The problem is… it’s really difficult to figure out what tools to use and how to stick to some habits and processes.

Here are five of my favorite tools/processes (I don’t have any affiliation with these co’s – I’m just an online tinkerer):

1)       Ping.fm – I use Ping.fm to update business messages to a variety of different social media/business platforms. I use the ping.fm toolbar to share stories that I find useful with my Twitter, Plaxo and LinkedIn groups. I find that some people are more active on certain networks, and I don’t want to have to manually update everyone separately. Ping.fm works great for this. I don’t update my primary Facebook page with this tool because those are mostly “social” friends in there. But I do have it set up to update my QualityWriter fan page.. which is really a nascent thing. There’s a good article about the best ways to set up Ping.fm here. Chris Brogan and ProBlogger Darren Rowse have good articles about how to structure your information sharing hub with a “home base” and “outposts.” They’re worth checking out for strategy purposes.

2)      Eye.fi – This is an SD memory card that goes into my digital camera. It stores photos and has a built-in Wi-Fi antenna (I’m amazed at how small the technology is – looks just like a regular SD card!). Whenever I arrive at my local network/home wireless network, Eye.fi auto-downloads all my photos and videos to folders on my computer and automatically uploads them to my services (Kodak Gallery, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook) based on my settings. This thing is dynamite. This has changed my photo managing habits. I now try to delete all bad photos and videos off of my camera before turning it on near my wireless network… before the “auto-up-suckage”. Another way to handle this is to use the Protect feature on your camera. Only photos that are protected are uploaded to your folders and networks.

3)      Google Voice – Google has a voice/phone service that integrates your landline and cell phone and texting into a unified “inbox”. I give out my Google Voice number to select clients and friends. When they call it, both my office phone and cell phone ring. It’s like a “Bat Phone.” From my laptop, I can SMS text my Gmail contacts (which are really all my contacts). This makes it easy to type out longer txts without doing the big-finger-blackberry thing. All messages go through my Google Voice inbox. They’re transcribed into text and emailed to me, too. I think I can have them sent as texts to my cell phone, too (not sure about this one). There are lots of other cool features – check it out, you’ll see.

4) ShareIn – If I want to update Facebook and/or Twitter friends about a story I’ve just read or a video I’ve just watched, I use ShareIn. This is a browser bookmarklet that gives you a “one click” way to do so. No more copy and paste. I wrote an article on how I came to embrace ShareIn here: How to Simplify your Social Media Life: The Pros and Cons of Posterous, Soup.io, ShareIn and FriendFeed. Ping.fm does this, too. But Ping.fm is better for touching all groups at once. ShareIn is good when you know exactly who you want to send something to – Twitter folks (who are more business for me) or Facebook (who are more social friends).

5)      Posterous – This blog/hosting services is a quick and easy to share photos, thoughts, articles, sounds and videos with friends and associates. See the “How to Simplify” link above for more of my thoughts on Posterous. Essentially, I use Posterous as a place to update close family and friends with my videos and photos of family life. I wouldn’t do this kind of in-depth posting on Facebook, because I don’t want to spam a loose group of social friends with too much cuteness, kid soccer games and such. Posterous, however, is a great place to archive stuff and allow family members to catch up. My family and friends don’t need to have an account or log in any way. It’s just my Posterous URL. Simple… and I can update it via email or the browser toolbar bookmarklet. Easy peasy.

Check out these awesome services. They’re all free – except for Eye.fi, which is a one time cha-ching (mine cost $69.99 at Amazon – with free shipping – shipping is a little steep from the main eye.fi site).

Please let me know your tips and tricks too by commenting below and sharing this post with your networks and groups. Thanks. – Phil

Are you familiar with the “inbound marketing” concept?

If not, here’s my quick explanation. If so, please scroll down to the bottom of this post to see if we’re on the same page and could possibly work on a project together.

Ok – inbound marketing is easy to describe if you compare it to traditional or conventional marketing/advertising methods.

Conventional marketing seeks to interrupt and pitch to people.

• It’s the unsolicited junk mail in your actual mailbox and the spam in your email inbox.
• It’s the car salesman that asks about your kid’s soccer team but has no interest or intention of getting to know the details of your son’s 8-2-1 season.
• It’s the 10,000 address Hoover’s mailing that seeks a 1-2% conversion via reply card.
• It’s the out-of-context XM radio ads that drone on and on about re-financing when you have no intention of re-financing your home. . or going bankrupt. . or rehabilitating your credit or whatever.

In short, interruption marketing is the old school approach that throws $10 million in ad budget at every method under the sun in order to bludgeon the market into coughing up a slim margin of return.

An Alternative to Annoyance

Inbound marketing is the modern, Web-connected alternative – although it integrates off-line advertising, direct mail, billboards, text messages, magazine ads and so forth. It’s really not about offline/online. It’s more about integration, conversion and accountable measurement.

Inbound marketing seeks to generate leads by offering content, value, conversation and education up front. It’s like “working the room” at a networking mixer. You ask about the other person first and try to understand what they’re up to before you lean in with your needs analysis. You don’t just foist out the business card and recite your elevator pitch. It’s about thought leadership, too. Inbound marketing might generate an email list by offering an in-depth, educational white paper.

Ideally, the best inbound marketing strategy should just offer up that white paper without any strings attached (no email capture or sign up form). Your content should educate and position you as the advisor resource right off the bat. That alone generates email leads, phone calls and qualified conversations about how your products and services can help.

Inbound marketing is also about measurement. How are your leads converting to real business? Can you measure that? Which landing pages are successful? . . which headline? Subheads? Photos? Calls to action?

All that stuff is easily measured with simple Web tools.

Have You Been in These Types of “Creative Meetings?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve suffered through meetings where marketing teams deliberate endlessly about subjective content treatments without having a clue about testing and conversion results (A/B tests or multivariate testing).

Inbound marketing strategies, systems and tools help you manage all this.

So . . do you agree with any of this? Are we on the same page? Are you ready to implement some real strategies and solutions for generating leads, improving your messaging, and cultivating enthusiastic product evangelists and “hub customers” that Tweet about your products, blog about your services, and promote you to their friends on Facebook.

Here are just a few general areas that you’ll want to consider.

Content Creation: Is your current Web site set up as a blog or do you have some other Content Management System (CMS)? Are you pumping out relevant, useful, well-written content on a consistent schedule? If not, why not? Your competitors probably are.

Optimization: Are you using tools to grade keywords, landing pages and inbound links? Do this right, and you’ll make some significant SEO strides.

Promotion: How are you using social media “channels” to connect with customers and leverage the exponential reach of friend networks? Do you have an efficient system for communicating with prospects via email and measuring the results of those interactions? Again, do this well and you’ll smoke your competition.

Conversion: What’s do your lead-gen process and pipeline/nurturing practices look like? Do you have simple, clean yet powerful ways to manage prospect lists and leads?

Analysis: Who are you reaching? When are they most receptive to your messages? Are they weighing you against competitive offerings? Are they asking their social networks about your solutions or products? Do you have a way to track all this and “listen” to the market?

Ok – enough with the questions. You get the point. Inbound marketing is an integrated, accountable approach to lead-generation and conversion. It’s about creating great content, making promises, having conversations, delivering value and converting interest to revenue.

Are you at the point where you want to do some these things and start making a measurable difference?

Call (949-244-9440) or email, and let’s talk. We recently gained partner status at Hubspot, so we can get you into that system. Or, we can pick up a few small projects and take it slowly.

This is one area of your business that you don’t want to ignore. There’s a big shift going out there in sales/advertising/marketing/lead-gen-land, and you don’t want to get caught behind the curve. Your competitors will just beat you up at every turn.

And please don’t get suckered into green, newbie “social media” and SEO outfits that promise to solve all your problems by setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts. (This is the part about burning your as$.) Inbound marketing programs are about reasoned, focused marketing campaigns. You don’t want to keyword stuff, pump out useless blog posts, or spam your press releases every 1/2 hour on Twitter. Content development is the key. You need writers, designers, creative input and cohesive strategies to make progress.

Contact us today, and let’s talk inbound marketing and meaningful content development.

949-244-9440

service@qualitywriter.com

I haven’t seen The Social Network yet, but it’s already bugging me. My neighbor, for example, announced that she took her entire family off Facebook after seeing the movie.

Now, I can understand why people would do this. Kids can get into a lot of trouble with social tools online. They need some tech guidance when it comes to the open-ness of these platforms and the traps that lie in waiting. Part of their education should also cover how to express  ideas, what to omit, how to communicate politely, etc.

But that’s not the point here.

My biggest, general beef is with the way people discuss these things. They place a lot of blame on the messenger and demonize the tools people use to express their ideas and connect with others.

It’s like a journalist from 1975 blaming his typewriter for the word f*#k. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

These tools we’re using evolve over time, and they have some features that can get non-techies into trouble. But they’re only tools with people behind them. Back in the 50′s there were people new to telephone communication who didn’t quite understand the concept of the party like (this is when neighborhoods were bunched into common calling lines – before the advent of one line, one house). They got caught gossiping while others listened in on their calls.

Similar things go on today with Facebook and Twitter. You’ve heard the stories.

So technology is disruptive because it catches those who remain unaware in these difficult situations – they get fired, their kid gets called into the principal’s office, a photo of their donger gets passed around the Internet (sorry Brett Favre).

The horse was disruptive, as was a car, and texting is disruptive (thought not as impressive as a horse). “The network” might be as impressive as a horse (e.g. Web/Internet/Social Media). Blah, blah, blah. It’s all technological leaps.

As long as you stay clear about what technology is, then you’re ok. We’re just talking about communication tools, really.

Modern, Web 2.0 tech helps you communicate with people, express your ideas, look for things and check things out. End of story. If you’re abusing those tools or using them stupidly, then it’s your fault.

That’s why content curation and filtering are going to be so critical moving forward. There are lots of companies in this space already, but I’m guessing that we’ll see even more interesting things develop in the months ahead. Mike Elgan wrote a great article about How Facebook Could Rule the World that relates to this.

Let’s just agree to stop all the stupidity about the tools themselves.

I like to periodically reset and remind myself that tech is only a bunch of tools for ideas. That’s why they’re important to me, at least.

Spreading ideas, sending them quicker, forming them, getting exposed to different ones, etc.

That’s my $0.02. What do you think? Please comment below.

Oh – regarding the irony – I tend to post a lot about technology, marketing and communication. . so I’m guilty of obsessing .

You can storyboard scripts with these tools, outline PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, conceptualize products, delineate workflow processes and much more.

I’ve used several mind mapping programs – freeware mostly. The most recent one I used was called Compendium. It was good, but it was pretty complex. With most of them, you’ll find them overly-complex. Compendium was nice, but I’ve found something better.

It’s called Popplet. This one is different, because it’s a Web application that has all the features I need in one package. The mind maps I make are shareable and “social,” so I can show people all my thoughts and even collaborate them without any local client program. They don’t need to install anything, and I don’t. It’s all Web based.

As far as I can tell, Popplet is pretty new. The app allows you to intuitively create detailed, flexible mind maps with just a few mouse. You can easily share these maps with others. You can easily collaborate with others to manipulate that maps in real time.

The product is a godsend for anyone involved in creative planning, software development, workflow, organized analysis of any kind. I made a quick video that shows you how easy it is to make a Popplet and how easy it is to share one. You can see that the below.

Take a look and please comment if you’ve tried and like Popplet. . or if you have any questions about this cool little app. Thanks.

Aside: The app is beta right now, however, I had no trouble getting an invitation. That may change as Popplet becomes more popular.

It got me thinking. Personal spending is obviously way down, but people still want to have a mall experience. They want to window shop, buy some small things, taste candy, play with pets, jump through fountains, see cool fashions and maybe dream a little.

The thing that *really* gets me. . in a recession. . is this. People go by the hoards to a place where the finest marketing minds in the world (from the most talented ad agencies known to man) are working their magic. Everything from the display windows and signage, to the cashier talk and uniforms, to the music and temperature, to the promos and tagging… is designed by the best of the best.

This may not be true of every store in every mall. The malls I usually witness are Fashion Island in Newport Beach CA, and South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, CA. But it’s certainly relevant to most of the national chains and high-end designers.

The point is that these people are voluntarily exposing themselves to a situation designed to suck money out of their pockets.

They want to be pitched, sold, persuaded and wow’ed! They want that, deep down.

And what do we complain about in marketing? Let me count the ways: Traditional advertising is dying. There’s too much noise out there. People are shutting out our messages. People are fed up with consumer-driven behavior. The market is resisting our messaging.

Yet, the malls still bring em in.

I realize that malls are “opt-in.” Maybe that’s something to ponder, too. Is there a way you can make your business and partner businesses more like a mall?

Something to think about. Enjoy your weekend. And please comment below to add your observations.

But.. I’ve got another problem that I’m sure you’re familiar with.

I call it Tabbed Browsing Hell for lack of a better name. This is the scenario where you’re so engrossed in research or just plain media consumption that you open tons of tabs. Eventually, you become burdened by them. They have psychic energy that can drain and distract you.

So what’s a boy (or girl) to do?

I found a nifty way to clear things up (at least for a while). It’s akin to stuffing papers into file folders in order to get a clean desk.

But it’s pretty slick to boot.

First, check out this nifty little service: Read Later

Read Later allows you to click a bookmark/script and save articles for later on your Instapaper.com account.

But wait, there’s more! (not steak knives or a slotted spoon)

When you want to back and read the articles you’ve gathered in Read Later, you can use another bookmark/script to force them into a clean, standardized format for consumption (you choose the font size and format). It’s called Readability. The buttons on the side allow you to easily and quickly get back to the original article (for Tweeting, sharing or Facebooking purposes, for example).

I think it’s pretty cool. And it helps me “get clear” and get back to work.

Have you tried it? What do you think? Please share your thoughts below.

P.S. The two solutions go great with RSS feed readers, too. Good way to filter articles and read later in a clean, consistent format.

WARNING TO CREATIVES PART I: YOUR CAREERS ARE UNDER ATTACK

If you’re a creative professional, you may have noticed a bothersome trend. In an effort to reduce expenses, clients are getting creative with the ways they deconstruct projects, bid them out and re-assemble the final product. (This applies to lots of different creatives including, freelance copywriters, strategy folks, designers, social media marketers, SEO specialists, content developers and Web developers).  

As a result, some of your work is becoming commoditized, broken into pieces and performed by someone other than you. There are lower-cost, dubious-value options out there waiting in the wings to snap up pieces of projects.

I’m not arguing that this is a particularly intelligent, productive or encouraging trend. I’m just saying that it’s happening in a number of settings, and, in many cases, you’re complicit. Yes you.

Let me discuss a few examples to illustrate my point.

Deconstruction and the Road to Mediocrity

Software developers used to scope, design and test a piece code from start to finish. That’s not always the case nowadays. Outsourced, off-shore software testing is becoming more and more common. Specialized shops that test applications and the platforms they run on (like testing a new Web app on every conceivable phone, OS and browser combination) eliminate this task from a typical coder’s project. There’s a company in Austin, Texas that’s doing this with great success. Everything’s managed stateside, but the grunt work is done cheaply elsewhere. Think of it as global specialization – where the “assembly line” is decoupled, sent to multiple specialists, then reassembled before launch.

You may have noticed the SEO copywriting trend, as well. For better or worse, companies are farming out articles to writing sweat shops and instructing them to assemble articles that are optimized for specific keywords (including headline and subhead instructions for keyword repetition). Then they send the completed article to a professional writer for editing, fact checking and re-writing.

As a professional writer, I find the practice ludicrous. It’s a process that’s flawed, spammy and basically ass-backwards. But I can’t deny it’s happening. Shameful admission: one of my clients in Eastern Europe pays me to write headlines and subheads for articles they’ve developed (they identify the keywords they need highlighted, and I try to make it work). Some of the articles are professionally written and some are atrocious. I flag the bad ones and have them re-written (via myself or another editor they use).

The trend is similar to the software development one. Publishers are attempting to decouple production and then reassemble the pieces. OnDemand Media’s Pluck is one example of this kind of low-cost, assembly line publishing.

With these types of approaches, some value is lost (maybe not so much with the software development example). You may have seen similar trends with your projects. Does the following sound familiar? A client asks you to produce a site, some graphic art or some copy that’s just like “competitor X’s site.”

The marketing director identifies someone else’s work that they like, and they encourage you to paraphrase, emulate or copy it. “Just make it like theirs, ‘borrow’ from it and you [as the creative] won’t have to do so much work,” they say. The result is unoriginal copy or design. [BTW - my advice is strap on your Pumas and run away from these clients as fast as you can.]

The point is, you can see, taste and smell the loss of value in these types of projects. Think about all those India-looking templated sites out there. They’re sterile. You know them when you see them. The treatments are flat, the colors predictable, and the layouts pure boilerplate. Some are worse than others, of course. There are, however, some nice WordPress templates that are produced by very talented designers and coders (and SquareSpace ones and Tumblr.. many others, I’m sure – this is a trend I’m watching closely).

Similar problems occur when people take short cuts with photography. How about those bland “business people at work photos?” Earnest looking professionals glare into the lens. They wear JCrew blue and khaki, and they always seem to be in these scrubbed, gleaming Formica white rooms. There are dozens of them on iStockPhoto, and they pop up all over the Web.  Anyone can get that stuff. Anyone can produce it. It’s a commodity.

Your Talent and Real-Time Creativity is Your Trump Card

The deconstruct and “farm out the pieces” train is gathering steam. Seth Godin talks about this in his book Linchpin. In a previous era, the strategy was applied to automobile manufacturing. Henry Ford developed detailed assembly processes that could be carried out by very specialized, low-skilled laborers along the line.

These days creative work can be made into an assembly line without borders… without a building.

Where does that leave you? In some sense your career is under attack. If important disciplines comes under assault as satellite teams are assembled and everyone meets up in places like BaseCamp and Google Docs, then there’s real value erosion from the client’s perspective. You may (like me) even have a hand in it. Heck, you may even use this approach to assemble teams of creatives. So, who knows where this is headed.

There are some easy answers, however. First – you must scamper back to value. Focus on originality and core competency. Your creative work, your artistry is what wins. You can beat a monkey on a typewriter. Your brilliance in the here and now beats any templated mash-up that a sweat shop can produce. That’s what brings the real dough. That’s what wins today’s contracts.

Think of it as a way to improve your gross margins. “How can you be remarkable?” as Godin might put it.

The companies and clients that don’t want the type of talent you offer are probably settling for mediocrity. They will be lost in the sea of noise. Their ads will not stand out, their white papers will not be downloaded, and people will land on their sites and get that ‘oh this was designed by low-level goons in Eastern Europe’ feeling.

So, if you’re a designer you need to be the one who pays attention to typography, usability, color choice and very specific business requirements. You have to listen. And, you have to find the clients who communicate their uniqueness, their goals and their fears directly to you.

Incorporate that into your designs, then collaborate with the Web development team, the writer, the photographer. Don’t be afraid to work with difficult people. Don’t be afraid to challenge your client. Argue with them (not argumentatively but in a Socratic way) with the fears, benefits, goals and aspirations of the company in mind.

If you’re a blogger or a ghost writer for blogs, stop regurgitating the messages of others. Stop chasing the link deals and trying to spam your way into Digg mentions, StumbleUpons, etc.

Promote your best, most unique ideas – even if it means taking a day or week off. Yes, you need to produce content consistently. . but you’ve got to rise above the noise and say something useful and unique each time you publish. Or else.. your days are numbered.

Bring ***thoughtfulness*** to your projects – as Tom Peters might say. (BTW his new book “The Little Big Things” is great.)

It’s important to understand some of these trends. The playing field is getting fluid with globalism, Web 2.0 trends, and unique developments at play. You need to pay attention.

Keep your eyes peeled for Part II of this article. There’s an interesting new technology wrinkle at play (it’s actually much more than a wrinkle – you’ve seen hints of it in Facebook’s recent announcements, and two of my uber-deep technology clients are raking in tons of cash by farming Web data – that’s all I’ll say). The point is, it directly affects you as a marketing and Web development creative. Stay tuned.

Please comment below and keep the conversation going. I’d love to hear your feedback and insights.

I was just listening to an interesting podcast on the way to work – Public Speaker Quick and Dirty Tips. This is Lisa B. Marshall’s ongoing blog and podcast that helps people deliver better presentations, improve their public speaking and communicate better overall.

The tips from this particular episode are great and very Web 2.0. For example, she recommends that presenters encourage attendees to take notes via Twitter so that their associates and followers can benefit (very viral). There are multiple benefits for all involved. The speaker enjoys more exposure. The audience gains improved retention (research supports that note taking improves retention). And, a collaborative environment is formed as everyone tweets and uses hash tags to follow along. Summaries and specific notes can be easily copied and pasted into other capture tools. Plus, the streams are searchable on search.twitter.com or organized via Twubs or Twitterfall.

I highly recommend you check this stuff out.

Do you use other tools when presenting? If so, please comment below about your tips and recommendations.

If you’re a creative professional, you may have noticed a bothersome trend. In an effort to reduce expenses, clients are getting creative with the ways they deconstruct projects, bid them out and re-assemble the final product.

As a result, some of your work is becoming commoditized, broken into pieces and performed by someone other than you. There are lower-cost, dubious-value graphic artists, Web designers, social media marketers, SEO specialists, content developers, programmers, freelance writers and others waiting in the wings to snap up pieces of projects.

I’m not arguing that this is a particularly intelligent, productive or encouraging trend. I’m just saying that it’s happening in a number of settings, and, in many cases, you’re complicit. Yes you.

Let me discuss a few examples to illustrate my point.

Deconstruction and the Road to Mediocrity

Software developers used to scope, design and test a piece code from start to finish. That’s not always the case nowadays. Outsourced, off-shore software testing is becoming more and more common. Specialized shops that test applications and the platforms they run on (like testing a new Web app on every conceivable phone, OS and browser combination) eliminate this task from a typical coder’s project. There’s a company in Austin, Texas that’s doing this with great success. Think of it as global specialization – where the “assembly line” is decoupled, sent to multiple specialists, then reassembled before launch.

You may have noticed the SEO copywriting trend, as well. For better or worse, companies are farming out articles to writing sweat shops and instructing them to assemble articles that are optimized for specific keywords (including headline and subhead instructions for keyword repetition). Then they send the completed article to a professional writer for editing, fact checking and re-writing.

As a professional writer, I find the practice ludicrous. It’s a process that’s flawed, spammy and basically ass-backwards. But I can’t deny that it’s happening. Shameful admission: one of my clients in Eastern Europe pays me to write headlines and subheads for articles they’ve developed (they identify the keywords they need highlighted, and I try to make it work). Some of the articles are professionally written and some are atrocious. I flag the bad ones and have them re-write them – by myself or another professional writer.

The trend is similar to the software development one. Publishers are attempting to decouple production and then reassemble the pieces. OnDemand Media’s Pluck is one example of this kind of low-cost, assembly line publishing.

With these types of approaches, some value is lost (maybe not so much with the software development example). You may have seen similar trends with your projects. Does the following sound familiar? A client asks you to produce a site, some graphic art or some copy that’s just like “competitor X’s site.” The marketing director identifies someone else’s work that they like, and they encourage you to paraphrase, emulate or copy it. “Just make it like theirs, ‘borrow’ from it and you [as the creative] won’t have to do so much work,” they say. The result is unoriginal copy or design. My advice is strap on your Pumas and run away from these clients as fast as you can.

The point is, you can see, taste and smell the loss of value in these types of projects. Think about all those India-looking templated sites out there. They’re sterile. You know them when you see them. The treatments are flat, the colors predictable, and the layouts pure boilerplate. Some are worse than others, of course. There are, however, some nice WordPress templates that are produced by very talented designers and coders (and SquareSpace ones and Tumblr.. many others, I’m sure).

Similar problems occur when people take short cuts with photography. How about those bland “business people at work photos?” Earnest looking professionals glare into the lens. They wear trendy blue and khaki, and they always seem to be in these scrubbed, gleaming Formica white rooms. There are dozens of them on iStockPhoto, and they pop up all over the Web.  Anyone can get that stuff. Anyone can produce it. It’s a commodity.

Your Talent and Real-Time Creativity is Your Trump Card

So your career is under attack. Every day sub-contractors attempt to deconstruct creative work and farm pieces of it out. Seth Godin talks about this in his book Linchpin. In a previous era, the strategy was applied to automobile construction, for example. Henry Ford developed detailed assembly processes that could be carried out by very specialized, low-skilled laborers along the line. These days creative work can be made into an assembly line without borders… without a building.

Where does that leave you? It’s easy, really. You scamper back to value. You focus on originality and core competency. Your creative work, your artistry is what wins. You can beat a monkey on a typewriter. Your brilliance in the here and now beats any templated mash-up that a sweat shop can produce. That’s what brings the real dough. That’s what wins today’s contracts.

The companies and clients that don’t want that type of talent are settling for mediocrity. They will be lost in the sea of noise. Their ads will not stand out, their white papers will not be downloaded, and people will land on their sites and get that ‘oh this was designed by low-level goons in Eastern Europe’ feeling.

So, if you’re a designer you need to be the one who pays attention to typography, usability, color choice and very specific business requirements. You have to listen. And, you have to find the clients who communicate their uniqueness, their goals and their fears directly to you. Incorporate that into your designs, then collaborate with the Web development team, the writer, the photographer. Don’t be afraid to work with difficult people. Don’t be afraid to challenge your client. Argue with them (not argumentatively but in a Socratic way) with the fears, benefits, goals and aspirations of the company in mind.

If you’re a blogger or a ghost writer for blogs, stop regurgitating the messages of others. Stop chasing the link deals and trying to spam your way into Digg mentions, StumbleUpons, etc. Promote your best, most unique ideas – even if it means taking a day or week off. Yes, you need to produce content consistently. . but you’ve got to rise above the noise and say something useful and unique each time you publish. Or else.. your days are numbered.

Another Warning: Legitimate Technology Trends Will Strip You Naked

This should probably be another article.. but, heck, I’m going to put it in here, because it closely parallels the “deconstruction” trend.

If you’re a marketer, you need to realize that subjective, off-the-cuff analysis of markets is a vanishing practice. Creative, “gee I like this, let’s run with it” moments are gone. David Ogilvy and Claude Hopkins did their best to kill it off, but it’s still the fall back position for lazy marketing departments.

Here’s where technology is taking a bite out of marketing departments. The following trends are eating away at staid practices:

1. Real-time analytics from real-time search like Twitter, Facebook and Google real-time results
2. Web scraping (real-time and sophisticated, in-depth, behind-the-Flash, behind-the-login-page scraping)
3. #1 and #2 combined with contextual analysis
4. Multivariate testing (Google Analytics, Optimizer)
5. Twitter testing and AdWords testing of titles, subheads and concepts

Analytics beats any whim or subjective position you have. Yes – I know – if you’re creating art, then you can be content with your own subjective analysis. But, it’s rare that those of us in the business world can produce art without being accountable for results. At some point, you have to sell something (even artists need to fill galleries).

So these five techie developments show us what sells, what gets clicked, what’s working, what the crowds think. Testing (Claude Hopkins, Ogilvy- style) is more relevant than ever!

One of the buzz phrases going around marketing circles is contextual sentiment. This is what Facebook is up to with their “Like” buttons all over the Web. Fact is, you could do this with some sophisticated software previously. If you run scraped keyword streams from Twitter or Facebook through an sentiment analysis tool, you can see all kinds of actionable information. For example, let’s say you launch a new soda flavor. You can quickly understand consumer sentiment by monitoring channels like Twitter and Facebook. At the root, it’s the transformation of unstructured data into actionable information. It can be used for all kinds of scenarios – public relations troubleshooting, customer service, R&D, polling/sampling opinion (without the focus group), product development and more.

Big brands are already integrating this “social media” sampling technique into their Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. One of the big benefits is that they get a clear indication of sentiment and the “reality on the streets.” In the past, they had to rely on focus groups with preconceptions and gamed reporting from their own internal departments (sales, finance, product development, etc.).

Bringing it All Back Around to You – The Creative

Creatives in every line of work – Web development, art, writing, publishing, etc. – need to consider these trends carefully. From my perspective this trend looks like a boon to creatives. But, to many organizations, it could mean that some of their services will go away. You can’t consult, for example, if your consulting guidance is based on premises that are counter to factual Web analytics. You may have to integrate these new technologies into your offerings.

How is it a boon? Creative matters even more today than ever before. People need you to test out ideas, push them out of their comfort zones and try new things. Companies need to round up whatever data and research exists then hand off projects to creatives that get it. Then you test… then you commit to what works. That’s a good recipe.

What’s become a commodity is the big agency’s powerful research and testing groups. They’ll be moving to new technologies and techniques. But these new methods should be fairly low cost. You may not need an army of people to pull it off. And as information becomes more available at a lower cost, you’ll see small agile creative firms making moves.

Some Extended Thoughts

Everyone has access to this now. This new world is here. Soooooo….

• Tips, info and tools are commodities unless they’re strikingly original
• Pricing for boilerplate, templated or paraphrased/hi-jacked content and design is being ground down to zero. It’s a race to the bottom. That work is going overseas, or it’s going to the lowest common denominator companies.
• Analytics (real-time) are showing companies who are willing to put in the sweat and the money exactly what’s going on with their products, services, brands, competitors, customer service, market perception… everything.

The information you have at your fingertips – your information tool box – is becoming irrelevant. There’s plenty of free information out there that describes what you know, best practices, tips, tools, strategies and so forth. That stuff is being commoditized. Dan Pink goes into this in detail in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. “McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30% of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70% comes from heuristic work,” writes Pink. (That algorithmic work is the non-creative stuff – the process work that can be duplicated in far flung locations.) “A key reason routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathic, non-routine, work generally cannot.”

Experience matters. Value matters. A creative, original filter matters.

What to Do? – Creatives, Get Back to Basics!

How do you win in this wild new world of shifting marketing and production trends? You focus on the key differentiators. Seth Godin talks about this a lot in Linchpin. You’ve got to continue to develop strong relationships. Stellar customer service, a sparkling attitude, personality, and your underlying creativity and uniqueness are the keys. Execution wins business as well – think about speed of execution, shipping on time/on deadline, and delivering a consistent, quality product. Of course you need to deliver value, meaning quality, differentiation and uniqueness, mind-boggling star power, and ‘something extra.’

In short, you need to become more remarkable now.

What do you think about this discussion and these trends? Are you seeing the same things I’m seeing? If so, what are your strategies for combating these trends or adapting to them? Am I delusional or off-base here? Please comment below.