Behind every news junkie or voracious reader is the know-it-all kid in school who always had his or her hand up to share the answer.

You want to know the know-it-all’s biggest secret? They spend less time searching for information and more time consuming it.

And that’s the coolest thing about information management in digital age. Now we all have the same tools at our disposal to be just as knowledgeable and, hopefully, the good sense to be a lot less annoying.

Here are the 10 steps I take before embarking on a research project to get smarter faster on a desired topic, customer segment and any relevant discussions occurring online.

Step #1 Give your research its own email address.
A single inbox for your topic or relevant discussion keeps them out of your existing workflow and gives you a place to consume when you’re ready. I’d suggest using Gmail to create this only because it will be easier to integrate into my other steps below. Something like <topic>@gmail.com to sign up for eNews and LinkedIn alerts will keep you focused.

Step #2 Use a news reader online to automate the news gathering process
After logging into Google using your new email address, you are automatically logged into Google Reader. Here you can pre-select existing topics, create your own using simple or advanced search logic, import RSS feeds, or bring in any Google Alerts as newsfeeds – all on a single online dashboard. Trust me, this will become your knowledge hub, if it isn’t already.

Step #3 Set up Google Alerts that align with topics and audiences.
This has become less of an email deluge by creating alerts as RSS newsfeeds. Check this out:

Creating News Alerts in Google and delivering them to Google Reader (Click to enlarge)

Subscribing to a Topic of Interest to Track (click to enlarge)

A News Dashboard with Key Topics (click to enlarge)

Step #4 Look for groups in LinkedIn with people talking about a key topic
Where appropriate, I have participated. If it’s likely to be intrusive, I’ve watched discussions unfold, gleaning key insights into not only who is having the discussions but what is working or frustrating the heck out of them. If you’re a member of a topical LinkedIn Groups, be sure to sign up for their email alerts – forwarding them to your topic-specific Gmail account.

Step #5 Monitor social traffic on the topics of interest
If you’re lucky, you have Radian6 and a team of social media users who alert you to key conversations and places to engage on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and other communities. If you’re like the rest of us, however, you MacGyver everything together with tools like TweetDeck , HootSuite, your news reader and your topic-specific email account for anything else you’ve missed. Sounds messy, but with a process in place it’s infinitely doable.

Step #6 Set up a Readability account to quickly push information you discover in your Google Reader that appears relevant into the “Read Later” bin. You can also send the most relevant eNewsletter content directly to Readability when you’re done gathering.

Step #7 Engage with people online in the social streams or communities relevant to the subject matter – See Step #4, but also pay close attention to leading bloggers in the area you are researching. Mine the comments sections to see who is seeking additional insight or offering their own. As you begin to understand the subject matter, this can also be a venue to ask questions or share knowledge. If you do decide to share, speak as a human being with a level of interest or expertise – not a brand megaphone. If your company has a relevant video, Slideshare presentation or white paper that honestly contributes to the discussion, go for it, but tread lightly.

Step #8 Set a time to review information collected – and stick to it.
What works for me is starting my day with a quick scan of about 30 minutes or so for any information gathered overnight – flagging seemingly relevant news using my Readability app. I’ll do a similar sweep at the end of the day to flag new items online and in my topic-specific inbox. I’ll also use Readability to narrow down the best of the bunch to review in-depth after the research phase ends.

Step #9 Look for patterns, odd ducks and hot data points or quotes.
After amassing this content and combing through it, you’ll start to see similarities emerge, as well as a few eyebrow raisers or quotes that set the tone for your work. I’ll bring these forward to breathe a little life into my findings.
Step #10 Put these discoveries into an outline.
Something as simple as:
I. Key Insights
II. Industry Trends
III. Quotes & Comments
IV. Conclusions
… gives me the structure I need to group findings in a way that is easy to communicate when called upon.

The key takeaway for all of this is to set up a system that delivers the right information to you so you don’t have to spend countless hours looking for it.Reach out to me if you want to chat about this or share your insights below to make us all a little smarter. You can also learn how LeftBrain blends deep demographic, psychographic and sociological research into its strategies for clients here.

Until next time.

Mark

I’ll give you my thoughts a bit below, and in future posts, but check this out first.

This is for all of you who have reached out to me in the last month asking about how to create and share information with prospects and customers in a way that creates awareness, preference and — as this presentation contends — paying customers. This really hits the nail on the types of content to create and when to do it based on where people in your prospect pool are in the sales cycle. Really worth your time. Commit it to memory.

Cautionary Tale Ahead

As good as this deck is, however, what I’ve found in my experience, is that in trumpeting “Content Marketing” as the way and the light, marketers and their bosses get lulled into thinking … “Hey, if we get interns to blog and write a white paper our prayers will be answered.”

This is a career killer of ridiculous expectations unmet. Content marketing is or should be the linchpin in a much larger strategy.  (more on that next time). For the purposes of managing expectations from people in the C-suite, the corner office and even your own, I’ve seen content strategy succeed  or fail based on whether these five must-haves to succeed in content marketing were present.

1. Patience — If you’re ramping up a content strategy with the sole goal of generating revenue, you’re doing it wrong. This is a strategy, if executed well, that takes 3-6 months to develop and may not bare fruit for a several months after a campaign is launched. Content is a conversation. It is meant  to walk people through the way they buy a product or service and serves up information as it is needed to make decisions or help others in their company reach conclusions. If your entire marketing strategy is a single piece of content or a content carpet-bombing of the marketplace for the purpose of having sales-ready leads, you will disappoint yourself and others.

2. A large library of information (bought or created) that targets people based on who they are, the problems they are trying to solve and how they make decisions.

• Are people unaware of your company and why its products are what they need?
• Do they need to narrow selected companies down to a list of 5 for a presentation to compare apples to apples?
• Are they selling it up into the organization to bosses and bean counters?

The answer to all of the above is YES. You better have content that addresses all of these things and more before you set the world on fire with your white paper. Otherwise You’ll always be playing catch up to the needs of your prospects.

3. Deep  research to understand your universe of prospects, influencers and visionaries in your field. Start a content strategy at your own peril if you don’t know who you’re talking to and why.

4. A clear path to integrating content marketing into your sales/marketing go-to-market plans — Content is the conversation catalyst, accelerant and hopefully, the decider. It won’t deliver itself and it won’t build a relationship with a human being. Only you can do that.

5. A multi-dimentional content calendar that includes a strong blog, social evangelism and an asset creation strategy that is tied  to news, events, interesting discussions and other topical engagements occurring in your universe. Notice how a blog or whitepaper talking about your product  doesn’t fit this criteria? Good!

Oh, and 5a: A distribution and socialization strategy that uses all online and offline tools at your disposal that you can afford. How is your content being used as pay offs for these tactics:

• Social media engagement (company and external blogs, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter, etc.)
• Direct mail campaigns
• Email blasts
• Search Engine Optimization/Marketing efforts
• Paid online and offline advertising
• Events
• Earned media coverage

Content Marketing has a place in all of these inbound and outbound marketing tactics, which should be tightly woven into your larger, more theme-focused Go-to-Market strategy.

If there is one thing to takeaway from all of my words it is this: Content Marketing is absolutely vital for maintaining relevance in the marketplace. You need to incorporate it into your marketing efforts. That said, success will elude you unless you have an integrated plan, more than a modicum of patience and the persistence to keep developing the content the market needs — not just what you want to tell them.

Reach out if I can help.

Mark

If you know anything about me, you’ll know that for better or worse, I’ve had my fair share of jobs. Trust me, it’s nothing I’ve ever wanted to be known for, but it’s an unfortunate truth borne out of a bad economy, bad choices or the dreaded “bad fit.”

So what the hell does all of this have to do with my headline?

My ability to feed my family and/or avoid crashing on one of your couches for any extended period of time is almost entirely due to social media engagement and networking … with a dash of reasonable skill in the areas of marketing strategy, social media engagement & content creation. And thus … the tie in to my headline.

Social Media Club PDX is bringing Social Stallion Joshua Waldman to town to show you how to discover those hidden job nuggets using social media tools and ways to pay it forward in true “You-Tweet-my-Back, I’ll-Tweet-Yours” fashion. Here’s the title and some eloquent prose from my social chum @unclenate, Prez of @SocialMediaPDX:

“Job Searching With Social Media For Dummies” author Joshua Waldman

“For anyone looking for a first job, exploring a career change, or just setting up for future success, social media is a proven platform for facilitating connections, demonstrating passions and interests, and ultimately landing the job. Joshua Waldman, author of “Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies” enables you to harness the power of the Internet to research and identify job opportunities, and create a strategy for securing a position.”

Other nuggets include:

• creating effective online profiles and resumes to sell your strengths
• maintaining your online reputation (and ensuring that employers who Google you like what they find)
• understanding electronic etiquette
• using the power of personal branding
• building your brand online
• avoiding common pitfalls, such as jumping into filling out a social media profile without a strategy
• getting to know Twitter, the only real-time job board with literally thousands of jobs posted daily
• using social media sites to uncover opportunities in the “hidden job market” ahead of the competition

This is your chance to meet some really cool and connected people as well as escape the job or the people you hate — for three whole hours! Just sign up already!

DETAILS
January 18, 2012 at 6:00 PM | $25 Online, $45 @Door | Limit: 100

Collective Agency
322 NW 6th Ave
#200
Portland, OR 97209

Is it the death or birth of innovation (Steve Jobs and the vision he left behind vs. the birth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as Steve Jobs Jr.)? Or, the year that the world woke up by laying down in parks across our great land, taking the occasional walk around to find a TV camera — that is until Christmas and the cold weather rolled in? OR … just more of the same good, bad and ugly. The words Sandusky, Casey Anthony, and  Republican Idiot Droids like Bachmann, Perry Overdrive and painfully vocal news readers who should find a new script like Megyn Kelly left a dent in my brain that will be hard to hammer out in the coming year.

Only the Lord himself knows for sure, but one thing I do know, 2011 did a lot to activate my senses in a good way. I’ll boil it down to my Top 5 — one for each of my senses collectively and individually overloaded.

Enjoy! Numbers 2 through 5 are actually safe to do yourself. #1, well, take a look. Happy New Year! I hope we actually connect in human form in 2012!
Cheers.

1. Sight. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Garrett McNamara’s Monster Ride

2. Sound. “Pure Ear Candy.”
Blitzen Trapper — American Goldwing + Furr (yeah, I know only AG came out this year, but both were good to me in 2011)

Singles:

Lonely Boy – The Black Keys

Ain’t Fit to Live Here — Graveyard

Face to the Floor — Chevelle

The Ruminent Band — Fruit Bats

If I Had a Gun … Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

Holocene – Bon Iver

Head is a Flame (Cool With It) — Portugal, The Man

The Suburbs — Arcade Fire

Get it Daddy — Sleeper Agent

Is And Is And Is — White Denim

Pumped Up Kicks — Foster the People

The Kooks — F*** the World off

Moves Like Jaggar — Maroon 5 (Admit it … this song is like crack on ecstasy!)

And … the Welcome back Award goes to Brian Jonestown Massacre after I finally heard them this year in the Boardwalk Empire intro with “Straight Up and Down.” Yes!

3. Smell. A Tie: Paul Mitchell Awapuhi Shampoo & Jonathan Antin’s Silky Dirt (R) hair product. These provide a complete Jedi Nose Trick at the start of every day that fools my brain momentarily into thinking I live somewhere warm and tropical.

4. Touch. The Kindle Fire — Finally! Something that responds well when I poke or swipe at it — and keeps coming back for more! It is worth every damn penny for that reason alone.

5. Taste: The Beef Brisket Flatbread w/ Onion Rings Tongue-gasm from Eat This! in Portland, Oregon 

EAT THIS! Even better now that it's loaded it with Onion Rings!

Seriously … no, SERIOUSLY … so good you make happy noises with every bite.

To an equally activating 2012.

Happy New Year!

Mark

I hazard to guess that you are all too aware of information overload in your personal and professional lives. What you may not be aware of, however, are the exorbitant business costs in time and money of information overload and the wasted efforts of the information workers who arm people with the most recent and relevant information to drive business results. What’s more, you should know that we now have the technology and proven processes to deal with this problem better than we ever have before. But first, let’s dive into the financial impact of accepting the status quo and resigning ourselves to live uncomfortably in a digital landfill.

In Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization, Jonathan Spira, CEO and chief analyst at Basex, offers these staggering stats to illustrate the impact of what boils down to, in my humble opinion, inefficient communication practices and tools.

Fast Stats from Overload!

• A minimum of 28 billion hours is lost each year to Information Overload in the United States.
• Reading and processing just 100 e-mail messages can occupy over half of a worker’s day.
• It takes five minutes to get back on track after a 30-second interruption.
• For every 100 people who are unnecessarily copied on an e-mail, eight hours are lost.
• 58 percent of government workers spend half the workday filing, deleting, or sorting information, at an annual cost of almost $31 billion dollars.
• 66 percent of knowledge workers feel they don’t have enough time to get all of their work done.
• 94 percent of those surveyed have felt overwhelmed by information at some point to the point of incapacitation.

As you digest these data points, remember, there is actually something you can  do to reduce the personal and business impact of information overload. And it starts with giving yourself a moment to think before you act.

In addition to the Basex challenge to think before you send in an effort to get people to send 10% fewer e-mail messages, starting October 20th (or sooner!), I would also suggest taking a broader look at the problem beyond email to assess your ability to have an even greater impact.

In addition to the use, and some say overuse, of existing communication tools such as email, information overload also reflects a missing set of technology-enabled processes to organize, filter, and intelligently deliver relevant information and knowledge to the individuals who need it.

You can get greater context from Attensa here, and in the Attensa White paper Reducing Information Overload in the Enterprise, but the bottom line is: You can lessen the impact of information overload and at the same time take advantage of the plethora of information available on the topics you need to follow by using the right tools.

This week and in the weeks to follow, decide that information overload is a problem that you can no longer accept and seek out the people, processes and technologies that can help you do something about it.

Here’s what we are doing at Attensa. If you like what you see and want to learn more,  let me know.

REGISTER FOR SOBCon Now!

We fight the same fight for relevance and acceptance in a corporate setting by trying to blend the right message or narrative with the right piece of “engaging” content, wrapping it in a creative execution that entices people to act. An overly complex (by design?) cadre of strategies powered by tactics, bolstered by words and images and measured — for better or worse — by how our actions correlate to revenue.

At the end of the day, we will succeed or fail based on our answers to two simple questions: “Does what you do every day help sales teams close deals?” and  “Can you prove it?”

AN ENABLER BY ANY OTHER NAME
Perhaps, in an effort to not be judged so harshly or more directly tie our roles to $, someone, presumably in marketing, coined the term “sales enablement.” This term, by the way, used to make me feel a little like a bespeckled dweeb (see inset photo) who writes the quarterback’s term paper to avoid getting beat up.

I come from a land and time that was no friend to enablers. They were the parents who replaced discipline with a candy bar to avoid the meltdown in a supermarket. They were the boss who kept  his under-performing nephew on board as a favor to his single-parent sister. They were the spouse who didn’t put his or her foot down after the other spent one too many nights out on the town.

The enablers I know rewarded laziness or just plain bad behavior. This may come across like I’m picking a fight over a word. Maybe I am. But from where I sit as a marketer, words are everything.

Maybe Geoffrey Moore’s power words like Engagement and/or Empowerment are more palatable to me personally, but regardless of the sheen we put on it as marketers, we all need to deliver something that can be directly tied to someone else’s ability to sell something. Or else.

SALES ENABLEMENT/EMPOWERMENT/ENGAGEMENT =  PEOPLE HELPING PEOPLE
In the digital age of ubiquitous personal publishing and sharing — as well as the rapid proliferation of devices to consume and distribute this fire hose of knowledge that is always on — my view on enabling, or more specifically, sales enablement has softened a bit. Now it’s less an indictment of a person’s bad habits and more of a realization that helping people find what they need, streamlined by proven processes and fine-tuned by purpose-led technology may be our saving grace.

Whether you are in competitive intelligence, marketing communications, public relations, product or solution marketing or are responsible for driving the global marketing strategy for your company, you need to be a curator and distributor of actionable knowledge. Those who take the role lightly by sending sales reps one-size-fits-all newsletters or alerts, and content not aligned with the buyer’s journey are at risk of being viewed as expendable instead of indispensable.

With modern software applications it is now possible to arm sales and account people with the critical information they need at the point of prospect or customer engagement. Regardless of the type of information or where it lives, be it product information, hyper-relevant web news, customer order details, help desk activity and more can personalized and delivered in the the context of a prospect or customer record. Welcome to the age of automating the Troglodytic manual tasks of hunter, gather and filterer to simply deliver personally relevant knowledge that contributes to revenue.

HOW ATTENSA CAN HELP
A brief commercial, yet completely factual, interlude: For me personally, the Attensa StreamServer simplifies and speeds up my most time-consuming tasks by finding, filtering and delivering immediately valuable information to me that gets more targeted to my preferences, and therefore more immediately actionable, with every use.

For you, the sales enabling marketer, the Attensa StreamServer can do the same by making your marketing department the knowledge epicenter for your organization responsible for connecting people in your own department, in sales and throughout the company with the knowledge that drives business results and better relationships. What’s more, you’ll have the data to prove it.

To see how all of this works, take a look at the Attensa Solution Overview, or download our latest white paper A Framework for Reducing Information Overload in the Enterprise. Reach out to me directly if you want to learn more.

Until I interrupt you again, Viva La Enablement!

Mark

@MarkAEvertz

This post was enhanced from a previous Attensa post on May 23, 2011 ^ME

Those who know me or follow my social media escapades are all too familiar with my recent prowess for landing coveted marketing positions in what I’m told is a bad job market in a state with one of the worst unemployment rates in the country.

What’s my secret? I stopped looking for a job. I look for people who work where I want to work.

How’s that workin’ out for ya?
Trust me, this isn’t something I wanted to be known for in the marketing world or among my friends and family. In fact, the joke has become, “Yeah, we know you can get a job. Now, let’s work on keeping one.” No office pools or stop watches, please.

Truth is (and this has been true for every job I’ve ever had), I hope my  most recent position — as the Director of Marketing and Engagement at Attensa -- will be the last job I will ever need.

Now that I am, at least for the moment, gainfully employed, I feel like it’s my duty to share with you some of the things I’ve done over the last two years to survive two gut-wrenching layoffs and a “thank you for playing” pat-on-the-back/kick-to-the-curb after a predecessor came back to grab his old job.

But let’s take a moment to grieve
Getting cut loose sucks. If you’re like me, you take it personally. As a sign of failure. You wallow. You plot against perceived enemies. You become a complete idiot who loses focus on the real problem at hand. Um, Mr. Bitterman/woman..You need to pay for stuff.

Even so, getting downsized, made me question everything about myself and my chosen profession. It led to a momentary lapse of reason where I was going sell scintillating haiku on a warm beach somewhere.

And then I just got pissed.

Mostly at myself for my pity party. Anger begat focus, which quickly led me to the people I trust. Today, more than any other time in my lifetime the trite“It’s not just what you know, it’s who you know” is an absolute truth.

No employer wants to sift through 800 resumes only to come up with a candidate that can sell himself or herself well in an interview. They want proof that you can do the job. And, in the age of social media, online recommendations and online fact checking to ferret out B.S., this is where you can and should plug in to not only serve your own interests but help others serve theirs. So, if I were in your shoes right now, or if I am ever again, here’s what I would do:

5 Tips for Landing the right Job in a Bad Economy

Tip 1: Be  good to people in good times and bad — Got a job? Help others find one. Got a skill, but out of work? Help someone in your network in need — even for free if asked. You will be seen as someone who is genuine, hardworking and willing to do whatever it takes. It gets remembered and reciprocated.

Tip 2: Search for a Company. Not a Job — Pretty basic advice. You know people who have jobs. Some of them want to see you succeed in life. Find them online, offline and in person to discuss how your skills could be of use to their company — if in fact you think you actually want to work there.

Tip 3: Look for people and organizations in your community (online or offline) that need your help – Let’s face it. You need some good juju. I’ve also found it reaffirming to have someone tell me they appreciate me and think I’m awesome after a recent career disembowelment.

Tip 4: Beat LinkedIn like a Rented Mule — If you are not on it, get on it. Fill out a profile right now. If you are on it, learn to use it. Check for updates, high-five people who announce new gigs and search for places you want to work and the people you know who work there.

Tip 5: Know your strengths and expose your weaknesses -- This is key to finding yourself a good professional home. Fudging your ability to meet expectations to land a job will get you back to the breadline in a hurry. I’ve gone so far as to ask people to rip me in recommendations to give future employers so they know exactly what they will be getting. Trust me. I don’t want a bad job anymore than the employer wants a bad hire.

For what it’s worth…the position you are in is brutal, but survivable. If I can help you, I will. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter to talk about it.

Keep your head up.
Mark

Here’s a “Director’s Cut” for a post of mine born on Feb. 16, 2011 at nonboxpdx. Viva la verbosity! -ME

Want to know what your company has in common with cultural powerhouses with iconic products  like Nike, Apple, Virgin Atlantic, Legos and Porsche?

As it turns out, not much.

That was my key takeaway from the latest book trumpeting design and deep customer analysis as the way to the promiseland of sustained revenue and consistently unleashing products that people crave.

Thankfully, former Business Week Seattle bureau chief Jay Greene uses Design is How it Works, as a platform for showing the uninspired that creating a product or a company that taps into the Id of people is as simple as embracing failure and financial losses, changing organizational processes to bring Design Thinking into every discipline in a company from the C-suite through R&D and on down through the ranks,  and doing deep ethnographic and psychographic research on probable users of your product before embarking on your next build.

Sound a bit daunting?

It is. which is why IDEO’s Tim Brown notes in the book, that when people tell him of their aspirations to be like Nike or Apple, he counters “You don’t have the nerve.” That is the greatest part of Greene’s book for me. The corporate moguls and design luminaries he interviews call a spade a spade. You can’t be Nike. You aren’t Steve Jobs or Jonathan Ive. You haven’t got the discipline, the reputation or, frankly, the balls.

The headline of this post is inspired by every client or boss who has uttered phrases like “We want to be known as the Apple of the (insert industry segment here).” Or…”Our products are best-of-breed innovations and we need to create the same experience and culture Nike does to drive demand and loyalty to their products”

Never mind that the industry segment is sewage treatment technology or the product is road salt. Make it pop, sucka! How many of you design professionals can relate to John Barratt, president and CEO of Teague in Seattle:

“I can’t tell you how many how many product briefs we get saying we want a product that’s as good or better than the iPhone,” he says. “That’s a five-alarm brief for me..those folks just don’t get it. An iPhone is not a product. It’s a manifestation of a culture.”

It’s that kind of no-bullshit take on the power of design to transform a company and an economy that makes Greene’s book so endearing, refreshing, and such a swift read.
For those of you who still think you’ve got what it takes to check your egos at the door, throw caution to the wind in the face of financial pressure, and actually find out what your customers want instead of what you can give them, here’s something you should know. Good design isn’t what you think it is.

• It’s not an emotive image with pithy text and a dope beat from a band named Mooseknuckle.
• It’s not a box made of hemp fiber in the shape of condor’s nest that was — be honest – an afterthought to hold your clever “Must-have” eco product.
• It’s not even the promise of a new piece of software that reports it will solve world hunger with a user interface you’re sure is so easy even a chimp can use it.

It’s how a product works in the hands of your customers. It may be easy to use or pleasing to look at, but if it doesn’t solve a pain it’s a waste of time and money. “If there’s no pet peeve, there’s no product,” says Alex Lee, president of OXO.

Thus, the title of the book absconds with the Steve Jobs quote: “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Whether that’s the tried-(or trite?)and-true of form following function, an evolution of tired phrases like “out of the box thinking”or new fangled concepts like Design Thinking permeating all disciplines to foster organizational creativity — the bottom line is you need to know your customers better than they know themselves. The only way to do that is to get your hands dirty and actually engage with them where they will put your product to use. The book gives some great examples of how and where to do that in the profiles on OXO, REI, Nike and Lego.

So, for me, the book is a call to get your head out of the freaking clouds or at least out of your own building.  It’s time to stop aspiring and start perspiring. There’s plenty of work to be done learning about what your customers need to cure their pet peeves. Build those products and they will come.

And, instead of leaving you with a cheesy movie line platitude, here’s a more actionable treat from Jay  Greene himself when I swapped a note asking for him to clarify design thinking and discuss ways all companies can infuse their operations with the principles of design thinking:

“Like industrial designers, design thinkers use creativity and empathy to help them craft something that has an emotional connection with customers. They prototype concepts and collaborate with colleagues to test theories and come up with novel approaches to new products. The difference is that design thinkers apply those concepts to businesses, such as software-as-a-service, that people don’t typically think of as being design-focused. They use anthropology, sociology and psychology to study customers in order to understand their unstated and unmet needs. They prototype strategies and experiences much the same way that companies model early versions of physical products. So if you’re looking for strategies for companies to implement to create iconic products, design thinking would be a great place to start.”

Here, here!

Every five years or so, marketing gurus repackage the discipline of garnering influence, attention and brand loyalty into something that drives new ways to engage people to take action. Look no further than the growing allegiance to social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Foursquare as a sign that Big Idea marketing from the mountaintop is giving way to crowdsourcing your way to a Compelling Idea.

My friends, we are on the cusp of another such evolution in marketing. For lack of a better term, I’ll float one for consideration – Bro-cial Media. The pillars of Bro-cial Media are simple:

• Don’t just know your audience. Be your audience.
• Feed your audience with content that makes them hungry for more
• Deliver content in a medium your audience likes to consume

The big brains at Nonbox, an integrated marketing firm in Portland, Ore., recently introduced me to a sports marketing client of theirs that is letting it flow in more ways than one: Connor Martin and his alter ego ConBroChill. Nonbox partners were quick to point out that Martin is responsible for creating a  strong  reverse-mentoring relationship with the agency on bootstrap digital marketing efforts that attract active followers.  Nonbox, in turn, is delivering its deep reservoir of sports marketing connections to Martin as they advise him on the opportunities his gregarious personality and sun-drenched good looks are bringing to the surface.

This former pro lacrosse star born and raised in the Northwest is more than a flowing mane (aka The Flow), with a penchant for the bombastic and a persona that’s part MTV’s Puck Rainey and part Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob fame. This wholesome kid next door is a bonafide digital media sensation.

With YouTube creations constructed using his dad’s video camera, Connor Martin/ConBroChill brings as many as 500,000 like-minded sports enthusiasts to him with every  three- to five-minute dispatch. This popularity has created a product-pitching hotbed for CBro and his sponsors, as well as opened the door to him as an arena anthem creator…
and a current spate of possible television projects that could propel him into being a household name.

So what does this Bro-make-good story have to do with you, Mr./Mrs. CMO?

It’s time to quit looking for ways to make a Facebook profile relevant for your company or clients. It’s time to quit pushing Twitter messages out that trumpet how cool you are. Retire big idea thinking for a moment and go Bro-cial.

Here are five tips for integrating Bro-cial Media into your marketing mix as a company or for your clients:

1. Develop a persona for your brand. You may not be ConBroChill, but you are somebody. If you don’t know who you are — Ask your coveted audience.
2. Live where your prospects, fans, and competitors live. Is it YouTube? Is it LinkedIn? Is it in technology or industry forums or trade pubs? Don’t waste time building communities from scratch. Find out where your Bros are already hanging out.
3. Don’t be a witness. Be an activist! Participate. Engage with your bros and give them reasons to want to hang with you.
4. Be fresh – in attitude and in your content. Have an edge that reflects your persona  in everything you deliver and bring things to your bros that elicit action. Don’t just create for the sake of freshness.
5. Encourage frequent  interaction with your bros to stay current. Don’t pontificate in a vacuum. Unvalidated clever ideas from you or your marketing cohorts may make you laugh or feel empowered, but if they miss the mark you could end up with something like this flop:  Motrin Moms Mishap from Johnson & Johnson.

It’s time to welcome your new marketing muse to the table. His name is Connor Martin.