Clark's Spot

While at the pool on Sunday, my companions and I were people watching. One group we eventually focused on was a teenage couple that was particularly touchy-feely. We tried to figure out how old they were, whose parents they were with, and whether any of us could have felt so unconcerned about the parents and strangers around the blissfully unaware couple.

One of the women in our group finally decided to go ask their age. (15 – nope would not feel comfortable with a set of parents around.) The part of the story that became more entertaining quickly was how she got around to asking their age.

She began by asking how the two teens knew each other. That brought stares from the two who didn’t know how to respond to the question. The girl tried again: You two look so cute together. How long have you known each other? The couple responded to the second approach (a year) and answer the other quick questions my friend asked.

I kept thinking about this on the drive home from the pool. I’m not sure what they thought of the first question, or whether it was the surprise of someone intruding into what they thought was solitude, but they simply didn’t answer. The second question – which began with a compliment – drew them in. The couple responded when my friend framed the question in a friendly way.

It isn’t that “how do you know her” isn’t friendly. It’s neutral. But “you look so cute” is friendly. It reminds me of the old positive-negative-positive lesson of feedback that I was taught in high school.

Framing your remarks – even in an offhand and incidental conversation – is the best way to get a response.

I’ve been away from Who Is Listening for a few weeks as I take a series of courses on public presentation and marketing management. Both courses gave me stuff to mull over – and some fodder for future posts. But I wanted to mention something now that was covered in a class in the past week.

The idea of Who Is Listening is that the way the message is framed is important. It isn’t enough to say it – you have to say it in a way that connects with the audience. This is no less true in video as it is in audio.

New GM appears to want to be more responsive and transparent to the consumer. (Comments about the American consumer/taxpayer being a de facto owner and entitled to transparency are fine. Go ahead and add comments below.) The company is launching an online suggestion box. It has a website dedicated as the home of its blog collection. And it launched a spiffy new commercial detailing how new the New GM is going to be.

The commercial has attracted commentary from the blogosphere (who believe it is cliche), journalists (who pen how the mighty have fallen), and wrestling fans (who don’t like the final line). Nevermind the spoof ad that has more views than the actual ad on YouTube.

The problem with the commercial? Watch it and take a look at some of the images. Tattered American flag. Hockey player pinned to the ice. Lots of unsold vehicles. Some of the images invoke thoughts of worn, old, outdated, and defeated. That’s not the message GM should want to convey.

It’s important to think about more than who is listening – or in this case, watching. You have to think about what they hear and see as well. Make sure that is in line with your message.

Twitter has two advantages over Facebook and other social networking sites. The open set-up makes it easier to follow people who you don’t know. This builds weak ties and grows your network further outside your social circle than you would normally look. Secondly, the hashtag system makes it easier to track updates from events and to connect with individuals through those events.

This focuses on the second point. I’ll follow up on the loose ties in a later post.

Hashtags bring some order to the large number of posts in the Twitterverse. Remember, my simplified view of Twitter is a giant chatroom where you are trying to get your message through the din. Your task is to figure out who you want to get and receive direct messages from. Hashtags help you sort through that noise if you’re interested in a specific topic. It lets you see a sign in the chatroom that your topic is being discussed in a certain corner, and you can go to that corner to hear everyone else espouse their thoughts on your topic.

Say that you’re interested in the annual Comic-Con show. #comiccon lets you track what other folks are saying about the show. You see where other people are spending their time at the show. It makes it easier to meet more people in real life who share your interests – which spreads your network and influence. And your more powerful network is much better than a few new followers.

That means the real world component of hashtags is important. If #you write sentences just to #include #metadata, you help #computers – not #people. Tags should be rare and should be unobtrusive. Take a look at Dave Coustan’s post. I’m not sure that I’d unfollow, but I like his comparisson to the NPR piece. They shouldn’t interfere with your ability to read the post.

Help sort – but don’t go overboard. Take a look at the directory on hashtags.org to see how out-of-control it can get. Hashtags remain an advantage for Twitter only as long as they don’t get in the way of the conversation AND they build loose ties.

About six weeks ago, I wrote about how a monthly e-newsletter was key to driving traffic to a blog and website where I worked. A few days later I was reminded of the Pareto Principle – also known as the 80/20 rule. The monthly e-mail doesn’t drive that much traffic, but I’m a sucker for a quick analysis and measuring the ROI is always a great thing to do. That led me to try to compare a few numbers to quantify how big an impact the e-newsletter gives.

Quick disclaimer. My six months of numbers are a little dated – the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009.

The e-newsletter, web page, and a blog received the majority of views during each month so I just looked at those sources. I left the e-newsletter numbers out as well because I wanted to understand whether the e-newsletter really increased the number of web page and blog views. So I focused on those two numbers. And I looked at the six-day period from when the e-newsletter was sent. Over the course of the typical 30-day month, those six days are 20 percent.

A copy of the e-newsletter was kept on the website and many articles were posted on the site as well. While each open and click could be listed as a page view, I only measured hits on the index page. The newsletter offered the chance to go to my organization’s “home page” a link to the index page – and a number of people did so. In the six days after an e-mail (20 percent of a month) we always had more than 20 percent of our monthly hits – as high as 34 percent in the final month that I tracked. The main web page generated 29.5 percent of its hits in the 20 percent of the month after an e-newsletter.

This trend was even more obvious in the blog hits. We launched the blog on WordPress.com in September, added a link to our web page late in that month, and began to promote the blog in the e-newsletter in October. The concept of visiting the blog was new to stakeholders throughout this period, and the monthly e-mail provided a great reminder and driver to the blog.

During half of the months studied, the blog received more than half of its page views in the 6 days immediately after the e-mail. While this isn’t an 80/20 split, overall the blog received 49.7 percent of its traffic in the 20 percent of the time following an monthly e-mail.

Content was likely one of the main reasons the blog fared better than the web page in the days after the e-mail. But the takeaway is the same. When planning communications, include something regular to provide your audience with a gentle reminder that you’re there. E-mail is deleted too easily and too regularly – especially when you lean too heavily on it. But e-mail is low-cost and unobtrusive enough that it can give your readers a push to get more information about you.