December 22, 2004
malaysia
I’ve been asked to go to Malayasia early next year and give a workshop on The Hughtrain.
Seems like a biz model is developing, despite my best efforts to make it not happen.
What I’m finding about about being a “marketing blogger”: It’s not enough to go “Hey, I’m in marketing! I think blogs are cool!”
Deliverables. It’s all about deliverables…
I’m interested in hearing from other “marketing bloggers” how the whole blogging thing is changing (or not) and evolving (or not) the product they are offering their clients. Anybody?
[NOTE TO SELF:] I’m trying to start a conversation here. I’m not exactly sure which one.
What I’m finding about about being a “marketing blogger”: It’s not enough to go “Hey, I’m in marketing! I think blogs are cool!”
dang it — there goes another career dream up in smoke.
okay, i’ll bite. i’m not sure exactly what the blog is doing to my product (in this case a zine) but i feel like there’s a lot of potential relationships there that haven’t been broken open. that if i can somehow get over myself in the blogging part of it and see it more as facilitating a conversation about some values that are espoused in my zine that the future publications will naturally become more collaborative and not just a one way conversation.
the potential is there, but there’s something i’m missing to really make it unfold. maybe it’s as simple as talking back or talking personally to include the people who supported the art.
but this might not be the conversation you’re looking for at all.
just a thought.
Hugh, first time poster long time reader.
I am not a “marketing blogger” but what does that really mean. Marketing is so everywhere now-a-days.
I did however throw my opinion in the ring. Which is… Marketing is already attached to each product. The marketing department just might not know about it yet.
So the next gen of marketers cannot afford to be scared to go to the mixer and talk up chatty customer.
The product they use to offer isn’t a product anymore.. it’s a by-product now.
Blogging isn’t just another tool in the quiver of marketing… it is the quiver.
Interestingly I got employed in my new job because of my blog(s). The firm was interested in me because of my point of view and the way I was reaching out to people and so they wanted to do the same. I said, I could help them do that.
When I joined I realised that it wasn’t super easy to help the firm create a blog. Here are some reasons:
* Who writes. Yeah, I am a supporter of the ‘let your employees blog’ movement (http://www.psfk.com/2004/10/robert_scoble.html) — but the % of employees willing to do that is small and normally web-centric folk. Will these give a fair representation of our firm’s POV?
* Time. You work for a small firm and you’re busy supplying the clients — it’s difficult to stop and look ahead/outward.
* Reward. The ROI isn’t exactly tangible, especially short term. How do you convinvce your boss to give you 20% of your time for blogging.
* POV 1. How and what I write on PSFK may not be totally appropriate for a professional services firm. I am rash, emotional. I read something and I react with a post.
* POV 2. There are so many blogs out there with POV on the marketing sector(s) — what’s going to make your company’s different? And how are you going to keep it different? This is a creative and resource challenge.
* Blogging is not only about blogging. It’s about community, it’s about sharing, it’s about commenting, linking and all those other things we do to keep it rumbling on.
* Up to the minute. There is a correlation re. how the most popular blogs are the most frequently updated.
Anyway — a few thoughts. I have a long list of marketing blogs I reviewed here if it helps anyone: http://www.psfk.com/2004/10/adragsadblogsar.html
Piers
“I’m trying to start a conversation here. I’m not exactly sure which one.”
Excellent…me too. Care for a singlemalt? I’m having a double, btw.
So. From an external vantage point, you’ve done a helluva job and *nailed* the headline. In this case, the headline is the Hughtrain Manifesto itself and its sundry parts. The headline is great. It’s gathered our attention and pulled us into wanting to know the rest of the story. Your brilliant headline has tapped into emotion, even in the absence of a plan for continuing forward. Now, it appears that your customers — and yourself — are saying “what’s next?” There is, in your words, “a good, robust philosophy,” but philosophising doesn’t pay the bills.
Once the philosophising is done, it’s about e-x-e-c-u-t-i-o-n.
It’s about having a track record. Getting shit done. Flexibility. Doing what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it.
In finding this resonance, you’ve found a corner of the Hughtrain that needs shoring up. Your prospects are saying (or you are anticipating them saying): “Interesting! This Hughtrain Manifesto doesn’t suck, and it sounds like you might be a good guide to this new, uncharted terrain we’re entering. We’re thinking about choosing you as one of our guides. So…where are you going to take us?”
[Q: “What’s the difference between a snowboarder and a snowboard instructor?”]
[A: “About a week.”]
One of your other commenters has stated: “If a company is clued in they won’t need you. If they’re clueless, they won’t want you. You need the half-clued. And if you’re half good, they’ll be clued-in quick…Work with no client for no more than three months.”
I could not agree with this premise any more. And I could not agree with the recommendation any less.
*gets up, pours two more drinks, hands one to Hugh*
As far as a deliverable goes, a “clue” is pretty hard to quantify. It’s even harder for some midlevel corporate type to justify spending money on, at any price. That’s not the ugly part, however. The ugly part is…if you are selling yourself for $500 (or even $3K) a pop, you’re in for misery for the next bunch of years, unless you get really lucky…and you may. You’ve got a helluva lot of buzz right now. But selling your time doesn’t give you any leverage, in the literal sense of the word. Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and the rest of the Cluetrain clue gained leverage by digitizing their ideas. They turned their insights into a tangible, replicable thing that is an entity.
A deliverable, if you will.
If the above rings true for you, your decision is between the following options:
1) Sell your time, but do it in a way that is replicable, understandable, and delivers predictable results.
Example: (caveat lector…self-referential…) One of the things that our company does is win/loss analysis for our clients. We have conversations with customers that our clients can’t have themselves, since we are addressing a touchy subject that requires a neutral, external third party. Not unlike your proposal for what you’d like to do with Hughtrain, we are, in essence, selling “time.” What we’ve done, however, is detailed out the full process, shared it, and put it out there for the world.
http://www.cerado.com/solutions01.asp
Now, we’ve spent a ton of time developing this, refining it, and proving it. And then we put it out there, in the plain light of day. Any one of our customers could take this and do it themselves. Hell, any one of our *competitors* could take this and try to do it. Why did we take that risk? Because we know that what we do is execute, predictably, and get the job done. And our customers have our back.
If you’re going this route, the recommendation is to outline exactly what you’re going to do, when and how you’re going to do it, and show examples. If you have (sanitised) examples from previous folks with whom you’ve worked, great! If not, make some up, clearly label them as fictional (but representative) and use those.
2) Distill the Hughtrain into something tangible.
This can be the thoughts themselves (a la the Cluetrain book). This can be a software or service that enables companies to recast themselves with greater Hughness (e.g. partner with one of the blog or wiki providers, come up with some Hughtrain templates, help customers understand how to use what you’ve created to illustrate and communicate the humanity and human potential that exists within their organizations, and charge based on a portion of the wiki/blog hosting provider’s fee).
This could be a Hughtrain desk calendar, with a cartoon a day. There are a million options.
But, when this conversation is done, you need to figure out what *you* want to do. Then put together a plan to get there. Then go.
*pours himself a double of Makers Mark*
As far as I can tell there are three kinds of marketing blogs.
The first kind are marketing stuff. After all — whether we’re in PR, advertising, whatever — that’s what we all do for a living. Sell crap.
The second kind are blogs about blogs, specifically using blogs to do the act of marketing. That’s Steve Rubel — very useful and helps in showing the nubes among our fellows who need to ‘get it.’ And helps us learn the ‘standard practices’ such as they are.
The third — and this is where you come in — are blogs about marketing itself. About the ideas and not about the execution of the ideas. Which is amazingly useful since I come here every morning and go ‘so that’s what’s been bugging me about Client X…’ The problem as you put it is that ideas are not very .… product-able. If that makes sense.
The question — as Christopher puts it — is what do you want to do with this? Write a book? Grow up to be Seth Goodin? Let a thousand Hughflowers bloom among the ad, pr and marketing agencies of the free world?
Figure that out and then do it.…
Woah, coolness!
Hopefully I’ll be there when you are there. : )
Who’s the Malaysian group?
Hugh, I love the ideas you have, the writing you do. You and Jeff Jarvis inspire me. I got to talking with a documentary film director about blogging and businesses and such. He encouraged me to start up a consulting business, and so that’s what I’m going to try to do. So far it’s me and a website that needs some work — blmbusinessblogs.com.
So much of what I’m reading about businesses and blogging has to do with marketing, but I see a need for them as an internal communication tool as much or more than for marketing.
Your comments on power the other day were interesting. I think those ideas go hand in hand with those same people being afraid of transparency. It’s an idea I need to mull over some more.
Who knows what’ll happen. I’m going to try to conquer my beautiful city of Austin, there are so many cool small businesses that would really benefit from both internal and external blogs.
You rock! BTW, we IM’d once about Mr. Hell and other various topics. My g/f is still jealous!
>I’m interested in hearing from other “marketing bloggers” how the whole blogging thing is changing (or not) and evolving (or not) the product they are offering their clients. Anybody?
I created an ebook about my topic and used movable types features to lock it as the #2 post. Other than that I keep my site fairly free of too much advertising and it does alright (it certainly pays the rent and hosting fees).
I think with how original and useful your content is the book idea is an obvious good call. You may want to provide both a physical book and an ebook on your blog. Another thing you have built up a lot of with your honesty and expressive behaviour is trust. You probably never really want to sell that out, but there are probably some additional ways you can extract value from that without being a sellout.
Also, as a pretty cool promotional bit perhaps you could include some of your cards with the first hundred orders or something? That would get the early adopters to really push your stuff for you.
Marc Canter will likely have a whole bunch of stuff over at his blog http://marc.blogs.it about the blogging program initiated at Marqui in which bloggers are paid a monthly retainer and in return blog (frequency not known to me) about Marqui … presumably mainlky about blogging for Marqui and not being whored out for Marqui .… there’s been a fair bit about it zip around blogland, too.
I’m not sure they’ll have much data yet in terms of the impact on profile and sales, but they should have a fair bit about what an early try at organized “marketing” using a number of bloggers looks like, what was involved in develoing it, the rationale for it, and o on.