There is lots of expensive, complicated, and sometimes fluffy stuff that can come into play later on, but I cringe when I hear entrepreneurs or product managers try to wash their hands of marketing altogether.  You can’t do it.  If you cannot communicate effectively why your product will help me, you don’t have a product.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s proceed.  You are probably making these mistakes.  I feel pretty confident in saying this, because I am making these mistakes even though I write about this stuff all the frickin’ time.  So this is a reminder to me and a kick in the pants to you to go do what you know you should be doing.

Not explaining how you’re different from your competitor / the leader in your space

Do you know who you should be differentiating yourself from? If you’re in a resegmented or new market, you may think you have no competition.  Wrong.  There is some alternative – if customers were not using your product, what would they be using?  If you don’t know, do some customer interviews.  (The answer may be a product that you think is totally different, or it may be a manual/offline solution.)

Are you effectively explaining how you’re different? Talk to 3 power-user and 3 semi-novice customers and ask them “how would you explain to a friend how our product is different from [competitor]?”   Are their responses factually accurate?  Are their responses similar?  If so, you’re doing a great job.  If your power users can explain the difference but your novice customers can’t, you need to find the explanations that work.

How I’m working on this right now: a couple of face-to-face customer interviews where I try to explain the difference between us and the competitor (over coffee, people are much more forgiving of you rambling).  I watch for the phrases where I see a light go off in their eyes, or where they are prompted to interject with a question, and I write those down.  After three face-to-face interviews, I have a list of concepts that I think are worth pursuing.

My next step will be to cull those into 2 or 3 sets of bullet points, and build a few quick-and-dirty landing pages.  I’ll show those to people and ask them if they understand how we’re different from our competitor.   Note that I haven’t mentioned A/B testing – in this case, I prefer to start with qualitative feedback, because the goal I’m after is understanding, not a numerical conversion.

Not using your customers’ own words to describe your benefits

Where are customers getting value from your product? It may not be where you expect.  Ask the people who are regular customers, paying customers, why they like your product.  The way they describe your benefits is the language that will resonate with other people.

When I was at Yodlee, we were pretty sure that the benefits of our personal financial management product were: being able to see all of your financial information in one place, being able to see where your money was going, being able to see if you were saving more than you were spending.  When we asked customers what they valued most, one answer rose to the top: “I feel like I have a sense of control over my money.”

We never would’ve come up with that – and personally, I thought it sounded too marketing-speak/new Age-y – but when we put that messaging on our splash pages, more visitors were interested enough to continue past the homepage, and a higher percentage converted despite a fairly long registration process.

How I’m working on this right now: Currently, doing some interviews with active customers; will be launching a mini-survey soon that only appears for logged-in, returning users, to ask them how they’d describe the value they’re getting from us.

Not asking customers to tell others about your product

There are two Mac apps that I paid for, use every day, and love.  (Curio, for sketching and brainstorming; and PTH Pasteboard, for remembering the last 100 things you ‘copied’)  Whenever the subject arises, I’ll eagerly recommend them – but people don’t ask that often.

These companies are missing out – because if they just asked, I would happily tweet about them, write a review, refer a friend.  But like most companies, they don’t ask.

Even if you think word-of-mouth recommendations aren’t going to bring in a huge number of new customers, there are two reasons why you should encourage happy customers to spread the word.  First, it brings good search engine juju – when people are searching for your company, don’t you want them to see happy tweets and reviews along with your corporate info?  Second, it reinforces customers’ happiness – once you recommend something, you actually feel more positively about it (thanks to a neat psychological effect called post-decision dissonance).

Something as simple as a link that says “Are you happy with [product]?  Tell your network!” that pre-fills a Twitter post would be easy to implement for just about any site.

Who has done this brilliantly: Dropbox.  Good article by @pricing on their referral and pricing process: http://www.pricingwire.com/home/2009/5/7/referral-and-pricing-lessons-from-dropbox-beta.html

How I’m working on this right now: Currently building a “refer a friend” workflow similar to Dropbox for our new KISSinsights product.  I’m also collecting customers’ descriptions of why they like the product and planning to whittle those down to “easily-retweetable” sound bites.

Did you learn something new from this blog post today?  Tell your network!

My experience has been similar to the author’s – lots of my Groups have 0 comments, 0 discussions.  But I don’t think that’s an unfixable problem or that the door has shut on groups.  I do think LinkedIn has to zero in more precisely on the function they want Groups to accomplish.

First of all, there are two types of groups that I’ve identified on LinkedIn:

• Institution-centered groups (i.e. ex-Yodlee, Harvard alumni)
• Activity-centered groups (Interaction Designers Association)

I’m not sure that the organization-centered groups have a viable life as active, communicating social networks.  It’s useful to see job updates (your former co-worker was just promoted to VP as his new job) or to remind you that you do have a contact at Company X that you’re applying to – but for richer interaction there are many alternatives – Yammer for inside the corporate walls, Facebook for coworkers that are more like friends, Twitter for more granular status updates.

Activity-centered groups are where LinkedIn should capitalize.  And the first step in doing so, is to humbly realize that LinkedIn is not the destination.  People are smart and leave professional “fingerprints” everywhere; LinkedIn needs to be able to find those fingerprints and affix them to their Group discussions, their LinkedIn Answers, and their profile.

This isn’t a new concept – BackType is doing exactly this (you can subscribe to my BackType feed to see my comments all over the web).  But LinkedIn has the advantage of location – I don’t expect future hiring managers to look up my BackType, but they will be looking at my LinkedIn profile and the more rich a picture I can paint of how I think and respond to ideas, the better.

Imagine the following: You set up a group on LinkedIn and people start joining.  Then, you can configure the Group to automatically pick up the RSS feed for your email discussion list and your Flickr feed.  You could allow individual members to upload their BackType feed and their RSS feeds.  Now your LinkedIn Group has automatic traffic, relevant traffic, and it becomes part of everyone’s individual professional profiles.

You’d probably have to allow individual granularity (i.e. allow users to exclude certain posts, or opt-out of the automatic reposting), but there would also be the potential for greater sharing (people may want that brilliant mailing list post they read to be available to everyone, not just their Group).

We’re in a new era: never before have participation levels been so high in sharing, commenting, writing, and conversing.  But it’s scattered among dozens of sites and services.  The time has passed for any one social network to be the “king” who claims all the content (despite what Facebook would have you believe), but there’s still the opportunity for one (or several) services to be the best aggregators.  No one is in a better spot than LinkedIn to capture the “professional personal branding” crown.

Is this a surprise to anyone?

“Not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company email, and messageboard posts.” (People Don’t Trust Company Blogs)

The Forrester report goes on to encourage ways in which companies can make their blogs more relevant and more genuine, to try and reclaim some of that goodwill.

My thought is: not that many companies are interesting enough to merit a blog.

If you have an eloquent CEO or group product manager or other evangelist in-house, that’s not a problem.  But I’m guessing more often blog content is generated in the same way as it was at one of my past companies: “Intern, write a bunch of blog posts and date them every week or so.”  This is how company blogs end up with rehashed press releases or a description of the in-house poker tournament last month.

No, I don’t really care who went all-in, unless it was the CEO and that’s your way of telling us you’re going under next week.

Blogs imply timeliness and consistency in a way that other communication channels don’t.  People expect to see three, four, or six months between press releases.  If they see a blog with the last entry three months in the past, they assume it’s been abandoned.

So you need to post often.  And it has to be good.

Forrester says, please don’t stop blogging.  I say, don’t focus on the solution, focus on the problem you’re trying to solve.

Preview new functionality: not sure a blog post is the best way to communicate this, especially if you’re seeking feedback.  I’ve liked the experience of seeing a few screenshots or a quick demo in the context of a short survey.  It makes me like my consumer input may actually be listened to and acted upon.

Transparency, AKA Admitting You Were Wrong: if it was serious and affects a majority of customers, it deserves homepage billing.  If it affected only a portion of customers and you know the damage is contained, communication via email – quickly – may be your best bet.  You may not want unaffected people to know about an issue that will never affect them.

Community: This may be blogger heresy, but I think a blog is a terrible way to build community. As conversation goes, it’s incredibly one-sided.  Company talks, people can only really comment on the topics you raise.  At Yodlee, we had a bulletin board for our customers, and that gave us incredibly open commentary from our users. (Sometimes harsh and hard-to-stomach commentary, but you can’t shy away from listening.  The truth can be hard!)

A human face / Personality: This is great when it works, a la 37Signals.  You get a true sense of their personality, the way they think and listen and learn.  But I don’t think it’s always even appropriate.

My work with usability testing and financial software taught me that people don’t want to think of their bank as “human”.  Sure, they want to talk to a human when they have a problem.  But they’d prefer to think that anything involving their money is automatic, regulated, infallible.

You have to ask: does being “human” differentiate you?  Is it a reason why a customer would choose you over your competition?  If you’re a housekeeper or a tax consultant or you sell baby clothes, probably yes.  If you sell pacemakers or provide plumbing services… maybe not so much.  The one place where I think everyone needs to be “human” is their Careers section – but again, the solution to that problem is not a blog.

“If you want to be a thought leader and helper for your customers, and you blog frequently about those customers’ problems and solutions, then you can generate trust. This takes time and effort, but it will enhance your company’s reputation and it’s worth it.”

In the end, I don’t disagree with this.  But please, no more pocket queens and a third queen on the flop.

–

Update: Janet Fouts writes along similar lines, with Facebook May Not Be Right for Your Business.

Who could resist finding out what “a bunch of stuff” is?

What do these things have in common? They’re all false conversation starters – companies offering up some information to reel customers in, then clamming up when customers want to respond or dig deeper.

Very web 1.0 – heck, very pre-web:

• Highly structured: constrained formats, language, and/or length limit creativity. (Customer: “Read one, you’ve read them all.”)
• Suspiciously positive: only successes are socially acceptable in these formats (Customer: “Hmm.. what aren’t they telling me?”)
• Emphasizing the uneven relationship: you only know what we want to tell you (Customer: “I guess they don’t value my input…”)
• Infrequent and static: you only get information when we have enough to it to publish, and then it never changes (Customer: “Is this still relevant?”)

It’s time to give them a social makeover.

And by social, I don’t mean “Company X has thrown a sheep at you!” I mean utilizing social media in exactly the way that it differs from pre-web media: embracing the absence of structure, providing useful information, and offering a venue for listening and responding back.

Toolbox: Get Started

• Reserve your company, product, trademark Twitter usernames (whether you think you’ll use it or not).
• Take the next logical step and reserve your company name at the major free email services as well as the major free blogging sites like TypePad and WordPress. (If you ever have an email outage, you’ll appreciate being able to send out emails from companyx at gmail.com instead of your personal address.
• Create some extra email addresses (suggestions@, research@, productname@).
• Carve out some website space where you can easily update content (if you can’t get edit access to www.yourcompanyname.com, see if you can host content at a secondary site like moreinfo.yourcompanyname.com or make use of the TypePad or WordPress site you just registered).
• Find an automated reminder system that works for your email habits (Outlook tasks, or a site like Remember The Milk or Backpack).
• Set up a free online survey account with SurveyMonkey (if you want your own branding and ability to receive lots of results, it’s well worth the $200/year for the professional subscription).
• Mac users, familiarize yourself with the built-in screen capture functionality. Windows users, go buy a copy of SnagIt

Now you’re ready to upgrade your communications.

The Job Posting

I’ve never heard a company say that they’re seeking out mediocre employees, and yet most companies have decidedly mediocre job postings. I’ve written about my experiences trying to craft a better job description before, but here are some more ideas on making your posting stand out:

Make information about the company and products readily available.
List the hiring manager and their LinkedIn profile.
Public transit friendly? In a cool metro area? Show it off.
OK, so few companies can match Google’s 20% free-time projects, but can employees choose a conference to attend each year? Pick their own computer system? Get all the free work-related books they can buy?

If you’re not comfortable publishing all of that information 100% publicly, you can always make it available only to applicants who have submitted their resume. Automate an email response (“Thank you for submitting your resume”) that includes a URL and password where they can get this information.

The Press Release

Regarding the press release itself, here are some good starting points from people more expert than myself:

Die! Press release! Die die die! (Silicon Valley Watcher)

Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes. Often they will contain quotes from C-level executives praising their customer focus. They often contain praise from analysts, (who are almost always paid or have a customer relationship.)

The social media release (PR 2.0):

The social media release is not a miracle pill to cure the ills of poorly written press releases. It is merely a tool that is most effective when combined with a strategic arsenal of relevant company blog posts, traditional releases, relationships, and an emerging category of press releases that tell a story (written by people for people using SEO to reach them).

For startup companies, the bigger issue may be the pressure to be newsworthy. You just don’t have that many “press release-worthy” events per year. But there are many more small milestones that would interest your early adopters and die-hard users. A company blog is a good way to keep users informed, but even writing short, unstructured blog posts can take more time than you have, and you don’t want a stale blog – that’s almost worse than not having one.

Enter Twitter. If you were wondering what it’s good for, this is it. There’s a lot you can say in 140 characters, but not so much that it’ll take more than a minute to craft it. Things like:

• Great blog post about us over at [URL]
• Redesign sketches online at [URL] give us your feedback!
• Interested in beta testing new product version? [EMAIL]
• Version x.x available for download now [URL]

Or any indirectly related quote or article that you enjoyed. You’re building a personality so that your users can relate to you (and cut you some slack when the inevitable thing goes wrong). Don’t feel pressured to update your status on Twitter every day. Try weekly, and until you make it a regular habit, set up an online reminder so you build consistency

SuggestionBox is a small company that uses Twitter really well.

The Team Page

Every company has a page with one-paragraph bios of their executive team. Current role, past companies, degrees and alma mater. The only things that vary across companies are the names and whether or not they included pictures. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been particularly curious about where Company X’s CEO got their bachelor’s degree. When I visit a “our team” page, it’s with one of these goals:

• I’m angry about a bad experience and want to vent/escalate…
• I’m interested in buying supplies/products from this company and need to talk…
• I have detailed questions about the product technology and need to talk…
• I’m interested in working for this company and doing due diligence…

…and none of these goals will be met. Recognize that my next step is going to be to hit Google, LinkedIn, review forums, whatever it takes. Embrace the information that’s already out there. Your “team” page should list:

• LinkedIn profiles for the entire management team
• Other social network profiles (but only for those folks who actively maintain and interact with them)
• Contact information for each product or service, as well as a generic suggestions address

This last one is particularly interesting – realistically, if I want to know about Product X, the CEO isn’t the person to ask – she or he is just not going to be down in the guts of the product. (Unless you’re a 1-2 person company).

I’d love to see a company list productx@companyname.com, productz@companyname.com, etc. email addresses so I could send questions or suggestions directly to the individual most likely to be able to respond.

If you have a critical mass of users, take it the next step farther and let them talk to each other. My current company hosts a messageboard where any user can register and post questions, issues, suggestions. It can be painful to read when the critical feedback reaches a fever pitch, but it’s not like not listening will make it go away.

Recognize that your messageboard will skew ugly-negative sometimes. It will often skew towards a certain type of user (typically early-adopter, power-user, brusque, knowledgable, passionate, helpful). And your job is not to be defensive. Your job is to listen, answer questions factually, and proactively communicate change.

This is just the tip of the iceberg – there are tons of opportunities to evolve your communication channels from icebreakers to ongoing conversations. For a lot more interesting ideas, check out these articles:

The Ritz-Carlton mystique (great service and communications in the mostly offline space)

PR Secrets for Startups

Writing Better Help Wanted Ads

Old Media Still Needs to Get Over Its Control Issues

An acquaintance of mine is starting a new job board for software product managers and marketers. Her angle? Submit a job posting and you’ll get feedback on how to make it more compelling. I love it.

Take your average rockstar candidate (as though there were such a thing!) – if a recruiter calls them up with an opportunity, what is their first question going to be?

Why should I work here?

Can you answer that?

Look at your company through the eyes of a job applicant:

• Google your company to see what the first impressions are
• Visit your company website – is it attractive and up-to-date?
• Visit the “careers” section of your company website – does it answer the important “Why should I work here?” question?
• Search job boards to find other companies who are advertising for the same position. Print out their job descriptions and put them side by side with yours. Is yours more interesting? Easier to skim? Does it direct the job applicant to where they can find out more about you?

Most hiring managers won’t have any control over the content of the company homepage – that’s why the job description is so vitally important.

When I was hiring for an interaction designer, I thought to myself, Why would a great designer want to work here versus somewhere else? I jotted down what I loved about our culture, skimmed through the Interaction Designers mailing list I’m on and read designers’ frustrations, and I read through my folder of “happy emails”. (I strongly recommend all product managers and designers have a mail folder where you keep all the positive feedback from your users – some days you’ll need it.)

I wrote a “Why work here” section with 4 bullet points. Then I sent it to some co-workers and asked for their feedback and tweaked it a bit. I sent it to HR to make sure it was kosher, then added it to the rest of the qualifications/overview section. I emailed the whole thing to myself, to see how long it was in an email window, and then trimmed it a bit as a result.

In total, it probably took me an extra four hours of active time versus just going with the generic description. I consider that a non-trivial amount of time. It also landed me with a terrific candidate within a week, one who chose us over several competing offers. Time well spent!