Johnnie Firari posted a blog on Smaller Indiana that I found interesting. It contemplates whether content is still king with the great explosion of content that is currently out there.  He made some excellent points and I left this comment in response.

@garyvee is right. Content is valuable is you are the absolute best.  The best way to be the best is to create an extremely narrow niche.  The narrower the niche, the less competition.

Secondly, I think frequency is the most important factor with content.  Short, frequent blasts of content (whether video, podcast, or text), allow viewers to check in with you more often, because it takes less time to consume.

The other half is that obviously content alone is not going to be enough.  You’re going to have to couple your content with a distribution strategy.

I think the main argument that the ‘content is king’ crowd is making is that all the distribution in the world will be wasted on shoddy content that has little inherent value on its own.

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If you distill your job as a marketer down far enough, you really only have to do 2 things.  First you have to create and define your message, and then you have to get that message in front of people.

When you start talking about getting your message in front of the right audience, you’re really talking about attention, which is essentially the most valuable commodity in the modern world.

3 Ways to Get Attention

1. You can earn it.

This is the kind of attention you get through permission marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, etc.  It takes time, but attention earned is extremely valuable.

Any time you build a following through word of mouth you’re earning attention.  You can also earn attention by creating amazing products worth talking about or by creating ideas that are so good they spread.

2. You can buy it.

You can buy advertising on TV, Radio, the web, billboards, magazines, or pretty much anywhere else.  This kind of attention is great as long as the message matches the audience.

It is critical that you match your marketing message to the media outlet or much of your marketing spending will be wasted.

Examples…

• Advertising a cooking tool on the Food Network.
• Advertising email marketing software on a web design blog.
• Advertising earbuds for runners in Runners World magazine
• the list goes on and on…

You can steal it.

You steal attention when you send you enewsletter to people who didn’t ask for it.  You steal attention when you put a popup on your website that the user didn’t expect.  You steal attention when you buy a list from someone and spam the recipients.

Stealing is wrong.  Stealing attention WILL damage your brand in the long run and is not a good investment.

Yes… Probably.

One of the things that marketers seem to be talking about incessantly is that social media can ad a human face to big established brands.

I think this is a little misguided.

I’m not saying that big brands shouldn’t have a presence in social media, but I I don’t want to see social media taken over by a bunch of crappy commercials.  Big brands need to understand the concept of an opt-in.

The real opportunity is for new unestablished brands to build a following.  It is far cheaper and easier now to build a following than it has ever been in history.

The fact is, those who really believe that the time is now will win.  I don’t care if the CEO of Pepsi is on Twitter.  I’d be much more interested in the guy making organic specialty soda in his garage and selling it locally.  That’s the guy who can get real ROI in his investment in social media.

So what about the people in the middle?  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post.

One of the reasons I love reading Seth Godin’s stuff is that he has this amazing ability to distill wisdom into really meaningful, short passages.  Here’s one that he posted yesterday…

Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.

How awesome is that!?  ‘Measured doesn’t mean mattered’.  I absolutely love that.  You could say that to any marketer and get a response.  With as much wheel-spinning as a lot of us seem to do, it’s great to hear a line like that once in a while.

Recently I finally got around to reading ‘Permission Marketing‘.   I know, I know, I should have read this one years ago, but I just now got around to it.  The other day I found the most perfect line that really defines how we should be defining the scope of website design and function.

Every commercial website should be set up to accomplish one goal.  Your Web site should be 100% focused on signing up strangers to give you permission to market to them.

Is there really anything else to say about that?  This is really the essence of why you pay someone to build you a website in the first place, and should be the main consideration when choosing a web developer.

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Okay here’s what I don’t get… We’ve been prophesying the iPad for years now and no one had the guts to beat Apple to the punch (except the folks at Techcrunch with their Crunchpad, which I’m sad didn’t get off the ground).

Here’s my biggest problem…

They totally missed the boat!!!

The iPad virtually guarantees that I’ll still need to bring my laptop with me most of the time, because it lacks two simple features.

Did you hear that!?  Two more features and it would have almost been the perfect device!!!!

1. Where’s the USB port!!!!??? – Seriously, this is crazy to me.  What if I want to use an external USB drive?  What if I want to take photos or video from an external camera and use them on the iPad.  This is a huge drawback.
2. Why isn’t there a video out!!!????  - Why can’t I plug this thing into a projector and run powerpoint presentations or play movies.  I think this is also a huge problem.

Someone please design a device that is similar to the iPad that has these two features.   Right now I can get a netbook for $300 that has both.  I can also outfit it with a 3G card for maybe another $50 bucks.

And it comes with video out and at least 3 USB ports, and great battery life.  Come on, there’s got to be a touch-screen version of this.

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To say that I’m a huge Gary Vaynerchuk fan would be the understatement of the century.  I think Gary is badass and inspiring and that he’s definitely one of the people who is changing the world.

With that said, I didn’t go out right away and buy his book ‘Crush It‘ when it first came out, because I wanted to wait for the audio version, which only just came out recently.  My patience was worth it.

One of the things that really hit home was when he talks about analytics.  He advocates not even checking your stats or traffic for the first year.

I’m one of those people who used to check his traffic every morning first thing.  I was pretty much obsessed with getting those numbers up as much as possible.  I think in a lot of ways that was a waste of time.  I should have been focused on tightening my tribe.

It’s interesting to look at day to day activities and calculate what each one contributes and what each one costs.  I don’t check my analytics as often these days.

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I’ve heard from people like Chris Brogan that you should never apologize if you neglect to post on your blog.  I guess the argument is that if you apologize you’re bringing attention to something that has past, and is therefore no longer relevant.

I have to agree for the most part.  I didn’t post at all last week or the first two days of this week.  In some ways this looks pretty bad.  I’m supposed to be a blogging evangelist, after all.

On the other hand, I’ve been doing a ton of work for clients, and my business is running quite smoothly.

I can honestly say that it’s good to have a break every now and then, but also that I truly miss interacting with the online world when I’m away for two long.  It’s a huge part of my life and I’m pretty certain that it will remain that way for years to come.

I’ve twice found myself in the role that Tony Scelzo calls ‘the worst job in the world’…  The first salesman hired in a startup company.

The first time I found myself there I worked for Marketpath, a web company in downtown Indianapolis.  Actually I was technically the second salesman… I was hired a few months after my good friend T.J. Furman.

The founders had business coming in, and they wanted much more.  They had just signed a huge deal with the Harding Poorman group that generated tens of thousands of dollars plus residuals.

‘Great!’ I thought.  ’I'll sell a ton of websites and make a boatload.’

It didn’t take long for me to realize that selling websites was hard work.  While TJ and I sold several websites in our first few months, we definitely weren’t generating enough income to justify having 2 salesmen on staff full-time, so I got the boot.

It seemed that the founders were much better at selling than we were.

So, I started looking for a new job, because I didn’t yet believe that I had the skills to go into business for myself.  I went to work for Brandswag… as the first salesman they had ever hired.

The founder, Kyle Lacy, had a ton of momentum going which I thought would make working with us an easy sell.  After a few months it became clear that people really preferred to do be sold by the business owner.  And again I didn’t get the job done.

So I went into business for myself…

And people started buying from me.

Here’s my point… If you’re a founder or owner of the business, people assume you have the power to make deals.  They know that you’re staking your name and reputation on your work, and they assume that you’re skilled in what you do (ie, you’re good at graphic design, so they don’t assume you’re great at sales).

So here’s the point.  Sales made by the business owner don’t count.  They all go towards funding the business.  A salesperson will rarely be as good as the founder and it’s likely that the founder will lose money on the salesperson for the first several months.

Thoughts?

Just a quick blurb to plug a new area of the Tribeswell website.  You can find it at http://seminars.tribeswell.com.

I created the Seminars subdomain site so that people interested in registering for seminars (and nothing else) would have a simple, uncluttered interface to use.

Currently I have a seminar coming up in Columbus, IN next Thursday (January 28) at 10 am at the Columbus Chamber of Commerce.

Expect to see lots more seminars coming up.  This site (and my speaking career) is just beginning.

I guess you could look at this post as a 3 step cookbook for using social technology to brand your business.

Start a Movement

Are you riding the tide of what’s always worked in your industry, or are you changing the game? If you’re constantly reinventing possibilities, then you’ve got the culture in place to lead a close knit community of passionate supporters. For more detailed instructions on how to do this, read Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin.

Build a Tribe

Technology makes this simple… but not easy. Where is your community going to ‘live’? Where are they engaging already? Facebook, twitter, somewhere else? Do they only converse at conferences or association meetings? Wherever they be, go there or create a tribe somewhere else. The medium is infinitely LESS important than the community.

Measure Conversions

Do you have a system in place to really track where business is coming from? If you’re truly leading a tribe, then each conversion will probably come from a complicated web of sources. Do you understand how this works? Are there ‘connectors’ at work in your tribe that contribute to a large part of your business. For a detailed description of how ‘connectors’ work read chapter 2 of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Like I said, a lot of these tactics are not necessarily easy, but they are very often simple. Technology makes it feasible (and if you’re lucky, scalable), but vision is just as important. What are you going to do in 2010 to change the market?

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