Our creations sometimes aren't the easiest solutions.

Background: The cat successfully caught and killed a mouse early Friday morning. (This is the first year we’ve had any mice issues… cat only has back claws.) So my wife had me get mouse traps the next day – to set out this weekend to catch any other mice who come inside the house. We have a couple traps – but none set out when this morning’s events happen.

So I make a quick decision. We put the cat in room upstairs with the litter box and food, and my wife and I set the mousetraps downstairs. We run out to shovel snow and run a few errands. We return home. No mouse caught, and the cat seems pretty content in the comfy chair in the upstairs room.

This got me thinking: Can I and all of the gadgets I love do better than the cat? Can I build a better mousetrap? This reminded me of an essay I read in The Cluetrain Manifesto.

How Lego Caught the Cluetrain (links to a video presentation that covers the same topic as his essay) by Jake McKee tells the story of how the Lego Company entered the world of social networking as part of its communication outreach. Lego had been aware of AFOLs (adult fan of Legos) but only marketed to children. The company slowly began to embrace AFOLs who had built websites, message boards, forums, e-mail groups, photo sites, and virtual stores to buy and sell pieces. Lego joined the conversation on the existing websites and developed new programs that made it easier for AFOLs to create their own designs and purchase the needed blocks to build those creations.

One paragraph in particular stood out. It highlights something that Jake says Lego did not do – something Lego did well.

“The mistake many companies make when they first engage a community is to rush in and try to replace unofficial efforts with official efforts. Even if such a move is well intentioned, it’s as if the company is saying, ‘Your efforts are sub par. Let us professionals step in and show you how it’s done.’ Not a very good way to start off the relationship.”

Lego included and built off the work that the fan community had already established. Lego joined the community. Its customers welcomed it, and they didn’t try to replace the work that was already done. The lesson is important for any company that connects with customers online – whether through a simple website or on a series of online communities. Don’t work to create an “official” and “artificial” community; go to where the customers are. You can add a legitimate voice to the conversation, but don’t hijack what’s already been built. Look for ways to complement what your customers, users, and constituents are doing.

Sometimes you can’t build a better network, and you waste resources and annoy everyone involved. That’s what my cat taught me about mousetraps today.

Thanks for picture: Picture is Creative Commons licensed from Joming Lau through Flickr.

Expanding on their website launched in 1999 (actually, expanding on the book published that expanded on the website), the four authors add additional commentary to their original work(s) and review how the Internet has changed business.

There are some good nuggets aboard this train.

First, you have to get past the voices. Oh, the writers are very proud of their voices. They explain how humanity hid its voices for The Corporation. They explain how the Web will free voices – has freed voices – and how if you don’t find A Voice and talk in A Voice, then your business will fail.

Perhaps they’re making up for lost time for their many years of hiding their voices. The voices must be stretched to check for their limits – the same way a 42-year-old at his college reunion tries to tailgate the same way he did as a senior.

You must also get through the tone, which can rail against business the same way a jilted lover proclaims all the failures of his or her beloved.

At times, the authors strike a tone similar to teenagers who sneaked into the office, turned on the P.A. system, and barricaded the doors – determined to have as much fun as they can squeeze into their minutes in the Sun.

That said, I’m convinced that markets are conversations. I’m convinced that conversations sound humans, and that ignoring those conversations means missing opportunities. I’m convinced that hyperlinks mean that networks can be as powerful as hierarchies within organizations. That smart companies can connect conversations that occur inside and outside the corporate firewall. That one of the changes wrought by the Internet and the World Wide Web is the lack of scarcity. That this abundance and this connectedness offer unique possibilities and challenges for all of the “people of Earth” – business and market.

So don’t misread my warning about voice and tone. Set those aside as you read it. This book offers four viewpoints (eight, now, with the new chapters and forward) of how to use the power of the Web to listen and to speak with your customers.

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.

Between these two inconveniences (they’re minor – this isn’t a major metro region), you’ll a dozen drivers jockeying for position. You’ll have traffic heading on and off the expressway. There’s always a truck from a distributor pulling out to block traffic. You’re likely to hit a parent stop in traffic lane to let a child out for school.

The rest of the drive is fairly empty. All of the congestion is in a really small area. That small patch of roadway determines whether I’m early, on-time, or late. The majority of the trip has no impact on the final results.

I was thinking about that as I drove to work yesterday. I knew that I’d spend the day writing and coding a monthly e-newsletter.

Research might suggest that e-mail is losing effectiveness. It’s too easy to delete (if it isn’t marked spam). The addresses in your list eventually go out of date. The information is scanned and discarded compared to interactive websites, social networks, and online communities.

(Disclaimer – we don’t spam, everyone has prior relationship with us, we process unsubscribes and opt-outs, etc.)

I’ve found our monthly e-mail is the largest driver of traffic to each of these other channels. The website hits go up. The blog views skyrocket. The clicks on Twitter and Facebook pop. It’s the reminder to our stakeholders to check in – using whichever program or format you’d like – to the institution where I work.

In other words, the three-day window of e-mail opens has a huge effect on the month traffic. What have you found?

Thanks to lynac on Flickr for the photo.