Golfers are the biggest suckers ever. Most will drop $500 or more on a new driver without batting an eye, when the real problem is that they don’t know how to swing it. Empires are built around the typical golfer’s obsession with finding a magical new gadget that will lower his handicap.

When it comes to communicating our businesses, we’re wasting far too much time and money on new tools when we need to get better at using the old ones. In the late 1990s, a client wanted to rename his company to a dot-com name, even though its only connection to the Internet was that it had a website. Another a client wanted to go “all in” on the synthetic world of “Second Life,” because that was the shiny new toy. More recently, a very smart fellow asked what I thought about his beginning to use “Bitcoin,” an experimental digital currency.

We have too many choices, and we catch ourselves doing things just to show that we’re “hip” and on top of the new technology.

But nobody cares if you’re hip, especially if your business has poorly trained people who can’t explain what they’re selling. They don’t care of your website has the latest and greatest coding if they can’t find their way to the information they need. They don’t care if you’re using the latest hot social network if they can’t understand what you’re saying.

Fortunately for golfers, the rules only allow 14 clubs in the bag. Otherwise, some would be carrying so many that their carts would sink in the ground.

If you really want to communicate better, here’s a much better plan than shopping for new toys:

1. Inventory the tools you have. You may be shocked at just how many things you’re doing — poorly — already. One of my favorite tools is the communications audit, which is especially useful in large corporations.
2. Ask yourself what you can quit doing. Don’t try to cut back across the board. Look for things to cut out entirely. More isn’t necessarily better.
3. Write out your communications goals and define the desired outcomes in terms of action. Publishing a newsletter isn’t a goal. Getting appointments with six people because of its content is.
4. Distill your core messages into five or six simple sentences, e.g., “YA Widgets have the longest warranty in the business.” These should be messages that, if you can communicate them well, should accomplish your communications goals and bring you more business. If you can’t do this, you’re so unfocused you shouldn’t try to communicate anything at all until you figure it out.
5. Decide how to translate those messages into content that your prospective customers will welcome and gladly consume. Give them advice. Track trends. Connect the dots in their industry. Tell success stories.
6. Select your tools and use them. I’ve found it helpful to think in terms of “carrying capacity.” I commonly use newsletters and blogs for longer content, such as analysis, advice and case studies, and use microblogging services (Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook) for pointing people to them. If you need to show something visually, consider using video and embedding it on your blog.

Whatever toolbox you end up with, seek to be the one who uses your tools most effectively rather than the one with the most tools.

 

 

In the early 1970s, when I was a student at the University of Alabama, one of the original Gemini astronauts came to speak. Someone asked, “Does it trouble you that space flights are getting so common we hardly notice them any more?”

His answer startled us: “Not in the least.”

He went on to explain that we really don’t get the best use out of new technologies and innovations until they become a routine part of our lives. In short, they disappear.

And that’s when we really get the greatest benefit. We’ve seen it over and over. We were all excited when the first personal computers came out. Now, they’re just how we do things and we never think in terms of “computing.”  These days, everybody’s talking about tablets, but pretty soon they’ll disappear too — at least in terms of how much we think and talk about them.

I can’t prove it, but I get the sense that we’re approaching the disappearance point with social media. When Twitter and Facebook first appeared about six years ago, we spent a huge amount of our time talking about … Facebook and Twitter.

We even blogged about blogging. Now? Not so much. I’ve been realizing lately that I don’t think of social media as its own thing. I use it, and show clients how to use it effectively, but for me, it’s just part my day-to-day ecosystem.

And increasingly, it’s integrated with my real life. Sure, I have Twitter followers and Facebook friends I haven’t met in real life, and I’ve been weeding some of those out. But the ones that matter are the ones I know as flesh-and-blood people.

It works better that way. I’m know a lot of people who first jumped in three or four years ago, gave themselves cutesie names like “SocialAnimal45,” and started either posting an endless stream of self-promoting tidbits or giving us trivia about their eating habits or annoyance with traffic jams. They threw up their hands and said “It’s just not working for me.”

Now, they’re drifting back in, because they’re surrounded by it. And folks are starting to see that talking to somebody on Twitter isn’t different from having a chat with the guy on the next Stairmaster at the health club.

Social media is disappearing, and we’re ready to just get on with life.

I don’t know if anybody’s noticed, but Twitter’s about to turn six. Facebook’s eight, if you count the time it was open only to students. But as a place everybody could go, it’s also about six. 

And in those six years, it’s quite possible that more uninformed nonsense has been written — with greatest of authority and confidence — than in the previous 60. There are lots of reasons for it, but one of the biggest is that there was no defined body of knowledge to start with. We’ve been making this up as we go along. So any idiot could declare himself a social media expert, and plenty of imbeciles did.

A major problem the experts share (I don’t pretend to be one, by the way) is a lack of balance. They suffer from what I call the Hammer Syndrome (when you have a new hammer, everything looks like a nail). Eyes get wide and the experts go all utopian on us, presenting Facebook and Twitter as the answer to every marketing question.

That’s why I’ve been enjoying the rare perspective of Scott Stratten in his book, Unmarketing. Let me point out that except for less than 280 characters of Twitter exchange, Scott and I don’t know each other. I bought the book the old fashioned way, from Amazon. All I’m getting out of this little plug is the pleasure of maybe helping you do a better job of connecting with your customers, prospects or first grade chums.

With that out of the way, I’m free to say that Stratten’s a pretty smart guy who understands that life is bigger than Twitter.  Bigger even than Facebook. Best I can tell, he actually lives in the real world.

I’ve been saying for 30 years that that nothing good happens until somebody talks to somebody. It may happen on the phone, over lunch or at the gym. At their core, Facebook and Twitter are another way to talk to each other. That’s easy for me to understand, because I lived blissfully in a Twitter-free world for 52 years. That’s not to say we didn’t have our own social media. Way back in the 1980s — well before the World Wide Web appeared in 1994 — we had 300-baud dial-up modems and DOS-based systems like PCBoard and RBBS, which let us create bulletin boards that worked about as well as anything we have today. I hung out on several of them and even ran a couple. (A side story: One of the local boards in Birmingham, run by a deputy sheriff, was called America Online. He sold the rights to the name for a few thousand lousy bucks. You can probably fill in the blanks.)

Whether online or in person, we had conversations.

Scott’s word for it is engagement, and it’s as good as any. I like it because it reminds us that Facebook and Twitter aren’t just places to dump stuff out into the world in hopes that somebody will see it and come rushing to buy from us or our clients. Social media is just one way we engage. Others include the ones we’ve known and ignored all along — great service, listening, and finding ways to help other people get what they need.

This is good, balanced, common-sense stuff. Communications basics, combined with the very best advice I’ve seen on how to use social media effectively.

Buy it. Read it. Find the balance.

 

When it comes to communications, I can’t think of any habit that serves us better than trying to picture ourselves in the shoes of the person we’re trying to reach. Usually, we talk about communications aimed at masses or at least groups of stakeholders, but we also need to pay more attention to our day-to-day personal communications. Either way, thinking about the other person’s own “ecosystem” can make a big difference in how you communicate. So let’s focus on how telecommunications technology has changed the rules for something as simple as making a phone call.

A lot of us — especially whose who are over 45 — formed our telephone habits in another day and age. One that didn’t include cell phones, Caller ID, texting and call forwarding. When we called somebody who was on the phone, we got a busy signal. If they were away, chances are we just heard it ringing, as answering devices were still primitive and less than ubiquitous.

So we tried again later. Somebody was in the shower. Or in a meeting. Or gone fishing.

That was a perfectly functional and necessary thing to do in 1975. Now? Not so much. Yet, some of us revert to those old habits, to the great annoyance of our younger friends and associates.

Let’s assume you started with the person’s landline. That’s usually the best place to start, and the one I prefer when somebody’s calling me. But if there’s no answer, no worries. I’ll try his cell. But here’s the problem: When I’m out of the office for more than a few minutes, I always forward my calls to my cell. So let’s say I’m in a meeting, or maybe driving. You call my office and my phone rings. You dial it a second time and it rings again. You’ve now disturbed my meeting twice. Even if my phone is on silent, the vibrating is a distraction. So you leave a voice mail.

Know what happens when I get a voice message? I have to dial a phone number. OK, on most phones you can just press and hold the “1″ button, but it’s still a pain. Then I listen to the mechanical voice telling me how many new messages I have, how many archived messages there are, and what I need to push to get your message. Finally, I listen to a rambling message that’s barely decipherable, especially if I’m in a noisy environment. A few more keystrokes to delete the message, then a quick search for the back of an envelope for me to write it down.

Can you blame me — or your friends, co-workers or clients — for preferring a text or email? I can read that in a second or two, and like everybody else, I get it all on my phone anyway. Often, even that isn’t necessary. My phone tells me you called, and it seems safe to assume you wouldn’t do that if you didn’t want to talk to me. Here’s a good way to be sure: For people you talk with regularly, just ask. Most will tell you that no voice mail means “Give me a call.” I have a service that turns your message into a text anyway, but it doesn’t work so well if you mumble.

A side point: I notice a lot more “This mailbox is full” messages at the end of somebody’s outgoing message. The younger somebody is, the more likely it is to encounter this. Lots of folks have simply bailed and no longer even pretend to listen to it! (I’ve never seen any stats on this, but I’d sure like to.)

Sometimes voicemail is unavoidable. If I need to convey something simple and important and I’m driving, I’ll leave one. But if I’m at a computer, or if it’s safe for me to text, I’ll shoot you a text or email.

Yes, I revert to old habits like other folks my age. I’ll call back later. Or hang up and try the cell. But I’m getting better. And in today’s world, you should too.

 

Like it or not, people decide what’s right and wrong based on what they see written by professional journalists. And for most journalists, the Associated Press Stylebook is the standard.

That means certain ways of spelling and using words are embedded in people’s minds, and if you deviate much from the standard, they’ll view your writing as amateurish and sloppy.

You can get it on Amazon for about $11. (I almost said eleven bucks. Guess why I didn’t.)

A few spoilers:

website. Not Web Site or web site

email. Not e-mail

social media. Not Social Media.

Google, Googling, Googled. Google is always capitalized, even when used as a verb.

Get it. Learn it. Use words the way the pros do.

 

 

Client: “Does your designer know how to do a QR code with a logo in the middle?” 

Me: “Why would she want to?”

So you tell me. Offhand, I’ll confess to a good bit of skepticism. I can see a number of reasons I’d hesitate to do this.

For starters, as a former corporate brand manager (I was Corporate ID manager for some of the BellSouth companies), I have a built-in aversion to anything that distorts your company logo. Most high-end companies have rules requiring a certain amount of space around their logos. Designers and video producers are always itching to have logos flipping, pulsing and doing other stuff. But when it comes to fancy gadgets, I’ve long since set my default response from “why not?” to “why?”

We’re way past the point where it’s a good idea to do something just because it looks cool. (When’s the last time you saw a “cool links” page?) I’ve used a QR code on a business card, and I guess it doesn’t hurt anything. The idea of embedding your contact info into the code is conceivably useful, since a smart phone app can usually import that straight into your contacts. But it can also make you look like you’re trying too hard. At any rate, how long does it really take to key in a contact? A minute? It takes me longer than that to pull out my phone, launch the code reader app, take the picture and make sure the data went into the right fields.

And even with the business card use, consider this. Let’s say you give me your card and I scan the code on the spot. Neato. Now you’re in my contacts database. Here’s the card back. I don’t need it any more.

Only when I get back to the office, I have nothing to get me to focus on you or your product. Even if I kept the card, I’m likely to say “I’ve already got that info entered,” and toss it in the can. You and your message are lost in my contact files — out of sight and out of mind.

Finally, I still have painful memories of the old days when folks rushed to implement the latest tricks on their web sites — times when we had java-driven icons that waved, sites built entirely in Flash, and sites with stuff jumping and blinking all over the page. *Shudder.*

QR codes are undoubtedly a neato technology, and they have a place. Aaron Traffas spotted a story about one potentially useful application just this morning.

I just don’t see much to get excited about. But I’ll also admit that this is a preliminary reaction on my part. I reserve the right to change my mind.

So you tell my why I should, or shouldn’t. I’m listening.

 

 

Admittedly, the social media rules have always been fuzzy and fluid. Great new ideas turned into annoying misdeeds in short order, and there were a lot of people that didn’t get the memo.

But we’ve all grown, and the picture has become more settled. We’re out of excuses on some of the earlier sins because, well, they’ve been sins for quite a while now. So if you’re still committing them, it’s time to mend your ways and turn to the straight and narrow path of responsible social communication.

1. Check-in Fever. Seriously, we don’t care what time you got to work, or if you’ve had nothing to do but hang out at Lizzie’s Speakeasy enough times to be named mayor. (Now, if you happen to be at Lizzie’s and a naked terrorist shows up with an Uzi to take everybody hostage, by all means, tweet it. Just tell us why, please, so we’ll know to call the cops.)
2. Gratuitous Gamesmanship. What on earth ever gave you the idea that we want to know every time your angry bird kills a green pig? And what were you thinking when you told that game it could post to your Twitter and Facebook accounts?
3. Desperate Friend/Follower Collection. Please tell me you wouldn’t walk up to strangers at the mall and say, “Look, we both shop at Macy’s. Can we be friends?” The social networks are just a subset of life. They’re places we go. They don’t have their own set of rules. Following somebody on Twitter is the equivalent of people-watching on the street. If they’re out in public, it’s ok to look. But sending friend invitations to people you don’t know is just needy and intrusive. Stop embarrassing yourself.
4. All Me, All the Time. Pretty much everything Dale Carnegie told us in How to Win Friends and Influence People applies on the realm of social media. (It’s real life, remember?) Show an interest in other people. Hang around and socialize a bit. If you never do anything but talk about yourself, you’re like the guy who barges into a cocktail party, passes about a bunch of brochures or business cards, and leaves without a word.
5. Automated Posting. If you’re sending out stuff you haven’t even read, consider this: If you didn’t care enough to read it, why should we? For the love of all that is holy, delete your Twitterfeed account. Dress in sackcloth and ashes for a week and live on bread and water until you get the message. If you can find a Twelve-Step Group for recovering RSS abusers, join it and work every step except the one about making amends. You don’t have to come ask for forgiveness. Just quit and it’ll all be OK.
6. One-Trick Ponyism. This is one of the most common and annoying heresies, especially on Facebook. One-Trick Ponyists are those folks who always post exactly the same kind of stuff. Some do nothing but dig up old quotes, humorous or otherwise. Some post nothing but Bible verses. Can you imagine how boring this is to the rest of us? By all means, it’s fine to establish your “brand” in terms of a particular area of emphasis or expertise. But most of us like to hang out with folks who are well rounded and who can talk about a wide range of subjects.
7. Public Displays of Annoyance. If you’re having issues with your spouse, your co-workers or your boss, that’s none of our business. Don’t pull us into your squabbles.

 

I haven’t mentioned much about the ongoing decline of newspapers in a while, but the situation continues to decline steadily. (Maybe I’ve just been remiss because the subject depresses me.) Indeed, there was a lot of happy talk going into 2011, suggesting that revenue growth would resume and and the newspapers would stabilize. It doesn’t seem to have happened.

Newspaper jobs are disappearing faster than ever. Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts blog reports that newspapers cut more than 3,775 jobs in 2011, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors tells us that nearly one-third of newsroom jobs have been eliminated since 1989.

Advertising sales aren’t coming back as hoped. Digital advertising was up 8.3%, according to an analysis by Alan Mutter, but those revenues make up only 14.3% of the total. Mutter predicts that when all the numbers are in, we’ll find that the numbers didn’t top $24 million, which would make 2011 the worst year since 1985.

Most print newspapers will be gone in five years. That’s what USC’s Annenberg School tells us in a new report: “Is American at a Digital Turning Point?” The Annenberg Center predicts that the only surviving print newspapers will be the very biggest (specifically, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Washington Post), and possibly some local weeklies.

This has enormous indications for the many companies that continue to rely on local newspapers to reach buyers. If you’re in a business that relies on local buyers, what’s your game plan for adapting to this?

 

What would you say if I told you there are nearly 12 million Republicans who react positively to the term, “liberal?”

Or 32 million Democrats who react positively to the term, “conservative?”

OK, I can’t prove any of that, exactly. I’m committing the statistical sin of projecting some results of a recent Pew Research survey onto the 2008 presidential election results to make this point: Our assumptions about what various words mean don’t always reflect the real world.

Pew found that 20% of Republicans surveyed responded positively to the word, “liberal.” Just for fun, I went back to the 2008 returns and found that there were 59,948,000 Republican votes cast for president. If indeed 20% of those reacted positively to “liberal,” that would come to 11,989,600.

Would that affect how we choose and use our words? Keep in mind that it’s 2.4 million more than the 9,550,000 votes that swung the election.

Here’s another shocker from the other side: 47 percent of the liberal Democrats react positively to the word “libertarian,” even though today’s Libertarians pretty much advocate dismantling every big government program with which liberals are identified.

The Pew organization’s findings serve as a challenge to all of us to avoid assuming that our own attitudes, definitions and reactions match those of the people with whom we’re communicating. This is especially true in light of our increased tendency to seek out people and sources of information that support our views, and to avoid those that don’t.

Consider that among the three major TV news networks — Fox, MSNBC and CNN — only CNN even pretends to be non-partisan. Talk Radio, likewise, seems polarized. There doesn’t seem to be much demand for “down-the-middle” commentary.

Even Facebook promotes this. We “friend” people we like (these tend to be folks we agree with), and within that group, Facebook tends to highlight posts from people who, in the computer’s mind, seem to express views similar to our own. We think we’ve got an ear on the world, when it may be just an echo chamber.

(Digressive note: How did we let “friend” morph into a verb, anyway?)

We communicators work with words. Sometimes we write them, sometimes we speak them. We may even sing them.

We say a picture’s worth a thousand of them, and that can be true, especially for persuasion. The entire Civil Rights Movement turned on a few images of dogs and fire hoses. Images of self-immolating Buddhist monks and bodies at My Lai hastened the end to the to the war in Vietnam. And no image of our lifetime has carried more emotional punch than those of the World Trade Center coming down.

But for communicating critical and complex messages, we’re pretty much stuck with words. (Infographics are hot right now, but they’re just a combination of words and images.)

So it’s not a bad idea to pick the right ones, and that’s a lot harder than it looks. Everybody starts by looking up a word in a dictionary, as if that proves anything. Dictionaries never come close to keeping up with the day-to-day use of many of our terms. The lexicographers can give us an idea based on its use historically. But they are terrible guides to the emotional impact of various terms. They tell us what a word denotes, but rarely what it connotes.

The Pew survey focused on political words, but the message applies to nearly everything we say. I recommend reading the full report.

In a world where new ways to communicate appear almost daily, it’s easy to get confused about where to spend your time and marketing dollars. Of all the bullets out there, which one is silver? So what if I told you I can answer that very question?

You think I’m lying? I assure you I’m not. I can point you to the only marketing tool that will work for almost anybody. But you won’t like it.

It isn’t Facebook or Twitter. Nor is it Google advertising. Or affinity marketing, or email blasts, or Groupon coupons or any of the other shiny options out there. Even a great website won’t assure you success. Companies die every day even though they’re doing a lot of these things quite well.

What works? Work.

Hard work.

Hands-on work.

Shoe leather. Getting on the phone, making those calls. Getting out and seeing people. (See, I told you you wouldn’t like it.)

If you’re like most of us, you’d rather automate everything. Crank out self-serving tweets and Facebook messages by the dozen. Keep the Constant Contact emails humming. Buy some ads. Put out a press release. Hire and delegate. Then sit back and wait for the magic to happen.

I’ve been watching — and using — media of all types for some 35 years, and I’ve seen a lot of success using everything from newspaper classifieds (though not lately) to radio to television to direct mail to Facebook. But I’ve never found any media strategy that would work by itself. Not even the ones I come up with.

To be sure, media are necessary. They’re tools, and they can be very effective if we use them right. But they can’t do the work without the one constant.

I’ve always known this, but I’ve come to a fresh appreciation of it as I’ve reflected my experiences in serving my biggest market niche: real estate auctioneers. I keep a close eye on the methods used by various companies, and I talk to a lot of auctioneers. I listen to stories. And of course, I’ve learned a great deal over the years from my own clients.

In short, the people — and the companies — that sell the most are the ones that work the hardest. They pour time and money into research about properties before they agree to sell them. They identify prospective buyers long before they start advertising, so the ads are better targeted. They follow up promptly on leads.

When they use Facebook and Twitter, they take the time to do it right. They “waste time” on conversations that don’t lead directly to sales, because they know that it pays off in the long run. (In short, they understand that Social Media are, in fact, social.) They get a feel for the networks by actually spending some time there, so they don’t step on their own feet. Above all, they avoid the temptation to automate their posting, sending out stuff they haven’t even read.

If there were any magic, I’m pretty sure I’d have found it by now.

And I have. Talking to people — whether face to face, on the phone, on email, or through Social Media. It’s the best way I know to work some magic of your own.

 

 

Just two or three ago, we were all pretty excited about the use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media for reaching existing and new customers for our companies. After all, it was free, and that’s where everybody seemed to be going.

We quickly figured out that we could link to our own web sites or (even better) set up a Facebook page for our own company. Facebook began selling advertising, and Twitter offered sponsored tweets. But the bulk of companies’ social media marketing efforts have come in the form of posts with links to company web sites, press releases or other promotion tools.

But is it working? That’s hard to say for paid advertising, because there’s not a lot of data yet and because most advertisers keep numbers to themselves. But what we know isn’t encouraging. About 10 months ago, Webtrends reported that the click-through rate for Facebook ads was only 0.051%, which was down 0.063% from 2009. Over on Google+, Mashable reports that most of the top brands have staked out their Google+ brand pages, but they didn’t seem to have many followers. It’s still too early to judge those results, though.

Facebook also recently announced plans to begin integrating its Sponsored Stories into users’ news feeds. (Currently, Sponsored Stories appear on the right side of the news feed, though they’re now going in the ticker as well.)

The tricky part of all this is that we really don’t use Social Media to find products, services or even local restaurants. Increasingly, it’s become clear that we go to Facebook and Twitter to socialize, not to shop. It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean social media ads can’t be effective. We don’t watch TV to find products and services either, but it works.

In its spring tracking survey, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that our top three major reasons for using social networks are:

1. To stay in touch with current friends (67%)
2. To stay in touch with family members (64%)
3. To connect with old friends we’ve lost touch with (50%)

After the top three, the numbers drop off dramatically. In fourth place is connecting with others with shared hobbies or interests, but only 14% gave that as a major reason. (Another 35% listed it as a minor reason, however.) That could be an important point, because targeting people by specific interests is of critical importance. If we’re not really seeking to connect with others who share our interests, we create fewer opportunities for ads that target us.

For most folks, of course, social media promotion amounts to posting promotional items on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Over the last couple of years, many have realized that people on social networks tend to skip over messages that are obviously promotional in favor of those from real people. A recent study found this to be true for news media as well: Twitter users are more likely to follow individual journalists than organizations. Because I live in Birmingham, Ala., I follow the tweets from major local media. But I pay more attention to, say, @erinshawstreet (who’s a real person who writes for Southern Living) than to the faceless @southern_living.

 

 

We hit a new record in 2011 with 115 press release. Click any bubble on the map for headline, date and client.

View NewMediaRules News Releases for 2011 in a full screen map

Most print newspapers will disappear in five years. Social media is the future of communication, but more than half of us don’t believe what we read there. Meanwhile, privacy is a lost cause, and we’re paying a high personal price for being connected.

That’s the stark picture painted in a new report by USC’s Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism, which has been studying our digital future for 10 years.  While we have virtually unlimited access to  information and ability to connect with others, this is creating “extraordinary demands on our time, major concerns about privacy and vital questions about the proliferation of technology,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for a Digital Future.

Here are the findings that jumped out at me. You can read a full summary here.

Tablets will become our primary tool for personal computing, and it’s happening faster than you think. Annenberg says that over the next three years, the desktop PC will dwindle to only 4-6 percent of computer users, and even laptop use will decline.

You can’t leave the office behind. The study found that there is a greater expectation that we will be at the beck and call of our offices and customers 24/7.

Most print newspapers will be gone in five years. Only the biggest and smallest will survive. Cole predicts that only four major daily newspapers will continue in print form: The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Ironically, local weeklies may survive.

Privacy? Forget about it. “The issue of privacy is simple – if you go online for anything at all, your privacy is gone,” said Cole. “Americans love that they can buy online, look for information online, and join social communities online.  But the price we pay is that we are monitored constantly; private organizations know everything there is to know about us: our interests, our buying preferences, our behavior, and our beliefs.”

The Internet is growing as a political force, but its impact remains fuzzy. The Internet helps us understand politics better, and it helps politicians get their message to us. On the other hand, only 33 percent of us think it’s safe to voice our political views online.

This time of year, a lot of us are evaluating what we did in the past few months and looking for ways to accomplish more in 2012. This article, which I wrote for the spring edition of the Georgia Auctioneers Association newsletter, suggests ways to get more for your marketing dollar. I figured it might be timely at the moment. While this was aimed at auctioneers, the principles apply to any business. – Carl

Carl Carter, APR
President, NewMediaRules Communications

Nearly every auctioneer I talk to these days tells me that while things are improving, it’s still hard to get sellers to commit to an auction. And cash-strapped sellers are more reluctant than ever to fund a substantial auction budget in advance. So when you sign up a sale, it’s critical that you make the most of it and spend your money wisely.

That means it’s more important than ever to know where your prospective bidders are and how you can cost-effectively reach them. My firm conducted a survey of auctioneers’ use of media earlier this year and found that 64% “rarely” or “never” have a budget of more than $10,000. In fact, 40% often have budgets of less than $1,000. So the old saying, “waste not, want not” applies in spades.

To help, here’s a roundup of the latest trends on where people are going for information. By watching these trends, you at least have a chance of identifying ways to “meet them there” and better promote your upcoming auctions:

Newspapers. The well-publicized flight from print newspapers continues, and almost 4 in 10 recently told Pew Research pollsters that losing their daily newspaper would have no impact on their lives. For every age group under 50, 24% or fewer now read a print newspaper. Below age 40, it drops to 15% or less.

“But,” we reassure ourselves, “we sell more to older people who are still reading the print newspaper.” This is true to an extent, but the fastest shrinking print audience consists of those who are 65 and over. Still, it’s true that about 31% still read a print newspaper, so it’s worth allocating part of your budget where possible. But what about the rest? Where are they going?

Search engines. For one American in three, the daily search for news begins with a Google search. This means it’s a good idea to do anything you can to get in front of those folks, including search engine advertising (e.g., Google Adwords).

Many auctioneers are seeking to reach this audience by buying listings or banners on some of the many web portals that have high Google rankings. This doesn’t get you on Google directly, but it can put you one or two clicks away. And you can buy a listing on many portals for $25 or $50, though banners with premium placement can run hundreds of dollars. Nearly 7 auctioneers in 10 said in my survey that they were buying more portals than a year ago. And on tight budgets, that’s not surprising, given the low cost of admission.

Handsets. Among those who own mobile devices, 42% said they use them to get weather and at least some local news, while 37% get information about restaurants and other businesses.  So how do we reach this vast, growing market? The answers are anything but simple. Email marketing is one option, given the huge number of people who access their email via iPhone, Android and Blackberry.  But email is waning as an online advertising tool, shrinking an estimated 18% in during 2010, according to Pew. If you use email marketing, do yourself a favor and make sure you comply fully with the Can-Spam Act, which has strict rules for who you can assume has given you permission to send them email.

Social Media. It’s no secret that a majority of Americans are now on Facebook and/or Twitter, and 60% of the auctioneers who responded to the NewMediaRules survey said they’re using more Social Media than they were a year ago. The natural question is, “what does it mean to use Social Media,” and that’s a question that goes far beyond the scope of this article. I suspect that for most, the use consists primarily of posting to their Facebook pages, with a much smaller number using Twitter. (Ironically, Twitter offers far more potential for reaching larger numbers of people, but you have to know how.) Now, Facebook has begun selling advertising based on expressed interest, so you can pay a specified amount for each person who clicks through to your web site. But folks who’ve looked into this more deeply than I have tell me that the prices can be steep, so make sure you understand what you’re getting into.

Oh yes, and one other thing: Even today, nothing beats a good sign, so don’t scrimp on signage!

We seem to have a rash of public figures embarrassing themselves by lecturing reporters who dare to ask hard questions. Looks like it’s time for a refresher course on the rules of the game.

1. Reporters don’t work for you, so they don’t take orders from you.
2. They get to ask whatever they like, no matter what you’ve told them is “off limits.”
3. They’ll quote your answer, whether it’s on or off topic. If you choose to rant, they can and will put the rant on TV.
4. If you refuse to answer, they’ll quote or show your non-answer. If you storm off, they’ll report and show that. If you don’t want to look like an ass, don’t act like one.
5. You don’t get to decide what the story is. They do.
6. Nothing is really “off the record.” If you’re talking to a single reporter, he or she may agree not to use something in return for getting background information. But they can still use it. Don’t say anything — even off the record — you can’t live with in tomorrow’s paper.
7. Reporters are people too. Like the rest of us, they’ll like you more if you smile and treat them with respect.
8. The media always get the last word. Always.

I know that’s not what you want to hear, but that’s how the system works.