Seven Ways to be More Easily Discovered

Publishers are slowly waking up to the fact that their “greatest challenge” “in the digital age” is discoverability,

notes Laura Hazard Owen. Yet what she writes is increasingly true for almost any kind of business or other organization, whether it yet sells online or not.

To be more easily discovered, hone  these seven traits:

1. Be the easiest to find on any screen, from online to mobile apps -- created by others or by your business. Increasingly those are the first two places we look for something. Theninvolve others in your story so they can become part of it, remix it and tell others, as Peter Gruber suggests.  That makes it more discoverable.

That’s why Bertlesman-owned Random House bought interactive, Smashing Ideas - to involve people more deeply in their content so they would share it and learn and make happy memories - with others.

And that’s why the collaborative video editing community, Stroome is rapidly growing. It enable people to share and remix video, often turning it into something greater they want to share. Imagine partnering with one or more people there to co-create a video related to your content. TEDxUSC, for example, partnered with Stroome to create a video scavenger hunt for their event. 

2. Be the most recommended online. What specific kinds bragging rights and other benefits accrue to those who tout your organization? Keep finding more ways to reward authentic, high-quality testimonials.

3. Host the most popular online community for people to share and compare ideas on why and how to use the products or services they can get from you. This isn’t relevant to some businesses yet it is to any that sell a variety of products or services from multiple vendors. Plus any member-based group from clubs to civic groups and professional associations.

4. Offer a Netflix-like feature that also allows buyers, renters or members to make recommendations and to easily see what is most popular with those who share your tastes. Enable recommenders to make their name visible, if they wish, so they can build reputation as they can at GoodReads or, more simply, via a “Like” feature. Such social features generate value for the host of the online community as well as for the most popular contributors.

According to Paid Content, Google eBookstore appears to be planning a Netfix-like e-book rental service. Your business, too, can become more discoverable and can keep people involved using a recommendation system that builds participants’ reputations.

Recommendation systems that build reputations also makes clubs and other non-profits and causes more discoverable and valuable. Use it to attract more kinds of support, and to hone your mission and model of service in ways that supporters show they most value.

5. Sell More Digital Content

If you sell content of any kind, turn it digital, if you haven’t yet done so. If you sell a physical product, sell and/or give away related guides, games, situation-specific advice and sponsor online contests to pull the best advice out experts who sell to the same kind of people, your current or prospective customers or suppliers.

Offer prizes, from your business and from others who want to reach your kind of customer. Make the names of winners highly visible on your site, not just when they win but forever. Shine a spotlight on them in other parts of their lives and reflect in the glow of expanded exposure for everyone. Do this by asking participants, “ What other organizations and individuals shall we notify when you win?”

6. Adopt the Easiest Way to Sell the Same Content to More People

Translate your content (guide, reference, course, etc.) into other languages. That may appear obvious yet here’s the facts that may spur you to act sooner, if you have not already: Barnes & Noble’s foreign-language e-books are now growing faster than their sales of English e-books—increasing over 100 percent each month, according to Patricia Arancibia who manages international content for the bookseller. That’s a strong indication there may be pent-up demand for other kinds of content, from vocation-specific learning course material to product ordering catalogues.

For starters, try Spanish. 50.5 million Hispanics live in the United States, according to the 2010 census. That’s 16.3% of the population and more than half of our nation's growth in past decade.

7. Provide the Best Value and Price in Real Time

Establish the capacity to swiftly change prices. Writes Owen, “When Perseus Books Group set out to learn more about pricing, Joe Mangan, COO, said they realized how little they knew about it: ‘Online retailers were repricing books every two or four hours.’”

8. Enable People to Get Something Done Better, Faster and Easier -- so More People Choose to Do it

Join forces with other businesses and organizations that serve the same situation. For example many people would enjoy a flower garden or other landscaping around their home or on their condo balcony. Yet more people might get one if the service was seamless. That is, they could go online, guided by experts and other user recommendations to buy the native plants that work best in their area.

Some might also want to have a landscape plan drawn up, one that includes a checklist of what to buy. Clicking to another part of the online community buyers might select the nursery, delivery options and gardeners to plant and/or maintain the garden – plus related professionals, from fence and patio makers to arborists. Such an online community enables buyers to make smarter decisions faster.

Happy buyers --- and the vendors that serve them – may proudly post online their dramatic “before and after” photos. Most active recommenders and/or biggest spenders may get bonus gifts from one or more of the participating suppliers that gain visibility by making offers that cite those gifts.

Such a local online community might be hosted by a national firm that makes, say, plant food. That corporation might have a templated online community design built that can be modified for different locales. The corporation hosts the online community for local nurseries, landscapers and gardeners to join, as well as for the individuals they seek to serve. The company gains visibility as the major underwriter and manager of the online community. It could post legal language to prevent liability from the members’ information or service provided. It would provide, multiple online ways for buyers and providers to offer ideas and recommendations.

What are other online methods to make an organization more discoverable? I’d love to hear your real life examples and your “what-if” dream scenarios. 

Share ideas with me on Twitter at @kareanderson

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

Host an Online Community Around Your Passionate Interest

Dog lovers, civic-minded coders, Civil War buffs and cyclists have two things in common.

They are ardent about their special interest and thus they are more likely to be active in an online community.

They want to share their experiences and know-how with others who feel as passionate as they do about their special interest.

Some want more.  They’d like to lead like-mind folks or to team-up around shared experiences and/or accomplish something greater related to their interest.

Like hosting the hottest party everyone wants to attend, why not start the most popular online community that best serves the people who share your passionate interest? Like you, they are intrinsically motivated to meet, demonstrate expertise, learn from each other and belong to a tribe around their hot interest.  In hosting an online community you can accelerate your learning and friendships  — with others.

1.  Delight members in ways that attract funding from company sponsors

A. Such sponsors could, instead of providing traditional advertising, make special offers of free products “available to members-only” to those who are willing to give feedback on those products.

B. Company sponsors can also provide eCoupon-based prizes for winners of members-only contests.

For example, start an online community for kayakers where they vote, each month for their favorite, member-contributed tips related to themed contests such as best dinner-by-the-river meals. All members get a set number of votes. The top ten most popular contributors in each contest might get eCoupon prizes from REI, Trader Joe’s and others.

Providing eCoupons as prize providers is one of the most compelling, credible and cost-effective ways for companies to be visible in key niche markets and to pull winners through their doors, perhaps getting something else they see, as they redeem their coupons.

Such contests serve you as community host because they:

•  Attract new members

• Keep members engaged

• Inspire members to contribute high-quality, relevant tips

• Attract bloggers and your kind of media coverage as contests announcements are inherent news hooks

• Increase the total prize value over time as more members participate, creating a virtuous circle of ever larger membership and prize value.

2. Make your community top-of-mind in your niche

Here’ are four ways to become the go-to place for the people you want to attract and involve in your community.

Make your community the:

1. Only group serving your kind of interest, and/or
2. Biggest
3. Most exclusive
4. Best at something such as hosting a conference, fair, tradeshow, speed consulting or other kind of event.
   

Alternatively your community might be designed to offer and attract the best content or unique and valued service.

Here’s two examples:

1. Some fractional ownership sites morph into communities as individuals become acquainted via sharing. People may share rarely-used tools or other objects atDIYFractional. The natural next step is for those local communities to get networked, creating, for example,NeighborhoodGoods.

Others meet online to share specific, big ticket items including second homes, luxury cars or motorcycles, and evenjets. Common interests and conversation beget community. See how you can adapt one kind of community design or purpose to serve another?

2. SheSpeaks provides a community of women with free samples of products that interest them in exchange for providing candid, specific feedback to the makers of those products.

Of course it helps to be the best at several things – for the people in your community.  Be the best place to:

•  Get answers, referral and/or recommendations

•  Buy and sell

•  Collectively advocate

•  Start a smaller special group within the larger community

•  Collaborate in some specific way that is facilitated in the community:

-       Cross-consult

-        Co-create a tip sheet, fundraiser, for-members-only service, product to sell, etc.

-        Crowdsource your niche

http://www.feverbee.com/2011/04/positioning.html

Can you imagine hosting an online gathering place related to your interest? It could be pro bono work, as your service to that community. Alternatively it could be your self-organized moonlighting job, perhaps in partnership with others — or it might morph into a full-time calling or job.

If you’d like to explore these possibilities,  here’s some places to learn more about cultivating an active, online community. For interviews, tips and strategies about community management for all kinds of communities, visitThe Community Roundtable hosted by Rachel Happe and Jim Storer. For pithy, practical tips see Rich Milligan atFeverbee, Managing Communities’ author Patrick O’Keefe and community strategist Angela Connor. If your interest relates to a cause or non-profit there’s  no better place to start than at Beth Kanter’s blog. If you want your online community boost your company ties to key stakeholders, see Connie Bensen.

And, since community-building is all about specific, apt ways to collaborate see this  collaboration daily paper curated from over 100 experts — and create your own community-centered paper.

Also peruse these lists of collaboration-related resources and books and tools, where you can add your own favorites — and create your own community-attracting list. For non-profit communities Beth Kanter’s blog is a great place to start. Connie Benson has insights about company-centered community management. Follow Kare on Twitter at @kareanderson

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

How We Can Savor Discovery, Learning and Inventing Together

Haven't some of your most meaningful memories been of times when you accomplished something greater with others? Didn't it bring you closer in the flow of camaraderie - even when someone in your group didn't act right - like you?'

What we learn from those times is vital in an information-flooded, connected world - and that's a good thing.

The most common and satisfying ways we learn and invent are not from sitting in a classroom seat being taught or trained. The world is too complex and fluid now to keep up with everything all by yourself.

That doesn't mean that we aren't sought-after for our mastery of a topic or skill. It simply means we stay relevant when we engage in projects with diverse others, learning and experimenting as we go. Like children we still learn best by observing, imitating, re-mixing, making fresh mistakes and, most of all, by playing and using our imagination - with others.

That's why the book, A New Culture of Learning, by John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas, two long time lovers of social learning-by-doing is so relevant today -- for students of all ages, in school, at work and involved with the causes and projects that most matter to us.

While their book is aimed at transforming learning in schools every concept I read can be equally applied to any part of our lives - lived well with others. If you'd like to see the next chapters of your life as the kind of adventure story you co-create with others and want a bigger voice in the role you play - literally - read and share this book with those you think will make engrossing, imaginative playmates.

Some of my favorite quotes from this book:

• The new culture of learning gives us the freedom to make the general personal and then share our personal experience in a way that, in turn, adds to the general flow of knowledge.

• In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity.

• Play is the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. When play happens while learning it creates a context in which information, ideas and passions grow.

• The important thing about the Harry Potter phenomenon is not so much what the kids were learning, but how they were learning. Thought there was no teacher in this setting, readers engaged in deep, sustained learning from one another through their discussions and interactions.

• In a world of near constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change rather than a way of growing out of it.

• The challenge is to find ways to marry structure and freedom to create altogether new things.

• Study groups dramatically increase the success of college students in the classroom.

•  The connection between the personal and the collective is a key ingredient in lifelong learning.

• When information is stable, the explicit dimension becomes very important. The speed of light, for example, is probably not going to change....The twenty-first centry, however, belongs to the tacit. In the digital world we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing... not by taking a class or reading a manual.

• Students learn best when they are able to follow their passion and opeate within the constraints of a bounded environment. Without the boundary set by the assignment there would be no medium for growth.

• Indwelling is a familiarity with ideas, practices and processes that are so ingrained that they become second nature. When engaging the learner, we must think about her sense of indwelling, because that is her greatest source of inspiration, but it is also the largest reservoir she has of tacit knowledge.

• Dispositions indicate how a student will make connections on a tacit level... how she is likely to learn.

• Learning from others is neither new nor revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions...

 ... and, I would add, by most of our organizations.

From the people under 30 who grew up studying and playing in groups I have enjoyed playing and co-creating on everything from business start-ups to models of more effectively serving causes. I hope that a version of this book is put up online for shareable input from us all - commenting, adapting, re-mixing the ideas, thus turning it into an ecosystem where we can hone our ideas on the new culture of, not "just" learning but also inventing and co-creating better ways to work and play together.

Find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/New-Culture-Learning-Cultivating-Imagination/dp/1456458884/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304030552&sr=1-1

http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/

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Sensory Ways to Bring Others Closer…

… and enable them to gain bragging rights about their experience with you and your place or event.

Was it the butterscotch-colored walls, light coconut scent wafting through the door as I opened it or the cushy island of deep blue carpet under my feet as I stepped into the boutique hotel? I don't know yet I instinctively sighed with relief. And that was before I saw the the smiling doorman walking towards me, saying, “We’re glad that you’re safely out of that storm. Let me help you with your coat, if you like, and your bag.” 

The lobby was light with the soft, full-spectrum lights that store make-up counters have, making us all look and feel our best.

Hint: Positive sensory cues multiple their emotional effect when we feel more than one at once or in quick succession.

In fact, without my knowing it at the time, that doorman looked more handsome and caring than I would have experienced him if the entry to that hotel had shiny metal railings, an elaborately patterned carpet and/or a dark colored wall. Further, since the “closing scene” when I left the hotel the next morning was as a positive as the opening scene, I tended to forget the slow room service or  cramped bathroom, according to research on the power of the sequence of events within an experience - from a vacation to a colonscopy. 

That’s why it behooves anyone who wants their guests, customers, conferenceattendees or families at home to feel welcome, brag about their experience and act nicely to storyboard the sequence of multi-sensory experiences that those they serve or love experience in their “place.”

Even apparently small physical experiences make a big emotional and even learning difference. Adapt these multi-sensory cues to emotionally engage with others: 

1. Children “are better at math when using their hands while thinking,” found to Josh Ackerman, a MIT psychologist. Further, the weight, texture and hardness of objects we touch affects our opinion of the people and the situation.

2. Actors recall lines better when moving and we remember more when walking, gesturing, eating or physically working on something.

3. “People are more generous after holding a warm cup of coffee and more callous after hold a cold drink,” discovered Yale University psychologist John Bargh.

4. Patterns, whether on the walls or floor or upper part of one’s clothing, break up the observers’ attention span and, like ambient noise in a room from the heating or air conditioning system, make us more agitated and inclined to become irritated by each other’s behavior.

 5. Scent is the most directly emotional sense and thus a two-edge sword. If the evoked memory is positive it hits deeply and, if not….well, we are more likely to project bad characteristics on the scene and individuals around us.

6. Enable people to engage in the scenes or objects around them and gain bragging rights as a consequence. Have a “What’s next for you?” sign on a large bowl of positive sayings or fortunes near places where they must wait or pause, such as check-in areas.  Staff can encourage them to read theirs aloud. (The more actions we take on behalf of something the more deeply they believe in it, identify with it and will share it with others.)

7. Encourage colleagues to stand and walk side-by-side with those you serve this "sidling" is more likely to evoke a convivial  “us” feeling.

 8. Create a story about your region, place, interactive object or monument or event, hopefully involving humorous, heroic or otherwise emotional incidents andindividuals, where you can invite those you serve to become a part of that story, asPeter Gruber suggests.

They may become a part  of "our" story when they can participate your custom ritual, receive your souvenir as a gift, eat the snack that’s part of the story or you take a photo of them in front of the scene on the wall that represents a highlight of our story – and email it to them after they leave.

9. Continue to keep them involved with “our story.” Use geosocial apps that enable them to connect with each other  - and your staff - as they walk through your store, hotel, hospital, sports arena or event. That’s what DoubleDutch did for TED conference attendees. And use augmented reality apps, as in Tuscany, yet to enable people to discover more about your area, place or meeting.

What multi-sensory cues have you used to involve people in your place, event or other experience?  Also let's share ways to say it better on Twitter. I am @kareanderson.

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

I Was Completely Surprised by His Behavior

Reinventing himself when he arrived at college Sam, “who had never had much luck with women” successfully beguiled a string of women into one-night stands, leaving his male friends shaking their heads in wonder because the women, though dumped, saw him as “sensitive, caring and sweet.” Also odd, Sam took up the habit of frequently washing his hands.

Now this might make you sufficiently curious to read the book in which this story is told, Out of Character. As you might have anticipated, Sam was subconsciously wiping his hands of guilt. A Macbeth effect for a man who’s dorm room was untidy.

Consider the sexual foibles of Eliot Spitzer, Tiger Woods and others. Yet, under the right circumstances we women can act as badly men. In fact, rather than acting heroically or evil we are all influenced by context and cues much of the time, according to the co-authors of this book.  Blame it our brain in constant combat, between the emotional and rational side. Yet understanding how we can convince ourselves to cheat, then minutes later, condemn others for the exact same behavior(another experiment in the book) can lead us to make more moral choices that serve us well in the long run, if not always in the tempting moment. And to stand up to bad behavior as Dan Weiss did at the Kennedy Center.

Here are three more examples of how we can be influenced to act badly – or better:

1. When angry people are more likely to see guns in the situation.

2. Experiment subjects are asked to watch video vignettes, some saw a skit from Saturday Night Live  and others got stuck watching part of a dull documentary of a quiet Mexican village. Then all were  asked how they would respond to a situation in which they are standing on a footbridge adjacent to trolley tracks. The only way they can save the lives of five men further down the tracks is to push a nearby, burly man off the bridge and onto the tracks, thus stopping the train.

Those who watched the SNL skit were three times more likely to push the man onto the tracks. What made the difference was the emotional state the videos evoked just before they were asked.  Those who watched the SNL skit felt upbeat and were thus able to overcome their aversion to killing one person to save five. They operated from their rational mind – thinking it made logical sense. Yet emotional contagion can influence our behavior in many ways. We are inclined  to belittle the next person we are around after we treated that way, for example. Co-author, David DeSteno suspects that “we act honorably—to the extent that we do—because we feel we should, not because we think we should.”

3. Sitting in a waiting room with a dirty rug, wall paintings askew and a dirty tissue on a table means you are considerably more likely to view the person who comes up to help you as not only less attractive but also less well-intentioned and skilled. You justify your less gracious behavior.  To warm others up towards you, consider storyboarding the multi-sensory cues that  people experience at your store, workplace, event or home.

Imagine the implications for our behaviors and settings at work or home. Later in the book see how you can view someone’s actions as arrogance or justifiable pride, depending on whether you believe that person knows what she or he is doing. Those asked, for example, about George Bush or Barack Obama’s actions are seeing them through the lens of their opinions about each one.  Similarly we are more likely to feel compassionate towards those with whom we can identify – they act and look like us.

That probably does not surprise you.

Yet when soldiers from vastly different backgrounds march together just once, they see and describe themselves as more alike and take more actions to support each other. One march does that.  Synchrony. It happens even when individuals in a study are asked to tap their hands in sync, some tap along with one person, others follow a different person.  Afterwards they answered questions that indicated they liked the people who tapped with them more than the others.  Makes you think of what you might want do when first convening a project team or starting the family off on a vacation?

Especially when I was younger I was astonished by heroes with feet of clay, not looking inward at my own incongruent actions. Coward or hero? Chaste or promiscuous? Bigoted or tolerant? We’ve played many roles.  As Dan Gilbert notes, “the hero and the villain that live inside each of us.” Reading this book is a fresh reminder that we all act “out of character” sometimes in ways that can make us ashamed or proud, depending on whether our emotional or rational brain is in the driver’s seat. We need both and David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo helped me see ways to balance them.

If you, too, are fascinated by what influences how we act towards each other then you may also enjoy Sway, Nudge,Multiplicity, Tell to Win, Influence, Just Listen, and Smart Choices.

See links here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2011/04/10/i-was-completely-surprised-by-his-behavior/

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

How to Nudge Others to Act “Right”

Unconditional love is a swell idea yet admit it. Aren’t there times you’d like to change other’s behavior? Get them to act right, like you. Or perhaps you’d like to drop a bad habit. Then learn how to “nudge.”

That’s a situational prompt that sways people to change.

For example, the traditional approach to getting drivers to reduce speed are those portable signs stationed at the side fo the street, showing how fast you are driving.

This is a shame or fear-based method. Instead, evoke pride or humor – or make it easier to do the right thing. In places in the UK, those signs don’t just tell drivers their speed. They smile at cars under the limit, and frown at cars over the limit.

Make the Right Option More Pleasurable Than the Other One

To encourage people to get exercise by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, one inventive group made the stairs sunnier and another made it more fun (piano stairs experiment) to walk than stand on the elevator.

Appeal to Our Better Nature

To motivate more people to wash their hands in the restroom two signs were

added, one for women and a more blunt one for men.

Instead of telling motorists to stop acting bad with “Don’t Litter” signs the state of Texas had much greater success by appealing to Texans’ pride, with signage saying “Don’t mess with Texas.”

Make it Easier to Do the Right Thing

If you worked for an organization that offered automatic payroll deduction for savings you’d be much more likely to save if the system was one where you had to opt-out than how they usually are set up – you must opt in to save. So discovered the authors of Nudge.

What nudge will you try to improve behavior – yours or others? See links to this post at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2009/10/18/how-to-nudge-others-to-act-“right”/

Follow Kare on Twitter @KareAnderson

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I Knew What You Meant When You Touched Me

Even when blindfolded, when touched just fleetingly we often recognize the emotion behind it. Even when touched by a stranger. Those touched in the study could identify the emotion (from eight, ranging from disgust to sympathy) more often than could happen by chance. Yet they were touched just five seconds.

More surprising to me, is that we are more likely to guess the right emotion that’s being expressed by someone’s touch than we can by hearing their voice or seeing their facial expression.

These three findings may startle you too:

• Men tended to avoid touching the face “and then only to express

anger or disgust at women and sympathy for other men.

• Women touched faces frequently to express anger, sadness and disgust for both (genders) “and to convey fear and happiness to men.”

We have a deep hunger human contact. Touch is the most direct, visceral path of contact with one another.

Yet Americans are among the most touch-adverse of all cultures, except with our closest family and friends.

In fact, increasingly schools have formal a Hands Off policy. “Even high-fiving and pats on the back have been outlawed” so we can protect youth from violence. The lesson, learned at an early age, is that adults would rather protect them from a problem (bullying and other violence) than help them with an opportunity (closeness and friendship). It’s easier to manage.

I can’t help but wonder if this cultural phobia is connected to the rise in loneliness. This is worth closer studyas loneliness may be as dangerous to one’s health as smoking.

Even smiling keeps us better connected with each other. In fact, just from looking at a yearbook photo, one can predict with some accuracy whether a person will divorce later in life,” claims Matthew Hertenstein, Director of the Touch and Emotion Lab at DePauw University.

But let’s end on an up note.

“Men soothe their loneliness with computers, women do it with pets,” says the co-author of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, John Cacioppo. In addition to his loneliness-relieving “make friends” tips why not literally get in touch more often every day?

Mind you, I still get itchy just thinking about popular Leo Buscaglia’s well-intended notion that we should greet everyone with a bear hug, including strangers. (“You can’t wrap love in a box, but you can wrap a person in a hug.“) Hugging everyone one meets negates the notion of touch having special meaning.

Yet why not hug your friends – and those to whom you are instinctively drawn? Shake hands with a smile when greeting colleagues.

As my Dad says, you seldom know if this time will be the last time you see that person.

Let’s stay in touch. (See links to this post here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2009/08/15/i-knew-what-you-meant-when-you-touched-me/

Meanwhile let's connect via Twitter: @KareAnderson

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Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect