The 5 Steps to Busting a Silo

Photo Credit: Doc Searls on Flickr I know.  The economy is tough and you're scared.  You're scared you are going to ruffle some feathers, make some waves, and possibly lose your job.  So you sit and do what you're told. Meanwhile, tons of half-assery is going on.  Or, things are not getting done in the manner they should - basically, no one is communicating outside of your department.  That ol' dreaded silo.  Or worse yet, folks in your department are all silo'd into their own responsibilities sort of forming this hyper internal sub-silo.

Be the one that breaks the silo

I promise, it can be easy.  Not always, but it can be.  And I've done it many times before.  Sometimes a literal reach into another silo is all it takes.  Even flying in the face of a crazed owner that would yell "Get in your own laaaaanes!"  I never followed his rule; I always felt it was too detrimental.  Not necessarily to the organization, because it wasn't my organization - I felt it was detrimental to my life and my future.  

And that is the one thing that IS ours.

Don't let someone else silo up your life.  Break free from that. 

Here's how to bust the silo

Look, I'm not suggesting you go all Willie Nelson and turn into some Organizational Outlaw.  And will this be an every-time scenario?  No way.  Sometimes you'll try this and you'll fail hard as hell.  Other times, you'll be wildly successful and make life-long friendships, build a rock solid professional network, and do some really great work.

1. Sneak into the other silo.  Instead of blindly bad mouthing the processes of another silo, how about you spend some time in there to really see what goes on?  You'll learn a lot and might even realize that there isn't a silo after all - maybe they have been trying to reach out for some time as well.  
   
   How to do this:  sneaking into the other silo can be acheived a number of ways, but the two most effective for me are (1) to casually walk down to the department and spend 5-10 minutes talking to folks there or (2) find an angle to get invited to a meeting or three. 


2. Start making friends.  This one goes hand in hand with the step above and actually, before you get invited to meetings or walk down to the department, you may not have a choice but to start here.  You need to genuinely ask folks in the other silo out to lunch, coffee, drinks, whatever.  I say genuinely because you need to look at this as a friendship building opportunity.  Not some James Bond-ish spy maneuver. 


3. Recognize and seize opportunites to consult the other silo.  Here is where it all takes shape. You've learned a little about what the other departments do, you have identified some cross-departmental talents and you've made some friends that can either help you directly or refer you to someone else - now it's time to take the first swing at the wall of the silo.  
   
   How to do this:  You are in a project meeting, the general consensus is either a.) the team needs consultation to move forward or b.) you've seen better work done and you know it exists.  No problem, you just had lunch with a guy who knows Tom in the other department and Tom has a ton of experience with this sort of project.  Casually consult Tom.  And I say casually because if the Silo-Rule is an order from the top, you don't want to go risking your job just yet.  You still need time to build organic support for this silo-busting initiative.  A casual consult will give you an out if the C-suite or your manager comes down on you for reaching over the fence.
   
   
4. Send a hand-written thank you note or small gift.  Once the cross-silo consult is complete, wait a couple days and send over a hand-written thank you note.  Maybe even a small gift.  This sort of closes the loop on that bond you're building and pays respect to the other person's expertise.  They may not get all teary-eyed, but I promise you - they'll really respect you for it.  And they will spread the good word.


5. Repeat steps 1-4.  Eventually one of a few different things will happen.
    
   • The owner/manager/C-exec will want to know where all this great work is coming from and find out and be wildly pissed or happy.
   • You'll build enough organic support and project case studies to pitch an official silo-busting initiative and approach your CEO/Manager with a new organizational/work process presentation.
   • No grand change will happen, but you'll build some great friendships and become one of the most resourceful folks in the company.

That's really it.  And look, this has just been my personal experience.  Once you step into the other silo and cross that line, a thousand different things can happen.  These aren't exactly the laws of the Silo Busting Universe.  Plus, when it is all strewn out here in a blog article it seems super easy.  And like I said, sometimes it can be.

Other times it isn't.  But you need to try or you'll never grow.

Have you had any experience with busting the silo?  

3 Reasons Why Using "For Immediate Release" Is Stupid

 

Let me also preface this by saying that I DO understand what you are hoping to accomplish with FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.  And back when the dudes above where ripping tips from the wire and sprinting to get it to print, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE told 'em "this needs to go out now!"

You know that it really doesn't work like that anymore, right?

If you don't believe me then take some time to really get to know one of those journalists you're constantly roundhousing with releases.  Know what you'll find?  Ten times outta ten, not only is your release not getting looked at, it's probably way too late to begin with...

3 Reasons Why I Think For Immediate Release Is Stupid

• You are assuming that whomever you are sending this to doesn't have anything else to release.  This is terrible because it couldn't be any further from the truth.  Like I said, make some time to sit down and talk to a journalist.  They are literally inundated with releases, more than ever before. Cut-backs have most performing more than one job.  Your last second release is a literal asshole line-crowder.  And nobody likes a line crowder.
• There is a 99% chance your release is about something salesy and not really of news to the general public.  I'm totally guessing here so feel free to slap me upside the head in the comments, but take a good look at your release.  Is it really news?  Seriously.  Look at it.  Is it really news?  Or is it some remade version of an event announcement that you hope the "press will get wind of and give you some free mention in the paper"?  If the latter is indeed the case and I'm in the small percentage of journalists that take your FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE seriously enough the look at the rest of the release, guess what?  I'm probably never gonna look at another one of your releases...ever.
  
• There is an 84.2% chance you haven't done crap else to get folks to your event.  For Immediate Release is desperate as hell.  Mostly because you are probably sending the release out at the last second, so - in a desperate attempt to get this out NOW, you slap FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE at the top.  Here's a nutty idea:  How about you put some of the promotional burden on yourself and do something else to promote your event?  And no, I'm not talking about what you do for the 4-6 weeks leading up to the event, I'm talking about what you do all the damn time.  Do you blog regularly?  Do you publish any other sort of content?  Is it regular practice for you to host events? 

Here is the deal, and I'm going to be bold here so bear with me:  unless you have built great two-way relationships with certain members of the local press DO NOT spend your time crafting and blasting a spray-and-pray FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE press releases.

They won't look at it. 

Try this instead.  Next time you are hit with the urge to vomit a press release, count to 10, pick up the phone, and then ask a local journalist out to lunch or coffee.  While you're at lunch, don't even talk about your event - just get to know her.  If said journalist is too busy, drop off some food/coffee or mail them a little note with a gift card attached.

Then, after you've done this with a few journalists in your area, get them all together for a networking event at your place - no pitching at all from you - just an event to get everyone together.  

By sort of flipping the media funnel and approaching the relationship this way, you'll get to know their needs - essentially helping you hyper-target your releases and actually getting a few of them to print.

How To Respond to Complaints On Facebook

Photo Credit: Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M

Every so often I see an article like this and I roll my eyes, thinking, "OMG, here we go again..."  Then, usually not too long after that, I'll see the very reason why we still need posts like this.  Negative posts or complaints on a business' Facebook page will arise and the owner/marketing/PR staff will decide to sweep it under the rug rather than address it head-on and look at it as a tremendous opportunity to increase quality and strengthen the core of their business.

And look, there are no shortage of books and other blog posts that address this issue.  I'm not covering new ground here.  Instead, I only intend to outline how I've done this. 

To give you a quick background, one of the companies I have worked with had Rip-Off Reports littered all over the web about them.  Complaints and lawsuits were the norm for this program.  I'm telling you this to illustrate that I came into a very negative situation by starting a Facebook page for them.  In fact, in the first days of Facebook, ANYTHING we posted on our page would be met with swift negative response.

And now that I've moved on and no longer work for said company, I see them routinely delete negative posts on their page and I'm reminded again:  Folks still do not get this human business thing.

So, here goes.  AGAIN.

Below is my basic route for turning a Rip-Off Report laiden program to one with a Facebook page averaging 4-star reviews and an EdgeRank score of 103.

Step 1: Set Up Your Reviews Tab

This is the scariest thing of all.  And backwards by what most experts tout.  Some experts you say need a plan in place first.  I say quit f'ing around and get this up immediately.  As the human being you are, you can personally respond to bad reviews until the company response plan is in place. 

In the early days with the company above, when a negative review would come, I'd simply respond to that person via comment and personal message.  Then, I'd run to whomever could help me right the wrong.  Most of the time, my direct report would do just fine.

With this, the complainer would usually apologize - stating that they had no idea human being was actually listening.  We'd still fix their problem.  They'd "fix" their review.  Or in the case of negative comments, they'd respond with some thanks.  But, I'd NEVER take down a negative comment, even after the situation was fixed.  Those posts and the subsequent comments were social proof gold that we were a responsive business that took those things seriously.

Step 2:  Build Your Response Team

Again, most folks will say you need to build your plan first.  In my experience, you can't build your plan without knowing what your resources are.  Build your team, gauge your resources, then construct a plan.

I'm an organic build kind of guy, that's just how I roll.  I want to identify the passionate folks before I make my plan rather than hocking the duties off on a certain department that could care less.

Step 3: Put Together a Response Plan (Or Not)

I'm going to confess something that'll make the social experts crap their pants.  I never really had a formal response plan in place.  It just didn't feel genuine to me.  I mean, do you have a response plan outlined for when you piss one of your real-life buddies off?  No.

Instead of a formal plan, I did have a loosely defined process.  Which was basically that:

• I would respond as quickly as possible
• I would respond as genuinely as possible
• I would alert our response team to sit back and monitor and weigh in accordingly
• I would let the chips fall where they may, since interaction can't be forced
• We would address the complaint internally to gauge areas of improvement in our business

Most of the time, compaints would turn into apologies.  Apologies would turn into rave reviews.   Or better reviews. 

In every case though, we would always offer to take things offline and reach out via phone.  There's that human thing again.

Step 4:  Everyone Must Have the Ability to Respond

I saw a tweet from D.M. Scott a week or so ago that said something like "Companies that want to be real-time need to push decision making as far down the ladder as possible..."  I'm ultra-paraphrasing there, but that is the gist of what the tweet.

Make sense?

Let's toss out the time decay factor of EdgeRank and be human beings for a minute: Do you know what happens the longer you wait to apologize to someone?

That's right.  They start to stand even more firm in their position of thinking you are an a-hole.  So:

Your apologies and responses need to be swift and firm. 

Swift, genuine response cannot be done by corporate committee.  It just can't.  Unless your Social Media committee meets every 15 minutes of every day.  Some of the ones I've been on meet once a week.

Make part of your response plan be to respond - FAST.  And remember: by responding, you do not have to fix the customers problems in the first response.  Just letting them know someone is there listening will already start to quell some anxiety.

Then, pass the messaging on to the rest of the team to help decide which type of action you will take to fix the concern.

How Do You Respond To Complaints On Facebook?

So, how do you do it?  You may notice that I did not cover setting up listening posts of any kind.  Mostly because I think the tools are crap unless you have the core values in place that allow you to repond like a human being. 

So, again - what's YOUR deal?

It's Not Just Music, You're Creating Lifelong Bonds

Me (middle) with my buddies PJ and Brian of Yellow Light Maybe

My digital buddy Dave Cool inspired me to go back to my roots every so often.  So I'm gonna.

And in some ways this applies to the small business owner in general, but I'm mainly thinking of my musician friends here.  You guys are the ones more often creating mini-events that not only bring folks together in good or like-minded spirits, but mini-events that also give them something they yearn for:  good times and music.  And maybe a few drinks.

Here's my question to you:

You ever take a second to look around at all the friendships and life-long bonds that you are in part, if not totally responsible for?

I haven't been steadily on the road for a couple years now and I still see facebook posts and pictures from individuals that met at one of my festivals or one of my shows - years ago.  Even some bands that I brought together that are still at it playing great shows with one another, bringing their respective fanbases together and having a blast.

Now, a couple years removed, when I look back at my time playing music, the bonds I have helped create are one of the top things I'm most proud of.  Seriously.  Not the five albums I wrote and recorded, not the fact that I did exactly what I set out to do with music - it's the relationships and stories I helped create via a few fleeting melodies in my head. 

Someone once told me that as we look back at our time here, the only thing that really matters - the only thing that truly holds weight is our legacy and the memories we leave behind. 

If that is true, then I can't think of a more fulfilling legacy than to have created dozens, if not hundreds of friendships and experiences that may not have existed otherwise.

Think about that next time you're in-between songs at your show.  Look out upon the crowd and just give yourself a second to see the people having a great time together that wouldn't have been doing so otherwise.  Then, periodically scan the social webs to see folks that have gotten married, that are dating, that are going on vacations together or checking out other musicians - all because you brought them together.

That's your legacy, man. 

Remember that the next time you get down on yourself for not "making it"...k?

Step by Step Guide For Using Facebook Ads

Note: This is an article of mine that originally ran over at the Content Marketing Institute blog back in June.  In the coming weeks, I'll be reposting these articles over here just to store and document them on my side of things.

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You may not be thinking about using advertising as part of your marketing mix because you consider ads to be:

• Expensive
• Annoying
• Immeasurable
• Interruptive (see annoying)
• Short shelf-life

 However, I have had some great success mixing content marketing and online advertising with Facebook ads:

• They are measurable via Google Analytics and other tools
• If you target well, they aren’t viewed as much of an annoyance as a pray and spray ad would be.

A targeted ad with content as the offer can increase click throughs and conversions.  And in my experiences, that percentage increase came in the thousands.

Here are the steps to developing effective Facebook ads for content marketing.

Step 1:  Choose your offer and set up your landing page on your website

The work starts on your own website with the development of a landing page that promotes a specific offer. Why? You want to hold your audience’s hands and show them where to go.  And the landing page is what houses your offer, your hook, your content. It tells the person that clicked on the ad “Hey, you made it!  Here’s what we were talking about!”

When getting started, a great landing page content offer could be your most popular piece of downloadable content since it has already proven itself as a piece that your audience likes to consume.

NOTE: If you are planning to run more than one ad, and each has a different content offer, set up a different landing page for each offer. For example, we have four different pieces of content that are promoted by  four ads – all linking to different landing pages that deliver content corresponding to the ad.

In addition to tracking capabilities, separate landing pages will also help you segment the leads, what their interests are and get right into the meat of their interests on call backs/emails.

Here is a quick 101 on how I set up my landing pages:

• Set up the page on your site and give it a recognizable sub-directory URL (yoursite.com/contentname)
• Remove site navigation if possible.  This has shown to increase conversion by keeping prospects focused on your offer.
• Write a strong, concise and actionable headline
• Use the language of your customer, and quickly detail the benefits of downloading the content (bullet points are GREAT here)
• If requiring registration for your content, keep your form above the fold or as close to the top as possible.  If using top of page placement, I suggest top left.  Typically, I’ll insert the form under the content benefits.
• Use the same picture you will be using in your Facebook ad to provide some familiarity upon click-through.

Step 2:  Set up your tracking URL

My organization uses Hubspot software for tracking, but you can set up a tracking URL with Google Analytics.  Each URL you set up has a description that allows you to determine immediately which Facebook ad you are looking at in analytics.

To build a tracking URL in Google, log into Google’s tracking URL Builder and follow these steps:

Don’t get scared at the Frankenstein nature of your link, it will look something like this (not a live link):

http://www.theindielaunchpad.com/landingpagename?utm_source=Facebook%2BAds&utm_medium=Ads&utm_content=Sports%2BContent&utm_campaign=Sports

If you are running more than one ad in your mix, you’ll be able to separate out which ones are performing the best from the ones that aren’t doing so well.

We run multiple ads (3-4) based around our most popular content and program focuses. However, you may want to minimize spend during your first test and just run one.  Or you could run two ads with different headlines, link to the same landing page, and see which one converts better.  Then, put all of your chips on the winner of the two.

Step 3:  Decide your spend

Let me be clear:  I’m not suggesting everyone run or experiment with Facebook ads.  Do it only if you feel the risk can justify the return. With a well targeted content offer, we’ve seen ROI in the 2000 percent range.  Cost per lead as low as $150 for a $15,000 enrollment or “sale.”

I’ve run very effective Facebook campaigns for around $5,000 for 30 days,  which is two hundred percent less than what we have spent on television ads. More importantly, the Facebook campaigns have had more than twice the results of any television campaign.

Nevertheless, make sure your team does a cost/benefit analysis to help you decide which ad option will produce the most benefits for your client.

The beauty of Facebook ad spending is you can experiment with a little or a lot of money and set daily limits on your spend.  Once the limits have been met, the ad shuts off for the day.

I suggest selecting “Pay for Clicks.”  Have a different experience with paying for impressions?  Please leave your comments below. The actual selection of pricing will come after you set up your ad (Step 4).

Step 4: Set Up Your Facebook Ad

Once you have decided on  your overall spend, complete the following information:

• Destination:  Select “External URL”
• URL: Paste your tracking link.
• Title:  This rivals the picture for the most important part of the ad.  Not sure what to use?  Have any email headlines or landing page call to action links that tested extremely well?  Try out one of those.
• Body:  Use the language of your audience in the ad.  Initially, Facebook ads did not work for us until we changed out the phrase “Free eBook” with phrases like “Find out how” or actionable ones like “Click here to do this.”  In other words, our Facebook crowd hasn’t been a big fan of “eBooks.”
• Picture: A picture is worth a thousand words.  You get a very limited space for copy in your Facebook Ad.  You only enough space for a call to action headline and a two-line description.  Make sure the picture says it all.

Step 5:  Target your ad

Facebook allows you to target users’ likes and interests.  Your ad reach can be as large as the number of folks living within a certain radius of your business (in the millions), or as low as 20,000 folks between the ages of 18-34  who like chocolate chip cookies and live or work within 10 miles of your business.

Facebook also allows you to change your target settings on the fly.  So, if you aren’t experiencing the lead flow you hoped to see, you can change the settings by widening or narrowing your target audience.

Below are examples of what this section looks like.  Browse the different sections and you can see how targeted you can make one of these campaigns.  Additionally, Facebook’s audience selection feature will show you the extent of your reach in real time as it increases and decreases with each new targeting specification.

Step 6:  Check and Adjust

Fair warning:  You might become obsessed with checking the analytics during your campaign.  Be analytical but patient and steady.  Since Facebook allows you to make changes on the fly, you can easily become a strategic line jumper.

Here are a couple of disconnects you may find and how to fix them:

• If your landing page conversions are low, it means users are making it to your page but they aren’t converting.  Check the following:
  
  • Headline:  Does it correspond with what your ad says?
  • Form:  Is it above the fold?  Or do you have it down at the bottom of the page?  Introduce this as soon as possible.
  • Picture: Could it be better?  Did you use the same one as the ad?
  • Landing page copy:  If you haven’t, introduce the benefits of the content as soon as possible.  Facebook users have short attention spans  (actually, we all do).  Are you mirroring the offer in the ad?  Using the language of your audience?
• If your click through rate is low prospects aren’t clicking on your ad for one or more of the following reasons:
  
  • Ad headline:  Is the call to action strong?  Are you using research proven terms that increase click-through rates like “Click Here?” Are you using the language of your audience?
  • Picture:  Does the picture correspond to and compliment the ad copy?
  • Ad targeting:  Adjust your reach and let it sit for a couple days.  Maybe your radius or age range is too wide.  Maybe you haven’t properly identified all the possible “likes” to target

Have anything to add or refute? If you’ve had any luck or other experiences with distributing content via Facebook ads, leave them in the comments below.