Katrina Klier's Blog

Fierce… the urban slang term meaning not just seriously on your game but seriously reinventing the game in real time by setting a new, very high bar. Being fierce implies a sense of style, presence and authority that draws people in. Being fierce means being consistently exceptional. 

I do many industry presentations and keynotes each year. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Where else can you meet so many interesting people; get outside the bubble of your day job; and learn in real time? Working in the digital arena, presenting at these live events is the ultimate test – does your digital brand match how you show up in real life? If not, trust me you’ll get called on the mats in no time. So don’t let that happen. Instead, be fierce.

So how exactly does one go about being fierce? Well, I won’t say I have all the answers, but here’s what has worked for me and garnered me a few “You are fierce!” remarks along the way – which I have to say always make me smile.

Being fierce has some intangible qualities. These are hard to teach, but can be developed with focus and time.

Confidence:

Trite as it may sound, people have a radar that detects confidence or lack thereof.  Confidence is a mix of stature, speech and presence. You need to stand, sit, walk, speak and listen like you mean it. Not in a condescending way, but in an authentic and engaging way. Show an ounce of timidity on stage and you’re toast.

Expertise:

No one knows everything and everyone knows that. So know what you know, talk about that and understand the limits of your knowledge. Continue to learn and always work on growing your expertise. Evolve your story so each time people see you speak, they learn more and offer more to you in return.

Grace:

Being gracious requires an authentic curiosity of and appreciation for a very diverse world mixed with a healthy respect for others. Being gracious is being respectful and at the same time, holding true to your values so respect is returned. Being gracious on stage is difficult at times but practice will make it easier and you’ll build a stash of ways to shut down hecklers, deal with very rude questions, convert or at least quiet the haters and respectfully engage the over-zealous.  

And being fierce has some practical components too:

Twisted Relevance:

Or – relevance with a twist. No one wants to pay a large ticket price for you to tell them things they’ve heard before or could find in a simple Google search. No one wants to hear you do exactly the same presentation at multiple events. Instead speak about things that are relevant and timely, but put a new twist on them. Bring in your point of view or connect data points for new insights. Twist around common information to provide a new perspective that is relevant to the audience. Be fresh. Attending the opening party of an event is a great way to get spin, perspective and examples to weave in to your talk track. Listen more than you talk at these parties and you’ll gain valuable insights into the audience that will hear you speak. These insights mixed with a few connection points to sessions before yours can bring new life to a presentation you’ve done before.

Help People Engage:

This is the practical side of being gracious. People really do want to hear what you say or they wouldn’t bother to attend the event. So help them help you. Simple but highly effective things to help people engage include putting your Twitter handle (make sure you have one, but that’s another post) and the event hashtag in the footer of all your slides. Make sure your slides are legible, the images you use are appropriate and any multi-media is tested and tested again. Include content snacks, easy to type and tweet highlights, in your talk track. Schedule tweets in advance that are timed roughly with your presentation that include your key points so people can retweet directly from you and also add their own tweets.

Show a Little Appreciation:

After your presentation, answer questions; talk to the people who come up to you; be gracious and listen to what people have to say. Also go through the Twitter stream from your keynote and retweet, reply and thank people who engaged during your talk. Continue to scan the feed and do the same over the next day. Always do a shout-out thank you during your presentation for being invited to the event and also via Twitter to the event sponsors. Saying thank you in an authentic way is one of the most powerful things you can do as a presenter.

You can be a fierce presenter with a little practice and determination. Enjoy the journey!

You’re never at the first meeting.

You’re never at the second meeting.

You’re rarely at the third meeting.

In fact, you may not be at several more meetings.

Then, if all these previous meetings go well, you are invited to meet with a potential customer. How can this be? Because your potential customers are meeting your company, brand, products, other clients and even your employees digitally long before they actually meet you in person.

Consider these statistics from Explore B2B:

93% of B2B purchases begin with an Internet search.

Sales reps used to get involved with a prospect about 30% of the way through the sales process. Now the sales rep gets involved when the prospect is 70% through the sales process.

And these statistics from SiriusDecisions which found that most C-level executives rely on general perceptions and influence of others (essentially word-of-mouth, usually delivered digitally) the vast majority of the time in validating purchase decisions. In fact, the combination of brand perceptions without previous brand experience; customer references and testimonials; and internal or external colleagues opinions account for the following amount of influence in the purchase process:

CFOs   67%    Chief Financial Officers

CSOs   64%    Chief Sales Officers

CEOs   54%    Chief Executive Officers

CMOs  50%    Chief Marketing Officers

CIOs    47%    Chief Information Officers / Chief Technology Officers CTOs

It should be noted that CIOs and CMOs seemed least likely to try a vendor they had not used before, hence the lower impact of non-brand generated influence.

The simple math shows that all brands need to actively manage their digital presence, engage in digital conversations to understand and steer influence or perceptions and recognize that they are dealing with far more informed prospects than ever before.

This is a big challenge for CMOs who often receive the brunt of the impact from this shift. CMOs need a solid relationship with their CIO so that monitoring, measurement and engagement technologies can be put in place. CMOs also need a new mix of talent in their organizations as the traditional push-marketing or advertising has been replaced by conversational marketing and engagement over time but build positive influence. The ripple effects in brand positioning, messaging and campaign design are huge. This also means CMOs need to be aware that influence plays a larger role in how their peers, and their boss, will interpret the effectiveness of a CMO’s strategy than perhaps the CMO realized.

CMOs in fact have to place the digital presence of their company, brand and products at the forefront of their marketing strategy. This is the only way to make sure those first series of meetings do in fact go well so you get invited to a real meeting down the line.

I recently attended a first-of-its-kind conference for Chief Digital Officers. It was a very worthwhile event and if they do another, I will definitely attend and recommend it to others as well. This post includes some observations I made during the event. I hope you enjoy it. 

So what is a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) anyway?

While a rare few hold the actual CDO title, many of us have roles that are essentially that – being the strategists, stewards, champions, educators and just-get-it-done leaders of all that is digital in business. It was an enlightening and funny conversation around the room as to what exactly each of our jobs entailed.

The mix of focus in the CDO roles of those attending was quite varied, but seemed to align with the progression of digital understanding and adoption of the company where each of us worked. All the companies represented were over the initial fear of digital and at least recognized the need to adapt. From there it was a wide open array of what the job was and how well the company embraced and empowered the CDO as a change agent.

Who are these rare creatures, CDOs, and where are they?

From research by David Mathison of @BeTheMedia and Chadick Ellig, 54% of CDOs are 40-49 years old and 80% of them are men. Most commonly cited qualities of a CDO include: strategic, committed, do-er, relationship-builder, leader, entrepreneurial, and innovative. Essentially the most successful CDOs were mentally elastic – thinking big picture, operational execution and building relationships inside their company and outside to get things done.

Not surprisingly most CDOs are on the east coast with a center of gravity around NYC and the west coast, primarily in various hubs of California. Since much of US business is coastal and the need for people with a technology understanding in the CDO job, the locations made sense. 90% of CDOs were hired into their role in the last 2-5 years and trends show that over 25% of enterprises will have a CDO by 2015. Similar to the rapid growth of CMOs, the CDO role seems poised to be the next executive career path opportunity for people and companies looking to take a leadership position in their industry.

Critical Skills and Challenges Faced by CDOs:

Many of the panel speakers alluded to both the skills they found critical for success as a CDO and the biggest challenges faced in the role.  Needless to say these are connected. The biggest challenges faced by those in the CDO role included:

• Culture Change – all across their organizations. Often cited as an ongoing endeavor.
• Constant Education – helping people inside and outside their organization understand the digital realm and opportunities. A big part of this involved understanding where various people were in their understanding and comfort level with digital, then helping them take steps or leaps forward.
• Effectiveness – demonstrating meaningful impact or effectiveness in the role. This was viewed as a challenge as many companies thought they wanted more change, only to realize they weren’t quite ready for all that. Being effective in role meant creating new performance indicators that were often a blend of hardcore metrics and milestones involving change management.
• Change Management – being disruptive while staying true to the roots of the company or brand. Since many CDOs were new to the company they joined as a CDO, understanding decision-making and appetite for change was critical to success. For in-house hires, they understood the decision making process but often faced some “why on earth would you want this job?!?” thinking and push back on their strategies and plans.

Critical skills mentioned by the various panelists centered on things needed to overcome these challenges effectively, efficiently and in a way that sill allowed them to enjoy their jobs. Loosely summarized these skills came down to:

• Diplomacy
• A good BS filter
• Adaptability to deal with a whole variety of people, situations and personalities throughout a day
• Love of the business they were in. Being great at digital requires a deep appreciation for what makes the company great overall and bringing that to light through digital opportunities.
• Comfort with technology, data and qualitative information all at the same time. Many CDOs seem to be very left-brain / right-brain balanced people and thrive in situations that let them use that talent.

That’s the high level view of a day that was packed with great information, interesting people and fantastic networking. Many thanks to David Mathison, Janice Ellig, Thomson Reuters for hosting the event and Deanna Zandt and the Lux Digital team for the digital coverage.

The recent “all for one and all in the office” decision by Yahoo has spurred a huge debate. Having spent most of my career deep in the heart of geek-land at a few global companies, here is my take on the situation – and it probably isn’t what you’d expect. First the disclaimer – this is my opinion and mine alone so please don’t read into this anything about my current or former day jobs. 

This is really quite simple. It’s about choices and the ups and downs that are life. Is Marissa Mayer’s office-only choice for Yahoo good or bad? Time will tell. I could argue both sides of her decision fairly well actually. What I find annoying is the huge backlash this has caused. A company made a decision, like companies do every day, and that’s about it. What people do as a result is purely a personal matter. 

If you’re affected by the Yahoo decision or you work at any company that makes a decision that runs counter to your values or creates immense disruption in your life, then you have some choices to make.

First, you have to decide if you’re going to be a victim or if you are going to be the captain of your own future.

Have your short-term pity party; cry; scream; whatever you need to do, just get it out of your system. Then get down to work creating the life you want. You have choices whether you see them immediately or not and the most important one is deciding if you want life to happen TO you and be the victim, or if you want to be happy and be the captain of your future. You make this choice whether you consciously think about it or not. 

Second, you have to decide how long you can live with the impact of the company’s decision.

Living with the consequences should have an end date for your own sanity. Ask yourself – what would need to happen for me to make this work for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, a year? Depending on your seniority, it can easily take a year to find something new. Know what your drop-dead date is so you can work back from there. In the meantime, have a coping strategy to get you through.

Third you have to decide what is really important to you.

This is a personal, no-judgment list. If it is important to you to be home when your kids get off the school bus then put it on the list. If it is important for you to have a flexible environment where you have an office and work at home options – put it on the list. If the type of people you work with is important – add it to the list. If economic security is important, it goes on the list. Then add how you want to feel when you’re working – calm, centered, valued, happy, like the sun is shining every day…. all that goes on the list right up at the top. You know that saying that people will forget what you say, often forget what you’ve done, but never forget how you made them feel? Well jobs are just like that. You’ll forget what people said, you won’t remember every activity that happened, but you will always remember how you felt in a job so make sure you have a list of how you want to feel in your new job both when you’re on the job and outside of work as well.

So you have decided to be the captain of your future, you know how long you can last in your current situation, you have a coping strategy and you have your list of things important to you. Excellent!

From here, compare the list of what is important to your current situation.

Where are the gaps? What can you cut out of your current life and what needs to be added? What would closing the gaps include? What order should you tackle the gaps? What help do you need to close them? This is where the rubber meets the road. You’ll create a series of projects to work on – and make sure you break these into projects so you can celebrate accomplishing them as you go. Then get to work. Start with one project, and get moving. Call people whose help you need. Update your resume if needed. Update your social media profiles. Read, make phone calls, write emails… whatever it takes to make your project complete, make it happen.

During all this, you do need to allow yourself to recover as well.

If you don’t preserve your energy and recharge, you will end up worse than you started – exhausted, in a job you hate and with major disruption in the rest of your life – truly miserable and no one wants that.

Often during times like this, financial security is a big concern. So when you’re planning how to recharge yourself, think about the little things that can have a big impact. Take your dog for a walk every day. Go for a walk yourself every day – fresh air and a little sunshine can make a big difference. Allow yourself to read something non-project related every day. Rent all the episodes of your favorite TV show, make a huge bowl of popcorn and settle in one Saturday for a marathon of couch-potato goodness. Call your best friends each week and ask them to help you check in on your progress and also to talk about something completely unrelated to your current situation. Most importantly take care of your health – physical, mental and spiritual – because good health can so easily be taken for granted, yet so quickly lost if not attended to. Make appointments with yourself to recharge and keep them with all the determination that you would keep an important business appointment.

Personal pep talks are also critical.

You will have ups and downs in this process. But do make a practice of starting each day with a pep talk. You can do this! You can change your plans when and if needed so you are never trapped. You have people who care about you and want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy. Many people write a short pep talk or list of affirmations and read them each morning. Choose what you like here, but make sure you start each day with a little personal motivation. Keep it positive because good thoughts create good realities. Leave the negative stuff for someone else – it has no place in your future. 

When you have a bad day or just feel a bit defeated, take a pause. It is ok to pause.

If you find yourself thinking “I’m never going to get out of here…” Then pause. Right then and right there, pause. See if you can identify what triggered the negative thought and how you can extract yourself from that cause in the future. And then set it right. Instead of thinking “I’m never going to get out of here…” think “Each step is a lesson and a gift. I am making progress toward my goal. I can do this. I am doing this. I am successful. I am thankful for this journey.” 

Make sure to celebrate the milestones as you close each gap.

Whether that means blasting your favorite song and dancing like no one is watching; eating an ice cream cone; writing “I DID IT!” in big letters on your plan and posting it on your wall…whatever it is that gets you jazzed to celebrate your momentum, do it.

You have choices.

You always have and you always will. How you make them and what you do as a result determines how happy you are overall. So if you work at Yahoo or anywhere else and the company makes a decision that disrupts your life… remember that it is short term because you can set your future and you can make it happen in spite of some silly corporate directive. 

Companies are always on the lookout for simpler ways to explain social media guidelines to employees. Scenario guidelines connected to people’s role or jobs tend to be the most helpful.  Here is a simple model that can be leveraged for any size organization and add clarity to help employees participate well in social media as it connects to your PR strategy.

The model is four simple questions: Who can make news? Who can break news? Who can share news? Who can consume news?

Who can make news? Who can break news?

Technically anyone in your organization can make news. The news may be good or bad. People are human so you’ll end up with a mix of both. But it is important for employees to understand that while they may make news as part of their job, most of the time it is the official company channels that will break the news unless agreed to in advance.

Let’s look at common examples:

You lead an account team and you’ve worked your you-know-what off for months to close a huge deal. You brought in the big fish and are doing the happy quota dance – you’ve made news. But you should not take to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other places with this news. Deal announcements and positioning with quotes as appropriate are best handled by the PR team. So while you’ve made news, it is not yours to break in this case. 

On the other hand, you signed up to keynote a major conference on behalf of your company. The PR team has been involved from the beginning and you’re good to go. You do a fantastic job and are riding high as you walk off stage. You tweet from your phone how much you enjoyed the opportunity to speak and the crowd’s support – you made news in your presentation by being on stage, but in this case it is ok to “break” news that you delivered this presentation and thank people via your personal social media handle. Why? Because you involved PR in advance and this is a way to personally thank those who listened to you. You should not however, take to Twitter that you had an awful experience or criticize the crowd lest you set off a firestorm of comments.

Who can share news?

You want to empower all your employees to share positive news. So again, anyone may be able to share news, the trick is WHICH news. Providing guidelines for employees to share news that comes via official corporate channels is a great strategy. They need to know what and where these official channels are – be explicit in this and don’t assume they’ll just find the right ones. You can also arm them with pre-approved, PR sanctioned, socially shareable comments in advance of some news like product launches, events, corporate anniversaries, etc.

Employees do need to know that they should not share news that relates to the day to day activities of their job, things they overheard or were said in meetings and that confidential information is off limits period. Everyone in PR and executives in general cringed at the HMV Layoff Tweet-Fest and subsequent fall-out. It’s a reminder that in particularly tense moments like substantial layoffs or with really big, positive internal news announcements – like you’re company is being acquired and everyone will make a fortune as part of the deal – people will have an immediate emotional reaction and may, without thinking, turn to social media for a release. Before such moments, preface your conversation by saying that the following meeting, announcement, etc. is not appropriate for social media per your company guidelines (all the more reason you need to get these written and review them on a regular basis). And let them know that your official PR channels will handle the news announcements and they should refer inquiries to PR.

For big emotional news (layoffs are a very common one), recommend other releases for employees – have counselors at the ready to discuss; recommend they take the rest of the day off to be with their family; offer to call someone to pick them up; etc. When you rock someone’s world, you can’t expect them to behave as if nothing has happened so help them through it in a way that is positive for all involved. 

With as much preparation as possible, you will still have a problem at some point. This is not an “if” question. This is a “when” question. So always have the critical response digital team at the ready in advance of such announcements. Real time monitoring and response strategy will make or break your brand. 

Who can consume news?

This is anyone in the world with social media. Never before has the world’s real time information been so readily available to anyone, anywhere, all the time. This is important to keep in mind and also to remind your employees that this is true. Social media can be deceiving… you can be alone on your phone tweeting away without realizing that you’re suddenly trending. A PR disaster is one tweet, one share or one click away. So remind employees to consume news with a grain of salt and to remember that anyone and everyone can be listening – and they usually are.

Scenarios with real examples from your business are the best ways to help employees understand…

Who can make news?

Who can break news?

Who can share news?

Who can (and will) consume news?

Simple, straightforward, empowering… these are the cornerstones of good social media guidelines.

It’s nearly 2013 and time for my annual ritual of making my vision board for the coming year. I love doing this. It helps me crystalize my goals and sanity check values. A vision board is a visualization of what you would like to be, do, have, feel or accomplish in the coming year.

Never being one for the arts and crafts version (too messy, paper everywhere and I’m limited by the magazines on hand), I’ve always done a digital board. I’d fire up PowerPoint and snip away on a variety of websites to build my board.

This year I decided to try making my vision board on Pinterest. I created a private board (sorry, no super secret scoop on me here) and went to work. Overall, I really enjoyed it and it works very well. Give it a try for yourself. Here’s some tips to get you rolling:

• Decide if you want to make a public board or a secret board. Secret boards are only visible to you; regular boards are viewable and searchable by anyone. This is entirely a personal choice, but decide when you set up your board because you can’t change it later. On your board page, if you scroll down, you’ll see the place to add secret boards.
• Download the Pinterest plugin before you start. If you haven’t already, download the plugin which allows you to pin from any site. Many sites do have a Pin It button, but not all do so the plugin makes it very easy to pin the image you want.
• Use the image search function in Google or Bing.  This is very helpful to find images related to emotions or states of being. Want to stay in your Zen zone this year? Or would you like to take a fantastic vacation to an exotic location? You’ll find some great images that are easy to pin by searching on key words and clicking the image results option.
• Bookmark interesting sites you find along the way. One of the best things about making a Pinterest vision board is you end up with bookmarks to great information or inspiring sites as you go. All useful as you go on the journey of making your vision a reality.
• Pin personal pictures or items easily. Pinterest has a function that allows you to upload a Pin from your computer. This is great if you want to add a photo of your family, friends or vacation spot or anything else that is important to you.
• Add comments to yourself on why this pin is important to your vision. I love that Pinterest allows you to essentially add notes to yourself for each pin. As an example, I pinned a great photo related to being in a state of gratitude. I added a vision note to myself for the pin that said “Be always in a state of gratitude for life’s amazing blessings” as a reminder for why the photo struck me and how it related to my vision for living in a state of gratitude each day.
• Your Pinterest vision board is always with you. A Pinterest vision board can go with you anywhere – to work, out and about, at home, anywhere you are.  So I can bring up my vision board on my phone, iPad, PC or anything connected to the Internet to check in on my progress or refresh my memory of my vision or adjust my board as needed.

This was a fun and enlightening project and I hope you will enjoy it as well. Please share your Pinterest vision board tips and tricks here too. If you’d like to follow other topics by me on Pinterest, you can find me at Katrina Klier.

Happy New Year and may all your Pins come true!

If you use Twitter, you eventually reach the point where the blur going by your screen is as fast as the credits at the end of a movie. Information flies by at a speed too fast to read, let alone digest. Lists are a great way to organize it all. Some ideas are below and please chime in with your list tips as well.

Foundation Lists Are Your Core Information:

Foundation lists include things you’ll follow for the long haul related to your career, business, family, hobbies, etc. Some may be basic lists, like my News list with Bloomberg, Forbes, etc. Others may be a list of influencers in a given topic area such as my Press And The Like list that includes media, journalists and prominent bloggers I like to follow. You may also have lists related to a hobby or your favorite type of music or your family. I have teenage kids, so I have a private list to follow all of them – a little parent 411 is never a bad thing. If you follow people in various parts of the world, you may want to organize them by time zone lists so you can catch what they tweeted while you were asleep. The organization of topics is up to you, but in general these are categories of information or groups of people you will follow long term.

Efficiency Lists Are All About Speed and Engagement:

These lists save you time and have a short life span. For example if you’re attending a conference, you’ll want to set up a list of the key speakers, journalists, bloggers and people you want to follow at the event. You’ll also include a saved search on the designated hash tags. This lets you efficiently follow along with the digital conversation; retweet the good stuff; and keep a log of important items via favorites for post-conference blog posts or other write-ups. Really good conference organizers will set up lists in advance that you can subscribe to which include all the speakers, official press and conference accounts. Another type of efficiency list may be related to a topic you’re researching for a specific project. You’ll delete these lists once they’ve served their purpose.

Private Lists: If you wouldn’t walk up to a stranger at a cocktail party and start a conversation about a topic, then it goes on a private list.

Twitter allows you to mark a list as public meaning it is viewable from your Twitter profile or private which can only be seen by you. If you have a business list focused on monitoring the Twitter streams of your competitors or your employees, you may want to make that a private list and decide whether to actively follow them or just add them to the list in “lurk” status. Private lists are also good for interests that you consider personal – perhaps you follow motivational accounts (quotes of the day, scriptures, etc.) or expert advice that for a personal endeavor (New Year’s diet or a medical condition) or companies you may want to work for someday.

Social Media is Social so Public Lists Are a Great Way to Connect:

Adding people to a public list is a great way to build connections. Topical in nature, these lists can be viewed from your Twitter profile and others can subscribe to them. People are usually flattered to be added to a list and will send a thank you and may even promote your list or follow you as well. As an example, I have a list called Social Movers & Shakers that includes people who are leaders in social media; have interesting information to share; and whose perspectives I like to follow closely. I also look through the lists of some people I like to follow on Twitter and search for new people to follow or subscribe to their list to get all the updates on the topic.  If you want people to subscribe to your list, name it something interesting yet descriptive. Avoid the “Group #1, Group #2” naming because it isn’t socially interesting and doesn’t tell people about who is on the list. Rule of thumb here is to make public lists that connect to your personal brand.

A List for Everyone and Everyone in a List:

Put everyone you follow on a list. This helps you keep track of them by topic area and also to see if they add value over time or if not, you can easily un-follow. Lists help you balance whom you follow across topics to quickly see where you’re light on number of people you follow on a given topic so you can add more as well as where you follow too many to track well which may mean splitting the list in to sub-topics.

To put your list strategy into action, you’ll want to add a column for each list to your favorite Twitter tracking tool. Now you have the full radar, neatly organized so you can quickly scan for interesting items; engage in conversations; and not miss a tweet.

If you have list advice and favorite lists you follow on Twitter, please share so we can all benefit.

@KatrinaKlier

To make a big leap forward in business, your career or anything else you have to do one critical thing…. you have to actually leap. Choose your moment, start the momentum, aim at a landing spot and jump. Put that all together and you leap.

If you wait until you’re pushed by other forces be it the competition, regulation, company decisions, etc. then you end up stumbling at best; falling at worst and no one enjoys that. In theory, you would always leap. But no one has perfect foresight so you end up with a mix of leaps, stumbles and a few falls. The trick is to have mostly leaps which make you stronger to deal with the occasional stumble or fall.

Leaping requires preparation and agility. You have to have a basic idea of where you are and where you want to land even if you don’t know the exact spot. You need to think about paths to your desired landing as there is almost always more than one. You have to assess if you have the energy to make it there and if you don’t, find a way to gain the energy needed. Understanding your level of tolerated risk is also critical – how wobbly a landing can you withstand? You’ll need to be able to balance quickly and possibly leap again if need be which requires an active understanding of your environment and confidence in your abilities. Then you need the courage and conviction to jump and start the process.

Leaping well means being open to new information and constantly scanning your environment. Don’t be afraid to see what others don’t or can’t – some of the greatest ideas in history came from calculated leaps to landing places others could not see or were too afraid to try. Know what you do well and what you need help to do better and then get yourself that help. Calculate the risks, have a contingency plan and LEAP.

Leap with conviction. Leap with courage. Leap with a positive mindset – knowing you can sort out anything you need to.

But most importantly… LEAP.

Being paralyzed by fear of the unknown, fear of the competition, or fear of failure simply puts you in a position to be pushed. Once pushed you’ll likely stumble or fall and end up someplace you don’t want to be. Leaping is proactive and creates momentum. Stumbling or falling is reactive and puts you at the mercy of other forces.

Leaping well takes practice and that is easy enough to do. Start with a few small, calculated leaps. What can you leap in to today? Give it a try. You may find yourself leaping for joy.

I was at PubCon last week which is a very good show. It’s a geeks’ geek show about SEO and social media and a great place to network for new ideas. That said, one presentation really took me aback. A representative of an agency (name intentionally left out) did a “best practice” type presentation on hash tag hijacking. I was appalled.

For those of you unfamiliar with some of the black hat social media tactics, hash tag hijacking is like a repeated photo-bomb on a twitter hash tag, usually associated with a company or brand event. In the example presented, the agency represented a company that competed with one of Salesforce.com’s products. Salesforce was having an event and of course, being very active in social media, the company had set up some hash tags so people could follow along in person or virtually. Hash tags for events are a common and very good tactic. The agency in  question built a white paper on why their client’s product was better than Salesforce’s with a side by side comparison then proceeded to highly promote the download of the whitepaper by leveraging the hash tag from the event essentially hijacking the purpose and audience connected with the hash tag.

Did they get lots of impressions – yes.

Did they potentially get a lot of downloads – possibly yes.

Did they create a positive and lasting brand connection – doubtful.

Did the agency alienate some prospective clients – absolutely, me included.

Many forget that in social media the world is watching… always. There is no place to hide so HOW you engage is as important as WHAT you engage about. I’m a big advocate for organic social media growth because social media is about engagement, connections and conversations which are not quick hit things. If you want to buy impressions use more traditional media like TV, print or banner ads, not social media.

True there is a lot of debate about the time required to build organic growth in social media and the trade off of the stickiness of organic growth (usually stickier) vs the hit and miss of other tactics. If you want 10,000 Twitter followers very quickly, there are tools and services to do that but it’s a body count, not a quality community result. Like growth hormones in meat, you get nice fat chickens in a few days but the long term health effects of eating that chicken are not good. Black hat social media is the artificial growth hormone of communities and they won’t stay healthy very long. Do you really want your brand associated with that?

As a CMO and CEO it’s important to understand these tactics so you can ask good questions of your agencies and not end up in a situation you’ll later regret. Also, you’ll want to include guidance about hash tag hijacking in your employee social media policies so no one (with all good intentions for sure – people are proud of the products / services they make) decides to have some “fun” at the expense of your broader branding strategy.

So skip the hash tag hijack and earn your connections the old fashion way – by building value and connection. Your connections may be fewer in number, but they will be huge advocates for your brand and over time be some of your best customer recruiters possible.

Remember, the world is watching… always. Make sure you leave behind the brand impression you want.

Having typically inherited a brand with existing marketing efforts, building a digital footprint and then growing it is new territory for most CMOs. Let’s use an analogy for how to build a digital center of excellence in an existing company. The analogy is gardening. Yes, gardening because it has many of the same elements of growth and sustainability as digital marketing.

Here’s what you need for an excellent digital garden.

Soil: The business environment you operate in

Soil is the marketing elements and fundamentals plus the internal perception about them. You inherited a website that may be depleted of vital nutrients in the form of stale content or low repeat visitors. You may have rocks to dig out in the form of executives not fully on board with a push to digital. Or you may have some clay to break up in the form of skeptics who with a little more information can become a vital part of your digital soil. Take stock, note the nutrients you need to build a rich digital soil. Make a plan, work the plan.

Sunshine: The brand perception or range of actions you want to drive via digital

Sunshine varies by time of year, just like a brand perception changes through sales seasonality and product cycles. You need to understand the sunshine you are working with and how much sunshine your audiences want/need so you can plant content accordingly. Are you trying to really turn the tide and improve your brand value, then you need a lot of sunshine or a mix of broad and then audience-specifically deep digital engagement. Again, take stock and be specific. Digital allows you to mix a range of activities through very targeted efforts so use that to an advantage.

Plants: The content

Most people’s favorite part of gardening is selecting and planting the plants themselves. This is how your garden comes to life. Content is the planting of your digital garden. To have a year-round digital garden you need an editorial calendar that spans the seasons and is audience specific. Leave the air cover marketing to TV and perhaps the home page of your website. This is about being on the ground since air cover only works if it is tethered to something of value people can grab on to. That TV ad for beautiful roses doesn’t mean you can clip them now for a bouquet. So, what types of content and in what structure resonate most with your audience? Do they want roses to smell and give as a gift aka content to read and share?  Or vegetables to eat aka downloadable content and resources? Perhaps they want both. Do the research, test, plan, execute, taste/measure, iterate.

Water: Marketing your digital presence

Water brings nourishment to plants much like the promotion of your digital efforts brings visitors, viewers, fans and advocates to your digital content. So Tweeting that your new thought leadership article is available for download brings water to those who may be thirsty for this information. Water often and in proportion to what the content needs. The delivery is also important – do you need a sprinkler like Twitter? Or a watering can like Facebook? Or a drip system like email, RSS and newsletter subscribers? Not all plants need the same amount of water just like all content doesn’t need the same type of promotion. Test, measure, tweak and help your plants / content grow.

Tending: Weeding out the bad and adding more of the good.

Yes, you’ll need to pull some weeds in your digital garden. Weeds in the form of negative feedback to manage with a little weed spray or plants that are being unruly and need to be pulled like content that isn’t performing as needed. You’ll also need to turn the soil a bit by keeping your internal stakeholders informed and measuring the nutrient level through a variety of metrics so your digital garden stays healthy and enjoyable for your audiences.

You can add digital gravitas to any brand, just like you can plant a garden. You just need to understand the soil, sunshine, plants, water and how to tend your garden so your audiences can enjoy it over and over. Happy gardening!