If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer. You’re the product being sold.

 This web document contains links to resources we introduced during our presentation.

Kelli’s topic was Facebook business pages and Heather covered Twitter. I spoke on corporate social media policies and blogging.

 Social media policies

There oughta be a policy — There are two kinds of companies in the world: Those that embrace social media and those that avoid it. No matter which one you are, you have to have a social media policy. It should be part of your employee handbook.

In the links document you’ll find two websites to help you. One engages you in a dialog to help you write your policy on the spot. The other links you to the social media policies at nearly 200 companies and organizations.

Social media R U: I believe that every company should embrace social media. You can use it to help employees and customers more easily collaborate with each other and/or to move from a marketing campaign to conversing with your customers.

For example: When I was buying a used car, the salesman at the dealership was blocked from using the Internet. I could compare prices at other dealerships and he couldn’t!  He had to use his smartphone. (That example isn’t necessarily about social media, but it does show how bad communications policies can hurt sales).

Embracing social media must go beyond a policy. It means training, supervising and measuring results. It means you trust your employees to represent you.

 Blogging

People freak out at the idea of blogging.

“I don’t need to tell everybody what I had for breakfast,” they huff.

Don’t think of it as a blog. Think of it as news. This is especially true if you’re in a service business. You’re selling yourself  – your wisdom and creativity. Show it off!

Blogs posts don’t have to be weighty tomes. A couple sentences about a creative solution to a problem will suffice. Repurpose other people’s content. When you see an interesting article in an online publication, write a sentence about why it’s relevant, include a one-sentence quote from it and provide a link to the body of the story.

There are tools that allow your readers to subscribe to your blog posts, but don’t stop there. In the digital marketing world there is no pull; there is only push. Today’s best practice is to send a regular enewsletter with headlines about recent blog posts and links to the full article. This puts control into the hands of your readers, using their time in a respectful way. (In fact, that’s probably how you wound up reading this article: Because you receive MY monthly enewsletter).

But sorry, that’s not enough: You must share, share, share! Remember, this is SOCIAL media. Go beyond Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Use social bookmarking sites to expand the influence of your product, company or brand: Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious.

You can start a blog right on one of websites for popular blogging platforms, like WordPress and Blogger.com. There your blog will have a domain like

Douglascommunications.wordpress.com. But why should wordpress get all the credit? You would do better to work with your website manager to integrate the blog into your existing website: Douglasgroup.biz/newsletter. That way your analytics will measure blog traffic along with the site’s other stats. (You do use analytics, don’t you?)

Once again, click here for the list of links on these and other subjects. You’ll also find my updated list of favorite smartphone apps, including the guide to finding all the Angry Birds golden eggs.

So I read “Rules for Radicals.” Alinsky spends the first third of the book establishing his philosophical principles. The final third is all about his legendary community organizing tactics. Unfortunately there is no middle third. We know that Alinsky’s acolytes sought racial and economic justice for those denied it, but Alinsky only hints at who organized and funded them and what their strategies were.

But this is a blog about communicating and what I took to heart was Alinsky’s demand that people not shy away from simple words with big meanings; that they not dissemble but say what they mean.

“It is not just that, in communication as in thought, we must ever strive toward simplicity… It is more than that: it is a determination not to detour around reality,” Alinsky said. “To pander to those who have no stomach for straight language, and insist upon bland, non-controversial sauces, is a waste of time.”

Alinsky’s best example was the word power.

“Striving to avoid the force, vigor and simplicity of the word ‘power,’ we soon become averse to thinking in vigorous, simple, honest terms,” he said.

Words have power and there can be no substitute for the right word. So, inspired by “Rules for Radicals,” here are five “Rules for Writers.”

1.  Write in an active voice. Regular readers know how I’ve railed against passive writing, most recently here. The active voice forces you and others to be accountable for you actions.
2.  Spend the time to write tight. Clients sometimes think that, because they want me to write something short, it should take less time. On the contrary: Writing shorter is harder, because it forces you to examine every word. With fewer words, each one must be specific.
3.  Use strong verbs and don’t let vague qualifiers (“probably,” “maybe,” “often”) turn your intentions into meaningless mush.
4.  Count syllables. Prefer the words you learned in middle school over the ones you learned in grad school.
5.  Avoid jargon. People have used certain business-y words so much that they’ve lost their meaning. Really, what does “world class” mean? Can you prove that your product has fewer flaws than any of its competitors anywhere on the planet? Then say THAT. If you respond every tech support call within four minutes, say so; don’t just say your tech support is “robust.”

In a recent episode of the HBO series “Game of Thrones,” Queen Cersei threatened one of her minions by showing how arbitrarily she could order his death. “Power is power,” she said.

Words are power, too. Keep them as sharp as a knight’s sword.

Political campaigns provide an entertaining and effective example of how to stay on message and what happens when you slip, as I wrote in this 2010 article. We offer training sessions for boards of directors and teams of business leaders, which may also include on-camera practice.

A professional association sought our help when they contemplated changing their management company and office location and wanted to communicate the options and reasons effectively to their members at an annual meeting.

“Your diligent work helped us to portray a strong message,” the president said. “The delivery felt quite easy actually, maybe because we were so prepared.”

Contact me now to schedule key message training for your organization.

With Mad Men back (hooray!), it’s time to look at a seminal publication in the world of advertising: “Your Creative Power,” published in 1948 by Alex Osborn, a partner at the advertising agency of BBDO.

Osborn pioneered the creative process known as brainstorming. When it came to ideas, quantity was more important that quality, he said. An unbridled team of people firing off one idea after another generated rich ore which would be mined to find perfect gems of creative concepts. Criticism was forbidden.

It sounds great, and I know I’ve spent a lot of time in my career grandstanding in brainstorming sessions. Only trouble is, they don’t work.

This New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer cites subsequent studies showing that individuals generating ideas solo came up with as much good stuff as when they worked in groups. The most effective structure was a team brainstorming session that allowed disagreement and debate. That format came up with the best ideas and participants had more good ideas in the days that followed.

In general, though, teamwork produces better results, Lehrer reports. Collaboration became more important as scientific knowledge grew because “interesting mysteries lie at the intersections of disciplines,” he said.

Northwestern University sociologist Brian Uzzi studied the teams that create Broadway musicals. He measured the connections between shows’ creative leadership and found that a mixture of social connections and newcomers worked best. Take “West Side Story.” Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Broadway Laurents were Broadway icons. Their creative shot in the arm was some kid who’d never worked on a Broadway show before: Stephen Sondheim. (I pause now to genuflect).

As a member of Commercial Real Estate Women of Detroit, I interact regularly with people who design office interiors. This field as much as any was changed by the concepts of teamwork. Lehrer gives many examples of prolific scientific laboratories and even Steve Jobs’ design on the Pixar movie studios, with an atrium whose geography and multiple functions forced everyone to interact.

• Anticipate
• Think critically
• Interpret
• Decide
• Align, and
• Learn