Bulldog Reporter’s Faux Pas Shows Why Not to Take Research at Face Value

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Paul

This lead from a recent Bulldog Reporter case study on business blogging certainly caught my attention:

“Recent research reveals that 64% of American companies will launch their own corporate blogs in 2014, and the average budget for corporate blogging will increase by nearly one-sixth. What’s more, 12% of American companies plan to hire a full-time blogger in 2014.”

Holy cow! Blogging is one of the oldest forms of social media and is not generally considered a high-growth field. In fact, statistically valid research conducted by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth over the past several years has documented that about only about one-third of the Fortune 500 and fewer than half of the Inc. 500 have public blogs, and those numbers aren’t growing very fast. What new research now predicts this kind of mind-blowing growth?

It turns out to be research that’s not very good. A little background checking revealed that the numbers cited by Bulldog Reporter came from a study conducted by a company called DeskAlerts, which makes messaging software for use inside organizations. In a press release, the company summarized its methodology this way: “DeskAlerts asked businesses around the US a single question: what would inspire you to create a corporate blog?”

That’s all. Nothing about how the survey was conducted, who the respondents were or how many people responded. This is kind of critical information to know if you’re going to cite the results in a responsible publication.

From Russia With Love

I tried to reach the contact listed on the press release, whose name is Natasha Chudnova. I e-mailed Ms. Chudnova via PRWeb but got no response. I couldn’t find a direct e-mail address for her on the company website or anywhere else. Her LinkedIn profile says she’s in the Russian Federation, which isn’t surprising given that DeskAlerts’ website says that’s where its development is done. The headquarters are listed as being in Alexandria, Va., but when I tried to call the company using the phone number listed on the website, I got a recording saying only that I had reached a voicemail box. The recording didn’t even identify the name of the company.

So I’m having my doubts about the quality of this research. But you don’t have to do any detective work to figure out that these numbers are suspicious. The most obvious question is how DeskAlerts derived so much data from a question that didn’t ask for any? There is simply no way that response to a single verbatim question could be interpreted to reach these stunning conclusions.

That’s assuming the question is valid, which it isn’t. A professional researcher would never use a word like “inspire” in a survey because it creates bias. It’s like asking, “What would cause you to take on the drudgery of creating a corporate blog?” The term “you” is also indefinite. Does it refer to the person or the person’s company? Even if the research was conducted over a statistically valid sample, the results would be meaningless if the question was asked that way.

But the most damning evidence that the research is flawed is the data itself. If we accept the UMass research as a baseline, then DeskAlerts is telling us that 100% of American companies will be blogging by the end of this year. Um, no, they won’t. Then there’s the statistic that 12% of companies will hire a full-time blogger in 2014. Given that there are about six million employers in the U.S., this would represent the addition of more than 700,000 skilled jobs to the workforce. If that were true, the President would be holding a press conference to declare victory over unemployment.

Despite all these problems, I don’t blame DeskAlerts for releasing bogus research into the wild or for producing the obligatory infographic above. Bad data is only a problem if people believe it. The real problem is when respected brands like Bulldog Reporter put the badge of legitimacy on information that is so clearly wrong. Publishers owe it to their readers to at least run a basic reality check before validating third-party research, particularly when it’s from an unknown party. Bulldog Reporter publishes a lot of good information, but it dropped the ball on this one.

8 Data Points about the Importance of Customer Experience

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Paul

I was asked to prepare some background information on the importance of delivering a positive customer experience, and I thought I would share some of the research with you.

How much does the market reward companies that deliver excellent customer experience? Consider that the Fortune list of the world’s 10 most admired companies in 2013 includes seven that are renowned for excellence in that area: Apple, Google, Amazon, Starbucks, Southwest, Disney and FedEx. The world’s two most valuable brands – Apple and Google – are considered world-class.

Recent research worth noting:

Dell has published internal metrics showing that 97% of dissatisfied customers can be rescued with proactive intervention and more than 40% of those people actually become raving fans.
Siegel+Gale’s 3rd annual Global Brand Simplicity Index reported last year that nearly 1/3 of American consumers would be willing to pay an average of about 4% more for simpler brand experiences.
Gartner estimated last year that by 2014 “failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% increase in churn rate for existing customers.” You have to wonder why one-third of large corporations still block social network use by their employees.
Research published by Temkin Group last year reported that only 7% of the 255 large companies it surveyed could be described as reaching the highest level of customer experience maturity, although nearly 60% said their goal is to be the industry leader in customer experience within three years. That’s gonna be a tall order.
A July, 2013 Lloyd’s survey of 588 C-suite executives found that customer loss was their second biggest concern, exceeded only by worries about high tax rates. Respondents also indicated they are under-prepared to address this risk, with executives giving themselves only a 5.7 rating on a 1-to-10 scale (see chart below).
Sixty-two percent of B2B and 42% of B2C customers purchased more after a good experience, while 66% and 52%, respectively, stopped making purchases after a bad experience, according to a recent survey of 1,000 people who had had recent customer service interactions. The research also indicated that customers are somewhat more likely to share bad experiences through social networks than good ones.
Executives talk the talk but still don’t walk the walk. An Oracle survey of 1,342 senior-level executives from 18 countries earlier this year found that 97% agree that delivering a great customer experience is critical to business advantage and results, and that the average potential revenue loss from failing in this area is 20% of annual revenue. However, 37% are just getting started with a formal customer experience initiative, and only 20% consider the state of their customer experience initiative to be advanced.
A survey of 2,000 adults last year found that 83% are willing to spend more on a product or service if they feel a personal connection to the company. One-fifth said they would spend 50% more on companies that they felt the company put the customer first.

Research Finds Expanded Marketing Role Correlates With Business Results

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Paul

At the risk of beating a dead horse, here’s further evidence that IT organizations need to take a more active role in supporting social business.

According to VisionsLive Market Research, IBM just released a global survey of more than 360 marketing practitioners and one of the key findings is that marketers want to be better aligned with their IT organizations. You can see a 28-slide summary of the top findings here.

There’s a lot of data about the lousy tools most marketers have two analyze the flood of data they’re collecting, but the relevant point for tech pros is that “nearly 60% indicate that lack of IT alignment and integration are significant barriers to the adoption of technology.” Marketers say they work pretty well with IT organizations in general, but those at top-performing companies have better-than-average relationships.

The research breaks the respondent base into two categories: Top Performers and Rest of Population. It finds that the best marketers have higher-than-average involvement in products, price, placement and promotion than average. They’re also more likely to be involved in customer service, supply networks and multi-channel marketing. basically, they’re assuming a more central role in business strategy.

However, they’re mostly flying blind because analyzing results is a huge challenge. Among the the top problems are measuring effectiveness, juggling data coming in from multiple sources and managing complex business rules. Eighty-five percent of marketers say they need an integrated suite to manage multi-channel communications. And who better to help them get there than the technology pros?

Other interesting data: E-mail is kind of a mess. Two thirds of marketers don’t integrate e-mail data with other customer information or they integrate data manually, which doesn’t scale. Only 21% have mobile marketing campaigns and 80% handle mobile marketing on an ad hoc basis. We’re still very early stage with that channel.

Overall, there’s a lot of good news for marketing in this research. It establishes that companies that expand the role of marketing beyond mere messaging are seeing better business results. That’s a good thing, right?

Press release/summary of results

The State of Marketing: 2012 IBM Global Survey

Direct Marketing Doesn’t Have to Suck

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Paul

In the weeks leading up to the Direct Marketing Association annual conference in Boston this week, exhibitors were out strutting their best stuff. Last week I got two letters in the mail that appeared to be personally addressed to me in a feminine hand (right). Both turned out to be promotions for companies exhibiting at the conference. One employs people to hand-address envelopes so that they appear to come from a friend. The other has an automated signature device that does much same thing.

I opened both envelopes without realizing what was inside and had to chuckle at how I was taken in. They fooled me good. And then I thought about what that says about the state of direct marketing today. Have we sunk so low that we need to trick people into reading our messages? Is it any surprise that forecasters expect direct-mail marketing to decline nearly 40% over the next two years?

Dump the Junk

Like many people, I’m less interested in reading mass marketing material today than I’ve ever been. There’s far too much good stuff out there. More than 90% of the material that enters my mailbox goes straight to the recycling bin. I unsubscribe from any e-mails that don’t offer clear value to me. Unsolicited e-mail simply gets blocked. Fooling me doesn’t make me a prospect; it makes me mad.

There are some marketing messages, though, that are so valuable to me that I actually look forward to their arrival. Here are a few that I welcome into my inbox:

Bulldog Reporter’s Daily ‘Dog – This e-mail arrives every morning packed with news and insight about the latest happenings in media and corporate communications. It’s so useful that I make it a point to read every issue, even if that means saving them for a few days until I have time.

Marketing Charts – This is an invaluable daily digest of the latest market research in media and consumer behavior. I bookmark many of its summaries for later use and frequently tweet two or three items out of an issue.

HubSpot reports – The maker of “inbound marketing” software regularly sends alerts about new white papers, tip sheets and e-books that highlight best practices in social marketing. I downloaded and read most of them. I tweet almost all of them.

Someecards – They make devilishly funny and marginally offensive greeting cards, and I love their stuff. The weekly newsletter is always good for a laugh. I’ve bought several branded items from their store.

Editor & Publisher Daily – This newsletter is little more than a curation of articles from other sources, but the fact that E&P puts it together in a compact, scannable format makes it one of my most useful daily reads. It’s a prime source for my Newspaper Death Watch blog.

Gizmo’s Freeware – Why pay for commercial software when products of equal or greater value are available for free? Each of these daily newsletters spotlights a different category of goodies I can get for nothing.

Other than a general media and marketing theme, these communiques have little in common other than the fact that they enlighten or entertain. With the exception of Gizmo, all the companies have something to sell. I may not buy from them, but I sure do help promote their wares. With 9,400 Twitter followers, 1,200 LinkedIn connections and regular columns in BtoB magazine and The CMO Site, I can extend their reach at very little cost to them. And I do, nearly every day.

Think Like the Customer

This is direct marketing that doesn’t suck because it delivers value that I can share to enhance my own value to others. When you think in terms of what your customer wants, rather than what you need to sell, you create new channels of word-of-mouth awareness.

Lots of direct marketers still haven’t bought into this idea. In the weeks leading up to DMA, vendors contacted me with offers of movie tickets, gift cards and a chance to win an iPad. These are the same corny come-ons I’ve heard from tradeshow exhibitors for nearly 30 years. Does this stuff really work anymore? Are serious buyers really willing to endure a half-hour sales pitch to get a crummy pair of movie tickets? And if so, were they serious buyers in the first place?

If you want access to my inbox and to my network, help me build my professional profile by making it easier for me to help my friends and contacts. Make me look smart, because I’ll return the favor.

But please, save the postage stamp.

My presentation to this week’s DMA conference is below.

10 Things Direct Marketers Can Do to Take Advantage of Social Media

View more presentations from Paul Gillin

How Much Should You Pay For Content?

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Paul

Marketers often ask how they can train engineers and technical people to blog, podcast and otherwise engage in deep online conversations with customers. My advice: don’t bother. You’re better off investing in professional communicators and teaching them what they need to know about your business.

The ability to communicate well in any media demands a certain amount of innate ability and it’s a difficult skill to teach. The technology trade media learned this long ago, and that’s why they have hired professional journalists to fill their pages for the past 75 years. It’s a lot harder and costlier to train technology experts to write than it is to teach writers what they need to know to about technology.

So if you’re going to create your own blogs, white papers, e-books and such, you should probably use professional communicators to help you do it. What’s that going to cost you? Like most things in life, it depends.

Media Dividend

The rapid decline of mainstream media (more than 45,000 journalists have been laid off in the last five years in the US) has put a lot of good communicators out of work, and many can be had today for pennies on the dollar compared to what they made a few years ago. I recently noticed a bylined article by a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter on a Cisco promotional website. And I’ll bet he was happy to have the work.

The cost variable is the level of technical skill you need. If you’re in a consumer industry where the necessary level of technical knowledge is quite low, decent freelancers can be hired for as little as 25 cents/word, although the norm is between 50 and 80 cents. Demand Media, whose formulaic, keyword-driven approach to topic selection enrages many journalists, is rumored to pay as little as $.10 per word.

A word on words: Freelancers are usually paid by the published word. It seems an odd metric, but it’s the one that’s been used for decades and will probably persist until somebody comes along with a better one. Payment is based upon the published word, not the number of words the writer submits. You should always specify an upper limit.

Many journalists who were making $60,000 to $80,000 salaries working for newspapers a few years ago are happy to work for $35,000-$40,000 today. Any journalism pro should be able to produce 2,500 words/week for you. Do the math to figure out if it makes more sense to hire or freelance, remembering that a full-time employee carries less administrative overhead – but more overhead cost – than a loose staff of contractors. If you’re negotiating for basic, off-the-shelf freelance help, start with a 30 cents/word offer and work from there.

The higher the level of technical expertise you need, the more it’s going to cost you. In the computer industry, which is what I know best, $1 to $1.50 is the going per-word rate for marketing-commissioned pieces these days. I imagine that in a highly technical field, like bio-engineering, the rate is even higher. The fewer options you have, the more you’re going to pay.

Where Writers Hang Out

“I once commissioned a story from a freelancer who had an impressive portfolio of published work, but who apparently had also worked with some outstanding editors. The piece she turned in was such a disaster that I almost cried.”If you’re looking to hire professional journalists, sites like JournalismJobs, WritersWrite and MediaBistro are good places where writers hang out and look for assignments. There are several large groups of freelancers on LinkedIn, including The Freelance Writers Connection with 5,600 members. Search for others.

If you’re more of a risk taker, sites like e-lance, Guru.com, Freelancer.com and iFreelance are places to fish for talent. Try posting your needs and what you’ll pay and see who responds. Be sure to ask any prospective writer for samples of his or her work in your field of expertise. You do not want to pay a freelancer to learn your business on the job.

Hiring freelance help blind is a risky affair. Published samples won’t do you any good. I once commissioned a story from a freelancer who had an impressive portfolio of published work, but who apparently had also worked with some outstanding editors. The piece she turned in was such a disaster that I almost cried. I spent more than four hours trying to turn it into something that was at least publishable, hoping that nobody would actually read it. Moral of the story: ask for raw copy, not clips.

Going the Full-Time Route

Cree Lighting blogger and former newspaper reporter Ginny Skalski

If you can afford to hire a full-timer, I highly recommend it. Journalists are quick learners by nature and their time to productivity is short. Staffers turn out more content per dollar than contractors, and you don’t have the overhead of legal documents, busted deadlines and flaky freelancers who simply disappear in the middle of the night

If you choose to hire a journalist as a corporate blogger, you’re in good company. Among the brands I know that do so are IBM, HubSpot, Eloqua, JetBlue, Cree Lighting and Sybase. I’m sure there are many more. Every single journalist-turned-corporate blogger I have met is happy to be out of the burning building that is mainstream media and into something with a manageable lifestyle and a boss who isn’t a screaming maniac.

If you prefer to go the freelance route, stick with a small group of reliable freelancers rather than playing the field. They’ll learn your business and require less hand-holding the longer you use them. They’ll also go the extra mile for you when you need them. Freelancers treasure steady work more than high pay. Most would rather work for a handful of reliable clients then constantly bid for the highest dollar. Paying within two weeks, rather than the corporate-mandated 60 days, will make you their best friend.

Final Note: Be Reasonable

I’ve been writing for BtoB magazine for nearly six years, some of it paid and some not. Like many media organizations, they pay less than any of my commercial clients, but I always put BtoB at the front of my priority list. Why? They’re just such damned reasonable people to work with.

Freelancers know that $2/word is no bargain if they need to produce 8,000 words and four rewrites over three months in order to get approved and paid. BtoB and I work so well together at this point that there is very little waste in our interaction. I actually make more money per hour working with them than I do with some corporate clients who pay considerably more.

The moral: The easier you are to deal with as a client, the better deals and favors freelancers will cut with you. This doesn’t mean dropping your standards, but the next time you’re ready to ship a draft back to the writer for a fourth revision in order to move two paragraphs around, you might consider just making the change yourself.

Let Your People Speak!

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Paul

IBM engineers celebrate Watson's victory (from a YouTube video)

IBM engineers celebrate Watson's victory (from an IBM YouTube video)

Earlier this week I wrote an article for SocialMediaB2B.com that made the case that last week’s IBM Watson Jeopardy challenge, in which an IBM computer thrashed the two greatest Jeopardy champions of all time, was the greatest B2B marketing campaign ever.

One reason I liked it so much is that IBM let scientists – instead of corporate suits – tell the story of their achievement. This was documented in more than 30 videos that IBM posted on YouTube as well as chat sessions and group Q&A interviews on the website reddit.com.

If you want to see the passion that the IBM scientists brought to this project, watch the 11-minute summary video that was posted shortly after the contest ended. It’s clear that Watson’s accomplishments were more than just a technology triumph. Researchers reacted as if their child had just graduated from Harvard. Their passion was contagious and genuine.

Why don’t more companies let the people who build and support their products come out of the shadows the way IBM did? In part, I believe it’s fear that people will do the wrong thing. It also reflects the time limitations that developers and engineers themselves often cite as a reason to stay in the shadows. Let’s look at each in order.

Tell Stories

Effective communications is about storytelling. Ronald Reagan taught us that. People don’t respond to statistics, feature charts and positioning statements the same way they do to other people. Entrepreneurs excite us when they share their vision, yet successful companies bury enthusiasm under layers of approvals and official spokespeople.

B2B customers have intense information needs, and their questions are often best answered by the people who build and service the products they use. Some companies understand this. One of my favorite stories from Social Marketing to the Business Customer is Indium Corp., which built a constellation of search-optimized blogs that put their engineers directly in touch with the people who buy their highly specialized products. Result: 600% jump in leads in six months. Marcom Director Rick Short (left) says his job is to “get engineers talking to customers and then get out of the way.”

Do unofficial spokesmen sometimes say the wrong thing? Sure. Does it matter? Not really. Corporations are far too sensitive to the indiscretions of individuals, which usually can be sidestepped with an apology or explanation. A couple of hours of media training does wonders.

Blogs Are the New Trade Shows

The issue of time commitments and availability is valid, but usually overstated. Many engineers are only too happy to write papers and travel thousands of miles to deliver presentations, yet writing a 500-word blog entry or recording a how-to video is seen as overwhelming.

There’s a contradiction here. Engineers naturally like to share, and they know that conference presentations are good for their careers. Contributions to the company’s social media programs potentially reach a much larger audience than a presentation at a trade show. They go to the trade show because that’s what’s always been done.

I wish more corporate marketers would adopt Rick Short’s philosophy and see themselves as facilitators rather than spokesman. They should be the ones urging recalcitrant executives to draw contributors out from behind the curtain. They should have the statistics to demonstrate that the blog reaches a larger audience than the trade show. They should be the ones positioning customer communications as a privilege, not a chore.

The best way to encourage individual contributors to participate in your social media programs is to celebrate them. That doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Recognize contributions to the corporate blog in your employee newsletter, or hand out awards for the most prolific or creative contributors every quarter along with a small gift certificate. When people see that their involvement is good for their careers, they quickly come on board.

A Personal Plea to Support the NewComm Forum

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Paul

The New Communications Forum is the one social media event I attend every single year. That’s because the speakers at this conference, which is now in its sixth year, are predictably incredible. I’m not talking about me; I’m referring to people like Kami Huyse, Geoff Livingston, Shel Holtz, Shel Israel, Maggie Fox, Katie Paine, Jackie Huba, Francois Gossieaux, Geno Church, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Solis and many others. These are, quite simply, the people I most respect and listen to in the social media realm.

NewComm Forum takes place the week after next in San Mateo, CA. The keynote presentation on Thursday, April 22 is by Scott Monty, whose accomplishments at socializing the Ford Motor Company’s marketing programs are deserving of a lifetime achievement award. People told me that last fall’s presentation on The Hyper-Social Organization by Gossieaux and Ed Moran of Deloitte Services actually changed their lives. I know it had a huge impact on me. You can hear an updated version on Wednesday, April 21.

People don’t come to NewComm Forum to sell stuff; they come to discuss the big issues of how social technologies are transforming organizations and institutions. It was this event in 2006 that convinced me to devote my career to understanding and documenting social media’s transformative impact.

Why am I telling you all this? Because registrations are down this year. Whether it’s the economy or the flood of new competition, they aren’t where they need to be and that’s bad news. I say competition, but NewComm Forum really has none. No other event will send you home with as many new insights, ideas and action items as this one. That’s not to denigrate the many other good conferences out there, but in my opinion there is simply none that combines the theoretical with the practical quite like this one.

It’s not just me saying this.

Kami Huyse calls it “quite simply the best social media conference I have attended;”
Neville Hobson says it’s “arguably the best conference for communicators and marketers to help you understand what social media and new communications tools and technologies can do for your business;”
JD Lasica agrees that it’s “one of the best social media gatherings anywhere;”
Todd Van Hoosear terms it “the premier conference for unlocking the power of social media for business.”

These folks have no financial interest in making these comments. They simply believe, as I do, that a program of this quality needs to be preserved.

The organizers have made $500 speaker discounts available if you register with the code NCF500. They’ve also added a one-day pass for $395 if you register with code NCF1D. If you happen to be in the Silicon Valley area, this is a no-brainer. You get:

Full access on Wednesday, April 21^st;
Keynote sessions by Jackie Huba, Dave Carroll (singer/songwriter, “United Breaks Guitars”) and Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategist of Pandora ;
Access to all conference sessions, including presentations by Shel Holtz, Jen McClure, Paul Chaney, Eric Schwartzman, Francois Gossieaux, Brian Solis, Katie Paine, Dharmesh Shah, Beth Kanter, Kami Huyse and others.
Breakfast, Luncheon featuring Dave Carroll and a cocktail reception.

Please support this valuable event and assure its health into the future. Tweet it to your followers using hashtag #ncf2010. And thanks for listening.