evolution of commercials, an iterative campaign that developed on top of previous campaigns and relationships.

To create a content garden you have to avoid becoming a content farm, but recognize that your content creation process can only be successful if you think about lowering your costs of creation through crowd-sourcing, columnist writing, and that using social has additional benefits for search marketing from the linking strategy that develops as result of the sharing that takes place.

To me a content garden is an effort to manage the content creation process efficiently, and recognize the importance of social media in how the eco-system of how the web works.

Content gardens need social content both because you have the opportunity to create more content at lower costs, and because it helps you build relationships with your wider community. The issue today however, is how do you keep the content quality higher. I think its about giving your social community the tools to manage themselves, and empowering them to manage the community, essentially, community management 101 at its best.