I go to Educon every year because it’s always inspiring.  You hear what’s happening in other school districts, and realize both how much more you could be doing and how far along you are, as well as how common and universal certain problems seem to be. Resources, even in well off school districts or private schools, seems to be an issue, even the ones issuing kids laptops and ipads simultaneously.  People are nervous about making a decision and spending money that might look wrong headed three years from now, but also know in their hearts that if you wait for the perfect answer, or the most convincing data, the road to the future will be even more steep and unwieldy than it seems now.

Regardless of the uncertainty of it all, the people at Educon are optimists.  They’re optimists because they are betting on the kids they see every day,  betting on the kids’ creativity and promise, despite the obstacles that often leave them drained at the end of the day.  These are educators who realize that technology is a tool to open up the world to kids in ways we could only dream about a few years ago, while realizing that the most important thing that happens in a classroom doesn’t involve electricity at all.  The most important thing about school is community.

Inherent in the purpose of school is bringing a group of people together every day in the classroom to learn with and from each other.  It’s about creating small families that may meet for all or part of the day, and that learn, over time, to leverage their strengths and weaknesses so all boats rise.  It’s about seeing kids as individuals, not just within your classroom, but as whole people with worries and even troubles that can effect everyone.  It’s about trying to teach and model resilience- how you get through challenges and come out the other side better for it.  The best teachers are wizards at turning a group of kids into a learning community- one that has its own ups and downs, but centers around mutual respect and common goals.

This is something you can’t buy from any business or publisher.  It’s not for sale, but it’s probably the largest predictor of whether the education in your schools is working or not.  It’s the common thread that the folks at Educon share, and talk about with passion and feeling.  It’s what moves them and keeps them in teaching every day.  It’s the chance to care and effect kids and help them learn as much about life as about the subject matter at hand.  It’s mentoring and nurturing and caring, and from that core, all other decisions are fairly clear.

One principal shared a story of having one of those dreaded moments of imposing clear line discipline with a student that violated the fundamental rules and trusts.  As he returned to his office, he saw a group of students there waiting for him.  He expected they would be mad, need to talk, or otherwise have an “us vs. them” conversation, but instead, one of the students asked him “Are you all right?  What can we do for you?”  They knew imposing this penalty was a hard for the principal as if he was doing this for one of his own children, and it still brings tears to my eyes as it did to almost everyone in the room.  It demonstrated that when you show real caring and empathy for the folks you deal with, you are in turn, understood and treated the same way.  this is the way discipline and learning should happen everywhere.

Instead, I worry that in too many schools, the caring is slowly being beaten out of everyone, students and teachers alike.

We all know and say this- but the best things in life are free.  They don’t come out of a box and they are unscripted.  But they do require an awful lot of time invested into community, common purpose and mission, and caring about everyone as people first, and people that are imperfect, changing, developing, and doing their best every day.  If we can start to humanize our schools, to lead with empathy, caring and understanding, we’ll have truly transformed schools without spending a dime.  But it will take the biggest commitment of all- one that begins and ends in our hearts.

Compass Points

*Quick note- I accidentally published this piece before it was edited- a quirk from using the iPad to compose in the WordPress app and save in draft format, which I messed up. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Sometimes, we know we’re going to encounter a problem that needs to be solved. But when we choose to take on that task may be more open to discussion.

For example, if you know your car is beginning to hit that age where repair costs start to outweigh the value of the vehicle, you have at least two choices. The first involves starting to shop for cars and deciding to find a replacement before it dies on some back road in the middle of the night. The second is to wait for it to die completely, and then make a more urgent and forced decision on alternative transportation. There’s clearly middle ground between these two choices, but procrastination tends to box you in on choices and timing, where doing some advanced planning may give you a wider range of alternatives and cause less stress. (This, of course, leaves you with less dramatic stories to tell as well, so that is something to consider, I guess.)

Many people get stuck in the research loop. They start planning, but they are always looking for that one better option, the one elusive piece of data that will make the choice easy.  I know I get stuck there, sometimes, thinking I’ll find just that one thing that will be the tipping point on a decision.  often times, data can just be more data.

There’s actually a whole psychological syndrome about this called the Hamlet Complex or Hamlet Syndrome, where people get stuck in the “to be or not to be” loop, paralyzed by making a choice, and fear of making the wrong one.  It’s caused by over-thinking decisions and as a result, becoming paralyzed from just making a choice and getting on with it already.

For these folks (and I think we can all go there sometimes), something that forces their hand, like a crisis, makes them feel better, because they can hardly be blamed, the rationalization goes, if they had to make a quick decision without a lot of information- it was an emergency! It wasn’t my fault! We paid too much, but we had no choice! The truth of the matter is that there were plenty of opportunities to do some advanced planning, or make a faster decision, and perhaps a better decision, but they just couldn’t find the trigger they wanted to pull.

I feel this sense of frustration often with some committee work I’m involved in. There’s general agreement of where we want to go. There’s general agreement of what the right thing to do is. But issues like time, money, logistics, etc. all seem to get in the way and give people an excuse against making a decision.

For example, let’s look at Apple’s new textbook initiative. We all have known since the Kindle came out that digital textbooks were coming.  Many of my kid’s classes have “at home” textbooks on cd, online portals to supplement the text, etc. because the current textbook purchase cycle is TEN years.    Is there anyone who REALLY thinks in the digital age, that text books purchased today are going to last TEN years in almost any subject? Do we really think kids won’t be reading digital textbooks within that time frame? Because if we know that’s going to be the case, why don’t we start the transition and planning for that process now?

There are lots of really good reasons why (or why not). Not every text is ready for digital right now. Committing to every child having a laptop or tablet scares the crap out of teachers, administrators and parents, who are themselves just getting used to these things. It will be expensive. It will require teaching teachers and students about digital citizenship and some of them will make mistakes.  Some of the mistakes will be more serious and have more consequences than merely doodling the margin of a school text or losing a book and having to pay for it at the end of the year.  Many teachers may not be comfortable adopting their lessons to an online world, or giving up top down control in the classroom. But I ask again, if we know that it’s coming, why aren’t we planning for that today?

It turns out if youset a firm goal and deadline you have to work towards, everyone can then start to make firm plans to meet those parameters. As long as a goal stays in the “some day”, or “wouldn’t it be nice if” range, it is as good as water through a sieve. It means very little without verbs in sentences and things to do behind the mission statements and platitudes.  Without nailing down what you want to do and when, it merely becomes another dream, ephemeral and unlikely to become reality.

So I ask you, as I ask everyone- what are you saying “Sure, but not now” to in your life? What excuses are holding you back? What are you afraid of? And what would happen if you just said- ” OK, so if not now, when?”   When will I finally commit to accomplishing this goal I know I need to accomplish?

If it isn’t tied to a date, or specific goal or course of action, you simply aren’t serious about committing to the goal, so take it off the table and forget about it. It’s worthless to you. It’s up there with my hopes I’ll finally get that extra two hours in a 24 hour day to accomplish so much more. Since Hermoine Granger isn’t showing up with a time turner, I have to deal with reality that there are only 24 and not 26 hours in a day, and make sure all those lists of some day tasks are put into a timeframe to be accomplished.

What will you move off your some day list, where your dreams are waiting for the stars and planets to align, and move it onto the front burner, where you have to work to make it happen?

It takes guts and commitment to go for your dreams.  It takes courage and conviction to face difficult decisions and take painful action now to make tomorrow better.  It’s not easy to pick a direction and go for it, especially when it’s a time of flux and change.  But I know waiting until the “right” moment means there will never be a perfect right moment and we’ll never achieve anything by waiting on the sidelines, hoping rather than doing.

From the Econ and Statistics Administration of the US Dept. of Commerce

I was with my trainer this morning, and we were discussing post-holiday things, as is typical the first week in January.  And I was struck by the following thought:

We got ourselves out of the Great Depression by an expansion of productivity, consumer spending, and eventually World War II.  (I will grant you up front this is probably largely simplified.) I don’t think we can do this again, and looking for consumers to haul us out of the economic doldrums alone without something else, is a mistake.

In this great recession, we’ve initially looked for consumers spending again at previously high levels.  But a series of articles over the past few weeks, have led to me to doubt that that will happen, in part, because we don’t “need” as much as we have in the past.

Look at the Chart above from the US. Department of Commerce.  Despite an increase in net worth, consumer spending is flat-lining at a decent, but not overwhelming rate.  Is it possible that we simply no longer need any more stuff?

Hear me out for a minute.  After the Great Depression, there was a vast input of new consumer devices that helped make the average person’s life more productive.  Think of everything from telephones to dishwashers to washers and dryers.  Think Refrigerators, TV’s, VCR’s and more.  Even computers, cell phones and the like have helped drive consumer spending.  But this year, as I did my holiday shopping, my family had much less on their want and need list than ever before.  We’re pretty much saturated with stuff, and we’re starting to move into the “let’s spend money on experiences” – ie. go someplace or do something together, rather than add to our inventory.

Sure, there’s replacement of old stuff.  There’s some upgrades to our older stuff as well.  But there’s not a lot of earth shattering upgrades that fundamentally alter functionality or time or anything else that we really need.  I may not be typical, I grant you.  We also tend to be a geeky household with more technology than is perhaps decent and seemly. But even as a self-proclaimed member of the technorati, I haven’t bothered to upgrade to 3D TV or Blu-ray because I don’t see the point, really.

Even the nifty stuff we did buy this year are niche products like coffee joulies, and we’re waiting for our Touchfire keyboard.  My husband thinks the Nest thermostat is something he wants.  But these products are what I certainly would call niche and weird.  Seth Godin has about a jillion blog posts that hit this subject matter, including his great book, We Are All Weird.  It comes down to innovations and opportunities being smaller and at the margins, but doable, and profitable for those willing to take the risk.  It’s not about the mass, vanilla middle anymore, and it may not be about making mass companies to produce mass products either.

I grew up in Rochester New York, which incubated some pretty awesome companies over time.  Kodak.  Xerox.  Bausch and Lomb. Stromberg- Carlson. (makers of Telephones and PBX systems).  It was a town where folks would grow up, get a job at one of the big businesses in town and be set for life.  A manufacturing town, and middle America in many ways.  Many of these companies have moved out of town, or in he process of the big wind-down, as Kodak is dismantling many of their plants because it’s cheaper than selling them off.  And the word on the street is that Kodak let many great ideas sit on the shelf, like Xerox did with its PARC lab, letting other companies with a greater appetite for risk take these great ideas and develop them into whole industries.  (You could argue that Apple alone helped usher in the decline in local print shops with development of fonts, and accompanying laser printers, making desktop publishing a reality, and programs like iPhoto along with digital cameras make printing photos less relevant than ever before, issuing an end to Kodachrome…but I digress.)

The point here is that we have plenty of ideas and even plenty of nifty products, but the end of the mass and the production for the mass market is coming to a plateau.  And as such, I’m not sure we’re going to be able to rely on consumer spending to drag us out of the recession.  It’s going to be small businesses, entrepreneurs, and the like, who now have as much access to consumers all over the world as never before, that will be our new engine of productivity.

I could be wrong of course, but I know I don’t have an un-ending need for new washers, dryers, or other large consumer products, because my current ones work just fine, and the upgrades are not enough to convince me to replace early.    As a result, I’m just not sure where the big consumer demand is going to be to drive our economy forward.  I think the new normal will be relatively flat spending and slow growth, and we should prepare for that reality.

What do you think?  Have I got it wrong?  Why?

Articles and Resources:

Why Best Buy is Going Out of Business…Gradually Forbes.com

Americans Plan to Spend the Same on Christmas (look at the trend lines…) Gallup.com

Lack of Hot Toy challenges retailers ABC.com

12 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2012 (many include “recycling”) Trendwatching.com

Online Shopping Statistics Visual.ly.com

What Drives Consumer Spending, Department of Commerce

Business Feedback Loops

Before the internet, we had to wait a lot longer between taking an action and seeing a result.  You launch a product, and in the next quarter, half year, or longer, you might finally have enough data to begin to see whether the product was a success or not.  If you get mediocre results,  you might start to consider tweeking the product, but the time between “trial”and “error” or getting an improvement out to the existing customers has been so long, it hardly seemed to matter much.

Now with the internet, you can begin to get almost instantaneous feedback from customers, and go to work almost immediately on your next iteration, if needed.  This can be a blessing and a curse, of course.  You may save money by not having to commit to thousands of units if your item has problems and you find out early, but the pros and cons of your 1st bite at the apple will also haunt you by the spread of reviews, comments, blogs and the rest around the internet.  This would be why limited beta testing and early focus groups are even more valuable to help you sort out details long before official launch.

Keep in mind, early reaction can be misleading.  Think about all those tech folks who said “Who cares about the iPad?  It’s just a big iPod touch- who needs one of those?” Those tech insiders and geeks had to eat their words when they figured out they weren’t the only audience for the thing.  Making choices and reacting too early to the early adopter crowd might lead you to making a big mistake- so it’s important to know which audiences you are speaking to and how important and relevant their feedback is to your overall vision and business.

Implementing Helpful Feedback Loops

The key is to set up feedback loops where you can gauge reaction or impact and adjust course, when necessary, with relative speed rather than waiting years to adjust.

Government, as we all know, is awful in terms of feedback loops.  Once a law or regulation is finally in place, after commentary, reconsideration, input of special interest groups and the like, the final version often has very different effect than what was intended.  Then along comes our old friend, The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences, where real world consequences of decisions and laws turn out to be different than what was initially anticipated or expected.

For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act has a couple of positive and negative unintended consequences.  With the increase in the number of ramps available for wheelchair access to buildings, parents with strollers, delivery men and others have easier access than ever before as well.  The negative consequences come from some folks using the law as a way to do “drive-by” lawsuits for businesses without adequate disabled parking, even for businesses they have never even attempted to visit.

Yet every law, negotiated and put into place to try to solve real world problems will sit, with its good and bad effects.  It will take forever to change it, with yet more compromises, to make sure it works better than it did at the outset. Because of the delay between enactment and action, the legal process moves at a pace that is frustrating and ridiculous at almost all levels, and this lack of responsiveness is part of the underlying frustration we all have with government at all levels.  The feedback loops, from election cycles to implementation of actual laws is so long, it can seem to render the modification moot.

But government is gradually getting with the program.  The State of Delaware has been using Twitter to help keep people informed of road closures and emergencies They also listen to social channels, so they know where there might be an emergency, a snow removal problem, or other issue the State and its employees can address, rather than waiting to hear through more formal channels.  It makes the State gradually more responsive to citizens, especially where it counts- on day to day issues that effect everyone.

Education Feedback Loops

When I was in school, our teacher figured out what we knew by testing us at the end of a unit or chapter.  we might have had a quiz or paper in between.  These data points are pretty far apart, and don’t help a teacher or student assess what they understand or don’t understand when something can be done about it- closer to the point of first learning.  Educators are using simple things like a “thumbs up/thumbs down” to do a quick check on who is following along and who is lost.  They may use “clickers” to take polls and informal assessments even several times during a class period, checking on what kids are getting and what they need more help with along the way.

These immediate feedback loops help keep kids on track, and avoids losing too many kids along the way.  They help a teacher figure out how to adjust her teaching speed to her students, and keep her from “over-teaching” concepts the kids already know.  The shortened feedback loops help make a teacher and a classroom of students more in sync, making sure each does their jobs better over time. Errors and issues can be spotted and corrected quickly, giving everyone a better shot at mastering the material and doing well.

Tweek Your Feedback Loops

The key in business and education is to keep feedback loops coming, and know when you need to adjust your course of action, and when to hold steady.  If you don’t think your marketing is working, ask your customers what they think of it, sooner than later.  How often would they like to hear from you?  What sort of information would be most helpful?  Do they want sales information, education information, or what would they like to see most?  The more you can gear your materials to your clients needs, the more likely you are to get the response you need.  But like any good feedback loop- you have to remember to ask for the feedback and then act on it appropriately.

feedback loops are the key to getting more out of your current actions- tyr playing with them, and see how they work for your business.

Despair.com poster

1. Moment by Moment Political Commentary. There have been so many presidential debates, and so many candidates literally churned through the media on a daily basis, we’re seeing more people comment on the most inane, minor stuff, reminding me of this great Despair.Com poster- Never Before Have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few. We’re spending more and more time commenting on every action, decision, rumor and the like, very little of consequences is actually happening.  While I appreciate commentary and insight, so much of it is not always based on all the facts, but just cherry-picked tidbits, that it’s virtually useless. It makes me ask whether or not the media circus is driving our political discourse with commentary that sounds more like sportscasters calling a baseball game.  It certainly seems to rival the influence on decisions that are made as much as donations and special interests do.

2. Everything’s On Fire! There’s entirely too many emergencies going on demanding my attention daily.  There are faux urgencies being injected into everything from the toothpaste I buy (If you don’t use this now, your teeth will discolor and fall out!) to Groupon and Living Social Deals (Now! Today Only! Act!!) to political fundraising (If we don’t get X dollars from you today, we’ll lose everything!).  I don’t know about you, but this faux hype is wearing me out.  It’s having one major effect- I’m getting really good at saying No, turning off these things, opting out of your newsletters, etc.   It’s like the boy who cried wolf- if you don’t save the emergency speech for the true emergency, I’ll stop paying attention to you all together.

3. Decision Impairment. This is the opposite, but a direct result from the Emergency! Problem. Based on the huge options for research, choice, and the constant hope of a better deal, and rumors of that “perfect thing” being just around the corner, I see tons of people paralyzed from action, unsure of when to pull the trigger, afraid of making a mistake.  Too much information paralyzes people from making decisions, and sometimes, more data is confounding rather than clarifying.  This fear of making mistakes leads us to avoid making any decision at all, and it keeps us in a rut.  My friend Julien Smith, is publishing a great book on this on December 7th.  It’s called The Flinch, and it will be available for free in electronic format for the Kindle, Nook, iBooks- everywhere.  We have to learn to take risks, to stretch, to even gamble with making mistakes- we learn a ton from them, and quite frankly, rarely do they turn out to be mistakes at all. But if you never make a decision and commit, you’ll never reap any benefit at all.

4. Privacy Issues.  People have realistic concerns about how much of their stuff online is private.  Basically, despite the appearance of privacy and firewalls online, I basically assume that anything I say or do online is on the public record.  This means the aggregate of my ideas, things I share, pictures, etc. will make up my digital – and real life- reputation, so I need to be responsible for this. It also means that whatever anyone else says about me will also be part of that reputation.  This means I have to live in such a way that I’m comfortable with people saying what they want, even if it’s not particularly nice- they are allowed to have their opinion, and maybe they are simply not my audience, and that’s fine.  Bt it also means that if I want to share truly private information with someone else, I should be selective with that, just like you would be when you decide to share personal info with friends offline. I get that some things should be private- and I’m a big fan of the Constitution.  But I also realize that I have some control over what is public and private- at least what I choose to add to the conversation- and I need to take a second to consider whether EVERYONE needs to know stuff or whether, maybe a phone call or email would be a better choice than a Facebook post.  Privacy, like security, may be as much for the illusion of privacy or safety than for the real thing, especially online.  If it’s important, know the difference.

5. Everybody’s An Expert. Google exists and we can have information at our fingertips at all times.  But information is not experience, or knowledge or wisdom.  Just because you went to school once, does not make you an education expert.  Learning how to construct curriculum, meet the needs of a diverse set of learners, and perform in front of them successfully every day is a real art and should not be subjected to the same moment by moment assessment of performance that Basketball players get on the court. Likewise, just because I can go to Home Depot and buy cool tools does not make me a general contractor.  Heck, there are some things I can teach myself to do, but I think we all have to be a little more wary of when we need to call in help from the field.  Watching one video on sink installation does not make me a plumber, and I shouldn’t try to armchair quarterback a professional’s every move when they come to fix something.  Let people with experience and expertise do what they do best.  And know when you’re in over your head and ask for help.

Tonight’s session will give you an overview of the four week course and branding your business with social media.  In addition to the presentation, we’ve developed some great materials as handouts for each class, and together, they will create a bit of a workbook/e-book to accompany the course.

We hope you enjoy the course, and I’d love to hear back from you about what was most helpful, useful, or what you would like to see changed.  Also be sure to let me know if there’s something particular you want to make sure is covered, and we’ll make that happen as well.

Week One Handouts are available as a PDF and you can download them by clicking here:

Branding Your Business – Week One Handouts (PDF)

In No Particular Order:

Fiction

Jen Lancaster.  Jen Lancaster has been a favorite of mine since my friend, beth harte, introduced me to her books a few years ago.  While Jen’s previous books were more life adventure sort of books, If You Were Here is her first fiction novel. Her writing is funny, touching and it has a sense of authenticity to it- It feels like she’s telling these stories to friends over drinks.  Meeting her at a reading in Center City Philadelphia this Spring felt like meeting Bruce Springsteen- it was a big deal for me, especially since I was finishing my own book at the time.  Her previous book- My Fair Lazy, inspired me to take my first trip to Chicago and go to Moto, a molecular gastronomy restaurant that makes you rethink what food can be.  It currently holds my personal record for having spent the most on a meal ever,  and having the most amazing time doing so I could imagine.

The Help- Kathryn Stockett  Yes, I read it, and enjoyed it- and the book is much more in depth than the movie.  I think the only thing missing from this story is the current irony where most of the people in the 50′s and 60′s who were prejudiced and unkind to The Help are now older people, depending on the very people they were abusive to, to take care of them in their old age.  Karma can be a b*tch.

Non-Fiction

The Myth of the Garage- by Chip and Dan Heath.  This book is a collection of great short pieces by the brothers responsible for Made to Stick and Switch- two other books I constantly recommend.  I find myself taking notes about things I want to remember or points to use in my work when trying to explain complex things to people who are a bit scared of all this new online stuff.  Even better, it’s free as an e-book on Kindle, Nook and iBooks.

Dan Ariely Dan’s work helps explain why we all do things that logically don’t make sense and how we can get in our own way.    I love this sort of cultural anthropology, and I’m a huge fan.

What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media- Chris Lehmann & Scott McLeod.  For teachers in the group, Chris Lehmann, the principal of Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy, is one of the most thoughtful, kind and amazing people I know.  His book helps you figure out the way forward, as technology becomes more a part of the student’s lives, even if you aren’t 100% comfortable with it yourself.  Time is short, and you need to get with the program as quickly as possible.

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip–Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (P.S.) “>Waiter’s Rant by Steve Dublinica, you’ll end up being a lot more patient and understanding with all the sales clerks you meet.  From a business owner’s point of view, you’ll realize how important your front line personnel are to your overall success or failure.

No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing “>No Bulls**t Social Media- Jason Falls & Erik Deckers.  While I should disclose up front that I consider Jason a friend and someone who I respect highly – and he’s a blast to share a meal with – His book is definitely worth your time, even for those who consider themselves social media savvy.   This is the no-gloss book to recommend to people who are still trying to figure out what this social media thing is about, and why it doesn’t seem to be “working” the same way traditional marketing works.  It contains the conversations all of us in this general social media marketing arena have with each other- it’s about time everyone else knew it, too.  Basic business good sense does not go out the door just because you have a website.

Chuck Klosterman IV- A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas- this is a fun romp from one of the kings of “literary non-fiction”.  Chuck has a bunch of interesting interviews and some of his famous riffs that always make me laugh and walk away totally amazed.

All of Seth Godin’s Domino Project books, including:

Poke The Box- Seth Godin

Do The Work-Steven Pressfield

We are All Weird- Seth Godin

Anything You Want- Derek Sivers

Pick Four (Zig Ziglar workbooks)

Read This Before Our Next meeting- Al Pittamipalli

Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas- Dan Zarella

End Malaria- Collection of work including amazing people like Mitch Joel, Sir Ken Robinson, Pam Slim, Steven Johnson, and Jeff Jarvis, to name only a few.

Each and every book on this list is worth your time, your attention, your money, and worth sharing with friends.  I’m also excited to say that another friend will be launching a book in this series shortly, and I can’t wait to tell you more about that one- it will change your life.

That’s probably more than the classic top ten, but it should give you a good idea where I’ve spent my time and attention this year, and where I think yours can be well spent as well.

And I have to add this last one:

For any teachers, educators, speakers, parents or other folks interested in education, please check out Chris Brogan, did a video review of the book recently, and it sums up what Jenifer and I were trying to achieve- giving teachers, parents and anyone interested in education a roadmap to how to reach everyone in your audience/classroom, and how to teach with your students in mind.  For me, the best reviews I could get for the work we put into the book is this sort of response- that it made people think, consider, and try something new to better reach their audience.  That’s all an author can ask for in the end.

While Ms. Sullivan did nothing disruptive while in the Governor’s presence other than send this tweet, she is being accused of being disrespectful in a rather ad hoc ergo propter hoc  way.  (after this, therefore because of this).   Ms. Sullivan is currently choosing not to apologize, and I strongly support her free speech rights, especially since she is at the age when she can begin to vote and take place in public discourse as an adult.

The really interesting question this whole incident is the free speech versus regulated speech argument, hitting at the heart of an  age-old debate about whether free speech rights apply in the school house or at school-related functions.  While the Supreme Court has stated many times that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door,  the school does have leeway to balance free speech with educational objectives.  This means, for example, that schools can reasonably restrict kids from wearing clothing with provocative language that may be disruptive to learning.  The most recent school speech case,  Morse v. Frederick may apply here.  In that case, Students had displayed a sign saying “Bong hits 4 Jesus” in front of their school when the Olympic Torch Relay was passing by.  The sign was confiscated by the principal and the student responsible for it was suspended.  The case wound up in the Supreme Court, where, in a 5 to 4 decision, the action of the principal was upheld as a reasonable enforcement of the school’s policy not to encourage illegal drug use, and that these policies also included students who were on field trips or other approved social events.

While Ms. Sullivan was clearly on a school sponsored event, her speech was not disruptive at the time, and did not inherently violate school policy other than using her cell phone during school hours.  But it is the content of her message, not the method by which it was communicated, that is being punished, making it much more likely that Ms. Sullivan will prevail if this matter ever goes to Court.

What I think is most important about this, however, is the need we all have to begin to teach kids at every age (and adults as well) what it means to be a good digital citizen.  We are doing virtually nothing (in the aggregate) to teach our kids about how to use new communication channels appropriately, and that digital communication like tweets can have a bigger impact on their lives than they realize.  For Ms. Sullivan, who is likely applying to colleges, will this event become something that makes her a more attractive candidate or less?  Will her handling of this issue lead to applause or a reputation of being a troublemaker?  the jury is out, but one thing is for sure- one snarky tweet may change this young girl’s life whether she’s ready for it or not. The lack of guidance provided in the vast majority of school districts to students on digital citizenship issues at any level of schooling will likely lead to more of these issues coming to the fore rather than less.

If we learn anything from Ms. Sullivan’s incident with her school and Gov. Brownback, I hope it’s that we can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the power of social media and the effect it has on people.  We need to begin to prepare our kids to live in a world we ourselves are still adjusting to- where your fifteen minutes of fame or infamy may come at any time, for almost any reason.

The classes are structured so that each class can stand alone, but the series creates an overall picture to help you better understand the opportunities available through social channels and how to leverage them for your own business.  The classes are being offerred in three locations and will cover the same material.  In addition, each week we’ll have handouts to go along with the class with resources, online tools to help you and your business, and a list of steps you can take to help implement what we’ve talked about that week.  Our goal is to make sure each week you have something to think about and actionable steps to help make this “social media thing” more manageable and useful to you.

Below you’ll find an outline of the course as planned, and I’d love any suggestions from you about things we may not have added to the list that you’d like to see included.  We’ll also leave a little time at the end of class so you can help get your own questions answered, making sure the class fits your needs as closely as possible.

Course Outline:

Session 1 Branding Online with Social Media
-Why Social Media Matters
-Identifying Your brand and Message
-Overview of the Social Platforms including mobile
-Communicating your brand through your profile

Session 2  Your Customers and Your Community: The Two Way Conversation
-Who do you want to connect to online and why? Inbound and Outbound marketing in a nutshell
-Engaging Your Audience- How to create content they will care about and how to make your messages more memorable
-Setting up listening posts

Session 3 – The Google Tools session: How do customers look for me, and how can I help them find me?
-Google’s Zero Moment of Truth and Customer Feedback Loops- When are customers making decisions and why after the sale is also more important than ever before.
-Basic SEO- understanding tagging, keywords, and trying to fish where the fish are
-Using Google Tools to help time content and check on your competition

Session 4 Managing Social Media and Defining Your Goals
-Integrating Your channels- to cross post or not- making the most of your content.
-Managing Social Media- tools to help make your brand and messaging more consistent
-Defining Success: How do I know if this is working? What am I looking for as far as results?
-Final To Do’s
-Q & A

Locations and Sign-up Links

Flickerwood Wine Cellars- the great wine shop in Kennett Square- 4 consecutive Mondays starting November 28th

http://brandingflickerwood.eventbrite.com/

Lily Sushi- the great new sushi restaurant in Kennett Square- Four consecutive Thursdays starting December 1st

http://brandinglilys.eventbrite.com/

Film Brothers in Wilmington, DE- four consecutive Wednesdays starting December 7th

http://brandingfilmbros.eventbrite.com/

We hope you’ll join us for these sessions.  The price is $80 for the 4 weeks, which comes to $20 per class!  Even if you need to miss a week, I know you’ll find it more than worth it and the handouts will be available to help cover what we covered in class.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Multilevel marketing and Video Email

There’s a “plan” out there I’ve heard a lot about from local business people, called Talk Fusion, that allows you to send Video Email.  It started in 2007, and boasts a large number of people all over the world using this as the next big thing.  The product itself lets you upload videos you create and simply embed them in your email, saying that your email will be much more engaging and “add a new dimension to your business communications.”  (They have other products as well, including video conferencing, video blogging, and more.)

This is intriguing to a lot of business folks, who want to see more results from their emails, bring in new business, and otherwise engage their clients.  This can seem like a great idea, and maybe it is- but you have to ask yourself the following questions:

1. How do I track my current email response rates?  If you aren’t looking at the effectiveness of your current emails, doing A/B testing, finding out when you have the best open rates, etc.  How will you know if any videos you add in will enhance your engagement with email?  Without a good baseline on your current email marketing efforts, how will you compare the addition of video?

2. Am I already using Email marketing best practices?

There are lots of great tips out there for using email marketing effectively. For example, here’s a link to a great post from the Blue Sky Factory Blog detailing 52 fantastic email marketing tips (Blue Sky Factory is now part of What Counts).  If you are going to use email marketing, getting good at that first will deliver much more return than just sending a video in your email will- it’s a whole package of using email to reach your target audience first, let alone engage them with the bels and whistles.  To use an analogy, you can be serving the best (and fanciest) food in town, but if you can’t get anyone to open the door, how will they ever know?

3. How and when/where are my customers receiving my emails?  Many professionals read their email over mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads, Blackberrys, Androids and more.  Only a portion of these platforms support flash players, and the videos in Talk Fusion are all flash-based.  This means all your engaging videos will be invisible to anyone opening up your email on a decent portion of mobile phones and devices, and will defeat the purpose of using this nifty tool in the first place.

3. Do I know anything about creating good videos?

Regardless of what distribution method you use for videos created in house, is the content itself any good?  I recommend you read Content Rules by CC Chapman and Ann Handley, discussing on how to create great and engaging content online first. (Amazon Affiliate link below)  Whether your video is on YouTube or some other online hosting service or part of an email, it should be engaging, informative, and worth the time of anyone who sees it.  Great content is great content, regardless of how you view it.  But “great” will be in the eye of the viewer, so keep that in mind.

Talk Fusion’s Website   

Interestingly, if you go to the Talk Fusion website, it’s as much about the process of signing up to distribute Talk Fusion as it is about the product(s) themselves.  Google Searches for reviews of Talk Fusion lead you to reviews of it as a business opportunity rather than as a service you might want to buy and use in your business.  This raised a red flag for me.  Many of the reviews themselves on various MLM websites are also next to identical.  This makes them all appear to be canned, copy and paste jobs, than authentic,useful reviews.  This has worked well in generating SEO for reviews of Talk Fusion as a MLM thing, but again, gives us no idea what the “users” think about this solution for video email over, say, creating a YouTube channel and putting links in your email, etc.  Nor does it give you any sense of whether or not video in email enhances conversions or business.

When you google Talk Fusion User Reviews you get many of the same results, but right under the video link, you get this:

This would lead me to suspect that there are many folks who are concerned that this MLM plan is more of a pyramid scheme than a really useful business tool, especially since the reviews of “users” are again, geared towards those using Talk Fusion as a personal business opportunity, selling the service, than as end users using it to boost their businesses.

Ok, well this makes me suspicious of Talk Fusion’s business model, but the question that’s still unanswered is whether video email is a good idea or not.

Let’s try to answer that.  Back to Google.  Let’s start with Video Email Marketing Tips.

Benchmark has a great post detailing video email tips and practices.  As we said before, it starts out with basic good email marketing practices.  One key paragraph says:

Overall, video email marketing is untested waters at the moment, but the format is interesting and can open up many opportunities to make new sales and raise interest in your products and services. The key is to start small and not be discouraged if you get less subscribers than you’d hoped for. In time video email may be the standard format, but for now you’ll need to enhance your regular emails with video to help your subscribers make an easy transition over to this new style of email marketing.

So it seems that at least one provider states this is new and untested.  Hrmmm.  The rest of the tips from our Google search all come from, no surprise, email marketing companies, but none of the ones in the first page are Talk Fusion.  That gives me the impression that Talk Fusion is more about selling itself than seeing people be successful using the product, but again, that’s only my opinion.

But let’s look under the hood.  Other email companies, like What Counts, also offer video email.  But they use HTML5 encoding rather than Flash, and to the non-geeks, this means the video is viewable on any device, including mobile, something the flash-based Talk Fusion doesn’t offer.

Conclusions

I haven’t used Talk Fusion myself, but I’m suspicious of the way the company operates more to promote itself than its actual products.  I’m cautious about the results delivered by video email, especially if you don’t already have great email marketing practices to begin with, which would limit the effectiveness of any email campaign, video included or not.  It seems like a shiny object.  Cool, but what’s the real return on investment for your business?  Maybe being seen as cool and cutting edge is part of the appeal, but the results will, again, depend on the quality of the video you produce, not the distribution channel alone.

Even the on-site hosting of your videos on the Talk Fusion “wall” seems to me to generate more traffic for Talk Fusion, not your own website, and does not allow the same sort of sharing that you might find via free services like YouTube.  (Note: Some folks don’t like YouTube and recommend you create your own “branded” video player, but I would suggest getting your content out and shared is more important for most small businesses than worrying about paying money to create a branded player first.  After all, social media and video is about sharing and making distribution simple, not more difficult.)

I’d recommend starting out with creating killer content.  The better your content, in video, audio , emails, blogs, etc., the more naturally people will want to share it and spread your message.  And in the end, whether you are marketing widgets, or trying to teach kids history, the more memorable and engaging your content, the more likely it is that your audience will respond.

And that’s true regardless of the package you wrap it up in.