Credibility, confidence, and preparation

A new series from Lifehacker this week: How to Present Yourself Powerfully. The first excerpt gives some great tips for improving your public speaking skills, but here's a simple summary of how to succeed as a presenter:

• The ultimate goal is credibility, which you get from having
• Confidence, which you can only get through
• Preparation

Preparation certainly means knowing your subject matter, but it also means knowing your audience, the room set-up, the technology you're using--even knowing your own speaking voice. Like most things in life, there's no substitute for hard work. By putting in the time it takes to do it right, you'll gain the confidence you need to feel comfortable at the front of the room.

Is online TV for real? You betcha.

Hard upon the heels of her Joe-the-Plumber -clogged visit to Memorial Coliseum, Sarah Palin is attracting even more attention elsewhere--online, on Hulu.com, for example. AdAge.com reports that while the live TV-viewing audience was SNL's largest in 14 years, it will soon be surpassed by the online viewing audience:

Two clips of the Alaska governor on "SNL," her fake press conference and appearance on "Weekend Update," have racked up 6.1 million views on NBC.com. Derivative versions such as those used in news coverage, as well as pirated versions of the clips, have been viewed another 2.85 million times on sites like YouTube, MySpace and Yahoo, according to web video measurement firm Visible Measures.

Combined, the videos have been viewed 8.85 million times since Sunday, an impressive number in four days. But that doesn't include what may be the biggest source of online viewing: NBCU and News Corp.'s joint venture Hulu.com.

Neither Hulu nor NBC will provide Hulu's streaming numbers, but they're likely to be high. Hulu streamed four times as many videos (142 million) as NBC.com (36 million) during September, according to Nielsen's Video Census. While it's possible a high percentage of viewers looking for "SNL" clips would go first to NBC.com, it's also likely that Hulu counts for as many, if not more, views as NBC. The opening skit with Tina Fey holding a press conference as Sarah Palin, while the real VP nominee looked on, was the No. 3 most watched Hulu clip this week, while the clip of Amy Poehler's Palin rap sat at No. 2.

The success of Hulu.com points to three important trends for marketers and other communication-watchers:

• Audiences are learning that there's no sense in investing 30 minutes in a show when you can watch the best bits in a fraction of the time. Shorter is better.
  
• The size of the audience gravitating to online viewing is only going to increase, so keep an eye on what you're being asked to pay for broadcast and cable air time.
• Also pay close attention to content that's timely, and line up your advertising accordingly. Palin is a phenomenon, but a week from Wednesday she may start to be forgotten altogether. Get on the bandwagon as soon as you can, but bail out before the wheels start to fall off.
  

Cutting Through the Clutter

In today's communication environment, one of the biggest challenges is getting your message to stand out. To cut through the clutter, you can't just raise the volume: you need to target your audience very precisely and create a message that immediately catches their attention without resorting to gimmicks or shock value.

As consumers have more and more options for tuning out advertising, communicating a marketing message becomes even more of a challenge. But it's not impossible, as this article in Monday's Wall Street Journal demonstrates. A sample:

Can the marketing stimulus be delivered at a time when the customer has few other distractions?

Marketing messages should target customers at times when they are unoccupied, perhaps even actively seeking some sort of information to process. Consider, for example, an airplane on the landing path into an airport. Sitting upright, with in-flight entertainment and electronic devices switched off, passengers have little to do but to look out of the window and wait for the aircraft to land.

Seeking to capitalize on this opportunity, London-based Ad-Air Group PLC places advertisements flat on the ground over an area as large as five acres alongside flight paths in and out of the world's busiest airports. Depending on their landing approach, passengers are provided with an unrestricted view of an ad for more than 10 seconds.

Read the other four questions and consider how your organization can cut through the clutter instead of just adding more noise.

The Clash and the art of listening to your audience

I am a huge fan of The Clash. They just had it--a swagger, a conviction, and a unique style that earned them the right to be called "the only band that matters." A book I'm reading right now includes a quote from Creem writer Bob Gruen that helps explain why they were so great:

The band would stay up every night and talk to anyone who wanted to talk. They weren't just out to meet cute girls. They were available to all their fans. It was the roadies' job to get their fans into the dressing room and the hotel, which was the opposite to other bands. They wanted to know what their fans were thinking. That helped inspire them.*

So what does this mean for you? No matter who your audience is, you have to do more than just listen--you have to create an environment that encourages honest feedback. And it can't just be because you want to sell something. It should be because you genuinely want to improve. The minute you stop listening is the minute you risk inauthenticity. And if you're not going to be authentic, what's the point?

*From Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash by Pat Gilbert

Abbreviations and your audience

One of the keys to writing well is focusing on your audience--making sure what you write is specific to their needs, while remaining both concise and precise. Today more than ever before, however, it's easy to take the whole "concise" thing too far, given the increasing role that abbreviations and non-standard language are playing in communication. The main problem with such abbreviations is that unless you're certain your audience knows how to decode your writing, you're making them do too much work.

This has gone well beyond common acronyms like "lol," "ttyl," and "brb." A lot of writers--especially younger writers--have gotten used to saying more with less, and it's becoming a bad habit. Remember, the more formal the communication, the less likely it is that abbreviations and slang are going to be received well. Remember too, that it's your job as a writer to make it as easy as possible for your audience to understand what you're saying. By taking shortcuts, you're asking the audience to do the majority of the work--and giving them an excuse to focus on something else that's easier for them to understand,

Your audience's favorite subject IS your audience

I read about a study last week that found teens are only "sorta" interested in the Olympics. The problem isn't that the Games are boring, but they're suffering from the same challenge nearly every medium and message faces today: they have to compete against text messages, blogs, cell phone conversations, and other content all focused on teens' favorite topic: themselves.

Now teens aren't alone in this: we all like content that's all about us. There are a couple of differences between millennials and the rest of us, however:

1. They're the first generation to have easy access to tools that allow them to create their own content, which means that content about themselves is always accesible, and

2. They're not predisposed to choose old media over other options.

In other words, we Gen Xers and Baby Boomers aren't less self-centered; we're just more conditioned to turn on the TV and less conditioned to create content.

This is a crucial point to remember when crafting your message, whether or not you have a Olympic-sized budget or idea. If your message isn't about your audience, it's not going to have much of a chance of cutting through. You can't just talk about yourself. Today's gold medal communicators start by figuring out how their message is relevant to their audience, and they focus on that. Do anything else, and you'll be lucky to make them even "sorta" interested.

The menu question

A few weeks ago, I asked the following question:

[W]ould you rather go to a restaurant that:

• Has a huge menu (so big you can hardly get through the whole thing) that stays the same every time you visit, or
• Has a one-page menu that changes every time you visit?

Assuming the quality is consistent, which would you choose? And why?

As I mentioned, the question related to a marketing issue and wasn’t really about food. It must have hit a nerve, though, because the post received quite a few comments and even more e-mails, most of which took the restaurant analogy and ran with it.

So what was the point? Well, I’ve been working on some web usability studies for clients, and I’ve become increasingly convinced that less is more—on the web and elsewhere. I believe in the paradox of choice to some extent, but I still think people want variety. The challenge is providing variety within a constraint, which sounds like a contradiction in terms even though it's not. The answers I received--almost everyone chose the one-page menu that changes frequently--reinforced my belief that there’s a distinct difference between giving your audience something new--and high quality--every time you see them, as opposed to just throwing everything out there at once and hoping they’ll discover the good stuff.

Part of the problem is that people just don’t have—or aren’t willing to give you—the time to wade through a huge menu. Jon summed this us nicely in his comment:

I hate facing a menu that I cannot completely read before ordering. I hate that!

And Heather, a new reader from Oregon, added this:

I always get intimidated with a too long menu, like I might miss THE special dish...because I couldn't find it!

The issue of quality isn't just about what you might overlook. It also involves the time and attention an organization will give to things when it's trying to do too much. Beth made this point in her comment:

I find that restaurants with too many offerings end up being a jack of all trades, master of none.

As did Julianne, who knows her stuff when it comes to both restaurants and marketing:

I have talked to enough chefs to know that when they are able to choose the dishes for the day guided by the season or inspiration or fresh ingredients or a new wine on the list, and they can set the menu to express their talents and training, that they then bring enthusiasm and pride to this dish, and it's likely the best you'll ever taste.

The challenge for all marketers—not just restaurants—is keeping things exciting, satisfying our need for fresh options but making those choices clear and easy to find.
Arienne made this point in her comment about restaurants with constantly changing one-page menus:

These are almost always the best places to dine because you explore something new.

And sometimes, as Joe stated, the element of surprise itself is what draws people in:

One of my favorite restaurants in Denver does not even have that. They walk up and tell you the 3 choices you have. And...I have never went to Denver without eating there!

All of these responses were great, but my favorite came from Sarah, who agreed with a lot of the points made above while putting her usual unique spin on things:

I don't like to sacrifice quality for quantity. Restaurants with giant menus generally have something to satisfy any palette, but none of the dishes excel....I also feel that a restaurant that's always changing requires an active, involved owner and/or chef, whereas the place with the huge static menu requires some yahoo with a clipboard to merely keep an eye out for the Sysco truck while some 16-year-old stoner chops a bag of onions before peeling a crate of potatoes and rinsing off last week's fish to get rid of the ammonia smell.

There are several analogies between your organization and these two types of restaurants. One big issue, of course, is whether it's being managed by an "active, involved owner and/or chef" or "some yahoo with a clipboard." Today more than ever, it’s important to do a few things well instead of being all things to all people--and that takes time and attention that generalists just can't give.

It also comes down to how today's audience interacts with your message. On the web, for example, we know that people who visit your page spend just a few minutes on your site before leaving. So when you're thinking about what should go on your home page, and how much content to include overall, think "today's special," not "everything on the menu is good...what do you like?" You need to spoon-feed your audience nothing but the best options you have to offer, with confidence that when they're hungry for more, they'll return to you.

Slate on the "weird science of stock photography"

Back in June I posted about some of the perils of stock photography. The bottom line is that today more than ever, audiences demand authenticity in communication, and it's hard to be authentic when you're using a photo that wasn't shot for a specific purpose. This is especially true in ads, where the audience is super sensitive to inauthenticity because they have so many other choices about how the use their eyeballs and ears.

But there's another risk in using stock photos: someone else may use the same shot--over and over again, in fact. Yesterday, Slate.com ran a great story about stock photography, and it included an example of duplicate use by competing interests:

A few years ago, a model/actress living in Portland did a one-day photo shoot on the campus of Reed College. She frolicked around the grounds and inside a classroom, wearing a purplish hat she'd borrowed from the wardrobe coordinator. The photos taken that day have subsequently appeared in ads for both Gateway and Dell; on the Web sites for a Canadian media planning company, a British science museum, the BBC, Microsoft Finland, Greyhound bus lines, etc.; and on the covers of countless books.

If a stock photo is good and inexpensive, you can be certain that someone else is probably already using it. Want to ensure that your photos are yours and yours alone? Buy the rights. Or hire a photographer.

Remember this the next time you send someone a link

Jessica Kizorek does a nice job of breaking down our motivations for sharing information in this Online Video Insider article:

Why do people share video?

They do so because it reinforces and strengthens the bond between the sender and the recipient. When someone shares a YouTube video with his or her friend, there is a subliminal communication taking place: "You would like this because I know you and I'm in touch with who you are as a human being, and I want to provide you with something you'd be interested in."

In the business world, a viewer may send someone a video clip to educate or inform a potential client. He or she is effectively saying to that person, "We are on the same page. We should do business because you can count on me and I'm listening to what you need. You can trust me -- I know what's going on."

When a video clip is received well, it immediately strengthens the relationship. If the video is not relevant or inappropriate, it weakens the bond right there and then. The deterioration of rapport may be conscious or unconscious. Either way, the sender becomes either a resource or a waste of time.

Think, therefore, before you hit send. What's your motivation for sharing the link? Are you certain it will position you as a resource?

Build trust by saying "I don't know"

Saying "I don't know is hard." Everyone wants to have all the answers, and no one wants to look dumb. But you can't know it all, and it's much, much smarter to admit that you don't. Why? When you say "I don't know," you build credibility. Being willing to admit what you don't know implies that when you do have an answer, you're confident that you know what you're talking about. It also builds trust, because the person you're speaking with knows it's O.K. to say "I don't know," too.

Of course, you can do better than "I don't know." You can say "I don't know, but I'll find out." Or "I don't know, but I know someone who does." Or "I don't know, and that's outside my area of expertise." But sometimes a simple "I don't know" is enough. You don't have to solve every problem.

The key is authentically saying "I don't know" often enough, but not too often. Say it too infrequently, and you'll be known as a know it all. Say it too much, and you'll be known for not knowing anything.

So how often should you say "I don't know"? The honest answer is, I don't know. You're going to have to figure that one out on your own.

What not to say in your voicemail greeting

Another thing about voicemail: if your greeting says "your call is important to me," change it. Now. The message you may wish to send is that you'll give careful attention to every message you receive. What the caller thinks, however, is that if everyone's call is important to you, no one's call is important to you.

Insipried by the the great book by Laura Penny, Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit.

TechCrunch says "VoiceMail is dead"; SBB says "maybe not"

The influential blog TechCrunch declared today that voice mail is "dead." The reason? Well, there are several, but it boils down to this:

- No one likes leaving messages and even fewer people like receiving them

- Voicemail is "outside of our typical workflow" (i.e. it requires a seperate "inbox" and isn't integrated with our computers)

- Reading an e-mail or text message is faster than listening to a voice mail

- If the point of a phone call is immediacy--as compared to e-mail, which is asynchronous--then leaving a voicemail becomes somewhat pointless

Now I'd be among the first to celebrate the desmise of the telephone. I screen calls at home, at work, and on my cell phone, and I pick up only when it's a client, a co-worker or someone whose call I'm expecting. If it were up to me, every conversation would happen over e-mail or IM, or face-to-face. Not everyone, however, is so opposed to the phone, and e-mail has problems of its own. That means rumors of voicemail's death are greatly exaggerated.

However, if the celebratory tone in the comments to the TechCrunch post tell us anything, it's this: there's a lot of room for improvement with the messages we leave. People don't seem opposed to voicemail, itself, that is--but they are opposed to bad voicemail messages.

So how do you make your voicemail messages better, and more likely to elicit a response? Start with a few simple rules:

- If you're calling someone you know, all he needs is your name, a very, very brief reason you're calling (enough to have anything he needs in front of him when he calls back), and the best place to reach you.

- If you're calling someone you don't know, you have about 10 seconds (maybe less) to convince the recipient that they should listen to your message. Tell them the one most compelling reason they should care, leave contact information, and be done.

- Say your phone number s l o w l y. It will help to read it off a business card so you go through it a little more methodically.

- Offer your e-mail address instead if your subject can be discussed over e-mail. That way the recipient has a choice, and may be more likely to respond.

- Don't give too many details about your availability. Instead, include the one best day and time to return your call. No one can process "I'll be in the office Monday after 2, Tuesday between 3 and 5, all day Wed., and from 8 - 10 and 1:30 - 5 on Friday." "Please call me Wednesday--I'll be in the office all day" works just as well.

- Consider whether your message would be better as e-mail. It may be that you can't encapsulate what you need to say in writing. Or maybe you know there will be follow-up questions that you can answer right away. But if you're only calling because it's more convenient for you, think about whether that's truly the best way to communicate.

Remember, it's all about getting the person on the other end to respond. Say exactly what the recipient needs to know, and nothing more, and you might just get a call back. Say too much, or give the wrong information, however, and you might just help prove TechCrunch right.

Say thanks this way, and your audience will thank you, too

Great presentation idea from Seth Godin. Simple, easy to implement, and probably better than how most of us are doing it right now.

NPR's "The E-Mail Age": a must read/listen for today's communicator

Great series this week from NPR: "The E-Mail Age." Since Sunday, our public radio friends have covered everything from "nettiquette" to "e-mail bankruptcy"--when you decide to just delete everything in your inbox and start over.

A few highlights:

• From "Make It Stop! Crushed by Too Many E-Mails": "E-mail is at risk of killing its own usefulness. Daily e-mail volume is now at 210 billion a day worldwide and increasing"
• From "Help! Family Spam Is Crushing My Inbox!":"[E]-mail etiquette expert Judith Kallos recalls an especially contentious e-mail brawl involving a mother who became so offended that her grown daughter had asked her to stop forwarding political content that she disowned her."
• From "E-Mail, the Workplace and the Electronic Paper Trail": "By some estimates, more than 90 percent of the cost of a lawsuit today can come from sorting through e-mails and other electronic documents to determine which ones are relevant to the case."
  

One big takeaway from all of this: the more e-mails we get, the more useless each individual e-mail becomes. And that's why this is becoming more likely.

What do you watch, listen to, and read?

This morning, one of the first things I did was walk outside and grab the Sunday paper. It's an old habit dating back to when I was a kid living just outside of Boston. Every Sunday, with few other things competing for my attention, I'd study the Red Sox box score in the Globe and read the weekly Peter Gammons column. This usually served as a gateway read, exposing me to issues and ideas throughout the rest of the paper that I might not have heard about otherwise. This was a good thing for a kid whose thoughts usually only ranged from Hank Aaron to Paul Zuvella.

Today, of course, things are different. The Journal Gazette is part of my Sunday morning ritual, but I spend significantly less time with the paper than I used to. That is somewhat a result of having less time, but it's also a reflection of my changing media habits. And I'd bet your habits are changing, too. All of us have more choices, which usually means less time spent with traditional media--newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio--in favor of new media.

All of this got me thinking about how it's much more difficult for advertisers to reach me these days, and much less likely that I'll be exposed to "unfiltered" information from outside my range of interests, for better or for worse. Here's a snapshot of how much time I spend with ad-supported media. How much opportunity does anyone have to reach me with an unsolicited message?

- The Internet is the big kahuna of my media consumption time. I spend at least an hour a night on the web, and as much as three hours some nights during the week. That doesn't count the time I spend on the web while at work, or the hours I'm online on the weekend, which vary from a couple to a couple dozen. However, I believe banner blindness is very real, and I can think of only about three times when I've clicked on a web ad. However, I know word of mouth (through e-mail, blogs, customer reviews, etc.) has a big effect on me, as does PR/earned media. In short, if you want to reach me, the web is where you'll find me. But it's unlikely you'll reach me with an ad.

- TV is where I most clearly divert from the norm. The only TV in my house is the one my wife has had since college (and she graduated in 1990). There is no such thing as "must see" TV in my world, and it's rare that I turn it on for anything other than occasional background noise. And while I'd like to attribute my rejection of TV to some Zen state of being or a preference for more high-brow activities, I'll steal a quote from Lev Grossman*: "I can get away with not having a TV partly because my personal life is so amazingly rich and satisfying but mostly because I have a computer." In fact, instead of upgrading my TV, I'm thinking of getting rid of it altogether.

- Radio is also a low-impact medium for me. When I'm in the car, I usually listen to a CD or I'm on the phone. I listen to a decent amount of NPR stuff on WBOI/98.1, but other than that, radio is a nonentity. And WBOI is, of course, "commercial free." So unless you're a public radio underwriter (sidenote: I don't think there's much of a distinction between advertising and underwriting), you won't get my attention.

- Newspapers and me, as mentioned above, go way back. But that's not to say that my newspaper reading habits haven't changed. In addition to Sunday, I read the paper on Saturday since its delivered as part of the ever-expanding Journal Gazette "weekend" subscription (which I think now includes everything but the third Tuesday of the month). Other than that, though, I almost never read a printed copy of the JG, and I read other papers only rarely, except when a blog post or a friend directs me to a story online. I used to go to the Fort Wayne Newspapers website just about every day, but now I have the sections I'm interested in--Local, Business, and Opinion--"delivered" to me via RSS feeds. And when Google Reader is your morning paper, guess how many ads you see? (Well, at least until next week.)

- Magazines still get some of my discretionary time. I subscribe to a few, and because they're aligned with my interests I'm sure the ads I see have some impact on me. The ones I read regularly include Runner's World and Men's Health (although I'm almost certain to cancel my subscription soon since all they write about is food, sex, and abs exercises...I'm not sure why I subscribed to begin with), and local publications like the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly, Business People, and Fort Wayne Monthly. But overall, my time spent with magazines is declining. A great example is Time, which I subscribed to for more than 10 years before canceling a couple years ago. It just seemed like most of its content was old news by the time it hit my mailbox. This is where local magazines have an advantage, because it's hard to find the same information on the web and the content is potentially more relevant to my information needs.

- Outdoor is the one medium that seems to be least impacted by new media. But it's also among the media most likely to be executed in a way that makes it totally ineffective. Creating a billboard is deceptively difficult, but if you follow the rules of good design, I'll listen to what you have to say. But only for about three seconds.

As someone in marketing, I continue to use myself as a reality check when considering how to connect an audience and a message. It's not easy today, and it's not going to get any easier as technology continues to give us more choices.

How about you? What do you watch, listen to, and read? How have your media consumption habits changed during the past few years?

*Recommended reading: Lev Grossman's "Getting Rid of My TV" at time.com

AdPulp on our web conservations

In this post, AdPulp does a nice job of breaking down some of the differences between monologue-driven communication, like e-mail and blogs, versus dialogue-driven communication, like IM and Twitter:

People want to engage by creating stories with others, as they would in real life. When one tells a story in real life, other people add to it in real time (which can be annoying to the storyteller). Twitter mirrors this, whereas a blog is more traditional in its storytelling structure. On a blog a writer offers something, then comments come in, but it's not a conversation just like email is not a conversation. IM and Twitter are conversations; thus, the excitement around them.

This may help explain why IM is gaining preference over e-mail. And while I still don't entirely understand the Twitter phenomenon, the analogy to a conservation seems apt.

On the Jobs training

Back in January I posted about Carmine Gallo's BusinessWeek column, "Deliver a Presentation Like Steve Jobs." Now Gallo has repackaged his thoughts into a video, allowing you to see some examples of the man in the black turtleneck in action.

Hat tip: Six Minutes: A Public Speaking and Presentations Skills Blog

The "ham butt problem": Erin McKean's words of wisdom about the dictionary

It probably won't surprise you to hear that a lecture by Erin McKean, editor in chief of the Oxford American Dictionary, is smart and informative. What may surprise you is that her "Redefining the Dictionary" talk is funnier than just about anything you'll watch this week.

Small world department: Erin McKean is the woman behind the Semicolon Appreciation Society.

Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.

That's the mantra of one of my co-workers, who develops estimates for print jobs. It's a quick way of saying, "you can't have everything, so what do you really want?" If you're looking for a way to get customers, co-workers, or even yourself focused on what's most important, you could do a lot worse than those five words.

What's the most important thing in the e-mail messages you send?

Your e-mail address. If people don't know who you are, don't answer to you, or don't think of you as a source of information/work/ideas, then you're immediately lower priority.

O.K., so what's the second most important thing? The subject line. Scott the Nametag Guy explains why:

Because that’s the only thing customers see. Because that’s the only thing customers have the time to read. Because that’s the only thing customers will use to decide whether or not to open it. Because that’s the only way you can immediately differentiate yourself in their inbox.

If your e-mail address or subject line doesn't give the reader a sense of urgency, your message may never get opened. So if you want to ensure that it does, read the rest of Scott's post.