How to create a Tribe and be a better business communicator

          We have always been a society that allows corporate America to just pass down information and we blindly take it (sometimes with a grain of salt). However that all changed when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook out of his Harvard dorm room. It wasn’t long after that when business owners started to find ways to connect to this active audiences. The problem was that they were still used to communicating in this top down fashion.

While many communicators were running around and panicking because people now wanted more than press releases and corporate communications BS. We don’t have to fall into the traditional patterns of business communications when it comes to social media. We can build relationships. A real relationship cannot be created when people don’t have a chance to communicate. Facebook and the other social media sites have allowed us to have those digital conversations. When we are able to have this 2-way conversation, we can really connect and get to know people and their needs. We can see the other benefits in this Mashable article.

The one other change that I want to note is that as communicators, we need to be better at our writing in order to make an impact. Twitter pushed us over the edge in this sense. We need to be able to write a strong and powerful message in under 140 characters. As we saw in this week’s readings its not just about writing short messages it is about writing messages that are long enough, but not longer. We need to craft a message that can make people turn the heads to look, remember what is said, and then engage in a conversation that will hopefully lead to a relationship. We also have to compete against everyone else. Seth Godin points out that this interactive digital communication allows everyone to become a marketer.

Godin states “Now that everyone is a marketer, many people are looking for a louder megaphone, a chance to talk about their work, their career, their product… and social media looks like the ideal soapbox, a free opportunity to shout to the masses.” Since reading his book tribes, I have come to incorporate this more into my practice as a PR person. We need to make sure our message is strong and it’s not about the quantity of the connections, it’s about the quality. We need to create a strong tribe of people around our brand to be strong.

Fascinate: How can you gain your Clients Attention?

“Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.” – Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher.

This quote came to my mind when I began to read Fascinate by Sally Hogshead. When people don’t understand something they take strange approaches to understanding it.  Whether it be by ignoring it or calling together an angry mob to hunt it down, the end result is the same.

A good story relies on this balance to keep the reader intrigued. Constant repetition of facts is only good for one thing, making your readers sleep. So why do we become fascinated with something? As Schopenhauer reflects, we either become bored or fascinated when we are left outside of the situation and haven’t yet come to terms with an understanding. One of the greatest and worse attributes in the human race is our never-ending quest for more. It’s hardwired in our DNA. It causes people to eat to the point of weighing more than their car, drink to the brink of death, and push the boundaries of technology until we create a global arms race.

The question is how do we take this drive for more and the power of fascination and incorporate it into our storytelling as public relations professionals? The first thing that I would suggest is to not dull our audiences. This way their interest is peaked and they want to know more.

After that is accomplished we need to keep them wanting more. We can’t give them everything at once or they will become bored and move on to the next thing. It is the reason why Apple Inc. releases new products strategically throughout the year. You run to the Apple store and pick up the latest iPhone. You enjoy it for a week and then Apple announces the next model is launching in less than 14 days. At that point your stomach drops and you know you want it. You may even upgrade again even know you can’t justify spending another $400 dollars on a phone.  You have to drive your publics to feel that they are an insider and an outsider at the same time. Apple isn’t the only one doing this. When a hot new book hits shelves, how quickly does the author publish the sequel? When a movie franchise is showing promising profits, the studio usually starts the sequel even before the first film has a chance to tank at the box office.

Strive to entertain, innovate, and educate. That is the real way to keep your audience fascinated.

Why is Marketing important for the Music Therapist?

Hearing the term marketing can make us shutter. We immediately get thoughts of corporate big shots trying to sell us stuff. Sneaking into our lives, finding out about who we are and using that knowledge to target us to buy things we don’t need. The purpose of marketing, branding, and public relations isn’t necessarily evil, but greed has caused people to exploit the industry.

There are a few of us in the industry who are devoted to making a change, and using the powers of marketing/communications to spread positive change in the world. It’s tough to get over the negative side of the communications world but there are reasons why you should care about marketing for your private practice.

1. Marketing for a good cause is not evil: The people who try to make a change in the world need to spread their message. They may or may not be trying to sell something, but they do have a goal in mind and that is to create positive change. As a music therapist, you offer so many benefits to your clients and more people can value from your service. The best way to do this is to have a targeted communications plan. You have to accept that by embracing marketing you are not going to the dark side.
2. Marketing can help you grow your business: You can only expand your business so much by word of mouth referrals (even know they are the strongest form of marketing) but you need to take a proactive approach to spread your business. Developing a targeted marketing plan can help you communicate to audiences that you wouldn’t be able to any other way.
3. Marketing will help you focus on what you want to accomplish: Developing a marketing plan and really focusing your communications will help you strengthen your business. This is because you have to figure out what goals you want to accomplish over a campaign, what groups of people you want to communicate with, and what your central messaging is. Going through a marketing plan will help you view your practice through new eyes and reenergize your business side.

There is a lot you can gain from adding a strong marketing, branding, and public relations presence to your business or practice. So next time you hear the term marketing you don’t need to be afraid or shy away from it. You can embrace it, help it grow your practice, and see the world through a different set of eyes. You can also learn how to recognize the marketing that is only out for the company it comes from and be able to avoid it in the future. If you have any more questions about marketing your practice, please check out our LinkedIn group and feel free to ask your questions.

Kick Start the New Year

We are just around the 200-hour mark into 2012, with about 8,530 left to go. How are you going to make the most of each hour you have left? As a therapist, you know you need to balance your life in order to live a full life. The key to making sure you start your year off right is to organize yourself.

Here are a few tips to make sure that you start 2012 on the right foot:

1. Prioritize: One of the best things that you can do to kick start your year, is to figure out what you want to get done. So if you want to build your business, get in shape, and learn more, then put those at the top of your priorities. We are in control of what we get done and we are our greatest enemies.
2. Schedule: This will be your lifesaver. Schedule out your week. I don’t mean what you are going to do in your workday, but with all of your time. Make sure your priorities are in that schedule and then stick to it. My fiancé and I created our schedule at the end of last year and have been sticking to it religiously. I make sure to get everything I wanted to do in the week done. The things that I am not over excited about, like going to the gym, have their scheduled time and I can’t ignore them.  Here is a Weekly Planner to get you on track.
3. Be Productive: We all get tired and run down, and people who spend their lives working towards helping others get tired even faster. It is important to make sure that even when we feel that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place we are working towards our goals. Everything is worth it and when you accomplish something big you will automatically be reenergized. Having your to-do list build up only slows you down more.  One great way to get yourself organized and maximize your productivity is by using a great notebook system. I recommend using the Arc notebook system by Staples. This customizable notebook has been a lifesaver for me and you can easily design it to fit your needs.
4. Have Fun: One of the most important things to make sure your year starts off on the right track is to have fun. Life is more than a bank account and a big to-do list. You have to enjoy every second, so make sure you are doing things that make you happy. Work with people you enjoy working with, spend time doing things you love, and try to make even the boring things enjoyable.
5. Relax: Relaxation time should be built into your schedule. It can make sure the first four things on this list are successful. Spend time doing what you love and slowing down to take in the world around you. One of my most energizing points of the week is when I take two hours out to sit near the ocean and read. Find a thing that you can do to truly relax.

Follow the above steps to make sure your year starts off on the right track and you can have a successful year.

The Emotion in Branding: Real World

Now that you know how and why brands depend on the consumer’s emotions, we will take a look at how certain brands play into your life. A key to building a strong brand is to realize how things affect you. Once you have that eureka moment, you will begin to see through the clutter and know how to see what is really going on.

Lets look at an example from “Emotional Branding” by Daryl Travis. One of the best examples that Mr. Travis uses to explain the power of emotions behind branding deals with loyalty to brands. Lets look at salt for a second. Salt is salt. There is no other way to make salt than by putting sodium and chlorine together. However, more people choose to buy the name brand of Morton’s Salt than any other brand. Ironically, Morton’s Salt actually produces most of the salt in other brands. So why the loyalty to a product that can’t have any difference? It is because there is a sense of comfort in Morton’s. Your mother used it and now you do. Since they have been around for so long and have never hurt their reputation with customers, they have essentially become the standard for the salt business. We trust that Morton’s salt will be the best we can get and we take comfort in knowing that.

So why do you buy the things you buy? Is it because of the price or the quality of the item? If an item is over $40, you probably buy it because you feel that you can trust it.

Here is a fun exercise to see if you are letting your emotions choose your brands for you. Pick 10 items, five that are higher priced and five that are lower. Write down why you buy that brand. If you buy Ivoryä soap, why do you buy it? If you always buy Ford cars, why is that? Once you have completed that list, think of brands that compete with them. Are there any major differences between the two brands, or do you prefer one over the other because of how it makes you feel to own it.

It’s not wrong to love the brands you do. In fact, if you feel attached to your brands then that company is doing their job. I proudly wear my Express shirt with my Steve Madden Shoes and drive my Ford Mustang everywhere, while carrying all of my Apple products.

Now that you know how emotions effect your purchasing power, you need to carry it over into your own life. How can you make people feel secure and comfortable with your business or yourself? What can you do to go out of the way to make someone trust you? Feel free to share your tips below!

Emotion in Branding: Emotional Connectors

Emotions play a big part in who we are. They tell us when we like certain things, when we hate certain things, and they give the drive behind what we do. No one lacks emotion and the key to being happy is truly understanding what moves us.

You may be asking yourself, “What does feeling and emotions have to do with this very business-centered term called branding?” The key to understanding how they relate is to truly understand what a brand is.

A brand is not just a logo and a tagline. Those are part of the physical representations of what a brand is, but they don’t show you the core. The value of a brand is in how people perceive you or your company. Do you help people feel better about themselves?

For example, every time I walk into the Apple store I am greeted and immediately asked if I need help. I can tell that the employees like their jobs and are passionate about the products. Even though I went in there knowing I already had a fondness for the company, I leave with my emotions for them strengthened. On the other hand, I am trying to cancel my AT&T U-Verse TV service. (As a new year’s resolution I promised to focus on things to enhance my life all around and TV isn’t a necessity.) The only way to cancel your service is to call their service line. This sends you to an automated messaging system that after about 10 minutes passes you off to a customer service line. If you want to buy a new service or upgrade you can talk to someone immediately. However, if you would like to cancel, you need to sit on hold for up to 30 minutes. (I have given up every time I got to the 30-minute mark.) Now I relate my experience with AT&T with aggravation and frustration.

So how can you make sure your brand, whether it be personal or a business, is giving the people the right feelings and strengthening the emotional ties?

1. Customer Satisfaction is Key: Make sure you treat everyone you interact with in the way you want to be treated. While a first impression is important, every interaction after that is as important. People have the ability to change their impressions of you. So make sure you treat them with respect and show them that someone is there listening.
2. Be Human: This step is one that many business owners forget after the years. They begin to think of their business, as it’s own thing. You represent your business and your business represents you. People don’t want to interact with a computer and you shouldn’t behave like one. Listen to them at let people see your human hat. They will be more likely to connect with you and not a business name. If you have employees, make sure they are representing the human race and the feelings you want people to get from your company.
3. Survey Often: This doesn’t mean you need to collect responses from people every month, but you should be asking people how they feel about you. A great way to do this is ask them if there is one way you can make your service better. This will get them to discuss your service candidly and let them address issues they may have without complaining. It also relates back to being human. You have the ability to give them better emotions about your business than before it becomes a serious problem.
4. Be Tough: You have to be tough on yourself. Evaluate your personality or your company from a third person perspective. Sometime’s people are nice enough to ignore things you do that cause negative emotions. You need to have the ability to look outside of yourself to strengthen the feeling people get from you.

The more emotional connectors you build between you and someone else, the stronger your brand will be. You want people to get happy when they think about you. The fulfillment of a strong brand is when people feel that their lives will be missing something without that aspect of their lives. As therapists, you are able to pass on positive emotions better than any toothbrush or computer can. There is no reason you can’t have a strong brand.

Spotlight on January

Welcome to the New Year. We all have had our fill of family, food, and fun and wish it could continue on. Unfortunately, the reality is that we have to ease ourselves back into work mode and get ready for 12 new months. As always, we want to make sure that you are successful in what you do and how you do it.

This month we are focusing on “New Beginnings” to help get your year on the right track. We are starting our month off with a three part series on how emotions give brands their real value. We will also be publishing a series of posts to get your business on the right track. We will give you a checklist to get you focused, tips on how to start your social networks off strong, and a few tips on how to brand your business. Also, in honor of Music Therapy advocacy month we will be putting together a three part series on how to amp up your advocacy efforts.

As always, new posts will go live every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can also subscribe to our blog on the right hand side. We also have a monthly newsletter to give you additional tips and tools to grow your business, you can sign up for that here.

Make sure you also check out our Brand Camp webinar. For only $25, you get an in-depth look at what branding is, why branding is important for your creative arts or small business, and get you started on developing your brand! Get more information here.

Thanks once again for checking out “Do it in Public” by Greenlight.

EI: The Theatrical Experience – Retail

This first area we are going to look at in this study is the movie industry.

Whether or not you are an avid movie fan like I am, I am sure you can think of at least one favorite movie of yours. The movie industry is a huge one as you could imagine. Here is a list of just some of the branches that is included. there is of course the production houses, the distributers, the theatre companies, the retail outlets, the rental outlets, and then the online distributers.

The production houses, distributers and theatres are doing pretty well. People pay to see almost any movie that comes to the theatres and pay pretty heavily to see it. If a movie is well publicised and/or has a big name actor/actress in it, people will pay to see it in the first weekend or two. The places that are struggling right now are the retail and rental outlets. That is where I am going to spend most of my time on.

Retail

The retail outlets are in the highest risk of closing due to bad marketing and business decisions. Most entertainment specialty stores such as Best Buy, FYE, and the former Media Play don’t attract the attention that they need to in order to keep their doors open.

Most of their issues come with the high prices of their product. People don’t want to spend extra money on useless things, so unless it is one of the blockbuster hits people probably won’t buy it. That is why they jack up the prices to try to make the most profit they can with fewer sales. Then when they get that popular movie that people do want to purchase, they increase the price even more to try to get the profit. They also suffer from fierce competition with non-specialty stores such as Wal-mart or Target. They do carry less product that isn’t in the long tail of the market but they carry the popular items that do sell, at lower prices.

The specialty stores also suffer in terms of proper marketing. People only have interest in a place like FYE if they want to buy a movie. We don’t see national advertising letting us know that it does exist outside of big release days, holidays, and birthdays. We know that chevy is producing a new car or that cheerios are still being sold in the grocery store because of the advertising we see on a daily basis. Even with Best Buy, where there are daily ads, we only get to see that Best Buy is the place to go get the newest televisions, or helpful customer service buying electronics. If I were in charge of their marketing departments, I would make sure that my company’s name is in the homes of my potential customers knowing that we are the place to go buy the newest movies every tuesday even when Avatar or the Blind Side isn’t being released.

Tune in next week for a look at the Rental industry.

As always if it is worth doing, Do it In Public,

Jim

Developing you Online Reputation

If you were to type “social networking sites” into Google, you would get about 65,400,000 results. For business owners seeking to make an impact in the digital world, the strategies are seemingly endless. What online communities are best for your brand? How can your brand engage your customers within those communities? Is a company blog going to establish your credibility?

To navigate the digital landscape, we have synthesized key elements to develop your online reputation:

Perception Development

Before developing your reputation strategy, create a compelling and unique brand identity. To start your thinking about how to develop your brand identity, consider these three questions:

• What are people going to rely on you for? This is your value proposition. What value are you consistently offering? Are you delivering high-quality marketing insights or are you positioning your client ahead of the curve?  Defining value proposition is important in understanding how to position your brand.
• What is your unique selling point? Figure out what makes coming to you a better experience than going to one of your many competitors or why your product is something entirely new.
• Developing your voice. Is your company going to fall in ranks with the status quo, or are you the innovative alternative? Imagine your brand as a person. How would they talk, act, and dress. For a more detailed guide to online branding, read Jack Yan’s Online branding: A definitive guide.

Developing Online Strategies to Meet Your Objectives

After refining your brand personality, identify your objectives and prioritize your efforts. What do you seek to gain from building your reputation online? Market leadership? Building meanginful relationships? To start your thinking about potential online objectives, here are common industry goals and strategies to meet them:

Credibility

Establishing credibility in your field is essential in building meaningful relationships and elevating your online presence. Here are some strategies to establishing credibility in the digital marketplace:

• Answer questions on LinkedIn or Yahoo Answers—These platforms will allow you to give free advice to people who are searching for it. As you answer more questions, naturally you will build relationships and authority in the field. Potentially, this could lead to new business.
• Blogging—You can also develop a blog to post market insights and comment on industry news. Additionally, you can use your blog as a vehicle to market your business via business (Entrepreneur.com, LinkedIn, etc) and social networks. Take example from Mario Lavandeira (aka Perez Hilton). The opinion-orientated voice of celebrity gossip blog, www.perezhilton.com, Mario Lavandeira has made his career by successfully building his reputation into celebrity gossip columnist no. 1 through writing about the latest, most juicy celebrity news.
• Wikipedia—As the first-stop online research platform, Wikipedia is an excellent tool for establishing credibility—as you can create targeted inbound links to your site. Actively and intelligently contributing to the online encyclopedia can drive readers seeking more information about your expertise.

Market Leadership

• New, Innovative Tools—Creating a new tool for industry professionals can elevate your market leadership. Take example from PR Squared—a blog managed by the social media firm, Shift Communications. Their aim was to provide insightful social media advice and commentary without charging content fees. To establish their market leadership and forward-thinking philosophy in the marketplace, PR Squared released their revolutionary Social Media Press Release. The template sought to guide the PR efforts of industry professionals.

Connecting

• Professional Networks—Business-to-business networking is critical in building relationships within your industry. The Visa Business network on Facebook can be a useful tool in finding, reaching out and building relationships with other professionals.
• Social Networks—All the rave, social networks provide data and analytics on specific, granular, segmented audiences. Businesses are increasingly investing more effort into reaching the mass audiences using social media. Think Skittles. They have taken advice from the millions of people invested in social networking and designed their entire web presence around sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. By focusing on where their audience already spends most of their time, Skittles is able to effectively target and engage their consumers.

How can the Long Tail help recent Grads

I just finished reading the Long Tail by Chris Anderson and found everything in it to be a real light bulb on thinking about this industry. Everyone wants to be on the top, everyone wants to be that number one guy/girl. They want the fame. Fame doesn’t bring the money or success anymore. All fame runs out eventually and it never stands out to long in the pages of history.

I admit it, I want to be famous. Ever since a little kid I have been working on random schemes to get myself noticed. It wasn’t for the money or anything like that, it was just for that ability to walk down the street and have people recognize me. I tried to be a comedian, a rock star, a movie producer, a director, an artist. The list goes on, but lets face it, none of that happened, I am still sitting in Rochester and getting ready to graduate and go into that real world and get one of those “Jobs”.  I have scaled back my dreams and aspirations of becoming famous, because right now it doesn’t look possible.  I could go the route of making the hilarious viral video such as the numa numa kid or the star wars kidbut I really don’t want to go that route. Plus, its not the fame I’m looking for.

You can say that I am trying to go for that fame by trying to write a famous blog, I am not going to deny that, but this book gave me an idea. Most money is made from the lower selling products, from people who crave those niches. The corporate America is slowly going down hill, they are going to loose that battle eventually. Don’t get me wrong that will be a very sad day, Heck I got in this business to work for them, and within the three years of my degree they have went from the only source to loosing the battle. Social Networking is here. My thought has been to open up my own firm eventually, but why not now. There are so many musicians or film makers, all those people who are doing what I dreamed of that have the talent but don’t know how to use this new source to make them as popular as George Lucas or Spielberg. Those guys were nothing other than talent and they were guided through the right channels to attract the fame.

The long tail exists and makes money, my goal is to help people, who are talented, take hold of the tail and make money off of it. That means I am making money in turn and can afford gas and rent and food. But if enough of us do that do we just become the middle man’s corporate America. This is my only issue with it. The long tail exists and helps people who have that talent but not that luck  to get their break. With the rise of the long tail, the decline of the hit and corporations running the show is happening. If I and several of my colleagues step in to help the stragglers out and make money off of it, do we just become the replacement of the failing industries who charge a little less but attracts more clients. It is very difficult to figure out especially since the industry is changing day to day, literally. I have no clue what its going to be like next year or even next week.

I apoligize for rambling on about my thoughts, but it was kind of a brain blast moment. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

As always,

Anything worth doing, Do it in Public

See ya,

Jim