Top Shelf Reading Picks:

Sometimes you find a great book when you least expect it.  Last week, I was invited to a conference and met Clara Shih, author of The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff.

As an early adopter, I understood using Facebook for brand-building (through Groups, Pages, Ads and Apps) and expanding your network by reconnecting with people from your past. However, Shih’s presentation and book brought me a new depth and understanding of what it means to interact with customers through social networks.  She also introduced a whole new vocabulary.

• Weak ties.  Sure, we can get a few sales out of our strong ties, but they’re limited in number.  It’s the weak ties that drive business.  On Facebook (and other social networks), you can stay in touch with a greater number of people who in the past would’ve fallen to the wayside.  You also have the ability to reach out to the networks of all your weak ties.
• Smart CRM.  Consider Facebook one of your customer relationship management (CRM) tools.  The difference is that it’s a bidirectional CRM tool. Communication on Facebook goes both ways; you are constantly prompted about what your contacts are doing, reading and thinking.  It even includes reminders of birthdays and other personal details.
• Transitive trust/passive word of mouth (WOM).  Traditional WOM relied on someone actively telling other people about a brand, product or service.  On Facebook, you don’t need someone to tell anyone anything. Friends can see when friends join a group, become fans or download applications.
• Intentional advertising.  When you advertise on Google, it’s “intentional” in that people are searching Google for something specific and, if it contains the right keywords, your ads will pop up.  This is one reason Google ads might have a higher click-through rate than Facebook ads, which are triggered by profiles meeting advertisers’ demographics.
• Hypertargeting.  Says Shih, “hypertargeting allows advertising precision that can uncover latent interest from passive buyers while minimizing wasted ad impressions.”  In other words, while it’s not intentional advertising, it’s possible on Facebook to target precisely the market you want by age, gender, geography, keywords, etc.,  thereby eliminating a lot of wasted clicks.  Side note: We’re currently in the process of testing whether intentional advertising or hypertargeting yields higher conversion rates (For example, if Google ads have higher click-throughs, does that equate with converting more people into members?).
• Mashup.  A mashup is a web application that combines data from one or more sources into a single, integrated tool.  Shih developed a mashup that pulls Facebook profile information and friend data into the Salesforce CRM application.  This is an interesting concept because it turns a static CRM system with one-way communication (i.e.,  you input data about your contacts) into a bidirectional database that can pull live content from Facebook.
• Social capital. We know about social capital, but when you add in the transitive trust/passive WOM concepts, social capital is even more important.  To paraphrase Lena West, who also spoke at the conference this week, when you think about promoting your business online, you want to use OPS “Other People’s Social.”  Click here for more on Lena’s talk about viral marketing.

I found Shih’s book extremely timely, as we had been planning to rethink our Downtown Women’s Club Facebook strategy now that Facebook had finally updated its Pages’ functionality.  Taking some of the elements and ideas from Shih’s talk and her book, we redid our Downtown Women’s Club Facebook Page.

Phase One:

1. We deleted our Downtown Women’s Club Facebook Group.  Groups have less functionality than Pages because they are an application, and you can’t add Apps to an App.   We considered keeping both, but the new page is much more dynamic and we didn’t want to a. Double-post content; b. Divide our potential fan base between the Page and the Group; and c. Create confusion for members about which one to visit/bookmark.
2.  We started posting DWC Networking Tips of the Day and Event Listings through the Page. Posts from that page show up in newsfeeds of our fans. And if a fan comments on something or leaves us a note, that will show up not just on our DWC Facebook  Page, but also on the fan’s own newsfeed, which will reach her networks. (We’re hoping for a little Transitive Trust action.)
3. We provide monthly messages to fans explaining what’s new on our Pages and ways for them to interact and promote their businesses (i.e., tagging themselves in photos, posting links and other announcements).
4. We’re encouraging all of our directors to post pictures from events on the Page so that members will go in and tag themselves.

After only one week of implementing Phase One, we’re: 1. Adding fans at a faster rate, 2. Interacting with members from across the country and Canada; and 3. Have increased the traffic Facebook was driving to our main site by 10 percent.

One bonus is the ability to track the demographics of visitors coming to our Page.  Not surprisingly, we found that we’re popular with women 35 and older.  The good news is that this is also the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook.

Phase Two will be to implement Facebook Connect on our main website.  This is something else I learned from Shih’s book.  Facebook Connect is an application that allows members who sign onto an external website to sign in via Facebook and see which of their Facebook friends are also members of the site. I’m going to hold off on that as our membership is still getting used to the Facebook thing, and I’m not sure they’ll be comfortable with the whole “Big Brotherish” feel to Facebook Connect.

Which leads me to some final thoughts from Shih about compatibility.  Should every company/brand/product have a Facebook Fan Page? Shih writes that social network marketing doesn’t make sense for everyone–it depends on your product, service and demographics. I couldn’t agree more. Fan Pages work for things about which people can be passionate or inspired enough to want to actively engage in a dialogue with your company.

Top Shelf Bottom Line.  I’m adding The Facebook Era to my “must-read” list for marketers and anyone in biz dev because Facebook–which should hit 200 million users this week–is a communication delivery system that no company can ignore, whether it’s for building their own brand, engaging/recruiting employees or simply keeping on top of trends.   Shih’s book is a great guide to using not just Facebook for business, but other social network tools as well.

**If you’re still looking to learn about how to use Facebook on a personal level, I recommend checking out Jason Alba and Jesse Stay’s I’m on Facebook, Now What?

I was all set to write a review of the updated version of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath, when I got sidetracked by the Jon Stewart v. Jim Cramer battle last week. Next thing I know, I’m wanting to write blog posts titled: “I’ve Got a Crush on Jon Stewart” and “Jon Stewart: Made to Stick it to the Man.” Fortunately for my readers, I decided to approach this in a straightforward manner because that’s what Stewart did on Thursday night’s Stewart vs. Cramer smackdown.

Why did Stewart’s takedown resonate? Because it was one of those stories that was “made to stick.” For those of you who haven’t read Made to Stick, I would suggest you make some time for it, especially entrepreneurs. We, of all people, need ideas that stick.

In a nutshell, the Heaths’ theory is that a message will stick if it follows their SUCCESs rule. This is why I thought I would apply it to Stewart’s performance last Thursday night. (Previously, I did something similar for Colin Powell’s Obama endorsement).

If you haven’t seen it, visit: www.comedycentral.com.

Here’s my take on how it fits the Made to Stick formula:

• Simple. Stewart’s goal was to ask: “How dare Jim Cramer and the rest of CNBC blame the mortgage holders when it was the bankers, egged on by financial reporters, who burned the house down?” He conveyed this message through simple language and simple imagery.
• Unexpected. The voice of financial reason is on the Comedy Channel?
• Concrete. Stewart kept his attack on Cramer on point. “You weren’t the watchdogs. You were the cheerleaders.”
• Credible. Even if he’s a comedian, he is also a journalist. We had one journalist taking on another. In addition, Stewart’s incredible research team should be leased out to the Justice Department. Its work is impeccable and worthy of a Pulitzer.
• Emotional. Stewart was clearly emotional and was able to stir up our own emotions.
• Storytelling. Stewart told the story of a failed system.  This was why a squabble between two cable TV front men captured everyone’s attention.  It had that “stickiness” factor.

More about the book below, but I have to make one last non sequitur comment on Stewart vs. Cramer: While clearly it was Stewart’s day in the spotlight, I have to give a pat on the back to Jim Cramer. He took it like a real gentleman. Sure, he threw out a few lame excuses; but for the most part, he let Stewart do his thing, took his lumps and said his mea culpas. I actually kind of like the guy for it.

As for the book. I reread the updated version and, like watching the Stewart/Cramer interview again online, it was even better the second time around. I wasn’t too clear which parts were new, as last time I listened to the audio version, so some of what I picked up may have been there the first time, but I wasn’t as focused because I might have been navigating traffic at the time.

Here are a few points that stuck out in my mind this time around.

The importance of the big picture. Early on in the book, the Heaths talk about how armies often fail because they put all their emphasis into creating a plan that becomes useless 10 minutes into the battle. It would be better if they focused on the commander’s intent rather than a set plan, i.e., “My intent is to capture the XYZ battalion.”

I think using a commander’s intent strategy for business today is a must, especially due to the different generations currently in the workplace. Telling a Gen Y’er that you want a marketing plan that utilizes print advertising might not have the same effect as telling a Gen Y’er that you want a marketing plan that will reach x number of people in the x demographic. Who knows? She might find a better, cheaper way to accomplish the same goal.

Speak the same language. The Heaths make a point about how one of the tricks to making ideas concrete (as opposed to abstract) is not to dumb things down, but instead to find a universal language that everyone speaks fluently. This is something I ascribe to heavily as I often find myself talking about technology to audiences who still think abstractly about computers. When I teach workshops about social media (especially to boomers), I’ve learned to rely on good analogies.

Semantics matters. I liked the example of how giving good sportsmanship awards didn’t encourage people to become better sports. However, when people were asked to “Honor the game,” they were more likely to exhibit good sportsmanship. We found out how semantics matters at the Downtown Women’s Club when we had trouble finding people to serve on committees and help with events. However, when we asked them to be DWC ambassadors and represent the DWC by helping plan and execute events, we found volunteers. So sometimes before you totally shake things up, try renaming them first.

What’s in it for me? The Heaths focused on some successful ads over the years that worked self-interest into the headlines and advised against burying that self-interest if it’s an advantage. This is something we also discovered this year when we changed our tagline/marketing line to “Professional networking that’s affordable, effective and fun.” We were listing our benefits/differentiators late one night to try to come up with a new tagline.  So I finally said, “I don’t care anymore; let’s just go with that for now. Well, clicks on our Google ad went up, membership is up, and I’ve been asked fewer times why we’re different.

Interestingly, we almost went with “professional networking that’s affordable, effortless and fun.” But I felt funny about the “effortless” part. I don’t believe that networking is effortless, but I do believe that if done right, it can FEEL effortless.  Yet that required too much explanation.  However, according to Made to Stick, I should at least test it out someday.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

There’s so much more in here, but I’ll let you discover that yourself.

Top Shelf bottom line: A must-read for entrepreneurs and marketers who want their ideas to stick.  And even worth picking up for a reread.  There, that’s simple (read this book), unexpected (from an article that starts out talking about Jon Stewart), concrete and credible (I hope), emotional (we’re all attached to our ideas) and, ideally,I told a few stories that will make it memorable. Let’s see if you can do the same with your own ideas.

Last month the Downtown Women’s Club hosted Michelle Goodman, author of My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire, on a DWC+ Teleclass, and I’m making it this month’s “quick pick.”

Right off the bat I asked Goodman what’s different about freelancing in this economy?  Her answer: The basics are pretty much the same, you just need to ramp up and fine-tune your efforts.  In other words,  anyone who has all her “ducks in a row”–meaning contracts ready to go, marketing plan in place, health care and a business plan–is in a better position to do well.

Why? Because she won’t waste time with that while haphazardly chasing clients and potentially taking on business that’s outside her business plan. In desperate times, we tend to act out of desperation; therefore, business plans are necessary to keep ourselves on track.

In addition, if an opportunity comes up in this market, you need to jump on it ASAP.  Paying clients are not going to sit around waiting for you to get a proposal to them.  Have it ready to go.

So if you’re one of these freelancing folks who has been flying by the seat of your pants or dependant upon a single client, you should definitely pick up Goodman’s book.  It’s a great overview of how to get your freelancing work operating like a business quickly, so that you can focus on getting new business. Goodman covers everything you need to know, and it’s a fun and easy read.

In the meantime, for the rest of you, here are a few tidbits we learned in the teleclass about freelancing in a down economy:

1. Make yourself more marketable.

• Be diverse (skills, subcontracting, fields of expertise, different technologies)
• Be flexible
• Be timely (jump on opportunities/trends, etc.)

2. Projects to avoid:

• Those that are below your minimum price
• Those that pay in promotion
• Clients whose companies are shaky
• Clients whom you can’t pin down to parameters

3. Counterintuitive networking

• Learn from other freelancers.
• Find them in person or on Twitter, Facebook, etc.