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Cindee Mock

About Cindee Mock

http://www.OrionX.net

Cindee specializes in value proposition/messaging development, PR-AR-social and demand generation activities; she is a published author in several outlets, including Harvard Business Review.

Posts by Cindee Mock:

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Best Time to Launch an Online Survey?

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When do you think people are most likely to fill out an online survey?  Weekdays or weekends? Early morning or late afternoon?

Knowing when people are most likely to take the time to fill out a survey can help you determine when to launch your survey.

Here’s what SurveyMonkey discovered in terms of best day of the week. Friday ranks highest – probably because people are winding down from a busy work week and finishing up loose ends.

SurveyMonkey also looked at time of day (times below in Pacific Standard Time) and it appears that between 4am-12noon PST (7am-3pm  EST) is the sweet spot during the day.

SurveyMonkey, August 2013

Of course, knowing when to launch a survey is only one factor.  You should also have a clear idea of what information you’re trying to gather so that your questions all relate to a single objective.  If your survey becomes too long (face it, who has the patience for more than a handful of questions?!), break the survey into several parts.

Dictionary of Numbers: Nifty Tool to Make Numbers Meaningful

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Large, abstract numbers have always mystified me.  For example, $25 billion sounds like a lot, but it’s beyond my range of comprehension. Now you can use Dictionary of Numbers, a new Google Chrome extension to make sense of numbers.

This can be really helpful for marketeers! I typed in $25 billion and got these results:

  • ≈cost of construction of Channel tunnel connecting the UK to France
  • ≈Manhattan Project, the original US program to develop the atomic bomb
  • ≈Gates Foundation total giving since 1994 (as of 2011)

 

However, the tool isn’t perfect (yet). I typed in 1, 2, 5 and 10 terabytes and got “no results.” Ditto for a few other numbers I tried. But the concept is great and hopefully it’ll continue to get better.

Get Your Website Analytics via Weekly Infographic!

Get Your Website Analytics via Weekly Infographic!

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There are many tools that help you easily create infographics (easel.ly, piktochart, venngage, among others).  One of the tools we use, visual.ly, recently introduced its Google Analytics report which sends you a custom infographic of your website’s performance each week, including change in page views, time spent per visit, new vs. returning  visitors and more! It also shows how you’re doing with social engagement (Facebook and Twitter traffic).  It’s a great way to check progress on a weekly basis. Learn more here.

While we’re on the topic of infographics, I’m finding that it’s easy for a non-designer (like me) to get carried away when creating infographics. (I know, I use too many fonts and colors.) So I thought I’d share these helpful tips for designing infographics from makeuseof.com:

  1. Keep it simple! Don’t try to do too much in one picture.
  2. Decide on a colour scheme.
  3. Research some great facts and statistics.
  4. Think of it as a visual essay: ensure your arguments hold and are relevant.
  5. Remember that it’s all about quickly conveying the meaning behind complex data.
  6. Draw conclusions.
  7. Reference your facts in the infographic.
  8. Include your URL so people can be sure who made it.
Infographic: When is the Best Time to Send Email?

Infographic: When is the Best Time to Send Email?

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When is the best time of day to send an email blast? Check out this infographic  from GetResponse.

Here’s the bottom-line, per GetResponse:

  1. Emails have the best results within the 1st hour after delivery. This is when 23.63% of all emails are opened. But 24 hours after delivery, the average open rate is close to zero.
  2. Almost 40% of all messages are sent between 6 a.m. and noon. This can result in inbox clutter, and significantly decrease results for these emails.
  3. Messages sent in the morning and early afternoon have a better chance of being noticed and consequently achieve better results: up to 10.61% open ratio and up to 2.38% CTR.
  4. Subscribers’ top engagement times are 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.- 4 p.m. with up to 6.8% average open rates and CTR.

Of course, this all depends which time zone you’re optimizing for and that depends where your audience is located.  For our U.S. clients, we typically use Eastern Time, but it’s interesting to note that GetResponse has a tool (Time Travel) that can schedule emails based on time zone segmentation.

Has Your Facebook Fan Reach Declined?

Has Your Facebook Fan Reach Declined?

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If you’re a Page Admin for a Facebook brand page, have you noticed lower reach and engagement numbers lately? Facebook changed its Edgerank algorithm on September 20, and Edgerank Checker   published a blog and calculated that pages lost approximately 6.5% of their reach after the 20th.

We’ve seen a slight decline in Reach with the pages we maintain too. Looks to me like Facebook is “encouraging” people to try its paid services.

I will be experimenting more with Promoted posts (as low as $5) to get status updates promoted in more News Feeds (seen by Fans and Friends of Fans).  Note, however, that you must have 400 Fans in order to Promote a post.

If you’re using Facebook Ads, did you know that you can target other Facebook brand page fans? For example, if you’re a database software vendor and you’d like to reach the Fans of your competitors’ pages, you can target them in your audience selection.  An effective Facebook ad to reach new fans could be some type of offer, e.g., eBook, webinar, white paper, survey results, etc.

If you have tips to grow your Fan base, please share them here.

Cheat Sheet for Sizing Social Media Images

Cheat Sheet for Sizing Social Media Images

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I just attended another seminar by Mari Smith and was reminded of this helpful cheat sheet for social media images from Luna Metrics.  If you’ve experimented with trying to correctly size Facebook Cover images, for example, this guide will save you time by giving exact dimensions.

For example, for Facebook:

  • Cover: 851 x 315
  • Apps: 111 x 74
  • Image (regular post): 403 x 403
  • Highlight/Milestone: 843 x 403

You’ll find dimensions for Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest images. Here’s the full guide:  The Complete Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet.

Should Businesses Still Use Wire Services? (If so, which one?)

Should Businesses Still Use Wire Services? (If so, which one?)

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Whether it’s Twitter or YouTube, social media tools allow businesses to instantly publish to the world and share information broadly. So do we still need to use wire services to distribute our news?

The short answer is yes, since distributing press releases over the wire will index your news on major search engines like Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo. That means that if someone is searching for a product or service like yours, there’s a better chance of finding you online (assuming you incorporated key words into your release).

So the question becomes which wire service is best?

There are many different wire services and over the past couple of years, I’ve used Business Wire, Marketwire, PR Newswire and GlobeNewswire. (You should know that all of these companies use the same mechanism to distribute news to media outlets, bloggers, internet sites, etc., so it really depends on which geography or niche distribution you choose that determines who sees it…and how much it costs.)

I’ve also used the free PR wires such as PR.com or Newswire Today for releases that are of low news value or that I know the media won’t pick up – but I still want it to be searchable on the web. However, with the free services your release must first be reviewed and approved by them – a process that can take more than a day. If you’re queuing up a release the night before (like I often do), there’s no guarantee that it will be distributed on the day you request. In fact, one release was distributed two days after its dateline! (You get what you “pay” for!)

Since I use another tool for media monitoring, analysis and list building, I really just need a distribution service that is affordable, while offering several distribution options . Especially since wire services can be very expensive, as most charge based on geographic distribution and word count (however, some now offer unlimited word count).

The “best” service will depend on your needs. For example:

  1. Do you need U.S. only, or global distribution?
  2. How long is your typical press release? If it’s more than 700-800 words, you should look at bundled packages or services with unlimited word count.
  3. Will you use a lot of photos/videos? Are you looking for help with release SEO? Many companies offer specialization in these areas.
  4. What type of reporting do you need?
  5. Will you require additional services such as monitoring, targeting or multimedia marketing?

We use a variety of wire services, depending on the client’s needs. For basic wire distribution, I’ve been using Marketwire or GlobeNewswire, as they’re less expensive than Business Wire and PR Newswire. Between the two, GlobeNewswire is cheaper, but I don’t like their reports although they’re working to improve them. Marketwire (like Business Wire or PR Newswire) is fairly comprehensive in its reporting capabilities and sends you an Initial report, a Next Day report, and a Fifth Day report. These visual dashboards are a nice way to show clients where the news has appeared over a span of several days.

Of course, there may come a time when social media activity influences search engine indexing such that distribution over the wires becomes a thing of the past.

How to Stand Out in a Crowd

How to Stand Out in a Crowd

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A simple trip to the grocery store will show us the overwhelming choices we face each day. When I enter the supermarket, there are more than 38,000 different items to choose from. I can choose from 10 different kinds of oatmeal alone! In most industries, brands have grown in number to mind-boggling complexity. So how do you stand out in a crowd?

Take a moment and ask yourself these questions:

  1. Can you summarize what your offering is, and why it’s a better choice than other alternatives?
  2. Can you articulate the value customers get with your offering…or are you focusing on a list of features?  (Remember, it’s about them, not you.)
  3. Do you have specific, value-oriented messages and “stories” for each audience (or are you trying to reach everyone at once)?
  4. Do you have evidence to support your claims?

I was listening to the radio the other day and the radio hosts were describing a new restaurant in San Francisco. Now, with more than 3,800 restaurants in San Francisco, it’s hard to get people’s attention.  But I think this restaurant does a great job of describing themselves:

Darn Good Food is a San Francisco eatery focused on quality “made-from-scratch” meals to meet the nutritional needs of fast-paced urban professionals and their families.
Inspired by healthy cuisines from around the world, with access to the highest quality ingredients and state-of-the-art technology, we are able to prepare “slow-food” fast and make “fast-food” healthy! There, we said it: the dreaded “F-F” word!

Darn Good Food (DGF) does a good job of communicating its value in a succinct and focused way:

  1. It’s clear who the target audience is (fast-paced urban professionals and their families).
  2. Their approach (homemade, nutritious, highest quality ingredients) is relevant and appeals to their audience’s needs.
  3. They offer something different (fast “slow-food” and healthy “fast-food”) versus alternatives, i.e., sit-down restaurant or fast food chain.
  4. Plus, we get a sense of their personality (playful, passionate) that helps us to connect emotionally.

Being able to describe your value to customers in a succinct and compelling way is at the core of your value proposition. We’ll talk about Orion’s TRUE model for value proposition development in a future blog.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons localjapantimes

Infographics for Beginners

Infographics for Beginners

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I’m a visual person, so I appreciate when information is conveyed via pictures. Infographics are very popular these days and I wanted to create an infographic for one of our clients: Curriki, an educational non-profit that provides free K-12 classroom resources for teachers, parents and students.

There are several free tools to create infographics like Piktochart and Easel.ly, but I chose Easel.ly because it’s simple to use and it allows you to drag ‘n drop objects and type data into one of several customizable templates.

The above image is the infographic on Curriki I created.

Figure out what information you want to convey and develop a graphic representation of your story.  It’s easy and it’s fun. Post a link below and share!

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Avoid “Sterile” Communications

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Anyone who knows me knows that I’m obsessed with food. A while back, I was listening to a weekend radio show that featured Food Maven Joyce Goldstein. She was describing a celebrated pastry chef who spent hours and hours making an elaborate dessert that used all sorts of gadgets – a huge slicer, a dehydrator, gellan gum, instant freezer, etc. – while showing off his finely-honed kitchen skills.

But the chef was far too technical.  “Where’s the soul, man!” exclaimed Goldstein.  She felt there was no passion, “no sensuality” to his cooking.  She called it “machine food.”

The same can be said about some high technology marketing. Especially with products rich in technical depth and where the benefits are not intuitively obvious. Oftentimes, technology companies will take a “clinical” and (overly) technically accurate approach when describing their offerings, resulting in a lack of passion and emotional appeal to the buying customer.  In these instances, the relevance and benefits to the buyer are noticeably absent – they’re either missing entirely, or buried in mounds of mind-numbing technical detail.

When it comes to messaging, extreme precision and being overly comprehensive can be the enemy. Too often, we have a tendency to list everything for fear of leaving something out. If you want your message to stick, keep it simple. Concentrate on 1-2 points that deliver the greatest value to the customer.

Just for fun, I used the Buzz Word Generator  tool to come up with some “jargon-ese” that is typical of the technology industry. I’ll bet you’ve seen similar phrases before:

  1. Fully-configurable  intermediate  utilization
  2. Organized  asynchronous  orchestration
  3. Intuitive coherent infrastructure

What do you think of these phrases? Impressive or just “noise?” In order to be effective, our messages must cut through the clutter.

Technology is an incredible enabler, but sometimes we communicate in ways that fail to connect with the buyer.  How would you assess your ability to communicate the value of your offerings?

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Think Hollywood for an Effective Technology Pitch

Think Hollywood for an Effective Technology Pitch

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If you’re a screenwriter, you need to successfully pitch your idea for a new film or TV show to Hollywood producers.  Likewise, if you’re a start-up, you need to sell your idea using an original and compelling pitch.

“Good in a room” is a Hollywood term referring to creative people who are experts at pitching their story in high-stakes meetings.  I often refer to former MGM Director of Creative Affairs Stephanie Palmer’s book Good in a Room for techniques that Hollywood writers, directors and producers use to get financing for their projects, since these techniques can work well in other business settings too.

But a great pitch is easier said than done, right?

After visiting several technology websites, I often find that I honestly don’t understand what a company does or why anyone would buy a particular product or service offering.

I find this start-up pitch that won the 2011 YouPitch competition refreshingly simple – it’s one example cited by Stephanie Palmer:

“We’re Clear Ear and we’re here to solve the earwax problem.  Everyone produces earwax, but for 35 million Americans earwax buildup is so large that it closes the ear canal causing symptoms such as hearing loss and ringing in your ears.

To get treated today, patients undergo a burdensome 45-minute procedure.  The patient first puts on a drape as protection from the oncoming mess.  A nurse the uses a syringe to shoot water into the ear canal not only once, but 20 times.  Worse of all, the nurse can’t see where the water is going.  This is a blind procedure causing complication rates as high as 38%.  If you’re a nurse or a patient, would you want to go through this long messy procedure?

Enter Clear Ear.

With our patent-pending earwax removal system, nurses can see into the ear canal while injecting water–thus avoiding complications like eardrum puncture.  The nurse only has to fill the water supply once, flip the ‘on’ switch and target the earwax.  Ten minutes later, all the wax is collected in a disposable container.  No messy clean up– it’s quicker, it’s safer, it’s easier.  Happier nurse, happier patient.

Clear Ear aims to deliver the solution to 350 million people suffering from earwax problems worldwide.”

If we take apart the Clear Ear pitch, we can isolate the key elements that make this pitch effective. Here are a few observations that you can apply to the business stories you create.

  1. You immediately understand what the company does.
  2. The problem they are solving is both clear and relevant.
  3. It is crafted to appeal to the buyer (remember, it’s about them, not us!).
  4. Facts and statistics add credibility.
  5. It uses a conversational tone and simple word choices (not dense, industry jargon).
  6. It revolves around a core idea, and is not burdened with excessive detail.
  7. It creates a vision of what the buyer gets if he/she says yes.
  8. It tells you why, i.e., the benefits (quicker, safer, easier = happier).

Do you have an example of a great technology pitch?  If so, please share it and get community feedback!

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The Power of Stories in Business

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We’re all familiar with stories – they’re the tales you tell upon returning from a trek in Costa Rica, or the chilling story you tell your teenager about the perils of drinking and driving.

But how do you tell a business story?

Even in business, we tend to understand things better when they’re presented in story form. Stories give context to a narrative and help put a “face” to an impersonal corporate entity. And since they’re often built upon personal experiences, stories cut through the meaningless jargon that’s so common in the technology industry.

The best storytellers are those who have lived through rich and memorable experiences (good and bad). So “business storytelling” comes easiest to those who are in constant contact with customers – sales people, service reps, executives or field engineers. If you’re sitting in an office in a product unit or a marketing department, seek out opportunities to observe or talk to customers.

Most of us are familiar with the product pitch that goes something like this:

Our Ergo ES.4 and EXP.36 servers deliver superior performance, reliability and efficiency for all your enterprise web-tier applications. Enabled with SuperSpecial™ technology, Ergo ES.4 servers not only provide the highest power-to-server efficiency than any server on the market today, they are ideal for unpredictable scale applications, allowing customers to confidently scale to more than one million concurrent users.

But wait! A story can be far more effective. In this case, the product doesn’t dominate the conversation and instead becomes the silent hero in our story:

I was at the Major Gaming Leagues Pro Circuit tour last week where the best videogame players from all of North America were battling it out for bragging rights and $100,000 in cash. Things were going well until a bunch of gamers launched a massively, multiplayer online game testing the latest pilot of HALO 4 and I thought they were going to bring the network to its knees. Luckily, our servers were able to instantly scale to accommodate this sudden peak need, easily supporting nearly 1 million concurrent online gamers!

Yes, the story is a little longer, but isn’t it more memorable? And instead of claiming to solve every customers’ problem, the story gives the listener a solution to his/her own problem by way of inference.

Why are stories so effective? Because they’re concrete, they’re authentic and they’re memorable. The most effective stories touch on human emotion and use equal doses of information and entertainment to impart information.

In reality, you may not always have a customer story to tell when you communicate information about your offerings. If not, think of an analogy that can help to personalize and ground your offering in reality. Can you recall a business story that “stuck” for you?