Screen shot of the main Google Wave page

Last week Google announced it was pulling the plug on Google Wave. When introduced, it was touted by some to be a revolutionary new way to communicate online. Some opined it would replace email, instant messaging and a host of other communication methods. I didn’t think it was “all that and a bag of chips” and certainly not a replacement for email, but I found it quite useful for collaborative projects and described why in my November 2009 article entitled, “Google Wave – Great Potential For Collaboration.”

Many have pointed out Wave’s flaws, and there certainly were some as there is in any new tool. Here are good examples, some which have points I agree with:

• “Let’s Celebrate Google’s Biggest Failures” by Danny Sullivan
• “Why Google Wave Sucks, and Why You Will Use It Anyway” by Martin Seibert on TechCrunch
• “Google Wave’s Unproductive Email Metaphors” by Robert Scoble

Most of the people I talked to about Wave either didn’t get how it could be useful (an argument I hear against using Twitter all the time, too) or that it was too slow (which it was at times).

Despite its shortcomings, I found Wave to be rather handy and used it in a number of collaborative projects. There were others who saw the potential it had and used it with some success, notably Chris Brogan, who wrote a number of times he used it on a project with his Trust Agents coauthor, Julien Smith.

• “How I Came To Love Google Wave” by Chris Brogan
• “How Google Wave Could Transform Journalism” in the L.A. Time Blog
• “Google Wave In Real Life” by Mitch Wagner on Computer World

So, in the end, was Wave a colossal failure? Was it a good idea gone bad or an innovation looking to fill a need that wasn’t there? Call it like you see it. No matter what anyone else may believe about Wave, I applaud them for at least trying.

Sometimes you just can’t tell if an idea is good or bad until you try it out. In cases like with Wave, what looks great in the laboratory just doesn’t quite make it out there in real life.

I will miss Wave on occasion, but not too much. I’ll go back to doing what I was doing before Wave came out. I”m sure another tool is in the offing. Perhaps one a bit easier to “get” and use.

What about you? Did you like Google Wave? Why or why not?

One concern my colleague had was that some customers who subscribed to the print version of this newsletter are new to blogs and might not know that automatic updates are available and how to get them. After thinking about how to tackle this possible knowledge gap, I put together a post for her which explains basically what an RSS feed is and how to subscribe to one.

The fun of this quick project was the challenge of writing outside my default style. The blog is written in the voice of the newsletter’s mascot, an armadillo named “Templeton” who has his own, unique vernacular. It was a unique challenge to put the piece together with accurate information while still keeping with Templeton’s idiomatic ways.

In the end, my colleague and the other folks in our Marketing loved it and with a few edits turned it loose. Although it was a spur-of-the-moment project which took less than an hour, I found the experience of “ghost writing” a blog post to be rewarding and instructional.

Here’s where you can read the post, “What The Heck Is An RSS Feed?“

Over the weekend, he came out with a brilliant article stemming from his “Rise of the Marketing Technologist” post which I wrote about back in April. Go check it out here: The Marketing Technology Manifesto.

Julie sums it up quite nicely:

Hybrid roles are intersection points for cross-team expertise, collaboration and communication. People in hybrid roles understand many different perspectives both internal and external to the company. The hybrid professional works to integrate multiple perspectives in work being done with multiple teams. Hybrids have real potential for broadly connecting the dots in new ways, to help company innovation and competitiveness.

The key here, is “to help company innovation and competitiveness.” This can apply to any company in any business. The race to remain competitive is critical, and companies need to grab on to what they can to stay ahead of their competitors.

From a marketing perspective, Scott Brinker refers to this when he talks about the Marketing Technologist, which I refered to in April in my article “Agile Teams Redux – The Marketing Technologist.” Indeed, Julie refers to this same article in her piece, noting that the Marketing Technologist is a great example of a hybrid role as she envisions it.

I’d like to bring in a similar perspective from another Austin-based writer, Chris Bailey, in an article he titled “Open Letter To Fellow Career Zigzaggers.” (Do you get the feeling there are a lot of very smart people in Austin, Texas? That’s because there are!) Chris refers to what Julie calls “hybrids” as “zigzaggers:”

My professional trajectory hasn’t been a straight line…more like a zigzag. This is both good and bad. The good? I possess a wealth of different experiences, skillsets, and knowledge. This diversity allows me to uncover patterns that many “straight line” professionals likely can’t see.

This is not to knock the people who specialize – not at all. There is a need for specialists who can solve specific problems. Those highly educated and skilled people bring very important knowledge to an organization. For example, you certainly don’t want an experienced and capable chef who might also draw well designing an automobile transmission. That’s best left to an engineer with expertise in the area of mechanical systems. Likewise, you don’t want that engineer who happens to know how to cook well taking out your appendix if that should become necessary.

An organization full of specialists is, sometimes, too fractured to see things from multiple perspectives. Someone with broad experience in several areas can bring a fresh perspective to situations and offer unique and eclectic solutions to problems which might otherwise be tossed around from group to group in a shotgun envelope with a note attached reading, “Not Our Department.”

No where is this more visible than at the crossing of Marketing and IT. As “traditional”  marketing starts migrating towards online, plugged-in marketing, the hybrid “tech-savvy marketer” or the “marketing-savvy techie” is going to become critical to the organization’s success. Companies need to find those “hybrids” or “zigzaggers” and put them to good use. They will be glad they did.

photo credit: tonrulkens

photo credit: tomw99au

photo credit: quinet

Getting The Most Out of It
If you are working with people and you want to get the most out of your efforts, you need to have the heart of a teacher – which I fully believe involves being a learner, too. I’m not saying you need to set up a classroom somewhere and show endless Power Point presentations which tell everyone how smart and wonderful you are. No, that’s not it at all.

To be most effective you need to connect with people and help them to see things from your perspective. I don’t mean argue and get people to “do things your way.” You need to help them see things from where you sit – and help them discover new ways of tackling the challenges they face. By sharing freely from your experience and expertise you can offer unique solutions which, perhaps, no one else could come up with.

The idea here is to show that you know what you’re talking about and you’re willing to jump into the fray and add value to the enterprise. Your ability to teach and add value to those around you helps them do their jobs better – and vice versa.

My Story
I was fortunate to have had some excellent leaders during my early years in the Army. There were four or five people in particular who were able to teach me some basic concepts of leadership and the particular field I was in. Because I was willing to learn, those people were able to invest their knowledge and experience in me. This helped lay the foundation for me to have a very successful career for the next dozen or so years.

In the military one generally moves every 3 or so years. Every move brings new challenges, new things to learn and different cultures and ways of doing things. Because I picked up early on how to learn and to teach what I already knew, I was able to make some very positive contributions to the to the people with whom I worked. The things I learned from the people at every duty station to which I was assigned, added to my own experiences and the formal training I received, allowed me to leave a positive imprint on each unit to which I was assigned. By being willing to learn and to teach I was able to contribute a lot of value to the people around me.

Those same lessons helped me to my job better in my first civilian gig. I was hired on to do PC and network tech support for a manufacturing company. Since I had little knowledge of the intricacies of the processes the company used, I spent a lot of time talking with the people I found myself in contact with and asked a lot of questions. I certainly did not learn enough to be an expert in each manufacturing department, but by talking to the people working in the plant I was able to understand enough about the challenges they faced and how technology might help them. When I was brought into a meeting to help work out solutions to problems I could make a positive contribution and help the group come up with excellent ideas.

It’s Not About Me
Now, I’m certainly not the first person to do these things nor will I be the last. My intention in telling you all this is not to brag on myself, but to illustrate some things I think are essential for you to understand if you are going to make the most positive impact on your organization’s efforts.

I want to challenge you to be two things: teachable and a teacher.
Everyone has something to contribute. As many people much smarter than me stress, the first part of connecting with others is listening. Listen to those you come in contact with. Learn what they know and figure out how it applies to what you do. Don’t look down on others just because they aren’t “technical” or “artistic” or whatever. Remember, the basis for being valuable to others is to value them first.

Being a teacher is really more of a lifestyle choice. The natural inclination for most of us is to keep what we know to ourselves. Like the Wizard of Oz, we believe our power is in the mystery (“Ignore the man behind the curtain!”). Really, though, the Wizard was pretty useless to Dorothy and the others until the charade was stripped away and he was exposed. Only then did he share what he knew and really try to help solve the issues at hand. Even though he wasn’t able to help Dorothy, he certainly added value to the Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow.

What’s your story? How has having the heart of a teacher and learner helped you and those around you? Please share in the comments.

photo credit: HikingArtist.com

When you’re working on a joint project with your IT folks, here are some tips gathered from things I’ve seen Marketing folks I’ve worked with do to help things go a lot smoother:

1. Gather everything in one place as early as possible
   The time to do this is not a couple weeks before the project is scheduled for completion – this needs to be done way ahead of time. If you think you need an image, grab it. If you need some copy for a web page, write (or copy) it. Get everything you need in one place. You might want to make a special folder for each web project on your computer.
2. Label EVERYTHING
   Give all your images unique names and put them in subfolders to organize them better. If there is a caption or text to go with an image, put them into a document file and make sure to clearly match the file name of the image to the text which goes with it.  The more “copy and paste” you can make things the better. Don’t make the IT folks guess at what you want or what you mean, unless they work with you a lot they probably won’t get it right. It would be great if you would arrange your “repository” with subfolders with the names of the folders for the web site. Inside you can name the document files to correspond with the pages the text will go on. You might also create more subfolders to hold the images I refer to above. In the end, the easier you make it to find things the more efficiently the project will go.
3. Don’t Leave Anything Out
   As much as you possibly can, include everything that needs to go with the web site in the final package you deliver to your IT folks. Every time something turns up missing and they have to ask for it, momentum is lost. Sometimes, if it takes too long for you to respond, they might get to other tasks which could delay completion of you project. Of course, sometimes things are going to be forgotten and left out. The more you minimize this the less frustrating it is for your IT counterparts. Make sure you keep tabs on your email and phone in case they call. If you did forget something, get it to them as quickly as possible to avoid losing that precious momentum.

Organization is key. The more organized you are when gather and assemble your materials the easier it will be to replicate what you envision for your web site.

Web Site Update Tip
One marketer I know came upon a great idea when specifying updates for her web sites. She does screen shots and pastes them into PDF documents and puts them into a network folder shared with the IT folks. She uses the text markup and notes tools in Acrobat to show the changes she wants made. When the IT folks have questions, they can leave them on the PDF pages using the sticky note tool so she can respond. This is not only a great way to organize, it helps keep the communications flow going smoothly as well.

One Last Tip
You might also consider using Google Wave as a communications tool for collaboration. In a recent project, I found it to work quite well in organizing communications among a disparate and distant (geographically) group. I wrote an article last year which will help get you started in Wave. I highly recommend you give it a try.

What ideas do you have to help make joint Marketing and IT projects go more smoothly? Please feel free to share some in the comments.

photo credit: @davestone

• One should seek to engage customers instead of just “selling” to them.
• Listening is just as important as “talking.”
• Relationships with customers are cultivated, hopefully, before problems occur.
• Relationships take time and effort to develop. It’s a crock pot rather than a microwave.

What if those in Marketing were to approach their relationship with their corporate IT counterparts with the same ideas in mind? Perhaps this would be a great way to foster better collaboration with them. Let’s delve in a little on how that might work.

Engage, Don’t “Sell”
As pointed out in my recent article “Agile Teams Redux,” your IT Department has a whole different set of goals and priorities which may be vastly different from yours. This isn’t selfishness on their part, but rather it stems from their unique role in the enterprise. They need to support all departments and thus need to spread their resources around.

If you come to them only when you need something done and try to “sell” them on why your project is more important than the others, your arguments may fall on deaf ears. But, if you engage them over time, bringing them in on your future plans as you work them out you might be able to get them to buy in to how you envision them helping out. This can be as simple as an email where you write something to the effect of “Hey, this is what we’re doing over the next few months. Let’s sit down and talk about how best to approach the online parts of it.” Bring them in as partners, not just “supporters” and do it early and often.

Listen
In any relationship, listening is just as important (if not more important) than talking. Listen to what your IT folks have to say about those things they are trained and experienced with.  They may be a bunch of geeks, but they certainly know more than a thing or two about their end of the business. Absorb as much as you can. You may not get into the technical detail of what they do, but you certainly can get concepts. If you’re going to delve into online and social, it’s certainly important you at least understand the basics.

Also, listen and try to understand their position on scheduling and priorities. You’re not their only customer and there is a lot going on you probably don’t know about. Try to be flexible enough in your timelines to allow them to work on other projects so they can devote more attention to yours when it comes time to work on them.

Cultivate Relationships
Your IT folks are, no doubt and like you, stretched to the limit supporting the entire organization. You can’t just “pop in” every so often, dump a bunch of work on them and expect them to be wholehearted supporters. You also can’t just jump on then when there is a problem. Again, it’s important you help make them partners in your efforts. Bring them on board at the earliest possible moment. If your IT folks get the impression they’re just an afterthought, you will end up being an afterthought to them.

You might need to find one person in the IT group who “gets” marketing and ask them to be your champion. It would be great if this person was an “official” liaison. If you can’t get inside yourself, having an advocate who can see your side of the issue and speak the language of IT may be the best thing for you. You might also cultivate your own Marketing Technologist to help you in this effort. Again, the idea is that this person speaks the other’s language and understands more of what they are going through. Empathy can go a long way in helping foster good relationships.

This Takes Time
Developing good rapport and a good relationship between Marketing and IT is going to take time. In these days of “hurry up and get it done” we often expect to have quick, surface relationships with those around us – “An inch deep and a mile wide” as one of my friends likes to put it. But, if you’re going to have a real working relationship with people you need to get a little deeper.

Last year I wrote some tips to help IT and Marketing folks work better together. Check out that article and see if some of those suggestions won’t work for you.

Don’t expect this to happen overnight. While it’s possible you can hit upon something and make things go good quickly, more than likely this is going to take some time. That’s OK – you want to do it right. Just like in cooking: a microwave may be fast, but slower cooking makes the resulting meal taste a whole lot better.

Please feel free to share your tips on how you’ve developed relationships between Marketing and IT in the comments.

Scott rightly points out that IT and Marketing have very distinct missions and goals and thus have differing priorities. By having a technical person on staff, Marketing can move much faster with online initiatives where direct IT support is not needed.

The CMT …

• … is in on Marketing’s plans from the outset and throughout any campaigns.
• … helps the marketing team make strategic and tactical decisions on which technologies would be appropriate for a given project/campaign.
• … evaluates what in-house resources are available and needed.
• … moves forward with implementation of plans when they are made.

The CMT would only call on IT for those things which they need to directly support, and coordinate for outside technical resources as needed. Because the CMT goes through this screening process at the outset of projects Marketing gets their stuff done quickly and efficiently, and IT has more time to devote to their missions because they don’t get involved until they are truly needed.

My Thoughts On This
Last October, I posted an article, “Communication is Key – The Funnel Effect” where I recommended that when Marketing and IT Departments work on a collaborative project, each department should appoint a point of contact person who would take all communication from their counterpart and distribute as needed. All communication between the departments would funnel through these people in order to better track the messages going back and forth. Rather than this becoming a new bureaucracy, I looked at this system as a way to avoid lost and duplicate communication. (Note: since then I’ve used Google Wave as a tool for communication on collaborative projects. It’s worked quite well and may eliminate the need for this communications “funnel.”)

Expanding on Scott’s idea, the person on the Marketing end of this type of collaboration could very well be the CMT. This would be the person who would speak IT’s language, as it were, and know best what they need to be given in order to successfully complete the project.

Also, right around that time, I posted an article entitled “Agile Teams” where I described how small teams could be pieced together using personnel from the Marketing and IT Departments to work on short-term projects. I suggested it might even be a good idea to temporarily move these people into an office space together to facilitate faster completion times. A person who could very likely lead such a team would be the CMT.

Scott has some brilliant ideas on his Chief Marketing Technologist blog. If you are a technically-minded marketing person or a marketing-minded technology person I think you will get a lot out of his writing.

In a recent post entitled “HTML Email + Alt Tags = More Bagels Sold” on his Marketing Tech Blog, Douglas Karr has taken this idea one step further by recommending the use of plain text in HTML emails.

Douglas shows quite plainly what an HTML email with text embedded in images looks like when the images are blocked, which is the norm for most email applications. It’s blank. He makes an excellent case which I think email marketers would be wise to consider.

One thing I would add to this lesson on “alt” tags: use them! In web pages this is especially important for accessibility by those with impaired vision. Images are invisible to screen readers used by those with limited or no sight and the “alt” tags are the means by which that content becomes usable to them.

Lastly, I’ve been following Douglas since I heard him speak at OMS in Austin last year. He’s a sharp guy and I recommend you follow his blog if you’re not doing so already.

1. Don’t tweet about your blog unless you’ve posted something new to it.
When you first start your blog, it’s great to tweet once, twice or even three times to let your followers know it’s there. After that, don’t keep tweeting about it unless you’ve posted something new. I don’t think it’s so much a question of spam, though some may consider constant tweeting about the same thing to be spam. I think it’s more about diluting your message. Either way, people will unfollow or ignore you, neither of which is good. Messaging when you have something new helps to keep your messages relevant and valuable.

There is still some debate over how many times is appropriate to tweet about new information in your blog or web site. I think once is enough. There is some honest opinion that more than once is good because you want to make sure everyone has a chance to see the message. I think three times should be the “unofficial” limit. Again, this is because you want to avoid being “spammy” and avoid diluting your message.

When you post something, it’s a good idea to use a URL shortening service. I recommend bit.ly because they let you see click-through statistics and they are taking some great steps to prevent phishing and other scams.

These same ideas can apply equally to Facebook or any other social site.

2. On web sites or blogs, text needs to be text.
This goes back to something I consider to be part of  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101: Search Engines don’t read text embedded in images and thus cannot index it. Even a web site for a professional servicing a local area needs to be well-indexed. After all, the better your web site places in search engine results pages (SERPs), the more likely you are to be found and get that new client. Your site will not be considered relevant by search engine logarithms if there’s no text visible to it to analyze and categorize the content.

3. Avoid the seemingly endless lists of links at the bottom of your web pages.
This was a method of SEO which was popular long ago and is now considered to be spam by the search engines. Having links in a block-formatted list really doesn’t do much good for your site visitors, either, because it’s hard for them to find the content they may want to read.

Instead of having an enormous list of links, create a menu system which is both user- and search engine-friendly. This will help your visitors (potential clients/customers) as well as let the search engines find your material. The added benefit is that search engines will find this method to their liking, which will help your ratings in SERPs.

One place where is it appropriate to have a list of links is the site map. Your web site should have an up-to-date site map full of text-only links to the content in your site. There should be a link from the home page to the site map, too.

4. Consider using a “Contact Us” form.
Different people like to communicate in different ways. On your site, give your visitors as many ways to easily contact you as possible. Provide phone number,email address, physical and mailing addresses as well as a “Contact Us” form. Put all of these contact points in an obvious place, visible above the fold, and in the same place on every page on the site if at all possible.

5. Consider making a Google Map showing your location rather than a “hand-drawn” image of a map.
It is very easy to create a Google Map and embed the map on your web site:

• Go to http://maps.google.com
• Search for your location, click on the letter corresponding to it
• Click on the “Link” link in the blue bar, upper-right of the page
• Copy the code in the “Paste HTML to embed in website” box
• Paste the code in your web site where you want the map to be

[iframe http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=south+pointe+casino,+las+vegas,+nv&sll=34.002581,-93.710632&sspn=1.750914,2.441711&ie=UTF8&hq=south+pointe+casino,&hnear=Las+Vegas,+NV&cid=16210623762068782240&ll=36.058259,-115.155945&spn=0.097142,0.145912&z=12&iwloc=A&output=embed 425 350]
View Larger Map

You can also do this similarly in Bing maps by using the “Share” link at the bottom of the page.

By using this type of interactive map you allow customers to save the map in their “Favorites” or “Locations” on the service. It also allows them to get driving directions so they can find you easier.

If you haven’t already, you should also consider adding your business to Google’s Local Business Center. This allows you to add your business along with some profile information. This takes just a few minutes, but it allows you to have some control over what people will see when they search and find you on Google.