Archive for the ‘Education Opportunities’ Category

Kinda Engaged: Your Brian Solis Cliff Notes

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 by Jennifer Kane

Brian Solis’ presentation in Minneapolis is just two weeks away (July 27), and I hope that you’re planning to attend. We’re excited and honored that he’s making the trip to speak to our community.

This post however, isn’t about that event. It’s about Brian’s book, Engage!

Engage is a great book. I read every last stinkin word in it … I underlined stuff (with a straight edge!), made notes in the margins, emailed passages to clients and tweeted my favorite quotes.

Problem is, I am totally not normal.

I am a reader. Hard core. I don’t watch TV. I don’t play video games. I have no hobbies or social life.

(Wow … that sounds really pathetic, doesn’t it?)

All I do is read … books, blogs, magazines, newspapers, backs of cereal boxes, you name it.

What’s more, I also read business books. (I run a business book club – thanks to all who’ve dropped by – and I know that this is an even more rare breed of people.)

So, when I see people tweeting that they’re anxious to tackle Brian’s book before or after the event, I get a little nervous.

You see, Brian’s book is really good, but it’s also really … well, epic. (At our book salon, some people said there were sections that “made their brains want to explode.”)

It’s summer in Minnesota, and I’m worried that even you serious readers out there might not be in the mood to have your brain exploding. Your brain probably wants more to lie in the sunshine with a gin and tonic.

Never fear though, I figured out a way that you can get your “Engage” fix and that gin and tonic too …

The “Engage” Cliff Notes.

Let me start by saying this:  I really think you should read Brain’s book in its entirety.

You should try to drink eight glasses of water a day, floss and “live your best life,” too.

The reality is that many of you won’t.

However, I’m willing to bet that you’ll read parts of this book, and some is better than none. If your time and attention is limited, hopefully these Cliff Notes can help you determine which parts those should be.

So, (with many, many, apologies to Brian) pick your profile and let’s get started …

1. “I’m clueless about social media, but I want to find out how to get started.”

  • I’d suggest you start at the beginning of the book with Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and ConfusedCustomer Service.

  • In Part II: Forever Students of New Media, read the Social Media 101 section and all the 201’s (201, 202, 203).
  • You may be in over your head with some of the 301 information and totally floundering in the 401’s and the “MBA” sections, so I’d suggest you instead skip ahead and read Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You and Part IV: We are the Champions.
  • You might just want to stop after Chapter 19 and revisit the book later after you’ve had some time to go use what you’ve learned in the social space and get more comfortable with the tools/technology/tactics.

2. “I use social media, and kinda know what I’m doing, but I still have a lot to learn.”

  • Start at the beginning of the book with Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and LearningCustomer Service.

  • In Part II: Forever Students of New Media, read the Social Media 101 section, as well as all the Social Media 201’s (201, 202, 203) and Social Media 301’s (301, 302, 303.) If that information isn’t freaking you out, go ahead and tackle the Social Media 401’s (401, 402, 403). Your brain will likely be hurting after you’re done, so if you decide not to read the MBA information right now, that’s totally okay. I’m sure Brian will still love you.
  • Read all of Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You and Part IV: We are the Champions.
  • If you’re up to it, tackle Part V: The Social Architect: Developing a Blueprint for New Marketing and maybe stop after Chapter 22 and revisit the book later after you’ve had a chance to process and apply what you’ve learned.

3. “Social media is part of my job at my company/agency/consultancy and people are looking to me to show them how it’s done. I need to make sure I know my stuff.”

  • You should really read this whole book, you know that right?SM

  • Obviously, read Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and Customer Service.
  • Then, since you’re working with these tools on a daily basis, you may want to skip ahead to Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You, Part IV: We are the Champions and Part V: The Social Architect: Developing a Blueprint for New Marketing. There is good information in these sections and you don’t want to be fried from reading all the New Media University stuff when you tackle it.

  • You should read Part VI: A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action: Rising Above the Noise, but I’ll admit that the Social CRM/VRM info can be a little overwhelming. You may want to just skim Chapters 23 and 24 for now. Chapter 25 though (Measuring Investment Returns) is an essential read, though. Do not skip this.
  • After you’ve had a chance to digest what you’ve learned, don’t forget to revisit the book later and read the New Media University section. I guarantee you there will be some tools and tactics in there that you haven’t used or thought of yet.

4. “As a business person, I get that we need to get on board with social media, but I just want to know what I’ll be hiring people to do and to how to fit this into our operations.”

  • Start with Part I: The New Reality of Marketing and Customer Service. Business
  • If you’re not going to be doing any of this, just managing it, you might want to just jump to all the business stuff in the back of the book and revisit all of the details about what social media is and why it works at a later time. This, (for obvious reasons) is not the best way to read the book, but it might be the most realistic way to tackle it for your situation.
  • If you are particularly strapped for time and just want to get down to business, you should definitely read Chapter 17 on establishing policies, Chapter 22 on building teams, and all of Part VI: A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action: Rising Above the Noise.
  • For a more informed approach though, instead of reading chapters out of context, start at Part III: Brand Representative Versus the Brand You and read from there until the end of the book.
  • It would be good for you to know that stuff in Part II: Forever Students of New Media, so don’t forget to revisit the book down the road and review when you’ve had some time to process or before you start sending our RFP’s for people to help you with your social media plans.

5. “I got this under control, already. I’m a social media rock star/guru.”

One of my favorite quotes from Brian Solis is that he considers himself to be “forever a student of social media.”Guru

… and he is one smart dude.

Point here is we all have stuff to learn.

If you consider yourself to be a guru, then I guess my recommendations for you are …

  • Read the book.
  • Then, go write one of your own.

Who knows? Maybe if you play your cards right, someday you’ll get your very own Cliff Notes too.

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Posted in Education Opportunities, Kane Co Events, New Media Marketing, Thoughts on the Industry | 14 Comments »

My 36 Days of Brian: An “Engage” Challenge.

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 by Jennifer Kane

Brian Solis is coming to Minnesota on Tuesday, July 27 to talk about his new book Engage (and I’m sure a host of other smart things – if you’ve read the book, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

I’ve got 36 business days between now and then to assemble a tribe of people to come see him.

How am I going to do that?

In order to spread the word about this event, I’ve created a challenge for myself based on a key concept in the book (and one of my personal soapbox issues): engaging through effective social media content.

(And yeah, the title of the challenge is a nod to the movie, “500 Days of Summer,” too. Um … cause it’s summer and this dance number makes me happy).

So, why a content challenge?

As social media has grown in popularity, it has contributed to a rise in the art of “short form communications.” We’ve got a lot to say, but now we have less space to say it in and readers who will devote less time to reading it.

Applications like Twitter are forcing us to find new ways to make an impression and engage with our audiences. As James Poniewozik said in this week’s TIME, “Twitter is pure voice, an exercise in implying character through detail and tone.”

It’s a style of writing that we’re still learning to master.

If I were to tweet: “@BrianSolis is coming to Minneapolis on July 27. Register Now: http://bit.ly/aigVPP” every day for the next 36 days, the repercussions would be troublesome. And yet, this is how many people approach their social media content:

  • Facts included? Check.
  • Link attached? Check.
  • Optimized keywords seeded? Check.
  • Shorten for “retweet-ability” Check.
This is Brian Solis. We are quite fond of him.

This is Brian Solis. We are quite fond of him.

But those qualities are just scratching at the surface of what makes good content for social media engagement, (It’s akin to thinking that you’re going to get lucky at a party tonight simply because you know for sure that your breath doesn’t smell.)

You devalue and dehumanize your social audiences when you limit yourself to a checklist of content logistics.

Think of the doors that you could open, and the relationships that you could deepen, if you were to ask yourself bigger questions, like:

  • Is this content interesting?
  • Will anyone want to read this?
  • Does this content offer a solution to anyone’s problems?
  • Is this content about/relevant to “them” and not just “me?”

Professionally, I’m often tasked with teaching clients how to artfully marry the answers to the questions above with the practical logistics of short-form communications. And I’ll admit, it’s not always an easy process.

The reality is that it takes practice to write 140 characters of content that is both optimized and eloquent.

The “36 Days of Brian” Challenge

To that end, I’ve developed a “36 Days of Brian” challenge for myself, as both an exercise and an illustration of the power/practice of writing for the social web.

Each day, for the next 36 business days, I’m going to share one post, tweet or update about Brian Solis through one of our Kane Consulting social media channels. (Most likely, many of these will be tweets, primarily because I like Twitter best.)

My goal is to produce content that people will actually take a moment to read (and, ideally, share), to take advantage of all the hallmarks of short-form writing and (of course) to entice you to come hear him speak next month.

I’m human and hardly a master of the form, so I’m sure I will write some clunkers during the next 35 days (this blog post is fulfilling my requirements for day one), so I hope you will hang in there with me. But, I hope you will learn with me, too.

As Poniewozik also said in his article, “give people 140 characters and they’ll take a mile.”

I’m going to try to run mine in 36 days.

I look forward to your feedback, participation and questions along the way and hope you can join me for Brian’s talk on Tuesday, July 27.

For more information on An Evening With Brian Solis, visit our website or check out the press release.

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Author Teleseminar with Lynda Resnick

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 by Jennifer Kane

I’m a big fan of Author’s Teleseminars. They offer a free opportunity to hear a smart person who’s just authored a business book, sit around and talk to other smart people about it.

(It’s like being invited to a very, very cool lunch date…um…except you’re on mute. But seriously, if Seth Godin and Robert Scoble are chatting about Godin’s latest book, I’m more than happy to just be a fly on the wall and listen in.)

The next Teleseminar is this Thursday Feb 19 at 1pm CT with Lynda Resnick, author of Rubies in the Orchard.

Lynda Resnick is the marketing genius behind three of the most successful brands in the world – POM Wonderful, FIJI Water and Teleflora.

Joining in on the call will be Dave Lakhani, bestselling author of Persuasion and Subliminal Persuasion and Melanie Benson Strick, Million Dollar Success Coach and founder, The CEO Factor.

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