6 divided by 2 ways to start the fixing process.

I don’t know how it happened, but last night I was watching CSPAN while the president and CEO of Toyota defended the Toyota brand in front of congress. While I was emphatically un-impressed by some of the representatives of congress and their professionalism towards the matter, I must say that I felt quite the opposite of Akio Tayoda, president and CEO of Toyota. IMO, he was very poised and professional while addressing what I thought were disrespectful and despicable “I am running for re-election” questioning from some member of the congressional panel. As a “marketer” who so often deals with PR issues our clients face, it begs the question of how do companies get themselves out of a PR mess.

The way I look at it, your brand is like being married…as a guy, sometimes you are just going to forget a birthday or a valentines day, unless you are one of “those guys”. There are times when you may have to work your way back off the couch.

#1 . Gain empathy

Like many [insert number here] step programs, the first and foremost step is to gain the empathy of your audience by recognizing that you are aware of the problem at hand. What this does is establish an emotional connection with your audience that helps you to gain their attention for what you have to say next. Usually, depending on the audience, people want to know that you care about their feelings and “admitting guilt” is a way of saying “I don’t want to bullshit you.” However, don’t be all negative, highlight the good of your brand without being obnoxious.

#2. Road map to regaining trust

Now that people know you are aware of the problem, the next step is to patch things up. This can be done by establishing a road map to making things better. “Over the next [insert realistic period here], we will address your concerns by [insert steps here].” This establishes a clear goal for your audience on which to measure your performance. People consciously and subconsciously love to compare so playing to that tendency will be in your benefit. The pressure here comes with hitting those goals and this leads me to my last point…

#3. Be transparent with your actions

Fixing the issues you are having in a black box may fix the issue, but it will not fix your audience’s perception. With this in mind, if you become transparent with the steps you are taking to fix the issues, then your audience will see that you are committed to regaining their trust which will in turn play on their empathy.

Of course, in PR there are many steps to helping a brand in mayday, and each solution may have its own approach. Can anyone say Tiger Woods?

Don’t just read… contribute. What’s your take on the matter?

If you are like us, you constantly check your web stats, email metrics and other Key Performance Indicator data to help figure out how your online efforts are being received. Hopefully I don’t have to stress the importance of being borderline obsessed with doing this. In fact, if I have to stress that, then you and I really need to have a little sit down. Metrics is the Grand Puba of learning. You may not be aware of it, but your brain auto-magically collects and analyze you life’s metrics in order to help you develop and even more primitively, to survive. In short, data is your friend. If you don’t know what is or isn’t working, then chances are you are fishing with dynamite, and while one could argue that it is a good approach to catching a lot of fish…and thus a terrible analogy, I would argue that all you create is a mangled mess.

Like many companies in our current economy, we are being super aggressive with our online branding efforts, so we have three maybe even four different types of campaigns running at all the times.  How do we keep track of them all? and better yet, how do we know which ones to keep running.

So you waited, now here is the sweet, sweet nugget. Drumroll…

KEEP A MARKETING JOURNAL AND RECORD EVERYTHING.

You laugh?! This may sound strange, but one of the first things we did at corner6labs was to keep a marketing journal. This seems like a no-brainer to us, but we have yet to say, “We keep a marketing journal” to someone and the don’t look at us as if we just punched a baby. Keeping a marketing journal helps us narrow down the answer to that elusive question…what the hell happened on Nov 6th. Looking over your blog traffic, your email metrics, your website metrics, will do you no good if you don’t know what you did to earn those numbers.

The other side of having all-that-metrics  is knowing what to actually do with it…but as I said, one thing for you today, so that answer may lie in a phone call.

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever

6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today

6 Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Lesson Six: It’s All in the Attitude (6 part series. This is part 6. Scroll down to find the rest)

6 Reasons You Should Invest in Internet Marketing During the Recession

6 Tips to Succeed in Social Media

And last but not least…

6 Tips for Crystal Clear Home Brewed Beer

Hey, don’t forget to drop your 6 cents in the comment box below.

Websites, Web Apps, Social media, viral marketing, Online brand promotions, Marketing automation… Yeah…that’s our forte. Drop us a line

With Thanksgiving holiday coming up next week, and Christmas just around the corner…one usually finds that many companies will disappear all together from social media. It’s understandable how this can happen, employees run off to their families and get caught up in the holiday spirit, but let’s not forget to feed the bird while you are away. Now don’t get me wrong, family time is important time, but consider this, if you have down time, so will your prospects… and a lot of time, that down time translates to online time. So here are 6 ways to keep the bird fat while basting the turkey.

One. Designate, then delegate. If you are small or medium business that already has your employees involved in your online community, ask them to contribute over the holiday. (Hint) Having a little incentive to do that will also help.

Two. Set a schedule. Designate at least 20 minutes each day to find, connect, and contribute to your community. This will show that you are actually in the driver’s seat for your brand and just because it’s the holiday, doesn’t mean you lose control.

Three. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal. This one is tricky because you don’t want to get too personal, like say tweeting about how bad your wife’s turkey turned out, but giving a little high level info on your do-abouts won’t hurt either.

Four. Try to set your conversations on auto-pilot. You can accomplish this by explicitly asking for comments and feedback on the stuff you post. Once the conversation gets going on its own, you won’t have to ignore your family the entire time.

Five. Take the time to learn about how your competitors approach “down time”. You should always be learning about your competitors and the holidays are no exception.

Six. Don’t get consumed. I said keep a pulse, but don’t let it consume you. Your family demands just as much time as your consumers so ignoring them may not work out too well for you.

In conclusion, showing your consumers that you are always ready and able to listen to them, even when “the man” closes business, will show that you are in the driver’s seat for your brand and will give you a major competitive advantage.

Don’t forget to visit our Facebook fan page to drop your 2 cents @ cornersix.com/facebook. Enjoy your cranberry sauce!

Now back to the matter at hand. In my last post, I started talking about a topic that seems to get the better of people on a daily basis, planning.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not professing that I am the dilai lama when it comes to planning, but I have picked up a few tricks here and there over the years (as a side note, I am quickly approaching my 31st birthday as of this writing….scary stuff). I must admit that from a programmers perspective and with the fast adoptions of methodologies such as “Agile Development“, my planning techniques have been tweeked here are there, and though this series is not particualary specific to application devlopment planning, the underlying concepts remained the same. I think this is a good time to introduce todays tip:

Scenario Planning

When planning, you should always develop outcomes or scenarios. This means that you have to ask yourself, whats the best that can happen?, whats the worst that can happen? and even some things in between. Many skeptics think this is an indicator of paranoia, but ask yourself, shouldn’t you be a little paranoid if what you are planning for is important?

If you borrow from the logical IF…ELSE operators in most programming languages, creating scenarios using this form will prove invaluable in the future. Think in outcomes and steps. What are the possible outcomes of my mission? IF everything doesn’t go right, THEN, How can I adjust? Write them down in short note form.

Now, I know you can’t possibly plan every scenario, but having an idea of how you will react to an outcome will make it easier to adapt and achieve a graceful outcome. Having these scenarios in mind, and outlining the steps to achieve what you want to achieve, will result in a critical part of any mission (desired outcome), your tactics.

Number 1 – Map It Out!…Mind-Map that is

You may have already heard of the term “Mind Mapping” but have never explored it.  According to Wikipedia,  “A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea“. There have been times that I have used some form of mind mapping technique, but I recently discovered a set of methodologies and free tools related to the subject.

Mind Mapping helps you organize your thoughts into a very powerful visual representation of a central idea. You start with a central keyword or phrase and branch out to related items for that keyword.

As a developer, the concept of mind mapping followed nicely with the way I have always done the preliminary architecture of an application, or even how I approach Object Oriented Programming through class definition. In fact, I recently applied the mind mapping technique while ideating (I term I first heard on an IBM commercial) classes for an application I am building. By focusing on one class, and one class only per map, you can derive the functionality you need to encapsulate within that class. From there, it was pretty easy to know the methods required to make the class work.

With the use of dedicated mind-mapping software, I was able to use the fact that I am a visual person, which for me, translated into more efficient planning sessions.

Here are some of the other reasons I like software based mind-mapping

1. I can ideate visually
2. Easy to learn
3. You can personalize them
4. Digital format for easy archiving and retrieval

There are many uses of mind maps, and when used properly can turn you into a mean planning machine.

Do you have comments on ways to be more efficient with planning? Drop me a comment. Let me know

So with the ground work out of the way, now down to the real topic at hand. You launched a great web application, or software as a service, whatever you want to call it, and now you are thinking, we need to keep our clients engaged, we need to add more features. IMHO, trying to engage your customers by adding more features is like fishing with dynamite, you might get more fish but hey will be all wrangled and dismembered (for the record, I hav elways hated that term). If anything , you should be looking to simplify your application. This aint field of dreams, if you built it, they won’t come, but if you make it usefully simple and simply useful, they will flock to you like 14 year-old-chicks to the Backstreet Boys, who by the way apparently have a new album…what?…why are you looking at me like that?

Before you go putting another sardine in your application tin can, consider the following:

• Ask yourself, is a feature addition necessary/ is it a preemptive strike. Your application can’t be stagnant I know, but simpler changes can make a big difference. Changes such as themes or layouts or simplifying the process to complete an action can make you look like a genius.
• Don’t spend time building, spend time learning. Find out what the pains are from your customer….Hint, they really do know best. Surveys and feedback sites such as Get Satisfaction can help you make your application more customer centric..and trust me, that’s all the rave these days.
• Always have an application log, and check it always. Your server logs can tell you a whole lot about how your clients use you application and besides, working out those very quiet bugs that just rare their ugly heads every now and then is way more important that adding a jet pack to your app.
• Check with your marketing department, find out what keywords make you pop up in search results. No, I am not saying build your app away from your core services, I am saying make sure you know what the craze so you don’t miss out on opportunities. Make of that what you will.
• Is my interface crisp, clean and inviting. Can users get to what they need in 3 clicks or less.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of do’s and dont’s for your app, all I want to do is give you pause. With cooler technology comes greater expectations on how to use it.

KISS ..google that $#iT

define("APPLICATION_NAME","v1.0");

If you have defined your config settings withing a class, you can use the “const” keyword

Then you can check for the constant in your child view files like this:

if(!defined("APPLICATION_NAME")){ exit("invalid view setup"); }

Its is a very simple test but it has proved to be effective time and time again.