Not so coincidentally, there’s usually an entirely new crop of tech companies and providers supporting these various trend niches with the attendant “gurus,” research briefs and industry writers touting the same.  The hot topics today, amongst others, include marketing automation, content marketing and mobile optimization, with yet others looming omnipresent on the horizon.

While all trends have an elemental importance to them, not all trends are created equal.  No company (that I’m aware of) has spontaneously combusted because they didn’t have a Facebook page (or a blog, for that matter).  Yet, “big data,” an unwieldy term with an even less user-friendly definition, feels like one of the trends, at least as it relates to web analytics, that has an opportunity to transcend hype and confusion to become something meaningful for marketers.

Explaining the Unwieldy

To make “big data” understandable, I’m going to forsake its still very much evolving definition (at its heart, it means finding correlations in massive amounts of data bringing John Nash-like skills to the corner office) and focus in on what I think it means from a web analytics perspective – a much more granular application relevant to marketers and those involved in marketing analysis.

By way of analogy, a decade ago, the holy grail for IT Managers was, “A single pane of glass” – a quirky euphemism that described a single access point to view (from a computer monitor) an entire company infrastructure in real time, usually with gauges, red/yellow/green lights, and various and sundry other visual geegaws.

If the email server went down, the “single pane of glass” of visual monitoring metaphors would flash red before the end-user calls started hitting the help desk.

Personal Financial Health at a Glance

On a more personal level, when Mint.com came out in 2006, the service provided a way to incorporate all of a user’s financial information together– bank activities for checking and savings, credit cards, investment, and loan transactions in one spot with an ability to track and set goals, all underpinned with clean, visually striking graphics – making it, literally, easy to understand what’s going on with your money.

Suddenly, users of Mint noticed the leak in their checking account that went to Starbucks as a mindless daily expense, seeing the cumulative dent a daily caffeine fix could bring.

The Dashboard

By comparison to our analogies, marketing analysis is still reasonably isolated and just as much art (qualitative) as it is science (quantitative).  Reports come in from various channels – direct mail spreadsheets via email, Google Analytics data is in one spot, PPC data in another, display advertising data in yet another.   Social media analytics is from one provider and social listening from another.  Often (not always, but frequently), these bits of data are viewed in silos without looking for co-mingling interrelations.

Big data, from the viewpoint of the marketer, and web analytics, therefore means pulling all of this data into one spot (usually called a dashboard) for a holistic (and visually graphic) view on marketing campaigns, and their interrelations.

The promise then is not seeing where we’re spending too much money on Starbucks; it’s isolating that return on investment (ROI) is a metric that can now become truly meaningful.  Or, as a BtoB Research Insights study published earlier in 2013 notes, “Tracking marketing ROI via technology is the most transformative factor marketers face today.”

What’s Next?

The market for web analytics and dashboarding in 2013 is incredibly messy.  Dashboarding solutions are kneeling down to the web analytics market from the enterprise Big Data space, social analytics are still in relative infancy, SEO providers are trying to lean into web analytics as their niche legitimizes, Google is trying to get into the enterprise web analytics space, tag management for tracking code snippets is evolving into the hands of marketers and away from developers, and, frankly, most hardcore users of web analytics haven’t gotten as far into the business value via meaningful tracking of KPIs as they could.

Yet, the market will continue to expand apace, perhaps chaotically.  However, out of every bit of chaos comes order and I strongly believe that in just a few scant years, every marketing organization will not only have at least one dashboard governing their marketing activity, but they will be a mission critical analysis and decision-making tool.

Most marketing departments aren’t ready for dashboards yet, so in order to prepare, you can begin by identifying internal skills gaps, and conducting knowledge management to support learning around what’s to come.  Below are a few resources as you begin your investigation.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics (Link initiates download)

Google Analytics blog

Alltop List of Analytics Blogs

SOUND OFF: Is Big Data, scaled down to marketing and analytics for dashboarding, a coming reality or more over-wrought hype?

CC Some Rights Reserved by Kai A

When Spencer Johnson wrote “Who Moved My Cheese” in the late 90s, a simple book aimed at encouraging corporate denizens to move with the times with agility instead of hanging onto vestiges of control against an uncertain future, he didn’t have the Agile software development methodology in mind; That would come a few years later in the new millennium, as pointed out in this prior post on the history of Agile.

However, what Johnson did have in mind was a call-to-arms to counter the paralysis that was gripping corporate America at the time with the looming issue of Y2K and its potential impact on business computer systems.

Until the late 90s, if you are to believe Johnson’s premise, professionals were embracing “change” as anathema, a pox on the way things have always been done.

Institutional progress in adaptability has been made in the intervening years; I’ve lived it, sometimes more comfortably than at other times. But professionals of all stripes, software development or not, still mostly do things by process, planning, and quarterly (or longer) execution increments.  Agile, as a fast, adaptable methodology, hastened by the light speed of the Internet, attempts to undo that linear stodginess and takes the parabolic thematic elements of Johnson’s tome into practical terms—embracing and welcoming constant iteration.  In fact, in an Agile mode, the end isn’t the end at all; it’s the beginning of what’s next.

The Agile Methodology Migrates to Marketers

Marketers, not a group to miss an opportunity to jump on a buzzword to make it their own, have co-opted the concept of Agile, even creating their own manifesto that models the Agile software development’s manifesto.

However, there is a fundamental difference in between what Agile means in the realm of software development versus that of marketing.  Where Agile as a software methodology strives to deliver working, valuable software quickly, Agile marketing embraces flexible, customer-centric, adaptive efforts.

CC some rights reserved by Omar Rodriguez-Rodriguez

The differences, then, between Agile software and Agile marketing are that a software deliverable presumably works.  Agile marketing, well, may not always work.

For marketers, an Agile call-to-arms isn’t just to embrace the principals of living fast and flexibly, but also to embrace failure.

We’re all up for failure, right?  If we are, then we should at least endeavor to fail fast and fail forward.

The Entrepreneur’s Secret to Staying Nimble in the Face of Struggle

“Failing forward” is a key principal of entrepreneurship, and start-ups, no strangers to agility, often do a little trick that keeps things moving along, both for really smart people who are working in the proverbial weeds all the time failing, but also to help keep their eye on the prize.  And this is a trick that I would encourage any marketer who needs to work Agile to do, as well:  fastidiously track the big picture and the future.

Let’s put this in practical terms.  You’re a digital marketer and you’ve been asked to plan and execute social marketing campaigns on an iterative basis.  Your quarterly marketing tactics are now a series of tactics that happen on a daily/weekly/monthly basis with no real end in sight—you adjust, you adapt, and you keep going, chasing interminable goals.  This can get exhausting (and frustrating).  However, it only becomes exhausting because we allow ourselves to be pulled down by the inertia of the grind, losing sight of the big picture.

Therefore, the secret that start-ups follow, to offset the weariness that sets in by failing forward constantly, is to track an anticipated future state:

• Here is where we are
• This is what’s next
• This is where we want to be

Often times in a more staid corporate culture, the “big picture” and the future is more difficult to parse and can be abstract. But tracking forces around your subject matter expertise, where your work is consistently engaged, can be a great place to start absent a sense for larger company missions for the future.

Here’s My Recommendation 

In order to stay Agile yet track the big picture, set up three buckets in your organizational tool of choice.  I happen to use Instapaper, a browser plug-in, to track news articles.  Evernote, OneNote, or even a spreadsheet will work equally well.  Now, within your tool of choice, set up three folders and called them “Now,” “Next” and “Nebulous.”

The “Now” folder is related to news items that are relevant to the work that you’re currently doing.  The “Next” folder is related to the things that you want to do, or you think you’ll have to do through the process of progress gained via Agile iteration. And the “Nebulous” folder is for all of the news items that don’t make any relevant sense but cross your radar with curiosity.

Any bit of job-related news articles that you read (that’s also worth saving) then falls into either the Now, Next, or Nebulous category.

Periodically, review each of these buckets.  The “Now” folder is going to bolster your confidence that you’re on top of your game.  The “Next” category is going to empower your work ahead of the Agile curve. And the “Nebulous” category, perhaps the most important category, is going to put wind in your sails that your nimble awareness will well position you and your efforts for the future.

Here are a few examples of the “Nebulous” folder news items that I’m tracking now:

• Google handwriting recognition for search 
• Hand motion control
• Apple iWatch
• Google Glasses 
• ICANN New Top-Level Domains
• 12 Futurist Certainties

Now, is tracking the future to bolster our sense of self in the short term a panacea for the discomfort we sometimes feel with the constancy of Agile change?  No.  However, it is at least a waypoint in the constant evolvement of the work that is our professional lives, and a continuing step forward to protect the sanctity of our current work while hedging for the future. As Daniel Burrus, the author of the “12 Futures Certainties” article linked above,  ironically notes,  “Agile” is no longer enough.

SOUND OFF:  With agility an imperative in everyday work life, what do you do to steady yourself, but ensure you’re continuing to push your knowledge and skills forward?

Too often, clients do not see the value in properly undertaking a planning process to define goals and anticipated outcomes for a web project.  Instead, projects are undertaken based on conceptual precepts that may or may not be true.  And forget about actual user testing.  How often does that happen?

With digital activities now having gone through multiple generations and reaching a maturity stage, I equate this lack of planning to the same loosening of parental structure that the youngest child experiences in multi-sibling families.  Increasing parental experience translates to a more hands-off approach for the kids, understanding that they will still turn out okay.

As the youngest child in my family, I can unequivocally say that I appreciated not having to experience the parenting rigor that my eldest sister received.  However, this laissez-faire thinking, in the realm of web development, is flawed—here’s why: Your kids will love you regardless of how much you’re invested in the process.  Your customers and prospects will not.

In fact, the pace at which your customers’ expectations of you are maturing doesn’t have a baseline, let alone a parenting analogy.

When considered in the realm of user-centered design, the process through which planning is undertaken to understand the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a web site (including testing with actual users), it’s easy to see why there are real winners and losers in any given competitive web niche.  If every professional who was responsible for a web project understood what the due diligence in planning and user-centered design would mean to success, we’d all become insufferable helicopter parents.

I don’t expect every client web project manager to turn into Ben Franklin overnight, espousing “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,” but some general order to thinking can definitely set a project up for success.  I tend to like frameworks because they can bring order to the unwieldy.  Here then are five recommendations for doing structured, light-bodied planning.

1.  Determine “What is Your Why?”

This TED talk video defines a small, light concept for getting to the heart of the matter.

2.  Determine Who Cares About Your “Why”

Persona development is a discipline unto itself.  I like using Claritas Prizm to map to demographic segments.

3.  Do Your Strategic Planning

This graphic from Angie Schotmuller, Chief Conversion Officer at inbound marketing company Unbounce, while presented for Social Media, is an equally good tool for web sites, sleek in its simplicity and coherence.  As a bonus, double-check your work to ensure your planning is S.M.A.R.T.

4.  Define the Ongoing Content Inputs to Support Your Site

I’m particularly fond of a model called “Web Presence Optimization.”  An explanatory white paper can be found here.

5.  Define Your Measurement Model

There is some overlap from analytics guru Avinash Kaushik’s measurement model with steps 3 and 4 above, but reinforcement brings clarity.

This five-step process to DIY web project parenting planning, punctuated by normal interruptions and breaks to bring order to thought, should take no longer than a good business day, perhaps a bit longer if put into a document.

If your planning is then turned over to your web partner prior to the project for more holistic support in execution that includes proper technical discovery, a creative brief, a project kick-off, development, user testing, and measurement tracking, I can guarantee you that not only will your web partner hug you with joy because of your preparedness, but you will also feel and receive the accolades of a parenting job well done after the site has launched.

SOUND OFF: What planning process goes into your web projects?

Emerging from its reputation as a digital dark art, SEO as a discipline is preparing to go mainstream.  According to an August 2012 survey led by enterprise SEO firm Conductor in conjunction with SearchEngineWatch.com, 63% of respondents said their executives are more familiar with SEO metrics than 12 months ago.  The name of the white paper for which the results were presented?  “Why 2013 Will be the Year of SEO.”  In addition, eMarketer recently cited software company SEOMoz, saying that 57% of online marketers practiced SEO tactics on a daily basis, beating out other digital functions like analytics (54%) and social media (48.1%).

It appears that the internet’s “killer app” remains much the same as it was over a decade ago.  According to The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project tracking surveys (2002 – 2012), 91% of consumers use search engines, second only to the 92% that use email, both figures far exceeding the 66% of American users that use social media.

Here then, a brief primer on the essentials of SEO as it becomes The Next Big Thing:

What are the Basics of SEO?

Before a search engine can provide results for a user in the form of a relevant page, file or document, the search word(s) must first be discovered by the search engine.  To find information on the millions of web pages that exist, a search engine uses special software called “spiders” or “bots” to build lists of the words it finds on publicly available web sites.  Building the list is called “crawling.”  Once a site has been crawled, it is referenced as having been “indexed,”  meaning it’s available to be part of the search results.

Google’s search bot is called “Googlebot” and was built to index every significant word on a page, leaving out the articles “a,” “an” and “the.”  When the Googlebot is crawling a web page, it takes note of two things, the words within the page and where the words are found.  Words occurring in the title, subtitles, and other positions of relative importance are noted for special consideration.

Other considerations are a part of the search “algorithm,” a proprietary bit of programming and mathematical logic that is designed to find, rank and place web sites in the search engine results page (SERP).  These algorithms are closely held secrets by the search engines (akin to the Colonel’s 11 secret spices) and Google indicates that their search algorithm takes into account over 200 “signals” (the previously mentioned “special considerations”).  One of the known signals is PageRank , a Google-based 1 to 10 ranking of a page’s importance based on the incoming links from other pages/sites.  Each link back to your page adds to your site’s figurative PageRank.

SEO industry insiders indicate that Google’s algorithm changes up to 500 – 600 times a year. While most of these changes are minor, Google frequently rolls out a “major” algorithmic update that affects search results in significant ways (See Google Panda and Penguin updates).

The monitoring, parsing, experimenting and consulting that takes place between SEO providers and their clients are informed guesses that are meant to increase the amount of relevance a web site (and its pages) has against those proprietary signals.

Why all the fuss, you ask?  85% of qualified web traffic is driven through search engines and search is the number one driver of traffic to content sites.  Google alone accounts for 12.2 billion monthly searches in the U.S. and commands 86% of all search volume .  Research indicates that a web site showing up on the first page of Google search results (especially in one of the top three organic positions) is critical, as these spots receive 58.4% of all clicks from users.  75% of search engine users never scroll past the first page of results.

Simply put, ranking highly in search engines can be the difference between recognition and obscurity for a person or business.

What’s the Difference between SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

SEO and SEM are two sides of the same coin.  Whereas SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or “organic” or search results, SEM expands that notion to include paid search tactics such as Pay-Per-Click.

What’s the difference between on-page and off-site SEO?

On-page SEO is all of the things that can be done to a web site to optimize it for SEO best practices, like the construction and proper technical maintenance of the site and ensuring the site content properly represents keywords that match to the search query intent in Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Google provides guidance on many of these items with Google Webmaster Tools and the more basic SEO Guidance. 

Off-site SEO includes factors related to PageRank, like getting one-way back links to your website from other quality web sites that use relevant keywords in the anchor text of the link.  This helps search engines know what your site is about and to assess its relevance and authority for those keywords.

Explain to me again how Pay-Per-Click (PPC) relates to all of this?

Ranking on page one in the Google search results for a keyword is difficult.  The amount of web sites published has grown from an estimated 3 million in 2002 to 555 million in 2012.  Pay-per-click (PPC) is a viable means for an advertiser to tout their web site on the first page of Google search results for a search query, even if their site doesn’t rank nearly as high for that same keyword or search query.  Again, the combination of search engine optimization for a site along with utilizing PPC is considered Search Engine Marketing.

Summary

Search engine optimization can be unwieldy, made worse by people who will extol its complexities instead of distilling it to its essence.  The core attributes are a technically sound web site with content that is frequently updated, relevant and valuable to your audience, and also monitoring the analytics on your site so you can understand where ongoing adjustments are necessary.

Chances are good that an executive is going to ask you about SEO in the near future and when she does, you can now confidently talk through the basics.  Feel free to call Fusion if you need additional support.

First some background:  If you are an armchair Web historian, you know that the commercial Internet took off in late 1995 and 1996, leading to the dot-com boom era in 1998 – 2001.  Those were gang-buster times for those in technology; halcyon days, too.  Then the bubble burst and a steady retreat and quietude took place over several years until late 2004 and 2005 when Web 2.0 became a buzzword and start-ups and innovation again took root, leading us to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and all of the social media tools we use today.

Having been intimately a part of both eras, the only real difference between how 2001 felt versus today is the stock market isn’t correcting against dubious Internet stocks.  Then, as now, the overriding business sensibility felt like it was time to paddle and catch up to the crested wave, a matter of correctly deploying and using the digital marketing tools and platforms already available and doing “more, better.”

Well, one thing that all digital marketers can do more of (and better) is to tell their story in a compelling way.

We’ve all been a little too intoxicated by the fumes of digital pieces and parts, worrying about Twitter Klout scores and hashtag tracking and Facebook engagement, and various and sundry bits of minutia, not even spending one tenth of the same time on figuring out the kinds of stories we want to tell.  That’s going to change based on the tea leaves I’m reading because brands and content are quickly converging and their story is becoming THE story—the protagonist—and not a supporting character.  Three different criteria lead me to this thought:

• Big Brand Focus
• Third-Party Validation
• Overarching Organizational Umbrella

Big Brand Focus

The Coca-Cola Company is, perhaps, America’s most enduring marketer, one of the most globally recognized brands, and the tail that wags the dog, i.e., a leader that other brands emulate.  So when they announce, via YouTube, as they did last summer, that their focus over the next decade will be on content and brand stories, I pay attention and note the potential implications.  Their Pt. I and Pt. II videos (each a nice bit of storytelling) are both well worth a short time investment in viewing.

Coca-Cola Content 2020 Pt. I

Coca-Cola Content 2020 Pt. II

Third Party Validation

Part and parcel with big brand marketing investment is the Don Draper-esque need for ego gratification that goes with brilliant marketing.  Cannes Lions, one of the preeminent creative awards for brand marketers, recently added a category for Branded Entertainment. The category rewards “…creativity in branded content…defined as: The creation of, or natural integration into, original content by a brand. The purpose of branded entertainment is to deliver marketing messages by engaging consumers via relevant content platforms rather than traditional advertising methods.”

The inaugural winning video can be seen here.

Overarching Organizational Umbrella

No good movement develops without a central pivot.  Branded content has its spiritual leader in the Content Marketing Institute.  Started in 2010, the Content Marketing Institute is dedicated to “teaching marketers how to own their media channels instead of having to rent them through advertising.”  Their overview video below is similarly time well spent.

Content Marketing and the Power of Story

To me, these paths all lead to a period of time in the coming years whereby a marketer’s focus will stop working backwards in the way that Marshall McLuhan taught them.  Instead of being focused on the platform before content, they’ll start with narrative and story elements that can then be delivered, frankly, any way (and anywhere) they want them to.

SOUND OFF:  At Fusion, we have a team of content strategists focused on helping B2C and B2B brands tell their stories, using the appropriate technologies, not the other way around.  As we head into the second half of 2012, what is your digital focus and do you think my suggestion that brand storytelling will take center stage is on point, or off base?

Herewith then is a business-level, executive summary-style overview of the whys and wherefores to upcoming changes in top-level domains.

ICANN stands for “Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.”  ICANN is a non-profit organization that governs the management of critical technological infrastructure elements of the Internet like IP addresses and generic top-level domains (gTLDs).  gTLDs include .com, .org, .net and 19 other dot-somethings.  gTLDs do not, however, include country extensions like .ca  that our neighbor to the north uses—these are ccTLDs, country code top-level domains.

gTLDs were once tightly administered by ICANN, but after much global economic study, they determined that allowing an open application process for new gTLDs (absent trademark and anti-competitive behavior) would promote healthy competition that breeds innovation, ultimately yielding benefits for consumers.  Hence an application process was approved in the summer of 2011 and initiated in January of 2012 whereby anybody with enough patience to wade through the application process—similar to applying to an Ivy League school with a business plan, while ponying up a $185,000 per domain application fee—could potentially earn the right to have their very own .com-like extension.  Or not, if criteria for approval was not met. No refunds on the application fee, either.

On June 13, 2012, a day dubbed “The Big Reveal,” ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom announced that ICANN received 1,930 proposals for new gTLDs with some 231 of them contested amongst 751 applicants, dot-somethings like .blog, .app, .web being notable examples of gTLDs for which multiple parties are vying.

As you might expect, large U.S. companies with deep pockets are well represented in the list of applicants, with Amazon.com applying for 76 gTLDs and Google applying for 101, and several proposals in competition with each other like .app  and .music.  However, not all applicants are tech companies.  L’Oreal submitted an application for .beauty and a proposal was made for .wine, as well.

For the balance of the year, ICANN will oversee both an open, democratic review of the proposals as well as their own review after which, should multiple candidates be deemed worthy of a  gTLD for which they applied, the candidates can negotiate with each other for the rights.  Failing agreement, the gTLD would then be put up for auction amongst the candidates in which the ultimate form of democracy (capitalism) will rule the day.

So what does this all mean?  Aside from the obvious—that a good number of applicants want to sell domain names for profit, like www.silveroak.wine to Silver Oak winery—there are also legitimate innovations that may occur in culture amongst music, books, and the arts.  Enterprise businesses are also likely to leverage gTLDs.  Google might use .search to stratify their search engine business from the other services they provide, while Marriott could use their gTLD to geographically identify their hotels using a URL like www.indianapolis.marriott.

However, this is in the future and very nebulous at this point.  It should be noted that there are 22 current gTLDs, and few but the most vigilant companies have all possible domains registered to their brand name.

Yet for those without the wherewithal to plunk down $185,000 for an application, it is worth setting aside some time to do some analysis on applications to check for potential implications on your business and industry.  If you are a cartographer and .map seems like an imperative to have for your business, what if your direct competitor owns that gTLD and is not anticipating allowing other domain registrants?  Viewing their proposal and plan for the gTLD will give you insight into their intentions and an opportunity to dissent until the public comment period ends on August 13, 2012.

Overall, there are very few seismic occurrences that can catch businesses completely flat-footed. This is not necessarily one of them, as ICANN has the best intentions. But it does have the opportunity to create long-term change and should therefore be a cause for careful understanding, even if at an executive summary level.

SOUND OFF: Have you taken steps to understand how the new gTLDs might affect your brand?

Borrowing from Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet’s longtime folksy and pragmatic shareholder letters (dating to 1977) and his more recent Berkshire Hathaway “Owner’s Manual,” a “Who’s who” line-up of rock star tech leaders have taken the opportunity to use their public platform to idealize their business philosophies.  Amongst Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Jeff Bezos Amazon.com and Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s Google, their Investor Letters all contain four common threads and essential truths that anybody in business can apply to their situation:

Align Your Business towards a Big Mission

Business is not business unless there is a big, societally impacting goal to achieve.  For Amazon.com, it is an opaque notion of sustainability, “Something we can all tell our grandchildren about.”  For Google it’s, “…Abundant, free and unbiased access to high-quality information.”  In a similar vein, Zuckerberg’s Facebook mission is, “To make the world more open and connected…to strengthen how people relate to each other.”

The Bottom line:  It is a long held management truth that employees want to rally around something bigger than themselves.  Is your mission big enough to position your organization to impact the world for the better?

Think Long term

Within our quotidian work routines exists opportunities to take shortcuts for the here and now. Zuckerberg notes that Facebook, “(Doesn’t) build services to make money, we make money to build better services.”  Bezos says succinctly, “It’s all about the long-term.”  The Googler’s say, “We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served as shareholders – and in all other ways – by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”

The Bottom line:  In an, “Information saturated, do more with less, what have you done for me today” work culture, the temptation is to worry about the future in the future.  Enduring companies do not take short cuts, nor let their employees take short cuts.

It’s All about Hiring Good, Smart People and giving them Meaningful Work

Is there a more shopworn business phrase than, “Our people are our most important asset?”  Perhaps, not, but our three leadership examples apply a well-intentioned and fresh take on what can border on the trite.  Brin and Page indicate, “Talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to change the world.”  Bezos suggests, “Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success.”  Zuckerberg has codified his employee ethos into a phrase, “The Hacker Way.”  Couched within the hacker-ish notion of continuous improvement he says, “We work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people.”

The Bottom Line:  If you want to soar with the eagles, don’t (hire) turkeys.  Talented people want to work with other talented people.  Hiring average people leads to an average organization.

Relentlessly Focus on Your Customers

Everybody who gets up in the morning and walks into an office does so in service to a customer. Our sage business leaders don’t forget this.  Zuckerberg’s vision is centric to not just his customers, but also his customer’s customer.  He says, “A more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with the customers directly and authentically.”  Brin and Page indicate, “Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority.”  Bezos, leading the most obviously product and service-oriented business notes, “Obsess over customers” by providing added value they can’t get anywhere else.

At Fusion, we’re a much smaller company than any of the aforementioned, but that doesn’t mean we don’t live by a core set of values – in fact, it’s at the heart of what we do.  Our promise touches on each of the four elements above and says:

“We will meet you where you need us, where your opportunity exists today.  We will listen, we will dig in, and we will deliver the right solution for your business.  We will also look beyond today’s opportunity to see your business more completely, and we’ll ask the questions that help you gain a clearer perspective on tomorrow’s possibilities.  But this is more than how we make our living – this is how we at Fusion Alliance have chosen to spend our lives, and this work is an expression of our passion to explore, collaborate, invent, and create a significant, measurable difference in our clients’ businesses.  It is what we do.  It is who are are.  Every time.

SOUND OFF:  Are the above four leadership focus areas in place in your business?

1.       Focus

Metaphorically speaking, have you ever run down a dark alley blindfolded only to feel the crushing thud of a dead-end? Often, that is how digital strategies are initiated:  “Hey Bob, can you put together a digital strategy for taking our online stuff to the next level?  Three weeks enough time?  Great, let’s get a review meeting on the calendar.”

Can you say nebulous?

As digital continues to grow in percentage of marketing budgets for organizations, it’s also growing in discrete areas.  Focus should always be wrought on specific areas of digital strategic development:  Does “digital” to the requestor mean the web site, social media, mobile, advertising or any of the dozens of other areas in which a digital strategy can be developed?  Hone in on the area that is the true request.

2.       Get Alignment with the Expectations of your Audience … Ahead of Time

Strategy, the art of planning, is one of the most oft-abused words in the corporate dictionary.  Frequently, when a strategy is requested, what you’re really being asked to provide is a thoughtful and organized group of tactics.  It’s not a strategy as much as it is an improvement plan organized for review.

Seeking a shared understanding with the requestor and/or your audience on the level of strategic visioning versus executional framework is crucial to developing a plan that resonates.

Potentially successful ideas can be detoured when presented to an audience expecting an approach different than your chosen path.

3.       Provide Context

After you have honed in on the key area of strategic development within the digital realm and aligned expectations with your audience, even cursory research means you will have an infinitely greater command of the digital landscape in the strategic area than the folks to whom you are presenting.  Providing context is the art of positioning the conversation so it is understandable.

Take some time to think about your presentation from the point-of-view of the audience, and frame it in a way that lets you tell a story about solving a problem through thoughtful action.  The truism, “Details make a story interesting” is appropriate here, and just enough detail makes a story understandable.  Not acknowledging this and not breaking down your suggestions into a framework that is relatable will immediately detour your presentation into the great unknown, affectionately known as FUD – fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

4.       Talk with them, not at them

If you were a physicist, how would you explain the theory of relativity?  If you were at a conference of other physicists presenting a research paper, the way and type of information you communicate would be a lot different from talking with a group of laypeople.

Further, there is a reason that newspapers are written at an eighth-grade level.  Showing your inner geek with your superbly deep command of the subject that is well above the grasp of the people you are talking with is sure to erode confidence.

It is imperative that you understand whom you are talking with so you can pattern your information presentation to the knowledge level of the recipient.

5.       Always, Always Have Next Steps

Often times, in the first half of your strategic presentation, if done correctly, your audience will be ready to make the leap to, “What’s next?”  That is great, but “What’s next” (if it’s truly a strategic plan) doesn’t always match to your preparation to that point.  You are trying to validate an approach, and now you are being asked how it’s going to be done.

There may be too many what-if’s in execution to confidently match strategy to tactical execution within the scope of the same presentation so leave the Gantt chart out of your presentation, but do be prepared with a 15 or 30-day plan to take your strategy into the first stages of execution.

6.       People Judge Books by their Cover

Have you ever been suspicious of the well-regarded, extremely bright person who looks like he got dressed in the dark and took a time machine to the office from 1989?

In the same vein, it is hard to take the content in your strategy seriously if it is in a shoddy, visually inept format.  Readability and aesthetically pleasing formatting goes a long way to helping deliver your message.

Do not discount the value of spending time making your presentation look good.

Bonus

A.      Follow the Rule of 1/3’s

People on the front lines of execution have an incredible grasp of the challenges to moving strategic change forward.  Yet, it is in our nature to present forward movement within the scope of the best circumstances possible.  Don’t do that.

Whether it is a home improvement project or a large, unwieldy business initiative, projects usually take 1/3 longer you then anticipated, cost 1/3 more money and have 1/3 more challenges than planned for.  Yet, leadership really only hears the deadline and budget you set.  Plan and communicate accordingly.

SOUND OFF: What tips for managing the process of developing a strategy are missing?  Do you have lessons learned not represented here?