Eggblogg

Using 'speech bubbles' to get your point across

When you're explaining things to people it's funny how there are some simple techniques that seem to work, whatever the situation.

In the last eighteen months or so my mother has been increasingly in need of extra help due to age-related memory loss, and through my conversations with her I've gained some fascinating insights into how we store information, how we remember things (or not) and how to communicate complex information in a way that's possible to understand and retain, without insulting the listener.

Sometimes my patience and powers of empathy are severely tested, but I've taken to approaching communications issues with my mother much as I do computer problems - if something isn't working, you need to try another tactic. Getting angry or doing the same thing over and over only backfires!

Something I tend to do a lot with mum is 'direct speech' scenarios. Instead of using reported speech, it involves putting things into speech bubbles. For example, instead of asking her

If someone came to the door trying to sell you something to help clear the weeds from your path, you'd say no, wouldn't you?

I'll say

If someone came to the door and said "Oh hello, I was just wondering if you'd like your path cleared of weeds?" you'd say "No thankyou", wouldn't you?

There's a difference. The second way of asking puts my mother firmly in the picture, and encourages her not only to imagine the person coming to the door, but it also jogs her memory so that if that scenario had indeed already happened, she is more likely to remember and tell me about it. If I want to make an even simpler, more immediate point, I'll put it all in the present tense ('If someone comes to the door ...")

So, using direct speech is a method of making a situation concrete, helping the listener to remember what you've said and also helping them to anchor it to any memories of similar events they may have.

For that reason, it's also a powerful technique when you're explaining, presenting or training - in fact, I do use it quite a bit, I just hadn't registered until now what I was doing and how useful it was.

A little video about my morning Twitter routine...

More good news about email marketing - any accountants listening?

A recent blog post from Email Insider highlights the fact that, despite email marketing delivering a return on investment (ROI) that's probably way beyond what the measurable stats suggest, many companies are still reluctant to allocate resources to email marketing.

Why not? Because just isn't sexy any more? Because they think no-one uses it? Or because email is so far 'below the line' that few agencies will suggest it to a client, let alone put their best creatives on it?

No, it's because ROI isn't a factor when calculating the next year's marketing budget. If that's true, it's a bit depressing that even in the current economic climate there are plenty of companies content to just up the budget by 5% or whatever and assume the 'tried and tested' stuff will do the trick.

Whatever happened to a belief in that Anthony Robbins quote "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got."

Moonfruit Twitter promo - stand by for the cheap imitators

If you're on Twitter you can't have missed the Moonfruit campaign over the last couple of weeks.

As reported in New Media Age and on Mashable, website building company Moonfruit promoted its 10th birthday by offering 10 Macbook Pro laptops over 10 days to followers who Tweeted its brand name. Twitter users were encouraged to follow the Moonfruit twitter feed, and they've now have accrued 36,000 followers.

Moonfruit reports that In the first two days the promotion drove a 600 percent lift in traffic to its site, and doubled the number of users signing up for trials of its services.

So far so good ... except Clickz now reports that Twitter has removed the Moonfruit hashtag.

Seemed like a successful promotion to me .. but Twitter gets nothing from it. Perhaps they're looking at ways to ensure it doesn't happen quite that way again? Or are they just trying to discourage too many others to jump on this particular bandwagon?

As with all good marketing ideas, it's bound to be copied to death, in far less charming ways...

Marketing has to change and I can't wait

This excellent post by Amber Naslund inspired me today: On social media and culture shift.

There's no denying that the 'media' is changing, driven (it seems to me) both by technology and attitude shifts, and as a result we have the new, and rather scary 'social media' landscape. Accordingly, marketing, and much of what is held up to be traditional marketing practice, must change.

I suppose this belief makes me a somewhat unusual marketer. I've always been a bit disillusioned by certain aspects of traditional marketing, and I seem to spend more and more time now telling people that most of what they've learned about marketing from text books is dead.

This may not appeal to potential clients who are looking for the same old, same old when it comes to marketing. But when it comes to keeping my head down and doing stuff that people ask for, while knowing in my gut it ain't gonna work, ("the client is always right, and besides, this is what we were taught on that CIM diploma 10 years ago..") I just can't do it any more.

So it's thrilling to hear it put so well by people who really do know what they're talking about: things need to be done differently, right across the company. Social media is not an add-on. As Amber says in her post, "for most companies, adopting social media means changing their mindset about how they do business".

Luckily, there are organisations out there, small businesses in particular, with less 'company culture' baggage, that are open and interested in doing things differently, prepared to experiment and unafraid of change.