How much of the digital brands that you create are visual?

Since digital experiences are mostly screen-based, the answer is that almost all our work is visual.

Before anyone cares about our words, clients experience our brand, usually visually. Sure, our Kantian monkey minds boil everything down to words, but they come from experiences. In fact, studies of cognition teach us words are how we remember experiences.

So, while this lovely viral video sets out to make the case for the power of words in marketing, I think power of its story comes from just about everything but words.

So take quick look. Do you agree with their copy “that marketing is the power of words” or if you agree with their example, “that marketing is an accumulation of experience“?

I’m pleased to announce this free webinar on one of the absolute hottest topics in digital marketing, future proofing our work as we move to a post PC environment.

Consumers today already expect fully responsive experiences across a huge number of devices and platforms. However, designing individually for the array smart phone operating systems, tablets, game consoles, and now even car dashboards, is a path to stranded effort and investment. The good news is that there is a solution to this.

Smart companies are finding they can use an approach called Responsive Design to sense visitor’s device parameters and render a digital experience optimized for them.

When: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 1pm – 2pm Eastern
Where: on your computer
How: Register for Future Friendly Mobile Development here.
Who: My colleague and friend, Gene Ehrbar, is the Director of Mobile Solutions at ISITE Design. 

If you’re thinking about how to develop great mobile solutions that can adapt to the future, then this hour should be inked in to your schedule. Having taught Mobile Marketing Boot Camp with Gene, I know insightful, expert, and generous he is. This will be good.

Tell him Dave sent you. ;>

As a marketer, journalist and learner, I’ve always had a nagging feeling about the idea of “content”.

Its a terribly generic word, which too often gets used by engineers and designers to describe undifferentiated marketing messages.  You know, after building a great page template, someone says “the content goes here.”

I’ve recently enjoyed serving on a committee with Margot Bloomstein who makes getting people to think about and plan “good content” her specialty. Thursday nigh, ISITE Design  hosted a little after work book launch bash for her.  I posted an announcement of this here, and got to see a few old friends too.

The registration and attendee list is here. 

Thanks for coming out – I hear that Wayne Kurtzman will be posting photos of the night here.

Hey, it’s time we caught up!
ISITE Design is sponsoring a free webinar in which I get to share the five things you need to do now to drive your digital business’ success. This has been an amazing year of working with great marketers around the world. I’m thrilled to have a chance to share some of these methods and views — and I want you to be in the house and part of the discussion.

We’re dialing in this Thursday, 2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific, and hope you can join us. (Jump to the registration details.)

What you can expect from #Digital2012
If you care about how the mobile web, video, and social media are coming together, then I think you’ll get fired-up by this. But knowing is different from doing, so we’ll also look at tools and techniques to help get your whole firm behind your digital business vision.

There’s just no way to write a post about all this stuff; it takes a webinar. But in just 60 minutes, it will be fast-moving and cover a ton. Please come join us, and bring friends. ;>

There’s an awesome give-away
Not that incentives are needed, but the first three audience members to log in on presentation day will get a copy of one of  2011′s best reads, Business Model Generation from Wiley Press. I’ll be demonstrating their business modeling rubric, and if you’re early, you’ll get a copy and be designing business revolutions from home.

You’re the first to know, so tell someone.
Since you read UsefulArts, you are the first to know about this free event. Act on this tip now, register here – *and* tip off your friends.

I’ll be tweeting about this using the #Digital2012 tag. Later today, I’ll start putting word about this on LinkedIn, and the usual channels. 

I’d be immensely in your debt if you’d spread the word — and I’ll try to pay you back Thursday with the smartest, most actionable, quotable presentation and discussion I can give. ISITE’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jeff Cram, will moderate questions and help get your voice in the mix.

This webinar is graciously organized by ISITE Design, with whom I have  ongoing business dealings. They do a lot of good promoting the discussion of online experiences that delight, reward, and elevate. I hope this will be one of those…with you in the house, it’s sure to be.

Thanks for encouraging my behavior!
Talk with you Thursday,
Dave

“I used to search for news; now, somehow, it finds me.”  Ever hear someone say something like that?

Well, that “somehow” shouldn’t involve peering through clouds of real-time information on Twitter. There are already too many “inboxes” in my life, and I imagine in your life too.

That’s why curation is a huge buzzword in content marketing.  But it’s a buzzword with a benefit. Here’s what how I’ve been curating.

Know how I find great digital marketing campaigns?  I have a Paperli page that curates the links being shared by several hundred top digital agencies through Twitter. Each day, it seeks out and organizes what these agencies are sharing, and it makes a little newspaper for me called The Digital Agency Daily. I get a consolidated view of what’s on the minds of the creative agencies I watch, and I can even tweak the results and share it as a link, or automatically send it to subscribers. It’s like a newspaper you do almost no work to make.

If you’re passionate about a topic, starting this kind of page might be a great way to follow the space, and even to share your view of its current events with others.

Meanwhile, if you follow the digital space, feel free to use this as another way for news of the digital world to find you.

Back in the day, when we got our news via dead tree, most folks picked up a newspaper either at the newsstand (quaint idea!) or by subscription. For a long time, most big cities supported more than one newspaper and, hard as it is to believe, some still do. Prior to the 1960s, Boston and New York had at least six and frequently many more. Media choice, time and economics whittled that down to our current condition, where most cities have at best one paper.

A few years ago, as the Boston Globe‘s front page described attempts at Mideast peace, but the Boston Herald told readers that a gorilla had escaped the zoo. For those of us near the zoo that day,  news of the gorilla trumped any peace talks.

But I digress.

Meet The Christian Science Monitor
It’s good to have a second news source you can turn to. The classic – and still one of the best – second papers is The Christian Science Monitor. The Monitor’s excellent reporters are far less concerned with breaking news than they are with putting it in context and filling in all the details; giving the reader the full story. Their award winning journalism and global focus makes them a compliment to most local news sources.

That’s why the Monitor is great a second newspaper, it has a different take on stories than you see in other news sources. To be clear: It is not one of those shouting-heads news outlets that just puts a partisan spin on stories. The Monitor offers thoughtful, well-researched and nuanced stories. Sometimes it offers a very different take than you find on other news sources. Other times it takes a similar approach but with far more context. Either way, the articles almost always provide a deeper look that gives you much more to think about than you’d get from a headline or the AP version. (Not that there’s anything wrong with the AP, except for the whole digital thing.)

There are several other newspapers I turn to for this kind of information – and which everyone now has access to at the click of a link:

The Epoch Times
One is The Epoch Times, which covers the world but is especially strong on news about China. That’s because it started as a Chinese language news source by Chinese people who weren’t content with the party line of information. It offers original news and reporting from China on a level unmatched by anyone else. As China’s importance and efforts at censorship continuing to grow, so does the need for The Epoch Times.

There’s obviously a huge quality issue between the Monitor, which I gladly subscribe to, and the Epoch Times which is free and localized in its six national editions.  Like the Monitor, the print edition is just a ton richer than the still interesting online edition. I’ve found some of the edgiest, earliest and most visionary reporting around it.

Their pages have parsed Wikileaks for four years now. More controversially, they’ve published a series of articles on organ harvesting in China’s labor camps.  These accounts of forced surgery on dissidents to provide party faithful in China with organ transplants could be the biggest human rights story of the decade.  It could also be bias in news.  They’ve been early and right before – so I continue to pick them up as an unusual source of news that is distinctly not in the echo chamber of the conventional media.

GlobalPost
Another great second paper is GlobalPost. This web-based news source works with hundreds — if not thousands — of freelance reporters around the world, who live in the nations they cover. The best way to describe GlobalPost is to say that it is The Christian Science Monitor of wire services like the AP and Reuters. To give you an idea of the quality, consider that GlobalPost‘s stories are picked up by everyone from NPR to Bill O’Reilly, as well as AP and Reuters.

News coverage is being cut back everywhere in the US. There are fewer reporters in city halls, state houses and especially overseas than ever before. (Did you know CBS only has ONE foreign bureau? It’s in London. They are supposed to cover the entire WORLD.) Reading and supporting any or all of these organizations is a great way to make sure that when the Next Big Story hits, you are already well-informed.

–
Disclosure: Before joining Thomson Reuters, I spent several years as Digital Strategy Manger at The Christian Science Monitor. I pay for my own subscription, and am fully independent of them and the other publications mentioned here.

Justin P. Lambert over at Words that Begin With You mentioned a series of posts we ran last year about the ethics of outsourcing social media.  While inviting discussion, he’s staked out a position which could be characterized as “truthiness in business.” That is, nobody expects relentless personal communication in business, so changing the medium shouldn’t shift that standard.

I took a different view of social outsourcing last year, when I referred to this as “Marionette Social Media.” This inspired three fantastic comments with differing views, which turned in to guest posts: one made the point that blogging and social media are different; one aligned with Justin that “writers bring a bardic voice to client communications” so why not blogs; and my friend Altaf outdid them all by saying failing to outsource is a risk to personal effectiveness.

I’d like to update this discussion, and I hope you’ll comment, email me, or write a guest post if you’re inclined.

Social Media Should Be a Choice
I hope everyone who reads this will agree that it is unrealistic to expect the whole world to blog, tweet, or moo just because it’s the new popular social media thing.  Fantastic athletes, statesmen, actors don’t have to be witty in 140 characters. That should be an option we’re ready to accept. Solitude is a forgotten pleasure, and in social media, too often the virtue of silence is forgotten as well.

I can cope with the idea that Bruce Willis or Tom Wolfe doesn’t want to Tweet to us. This admission, that it’s okay not to use social media, is the difference between real life and episodes of Frasier.

Mind the Gap
Also, I hope we can agree that clients need to mind any gap they create between perception and reality when they hire writers.  This is just a point of good brand management. The execs at BP would have done well to mind the gap they created by branding themselves as the “green” oil company.

Ethics Can Be Situational
Does it matter that the CEO of Dunder Mifflin turns in newsletter features or blog posts written on assignment by someone else?  Nope. Does it matter than the Guy Kawasaki who comments on my blog might be his assistant using his name? It does if that means Guy really didn’t read the post, and that the compliment is really part of a brand-building campaign.

Does This Change Based on Which Social Media Is Used?
Is it okay when someone tweets on another’s behalf? It may, when it comes out that @RealHughJackman is making factual errors in their tweets as a.) the real Hugh Jackman hired that job out and b.) the tweeter isn’t in the same city that he’s writing about “really enjoying.” Once the truth is out, social media outsourcing can look pretty silly.

Does Profession Matter?
Some professions have codes of ethics that extend to marketing and address creating false perceptions.

1. Journalism
   Does it matter that a journalist in their newspaper’s blog writes what is actually bylined to them? Yep. In my experience, bylines matter a great deal in newsrooms. Journalists like facts, and they treat bylines that way.
2. Lawyers
   If you learn of a lawyer through a ghostwritten blog, you might form your opinion of the lawyer’s skill and knowledge through their frequent and excellent writing on a topic. If it turned out that counselor was not skilled or knowledgeable as suggested in the blog, you could mount a successful ethics complaint.
3. Public Relations and Ghostwriting
   The public relations industry also has a code of ethics, and some agencies I know are quite uncomfortable with ghosting that crosses the line of deception. In both these instances the client, not the writer, is responsible for the impression created.

It’s a Matter of Degrees
Most writer/client relationships I know of are highly integrated and client-driven. A busy executive wants to say more than they have time to write; they may pass off outlines and drafts, and re-edit written work so it is just as they want it. That’s different than the buffoon Denny Crane who hires Tom Wolfe to write and post some of that “social media stuff” for him.

Let the Client Beware
You’re publicly responsible for what you have done in your name.  It’s okay not to be in social media. It’s okay to get help to “amplify your voice.” But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so keep it under control. Everyone is cool and hip in social media, until someone becomes Frasier.

Like politics, strategy is the art of the possible. And as strategy pursues corporate goals, it has to navigate the pecularities of the organization while marshalling its assets.

In this video, I share some thoughts on the FutureM conference on the Future of Digital Strategy, as well as some words from Harvard’s Perry Hewitt, who talks a little about their mobile strategy, and why it made sense to take this on as an open field for innovation.

As pragmatic marketers, it often makes sense to innovate in arenas where organizational stakeholders are not focused.  You can start with a blank page and  iterate your new approach with a bit more time and space for experimentation. And then deliver an unexpected new result.

The video below will give you an idea of how Perry’s done this as an enterprise marketer, and how you can use this approach in your organization’s digital strategy.

Have you noticed firms that do content marketing with such an SEO focus that it gets in the way of their user experience? Too often firms follow SEO tactics which are really an arbitrage of marginally useful actions that often have no value other than to influence Google.

Here are some good SEO practices that I’ve seen turned in to tulip manias:

• Crappy content marketing
  (page count and keyword loading)
• Insincere links (popularity)
• Exact-matching domain names (hyper relevance)

These efforts are usually based on “proportionate thinking,” which builds an SEO factory to bulk-up metrics to “please” (or more accurately to trick) Google. The problem with this thinking is that Google doesn’t want to be tricked. And just like the stock market, there are corrections when bubbles develop.

Crappy Content Marketing
If you want to know exactly why content always trumps SEO, visit DemandMedia, Suite101, Associated Content, or one of the other content mills and do a query on a random topic. I did this with typewriters – because a friend of mine collects them – and then clicked on the first article each site suggested.

• Suite101: There are many simple machines that go into the construction and contribute to the proper functioning of typewriters. Until the rise of computers, typewriters were the most popular machines used for word processing. For most types of typewriters to function properly, each and every type of simple machine is required.
• AssociatedContent: There are many people that collect something they really like such as first edition books, antique desks, or vintage sewing machines. There are a few things however, that not only can get expensive but if you don’t know what to look for can burst your bubble, like collecting vintage typewriters. Not yet an expert and still looking for more tips on collecting vintage typewriters, I have made a few purchases, some good, some great, and some that I should have researched a little better. The more the experts share with us rookies, the better off we as collectors will be and fortunately with a little research and by following tips on collecting vintage typewriters, the pitfalls can be averted.
• DemandMedia offered me an article called “How To Use A Typewriter” which offered 12 easy to follow suggestions like: 1) If it’s an electric typewriter, turn it on.

Would you really have any faith or interest in a site that presented you with this kind of crap? Would you ever go back to this site? No and no.

People and companies pay for this stuff! They put it on their sites because … content helps you get traffic, right? And these content mills are very concerned with SEO. They have SEO guidelines for writers in order to provide companies with content that will improve their search engine results. If brands are built based on user experiences, then pulp content turns brand experiences in to static.

Attention K-Mart shoppers: Content is not king. GOOD CONTENT is king.
Content = Currency. Do you want your currency to be the Haitian gourde (currently trading at 0.0248004 to the dollar) or the Euro (1.39509)?

Online, you are what you share.
It comes down to the quality of your site’s insight and its expression in content. So, “If it’s an electric typewriter, turn it on”….and write something an audience cares about.

I’m not sure who’s an expert about social media. But I’ve figured out a few tips to steer clear of stupidity.

1. Shun Gurus, Ninjas, Rockstars
They should be translated as follows:

• Guru = “Windbag”
• Ninja = “Novice”
• Rockstar = “Marginally competent”

How did ninja – an elite assassin and/or practitioner of ninjitsu – come to mean “someone who is good at social media”? In this context, shouldn’t a ninja be someone who is good at destroying reputations?

A friend of mine got a call from her daughter’s kindergarten, claiming the girl had been lying. Seems when they ask the kids in the class what their dads do for a living, the daughter says, “He’s a ninja.”

Long pause from mom on the phone. Then mom says, “Well, what do you call someone who teaches ninjitsu?” (And unless that’s what you do, best to stop it now before you meet a real ninja.)

2. List-Based Headlines Announce Weak Content
Y’know, like “iPads, Facebook, Pro Wrestling and You.” Or “Three Tips Anyone Can Use to Muck up a Headline.” It’s a sure indicator that the author doesn’t have anything new to add to the topic or even a coherent idea.  I stopped reading these (and writing them) cold turkey, and life has only gotten better.

List headlines may good for SEO. But since people make all purchasing calls I’m part of, it’s a no-brainer to default to writing for the humans who pay the bills, rather than the search algorithm that’s trying to  ignore over-optimized drivel.

3. Follow Your Own Path
Beware of any blog written according to the Problogger/Copyblogger formula for success. Jason Cohen has a great post at his blog A Smart Bear explaining what this formula is and why he’d rather get a root canal than follow it. This formula is perfect for people who have nothing to say. The only reasons for writing like this are because you’re lazy or you think your readers lack a clue.

4. Don’t Study “Authenticity”
If you want to be authentic then just say what you have to say and stop wondering if you sound authentic. If you’re worried about sounding authentic – whatever that means – then you have a bigger problem: Figuring out who the hell you are. An authentic person just is. Maybe your authentic voice is that of a stuffed shirt. That’s OK, as long as it’s a stuffed shirt with real information. If you don’t have the information then, again, SHUT UP.

5. Avoid the List’s End
Be extra-skeptical of any post that has five, seven, 10, or 15 items. Real life doesn’t work that way, even if marketing wants it to. Generally, a list like that has been padded out. And that last item will be real short and self-evident. Like this one. ;>