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Strategy

Cornerstones and Cobblestones

by Daria Steigman on March 4, 2013

CobblestonesI learned about propinquity at the Solo PR Summit.

Okay, to be fair, the concept isn’t new–but I would have been hard-pressed to define the word itself. Propinquity means nearness, but it’s really about the relationship between proximity and relationships. Or, as Tom Martin put it:

See me. Know me. Like me. Hire me.

This lies at the heart of a good content strategy.

In a session entitled Painless Prospecting, Martin talked about strategies for becoming and staying top of mind with potential buyers of your products and services. One element of that is designing your Web site to funnel prospects where you want them to go. (That’s a topic for a different post.) Another element: having lots of quality content to educate people and to showcase your smarts.

You need to create cornerstones and cobblestones.

Martin pointed out that most content creators focus on cobblestones–blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other “one off” pieces to feed the content machine.  But if you start with a “cornerstone” big idea instead, you can then chunk it into blog posts, videos, presentations, podcasts, and the like to feed your content needs. Then you can go back and reverse engineer the “cobblestones” into a white paper, an ebook and/or a conference presentation.

I love “duh” moments.

My content strategy has always included some cornerstones because I plotted the strategy a long way back: business column, then blog, then early social media use.  The column provided evergreen content for the blog, and the blog provided an anchor for my early forays into social media. But as the demands for new content grew (and the business of running a business interrupted), it became easier to just focus on cobblestones. Now it’s time to get back to cornerstones, and my brain is already working on a couple of ideas.

Your turn: Are you creating cobblestones or cornerstones?

Photo by Bri Weldon (Flickr).

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The Difference Between an Idea and a Business

by Daria Steigman on September 20, 2012

Help Me... WHY?Some people don’t deserve to run a business.

A basic rule of  business is that income has to exceed expenses. If it doesn’t, then you have to figure out why (and determine how to tweak your model to be successful).

Or maybe not.

According to an article in the Washington Post, a local restaurant is asking customers for donations of $50 and $100–to pay its $133,344 tax bill. According to the article, the restaurant is pitching that:

“In order to stay open and provide you with the healthful vegan dining experience you’ve grown to love, we are going to need a little help from our community.”

They have reportedly raised about $3,000, presumably from people who like to champion lost causes. Because before they were shut down by the D.C. Department of Tax and Revenue for nonpayment of taxes, they were almost evicted for nonpayment of rent.

Putting side my aggravation with people who doesn’t pay their taxes, let’s consider one basic fact. You don’t have a sustainable business model if you can’t pay your bills.

What left me shaking my head on this story is that they just don’t get it. They’re not talking about revenue strategies, ways to build foot traffic, or where and how to cut expenses. They just want to “appease the tax guys and give them what they need to get the doors back open.”

I get it: Running a business is hard work. But “healthful vegan dining experience” is no substitute for a business plan.

Photo by sillygwailo (Flickr).

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What Is Wrong With IBM?

by Daria Steigman on June 11, 2012

Men Only (No Women Allowed)IBM has a female CEO. IBM sponsors the Masters, an event held at Augusta National, a private club that does not allow women to be members. Which means Virginia Rometty can’t join the club that her company pays to prop up.

This isn’t a new story (or a new controversy). And I don’t expect Rometty to make a big deal about this. It’s not her job. She become CEO of a Fortune 500 company not by railing at the glass ceiling but by pushing through it.

IBM, however, could do better.

I was thinking about this again the other day as I was reading Why Boards Need More Women. The article correlates better gender parity to improvements in sales, risk management, and reputation.

But this misses the “why” factors: experience and perspective.

IBM’s 13-member board of directors (excluding the CEO) has an average age of 63 (the youngest board members are 57). There are two women. Old, predominantly male, and predominantly white might reflect Augusta National’s membership, but it doesn’t reflect IBM’s customer base–or it’s employees.

Here’s why diversity matters.

My mom has a friend who worked for a big New York law firm in the mid-1950s right after graduating near the top of her class from the University of Chicago Law School. About once a week, her male colleagues would have lunch with a partner at the club on the penthouse level of the building. (Yes, it was “men only.”) It wasn’t fair–but what was she going to do then? But I know what she’d be pushing for in 2012 if she were on IBM’s board.

Jump ahead just one generation. I’ve seen the glass ceiling, but I’ve largely been immune from its impact. (It helps that I work for myself.) The women who have followed me into the workforce didn’t grow up in a world of gentlemen’s country clubs. You know my perspective. What do you think their reaction might be?

I’m also a business owner. I’m not telling IBM’s board of directors that the company should take a public stand and yank its sponsorship tomorrow. But if I were on that board, I’d be advising company executives to think about what “I’m an IBMer” really means.

Photo by PinkMoose (Flickr).

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Even Enlightened CEOs Don’t Get It

by Daria Steigman on May 30, 2012

The View from the TopI was reading The View From the Top,* a recent report from the IABC Research Foundation. Researchers interviewed 20 CEOs about the role of corporate communications. What I like about the report–and IABC–is the global perspective. These CEOs run companies in Peru, South Africa, the Philippines, India, Hong Kong, Australia, and the UK, as well as in the U.S. and Canada.

Much of the report covers what you’d expect. The CEOs cited growth in uncertain economic times, adapting to change, attracting and retaining employees, and communication as their top business challenges.

Did I mention that the research reflects the opinions of only 20 people? Since they agreed to be interviewed, it’s probably safe to assume that these CEOs already place value on the communications function within their organizations. Indeed, the report says:

Senior executives believe corporate communication is a core competency that plays a critical role in supporting business strategy. All study participants viewed communication as a key component to both their organization’s overall success in the marketplace and to their individual effectiveness as leaders.

Unfortunately, however, even enlightened CEOs don’t get it.

I was skimming along until I hit the chapter on the role of communications professionals within the organization. That’s what I read this:

The primary responsibility of communication professionals is to help identify who needs to be informed, how they should be informed and who should inform them. Most of the time, important messages should come from “the top” or the CEO/president/managing director… Ultimately, a communication professional plays a key role by assisting the senior executive in finding the best forums in which to communicate, crafting messages and keeping them simple, and ultimately getting the maximum value out of the communication effort.

Is it just me, or does this sound like your senior communications staff have been reduced to picking and executing tactics? Whatever happened to strategy and counsel?

I wrote a blog post a couple years ago suggesting that too many marketing communications pros don’t define themselves (or act) like business people. Which means communications isn’t perceived as a core business function.

To be fair, I’m not sure whether the problem in this study lies in the perceptions of the CEOs or in the questions they were asked. Either way, it’s a troubling picture.

Your thoughts?

*The research report is available for free to IABC members.

Photo by 416style (Flickr).

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The Truth About Being a Selling Success

by Daria Steigman on April 16, 2012

Stones in a Row: Why Concise is a Business AssetMy father makes his students write one-page briefing memos for the Secretary of State. He also dings them for typos.

Being concise (and accurate) is a business asset. And it can be the difference between selling your idea (or initiative, or product, or service) and sitting on the sidelines.

I was thinking about this as I listened to a pair of CEOs talk about how to grab their attention. One talked specifically about “telling me what I need to know.” His point was that he was best able to make decisions when someone broke down the strategy and put the information into chunks.

A couple more takeaways from the CEOs’ conversation are worth noting, if for no other reason than the fact that they were raised in the first place (yes, more duh moments):

  • Don’t act like a lemming. One of the CEOs, a Swedish national, said that Americans tend to say yes to everything, while Swedish employees are more apt to ask questions and challenge the assumptions on the table. Feedback is critical, so which kind of employees do you want?
  • Know your boss’ temperament. The second CEO pointed out that social intelligence is huge, and you have to know the right (and wrong) times to approach your boss. I wrote about one aspect of this here.

There might have been more takeaways, but the moderator dominated the conversation. So much for concise.

Photo by Olof Senestam (Flickr).

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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