Authentic Communications: Get it Done without Going Crazy

By Leslie Martel Baer

So, you have a sustainable or local business–or, ideally, both. Great! And, because of your job title or the size of your business, some or all of the communications responsibilities fall to you. That means you need to communicate in as consistent and authentic a manner as possible with your various stakeholders. Now what?

You no longer have to keep up with just print ad placements, a phone listing and a few coupons, circa 1995. Now, you have to manage your website (including an intranet) and all of the new social marketing. Add in the public relations and caused-based marketing that you really want to do but keep putting on the back burner, and how do you get it all done?

Here are a three very basic tips for getting started on a path to authentic communications.

Authentic Communications Tip #1: Get Everything in One Place
One of the first mistakes that purveyors of local businesses make is to not be able to get a snapshot of their communications at any given time. That means, one person being able to overview everything that is happening with your brand and messages—and, therefore, your reputation.

To accomplish this goal, set up a files (such as a spreadsheet, Word table, or mind map), where you can collect all of your ideas for in one place. You should include topics such as the following:

Goals for your communications
Definitions of audiences you want to communicate with
Key elements of your brand
Key elements of your messaging
Ways that you have found to be successful for communicating your message (e.g., specific print ad placements, Facebook)
Communications channels with which you would like to experiment
and so on.

Authentic Communications Tip #2: Find a Way to Track Everything
You can’t really know if the effort you put into a particular communication method is worth it unless you find some way—even in the broadest terms—of tracking it. This tip goes for everything, from approaches to employee training and updates to marketing and advertising. Of course, you will need different methods for different channels. And, some channels—such as email marketing—afford the ability to track in a very accurate, detailed manner. Others, such as print ads, require more effort and only give you an idea of trends. But, either way, you’ll be getting a sense of the effectiveness of each thing you work on, and where you should trim your efforts and where you should expand them.

Authentic Communications Tip #3: Review
Make sure that you set aside time at regular intervals to review what you are doing. You want to do this for a couple of reasons. First, make sure that you have continued to keep everything in one place (see Tip #1). As with everything else in your business, your communications will tend toward entropy. Regular reviews will help you see if you’ve continued to…

keep it all in one place;
keep your brand and message consistent across all of the materials that you’ve developed in the interim (mixed branding or messages is a reputation problem for your business!);
created unnecessary overlap in your efforts or stumbled across some great new ways of communicating.

Finally, regular reviews also help you make use of that tracking you’ve been doing (see Tip #2). You can look at the results of your tracking—however crude—and decide if some channels or projects are more rewarding than others. Then, you can trim the areas that have lack luster performance and focus more on the projects that have been giving you better returns on your dollars and effort. Make note of that in your “file for everything” (otherwise now known as your communications plan) and you are all set to keep the positive work going in your authentic communications.

Which gets us back to that “crazy” part: if you know where everything is (Tip #1) and how your projects are performing (Tip #2) and you’ve reviewed with an eye toward staying on track and focusing on the results-oriented efforts, you life will be—slightly—less crazy.

E-waste Solutions that Go Beyond the “Reuse Art Project”

By Leslie Martel Baer

Recently on MotherJones.com, Kiera Butler posted a “solution” to the “Econumdrum” of what to do with old computer media such as floppy discs.

Having just come from the State of Green Business Forum in San Francisco, I couldn’t help but shake my head… and respond. We don’t more solutions that make progressive, environmentally minded professionals look like hop-heads. And, we don’t need “solutions” that will, in the long run, actually make the situation worse.

So, while I acknowledge that Ms. Butler had the best of intentions–and even a fun idea–I encourage her in this copy of my response post–to dig deeper to better solutions. Was her post tongue-in-cheek? Probably a little. But, we need–and already have–good solutions (see below for links) to problems such as e-waste, and we need to push forward with more in the mode that consumers–even green consumers–want and need: fast, simple, economical appealing solutions that improve our lives and protect the planet. As innovative businesses, we need to send the message that we are doing just that.

Here’s my post, and tell me what you think of this issue:

Look, I appreciate the intent here, but this is the wrong idea for several reasons.

First, Ms. Butler instructs folks to turn their media waste into another waste product that will ultimately get land-filled when the creator gets sick of looking at it or has a change of taste. And, at that time, it will be more likely to get land-filled than it is before the project was executed because it is harder to disassemble. Plus, you’ve added/consumed more toxic chemicals in the project than you started with when you just had your discs.

Second, Ms. Butler perpetuates the myth (or, at least what I thought was a myth, before I read this post) that progressives looking to save humanity from itself are tail-chasing, clueless dreamers who don’t have a foothold in reality and think e-waste art projects are viable solutions to our overwhelming problems. Sure, there are some of those out there–and a certain about of found-object art is fine–but there are also a lot of us who are very technologically, economically, and design savvy who know that solutions like these are ultimately counter-productive, no matter how well-intentioned. I actually think Ms. Butler falls into the latter category and should stick to that image.

What we really need are true life-cycle solutions for slick, cool products that actually make our lives better and more fun. For the stuff that was designed before designers had even heard of cradle-to-cradle? Enter folks like GreenDisk.com (http://www.greendisk.com/) and GRX Recycling/Metech Recyling (http://www.metechrecycling.com/) who are actually harvesting materials from these media (and electronics) and putting them back into the manufacturing stream.

It isn’t a perfect system, but recycling–in this instance–is a far sight better than the “reuse” suggested here. And, having just come from the State of Green Business Forum last week (http://www.greenbiz.com/stateofgreenbusinessforum2010) seeing posts like this one–even targeting consumers–just makes me shake my head. We can do so much better than this suggestion for “reuse”!

I encourage Ms. Butler to dig a little deeper and look for savvier solutions to our consumer waste problems. They are out there, and she would be doing folks a tremendous service by promoting them through her blog.

The Branding of Peace and Respect (with a thank you, Mind Over Markets)

By Leslie Martel Baer

In her her post on solar energy messaging on the Green Marketing Blog, Carolyn Parrs of Mind Over Markets points out that the message of the solar industry needs to come down to earth: we’ve got the technologies, this stuff isn’t rocket science, and we know—in the long run—it will best serve ourselves and future generations. Let’s get ‘er done and reap the rewards!

(Of course, as one blog commenter points out, ROI still must play a large role in the conversation. I’ll leave that to those of you with the spreadsheets.)

But the observation that really intrigued me in her post is this: “The loudest voices we hear are the ones against whatever is put in front of them.” Our media—and, more broadly, our culture—has devolved into one in which the loudest, roughest bully gets his way, right or wrong. Might makes the right to be “the decider.”

That’s not exactly a revelation. And, one could rightly argue that the election of Barack Obama and comparatively progressive majorities in the Senate and the House stand as historic victories for peaceful, positive, grassroots democracy in the U.S. We have seen intriguing new work on our most challenging issues as a result. Whether or not one agrees with the unfolding policies, at least things are moving that haven’t budged in decades. Inaction breeds criticism without having to risk new ideas. Cooperative action affords the opportunity to determine what works and what doesn’t.

And therein lies the crux of our sustainability communications debacle. When major radio personalities state that activists working to salvage our environment should “go off and die,” when congressmen shout “you lie!” to the president during a formal address, when parents tell children that the president is lying about trying to get more funding to public schools, we have utterly lost the qualities of peacefulness and respect—and, therefore, constructive, cooperative action—in our culture.

Where is the respect? Where is the common decency? Where is the peaceful approach to solving our differences and finding common ground?

In the U.S., the brand of peace and respect is weakness. Peace is for sissies. Being respectful is wimpy. We have raised our children—especially our men—for generations on that brand. Showing compassion, acknowledging the dignity in another—particularly one who may appear to be from a lower socio-economic class—makes one a no-account do-gooder. And, that is exactly what is wrong with the branding of renewable energy, natural products, energy efficiency, socially responsible investing, green building, and every other sustainability space.

Sustainability messaging doesn’t need to get mean, nasty, and shout down the other guy. That’s just not our style. But it needs to get tough. We need to say, “We won. We won because the majority of people think we’re right. Majority rules. The loud mouth on the radio is wrong.We are right, so let’s get it done.”

Sustainability messaging needs to stop laying over like wet grass. It needs to say, “Buy a $30,000 SUV, in 10 years you have a used up SUV. Buy a $30,000 solar pv system, and in 10 years you have free energy AND you get to be a smug SOB because everyone else will be scrambling to pay their outrageous energy bills. ”

Sustainability messaging needs to put it’s foot down. “Sure, your contractor resisting every green thing you want to do—it’s what he knows. Tell him if he doesn’t get on board, he’s fired. We’ll give you a list of experienced contractors who get it. We’ve got your back.”

Ultimately, sustainability—in the broadest view, after the profits are counted—is about humanity. It’s about solving the problems that prevent us from having a more just, peaceful world. It’s about respecting the rights of all beings to coexist and access the resources they need. It’s about compassion; it’s about dignity.

We need to give these characteristics a new brand. Compassion, respect, and peace need to equated with toughness, pragmatism, and even profit. This can be done; I have a real life example. My father is a retired Marine Corp colonel and Vietnam vet and one of the kindest, most gentle, respectful, happiest, peace-loving people I know. His rifle and pistol marksmanship records stood for years at the Quantico Command & Staff College. He believes passionately in socially responsible investing and is a cheerleader for Michael Pollan and Thomas Friedman. Obviously, physical, mental, and social toughness can coexist in the same person—and the same business or culture—as peacefulness and respectfulness. The world abounds with examples. Yet, as my father would point out, we have at least three well-known academic institutions to train citizens to go to war, but the average citizen cannot name an institution that instructs us in implementing peace and respect.

So, as Ms. Parrs challenged the solar industry to bring its messaging down to earth, I challenge everyone in the sustainability spaces to rebrand peace and respect in the U.S. Let’s make it hip, not only to be green, but to be respectful and peaceful. Get people curious about learning these qualities. Let’s show the bullies that through those qualities, we are getting the job of saving humanity done.

Single source your data!

By Matthew Arnold

Data is everywhere. Data is personal contact information. Data is information about the webinar you are attending. Data is the agenda for your next conference. Every document, every email, every Tweet, blog post or web page is data. Since we are surrounded by mountains of data, one of the most important things you can do is to single source your data!

Single sourcing your data will save time and save money. By single sourcing manual data entry can be done just once, saving personnel time. You can also save time because you always know where your data is.

Multiple purpose your data, enter once use everywhere!
Data in an online database can be used to drive content to web pages. The same data can also be used in a private website back end to send out reminder email blasts, do informational downloads, and have internal data sharing. Data from this database can be downloaded and poured into printed pieces with technologies like XML.

Take your data out of this single source and you find that one piece of data can cause time loss, money loss and even confusion. If your data is information about where a meeting takes place, store it centrally. Access it from your web site. Download it into your print materials. If someone takes that data out of context we have data splintering. If the data is then changed, which one is correct? Where is the meeting being held? How many phone calls/emails will it take to make sure everyone knows where the meeting is?

Single sourcing can help save time, save money and save your sanity!

A Few Resources for Learning About Health Insurance Reform

By Leslie Martel Baer

As business owners, we are going to be greatly affected by health insurance reform. I’m all for some new approach, but I want it to be thoughtfully developed and executed. It is hard to believe that a well-reasoned bill is going to come out of the din we are currently enduring.

Nonetheless, I believe we owe it to ourselves, our businesses, and our fellow citizens to educate ourselves on the options. I believe in the democratic process in which citizens learn from the debate, formulate thoughtful opinions, and voice themselves through voting, contact with representatives, and public action. Who knows, maybe that process will work yet with health insurance reform.

To that end, I am posting a list of resources from the administration, generously compiled by Rick Colson of EcoVisual Communications. While I certainly do not claim that this list of resources is complete or unbiased—it is from a single source, afterall—it does appear to be a reasonable jumping off point for those of us who wish to understand the debate to formulate our own thoughtful opinions and raise our voices.

Meantime, I welcome considered suggestions for additional resources that would be valuable in formulating an objective decision about the health insurance reform discussion. Please feel welcome to send them in—without any bashing of “other” sides, of course.

Just Go Slightly Nuts Measuring Social Media ROI

By Leslie Martel Baer

Every part of your communications plan should include even a casual measurement of return on investment (ROI)—which requires three things:

What types of returns you expect.
What variables or metrics you are going to use to evaluate those returns.
The before and after values of those metrics relative to the given effort.

What types of returns can you expect from social media? Exposure, obviously. LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, and quality niche social media can broadcast your message and increase hits to your site, queries about products, sales, and calls. But don’t stop there.
Social media can increase your stature as a subject matter expert. Respond constructively to the queries and discussions of others. Guide peers, contacts, and prospects to useful posts, white papers, articles, and other resources—on your own pages and website, and elsewhere. Expect to receive referrals, queries that tap your expertise, and more traffic on your site and phone line in return.

At the same time, cultivate social media for their learning and resource opportunities. As George Gay of First Affirmative Financial Network recently pointed out, “It can be more important whom you follow than who follows you.” Why? Because learning from a crowd of exceptional minds adds tremendous value to your business practice. Comb these media for resources that resolve the challenges that you—and your customers—face every day.

Further, asking questions makes for great introductions and opens doors. Bonus: it will make your network colleagues feel good. Learning returns are more qualitative: more connections, improved productivity, better knowledge of hot topics for your industry, and other variables that affect your competitiveness.

Of course, share special offers, close sales, and offer support to your prospects, customers, vendors, and community for a return of increased traffic to your business. But, be respectful. Generally, social networkers do not appreciate a “hard sell” unless the site is designed for it. Aim for 80% information, 20% sales.

Once you’ve identified your expected returns—increasing your LinkedIn network within your prospect base, for example—determine how you will measure success. If necessary, start informally. How many emails do you average from prospects each week? How many did you get after the campaign? Or, count how many contacts you have within your target audience before you begin posting useful articles and count again, one month later.

Tie your metrics to specific goals. Do you simply wish to expand your network? Or do you want to measure the communications effort in closed sales? Detail about the goal to be met, the return used to meet it, and the metric will clarify if your time has been well spent.

Sound like a lot of work? It is more work than jumping on to Twitter or your favorite LinkedIn group. But, how much time do you spend on social media each week? Three hours? 5? 10? That much time, energy, and money in a communications tool had better be worth the investment.

It boils down to determining if the time you spend on a given network has improved your bottom line. If you spend any time thinking about it, you probably already know the answer.

Do you NEED to Twit…er, Tweet?

By Leslie Martel Baer

If you own a computer or mobile phone with internet access, you can’t get through your morning coffee without sensing the urgency of social networking.

Facebook, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn, Twitter—ugh—are all the rage and driving us to increasingly short, frequent, distracted, and interrupted communications. And, you can likely add a half-dozen LinkedIn groups or other networks of interest to your burgeoning list.

Can you keep up with the constant checking and email digests? I can’t, and don’t try.

Is all of this communicating necessary to our daily lives or business? No. Is it useful? Often. Can it be constructively tamed? Yes.

On June 10th, CNN posted a poll in which over 70% of respondents said they felt overwhelmed by social media. MSNBC reported “social media overload” last summer (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25707391/). I’ve recently seen many online discussions about how many discussions are about social media…and not much else. Have we reached self-perpetuating babble?

When clients ask if they can—or should—use social media as part of their communications, I guardedly say, “yes,” with caveats.

Be realistic about time: join only networks that you can maintain. If you can’t tweet and review Twitter postings at least once each day, don’t use Twitter. Blog only if you can do so at least once each week. Join social networks only if you have time to scan email digests daily and post once a week.
Be selective: not every social media format is right for you or your business. Try out a couple. If they are productive—in terms of what you learn and what connections you make—pursue them. If your networks aren’t growing or the information isn’t valuable, drop them and open your schedule to others.
Set a discipline: as with all things that involve time, discipline is crucial. Set a limit (5 minutes, 30 minutes, etc.) and a routine time of day to manage your social networks, including both reviewing and posting.
Set goals: what do you want your social networking to achieve? Increased web traffic? More customers? A broader network for partnering? Have a clear idea of what you hope to gain, and shape your networking efforts to support those goals.

Next time, we’ll talk about what ROI to expect from your social networking efforts, followed by a third entry on how to integrate social media into your overall marketing and communications picture.

Renewable energy everywhere!

By Matthew Arnold

Mountian Muse Communications was the featured business sponsor of the Colorado Renewable Energy Society‘s most recent meeting on May 28th. We enjoyed being introduced to the crowd before hearing about how the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) will help Colorado. Jeff Lyng of the Governor’s Energy Office here in Colorado did an excellent job of spelling out what money will be coming to the state from the Recovery Act, and potential for much much more money from the act in the form of block grants and community grants. He was very knowledgable about the entire act and made the topic fun and interesting to listen to. Thank you to Jeff for a great talk!

On Monday Mountain Muse was present at CORE‘s distinguished speaker series to hear the CEO of PAETEC talk about their plans to get renewable energy moving. Arunas Chesonis talked about PAETEC’s work with MIT to get all kinds of different projects off of the ground to the point of looking at prototypes. They are funding the first gap in the financial world of idea to prototype, where most financial institutions typically won’t go. Mr. Chesonis emphasized that storage is the major hurdle in getting renewable energy to be a major player in the energy sector, so that it can provide base-load power. Along with the start up funding PaeTec is looking to sell energy to their customers to save them money and give them a chance to fund energy producing equipment (solar PV, wind, etc.). The energy side of things was summed up by Arunas as be good to the environment, have fun and make money. Thanks to CORE for continuing to bring quality programs and chances to network.

Get Authentic with Your Readers

By Leslie Martel Baer

You know you need to reach your customers (or vendors or the community). And, you’ve decided to use your cool new blog (or print layout or radio spot) this time. Now, you decide what to say.

Well? Are you staring at a blank page?

The number one issue we see stalling message development is that clients fail to tap into what their audience is passionate about: themselves.

Trust me on this: no matter how cool your gizmo is, or how much you’re saving the planet, or how easy your purchasing form is to read, your audience doesn’t give a rat’s patooty unless you can directly relate it them. “How will it improve my life?” “Will saving the planet save me money?” “Will your new form stop Frank in orders from calling me each time he gets one?” Answer these questions before they are even asked.

Even if we do care about cool gizmos or saving the planet, none of us have time (usually) to handle messages that don’t relate to us directly.

So, stop thinking about what a great product/idea/service you have. In fact, just stop. Take a deep breath. Now—write down the one thing that your audience will care about most. Done? Good…because now you’ve started on a message that will actually work.

Welcome to Musings

By Matthew Arnold

We hope you find these periodic posts helpful in your efforts to make your communications more effective, efficient and sustainable.

We’ll discuss sustainable communications concepts such as how authentic communications can positively impact your sustainable brand. We’ll also get into nuts and bolts issues (“How do I get all that info I collected in my database into a nice Word doc?”)

If you have a topic you would like us to address, please contact us with your suggestion.